City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, and welcome to, the regular city council meeting of Monday, 03/02/2026. The time is 06:07PM. City Council, we met in closed session tonight starting at 04:45PM, and I do not have anything to report from that closed session. And we are going to now move on to our pledge allegiance. If you are able, please join me in standing.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Okay. We are now going to move on to our public forum. This portion of the meeting is when members of the public can speak to the council on any item that is not on tonight's agenda. If you'd like to speak on a matter that is on the agenda, please reserve your comments for when that agenda item is called.

The purpose of public forum is to provide the public with an opportunity to be heard. However, if your comments do not address a topic that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city or if your comments are disruptive, I will provide a warning. If the warning is not followed, I will direct the city clerk to cut off the microphone. Each speaker is usually given three minutes. This time may be adjusted at my discretion based on the number of speakers or the number of items on the agenda.

If you ask questions during public forum or during public comment with respect to an agenda item, those questions will not be answered during your allotted time. However, a member of the council may, at the conclusion of public comments, direct your questions to staff for response. Pursuant to state law, the council may not discuss issues brought up at public forum, but council members or staff may provide brief responses to statements made. So I'm looking at our city clerk, Anna Brown. Do we have any members of the public here who'd like to speak on public forum?

I currently have one speaker card for public comment, Doctor. Steve Sidney.

Oh, hello, Doctor. Sidney. Please welcome.

Let's see. Can you hear me? Is this working well now? Yeah. I've got it on green. I am here on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Piedmont, which has begun organizing a rally in Piedmont Park on No Kings Day three, March twenty eight at ten a. M. We are working with the city clerk's office, which has been very helpful and is helping to facilitate our activities and to determine whether things we would like to do are allowable and feasible, such as providing sound amplification for speeches and songs. We have discussed a provisional target for attendance of 400 people. Why 400?

Political scientists, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stefan analyzed data from hundreds of resistance campaigns and showed that 3.5% of the population actively participating in sustained nonviolent resistance is enough to make major political changes highly likely. This is what we need to know considering that our federal government is clearly moving away from democracy and towards autocracy and is likely to get there if we do not stop it. Estimate from the No Kings II rally on October 18 are that 5,000,000 to 7,000,000 people took part in these rallies. 3.5% of The U. S.

Population is about 12,000,000 people. We would like Piedmont to reach the 3.5% level, which equates to about 400 people. We additionally hope that we have participation of a large number of students from the Piedmont schools. Less there are concerns that this rally would be devices for community, I would like to point out that this is not about Republican, Democratic and other parties and their politics. It is about whether we maintain a society based on democratic principles with a constitution forming the basis of our legal system or whether it morphs into an autocracy with a dictator or king or queen who makes all the laws according to his or her whims.

Regarding the issue of political divisiveness, I think it is useful to point out a fact which, surprised me. According to the office of the California Secretary of State, Kamala Harris received 86% of the Piedmont vote in the twenty four presidential election, while Donald Trump received only 11%. There is not much to divide here. Thanks for your attention and hope to see you at the rally.

Okay. Thank you for your comments. Do we have any other speakers for public forum either in the chambers or online? I have no additional speaker cards and there

are no hands raised in the online.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for coming by. I'm gonna go ahead and close public forum and we're gonna move on to our presentation for this evening of for in honor of Women's History Month. And we do have Enduro Bulkerson here who is gonna accept this after I read the proclamation.

So thank you so much for being here. Okay. Whereas the celebration of Women's History Month grew out of a weeklong celebration of women's contributions to culture, history and society organized by the school district of Sonoma, California in 1978. And whereas in 1980 President Jimmy Carter formally recognized the week of March 8 as National Women's History Week, a celebration that expanded to the entire month of March in 1987 following successful petition to Congress by the National Women's History Project. And whereas the National Women's History Alliance has designated the official theme for Women's History Month in 2026 as leading the change, women shaping a sustainable future.

And whereas expanding the definition of sustainability, the theme honors the women who have and are reimagining and rebuilding systems to endure long term sustainability including environmental, economic, educational and societal. And whereas women are pivotal drivers of global sustainability acting as primary caregivers, resource managers and leaders across environmental, economic and social sectors. This theme recognizes the powerful leadership of women in creating a future that is rooted in equity, justice, and opportunity for all. Whereas women's history is essential and indispensable part of the national narrative, by understanding the achievements, struggles, and contributions of women throughout history, begin a fuller, more accurate, and more inclusive understanding of our collective past. Now therefore, I, Betsy Smeagol Anderson, mayor of the city of Piedmont, do hereby proclaim March 2026 as Women's History Month.

Thank you. So I don't know if you're gonna talk about yourself, but I know, oh, Endura as she is currently the vice chair of the community advisory committee for Eva Community Energy, which supplies our carbon free energy to the residents of Piedmont and many residents in Alameda County. And I am delighted to work with her to the extent that our paths cross because I sit as the board chair of AIVA Community Energy. So we are both women working on sustainability. Thank you for being here.

I'm sorry. Because my area is more environmental, I thought I'd focus on how many amazing things the leaders of Piedmont and their allies have been doing. And so just thank you so much, mayor Anderson and members of the city council. It's an honor to accept this proclamation on behalf of the women in our community. Women have been leading change for a sustainable future since Piedmont's founding to the present day.

We focused on sustainability because we want to ensure that Piedmont remains a community our children and our children's children want to live in. There are so many examples of projects the women and our male allies have taken on, and I I couldn't even list them all, but I just wanted to focus on the climate events. So first of all, we have green building codes, and we are one of the few cities in California with building codes requiring electrification for both new builds and existing home renovations in support of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. We encourage the replacement of gas equipment with electrical equipment. We have an induction stove loaner program, money monetary incentives, education outreach, and EV charging stations amongst a lot of other things, all with the goal of improving indoor and outdoor air.

And we're working on lowering our greenhouse gas emissions by joining Eva Community Energy, which offers a 100% renewable energy and provides lower rates for energy generation. We have sustainability project manager, yay, Denise, who among other things measures and tracks our greenhouse gas emissions and our climate action plan. And we are improving our water infrastructure by and conserving water by replacing our leaky pool with an all electric pool and building green infrastructure like the bioswale bulb outs on Grand Avenue, which is our most recent, and our other locations. I'm proud of this proclamation, and I look forward to continuing our work alongside this this council to ensure our city's future as is as bright and sustainable as the women who lead it.

Wonderful. Thank you. I was going to suggest that we take a photo. Are you okay? Oh, would you like to come back here to take a photo with us?

Thank you. Alright. We are now moving on to the consent calendar. We have, one item on our consent calendar, which is approval of an agreement with the city of Alameda for the provision of firefighter training and education. I'm looking at my colleagues.

Do any of you wanna pull this item from consent? Okay. Do we have any public comment on this item?

We do not.

Okay. I will entertain a motion at this time. So moved. So moved by council member Long. Do we have second?

Second.

Seconded by council member Ramsey. Let's go ahead and vote. Aye. Aye. Aye. Consent calendar agenda item number one passes unanimously. We are now moving on to our regular agenda item number two, which is a consideration of a resolution adopting the 2025 local hazard mitigation plan. This is very exciting for all the local hazard mitigation groupies out there, including myself. I know. Founding. Welcome, chief Brannigan.

Alright. Good evening, madam mayor, members of council. I'm going to share my screen. All right. Madam Clerk, do we have Janine Foster on

line? Yes.

Okay. Great. So, madam mayor, council members, I am very pleased to have this item before you tonight. The local hazard mitigation plan update is a process that has to happen every five years in order to be eligible for FEMA mitigation grant funding, and we want to make sure that Piedmont is current. We did this first in 2019 and are updating it now following a process that involved a grant application, successful acceptance of that grant and then hiring a contractor, and that is Foster Morrison Consulting.

