City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

All righty. So, we are going to start our meeting this evening at 6.39 p.m. City Clerk, would you kindly take roll call?

Council Member Adler? Here. Council Member Joynette?

Present.

Council Member Varos?

Here.

Vice Mayor Rubio?

Here.

And Mayor Armstrong is not with us this evening. Okay, let's stand up and take the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay. We'll move on to announcements.

Changes and additions to the agenda, there are none. If you're attending in person and wish to speak during public comment or on an agenda item, please complete a speaker card located in the back of the room and submit it to the city clerk. If you are attending remotely via Zoom and wish to speak during public comment or on an agenda item, please use the raise your hand feature on your computer or dial star nine on the telephone to request to speak when public comment is opened for that agenda item. When it is your turn, you will be unmuted and may provide comments for up to three minutes. After your allotted time has expired, you will be muted again. Written public comments received by 4.30 p.m. today were provided to the City Council and are available for review in the red binder in the back of the room and on the City's website under tonight's meeting agenda.

Great.

Thank you.

We move on to item number four, public comment. At this time, the public is permitted to address the City Council on any non-agenda item relating to the business of the City Council, items that are on the consent calendar, including requested polling item from the consent calendar and the reason why. you wish to pull the item or items. Please note that the decision to remove the item from the consent calendar is strictly at the discretion of the City Council. Requests for future agenda items, special presentation items under section six of tonight's agenda, items that are not on the agenda and are within the City Council's jurisdiction, Please be reminded that while the city ensures the First Amendment rights of its citizens, we do not accept nor endorse any offensive or hateful comments made during our meetings. The city celebrates the diversity of our community, and we strive to be a welcoming environment and open community for all. While we encourage your comments, unfortunately, state law prevents the city council from discussing items that are not on the meeting agenda. The city council does take them very seriously, however, and if appropriate, If appropriate, staff will follow up. Okay. Do we have public comment?

Are we going to open for public comment? We do. We have several speaker cards. The first one is from Elaine Sharuth.

Good evening, Vice Mayor, council members, and staff. My name is Elaine Cortez Shroth, and I'm representing 333 Arts, a nonprofit arts organization focused on using public art to strengthen and connect our communities throughout Contra Costa, Alameda, and the surrounding Bay areas. So I wanted to share with you that the Great Elephant Migration is coming to the Tri-Valley this fall, and that's October 10th through December 6th. And we hope the city of San Ramon will be a part of this spectacular regional experience. So think big art and cultural explosions of activity. The exhibit will provide 30 life-size elephant sculptures to downtown Livermore and the only West Coast stop this year. Each elephant is handcrafted by indigenous artisans in South India, transforming an invasive lantana plant into extraordinary works of art while creating jobs and supporting CONSERVATION. THERE'S NOW A HERD OF 100 IN BOSTON. BUT THIS ISN'T JUST A LIVERMORE EVENT AND IT'S A REGIONAL OPPORTUNITY FOR COMMUNITIES LIKE SAN to really participate in. So South Asian and Indian American community organizations are already stepping up and sponsoring and community partners, creating opportunities to celebrate Indian heritage while sharing a universal message about conservation, coexistence, and our connection to wildlife, especially the magical elephant. And as we know, San Ramon is home to a vibrant and growing Indian American community, making this especially meaningful opportunity for cross-cultural engagement. We hope that families, businesses, schools, community organizations, and cultural groups from San Ramon will participate and help the migration a true regional celebration. So I can let you know that visitors from throughout California will also be staying in our local hotels, dining at the restaurants, shopping, and exploring communities throughout the region, including San Ramon. Previous U.S. installations have generated millions of visitor interactions with a reported increase of 52% in foot traffic and 20% in retail sales. So past exhibits have been Newport, Rhode Island, New York City, Miami Beach, and Beverly Hills, the only stop last year on the West Coast. So there will also be student field trips, community events, and docent tours that will bring the story of indigenous knowledge, wildlife conservation, and human-animal coexistence to life. This is the Elephant Conservancy. So again, we invite you to create that community awareness and connect with us at 333arts.org, Great Elephant Migration. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, Shareeb Shaheed.

Dear Council, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to comment at this meeting. I've come in my capacity as a resident of Pinot Court and represent the unanimous views and opinions of everyone who resides there. Well, all but one. You see, for the last six months, we've been living in a situation where someone has deliberately flouted the planning and zoning laws of the city to create a mini hotel, Airbnb hotel, on our small court. This is something that the owner of the property has previous experience as they have a similar property or a similar mini hotel running on a court a few streets away from us for the last three years. Now, San Ramon's Airbnb laws are slightly more relaxed compared to our neighboring cities. However, this also means that the city must be proactive in policing these rentals and relentless in pursuing any violations of it. The situation in question that I'm talking about is where someone has bought a single-family home and converted it into four individual compartmentalized apartments, each being rented out concurrently on Airbnb. Again, this isn't a one-off, as the owner of this property has done the same in a different court, and the residents of that court are also mobilizing to raise this issue with the city as well. Now we have multiple transient guests staying in a small court, in two small courts filled with families. We've already had police called by these guests multiple times for issues up to and including domestic violence. And this has all happened in the last six months. Now, our concern with the city is twofold. When dealing with someone who is this wanton in their disregard of the neighbour's well-being and the laws of the city, we expect the city to be equally diligent in their pursuit of zoning violations. However, we see that short-term rental licenses have been given out at face value based on the representations of this owner, and this was after we had raised all these issues with the city. Now we face the absurd reality of real-world safety risks in having five, for example, makeshift kitchens within one property on a permitted Airbnb, an Airbnb that's been permitted by the city. Secondly, we expressed extreme concern that the owner of this property was able to get final sign-off from the city's planning department to build these mini-hotels not once but twice. Both properties have five front doors, which were somehow missed in the inspections. And if it weren't for the dogged pursuit of the neighbours of both courts, these issues would not have come to light. Now, whilst I understand this is a public comment and I cannot ask the council to take any action in this particular meeting, I hope that the city is going to be more deliberate in their enforcement of these different issues, especially with bad actors who are so egregious in their conduct. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker is Don Normand.

Is that right?

Good evening everyone. I'm a member of the Indivisible Tri-Valley Climate Group. Sorry. Today I want to talk about the challenge that touches every corner of California, global warming and its effect on our state. This isn't a distant problem for future generations. It's shaping our summers, our water, our air, our forests, and our economy right now. And it's a challenge that calls for both honesty and hope, honesty about the scale of change and the hope and the choices we make together. One of the choices we can make is having our community support to make polluters pay by a bill that's being sponsored and sporting a resolution. The climate is warming here. Our summers are getting hotter. Heat waves are more frequent and intense. Heat isn't just uncomfortable, it's dangerous, especially for the elderly, the young, outdoor workers, and communities with limited access to cool spaces. Higher temperatures raise energy demands for cooling, stress our power grid, and worsen air quality by trapping pollutants close to the ground. In short, heat is a multiplier, exasperating health risks, straining infrastructure, and reducing quality of life. The Make Polluters Pay Superfund would require fossil fuel companies which knowingly concealed their role in the climate crisis to fund the damage they've caused.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Catherine Grace.

Okay, tonight I'm setting aside polluters pay momentarily because I've been appalled by the open hostility in recent meetings, shouting accusations and personal attacks on some of you. I want to take a moment to even things a bit by thanking you for leading San Ramon and looking out for all of us. I see the hours you spend attending events, listening, making hard choices, and navigating mountains of paperwork. I don't always agree with you, and sometimes I might argue, but I respect your commitment to this work. That said, I'll return to my reason for standing here again tonight. And I'll admit, this is not my scene. I'm not a person who craves the spotlight. I'm a hermit crab, happiest at home, unnoticed. But sometimes we have to come out of our shell. I need to be able to tell my grandchildren I saw what was coming and did what I could. The Arctic is melting. The tundra is leaking gases that alarm scientists. The oceans are heating, and firestorms, floods, and heat domes are battering great swaths of continents, including ours. And this is just the beginning. By 2045, when our climate action plan is supposed to deliver, what will we face? We have less than 19 years to cut emissions, but the roadmap is hazy, and we haven't even started after a year. What will I tell my grandchildren in 10 years if I'm lucky enough to be here? That I stayed silent out of fear while food and water dwindled and disasters piled up? I can't accept that. So here I am, asking you to do more to meet this climate crisis. We still have time. We have the tools to solve these problems. All we need is the will. We need to start implementing the cap and figuring out how we'll meet our 2045 goals. And yes, we absolutely need to make the polluters who made this mess pay. Thank you. Thank you.

Next speaker is Greg Carr.

Greg Karp, San Ramon resident. I swore I wasn't going to do this, but I can't help myself. The second speaker prompted something in me that I think is important. Sometimes the citizens don't know where to go for problems like his, where you've got some clown buying a house, turn it into an Airbnb fourplex. probably not in the zoning ordinance, nor is it acceptable for his kind of area. I would ask that next time a speaker comes up like that, you may want to consider, hey, you could contact the planning department director, so and so, or the public works guy who is sitting here, Brian, who I know well, and help them connect up so that they can explain their problems to them, perhaps here out in the hallway, or set up an appointment to come down and speak about it so that there can be some satisfaction rendered to the citizen who has a complaint. Not everybody knows how to get through the city. God forbid, it's not like San Francisco, which I've got a lot of experience with. It's pretty good, but they still don't understand it. And you can't blame them. So I would hope, if we ever have that again, that you might help them. You don't have to talk about it. Fine. But you might say, could you contact the public works director, Brian Bornstein? He's sitting in the back. or so-and-so, he or she's not here, that would be a step towards communicating and assisting the people that live here.

