City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Welcome to this, the July 27th meeting at the Livermore City Council. I call the meeting to order. Roll call, please.

Here. If you'll please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

OK, very good. Thank you. OK, so we've come to the end of a long journey. No, I'm not talking about tonight's meeting. I'm talking about in September, we empaneled the September of 2021. I had actually termed out of office. And I was fortunate to be appointed to the General Plan Advisory Committee. And every 20 years or so, the city council goes through the general plan to update it. And so I had updated the plan in 2002 and figured since I had so much fun doing that, I'd come back and do it again. So we impaneled 19 people, and it was a wide cross-section of the community. Our first meeting w

Thank you. And I'd also like to recognize the three people who were on the committee but are not here. Krista Alexie, Arun Bhatia, and Ellen Peet also stuck out the whole five years here and sincerely appreciate the tremendous amount of work and commitment that everybody did. So once again, thank you so much. It's greatly appreciated. This is the blueprint for the next 25 years. So certainly appreciate the fact that they got it right. 748 pages in the final document. So thank you. Advisory body appointments, we don't have any. Next, moving on to the open forum. This is an opportunity to speak

Okay, thank you. I'm going to close the public comment period for open forum. Moving on to the consent calendar. Is there anything that anybody wishes to pull on consent?

Not pulling items, but I wanted to give staff an opportunity to comment on 6.3, and then I have some comments on 6.5. Okay.

And I have some comments on the sewer proposal and then I'll be abstaining on 6.7. But if you want to go ahead and make your comments.

Yeah, if we could start with 6.3. I just think this is a really great program. This was kind of Amazing. The city was able to work it out. So I wanted to give staff a brief opportunity to kind of explain what we're doing with the cyber walk repair project and just to highlight it for the public on what we were able to do.

Thank you. Yeah, this is a really great program, really just showing the economies of scale that the city was able to figure out a way to really make do the sidewalk shaving for, like you said, 15,000 out of 16,000 of them for a very reasonable price over the course of the next year, the project's expected to complete in roughly a year's time. So that's, I think, pretty amazing. I just wanted to highlight that because it's really, it is, you know, it costs less than we thought it would. It's covering more of the sidewalk than we thought it would. It's making the city, you know, just a much nic

Well, it's just a win for everybody. And the fact that, again, thanks to the staff for taking a lead on that and negotiating was a great benefit for everybody.

Actually, did you have a, okay. With that, if there's no other comments on consent, I'll entertain a motion. We have one public comment.

There's also public comment. Do you want me to go first, or do you want to?

No, I don't have a comment. I got that myself.

On 6-5, I just want to comment. We received a really extensive letter on the airport project. I just wanted to make sure that staff was able to review that letter. And as we're looking forward to the implementation of this project, taking the advice under consideration, I think there was a number of items in there that were meaningful. I'm not going to go through item by item, but I think it's meaningful for staff to pay attention, address the concerns as we're moving forward and really incorporate those into our future planning.

Perfect. Thank you. OK, so if that's the comments, then if there is, I'll accept a motion on the consent calendar. Oh, do we have public comment? I'm sorry.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, this has been, I think the state of California recognized that the homeowners were responsible for the site of Lubbock in, I think, 1947. So this is, as people move in and out of neighborhoods, there have been some cities that used to fund that. And with all of the other requirements on cities now, we just don't have the resources. And it's up to the homeowners to decide to mitigate that. So this is an opportunity to make a huge difference. And again, I applaud staff for taking the initiative to make that happen. Any other public comments?

Okay, I'm going to close the public comment period for consent calendar. Is there a motion to move consent? Do you want a motion on all items or was there one? I will just say that I will be abstaining on 6.7. Okay, then I'll move consent. Okay, that work?

Okay, so I'll amend my motion to move all items other than 6.7.

Okay, seconded by Council Member Dunbar. Any discussion on the motion moving everything except 6.7? Oh, we have to do roll call, that's right. Type your meeting.

