City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. This is the regular joint meeting of the Oakley City Council, the Oakley City Council acting as a successor agency to the Oakley Redevelopment Agency and the Oakley Public Finance. This meeting is called to order at 6.30. Will the clerk please call roll?

Council Member Shaw? Here. Council Member Williams? Here. Vice Mayor Meadows? Here. Mayor Henderson?

Here.

And Council Member Fuller is absent.

Item 1.2, Pledge of Allegiance. Today we have the honor of having Chandler, who's involved in the Mustang managers' leadership and is in the gate greeting for Almond Grove School. Chandler is a very social person. He always has conversations with friends. When he's not together in person, he enjoys laughing over FaceTime. In his free time, Chandler enjoys golf, bowling in a league, playing basketball, baseball, reading, and of course, little fortnights. He dreams of becoming a pro golfer.

Please stand. Hand over your heart, please. Pledge. 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, with liberty and justice for all.

Item 1.3, proclamation honoring Ashley Hopwood for earning her Girl Scout Golden Award. If Ashley can meet me up front at the podium, please.

Whereas the Girl Scout Gold Award is the highest and most prestigious achievement in Girl Scouts, earned exclusively by senior and ambassador high school Girl Scouts who demonstrate extraordinary leadership, community impact, and dedication. And whereas fewer than 1% of Girl Scouts possess the perseverance and vision required to complete the rigorous requirements needed for this award. and whereas Ashley is a hardworking, dedicated, kind-hearted person who has been an active member of the Girl Scouts community since kindergarten, and whereas Ashley is currently a senior at Freedom High School, maintaining membership in the National Honor Society and numerous other clubs while simultaneously pursuing college coursework at Los Medanos College toward her goal of becoming a crime scene investigator. And whereas for her Gold Award project, Ashley dedicated over 80 hours to designing, planning, and constructing one standing height and two wheelchair accessible garden beds for the residents at Commons at Dallas Ranch Assisted Living. Whereas Ashley hosted a special event at the facility inviting attending seniors to participate in planting the new gardens and Whereas the assisted living facility now has a garden club where residents meet regularly to take care of the gardens now there therefore be it resolved that Hugh Henderson mayor of the city of Oakley along with the members of the Oakley City Council and do hereby recognize and honor Ashley Hopward for earning the Girl Scout Gold Award and commend her exceptional service and lasting contribution to the community.

Congratulations. And all those hours into the community and what you've done, you should be very proud in the city council. We're very proud to have you as a resident of Oakley. Item 1.4, Oakley Library Update.

Hello there. Good evening. My name is Lucia Flores. I am the Youth Services Librarian at the Oakley Library, and I'm joined by Gia Paolini, who's our Library Services Manager. Thank you, City Council, for giving us the platform to share that it is Library Card Sign-Up Month every September. So we are so excited to be here and share what the Contra Costa County Library and what Oakley Library provides for the community free of charge. Next slide, please. Oh, I have it. Let's see, this one right here. Perfect. So why get a library card? Library cards are free. If you are a California resident, you can get a library card in any public library in the state. So in our county library, we have no overdue fines. You can check out up to 100 books at a time for up to three weeks. We don't recommend that, but just so you know, that's the limit. We do have books for all ages. In our library, we have collections in English and Spanish, but we're also happy to order books in other languages as well, such as Hindi, Russian, Farsi, Mandarin, and more. You can also find movies, audio books, music CDs, and magazines in our library. And we can also order things for you to check out, such as ukuleles, Wi-Fi hotspots, California State Parks passes, which are really popular in the summertime, and so much more. You also get free access to our myriad of digital resources. There's way too many to name, but just to kind of summarize what you can do with them, you can check out e-books and e-audiobooks on your personal devices. You can stream music and movies. You can get free tutoring for your children. You can learn a new language, get free and discount passes to museums and attractions in the Bay Area, and so much more. There we go. So in our Oakley library, we have roughly 8,819 patrons last fiscal year. And about half of those are Oakley youth ages 5 to 17. So when you look at the total population of Oakley, that's roughly 19% of the population is a library user. And when you isolate the Oakley youth population, that's more than half. that are library card holders, so 57.5%. We do a lot of outreach to Oakley schools, at community outreach events, so we're very, very, yeah, that's an important thing for us to reach out to the youth so that they're aware of what the library offers for them. And last fiscal year, we circulated 39,427 physical items in our library. Let's see. All right. And some may not be aware that all Contra Costa County libraries offer free programs for the community. In our library, we have literacy and reading programs, such as story time, which is happening right now, Tuesday evenings at 630. We also have family bilingual story times in English and Spanish, last Tuesdays of the month. And around April or May, we host kindergarten countdown workshops geared towards incoming TK and kindergarteners to help them and their families model skills for them that they could use when they start school. And we host a quarterly rising readers program with a literacy tutor that does games and activities with the kids to help engage them and get them excited about reading. And, of course, we have STEAM programs at the library, such as our weekly Lego Club every Saturdays at 3 o'clock. And we partner with East Bay Regional Parks on occasion to host science workshops at the library, and we have art workshops as well. So last fiscal year, we had 241 programs, and we had 5,113 attendees, which is a huge accomplishment for us. Oops.

Let me go back.

There we go. So it's our goal every year to visit all second grade classes in Oakley. And we were successful in that endeavor last fiscal year. We visited all the second grade classes, some other grades, and some special education classes as well for a total of 763 students. And we gave out 333 library cards. That's probably the funnest part of my job. And it's very important to us to nourish our community partnerships and reach out to the community. So we love going to Heart of Oakley. We had Science Day this year. That was so much fun. So please continue to invite the library to your events. And if we invite you and you're able to come, please do so. We have on occasion invited nonprofits such as Hijas del Campo, East Bay Regional Parks, Care Parent Network to come to our events and provide their information for the community as well. And of course, thank you to the Friends of the Oakley Library who help support our programs in getting us a new library. All right. So just to summarize, library cards benefit everyone. I hope you come by the library sometime, and we can help you find what you're looking for. We can get you a library card for free. And that's pretty much all I have. So thank you.

Any questions from council? Thank you very much for the update.

Thank you.

Item 1.5, California Main Street update.

Good evening. Tonight, I'm pleased to introduce Ms. Brooke Fox, State Coordinator for California Main Street, who's here to share more about the California Main Street program and how the Main Street approach can support community like Oakley. Today, Brooke and I toured downtown Oakley and throughout the city. and right before this meeting and took a fresh look at the businesses and properties and public spaces and development opportunities along main street it gave us an opportunity to re-evaluate areas potential and discuss some challenges and consider how the main street approach could help guide continuing revitalization the city has been a member of california main street since 2021 And over the past several years, the city has continued to make downtown Oakley and Main Street a key focus on our economic development program and efforts. And while many significant investment has already been made in the area, as you know, the downtown revitalization is an ongoing process. Ultimately, our goal is to continue transforming downtown Oakley into a vibrant destination and economic center for our community, the place that supports local businesses, attracts new investment, and create memorable experiences. And the businesses are proud to call their own. Our participation in California Main Street give us an opportunity to learn from other communities, successful communities, and access technical expertise and proven best practice. With that said, it is my pleasure to welcome Brooke, who's been providing the overview of Main Street approach and the resources. Brooke, thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much. Good evening, mayor, council members, city manager. Thank you, Harumi, for your hospitality. What an amazing tour. It's long overdue. I live in Vacaville, so it's not too far. So I'm sure I will be back. And I got a great picture of some of the exciting developments, including the library and the train stop and some other exciting things. So it's nice to see that things are consolidating into the downtown core, which is what we want to see. So let me just give you some information here about California Main Street. So... Great, so California Main Street was originally formed in 1986. It's been around for 40 years now. And it was originally a statewide program under the Trade and Commerce Agency for the state of California. Since 2002, it's been volunteer run through the California Main Street Alliance. So our board of directors is comprised of Main Street directors from across the state. We represent 31 designated Main Street communities, of which Oakley is one of them. We are the state coordinating partner for Main Street America, which is the nationwide movement of over 1,300 communities nationwide that are designated Main Streets. And Main Street America is actually a subsidiary of the Trust for Historic Preservation.

