City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. you Thank you. Thank you. so so Thank you.

I'm Kevin Wilk, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, and welcome to the regular meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council. The City Council is conducting this meeting from the City Council Chamber. This meeting is being video streamed and can be viewed live or later on the City's website. As some attendees may be participating in their first Walnut Creek City Council meeting, I wanted to welcome everyone and talk briefly about the public comment process. For each agenda item, there will be an opportunity for public comment on the item. Thus, if you desire to speak to an item on the agenda this evening, please hold your comments until the City Council considers that item. Additionally, we have a section on the agenda titled Public Communications, which is for public comments for items not on the agenda. Any comments during public communication should not relate to an item that is on the agenda this evening. Consistent with Section 9.5 of the City Council Handbook, 30 minutes will be initially allocated for public communications for items not on the agenda. Additional time for public communications for items not on the agenda will be provided at the end of the open session portion of the meeting if necessary. If you desire to provide a public comment, please complete a speaker identification card and line up behind the lectern at the appropriate time. Wait your turn, and then when you approach the lectern, please state your name and city of residence for the record. You will have two minutes to address the City Council. Please keep in mind that this is a city business meeting. The City Council has adopted rules of decorum to ensure that meetings are conducted efficiently and effectively, and that all members of the public have a full, fair, and equal opportunity to be heard. The City Council Handbook outlines decorum expected in the Council Chamber and can be found on our website. All remarks should be addressed to the City Council. Please do not use threatening, profane, or abusive language which disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the Council meetings. Again, each speaker will have two minutes to make your remarks. Written comments submitted and received up to two hours before the meeting have been posted to the city's website for public review and are included in the meeting record, but will not be separately read into the record. I'm Kevin Wilk, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, and welcome to the Tuesday, June 16th regular meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council. And if I could now ask everybody to please join me in 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.

All right, Deputy City Clerk Eleanor Branson, would you please call the roll?

Council Member Devaney?

Here.

Council Member Darling? Here. Council Member Silva? Present. Mayor Pro Tem Francois? Here. And Mayor Wilk?

Here. All right. Our first item is a proclamation for Juneteenth. And I invite Nicole Hankton from the Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau to please come forward and accept the proclamation. And while you're there, I'll read some of the proclamation, and then if you'd like to say a few words as well. Whereas on January 1st, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation officially ending slavery, changing the status of more than three and a half million enslaved African Americans in the Confederate States of America. However, over two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865, to inform enslaved African Americans of General Order No. 3, the people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection between existing between then becomes that between employer and hired laborer. And so Juneteenth, also known as Juneteenth Independence Day, Emancipation Day, Emancipation Celebration, Freedom Day is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. It's a need to fight for freedom. And whereas the City of Walnut Creek commemorates the anniversary of Juneteenth in recognition and celebration of the great contributions that African Americans have made to the United States, California, and the City of Walnut Creek, and therefore I, Kevin Wilk, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, on behalf of the Walnut Creek City Council, do hereby proclaim June 19th, 2026 as Juneteenth National Freedom Day and encourage the community to honor and reflect on the significant role that African Americans have played in the history of the United States and how they have enriched society through their steadfast commitment to promoting unity and equality. And, well, I think that just deserves a round of applause right there. So, and Nicole, if you'd like to say a few words on behalf of yourself, the chamber, and what Juneteenth is.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Mayor Wilk and city council members. Thank you very much for this proclamation. I brought some supporters here. I brought my cousin, Aaron Robertson, who does business in Walnut Creek. So welcome, Aaron. And Wilson Stevens, who also is an entrepreneur in Walnut Creek and a new business owner in Walnut Creek. Tell me your name and your business. Absolutely. So they showed up here very happy for the proclamation, and we welcome all of them as chamber members, and we're just excited to be here to receive this.

Wonderful. Well, thank you, and thank you for attending. Why don't we take a picture to make sure that we get this word out, too.

You didn't know you guys were going to get one.

Okay, one, two, and now I got you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for coming. Nice to meet you.

Congratulations. Welcome to Walnut Creek. Thanks for coming.

All right, next on the agenda is the consent calendar. Does any council member wish to pull an item for discussion? Or any member of staff wish to pull an item for discussion?

2F.

2F. I will pull 2G. Anybody else? Okay. Does any member of the public wish to comment on an item on the consent calendar? As a reminder, each speaker will have two minutes to make their remarks. Written comments submitted have been posted to the city's website for public review and are included in the meeting record but will not be separately read into the record. And I don't see any speakers. So I'll ask the council if anyone would like to make a motion with regard to the consent calendar for those items that have not been pulled.

Move to approve items 2A through 2E. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Elena?

Councilmember Devaney?

Aye.

Councilmember Darling? Aye. Councilmember Silva? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Francois? Aye. And Mayor Wilk?

Aye. All right, so now we've, so let's go to item 2F. Councilmember Devaney?

Yeah, so I just had a quick question for Arts and Rec. It looks like this, and it sounds like, it looks like Lifetime Tennis has done a great job managing these courts, you know, positive feedback and positive report and the agenda report. When I was reading about the financial agreement, it just made me wonder if we're, There's over 700,000 in profit. We share 5% above that. Is that what that says?

That's correct.

So it reads as if there's quite a bit of profit made there, and it makes me wonder if have we explored running that from an arts and rec standpoint if it's really that profitable, or we've looked into it and it doesn't really make sense to do so.

Sure, so a lot of expenses are absorbed by their company overhead that isn't included in this bottom line. So for example, their marketing is shared across multiple locations. And so those kinds of costs that we would be absorbing on our own would be far more expensive than their shared resources that they are looking at. So to be fair, though, we haven't looked at that for probably six to seven years. So as we are preparing to launch into the RFQ, RFP process, that is an analysis that we could make at that time as well.

And so just to clarify for everyone, my question again, they pay us $67,500 to have the courts. Correct. And then they run them. And then if they make over $700,000, we share 5% of that profit over $700,000. So it sounds like they've got a lot of operating expenses and a lot of other things that that they're paying for that would be questionably profitable for us to take over. Okay, well as long as we'll be exploring that in the future. Yep, thanks.

Thank you. As long as you've answered a question, I have a question on this in the same way. What employees and services do they provide? They're not just opening and closing the courts.

Correct. So they also provide instruction and then all of the U.S., the national tournament structures. So the city is not responsible for providing those opportunities for the residents. So whether it's a class, it's an instruction, or it's a league play, tournament play, they are managing all of that as well.

And this is similar to the outside golf course expert that runs Boundary Oak Forest?

Very similar.

Okay, great. Thank you.

I don't see any more questions. Council Member Devaney, would you like to make a motion?

Yeah, I move to approve item 2F as written in the agenda report.

Second? We have a motion and a second. Eleanor, can you call the roll, please?

Councilmember Devaney?

Aye.