Okay, moving on to zero motion from 66.7 almost 6.7 and I'll second. Much me by customer branding seconded by customer Dunbar any discussion on the motion. Will call please.

Okay, that quote moving on from consent. This is item 7.1, hearing to place delinquent sewer accounts on the property tax roll.

Okay, in that case, I'm going to close the public comment period, bring it back to the council. Do we have any questions, comments? Okay, seeing none, I'll accept a motion. Moved by Council Member Berrientos. Seconded by Vice Mayor Wong. Any discussion on the motion? So since we are hybrid, we have to do the roll call in each one, correct? Okay.

Aye. Okay, passed unanimously. Moving on to 7.2 is the hearing to adopt the fiscal year 2026-2027 sewer service and use charges. Presentation.

Okay. In that case, I'm going to close the public hearing, bring it back to the council. Any questions or comments from the council? Okay, so we just did a repair on the sewer line. I saw that $28 million is the ballpark revenue. We just did a repair of 3,400 feet of sewer line, which came into about $3.5 million. And so... ballpark, we have about 300 miles of sewer line in the system. So doing the math, that comes out to about $1.6 billion to replace our sewer system. And this is bringing in $28 million. So hoping that the sewer system lasts for but 58 years based on that. But that doesn't in

And so we're branding I don't remember Dunbar I vice mayor Wong I remember Sean I passion amously moving on to the point 3. There are a few people who are sticking it out to the final final episode here.

Okay, thank you. Do you have any public comment?

Okay, so we're going to take a brief recess while we work the technology. Sort of see heads nodding. Okay, we're going to take a brief recess. So we will be back shortly as we work through the technology.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, if you could please take your seats. It looks like we've worked through the technical details and the meeting is going to resume shortly. So if you please take your seats. We will get back to we are in the middle of taking a public comment on 7.3, the general plan. And we had just promoted Jean King to speak. So with that, I'm going to call the meeting back to order. And we will hear from Ms. King.

Can you, Jean, can you mute your volume, not your speaking volume, not your microphone, but your speakers on your end so you can't hear yourself from your computer?

Any questions to start with the council? Moving, no, seeing no questions, comments. Council Member Dunbar, take it away.

I mean, it's not the first time we've been here. We've seen drafts. We've been through this. It is quite something to come to the end of the line and go, all right, this is the end of the line that we've been working towards this whole time.

Five years. I'll maybe start with the small thing that needs addressing more so than anything else I could find. The report as it stands today does not have hyperlinks within the PDF and does not have chapters in its PDF. I'm able to get through it because it's my job to get through it. But in order for it to be a useful document for staff in the future and for any public to come in in the future, those need to be tightened up and put in on the final. I know we have an online version of this thing as well, so it is accessible in different ways, but some people like to look at the PDF. So that'

And it's fair to say that we're constantly trying to integrate all those together to be easy to follow, not just for the applicants, but for staff's own review. Yes. In terms of the, you know, we talked about the purpose of the override considerations. You spoke a little bit to the impacts that are significant and unavoidable and them being programmatic in nature. Can you expand on that a little bit for the

will be met through the general plan and that those benefits outweigh the potential significant impacts associated with it so for example in the document it talks about noise potentially being significant and unavoidable as if all the projects get built at the same time with loud construction equipment with no mitigation but that's not what we're expecting at the project level obviously but we have to analyze it in this way for the purposes of the eir exactly yes I heard a lot of the word balance. That's the word that I am looking for in this plan as well. That's really all you can do at such

We are doing our best at conserving all of these wildlife corridors. I'm sure that we will look at the connectivity of those relative to our other plans as those continue, but we're not really taking any action on the places where those might occur or propose. I know we had some sort of grant application in the recent past about those sorts of crossings, so we wouldn't want to be conflicting with ourselves, our own grant application anyways. Yeah. I think those are my questions for the things that I wanted to bring up more specifically other than that I was very happy to see the additions to t

