City Council - Regular Meeting

You're watching KCRT television. To hear public comment before closed session. Roll call, please.

Council Member Bana. Here. Council Member Brown is absent. Council Member Jimenez. Present. Mayor Robinson.

Here.

Council Member Wilson.

Here.

Council Member Zapata will be absent for the entire meeting. And Mayor Martinez?

Here.

During closed session, the council will discuss the following items. Item C1 is liability claims. Claimant Jose Salala, agency against City of Richmond. Item C2 Public Employee Performance Evaluation. Title city clerk and second title city manager.

Conference item c three conference with legal counsel existing litigation. Cedar Richmond et al versus Chevron Corp et al. Item C Force Conference with Labor Negotiators Agency Representatives, Sharon Taylor, Jack Hughes, and Lisa Chaubernay, Employee Organizations, SEIU Local ten twenty one full time and part time units, IFPTE Local twenty one mid level management and executive management units. Richmond Police Officers Association, Richmond Police Management Association, IAFF Local one hundred eighty eight and Richmond Fire Management Association. Item C5, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation.

There are two cases. Item C6 is public employee appointment or employment and the title is city manager. We have one request. One request to adjust to council. If there's anyone joining us online that would like to address the council during this open period, please raise your hand at this time. We'll start with the in person speaker. Cordell Hinler.

Thank you. So good afternoon, mayor Martinez, counsel. For the record, I am Cordell Hinler, and I have two items to discuss. So number one, I think Pamela Cushing has done an outstanding job as a city clerk. She always makes sure that that the minutes get published within the two week time period.

So when you go back in there, think of all the hard work that she has put in. Number two, Shasta Curl has done a terrific job as the city manager because whatever policies that that is being implemented from this council, she directs it to her her her department. So think about all the hard work she has put in for both the executives. Because without this city, without these two, this city cannot function. So that's one.

And then c six as, like, far as, like, the appointment of an interim city manager, you gotta, like, let this thought sink in. Who shall be the next interim city manager? Who knows? But when you go into closed session, I want you to think about who you want to see as the interim city manager. So I just want you to appreciate all the hard work that these executives have done for Richmond. So with that, I'll give my time to the online speakers.

We have

one The speaker is Benjamin Terrio. Ben, please unmute yourself, and you may begin.

Thank you. Ben Terrio, president of the Richmond Police Officers Association. You know, a couple weeks ago, the city manager, told you all the diocese and Anne Richmond that she intends to retire, but only when she decides that some renovation projects are complete. No date, no transition plan, no public benchmarks. That's not a retirement announcement. That's an open ended extension on her own terms, and Richmond deserves better than that. When I raised concerns about a lack of a real evaluation process, the city manager's response was not to engage, said to publicly accuse the RPOA of bullying. But let me be clear. Asking for a 360 degree evaluation is not bullying. It's a standard practice in serious public agencies in this country.

Confidential input from labor and department heads from the people who actually do the work, that is accountability. Filtering everything through HR and a closed session, handshake is just not really how it works.

And to let the record speak for itself, we have chronic police understaffing,

we have department heads quietly looking for the door. We have a pattern of micromanagement that has demoralized career professionals across this organization. Budget dust grants and ribbit cut ribbon cuttings don't erase that. So tonight, I'm asking the council again, don't extend, formalize, or quietly renew this contract without public structure evaluation. Direct staff to launch a national recruitment now, not after the renovations and not after any, you know, mysterious retirement. Do it now. Adopt a 360 degree evaluation policy for the city manager position permanently so the next person knows and walks in knowing exactly what accountability looks like in Richmond. The community is watching and the workforce is watching. Lead. Thank you.

Thank you. And there are no more speakers.

And for the record, council member Brown is present.

Okay, with that, open forum is closed and we will retire to closed session. We now have quorum. If the chambers can quieten down, if the chambers can stop their conversation so we can begin We'll begin with this pledge of allegiance. Roll call.

Council member council member Hibana. I'm here. Council member Brown. Here. Council member Jimenez. Presente. Council member Zapata will be absent the entire meeting. Council member Wilson?

Here.

Vice mayor Robinson?

Here.

And mayor Martinez?

Here.

Our next item is statement of conflict of interest. Are there any? Hearing none. Our next item is agenda review. And I wanted to check with Council Member Bana if she still wanted to remove item n five d, and that's the agreement with Contra Costa County Animal Services Department for ongoing animal controls services.

Yes, please.

Okay. And that's the only change that I have.

Okay. I would like to switch Q2, introduce ordinance amending sidewalk vendor regulations to the position of Q1. So Q1 will be Q2.

Can we leave it like that? Are people from the community here that were waiting last council meeting to do the presentation. So I will respectful suggest that if we can leave Q1 in where it is.

Well, we kept staff here all night and I would like to give the staff a time off. I'm keeping Q2 as Q1 and Q1 as Q2.

Any more changes? That's it? Okay, our next item is report from the city attorney of final decisions made during closed session.

Good evening mayor and city council. No final actions were taken during, tonight's closed session.

Our next item is report from the city manager and that includes a new employee report.

Good evening mayor and members of the city council, Richmond community. KCRT, can you please put up the slide deck? As a reminder, all of these items can be found in the City Manager Weekly Report. And if you have any additional questions, next slide, you can call (510) 620-6512. Next slide.

I want to briefly highlight, we had a very active week last week. Many of you were out at Cinco de Mayo and other events such as the senior transportation workshop. Also there was the Know Your Rights Immigration Forum at the Rise Center and also we the city participated and partnered in the Asian American Pacific Islander Committee event in the auditorium. We also, I'd also like to thank all of the non profits and business organizations for the work that they're actively, engaged in in our community. The Commission on Aging really had a great turnout and

I

want to thank the twenty third Street merchants for working collaboratively with city staff, and want to thank all the city staff that supported all of the events. Next slide. It was very active, was a very engaged time and this really shows the strength of our community. So thank you everyone. Next step, I want to make sure that the community is aware of how they can access budget documents.

So you can scan this QR code or click on this website. This information is on the city's website, but we want to make sure that everyone is aware of how to access budget information. So we're starting this evening on May 5, and then we'll have a series of meetings through June 23. And all of the slides will be kept in a central repository as always so that way as we move through the process you can see how the budget is developed. We welcome your input during this process.

Next slide. I would like to acknowledge that the city of Richmond Port received $11,220,000 in federal funding through the U. S. Department of Transportation's port infrastructure development program. This is a significant undertaking and really want to thank Nanette Beecham, Charles Girard, Lizette and Kyle for all their work in the port.

This modernization effort of birth seven at the Pointe Patrol Marine Terminal is key, and I wanna thank the staff for all the work that they're doing. We anticipate that we will commence construction once they have all of the construction documents finalized with a targeted completion date of 2027, late twenty twenty seven. Next slide. Also on coming up on May 9, United Business Organization's Mother's Day event is taking place in the Richmond Auditorium. They're the first 150 mothers that are registered and and are present for the full event will receive a gift.

If you have questions, contact, please call (510) 917-1136. Next slide. This week in Richmond, we're celebrating National Small Business Week. We encourage you to get out and shop locally. We are engaging and partnering with CoBiz, with our economic development department, the Renaissance Entrepreneurial Center, the Chamber of Commerce, as well as Main Street.

You can see that every day there are activities taking place in our community, and we invite all Richmond businesses to get involved, we want to make sure that we're partnering with you, and that we're being as supportive as possible. If you have any questions, feel free to call (510) 412-2093 to obtain more information and get technical assistance to support your business. Next slide. I'd like to provide a brief update on the Metro Walk phase two project at the Richmond BART Station. This project has been recommended for the 2026 federal 4% and state low income housing tax credits, supporting 150 unit affordable housing development that will help expand housing opportunities near transit.

The California Tax Credit Allocation Committee is scheduled to review the project on May 12. Following that review, the development team would have one hundred and eighty days to move forward towards construction. Staff will return with a final update and next steps following this decision. This represents an important step forward on a council priority advancing transportation oriented housing development that is affordable and continuing progress at the Richmond BART station. For more information, residents can scan the QR code on the screen for details regarding the upcoming presentation.

Next slide. Right, so this is really exciting. It's almost $50,000,000 in the queue. So for anyone that needs to access information, you can call (510) 620-6512, and access information on our website, which is www.richmondca.gov, and you can also scan this QR code to sign up for the city manager's weekly report. This is really exciting news, and I'm happy to share it with the community and the council. Thank you. I'd now like to hold it, turn it over to deputy city manager Nikki Mastaj, who is pinch hitting as Sharon Taylor, our director of HR, since Sharon is on a well deserved vacation.

Good evening, City Council and Council members. KCRT, please put up the slide deck. Thank you. Next slide, please. Our new hires start we're starting with Eduardo Romero, administrative assistant for community development. Next slide, please. Valerie Lee, administrative assistant for the mayor's office. Next slide, please. Ben Smith, police officer for the police department. Next slide, please.

Claudia Garcia, police officer for the police department. Next slide, please. Israel Fernandez, police officer for police department. Next slide please. Daniel Santu, police officer trainee for the police department. Next slide please. Sahinder Braar, police officer trainee, police department. Next slide please. Chris Escalante Kehano, maintenance aid to public works. Next slide please. Tanya Palma Herrera, Recreation Program Leader, Community Services Recreation. Next slide please. Our promotions for April. Next slide. Stephen Harris, Battalion Chief, the Fire Department.

Next slide please. Jean Quan, fire captain, fire department. Next slide, please. Brianna Kay, jailer, police department. Next slide, please. Joshua Tate, fire captain, fire department. Next slide. Kelly Griffin, fire captain fire department. Next slide. Thank you.

Okay our next item is open forum. An open forum is an opportunity to address the council on items that remain on the consent calendar or items that are not on the agenda. Tonight we have one item that has been removed from the agenda for discussion at the end of the agenda. That is item N5D and that's agreement with the Contra Costa County Animal Services Department for ongoing animal control services. If you'd like to speak on that item please sign up, turn in a speaker's cord, and wait for the item to be called.

Anyone joining us online that wishes to address the council during open forum please raise your hand at this time to be counted. During open forum dialogue between the council and the speaker is prohibited. When your name is called and you are online speaker, please be ready to unmute yourself to begin speaking. For speakers in the chambers, when your name is called, come forward and line up behind the speaker's podium closest to the wall. For safety reason, all aisles, including the area behind the speakers podium and the staff presentation area, must remain clear.

All speakers should state their name and your city of residence is optional. Please terminate your address to the council when your time expires. Tonight we have Let's see, hold on one second. We have five in person speakers and two online speakers. So each speaker shall be allowed up to two minutes to address the council.

The city of Richmond welcomes your comments and requests that you present your remarks in a respectful and appropriate manner within the established two minute time limit. The in person speakers are Cordell Hendler, Claudia Citroen, Antoine Claude, Solomon Irwin, and Mark Wassberg. Two online speakers, Janice Hagan and Emily Ross. Cordell?

Yeah. So good evening, Mayor Martinez, counsel. For the record, I am Cordell Hamlin. I'm a Richmond resident. So happy Cinco de Mayo, everyone. So and I have a little gift for you all. So let's start with the arts and cultural manager. So if you recall at the December meeting when the item was being was coming forward for an arts and cultural manager, I do like to hear some more I'd like to hear an update regarding that position because it's been five and a half months. So I was hoping that we would it would be agendized for a future meeting, so but that's down the line. That's one.

Then number two, I do have a future agenda request to have the Salesian College Preparatory High School for a proclamation for their service day because I was reading this article about it and I'm like, this is amazing. We don't hear nothing good about our schools. So I'm hoping that it would be agendized at the end of the month because they're going to be grad got their graduation covered up four days after that. So it would be great to have Salesian College preparatory for their proclamation. So with that, I leave my time.

Claudia Citroen.

So we have 104 boards and commissions. I had no idea. I wonder who else had no idea. I tried to get information from the rent board on the weekend as they were at the Cinco de Mayo why they don't never present in person but sneak in their budgets, you know, through the consent calendar. I could not receive an answer.

I could not receive an answer from the mayor either. It is my understanding that boards and commissions are supposed to present in person if they receive funding from the city. The same is for office of neighborhood safety. We haven't heard anything from them ever. The one time they came after, there was an outcry, they presented outdated data from back then when, but nothing up to date.

So I'm just requesting that the council in I thought it's a requirement, please update me if it's not, that boards and commissions present to the public here because if they present their budgets in the consent calendar, neither you can ask questions nor we can comment on it. And second, there is no clarity which boards are actually filled, staffed sufficiently, and which ones are not. I think there should be an update. And lastly, I have a request to code enforcement. I love code enforcement, and I know they really work hard.

I hope that they just have time to once a month do an update for residents. This is dragon spine, which is popping up everywhere in all the front yards in my neighborhood in Northeast. My cat ingested one years ago and she almost died because it went into the larynx. It would be awesome if code enforcement could be encouraged to just once a month do an update letter, What's going on in the community? What Thank they've you.

Thank you. Antoine Clord.

Antoine Cloy, Richmond resident. You know, I've been here sixty three years living in Richmond and it behooves me that after some recon I did and some research and asking some questions, Richmond residents are not safe. I'm going say it again, we're not safe because we have been misinformed or uneducated on not just the refinery as I always put it, but other entities that could have air quality issues in our community. And just God forbid something really for real for real happen, we are not prepared. We are not prepared.

And I need this city council, but all this money y'all trying to spend talking about going green and doing all this other stuff, put the people of Richmond first. Our safety, That we are informed and educated if something was to happen, we know exactly what to do. Not to assume what to do because assumptions cause people to lose their lives. I'm a say it again. You can't play with people lives.

You can't raise taxes and if we don't know where our money going to like the young lady just said. There's no accountability. And we, what do you have right now? I'm writing a proposal right now for this air quality grant. And I need this city for real for real to partner with me because we want to inform our residents, not just Chevron, but we got Valerio, you got all these other entities that can cause damages to the air quality of our community. That they know how to not just shelter in place. How to recognize if somebody has been exposed what to do. How to police work with law enforcement and the police department. How to navigate where our shelters in place really are. Not thinking where they are.

We need to know where they are. Right? And then two, open up these schools for shelter in place, these capacity places that have space for our homeless people to go into. You gotta think big now because times are changing our community.

Your time has expired.

And we ain't got no hospitals, so if something happens, we're gonna be in crucial trouble. Thank you very much.

Solomon Aaron.

Hello, how you doing? My name is Solomon. I'm the director of Save With America's Youth. First, I want to say hello to the city council and thank the Richmond Recreation. Just this past couple of weeks, I have my girls basketball team who joined the Richmond Recreation League, and they were actually the only center in a whole middle school league. And out of, I think, eight teams, they came in first place and took first place in the league. And I'm just saying it's great. I thank you guys for recreation, inner city of Richmond for keeping the center open, Booker T. Anderson, so these kids can practice. I'm starting to see better grades, better academics, better attitudes by working with these kids, so we could just keep that up.

Also, this Saturday, we're putting together a tournament, May 9, where they're getting some exposure. Teams coming all the way from Modesto to play. I have a lot of people come. Oscar Grant's mother's even coming out to speak. So it's gonna be a great thing at Booker T. Anderson. I just wanna thank you guys for that and thank Richmond Recreation for just working with the kids. Alright.

Thank you. Our last in person speaker is Mark Wassberg.

Back in the day, would have smoked that weed. Illegal immigrants right here have no illegal rights to nothing. Right? They have no right being in my country. They have no right to food stamps. They have no right to college education. No rights at all. Let's see here. Trump cut off all food stamps, all legal assistance, snap, give them money to nonprofits to support illegal immigrants is a felony. Do you know that city manager?

You can't give money to a church when they're gonna aid in bedding criminals from the law. This million dollars are gonna give to these nonprofits. Ain't nothing but a rip off. It's they're laundering the money. Now what are you gonna do with the million dollars? It's just gonna go with here. It's gonna go there. It's gonna go in their pockets. And then the RPA's gonna get kicked back because they're in cahoots with the nonprofits. We all know that.

So how are gonna stop it? Million dollars is gonna stop ICE from arresting criminals? I don't think so. And you people out there so stupid enough you put these people into office just plain dumb. Let me see what else I got here. Ask about it. Because like I say once the Feds find out what you're doing give the money to these nonprofits, that's not going to do nothing. You can tell me a million dollars what you're to do for illegal immigrants. Nothing. You're not going to stop law enforcement from arresting these people.