Councilmember Darling? Aye. Councilmember Silva? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Francois? Aye. And Mayor Wolk?

Aye.

Motion carries.

All right. So next is item 2G, and I pulled this one not so much because I have an issue with it, but this is regarding... A $30,000 payment from Chick-fil-A for traffic calming measures in the traffic impact mitigation Fees Fund. I see Matt Redmond. Thanks for coming on behalf of Public Works and Transportation. So I'm really, I haven't heard of any traffic issues that have been going on in that area where Chick-fil-A now is. I've driven by a number of times. I checked the parking lot. There isn't, doesn't seem to be impacted in the parking lot. In fact, there's always spaces right there next to Chick-fil-A. So I'm just curious, what kind of traffic calming measures are we looking at? And I don't need the specifics, but just like in general, what would we normally think about that kind of an area?

Yeah, sure. Matt Redmond, traffic engineer for the city. So I think in front of Chick-fil-A on Citrus there, I think there could be some additional vertical delineators that prevent the U-turn where the sign is. That's kind of the main issue that I've heard of from residents and people in the area. But I think since we have these funds, we can also use that to improve some crosswalks in the neighborhood there and just enhance safety around the school. Okay.

That's great. Yeah, I actually, living in the area, and of course there were a lot of concern among residents, I have really not heard of any concerns from residents or neighbors or people that have said that there is problems with traffic, with signals, or really almost anything else. I would certainly hear about that being in that area. It's interesting how things turn out. Great job to Public Works, to Planning Department, to the Council for a very long meeting on that night when we We're really going over everything with a fine-tooth comb. So thanks, appreciate that, and look forward to seeing the improvements. And with that, I'll make a motion to approve item 2G.

And I'll second.

We have a motion to second.

Council Member Devaney. Aye. Council Member Darling. Aye. Council Member Silva. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Francois. Aye. And Mayor Wolk.

Aye. All right. Moving right along. Next on the agenda is public communications. This portion of the meeting is reserved for comments on items not on the agenda. Under the Brown Act, the Council cannot act on items raised during public communication, but may respond briefly to statements made or questions posed, request clarification, or refer the item to staff. Consistent with Section 9.5 of the City Council Handbook, 30 minutes will be allocated at this time for public communications for items not on the agenda. Additional time for public communications for items not on the agenda will be provided at the end of the meeting if necessary. Written comments submitted have been posted to the city's website for public review and are included in the meeting record but will not be separately read into the record. So at this time I'll note that the time is 6.15 and we'll take public comments on items not on the agenda until approximately 6.45 and then the remainder of any such comments at the end of the open session portion of the meeting. So this is the time to speak. If anybody has any items on public communication for not on the agenda, please come up to the podium, line up along the left side, and state your name and city. You're first. Come on up.

Thank you. I think I'm quite nervous.

No worries.

Does it start now?

Whenever you start with your name and city.

Okay, yes. My name is Alex Williams. I'm from Walnut Creek, California. I was born here in 1987 over in John Muir Hospital off of Ignatio. I wanted to speak to you on behalf of an item or an idea that sits in the heart of my generation that they remember and recall with Walnut Creek. So if I... May I give you this speech, if that's appropriate? Oh, the time, great. Mayor Wilk, members of the City Council, and my fellow neighbors, you know, it's been said that the public comment periods are reserved for airing of grievances, and heaven knows we have enough potholes to keep us busy. But tonight, I didn't come to look at the ground. I came to ask you to look up, look back, and remember who we are. I want to talk about a long-standing resident of this town who's been part of our story since 1911, but has been quiet for far too long, and that is King Walnut, if you remember him. But now we have... wonderfully dynamic and forward-looking council, and I believe your youthfulness is not a sign of inexperience, but a magnificent opportunity, a chance to bridge the vibrant future you're building with the timeless wisdom of our elders like King Walnut. And some might look at our history and see a bygone era, but those of us who remember when Barnes and Nobles had a second floor that was beautifully air-conditioned with a cafe will know better And we know that King Walnut represents the very soul of Walnut Creek. The generations before us didn't just want to build houses. They built a community where civic pride meant something tangible. In our rush toward modern progress, we must never make the error of thinking that new is always better. A town that forgets its roots loses its footing. Bringing back King Walnut is not about resisting change, but preserving the character and warmth that made us want to raise our families here in the first place. Oh, is that it? He is a symbol of the treasure and the whimsy and the unique identity that sparked a fire in our hearts during our childhood and reminding us of the Twilight Parade, the Walnut Festival, and the pure joy of growing up here. So let's breathe new life into this classic icon for our public squares so future generations can share in the same sense of wonder. Let us make the city once again a shining example of a community that honors its past while confidently stepping into the future. Let's bring back the fun, let's bring back the heritage, and let's bring back King Walnut. Thank you and God bless you.

Thank you, Alex. Well, first of all, he called us youthful. So right there, he's got us on his side.

And he might not realize that many people have often thought that Mayor Pro Tem Francois just might be King Walnut. We don't know. Never been spotted in the same place.

You know, you bring up an interesting point because I think a lot of people also... conflate a bit between the City of Walnut Creek and Walnut Festival Parade. So I'm gonna ask the city manager, actually, if you could just give us a quick rundown of the difference between what we're seeing typically from the Walnut Parade, Walnut Festival, and what the City of Walnut Creek actually does. And then we have your contact information, I think, and then we'll figure something out. Thank you so much.

Yeah, good evening, Dan Buckshi, city manager. Yes, the Walnut Festival Association has run the previous Walnut Parade as well as the annual festival that would be at Heather Farm. And so they are an independent entity that has coordinated that for years. Obviously some city streets and coordination occur, but they have led this, they've chosen for the last several years not to bring the parade back. Certainly there's the option to do that, but they've not pursued that at this time. And then with the festival that occurs with all of the construction that's occurring at Heather Farm Park, it's temporarily relocated, but would certainly be welcomed back once the construction's done out there.

So I think what we'll do, Alex, we have...

They have a website.

There is a website, although I'm not, again, I'm not sure if they're active and if they're even planning on anything.

There's contact information on it.

OK. So check the Walnut Creek Festival website. You can try emailing, see if you can connect with anybody. And on our end, we'll keep your information on file as well. And so anybody that's in the communication or arena where there should be some discussion about the reinstitution of the Walnut Festival or Walnut Parade. We'd all be very interested in that happening, but we'll keep that on hand.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for coming. Do we have any more people for public communication? All right, seeing none yet. Seeing none, we'll close public communication and we will be moving right along now to council member and staff announcements, reports on activities or requests. We'll start with city attorney.

Thank you, Mayor Wilk. I want a report of an action by the council to prior closed session. At the closed session on March 13th, 2026, The City Council, by a 5-0 vote, concurred with the MPA, CARMA, and the excess insurance companies to enter into a settlement agreement to resolve the Chulanbat versus City of Walnut Creek litigation. We're reporting this a little bit later than the event because it took a few months to put the final settlement terms together with the parties, but that has now been completed.