They were our vendor the first time through and did our update for us. We do have Janine Foster, the principal planner from that group, online with us tonight. So she can introduce herself and answer any questions if you have them after the presentation. So let's talk a little bit about the planning process. And first, I want to thank everybody who was involved.

So we had members of staff from the city administrator to planning director Jackson to associate planner, Lemise Chobani, Eka Schneider, our communications officer, and literally almost everybody else in city staff participated. We had several council members participate. We also had lots of outside agencies. So we had East Bay Mudd, Alameda County, City of Oakland, Piedmont Unified School District. Lots of member of these groups made up what we call the Hazard Mitigation Planning Committee.

And the Hazard Mitigation Planning Committee was a group of experts and community members and partner agencies that got together throughout various phases of this planning process. As we move through the process and what we're going to talk about tonight is the mitigation strategy, how we did the planning itself and sort of the components that we got through. So we started with this is actually FEMA's advice process for doing this. We start with organizing our resources, getting that group together, doing a risk assessment. So we have to look at all the natural hazards that Piedmont may face and ones we may not face and determine whether we do or don't and look at those risks.

We have a robust community engagement process that we'll talk about in a moment, coming up ultimately with a strategy which consists of goals and actions. Once that is determined, the plan is created, it goes to CAL OES followed by FEMA. Both of those bodies have approved the plan at this point, and now it's coming to you for adoption. So, in addition to the Hazard Mitigation Planning Committee, we did a robust community input process. The goal was to meet people where they are, create opportunities for meaningful input and foster community ownership of the mitigation strategy.

So we I think you know that last time we did this in 2019, we had some community events and the mayor and the former mayor were some of the regulars, but one few of the participants

at We participated as robustly as we could.

You did, yes. This time, I'm happy to say we had a direct engagement with over 300 community members throughout the process. And what you see on the screen is one of our workshops where we had input opportunities. People could use sticky notes. They could use red dots to give us input on ideas that we had. So we did one of those for gathering information about our historic hazards that we face. We also had a community I'm sorry, that was the survey. And we also had a survey on our mitigation strategy. The workshops garnered more than 50 attendees. We had a dedicated project e mail list and website with over 84 subscribers.

We presented multiple times to the Public Safety Committee, and we presented to the Parks Commission both to update them on what we were doing but also to get their input on what we were working on. And our community partners included presentations to the League of Women Voters, went out with Walking on Wednesdays. We presented at the or a table to the adult recreation expo, food fest, and Arbor Day. So really had a big wraparound involvement of the community to get feedback and ownership to the public. So the first phase that we had to work on was assessing our risk.

And Piedmont faces a lot of things. The list you see before you on the screen are the hazards we identified in both 2025 and 2019. This is the table directly out of the plan that's before you tonight. I think the big ones that people know and understand are earthquake and wildfire in California and Piedmont specifically. The hazard mitigation plan is about natural hazards, so we try to avoid human made hazards.

It's really designed to be about natural. That being said, climate change is something that we consider a hazard that Piedmont faces and is an important element for FEMA to consider. You can see the other things on here. One of the most prominent issues we've had to deal with in the last six years has been severe weather, so trees down, localized flooding, stormwater problems. So those are all included in here in addition to your more common hazards.

The next phase in the process we developed and refined, five mitigation goals. So these were almost the same as what we came up with in 2019. I won't repeat them all here, but the categories we in general, the purpose of mitigation is to minimize risk, enhance our awareness and preparedness, our ability to bounce back from a hazard, improve our resilience, integrate the work we're doing into laws and code, which we've worked on a lot over the last year. And then lastly, maintain our eligibility for FEMA grant funding. Now this one thing to clarify, this is not about disaster grants.

So if we had a disaster, FEMA is going to come regardless of the status of this plan.

We hope.

This is specifically about mitigation grant funding. So, this is before the fact, things we might do. And if an item is not in this plan, it's not eligible for mitigation grant funding. So, we tried to really front load lots of ideas into the plan. There are some projects on here that may never come to light, but if they're not in here, we can't apply for grant funding. So, we wanted to be broad and leave our opportunities open. So, once we established these goals, we came up with a list of mitigation actions. And we had 30 actions spread out across all the different hazards. I didn't want to overwhelm you with that in a slide. So you have on your desk a table with all of those actions.

And members of the public who are here, they're more outside if you want to look at them. If it's online on the agenda, there's a link to the mitigation plan, and it's Chapter five. So what I like about this table and how Foster Morrison put this together is that it shows the hazards and the actions that we're including in the plan, whether it was in the original plan in 2019 and or whether it was new. So again, we're looking at multihazard. One of the nice things about multihazard plans is or actions is that they can address multiple things.

You'll notice we have several agencies represented in our actions. So these are not just City of Piedmont actions. We worked with PUSD to get to include projects that they might be interested in doing because they would be eligible for funding if they were to apply for grants underneath our local hazard mitigation plan. So that was an important thing to integrate. Also, East Bay MUD was an active participant in this process, and so we included several actions that East Bay MUD expressed interest in and then, of course, lots of plans for Par City.

Some of them have already started. Some of them, as I said before, may never come to light, but it's an opportunity for us as a city to identify the possibilities. Next steps in this process is to take action, to get to work on this list. Some of the things have already happened. One of the things hopefully will be happening later tonight, which is integrating this plan into the safety element of our general plan.

So we're going to continuously review this process. FEMA says we're supposed to do it annually. And working with the city administrator, we've identified a plan to bring it up for review in the months leading into the budget process so that we can see if we had already budgeted things or are already with them. And if not, maybe it can help inform the budgeting and the strategies and the goals that this body wants to embark on also. It will also give us a chance to look at grant opportunities as we move forward through that process.

So that is a very brief overview of a very long plan. I'm sure you all had a great opportunity all weekend to read it. And of course, you were involved in the process up until now from time to time. So, if you have any questions, I believe Janine is online, and I am happy to answer anything.

Great. Thank you so much and really appreciate Janine Foster for being here as well. Looking at my colleagues, do we have any questions about the updated new and improved hazard mitigation plan? I'm looking at Council Member Ramsey.

Thank you for that. I do have a question of the 30 actions. How can you help us think about priorities and or can we group those in priorities? Or how should we be thinking about that?

That's a great question. I think, as I said, some of them are already underway. One of the easy ones was code adoption. We updated our fire and building codes to address some of these issues. Some of them are in the climate action plan. So they're things we're already working on. I think it would be a good exercise to, as we go through the list, look at likelihood of additional funding, the grant opportunity, trying to find the things certainly

in

the early years of this, what are the big impact at a lower cost. And we included things we've talked at length about our capital improvement plans and public safety building. We included actions in here that would encompass those. As long as funds are available as we pursue that, it's possible to add grant funding to the funding stream now.

Councilmember one.

Thank you. This has been a long time in the making and a lot of touch points. Can you just remind all of us what a process like this allows residents and staff and all of us to be able to do when something happens?

Yes. That's lifecycle of the planning process involves getting input from all the stakeholders and policymakers so that we can mitigate. And mitigation, if I didn't explain this before, is the idea that we're going to take care of problems before the disaster hits. So hardening buildings, fixing our storm drain infrastructure, working on vegetation management. So we're all better prepared so that when a disaster hits, the impact is lower and we're able to respond and recover quicker.

So the reason it's really important for us to get input from everybody in the community and our partner agencies is that everybody is impacted in ways that we don't want to assume we understand. And the community knows especially with the historic hazards and the risk assessment, the folks who have lived here through all of it, through the 'eighty nine earthquake, the 'ninety one fire, they understand what they've been through and what they're worried about. And we want to capture the concerns of the community so that we can have a chance at mitigating against the problems they anticipate.

