City Council - Regular Meeting

Excellent.

Well, I would like to call the May 26th city council meeting of Lafayette to order at 615. Let the record show that all members of the council here, except for Mayor Enduri, who has an excused absence. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda?

So moved. Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

All right. We're going to be moving to closed session. But first, is there any public comment for items on closed session?

The mayor is currently taking comments for item 5A and 5B. I have no speakers in the community hall, and I have no hands raised in our virtual audience.

Excellent. All right. We will adjourn to closed session. We will reconvene at 7 o'clock.

No, I see.

CJ, we're ready.

All right. Excellent.

CJ, are we on?

Excellent. All right. We are back from closed session with no reportable items. So if you can all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

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.

Great.

And for those of you that were not here at 615 when we started, and none of you were here, Mayor Nduri is absent with an excused absence. He's doing well, but we are proceeding without him tonight. Great. Okay, let's go ahead and find out. Are there any public comments for items not on the agenda, but under the purview of the City Council?

For this evening, for persons in the Don Tatson Community Hall, if you wish to speak on this item or any other item on our agenda, you'll need to fill out a yellow speaker slip, which is on the back table. For persons in our Zoom virtual audience, if you wish to speak, you will need to raise your hand when the Vice Mayor calls the item. Vice Mayor McCormick, I have no speaker slips and I have no hands raised in our virtual audience.

Excellent, thank you very much. All right, we are moving on to the city manager's update.

Thank you. I'll be filling in for Naroop this evening.

So from Parks, Trails, and Recreation, in response to the community need for afterschool care, the PTR department has worked closely with the Lafayette School District to add additional care for TK through fifth grade students at Burton Valley Elementary. This is in addition to After School Awesome at the Community Center, Club Yoshi at Lafayette Elementary, and enrichment programs on site at each elementary school in the fall. The application for CAP Care at BV Burton Valley opens on Friday. Summer camps start next week. Beyond traditional options like Camp Awesome and Tiny Tots, campers can learn new skills such as archery, disc golf, video game design, and sewing. And you can register for camps on the city's website. And we are looking forward to celebrating 20 years of the Spirit Van program at their event at the community center tomorrow. Residents can learn more about the senior transportation program on the city's website. From engineering and public works, with schools letting out this week, both PG&E and East Bay Mud will be expanding their working hours on their downtown projects. Our crew is working hard on weed abatement as fire conditions intensify, and the city's large paving project is planned to start June 8th. And finally, from planning, all three La Mirinda planning departments issued a joint request for proposal to prepare pre-approved accessory dwelling unit plans that the public can use free of charge. The goal being to reduce costs and accelerate the production of ADUs in La Mirinda. Proposals are due this Friday, followed by selection of a qualified consultant to prepare the plans, which should be made public later this year.

Temple Isaiah has filed an application to construct a 16,000 square foot two-story building to serve as the new focal point for the campus. The building will house a cafe with a lounge area, flexible spaces for classes, lectures, and small meetings, a reimagined multimedia library, and multi-purpose room for tutoring. small groups or larger events the app the application will have its first public hearing before the planning Commission on July 6. That is all.

Thank you very much, do we have any questions. Is there any public comment on this item. All right, thank you very much. All right, we'll move on to presentations. I think for all the presentations, I'd like to do something process-wise that Mayor Endura did last time, which is nice, which is basically after each presentation, we'll do any public comment, and then we'll come back to the council for questions or comments to kind of just as opposed to back and forth. So excellent. So, Assistancy Manager Tracy Robinson, you are up.

Okay, I wanted to introduce to you Fiona Mallon, who is the new Assistant Recreation Coordinator out at PTR. Fiona joined the city in late April, and she will support operations at the community center, including customer service, rec program, community events, and communications and outreach efforts that help keep our community informed and engaged. She brings a strong background in digital media and marketing, having studied business administration with a focus in digital media and marketing at St. Mary's College in Moraga. Fiona grew up in the East Bay and shared that she was drawn to Lafayette because of her belief in the value of community programming and involvement. We're excited to have her energy and enthusiasm as part of the team. So please join me in welcoming Fiona to the city of Lafayette. Mm hmm.

Hi, thank you, Tracy, for that intro. And thank you for having me here tonight. I'm very happy and excited to be part of the Lafayette Park Child and Recreation Department. The past month has been really awesome so far, and I've learned so much. And I can't wait to continue learning about the Lafayette community and how I could support and just contribute to the greater good of the Parks and Rec and Lafayette in general.

Excellent yeah Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. We have any questions a public comment i'm sorry. No public comments on any questions or comments from the Council well welcome we're happy to have you part of the Lafayette family. Excellent all right next we'll have the we want to recognize and thank our graduating senior youth Commissioners understand justin is not here, but kira is going to take the take the lead.

All right. Great. Good evening.

I'm coming down there, right?

Sorry?

Am I coming down to the podium? Is that the point?

Oh, if you would like to, I do have some plaques. Yeah. Good evening, Council, staff and members of the public. My name is Kyra Tanland. I am the Recreation Coordinator for Parks and Rec Department and also one of the staff liaisons for the Lafayette Youth Commission. Tonight, I'm here to acknowledge and honor the graduating seniors of our commission. This is a really special group. Come just their freshman year, We were barely making quorum like once a year. And now a couple of years later, we've made quorum every single month with participation reaching 15 to 20 kids. This group has set a new standard of commitment and excitement, and we couldn't be more proud of them. So I do have some plaques for you guys that council member will give out, and I'll let you guys introduce yourselves.