Sure. I'm actually going to break my comments in two parts, because I think one we need to talk about as a council. So first, I want to start with a huge thank you to everyone who was involved in this. I particularly want to start by thanking the GPAC committee members. You guys were volunteering your time for five years for a lot of meetings. I don't know how many hours you spent on this, plus reviewing packets and all that. That's a big volunteer commitment, and this didn't happen without you. So I really want to thank the GPAC members. In addition, of course, I do want to thank staff, past

Yeah. So we'll actually be reviewing those. So I do appreciate the feedback on that. We need to get those in line and make sure they're updated. Also, it came up on access to the midtown area, walkable, bikeable neighborhood. And that's actually one of the reasons we switched it over to a neighborhood plan instead of trying to finish it. I suppose I'll brag that was actually, I think that was my idea originally to switch it over there because of the exact concerns you had, the coventry had. which was that I wanted to make sure it's a cohesive neighborhood plan, not just piecemeal bits put toge

First off, I'd like to thank GPAC for all the work you've done and the staff. And we get briefings throughout the years. Here's where we got planned here for Midtown. And we get to see all that and all the plans we have input at that time, too. And our concern is right up there. So you get this document. It's kind of cleaned up a little bit. Some of the edges have been knocked off. And I appreciate for the work you've done. The other thing is, I would, if you heard a couple years ago, I voted against the EIR on the Greenville area. And my concern was Mission Creek. And I felt like if we do the

I think you're keeping the count, head count. Anyway, squirrels, raccoons, chipmunks. Anyway, the other thing is... One of my friends drove down. I was born in San Francisco, and I lived in South San Francisco. If you drive from South San Francisco down south on the El Camino, you cannot tell when one city switches to another. You can't tell when you cross from Burlingame to Millbrae to San Mateo. You can't. And that's what impresses some people that come to Livermore. They're impressed. with our town and the way we were set up. And we are concerned about encroaching from our neighbor cities t

Well, it's been a great privilege for me to have started on this plan back in October of 21 and moving ahead with it. And now here we are five years later. When I did the plan in 2002, it was a two-year plan. And again, we had a large group of folks. As I mentioned before, it was very contentious. I have to congratulate everybody for going through a tremendous amount of information. And again, the staff for providing all that information and feeding it to everybody in a way that they could digest it because we're not all urban planners, but we represent the community. And we had 19 people spea

Just a few things to add. One, on the connection with our neighbor, we added a policy LU 2-8 policy Newland Canyon Open Space Greenbelt for maintaining the greenbelt between us. I wanted to add a little bit to a public comment I heard, which was about metrics. There is in the implementation chapter, a specific breakdown of the housing production and affordability, jobs, housing balance and match, economic vitality, environmental sustainability, multimodal safety and quality of life metrics. That is exactly the highlight of where we're going with that implementation chapter. The last thing I wa

I'm going to get us way into the weeds on something right now. So I have some concerns about the Las Colinas amendment to the general plan. And so this is something that's come up and it put me in a little bit of a weird position. And a lot of it has to do with the ordering of how things are going to be on the agenda. And so... With the development agreement that is coming up next on the agenda, the development agreement includes, it's not for the specific plan. It goes into the broad suite of it. But unfortunately, along the way in developing that, I don't think there was a proper conversatio

Well, it sounds like the cleanest way would be to... move this item and then finalize that in the language that you're talking about in the resolution in the next item, 7.4. Remember, any project that comes to us, we still have the ability to approve or disapprove it. So I think that's where most of our strength is, is as a project comes in, we can still disapprove it. But it sounds like from what you've described, the cleanest way is to, and the easiest would be to go ahead and move this and then ensure that we have that language in the resolution in 7.4. Anybody else?

Of course, we would trust staff to ensure that as those negotiations progressed, that they would maintain their consistency with the general plan.