Thank you. Thank you. City Manager, I just want to make sure we are in contact with the person who spoke, correct?

Yes.

I don't know about the person who spoke, but we do have multiple emails being exchanged with many residents of the neighborhood. And it is in both locations cited. They're both active code enforcement locations at this point. So we're well aware and building is leading the effort with code enforcement.

Okay. So they're in touch. But if you need more information, definitely. Or reach out to us.

So there are no more speaker cards, and there are no hands raised for remote participants. We did receive written public comment from Sue Wild, Reflections 285, and also Elaine Sharoth, who spoke earlier today. And those are in the back of the room and on our website under the meeting. OK. All righty.

Are we free to move on?

I want to make sure. Okay. We do have one more speaker. Okay. Johannes Tillohan.

Madam Mayor. Councilmember, staff, I apologize about putting the wrong number in. First of all, I really do appreciate you taking the action after Mr. Gary's feedback. The fact that you stepped up and it took something, I really do appreciate that. My point today is I attended the July 14th Long-Term Financial Plan presentation and I want to share a few thoughts about that. Mr. Branson did an excellent job. I'm sure you all remember the presentation the last time, it was a month ago. The presentation was clear, detailed, and well delivered. I appreciated the depth of his work. But here's my concern. When a city is running a structural deficit, the priority should be bringing in a consultant who helps you grow revenue. Instead, to me, I felt we brought in a modeling consultant. The forecast model tells you how bad the problem is. It does not tell you how to fix it. That was the wrong tool for where we are right now. Mr. Branson told us to replace Measure N through retail alone, we would need the equivalent of eight busy caskets opening in San Ramon. That's a powerful way to show the scale of the problem, but that is all it was, a description of the problem. My question to the Council is, what's the solution? You also mentioned that the city has a sales tax consultant, but their analysis is not fully reflected in the model. I would like to know why. That seems like an important gap. Measure N was approved by voters in 2024. Budget discussions have been ongoing since at least March of this year. We're now more than a year and a half since the conversation has started and to date I've not heard a single substantial discussion how the city plans to grow revenue. Every conversation has been about managing the deficit and closing it. The model shows the risk. When does the council present a revenue growth strategy? And one final question for transparency. I was just curious, what would the cost of Ross Brunson's consulting engagement? So my point is at one point we have to take it seriously. What is it that we need to do to increase revenue for this city so that it covers THE DEFICIT. TWO YEARS IS ABOUT TO PASS BY, AND EIGHT YEARS I TRULY BELIEVE IS NOT ENOUGH, AND I DON'T THINK THERE'S ANY PLAN SO FAR. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. ALL RIGHTY.

THERE ARE NO MORE SPEAKERS. OKAY.

GREAT. SO WE'RE GOING TO MOVE ON TO ITEM NUMBER FIVE, CONSENT CALENDAR. DO I HAVE A MOTION TO APPROVE THE CONSENT CALENDAR?

I MOVE THE MOTION.

I SECOND. Okay, I have a first and a second motion. Please go ahead and vote. Okay, the motion to adopt the consent calendar was supported unanimously, four to zero. So, We are gonna move on to item number eight, unfinished business. It's a resolution number 2026-108 confirming building and safety services division statement of expenses for unpaid fees and fines and directing the city clerk to forward a certified copy of this resolution to the office of the auditor controller of Contra Costa County. Please, thank you for being here and feel free

Thank you, good evening. So it's that time of year again. At the beginning of each fiscal year, we catch up for code enforcement fees that have been unpaid throughout the year. So the purpose of tonight is to request that city council approve the levy to special assessments for unpaid nuisance abatements and property management fees. These fees result from properties that remain out of compliance and after multiple notices and opportunities to resolve the violations. Our code enforcement process is once we receive a complaint, we reach out to the homeowner with a courtesy notice. It explains what the violation is and gives a time frame that needs to be fixed. If nothing happens, the date expires, we move on to a notice in order and we post on the property an order to comply, notice what the violation is and so forth. Third step, if that is ignored, we go to notice of cost. Now fees are involved at this point because it's our third trip out there. And the homeowner is provided an opportunity to appeal. So they can appeal it, the fees, the violation, et cetera. If that was on, we continue with fees. We continue with notice of costs. We usually go about three, maybe four times a year, depending on when it starts. And then once we've exhausted all those options, we move on to tonight for... I'm sorry, special assessment. So we move on to special assessment, and that's where we attach the unpaid fees to their property tax bill. Tonight, there's only one property in front of you. It's residential. It was complaint-based. Our staff does not proactively enforce residential. We respond to complaints. We proactively monitor commercial properties because they're not usually maintained or the owner's not on site. So the property owner in front of you has received multiple notices. We've contacted them many times. This one has been responsive. They talk with code enforcement. Code enforcement goes out and meets them. It just never gets done. So when it comes to special assessments, we started out on May 18th. We sent out a notice intent to pursue special assessments. Come July 14th, we set a public hearing. That was about a month ago, and then that was set for tonight. Three days later, on July 17th, we sent out certified notifications to the property owners, notifying them to be attached to the tax bill. The next step after tonight is we'll wait 10 days. If they want to appeal tonight, they still have the opportunity to appeal tonight. And then they have 10 days to pay. After those 10 days, we'll send off to the county assessor's office. The county assessor, once they collect the property taxes, they will pay us what the bill is due. The only fee to us is a $250 flat fee and then 76 cents per line item. Since there's only one property, it's $250 and 76 cents will be our cost. The impact of these special assessments, the important thing to point out is when we sent out the initial notifications, there were seven properties on our list. The notifications that we've sent, certified mail, so forth, got attention. Six of them paid. One of them is still outstanding. So it is an effective tool for us. And if we fail to collect these fees, we would diminish our ability to obtain compliance because it's our last-ditch effort. And with that, that's the process. Thank you.

Thank you, Josh, for your presentation. Does anyone have any clarifying questions? Yes, Vice Mayor, I mean, sorry, Council Member.

Hey, Josh. Question related to just the, sounds like we have six people out of the seven that have paid. Correct. This individual, is it, do we have, Is it a situation of hardship? What was their excuse?

It may be hardship. They haven't made that statement, but they're just not paying. What it is is a garbage case. ACI notifies us when there's no garbage service because our ordinance requires garbage service. And they have an outstanding bill with ACI. And this is the second year in a row. So the fees to us is double what it was last year. And it's quadruple what they owe ACI. So if they have just paid ACI monthly, it would cost them less money.

I see. And just for my edification, do we offer a monthly payment or some sort of payment plan? Can they work that out with the city?

Absolutely. So, yeah, code enforcement is very flexible with this. So if they... If they're moving toward correcting the violation, then we don't start keep assessing fees. If they're not doing anything, that's when it comes. So, yeah, I believe finance may be able to work out a payment plan on it, but that's not my department.

Sure, sure. And do they, within this 10 days, does a property owner still have the ability to... request that if they wanted to? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. We provide a contact in finance and they can call them and discuss how to pay.

Okay. Well, I hope they're listening if there's an opportunity because levying something on the property against the deed is not... Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Very painful. Okay. Thanks, Josh.

You're welcome. Please go ahead, Council Member Rose. Thank you.

I just wanted to understand the next step. So once we send this to county, then is county is going to first get the fee, or are they just going to go and put the lien on the deed? How the next process works?

They attach it to their property taxes. So say you owe $10,000 this year, it'll be $5,000 every day and a half. They'll add this to the next one. So November, I think, is the next tax. So they'll add this to it in full. And then they collect property taxes. Once they get it, then they pay us out.

Okay. And once they pay through the tax, then they'll be reimbursed. Correct, yeah. After once it is done. So roughly maybe in January or something. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you. Any questions? Yeah, I just.

I want to be clear exactly what's going on in that property. It has something to do with the garbage, but is it an accumulation of garbage or they're not using the service they're supposed to use? What's going on?

The garbage is not piling up, but the ordinance requires garbage service. So I honestly don't know what they're doing with their garbage, if they're taking it to a commercial property or using the neighbor's. We don't ask, but it's not piling up out front of the house.

At least that's not happening. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of... being on the HOA board and you have little things like that in your neighborhood where maybe they didn't take care of the lawn or something and they get warnings and notices and everything else, this just goes to another more serious step. But I understand what you're doing and I'm glad that most of the people did the right thing. But thank you for the report. Thank you.

Thank you. So my question is, so you said our fee is a flat fee of $250.56, correct?

Well, the flat fee is $250 and then $0.76 per line. So if we had seven going tonight, there would be $0.76 times seven. So it's a very minimal fee.

Okay. So, and then the rest of that, the rest of that balance, the 2,000 some dollars is essentially accumulated non-payment for their garbage services.

Yeah, correct. Yeah, that's for us. It doesn't go to ACI. It comes to us for the code enforcement.

Correct. Okay. So the rest of it is just the portion they haven't paid is what I'm clarifying. Okay. And you said in the It says appropriate notifications. What types of notifications have you provided them?

So the first one is a door hanger. It's posted on the property with the information. We call it a courtesy notice or a door hanger. Second one is a notice and order. So it's a little more formal. It's an official order to correct the notification. That's two posted on the property. The third one is also posted on the property. It's a notice of cost, but it's mailed to the registered address of the owner, which is where they receive their property tax bill. And then we continue that like I said three or four times we do that that same process it's posted on the property and it's a Mail to them if they have multiple addresses we mail it to multiple addresses So we do everything we can with the information we have to reach the homeowner even say it's a rental. Maybe the Tenant is not giving the posting so that's why we mail it out and But then when it comes to special assessment, we send out information on May 18th, July 14th, or I'm sorry, May 18th, July 17th, and then we're here today.