Okay, thank you very much. City Manager reports?

I do not have an update this evening, Mayor.

Okay, we'll swing to this. Actually, we're gonna start with Council Member Darling reports.

Thank you. Couple interesting things this month. DRAA had the Business Leaders event up on the stage at Leicester, which was always a lot of fun, and they had brought in a couple musicians, and we got around a chance to visit about how important the business community and the arts community cooperating is. I won't talk about the mayor's conference because that's your job And then I helped sell tickets at art and wine until my little ticket selling fingers were sore. It was a beautiful day It was nowhere near as hot as last year. And so it looked like everybody had a really good time The other thing that I got to do this month. I I am the representative on MCE for the city of Walnut Creek and we have a an ad hoc committee that has been working to provide coordination and oversight over short-term power contracts that they're buying. They are the electric utility for most of us here in Walnut Creek. They go out and buy the electricity. It comes through the PG&E lines to your house, and it's a greener product with local control. And so I got to sit in on, I get to sit in with all these power nerds. And so they had run a solicitation for power to help us hedge during the summer months because you can never predict how much electricity people are gonna use in the summer. So they always buy a little bit extra and they had gone out in an open solicitation and gotten back contracts. And the good news is the prices that they got in that solicitation were very reasonable. One was well below what we had in our budget. And I think we're going to save a couple million dollars on that particular acquisition. So that was fun to see that one from beginning to end. And then lastly, I got to go see Jagged Little Pill. And it was really fun. And I love Alanis Morissette and her music. And so I didn't sing along too much, but it was fun.

Thank you. Council Member Silva.

I'll pick up where council member Darling left off and say that yes, as the liaison to the Diablo Regional Arts Association, which is the fundraising partner for the Lesher Center for the Arts, I too saw a jagged little pill last week. You have until June 28th to get tickets. The house was full and it is, a moving musical, and so that was really important to see. So I strongly recommend that, and while you're there, you can also get in on the Aztec Stories at the Bedford Gallery. Both of them close, the last day is June 28th, so there's no time to waste on that. Diablo Regional Arts Association had its bimonthly board meeting a couple of weeks ago. Three things to note for my council colleagues. On Broadway is October 3rd and planning is well underway. They are using a new auctioneer this year and we got to talk to them as part of the board meeting and they are having a big fundraising plan that really What they raise funds for is to support the arts in Walnut Creek at the Lesher Center, but also the arts access programs which provide arts programs and experiences for underserved youth across Contra Costa County. It's a very important work. And I will mention that they're also in the process of hiring a new development director for the association.

Who's the current one?

Pardon me?

Who's the current development director?

There hasn't been one for a while, I think. Yes, I sold tickets at Art and Wine. I don't think I lost any money. Very important, right? But I wasn't drinking any wine while I was trying to sell tickets. Were you? That's very important.

I was not drinking wine.

On behalf of the City of Walnut Creek and as liaison to Walnut Creek Sister Cities Organization, I attended the eighth US-China Sister Cities Summit. It was a couple of Fridays ago in San Francisco. This was the second time I had the opportunity to attend this summit. The first time was actually when I was in China in Shanghai in 2023. It's a one-day summit, and the bottom line is they bring a lot of people in from China. There are a lot of people in from across the country in the United States. They're trying to encourage friendship between our cities in China and our cities here, and encouraging people to establish relationships, sister city relationships with Chinese cities. That's an amazing feat because Chinese cities, our corollary city for a city of 70,000 people, which is what we are, would be two to three million in size. So there's nothing small like we are. Also, Walnut Creek Sister Cities had their annual meeting a couple of Sundays ago. It was well attended. It was a picnic in Red Gear Park or an ice cream social, and it was very celebratory as well because they were welcoming the new class of youth ambassadors who will be visiting our two sister cities in Europe, Schiavo, Hungary, and Cetto, Italy, in the fall. Recently, Cal Cities, League of California Cities had their policy committee meetings in June, and as vice chair of the Revenue and Taxation Policy Committee, moderating, facilitating the meeting. We had three interesting presentations, one from Michael Coleman, many of us will know, who is the lead fiscal consultant to the League of Cities. And he talked about tools to assess fiscal health of cities, which is very important. You can't just look at your checkbook on any given day and say, oh, everything's fine. You have long-term, long-range planning. We also had a presentation on state unfunded mandates and what the rules are to get reimbursement. And it's complicated. And the third was from CalEd, the local government economic development entity, where they talked about local economic development and opportunities and how it was done in Ontario and Ukiah, two very different cities. And I would mention also that I decided to take the SB 827 fiscal health workshop. It was excellent. I learned something and it was important because they had a whole section on fees and cost recovery and it was the Thursday before. our last Tuesday meeting and even though I've been on this council for 20 years and have been through budgets over and over, I learned something and it was definitely, the experts had put it together. This Thursday, the Association of Bay Area Governments will have its annual General Assembly meeting which there will be representatives from the 101 cities in the nine counties of the Bay Area and representatives from each of the nine counties. We will really just be focused on adopting the annual budget, which will have a just under 3% membership dues increase to cover inflationary costs increases. And also the General Assembly will be asked to affirm the new president and vice president of ABAC. The new president will be Sue Adams, who is a council member from Rodent Park in Marin County. And the new vice president will be Solano County Supervisor Wanda Williams. also this will be my last duty as a member of the executive board of the association of bay area governments as i'm being replaced july 1st by maureen toms of pinole and i'm She will be assuming my job and I'm trying to make that transition as smooth as possible. Recycle Smart is in the middle of the transition to a new contracts for collection and reprocessing of organics. That will go into effect next March, but in anticipation of that, a group of us are going on a tour of Recology's organics processing facility in the Central Valley tomorrow. More to follow. I think I get to wear my boots. My buke. All my nose. And I think that is all I would talk about.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Quota Council Member Devaney.

Well, my youngest graduated eighth grade. We hosted a party for the class at our house, and we went on vacation and just got back. So I have no city business to report.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Francois.

thank you mayor i i too do not have much of an update since our last meeting but i do have an announcement that i would like to make after a lot of thoughtful consideration i have decided not to run for reelection this year i can honestly say it's been one of the true honors of my life to represent my fellow residents as a council member I respect immensely the trust that these residents placed in me and I worked hard to try to never take that for granted. I'd like to thank staff, obviously starting with our city manager and city attorney, but everyone in this room and everyone who works in this building for everything they do to make this city run so smoothly. I saw it firsthand in countless ways over the last eight years on council and 11 years on the planning commission before that. I want to thank my council colleagues for making this experience a truly enjoyable one and for making me a more thoughtful, informed, and better person as a result. We accomplished a lot together over these last eight years. Chief among them, in my mind, being the passage of Measure O, that will continue. It will live beyond me and beyond some of us and continue to enhance our high quality of life. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon, though. I will be here and committed to serving the remainder of my council term this year, so it's not goodbye yet. And in November, of course, there'll be an election to select my replacement, and I vow to do everything in my power to assist that person in making the transition a very smooth one and pledge him or her my full support. In the meantime, to my colleagues, let's keep being good stewards of this city, leading it with humility and grace, and serving as good models of leadership and civic engagement. Thank you.