Yeah, I don't think you were talking about changing the zoning.

So that would be if we wanted to start over on negotiations, we would change back to the current zoning. If we wanted to move forward, we would approve the entirety of the general plan as is. Or if there were other modifications outside of Las Colinas, we would approve it as is and then make discussions during 7.4. So we couldn't, just to rephrase it, we can't continue 7.3, have the discussion in 7.4, and then go back to 7.3.

But I said trusting staff that they would maintain the consistency with the general plan. Because I don't think the issues that you're talking about PB, John Gerstle:" Are we are we getting far feel are we discussing 7.4 or but it sounds like we can trust staff to ensure that we have a consistent agreement consistent development agreement without changing the zoning because I don't think zoning is the issue it's the benefit package.

The zoning is part of the issue. But if we move forward and we had the additional language, it does give us some support. So it is stronger. We could get stronger language if we pulled Las Colinas, left it at the original zoning, and then modified the DA or sent the staff back to negotiate the DA. We could get stronger language. I have spoken with staff and staff does believe we have enforceable language. It's not as strong as had we renegotiated, but it is still enforceable language that we would be able to get if we move forward on 7.3 and then do a modification to the ordinance in 7.4.

But we still have the ability to deny the project.

We would, but if we deny in 7.4 after approving seven, if we improve 7.3 and then deny that, the DA and 7.4, we wouldn't have any real bargaining leverage anymore. If we move forward, we would be able to deny the specific project based on objective criteria, which modifying the ordinance gives us an objective criteria to work with. Again, like I said, this is getting very deep in the weeds. We've had a lot of conversations.

Again, my sense is if that were to happen, if you were to You can move forward with the general plan as stated. That is a theoretical possibility, but the site is so complex that doing it without a development agreement and the city playing hardball by not having the previous development agreement agreed to would be very hard for the developer to actually get through, even under objective standards. I don't necessarily see that as the biggest risk. Is that fair? It sounds reasonable.

Any other thoughts? I mean, like I said, I can go either way. I just wanted to address this as a very, it is a large concern I have.

I think that we can get through it. I think that staff has shown themselves to be very, very adept at addressing Mayor Mrakas, Working through a lot of these issues that, especially with 748 pages, the general plan, I think that this. Mayor Mrakas, That this is doable and I would trust staff to ensure that the the plans are compatible. Mayor Mrakas, Okay, it looks like we have consensus that customer into. Mayor Mrakas, Sure absolutely. So move. Okay, moved by Council Member Barrientos. Is there a second?

Okay, seconded by Council Member Dunbar. Is there any discussion on the motion? Roll call, please.

Aye. PB Harmon Zuckerman. Okay, moving on to 7.4. This is the hearing to introduce an ordinance and wave the first reading of the less cleanest road. PB Harmon Zuckerman. Development.

Thank you. Thank you. With that, we'll open the public hearing. Do we have anybody who wishes to speak?

That was our last speaker. Okay. I'm going to close the public hearing then and bring it back to the council. Questions, comments from the council?

I will start. Staff, can you speak to, I was trying to pull it up on my computer. I'm looking at Exhibit B for the roadway alignment relative to the where the trail was proposed as part of the earlier items in the evening it looks like it's sort of an immediate left turn once you hit the overpass as proposed for the roadway alignment so it would not extend very far onto the section that i know is dirt if i go over there sometimes um is that and and even if it is dirt today they would be needed to be improved as part of this development agreement right

But it would need to meet our fire access standards. And they would need to find a purchase. Yes. The developer, whoever they may be in the future, would need to find a way to actually meet those for us to get approval in the first place. And that would be just an objective standard that they do or do not meet. And if they do not meet it, it would be our purview to block the project at that point. But we're not going to block it at this point because it's their prerogative to go search for that. Can you speak to why the range of densities are the way that they are?