Okay, if you had to guess approximately how many notices have you sent them in the past two years that you've been trying to resolve this?

In this individual case? Yes. There were three this year, I believe three last year as well. Okay, so a total of six. Six plus the special assessment notifications.

Okay, all righty. And the hardship question was already asked, which I was going to ask about, but have they expressed... Any inclination as to why they're not paying?

No. They just, oh, we'll get around to it. Yeah, we'll take care of it. And then we don't hear back from them for a while. And then reach out to them again. Oh, yeah, I'll get on that. They just don't.

Okay. All right. That helps a little bit understand better. Maybe if they're responding, but they're repeating a commitment that they don't fulfill.

Correct, yeah. It's not a priority.

Okay. Okay, well, that's all of my questions. So thank you for your report and presentation. We will move on then. Does anybody, we should open public comment on this at this juncture? Are there any cards?

We actually have to open the public hearing.

The public hearing, excuse me.

So- I move the motion for public hearing.

I second.

Okay, do we have any comments?

So I have not received any speaker cards and I do not see anyone who is participating remotely with their hands up and no written public comment has been received.

Okay, great. So we need a council motion to close the public hearing.

I move the motion to close the public hearing.

I second. Okay, motion first and second and we go to a vote. Okay, any additional discussion by the council on this item Okay So we need a motion to We need a motion to adopt the resolution number 2026-108, confirming building and safety services division statement of expenses for unpaid fees and fines and directing the city clerk to forward a certified copy of this resolution to the office of the auditor controller of Contra Costa County.

I move the motion.

Okay. I second.

Okay. Thank you. Okay, that passed 4-0. We have one person abstaining, not in attendance. So we move on to item 9.1, resolution number 2026-109, authorizing the mayor to execute a memorandum of understanding between the City of San Ramon and participating agency for the I-68. 680 corridor coordinated adaptive ramp metering project. Staff report by Chris Weeks.

Thank you, and good evening, Vice Mayor Rubio and members of the San Ramon City Council. I'm Chris Weeks, the Transportation Division Manager in Public Works for the City of San Ramon, if you haven't met me already. I'm here this evening to request the San Ramon City Council consider approving the proposed resolution 2026-109, authorizing the mayor to execute a memorandum of understanding between the City of San Ramon and participating agencies for the I-680 corridor ramp metering and to introduce a presentation on the I-680 corridor ramp metering and coordinated adaptive ramp metering, known as CARM, from the three representatives of the Contra Costa I-680 corridor ramp metering team. And I'll introduce them at the end. This proposed memorandum of understanding has been developed in collaboration with the California Department of Transportation, Caltrans, and the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, CCTA, and the local jurisdictions along the I-680 corridor, including San Ramon. to document the goals, policies, and procedures for the implementation of ramp metering. Approval of this item authorizes the mayor to execute the MOU, which defines the roles and responsibilities of all the MOU signatories. Execution of this MOU enables San Ramon to participate in the Ramp Metering Technical Committee, or the Ramp Metering Working Group. These working groups are where technical and operational issues with ramp metering are discussed and resolved between partnering agencies and decisions that could affect San Ramon will be made. The city of Walnut Creek and the town of Danville have already approved resolution allowing their mayors to execute the same MOU, giving them a seat at the table. So our presenters this evening represent the agencies that have been part of this process. We have Stephanie Hu with us today, CCTA Director of Projects and Innovative 680 Program Manager, Sam Woldensmiot, Caltrans District 4 Innovate 680 Corridor Manager, and Darren Henderson from GHD, Innovate 680 corridor manager and a coordinated and adaptive ramp metering project technical lead. So these are the thought leaders in the area, and they've been presenting along the corridor. So at this time, I'd love to invite them up and give their presentation to you, and we'll all be here for questions if you have them later. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Vice Mayor, Council Members. Thank you for having us this evening to discuss the upcoming ramp metering implementation. Chris did a wonderful job describing why we're here, so I won't belabor it. It is a collaborative effort that we've gone through to get to this point of MOU in front of you. So just a little bit background on the project. There is a recent article on SF Chronicle that listed the top 10 congested areas in the Bay Area, and 680 landed in number seven on the list, and mainly specifically Northbound 680 in the PM period. As you know, it's very congested. And one of the tools we're proposing to deploy is ramp metering. And why? To adjust the congestion. It regulates the flow of traffic entering the freeway. It smooths out the flow of traffic to enable a more efficient system. It also discourages those who kind of get off on an off ramp and get back immediately on the on ramp to cut through the traffic. It also helps to reduce crashes during the merge area, in the merge area where people are trying to enter and those who sometimes also trying to exit. It will also, we hope to eliminate or reduce the number of cut through traffic through local streets. People get off the freeway because there's congested and wanting to find other ways to get to their destination through city streets. And also, it improves the efficiency of the 680 corridor without further widening. You know the 680 corridor is pretty built out. And it also meets the state policy of reducing vehicle miles traveled. It is becoming very difficult, a limited ability to widen freeways in terms of... capacity increasing which Senate Bill 743 restricts. So this is a tool where it satisfy or meets that new policy the state has implemented. So there are two projects that are being delivered. First is the Caltrans Adaptive Ramp Metering, or ARM. This project has been planned by Caltrans District 4 for the past few years. This is funded by the State Highway Operations Protection Program, or SHOP. They had intended to implement ARM. ramp metering in the entire 680 corridor and actually a little bit of 780 north of us. It is different than the traditional ramp metering where it depends on the time of day. Usually in the old system it turns on a specific time of the day and for duration during peak of the peak. And Sam, who will come up in a moment to discuss this, will give you more background on the ARM project. In parallel, CCTA was developing a program called Innovate 680, which we've presented here in the past. And we saw an opportunity to carve out a piece of the corridor to implement a coordinated adaptive ramp metering, which is CARM. And in this map, what we landed with is the light blue areas will be the planned Caltrans arm system, and then the dark blue is the CCTA CARM, which is on northbound only from Alcosta all the way to Willow Pass or Burnett. So that would be a demonstration project for three years, and CCTA has secured funding for construction and implementation for three years. Through the partnership of these two projects, we are finding ways to cost share and scope share for more efficient delivery and not to waste. for reducing throwaway and then also we commit to at the end of this three year period to evaluate the performance of the ramp metering system. Just really quickly on Innovate 680, we've heard this, I think we've heard this before, presented to you all before through shared mobility hubs actually. CARM falls under an advanced technology project under Innovate 680. CARM meets or achieves three operational strategies, or management system strategies of cooling hotspots using innovative operational strategies. and really preparing the corridor for the future using technology to tackle congestion on the corridor. CARM is also the main tool for managed freeways, which Darren will come up to speak about as the CARM expert. CARM really reduces the cost of addressing congestion, not deferring or using expansion as the solution, and yielding higher operational benefits at a lower cost. And again, it meets the state mandate on reducing VMT. So with that, I'm gonna invite Sam from from Caltrans District 4 to talk about ARM and after him, it will be Darren who will be discussing the technical aspects of CARM.

Thank you. Good evening Vice Mayor, Council Members. My name is Samuel Samayat. I'm Caltrans project manager covering Contra Costa County. I'll provide a brief overview of Caltrans planned ram metering operation on the 680 corridor. Just to provide some background information, Caltrans program a ram metering project back in 2020. The project proposes to install ram metering along the 680 corridor And that project is currently in construction and is planned to be completed towards the end of 2027. Most of the ramp metering system along the 680 corridor will be installed under that project. As Stephanie mentioned earlier, Caltrans is collaborating with CCTA to implement RAM metering along the 680 corridor. As part of that collaboration, CCTA will be implementing coordinated adaptive RAM metering along the 680 corridor on a three-year demonstration. During that demonstration period, Caltrans planned to use a similar ramp metering system called adaptive ramp metering, or ARM, on all southbound ramps and very few northbound ramps that are not within the limits of the current project limit. MC and Caltrans have already been implementing ARM on more than 300 ramps across the Bay Area on some major freeways, the likes of I-80, US-101, and the San Francisco-Oklahoma Bay Bridge. The two agencies are currently extending calm coverage on several other freeways, including our I-680 corridor. Unlike the traditional run metering system, ARM is not a time-of-the-day run metering system. ARM are just metering rates based on real-time freeway conditions. It also proactively adjusts metering rates depending on fluid congestions or slowdowns. If there are incidents on the freeway, the system has the capacity to adjust metering rates or to turn on and off ramp metering. There is a QR code that provides more information if you want to learn more about ARM. MHC has more information provided in the QR code. Okay, great.

Thank you for your presentation.

