City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay. The time is 6PM and I'm calling to order our regular city council meeting of Monday, 04/20/2026. We are here in the City Council Chambers at Vista Avenue in Piedmont, California. We just had a fun volunteer reception preceding this event. I want to thank city staff and our communications team and everybody involved in making that event a success.

We're gonna go ahead and start with Pledge of Allegiance. And I was just thinking that I might ask AVA Community Energy CEO Howard Chang, who is here to lead us in the pledge. All rise who are able. 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. Wonderful. Thank you. Okay. We are going to continue on with our public forum. I'm going to read an introduction to our public forum. This portion of the meeting is when members of the public can speak to the council on any item that is not on tonight's agenda.

If you'd like to speak on a matter that is on the agenda, please reserve your comments for when that agenda item is called. The purpose of public forum is to provide the public with an opportunity to be heard. However, if your comments do not address a topic that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city or if your comments are disruptive, I will provide a warning. If the warning is not followed, I will direct the city clerk to cut off the microphone. Each speaker is usually given three minutes.

This time may be adjusted at my discretion based on the number of speakers or number of items on the agenda. If you ask questions during public forum or during public comment with respect to an agenda item, those questions will not be answered during your allotted time. However, a member of the council may, at the conclusion of public comments, direct your questions to staff for response. Pursuant to state law, the council may not discuss issues brought up at public forum, but council members or staff may provide brief responses to statements made. So I'm looking at our city clerk to see if we have any speaker cards for public forum.

I do not currently have any speaker cards for in the chamber and there are no hands raised online. Okay. I'm gonna go ahead and close public forum and we are going to move on to our presentations. We have two this evening. Our first presentation is from Piedmonters for Inclusive Education. And I would like to invite Betty Rojas. Is she here? Oh, hello, Betty. Thank you so much for joining us. Please come up to the podium. Make sure the green light is on on the microphone so we can hear you. And do you need any assistance holding anything?

No. I'll just leave this here.

Great. Okay. Thank you. Welcome.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Anderson and members of the City Council. My name is Betty Rojas and I'm here tonight as Board President of PIE, Piedmonters for Inclusive Education. On February 27, our community gathered for a night of music and mission at our second annual Sidekicks benefit concert. We were there to support the Piedmont Rec Sidekick program, an initiative that perfectly captures our town spirit of inclusion and mentorship.

Sidekicks is a vital program that trains local teens to support after school and summer programming for neurodivergent children. Last year alone, sixty teen mentors supported more than 60 children. Teen psychics help neurodivergent kids navigate activities and build the confidence they need to thrive alongside their peers. For many families, this program is transformational. It doesn't just provide access to summer camps and after school programs that these children might otherwise not be able to attend, it also creates a space where they are genuinely supported and included.

The concert was inspired by the musical talents of our local parent band, We Are Leaves, and a shared goal, ensuring this program has the resources to expand. And under the careful design of Larissa Martinoak and Eva Phelan from the Piedmont Rec Department, these funds will go toward new classes, specialized staff training and deeper collaboration with regional providers. Because of the incredible generosity of our neighbors, we exceeded our expectations. Tonight, it is my absolute pleasure to present Piedmont Recreation's psychic program with this check for $5,452 These funds represent a community that believes Piedmont should be a place where every child of every ability feels like they belong. We are so grateful to be part of this wonderful program.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. That's wonderful. I really appreciate the presentation and that is a vote of confidence from our community in this programming and I'm so grateful. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Okay. Our next presentation is from Eva Community Energy, the CEO, Howard Chang. He already gave us his check. Eva Community Energy, I can't say this enough, has given the city of Piedmont a no interest loan to purchase the heat pumps that now heat our beautiful new pools and there are a lot of them. So thank you so much for helping Piedmont afford that technology.

Next time we'll do that in a form of a large check. Didn't know that was popular here so. Thank you

coming to be with us tonight.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for allowing me the time here to present a bit to you about Eva and our recently published impact report and maybe my colleague Kelly and your fellow Piedmont resident, she'll hand out some hard copies of that. You can peruse that. I'll give a bit of a summary of that this evening and certainly you can request more hard copies or get a soft copy online if it's helpful. I have about a ten minute presentation, it's about 10 slides. I'll try to move quickly because I know you do have a full agenda. You can jump right into it here. So again, my name is Howard Chang, CEO for Eva Community Energy. I've had the privilege of working with the agency since 2017. So been a part of the launch of this public agency.

This is the first time we are publishing what's called an impact report. The goal is really to try to help educate our customers, city members, city staff, policymakers on a little bit more about what Eva Community Energy is and some of the achievements and milestones that we've hit throughout our agency life. It's a little less geared towards customers. Obviously, the information here is a little bit more elevated in terms of technical detail and whatnot. But again, certainly customers can peruse it as well.

So we can go to next slide please. So what is Eva Community Energy? We're the default electricity provider for all of our service territory. We have 18 members in total. We've launched serving Alameda County, so the kind of the dark green area there.

The only exception there is the city of Alameda is actually served by its own municipal power provider. Otherwise we serve all of Alameda County. We launched originally as East Bay Community Energy you may recall and then in 2023 we rebranded to Eva Community Energy. Part of that is because we've extended into unincorporated sorry into San Joaquin County I should say, which includes right now the cities of Tracy, Lathrop and Stockton and unincorporated San Joaquin County we're start serving next month. So excited for that expansion and continue to serve both Alameda County and the Central Valley.

So Eva is a little bit of a reference to serving Alameda to the Valley FYI. And of course, want to thank Mayor Anderson for her leadership and contributions on our Board. Piedmont has always been a very active member for Eva. All of the city council members serving as Board members have always been very deeply engaged. We know that energy, climate sustainability has always been a really important focus and priority for the city. So thank you to Mayor Anderson for your leadership. We can go to the next slide. So what is a CCA? We are formally known as a community choice aggregator. We kind of break it down to the different types of entities here of course.

Eva specifically Joint Powers Authority, so similar to the right side of this slide, similar to AC Transit, EB MUD, which of course you are all familiar with. We're structured in a similar manner. But we're also a little bit like the other two categories. So publicly owned utilities in the middle, as I just referenced Alameda Municipal Power, AMP is the public utility that serves that city. SMUD is the Sacramento municipal utility district.

So we are in the public power sector of course as a public agency providing power. And then on the left side, can see your typical investor owned utilities here in Northern California PG and E of course. We collaborate closely with them. We sort of view them as a partner in terms of the energy services that they provide related to lines and wires. And of course we are on the electricity generation side of things.

You can go to the next slide and I'll talk a little bit more about that. So on the generation side, what really Eva focuses on is sourcing power, right? So all power decisions, power content, the power that we purchase, the projects that we get built are really part of the local governance and decision making of our agency and our board members. So that's on the generation side of the bill. And then on the delivery side, you continue to receive services from PG and E.

So they are managing the wires, the lines, the metering really any of the public purpose funds that are required from a state or regulatory perspective that is all under PG and E. It's very seamless from a billing perspective. So all of our customers receive their bills from PG and E and we have some line items that are associated with Eva Community Energy. The transparency is there for anyone that wants to dig into that though we certainly recognize bills are not exactly the most easy thing to read. It's buried in there.