They're just gonna come in and take them away. So where's the million dollars gonna go to? It's gonna go into their pockets. They go to administration, they're gonna funnel the money from here and there and give it to their buddies and all the other stuff. Like I say, you need to vote the RBA out.

That was our last in person speaker. Now we'll move to the online speakers. And there are three speakers. Tarno Abbott was having an issue raising her hand at the time I called the speakers. So Ursula, please call Janice Hagan, Emily Ross, and Tarno Abbott. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. So Janice, please unmute yourself and you will have up to two minutes to speak.

Janice? Good evening, Mayor. Can you hear me?

Yes. Go ahead.

Good evening, mayor and council members. I'm Janice Hauga, a Richmond resident. I'm a member of local and state groups working to stop the use of illegal fireworks, which in Richmond would be a huge culture change. I'm concerned about illegal fireworks for the reasons you have heard before. Fires, injuries, they frighten some pets and people with autism, dementia, and PTSD, pollute the air and water, frighten wildlife, and are and they're a nuisance when you're trying to have a relaxing evening or sleep.

On a personal note, I don't have a car, so use a bike for transportation. That kind of aerobic exercise opens up your lungs. Biking from the BART station to where I live in Marina Bay on July 4, and this was even before dark, I had lungs full of fireworks smokes that that made me sick. So let's support bicyclists by keeping the air clean. Richmond's fine for a first violation of $250 for using illegal fireworks is not an adequate deterrent.

If people can afford to buy illegal fireworks on the black black market, they can afford to pay a higher fine. As a reminder, these are administrative fines that will not go on anyone's record or put anyone in jail. Please raise fireworks' fines. Thank you for listening. Good night.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Emily Ross.

Good evening, council and community. My name is Emily Ross. I'm a Richmond resident, and I am speaking on the community prosecutor agreement. I'm bummed about this in general. You know, we've had it for a while, and it's, you know, us investing in criminalizing people.

I our county DA's budget is already much higher than the public defender's budget, and I don't understand why we're further supplementing that. But that said, I, you know, understand we're we're moving forward with this with renewing this agreement. And so I wanted to note it note that in 2023, a change was made. A special focus was stated on improving the prosecution of quality of life crimes, and that was supposed to be changed to violent crimes in 2023 following a unanimous council vote. I noticed the current version still states a focus on quality of life crimes, which are low level, And it's a bummer that we're focusing on that rather than deeper harms.

We continue to like not get oversight on this position or data about the types of charges that this position is prosecuting. So maybe three years from now, we'll we'll take a closer look. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. I will try Tarnall. Tarnall Abbott, you may begin. Okay, I see someone with iPhone. It could be Tarnell. I can try calling you.

Hi, Okay, I'm

thank you. Go ahead.

I wanted to talk about the Sister Cities item on the consent calendar because I'm sort of acting as a co chair of the Richmond Regla Friendship Committee, which is mentioned in the agenda report. But we are a committee. We are not a commission. The friendship our sister city, our friendship city, that relationship we have with Regla in Cuba is essentially a sister city type relationship. We have made several trips to our sister city, bringing a lot of humanitarian aid and we have ongoing cultural and other medical exchanges that we interact with our sister city.

And I'm kind of confused because some people have told me that this, the dollar amount attached to this is to be split between three sister cities. Traditionally, all the years I've been on it, which is like twenty six or seven years, The sister cities and Regla Commission have received the same amount of money. So, I'm just confused about this one. I think it's fine to support the sister cities at a higher level, but I would ask that if Regla is not part of this piece of the pie that we bring it back and add Regla in some fashion at a higher dollar amount than what we've had in the past, which is a thousand dollars a year. $1,000 a year.

Thank you.

Thank you and that was our last public speaker.

Okay, our next item on the agenda is approval of the consent calendar and as a reminder, one item has been removed. That's item N five d like dog. That's the agreement with Contra Costa County Animal Services Department for ongoing animal control services. That item will not be a part of this approved consent calendar.

Do we have a motion?

I move the consent calendar.

I second.

Okay. Moved by council member Vovana, seconded by Vice Mayor Robinson. Is that correct?

Council member Brown?

Yes.

Council member Vibana?

Yes.

Council member Jimenez? Yes. Council member Wilson?

Yes.

Vice mayor Robinson?

Yes.

And mayor Martinez?

Yes.

The motion passes with council members Zapata absent.

Mayor, if I may, through you as the chair, there was a question from a previous speaker, and I just wanna note that the item on city council includes the Regla sister city. Correct. And the appropriation was for 23,000. The council offices are working with deputy city manager White to ensure that all the commissions are informed of the procurement policies, and we'll work collaboratively with them and the council liaisons to effectuate moving forward. Thank you.

And to explain why it was three instead of four, we had already appropriated money for the Shimada sister city.

Yes, that's correct. And that's outlined in the fiscal impact on page one. Thank you, Mayor.

Our next item is under budget session. Item q o one is to acknowledge receipt of the draft fiscal year twenty twenty six, twenty seven annual operating budget in fiscal year twenty six to through '31, five year capital improvement plan, review the budget adoption schedule, and receive an update on departmental operations with discussions upon completion of all department presentations. We do have one speaker, well two in person speakers. Anyone joining us online that would like to address accounts on this item, please raise your hand at this time. Thank you.

KCRT, can you please put up the slide deck? Good evening, Mayor Martinez, members of the City Council and Richmond community. Shasta Curl, Richmond City Manager. I want to take a moment to sincerely acknowledge the remarkable city staff who serve the Richmond community every day. You work evenings, nights, weekends and holidays, and your dedication is evident throughout all city departments.

And your commitment to continuous improvement is the driving force behind moving Richmond forward. For anyone in the audience who would like a copy of this document that highlights our accomplishments from, 2025, last calendar year and and moving into this year, They are available in the front by the speakers cards. Next slide. As we commence the fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven budget process, it's important for us to reflect on how far we've come. In fiscal year twenty twenty one, we had five eighty one full time equivalent positions.

During my tenure as city manager, we have increased that number to six seventy three full time equivalent employees. Today, is a net increase of 92 FTEs, which reflects our commitment to strengthening our workforce and better serving Richmond residents. Here is a brief overview of what we will cover this evening. We will walk the council and the community through the remaining budget schedule. I would like to thank the finance staff for all of the community outreach they've conducted thus far.

We will review the city's finances, discuss budget challenges, general provide a general fund overview, highlight key initiatives, discuss citywide priorities, and most importantly, we will have departmental presentations. The departmental presentations that you will hear this evening will be from the Community Development Department, Police Department, and Public Works. Next slide please. Tonight's presentation is structured very intentionally to begin with our broad financial picture, where we stand today, and then walk through what is driving our costs, where there are risks, and the pressures that are impacting our budget. Next slide.

City staff would like to encourage the city council to adopt three key priorities with the adoption of the fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven budget to ensure that we are working together in alignment and are focused on matters that impact our community broadly and have significant fiscal impact. For example, our contract with Veolia expires next May, and we need all hands on deck throughout the city, public works, city manager's office, city attorney's office, working collaboratively with our owners' advisers to transition this work. We have three park renovation projects that are coming online, and we have worked tirelessly to improve the built environment around these parks and in the adjacent community centers. We like to refer to this as HGTV Richmond Edition. So we'd like to continue to focus on this.

We also understand through our work with Bloomberg that it's important that we maintain a culture of innovation and that we streamline and create better systems to operationalize our work by developing improved processes and recommendations that are data informed to increase efficient service delivery. Next slide. This evening, as with past presentations, city staff will collect comments and excuse me. We will collect questions from council members at the culmination of the presentation, which staff will type up, and you will receive in writing responses to those questions, and they will be posted online. Next slide.

By way of background, we're starting this evening on May 5. Next on the nineteenth, you will have the master fee schedules, and you are tentatively scheduled to hear from community services, economic development, and fire. On the twenty sixth, Daniel Chavarria with Public Works will be back to talk about the five year CIP, and also to, you will hear from other city departments, including internal services, city manager's office, and so forth. Finally, the draft budget and final checklist will be provided on June 16 with the goal of adopting the budget by June 23 to enable staff to input the final budget in newness to ensure that there are not additional delays with payment processing and developing the next round of purchase orders to continue to pay vendors quickly. Next slide.

One thing that I'm sure was concerning to many of you is what we outlined is the need to have a as a 12% vacancy rate, which is approximately $6,400,000 to balance the budget. I think it's very important that the city council and the community have the context that in fiscal year twenty twenty one, and my understanding from internal services, is that there were six sixty nine positions in position control. That number has increased significantly. So if we were if we still had the same number of positions and position control as we did in 2021, we would actually have zero vacancies. We would actually have a net increase of four.

But during this time, positions have continued to be added and positions in most cases were not reduced. That is why there is such a large vacancy rate. It is not because we have arbitrarily decided to not hire staff, we have hired staff. The issue is that there's been continuous additions to the position control list without reductions. During this time, we've also had significant increases and just like all of us had when we go to the the gas tank, gas has increased.

The city's expenses have increased alongside with everyone else in our community. You'll see that our CalPERS medical premiums are nearly $21,000,000. We have nearly 20, three nearly $3,000,000 in OPEB expenses, and we are continuing to face significant pressures on our budget due to increased volatility in the national and global economy. Also, we frequently face unfunded mandates from the state of California, as well as the federal government. So as we receive those unfunded mandates, we have to quickly adapt and implement new state and federal requirements.

Simultaneously, inflation is increasing on our construction projects. We frequently come back to the City Council with requests to absorb change orders and cost increases for various projects, and this is a driving consideration for why it's always important for us to end the year with unspent funds to ensure that we can complete capital projects that our community is expecting. Lastly, as the general fund revenue increases, we have to simultaneously increase our risk reserve. So that at a minimum, we maintain 21% in unspent funds to account for our risk. Next slide.

Many of you throughout the region many cities throughout the region are experiencing significant cuts. We are proud that we will present a balanced budget to the city council, and will not need to lay off staff like many of our neighboring cities, because we have been very judicious with our recommendations and very thoughtful in our hiring. We thank the city council for working collaboratively with staff to ensure that we are not in these financial constraints. Next slide. Again, global volatility has been ongoing since COVID, and it's this is an unprecedented time.

There are EAU is considering leading OPEC. This may have long term implications on the US dollar being the global currency, which will impact our inflation continue to impact our inflation rates. As ongoing volatility continues to increase in the petroleum sector, this is having tremendous impacts on the global economy. And we in the short term, things have been fine, very turbulent, but we're not sure of how this is gonna impact us long term other than continued inflation. We want to make sure that the community and the council are clear that since fiscal year twenty one, twenty two, we have increased personnel costs by $55,000,000 or 38%, which is we have been able to absorb by strategically increasing revenue.

Next slide. Some of the emerging fiscal pressures that were outlined in the staff report include, unfunded CIP programs. It's, in excess of a billion dollars, approximately 1,150,000,000 currently. We have historic structures at Mira Flores that we need to preserve, stabilize, and work with the developer to relocate. We have to ensure that we continue to monitor and eventually remediate the Point Miladi site, which the city owns a significant portion of in collaboration with the East Bay Regional Park District.

And we also have approximately a current present value of approximately $1,000,000 a year in home key operations that may become the city's responsibility in approximately seven years. So it's very important that we keep track of these emerging financial pressures so that in outer years, the city is prepared to absorb these costs. When I became city manager, there was a host of emerging fiscal pressures that no one was keeping track of, and then we frequently found them on occasion, and we had to bring them to city council to deal with. And so we're working diligently to ensure that we keep track of all the items that the city council approves and where there is long term financial exposure. Next slide.

This is a slide to help illustrate that the cost of inflation on CIP projects and why it's important for us to try to quickly and expeditiously continue to make improvements in the built environment because throughout time the costs just continue to go up exponentially. So it's much better for us to invest quickly to save funds. Bless you.

Next.

One thing that, is is important for, the community and the council to also understand is, what we and and local government called PEPRA, Public Employees Pension Reform Act. This became effective on 01/01/2020 in 2013. It provided increased retirement ages and decreased rates of pension formulas. And so in our actuarial reports for employees, it anticipates that the cities will have reduced contributions and that we will need to make corresponding decreases in our CalPERS payments. One thing that is important to note is that this legislation is currently being challenged, next slide, by AB thirteen eighty three.

We anticipate, that if, the legislature approves, and the governor at the time approves lowering the minimum retirement age from 57 to 55, and increasing the cap for PEPRA employees to increase the percentage formulas for public safety, that initially we are looking at approximately a $1,000,000 increase, and this will continue to compound and increase over time. So this is an example of another potential unfunded mandate that the city will need to try to address. Next slide. This slide here indicates that, in fiscal year twenty one-twenty two there are five eighty one positions and now we are proposing six eighty four positions for fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven to ensure that we have a balanced budget. Next slide.

There have been many questions regarding unspent funds and where funds are, so this is a snapshot to ensure that the council is clear that the $48,500,000 in one time funds, those are available as noted. 1,500,000 was earmarked and transferred to the Richmond Department of Children and Youth because that equates to approximately that adds to the 3% of the general fund that is required per the charter and approved by the voters. Next slide. And with that, I would like to turn it over to Emily Combs, director of finance, to continue the presentation. Thank you.

Thank you, and good evening. So this is a high level look at our general fund revenue assumptions. You can see that, our revenue projections reflect steady moderate growth across all of our major categories, property tax, sales and use tax, and utility user taxes. Our property tax benefits mostly from modest, increases in our assessed valuation and then reassessments that are tied to recent property sales. While sales and use tax reflects just continued strength, just you know moderate strength in the local activity.

Our utility users tax is also growing driven primarily by energy related inflation even as our cable and telecom revenues continue to soften. So overall, our revenue outlook is pretty stable, but these categories do remain sensitive to economic conditions, things like energy prices, inflation, and that ultimately impact consumer behavior. So we'll continue to monitor the performance and report out at our quarterly reports. Next slide. So this is just, a look of our at our general fund revenues at, again, a very high level. Again, these projections reflect steady moderate growth. The major categories continue to perform within a range that we would expect.

Next slide.

So looking on the expenditure side, the increases that you'll see in this draft budget are reflect our current staffing levels, what's in our position control, and the labor agreements that have already been finalized. So these amounts do not include those MOUs that are still in negotiation, which we'll talk about a little bit later. And as those agreements are are completed, we will, likely need to, we will need to rebalance the budget, so they're not included. And what that might mean is revisiting our vacancy factor to accommodate the updated costs. Our benefit cost, increases continue to be driven by our pension and our health care obligations for with CalPERS, which reflect updated CalPERS requirements and our our higher health premiums, which our city manager, spoke about earlier.

On the non personnel side, we're seeing some reductions in vehicle replacement costs. That's not necessarily because our costs are going down for vehicles, but we program what is in our vehicle replacement schedule, which can have some fluctuations. We also, you'll see on the next slide, reduced debt service, and that is tied to some of our lease costs for streetlights. And then also we remove any one time expenses in the prior year budget to not inflate the next year's budget. Next slide.

So here's a high level look at our expenditure projections, which reflect the cost pressures that we've we've been discussing, particularly in personnel. So most categories are tracking in a way that's consistent with recent trends and what we've been talking about probably for the last couple of years. But, there are still variables that we'll need to track going forward, and that could so our expenditures could shift as the year unfolds. Alright. So at a high level, this is what the department submitted.

And as you can see, there were more requests than we were able to fund in this draft. So to a total of about 29,300,000. So this slide reflects the operational needs of the departments, but since they exceed our resources, we're unable to fund them at this time. So it's really just meant to show, the slide's meant to show the gap between what departments are asking for for their operations and what we can sustainably support. And sometimes it doesn't mean that we're not doing it, but what we do is we ask departments to try to absorb those increases within their existing budgets, and then we'll monitor those budgets throughout the year and make adjustments, as necessary.

Next slide. So we continue to invest in reimagining public safety with a total program budget of roughly 9,300,000. So this includes YouthWorks, the Office of Neighborhood Safety, and the ROC program. So these investments reflect long standing council priorities and the city's commitment to community focus safety initiatives. Next slide.

We have secured and leveraged a significant external funding of about 59,300,000 in total grants to support our in house services. So these investments help sustain emergency sheltering, outreach, housing placements, and program operations. It's a strong foundation, but much of this funding is one time and requires continued planning for our long term sustainability, for our unhoused. Next slide. So despite, some of our fiscal constraints, we've continued to fund a range of key initiatives that align with, council priorities, including work on the arts corridor, black resiliency, gender based violence program, our immigration services, kids first, community engagements, efforts around limited turn revenue, the mental health assessment, just to name a few.