Come on up.

Okay.

Hello, my name is Addison Stevens and I've had the pleasure of being on the Youth Commission for about seven years now. I started in sixth grade and worked my way up. I've also been a co-chair for the Youth Commission for the past three years with Miela over here. And it's just been such an honor to be able to work with all these wonderful people and be involved in my community in this way and from such like a young age and everything. So thank you for having me and it's been a pleasure.

You? Yeah. All right.

Hi, my name is Miela, and I've been on the Youth Commission since seventh grade during COVID. And I've been here six years now, and the past three I've been co-chairing with Addie. And it's really been a lot of fun. It's been really great to just get involved in my community and just host all sorts of fun events for youth in the area that are just so rewarding to do.

Hi, my name's Lily and I've been on the youth commission since sixth grade. So about seven years now, and it's been really great getting to give back to my community and getting the youth more involved and kind of, it's been really great watching the commission grow so much. Like Kira was saying, we've literally had like no one six, like when I started and it's grown so much and it's really great. So yeah, after, um, this I'm graduating, I'm going to Penn state university. I'm majoring in kinesiology.

Hi, my name is Audrey. I've been on the Youth Commission for the past five years about. I've been on it since eighth grade, and I've been the treasurer for the past two years. And I've also just had a great time getting involved with the community and organizing events to help bring people together. Next year, I'll be attending Brown University and studying environmental science.

Hello, my name is Amelia Tantemang. I actually, it was Addie and Lily who asked me to volunteer, I think back in eighth grade for a youth commission event. And then I became an official member freshman year and I've got to do so many fun things that I didn't think I would be doing in high school and got involved in the community in ways I didn't expect. So thank you.

Hi, I'm Marley. This is my second year with the Youth Commission, but only my first year as a commissioner. But it's been really cool just to see how much the community cares for the Youth Commission and how with that support, you know, how much direct impact we're really able to make on the community. So yeah, it's just really inspiring to see. So thank you.

Would you want to come to the front? We'll get a picture with the council.

Excellent.

All right, next up is a Oh, thank you. There you go. See, look at it during a public comment for this item.

No comments on this item.

No, we do public comment them go to the council. Right? Excellent. Any counsel? Are there any questions or comments? Go ahead. I think, yeah. Go ahead.

Well, full disclosure, I am Miela's mom, but I say this as if I were not. So thank you all for your leadership and commitment that you've shown over these many, many years. You all said how many years you've been involved, but I totaled it up as my fellow council member, Jim Cervantes does the back of the envelope calculations. And it's 35 total years between all of these amazing, amazing commissioners. And I've asked a couple of how many hours per year they've spent, and it can be up to a hundred per year. So that is 3,500 hours that we see represented in front of us. So thank you. Thank you. And just, yeah, I mean, you persisted through the pandemic. You brought it all back. You have creativity and enthusiasm, ingenuity, producing so many fun activities, especially that haunted house, which is just epic. And I hope that you're able to pass that on to the next folks. And so you're just very appreciated. Thank you. Thank you.

If I could add in, I've had the pleasure with then Councilmember, now Vice Mayor McCormick interviewing commissioners. What a terrific commission we have here. And I think I take great pride in that I look at the future, not just of Lafayette necessarily or California, but this country and beyond that, and seeing you a hope for a better improving society writ large. So thank you for your service to our community. And I look forward over the years to the service you'll give to maybe back to Lafayette or to California or the United States or beyond. And I think we're all better off for your work and involvement. So thank you very much.

All right, great. Yeah, I've been fortunate to be a liaison for a couple of years at the Youth Commission. I agree, incredibly impressive group and you will be sorely missed. Thank you very much. All right. Excellent. All right. Now we will go on to our annual update and work plan from the Design Review Commission and Planning Commission.

It's not on.

So looks like we could be hearing from the DRC first, that looks like. Excellent.

Looks like we are. So good evening. I'm Richard Stanton. I'm the chair of the Design Review Commission. And I don't, do I advance slides or does someone else? I do. Okay. So this evening, we're going to discuss the role of the Commission, our Commission members, guiding policies and documents, meeting statistics, looking back at what we accomplished last year, and then looking forward at the coming year. The Design Review Commission advises the Planning Commission and the City Council on matters relating to aesthetics and the physical appearance of the City of Lafayette. We hear and decide applications for design review and hillside development permits in a quasi judicial capacity. And we serve as a referral body to the planning Commission on land use permits subdivisions density bonus projects and policy development, such as the objective design standards that we worked on last year. commission members. So I'm the chair, Travis Couser, who is not here tonight, is the vice chair. Glenn Cass is here with me. John Gray is here with me and Armand Havilou is the other commissioner. John Potter, Our guiding policy and documents of the Lafayette general plan the downtown specific plan downtown objective design standards municipal code findings for. John Potter, Design review and hillside development plans residential design review guidelines downtown street improvement master plan. Our meeting statistics. So we had 18 meetings last year 15 hours in session 62 items of business, including 34 public hearings five study sessions and 25 other business items. This is a John Potter, Chart showing our meeting data but numbers and meetings is not as much as it was 10 years ago, but consistent with the last three or four years and numbers of applications considered sort of varies a lot, but I'd say it's sort of a typical load last year. So we provided feedback for five study sessions we approved three sign permits marks paint a hardware horn barbecue proved for projects involving the demolition and construction of new single family residences couple of them are shown on this slide. We approved six projects involving residential additions or alterations. We approved four projects to construct a total of 20 single-family residential housing units, the 3600 Deer Hill Road being a notable one. And the Objective Design Standards Subcommittee was formed, worked with Lisa Wise Consulting to amend the Objective Design Standards for Multifamily Commercial Mixed Use Residential Development. There's a picture of the open house and Glenn and I are there see us in the picture. Looking forward, we'll continue our role as a decision making body on design review and hillside development applications, continue our role as an advisory body to the Planning Commission on land use density bonus and other projects, assist in the development of the downtown objective design standards in light of the new density and height limits necessary to accommodate the regional housing allocations.