Thank you. So I just want to show some cases that we implemented ARM. Caltrans has already implemented ARM on the US-101 and I-880 corridor. US-101 from Greenway to Brisbane and I-80 from San Jose to Oakland are some of the freeways that received upgrade to ARM. Initial studies indicated that Slow travel time has been improved significantly on those corridors, and also merging and shockwaves like speed on the freeway has been improved significantly on these freeways after we upgraded them to ARM. This graph indicates the before and after analysis that was performed on a segment on US-101. As you can see on the graph, close to 10% travel time savings have been registered on the US-11, some segments. And that shows how ARM is an upgrade to the traditional RAM metering system. This is another graph for the IAT corridor. This is a good segment on the northbound side of the IAT corridor. This graph also demonstrates that we have some travel time savings when it comes to upgrading the run-metering system. So our plan is to learn implement the lesson learned from this implementation of various corridors on the state highway and use it on the 680 corridor and make it more efficient and actually reduce the travel time and congestion in the corridor. With that, I will pass it to Darren to provide more information on the code data.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sam. Thank you again for having us here tonight. My name is Darren Henderson. I'm a senior technical director with GHD. And as was mentioned in the introduction, I'm the subject matter expert on the CARM system. So we'll talk a little bit more about that. So as Stephanie mentioned, When the SHOP project came about, we saw that there was an opportunity consistent with Innovate 680 to introduce this next generation ramp metering approach. And so we have pursued that. It has been very much a collaborative process working with Caltrans and CCTA together to bring this about. And in fact, a lot of the improvements that are necessary for the current project are actually being implemented as part of the SHOP project. So they're very much intertwined with each other to deliver the ultimate system. What it does is it expands on the capabilities of the ARM approach and gives more robust underlying technologies to not just break up the traffic that's entering the freeway on the ramps, which is what traditional ramp metering does, but to actually use the ramp meters as a tool to try and control the traffic flow on the freeway. So if we can do that in real time, we can prevent the freeway from breaking down and we can sustain greater productivity over the duration of our peak periods and hopefully reduce the amount of congestion that we see out there. So it is a new approach, but it isn't the first time that's being implemented in California. There was actually a project in Riverside County that went into operations a couple months ago in May of this year. It is showing positive results, and so we're encouraged by that. This will be a much more extensive deployment of the technology here in Contra Costa County, so we're hopeful that with more ramps included in the project that it will be even more successful than the project that's been undertaken in Riverside. But we can thank them for helping to blaze the trail and help to smooth the path for us up here in Northern California. So some key features of the project. Firstly, we enhanced the vehicle detection capabilities within the corridor, both on the freeway itself and then also on the ramps. By having more frequent and more accurate vehicle detection in the corridor, we get a better understanding of how traffic is operating. To put it simply, if you can't see it, you can't control it. So we want to be able to see how traffic conditions are in the corridor in real time so that then we can use the ramp meters as a way to respond. If we need to hold back traffic on the ramps to allow the freeway to continue to operate, we can do that. If the ramps are starting to back up, we can release more traffic onto the freeway when it's available, when space is available. in order to ensure that we don't back the ramps up onto the arterial streets. So it's really achieving that balance that becomes a critical part of this system. So all of that data gets fed into a very robust advanced traffic management system platform. It, every 20 seconds, recalculates what's happening in the corridor and then makes judgments on how we need to adjust the ramp metering rates at all of the ramps in order to optimize the flow in the corridor. So it's a very frequent retuning of how things are operating in the corridor. If a ramp meter needs to come on, it comes on and it starts to help give us that control. If it's no longer necessary, it backs off and it turns off and we don't need to use it for a period of time. So it's that sort of continuous process of fine-tuning the corridor that really allows us to get the results that we hope to achieve. It also involves some physical improvements in the corridor, and there's two locations here in San Ramon that will have more extensive improvements on the ramps themselves, although that work is being designed in a way to minimize intrusions on the traffic that needs to use these ramps on a daily basis. You'll know that both the ramps on the northbound side of Crow Canyon and Bollinger Canyon are what we call parklo, partial cloverleaf interchanges. At the moment, they have two merge points, and usually the loop one on a parklo is a very short merge distance. And if you've ever tried to merge onto a freeway with a very short weaving distance under congested conditions, it can be very tricky. And it can be very disruptive to the mainline traffic flows. So one of the design elements that we're doing as part of the project is to merge those two lanes together so that there'll be a single merge point that can use the aux lane downstream to help provide more distance for traffic to merge onto the freeway. So that happens more orderly. It's also giving us the opportunity to expand the storage on the ramps in order to ensure that we have sufficient space to hold the vehicles when we do need to hold vehicles on the ramps, and to provide more ability to release vehicles more quickly by having more lanes at the stop bar when we have the ability to put more traffic onto the freeway. You've probably noticed on the freeway, you can even see it in the photograph there, there's a cluster of vehicles right by the ramp, but behind it there's a bit of a break. So when we see those breaks, the system can push more vehicles into those breaks, into those gaps, and allow us to better control the ramp traffic. So we will be doing that by modifying these ramps. So similar to the one at Crow Canyon, we're doing exactly the same type of improvements at Bollinger Canyon. This one has one added complexity with the abutment on the bridge itself. But other than that, both of these will look very similar in terms of merging to a single merge point onto the freeway. So we're here tonight to ask you to endorse the Memorandum of Understanding and to authorize the Mayor to execute that with CCTA, Caltrans, and the other local agencies in the corridor that are involved. As you can probably surmise from the presentation, it has been a very collaborative approach to developing this project, not just between Caltrans and CCTA, but also the local agencies within the corridor. It became pretty evident as we were embarking on various stakeholder outreach efforts that an MOU would be appropriate and necessary for a project like this because of all of the stakeholders that are involved. And we heard that loud and clear from your staff, from the local agencies that they wanted to see something like that. That process has been very collaborative. Again, the agencies working together. It went through three rounds of review with each of the agencies involved. So your technical staff had the opportunity to review draft documents, provide feedback to CCTA and Caltrans, see those documents modified. We also went through a round of one-on-one meetings where we literally came to each of the agencies and sat down and talked to them about what were their concerns with the project, what would they like to see in something like an MOU. And ultimately what that leads to is a document that provides a foundation on how the project will get implemented, sort of the broad level policies, roles and responsibilities, who's responsible for what, who's paying for what. It also establishes the framework for how we'll measure the performance of the project to determine whether it's been successful or not, how we can improve it if it's necessary, and how we will engage in stakeholder coordination and sort of overall governance of the project as it moves forward. It becomes a foundational document that then leads us on to the next step in the process, which is developing what we call the ramp metering operations and maintenance procedures. That gets to be more of like a user manual for how Caltrans and CCTA will actually operate the facility, maintain the facility. But similar to the MOU process, we fully expect that to be a very collaborative process in developing that document as well. Again, there'll be multiple opportunities for your technical staff to be involved in reviewing that document and making sure that your needs are being met. It will outline in a little bit more detail exactly how both the ARM and the CARM projects will operate, so what the differences are in how they operate, how incident management will take place, who's responsible for maintaining different devices and different systems. It will again elaborate on the performance and monitoring requirements and how we can then feed that information back to you so that you can understand how the project's working and if it's being successful. further clarify stakeholder communications, how we maintain communications through the implementation and the operations of the project. And all of that is expected to be completed by early 2028, which is ahead of the project actually being ready for operation. So when it's going through construction, we hope for this document to be completed so that everyone understands when it starts to operate, this is how it's going to operate, this is who's responsible for what. And ultimately that then helps to inform the co-op agreement that will be signed between Caltrans and CCTA for the actual responsibilities of operating and maintaining the project. So they're all sort of building into the foundational documents that guide us along the way. So my last slide, no doubt you are very aware that construction has started on the project. Caltrans has already started work on the arm part of the project, that light blue sections that Stephanie showed, as well as several of the ramps that are part of the current project. So they're happening on both sides of the freeway and involving both projects. For the current project itself, that is in final design, so that design is being reviewed by the agencies right now. We anticipate that that will be completed by the end of the year. That will allow the current part of the project, which includes the ramps at Crow Canyon and Bollinger Canyon, to go to construction next year, with the goal of the project being ready for operations by the end of 2028, early 2029. Because there is a lot of ramp metering that's going to be getting implemented in the corridor, we do expect that some of the locations will have the meters installed and ready before others. The expectation is that at those locations, the meters may rest on green for a period of time just to show that they are complete, but they're not actually functioning as ramp meters until the entire project is ready to be implemented. So you may see ramp meters finished and you may see lights turn on, but the goal is to try and have the entire system operating simultaneously so that that way it doesn't confuse the public any more than is completely necessary. So on that, we will happily invite your questions and look for your endorsement of the resolution.

Thank you. Great. Thank you so much for your presentation. TO ANY OF THE FELLOW COUNCIL MEMBERS? YES.

THANK YOU, VICE MAYOR. THANK YOU FOR THE PRESENTATION. I WANTED TO CLARIFY FOR THE PUBLIC WHAT THIS IS NOT. MY UNDERSTANDING FROM THE MOU, I HAVE RECEIVED SOME E-MAILS FROM CONSTITUENTS. WHAT THIS IS NOT, THIS IS NOT THE HIGH OCCUPANCY VEHICLE FAST TRACK METERING. I JUST WANTED TO CLARIFY THAT FOR THE PUBLIC BECAUSE THAT WAS SOMETHING THAT CAME BACK TO MY DESK WHERE FOLKS WERE WONDERING, IS THIS THE METERING THAT ALLOWS, BECAUSE THE CONCERN WAS PEOPLE WILL TAKE THE STREETS THAT ARE PARALLEL AND AVOID 680 SO THEY DON'T PAY.

Yeah, no, there's no tool involved with round metering. That's not what this is.

I just wanted to clarify that, thank you, yeah. And then the second, this is also for folks metering, this is the stop lights that are at the end. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Do we know, city manager, THE COORDINATION BETWEEN THE METERING, HOW IT AFFECTS THE LIGHTS ON THE SURFACE STREETS, THE STOPLIGHTS?

I DON'T BELIEVE THERE'S ANY COORDINATION WITH OUR STOPLIGHTS, BUT THROUGHOUT THIS ENTIRE PROJECT, THE MAIN PURPOSE OF THIS MOU IS TO ENABLE SAN RAMON TO JOIN the technical group and the working group that will monitor everything. So I assume you'll get data from us if it's backing up on our streets. And if they do need street light data, we'd be happy to provide that. But anecdotally, I'm excited about this because I've been commuting 580 for almost 30 years. And when the metering occurred on that 580 corridor from Livermore to San Ramon, I shaved off an easy 15 minutes and stopped using side streets and started using the freeway because the metering really did affect it. So not to build up any hopes or put too much on you guys about this, but hopefully it will achieve the same effect.