These initiatives advance important community outcomes, but they also rely on staff who are operating at full or near full capacity, which may extend timelines or require trade offs as additional work is introduced. So you can see that some of these are being rolled forward as we're able to staff the programs. Next slide. So the budget does include several ongoing subsidies that we normally have, including support for housing, that's for Richmond Housing Authority, the rent program, employment and training programs, our landscape maintenance districts for Hilltop and Marina Bay, and also our IT systems. Another core services core services that don't fully recover their costs through fees, assessments, or, charges for services.

So these are reoccurring annual commitments necessary to maintain essential services and our community programs. Next slide. So on this slide, we're showing two different concepts. So the table on the top, those funds, they're for funds or programs that may need general fund subsidies during the year. So that is if their revenues aren't covering their operating costs, we'll transfer the general fund to bridge that gap as the year progresses.

So they're not set, but that's the current gap in the budget. The second is, cost recovery gaps for core programs and I'm sure there are many others, but here we're showing engineering and code enforcement. So these aren't, subsidies sort of like in the same sense, they're simply areas where fees and fines or charges for services are not covering the full cost of service. And this is a lot like other cities. We rely on the general fund to support the portion of the work that is foundational and not necessarily fee based.

Next slide. So this slide reflects the tools we're relying on to balance the budget this year. As our city manager mentioned earlier, the vacancy factor is not a long term strategy. It simply reflects that we can't afford the amount of positions that we have allocated in the budget or the amount of all the authorized positions that we have. And those vacancies create savings that help keep the general fund in balance.

We're also reducing SORD overtime as staffing stabilizes our public safety departments, prioritizing it for our core public safety needs. So these approaches help us balance the budget for now, but they underscore the structural challenges that we're having and what we're working with. Next slide. So it's important to understand what we don't have in the budget now, which may come back very soon, and then we'll have to, again, rebalance our budget. We do not have future labor agreement costs for our police officers or police or fire management yet.

Contra Costa funding for housing, homelessness, and community development is not guaranteed in this budget, and any delays or reductions could shift some unplanned costs onto the city. We have advanced life support, and we need fire station upgrades. We're still working on the cost for those, but without a dedicated revenue source, which staff is actively exploring now, these costs would fall to the general fund. And finally, just the broader economic environment, our energy markets, inflation, and supply chain issues just remain unpredictable and could generate increases increases in costs. Next slide.

So those were the budget items that may require adjustments as the year progresses. But in addition, we're also managing a significant volume of council directed work, which is shown on the slide, and it's tiny. A total of 34 city council directed work efforts have been identified from 01/01/2025 to present, spanning policy development, capital projects, new program creation, and just some ongoing service delivery items. So these 34 items reflect formally documented council actions and may not encompass all the ongoing requests that are made directly to our staff. Many of these items require significant staff time, interdepartmental coordination, funding identification, and long term implementation, which represents a substantial expansion beyond our baseline operational responsibilities.

Next slide.

Mayor, we said we would have transition breaks, so this is a time for everyone to get up and stretch. So

everyone. Alright. We've got ourselves animated. I'm happy with that. So now it's time to return to the mental work.

So if you would.

Thank you, Mayor. We appreciate the stretch break since this is a long presentation, and sometimes we have long meetings. Next up, KCRT, if you can please put the slide deck back up. We would like to, next slide please, introduce, Doctor. Mia.

She has been working with us, and our senior management team, for quite some time now, and she's been extremely invaluable to helping our team, work on, our organizational health and our performance, and ensuring that we can respond in a collaborative and thoughtful and collective manner to moving forward the city council's policy directives and concurrently balancing that with delivering on our day to day core operations. And so Doctor. Mia is here to will introduce herself in more detail, and we're proud to have her with us as a a Richmond native.

Thank you, madam city manager. And thank you city council, the City Of Richmond residents, as well as the City staff for having me tonight. As our City Manager said, I am the proud product of the City of Richmond. My family bought their home in 1971 and my district is District 6. And so I also think it's very important to pause for a moment.

A longtime City Richmond resident as well as staff member passed away, Abigail Sims. And Abigail and her brother Israel and I graduated El Cerrito High School together. So this has been a deep loss for the community of Richmond, for the city of Richmond, and for our family. Again, I had have had the great pleasure of working as an organizational health consultant across the nation and to be able to work with the city of Richmond has been a highlight of my work. I've worked with all of the departments, potentially over 200 of your staff.

I've worked with them on key performance indicators, on equity centered practices, as well as leadership, and then trained, of course, your ROC team. So I've had the great pleasure to work with your ROC team directly and train them. Next slide. And when I look across the nation at different cities, I look in organizations, I look at it through a lens of five different components. First, the culture of an organization.

The culture being the traditions, the patterns, the behaviors, the norms of the city. Then I look at the composition, the structures of a city, the organizational charts, the number of councils of which I know you all have 104, the capacity of the staff and the city, meaning the number of people, the number of requests for projects made, the time it takes to actually move from policy to implementation, and the expertise and training as well as wellness. This month, May, is mental health Mental Health Awareness Month. And one of the most stressful seasons for an organization and for their staff is budget development season. It breeds a lot of anxiety, it breeds a lot of stress and uncertainty.

So we want to acknowledge that as we go through this work together. I also look at the fourth element currency, fund optimization, revenue generation opportunities, state mandates versus unfunded mandates, which a lot of cities have that as one of their prime challenges, is how to do this work and make sure they're assigning funds to the work that needs to get done. And the one that's most missed is celebration. The celebration is a huge part of a strong and healthy organization, celebrating the wins, the successes, and the sustainability of an organization. And I want to pause to celebrate Richmond.

Next slide. Celebrating Richmond's big win. Everyone has the moving Richmond forward with all of these amazing accomplishments. The data shows progress in amazing ways. And I just want to highlight some progress and thank you for the work that you're doing in the city that raised me.

One, the Home Key Project providing 48 permanent supportive housing to chronically unhoused people. The Lighting Richmond Project, making sure that Richmond is well lit so that we can move about it in a continuous safe way. The Shield Reid Park and the Booker T. Anderson Community Center rehab. The CCRP Rock team being on mission and working hard to mitigate risk within Richmond.

And then this is a big one, being removed from the state audit list and no longer being on the list of an at risk government agency. So let's pause and give ourselves a hand. So important to celebrate Richie. You've done that. Next slide. Now in any work that you do within an organization, there are direct costs and there are indirect costs. So the direct costs are the ones that we see. Next slide. Moving it forward. The direct costs are things like your salaries and benefits, like the core services.

Those are all your direct costs that you see in state mandates. Next slide. There are indirect costs that we rarely count in budget development, but I want to encourage us to consider in the budget process the indirect costs, things like employee burnout. Next slide, just keep pushing those. The rework.

Rework means that we have so many priorities, they continue to change and so we have to keep reworking the plan. We have additional meetings that continue to add cost to your staff. Go back please, thank you. We have staff turnover because of the burnout, because of project delays, because of additional meetings, because of the pressure, the stress. You also can find yourself in an organization having low quality because you have too much quantity going on.

It's so hard to produce quality when the volume is so big. You have unfunded mandates, a low morale, additional hours worked that then creates costs like overtime, And then you increase the risk to your city as well as reputational damage. And so we want to highlight the unhidden, I mean the hidden costs, the unseen costs, so that when we consider budget development we consider those things as well. Those are implications that are underneath this iceberg. They're not on the top, but they really, really matter.

Next slide. Good news about Richmond is when we look at the components of a successful organization, you have some of the greatest people working here that I've ever worked with across the nation. Let me say that again. You have hired well. They are experts. They are passionate. They are committed. 36% of your permanent and part time staff live right here in the city of Richmond. 36%. So that's a check mark.

That's a huge win. We also have a wonderful council that not only adopts policy, but they adopt equity focused policy. That does not happen across the nation. So that's a huge check mark. We also measure our impact now, right, on so many different measures that matter to the community, that matters to the environment, that matters to the nation, that matters to the state.

Now where you don't see a checkmark are on two areas where I would challenge us to continue to work to strengthen. Those things like effective processes, like really examining the process of how are we making sure that there's equity across each district. Some district council persons may work full time jobs as well as serve on the council, so they may not have the same kind of time as a business owner on the council or a council member who this is their sole focus. So we want to make sure the effective processes are in place to make sure the allocation and equity of advocacy is also happening. How requests come to staff, very very important to outline what that process looks like.

And streamline streamline communications so that we can understand exactly how communication flows and that it is aligned to your five strategic priorities. Next slide please. So I want to offer some components of successful organizations and some recommended shifts. Next slide. So we want to in culture, we want to shift from to.

So keep on thank you. From culture, want to shift from being reactive to proactive, anticipating what the needs are. We also want to shift from no prioritization where you have so many things that we're saying we want to do to the point where actually we're not prioritizing anything. Things remain outstanding. So I want to encourage us to consider three priorities every year that we can focus on achieve well.

In terms of composition moving from expansive, like having a 104 councils, committees, and task forces to streamline. What would it look like to consolidate them so that they're doing work that's aligned? When it comes to capacity, considering from offline request to trade offs, to really having to look at what comes off the plate if something else is coming on the plate. Looking at who's beyond capacity to move everyone to an at capacity work expectation. That is very, very important.

I want to pause there just for a moment as we started with mental health month and how important that is. Most employers want folks to work beyond capacity. What that means is you're burning them out. But the real goal is to work at capacity. That means you're doing excellent work but within the scope of the day and in a healthy way where you can have work life balance.

We also want to move in capacity from quantity, not so many things, to quality where we're measuring the quality of the work. And finally, when it comes to currency, we want to move from unfunded mandates where we know the funding source for each of the items to funding for our state mandates first and foremost, taking one time funding away from ongoing projects and making sure we're focused on core services. So the core items are what our city could receive. And so, to close out, seven strategic budget questions are very important to ask like how will our budget decisions support our approved strategic plan and our top three council priorities, as well as what new initiatives, projects, services are being added and what is being discontinued to make room for them, Or what trade offs are we making to fund these priorities? What is the impact of our budget decisions on the fund balance, our reserves?

What are the top three financial risks to this budget and what is our plan to mitigate that risk? And does the budget equitably represent our values of core services, state requirements, staff, and community needs? And then how will we continue to measure the success so Richmond can continue to move forward? Next slide. So as you're going to see these budget department budget presentations, I want you to keep these themes in mind throughout the weeks of these budget presentations.

Number one, the core services being prioritized. That's going to be a theme that you're going to see. Number two, protecting time for policy implementation. And I'm going say that one again, protecting time for policy implementation because it's one thing to make policy, it's another thing to implement policy. Number three, to pause on unfunded mandates, to say to ourselves that we want to pause and get some things done so that we know where the funding is coming from but we know we can move the ones that we do have funding for forward.

Number four, we want to practice the art of considering tradeoffs versus one off requests. And finally, want to preserve the mental and financial health of the city and its employees. So you'll see that theme throughout the Department of Budget presentations. And we wanted to show you this last slide of how this framework that we worked on, how policy adoption is very important, But the multiple steps it takes to get to the wins, to the celebrating the presentation, there are so many steps. So step two after the adoption is to determine funding sources and department owners.

Number three, to identify key decision makers. Number four, to understand regulatory standards. Number five, to engage our key implementers and stakeholders in the process with us to co construct. Number six, to draft procedures and timelines and assess all of our resources. Number seven, to draft a wonderful communication plan. Number eight, to continue to educate and work with our community about the policy and then to evaluate the policy as well as to present about its outcomes and success. With So that, I want to just thank you so much for continuing to hold the city that I love and that raised me so well. We appreciate you.

Thank you doctor Miya. And next?

I'm gonna go ahead and take over here with boards and commissions. So and we'll go briefly through these. Staff currently supports more than a 100 boards, commissions and interagency groups, many of which meet regular regularly and require ongoing coordination. Next slide. That translates to about three thousand five hundred hours a year spent in meetings alone.

So that's roughly a little under two full time equivalent or full time employees. And that doesn't include preparation, coordination, or follow-up. So in reality, the total workload is likely closer to about seven thousand to fourteen thousand hours annually. Next slide. This work spans all major service areas and often requires multiple departments to coordinate, which adds another layer of effort beyond the meetings themselves.

Next slide. So when you put it all together, these are ongoing commitments that function as a baseline workload, which means new requests don't create one time task, they create permanent ongoing obligations. Next slide. And given that, staff capacity to take on additional work is limited without reprioritization or consolidation of existing efforts. So with that, we're gonna go ahead and move on to our department presentations, and we can queue up. Lina Velasco, our director of community development.

Thank you, Emily. Good evening, Mayor Martinez, council members, Richmond community, and my city colleagues. My name is Lina Velasco. I'm the director of community development. I'm excited to kick off the department presentations for the fiscal year twenty six twenty seven budget.

I wanna first start by acknowledging the amazing and dedicated team that I get to work alongside every day and represent this evening. It is truly an honor and privilege to work with them and many other city departments in the core services we provide every day to move Richmond forward. This evening I will provide an overview of the core functions of each department division, identify some of the key projects and council goals we're leading, as well as discuss the changing landscape of regulation that is changing how we do our work, and we'll close with some recommendations as we move forward into the next fiscal year. Next slide. Many of our core functions such as permitting, support council identified goals, specifically community development supports all six goals identified with our greatest capacity demands being in housing development, homelessness prevention and response, as well as community health and citywide plan development.

There's a few I'm going to highlight. As noted this evening, our Homekey project, This was a partially city funded as well as a grant funded project to purchase a motel and convert it into 48 units of supportive housing to serve the chronically homeless. The project is under construction, and we're hopeful to start occupancy this fall. In addition, we are have expanded the residential

state

on the

the state Richmond Housing Authority and the rehabilitation of Nevin The Plaza of phase two. We're also currently leading the development of the Hilltop Horizon specific plan, which will bring jobs as well as housing opportunities here within Richmond. We also support and lead the implementation along with many community partners of Richmond Rising, which is a transformative climate communities project to serve the Iron Triangle, Santa Fe, and Coronado neighborhoods to enhance climate resiliency. In addition, we have a grant funded sea level rise adaptation plan and resiliency plan that we're currently in development and doing community engagement around. Next slide.

So the first division I'm gonna talk about this evening is our building division. The the building division's key purpose is mostly around permitting construction. However, this role continues to evolve with new state legislation centered around the housing crisis. Specifically, this includes establishing new processes to legalize on permitted accessory dwelling units that were built prior to 01/01/2020. In addition, we are now also being, asked to not only do habitability inspections related to homelessness shelters, but now we're required to do annual inspections of all shelters, within the city.

So just some of the key functions, as I mentioned, we enforce the California Building Code Standards as well as the California Health and Safety Code, the city's grading ordinance, the National Flood Insurance Program, and this is all important stuff that serves the public safety. Flood insurance program is to make sure that Richmond residents are able to get a reduction in their premium for flood insurance if the city doesn't keep an active program. In addition, the city has adopted a green building ordinance, and the building division helps enforce that ordinance, not just for city led projects, but also private projects. We also investigate substandard construction, and if we do emergency response. So if the city was to be an earthquake just this past weekend, there was a residential fire, and so we will send a building inspector to determine if the building is safe for reoccupancy or if a red tag needs to be issued to make sure that nobody enters the property.

We also calculate and collect permit mitigation and impact fees, not just on behalf of city departments, but also other state agencies and regional agencies such as WICTAC as well as the state. We also provide direct plan check and inspection services for the Chevron Richmond refinery. This is important priority to make sure that they're able to do regular maintenance work of their facility, And so we have assigned staff that we have a permit services agreement for. So the next division that I'm going to talk about is the Planning Division. The Planning Division's core function really centers around project entitlement, making sure that projects comply with city regulations, and that includes the Permit Streamlining Act, the California Environmental Quality Act, also for both the Richmond Housing Authority or any project that includes a federal action or funding, that may also be subject to the National, Environmental Protection Act.

And so we support the environmental review as well as public noticing requirements around zoning regulation, general plan amendments. One of the biggest areas for planning is really around housing and state law implementation, particularly as it relates to general plans, as well as now the Housing Accountability Act, no net loss, and our annual housing element progress report. And the annual progress report is a small function, but it's a very important function that if it's not completed, it makes the city subject to certain builders remedies in which projects that don't comply with any regulations are able to come forward. It also makes the city eligible to apply for certain funding around transportation dollars, housing dollars, encampment resolution dollars. And so if we are unable to complete these mandated tasks, the city is not eligible to apply for a lot of the funds that we're able to to obtain.