Well, thank you, Matt. I mean, it's been a pleasure to get to know you and consider you a friend now over these last eight years that you've been on council and even several years before that. We're going to have a lot more to say through into December, so you're not going to get all the goodbyes and everything now. In fact, being my mayor pro tem, you're going to be working very hard for the next several months, too. But it has been and will continue to be a pleasure working with you on this, and I know that your family lives here, so you're not going far. All right. Well, I have been kind of busy in the last couple of weeks. As we heard Councilmember Darling mention about the DRA business leaders and celebrating the upcoming events for the Diablo Regional Arts Association, there's just a tremendous amount of enthusiasm with within the arts community. We're seeing that from the DRAA events that are sponsored and we had several of those business leaders that are sponsors that were there and thrilled to see that continue because as we've unfortunately seen ever since the pandemic, there are far and few between art centers remaining now. and we are one of the last, certainly we're the biggest and well the best, let's just say it, we're the best in the East Bay. However, there are unfortunately a fraction of what there were prior to just seven, eight years ago. So it's important to keep that going. As the liaison to County Connection, I did want to mention that there was a background state audit recently that was done. Now, some of you may be aware that, of course, County Connection is one of just many different public transit agencies throughout the East Bay and the Bay Area. And there has been discussion among a couple of state senators about combining all of them and essentially aggregating all of them into one entity. And so the request was done on behalf of State Senator Ayesha Wahab in District 10. requesting that the Legislative Audit Committee approve the transit agency's audit concerning this fragmented transit landscape. The audit reviewed six bus services agencies, including County Connection, and the five main takeaways from the report are that the audit found the East Bay agencies regularly coordinate amongst each other, which actually is what County Connection and our staff has been saying, and that travel between different systems was accessible and easy to navigate. That was a key point. There are no recommendations for the East Bay transit agencies. Another key point, they're not recommending for anything to happen in that regard. and that MTC agreed with the three recommendations presented, which were that the audit recommends the legislature consider amending state law to extend the innovative clean transit regulation deadline or allocate new funds to transit agencies. Combining the East Bay transit agencies specifically was not a recommendation due to the analysis that it may not provide significant financial benefits and would likely have higher costs. So we are hopeful that this ends this phase of the push from a couple of the state senators of consolidating all the agencies. We think, first of all, it would cost jobs as well, and we wanted to make sure that that wasn't going to happen. Frankly, it would cause more issues than it would resolve. So I hope you won't have to hear more updates from me on that. I hope that's it, but I'll let you know if that does happen. The Mayor's Conference, so it's something that occurred here a couple of weeks ago. And the Mayor's Conference is something that goes throughout the 19 cities in Contra Costa and each city hosts it and then it moves on to another one. And so I want to thank staff immensely for this. This does not happen without the hard work of staff their city manager, Dan Buckshi, and city clerk Susie Martinez, and Ellen Branson, and Cassava Washington, and Nancy Cyr, and really the people on the executive team that helped make this happen. Greatly attended. It was in the library Oakview room. The restaurant where we had dinner afterwards was La Fontaine down the street on Broadway. They did a tremendous job in making sure that, I mean, the service and the food was excellent, but it was all very smooth. We have been to mayor's conferences where that was not the case. So just a huge... Thank you to everybody on there, and the presentation was by White Pony Express, which rescues surplus food from businesses like grocery stores and restaurants and delivers it to over 100 local nonprofits, serving 125,000 people annually. So they gave their presentation, very well received, of course, by everybody, and people were even making donations right then and there. So, again, just kudos all over for the city manager's office on this one. We heard that there were policy committee meetings from Cal Cities this last week, and in fact, I am on the Environmental Quality Policy Committee. And a lot of the discussion this last week was on BACA, which is Building an Affordable California Act, and really pushed to try to alleviate some of the regulations that special procedures under CEQA. And the idea is that it would only apply to essential projects, but that could include a whole host of different areas, from types of housing and water, clean energy, public health, wild wildfire safety, and the list goes on. The idea being reducing the regulations and essentially easing CEQA a bit is going to make it easier to build. But there was a lot of discussion and a lot of pushback, and really it divided the Environmental Quality Policy Committee. The recommendation fact from the committee was to oppose the act. So I'm sure we'll hear more about that coming forward. Yeah, it was a heated discussion. It was spicy. The Art and Wine Festival, Chamber of Commerce, Nicole, I thought it was terrific. I was there morning and afternoon, both Saturday and Sunday. People loved going. I heard so much positive enthusiasm about it. And I look forward to even making it above and beyond for next year as well. So congratulations. Big kudos to the Chamber on that one, too. I also attended the Shadeland's Car Show by the Shadeland's Historical Society. They had their 200 cars out there that were fantastic, from a 1915 Model A car. Yeah, I know. It was like 110 years old. To probably a 2024 car that's probably a half a million dollars. Amazing, amazing event. I also went on the tour and the family-friendly day of Central Sand event that was this last weekend. Florence Weddington is our elected representative for there, was there along with most of the Central Sand Committee. Yeah, it's good to certainly bring a nose plug, but it was really interesting to hear what happens when the water goes down the drain or the toilet and how is it recycled. So I found it fascinating. Just a few more here. Fiesta Culturale was this last Saturday. And congratulations to Carolyn Jackson, the staff of the Escher Center, and Chris, your team. It was great. I was there for a few hours. And the performer, it was a warm day on, it was what, Saturday? It was Saturday. It was a warm day. Performers were great. Vendors were out there. It was just a terrific event. So I look forward to seeing that in the coming years as well. And there was something at Remembrance Park that NAMI sponsored yesterday. And I bring this up because, first of all, I was presenting a check from Lunacy Lounge, where I was a celebrity bartender event a couple of weeks ago. A part of the proceeds donated along with my tips and some additional monies went to the National Association for Mental Illness. And the whole idea is reducing the stigma of mental health. And why that is something that people tend to not talk about, but there's not a problem talking about cancer or diabetes or a number of other illnesses, but mental health is something that's still sort of in the shadows. And so the whole idea is what can we do to reduce the stigma of it and bring it out into the open. So that was a really nice event yesterday. This morning was coffee with a cop. We had our chief of police, we had captains, we had lieutenants and sergeants and all sorts of officers there at Coin Coffee in Shadelands. Lots of residents that were there. Always great to see that event and thank you so much for putting that on and reaching out to the community. And I'll be seeing Jagged Little Pill this week. And that's my update. All right, we're done. Next, we have a consideration item. And it is the authorization of the city manager to execute a memorandum of understanding between the city of Walnut Creek and participating agencies for the interstate 680 corridor ramp metering projects. I invite traffic engineer Matt Redman forward to provide the presentation.