Sorry.

OK, so this is a look at our network. As I mentioned, we have 31 communities, and 17 are accredited, 14 are affiliates. And I'll explain what that means in a few minutes. But this is a breakdown of we work with cities large and small, from rural to very large, and all over the state. Every year we ask our communities to submit reinvestment statistics that gives us a look at our economic impact across the state. So we ask them to report on jobs created and buildings saved and volunteer hours. So this is a look at both our 2025 reinvestment stats and also our cumulative stats are down below. So it represents quite a bit of investment that these programs have given back into the state. And on the right side, you'll see actually visitor numbers. So we use PLACER AI data compared with Main Street historic districts. And when we triangulate those, we can see how many folks visited not just the city of Oakley, but the downtown core of Oakley. So I'm excited to report, actually, that when I pulled the numbers, in 2025, Oakley saw 10,852 more visitors than than in 2024 to its downtown core. So almost 11,000 more people came. Those are visitors. So almost 11,000 more visitors came to your downtown in 2025. So that's a 3% increase. So it's very exciting. the main street america movement is built on the main street approach which is a four-point approach uh... and this was formed back in nineteen eighty you can think back to conditions in that time what was happening lots of malls being built lots of downtowns emptying out, stores moving to the malls. The focus of commerce was shifting, and buildings were sitting empty. Often historic buildings were falling over. So the National Trust for Historic Preservation piloted a program to reinforce the downtown commercial cores across America, and the Main Street Movement was born. This is a look at the layers here. So Oakley, you're there in the middle in the center as a local program. And then as the state coordinator, we're in the middle ring there. And then we back that up with national stats and resources from Main Street America. Our members receive training and resources, access to exclusive grant opportunities. We hold an annual conference every year. And so we get together every month virtually. And Harumi's been on many of those calls. And it's really an opportunity for our Main Street directors to connect and understand the very unique work that they do. This is just a snapshot of the benefits that Oakley enjoys in part by being a member of this network. So some of the things that Harumi has engaged with, she's been on those monthly member check-ins. She's been at our webinars. She and I connect quite a bit over specific technical assistance questions. She'll call and ask questions relating to, for example, the ice rink. I connected her with a couple of other Main Streets that had ice rinks. So it's really just about really kind of connecting with resources and supporting the work that she does. So there are two types of designated Main Streets. There's an affiliate and an accredited level. In Oakley, you are an affiliate, which is a designated Main Street, so it's recognized by Main Street America as a designated Main Street. And accredited Main Streets are... main street organizations that have taken the extra step to build capacity and intention in regards to downtown revitalization. So I'll go into that in a second. These next few slides are gonna have a lot of text, but I'll summarize. So the affiliate Main Streets get access to resources, technical assistance. They get to use Main Street America branding. They're recognized as a designated Main Street. This is all what Oakley gets to enjoy. And then if a designated Main Street decides that it wants to become an accredited Main Street, then we start to have conversations about goal setting and work plans and how we can move forward to that goal. But everyone in the network, if you're designated, you start at this affiliate level. So to level up to the accredited level, There is a set of baseline requirements, which I will go into quickly. So this is, you know, why accreditation, right? So obviously it's a stamp of distinction. It shows intent in downtown revitalization. It shows you're committed and that you've devoted a certain amount of resources toward this end. And as a city, you value downtown revitalization. It opens you up to different grant opportunities that are only available to accredited Main Streets. It opens you up to become a potential candidate for the Great American Main Street Award. So there's lots of opportunities there. And so the how. How to become accredited, that's a conversation that we can have in terms of, like I said, setting goals. You'll see in this next slide here that there is a set of standards that Main Street America requires of accredited communities. And typically what Main Street America looks for is staff resources. And those can come in many different ways, right? Those can come in a independent organization that's got an executive director that's focused on the downtown. It can also be a program officer that works for the chamber. It can be a city economic development manager that's dedicated to Main Street work. There's lots of different ways this can look, but the ideal there is that there is a full-time program manager that works, that their job is to just wake up every day and think about how downtown can improve. And then the other benchmark that we build the work around is something called a transformation strategy. And it's kind of a fancy name for an economic development main street plan, basically. And so the transformation strategies that we help our communities build, they are community driven. They're based on market data. They're three to five year outlooks. So they're not quite like a downtown master plan. They're a little bit more like we're here and we want to get to here. So really kind of setting goals around that. There's a work plan and a budget that's set aside for that work once the community has all bought in. And the idea there is that we want to see measurable progress and noticeable impact. So field services work. This is a feature of Main Street America and California Main Street. When our cities decide they would like to level up on the work that they're doing or they'd like to bring in specific experts to solve a problem, then we are available and we can bring in folks to do things like walking audits or create a transformation strategy or form a downtown association. Those are all things that are in our wheelhouse that we that we do for other cities in California. And so that is part of our work. And our conference is coming up in two months. We're going to be down in Carlsbad this year. It's about 125 Main Street professionals from across the state. And it's three days of learning and engagement and networking. And this year, it's going to be right two blocks from the ocean. So I hope you can join us. And Main Street America has a yearly conference which draws about 2,000 people from around the country. And this next year, it's going to be in Detroit. So that's coming right up. So I want to conclude my presentation and thank you for five years of membership. I think it's a great time for me to come and check in and learn more about your priorities as a city and how I can assist Rumi with her goals and with your goals and move the needle for downtown Oakley. Thank you very much.

Any questions?

Councilmember Williams You mentioned that in order to become accredited there has to be a full-time person dedicated I know like Downtown Brentwood coalition they started out as an all volunteer force So does that full-time person have to be a paid employee or could it be a volunteer? Who's just focused on the Main Street portion of things? I?

I believe it has to be full-time paid, but I can double-check for you. Yeah, Brentwood is one of our members as well. And so we actually, they're a great case study because we took them from affiliate to accredited. And so it would be a great resource to look at and see how they did that. Because, yeah, again, it was Main Street works best when it involves the whole community. And everyone can buy in and get excited and rally around. And then you coalesce all of that good work and emerge with staffing and with a board of directors that really is focused on the downtown improvement. Yeah.

Thank you very much for your presentation.

Thank you for having me. Have a great night.

Item two, public comment. We will now receive public comment on items on the consent calendar and items that are not on tonight's agenda. I currently do not have any speaker cards. If you wish to speak, there are speaker cards in the library, the blue cards. You can fill one out there. A reminder to the public that it's limited to three minutes. There's a timer in front of my seat. At one minute, there will beep, and the light will turn yellow, and as it turns red, there. Also, if you're remote and you wish to speak in public comment, please raise your hand. Do I have any public speakers? I have no one in-house. I have nothing that was turned in online. Do we have anybody online that wishes to speak?

I do not see any hands raised on line.