As I noted, you know, general plan law requires the city to maintain and regularly update its general plan. Our current general plan right now is envisioned through 2030. We are nearing 2030, and so it's time for us to start in the process of updating the general plan and getting that through the process. And so that's one area that will be focused on over the next couple of years and that's necessary to make sure that the city's vision, development vision, land use vision aligns with community goals and priorities. The other big part that we do is interdepartmental and agency coordination.

So many of the projects that we're reviewing require review by outside, not always internal, sewer companies, utility companies, environmental health. And so there's a lot of coordination amongst our departments, but also agency coordination to make sure that we're obtaining conditions of approvals for projects. In addition, the division is currently supporting the interdepartmental as well as the interagency coordination with implementing the terms of the maintenance service agreement around Pointe Mulati with the East Bay Regional Park District. And so that is taking up, a significant amount of staff time too. Next slide.

As far as the the next division is code enforcement. Code enforcement is here to protect the public health safety as well as neighborhood quality by ensuring properties comply with municipal codes. Zoning ordinance maintenance requirements. The program does emphasize a voluntary compliance first and we do this through inspections providing notices to property owners as well as providing a time to correct deficiencies. What and a lot of this work requires coordination with other departments that may have identified violations, including building, planning, as well as public safety such as fire.

Over the last few years, as the council and the community have reimagined public safety, some of the regulatory functions that the Richmond Police Department was holding, those got shifted to code enforcement, specifically around cannabis, tobacco, alcohol. And, you know, as as we've brought forward to the council an enhanced tobacco enforcement program, retailers license, the state, however, still requires the police department to be engaged in the confiscation of illegal flavored tobacco products. And so code enforcement is working closely with our colleagues at the Richmond Police Department to make sure that as we complete inspections and we identify illegal flavored tobacco products that the police department is able to confiscate those to make sure that they're not being sold within our city. In addition, there's a lot of coordination around cannabis licensing, not just from wastewater, but, also with building to make sure that improvements are being maintained and enforcement, if necessary, to ensure compliance with conditions of approval. We also support abandoned vehicle abatement.

So when somebody has inoperable vehicles on their private property and they're not being moved or regularly maintained, we also manage that program to ensure neighborhood quality. In addition, we support, the Code Enforcement Division supports planning when we find violations of conditions of approval, as well as other enforcement for unlicensed operations. Next slide. So as far as our housing division, you know, this division

sort

of is evolving from mostly our grant work, but there's also responsibilities that were assumed with the dissolution of the redevelopment agency. So specifically, this division manages the portfolio of city loans and agreements that remain now sitting with the city, And so oftentimes there may be a property owner who is trying to refinance or wants to pay off a loan. We support in those daily activities to make sure that that they're able to get the pay offs that they need or the subordinations complete work. In addition we may fund supportive services for affordable housing projects through some of those agency funds former agency funds that we support. A lot of our work has been around encampment resolution as noted earlier we've been successful in bringing more than $20,000,000 to support on house interventions, everything from job creation to rental assistance.

And all of that work is complemented through support that the council has provided also through its reimagining funding. This division also supports the oversight and the implementation of the inclusionary housing ordinance. So the city requires market rate development to contribute its fair share towards affordable housing needs. We completed a nexus study several years ago, and percentage is now set aside for affordable housing units. In addition, we do have several recognized obligation projects of the successor agency before we officially close and wind down the successor agency, and those are related to the Metro Walk phase two as well as Mira Flores.

And earlier, our city manager was able to share the good news that Metro Walk is getting tax credits hopefully after May 12, and we'll be able to hopefully sunset that project within the next two year period. In addition, we are in the process of supporting the development of a housing equity roadmap as well as the homelessness strategic plan, and that work is led by the housing team in coordination with community input as well as city departments. And I was I was already noted the Homekey project is a is a key function or key project right now this division is working on. Next slide. One of the unique things that we has happened in this department was in 2023, we were able to secure a $35,000,000 transformative climate communities grant, which is a five year period project for the city.

And this was done in partnership with several community based organizations. And so within this to within our department we now have a transformative climate communities team and so this is the the term staff that has been hired specifically to focus and support the implementation of this project. And they do this through grants management as well as regular invoicing. And we are also consistently working to identify additional funding sources to to fund gaps that may be identified within the already identified projects or projects that would leverage the work that's already be done. And so last year we were successful in securing 19,500,000 to support additional projects within our project area.

We also are the TCC team is working closely in coordination with several city departments, mostly our engineering our parks team as we do tree planting new streetscape projects sliding projects. E bike lending libraries there's a lot of coordination with city departments. In addition, we're we have a collaborative stakeholder committee so monthly this team is leading a community meeting at the Nevin Community Center that invites both the public and all the project partners to report on project progress as well as to gather input around program implementation and program design. So this team, as we've secured additional funding, they will also be supporting the grant reporting, and completing the grant deliverables that were secured through that additional funding. Next slide.

So now I'm going to shift a little bit into the the special projects that are creating some additional demand in our core services. Our core services already, you know, demand a 100% of our capacity. However, you know, as we continue to focus on special projects, these are are really the the major projects that that are putting additional strains. Grant writing. This is an important piece, and I'll talk a little bit more detail in terms of how this work happens.

But this, personally, is very important to me. I think if we develop plans and bring those forward for City Council adoption, we're making a promise to the community that we are going to try to implement every component of that. And so if we are unable to do that within our city budget, then we have to find external to help support in those implementations. So I don't just like to plan, I actually like to implement. And so I think that's a big part of why I do grant writing and why we really push our team to to also focus on that.

The other project that's taking a lot of time is the Hilltop Horizon Project, as we know that development can be a moving target, particularly in times of uncertainty around markets and things like that. And so it's very important for us to make sure that when we do have grant funded projects, which this is, to try to stick to a project deadline. And if we're having a lot of external projects come forward, it sort of detracts our attention away from the projects we need to complete, and then those projects are not able to be completed on time and within budget. And then that results in us coming back to the council asking for a subsidy to close those gaps in the project delivery. And so this is also the case with the sea level rise adaptation plan.

This is an Ocean Protection Council funded grant project. However, if we're unable to complete the project within the time frame we specified in the grant, it could result in a project overrun, and that may require us to come back to council asking for a subsidy. So I think we would very much want to focus on on completing those projects on time and within schedule. In addition, the rental inspection program, as the council may recall, when we brought the expanded program to the council for consideration, in in the ordinance, you know, there was a desire by the council for us to evaluate whether or not we can bring this program in house with the cost, the timing, and the steps for that to occur. So that is work that's in progress.

We have issued an RFP to get a consultant to support us in that analysis. And so we will be reviewing the proposals received, we'll be coming to counsel for that work. I think what we do know is that to bring the program in house will likely cost more, and so who absorbs the cost will be a decision that we'll have to bring forward to the council for consideration, and that is targeted to occur next fiscal year. And then lastly kind of the other big project is the tobacco program as noted. There there is a huge amount of flavored tobacco still out in our community as well as many prohibited products.

And so this is a strong collaboration not just by code enforcement, but it includes planning the Richmond Police Department as well as our Fire Prevention Bureau and our city attorney's office. I cannot forget them because they're they're a very key part of of enforcement actions as well. And so I just wanna note that a lot of these special initiatives and the major projects are drawing on the same staff that are having to provide core services to the community, our contractors, our businesses, owners every day. And so, you know, we just need to be cognizant of of of those strains. Next slide.

Okay. I'm nearing the end, I promise. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about the grant work. So as of December 2025, you know, we are managing approximately $296,000,000 in grants, which is about 40% of the city budget. And and the city does not have a specific team dedicated to identifying, applying, or managing grants.

So these are all this is all work that's being consumed by existing staff. And, you know, the the process typically identifies we we look at the opportunity. We then look at what are eligible expenditures, who are eligible applicants. We identify, okay, here's a few projects. Oftentimes, we're bringing in other departments who may also have projects of interest.

We also sometimes will bring in project partners. I think the council has identified the goal. How do we decide on which projects to come forward, which projects do we apply for? And so we also tried to look at an equity lens of, like, where is the needs needed? And so all of that takes time.

I think receiving the award is one thing, but then it's implementation. A lot of these grants now want us to have community engagement, which is important to us as well, but then also regular reporting and invoicing to make sure that the a lot of the grants are reimbursement based. So the city puts the money out first, and then we have to ask for the money back. And so making sure that we're able to seek reimbursements on a timely basis so that we're not drawing on on city funds. So just wanted to note the the many processes that go into grant writing as well as grant management.

Next slide. And here is just, again, some of the typical cycles, and a lot of this is coordination amongst different departments to make sure that we know there's either a coordinated effort or if multiple departments are going to be applying for grants. And so it's just, you know a lot of effort and time and so I just want to acknowledge all the staff that works on these grants. It's not an easy thing but we do believe it's important to to do it to bring more resources to to the city and our residents. So next slide.

And so one of the last things I'm gonna talk about is how how different legislation is affecting our service delivery. So since 2020, California has passed over 200 housing related bills that heavily impact the way we do work, how city, local governments. It's really around zoning, permitting, and housing accountability. And so every time a new law comes into effect, we have to review it, understand if there's any already published guidelines on how it's implemented, and then oftentimes we're having to update city regulations, update our forms, look at our fee structure, are we collecting the right fee for the work that's being requested. And so I think this is a major, major impact.

And and now it's not only spreading to the entitlement, which is the planning process, but also into the permitting process. And so this is just one area of work that is fundamentally changing how community development delivers services. A lot of it wants faster turnarounds, less discretion, as well as greater op seeking greater operational agility. And so we need to be able to spend time to review the legislation so that as it's implemented, we're we're fully understanding the obligations of city's staff. Next slide.

I'm not gonna go through each one, but I think here on the slide here are some of the major legislation that's impacting how we do the work. As I noted earlier, we also have now homeless shelter inspections. Before it was only if we had a habitability complaint, but now and it is required. We have to submit a report. If we don't submit a report, we can't apply for encampment resolution funding.

So the state is also adding a stick to the carrot. Right? So if cities want to apply for funding, you now need to make sure that you're completing these inspections to be eligible to get those funding. So it's very much serving as, as a gate to us being able to to secure some additional resources for Richmond. So having staff, time being to be able to dedicate to implementation of these laws is going to be very important to to keep resources.

Next slide. So this is my last slide. And so what are our recommendations? I think here, you know, we obviously want to ensure that staff capacity is aligned to make sure that all of the the state mandates that are being remanded down, that we're able to implement, update our regulations to align in a timely fashion. Because if not, then, you know, we're having to do bulletins and sort of do other notices to the public.

We also are wanting to continue to invest in staff training, technology improvements, as well as process improvements. As mentioned earlier, we very much want to streamline, look at possibly combining our design review board and our planning commission since both draw services, but the state is really moving to objective design standards. And so what a design review board can do is still very limited. And and so we could still combine the focus so that the public still has an opportunity to comment and provide input, but it may be in a more streamlined fashion. In addition, we do want to continue to enhance public communication around all these new housing laws and how they're impacting our work, but also decision making in the city.

The the state is telling cities, you now need to allow this use by right if you allow housing of other types. And so really just being able to educate the public about the local control that is being eroded due to the housing crisis is an important function for the public to also be informed. We also wanna make sure that we have capacity to follow the legislation that's changing so that Richmond has an opportunity to opine and provide input in the process if we know it could have adverse effects to our community. And so, I think we need some bandwidth to be able to provide, the ability to do that. And then lastly, you know, we we have a lot of goals that the council has already identified for us, and so we would like to focus on completing those already identified assignments and just making sure that we're able to complete those projects on time to make sure that there's no cost overruns, and, you know, also ensure that as we do this implementation that there's less potential for mistakes or other hidden costs.

And so with that, I will pass it on to the next presenter. So thank you.

Thank you, Lina. And we have a transition break now. Stretch away.

I'm I'm glad that, everyone is enjoying these breaks. I think the breaks, keep us animated, but we also need to be able to settle down. So I'd appreciate it if people bring yourself to order so that we can begin our session. All right. Commander in chief.

All right. I guess I'm next. Good evening honorable mayor, city council, and residents of Richmond. My name is Timothy Simmons. I am the police chief here in the city of Richmond and my slides will be much quicker than all the others you're going to see tonight. All right. No, no, stay on that current slide please. Thank you. So, tonight I'm going to discuss how the current workload affects patrol visibility, our capacity for investigation follow-up, our temporary holding facility, community policing, and our compliance responsibilities. For the council's pleasure, our mission statement is rather lengthy, but it can be summed up with four P's.

It's prevention, partnership, professionalism and protection. And that's what we set out to do on a daily basis. So why this matters now? Richmond Police Department supports core public safety functions while also contributing to the multiple City Council strategic goal areas. I want to frame the role of the Police Department tonight not just in one category of public safety but how we collaborate with other city departments, community based organizations, and other outside organizations to really be a partner with all six of council's goals.

So the first council goal, housing and homelessness. Police Department has encampment response and unhoused outreach coordination with quality of life calls to both isolated locations and repeated locations. Last year alone, Police Department responded to 600 calls for service related to unhoused individuals or encampments. We don't respond to those alone. We respond to those in partnership with CORE, with partnership with The Rock, partnership with A3, and partnership with our Crime Prevention Unit.

Primary goal there is to help unhoused individuals find wraparound services and be able to help bridge the gap between homelessness and permanent or temporary housing. The second area council priority that the police department helps facilitate is under revenue and economic development. We work to provide support for business district safety, special events, visible police presence that supports commerce and investment. We work with the Port Of Richmond. We work with the Richmond Main Street Initiative.

We work with economic development, 23rd Street merchants, the McDonald Business Corridor, the San Pablo Avenue Business Corridor. We meet with them on a monthly basis to see how we can support commerce and economic development in the city of Richmond. We support quality of life and community health through crisis response, addressing neighborhood issues. We engage our youth and community engagements. We deal with nuisance abatement and neighborhood related issues.

We also don't do this in an isolated VAP, but we collaborate with the West County School District in this regard. We collaborate with ROC. We collaborate with R Powell, Public Works, the abatement team to address illegal dumping, and we have a robust explorer program that engages our youth and gets them involved and off the streets as well. The fourth council priority that we engage in is public safety, and that's kind of the easy one that people would think is our bread and butter. It's our patrol response, our investigations, traffic enforcement, violence reduction, emergency response, and case follow-up.

But even there, we do not do that in an isolated VAC alone. We collaborate with the county task force. We collaborate with mutual aid response and even work with neighborhoods like the RNCC and other community based organizations to address public safety in that regard. The fifth priority that we partner with is under internal infrastructure and process, ensuring officers are trained, that policies are followed and updated, that legal mandates are met, and accountability systems function. This includes having a cooperative relationship with the Community Police Review Commission, a cooperative relationship with RNCC, a cooperative relationship with state oversight bodies like California Peace Officer Standards and Training and the federal oversight bodies through the Department of Justice and the COPS Office.

And then lastly, the shoreline and ecological sustainability. Having police officers present enforcing regulations that are in the parks and shoreline areas, having emergency response to those locations, partnering with East Bay Regional Parks and Public Works to deal with illegal dumping in our parks, all part of keeping the parks sustainable and a place that people want to visit and frequent and spend the day with their families. So to that regard, RPD supports all six goal areas the council has set forth. Next slide, please. The work that keeps Richmond running within the police department, so our core service and function, I'm just going to go through a few of these, so patrol response and BEAT coverage.

With regard to our patrol response and BEAT coverage, that is emergency calls for service, report taking, field response, mutual aid, coordinating with the courts, and booking responsibilities. This also includes patrol officers who conduct preliminary investigations. Then we have our investigations bureau, our investigations unit, who's responsible for case follow-up. And they also deal with quality of life issues addressing things that code enforcement needs cooperation with. Case assignments, interviews, warrant authors and warrant service, discovery, working with the court system, subpoena process, and DA support.

And I'll even add that we do support even the public defender's office when they need discovery and they need certain things from a police officer. We make them available in that regard as well. Our temporary holding facility operations, that's booking coordination and transportation to the Martinez Detention Facility when local facility staffing is unavailable. I bring this up because when we are not able to properly staff or or keep our temporary holding facility open, that requires an officer to leave our jurisdiction, leave our city anywhere from ninety minutes to two hours to drive to the Martinez Detention Facility and the booking process that takes place there is rather laborious and backed up. So now that officer, instead of being in our city providing emergency response or calls for service support in our city, They're spending that time waiting in a line or dealing with the county out in Martinez.