Thank you. Okay. Councilor Pammier?

I just want to follow to something you said about looking at these actions and what could be potential good candidates for some of the grant funding. And I'm wondering if that's something like, similar to the CIP where it could be a a five year projection and, like, these are the more expensive categories of hazards that are more likely to get funding or less likely to get funding, and that then we can prioritize those when it comes to budgeting. And if that's something that you're already doing or you plan to do in the future or

where that I think finance. Yes. And Rosanna can I talk to this think as we incorporate this with the longer term strategic planning and budgeting, this will inform those processes? As to prioritizing them to risk and likelihood, I think we can we've I've personally, in this role, taken a little bit of a shotgun approach at grant opportunities. So having this in this format will inform me and the city administrator and ultimately the council and the community on probably gives us a little better lens on how to focus in on the things we want to prioritize, especially now that it's updated and we can marry those processes, the budget and the strategic planning processes to inform what we want to do.

And I would say, in general, because we're fiscally constrained, the risk management approach is what drives the capital projects that we prioritize on an annual basis and what we bring forward for discussion and budget study sessions. That is going to be always a critical variable that defines the projects that make it on to the shortlist for prioritizing what needs to be addressed first. With reference to grant opportunities, there are many, many ways to pursue grant funding, but because of the size of our staff and our limited capacity, we really want to match grants with activities that best align with what we need most. And so this type of a document is a roadmap for the things that are most critical for the city to pursue and by aligning across departments in key areas this would for instance allow for public works, fire and the administrative functions of the city to look for the same opportunities and the alignment.

And I'll say I can't speak to how FEMA will work on ongoing, but the way it has worked for mitigation grants is we've had to wait for some kind of a disaster for them to open up the mitigation grant window. That's one of the reasons this project was delayed a little bit is because we wanted to get a mitigation grant to pay for it, and we had to wait for the wake of some storms to open up a mitigation grant opportunity. So that sometimes dictates how it's going to go also is when these things come up. Another big difference, too, in terms of prioritization of now versus six or seven years ago is our far more robust ability and efforts to get input from the community via online surveys and all outreach and receiving efforts we get through the communications officer, we did surveys around disaster preparedness, and we were able to do online surveys around this plan specifically. So, that helps us a little bit understand what the concerns of the community are that we may not know without doing those types of activities.

I had a follow on question. We are always looking for ways to partner with the PUSD and I see one of our school board trustees here in the audience with us. Thank you. And I noticed that action number 29 is indicating potentially some collaboration with the school district on reducing hazardous trees and connection on the middle and high school space. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that and whether or not there are grant there might be grant funding available that's separate and apart from FEMA funding

Mhmm.

If we if we're able to partner with the district.

Yeah. We we often get requests from Pete Palmer to both advise on trees and vegetation around the schools. We do annual inspections, but also he's always looking for the opportunity to collaborate on funding opportunities. I found it difficult so far in Piedmont to be eligible for California vegetation mitigation grants. Those tend to go to larger multi jurisdictional projects that don't address a particular location, but rather like a shaded fuel break so they can anticipate slowing down a fire that's impacting the whole region.

They also are often tied to the economic status of a community, and more challenged communities are eligible first for those grants. So the opportunities we've looked at in Piedmont, we haven't been able to be to consider those. But that being said, without it in here, we can't consider it. So never say never, and we're going to keep trying.

That's right.

And we're surrounded by a big community that often is eligible for those types of grants, so we are always looking to partner with them too.

Great. Thank you so much for that. Any other questions before we turn to public comment? Okay, let's go ahead and turn looking at our city clerk. Any public comment on this item?

I have no speaker

cards. Okay. Thank

you. Susie Struble.

Thank you. Very excited to see this. I timed it well to come today, and I remembered responding to the survey, so I love seeing some of that showing up here. Curious as a community member, how can we follow-up to kind of understand what might be happening on some of these actions and how can we help? There's a bunch of these that pop up to my mind thinking about tree mitigation. I know lots of people have been working in the park and with UC Berkeley on eucalyptus trees and they've got like all grants and that might be a really great connection. I live on St. James Drive above a very steep hillside where your septic lines go through and I've already talked with the Department of Public Works about it. The land is slumping, it's falling into the creek. I'm very concerned it's going to break the pipe and we're going to have some big issues.

I would love to partner with the city somehow and working on what we could do to mitigate that. For whatever it's worth on that, what I think is not only with grants, but also can be for private landowners, there may be ways that the city could help us work through all the red tape around creeks as well. So there's things that I could do as a private landowner that would really help with the erosion and creek mitigation, but I'm not allowed to touch anything down there. Right? So curious what your what your response to that would be because I'd love to be involved. Yeah. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you for that. Do we have any other public comment at this time? I see none. Okay. So I am going to turn to our chief and ask if you would like to respond to any of the questions raised by our public comment.

Sure. Be happy to. So to let's see. In terms of the schools, so one nice thing is we have been presenting and getting feedback at the Public Safety Committee, and we do have school board member on the committee. So that was great to get that kind of direct work done.

In terms of the collaborative efforts, the grants and that what we've done in so the work around Grizzly Peak and up top there is there's collection of agencies that meet regularly who were all the agencies that the ninety one Hill Fire impacted. Unfortunately, Piedmont was not one of them, so I listened in on those meetings. We're invited to to hear. But they also are a number of big state agencies. They they have received a lot of those grants because they are an area that they're looking at for a regional firebreak, and that hasn't really gotten down to us here in Piedmont.

But in terms of your other concerns around the public work side of things, how we address our infrastructure, hillsides, working with PG and E, working with East Bay Mud, if it's pipes and sewers and our public works department, can all tie into this. And there are actions in here that will allow for some of that. Yes, we can talk about that. Great.

Okay. And I like to think that all of our meetings are really wonderful to attend. So, you are welcome anytime to come to our meetings. Our agendas are always really interesting. Okay.

Any other thoughts, final questions before we consider action on this item? Just have I just want to thank our city staff because I know this type of planning it's not just the public that was involved, was also quite a number of our city staff from different representing different departments and different constituencies within our staff. So I want to thank everyone for their work on this internally. I also want to thank Eka Schneider for rallying all of these folks to come for getting the word out and for inspiring folks in our community to attend and to participate. It really is wonderful to see such a robust process this time around.

I know we have not welcomed Jeanine Foster to the screen, but I also want to thank her and Foster Morrison Consulting for all of their work that they put into this and is there anyone I've forgotten? No. Okay. And the Chief. Thank you, Chief Branigan.

Thank you.

Okay. We'll entertain a motion at this time. So So moved by Councilmember Long. Second.

Second.

Seconded by Councilmember Plumier. We are by single motion taking the action as outlined in the staff report. Anything else? Nope. Okay. Let's go ahead and vote. Aye. Aye. Motion carries.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Janine.

Okay. We are now moving on to regular agenda item number three, which is presentation of the Piedmont Police Department 2025 end report. And we'll welcome to the day as our police chief. Do wanna do you wanna come sit for

the report?

I'll be lying for that chair up here.

Police chief Frederick Shabies the second. Thank you so much.

Thank you, madam mayor, council members, and city administrator and Piedmont community. Thank you for having me here tonight for the opportunity to present the police department's annual report. I wanna reflect on the work that was accomplished this year by the members of our department, some of which you see here tonight in serving our community. I also want to thank the city council for entrusting entrusting this department to me and the responsibility of being the chief. I don't take it lightly.