I will close public comment. Move to item three, council members' comments. I do not see any council member comments. We'll move to item four, consent calendar. Does anybody wish to remove anything from this consent calendar? Otherwise, I'll look for a motion. I move approval of the consent calendar.

I'll second. Thank you.

So we have a first and a second. Can we have a roll call vote, please?

Council Member Shaw? Yes. Council Member Williams? Yes. Vice Mayor Meadows? Yes. Mayor Henderson?

Yes.

The motion carries 4-0.

Item 5, no public comments tonight. We'll move to the regular calendar, Item 6. Item 6.1, adopt resolution appointing one planning commission to fill a two-year vacancy expires February 28th of 27. And our community development director.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the City Council. Thank you. I'm Ken Strelow, Community Development Director. I'm just going to give you a brief introduction to what's on tonight's agenda, which is for the City Council to hear interviews of three candidates or applicants to fill a vacant role for the Planning Commission. and then to determine on which of those three you'd like to appoint. So a little bit of background. Planning Commission is made up of two two-year term seats, which expire February 28th of next year, and three four-year term seats expiring October 11th of 2029. Eventually, we'll get back on track so that all the seats are for four-year terms. One of the two One of the two-year term seats expiring next year was vacated recently by Commissioner Oliveros, who resigned from the position on July 7. The process for the applications, they were made available to be submitted from July 13th through August 20th of this year, and the city clerk received a total of three applications, one from Pierre Reyes, one from Louis Gentry, and one from Adam Sterwood. Proof of residency has been confirmed for all three applicants. For the interview process, the interviews will be held in the order the applications were received, which is the same order of the names I just presented, Candidates two and three will exit to a conference room, and they will be escorted by Mr. Gorman. And then once an applicant has been interviewed, they're welcome to remain in the chambers during the following interviews. There's four questions to ask the applicants. Some of them are two-part questions, but we wanted to split them into four so you can share them if you like. If you want to go down the line or however the council chooses, that works out fine. And then there's three question sheets for each of the city council members. There should be one sheet per applicant so you can take down notes as you're asking the questions. And we just ask that you put their name or initials up top so that we know who they're for. You also have a forced ranking summary sheet. And I believe most of you have used these in the past. But just for transparency's sake, they require the city council to essentially re-rank the candidates after each interview. So for the first column, you would be putting the initials of Pierre Reyes, or PR. And then after the second interview, you will rank whoever you feel ranks higher between those two. in the second column with the higher ranking up top and so on. And it's important that all of the names are filled out for each of the rounds to prevent any confusion should there be a tie or something like that down the line. Are there any questions on the ranking sheets? Good. OK. And then after the rankings are done, staff asks that the mayor call a short recess to allow the city clerk and myself to tally up the numbers. We do have some tiebreakers in place should we come upon a tiebreaker. If we have two tiebreakers that we have set up, it's first place votes and then the least amount of third place votes. If we get to, we're still in a tie, we would ask the city council to deliberate and someone make a motion on who they'd like to appoint. I'm sorry we ran out of tiebreaking ideas. And that concludes my short presentation. I would just ask if the three applicants are in the audience, that they please raise their hands. Excellent. So we would ask that Louis Gentry and Adam Sterud follow Evan. Mr. Gorman back there. And Pierre can stay in the room until he's called up. Thank you.

Any questions for staff before we get started?

Thank you for explaining my sheet for the challenges in the room.

If you have any questions, let me know. Thank you.

Vice Mayor Meadows.

I was going to ask, who's got one, two, three, four?

I'll do one. You're doing one? Okay, what do I have? You have two. Two? Okay.

So we'll go ahead and call the first applicant up. Good evening. Good evening. So we'll start off with the first question. What motivated you to apply for appointment to the Planning Commission?

Well, one thing that motivated me to apply for the Board of Commission was that last year I was part of the leadership, the Oakley Leadership Program. inspired me to actually take this opportunity to and learn what i've learned from the program and see how it goes and give me a better perspective of the city and how it works how would you describe the city's current direction regarding development and growth

And how do you envision Oakley developing over the next 5, 10, and 15 years?

Well, I've been in Oakley for five years since we moved from Daly City. I grew up in Daly City most of my life, so having to see Oakley grow in the span of five years is quite interesting. prideful about it, because I like how it's going to be, because there's more people, more opportunities. And what I can see in the future for Oakley is to be more thoughtful and strategic when it comes to its development. And I feel like having more of the changes in a positive direction, it would provide Oakley and its residents a better life.

Thank you.

All right. What is the most important skill or quality that a planning commissioner should bring to this role?

Well, for me personally, having to be an educator, I think that one of the important aspects of leadership is the ability to be able to listen and comprehend what is being asked or what's being given to you. And by listening, you actively participate on, not just like listening, but actually caring enough so that they can show your sincerity of what you want or what you want them to feel and see that Oakley as a whole can be a better place for development,

If appointed, how would you define your role and responsibility as a planning commissioner? And do you have any scheduling conflicts that could affect your ability to regularly attend planning commission meetings which are scheduled for the first and or third Tuesday of each month at 6.30 p.m.?

What was the first part of the question? Sorry. That was a long question. I got the second part. All right.

How would you define your role and responsibilities as a planning commissioner?

Well, first, I would more likely be more objective, be more active in listening to the rest of the board. And if there is any some sort of conflict or disagreement, willing to collaborate. and be able to see what they're seeing that I'm not seeing in terms of planning or what they see or what they have learned previously. And it's a good opportunity for me to learn as well in having a much more group organization to see what we can do in terms of as a group. In terms of conflict, I have no conflict with anything, with scheduling. The best part of being a sub as an educator, you hold your time.

Thank you.

That includes our questions, so you can either stay and listen to the other interviews or... We'll get through the next two.

Second candidate will be Louis Gentry.

Hi. Thanks for your time. What motivated you to apply to be a planning commissioner?

Yeah, that was really easy. I think it's just the modern chaos of the modern times. Also, the fact that now that I'm in Oakley, and during COVID, when my job went remote, I had more time at home, more time in the community, as opposed to before, where I was mostly just in the rat race of go to work and just, you know, earn your money, come home, take care of the family, and then there's no time to actually experience the community, see what environment I'm actually living in. So since moving to Oakley, I've been part of the community, digesting it, seeing the community, I fell in love with the beauty. I fell in love with the hospitality of the residents. It's hospitality I hadn't experienced since growing up in a military family. My dad was in the Army. And so on the military bases, everything was really hospitable. But when I moved to California in 98, I mostly lived around Silicon Valley, Santa Clara, Fremont, Union City. fine cities, but they lack hospitality. And so when I came to Oakley, that was the first thing that stood out. Also, I see how the city is clean and complete, is the way I summarize it, complete in the sense that Everybody's basic needs and resources seem to be easily accessible via public transportation or even walking. So I was never really a big walker until now because everything is so convenient. I walk my dog all over. I walk several miles almost every day. And I just enjoy it. And in the process, I'm speaking to other residents. And they're speaking back. And so you learn about their lives. You learn more about how the city operates. And so I think this, to answer your question, this is the community that I've always wanted to be around when I settled down. finally being amongst that community and then seeing all the threats outside, technology threats, hate threats, all of those things, I just felt like when the position got opened, I just needed to at least do what I can to try to help combat negativity that's going on around and try to protect the community and the city to keep it pristine at least. Keep this as a nice oasis for as long as we can and spread the positive vibes that Oakley and the example that Oakley sets to other surrounding areas. So hopefully that wasn't too long winded.