And I think that is it for us excellent we're going to public, is there any public comment before we do, I have no speakers on this item excellent excellent let's go the Council, are there any questions or comments for our Commission members.

So thank you for all the work on the objective design standards and I understand the reasons why we haven't published them yet. But those people who have worked on it is there. opportunity to bifurcate the objective design standards possibly? Can we talk about that or no? It's not on the agenda, but we are bringing that back at your next meeting to discuss. Thank you. Got off the hook, so yes.

Any other questions? Yes, Mr. Martin.

Can I have a question? I mean, the landscape with state law has changed a lot over the last five years with respect to housing in particular. um how do you what do you see as like challenges going forward for the design review commission and what are the things that you're seeing out there that you guys may think about like look this is something we might want to pay attention to in the future or thinking through your role in terms of how we do it right with development just kind of get your thoughts on that that's a big question but i i think

That the issues that you probably are aware and deal with also so you know a lot of our housing sites for new single family residential wildland fire is an issue. And how that all works in the development of the site. Certainly, I think I think you're referring to the landscape water conservation and those changes that have come along and and using native plant materials, but also you know, in the city with the. objective design standards, ability to build multifamily residential in the core of the city. How that is all gonna play out is certainly to be seen how that goes. Those are the ones that come to my mind. Anything else you guys? Give me the mic.

Well, one concern I have is that inconsistency on how the FAR agencies enforce They're enforcing on new home or renovations on homes, but the next door neighbor doesn't have to comply. It just, and also when you look at their document on what they're asking for, they're asking for, for instance, no bark within or within five or 10 feet of the road, but then they approve projects that have bark within 10 feet of the road. I mean, it's not really consistent on how they interpret their own documents. And I don't think that Contra Costa Fire is doing anything near what the Renda Moraga people are doing. You know, so that's sort of, to me, almost embarrassing that they really don't have their act together. And that's something that the city should be pressing on.

And to clarify, we're talking confire here?

Yes.

Okay. So that's something that maybe pay attention to. Thank you.

Did you have something?

Yeah.

So the one thing that I would add that I find especially challenging here, and I'm sure you all do as well, is what are density bonus projects going to do to our downtown? And how do we work with the public to help them understand what we can and can't do to influence that? There is very strong vocal opposition from the community that we all understand, but we also have an obligation to provide housing. And how can we, as the Designer View Commission or as others in city regulators, influence that to make it as good as it can be. And we certainly have found challenges there and are doing our best.

Great. Thank you. Anything else? Council Member Witherspoon.

Yeah, I just want to thank you for your work in reviewing the objective design standards with the consultants. Really, really appreciate that. And then also in giving your time to being part of study sessions with developers who are interested in taking that kind of first step, getting that feedback from you and from our community. Really appreciate your contributions there.

Great. And all I will say is I feel the pain you're saying about trying to educate the population or the community. So I think we're all open to, if you have suggestions for us, if we have suggestions for you, I mean, a lot of times, obviously you're hearing it before it comes to us in many cases. And so you're getting the sense of what the community, by the time it gets to us sometimes, you know, they feel like everything's been said. So I think we're open to ideas to figure out how we try to do better communication. I mean, I get the sense that people are getting, are understanding some, much of it's out of our control, but better education. And what all it means, I think, is that the work you guys are doing, which is trying to, even absent controls, just trying to guide and help and work with developers, you know, in more of a collaborative effort to like try to make it better for the community. I think I know some of the at least a couple of the projects we've seen up here recently, I know have benefited from going through DRC and we deeply appreciate it. So we thank you very much for all your work on this and don't get, you know, don't get dispirited. We just got to think, I think we just got to be really creative in this current environment. So thank you very much. All right.

Thank you. Thank you.

And now the planning commission.