I do it with honor and commitment. Residents of Piedmont that are here, thank you for welcoming me into the community over the last seven or eight months. Thank you for all the conversation that we've had in the community at meetings, at school related events, at neighborhood gatherings. And so helping us understand, we're helping the organization and the city understand that public safety is a partnership for both city government and community. Big thanks to the sworn members that are here.

I appreciate you guys being here tonight. I'm usually at these meetings by myself, so thanks for being here. Proud of the sworn officers, dispatchers. We'll get into it. The sworn officers, the dispatchers of our organization, the non sworn members and even our volunteers. And so you guys show up every day, professional, with the service mindset. I'm proud to lead you all committed to training you all and providing resources in the coming year and giving you the support that you need. I'm going to get into let's see how you wanna come in? There you go. So this annual report captures the year.

We had strong service delivery and continued operational demands with regard to staffing. We experienced nearly 12,000 calls for service and untold number of investigations. We have obviously conducted traffic safety in our daily work of being visible and responsive and dependable in our community. So what this report will and you guys may have it in front of you, but what this report captures are measurable outcomes. We saw reductions across key crime categories through a combination of focused strategy.

We leaned into directed patrol efforts by the officers you see here in this room. We tried to understand time windows where we saw patterns. We strengthened our real time response. And more importantly, we focus on actionable information and rapid follow-up through our flock safety cameras and our reports from our community. We utilize we track down leads, utilized our public safety cameras to support investigations, improved situational awareness and reduced time to identification when incidents occurred.

There was I'll get into some of our crime numbers, but again, just in looking at real time, I think just in my second week here, there was a robbery that occurred and the officers that you see here in this room led by officer Fauci and officer Singh, utilizing the technologies that were available to the agency, we're able to track the individuals that had committed the crime in our community and take them into custody and even found that they were repeat offenders that had continued to come and victimize our community. So again, we're grateful not only for their hard work and responsiveness to our community, but also the technologies that have been afforded to the agency. In talking about this reduction, we also know that the work wasn't done alone. We work closely with our regional partners, Oakland, which surround us and also other public safety agencies throughout the county. We share timely information, coordinated on crimes, and suspects crossed jurisdictional boundaries.

These reductions, again, reflect the disciplined efforts of our patrol officers and our investigative staff that follow through on cases, case by case, report by report, and also, more importantly, just the context that we make in our community. I want to discuss how we do it because I think that the way in which we police or the way that we serve our community reflects the values of our community. In my first year, I'm committed to ensuring that my staff understand the values of our community, that they continue to operate within our our community, utilizing the tools and technologies that you guys have entrusted in us around public safety. I wanna I think it's important that we that we use these tools with the utmost transparent transparency and integrity. I think that technology should strengthen trust.

It shouldn't erode it. And so that's along those lines, that's one of the reasons why I meet I've met directly with members of our community about our ALPR cameras. We'll continue to have those conversations over the course of my tenure here. We are committed to both myself and our agency, we're committed to safeguarding the privacy of all of the folks that reside here, that work here, that pass through our city. We'll continue to apply clear rules, consistent oversight, regular review to ensure that the tools are being used lawfully.

One of the things that I think is extremely important is or that for community and for council to know is that any and all request to get any information from our network goes directly through me. We won't run into issues. I'll just say that all efforts to access our flock network comes directly through me. And we, again, in keeping with state law, will not be sharing any data with anyone outside of outside of our state for sure. And we also aren't sharing with any federal agencies.

The city of Piedmont police Piedmont police department maintains full control over our data. We operate in strict compliance with California state law. California agencies, as you all know, cannot accept or initiate data sharing outside of the state or with any federal agencies. We will not be engaged in any immigration related or reproductive care related searches having to do with any of our data. So I think that that's important for counseling, for staff to under staff and also our community to understand.

The only time that an individual can access our data is through an actual or excuse me, within the organization even is through an actual NIBRS related or a crime related event. They there has to be some nexus to an actual crime that was committed here in the city of Piedmont or in the surrounding jurisdiction. And so one of the biggest accomplishments, though, while while I before I get into crime, the biggest accomplishment was the completion of our dispatch center. And so I know many of you all have been there, I know a lot of folks are excited about it, but I can't talk enough about how important that service was. The dispatch center is more than just a room.

Obviously, it's the nerve center of public safety here in the city of Piedmont. I know that Chief Brangan and I often talk about this is the first line of I don't like to say defense, but the first line of public safety in the city of Piedmont. So when you when there is a police or fire incident, our dispatchers coordinate a response. And oftentimes in emergency situations, seconds matter. So with the completion of the dispatch center, we're positioned to modernize our operations, strengthen both performance and resilience, modernizing that space.

It positions the city to capitalize not only on the existing technologies that we have, but also more importantly, it provides us infrastructure to integrate new technologies that will help us better protect, serve and respond to the evolving needs of our community. It's public safety investment. It improves operational effectiveness. It strengthens the community. Supports recruitment and retention, which is a huge issue here at the police department, and ultimately provides service delivery for our community members that call on us.

And so one other thing I want to touch on just obviously, this was a year transition, particularly around staffing. Chief Bowers retired from the organization this year, but he wasn't obviously, the only retirement that we saw, we we experienced some critical retirements in last calendar year, a very tenure season, both police officers and dispatchers. So I think it's important to I know that we've in these chambers recognize Chief Bowers, but I think it's important to recognize the service and appreciation for the sworn personnel as well as the dispatchers that retired this year. And I know that their contributions to the city mattered. And so I think that's important, but also see this time and those retirements as an opportunity for us to recruit and develop the next generation of folks to serve the Piedmont Police Department, professionals that are going to carry our mission forward, people who are aligned with our values, committed to service, and prepared to operate in a modern public safety environment.

So my goal this year is to staff patrol and dispatch in a way that sustains higher performance that keeps in line in our crime reductions and also our high level of service and response. I also want to promote wellness. That's why I'm extremely happy that the officers are here tonight. I think it's important to support wellness, support training, ensure reliable coverage across our shifts, so that provide a high level of service. And so the worker recruitment, selection, onboarding, training, these things are not often quick.

And so it's not easy in today's hiring environment. There are very small number of candidates excuse me, yes, small number of candidates vying for a large number of jobs. And so it's still a top priority. And so we're going to be approaching this with obviously urgency and intention. Let me get into some of the numbers and then we'll get back.

And so Group A or Part one crimes year over year, we experienced a 40% decline. And I think a lot of our greatest reductions, again, as you can see, were in property crimes. The majority of that, I think a lot of it can be attributed to active enforcement, proactive enforcement. I think I talked about the one instance where an individual had committed a robbery in our community and was taken into custody that day. One of the things that we found is that that individual had been engaged in thefts.

And so, one of the things that we've seen is that individuals engaged in theft or vehicle theft or burglary are often repeat to our community. And so when we are able to take individuals into custody, it reduces crime and we can see somewhat of a low. So if we look at our crime trends, one of the things that I wanted to look at this year versus in years past is just looking at the previous five years and then also a five year average, which I think gives us a better accounting of trends versus a ten to fifteen year view. And so, our robbers were down 16%, assaults were down nearly 25%, burglaries, however, were up. Burglaries were up.

We had they were they were up in comparison to our three year average. But I think year over year there was a reduction but compared to our five year average they were up. Larceny or other thefts were down nearly 63 or over 63, and then motor vehicle theft motor vehicle thefts were down over 44%. And so robberies increased year over year from 24 to 25. But again, in in looking at the average, they were down, but they also increased by just two.