They're overly technical and we are trying to do our best to try to educate customers and just become a little bit more energy aware and whatnot. I'm not going to read through all the stats on the right side of the slide. I'll highlight a few, which is just our service territory overall is about 2,000,000 people in population that translates to about 760,000 customer accounts. You can see a participation rate of 96% and the reason why we flagged that is customers do always have the choice to opt out of our service and return to PG and E service. Of course, that's a fairly high number.

We are a nonprofit public agency at the end of the day. So we tried to reinvest in our communities. We tried to lower rates. So as you can see the majority of customers stay with Eva service. And then two numbers that I'll highlight there that are very important to us. One is that since our launch we've provided about $184,000,000 in savings to our customers. And then the very last number there on the right side is nearly $110,000,000 that we reinvested in the form of sort of grants or sponsorships or direct customer incentives. Next slide please. This is just a summary of the two basic energy products that we provide. The one on the left is called Bright Choice.

That is a mix of mostly renewable energy, some large hydro, there's a little bit of nuclear energy and some system power as well and it does carry some carbon emissions. Those that power content does fluctuate year to year. And then on the right side is the Renewable 100 product as its name simply states, it is 100% renewable energy. That's on a net annual basis. That is the product that City of Piedmont is defaulted to for its residents and municipal accounts. Every city makes that choice for itself. City of Piedmont was one of the first to default to R100 back in the day. Next slide please. This is an eye chart. I'm not going to unpack every part of this.

Electricity costs are an increasingly discussion point for our customers these days. Unfortunately, that's in the face of rising energy bills. We recognize that. So I did want to just show this to sort of unpack it a little bit. So a couple takeaways I'll highlight on this slide. One is that what we serve as energy generation again, so not the delivery portion. Our portion of the bill is about a third of it. So about 35% or so of the overall electricity bill. So about two thirds is PG and E delivery services. That's one point I wanted to make here.

And unfortunately, those delivery services have generally been on the rise over the last five to ten years. Most of that is related to wildfire hardening. But we know that our customer bills have been increasing pretty significantly over the last ten years or so. On the electricity generation side of things, that's what this bar chart shows. And even there we can see that it certainly has increased over the last five years.

What I want to highlight here is that the blue portion there reflects the discount that Eva provides to our customers relative to PG and E. That's for the BrightChoice product. On the renewable 100 product, it is at a modest premium of $0.01 $75 above PG and E. So that blue bar is really for the Brightchoice discount. Every customer has an option to opt down if they're interested in seeking greater savings.

So that product is available even for us City of Piedmont customers that are default to the R100 product. And the biggest thing I'll just highlight is in 2026, the year that we just entered, we were able to reduce our generation rates by 15% to 20% for all of our customers. So you can see that blue bar kind of goes up a little bit down a little bit. It's generally range between 055% year to year. And when our rates are a little bit higher, we tend to increase that discount relative to PG and E and when our rates are fortunately lower that discount gets compressed a little bit.

So right now in 2026, we've returned back down to levels in that sort of 2019 to 2021 levels. You can go to next slide please. These are just some facts about City of Piedmont specifically to give you a snapshot of that. So we have about 3,800 customer accounts within the City of Piedmont. Piedmont is actually our smallest municipal member by load and by accounts, small but mighty, very active in the energy space of course.

There are only 62 Carifera customers, that's an income designated qualification throughout the state of California. Customers can qualify for to get receive an energy bill subsidy. And then close to 25% of the customers here actually have solar on their roofs in some form. So that's one of the highest numbers throughout our service territory. You can see the pie chart sort of breaks it down largely residential of course.

And then the last point I'll just make is, we've provided about $215,000 in savings to customers in the city of Piedmont and you can see how that's broken down in terms of the Bright Choice savings and some of the unbilled credits that have been provided. Next slide please. Just a few more here. This is a snapshot of some examples of the work that we've done directly with the City of Piedmont. It's been great to work closely with the city staff. You all have been very collaborative and thinking about various energy programs and ways to engage. I won't walk through all of these, but I will highlight a few points. One is that we have been developing a portfolio of public facing fast charging stations through our service territory. We call that Eva charge. Our first one is operational in Downtown Oakland.

We do have a site that we've been working on with city staff here in Piedmont as well. Candidly, will say that site has hit some challenges and some disruptions just in terms of the counterparty that we've selected to help build those sites. So we have been actively engaged with city staff to kind of work through some developments there and updates will certainly come in the next several months or two, but just want to highlight that. Secondarily there, I'll highlight we have provided close to $1,500,000 in technical assistance throughout our territory and that does include Piedmont that's on fleet electrification specifically. Of course, we've highlighted the pool loan already at $750,000 really proud and excited for the work that we've done with the City Of Piedmont on that.

It's really quite groundbreaking. Obviously, one of only a few electrified poles in the State of California. I know that's been a lot of work. There's been a lot of complications there, but really reflects the leadership of the city to help to innovate and lead on a from a clean energy perspective. And then lastly, obviously we've done some different forms of grants and such through COVID and other reach code work.

Next slide please. And then this is a slide just on some of our active programs right now. Three that I'll highlight specifically, one is called the Smart Home Charging Program. That is for those that charge at home generally speaking. There's a modest incentive to get enrolled in that program of $75 upfront and then there's an ongoing $25 incentive.

And by enrolling in that program, EV drivers can enroll in the sort of the app that we have, which will guide customers to charge at optimal times, which is both beneficial for the grid reliability and our own energy costs as a load serving entity, but also helps to lower their own electricity bills. The middle column is a program called Evobike Electric. It's been a hugely popular program where we're providing direct to customer incentives to lower the cost of e bike purchases. And then the column to the right is a program called Smart Home Battery that was just launched launched last month, which is a $15,000,000 incentive program to help customers install solar and storage at their homes. And a portion of that is also for community resilience hubs.

I think that's the last one. You can go to one more and I think that's just a wrap up. That's a brief summary of the impact report itself, some of the contents and a link to get a soft copy if you're interested. Thank you so much for your time. Thank Happy to take any

you. Yeah, absolutely. Really appreciate all the good work that's being done. And I really, really like this impact report, the hard copy. I especially like the photo on page 17 of me. Yeah. And And I'm there at a ribbon cutting, which CitySouth knows is my favorite thing to do. Right next to proclamations. So anyway, thank you so much. This actually is really helpful. You know, I know AVA Community Energy is doing such amazing work out there in the community. And it is frustrating when you run into people who are like, what's Ava Community Energy? What is is that? And you're like, oh, it's it's everything. It's it's our whole push to electrify.

And so how I you can correct me if I'm wrong, but how I explain Ava community energy to people is it's a clean energy accelerator. Right? We're there to go out and secure contracts for clean green energy and try to reach our goals that we've set as a state faster and more efficiently and more affordably.

So

That's right. Yep. And it's something that is somewhat unique to California. There are CCAs throughout the country, but they're all structured a little differently. In California specifically, it is enabled by state legislation that was passed going back to 2001 that basically allows municipalities of any sizes to form together and create their own energy retailers as a sort of a quasi form of deregulation giving customers some level of choice.

Great. We love choice. Any questions for my colleagues here, Ms. Sidney?

I would make a comment.

You absolutely can make a comment. Yes.

I just want to thank you for your investment in our community. I recall five years ago maybe being at a conference up in Yosemite and I was with another council member. We were trying to figure out how we could electrify our pool, and we were really working the room of maybe a 100 people, and literally everyone there said to well, you were East Bay Community Energy at the time said, you gotta go to East Bay Community Energy. And then and it it's been just a wonderful partnership with you. So thank you for everything you've done for our pool and we're happy to lead and innovate as the mayor said, where we have an opportunity to, a small but mighty town.