I agree. I use Whipple and Redwood City often when I have to go make appointments, and I've noticed a considerable difference. So thank you for the thorough presentation. I really appreciate it.

Very informative. Council Member Burroughs, please.

Thanks for the presentation. First of all, we appreciate that you understand, like Caltrans and CCTA, you understand that or you understand figured out that there is a problem with 680 corridor, and then you're working on solution. So that's a really good thing, because as a regular commuter on 680, this is really needed. So just to make sure I have clear understanding on this, ARM is more like a reactive, and CARM is more like a predictive. Is that right? What is the, I'm trying to understand. You mentioned it is CARM takes 20 seconds to get the flush.

So CARM is not really predictive. It's not trying to forecast what's going to happen. It's just a more refined implementation of the adaptive ramp metering approach that's being done So think about the adaptive ramp metering as sort of ramp metering 2.0. CARM is now going to the next level, 3.0. The main difference is that all of the ramps in the CARM system are working together as a single unit. So that way, it's allowing if one ramp is backing up or is being stressed because there's a lot more traffic at that location. So let's say Bollinger Canyon is a very busy location. It's got a lot more traffic coming in at Bollinger Canyon. the system can look along the entire length of the corridor and say, okay, well, if this one's being overloaded, we can look at Crow Canyon or Acosta and allow more traffic to be held back at those locations so that we can balance those demands. So it just becomes more sophisticated in terms of how it balances the management of the traffic along the full length of the corridor. That's the coordinated part of it.

Okay. Whereas in ARM, it doesn't do anything like that, or is it?

Yeah, it doesn't coordinate the traffic on each individual ramp. Could you step forward a little bit closer? Sorry. Yeah, it doesn't have the capacity to coordinate the traffic congestion on each ramp and do what CARM is doing, holding traffic on one ramp and releasing traffic on another one. But other than that, most of the features between ARM and CARM are more or less similar.

So SCARM doesn't look at the previous data or anything like, hey, yesterday, like during weekdays, this will be the data.

Yeah, it's primarily using live data. We do have archive information in the system so that if, for example, we get a communications loss at a particular site, the ramp meters will continue to run based on what the expected conditions would be. The other beauty of a system like CARM is that as we do get new AI technologies that are allowing us to be more predictive in how we use these systems, and they are definitely capabilities that the vendor is looking to incorporate into the software, they will get included and you will get to benefit from them because inherently they'll be a part of the system. But today we don't have those predictive capabilities as part of the ramp metering systems. It's just doing it in real time based on the actual conditions at this moment in time and then recalculating every 20 seconds what needs to change in order to keep up with what's happening out in the corridor.

Okay, so that's like 30 seconds versus 20 seconds. Is that right? Like, ARM is 30 seconds?

It's not really fair to characterize them that way.

I'm just trying to understand why we are using the ARM versus CRM. If it is the same, then why we are using CRM?

The C is the coordinated part. That's the primary difference. That all of the ramps, all 19 ramps in the CARM segment will be working together as a single unit. So if any location is having a problem, other ramps can get bought into the mix in order to help get that control. ARM, they basically all operate independently. They are adaptive, so the signal rates will change and the meters will come on when they need to and go off when they don't. But ARM doesn't provide the same level of capability to coordinate along the corridor. And that's the primary difference.

They talk to each other. That's good. That's correct, yeah. It's a single system. Single system. Okay, sounds good. Now, I would like to extend question from our council member Joannet regarding the local street, right? The protection for our local street. That's one question that definitely all our residents would like to know, especially one of the topic, the major concern that our community right now have is about traffic. Anybody you ask, they say that one of the top concern is the traffic, so especially the additional development that is going on here, right? So you mentioned that in MOU, it includes safeguards like queue control as well as queue override, right? So to prevent freeway traffic from backing up onto our city streets, so what specific queue lengths or occupancy thresholds will you set in San Ramon ramps so that it won't trigger? At what point you can let the overrides take over? Do you have certain... parameters for that?

So for the CARM system we start by analyzing the volumes that we have on all the ramps and then estimating what we need in terms of the length of storage and the number of lanes that are going to be optimal for CARM to work and so the improvements that are being done at Bollinger Canyon and Crow Canyon are in part to help us accomplish that. And you'll see that on this particular example, the Bollinger Canyon ramp, the direct ramp is gonna have an extra lane added. It's a very high volume ramp, as I'm sure you all know. So we wanna provide some additional storage so that we can better manage the queues on that ramp. And then within the ramp itself, we will have multiple detection points that will continuously measure the traffic that's coming on, the traffic that's coming off, and is able to estimate the length of the queue and what percentage of the ramp is currently utilized, and also what amount of time it's taking for vehicles from the time they enter to the time they leave. And so there are multiple algorithms that then run within the current system that are measuring all of those things. And if it sees that a wait time is getting excessively long, or if it sees that a ramp queue is getting excessively long, like more than 80% of the ramp is occupied, it will accelerate the metering rates in order to help control that ramp and prevent it from backing up onto the arterial street. And that's when the coordinated aspect comes in because it may say, okay, Bollinger Canyon's at 80%. We need to accelerate the ramp metering rate. But what we need to do is also hold back traffic on some of the downstream ramps in order to prevent a bottleneck from forming for the downstream. Because if we push more traffic onto the freeway, it then increases the risk that the freeway will break down at a critical bottleneck. So the system is trying to manage that balance so that that way we can avoid backing up onto the arterial streets, we can avoid long wait times, but at the same time trying to sustain the flow on the main line so that we can keep that productivity. And I think what you'll find is that the system can do that very, very effectively. And that's the feature of the system that we want to be able to demonstrate and then ultimately implement on all of the ramps in Contra Costa County.

Okay. Let's say, for example, in Danville, there's a huge... traffic on the ramp and also in San Ramon at Bollinger also there's a huge traffic in the ramp so do you communicate and make sure that which one will like do you take like a priority or something or just you take based on that ramp capacity based on that you start releasing

No, part of that every 20 seconds recalculating, it's reassessing, well, which one's the priority here? Which one's the one that's most critical and needs to be most controlled? And then the rest of them get adjusted to help sort of offset that impact. So again, that happens every 20 seconds. So in this 20 seconds, it may be a ramp in Danville that's most critical because there's an immediate downstream bottleneck that's at threat of breaking down. The next 20 seconds, it may be Bollinger Canyon starting to back up too much. We need to push some more traffic through. So we'll make that adjustment and let that happen. So that's sort of how refined this system is at fine-tuning how it manages the traffic. Okay.

So our staff can override that? No.

No. In fact, the whole process is largely automated. We try to avoid human intervention as much as possible. If there is an incident or if we see a regular occurrence of backup on one of your arterial streets, there will be protocols in place for you to contact the system operators. This is an active management system, so there is an operator that will be overseeing the operations of the corridor. So if we do see a problem at a location, you'll have the ability to contact the operator, and the operator will have the ability to override the system if that becomes necessary. Okay, so we cannot call our Chris. You can't log in and do it yourself, but Chris can certainly call and ask for an override, or more importantly- your emergency services can call and ask for an override if there's a crash or a fire or something like that, that they need to get emergency vehicles onto the freeway. Okay.

Now, you mentioned that all your systems are coordinating and all this data is stored and centralised. So what happens if, say, if that centralized data is inaccessible due to what are the network issues or data issues, something, then what happens?

So there are some redundancies built into the system. So if a fiber line gets cut, there's usually a loop so that that way we can at least get data continuing. If we completely lose communications to a particular ramp meter site, Obviously it alarms us and notifies us that that's happened so that we can mobilize a maintenance crew to get out there and fix it. But there is a local processor in the cabinet at the ramp meter site that is able to control the ramp meters based on historic information so that that way we still get to benefit from having ramp metering. But obviously that coordination can't happen if that particular location has been isolated. There is some compromises to the performance when we do lose comms, but the system will be able to continue to operate to some level even when communications are lost.

Oh, yeah, that's very important rather than just start flashing red lights and then that will become painful.

It is an actively managed project, and so part of that ramp metering operations and maintenance protocol document and the co-op between Caltrans and CCTA is will outline the maintenance responsibilities. And if there is a communications breakdown, you know, what protocols are in place to get that fixed and what's the priority for getting it fixed. And with a system like this, we don't want to wait for a month for a contractor to get out there and fix a comm break. It needs to happen like tomorrow. And so those priorities, that funding is coming from CCTA to ensure that we can get that level of responsiveness.

You will be getting calls immediately. So my next question is regarding about the CCTA and Caltrans as well as the cities, they are all being part of this whole thing, right? At any point of time, if we start seeing that there is a lot of accumulation and traffic issues going in our streets because of this new system. So what is the option for our city to escalate this? Is it like we need to go to CCTA and Caltrans or is there any other?

I think I should have prefaced this in my previous presentation. This is the first time we're doing an MOU for ramp metering for Contra Costa County. We had experience ramp metering being implemented without being able to voice concerns, especially for the local jurisdictions like yourselves. So this MOU is really to develop a a forum or a governance structure where every jurisdiction along the corridor has a seat at the table so that we can review the performance of the ramp metering implementation post-operation. And the MOU outlines a group that will be formed that will include technical staff, maybe it's Chris Weeks or others, that can come together regularly to assess the performance. And it doesn't have to be quarterly. Whenever issues arise, there's a place to call, a place to kind of solve issues, and that we are committed, CCT and Caltrans are committed to working through the issues that any of these jurisdictions face or see negative impacts on. We hope not, but if there is a case like that, we can address it, and there's a forum to address it, and we'll be... we'd be accountable for those things that are maybe negative things that might be happening and address them right away in the lowest possible level among staff. And if it is really, you know, involves something larger or policy changes, then we will elevate it. But we know that we can solve problems in staff levels as we normally do. But that is the way we are approaching this. That's why the MOU is in place. And that's why we're going down each city in the corridor and doing this kind of show and explanation of what you expect and what will happen if there are issues and how we anticipate to reach resolution.