How would you describe the city's current direction regarding development and growth? And how do you envision Oakley developing over the next 5, 10, and 15 years?

I would describe the current pathway to be very healthy. I started to come to the planning committee meetings for the last couple of months just to kind of see how things are operating, see what direction things are going. And I really like that the community itself, the residents are very vocal. They come up, they have their complaints, and I like the way that the committees and the council hears them and responds to them. I hear all too often on a lot of surrounding cities, particularly Bay Area cities where their community leaders, they don't really listen or serve the community. And so the fact that Oakley receives and they take their time to really investigate and then advise. It feels very fair, it feels like they have the citizen's best interest at heart and that's the kind of leadership that I want to be around and would like to be a part of.

All right, what do you feel is the most important skill or quality that a planning commissioner should bring to this role?

I'll kind of wrap them into one, but they're kind of two words, two concepts, but objectivity and listening. I think far too often, too many people already have predisposed answers to problems and they don't listen to the specific details of that person or that entity's unique problem. So, you know, listening with full engagement, fully intent, And then full objectivity, try to take as much bias out. And then also really objectively thinking through the problem to try to come up with the best solution, not just for that one individual or entity, but thinking through the repercussions of the solution. How does it affect the community? How does it affect other entities? Basically, try to follow the butterfly effect as wide and as far as it goes, and make sure that you've uncovered any potential hiccups or surprises. There's always going to be some surprises, but you try to minimize the surprises as much as possible.

All right. Mine is a two-part question, so bear with me. If appointed, how would you define your role and responsibilities as a planning commissioner? And do you have any scheduling conflicts that could affect your ability to regularly attend planning commission meetings, which are scheduled for the first and or third Tuesday of each month at 6.30 PM?

I will answer those in reverse, because the second one is a little easier for me to answer. No scheduling conflicts, because not only am I working from home remotely, but I'm one of those software engineers whose careers have been eaten by AI, so I have a lot more time on my hands. So right now, I do have an LLC that I'm working with with my partners, but all of that is remote. And so I have a lot of time on my hands at home. So it would be nice to break up that time with more than just golf and video games. And then to answer your other question, honestly I don't know because I'm a software engineer. I don't know necessarily how cities operate. So that's what I'll be in to learn. One of my biggest skills is learning. I've always had to adjust to different industries, whether it be in software or whatnot. I guess I get a lot of that from growing up in a military family. I've watched my dad have to pivot. I watched him learn and pivot when he retired and couldn't find work with his military skills, so he had to pivot to something completely different. So a lot of what he went through, I'm in the process of, and he got through that by staying open-minded and learning, and not assuming that he knows the answers or even knows all the questions. So I would say that would be my biggest skill. I could be putty in people's hands, but not silly putty. I can smell BS, and I'm not easily controlled, and I have no issues being the only one going against the status quo. I am a stickler for facts. Because I think without facts, without truth, you have nothing but chaos. And so if I'm the only one saying truthful things, then so be it. So I'd say I am open-minded, objective, and willing to learn. Thank you.

Thank you. And you can either stay in the audience or step out of the room while we do the third interview. Okay. Thank you.

Our last candidate for the evening will be Adam Steru.

Good evening.

Good evening.

What motivated you to apply for the appointment of a planning commissioner?

I was just motivated by being more involved with the community. My whole family grew up here. Grandparents raised their family here. Family still lives here. I've been here for 15 years and kind of seen the development. And then we are definitely going in the direction But I just kind of wanted to help guide that direction from a youthful standpoint, from a parenting standpoint, from somebody who's involved with the community, who does enjoy spending time in this community and wants to see tax dollars spent in their community or tax dollars earned in their community, just wanting to be more involved with whatever direction it is. Because we are going somewhere, but just wanting to make sure that it steers in the right direction.

Thank you. How would you describe the city's current direction regarding development and growth? And how do you envision Oakley developing over the next 5, 10, and 15 years?

I think that we definitely don't have a problem developing. And there aren't people that are interested in developing here. We have no issue with getting projects built. I do think that we're probably building residential faster than our infrastructure or spending shopping can handle. Like that Safeway on Laurel, for instance, was a much needed community resource. You can tell from the day it's opened, it didn't take time to gain traction. And with us developing the East Cypress Corridor, not to mention there's so much land on the Main Street, Empire, Laurel, Carpenter corridor. We have so much more room for development. But how are we going to responsibly develop that in order to support the community as a whole? In five years, I'd like to see more places for me to take my wife on dates. Or if I ask where to go get a T-bone or a couple of oysters right now, you guys probably aren't going to refer to me a restaurant in Oakley. And if my kids want to play competitive sports, they're probably not going to play in Oakley. So how in the next five years are we going to build our infrastructure and our resources and our services to support the community that we've already built and are continuing to develop right now, as well as looking into the 5, 10, 15 year? Right now we're right under 50,000, but we could be at 75, at least 60 by then. So how are we going to develop? at the same rate to support all of that growth.

What would you say is the most important skill or quality that a planning commissioner can bring to this role?

I would say malleability. And because you have some things that are malleable, you can bend them with your hands. Some things have to be heated up and hit with a hammer. And I'd like to think that I'm somewhere in the middle there, because you're going to have more senior members on any kind of commission that you're sitting on than you want to learn from their tenure, see how you don't want to come in and try and change the world with all your ideas at once. And you have to take that resident of 40, 50 years, perspective as well as resident of maybe five to 10 years and somewhere in the middle. And you guys have to work cohesively as a group to be able to move in any direction. And so malleability as it comes to cohesion as a group, you can't just go in there and force your way. You do have to look at other perspectives in accordance with the plan.

OK, I have a two-part question. If appointed, how would you define your role and responsibilities as a planning commissioner? And do you have any scheduling conflicts that could affect your ability to regularly attend planning commission meetings, which are scheduled for the first and or third Tuesday of each month at 6.30 PM?

Can I answer? I'm going to answer the second part first. No, I won't have any conflicts. Being a father of four children now, I've always had meetings. I do have a very hectic schedule with sports, with other meetings for things that I attend to. And I will plan vacations out, which you need to do when you have a large family. I plan my vacations even a year in advance around meeting dates. So being that this is, you know, you can look through the end of 27 right now and schedule the rest of your committee meeting dates for the next 18 months in advance technically. And I'm not booking vacations two years ahead of time. So no, Tuesdays I am wide open in general and won't, make things that contract or conflict, I'm sorry, with those obligations as a planning commissioner. My most important role would probably be just at first just assuming the position of being the newly appointed member and working with the group, seeing how the rest of the group flows, what I can do to help, perspective I can offer to the group without trying to like I said kind of earlier jumping in and pushing my own agenda or changing things right off the bat learning learning first on how you can't really affect change until you know how change happens thank you okay we're gonna take about a five minute recess now

So we'll call the meeting back to order. And then we're going to get the tally from city clerk, please.

Thank you. Yes, after tallying the votes, the highest score received was to Adam Sterod.

So at this point, I'll need a motion to approve.

I move that we appoint Adam Sterod to

planning commission second we have a first and a second a roll call vote council member shaw yes council member williams yes vice mayor meadows yes mayor henderson yes the motion carries four zero congratulations item six point

Item 6.2, appeal of the Planning Commission decision on 5279 Neroli Road. And we'll receive our staff report from our associate planner, Evan Gordon.