That's right.

Thank you for sharing that anecdote.

Thank you so much for the presentation and for your partnership work and the clear focus on communities, which I really got from your presentation. The only question I had was I'm curious about the opt out procedures with 96% of people being opted in. I'm wondering how those other 4% choose to opt out?

Yes, just to clarify there. So all the customers are defaulted into the program and then of course customers have that option to opt out, opt down, opt up in terms of different energy products. So roughly 4% to 5% of our customers have opted out and that's kind of broadly throughout our entire service territory and similar to what City of Piedmont has done specifically. And customers, it's a very easy process and it can be very seamless. You can go online and click a few buttons.

You can call into our call center and ask to be opted out. We always try to survey customers that have an interest in opting out given that we think our value proposition is as clear as it can be. It's lower prices, it's greener content. We're nonprofit, we're public agencies, so we operate with a lot of transparency. With that said, not every customer wants to remain on our service. A lot of the most common reason that people give us for why they opt out is we don't like the idea that we were forced into previously they weren't really given any options. So not sure that that's the most logical comment, but that is a very common one. And then the other one is we don't really like government. It tends to be the other reason that people click the box on. Yeah.

We're city council members. We love government.

We want more of it. Versus giant private corporation. Right. Yeah.

Awesome. Thank you so much again. Thank you for coming. Thank you, Kelly, for also for being here and for all the work. I think you've done and Denise is here on our electrification task force, which is I think coming to us soon is my understanding. So again, thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Okay.

Okay. We are have finished with our presentations and we are moving on to our consent calendar. We have two items this evening on our consent calendar. We have approval of a second reading and adoption of an ordinance as set forth on the agenda. And we also have item number two, which is an acceptance of the twenty twenty five twenty six state of California citizens option for public safety cops grant and approval of the expenditure plan. Would either of my colleagues here want to pull any of those items from consent?

No. And I would move consent.

Okay. Do we have any public comment for the consent calendar items one and or two? We do not. No public We have a motion. Do you have any comments at this time or a second?

The one comment that I have is that I appreciate the requirement to have a report of how we're using the money for the COPS program. And that was interesting information, and I appreciate it. And I will second the motion.

Great. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Let's go ahead and vote. Aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Moving on now to our regular agenda item number three which is consideration of appointment of one parking hearing officer.

Thank you, Mayor Anderson. This item will be briefly presented by our city clerk.

As you recall, we had a special city council meeting where we appointed members to our commissions that was held on March 23. Following that meeting, we had one vacancy that remained open that was for the parking hearing officer. That recruitment remained open until we received an application which happened on April 12 from Mr. Matt Disco. So his application is being presented to you today for consideration of appointment. Wonderful. Thank you so much. I am delighted that mister Disco has applied. I've known him for over two decades. I think he will make a wonderful parking hearing officer, and I'm thrilled that he wants to volunteer for the city of Piedmont in this capacity.

Any other comments, any questions? And I should ask, is there any public comment? There is no public comment. Okay. Bringing it back.

Is mister Disco here?

He's not here yet. Conflict.

No. That's

fine. A very nice, very thorough application. I appreciate the application and I also appreciate that he applied.

Great. I would be happy to entertain a motion.

So moved. Second.

Wonderful. Thank you. Moved by council member Plumier, seconded by the vice mayor. Let's go ahead

and vote.

Aye. Aye. Motion is unanimous. We are now moving on to regular agenda item number four, which is consideration of an award of contract for professional clean water program and municipal regional permit compliance permit services with EOA Inc. For a not to exceed amount of $472,800 and to authorize the city administrator to execute related documents.

Thank you, mayor Anderson. Staff and I always welcome an opportunity to educate on the topic of clean water. It's an often misunderstood subject and an unfunded mandate with a very important purpose and I think because of the prominence of this topic in our everyday work and its significance in the community, the impact on our facilities, we thought it was a great moment to bring forward the subject in a brief presentation this evening. So with that, I will hand off to our sustainability program manager.

Evening, mayor and council. I'm Denise Ergen, the sustainability program manager. And I'm here today as the city administrator explained to, yes, talk about our upcoming contract and city staff recommendations related to a clean water consultant, but also to provide a brief overview of the very complex city run clean water program. So the at the heart of the clean water program is our regulation to implement the municipal regional permit, which is in its third iteration, and so we call that MRP three. As Rosanna said, it's an unfunded mandate for the city to minimize and eliminate pollution from entering our storm water system, which goes unfiltered into the San Francisco Bay watershed.

It is administered by the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board, which we call the regional board, and it is very broad and comprehensive in its scope. It has 21 provisions that really require the city to take action on planning for the future, implementing current programs, constructing and maintaining hard assets, new infrastructure, engaging, inspecting, and enforcing with local businesses and our residents. And I think it's also really important to note that the requirements of the MRP are increasing year over year. So the program is becoming more complex. And at the same time, the reality of climate change is also adding more pressures to our storm water system.

Today, the weather got the cue to really demonstrate the impact that's having. So while we are here to talk about consultants, I just really wanted to take a few moments to highlight the work that city staff do to implement the MRP. But these are just a few examples. So that's really kind of the tip of the ice berg and where visual aids lend themselves on what implementation looks like. So the first area I'd like to highlight is low impact in green infrastructure development.

This is the work that the city does in developing and maintaining green infrastructure. I know at a later time, are going to return back with a more focused discussion about this topic and what this will look like for the future and our upcoming requirements. But I did want to highlight that the city did, over the last year, put online two new green infrastructure sites, one at the pool, and then you can see here in the picture on the left of the screen is Grand And Fairview, which today is doing a really important job. It is capturing water. It's slowing how it's getting into the storm water system, and it's filtering the water before it hits the system.

The second picture actually highlights the work that we do with private lands and property owners for low impact development and green infrastructure when appropriate. And so this is a bioswale on a private property within Piedmont, that the city will have an ongoing role to ensure that it is inspected and enforced and performing into perpetuity. Okay. The next piece is illicit discharges. So this is a really fun one where we get calls from the public, from city staff.

And this could look something like the pictures on the left, which are just some mysterious substances at the curb, and city staff have to go and investigate, where did it

come

from? We also provide that frontline effort to make sure it doesn't get into with the nearest catch basin, and then try and work with, when we can, property owners in order to mitigate further discharge. But I really think the picture on the right is the compelling image. So this is Bushido Creek in Piedmont Park, and actually Director Jackson sent us this photo, and staff sort of rushed out there. The creek is white.

And so what we believe happened is that somebody upstream, up the hill, was probably washing, rinsing out paintbrushes, and it was just on their property, and that was going into the curb into the catch basin. And so this really highlights this water is not being filtered. It's going directly as is into our watershed. And this is just the amazing work of our public works maintenance crew getting into the creek, adding filters at different tiers to try and filter out the water, contain it so that it doesn't affect you know, light or down on the watershed. Unfortunately, just a few weeks ago, again, director Jackson noted that the the creek was full of suds, And so that's just probably somebody washing their car and rinsing that off and that going directly into the watershed as well.