Good evening. Matt Redman, traffic engineer. I'm just going to introduce this before I hand it over to CCTA, Caltrans, and their consultants. So good evening, Mayor Wilk and council members. This item is to execute a memorandum of understanding between Walnut Creek and CCTA and Caltrans to agree to operations of the 680 on-ramp changes. So a ramp meter, where you have an on-ramp, is a traffic signal on a freeway on ramp that's used to regulate the flow of vehicles onto the freeway. I just want to make sure we're clear because we're going in depth with this technology tonight. So there's really kind of two projects going on. Caltrans has a SHOP project, the State Highway Operation and Protection Program. This is for communication infrastructure upgrades as well as ramp metering upgrades along the 680 corridor. And they have technology to meter the ramps. Now, CCTA has an additional project that layers on top of that shop project called the CARM project, which is a coordinated adaptive ramp metering project. So this will install advanced freeway monitoring technology and updated algorithms at the northbound I-680 on ramps from Acosta Boulevard down in San Ramon to Burnett Avenue in Concord. So all of our northbound ramps on 680. None of these currently have ramps. In this MOU, I've reviewed it, legal's reviewed it. My main comments are related to putting an agency, a local agency focus in the MOU so it's not just a care about the freeway mainline, we also care about local arterials. And so I went through that and updated that and provided those comments throughout the three revisions of this MOU. So with that, I'll turn it over to Stephanie Hu of CCTA.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members, and thank you, Matt, for the introduction and the quick summary, which is really well done. We are happy to be here today. My name is Stephanie Hu, Director of Projects at Contra Costa Transportation Authority, or CCTA. With me are staff from Caltrans, Sam from District 4, as well as our consultant project engineer on the CARM project. Just as what Matt was saying, 680 ramp metering deployment, we're doing something different. In the other corridors in Contra Costa, ramp metering have been deployed without very much collaboration and coordination with the local jurisdictions. And in this case on 680, we have been collaborating and coordinating with all the jurisdiction along 680 with the local staff the traffic engineer of each of the cities along 680 for the past year and a half and the result of that is this MOU that documents the roles and responsibility expectation goals policy governance structure of ramp metering on 680. So you all know that 680 is pretty congested. This bar graph here is actually taken from a recent article from SF Chronicle where northbound 680 made it to the top 10 most congested freeway segment in the Bay Area. You guys know northbound 680 is very congested in the PM peak period. So wide ramp metering, it is a strategy to regulate flow of traffic entering the freeway. It helps to smooth out the traffic flow entering the freeway. It also discourages those who sometimes take the off ramp and then get on the freeway and the immediate on ramp to bypass some of the congestion. It also reduces the crashes or likelihood of crashes in the merging area where folks are coming onto the freeway and sometimes folks are also exiting. having ramp meter to reduce the probability of crashes in those areas. Ramp meter also have the potential to have more reliable and efficient travel on the main line freeway so that folks don't want to get off the freeway to find other ways to cut through city streets, for example. And this strategy also improves efficiency of the freeway system without building more freeway lanes or widening the freeway, which is consistent with the state policy of reducing vehicle miles traveled. So as Matt mentioned, there are two projects being proposed for ramp metering on 680. Originally, as Matt said, Caltrans had already had plans to implement ramp metering using adaptive ramp metering arm. This is a little bit better than the traditional time of day ramp metering where ramp metering goes on at a certain time of day. This is adaptive in nature. and they had plans and funding to deploy ramp metering on the entire corridor of 680 in both direction. CCTA saw an opportunity to partner with Caltrans as part of the InnoFace 680 program. We had plans and goals to deploy coordinated adaptive ramp metering where all the ramps talk to each other, and Scott in a moment will talk about that. So we partnered with Caltrans to basically carve out a segment of 680 to deploy CARM and the segment that is in blue is what we're proposing for CARM which is Northbound 680 from El Casa to Burnett and this will be a three-year demonstration project Through the partnership with Caltrans, we were able to find efficient ways of delivering both projects, either by sharing cost or sharing scope for more efficient delivery. And then we both agreed to have some common agreed-upon performance measures to help us evaluate both systems intermediately throughout the three years, as well as at the end. Just a little bit on Interface 680, it is a suite of projects, it's a program of projects that help to reduce congestion on the corridor. The adaptive ramp metering, or CARM, is under the advanced technology projects, but there are other projects that are on this menu of projects to help reduce congestion, not by really widening the freeway, but using other technologies or strategies such as part-time transit lane for buses as well share mobility hubs to promote share modes and Basically not build ourselves out of congestion So the con project is part of the advanced technology project which tackles cooling the hot spots of the corridor using innovative operational strategies and also preparing the quarter for the future and these strategies really will help to avoid costly expansion of the freeway to tackle the congestion. It also has the potential of high benefits with lower cost investments and also again being consistent with the state policy of not basically widening more lanes and increasing capacity. So with that I'm going to invite Sam who will talk about the Caltrans ARM project and then after that Scott Patera will come up and talk about the CCTA CARM project.

Good evening, Mayor, council members. My name is Samuel Lesomad. I'm Caltrans project manager covering Contra Costa County. I'll provide a brief overview of Caltrans planned run metering project on the 680 corridor. As Stephanie mentioned, Caltrans has been collaborating with CCTA to deploy run metering along the 680 corridor. And as part of that collaboration, CCTA implements a quantitative adaptive RAM metering system on the 680 northbound all-RAMs. On a three-year demonstration project, Caltrans plans to implement a similar RAM metering system called adaptive RAM metering system, or ARM, on all southbound RAMs and some of the northbound RAMs that are outside of the CARM limit. Caltrans and MCC has been implementing adaptive ramp metering on around the 300 freeway all ramps across the Bay Area on some major highways, the likes of I-80, US 101, and San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. We are also expanding coverage on some major freeways, including the 680 corridor. Unlike the traditional ramp metering system, ARM is not a time of day system. In fact, it uses real-time traffic data to optimize traffic metering and also respond to incidents on the freeway when there is a slowdown or accidents. It has a capacity to automatically turn on and off ramp meters. There is a QR code and also a link at the bottom of the slide where more information can be found. As I mentioned on the earlier slide, some of the major freeways that received upgrade to ARM are US-101, from Greenway to Brisbane, and IAT from San Jose all the way to Oakland. From the early demonstrations where performance measures were conducted, ARM has shown strong performance, resulting in 10% to 30% reduction in travel time. This is an example taken from the performance evaluation for US-101 on one segment. As you can see, there is some 10 to 15 percent travel time reduction. Drivers also experienced smoother merge and fewer shock waves, as well as constant speed on the freeways on the US-101 segment that we performed performance evaluation. This is also another performance evaluation example that's taken from the IAT corridor segment on the northbound direction. Also here, especially on the PM peak, there is significant travel time reduction, and same as the benefits that was experienced on the US-101, such as smoother merge and also constant speed. We are planning to use the lesson learned from these deployments on our effort to use ARM on the three-year demonstration period when CCTA is implementing CARM on the northbound direction. With that, I'll pass it to Scott to provide a brief overview on the CARM.