Tonight's presentation is just three slides plus this title, so don't blink. Thank you for the chance to present it. This is 5279 Neroli Road Appeal. For some background. First in background, this property is 5279 Neroli Road. It's zoned light industrial, and it has a single family residence on it, built in 1944. On June 8, 2026, the zoning administrator determined the residence may continue. The Oakley Municipal Code prohibits expansion or intensification. An unpermitted addition and a proposed ADU both qualify as an expansion and cannot be legalized. On August 18th, the Planning Commission held a de novo hearing. That's a fresh hearing where they are not beholden to the zoning administrator's determination. They can make their own. And they voted 3-0 to deny the appeal and affirm the determination as modified. Is a de novo public hearing so another hearing this time in front of the City Council If you were to choose this staff would schedule it within 30 days Testimony and evidence would be received at that meeting. This doesn't have a resolution. It just needs a majority vote and The next one, in your agenda packet, you've been provided a comprehensive record of the past decisions and the public hearing on August 18th. You could decide to affirm the Planning Commission's decision based on that record. vote not to uphold it, or you could affirm with conditions. This wouldn't require a hearing. Just be based on the record in front of you. This would be the final determination. And there's a draft resolution for the affirming the Planning Commission's decision should you choose that. The third option is to refer it back to the Planning Commission. Staff would schedule another Planning Commission hearing. This decision just needs a majority vote. Independent hearing officer. If you were to choose this, staff and the city attorney would work to appoint an independent officer. The officer then makes a recommendation. Council hears that at a later meeting and adopts or substitutes its own findings. And finally, a firm without hearing or record review. Because we've provided you an extensive record, we don't recommend this one. that covers your options i'm happy to answer questions on that procedure along with the help of the city attorney and i appreciate your time questions first okay we'll move to public comment i do have one uh... public comment card for this henry

Good evening, your Honor. Henry Catalan for the owner's agent. And I just wanted to state for the record the proposed resolution rests on a reappealed ordinance, and that ordinance is 826, and it was reappealed by the same council chamber. And it's on the rationales raised for the first time in the staff report, which the appellant has had no firm to answer. I understand the draft and its adoption is procedural, but we object. It just do because there's been things that have not been heard of. And we ask that this objection be reflected in the minutes.

Thank you.

Do we have any other public speakers for this item? Do we have anybody online for speaking on this item?

There is nobody on line, Mayor.

And I'll bring it back to council for deliberation or a motion.

Vice Mayor Meadows. I would prefer to move forward with item two, review the record and decide.

Council Member Williams.

Could I just ask a question? If we're reviewing the record and deciding, no new evidence can be introduced, right? It's just reviewing?

Correct. So public comment is closed. You would basically deliberate, and you can make a motion to affirm, deny, modify. But that's pretty much all you can do at this point. And no, you would not consider anything beyond what's in the staff report.

OK. Thank you. I just needed that clarity.

So do we need a motion then to?

If it's the pleasure of the council to proceed as Councilmember Meadows suggests, then a motion can be made to affirm or deny or affirm with conditions, whatever the pleasure of the motion maker is.

Vice Mayor Meadows.

If it's OK, let me ask, when did The general plan changes to light industrial.

The general plan adopted in 2002 designated this property as light industrial.

Do we know when the property was purchased?

No.

I'm assuming after 2002? 22? OK, thank you.

Council Member Williams.

I'm just having a hard time, because I was leaning towards the second public hearing. And the reason for that is because I think we should take anything that has to do with people's property very seriously. But that was a good question that you just brought up, because that does make a difference. The zoning was already light industrial. So I don't know if I can be the tiebreaker yet on this one, though.

Council Member Shaw.

Yeah, I'm leaning towards number two as well. I have reviewed all the documents as well as gone back and watched the video of the Planning Commission meeting driven by the location. And I think I have enough information to make that determination.

Vice Mayor Meadows. So...

I feel for you. You assumed you were going to be buying a house that you could live in and do whatever you want with. But when you're buying a property, you've got to do investigations. And you've got to find out what you're buying, what the zoning is, what you can do with it. And it's unfortunate that you didn't And that's all we're looking to get. Well, yeah, but I'm not done expressing it. I mean, I feel for them, but it's also zoned light industrial. And so that means you can't go and expand a house. And you can't add ADUs, which I don't even know why we're talking about ADU on here, because that's not what was, there was no application for an ADU. So based on all that, I'm going to make a motion to affirm the Planning Commission's decision.

I'm going to second.

So we have a first and a second. We'll go for a roll call vote.

Council Member Shaw? Yes. Council Member Williams? Yes. Vice Mayor Meadows? Yes. Mayor Henderson? Yes. The motion carries 4-0.

Move to 6.3, adopt a resolution superseding resolution 36-26, updating remote Public participation guidelines and public comment time limits. And this will be a staff report from our city clerk.

Yes, good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. The proposed resolution amends section 7 to include procedures for remote public comments while also correcting some minor typographical errors throughout the document. In addition, the item addresses Vice Mayor Meadows' request from the July 14th meeting regarding time limits for public comments. Staff reviewed resolution 36-26 and determined that the current guidelines allow for a 30-minute time limit on public comments at the start of the meeting, with any remaining comments being heard at the end of the meeting. Staff's requesting council direction on whether to maintain the 30-minute time limit or revise it to a longer or shorter duration. Any direction provided tonight will be incorporated into the final superseding resolution.

Thank you. Questions for staff? Not seeing any questions for staff. I do not have any public comments. Does anybody wish to make public comments on this item? Do we have anybody online?

There are no hands raised online, Mayor.

And I'll bring it back to the council for deliberation.

I move approval of this resolution.

Second. We have a first and a second. Roll call vote, please.

Council Member Shaw? Yes. Council Member Williams? Yes. Vice Mayor Meadows? Yes. Mayor Henderson? Yes. The motion carries 4-0.