So just sort of an unfortunate reality but staff working to try and minimize the impact. We also work with contractors and property owners during construction. And you'll see sort of a myriad of on the left is what not to do. And usually when we get involved, we're noticing sites like this to help ensure that dirt, soil, debris is all contained within the construction site. And so as you go to the right, you start to see the implementation of best practices and us working with folks on-site to make sure that it gets to where it needs to be.

We also have a very extensive trash and debris management program. As part of our requirements to meet 100 trash load reduction, which the city was one of the first in Alameda County to reach that target, which we were mandated to do by last year. But this involves our street sweeping program. And then the smaller picture in the middle shows inside one of our storm drain catch basins the filters that we have. So we have about 22 of those that get regularly cleaned.

And then the the far right picture actually shows the trash rack at the bottom of Bushy Dell Creek that was cleaned after a storm, and so that's all the debris that's removed so that the water can flow easily down through the system. So that's kind of some of examples of the sort of physical elements of it. I just wanted to also quickly highlight some of the planning that goes on in the background as well. And so last year, we developed an asset management plan for our storm water quality control infrastructure. And also this year, we're working across Alameda County to develop a climate action plan for that same for those same pieces.

Okay. Last year, we also, for the first time, were mandated to do something called cost reporting, and so we had to collect all costs associated with implementing the MRP three point zero. And this is sort of a response to communities, much like Piedmont, expressing that this is an unfunded mandate, and it's requiring more and more resources. And so now we have to communicate what those resources are. There's no plan at this point to actually reimburse us for costs incurred, but they want to get a sense of what those the scale of those costs.

The first piece is that staff now have to track all activities related to clean water implementation. And so that's that purple wedge within the pie that you see there That comes out to around $144,000 A big portion of that is my work. About just probably over onethree of my portfolio is program managing this, but also a lot of this is, you know, our maintenance crews work. I will note that street sweeping, regular street sweeping, is not included in this because if it was, that cost would be much, much higher. The rest of it is costs that we pay to various consultants.

And of course, last year was pretty extraordinary because we were bringing those two green infrastructure projects online. And so that's that lighter blue wedge of the pie there. But overall, we spent just over $1,000,000 in MRP implementation within one fiscal year. Of that, we spent about $176,000 on clean water consultants. So the city has worked with clean water consultants on our implementation for the MRP since about 2017.

I think this has become more and more important as the program itself has become more complex. And so our last contract expired in February 6, and it was a three year contract for a not to exceed amount for $5,000 or $596 $97 ish. Moving forward, starting in January 8, staff initiated a solicitation process for consultants given that that contract expired. And tonight, we are recommending moving forward with EOA as our new consultant, clean water consultant. They provided the most comprehensive set of qualifications in a response to request for qualifications.

And, you know, they really highlighted that they have a plethora of local experience. So they work not only with other jurisdictions within Alameda County, but they have been supporting the Alameda County Clean Water Program since the early 1990s. So what that means is a lot of the templates and information that we use to implement our program were developed in collaboration with EOA. So they're just really steeped in their knowledge of implementation of the MRP. The proposed contract will be set up similar to contracts in the past.

So it's a one year term with two options to renew annually. And the total not to exceed amount is 4 and 70,000 to thousand $800 which you'll kind of note is more than $100,000 less than our last three year contract as well. Given that, our recommendation for tonight is to approve the contract with EOA for a not to exceed amount of $472,800 and to authorize the city administrator to execute related documents.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you so much. Curious if we have any questions here at the dais. If not, I have some questions. Go ahead Vice Mayor.

I'm I'm very comfortable with the way you presented this contract and why this is the one we should approve. But since you're here Mhmm. Can you talk to us for a minute how low impact benefits of a bio swale and how much it cost to implement one and should we get more? What can we do? We refer to them like everybody knows what it is, but

So green infrastructure can mean many different things. So typically, they're engineered systems with two main goals. One is well, maybe three main goals. The first is to keep rain where it is. So in an ideal world, rain is being absorbed by the ground where it hits.

It's not hitting our hard impervious surfaces and traveling down the street and rushing into a catch basin. All of that is just displacing rain from actually getting into the soil and also puts a lot of pressure on our storm water system. So that's the first sort of goal with green infrastructure. The second is kind of related to that, which is just basically to slow the amount of rain that's going into our existing catch basins and in our infrastructure as well. Particularly important because we're seeing this increase of high intensity rainstorms.

And so we know that this infrastructure that we built many, many, many years ago is sort of not right sized for where we're going in terms of climate change, and we're starting to feel those impacts now. And so this is a way to actually lessen the burden on those existing systems. The third is to pride filtration. So these are sort of natural engineered systems that help filter the water and eliminate the pollutants that carry with it. So you can think of pollution in terms of trash, debris, wood, sticks, leaves, even litter, but there's also a lot of invisible pollutants like oil and microplastics on the road that need to be that can be collected and filtered out through these systems so that they're not getting into the watershed.

And so that's sort of how they work. They can look like bioswales, which I showed pictures of there before, which also provide other co benefits. I mean, they're a great location for local and native plants, climate resilient plants. They look great. They're just sort of creating more natural space within our city infrastructure.

But there's also things like pervious pavement is which we also we have in Piedmont as well that can act as green infrastructure. You have to kind of look at what makes sense for the community, and so this has been a really interesting challenge. And again, I wanna just highlight that we're gonna come back with a more focused discussion about some of those challenges within Piedmont and some recommendations moving forward because implementing these system, there's so many factors to consider when choosing the right location and choosing the appropriate technology or infrastructure to implement.

I appreciate that. And I was more curious when you had one on private property, like where that would take us in the future. You don't have to give us all now, but I will I think we'll all look forward to getting that report when you bring

it back to us.

Okay. Thank you. Yes.

I do have questions. Thank you for this presentation. My first question is about the example you gave of somebody having a bioswale on private property. So I'm curious about how that process works. Like, do people Yeah. Just reach out to the city and ask for help? How exactly does that work? So

that specific biosoil was regulated through the MRP. For in the same way that we had to put in green infrastructure for the pool is the exact same sort of rule, set of rules that mandated green infrastructure go on that private residence. So there's kind of two key things. It's it can be triggered by the amount of impervious surface that you're redeveloping or by just the whole size of the construction site. And so if it's over an acre, it will trigger this requirement as well.

And so our role as a city is to ensure right from the get go that in their construction plans that they have appropriately developed a system that's going to capture all on-site runoff and then appropriately sort of treat it. And this is one of the options that they can do and that they chose. But then we have to inspect to make sure that it's correct and it's matching up with the drawings. And then ongoing, we have to ensure that they're actually maintaining this. So this is not a one and done, like, congratulations, you built it.

The city has now a role to go. And on a very prescribed timeline, make sure that this is actually performing the way it's intended to. So I don't know if they would have put that in without the actual requirements of the MRP, and the city enforcing the MRP two

And the city is required to enforce to comply with the greater regional Correct.

Yes. Yeah. Okay.

It would be like a condition of development for a new home.

Right. Yep. Thank you. So my second question was about the mysterious substances. And if you could just share if a resident is walking around the street and sees something, what should they do?

Well, typically, it depends on the substance, but typically what happens is they contact Public Works. Residents are welcome to contact me directly because if they contact Public Works, it usually gets to me. But it depends on the severity of the spill and what kind of attention it needs immediately. So sometimes our fire department is involved to really ensure that some sort of absorbent is put on-site immediately. Sometimes it's myself, sometimes it's public works, and we're right now developing a more structured process on how we triage these types of incidences.