Hi, good evening. My name is Steven LaBonge. I am not the chair or the vice chair, but I was next. So they called me and asked me if I would speak. And I'm very excited to be here tonight. I'm going to try to make this a little quicker. I'll just highlight any differences. And then I think I would like to speak a little bit to some of the questions at the end, just my perspective. Overview, very similar. And I'm just going to go to the next one. Dave Kuntz, Big big picture thing general plan implementation zoning ordinance development applications. Here's our Planning Commission members. So Chair Radnich, Vice Chair Carl DiGiorgio, myself, Commissioner Mason, and then we have two new commissioners, Commissioner Salimi, thank you, we're just kind of meeting, and Commissioner Snyder over here, who I just met tonight for the first time. So we're super excited about that. Quorum won't be such a roll of the dice for a while, but we do have an even number, which creates its own uniqueness, but I'm not that worried about that, so. Here are our guiding policies and documents, very similar, everyone which you guys are familiar with, so I will just keep going. Here's our stats, and I'm going to go to the next page because it kind of shows a little more. The only thing I would really point out here is from a planning commission perspective, the biggest thing that drives our meetings are housing developments. And two things there. Interest rates are really high, so it slowed down housing development. You could see that clearly in 23 and 24, where it really dove. It's coming back a little, and we did approve one project earlier this year. So I do see that coming back a little. Looking back, updates for the six cycle housing project, housing cycle is a really big endeavor for everyone in the city. And we enjoyed our part of that as well. 101 Oak Hill project with 90 homes. That's an interesting project. It came through earlier and then came back. And to my earlier point, that I wanted to talk about. One of the things that's changed, and you guys know this, is our discretionary approvals have really changed based on a lot of the state laws. And this is an example, this project of one where we talked to a developer who happens to be local, whether that helps or not. In this case, we came up with some thoughts that we thought would be better and to their credit they actually implemented some of them in terms of design and what was ultimately approved and so um it goes more to we can ask and suggest and i think with drc's help as well on aesthetic design you know cajole a little to things that we think would be better ultimately a developer should want the best development because in theory that would make them the most money which is typically what they're driven by which is which is okay that's that's a capital uh business and that's what they're doing but uh so that's just an example of one and things we can work on um let's see we also uh had here's a couple other um examples uh deer hill road um objective design standards um which we will see come forward more and see how that plays out with with with our approvals um looking forward uh same things i mean um Again, what I would say, the biggest thing that we're going to be dealing with is housing and to the earlier discussion with DRC, the education in some of those applications on what we can and cannot actually do. And I think that would be something we really, as from an agenda item to the staff report, more to the projected staff report, really try to help convey that message. I feel like the last year in our meetings, especially when I was chair, personally, I felt like a lot of times I had to talk back to the audience, whether they were here or online and explain that while I might not want that big building there, you know, what I can talk about is in this lane, and this is what I'm going to talk about. So as much as we can publicize that, I think that will help all of us. And here are some of the things we're looking for going forward that we've seen and may or may not see again. I didn't put these slides together, so I'm not exactly sure if we're going to see some of these again, but they're all great projects we're looking forward to. So with that, if you have any questions, we would love to answer anything you have.

Absolutely. Excellent. First, let's see, is there any public comment on this item?

Vice Mayor McCormick, I have no public comments on this item.

All right. Excellent. Now we'll bring back to council. Anybody like to start?

Thank you for your feedback. We will definitely, I think what I'm hearing is it would be better if we had something, some canned verbiage or something in the staff reports that do explain the limitations of housing laws as it applies to this particular application and have that spelled out a little better. We have a lot of canned statements that go out from the city on all sorts of different topics. And so maybe we should just work on something like that. I think that might be helpful, huh?

And I would think it could be canned. There's lots of laws and they're nuanced differently. So it might be, we kind of need to make one for each one so that we can integrate.

We have to be tailored to each one. Yeah, each one's a little different.

And the concessions and waivers, I think is also one that needs to be explained a little more because- You know, I struggle with that one because, you know, it's really hard. My understanding of it is it makes, if it makes it financially infeasible, we can't ask them to do something, but I've been in development. The only way you can tell if it's financially infeasible is to see a pro forma. And we can't get those very trust me, but don't verify. So anyways, so as much as we can educate.

Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. We've spoken about that enough. I'd like to go somewhat sideways. We talk about fire, we talk about this, but we don't prepare for what happens. If you look at, say, Palisades has 2200 homes. My research shows about 30% won't come back. The average homeowners insurance covers rentals for two years. There's no process that we have that we could process that many homes. So I'd like to, I mean, that's even before you get on homes being rebuilt on hillsides where they weren't allowable. So I'd like to at least get people thinking about some sort of framework for somebody declares emergencies so that we can process homes. these things more quickly. I mean, when the Santa Rosa fire happened, I talked to people that were working in Santa Rosa, the nearest affordable housing they could get for rental that their insurance covered was Walnut Creek. So they're commuting to Santa Rosa, because that's where their kids were in school, you know, every day. And that's tough. I mean, I know we can say, well, you know, if it's about the same size, we could do it. But, you know, given the average age of the homes here, who's going to say it? Who's going to say what's close? And I realize it's a big problem for everybody around here. You know, how many ways out of the morgue are they? They're all two-lane roads with trees on either side. You know, the county is going to be overstaffed. But at least they like to start thinking about it so that, you know, best way to deal with the problem is just at least prepare for it. Whether you face it or not, at least give some thoughts so we're not making rushed decisions, which are probably bad decisions. Thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

Council Member Cervantes?

That's a really interesting thought. I think it kind of bears, I mean, it's almost like gaming out a scenario, I suppose, in that God forbid scenario where something does happen with wildfire and what do we do with that? I mean, wildfire safety is our top priority for the city. We have an emergency preparedness commission that's very active on this. There's a lot of work going on in that, and other agencies too, I know, but... You know, I think it's good to try to think this through as much ahead of time as you can, acknowledging that we're in a world of uncertainty when it comes to that. So thank you for raising that point.