Crime prevention and community engagement. This is a very important one for us. This is dealing with problem solving, neighborhood meetings, business outreach, addressing repeat locations, building community relationships. One of the priorities for the police department this year outside of the police department is building relationships and out of relationships we believe trust will be cultivated. Traffic special events and directed enforcement.

This is collision response, DUI enforcement, traffic safety work, working with public works and the engineer department on how to address issues that are on our roadways. We meet on a monthly basis right now as a cooperative effort. And also supporting community wide events such as Cinco de Mayo, Juneteenth, National Night Out. That's just a few of them. We have a total of about 10 community wide, city wide events that the police department supports to make happen.

And then lastly, training, compliance, records, and administrative support. So as with every other department that you've heard from tonight, there is state mandates and federal mandates and laws that come through throughout the year that address how we do our jobs such as AB nine fifty three, which is the RIPA, or stop data collection, stands for Racial Identity Profiling Act, or AB 41, which is our military equipment use policy, and our annual reporting duties that come with both of those. And there's a few others, but those are the two big ones. In addition to California Post Standards and Training, which annually comes out with new standards, new training standards, new criteria for how officers should be doing their job. The training aspect of what Post does requires twenty four hours of professional continued education for each sworn personnel every other year and twenty four hours of perishable skills training every other year.

So the police department has to ensure that every sworn personnel from myself all the way on down receives forty eight hours of continued training to meet the post mandates. Those records are audited on an annual basis. Somebody from the state comes to the department and our accreditation as a police department hinges on our ability to maintain those training standards. Next slide please. So operational demands affecting core service delivery.

So the Richmond Police Department, like I said, responded to over 600 calls for service related to unhoused that was year to date. That's about an 8.5% increase from this time last year. And again, our goal and our purpose linking it to the council goal is to support our unhoused community to help other CBOs and city departments address those issues and help them find temporary or permanent housing, which also goes towards crime prevention, community policing, and really helping our neighborhoods become sustainable. That is a high capacity demand. Our temporary holding facility limitations, which is what I just briefly talked about, that goes to public safety and our internal process.

If officers leave the beat and are on their way to Martinez, then they're not in our community providing service. This draws on the attention of all of our patrol supervisors and our line level officers. It's an immediate operational strain when things are not happening properly in the temporary holding facility. Our patrol staffing needs affect investigation's ability. So when we do not have proper staffing on patrol and mandatory staffing beats are left vacant, what is required is a reverse rotation from our investigations bureau down into patrol in order to maintain that minimum staffing.

If I have detectives that are working beats, means they're not following through on the caseload they have for investigations, and then vice versa. Compliance mandates, public records, major event operations. RPD responds to approximately 92,000 calls for service per year. That equates to about two fifty two calls for service per day. So all the mandates and the case updates and the legal updates and the training requirements go towards our ability to be efficient and properly respond to those calls for service throughout the day and throughout the year.

And then lastly, community policing, neighborhood problem solving and outreach. Officers account for 32 neighborhood council meetings. Not all of those meet every month. Some of them meet quarterly. And some of them actually are not meeting at all. So, full transparency, I don't believe that all 32 are operational. But we assign officers to each so when they do start meeting, they have an officer that they can connect with. And that supports community health, crime prevention, builds resident trust and visible service delivery that is beyond just responding to reactive calls for service. Next slide please. So how limited capacity affects service delivery?

As of 05/04/2026, the police department has authorized 147 sworn positions. There are currently 129 filled positions with nine of those are still in the police academy and 18 sworn vacancies. The department has authorized 71 full time professional staff employees. There are currently 58 positions filled and 13 vacancies. An important stat that I didn't include in the slide, but I think it's important to note, right now 40% of our patrol bureau is all on probation still.

So that's reflective of the new staff that we've brought on, but it's also indicative of officers that have retired or moved on to other jurisdictions. But it's important to know that with 40% of our patrol response is on probation, means there's a lot of training, there's a lot of supervision, and there's a lot of paying attention to what people are doing because they don't have the expertise at this point to really be any more lax than what we are right now. So it's high supervision right now. So the work that gets squeezed when staffing levels are impacted, that's proactive community policing and engagement, our investigations suffer, crime prevention suffers, problem solving suffers, and our training staff and development becomes more difficult to try to accomplish. The operational impact is officers end up leaving beats to either cover other officers and other beats to respond to Martinez for booking, which is what we've talked about already.

Supervisors and key staff have to absorb additional responsibilities Major events and seasonal enforcement plans compress already limited staffing. The impact to residents is less visible patrol. Relationship based policing suffers, slower progress on cases, and nuisance issues. And repeat problem locations go unaddressed. And then higher risk of burnout and turnover for our current staff.

As staffing increases though, here's the good news as staffing increases, which it has been, the department can move beyond minimum staffing and begin restoring critical service capacity including full time traffic division, a bicycle patrol unit, which we're consistently being asked for in all three of our business districts, specialized investigations unit, and an additional weekend patrol team. Our patrol team on the weekend, they worked twelve and a half hour shifts with no relief. I recently have been able to implement a partial shift on the weekend due to our increased recruiting, where now our weekend officers are starting to have some overlap for the first time in five years, which allows them to be able to take breaks, have their lunches, get caught up on reports, and be paying attention to the things they need to be paying attention to and providing the level of service that we all expect our officers to provide to our community. But it's only half full. I need to continue to staff that shift.

Next slide, please. So here's an example of what some of our collaboration looks like, and you heard about this from Lina just a moment ago. We partnered with code enforcement to address some of the smoke shops and the flavored tobacco that is not supposed to be sold in our community. And what you see this picture of right here is a Connex box that has been delivered to the police department. It's on our property and it serves as our makeshift evidence vault for all of the flavored tobacco.

And what you see on those tables right there reflects two inspections on two smoke shops out of all the smoke shops that we have on the list that need to be inspected. All of those items you see on that list fall into the category of prohibited items under the City Of Richmond's current ordinance and state law. Each one of those items has to be properly booked. Chain of custody has to be properly taken control of, and each item has to be described and properly like, to book this much evidence right here, I think it took the team about two weeks, to do. With the additional staffing that that has been supported in the police department, I've been able to add an additional body into our investigations unit that focuses solely on the partnership that we have with code enforcement to help get this work done.

Next slide please. What support protects core service delivery? So, service delivery is protected when the police department has sufficient support and staffing to absorb mandated training, legal compliance, reporting, technology management, supervision, scheduling, and public transparency requirements without pulling critical time and personnel away from patrol response, investigations, traffic safety, and community policing. And so like I stated before, the way that we've been managing things over the last five years been robbing Peter to pay Paul. We take officers out of patrol to have them do certain specialty assignments.

We take officers out of specialty assignments to have them do things in patrol. We heavily rely on volunteer overtime when things come up that are required to be addressed in the police department, where we need people to volunteer to sign up for. And that is in addition to when there are seasons and times when there's mandatory overtime as well. That places a strain on the organization. With a fully staffed department, we do not rely on volunteers.

We're able to properly staff each unit and provide the service that the community expects. Stabilizing patrol staffing reduces beat vacancies. We need to protect minimum staff deployment and create room for proactive work instead of just continued backfill. I hear this request almost on a daily basis from different parts of the community, whether it's through emails or phone calls or people setting meetings to come by and meet with me. They want to know who their community, who their neighborhood police officer is.

Who is the one they can talk to? Who is the one they can build that relationship with? Where over the last several years what we've had to do is it's a different officer. You could be a different officer from one day to the next depending upon what's going on with our staffing levels, injury, training, vacations, things of that nature. Protecting investigations and specialty functions.

We need to preserve detectives' capacity to follow through in a timely manner on critical investigations. Some of the investigations we deal with have strict timelines associated with them. There's evidence that has to be processed. There's strict timelines that the state and the federal government has on when we are to get those pieces of evidence processed through like a DNA lab, like a sexual assault kit, things like that. Those cases need to be followed up on in a timely manner.

Address temporary holding facilities and transport coverage. We need to make sure that our temporary holding facility remains open and active so that officers stay in the city of Richmond where taxpayer dollars are supporting them in our community and not anywhere else. Rebuilding community policing relationships. Again, it's a priority in the police department that we build relationships and out of relationships comes trust. And then to encourage the council to limit new initiatives to available staffing capacity.

We are open to new things. We are collaborative. We want to provide all the service possible. And it's just the ask is that we look at what our current staffing capacity is and that the initiatives that we take on that are new, that they be aligned with what our staffing capacity is. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you.

And we have public works next. We do have a transition break.

Okay.

All right. If we can complete our conversation so we can begin the next section on public works.

And last but not least, director Chavarria.

Are you the one? Okay. Good evening, Mayor Martinez, City Council members. For the record, my name is Daniel Chavarria. I'm the Polyworks director. And with me tonight, there's a distinguished staff members from the Polyworks department. Please raise your hand from the Polyworks department to be acknowledged. Darcy Darcy and Hilal, you should swap seats, just saying. Also with us today is Mr. John Bliss remotely from SCI Consulting.

And all of us are ready to answer all your questions about this presentation in attachment eight, attachment nine, attachment 12. Mayor Martinez, council members

But wait, Daniel. We're not gonna have we're we're gonna listen to questions, but we're not gonna respond. Remember? They're gonna kill They're me gonna kill me. Because we have public hearings

gonna say what? Thank you. Mayor Martinez, council members, tonight I want to start by recognizing the work of the PolyWorks team. The team is delivering essential services every day while also managing a large capital port project portfolio, responding to resident concerns, supporting council priorities, and building systems that Richmond has needed for a long time. There is a lot to be proud of.

We are not where we want to be there yet, but we are moving from a reactive PolyWorks model towards a more planned, data driven, and accountable organization. That is a major shift. Next. Polyworks touches almost every physical part of the city. Streets, signs, signals, sidewalk, buildings, parks, fleet, drainage, wastewater oversight, abatement, capital projects, permits, transportation services, and administrative support.

The challenge is not that the work is unimportant. The challenge is that almost all of it is important at the same time. Next slide, please. We are managing daily operations, emergencies, resident requests, council referrals, regulatory compliance, and a portfolio of more than 80 CIP projects. That is before we add new initiatives.

Many of the council directed initiatives are valuable and aligned with community needs, but each one requires a staff time, procedures, public communication, enforcement coordination, technology, legal review, and field implementation. The more directions we move at the same time, the harder it becomes to deliver the core infrastructure work residents also expect. We have a list in the middle column there about some of the city directive initiative, but I definitely miss adding some more. We have the blue curve as accessible parking program, holding tank policy development and implementation, CCLO VA event coordination and field support, sidewalk vendor ordinance,

Operationalization. Oh, I

botched that too.

Thank you. Ongoing emerging assignments from council and city manager directions, zero zero emission vehicle infrastructure transition plan, autonomous transit network feasibility study, and the ones that I miss, the lot, wildfire preparedness ad hoc committee, three wells in CIP sidewalk projects, purchases village, infrastructure plan, community led bus stop bench program, clean Richmond pilot program, Cheese Park improvement plan, Pool My Neighborhood Park, and land acquisition feasibility in county. Next slide, please. Let me stop for a moment to talk about the different groups that we have in Public Works, and I'm gonna start with operations and maintenance. They keep the city functioning.

Operations and maintenance is the most visible part of Public Works. These are the crews residency where potholes are patched, signs are replaced, parks are cleaned, graffiti is removed, facilities facilities are repaired, vehicles are maintained, and emergencies happen. The pressure on this group is significant because much of the workload is reactive. Vandalism, illegal dumping, copper wire theft, encampment impacts, aging facilities, deferred maintenance, storms, and emergency repairs all pull the staff away from planned work. Next slide, please.

I wish I will be able to read all what we have per every single group, but I think you have it there and you will be able to it on your free time. I don't want I want to move forward a little bit more with the data. We'll get to that. Next slide, please. And this is the second slide from operations and maintenance. You have the five groups that have operations and maintenance. Next slide please. The strategic shift we need is simple. More preventative maintenance, fewer emergency repairs. Preventative maintenance is cheaper, cleaner and smarter.

Emergency response is expensive and ugly, and Richmond has been leaving too much in emergency mode. We receive constantly your offer to how can we help. You have said it in public, and sometimes I haven't been able to express specifics. And I'm going to start with the fair help I need. We need to maintain the assets we already own before they become more expensive failures.

Next slide, please. The next group is engineering and transportation. They deliver projects, but the pipeline is overloaded. Engineering and transportation are managing capital projects delivery, development reviews, permits, traffic safety, active transportation and mobility programs. This team is managing more than 80 CIP projects through planning, design, bidding, construction and closeout.

They are also responding to traffic safety concerns, city council requests, grant requirements, design coordination, permit reviews, and construction inspections. The work is technical, deadline driven, and very easy to underestimate from the outside. When new projects are added without stopping or sequencing existing work, we do not create more capacity. We create more competition for the same staff time. That is where projects slow down, Not because people are not working, but because everything becomes priority number one.

And when everything is priority number one, guess what? Nothing is. Next slide, please. This is the same concept. I'm gonna leave it up to you to read out your free time. Next slide, please. Next slide. Here is where I ask for help number two. For fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven, the best thing we can do for the CIP delivery is focus on completing the projects already in motion. Next slide, please.

The next group is water resource recovery. Here is where we where we have high risk, high compliance, high cost infrastructure. Water resource recovery is one of the highest risk areas in public works because it deals with regulatory compliance, wastewater treatment oversight, sanitary sewer collection, storm water collection, industrial pretreatment program, fats, oils and grease program, national pollutant discharge elimination system, MS four permit, sanitary sewer overflows, and long term infrastructure planning. Next slide please. The operations of the wastewater treatment plant, sanitary sewer collection, and storm water collection are currently performed by Veolia, but the city still owns the infrastructure and carries major oversight and regulatory responsibility.

That distinction is important. Next slide, please. We are advancing the owner's advisor process and operator procurement because the next agreement must be modern, performance based, measurable, and much stronger on accountability, reporting emergency response, compliance, and city oversight. But even the best contract does not manage itself. This is an area where staffing is not just about workload, it is about risk management.

Help number three, the city needs adequate water resource recovery staff to monitor compliance, oversee the operator, manage reporting obligations and plan infrastructure investments before problems become violations, failures or emergencies. Next slide please. The final group is Strategic Services, the heating engine that makes delivery possible. Strategic Services is the heating engine of public works. This group handles contracts, invoices, grants, capital planning, reporting, asset management support, special projects, and administrative coordination.

This is not paperwork for the sake of paperwork. This is how projects get awarded, vendors get paid, grants stay compliant, insurance is verified, budgets are tracked, and council receives better information. The presentation shows that Public Works is carrying a very large share of the city's contract value and invoice volume. That means administrative capacity is directly connected to project delivery. If this unit is overloaded, projects slow down, period. No magic wand, no unicorn with a clipboard. Next slide, please. Same concept. Slide. Thank you.

This is help number four. Modern public works requires modern systems. Asset management, digital workflows, performance tracking, and clean data. Slide next slide, please. So I'm going to just repeat the four elements that we're asking.

The help number one, we need to maintain the assets we already own before they become more expensive failures. Help number two, for fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven, the best thing we can do for CIP delivery is focus on completing the projects already in motion. Help number three, the city needs adequate water resource recovery staff to monitor compliance, oversee the operator, manage reporting obligations, and plan infrastructure investment before problems becomes violation, failures, or emergencies. Finally, help number four, modern public works requires modern systems. Asset management, digital workflows, performance tracking, and clean data.

Next, please. This is the part that I think a lot staff enjoyed to put together the most. The data history, maintain, repair, replace what we own. This data section is where the story becomes very clear. Richmond owns a large infrastructure portfolio and many of those assets need maintenance, repair, replacement, or modernization.

This is not only about building new things, it is about protecting what the city already owns. Next slide, please. In the first slide, we we talk about a series of assets that are in the public right away. You see I mean, I know there's a lot of information in this slide. I I wanna just bring your attention for a moment to the four rectangles that you see at the bottom. The first one is sidewalks. We have 500 miles inventory of sidewalks, and there are over 120,000 repairs identified. That equivalents to $51,000,000 just to repair them. I'm not talking about building new sidewalk, just to repair them. Dollars 51,000,000.

In traffic and pedestrian signals, we only have so far 5% of the inventory. And we have identified two seventeen repairs needed. That's about $6,000,000 and counting. In the street signs, we have almost 38,000 street signs. So when I receive a request, let's change a sign to this or that, I have to multiply that not by two or three, I have to multiply it by thousands.