i i think the concerns about water flooding are the same as the roadway concerns there to be analyzed it's too early to analyze them um i hear the concern but i don't know how to react to it right now given that just don't have a report of what the design actually looks like is that fair okay um i think we've both been over before uh you know school impacts given the declining school attendance these days um but i do think it's fair to say that there are amenities with this project um israel being one of them having another roadway to springtown is very important um i am somewhat concerned abo

Well, I haven't heard too much from my constituents. That's my district. Where were they? I heard them here. I do have concerns about the whole thing anyway. I see that little blue thing go through there, the creek. But right now, I just want to hold my comments until later. All right.

Okay, so again, just as I understand it, this development agreement is not a final plan, but it sets up a process to develop a plan. Because obviously nobody's going to be building a development supplied by a 23-foot dirt path. So this sets up the process to develop a final plan. And this is within the city limits of Livermore.

Because somebody said, well, this isn't infill development. Well, it's infill because it's filling in within the city limits of Livermore. It's not extending going into greenfield development. So this is definitely green infill development. So, uh, this, this area was under, uh, the ownership of, uh, the Livermore Robert Livermore and family, uh, apparently, uh, as was stated previously. It was also stated that this was sacred ground. Do we have any record of this being sacred ground for the Muwekma, the Miwuk, the Ohlone, the Futsus, any of the indigenous peoples that we have here?

Okay, thank you. And again, when there's a final development application, that's when the project-specific traffic study and those types of things will be coming in. That's correct. This just, again, sets up a process. Okay, I got my questions answered. Take it away, Council Member Brannon.

All right. So first of all, I do really want to start by thanking the Archdiocese in Aventis for coming to us with this project. This was... land that had a different designation 45 minutes ago and now is actually zoned for housing. So this was something that is giving Livermore an opportunity to get some really good community benefits here. I really do appreciate the negotiations, the conversations. I know there's concerns from neighbors. And as the plan develops, you know, follow along, continue to get specific concerns, but, uh, any of the concerns that have been brought up should be mitiga

Any comments on the proposed provision? I think this does speak to quality of life. And that's something that we already talked about is one of the primary drivers of our general plan is quality of life. And I think that encouraging local workers and encouraging apprenticeship programs, because that's going to be contributing to the growing workforce. So I could certainly support all of those. and using the term encourages. So I would be willing to support that. So if you're willing to make the motion.

If I may add just a few more things. OK. I'm OK with that. I think it expands upon the intent of the ordinance as it was proposed, but more specifically, I just wanted to add a few more things. One, on emergency access, I wrote down there is proposed another emergency access easement via the trail, via the item that we approved earlier in the evening. So that is another consideration here that is addressed, at least at a concept level at this point. i i wanted to make the point that we've talked about this many times before we have a housing element and it's not just the housing element that w

Okay. Sorry. Any further comments? Council Member Variantos?

Every time we go through these developments, I understood that we always encourage developers to hire union workers. And the word encourage is like, when I teach, I encourage my kids to do their homework. Some did, some didn't. Anyway, that's the only thing that bothers me, encourage it. But, you know, I'm a union worker. I'm a union man all my life. U.S. Steel to post office to teachers. And so I support the idea that we need union workers. And they've been destroyed, basically, in the last, since Reagan, the union movement. And that's what made our country better and the middle class stronge

OK, so you've made the motion. Oh, well, now I can make the motion, or officially make the motion.

I would move staff's recommendation with the amendment to section 5 that I stated earlier. Is that phrased correctly? That's fine.

Okay, seconded by Vice Mayor Wong. Any discussion on the motion? Roll call, please.

Aye. Okay, we're rolling up to 10 o'clock, but we're real close. Does anybody want to take a five-minute break? We're good? Okay, we'll continue to roll on through here. Okay, 7.5. This is McGrath Rent Corp. Thank you all very much for your comments tonight. Thank you. All right, 7.5.