I mean, the way I look at it, I'm a structural engineer by training. So we prepare for earthquakes that have a 50% chance of happening every 50 years. So if you put that as far as a catastrophic wildfire, yeah, I can see in the next 50 years, we could have something that wipes out a good portion of the city. You know, even some, how do we get the elderly out? You know, there's a lot of little plays, a lot of little narrow streets. That are, you know, dead end death traps and I just, I just want to at least get that going so that we can, you know, find a way to at least say hey, if we have to make a decision. Here's how we're going to make the decision.

Yeah. And I will think, I think it's worth pointing out, I mean the city has done work on. kind of gaming out some of this, like responding to emergency, we've got like 33 plus firewise groups, each of which have a game, a plan, part of which in my neighborhood, for example, is trying to identify individuals who might have mobility problems. So if the evacuation order goes up, making sure those people get out. So stuff like that. And then there's the longer consideration you were raising with respect to, okay, it's happened, what do we do now? There's a lot of thought that could go into that. And I... I appreciate your raising that.

Yeah, I will say the Emergency Preparedness Commission is looking at much of that. I think it is interesting you talk about there's a planning kind of angle to it that I think would be interesting and maybe it's a worthwhile kind of a joint commission kind of study.

That might be worth a thought actually.

You know, I was involved in some of that, the planning, but if you look at, say, the average monthly residents, single family residentials that we process at the city and look at what the workload would be at the, at a catastrophic scenario, you know, green design review, planning commission, you know, what, what potential shortcuts could we take? What could we do to get people back in more quickly?

I'm intrigued by what you're raising here, but the question I had is like, so we all know it's a difficult market to develop in. Rates are so much higher than they were in 20 and 21. Construction costs are higher, input costs are higher. so i'm just kind of curious from like the interactions that you all have with on the development on the development community side what are you seeing hearing i mean i mean i'm struck by the number of projects approved that have just gone sideways kind of curious like what your sense of that is so my day job is development but it's it's retail commercial but i interface with a lot of residential um

The bigger ones, now's the time to buy land. When demand's low, it's easier to negotiate. But what usually happens there is anyone who's owned land that has attracted a housing developer remembers the highest offer they ever got. And so they won't see anything short of that. It takes a long time to break that cycle. So, I mean, there's two big housing developers in the Wall Street Journal yesterday were talking about merging. I mean, there's consolidation in the industry, but we're going to need more housing. On the way here, I was thinking about it, like what are ways we could make it less expensive? I mean, the things we keep implementing are for safety and for efficiency and for electrification or different things like that that we want. or solar, they're all things we want. They just add a lot of costs. And so I understand the want from this job of why we want all that. From that side, there's really only three factors. There's the land, there's what people will pay, And then there's how much profit they're going to make. And so if they can make profit with their amount of money somewhere else, the money's going to flow to the profit regardless. Now, if demand gets high enough, the profit goes higher, then they'll do it. Or rents have to go up. So it's a little tough, but we're human. We need places to stay. This is a great place. to live. We all know that the better we keep our schools, the more we'll attract more people that want to live here, the more demand there will be for housing, but unfortunately the costs are going to keep going up. So.

Fair enough.

Great.

All right. Well, thank you very much. I'd like to extend a welcome to commissioner Salimi and Snyder. I'm glad you guys are on team. It's a great team. If you know, if you had a chance, I guess you have, you've not had a meeting yet.

Apparently.

Okay. Well, anyway, I think it's a welcome you both. And what. Yes, good. And we'll keep an eye out for the final vacancy. And thank you very much for all your service.

Thank you.

Okay. All right, we're on to consent. And does anybody wish to pull an item from the consent calendar? Do we have any members of the public that wish to pull an item from consent?

I have no request to pull an item from consent.

Okay, to that.

Move we adopt the consent calendar calendar. Second.

All those in favor. Aye. Unanimous. The consent calendar is passed. Approved. Very nice. Okay, so with no old business and no staff reports, we'll move on to our public hearing. So please come to the table. We'll start public hearing. All right. It's almost like they were not excellent. So we'll open the public hearing with our presentation from our Chamberlain, our public works manager.

Good evening. I'm going to confirm that you guys had a chance to look at the staff report that was submitted. Do you have any questions regarding the staff reports?

So, okay, we're just going to proceed right into the question part. That's totally fine. That's good. Council Member Cervantes.

Yeah, I think you answered this question for me. I thought I'd raise it, which is that I noticed that with respect to the core downtown district, in effect, the general fund is kicking in money to cover the costs. And my question was, Why are we doing that? I assume it was Prop 218. There's a little bit of a backstory, which might be helpful to share as to why the general fund is subsidizing these costs.

Currently, the revenue generated by the core area assessment district does not pay for existing services. And the city has made up the difference with the general fund. And the assessments have not increased since 1994. When the state Proposition 218 passed requiring a vote of affected property owners rather than council action alone to approve any new or increased assessments before it could be levied. So the city's last effort to modify that was in 2007, but it did not receive sufficient votes and it did not pass.

So we tried, it didn't work. We haven't tried it since. I think the assumption being that we're probably have the same outcome as we did in 2007.

I would believe so. Yes. And I did a little research on that as well. Just because I know that you'd have to do whole voting process with ballots and it's weighted by the amount a parcel would pay because not all parcels pay the same amount. So it's not like a one per one vote. It would actually be parcels that are assessed a higher amount would have more weight than ones that are assessed a lower amount. So it could easily be outweighed in the voting process.