In whatever we spend there, not only in funding, but also in staff time, we are not spending in other signs that probably require a replacement or retouching. That is almost $3,000,000 Then we're talking about the street lights. In the street lights, we're talking about we have 9,156 street lights. These are not the ones that we are missing that maybe we should have in some area. These are only the ones we have. Out of those, we have 884 repairs identified. To give you a proportion, I think and I don't know if we might I'm talking out of class here, but I don't think we even have a 100 signs

with

the solar lighting that we we are doing right now, right?

No.

Okay. So just to give you a a proportion, we need eight eighty four, right? And finally, ADA curb ramps. There are almost 6,000 ADA curb ramps in the city. We need to upgrade more than 4,000 of them.

That's $37,200,000 Altogether, it's 103,000,000 just repairs. Next slide, please. Giving a little bit of idea what the administrative staff do in public works, they they manage more than 70% of all the contracts value in the city. If you can see there, the the public works manage about two twenty five contracts. And in that table, you have the top five departments in the city.

Next slide please. Invoices paid. So in this fiscal year, from July to April, the Polyworks department has paid more than $55,000,000 in invoices. That is about 7,500 invoices in that period. Get back for a moment. Yeah. Just wanna let that sink in. And that's about 750 invoices per month. And the month doesn't have thirty days, working days. Next slide, please.

The administrative staff also pays all the the the the I mean, we thanks to them, we have light in this building right now because the bills are being paid. We paid almost $4,800,000 to PG and E so far. That's almost 28,000 invoices. And to East Bay Motte, a little bit over $1,500,000 almost 1,000 invoices so far. Now one thing that I can tell you, unfortunately, we have not had the time and that's what we want, get the time to analyze every single one of these invoices.

I don't know what we can find, but I mean, I don't know if maybe there's some savings there that we haven't identified yet. Next slide, please. In Facilities, out of the 41 general buildings that we assess with a consultant, we're talking about $28,000,000 in repairs and 88 upgrades. Again, these are only these are repairs. These are not CIP.

There's not improvements like we're gonna build another another building or we're gonna we're gonna do it like a library project. This is replacing the HVAC, replacing doors, the lighting, minor things that add up to $28,000,000. Then you have 10 community centers, and that adds up to $30,000,000 in repairs and ADA upgrades. Next slide, please. When we move to parks and open spaces, you have we have 54 parks in the city or 57 with the Greenbelt, if you want to split some of them.

We have 15, not three. I know we focus on only three, but we have 15 current CIP projects related with parks and open spaces right now. Dollars 49,000,000. Out of those, 12 are grant funded. We have $37,000,000 in grants.

We have received 10 more projects we have the request is for 10 more projects, so that will make it 25, right? That's $60,000,000 more that we're going to need. The operations and maintenance budget, I mean roughly speaking is $12,500,000 when you add all general fund and what it goes to the special districts. And you have the two special districts. And in terms of the assets that we maintain is three thirty two acres of park, 106 acres of high fire zone, 70 acres of streetscape.

We thought that it was less than 15. But now with the new supervisor, he told us it's not 15, it's 70. So I mean, you can see the difference of what we think or what it really is. We're going to embark right now in our tree inventory. Right now, we estimate that our tree is our total 22,000 of them.

We have 500 plus trash receptacles in the two maintenance districts. And with that, I just want to point out that the top right, that when you talk about CIP, we're talking about the one engineering staff. Darcy, can you raise your hand, please? She's the 15 active plus the 10 new in counting, right? Then we have 48 to 60 operations and maintenance staff depending on the temporary staff that we have at the time.

Next slide please. When we talk about repairs in parks, I mean playgrounds, we're talking about we need about $3,000,000 to repair them, right? The playgrounds, in all the playgrounds in the city. The courts, the grass fields, the restrooms, these are repairs, not new restrooms. This is repairs.

Lighting and other repairs that adds to 11,000,000 If we want to continue with renovating the remaining parks, we need over $283,000,000 today's dollars. If we do it, if we talk about that next year, it's going be more. Next year. Now let's move to pavement. It's an asset that is about $800,000,000 and you can see there our pavement condition index.

This is the score that street sections receive and as a city, as a network, every city receives a PCI score. You can see that the City Of Richmond currently has a PCI score of 59. Personally, I would like to be in the 64, 65 or above, But it's a big overtake to get to that point. I'm going to show in the next slide. Don't go there yet.

But I just want to say that if you see San Pablo and El Cerrito, they are sixty three and sixty four. So, I'm not afraid to say that I want to be regarding to the PCI at Sao Paulo or El Cerrito. Next slide, please. So this is how our PCI score will deteriorate in the next ten years with the current budget that we have. We have a budget of $6,300,000 and everything comes comes from gas tax.

Utah and SB one. Gas tax is component is is it has two elements, Utah and SB one. But it's $6,300,000. This fiscal year, the city added more funds to the program. But it's not something that is guaranteed to happen every year unless there is a commitment. So what we propose is to invest $80,000,000 every year. That means $11,700,000 more than what we have right now. So, if we don't do it, if we stayed at 6.3, the PCI score in ten years is gonna drop to 48. Can you go to the slide before? You can see that Pinot has 51.

So we will be leading this chart of 48, but not in the best way. Next slide, please. But if we invest the $80,000,000 per year total, I mean, I'm talking about 6.3 plus 11.7, our PCI score in ten years can get to 64, which would be like El Cerrito or Sao Paulo. Next slide, please. Talking about traffic safety, we're showing the map of the High Injury Corridors.

Sixty three percent of all crashes in Richmond happened in eight percent of all roadways. Next slide, please. Here it shows fatal crashes between 02/2019 and 2025. Next slide please. And also, fatal and severe injury crashes. Next slide please. Here, we're showing the same map in the High Injury Corridors with some projects that have been built already or are in design process. We expect this some of these projects are going to be in construction this year. Some of these projects will be in construction next year. But they're in motion.

Unfortunately, because people don't see it, have the feeling that there's nothing is happening. But there's a lot of work happening right now. Next slide please. In transportation services, I want to point out our para transit that we do it with our own vans and with Lyft. Next slide.

And the Richmond Moves program. Let's go to the next slide. I have some data there. So talking about 2025, actually you can see the last 2024 there, where we have almost 19,000 rights. But in 2025, you can see quarter one, two, and March, and a total of about 86,000 rides in Richmond Moves.

One of the biggest destinations, I think if not the largest destination, is Richmond High School. Remember this program, if you're a student or a senior, you don't pay for it. And the cost, if you have to pay as long as it's inside the city limits, is $2 So you want to go to Costco, you want to come to the city council meeting, right? At least at the beginning. If you're a senior or a student, it doesn't cost you.

Next slide please. Now our biggest asset, an asset that we're talking about wastewater treatment plant, the sanitary sewer collection system, and the storm water collection system. You can argue that this asset is $2,000,000,000 The wastewater treatment plant has a capacity of 24 millions of gallons per day, And the total replacement cost is in that range. Same similar to the 185 miles of sanitary sewer pipes. Almost 2,800 manholes, 13 lift stations and then that storm water collection system is 94 miles of pipes that includes 3,300 catch basins, 1,200 manholes, 12 miles of ditches, seven pump stations.

Hold on. Is that okay? Next slide, please. This summary slide identifies more than two seventy million dollars in non repairs and maintenance needs before even fully pricing wastewater and storm water maintenance. This is the sober reality.

Richmond has major assets, and those assets need disciplined reinvestment. These are not CIPs. So the question for fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven should not be what new project can we add? The question should be how do we finish what we started, maintain what we own, and build the systems needed to make better investment decisions? Public works is ready to deliver, but delivery requires discipline.

We need to finish current projects, protect existing assets, invest in maintenance and create the systems that move us from reactive response to planned service delivery. The team is working hard. The data is getting better. The direction is becoming clearer, but the next step is focus. In fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven, the most responsible path is not to keep adding more to the pipeline.

Responsible path is to complete what is already underway, maintain what we already own, and prepare the next generation of infrastructure investment through planning, asset management and data driven prioritization. Next slide please. This final slide is really the bridge to the next conversation with council. Tonight, we are showing the size of the public works workload, the condition of the assets we are responsible for, and the level of investment needed just to maintain and repair what the city already owns. The next presentation, the programmatic approach and capital improvement programs update on May 26 is where we move from what are the needs to how do we prioritize sequence and fund and deliver them.

That is why fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven is so important. We need to use this year to stabilize the current CIP portfolio, protect existing infrastructure, improve asset data, and build the systems that allow council to make decisions based on conditions, risk, funding, readiness, and community impact, not just the loudest or the most recent request. We need to finish what we started, maintain what we own, and plan the next round of investment with better data. Thank you very much.

Alright. We're almost to the end. In terms of next steps, the exciting month ahead, we on May 19, we'll be bringing forward our master fee schedule and we'll cover some more departmental presentations that will include community services, economic development, and fire. And then on May 26, we'll cover our capital improvement program presentation and then we'll cover the remaining departmental presentations which is internal services, attorney's office, city clerk, city manager's office. And then throughout that time, finance will track all city council questions and will work with the departments to prepare the responses for the budget checklist.

So then, and I covered May 26, and then June 16 we'll come back with the budget checklist follow-up with hopefully final adoption on June 23. So tonight, we're not asking for any decisions to be made on the budget, and here is the recommended action in front of you to acknowledge the receipt of the draft budget and the CIP, review the budget adoption schedule, and receive an update on departmental operations with discussions upon completion of all departmental presentations. And that's all we have for you tonight. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Public speakers?

Yes. We have two in person public speakers, Cordell Hinler and Claudia Citroen, and one speaker online, iPhone 82.

Okay. So good evening, mayor Martinez, counsel. For the record, I am Cordell Henle, and I did attend the budget meeting the April. And it was my idea to have all of my items regarding job classification, street repairs, and other things. It was my idea. I do you do get some credit for that one. That's right. Thank you city staff for these presentations. And so after listening to them, I said, there's still work to be done for each department. So I like the presentation. I have my own little budget checklist, which I will share on May 26. You're going have to wait till then. So with that, Claudia, it's all yours.

All right. I'm just going to conclude also with the words the last presentation ended. These are just a known repair sobering reality, not VIP projects. We need to maintain, move from reactive to proactive management. Responsible path is to focus data driven action, protect infrastructure, and it's not about the loudest or the pushiest one to get what is being done.

I have just so much respect for Lina and for public works. This is astounding, amazing, remarkable. These are definitely more than sixty hours all of you put in every week, and, oh my god. So if I can just have, like, thirty seconds silence to acknowledge, you know, all the employees and city manager and city attorney who keeps all you going like, yeah, and then to really think, oh my god, so let's just use like one minute and thirteen seconds, twelve seconds. And I yield my time, thank you so much.

Thank you. In that amount of time, I'm sure Public Works has completed three projects.

That was our last in person speaker. Now we'll move to the online speaker.

The online speaker is identified as iPhone 82. You will have up to two minutes to address the council and please state your complete name for the record.

Alright. Good evening, city council members. Can folks hear me okay?

Yes.

Yes. Great. Hi, everyone. My name is Jillian Della Torre, and I'm with Healthy Contra Costa. I also grew up in West County.

And so I wanna uplift the importance of considering the city of Richmond's ongoing race equity work as we move through the current budget cycle. First and foremost, I wanna acknowledge the hard work that has been contributed and the dedication that has been shown to this work over the years and recent months from Trina and Jasmine and others. I also wanna emphasize that this work would benefit from a full time dedicated staff person. This is an analyst role or a different position, I wanna urge the city council to consider the importance of race equity work within the city that this can be resourced and supported in a real way. This would include addressing and integrating the goals of the race equity action plan, the city council's various race equity initiatives, including the black resiliency fund and the immigrant fund, departmental race equity priorities, including the health and all policies goals, and the commitments to develop departmental equity statements and to initiate deliberations on a budget equity tool.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you. There are no more speakers.

Alright, public comment is closed and now it's time for questions from the city council. There will be no answers because we won't be able to ask that many questions. We will write them down and send them to staff so that staff will be able to make a presentation in answering those questions. So do we have any? Vice Mayor?

Yeah. So I wanted to say thank you. That was a lot of information, a lot of things. And I I have a a comment, and then I'm gonna I have too many questions to read them all. But I have a comment that I think I I think it's important to say. One is I think that the reason why we're at this moment where we can have the questions in front of us today is because this council has been focusing on how to work with staff to fix these things, how to get an assessment. These are things that we voted for. These are things that we brought forward actually. The parks and facilities assessment was a council requested thing. Hiring more staff in order to address all these things was a council supported thing.

The reason why we got to a place where we were actually have a system to inventory all of the street signs is because I requested that we bring back street sweeping. And then in doing that, we learned a whole lot about what we didn't know and what we didn't have in place and what we didn't have budgeted and we started and said we needed an inventory of street signs or whatever. So this is a part of a whole process that actually a lot has come from council requests. So I really want us to consider that counsel requests needs to be also a part of what we're doing. It can't be the evil enemy because it's actually actually the impetus for many of the work much of the work that you're you're talking about started in the seed of our request.

And the other thing that I wanna really put in people's minds is where do these requests come from? They come from residents. I was not sitting at home alone dreaming about bringing back street swooping. I was going to neighborhood council meetings where they were talking about how this is something they felt like was a serious issue, so it was probably the same thing with the blue curb policy, same thing with, you know, the MLK Center, you know, the the not having a park in Pullman. This is residents using their elected official to express their needs.

Some needs, like with Parchester Village, had been unheard, undealt with, not dealt with for decades, speaking into the void. So I really want staff to understand that as elected officials, we have a role as well. Right? We're supposed to be out in community. If we're out in community, community tells us things, and community says, this is the problem we need you to bring and raise and we do nothing, then we're not doing our job.

So I would also request of everyone who spoke tonight, everyone who is going to speak, how do we make it easier to communicate the needs of community members and work them into workflow instead of have it be something that works against workflow? Because I do not think it's the right answer to say we can't have things that come from council. Because if we're doing our jobs right, what we're doing is communicating to you what we're hearing from from residents and what we're with the needs that we're seeing. So I really would like to request that everyone think about how can we do that better? How can we do it so it's not a burden?

How can we do it so that it goes into some kind of priority? So there's transparency. So there's accountability. I requested the blue curve policy because I have a number of seniors in my district who have problems parking close enough to their house so they can actually walk home safely. I requested that my first year over three years ago to have clarity because there's different rules being used for different people in different neighborhoods and lots of people waiting in line and no one getting what they needed.

It's still not done. That was not some personal project. That was senior citizens and people who are disabled who can't get to their house from where they parked or have the people who are giving them support be close enough to give them aid. So I just wanna know how do we work better together. And I'd really like to ask all staff just to help me. I don't wanna put a burden on you. I see the fabulous work you're doing, but I also have a responsibility to bring forward the things that residents tell me and seek solutions. So I have a long list of other questions. I'm gonna send them via email, and thank you.

Council member Jimenez.

Yeah. Thank you, staff for the presentation and for this great presentation. I will and I will echo what, council member Robinson said because I know that there is this dilemma about how we bring things to answer the issues and problems that our community are dealing with. And then they feel like, oh, it's another thing. Well, it's another thing.

And it's going to be like that until we create a way to kinda like merge and work together in that way. But I am happy to see all of these things. And I was just thinking about also, especially in the public works department, there is a lot of work that is happening. How we communicate that better to residents is key because sometimes what I receive some inquiries about what is happening in this area and I see, oh, that is coming, it's not coming this year, but next year. So I think that and I also wanted to thanks especially the Public Works Department as well because a lot of the inquiries that I received from residents has to deal with the light that is broken and is stopped because we have better staffing, is able to reply and resolve things like that that is in the maintenance part of work really quickly or fairly quickly.

Before, people were not receiving any information and now they are happy with the responses, most of them. I have some questions. It's just like few question and then others, I look at these more closely, I will be sending more questions. But for Lina, my question is, we are one of the things that we are talking about with the McDonald task force, bringing more housing. We see the need for more housing in the city to bring more revenue and to add more housing in the city and revitalize downtown.

How many staff in the housing division do we have? And if this is going to be enough for the vision of revitalizing downtown and other projects that are coming up in the pipeline because we don't want that other things happen like we are going to to hear in the public hearing tonight. For the public works department and and and excuse me. And for Lina, for the goals that she is mentioning that she wants to address for this year, if she has the right staffing to really get to that place. For public works department, I would like one of the things that I I I we we allocated this year $10,000,000 in the pavement.