And because it also can you know, these kind of spills don't necessarily wait for the nine to five, Monday to Friday windows as well. Mhmm. Yeah.

I have a follow-up question about that, and the I'll just give this example. There's a piece of sidewalk that's actually fairly close to the mayor's mayor's house. That's not I'm I'm not a few houses away from you, where there's always, like, greasy, oily looking stuff. There's clearly something underground happening, but I assume, like, there's only so much that the city is gonna do to investigate something, and mostly those things are on private property. Right? The origin is usually private, not it's not generally coming from a city source.

So there's sort of two pieces that we have. Chapter 30 of the city code gives us certain authorities for enforcement of illicit discharges. And then we also, to complement that, have a enforcement response plan. So that really guides us through how we're interacting with private residents as we go through this process of, you know, because most if not all of these illicit discharges are happening from private residences.

Doctor of Public Works is approaching the podium. Welcome, Daniel.

Honorable mayor, council members, thank you. I'll just jump in with this. If anyone, council members or members of the public, observe an oily substance, we want you to contact us. I mean, we want you to contact Public Works. We want to investigate it. We we we have done this in the past. Right? We we know that we occasionally get calls about things like fuel tanks or oil spills or or or, you know, some some other type of substance, and we we want to address it. And so we will go through the process of investigating, identifying the source with the residents typically. It's usually coming from private property. Mhmm. And then we have an abatement, you know, process that we go through with them.

And you keep, like, a a list. I I know I didn't personally call, but I know this space has been called in. And so I assume there's, like, a record of, oh, yes. We're aware of that, and we've done what we

can or whatever. If it's reached if it's reached public works, what we would typically do is we would investigate that that. We would start to we would have to report on it, what we found. It's a it's an illicit discharge. I mean, ultimately, you know, there there's the the name of the program was only rain down the drain. It's a very effective name because if it's anything but rain, we don't want it going down into the storm system. So, you know, an oily substance of any kind is already an illicit discharge. We're going to have to track it. We're going to have to report it. We have an annual report where we track these things, and we and we report on what what we observed, what we did about it, you know, the follow-up actions. And so, you know, anytime there's something of that nature, yeah, there's going to be a follow-up process, but we want to know about it. We want to abate it.

So, you are very encouraging of residents to call in and report.

Absolutely. Yes.

Thank you. And then, sorry. Can I keep Sure? Going? Please. I'm I'm about halfway through. Maybe a little bit more.

Go for it. About

the suds in the creek. So the suds in the creek, I know it looks like somebody is car washing. And the white substance you showed, I'm not talking about that. That definitely looked like something. But the branches that fall into the creek, the water they sit in the water, and it creates a natural surfactant on the outside of those branches.

And if you've been dry for a month or whatever and then you get a heavy rain, the the motion of the creek flowing over all of those branches creates suds. And it looks like somebody had a car wash upstream, and I've had many conversations with people. Like, I was up in arms about this when I first saw this ten years ago when my dog was a puppy. Mhmm. But it it's actually naturally occurring in the creek, and so residents shouldn't be upset when they see something that looks like a car wash Mhmm.

In the creek. My next question was about the map. And I was curious if the if you identify, these are the areas where we want to have future bioswales or, like, these are the the areas that are most problematic or that we think are are gonna be the most problematic, and then you have a is there, like, a prioritization of future work?

Page seven of the PowerPoint?

Yeah. I can I can go back to it, but that's not the map that we would use? So there's a few different maps. We have to have a we have a trash generation map that highlights zones of moderate to high. We only have one high trash generation zone.

And we need to continually update that and report that to the regional board. That helps us understand where we need to be putting more trash capture devices, so those filters within our cash basins, where we need to be working with private businesses, reducing the trash that they generate or that are on their sites as well. So we use that quite a bit for preventative measures. In terms of green infrastructure, we also for MRP-two, so this is the iteration before MRP-three, we had to develop a green infrastructure plan that as part of it provided some maps and some really conceptual work about where green infrastructure could be located. Part of it so one of the lenses is, yes, where is there the most runoff and where could green infrastructure provide the most benefit?

But there's quite a few other factors to think about as well that will have a lot to do with where is it flat enough to actually accommodate some green infrastructure? Where is there a slope? And where can it sort of where can it where is it the most cost effective to kind of put in this important infrastructure?

Thank you. Oh, my so my last question, you talked about pervious pavement. We actually have some pervious do you know where?

Highland Guilford Steps.

Okay.

Yeah. It's a very small contribution to our green infrastructure, but it's there. And I want to say, here in this picture, the very small box at the bottom is the demonstration of where some of our pavers are.

Okay. And I'll just add that that so it is an engineered system. It does have subsurface drainage. It's designed to percolate in, to get into those sub drain areas, and then to get eventually to a storm system. We do get credit for it in the you know, just based on the rules that that are laid out in the MRP, we do have we do get credit for it. We do report on it. And so that that is part of our total contribution for for green infrastructure.

Thank you.

Okay. I those are great questions. I also have some questions. I guess my first question has to do with the budget. So you said the MRP just came about in 2017. Is that when it was?

That's when we first hired a consultant. So we've been working on the MRP since twenty eleven, twenty ten. I did we just filed a claim for a reimbursement claim for MRP one that spanned 2011 to about 2017. So 2011 or before.

Okay. So this is a relatively recent cost to the city that sounds like it's increasing with no revenue stream associated, correct?

So our overall cost for implementation, it's really hard to say that with certainty. I think that's correct. But this is the last fiscal year was the first year that we actually collected all the costs and were required to report them. So that's really our only insight into implementation costs. But I think given the increasing complexity of the program, that's a fair assumption.

Yeah. And last year, looks like the numbers were close to $1,000,000 Is that correct? Okay. So where is that money coming from for this unfunded mandate?

It is being funded through the general fund.

Just the general fund. Okay. So this is another project that needs to be funded out of the general fund that does not have any separate funding coming from it. Okay. So I'm curious if there's any small city accommodations under the MRP or if it's kind of like a one size fits all?

It is unfortunately one size fits all.

Okay. So it doesn't matter how small your city is, how small your we're 1.7, 1.8 square miles.

Yeah. Yeah. No. Unfortunately not. I mean, so it's a blanket it is a blanket rule, you know, rule permit that is applied to everyone, you know, and it's San Francisco Bay Region is what we are under, but we are in the Alameda County permit that's administered through, so it's pushed down to every municipality. You know, the costs, countywide costs are divided up, I believe it's divided up by population, is that correct?

Population, land area, and then there's some base costs, but probably within the next year we're going to be coming back to discuss the Alameda County program costs as well.

Yeah. So but but it does they do account in the distribution of costs for the smaller population, and that we pay a smaller share of those of those overarching costs, but there's in terms of the implementation costs, there's no there's no savings for that. So the funding comes out of general fund, the capital project, of course, most of that comes out of the facility's capital fund. And that's where you're looking at those costs. But the day to day implementation are just general fund maintenance costs that take us away from other things that we would be doing typically to do these things.

And is this a situation where the goalposts keep moving? Like, it's, you know, in the two point zero, it was X many I shouldn't guess. Should like to

No, no. I think it's a great question, and you're correct. I mean, it's a leading question, but you know that's because we know the answer is. The first time I remember seeing these types of permits, there were regional permits that were issued in the '90s. That was not those were in effect, it wasn't called MRP-one.