Item number seven, reports. 7.1, city manager's report.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, members of the city council. The only item I want to make note of is we have our Heart of Oakley celebration coming up this September 19th from 11 AM to 4 PM downtown here at Civic Center Plaza. We have our August business license list attached to the agenda for your review. And I'm going to concede my time for the remainder of my report to both our police chief, Paul Beard, and Lieutenant Kevin Morris. Police chief is going to give us a police department update. And Lieutenant Morris is going to give us an update or a recap of our fireworks suppression operation over the July 4 holiday weekend. So with that, I will invite Chief Beard up to give his presentation.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, members of the council. This is the second time I've actually done a mid-year report for all of you. I typically do an annual report, but last year we thought it best to do kind of an update through the middle of the year, and I believe last year we thought that was a good idea, so we're just going to continue with that today. of our criminal stats are trending downward and Oakley is remaining a safer neighborhood. As the four of you know, I do track statistics in key areas to assess the overall safety and where to best apply police services throughout the year. For those listening online that may not understand what those key statistics are, but that's going to be revealed in the next few slides. And just so that I'm comparing apples to apples, I can't compare the first half of 2026 to the whole year of 2025. So what I do is I compare the first half of 2026 to the first half of 2025, just to see how those first six months trended and compare with one another. So as you can see, everything is down on the first slide except for domestic violence. And domestic violence has been a stat that has steadily risen over the past three years. And I do realize that. I do think there are some factors for why that is, and we will get into that. If we're looking at our quality of life crimes, our theft reports are down. Our petty thefts are down 25%. Our commercial burglaries are down 50%. Moving on to the second half of stats. A residential burglar, we've seen an increase of 25%, but we're looking at scale here. We only had four total in 2025, and so far in 2026, we've had five. So that does constitute an actual raise in that step. But again, most of everything else is down. Our auto burglaries are down by 45%. Our vehicle thefts are down 14%. And as you may recall from my previous presentations, I equate a lot of what happens in the city to vehicle thefts. If vehicle thefts are down, generally speaking, all other property crimes are trending down as well. And that has worked out to be true this time as well. Our property damage traffic collisions are down by 7%. Our injury collisions are down by 42%. And luckily, we had no fatals in the first half of 2026. I'm going to start tracking two new stats moving forward, and that's going to be our hit and run, both at the misdemeanor level and at the felony level. A hit and run property damage only is considered a misdemeanor. A hit and run involving an injury is considered a felony. In the first half of this year, we've had 39 misdemeanor hit and runs. And we had 28 versus 27 DUI arrests between the two years. 15 of our 28 DUIs this year were the result of the intoxicated driver actually colliding or crashing into something. So about domestic violence, statistically, and this stat has been the same for many years now, 33% of women and 27% of men will experience some form of domestic violence in their lifetime. Domestic violence is a closed door crime. We are adding more and more closed doors to our community. We're adding those closed doors in many different fashions. We're adding those closed doors in high density settings, and we're adding those closed doors in single family residence. But the bottom line on that is the more closed doors that you add, the more this type of crime is going to occur. wish we could change that. And there are tools that we can push out to the community to try to change that. But typically, at 2 o'clock in the morning, behind a closed door, the sight of a police car on Main Street is not going to have too much influence on that. We believe that the best tools against domestic violence are enforcement. Our officers do vigorously enforce the law when they do respond to a domestic violence incident, and you'll see a slide on that pretty quick. We believe that collaboration between law enforcement, courts, and advocacy groups and victims is key. We believe that good documentation of these cases is very important to best serve the victim in that current case as well as cases moving forward. And we believe in providing the victim and the community as a whole with education and empowerment. So of our 62 cases, we had 13 felonies. A felony domestic violence case would be a situation where the victim received a greater injury, a significant injury. We had 49 misdemeanor cases, and that could be equated to a injury that is not quite as great. And of the 62 cases, we made arrests in 81% of all those cases. Domestic violence can best be described as physical assault, emotional abuse, threats or stalking, economic control, sexual abuse, or mental intimidation. I've highlighted physical assault in red because that is primarily what the Oakley Police Department responds to of all those categories up there. The overwhelming majority of the reports that we take as it relates to domestic violence is because of physical assaults. And this is the same information that I showed you in the community last year. And if you think it would serve the community best, we can push this out again on social media. These are resource contacts for victims of domestic violence. We work closely with the Family Justice Center. We work closely with the Contra Costa County Victim Witness Assistance Program. And we work with STAND and Community Violence Solutions. Another theme that developed midway through this year is DUI enforcement. And to answer some of that theme, we have engaged in several Office of Traffic Safety grants. And because of those grants, we have been able to engage in several DUI operations where we are holding checkpoints or we are on active patrol seeking out impaired drivers. Statistically, DUI represents a huge threat to all of us. 33 people are killed each day in America on average, and 943 people are injured every day because of impaired drivers. Our community and our Bay Area is no different than the rest of America. These impaired drivers are all over our roadways. Last year, for 2025, Officer Freddie Williams was our DUI arrest leader. He had 26. Because of that fact, he was awarded an award by the Mothers Against Drunk Driving. So two months ago, myself and Lieutenant Collier, we accompanied Officer Williams to the ceremony. And I'd never been to one before, so it was very impactful to me to see what all went on. Several officers received awards. Of all the officers that received awards, it was a mind-boggling number. Those officers represented almost 10,000 DUI arrests only in the Bay Area. And a very small number of officers were getting awards. So it's a huge problem. I remember on May 5th of 2024 hearing the news that Antoinette Finnell was killed by a drunk driver. I remember the case because she was a dispatcher for Alameda County, and I remember that she was going to work. She was working an overtime shift on that day. I knew just because the fact pattern of the news broadcast, I knew that her own coworkers were dealing with her passing, her accident. The deputy sheriffs that she would dispatch to these types of calls were handling her fatal crash. I remember thinking how impactful that must have been on everybody. What I didn't anticipate by going to the MADD award event this year was I didn't expect to come face to face with her mother. Her mother was the keynote speaker. So for everybody in the audience, you got to hear how great of an impact the loss of this person means to her family and her community. And it made it more impactful on Lieutenant Collier and I. On the way back to Oakley from that event, we discussed ways to motivate and educate and empower our officers to get more vigorous with DUI enforcement. And so that's going to be a theme as we move forward into the holiday months. I want to talk about staffing. Administration, we're fully staffed. We have all of our sergeants in place. Our investigations unit is fully staffed. Our special services officers are fully staffed with two. Our school resource officers are fully staffed at two. I have two out of three traffic officers staffed up. And I have 15 out of 21 patrol officers currently staffed. Now, we do have full patrol teams. We have a sergeant and three officers on each patrol team right now. But this is a decision that we made several months ago that we would make an effort to move our patrol teams to four across the board. So that created more openings in the patrol division. So that's why there's a little bit of a disparity there. And as of today, we now have two officers in field training. We just hired a new officer today. And we have 37 of our allotted 42 slots filled today. You know, we're always actively looking for lateral officers to hire. We have to kind of go by the scheduling of the basic police academy to determine when we can engage in the entry level officers. Most of our officers are lateral officers, meaning they came to us from other agencies. Only two of our officers are basic academy entry level officers. As of tomorrow, we're interviewing more candidates. We interviewed two more candidates tomorrow at the lateral position. So in full transparency, one of our officers did leave us to go to a larger agency two months ago. And we have another officer who is currently in the background in a hiring process with another larger agency. While not good news for us, it's common in the industry. And I just have to remind us all that This is how we received the bulk of our officers, officers looking for homes. There are reasons why the officer left two months ago, and it had nothing to do with us as an agency. He left for family reasons, and we respect that. However, if he did decide to reapply, I would gladly take him back. I do miss the guy. So counting the officer who did leave and the officer we anticipate leaving and two lateral officers we expect to receive fairly soon, we will be at 38 positions filled out of 42 allotted, which is to say a 90% staffing rate. And one other positive thing that happened for us in the first half of this year is we became a 10 year, we celebrated a decade of being a police department. We opened our doors with 32, I'm sorry, 28 total officers from chief down to the most junior person on May 6th of 2016. And now, because of all the efforts that we're making, we're talking about trying to fill a department of 42. So we have certainly grown. And with that, my presentation is complete, but I am open for any kind of questions or feedback.

Questions for the chief? Also, remember, we're working on...

it might not just be for the chief it might be just a general um because i know you've been trying to make that domestic violence stat go down um maybe we could invite one of those organizations to come down for i mean a presentation i know you know the audience isn't always packed with people but hopefully through all of our channels we could get people to pay attention so i don't know if we just have them come give a presentation to us at account at a council meeting or maybe we can Talk about doing something like what we did for the fentanyl awareness, but just something to get a little bit more information I think just from going to some of the stand events and things a lot of times It's hard to get the information out because people just don't think oh that doesn't happen here And so they may not be getting the resources no matter what it is that we're doing so I don't know if we can consider that and

I think any amount of awareness is good, so I would support that. And our detectives, we have good contacts at each of these advocacy groups, so that's a very good idea. And you said something which made me think of something as you were talking. We find that people, they don't really want to come. They don't really want to accept the help or whatever might be going on. It's because domestic violence is closely tied to codependency with the people that are involved. And unfortunately, so many of these things do occur behind these closed doors that I talk about that even the next-door neighbors don't always know what's going on to actually kind of step in and help them out as well. So any amount of awareness would be good. Thank you for that idea.