Right? So it's 6.3 that is we had been allocating, but then there were some surplus or right? And we allocated some for the pavement. Is that correct? Because this is what we were told from from the staff.

And then I think I just wanna comment in terms of staffing. Think one of the things that we saw that was inquiries and from the community is around the street safety issues, and we had been advocating heavily here to provide more support. So we created a street calming division, and then we saw that there was a need, and now we have two planners in that division, and I am looking forward to see what they are coming up with the $6,000,000 that we allocated to for that work with this this year's surplus as well. Thank you.

Council member Brown. Thank

you so much for all the departments who shared today. I appreciate the comprehensive reporting. It was really a reality check as to all the things that we pass up here and seeing them actually being materialized. I think that it was, again, a reality check, from the public works department. I have a slew of questions because it was a lot to take in, and so, I'll email them over.

And city manager, will the questions that we submit be provided to the public and including the responses from each department? Yes. Okay. Great. Also, in what was mentioned, earlier is that after getting all the information, I kinda felt a little defeated, a little, just a little, because of what the city brings in and what we spend.

And then we have all these big, huge, gigantic numbers. And it's like, what came to mind is, will we ever catch up? And so I want to see a way that we could break down these large numbers. I mean, because it's really scary for some folks that are not familiarized with budgets and forecasts and all those things to actually be able to kind of digest them and say, like, yes, this is a lot, but we're gonna do it, and this is how we're gonna do it. Because I don't I don't again, I don't wanna feel defeated.

And I kinda feel that way, when I'm writing down the questions and then just looking at all of the numbers. Also, I just wanna commend the city staff for the amazing work that you all continue to do. This is not easy. I don't believe I could do it. I probably have been checked out myself, but thank you guys for sticking with us. And so I'm just wanting to know if we could just prepare just like in the future of of more of a digestible sort of, like, scope of how we plan to get to where we need to be. Thank you.

Councilmember Bana.

Thank you. I was very impressed by all the presentation. It shows how active our departments are, how they work well, they have a good command, good knowledge on top of the situation. Everything's awesome, it's just that the City Council also works well and it's a few steps ahead of them and we need to figure out how to close the gap. I have some minor questions.

I'm going to read them fast. But I have two major points that are more systemic. And I'm going to start with them. Number one is homelessness. It's a major issue, major cost to the fire department, to the police department, to the homeless themselves, to other residents, to economic development, to our businesses.

One of them spends $500,000 for security per year to avoid fire. A woman who was a resident in my district had mental health issues was killed as homeless last year, which is very sad. We need to find the solution. And I know the city, all the city departments are just too busy to shift gear and find the solution. But the city does have some vacant lots around East Area Rescue Mission, and maybe we can build a navigation center. I know it takes money, it takes effort, energy, huge project, but I would This like

us is questions, not for suggestions.

It is. It is a question about how we shift gear because when we are very busy, we just keep the direction we are in. We cannot steer away from, you know, a status quo. But at some point, we have to do it. Number two is, I don't know if it's the question is, is it IT process or whatever it takes? There are many complaints about the permit process that's not straightforward, takes long, confusing. I had the experience myself unfortunately, so hopefully we can do something about it. And now my quick questions. First of all, requests for every table, please next to the table have a bar chart. That will help a lot.

When you list

Excuse me, you're still making suggestions. This is time for questions.

So the question is can you make bar charts please? And can you list the value amount next to items like digitization? If it's $5,000 let's go for it. If it's $5,000,000 maybe it can wait. The rent program, the question is why do we have to pay $529,000 to an entity that we cannot evaluate and have no oversight?

Can we slash it? Can we have a grant office so the staff spend their time on implementation and we can outsource the application process, which could be more effective? And can we see the results of the need assessment? I assume it's done but I didn't see the results. If you could share it, that'd be awesome.

And I believe the fire chief hats an item that was supposed to be on the agenda tonight. I wonder why it's not and are those numbers included in the budget? I would appreciate there is an answer about that. For to the police department, I wonder if the rock has helped with reducing the load. And any cost or update on the substation at Hilltop.

To the public works, I understand all the load and everything, but maybe we can just prioritize public safety, not just public works, departments like signage and painting and fire lanes. And I don't know what the street escape means. Is that evacuation routes? So, make the next presentation, you know, more explanatory. I appreciate it. I spoke in Morse code to be brief, so thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Wilson?

Yeah, just briefly, one of the things I don't see in the attachments, but again, I might have missed it. There's a lot of attachments, is for the I see on attachment six that we have a list of the capital improvement projects along with which is a delightful addition I believe new this year with their CIP score because we spent a lot of time coming up with criteria and I see that there's scores on 50 many projects? 57. That that work's been done. I can't tell from the list though.

I can see which are partially funded and which are unfunded. But I still don't I can't tell like what's the plan for the coming year and you know, so because the category at the top is the ten year plan. So, maybe that's a future presentation but some more clarity about what are we funding, what are we going to fully fund and implement year one, year twos and so forth. However far out that's known. And just sort of a question building on previous comments, I think that if there is a way that not just public works, but all departments can sort of think about, for me, the most important thing is that we are going to bring ideas and I think I'm not expecting any department to implement everything, know, the same month, the same year even that it's brought forward.

But can departments sort of come up with suggestions for ways that they can keep track of what the requests that are coming from the council, which as Vice Mayor Robinson said, ultimately are coming from the public, and have that be a transparent thing that anybody in the public can see. And then for us to have, I'm happy to have discussions about prioritization and timelines and things, and maybe that will relieve some of the pressure on staff, is that if we make clear that we know that not everything can happen all at once, you know, immediately when we ask for it, so if that can be developed. Thanks.

Thank you. Much thanks to staff for giving us an overhead view of everything that's being done and I know that we'll have two more presentations taking this further into the complexity of the workings of the city. I do have one question that I want to share now, and this is a question not only for staff, it's for council. You said that before we had five eighty two FTEs and we added 91, which means that we have six seventy three FTEs now. You also said that we will be able to afford six eighty four FTEs, which means 13 new positions.

So the question is, with all the needs in all the departments, how do we, staff and city council, figure out where those 13 positions will go? So I think it's a very important question that we need to give a lot of thought to. There's been suggestions made about shifting the monies around, but I think that these presentations will give us a better idea of how to do that. So where do we put those 13 positions? That's my question. Thank you so much. So with that, we will move on to the next item.

We need a motion to receive.

I move the item.

I second.

Council Member Brown?

Yes.

Council Member Bana?

Yes.

Council Member Jimenez? Yes. Council Member Wilson?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Robinson?

Yes.

And Mayor Martinez?

Yes.

The motion passes with council member Zapata absent.

Mister mayor, the Montezuma, the if if residents are here to present, and I wonder if we can just give them five minutes for presentation. So because they have been like, they were last time last city council here and what I asked last city council is that we can put this item first on the agenda. And I think council approve it and but now it's below three more items. So, I wonder if we can just move it and give them five minutes to presentation.

It's just it's just one item. We will only have one more item before

No.

Our next item is public hearing.

So, I wonder if we can move the presentation right now and give them five minutes for presentation.

I believe we need to do the public hearing.

Okay, our next item under public hearing. Pursuant to public notice, it's time to hold a public hearing to consider two appeals of the Planning Commission's conditional approval of the Marina Pointe Residential Project, and that's PLN 20 three-one 117, and adopt a resolution modifying the conditions in response to the appeals and otherwise affirming the Planning Commission's conditional approval. And I'll just read the procedures for this public hearing. First, we'll hear the staff report, then we'll have questions from counsel. The mayor will open the public hearing.

We'll hear from appellate number one, presentation, eight minutes. Then we'll hear from appellate number two, presentation, eight minutes. Public comments, three minutes per per per speaker. Appellate number one will have a rebuttal for two minutes. Appellate number two, rebuttal for two minutes. And then we'll close the public hearing. And then council deliberation and action. If there's anyone joining us online that would like to address the council during this public hearing, please raise your hand at this time.

Okay. We'll begin with staff report.

Good evening, mayor, council members. Lina Velasco, director of community development. With me this evening is Avery Stark, our planning manager, as well as James Atencio, our senior assistant city attorney, who will I'll be handing it off to do the presentation.

Good evening, mayor Martinez, council member, Richmond City Council, and members of the public. Again, Avery Stark, planning manager here with the city of Richmond. Tonight, I will be presenting on the appeals for the Planning Commission's conditional approval of the Marina Point residential project. This evening's hearing is not a reevaluation of the project as a whole, but rather a focused review on the specific issues raised in the two appeals. Why we're here tonight.

So on March 5, Commission approved the project with several conditions and then duly filed appeals were provided to the city clerk on March 12. And again, to reiterate, your role this evening is to determine whether the Planning Commission's decision was supported by substantial evidence based on only the issues raised in those appeals. A brief project overview for the commission or for the council. Again, this is for the proposed development of 70 single family homes with 30 additional junior accessory dwelling units on a roughly five acre site in the Marina Bay neighborhood at the terminus of Marina Way. The entitlement includes a major development design permit, a conditional use permit, and a vesting tentative map for the subdivision of the land.

Here we have an aerial of the project location on the left hand side. You see the four building off to your left and the Rosie the Riveter on the left. And then off to the right, you have the Lucretia Edwards Park and the school. And then in the right image, have highlighted in red the actual project site that is being proposed for this project this evening. So due to timing requirements under SB three thirty, this project is considered deemed consistent for the processing purposes even though it does not meet the city's density standards.

This means that the city's discretion is limited to applying objective standards only, and we cannot deny the project based on any policy inconsistencies. The first appeal, appeal A, is from the applicant. The applicant's appeal focuses on concerns around shoreline conditions and regulation exposure, JADU requirements, the number the no net loss analysis requirement, and infrastructure contribution condition. Appeal B is from TRAC, and the Trails Enrichment Action Committee focuses on the adequacy of shoreline improvements, the lack of enforceable conditions, and the request to require those improvements to be prior to the first occupancy. Four, at its core the council is being asked to resolve one central question, and is how do we achieve shoreline improvements in a way that is enforceable, feasible, and legally defensible.

Staff's approach was to refine, not remove, these conditions by, one, replacing any vague language that we had in our conditions of approval, adding clear, enforceable requirements where necessary, avoiding conditions that were tied to external approvals of other agencies or parties, and ensuring the compliance with the various state housing laws. In regards to the shoreline solution, the revised conditions now require a detailed shoreline design package, landscaping access and amenities. This will be done and submitted for administrative approval so that no new entitlement is created. And the dedication of this shoreline parcel to the city of Richmond. The appeal is by track, requests the improvements be completed before the issuance of the first certificate of occupancy, and to note that this challenge is one that would require approval from the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, otherwise known as BCDC.

Again, that is a process outside of the city's control. While we cannot tie occupancy to an external agency's timeline, as doing so would create legal risks and could delay the housing delivery indefinitely. Instead, our primary goal was to work to revise the conditions as presented to come together on a mutually beneficial project for the city of Richmond and its residents. So one, the required of the design to be completed and provided by the developer, require of said construction if approvals are obtained as necessary from BCDC, where I will shepherd and lead those efforts for the city, And then include in the event an escrow mechanism for timing if delayed and we're unable to secure the necessary permits from BCDC prior to a certain point of their development. Again, this ensures the improvements will still occur without creating an infeasible condition for the developer.

This project also raises a separate issue under state law. This site was assumed to accommodate significantly more housing in the housing element, and as a result, the city is required to evaluate compliance with a no net loss under government code section sixty five thousand eight and sixty three. The condition that was in place and is there now is the condition requires a third party analysis which will be funded by the applicant to effectively audit and understand the current status of our housing inventory and sites management list for our housing element. Regarding the infrastructure contribution, the original condition required a signalization contribution to the intersection of Marina Way and Hall. However, without sufficient documentation, that condition would leave us legally vulnerable.

And so the revised condition reflects a negotiated $25,000 contribution towards the Richmond Wellness Trail Phase II extension, which is a defensible condition of approval. And for clarification regarding a revised condition of approval, staff would like to clarify that due to an administrative oversight in the process of uploading the final documentations, A final condition was missed. It was inadvertently omitted. Condition 69, which requires the removal of the proposed parking along Marina Way South, which is identified as guest parking or off-site parking for this development. It would require that the applicant just simply revise the project plans to remove that and would be provided to the city prior to the during the submittal of their building permit.

This condition reflects the direction and coordination between the planning department, our TCC, and public works, and is consistent with circulation approaches presented by the Phase II Richmond Wellness Trail. Staff respectfully ask that counsel additionally consider and incorporate this condition, which is provided in the corrected copy distributed to you at the dais and is highlighted in yellow. Council and the planning department also received several public comments, including correspondence shared with council members requesting that the shoreline improvements be completed prior to the issuance of the first certificate of occupancy. Staff wants to acknowledge that we share the same goal by providing a high quality shoreline access and improvements consistent with the Bay Trail. However, the request's condition would require approval from the San Francisco BCDC, and is something that is outside of our control.

We cannot legally tie the occupancy to an external agency's process, as that introduces risks and could delay the housing delivery inevitably. And in response to these concerns, staff has strengthened the condition to ensure that, first and foremost, a detailed shoreline design is required. And when I say shoreline design, I am speaking to a landscape, amenities, walking paths, benches, the little dog business pickup station, and things of that nature. Improvements will be constructed where feasible within that shoreline area, which is roughly looked at as the 100 feet from Meade to Highwater within the bay. And we have a clear mechanism to ensure implementation of that development and of those improvements as public improvements.

So while the timing differs from the requested questions received, the outcome still remains the same, is that the shoreline improvements will be required and will be delivered in a way that is enforceable and legally sound for the city of Richmond. Again, are not removing the requirement. We are just structuring it so it can be achieved effectively. And to close, this project is moving forward with the considerations of a number of state laws and housing bills. And the question tonight is really around whether or not the project proceeds, but how the conditions can be structured in order to achieve the best possible outcome.

The revisions before you are very intentional. They've been designed to strike a careful balance between delivering meaningful public benefit, respecting legal limitations, and ensuring the project remains feasible to implement. In summary, the revised conditions improve enforceability to respond to TRAC's concerns, maintain feasibility in response to the applicants, and position the city to act in a way that is clear, defensible, and compliant within all of the state laws. Staff recommends that the City Council hold a public hearing with the modified procedures to account for the two appeals as outlined by the clerk, and then adopt a resolution modifying the conditions of approval in response to the appeals and otherwise affirming the Planning Commission's approval. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Okay. Are there questions? Councilmember Wilson?

Hi, could you say a little bit more about the change in number 69? What's motivating that?

So the Richmond Wellness Trail phase two, as designed along Marina Way there, will be a small road diet and the addition of a class three bike lane, which will be a protected bike lane. And the concern about having additional perpendicular or 90 degree parking being added on Marina Way would create conflict where cars would be backing out or driving in where bicyclists would be making their way down that roadway now, which would become a bike lane, into Lucretia Edwards Park, where they would then join Richmond Bay Trail. So the removal of that component is being in collaboration with Public Works, again, and TCC as we work on that design to ensure feasibility and success of safety for both residents and for bicyclists.

Okay. I just wanted, could you say a little bit more about the, I think what, I liked how it was stated in the agenda report that, the council's role is to determine whether the Planning Commission errored in its decision based solely on the issues raised in the appeals rather than to conduct a de novo review of the entire project or to consider issues not specifically raised in the petitions for appeal. Can you explain that a little better? Because I think that's an important distinction.

Absolutely. Thank you, council members. So the focus of this evening and of the action of counsel tonight is to look very specifically at both appeals and the points each one of them raises, one by applicant and one by track, each related specific conditions of approval that the Planning Commission provided. Each condition is then addressed by staff in terms of a revised condition of approval, and the focus is whether or not these revisions to the conditions of approval will continue to further the application, or whether or not Planning Commission's affirmative approval of the project based on the conditions is still sound. So again, the focus is not on the design, the location, the size, the height, the number of units.

It is very strictly limited to the points brought up within the two appeals, that are being presented this evening and outlined in the staff report.

Do other people wanna ask questions?

Any other questions? Oh, Councilmember Baba.

Thank you. So the solution to the appeal by TRAC, was it formulated in collaboration with TRAC, I hope?