And I believe the last robbery that we had in the city occurred is the one that I spoke of, the one that occurred in July. And so I don't know that we had another robbery after July. And so we are trending in the right direction with regard to violent crimes against persons, assaults continue to trend down. Again, there was an uptick and I think one of the through lines that you'll find is that there was an uptick in 2023 and so the majority of all of our numbers are down looking at the numbers from 2023 compared to those of '25, they trended down last year and they continue to trend in that direction. Burglaries reduced slightly.

They were still up from our five year average. One of the things that we found were that we experienced what we've been experiencing is an uptick in auto burglaries, oftentimes overnight into the early mornings and then we' also seen thefts around construction sites and I know that in recent years we' implemented the piedmont police where individuals can log their equipment with the department in the event that if there is a theft we can locate or can attempt to locate them and return them to their rightful owner and also just the visual deterrence hopefully of having a sign that says that that this site is has logged their tools with the Piedmont Police Department. In 2025, there was also a law passed where it is illegal for individuals to possess WiFi jammers or electronic jammers. And so one of the things that we saw toward the second half of the year, well, we've seen where jammers are being used in our community and we can talk offline about that, but that's something that our staff, our detectives are addressing and also just law enforcement in the region are addressing. Again, theft and larceny, are continuing to trend down sharply.

Think a lot of that can be attributed to, again, our public safety cameras and it's not just in our city. One of the things that I well, I'll say the other agency that I contacted and looking at at our data were the the community that surrounds us. And so their burglaries, their thefts and their robberies were also trending down. And so in speaking with the chiefs in that agency, one of the things that they've seen is again the use of technology in the ability for staff to rapidly not only rapidly respond to those who have been victimized, but also the leads in order to capture the individuals that are committing the crimes in our community. Motor vehicles, motor vehicle thefts were down again at its lowest point since 2020 and again, think that that's a direct result of while the cameras won't necessarily prevent the vehicle from being taken, but the individuals that are constantly taking vehicles over and over and over again, those individuals being oftentimes being taken into custody now.

And so you have less individuals coming into the community to commit those steps. So if I can get back just to dispatch and then I'll take some questions on the crime numbers at the end. Now I wanna beat a dead horse because I think this is one of the most incredible projects that we've undertaken at the police department, and I think their staff feels the same way. But, again, grateful to the dispatch supervisor. Like, I'm extremely happy that we have a dedicated dispatch supervisor.

This is the first full year that the Piedmont Police Department has had a dedicated dispatch supervisor. And so it's given us an opportunity to have structured focus on quality assurance or Q and As ensuring that the dispatchers are providing high level of service to those that are calling, ensuring that they are relaying information so that we can get our officers in the field with an accurate picture of what's taking place. One of the things that our dispatchers are doing that we're grateful for is they're also utilizing our ALPR technologies in order to provide staff with oftentimes direction of travel or direction of flight of those who may be coming in or out of our community that may have committed a crime. So one of the things that I think about as we move into 2026 is just leading with professionalism. I have a heavy focus on training, which staff can attest to.

I think that it's important that we invest in our staff so that investing not only in our staff, but also in strengthening our systems. I've talked with the city administrator about different technologies that we can bring on in order to raise our level of service so that it reflects the values and more importantly, the expectations of you all as well as our community. So in the coming days, we will have a written annual report that will be shared with the entire community, both online and in a printed version. And so with that, that's our 2025 recap.

Okay. Thank you so much. Really appreciate that. I think it's important to go back to the cover photo. I think it's such a good one since it has me, Councilmember Ramsey, Councilmember Plumier, Councilmember McCarthy. I guess you didn't okay, so maybe it's not don't go back. We're missing we're missing council member Long. So it's not it's not a perfect photo, but it's a good one. So celebrating our success with the dispatch center. So that's that's exciting, and I'm glad to know that staff are moving in and using the space.

Absolutely.

And that's terrific. So appreciate that. So this is an informational item and so this now is a chance for us to ask questions and for the community to ask questions if we want. So I'm looking at my colleagues, do have any questions at this time?

Thank you for your first inaugural report, and thanks for delivering great news. Crime is down, and I think there have been predating you, but there were times where this was not the case, and it it was really challenging for the community. And the community was really looking for the way that we were going to all respond. And so thank you for picking up the mantle, for utilizing the tools that you all use to help keep us safe. There there it it appears in many areas that we are trending in the right direction.

Are there any strategies that you're thinking about using in the area? I think one area where it seemed to be trending up.

Can you talk a little bit more about that?

So with regard to our I believe it's our thefts and one of the things that is important, one of the things that I that I find important is that we actually position ourselves. And so it's not necessarily that it's trending up. It's up from our five year average, but it's still trending now. But I think it's important that we that we analyze data quarterly so we understand when and where crimes are occurring and we're able to position ourselves to affect it. I also think that is one of the things that that I found in my couple of decades of policing, while the numbers are what they are, I also think it's important that community feel safe.

And so it doesn't bless you. And it doesn't always matter what the numbers say if if individuals in our community don't have a sense of safety or they they don't feel safe. And so I do want to get ahead of our burglaries or excuse me, thefts in this coming year by using data to drive that strategy. So oftentimes you'll see you'll see vehicles that are positioned in our community. I think it's important that we that any and everything that we do is data driven.

And so it it can't be random random. Probably everybody that knows me over the last fifteen years knows that I believe random police in U. Random results it's important that we that we position or deploy our staff in a way that that allows them to be successful and allows them to to prevent the crimes that we're trying to prevent.

Thank you. I was going to ask a follow-up on that. In past years, we have actually seen maps kind of like crime maps and I was just curious obviously the department has that information in terms of thinking about where to deploy resources and it might be a strategic decision not to share the maps with us as has been done in the past. But as long as I guess just wanted assurance that and you already said it in your answer that you have those maps and you're deploying our forces based on where you see the crimes occurring.

Yes, we're looking at data. We're also hopefully hoping to get some technology can create dashboards for officers in real time so that watch commanders, investigators and even patrol officers understand when and where crime is occurring. And I know that we are obviously have access to our DNR's our daily nightly reports, the reports that come in every day, also sometimes that stuff is kind of anecdotal. So it's important to actually see the data on a dashboard versus of fields like this or fields like that.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Councilmember LeMier?

I have a question about the data from the ALPRs. And it's similar to what you were talking about, where, like, crime may be going down, but if people don't feel safe

Mhmm.

That means something still. And you might be doing all of the right oversight with the data and making sure the data is not getting to the right place. But if the community doesn't feel Right. Like they understand that, That's a weak point. I'm wondering if it's possible for you to easily share the data that the monthly oversight audits that you're conducting with the public in some way, whether that could go up on the website somewhere or some other format so that the public could have a larger understanding of better transparency of what Yes.

What you are doing anyway.

Right. Think, yes, I need to ensure that I'm not sharing any siege's data. But I think the so I've met with committee and expressed that the audits are being numb, but I will figure out a way to share that information to and also one of the things that I will definitely share audits, but I also think it's important that we are proactively getting out in front of anything that could occur. And so while audits are important, an audit will only show you that you that something has occurred, right? And what I'm trying to do is prevent anything from ever occurring.

And so that is one of the reasons why obviously it's blocked from no one in our agency could even click a button to accidentally share it. It's we it does it's not allowed and so it can happen. But I do think it's important to continue to have conversations and even if I one of the things that I'm committed to is maybe getting out in committee. I've had folks into the agency but I'm willing to get out in the committee and meet with members of the committee that are concerned and kind of try to understand what it is that they're concerned so that I can alleviate those with either written document or with monthly, quarterly or biannually meetings.

And

I think you're speaking to something that is obviously you said here tonight, it's on flock safety's website sort of as a policy, have said we can, you know, someone can access and not. I think some of what you're speaking to is sort of the anecdotal stories from other communities where they've described scenarios where information has gotten out that they seemingly said they didn't intend to get

out. Absolutely.