So thanks for... about the sharing the information. So are you going to share the information about the data with our staff?

Yeah, so the CARM system will be run on a platform called Streams, a dashboard online that the cities will get to view. They won't be able to control, but they can see what's happening, and we will also share data as requested by each of the jurisdictions. And I think Caltrans will do the same as we move forward on how to, especially if there are issues that we see, we will share data and get a better understand of the situation. But yes, we will be sharing performance data and evaluation results with all of our partners, the parties on this MOU.

Okay, so you'll share the dashboards and all that.

With the city staff.

So that dashboards are generated and given to us. I mean, we trust that you'll be giving a real data, but how we can verify that it is really making a difference.

Well, maybe Darren can speak to what they will actually see on the platform or dashboard.

I can pull it up on my tablet when we're done with the meeting if you would like me to show you what the Riverside one looks like. So this is a screenshot of the dashboard from the Riverside project. To your question, like, is it the real data? This is the system that operates the facility. It's the same dashboard that the operators see to actually control the system, to put the input parameters in place. You just see the sort of external facing side. That's the performance data on how the actual system's operating. But it is a single platform that is both on the control side and on the public facing side. So it is the real live information that's controlling the system.

Okay. The reason I'm asking is not doubting you, but always our residents say something different than what, like there are some residents, they always tell something different than what is happening, right? Then we need to have a data that support us argument. That's the reason I'm making sure that.

And actually this is, yeah, you raise a very valid point. I mean, the project in Riverside has been up and running for two and a half months now. And so we're hearing exactly that. Like I waited on the ramp for, you know, Exactly. Half an hour. And we can pull up that moment in time and say, no, the queue on that ramp was only eight cars long and you probably waited for 30 seconds. So it gives us that level of information to be able to understand exactly what's happening at any moment in time in the corridor.

Awesome. We can publish that copy and post it in our thread.

Yes. That is the desired goal, is to have something like this visible at your agency if anyone wants to see it. Anybody ask question, go check out that one.

That's a good one. Now, I'm pretty optimistic and pretty excited about this as a 680 commuter. Is there any way we are communicating this to the community outreach, how we are working on that one?

So we are working on, since we have yet started construction, there are two systems happening on the corridor. So we are developing a plan to educate the public early that ramp metering is coming. It doesn't exist on the corridor, just what to anticipate. and also a place where they can provide comments if needed. But yes, there will be videos that we're thinking about producing, fact sheets. Actually, there's one in front of you, I think it's at the dais. So there'll be various ways that we will be reaching out to the community that this is happening. It'll be operational in early 2029, as we mentioned. So there's a little bit time where we can kind of work on those collateral and fact sheets, videos, visuals to really inform the public that this is happening on the corridor.

Awesome. So do you have someone on next door?

Mm-hmm.

Do you have someone on Nextdoor also?

Nextdoor?

That's where all your questions will be coming up.

I think the PIO group at CCTA have access to Nextdoor, and I think sometimes we also publish information regarding CCTA there as well. So we'll cover all the social media that are the popular ones. I assume, I think Facebook, Nextdoor probably, yeah.

Yeah, Nextdoor is definitely important.

Yeah, we have other projects or other initiatives with the public as well, so something that we're very familiar with and have a good group that does that.

So my last question is about, okay, in the... When, after three years, if things goes well, then we'll extend, right? So otherwise, if three years, after three years, we say that, hey, this is not working, so.

Well, the hope is it will work, and we have confidence it will work. I'm confident. Yeah, it's been implemented elsewhere. RCTC, as Darren mentioned, and other states, as well as overseas. So the plan is to demonstrate great effectiveness and then really work with Caltrans to implement more of this in Contra Costa County or in the corridor and then expand it elsewhere. And in other counties, other places in the state, implementing this will also help make that case to the state. There's multiple implementation, multiple demonstration. Can we get behind using this more widely in the state? So that's the hope. But we do need that demonstration to prove that it works.

We all are optimistic. We love it. Let's say it's successful, we want to go. But in case, a little bit pessimistic there.

So what happens? If it does result in no funding to fund it past three years, the worst case scenario is that we convert it to ARM, which is along the rest, the ARM system that Caltrans is doing. They're in that stretch that's doing the demo. So it would be converted to the ARM system that Caltrans has done and elsewhere in the corridor.

All that expenses will be paid by CCTA and Caltrans?

Correct.

Okay, nothing for San Ramon.

Yeah, so it's clear in the MOU that there is no funding request, monetary expectations or requests from the cities for either ramp metering systems.

It sounds good. Even though we have to put some staff time definitely for the operations, but definitely. It's nothing coming free. It'll be more efficient.

It's a more efficient system that they would have to monitor.

Yeah, we love that one, definitely. Thank you. Thank you very much for answering all my questions.

Okay, thank you. Council Member Adler.

Yeah, I sure do. This is really exciting. You know, I'm optimistic as opposed to my fellow council member. No. I just wonder, I mean, it's a good time that this is coming. We have a lot of building in our city, and I think Crow Canyon and Bollinger are the two corridors that's really going to be most affected, or the only ones, I guess, that enter the freeway, right? I don't mean, I mean in San Ramon. Yeah. Yeah. Alcosta. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's like right on the Alameda. Yeah, it's right at the border. But Alameda is not yet, are they? Okay.

The Alcosta ramp will be part of the system. Great. We just don't need to do any widening on that ramp. It's already sufficient for our purposes. Right. And Alameda is not part of this.

Right. But hopefully maybe the whole longer corridor will be connected once this thing gets underway and we hopefully see the benefits of it. What is the average person that's just getting on the freeway? Is it going to look different as far as like the signal light, you know, stop and go and that kind of thing? Or is it going to be a different apparatus you're going to be looking at or?

If you've ever been through a ramp meter site in Northern California, it'll look exactly... Okay, so it will not look different.

Great. And so this is going to be...

Sorry, Sam just reminded me. There will be, not in San Ramon, but further to the north, a couple of the ramps will have what we call a part-time shoulder line. So there'll be a... VMS sign overhead that has a green arrow when you can use the shoulder as a lane, and it'll have a red X when you can't. That just allows us to get more storage on a ramp where we don't have the physical space to widen it. We don't have that problem in San Ramon. The ramps in San Ramon that we are widening, we have the space to be able to do it. But you will see it further to the north.

So is this different in that there's more communication going on in that whole corridor as far as, I mean, do we know what all the lanes, what's happening in all the lanes as they go north? So are we getting more data than we used to get to know what's going on?

So again, I'll pull that dashboard up. You can look at it a little bit more if you want. But you can see the image on the left of the screen is showing the status of the entire length of the freeway corridor in Riverside County that's controlled. You can see the speed in every one of the segments, what the flow is in every one of the segments. And then there's similar screens for each of the ramps to be able to see what the status of the ramps are, how long is the queue, what's the ramp metering rate that's in effect at that moment in time, all that sort of stuff.

And are we in Riverside the only ones being kind of the test case that's being used to try out this program?

No, there was a project done in Colorado a few years ago. There was a nine-month pilot on I-25 that implemented this technology. The project in Riverside is obviously live. Yours is going to be coming online in 2029. And the Utah Department of Transportation has a similar grant to CCTA to implement the same concept on a section of I-15 in Salt Lake City.

But Riverside is live, and these other areas aren't quite online yet? Colorado has already happened.

They did a nine-month pilot, and then they ended the pilot. Yeah, Riverside's the current live one.

So have we learned from Colorado? Have we learned anything that is beneficial?

Absolutely, yeah. There's a lot of lessons learned from Colorado. The other thing to point out is there's many hundreds of ramps in Australia that are controlled with this same system.

I was going to wonder if you'd bring that up, that you're Australian.

Melbourne, pretty much all of the freeways in Melbourne are controlled with this system. Perth, the major freeway in Perth, is controlled with this system. Brisbane is controlled with this system. Actually, in Queensland, it even goes more extensively onto the arterial network as well.

So you brought your special skill from Australia to kind of help out?

I didn't bring it from Australia. I borrowed it from some of my colleagues in Australia. Oh.

Okay. All right. Anyway, as I said, it's a great, I'm optimistic about it. I think it's going to speed things up. And we just started our sustainability committee last week, and already we've got this new idea that's coming down. So anyway, thanks for being here and taking the time to explain the whole system to us.

Thank you. Okay. Well. My colleagues here asked many of the questions I was going to ask, so thank you all for your thoughtful questions. So the only thing I wanted to really add to that, Will, during the implementation phase, how significant of an impact do you anticipate it could have during that transition period with our existing traffic?

Do you want to talk to the construction and construction management?

If it's about construction, I think you may have already noticed that construction is going on and we have been trying to limit impact on traffic by limiting closures only to shoulder and when necessary we are using only nighttime closures and we're doing widening on the southbound direction of Bollinger Canyon and Crow Canyon. We're adding additional lanes to provide additional storage so that traffic will not back up into the local trails. So we are trying to minimize impact on traffic by utilizing those. There will be some advisory that comes out every time we plan full closures of the ramps, especially that happens only during nighttime. and we try to avoid any impact to traffic during construction.

Okay, so yes.