Vice Mayor Meadows.

You kind of mentioned in the presentation about it, but, I mean, pushing information out through our social media,

Yeah, I know that he did that they did a lot of that last year because we were getting a lot of questions too about it So yeah, I mean I think all the things we can do for sure just like how you were saying You're all gonna step up like the DUI enforcement, right? I think when when it's presented to people maybe the they can see and know that there's some options out there so

I would just ask, and I don't need an answer, but how many people felt impacted by now knowing the fact that 33 people are killed every day on our roadways and 943 people are injured on our roadways because of DUI? To me, that's impactful. That makes me think about my personal travel routes. So to that point, if we did push out information on domestic violence, it may resonate with people that it wasn't resonating with before.

And you said we did last year, but I think it's something that just needs to be on a rotational basis every so many months. And not that I run the social media, but. Thank you, Chief.

Thank you.

We'll now hear from Lieutenant Morris.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council, tonight I will be doing a recap of our July fireworks operation. Figured it out. All right. So our July fireworks operation, we did have a three-night operation. We had it July 2 through July 4. And this year, July 4 fell on a Saturday. So to prepare for that, we did the two days leading up to it. What we ended up doing for this operation is we had a layered deployment of managers, sergeants, uniformed personnel, unmarked units, and our drone teams. And this was spearheaded by our special services sergeant, Sergeant Soares, and his team as well. Something I'll get into in just a little bit, but we did embed code enforcement personnel with our drone teams, which had a significant impact. So our goals this year were to deploy these drone teams and then these uniformed and plainclothes personnel during a designated time period. Generally, it was later in the evening when fireworks are more prominent. Their objective was to locate, observe, record, and document the illegal fireworks violations, and then through recordings, preserve the evidence so we can issue administrative citations. And then also, when we have these number of officers, they need to maintain readiness to respond to any firework-related events, such as fires or large gatherings that just inherently come with a holiday-type environment. So our enforcement strategy, which I kind of touched on a little bit, was to document the violations at the time that they were occurring, rather than going and making immediate contact and trying to issue a citation right there in the field. Subsequently, we would issue an administrative citation after the fact, once we collected all the evidence and reports that were needed. And for us, this really does limit the contact with law enforcement personnel, with people that are in a holiday-type setting, and would limit the confrontations and potentially dangerous interactions that can sometimes present themselves in that type of environment. So some of the pre-event mitigation efforts that we did was signage was posted throughout the city. Social media was utilized to educate the public about the dangers and our enforcement approach here in the city of Oakley. We communicated with our partners throughout our area to include Contra Costa Fire Protection District. And then we specifically had our drone team training for firework-related events prior to this operation. And I would like to do a special thank you to Sergeant Foreman. Over the last few years, he's really spearheaded our drone team. And then he will specifically look at what events are coming up and then guide his training to get his team ready for that type of specific environment, whether it's going to be daytime, nighttime, or all the special features that the drones might have, such as thermal imaging and stuff like that. So he's done a really good job putting our team together. So a significant change this year is we partnered with our code enforcement team. So by bringing them in, they're able to provide us some guidance and feedback on administrative citations, which we commonly don't interact with. And their experience with those administrative citations and the ordinance violations, it really just streamlined the process from when we observed a violation to how quickly we get a citation out to the violators. And then this obviously allowed our officers to stay active within the streets, focus on the calls for service that were out there. And it really just made for a more clear, precise objectives for each one of the elements that we included in the operation. So just a little way to present that to you guys is we essentially had two direct routes to issue a citation. One was our drone teams, which can observe a violation through the drone. And the way that's set up is we had our drone operator and our code enforcement officer. And the drone operator was able to have a live video footage feed to a monitor in front of the code enforcement officer so they can watch along to what they're observing. So when it was observed, code enforcement officer could immediately find the location. We could provide them the drone footage when we completed it. And then they can go and issue the citation immediately to that violator. Now on the other side of things, we can have officers in the field, which we did. Those officers trying to go to the locations, but they would have to observe the violation. They would then have to try to get a recording with their body camera footage. After that, they'd have to go back, write a report, upload the video footage, and then we'd have to collectively get all that together, then provide it to the code enforcement officers to issue the citations. So it's just a little bit more cumbersome, and it wasn't as smooth or efficient. So just speaking on top of that, I do want to say thank you to Ashley and Ralph, who really did help us with that. They educated me a lot through this. And hopefully, if we continue this partnership in the future, which I believe we will, it will just make the operation even better next year. So as I said, our operation went from July 2 through July 4. I was here every night with our teams. July 2, we started off with a little pilot program. It was a smaller staff team, but we went out to the Summer Lake community. It gave us a real good opportunity to fly the drone, try it in different lighting settings, see how far it can go, how far we can observe a violator. But in all honesty, the city remained very quiet that night from our perspective. Very little fireworks, but it did just provide a great training opportunity and for us to really practice with the code enforcement team. July 3rd, we decided to deploy the drone from the top of City Hall. It was a really good location for us to get to different areas throughout the central area of Oakley. But once again, very few fireworks. So commend our community for doing that. They're following what we request that they do. But we did practice a lot more and still got ready for the lead up to July 4th. And also on July 4th, we once again launched from City Hall because it seemed like a really good central location. And as you guys know, we did have a lot of fireworks throughout the city. It was an active night in our city and the surrounding cities, which we can observe from up top here. But from the drone team in the ground units, we were effective. We did take action throughout the night. So because the first two nights were quiet, no citations issued. But on July 4th, we did issue 21 citations. Twelve of those citations came from our drone base teams, and nine came from the officers who were actively in the street. And just to speak a little bit more on that, from the drones, All we had to do was capture video. We can jot down the address. We can use that as evidence. From the officers, they did have a couple methods of deployment, but it's so difficult in the middle of a party environment for officers to drive down the street without being noticed or without being crowds on the road for us to isolate individuals to a property. And just to expand on it a little bit, we did have 21 citations, 75 fireworks calls, which has increased from 71 of last year, four reported fire calls, no major damage to any property or anything. Our officers did respond, but the fires were put out quickly. No injuries. And we did have one arrest for the operation. That was July 4, the very beginning of the operation, where we had officers out being visible in the community. And during a traffic stop, we made an arrest for somebody for possessing a firearm. So we get the personnel cost, 160 total hours. That included the managers, sergeants, officers, and non-sworn individuals that assisted us. 106 of them were overtime. But we did mitigate some of it because, like a special services team, we were able to absorb some of it through their regular shifts and their regular hours. And then before I move on to my recommendations, I did want to provide you guys with a visual of how effective these drones were for us. So Assistant City Manager's gonna pull it up for me here. So I just want you guys to see how effective it is. So this is our large drone. This is what we had up above City Hall. So this drone has multiple lenses, and it records from each one of those cameras. So this is just an overall camera. What we don't know is when we go to some of the other videos, you'll see that in real time how well this drone can zoom in and assist us in finding violators of fireworks. Here you're going to see a thermal imaging model. So as it goes through, this is from the same time frame, just a different lens. For us, in a few seconds you can see, we can tell when fireworks go up because they're white hot. There are different images that it could be changed to. So we could also see a hot red image for when the fireworks go up. But we also utilize it if we're trying to locate somebody. So it just stands out when we're sitting there watching it. And so from the same feed is our next video. So this is the same occurrence, same court, same drone, but it gives us this capability with these different lenses to monitor and capture individuals that are setting off fireworks. So that was our main drone, the last few videos you saw. And it just shows the effectiveness because from a good distance, we can zoom in, and we can see that violation, and then we can move on to the next without having to fly directly overhead. This flight time does take a little bit to catch individuals setting off the fireworks. We'll go to the next video. So this next thing just kind of rounds out some of our capabilities with our smaller drones. This one was deployed from a patrol vehicle who is responding to the report of fireworks. These drones are really good in the field because officers can be driving around and immediately deploy them. They don't have the range. They don't have the battery time or the flight time. But still, for us, when we're trying to issue citations and gather evidence, it's really nice for them to have access to them inside their vehicles. If we go to the next video, please. In the final video here, I'm just going to show you this is a deployment from the vehicle and how fast they can get over and try to find where the fireworks are being set off. Cool. Thank you, Danielle. So I just wanted you guys to see that, to see how effective these drones have been for us, especially when it comes to these type of operations. It's really benefited us so we don't have to try to get patrol officers directly in the area at first. We can try to capture evidence on video and eliminate some of those confrontations that might happen in the field. So some of my recommendations after performing this operation will be to expand our enforcement capabilities with a drone, one of our more enhanced versions, which has an extended battery, greater range, and obviously the video is crucially important for us when we're doing this. I would like to recommend evaluating an escalating fine structure for repeat violations for the locations or the violators. And then without question, I would ask that our code enforcement partnership continues because they really did streamline the process and made it much more efficient for us. And then as always, we should review the future staffing needs and location-based deployments. So with that, thank you guys. Any questions?