I think that was around the late aughts, 2008, 2009 or so, that MRP-one came out, and it was much more restrictive than what we had before. The first know, in the nineties, the permits were more general, and they were things that I would say were felt more common sense. So, like, you can't dump asphalt in the bay, you know, and that used to happen, you know, and they would say, now you can't do that. And that was you know, they kind of tamped that down. And then it became more restrictive, and it was, okay, now we're gonna we want you to have green infrastructure.

We're we wanna have trash load reduction, and so we want a trash capture plan. Now we want regular inspections of all these different, you know, these different filtration systems. And all of these things have just kind of they gradually just increased. I think that the trend we have seen, one of the questions earlier was about thresholds for requiring green infrastructure on projects. You know, it used to be 10,000 square feet of area, it became 5,000, right, and now low low impact projects are 2,500, so it gets lower and lower, and that's the trend, and it's going to continue.

And there's different ways of looking at that, and you can say, well, you know, it's making the bay cleaner, and it's making things cleaner, but someone has to pay for it too, and that's I think that's the business end that that we're on, certainly.

Right. Right. I mean, it I'm not sure our residents know what a significant cost this mandate is. And then I'm curious, is the bay getting cleaner? I mean, we've all all of our communities have been doing this now for quite some time and we're on the three point o. Do we have any I mean, is there any information coming back to our community about our efforts and whether or not they're paying off collectively? That's

such a good question. I am so much on the compliance side that sometimes I forget to look at overall water quality. I think there's so much complexity with that as well and so many different factors that really impact water quality within the bay. As part of the MRP, there is some testing in local watersheds that's done by our Alameda County Clean Water Program as a way of somewhat measuring mostly with some of those PCBs and industrial chemicals to see the impact that they're having. That's not necessarily an issue in Piedmont because we don't have any industrial sites.

But, you know, I think yeah. This is just just an interesting I'll

be curious about that. I can And then the other question, I'm gonna sound a little clueless here. Are we allowed to wash our cars here in Piedmont?

Or is all

the best.

Is that a no no? Are we not allowed to wash our cars anymore?

Daniel said it best. Only rain down the drain. You're welcome to so our recommendation is always go to a site that is set up for you to wash your cars. They have catchment systems and filtration systems at these professional sites. I would always suggest not washing your car on your property because it's I don't know how you would catch all of that sudsy water. Alright. Unless you can find a way, but I think that would be really tough.

Okay. I mean, it's possible I've been living under a rock, but I've never never heard that before. So I wonder if that is an opportunity for to get the word out to the public that as part of our efforts as a community to comply with these lofty goals that we are supposed to have our cars watched either at Carlabet's size machine on Piedmont Avenue or it sounds like one of the do it yourself places that are set up as you said with the appropriate capture mechanisms.

And for years I think every sports team at the high school did a fundraising car

wash Right. Up

Well, I felt like a party pooper recently because somebody reached out about that, and I had to really kind of give that perspective of I don't think that this is going to be possible in a way to do it with complying with the MRP. Yes, that just it's it's the real reality.

And then my final question and I'm gonna sound like a horrible person to ask this question, but what if we don't comply? Like what if we said uncle, we don't have a million dollars to comply with this?

Okay. So under the statute, there are different enforce enforcement mechanisms. If the Regional Water Quality Control Board enforces the Federal Clean Water Act, our penalties are a maximum of 27,000 and some change per violation per day, not to exceed 342,000. If the federal if if this if a citizen brings a complaint under federal law, it's $68,000 per day and no cap. If the regional board enforces state law, it's it's 10,000 per day for violation.

And if the attorney general brings a lawsuit, it's 25,000 per day, and there are no caps under state law.

So that's if you're doing something that's creating runoff, right, waste? But what if you just don't build the green Yes. That's also a violation?

That's correct. So not building and not complying with green infrastructure requirements could trigger that. Now there are the city could advocate for itself and make a case for itself, and so the penalties may not necessarily be that high, but I'm just giving the overall maximum amounts just to paint a picture. Sounds

like all sticks and no carrots.

And regions did organize all over the state of California to fight the last round with and made little to no progress with the state of California. So this is an area where the standards are becoming more rigorous and it's a battle that local agencies haven't been very effective at fighting.

Isn't this why we were very cautious with the runoff complaints that were coming off of?

Absolutely. Right. Excuse me. Let's say the whole thing.

It was what's the name

of the

Linda Offline.

Linda Offline.

And we did get some minor criticism that we were overreacting, but clearly not. I mean, the risk is great if you don't take care of it, that there will be severe consequences.

Yes. Correct. Thank you.

Okay. And one final, maybe slightly more optimistic note. Are there any grants out there for small communities struggling to pay for this infrastructure or anything that we might apply for that we qualify for? I don't know that we qualify for it, but

Yeah. We're definitely tuned in to grant opportunities. I would say in sort of my tenure of overseeing the program, at least federal and state grants seem to be those opportunities seem to be shrinking and they seem to be focusing on large impact that we just can't really reach here in Piedmont.

Great. Well, a lot to think about and it sounds like this will be coming back to us, you said with some more specifics in

the future.

So thank you so much for this. And actually this is an action item, right? So we are talking about approving a contract, a three year contract and a not to exceed amount. It sounds like it is less expensive than the prior contract. So that's good news. And do you have any questions about the contract? Looks like it's been reviewed and approved by the city attorney. Anything else that we need to know about the about that? Okay. Any have we done public comment? There's no public comment. No public comment. Okay. Bringing it back to counsel. Any comments at this time and or motion?

Make the motion. I move that we award contract for professional clean water program and municipal regional permit compliance, permit services with EOA Inc for a not to exceed amount of $472,800 and to authorize the city administrator to execute related documents. Okay.

Second. Great. We have a motion by the vice mayor, seconded by council member Pumier. Let's go ahead and vote. Aye. Aye. Passes unanimously. I want to thank Ms. Arrigan, our sustainability program manager. I also want to thank Daniel Gonzalez, our public works director. It sounds like we also need to thank Kevin Jackson, who's fielding these calls about Bushy Dell Creek. It Takes a Village. Nancy Kent, I know you are also involved in our explorations of green infrastructure. So I just want to thank the whole team and appreciate you bringing this topic to our attention and moving us along.

You. I believe you have been

with us ten years. Did you just say that?

No. No. I was gonna say Ten years.

In your tenure, I was like, wait a minute. I feel like How is that possible?

Yeah. I was like, wait.

You started in high school? Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

Okay. We're now moving on to agenda item number five, which is consideration adoption of resolutions. Boy, our civil service committee has been busy. These are to approve job classifications and set compensation and employment terms for the new administrative analysts and the new pool operations and facility technician and add the classifications to the unrepresented professional technical and supervisory unit and to approve revised job classifications for human resources manager, planning technician, police captain, police sergeant, and support services commander. That is a lot.

Thank you, mayor Anderson. So this total number of seven positions were taken to the civil service commission on April 13. Our commission liaison, vice mayor, McCarthy was present for that meeting and I think probably the primary distinction is five of these positions were existing positions that had modifications that took the form of updates to those job classifications and two of the positions are new full time job classifications that are presented for the council's consideration. So those two new job classifications are administrative analyst and the pool operations and facility technician. So the administrative analyst is a position that is cast as a administrative support role that's intended to provide technical analytical program and project support to a department and in this instance, we are looking for it to pair with the public works department, but in the future it might be a role that could be in a support role to any department in the city.