And so when we get through construction, for the CARM system, we activate the system and test to make sure all the devices are working, but we don't actually turn the signals on. And so that will happen for about 12 weeks. That way we can collect baseline data that we can then use as a comparison to once the system's operational. But it allows us to start to measure, you know, what are the volumes at the ramps? What do we need to turn the ramp metering rates at to start? And then when we start actually activating the ramp meters, we do what's called a soft launch. We don't turn the system fully on 100% on day one. We kind of slowly roll it out so we have less aggressive ramp metering rates, much more conservative. It probably won't prevent queuing or completely stop the congestion on the freeways, but it minimizes the chance that the ramps are going to back up. And so we learn from how that system operates and slowly roll it out over another couple of months until we get to full operations.

Okay, that's important to know because I was just curious. As was mentioned earlier, we may have residents who are wondering, what's going on? This is causing me more grief, right? So that's good to hear that they will be working overnight and that there will be a rerouting lane that they can utilize in lieu of where you're working. Okay, so the other thing I just wanted to mention, do you have any data, because I did go to the Department of Transportation and read up on this and lots of good reviews and things about this system and the implementation. And one of the things that I know was raised to us by a resident was concerns about the queuing and environmental impact of potential queuing happening as they're trying to get on the ramp and into the freeway. So I guess I just want to provide them with that information. In terms of absolute terms, what I saw at the DOT is that it should actually abate that. It'll abate that because you don't want hundreds or thousands of cars going through there all day and bottlenecking on the freeway, and then it's creating a big cloud of greenhouse gas emissions. But for the benefit of the concerned resident, Could you explain that, the cost benefit there?

Yeah, so you're absolutely right. The small delay that gets incurred at the ramp meter is offsetting the much bigger delay that you would get on the freeway if we were just to allow that traffic to spill out there and to cause the freeway to break down. So it's that sort of offset that we look for. There's certainly performance results from the Colorado project that I can send your way that sort of document how much we were able to reduce delay and how much we were able to improve the travel time in the corridor for that nine-month pilot. Again, the Riverside project's been up and running for about 10 weeks now. We're starting to get data coming back from that project that's showing positive outcomes. RCTC has a major milestone in November to do sort of a major briefing of their board of the first three months of operations. I believe that they're going to also invite other stakeholders that are interested to watch that come down and potentially look at their project. So there will be some information exchange that will be able to happen as a result of that project. They've been very forthcoming in sort of sharing their experience with agencies like CCTA. And so yeah, if you have an interest, we can definitely connect you with your peers in Riverside and learn from their experience in Temecula.

I think that would be helpful. Agree? Yeah, that would be helpful. We'd appreciate that. Thank you. Okay. So thank you again all for your presentations. We appreciate it in answering our questions. So we will then move on to public comment.

There are no speaker cards. If there is a member who, okay, we do have a member who is attending remotely via Zoom. And if you are attending remotely, please use the raise your hand or, I'm sorry, star nine on your telephone if you'd like to speak. So our speaker online is Susie Ferris-Inderkum.

Council, I have a comment here. in that I do feel that San Ramon should be a participant in this effort and have a seat at the table. But as the young lady that was speaking noted, this is the first MOU that they have done with local municipalities. You received a rather extensive evaluation provided by Brian Swanson regarding some serious concerns about how this resolution has been crafted so I would like to suggest that it not be approved tonight that it be carried over and that you have a chance to review the recommended safeguards and the changes in the verbiage for that MOU before it's signed and I think it would also be a good opportunity if some of the public had an opportunity to participate in discussions about that MOU Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other comments? The only other thing that we have is written comment that was received from Brian Swanson, which is before you. It's in the red binder in the back of the room and also posted on the website. Thank you. All right.

So I will turn it over again to my fellow council. I'm sorry. Let's close public comment. No motion is required this time. So do any of my fellow council members have any discussion points?

All my questions are answered. I'm good to go. IF EVERYBODY IS OKAY, THEN I'M GOOD TO MOVE THE MOTION FOR ADOPTING. OH, BEFORE THAT, DEFINITELY I THANK SUZIE FOR YOUR PUBLIC COMMENT. WE APPRECIATE. AND BRIAN, THANKS FOR YOUR COMMENT. WHEN WE DID REVIEW AND WE DIDN'T REALLY SEE ANY SPECIFIC RED FLAGS IN THIS CASE, THIS IS A MOU THAT WE WANT TO SIGN SO THAT WE CAN ADDRESS OUR COMMUNITY CONCERNS. AS I MENTIONED, In my constituents, majority of their concern is about traffic. That's the top. And I'm very happy that we are partnering with one of our key stakeholders in our community, like CCTA, Caltrans. They are key members. Their subject matter expertise in this field is huge. They do, like, Caltrans-run state of California. So it's pretty extensive expertise. DATA AND RESEARCH THAT THEY CONDUCT BEFORE IMPLEMENTING SOMETHING LIKE THAT. SO I TRUST IN THEIR ABILITY TO CONDUCT ALL THEIR RESEARCH BEFORE THEY BRING THIS SOMETHING TO COMMUNITY. AND ALSO FROM OUR SIDE, WE DID ALSO ASK ALL THE QUESTIONS THAT WE HAVE CONCERNS. SO DEFINITELY I'M LOOKING FORWARD FOR A GREAT SOLUTION LIKE THIS THAT CAN HELP OUR COMMUNITY. SO THANKS, CALTRANS. THANKS, CCTA. for getting together and providing solution for one of our key issue in the community. So with that, I'd like to move the motion for approving this resolution.

I second that motion.

Okay, there's a first motion and a seconded motion. Let's move to a vote. Okay, the motion passes 4-0-0. Thank you, everyone. We will move on to item number 10, City Managers and City Council Members' Comments, Matters Initiated.

Thank you, Vice Mayor and members of the council. I do have three updates for this evening. First, the San Ramon Department's Popular Community Academy is back, and it starts next Wednesday, August 19th. It's a 14-course session that is free and taught by police officers and department personnel. Classes are held on Wednesdays from 6.30 to 9 p.m. plus two Saturday sessions. Applications are due by Friday, August 14th, so visit the city website to learn more and apply. Also, our third Thursday's Arts and Eats events are still occurring. The next third Thursday will be on coincidentally, the third Thursday, August 20th, at the Doherty Valley Community Arts Center. It's a monthly gathering celebrating artists and food with booths and food trucks, and you can stop by between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. If you can't make it this month, we have two more in September and October for this year. And finally, we have the sports field user survey that's out to help shape the future of athletic fields in San Ramon. The city's conducting a utilization study and we need to hear from residents, athletes, parents, coaches, and sports organizations. You can complete the survey and comment on an interactive map through October 4th. And you could do that by visiting sanramon.ca.gov slash field study to share your thoughts. And with that, that concludes my update for this evening.

Great. Thank you so much. So we will start with Council Member Adler.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. First meeting I went to, but actually I was traveling that day, so I didn't see all the meeting. I was on the road. But the July 24th San Ramon Historical Foundation Monday meeting met. And, you know, they are a great organization. And just generally it's good, I think, for our people of San Ramon to – They want to go into the past and understand the history of our city. Forest Home Farms is a great historic park and offers guided tours of the old ranch house and the David Glass House. There have been some great speakers that have come. I was trying to find something I thought I brought. We have people who have... have a lot of knowledge about how our city developed. And so this speaker series, which is ending at the end of the month, is a great opportunity for, and you can look it up on Facebook. They have a good link about some of the speakers that have come over the summer and talked about old San Ramon. On Thursday, July 30th, I attended the Tri-Valley Mayor's Summit in Livermore. It was hosted by the Livermore Valley Chamber of Commerce, and the event drew over 300 attendees, moderated by former State Assemblywoman Catherine Baker, and they focused on regional cooperation between all our cities, local economic opportunities, Kind of got into what's going on in each jurisdiction's housing and infrastructure and some of the shared challenges that we all have to meet. On Tuesday, August 4th, it was the national night out from 5.30 to 9.30, and I did a ride-along with Corporal Stephen Hill, and initially it was Hall, And we drove around, mostly in my district, and met the neighbors. And I was particularly impressed with some of the folks on Mangos Drive. This neighborhood has been getting together for like 40 years. And a lot of great food and conversation, and they do things during the holidays where they'll, you know, somebody will bring an hors d'oeuvre, somebody will do the main course, and somebody will do dessert. So, you know, we don't always know what's going on in the city, but there's a lot of great neighborhoods here that... really interact and the national night out was a good opportunity to see that in action and Meet with our local police and just share. You know what's going on in our community Wednesday August 5th, I attended the the first sustainability Advisory Committee meeting And I, you know, as the first meeting, we have a great, you know, I think we sometimes forget, we've got a lot of people in our community that want to get involved. And we have some really good people on that committee. that want to do good things as far as sustainability. And, of course, this was the first kind of overview that happens with a new committee with the Brown Act and our city attorney going over the details, Martin Lyson's going over that, and a review of the committee purpose and charge. We have a new sustainability program manager, Rose Daly, and we got her from Michigan, I think, and so she was involved for the first time, and we are going to have some future meetings. I think the next one's October 5th, and so we're going to meet on a regular basis, and it'll be good to see how this committee hopefully really gets some things done. And the last thing I did was Sunday, I went to the National Eagle Court of Honor And, you know, we hear about our youth, but some of the males, you know, not getting maybe the background they should. But I'll tell you, Eagle Scouts are great. And it's really a group effort of scoutmasters and teachers and parents who have, you know, these kids have a difficult job to get to that Eagle Scout ranking. And it's the highest achievement in scouting. And I just feel really great to see these kids finally reach the end of that journey. And some of these kids are like starting college, but they come back for this event. And Council Member Perkins, Scott Perkins, was there. He has done a great job with his troop and getting these kids ready for that important step. And so he was recognized by, I think, all four of the kids that reached that honor, and they thanked him for that. So again, you know, I think it's good for the city to know what's going on, especially with the scouting. So I was honored to send out or to hand out some certificates signed by our mayor, who is an Eagle Scout. So anyway, that's what I did. Thank you.