Yeah. So I remember when Prop 21 team was up and our argument in my old life was that cities would inevitably be having to pour money into districts like this where they hadn't before. And that argument didn't carry enough weight with the voters. So here we are. So thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

Any other questions? No.

I have a question about A2, 13A2. Are we on that?

Do we do them together or we do one at a time? We do one at a time. We do one at a time. Okay. Well, then we'll just hold that. Excellent. All right. So are there any public comment for item A1?

We're going to open the public hearing?

We will open the public hearing. Thank you.

And we have no public speakers?

Okay. We'll bring it back to the council then for item A1. Are there any comments? Yes. No. Okay. So then we do need to adopt a resolution.

So I would move approval of resolution 2026-33, which I believe is the correct resolution.

That is the correct resolution.

I second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Anonymous. All right. We'll move on to A2, when we're talking about the lighting, I believe, lighting district. Okay.

Yes, this would be for the residential area district. Okay, so I know that seems like there is no contribution from the general fund, because this is a district that doesn't require. lighting and you know it's residential so there's a lot less money that's required to maintain it usually just money that is from our street repair fund so. it basically just rolls over as well. I didn't know if there was any questions regarding that.

I do have one question. So I wasn't aware of this program, the way it's set up. And so I'm wondering if there's a neighborhood that wants streetlights, what is the process for them to, I guess, make themselves a district and join this?

Oh, that's a good question. That hasn't happened in quite some time that I know of. I think they would have to get together and decide and put forth that they'd want to bring that to council. So that would be the initial process. As far as going forward, I'm not really sure. I'd have to verify the data on that. But I could get back to you and give you more information going forward because I don't think we've had anything in the residential area added in a long time.

Okay.

Thank you.

Good question. Any other questions? All right. Do we have any public comment on Matter A2?

You've opened the public hearing, and I can tell you we have no public comments at this time.

All right. Great. Well, we'll bring it back to council. Any comments?

I'll move approval of resolution 2026-34. I second.

Excellent. All those in favor?

Aye.

It is unanimous. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Excellent. All right. Well, now, since there were no items moved from consent, we'll move on to council and commission reports as a chance for council members to to report on activities and consideration matters that council member wishes to initiate for placement on a future agenda. Would anybody like to start? Yes, Council Member Witherspoon.

Sure, let me just actually find what I had. Sorry. Okay, so on the 14th, I attended Bike to Wherever Day, which was held in Plaza Park. It was very nice. It was nice out. We had a good number of people stop by, some little kids on their way to LES, which was very sweet. It's a great event. And then right after that, I hoofed it over to Arinda for the CCTA board workshop on on the transportation expenditure plan that will be an effort over the next year and a half to develop. And what that basically is queuing up for a ballot measure in 2028. That would be a renewal extension of Measure J. Um, there were two prior measures in the last couple of years that were for very similar purposes that failed. And so there's kind of a lot riding on this particular... Is it a parcel tax or what sort of tax?

No, it's sales tax.

Sales tax.

Oh.

It's sales tax. Yeah. And so we'll see. In the public polling, maybe a little bit mixed. People are feeling a little taxed.

Maybe.

Bit taxed.

I've been thinking 2028, though. So wow, interesting.

28, yeah. So we'll see. They are going to be doing some more focus groups and outreach in pretty much this summer. The interesting thing will be they were going to be trying to describe countywide transportation initiatives alongside when the BART measures probably going to be in a camp. That's right.

There'll be some confusion there, potentially.

There'll probably be a little bit of, yeah. So it'll be an interesting collection of data that the political consultants will be doing. But yeah, it's basically a process to identify programs and projects that jurisdictions want and that are also aligned with the countywide transportation plan. It was really helpful to be in that two-day session to hear.

You went instead of me, so thank you so much.

Of course. No, I was really glad to. Thank you for the opportunity. It was really, really good. It was representatives. Well, all the board was there, but then they invited representatives from other jurisdictions that don't have a seat on the board because CCT's board is... has a process for placements. And so not every city has a, has a spot. So there were some discussions about kind of the general, what is this all about? How are we going to get there? But also about kind of governance, because there are these regional subsections of the county that are broken up into these RTPCs, which stand for Regional Transportation Planning Committee. Yes. Something like that. They gave out a booklet of 10 pages of acronyms, that I'm happy to.

You know, I wonder just as an item for a future agenda, I wonder if it makes sense to get some sort of briefing, you know, for the council so at least we can kind of get it in the public record what this organization's got so much, you know, going on, especially if they're going to be asking for a tax thing and what education we can do.

Sure, we can get the director to come and give a presentation. Yeah, exactly. It's a very good idea. Yeah, yeah. So there was a debate, kind of discussion about governance, how these five subgroups, how they do their work, their business, how they operate. They all have different structures. Like one has a staff member, full-time staff member. Others don't. Like ours is called SWAT, Southwestern Area Transportation Committee, SWAT Committee. And we have a San Ramon staff who gives a little bit of time to organizing it. But so there were questions about sort of one person or they actually did a survey and it was, should every jurisdiction have a seat on the board? And it was split. split. There were eight groups or eight individuals that said no, and then a couple that were strongly and a couple that were yes, and it was a split.

Well, larger boards don't always equal more efficient.