It is presented as a generic statement though for admin analyst. You'll see in the description how public works would be a beneficiary for the role as it's currently being proposed at this time. And then the second new job classification, which is the pool operations and facilities technician is associated with our new pool facility and we had worked along with our outside consultant, Gallagher, which is a party that's been in consultation with the city for a couple of decades now. They are the entity that has informed the city's work around wage and comp studies and job classifications for many years. So we used Gallagher to review all of the job classifications that were drafted and the modifications that were proposed as well.

And after those changes were presented and approved by Gallagher. We presented them to legal counsel. They went before the Civil Service Commission and now they're here before you tonight. So if you have any questions, happy to take them. If you have any comments, happy to take those as well.

Okay. I'm looking at my colleagues. Any questions? I had a question. Do what would be the fiscal impact these of of the action tonight?

There is no fiscal impact in the current fiscal year and anything associated with changes in the future will be subject to budget approval next year.

Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you for that context.

I would comment unless we have more questions.

No. Do we have any public comment? I'm looking at our city clerk. Any public comment online or in the room? There is none. Agenda item number five. Okay. Bringing it back to the council.

I I would just comment as, the city administrator alluded to, we have a top notch civil service commission and they are very thorough and came to the meeting prepared and and reviewed all this and we're in full favor of the proposal.

Great. Anything else? No? Okay. Yes, no I do appreciate having updates for the continuing positions and for having clear what's the word, job classifications, I guess that's the word, clear job classifications from the new positions as well even though at this point in time when we say new, it's not affecting our budget, it's reorganizing and we'll talk more about it at the budget. Great. Okay, we did public comment. May I have a motion?

I'll move that we adopt the resolutions as listed in agenda five. Great. So moved. Agenda item five.

Moved by the vice mayor. Second. Seconded by council member of Pumier. Let's go ahead and vote. Aye. Aye. Passes unanimously. We are just getting stuff done. Alright. On to our last agenda item for this evening, agenda item number six, which is a consideration of an award of a contract for the annual sidewalk repair program fiscal year 2526 to FJNI Engineering in the amount of $368,053. That is very specific. Approval of an overall construction budget of 4,000 sorry, $404,858 and a finding that the project is categorically exempt under the California Environmental Quality Act section fifteen three zero one.

We have a brief overview today by our public works director.

Thank you, madam mayor and council members. So no slides. I'll keep it brief. We have about a 181 locations. This is remove and replace of sidewalk. There's some curb and gutter that's been added. These are all locations that are basically affected by city street trees, so city responsibility. So we are going out. These are locations that are too extreme for us to shave. That is a preferred method.

If we can do that, it's less expensive, it's more expedient, we try to do it that way. If we cannot shave, we have to remove and replace. So I'll give you some feedback. We've had quite a program over the last few years. This budget is actually, I think, little bit lower than the previous year's project, a few fewer locations done than the previous year's remove and replace project. We are we have worked through our backlog. I think when I started here, we had things that were five years old. Now we are going out and we are looking for locations. We are inspecting and looking for those locations to replace them. And so we're being more proactive.

That's where we want to be. And this is one of the first steps we have the first projects we have where we have gone out, we've addressed everything that we that has come to us. We are going out, finding locations that we know are our responsibility in addressing them. So very pleased about the prices. I think we had 11 bids. It's the kind of those are the kind of responses that we're hoping to get. And so it's very competitive. And I think we're going to have a wonderful project. I will just add, trip and falls, one of the major risks and liabilities that any city has. We own we do have a responsibility when we identify these locations to do something about them. And so this is again, this is us being programmatic and honoring that obligation.

Okay. Any questions? Yes. Go ahead.

Can you talk a little bit you you mentioned that these specific areas because they're caused by city trees, is the city's responsibility to replace the sidewalk. Can you talk a little bit about the trees and like the long term plan for city trees?

Yes, so absolutely. So there's phases to this. So we try to save our trees wherever we can. That's always our first priority. But there are some trees that have simply outgrown the space that is available to them, and so they cannot grow in a way that is healthy and that our sidewalk can be safe for residents.

And in those locations, we will look to remove the tree. So, kind of the graduated steps are that first we we go out, we try to save the tree, we see if we can work around the tree, we will shave tree roots sometimes, well it's cutting tree roots down. Some trees apparently, I'm not an arborist, Nick Milosevic on our staff is, and Nick will say, you know, so there's some trees you can just hack like six, eight inches of roots off, and you know, buy yourself another ten years, and they grow back, and and it's healthy, and it's okay. But there are some trees you can't do that. And so that's where you need someone like Nick, who's an arborist, who can look at those locations, who can make that determination of whether it's safe to do that, take that type of approach, or whether you have to remove the tree entirely.

This project does include some tree removal upfront. I think we actually, I think we're doing it on the tree trimming project that we have going on right now. And so we've removed the trees in advance, and then we're going to look to do the sidewalk after the fact. So we are replacing those trees. Now, part and parcel with that question is that, you know, where a tree cannot grow in a healthy fashion, we are looking to remove it and we are looking to replace it and we work with homeowners to do that. We have a really great urban forest. You know, we've gone through that process of cataloging our trees, understanding what those trees are, looking then for opportunities to remove trees that cannot grow in a healthy fashion, replacing them with appropriate trees is the next step and we're also doing that. So, we're always looking to revegetate that urban forest.

And, just one follow-up question. When you say more appropriate tree, you're talking about a tree that's more suitable to the climate and to like an urban environment where it's going to be surrounded by pavement.

That's correct. And Nancy, Nancy Kent is here, our parks project manager. Maybe she wants to jump in, maybe she doesn't. But if I misstate, Nancy, please correct, which is that there are several factors we look at. So, it's climate adaptive often. So, not always native, but there are certain trees that do better with warm temperatures, low water, smaller spaces, and then also, you know, there are other factors. I know our park commission actually had an entire study on this, and so there's quite a bit that goes into it.

And we're actually in our new good evening, everyone. Our sustainability study that's coming up, we're actually looking at a climate zone that we think Piedmont will be in in the next fifty years. So, we'll be looking to tailor our trees for type of climate that's going to be much warmer in the future. So your question about the type of trees, it's often about climate adaptive trees. It's also we're more aware of planting trees under power lines now.

So where we do have high voltage power lines where PG and E, we used to have a little bit more leeway with that. We don't have that as much now. We really want PG and E to come in and clear the wires anyway they need to, but that often means that if we have a really mature tree, it's just being butchered. So we're trying to plant more appropriate trees underneath wires. The real challenge is in the really small planting areas that we have, how do we get a tree to grow and thrive in that area.

So we encourage our residents to water the trees when we put them in, but we're also as a staff looking at expanding the types of trees that we're planting and finding them finding ones that are more adaptable to each individual condition.

Thank you. Okay,

so I have some questions. One, I'm curious if we if a resident is going to have a street tree removed, do they get notice of that?

They they do.

They do. Okay.

Yeah. We do.

How much notice do they get?