Thank you. And we will move on to council member.

Thank you. Um, I want to, um, first off congratulate the San Juan Valley little league for the, uh, winning the North American, uh, Northern California championship. I think, uh, city manager, they played here in our backyard, correct? One of the games and,

Yeah, Bollinger Canyon Little League played twice at Max Bear Park in Livermore. Yeah.

Congratulations to them. I know the San Juan Valley Little League did lose last game, but they won Northern California, so congratulations to our boys there. National night out. I attended as well, and I wanted to thank our volunteers as well as our officers and our neighbors, who I think last year we had about 14 hosts, and this year we're up to 30. It's almost doubled, which was really good turnout for a national night out. So thank you to those that are hosting. Thank you to our officers and especially our volunteers who took the time out that evening. It was a long evening. It was a hot evening. to go out there and meet with the city. From the advisory committee, actually the finance committee meeting, we reviewed the PAR stabilization report and we're happy to report that that is very healthy. Our city investment report as well. Quarterly investment report came back healthy as well. We're in good, strong shape. OUR DIRECTOR OF FINANCE, JENNIFER WAKEMAN, PRESENTED OUR, IT'S BEEN A WHILE, OUR BUDGET TO ACTUAL ANALYSIS. IT'S UNAUDITED, BUT THIS IS, SHE'S BRINGING THIS BACK TO COUNCIL, BRINGING THIS BACK TO US. IT'S BEEN A WHILE. I can't remember the last time this has happened, but I bring this up because it goes back to a comment that a public speaker made regarding how do we correct a deficit. Well, part of what we're trying to do is understanding the problem and understanding the gaps in the budget, understanding what we need to address first. You can't really solve problem that you don't really have you don't really know what the question or the problem is so this budget to actuals which will be presented to council at a later meeting along with our investment report etc will shed a bit more light on that and finally I have a comment actually a request not it's not a matter initiated Mr. City Manager but what I'd like to do is I'd like to Council Member Adler mentioned the Sustainability Committee, and they met for the first time, so it sounds like that they're in full swing. We've had comments regarding leaf blowers. Bless you. That was on time, city attorney. Nice sound effect. So the leaf blower, there's an ordinance in California banning leaf blowers. Some cities have done it, but I'd like to have sustainability committee come review what other cities are doing. Perhaps come back to council with, and I don't think I want to know the obvious that it's loud and polluting. I want to know from understanding from what other cities do, how do they enforce applying this rule because it's not a police matter. It's not something where residents call the police to enforce it. This is a code enforcement. So how are police, how are code enforcement agencies handling this in other cities? What's been the result? What's the return on this? What's the cost to the city? How are some cities, how are they enforcing it? When have they enforced it? Does it take them a year to enforce it? Six months? and what has been the results of it.

So if I have other nodding heads up there, we can get that on a future sustainability agenda? Okay.

Yes, and I would add, because this is something I've been thinking about as well, is just if we could review our current policy on that.

Well, we don't have a leaf blower policy for the city. We do have noise ordinances that would still apply. But rather into getting into a large discussion here, we will provide a summary to the sustainability committee. We will get their comments and then we can bring it back to council for information or consideration.

Okay. Okay. Because, okay. I will leave it at that. I had gotten different information, so. Okay. Okay.

Was that a city manager? Did you get your three nodding heads?

Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

All righty. We'll move on with Council Member Rose.

Okay. July 16th, I attended Marine Clean Energy Board meeting, MCE. Two key items. One is, as already mentioned, that the CEO stepped out of MCE. There's an agenda item that we looked at, proposed the creation of ad hoc committee to search for CEO. So it took a long time to get that ad hoc committee. That was one of those long meetings, close to midnight. But anyway, so the second one was about creating ad hoc committee for civil grand jury response committee. So those two were done successfully. And then Tuesday, August 4th, similar to our council members mentioned that national night out. Thanks to Officer Jeremy Dang for the ride. Thanks to all organizers who hosted the events and community residents for joining us. Appreciate for sharing all your thoughts and appreciate for all the delicious food. And also I attended so many other community events. I don't like, okay. So tons of events happened. So thanks to all organizers and community residents who host these events in our community and make our city a vibrant city where we can participate, enjoy all festivities as well as events. Thank you.

Thank you. So I will. So the only thing I wanted to clarify, so I agree with what council members right now said we do. But when we had the meeting, the update given to us one year out of Measure N, which ended June 30th. I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT WE DID GIVE INSTRUCTION TO LOOK INTO IDENTIFYING WAYS THAT WITH THE SURPLUS THAT WE DO HAVE HOW WE CAN INVEST THAT AND ALLOW THAT EXTRA FUNDS TO GROW. SO WE ACTUALLY HAVE INITIATED THAT REQUEST TO HAVE THAT HAPPEN, TRANSPIRE. AND I ALSO WANTED TO CLARIFY, I'M VERY GRATEFUL TO OUR FORMER MAYOR, GREG CARR, FOR THE COMMENT HE MADE EARLIER, BUT THE REASON I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING, I JUST WANTED TO CLARIFY IS BECAUSE I ALREADY KNEW THAT THE PERSON WAS IN TOUCH, SO I FIGURED WE'D FOLLOW UP WITH THEM AFTERWARDS AGAIN. Then so let's see Okay, so I'm gonna move on to what we've been doing. It seems like forever because we had a break so Jill June July 15th I attended With the mayor the critter crossroads ribbon-cutting we had plenty of staff there That was a great event It's a it's a beautiful park lots of outdoor. They even have a

What do they call the little sandbags that you throw?

THAT GAME? CORN HOLES. CORN HOLES. THANK YOU. SO IT'S A LITTLE DIFFERENT. IT'S A MUCH MORE ENGAGING PARK. YOU CAN GO WITH YOUR FRIENDS AND DO A LOT OF DIFFERENT THINGS. IT'S NOT YOUR TYPICAL PARK. I DEFINITELY ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO GO CHECK IT OUT. THEN ON JULY 16TH, I WENT TO THE TRANSPORTATION ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING, AND LET ME SEE. SORRY, I HAVE TO REVISIT. We basically talked about the proposed rock and roll program at Coyote Creek and Hidden Hills Elementary Schools. And that was basically, the biggest concern we had about that was just about making sure that we had traffic guards in the area key intersections to make sure that it wasn't just in the immediate proximity, but a little further out. We had enough crossing guards to make sure that children could safely cross and get to school by foot. And then, We had an update by PJ Dute, who's our associate planner on residential traffic calming updates. We've been talking about the Doherty Road area and putting a couple of, putting a sort of a meter reminder, speeding reminder for people to try to encourage people to slow down. And then on July 20th, I went to the Tri-Valley Transportation Council and there we covered, we adopted the proposed addition of reduced fees for the transit priority area, residential categories in the Tri-Valley. Tri-Valley TDF rate schedule pursuant to requirements of AB 3177. Okay, I think there's more, but that's probably the most important part. And then on... July 22nd, I met with our fire chief, Aguiar, and I was able to just to connect with him now that he's taken over for PAGE just to get an update of sort of what his priorities are with some of his concerns and how we could work more collaboratively with our fire department to support them and also make sure our community is safe. especially as we are in the middle of a fire season right now, and we're seeing it happen more and more in different areas throughout the world, in fact. So then on August 4th, I also went to the National Night Out. I was joined by Lieutenant Pistello. We had a great time. It was really wonderful to talk with people and to meet with people. It's just a great opportunity to really connect with people face-to-face, not behind this dais, which is so restrictive. So, just really enjoyed it as always. I think it's probably my favorite event every year. August 5th, we had, as was mentioned, our first Sustainability Advisory Committee. People just, there's a lot of great energy. Alternates were so excited. They were there and they were, there are alternates, technically, and they just showed up anyway because they're really excited to be there and they really are looking forward to being, playing. a vital role in really how things unfold in San Ramon. How do we maintain the quality of life that we've become accustomed to and that we all so much love and want to uphold? And that's part of our climate action plan, and they will be also working to try to play a supportive role to our staff in identifying funding opportunities and things that we can do to make these things possible. Just like our bridge is one of those projects that we were very fortunate where over 82% of it was funded by external grants. Those are the kind of things that we as a city should always be looking out for to find ways to run a leaner project. operations. And then August 6th, I went to the marketing, planning, and legislative meeting for County Connection. I wish I had good news, but right now things are looking a bit bleak. There's a few bills that are coming down the line that could be costing The agency More Money and County Connection in the world of transportation is considered a small agency, but they're a vitally important agency that provides a paratransit, which is services, ridership for people with disabilities. So they're very important and we're hoping some of these bills some pass and others don't so there's a whole list of that If anybody's interested in knowing the details, I'm happy to share with share that with them on August 10th I attended the Iron Horse corridor management program at Advisory Committee meeting with councilmember Adler and we were talking about the dual track between the bike and the pedestrian lanes and just really discussed safety measures as would they enter the bridge exit the Bollinger overpass as well and just making sure people are careful and making sure that we're putting up adequate signs to make sure it's visible and we also talked about putting a signage on the actual ground. So it's very clear where pedestrians should stay and where the bikes should stay during those points where they have to merge and divert. And then Just in terms of further down in the project, this is something they're working all throughout the Iron Horse Trail. They're still deciding between whether it's going to be an overpass and an underpass, but a big concern was the cost. And of course, overpasses cost a lot more money, But of course, underpasses have some of its disadvantages, so it's something to be determined along the way. And that's about it. Thank you for your time. And we will move to adjournment at, wait, 8.36 p.m.

Thank you.