All right. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Scott Patero with GHD. I'm a consultant to CCTA. So the Innovate 680 coordinated adaptive ramp metering project, so CARM, will operate as a three-year demonstration project as a proof of concept for a new ramp metering approach in the area. It'll operate only in the northbound direction of I-680 from El Costa to Willow Pass. CARM expands on the capabilities of the Caltrans system. It adds additional vehicle detection to provide real-time data and additional ramp metering capabilities to respond in real-time. to manage the flow of vehicles along the freeway main line while managing the conditions on the ramps and preventing backups onto adjacent arterials. The key difference between CARM and other systems is that it's coordinated. As Stephanie mentioned, all the ramp meters all talk to each other. They all work cooperatively to address any traffic issues that may pop up on the freeway or on individual ramps. So this will be the first project of its kind in the Bay Area. But a very similar project just went live at the end of last month in Riverside County, the I-15 Smart Freeways project that's operating right now near Temecula, California. So there are several components that go into CARM operations. It involves advanced vehicle detection technologies installed along the freeway main line, as shown on the diagram here. as well as additional detection on the ramps themselves. So all these new detectors provide real-time data to the system, and then the system responds by manipulating ramp metering rates throughout the entire corridor to manage congestion on the main line and prevent backups onto adjacent arterials. The project will also include select ramp modification improvements that provide more space at certain ramp locations. It gives the system more operational flexibility, more storage on the ramps to keep queues from impacting arterials and to keep wait times under control on the ramp as well. The project will also install a number of new CCTV cameras along the corridor to give operators a clear view of what's going on so they could take steps to make changes if any issues arise. So the CARM system is really powered by a software platform called Streams. Streams uses advanced algorithms to power the system, and it allows that coordination between all the ramp meter signals. It'll continuously monitor what's going on on the main line and on ramps. It'll take in all that real-time data. that real-time traffic data, and then adjust ramp metering rates throughout the entire corridor, balancing ramp queues, keeping wait times under control throughout the corridor, and preventing impacts onto adjacent arterials. This is actually an image from a web dashboard as part of the Riverside project that I mentioned previously. So this provides a platform for monitoring and data sharing. So CCTA anticipates creating something just like this and making it available to stakeholders along the corridor, including the city of Walnut Creek. The northbound Olympic Boulevard on-ramp will also be modified as part of CARM operations. So a part-time shoulder lane will be installed along the ramp. So it'll provide a temporary third lane on that ramp that'll be controlled by overhead lane use management signage. So it'll only be open to traffic when the ramp meter is turned on, when it's metering traffic. It'll provide more storage on the ramp to prevent backups into arterials and it also provides an additional lane so the system can release vehicles more quickly when it senses the ability to do so. When the ramp meter's not activated, the overhead signage will display a big red X. It'll close that lane. So during off-peak periods, that lane will just operate as a normal shoulder, as it would normally, and it prevents vehicles from speeding down the ramp at relatively high speeds and merging into that extra lane space. So again, this northbound improvement at Olympic Boulevard, it's meant to provide more operational flexibility to allow the system to respond in real time. So CCTA and Caltrans are following a collaborative approach to ramp metering implementation along I-680, which is already explained by the other speakers and memorandum of understanding has been put together that outlines key assumptions for implementation policy and roles or responsibilities for each ramp metering system it establishes a framework for how each system will be evaluated including key performance indicators And it also creates a structure for stakeholder coordination and governance to oversee operations of each system and provide a forum for any operational comments or concerns that stakeholders may have. MOU, as Stephanie explained, has been in development for some time and there's been a number of one-on-one meetings with city staff to get to this point. The ramp metering operations and maintenance procedures document, so the OMP, this will be a more detailed user's manual that gets more into the weeds on how each system will be operated and maintained and how the performance will be evaluated. This document is already in development and we're anticipating multiple rounds of review with local jurisdictions before the document is finalized. In terms of implementation schedules, so the Caltrans ARM project that Sam discussed is already under construction. The Innovate 680 CARM project is in final design stages. Both projects are expected to be finished with construction in 2028, and we expect them to be fully operational in early 2029. So we ask, the CCT and Caltrans ask the city manager to execute a memorandum of understanding for the new 8680 corridor, rent metering projects on behalf of the city of Walnut Creek. So I think the team is here to answer any questions you may have.

Great, thank you so much for the multivariate presentation. Let's first start with any questions that we have here at the council. And it looks like Council Member Devaney has a question.

I do. Thanks. Thank you for the presentation. I'm curious about sort of responsibilities. I know that the CCTA you spoke about monitoring the ramps and the arterials does the adaptive light and the adaptive ramp metering from Caltrans have that same technology to monitor the on-ramps at all and my question kind of getting to is there a responsibility for caltrans to respect the arterials and not cause additional congestion on those because it would seem like a very easy thing to do just slow traffic onto the freeway and the freeway traffic will move faster, but it's just because it's sitting in the side street. So is there a Caltrans aspect to what we heard about from the CARMs?

Yeah, that's a very good question. Yes, unlike the traditional ramp metering system, the ARM system has detections at the end of the ramps. When those detections are activated, when the queue goes all the way to the end of the ramp, that activates the ramp meter to adjust the metering rates so that traffic will be led into the freeway. And that way, we will not let traffic backing up into the arteries.

And I'm curious then, for both agencies, And it's funny that you mentioned Olympic on-ramp, because that was the one I was thinking about. That backup is frequently past the entrance to the on-ramp. So how does this technology keep track of, once you get to the end of the on-ramp, is there anything to monitor what's going on in the streets?

Yeah, so first question on the ramp itself. So there's detection throughout or along the entire ramp. So the CARM system in particular will have a very good idea of the length of the ramp queue or the number of vehicles. So as the number of vehicles starts to approach that arterial, it'll start speeding up the ramp metering rate to keep that queue under control. And if it backs up all the way, then it'll go to its maximum release rate. And how the coordinated system works is if that happens, it'll then talk to ramps upstream of Olympic, if you follow me, and it'll change those ramp metering rates to prevent sort of a bottleneck from forming on the main line. It'll work cooperatively. The Caltrans system as well, they also have those back of queue detection. So that's what Sam was talking about. The CARM system is a little bit more sophisticated, I guess proactive in terms of controlling the ramp queue as it grows. And we will be, one of the key performance indicators that came about as part of this MOU process is we will be monitoring and evaluating any impacts to arterials as part of the performance.