They talked about that. They did talk about that. But yeah, there seemed to be There seemed to be areas that people thought could be improved from the RTPC site or direction going up to the board. And it was just also helpful to hear about the priorities of other parts of the county, in particular West County and East County, which are just areas that I don't tune into as much. But they're distinct, they're unique. But one thing that was interesting that was almost uniformly, emphatically agreed upon, which was school buses. everyone would love to get more school buses because the AM congestion is difficult in a lot of cities. And there was a statistic, I don't want to misquote, but it was well over 50% of peak traffic volume is school traffic. And for some of them, it's significant. It's, yeah, it's like really causing standstill in their communities. And so we'll see. We'll see about that. This is an opportunity through this measure, potential measure, to get funding that might be toward this area, which we would love. Yeah. We definitely need more in the La Miranda School Bus Authority. And so, yeah, the other thing that was interesting was that congestion and road maintenance were pretty much the top priorities. They did a lot of mentee polls. So you would, like, do a little poll on your phone, and then they'd show the graph. I like that. Yeah, they did a whole series of them. And congestion, road maintenance, top concerns. Transit was at the bottom. so it was interesting yeah yeah that's interesting so you think this would be the one group that would uh be most yeah yeah yeah no very very um road congestion efficiency yeah focused yeah freeway and local roads but yeah so it's a very good meeting stay tuned excellent

Council Member Cimantes.

Thank you. One item at the end, at some point during the last meeting, during the capital improvement program discussion, Mike Moran referenced the aqueduct trailway plan and some of the issues we're having with East Bay Mud and working through issues with them. So Vice Mayor McCormick and I worked out a sit down with Mike, Patrick Collier, and Matt Luthrop. And then we later on last Friday went on a walk along the aqueduct, which I would encourage the council members to do with trail guides. It's a fascinating tour of the back part of Lafayette, if you want to call it that. uh the aqueduct aqueduct itself is really two of them is is really impressive when you get down to it but the the potential and the challenges of the pathway are really striking you can see it behind the brand where it's in place it is really lovely it's a huge amenity but as you push further east the engineering challenges are significant So it was helpful to get that. We're hoping to have a follow up with East Bay Mudd to help facilitate the effort. But I thought that was fascinating and I'm sure the virus may have a comment on that. But to do one totally away from that, since I've got the mic, I wanted to just to congratulate a resident of Lafayette. The governor recently appointed Jonathan Klein, a Lafayette resident, to be the chair of the California Housing Development and Finance Committee. which is the entity under the restructuring of the way California does affordable housing, which is sort of the center cog in the wheel of how we do affordable housing funding and finance in California. So you've got this committee, the California Housing Finance Agency, my other stick is on that. California Housing, Jonathan Klein. And HCD is a part of this. Any entity in the state that deals with affordable housing is a part of this. The idea is to try to instead of the multiple silos that we have now, it's just sort of consolidated and make it sort of a more of a one stop shop to facilitate affordable housing in the state, which is a great idea. So I'm thrilled the Lafayette resident will be making a significant contribution to affordable housing in California. I wanted to salute Jonathan for stepping up and for the governor for nominating him. So I think that'll be good for all of us in the long run.

Excellent. Councillor Kandel. All right. A couple things since Mayor Enduri is out, I have been busy. And now I see a little taste of next year, apparently. As I did attend last yesterday afternoon, I did attend the Memorial Day vigil at the crosses, gave a little talk. So that was good. It's a moving event, I suggest. I know Councillor Kandel has been there and obviously spoken very eloquently there. And that was a really tremendous event. I highly recommend it. We did the aqueduct walk, and I agree. I am impressed at the enthusiasm of our engineering staff that want to do this. It would be a great project. It will require a village to get that done. But I would definitely suggest, I mean, do a field trip. It's totally worth it. And bring your sneakers. It's farther than you think. Um, at least than I thought, um, I did attend, uh, last week, taste Lafayette, which again was a great, um, great event sold out. So it sells out early every year, 500, uh, people in the park and attending all the restaurants, a couple of restaurants did run out of food, but, uh, it was, um, it was just phenomenal and it really showed, uh, Lafayette's restaurant scene at its finest. Also last week, two weeks ago, I did attend the, Recycle Smart had a composting workshop at the community garden. We were able to attend that. We got good education and even the people attending it, which are mostly the community garden members who are probably the most educated people group in Lafayette, we're still surprised about what you can compose, what you can recycle, what you have to throw away. And so if they are surprised, then you can just imagine what the mere mortals have to think about. And then also then tomorrow, I will be attending in the mayor's behalf the 20th anniversary of our spear ban. And then that's everybody there. Very good. Excellent. All right. So why don't we go ahead and move on to Council Members Kandel and Cervantes of the Legislation Committee.

Yes, okay, so I'll try to do this quickly. So AB 1821, this is the agency response time in responding to public records requests, which has gotten very cumbersome in recent years. And this gives a little more time for the city or whatever agency to respond. And so it definitely is something we wanna support. This bill actually did have at one time money to get paid back. as well, but that got pulled, unfortunately. So it was better, but then now it's still good. This is still a good bill that we should support. The next one is AB 2296, and that's the regional housing needs allocation. It is back on this year because the governor vetoed a similar bill last year. So we're trying it again. It gives more time for our cities to do our housing elements and puts far more guidelines onto HCD itself in how they're dealing with us cities to make it a far better process from both ends. So we are crossing fingers that this year it will pass and not get vetoed. The catastrophe modeling in distressed areas. Yeah, this one's also, this is actually a really good bill for Lafayette and La Mirinda in general, because it changes the definition of cities who can be part of this modeling. And it used to be that you had to be in a distressed county rather than, and the modification is a distressed zip code because our county is not all in high-fire zones. We have specific zip codes that are in those high zones. And so distressed means at least 10% of the properties are insured through the California Fair Plan. So we have a chance of being part of this program. And she had a comment about how it was better, and I forgot to write it down. Do you remember? it got watered down in some way. She's like, oh.