Yes. So I did have the opportunity to speak to Bruce in regards to the solution that the city had come to regarding the ability to, again, come to a common ground, an agreement around the ability to have a developer assist in funding for the shoreline development of the park area. Although where we differ is in the timeline request, the city is acknowledging that we cannot require it be done prior to the first certificate of occupancy, which is a key component of TRAX appeal to the planning, to the city council. So although the timeline and the way in which we get to the end result is the same, it is a slightly different mechanism of time.

Is it a matter of your preference and their preference, or?

Unfortunately, it's not necessarily a matter of preference. It is more of a matter of state law. We as the city and through the approval of a housing project cannot unduly burden the applicant. And by tying the potential for a need of a permit by BCDC to, again, an outside agency, something we do not have control over, to the first occupancy permit of a building would be an undue burden. And under state law and within SB three thirty and within state density bonus law, there are provisions and concessions of waivers that would allow a developer to relieve themselves of that.

So in light that, we've worked to, again, ensure our stability within the confines of the limitations that we've got in terms of legal structure.

Okay. Thank you very much. I look forward to hearing from TRAC to see if it's agreeable to them. Thank you.

Just a point of order, like, will we have after the presentations from the appellants, will we have a chance to ask more questions of staff as well as the appellants? Or is this where I have to get all my questions to staff out?

We have

deliberation and action.

Okay, so maybe I do need to get my questions Okay, so just as quickly as I can, the work around that the staff is suggesting for the tract of land between the development and the bay is to have the developer donate the piece of land to the city. And my question is, is that something that is commonly done? Does the city generally own the pieces of land right along the bay between the bay and the developments?

It's a great question, thank you. So yes, the city of Richmond does generally own the land that abuts the bay throughout the city of Richmond. And in this case, the practice of when you do a subdivision of land and you create a separate parcel, and this is parcel C, which is going to be strictly for the area of the park. For it to be deeded back to the city is a very common practice. And further, the applicant, through the conditions of approval, is agreeing to, again, fund the design of the park.

And if we're able to successfully achieve the permits with BCDC, which I feel very confident that we will be able to do, we then also be able to develop that park in alignment with the construction to then turn it back over to the city and then have the maintenance and the costs of the ongoing care of that park be paid for by the HOA.

And just to make it very clear, why don't we just ask the developer to do the BCDC application?

I think that's a reasonable question. That's something that's definitely come up. The developer has tried and has spent a little over two years working with BCDC to try to achieve a permit, and I don't think out of light of trying, but was faced with some inability to achieve their design review board's approval, a recommendation for approval to their main board. And we believe based on our relationship that I have with BCDC staff where we meet quarterly that I'll be able to shepherd that project forward, understanding that there's a possible administrative path that would not require a public hearing. And so yes, although it is an option that they could be required to do, we're taking on that responsibility and effort of getting the best possible public engagement, public portion of the site for the City Of Richmond.

And they're compensating the city for us taking on that road work?

Correct, so effectively by, in the condition of approval, it's outlined as a payment of $150,000 and then when we look at the park in lieu fee, the park dedication fee that's paid for a subdivision of land, we would effectively credit the dollar amount that they would otherwise be spending towards their contribution to designing the park. So if they were required to, in this case, say, pay us $1,500,000 in a fee, if through the design of the park and the cost it comes to $500,000 they would just pay us less than $500,000 in addition to also paying the $150,000

And then my last question on this is, if we were to just say we're not taking this on, we're going to ask the developer to do this and we don't care if it takes two years or five years, etc, what would be the consequences for the city or the possible consequences?

The possible consequences is that we may not ever get a developed park in that portion of the shoreline. Although within the agreement that we've structured, if again they were to be responsible, there would be a payment to the city which would go into an escrow account which we would eventually be able to then use to fund the development of a park. But it is at our, as we've discussed and worked with the developer, we find that it's most advantageous to take that lead and that responsibility for interagency collaboration to be able to proceed and ideally be able to deliver a park in line with the goal of the first certificate of occupancy, but certainly prior to the final. Again, the improvements both benefit the city and the developer in terms of their project.

Council member Jimenez?

Thank you. I have just one question, and it's about the Richmond Municipal Code on the inclusionary housing, and why is this developer not following that?

So I believe the question is specifically looking at the accessory dwelling units and the clustering within the site of the affordable units. And so after reviewing consideration, one, they have submitted a formal request for a state density bonus waiver, which allows them to waive out of a concession that would unduly burden or cost their project and would make it infeasible for them to build housing. And because they are providing 10% of their units or seven units at moderate income, they are eligible for those concessions under state density bonus waiver. Further, HCD has come out with a technical memo advising all of cities within the state of California that although it is maybe contrary to what we would believe on a larger scale to have a clustering or a row of homes that would be affordable in the context of a site in this particular instance through the state, this is something that is considered to be amenable and something they can waive as a concession. So although it does not adhere to our inclusionary housing provisions about equitable distribution and that the units be similar and like to the other amenities, it is something that the state has identified as being an area that they can request a waiver from or a concession from, and then they have.

And my last question is, I heard that this public hearing is about these specific things. It's not about whether we approve or not the project. What are the consequences of not approving these right now for the city?

Wonderful question. So the major consequence of not approving this project would be further litigation between the city and the applicant. The next major step would be that the Attorney General's Office and through HCD have been very actively pursuing cities who violate housing law. And it would put us in jeopardy of one being sued by the Attorney General. It would then also mean that they would likely decertify our housing element, which is a key tool in implementing the city's growth and plans around affordable housing and services.

It would open us up to the builders' remedy, which is a path that we would not want to go down. And so by not approving this project, it really would open up a tremendous amount of legal risk for the near future.

Anyone else? I have a couple of questions. One is about the ADUs, and I don't quite understand why it would be economically more unfeasible to have them integrated, you know, because the plan that they have to cluster them I consider to be economic segregation, which is something that we all want to avoid.

I think that the answer to why from a cost perspective would be best answered by the applicant as it is their project and it was their concession that they requested of counsel and I don't want to speak to the economic feasibility component of their project.

Okay. Maybe they can speak to it when it's their turn to come up. The other thing has to do with BCDC. Your implication that you can do something relational ship through relationship that can't be done by law makes a cell like BCDC is capricious. And I think I would like to know what sorts of roadblocks the applicants felt they couldn't overcome in their conversations with BCDC and what arguments you would make that would convince them.

So I'd let the applicants speak to the arguments and the questions around what made it infeasible for them to seek BCDC's approval. And speaking for myself and for the city of Richmond, again, I'm not indicating at all that my relationship professionally with the planning staff in some way is obfuscating any kind of need for review or permit. We would still seek the same review, submittal, and permit documentation as the applicant had, but we'll be able to potentially do so at an administrative level threshold where because there won't be any physical homes built within that 100 foot shoreline band, and the focus of the improvements would be generally around landscaping, irrigation, plantings, again, thinking it as a park that you'd be able to watch the fourth of July fireworks from, that will be able to navigate both their regulations and requirements around how do we keep the project scope focused so that it can be done administratively. Again, if it needed to be brought to their design review board, that is also still a possibility and something we continue to work with, but I'm confident that there is an approach to developing a park that meets those established criteria and regulations that BCDC has for administrative review of a permit.

Okay, I would assume that that's an argument that they would have made and it was not accepted. If there's no further questions then we'll move on to the next open to public hearings. So are there people in the audience?

We go to the appellant presentation, eight minute.

Okay.

And then the public hearing is after the appellant's

So the appellant, number one.

Mayor Martinez, members of the City Council, my name is Brian Winter. I'm the land use attorney on behalf of the applicant. We have various members of our project team here including Glenn Powells who's the principal on behalf of Guardian Capital, the applicant. Our we we don't have a formal presentation tonight. We wanted to acknowledge the, the work that Avery and city staff have put into this project. They've worked very well with us. We've worked carefully to address the issues that we had, as as the basis for our appeal. I wanna be clear also that this project is approved. The approval of of the project is not on the table, so a a disapproval of the of the requested revisions to the conditions would simply revert back to the Planning Commission's approval. So I want to be very clear about that.

That's as a result of your code provision which doesn't call for de novo appeals. It's specifically limited to appeals where there's an alleged abuse of discretion or a lack of substantial evidence to support the issue in question. So again the project is approved, the only issue here tonight is the resolution of the appeal items and the work that we put in very carefully with your staff to come up with an agreeable approach to address those concerns. I want to also acknowledge that we did formally apply to BCDC for a permit and we met with their staff numerous times. We attended I believe two hearings in front of the BCDC Design Review Board and they made unequivocally clear that they desired that we pull the project completely back from the 100 foot shoreline band.

So the present iteration of the project is as a result of the feedback that we got. I'm a former city attorney and I can say unequivocally that sometimes agencies play more nicely with each other and I do think that Avery is correct in that the agency to agency relationship and talking about the improvements that we will design will likely be more productive than we were able to it go. I also have Steve Riley here who could talk about the project economics to the extent that there's questions about the affordability of the ADUs and the placement of the units. And I'm happy to answer any other questions.

My question was what arguments did you use when you talked to BCDC?

What specific arguments? In what sense?

In the sense of convincing them that they should give you a permit. That's what you were trying to do, right?

Of course, a permit. Yeah. This was several years ago. We made the normal arguments. This is a needed path forward to get the project approved and we were directed, as I recall, by city staff to attempt to get BCDC's approval before we proceeded, but the conversations with BCDC and our designed improvements in that area were not acceptable and they directed us to pull the project back from the shoreline band and we did.

So after you made the concessions to deed the property to the city, did you have further conversations with BCDC to share that with them?

We have not had, to my knowledge, recent conversations with BCDC. Once we pulled the project back from the shoreline ban, we're no longer in their jurisdiction.

So then it seems so it's separate from you, the BCDC?

At this point it is separate from the project, Okay.

Right. Well then that says a lot. Thank you.

Sure.

Any other questions? And you have nothing else to share with us?

No. Happy to answer questions.

Okay.

Thank you. Well

if there's no further questions then we'll move to the second appellate.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Mister mayor, members of the council, for the record, my name is Bruce Byard. I'm the chair of TRAC, Trails for Act Richmond Action Committee aka appellate number two. Track is pleased that staff supports our appeal. Avery, are you ready for the visuals, please? And agrees with us that there should be landscaping and public access improvements in the 50 to 60 foot wide area between the existing Bay Trail and the row of houses on top of the wall.

Slide one is the plan deemed complete in 2023. You can see it includes many public access improvements in the area between the houses and the trail. Therefore, there can be no question that the city has authority under state law to require these improvements in the area between the trail and the houses. The second plan, if you show that Avery, is that approved by the Planning Commission on March 5, leaving a so called open space between the trail and the houses. The so called open space results from the desire of the applicant guardian capital of Carlsbad, California to avoid the need to obtain a BCDC permit.

The desire is completely understandable. Filing an application and obtaining BCDC approval would delay building and selling houses and make it a profit on their investment. BCDC permits are sequential. They will not accept a permit application prior to receiving all local approvals for a project. Guardian Capital could not have previously filed and had a permit application deemed complete with BCDC.

That's not true. It's also inconceivable that BCDC would not improve public access improvements in the shoreline band. That is their mission. Development projects in Richmond starting with Marina Bay in 1980s got BCDC permits for public access improvements in the Shoreline Band and more recently, Shea Holmes did in the Waterline Project. I've never heard of a case in the entire 9 County Bay Area where the city has agreed to get a BCDC permit for an applicant and take title to the shoreline band.

I've never heard of such a thing, certainly not in Richmond. DRAC is recommending that these shoreline improvements be accomplished by simply requiring Guardian Capital to design and obtain BCDC approval for these improvements and having it open for public access prior to issuance to the first certificate of occupancy. This is what's been done in Richmond for years, never the last certificate of occupancy. The agenda report respects Guardian Cabell's desire to approve to avoid obtaining a DC permit and avoids opening the trail to public use at the time of first application. TRAC doesn't believe the four complex shoreline conditions 64 to 67 in the proposed resolution are fair or workable for the city or in the best interest of Bay Trail users.

First, condition 65 states that guarding capital would not be required to receive, to open the trail before the last certificate of occupancy, as I mentioned. Second, these conditions shift from Guardian Capital to the City Of Richmond, the entire burden of obtaining a BCDC permit for designing the shoreline improvement area. In fact, condition 65 states that Guardian Capital has, No obligation to seek, obtain, or participate in seeking or obtaining the required BCDC permit. Finally, things really go to pot under condition 66 if the planning manager has not received a BCDC permit before the project is ready for the twenty fifth certificate of occupancy. For example, the city public works department would have to advertise bidding for construction contractors and manage construction of the improvements between the houses and the trail.

Garden Capital required to place only an inadequate 150 in escrow for the construction of improvements and the HOA with as few as 25 residents would be required to pay the cost of the capital improvements above 1 and 50 ks. The fundamental question here is why the City of Richmond would want to burden its already heavily loaded planning division and public works division staff with obtaining a BCDC permit for this developer and managing construction project, especially for a project that bears no resemblance to requirements of its general plan and zoning ordinance. Slide three, please. Rather than adopting the four shoreline conditions 64 to 67 in the proposed resolution, Tracks X asks that you adopt the following single straightforward new condition. The applicant shall install and maintain landscaping of public access facilities in the space between the San Francisco Bay Trail and its project wall fronting the bay to correct create a seamless linkage between Lucretia Edwards

I'm I'm sorry. Was distracted because this slide didn't show. Could you start from the beginning of the paragraph you were reading?

KCRT, could you please share my screen? Thank you.

Okay, I'll start again. So, what TRAC is asking to adopt is a single straightforward new condition as follows. The applicant shall install and maintain landscaping and public access facilities in the space between the San Francisco Bay Trail and the project's wall fronting the bay to create a seamless linkage between Lucretia Edwards Park and the visitor center for the Rosa Riveter World War II Homefront National Historical Park and obtain all necessary third party permits. These public access facilities shall be open for public use and enjoyment prior to issuance of the first certificate of occupancy for any residents. This is a revision of the language we suggested in our original appeal to avoid making determination regarding BCDC jurisdiction.

So the key differences between our recommended condition and the four recommended in the agenda report are first, trailsides landscaping and public access facilities will be open to the public before the first certificate of accuracy, which has been the case for all of their projects in the past in Richmond. Second, the applicant assumes complete responsibility for filing and obtaining the BCDC permit, which can't be applied for until it gets to city approvals. Third, the City of Richmond does not have to pursue a BCDC permit, deal with design revisions, deal with escrow payments or billing guarding capital for expenses, take title of the land, or manage a construction project. Please adopt tracks recommended straightforward new condition rather than the four conditions 64 to 67 that proposed resolution. It will be much better for the city and for Bay Trail users.

Thank you. If you have any questions, I'll be glad to try to answer.

Okay. Council Member Wilson?

So, there's a number, I think, of factual discrepancies between what some of the things you said and some of the things that staff said, so I'm gonna ask some questions to try to draw that out. You said that $150,000 is for the construction of improvements of the $150,000 the city would be asking for would be to pay for the improvements but my understanding is that is not the money that is for improvements.

That is the amount specified for escrow payment in the conditions proposed in your resolution.

And and my understanding is is that's to compensate the staff for this time they spend working with BCDC, but the actual construction costs come from am I allowed I don't know the process here. Am I allowed to ask staff where the money for the actual improvements come from?

For clarification, yes.

For clarification, yeah.

Yeah, so the cost would be coming from what would otherwise be a contribution to the city for an impact development fee for the Park in Lou dedication to the city. So the project was already required to pay a dollar amount to the city for parkland dedication, and so we'd be using an amount, if it was $100,000 or $200,000 or $300,000 of that fee to be paid to credit them based on the park that they design, build, and maintain to then reduce the fee that they would pay to the city. So again, $150,000 is to more directly cover, like you said, staff time and costs associated with obtaining the permits. The value assessed around the development of the park would be then found as a credit towards the Park in Lou dedication fee.

And do you know how much money we're collecting from the developer into this category of money that will be used I for the

do not have the final number on the top of my head, but I do believe it will be in the like $1 to $2,000,000 range.

And how much of that would you expect we would put towards the park? Do you have that number?

On working with CIP staff and evaluating a park of this size and this acreage, if we went on the low end of very minimal amenities and landscaping, would be about $250,000 If we went on a higher end of amenities, we'd be looking at more like 3 and 50,000 to $450,000 which would be then the credit they would not pay towards the parkland dedication that they would be paying to the city of Richmond. So that's where the monies are coming from, is effectively Thank they're just paying it

you. And so does that change your thinking about anything that

Yeah, conditions don't mention this, what he just said at all.

So