Which leads me to my next question. It looks like the metrics that you're gonna use to monitor those arterials are arterial travel time, arterial travel delays, and arterial impacts. Can you speak to what those are? Those in the metrics section of the report.

Sure, so travel time would be looking at the actual travel time on a section of the arterial that, you know, call it a quarter mile, for example, that crosses the freeway. So we look at the travel time average when the ramp meters are active and when they're not active over the course of the three-year pilot and make sure that we are not impacting the arterials, making travel times worse for people when the ramp meters are active as far as that through movement on the arterial. As arterial impacts go, I think that's truly if there are occurrences of the ramp meter spilling back onto the arterial and seeing an operator, seeing impacts, seeing vehicles blocking the through traffic on the arterial. And you mentioned a third one, if you could remind me. The travel delay. Travel.

Also, just to clarify, I mean, I understand there's technology on the on-ramp. Yeah. Is there technology in the streets around the on-ramp? Because you're talking about the arterial. Is the arterial the way you're describing it, the on-ramp? Or is, say, Olympic Boulevard the arterial?

So, sorry, the arterial is a city street, so Olympic Boulevard, so as far as new hardware, it would only be on the ramp, but for evaluation purposes, we have access to other sources of data, including third-party probe data that'll give us an understanding of what's happening on the city street.

So is that the city's responsibility then to provide that data to CCTA or to Caltrans? I'm still unclear as to how you would say on Olympic Boulevard. It's already backed up all the way to the bottom of the on-ramp every day and past that. So I imagine that whatever... metering system you have will be at its max every time during during peak travel times and so then the question is how how will you measure whether that's negatively impacting Olympic Boulevard around that that on-ramp like as it goes east and west of there so it would be focusing not just on the ramp but Olympic Boulevard itself and looking at making sure travel times are not

slowed during rent metering operations making sure throughput remains consistent with when the rent meters are not activated essentially that we're not not causing a delay so you ask a question about would that be the city's responsibility no ccta and caltrans would work with cities we would be open to using any data that's available from cities but if that's not provided by local jurisdiction then then it would be up to CCTA and Caltrans to obtain that information.

I saw that it was, it said that arterials would be selected, that it wouldn't be all arterials around these metering ramps, that they were just selected arterials that would be monitored. Have you designated some of the arterials that you're going to be monitoring and others that aren't, or have they all been selected? because it kind of specified that they would select certain arterials to be monitored.

So speaking for CARM specifically.

Well, I don't know. Maybe it's a combination of both, but yeah.

I could only speak to the CARM component, but all ramp locations and those adjacent arterials will be monitored. That's why we're installing the cameras.

Okay.

Can I just build on that for one quick second? So at the northbound Treat Buskirk on-ramp, so that's a strange one because you end up having a backup on Treat, which is actually not the arterial. Buskirk goes into the next street that then goes into the on-ramp. So how far back are you monitoring? Because in the mornings, just unfortunately from personal experience, bless you, That backs up, and it can be several cycles of signals before even being able to make a right on the buskirk. And a lot of that is due to the traffic backup, people walking across the street at that point. It's a pinch mark.

So I agree with you that is a complicated intersection and that's actually the one location where we're anticipating putting additional detection along the city streets. We've also been working with Contra Costa County that has jurisdiction over that city traffic signal to coordinate it directly with the ramp meter to adjust metering rate. So I guess to answer your question, we flagged the difficulties at that location so we're

Making some additional accommodations there as well as ones that could be on North Main Street Especially when there's very a very short lead up onto the ramp. You'll be checking that as well. I'm thinking of southbound at North Main Street just near treat yeah, so That location also is one will be looking at red flag.

Yeah, so that wait I mentioned earlier in the presentation having additional storage on the ramp provides more operational flexibility. So where there are shorter ramps or complicated approaches from city streets, that's something the operators are going to be looking at very carefully so we don't impact those arterials.

Okay, thank you.

Just a comment on the Buskirk and Oak ramp. We are reconfiguring the ramp on busker to add additional close to 1,000 linear feet to storage. That way, at least you can elevate some of the backup on the . Okay. Yeah, the configuration will add some additional storage.

Thank you, thank you. Thanks for allowing me to interject there.

Maybe come back to me.

I'd like to ask some questions and then. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you for the presentation. Interesting project. Just big picture are the improvements that you're talking about can they all be accommodated within the existing right of way.

Yeah I think well the designers can speak to it but most of them are within the existing right of way. I think we try to use the limited space the physical space that we have as much as we can. We're not acquiring additional right of way as both CARM or the ARM project. So to your question yes.

And then this is northbound only initially?

So northbound, no, it's both direction. Northbound from Acosta to Burnett and Concord, that would be CARM, the CCTA-coordinated adaptive ramp metering. The rest of the corridor would be the Caltrans adaptive ramp metering arm. The difference, again, is that CARM is able to coordinate, all the ramps are talking to each other and coordinating, and Scott talked about if one ramp location is in trouble, it communicates with the ramp adjacent to adjust their ramp metering rates to kind of help that one in trouble, either holding back traffic or accelerating, getting cars, on faster or slower to help the ramp in trouble, I suppose. But yeah, they're all kind of talking to each other and that's the main difference between CARM and ARM.

So both directions essentially effective 2028 CARM only northbound with the flow of traffic essentially. So the commute following the commute direction.

Yeah, 2029 it's when it's both system will be turned on. And we came into agreement that they will be all on at the same time. what sort of outreach i mean obviously you're here tonight thank you for that what kind of public outreach and so yeah the first step is really coordinating with the technical staff as i mentioned we have goals to have videos to explain um what the ramp metering experience would be like the public should understand that this is new we know there's no ramp metering again on this quarter right now so we plan to do either uh Different strategies one being some short videos to explain what RAM metering could look like We've done videos on other things on the corridor for interface 680 to explain Express lanes and all of that. So that's something we'd like to continue and then we've been doing a lot of outreach during our Summer months on outreach to the community farmers market. We've been doing that every year so this is another way we can kind of touch the public with the project and updating them what's gonna come and

And then finally, you mentioned the average savings and delay once you're on the main line. That's got to be counterbalanced a little bit by the delay it takes you to get onto the freeway. Is there information or metrics on that?

Yeah, the metrics we have right now is mainly focused on the freeway, so the delays. We will be doing the same performance evaluation before we turn the parameters on, on 680 corridor as well. before and after evaluation to measure the effectiveness of the rail metering system, and CARM is going to do the same as well, and will continue doing that over the three-year administration period, comparing both systems, CARM and ARM, to see which system effectively manages traffic when it comes to traffic management on the freeway as well as on the arterials.