Any questions? Thank you very much. Great report.

Thank you.

We'll move to 7.2, City Council acting and successor agent reports. Council Member Shah.

Since our last meeting, I attended at Cal City's East Bay Division Board Legislative Day in Sacramento, where we got to meet with senators and assembly members to talk about local control and things that are affecting the cities. And then I had a Josh Harder Day. We did the Staff Appreciation Lunch at Freedom, hosted by Rotary, but always great to partner with all of them. the organizations that serve the same residents that we do. On the 19th, I went to Hot August Nights at Studio 55. And later that afternoon, Oakley Optometry Ribbon Cutting. I have my new glasses on today. And then on the 20th, at Cal City's East Bay Board Zoom, attended the special meeting for the Oakley City Council on the 20th. The 25th, virtually attended the Contra Costa Fire District meeting regarding fire stations out here in East County. So I would advise all residents to pay attention to what's going on with that. The 26th, Tri-Delta Transit Board meeting. Councilmember Williams will have some wonderful notes. The 27th, Delta Association of Realtors elected reception and then ran over here to be a part of the Freedom Homecoming Parade and Rally. And let me tell you, if you guys missed it, it was huge and amazing and I hope we can continue that partnership. On the 28th, the elected women's luncheon And then that night, Freedom Homecoming game, where we volunteered at the concession stand, again with Rotary. The first, the library subcommittee meeting. All things library are moving forward. So very excited to finally get that going. And then on the fourth, the Favalora Wine Tasting Room ribbon cutting. And this afternoon, a swear in for our newest officer, I did receive a call that I have been nominated to serve another year on the East Bay Division Board for California League of Cities, and I also received a call last week from the incoming president of California League of Cities, and I've been selected to serve as vice chair of this year's Public Safety Policy Committee. And that is all.

Council Member Williams.

All right. Aaron wants me to take up some time. I attended coffee with the principal at Freedom. He did provide really interesting data regarding fights on campus, GPA goals, enrollment numbers, state testing outcomes and goals. And he was also highlighting the partnership and what a good partnership he has with the city. So I don't think he was just saying that because I was there, but maybe he was. I went to Studio 55 hot August nights, the ribbon cutting for Oakley Optometry. All right, Tri-Delta Transit. So we had a discussion of SB 63, as always, and a review of the expenditure plan. Tri-Delta will receive, if that passes, 34% of the 19% that are returned to source funds which will be distributed through CCTA. The funds will be spent 60% going towards fast, reliable service, 40% going towards safer, easier, and more convenient travel. So basically not just status quo. So that was interesting. We also talked about youth ride free. And what the outcome of that was, that's the program for youth ages 60, 18. There was fair box tracking only to see how many people were using it. This past year or summer, it was 31,614 rides, which is up 61% from even the previous year. So obviously that's a very important problem. program we run. Measure J renewal info, 97% of the projects programs that were decided in 2004 when Measure J was approved have been completed. There will likely be a ballot measure for the renewal in 2028. We did have a presentation on SB 707 as it pertains to our board, but not quite as Lengthy as here. So I also attended a webinar for Prop 4 parks funding to see how we could get a competitive grant. I was originally intending it for the 55-acre park. There is some opportunities for our second phase of the rec center, potentially the community center portion of the library. But new parks do get higher scoring, so that's something to keep in mind. And they also said that agencies can submit multiple parks for grants, but each grant application can only focus on one park. It did seem like a heavy lift, but still an interesting presentation. Freedom's Homecoming Parade, amazing. The participation and pure joy from the students and the community was amazing. I also attended the mayor's conference in Moraga as the chair. We had a presentation from St. Mary's College. Enrollment is up 18% over last year and international students are up three times what it has been. They did start a new nursing program, which is very important for California and particularly out here as we have a lot of students who would like to become nurses. And we currently have a nursing shortage of 40,000 nurses. St. Mary's does have internships and placements included. They just added an entire swim program, water polo and swim, to their athletics program. And he wanted to point out that the Stanford study noted that the new economic development corridor will be from the East Bay to Sacramento. And St. Mary's would happily partner with all of our cities to create economic development opportunities. And that's it.

I also attended the Mayor's Conference and that was a great presentation by the President of the college I went to. I was at the Rotary Lunch at Freedom. for a while. Since the last meeting, I've also attended the planning committee meeting, CCTA. I had a trans plan meeting. I had a MCE meeting. I was at the swearing in today for our newest officer. I did the ribbon cutting for a wine tasting, which looks great. And Julie DelBarbera did a great job of remodeling the women's club. I attended a CCTA TEP meeting discussing the future transportation expenditure plan. Today I met with Rashidi Barnes from Tri Delta Transit and Bill Churchill from County Connection, really talking about transportation and then starting to get into the expenditure plan that Councilmember Williams mentioned potentially being on the 28 ballot. I attended Delta Association of Realtors local government networking event, whatever we call it. And then attended the Freedom Homecoming Parade, which was a great event.

And since our last meeting, attended Iron House Sanitation District, Studio 55's Hot August Nights, Friday Night Bites, the Homecoming Parade, and like everybody said, that was a home run, and Mayor's Conference. We'll move to 7.2.b, request for future agenda items. Council Member Williams.

In light of the fireworks presentation that we just got, I don't know if this needs to be a future agenda item, but can we discuss some of the recommendations from our police department?

I think I need a second. Yeah, for what? Recommendations for fireworks or something else?

Yeah, sorry. The recommendations that Lieutenant Morris gave us for firework follow-up stuff.

If we need to bring it back, I'll second it.

With that... Item 8, work sessions, we have none tonight. Item 9, closed session, we have one closed session. Item 9.1, conference with legal counsel, anticipate litigation, initiate litigation pursuant to paragraph 4, subsection D, section 54, 95, 56.9, one potential case. We will adjourn the meeting after closed session. So thank you, everybody.