I do recall that. Yeah. I mean, I have to salute our assembly member for pushing this.

Oh, for sure.

I forget what that nuance was, but it helps us because right now we're not in the game when it comes to the sustainable insurance strategy of an insurance commission.

Right. So this is definitely something that we thank our assembly member for pushing through. All right, so those were the other one. That was all we're going to write letters for. Do you guys have any questions? Questions?

So I did have a question on this. So are we, I mean, this seems, I should know this, I guess, but so we qualify as distressed city because we have more than 10% under fair? Do we know what our percentage is?

I don't think Lafayette does, but Arenda and Moraga do.

Okay. Yeah. We're definitely doing this and, you know, it wouldn't take much for us to probably tip into that. Yes. Category no matter what. No, this seems, yeah, I agree. I actually, I think it's, I mean, I just, I like seeing, our assembly member leading the fight on this. That's really terrific. Other questions? Do we have any public comment on this item?

Vice Mayor McCormick is taking public comments on item 15B, 1, 2, and 3. I have no public comments.

All right. We'll bring it back here. And in lieu of any other comments, we could take a motion, I guess. We do have a recommendation.

Yes. One question. Yes. The other that you said we're just watching, Building Affordable California Act.

Actually, that's a good question. I was unclear why that was. I mean, I read it. I didn't know what we were doing with that.

And this is the one that has the Contra Costa County, LA County tax rates. Is that the one you're talking about?

Oh, no. The one that there's like a campaign flyer, and then there's the whole text of the measure. It's a ballot measure. So it's a yeah it's got polished and it didn't building industry association Chamber of California Chamber of Commerce.

I mean, it's not one of the ones that we were recommending.

Right. They've got to watch, right? Yes.

We had a good discussion about this with our lobbyist. I think we felt like including this in the package for information of the council is important. It's a huge topic. And there's a lot of, I guess it's one where you say there's a lot of devils in the detail on this one. There may be some good elements in it. There may be some really bad elements in it. It's hard to say. You'd think that ideally this is something that's worked out in the legislature where different parties can weigh in and you come up with, in effect, a compromise that makes it better than it is now. But this is like one group's approach to it, the BIAs. So we felt like we can't, we'd be out over our skis supporting it or even maybe opposing at this point, but just keeping an eye on this because it could well be coming to the ballot was something we thought would be helpful for the council.

Yeah, it's very helpful. So is this currently gathering signatures? Is that the phase it's in? It may have qualified.

Did they qualify? I'm not sure. Wow. I'd have to circle back with you on that.

I don't know. I hadn't heard about this one, but it's huge. It's huge.

The scope is so broad. Very broad. And so we need to really understand what's actually in it before.

Which we make it for challenging ballot measures, just very complicated ones tend not to do well because people get bored halfway through.

Yeah, I mean, this has got CEQA reform and limiting judicial review, and it's got a lot.

A lot going on. There's a lot going on. Okay. But I said we should recommend a...

The three letters of support.

Great. So can I get a motion to support the three measures being put forward?

So moved.

And I'll second that. Great. All those in favor?

Aye.

It is unanimous. Excellent. Thank you very much, Ledge Committee. All right. Now we're on to written communication. So there is a... We have an email from Terry Pickering requesting Christian to use the plaza. uh for the fifth annual uh workshop and uh no road closures are required so it seems fairly straightforward does anybody have any questions on this one no any public comment are we yes no public comments great all right so we don't need a vote i guess we would endorse uh we would approve this yes no concerns do we do motion okay can i get a motion i move approval of the uh

Lafayette Center at Rotor's request for the Winter Workshop for Kids on December the 12th.

I second.

Excellent. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? No. Unanimous. Excellent. And we have two relatively, I think, disappointing emails that's worth acknowledging, and we need to do much more than this, but obviously, I mean, 16 years of volunteer service on the Public Art Committee, but I think that's 43 years in total service, including multiple rounds as mayor, Very involved with Cal Cities. And one of the reasons I'm here is with his encouragement. So we'll have to, this will not be the last time we should talk about this, I would think. But I guess we have to have no choice but to accept with regret and thank him for his service. And also an email from Carter, resigning from the Public Art Committee. Five years still, though, I think the Public Art Committee has made such a big impact. Losing anybody is very sad. But any comments or anything on that?

All right, so I guess, yes, sure. Yeah, I'd like to also, I mean, Erling Horn is someone who made a huge contribution to the committee over the decades on this dais or the one that was here before. Another reason why I'm sitting here now, it was his encouragement. You know, there's many people I think we all look up to who've made Don Tatson, Erling Horn, many, many more who made this such a better community. So it's with not a great appreciation, I think. Yes.

As I said, I think we'd love to kind of talk about something else with him afterward this. Okay, great. If you know the comments on Carter, no? Okay, then we will accept with regret. And unless there's anything else, I believe we are adjourned. Thank you.