Can you speak a little bit to why, you know

So that concern is not lost on me. I am in constant communication with FLOC. I think think many of the other police chiefs here in the region as well. And so I've had an opportunity to have one on one conversations with flock leadership. I think that those conversations will continue. I know that flock has been committed to doing what they say, but I also think that it's important that we trust but verify and I think that it's important that we do the audits and the work on our end as well. And so we are not just sitting back and taking the company's word for

And if may just add to this, I did join the Chief in a briefing with their leadership at FLAC and I think by him being the gatekeeper for any access, it ensures that he must verify who is being provided access to our information. So literally another agency cannot gain entry to our ALPR data. He must be the party that clears and that will allow for the go forward access and I think the audits provide for the look back at who has accessed the go forward, he is the gatekeeper for.

Thank you. And I think that's a big important feature for our community to know about and understand because we can keep reiterating that it's our policy not to have this, but I think it is helpful to your goals of transparency to let people know that we are actively engaging with flock leadership, that we are continuously expressing what our parameters are and how we intend to do business with them. So thank you.

Yes, Councilor Member?

Yeah. Thank you for that report. More important, thank you for your service and keeping us safe. Microphone, please. Did you all hear me anyways? Yes. Right.

Did. Why don't you go ahead and repeat it because it was so nice.

Thank you for the report, but more importantly, thank you for keeping us safe every day. That goes to you and plus all the everybody in your staff, and it's good to see the your staff here today too. I wanted to follow-up on some of the trends and specifically the burglary just follow-up on the one that bumped up a little bit. Yes. Is there anything or anything we can communicate to the community on things that we should be doing in terms of, I don't know, you mentioned construction sites and auto burglaries being up.

Is there any should we tell our tell the community to be vigilant, report more, anything like that?

Yes. I think important that community is vigilant. I also think it's important that I don't want staff or excuse me, I don't want community feel as though they are living in fear that they're calling the police on their neighbors. Think it's important that I do think it's important that you see something, say something, but also know that we are asking staff to get out and have conversations with individuals within the community in the event that we see something that appears unsafe. Hey you all are away from your car, you left these tools in the bed of the truck, it's unattended things of that nature and I think this year we'll be putting together a flyer of just how you can how folks can stay safe by paying attention, by reporting suspicious activity, but I also want to guard against individuals in our community just calling the police because they see someone who doesn't look familiar to them.

And so I'm conscious of that, but I'm also one of the other things that we've asked staff to be more visible in community to do more I don't like saying routine patrols because I don't believe that patrol is routine at all but it's important that we are circulating throughout our community. And so we are also obviously an additional more trained set of eyes in our community looking for things that may be out of place or even ways in which we can I don't like saying harden, but we can prevent crime from occurring?

Got it. That's good. And then the same question for advice, but to us in terms of priorities or how we can support you. I mean, was writing down some of them. I heard use of technology. I heard training. Staff.

Staff. I'm grateful for the support of the city administrator with regard to attracting dispatchers. We again are losing some dispatchers to retirement. We're losing some staff to to other agencies. I think it's important that we work hard as a technology or excuse me, work smarter.

I think technology is extremely important And I'm eternally grateful for the support at both council and community provides the police department. But what are the things The the most important the the biggest priority for me in 2026 is just fully staffing patrol, fully staffing dispatch. And then we'll begin to talk about technologies. But as it stands, I think it's important that we see these reductions in order to maintain and build upon those. It's important that we have staff and we have you see there are four of the hardest working police officers here in the city of Piedmont sitting in this room that are constantly in community building bridges and making contacts also educating staff or educating folks on on how to be safe, but also tracking down those that may come to our community to commit crime and bringing them to justice.

Great. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. And I see our juvenile officer here, Hugo Diaz. Hello. Thank you for being here and thank you for all the work you do with our partnership with the school districts. Really appreciate that. I don't know, Chief, if you have anything you want to add about that partnership. I know you talked about community outreach and a cop on the block is going really well. Coffee Cops and Cars is now a beloved annual community events. As I mentioned, officer Diaz is doing a great job over with the district. Do you want to talk anymore about the community relations aspect?

Yes, again we have some really community forward thinking officers. Think we are nearing the end of our tobacco grant, which has funded the juvenile liaison officer. Both myself and the captain will be looking for additional funding, but we remain committed to ensuring safety around our schools. I think both officer Diaz and I are participating in a mock Supreme Court hearing here this month. Think we have three or four separate days we'll be holding a Supreme Court sessions and so just officer Perez, officer Diaz, officer Petit just absolutely incredible in the community like you talked about coffee cars and cops, you talked about every single officer in the agency participating in cop on the block and just grateful.

I know she' not sworn but the digital communications by Ecker Schneider and April Fitzgerald, absolutely appreciate it.

Great. Awesome. Thank you so much. Okay. I think oh, yes, go ahead.

You talk about I love all this coordination in events. Can you talk a little bit more about the partnership with some of our neighbor cities? Yes. And how that is so integral to what happens here, you know, helps with our officers trying to prevent capture.

Yeah. So crime is transient and we we we live in a region where especially along the 5 Eighty's the 13, the 80 And 680 corridors, you get individuals that are committing crimes that are traversing the region. I think it's extremely important the contacts that we have. Obviously, I have strong contacts at the Oakland Police Department, but I know that the officer there's a couple at least one officer here that formerly worked at the Oakland Police Department and another who has strong contacts at the Oakland police department during his shift as well as day shift and so our dispatch centers work hand in hand. One of the things that that I think strengthens not only the Piedmont police department but the regional police departments are the work that's done by the various chiefs, the chief in Fremont, the chief in Alameda, the chief in Emeryville, the chief in Oakland, all of us constantly working together to ensure that our staff are communicating so that we're not working in silos, so that we're sharing information so that again, talking about we talked a lot about we spent a decent amount of time talking about our network and when I talked about not sharing, one of the things that I'm extremely that I absolutely the agency that I absolutely want to share with are obviously the city that surround us surrounds us and also our neighboring cities so whether that's San Leandro, Emeryville, Berkeley, Albany because we are all experiencing not necessarily the same level, but the same types of crime oftentimes committed by the same groups of individuals.

And so one of the things that I found at my previous agency is that there's really two to 3% of the community that are engaged in 80 plus percent of the crime. And so if we're able to talk to one another, we have to identify those individuals and bring them to justice.

Thank you. Great. Thank you. Okay. Let's turn to public comment at this time. Let's see if we have any members of our audience.

Yes, I have one public speaker card from Susie Struble.

Thank you. Welcome.

Thank you.

First, I want to make it clear I'm speaking on behalf of just myself, a personal opinion and not on behalf of any public entity. But still, officer Diaz, thank you very much for what you do with the school. We're very appreciative. And to everybody here on the council and Chief Chavey is just absolutely thrilled that you guys are actually taking up the issues and bringing talk and speaking about the concerns that we've had for quite some time about how we share our data. Just from my heart really, really appreciate it.

And I want to say clearly, Chief Shabies, everybody on the force completely respect you very, very deeply and also understand that our city's use of our ALPR, you know, public surveillance system delivers real value to the community. Right? And I know we're going to see, you showed some of that data, we'll see more of it I know in the longer report that you'll share. You know, I still do have concerns and I'm excited to hear that you're going to speak more openly or present in some better way kind of what an audit might actually be. There are some things I know you and I spoke about when when we met and I know you expressed a little bit of frustration that I couldn't come to you and kind of give you some specifics about what I would want to see in an audit.