Usually, it's a it's a fair fair bit of notice. You know, it's not to say that happens every time, but but very often, it's it's Nick Milosevic goes out and he provides the notice himself. He coordinates, you know, he he's usually the one that oversees our various street tree contractors if there's emergency work. You know, he's coordinating that. Obviously, there's not much notice with emergency work, but but most of the time, you know, we we we are aware of where the locations are, we're going go out, we're going to provide them notice.

I I I'm guessing, I don't know if it's weeks in advance, but it's it's there's certainly advanced notice that's provided. Usually, they're talking about replacement trees as part of that. Sure. You know, Nick's and and the city's approach, right, is that we actually try not to remove the tree, and so we're usually working with residents not to do that. Now, some residents want the trees gone, and, you know, some do not. Usually that doesn't necessarily change how we approach it. I mean, we want to try to save the tree if we can. We provide the notification upfront. We say we might not be able to do that. And if we have to take it, know, what you know, are you willing to replace the tree with something else and would you be willing to water it?

So, it's usually that type of process before we even get on-site and have a contractor. We have to go through the process of bidding things typically, and so it takes there's there's usually a bit of time before we can get out there and do that work. They're usually aware of that, and then they're given some notice of when when we think we're going to be in town to do the work.

Yeah. I was curious, was looking at the time frame and I see that it's happened potentially if we approve this night starting in May, as early as May, and then would continue throughout the summer when people are traveling of course, which for some might be good timing and for others if you're taking out a beloved tree or doing something right that might not be great timing. So I was just curious about how notice is going to go not only with respect to tree removal, but also with the sidewalk work itself. Right? People are planning birthday parties or what, you know, like how much notice a resident is going to get?

Well, so it's it's this and this project is a great example. So, you know, I think I I mentioned, you know, these these take months to prepare these plans and to then to bid the plans. So, it was far enough in advance that we were able to add this to the tree trimming work that I think was awarded probably like maybe three meetings ago or something. So, you know, we've I probably already made contact with residents. They're going to have their tree removed at that point in time. That's usually how it would go, because, you know, in some of these locations where we know that the trees are going to have to come out, there's a fair bit of planning that goes into it.

What about the sidewalk work? Cause I presume that people have to move their

so so side sidewalk work is more is more challenging. And so what we what we typically would do is then you you have flyers that go out to those those individual residents. The the what most people do is they take that and they throw it in the trash. They don't look at it. Right? Then and then they call and say, I didn't know about it. No. What what they do is that, then you post barricades, and it's usually when the barricades come saying that we'll be in here in the next week or two. We usually don't want barricades going up more than than two weeks in advance because then, you know, people tune that out also. But usually they have one to two weeks of notice other than the flyer that they usually don't read.

Right. Yeah. Okay. And then my last question is one that is familiar to public works director and this might add cost to the contract. But are the sidewalks going to be Piedmont pink?

We we do list we do list in in the contract yellow buff, Piedmont pink, and and lamp black. So we are becoming more Piedmont pink. Don't know if that's something you've noticed. We are we are conditioning that. We are we are looking to do that. If there's Piedmont Pink in the immediate vicinity, we are requiring it to be Piedmont Pink.

I appreciate that. I am sure it makes others happy as well. Okay. Those are the questions I think I had. Do we do public comment? We did not and there is no public comment. Okay, no public comment. And it looks to me like we were able because of the way the bids came in, are able to do bid alternate number one and number two, which is great.

That is correct.

Okay, that's terrific. Anything I'm looking at our city attorney, is there anything we need to do with respect to the findings for CEQA?

To make the finding in the motion would

be great.

Okay. Great. Again, thank you. I'm super excited that we're gonna be working on our sidewalks. I know our residents really value the ability to walk and walk safely around our community. So sorry. I'm very much in favor of this project. May I have a motion?

Do you want me to make sure I Yes.

A single motion, move that we take the following actions regarding the annual sidewalk repair program for fiscal year twenty five-twenty six. Do I need to actually read these or can I just say as enumerated in the agenda?

You can refer to the staff

As enumerated in the staff report.

Great. Second. We have a motion by council member Plumier, second by the vice mayor. Let's go ahead and vote.

Aye.

Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Okay. And we are now on to announcements, reports from council members and discussion of future agenda items. I'm turning to council member Plumier.

I am taking up council member Ramsey's mantle to announce some Arbor Day things. Sorry, I'm

pulling out the stirs.

You've got like

So the Arbor Day celebration is on the twenty third in, Piedmont Community Hall, and there will be a special program this year, East Bay Children in Nature with like arts and crafts and music and other really exciting fun things for the kids and it's from 03:30 to 05:30 this Thursday.

And there's gonna be sing alongs.

Yeah. Yeah. Sing along. Nature sing along, like arts and crafts, all kinds of fun stuff. Cool. Very nice. Okay. That's all. I don't have anything to do.

Vice May?

I would like to report out on a wonderful design awards gala earlier this week. I think everyone here was participating in it, and it was just such a good feel good event, and it just reminds you again how wonderful our staff is and leading these awards and our commissioners on planning and all the folks who were nominees and got the awards. It was it was pretty tremendous. So we this was the the second year for sustainability awards in addition to our design awards, and the first year, the inaugural year for fire resiliency. And it was it was tremendous, and I I hope more people go in the future, and it was very inspiring.

And I think, I'm sure this will be reported out on in our local papers, but folks will read about this and and want to figure out how to do it in their own homes. So it was it was pretty great. So thank you, Kevin and chief. And who else was there? I'm sure Nancy has something to do with the Chile. Everyone here had something to do with it. So thank you. And I got to step in for the mayor who was off doing something else on of our city.

I was running an AIVA community Yes. I am. So sorry about that. Yeah. I I'm looking at our community calendar, and I'm a little bit, like, in awe of how much is happening. So council member Plummet mentioned the upcoming Arbor Day Earth Day. But before then, have a budget advisory and financial planning committee meeting on the twenty second. We have a city schools meeting on the twenty fourth. We have Food Fest on the twenty fifth. We have Play Like a Girl coming up on May 3.

So I kind of feel like if I'm a you know, I'm not, but if I were a city staff member for the city of Piedmont, I'd be like listing all these events and the design wars and the volunteer wars that happened tonight and be like, what have you done this month? Like, I've done all this. What have you done? In addition, opening an amazing new aquatics facility. So hands off to Sam.

Our city staff is incredible, and we had a very lovely but very rainy wet ribbon cutting for the pool last week. And I think most of our staff was there. I think, Kiran Bawa, you sort of got short short sight changed a little bit because you were hidden in the back, but I wanted to thank you. And I also want to thank our public work structure, Dana Gonzalez, so much for all the work you did to get that project over the finish line. I mean, incredible, I know.

In addition and as I said, you all had full time jobs before we took on the pool project. I just want to acknowledge that and appreciate the heavy lift that this has been for staff. And I am so our community is so grateful and I don't know what I just did with Will Ford and Cole's drawing, but I brought in a drawing from my neighbor who just dropped it off thinking thinking me. I don't know where it went though. It was so cute. I'll show it to you if it went oh, here it is. This is from Matt and Alana and Cole and Ford, my neighbors, and it's their little drawing of the Piedmont Pool. And they're just one of many, many, many happy families that's been splashing around.

So you have to read it. Mayor Betsy.

It says, mayor Betsy, we love swim the pool. So anyway, I share this with all of you. Thank you. Okay. And it is 07:30, and I'm gonna go ahead and adjourn our meeting. Thank you.