But it's a little bit hard for me as a citizen who has no idea kind of how the flock system works, who's only able to kind of see from the outside that there are gaps in the reporting data that we've presented where I don't understand the IDs that are presented, some of the requests come in and with the ALPR data that we publish, reasons aren't given for why that data or that request was made. I only see what I can see publicly looking through the contract and MOUs that I've seen published, you know, I see questions in the contract with FLAC where they're permitted to, you know, share information with the with any agencies that the federal officials based on their own good faith belief of necessity. You know, there are some things that I see from the outside that feels like gaps between what we say we want to do and how we can actually in our state policy and what actually is kind of enforceable and that we can we can confirm. So I appreciate that you're looking at this and thinking about how we might might do better on that. And again, you know, I our department, I think someone brought up earlier, we might be doing everything right on our end and we may be working with a vendor that maybe is just a little unreliable, right?

I know that there's been a lot of news about problems with flock and while cities like Ventura County, Oxnard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, there's just a class action lawsuit filed against them last week. Many of those may be employee or police departments grew ups, but not all of them are. So, again appreciate very much that you're taking the time to think about this and ensuring that our community values are protected and are as aligned as they can be with this public surveillance system, so we can continue to use it to keep our community safe.

Thanks. Great. Thank you. Do you have any other public speakers either in the chambers or online on this agenda item? I see none. Okay. Public comment is closed and I our city administrator would like to respond to no, make a comment, make a general comment. Thank you.

So I would be remiss if I did not offer some comments on the year 2025 for our police department. It has been a twelve month cycle of incredible change with the dispatch center and I do want to offer my gratitude to the PD for weathering incredible change and disruption. I think both our sworn and non sworn personnel had their patients tried in incredible ways, not just for twelve months, but for more like eighteen months. And I hope as the department has been put back together in a more complete way that there is a chance for everyone to feel a lot more at home than that space maybe has allowed for an extended period of time. And while the vision for that space Chief Bowers began and our Public Works Director, Daniel Gonzalez was part of defining.

I am very grateful to Chief Chavez for helping to bring that across the finish line. So my thanks and gratitude to our staff for being patient. I know it wasn't easy and I hope the finished product is something that everybody is pleased with. It's definitely an upgrade from where it was and I think it's a much better workspace for everyone.

Great. Okay. Thank you for those comments. Looking at my colleagues, are there any this is an informational item. We do not have to take a vote. So are any other comments you want to share at this time?

I just want to echo the appreciation. You know, it is lovely. I walk around town walking my dog, and it is so nice to see our officers out and about and to just wave and to know, and I know it's not just with me. And so thank you all, and thank you for your leadership in helping to make this a smooth transition. As you said, this has been a lot of change on a lot of different levels. Literally, the dust needed to settle. And so thank you all. Thank you, Chief, for continuing the excellence that this community is used to. Thank you.

Okay. Well said. I don't think I could mean, well said.

Plus one.

Plus one. Ditto. Okay. Chief, thank you. Really appreciate you and thank you all for coming. All the officers should join us for this agenda item. Okay, we are now moving on to agenda item number five, which is public hearing consideration of adoption of amendments to environmental hazards element of the city of Piedmont general plan to incorporate the city of Piedmont's 2025 local hazard mitigation plan. Wow, that is a mouthful. Oh, you know what? Did I miss an agenda item?

Well, you very much. I'm looking at an agenda that is missing agenda item. Oh, or maybe I just checked it off. Item four. Item four. Okay, I'm backing up. Item four, Consideration of the establishment and of an appointments to an ad hoc council subcommittee for selection of the 2026 volunteer of the year and young volunteer of the year recipients. Okay. So this we do need to take action to establish a subcommittee. It sounds like it has a very discrete purpose.

I am so excited that we are doing the volunteer and young volunteer of the year award. I would love to be one of the two members in my one year left or less than one year left. And I have a feeling that the vice chair vice chair? Vice mayor would also love to be on this committee, but obviously we can chat about it.

Good to me. Okay,

so a public comment.

Thank you.

Wheels are coming off the bus. Public comment.

There is no public comment for this item.

Thank you. Okay. Back. So at this time we would if there's no more discussion, we would entertain a motion.

So moved.

Okay, moved by Councilmember Long. Second. Seconded by Councilmember Pumier. I believe the motion is for myself and the Vice Mayor to serve on the subcommittee. Is that correct? Okay. Let's take a vote.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Thank you so much. I appreciate the confidence that you have placed in myself and the Vice Mayor. Okay. Now on to thank you for keeping me on track. Now on to agenda item number five. Right? Okay. Public hearing. Consideration adoption of amendments to the environmental hazards element of the city of Piedmont general plan to incorporate city of Piedmont's 2025 local hazard mitigation plan.

Yes, while he brings up the PowerPoint presentation, this is a follow-up item to the local hazard mitigation plan that was approved a little bit earlier today and it will be to integrate the plan into our general plan as a follow-up action.

All right. Let me do the show. All right, so good evening. Mayor Anderson, City Council members Long, Ramsey, and Plimier. This is a routine item really, every five years we update our local hazard mitigation plan, state law requires us to update our safety element which in our case is our environmental hazards element to either incorporate or site reference the local hazard mitigation plan, that's what we've done.

Assistant planner, let me let the effort on the planning side, and so she's going to give us a brief slide show to talk about what we've done and seek your approval for those updates to the general plan.

Great. Thank you.

Go

ahead, Lemise. Okay. Good evening, Madam Mayor, council members and members of the public. My name is Lemise, as Kevin mentioned, and I'm the assistant planner at Piedmont. It's a pleasure to meet you all.

In this presentation, I'll provide a very brief background overview and a summary of the amendments made to the environmental hazard element of the general plan. So, next slide please. So, as our city administrator mentioned, this presentation builds upon the updates made to the local hazard mitigation plan, which was presented by our chief. This was already adopted by the city council earlier this evening. So, in addition to the adoption of the local hazard mitigation, it is important for the city to comply with the state law assembly bill 2,140 in order to qualify for the maximum available funding.

So, in summary, AB two thousand one forty requires that a city incorporates and references its recently adopted local hazard mitigation plan into the safety element of the general plan known in Piedmont as the environmental hazard element. So, as mentioned before, the environmental hazard element currently references the 2019 local hazard mitigation plan and amendments have been made to update the elements to reflect and align with the changes made in the 2025. These amendments will help ensure continued compliance with AB 2,140. Next slide please. So, okay.

I will give a summary of some of the changes, a very brief summary. So previously, the Southeastern portion of city was designated as very high fire hazard severity zone by CALD FIRE. Piedmont is no longer in the zone, so the entire city is however designated as a wide land urban interface. Therefore, all references for very high fire hazard severity zone has been removed from the environmental hazard element including figures, goals, policies, and any related text. So there are also some changes that have been made to the dam failure.

The Tyson Lake is the only dam that could affect the city. So overall, the probability of a dam or tank failure is extremely low. Amendments have been made to reflect these changes as well. Next slide, please. So, the chief has already also spoken about some of these and we've had some updates and updates to goals and some policies.

So, the local hazard mitigation plan 2025 includes some of these changes. There has been new policies that have been introduced to goal two. Policies under goal two focus on increasing disaster awareness through education and outreach and encourage community involvement and engagement in the local hazard mitigation plan updates. Under goal three, there has also been introduction of new policies. These policies talk about improving communication and technology used in order to successfully respond, manage, and recover from disasters.

Goal four and goal five are new goals. Goal four is under these policies, the policies under this goal focus on integrating mitigation principles into city policies and decision making with focus mostly on equity, accessibility and community resilience. Goal five is also as mentioned, a new goal. Policies under this goal focus on ensuring the city maintains FEMA eligibility by actively monitoring available funds and grants in a timely manner. Other changes were made also for text and figures and tables that reflects the changes that were made in the local hazard mitigation plan of 2025.

Next slide, please. So on 02/09/2026, the planning commission recommended that the city council adopt the amendments to the environmental hazard element of the general plan. There this evening, the city council is being asked to adopt a resolution that amends the environmental hazard element of the general plan to incorporate the City Of Piedmont's 2025 local hazard mitigation plan into the element of the general plan. And the second would be to make findings that this action is this project is exempt from CEQA review. So thank you. If you have any questions, we're

here to answer them. Thank you so much for that and for the presentation. Do you have any questions at this time? Yes. Council member Ramsay.

Thank you for that. I do have a question, maybe a clarification, maybe you could remind us. But You remind me to push a button too. Thank you. So, on the what, the third slide here, the statement that we are no longer in a very high hazard severity zone. We didn't move our city, but the map was

changed. The map was redrawn.

So could you remind us of that, and then also what actions we took or did not take or decided to take regarding our codes too on that?

So the go ahead. I think the Chief Brannencombe would like to address that question first, and then I'll follow if I need to.

Good evening. Thanks for that question. So 2007 was the last time the maps were drawn up by CAL FIRE. Those included segments of the city of Piedmont. They refined significantly their process for developing and determining what's a very high fire hazard severity zone.

And in the updates that were released at the beginning of 2025, all of that had moved up the hills past Montclair, so there's none down here. Cities have the option of designating their own very high fire hazard severity zones or lower levels of that. We in Piedmont, the council back in November and December, along with the new fire code, enacted an ordinance declaring the whole city a wild land urban interface. That allows us to apply more stringent building and fire codes based on that designation and then draws attention to the importance of that for the city.

That's great.

Thanks. Yes.

Go ahead, Benoit.

Thank you. You and this was the topic where we had the conversation around insurance and does this new designation or not new designation, but does this designation in any way negatively or does it help us and help our residents really with what has been a challenging climate in the insurance home insurance world here.

And since that last item a few months ago, I have heard back from the commissioner's office, and they assure us that well, they can't guarantee what insurance companies do, but this type of designation is not intended to impact any kind of consideration of the insurance companies. Where it does benefit Piedmont, I think, is by default when you do work on your home and in your yard and we inspect and enforce that work, it's going to have the broader community at a higher level of fire safety. And hopefully, the insurance companies will note that and consider that in their actuarials.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Okay. Any other questions at this time or any public comment on this? None. None. Okay. We don't have any public comment. This is an action item. We do need to adopt a resolution. So moved. Thank you. We have a motion from Councilmember Long.

Second.

And a second from Councilmember Plumier adopting a resolution as set forth in the staff report and let's go ahead and vote. Aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for the presentation.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Okay.

We are now moving on to announcements, reports and any discussion of future agenda items. Councilmember oh, we're going start with the council I'll start on that end. Okay. Councilmember Plumier.

I have a couple of announcements. One is that there is a planning commission meeting next Monday, and the one thing on the agenda that might be of interest to folks is a study session on a housing element program that's intended to expand housing options and housing types in Piedmont. So it will include research into regulations and incentives for home sharing and other things as part of the Piedmont expanding housing options program. And my second announcement is from Stop Waste, which is the county wide waste management authority, and they are having a what they're calling, we are the regeneration art and storytelling Contest, and it is open from now through May 4, so there's still a little bit of time. It says it's all ages, but if you go to the website stopways.org, you'll see it.

It's probably mostly kids, but definitely all ages of kids. So if you have high school kids, they would be open to it too. So please share with friends, family and others. Thank you.

Great. Going down the line. Let's do it. It's that time again, nominate your Heritage Tree nomination. Be sure to forms are available on the city's website. So that's coming up and that's in preparation too for the celebration of Earth and Arbor Day coming up, next month. It's a great place for children and nature and to play on some public works trucks. It's a lot

of fun.

So keep that in mind coming up. I also have one general comment, observation announcement, but or not announcement, but just something that really I took notice of this week. So I was chatting with a neighbor who is over 80, maybe 85 years old, and he was talking in detail about things going on at the city. And I said, how do you know so much? And he said, and I'm quoting here, he said, anybody who doesn't know what's going on with the city is has their eyes closed because it's so easy to get information.

So I say that because I see Eka standing or sitting there, but I don't think we hear that too often from No, eighty five year we don't. So I just thought I'd throw that out there cause I was very impressed with that.

Thank you for passing that along. That's great. Okay.

These are recreation announcements. So last Friday, PIE, which is Piedmonters for Inclusive Education, hosted their second annual sidekicks fundraise fundraiser. It was a wonderful night of music, food, and fun. Funds that were raised go to support PRD's psychic program, and, you know, there it's truly worthy and I know the kids are thrilled to have the fullest access they can. So appreciate you.

And then 08:01 on March 11, there's an Eagles Have Landed in Piedmont and Beyond, which will feature our veteran raptor biologist, Alan Fish. PRD would like to invite all of our bird nerds. Who isn't a bird nerd?

Right. That's everybody. Right. I mean, you

know, anyway. And this this to come in and listen to this unique Hawk Talk and that starts at that's not my verbiage but at a

Times in this God, I gotta up my game.

Yeah, we really do.

Is not me.

This is not me.

At 06:30. And then PRD is seeking entries for the third annual Piedmont Putt Putt and Picnic in the Park. This year's event will take place on Sunday, April 19 in Piedmont Park. And if you're interested in building a mini golf hole for the event, please contact our rec department.

Two crimes and then a liberation.

Wow. I don't think I don't think I can match that. All right. I was going to report that our city administrator Rosanna and vice mayor Khanna and I all attended the League of California City's East Bay division meeting last week. And there was not one, not two, not three, but four state senators who did a panel, senators Aragine, Grayson, McNerney, and Wahhab.

And I wish I could say it was uplifting. It was not. It was I think the state is looking at about a what a $17,000,000,000 budget deficit that is going to have to be figured out somehow. So on that happy note, we'll move on. But I grateful that there was such good attendance. Let's put it that way. Plus there's lots of people there. All right. Oh, yes, please.

And a recognition that housing goals for local jurisdictions are a challenge to meet when there aren't resources for infrastructure.

Yes. Is

that a recognition for funding?

Recognition from state legislators that housing production goals that are being driven at the state level will be impossible to meet in the absence of state resources set aside for infrastructure. And it was kind of like an moment I think for all of the cities in the room. There was relief that there was recognition that realizing the potential of housing can't happen without dollars.

Think we

gave a press release on that today.

Oh, today I didn't see that,

yeah. Announcing significant amount of funding. I don't know the details.

Okay. Alright.

Yeah. For Look

for that. Look it up. Awesome. Thank you. Glad glad we brought it up. I also wanted to announce that we are currently seeking applications. I'm looking at our city clerk for our city committee and commissions. Those are due by the thirteenth, Friday March 13. We are also taking nominations for city volunteer of the year, right? Correct. Young volunteer of the year, is that on the same time horizon?

Same time horizon, same deadline.

Okay. So I just encourage folks to nominate their friends, their neighbors, students they know who are out there doing good work for the City of Piedmont. And then I'm guessing that there are some announcements about updates related to the pool that we just want to continue to announce for the public.

Later this week we will have release of the pool pass model. Lots of information coming forward on that front. So stay tuned.

Okay. And opening date is still April Yeah. Our public is a little cynical. They keep I keep getting questions like, is is it really April 11? I'm like, oh, yeah.

It's really April 11. Commissioning is going fabulously. So we're on target for opening.

Knock on wood. Okay. Great. Also, I get to knock on wood actually as I adjourn the meeting at 07:51.