Do you have data now that tells you what the delay is in terms of once meters go in, kind of how much longer it takes to get onto the main line?

I think probably you may be able to provide some information.

Yeah, so the CARM system, for this project we're taking a lot of lessons learned from a pilot that was done in Colorado with the same software system. So in that implementation, the results showed that there was a slight increase in the weight on a ramp in exchange for a shorter, more reliable overall trip, and the data showed that. Average wait time, and we can provide that evaluation report from Colorado if you're interested. The average wait time was only, I believe, one or two minutes at certain locations, and then it would increase from there. One of the components of the CARM system is if a longer wait time, like three plus minutes is detected, that's a component where it'll take steps to speed up the metering rate to bring that back down under control.

Thank you. Council Member Durling.

Thank you, just a couple quick questions. Thank you for the presentation, all the thought you've put into this. Thinking about future proofing, is there, the algorithm is set now, can you modify it over time as you learn?

So there's a set of base algorithms. Part of the process and part of the reason why there's folks monitoring at all times is there's actually a lot of calibration that takes place. So throughout the three-year pilot, the first three months, for example, it may only take two months, it may take four months. There'll be a lot of incremental tuning and calibration. And then as we anticipate, every three to six months, there'll be a review of data and then continued calibration.

Yes. And do you, as you're tweaking it, are you gonna be reaching out to city staff to see if they're getting complaints and, you know?

I think part of, Part of the MOU has a section on sort of ongoing working group. We have a technical coordinating committee as part of Innovate 680. We're basically drawing from that group the same, like Matt, who was on it, just continue to monitor and meet regularly, quarterly, whatever. If there's issues, we can meet more. But I think we're thinking about quarterly at first, and then maybe pivot to something less frequent if there's no issues. But yes, the cities are, I think what's good about the MOU is that we have a common understanding of what the partnership looks like and what is required from each party. And if there are issues, we are all in agreement to meet and resolve them. If there's specific ramp that's of an issue, CCTA, Caltrans are committed to work with the locals and to resolve it, not to walk away after the installation of the ramp meters. So that's what MOU is really for.

And this is going to be a silly question. Why are you doing detection on the freeway? Can't you just use the cell phone data that Google uses?

That's a really good question. So we hope to be able to use that probe data at one point. Currently, the system needs to know where every single vehicle is at any time. That's why there's a lot of new actual physical detectors put in place. probe data like from cell phones or connected vehicles that's something that we're really interested in using to adjust the algorithm and we might use samples of that to sort of tweak things and calibrate but the actual control of the system requires knowledge of where every single vehicle is it's kind of based on industrial control logic if you can imagine like a assembly line so until every single transferring smoothly that's that's the idea so There are other ramp metering systems, though. They're not quite as sophisticated as CARM, but they're relying on that cell phone data or connected vehicle data. But as technology continues to improve, that's something we're looking at for sure.

Great. Thank you.

Councillor Priscilla.

Thank you very much for the presentation and all of the work that's going into this. And oh my gosh, Matt Redman must be very excited to be participating in this project. My question starts with the premise that we're trying to improve the performance on the main line by improving the performance on the ramps, on ramps, but not impacting negatively the performance on the arterials.

Correct. Yeah.

So how do, what kind of baseline data are we going to have before you turn it on to know how the arterials are performing?

So Scott spoke a lot about, a bit about the three years sort of, sorry, three months of calibration on the CARM system. Part of that is collecting data of the existing prior to turning it on so we know what we're comparing just one week's worth of data No one schools out.

Yeah. Yes.

Yes a representative set of data to help us understand the existing condition pre rat mirroring being turned on That will be the basis from which we would compare and then we talked about You know working with city to collect data from the local streets that they may have that could be useful for us in that comparison moving forward

Because I will say Olympic on-ramp backs up every day all the way to the CVS. Correct.

That's why you guys have the 680 lane.

It's not just at the bottom of the on-ramp. And then it backs up in two lanes. And the third lane that's going through on westbound Olympic is just don't go that way during certain hours. So we have three northbound on-ramps that are in this, Red Gear Road, Olympic Boulevard and North Main Lawrence Way Beyond that and south of that those are in the unincorporated area on the North Main Those are really unique on ramps. We are all aware of that, right? Because two of them are in the middle of an interchange. And then the Red Gear Road northbound on ramp starts from the west side and goes, where are you going to put the signals for an on ramp that you can't see when you're turning onto Red Gear Road on ramp?

so I don't have the the designs in front of me but there's advanced warning beacons that are in place on the ramp meter so it'll let drivers know that a ramp meter is ahead that's there's also signage that will be installed at the the entrance of the ramp so on the actual arterial telling folks that the ramp meter is on so to look for that

but you know what I'm talking about it is a blind on-ramp where you turn you come from two different directions but you cannot see most of the on-ramp when you're going on to the Red Gear Road northbound on-ramp so the traffic signal itself or the ramp metering signal is placed based on site constraints and storage requirements so okay

That will be placed. And then there's additional signage letting folks know that it's happening. And when the ramp meter is active, we anticipate other vehicles to be there. So a driver shouldn't be surprised when they're getting off the ramp.

See, Olympic on-ramp. feeds right into the off ramp into Ignacio Valley Road. That's part of the problem is it's not really a free flowing freeway at that point. There's traffic moving like this up there. You know that. And then the North Main Lawrence Way on ramp is just a very long city street. So all of those make these three fairly unique. So we'll have good baseline data to start with. Why are we testing it if it has been tested and it's in play in Riverside County? I-215 and I-15.

Yeah, the Riverside County one is also a demonstration project. It's for two years. It's for a lesser stretch of the freeway. I think it's four interchanges. The reason why is that we need to demonstrate to Caltrans this is an effective system. They have deployed ARM throughout the state, and CCTA is interested in proving that the demonstration of CARM would be successful in order for us to do more CARM elsewhere on 680 as well as other parts of the county. We know it's been successful in Australia, in Colorado that Scott spoke about, and then also with the demonstration project in Riverside that's just starting. We kind of overlap a little bit. We're hoping these two pilot projects will help demonstrate its effectiveness. So that's why.

So the point is to demonstrate that this is more effective than ARM. It's a better system, yeah, correct. With this fuzzy logic, I don't even want to know what fuzzy logic is.

It's a name.

It's a technical term.

Yeah, it's their algorithm. Just like streams, it's the algorithm for CARM.

I think you've answered my questions. Thanks.

Any further questions? All right, so why don't we, well,

One point of clarification, and I'm glad you asked that question. That's exactly what I was thinking about collecting good data ahead of time. How are we gonna monitor it? Maybe it's a question for our traffic engineer, but do we already have, is this already data that we collect? Because when I'm listening to the project, I'm getting the sense that we're installing additional monitoring systems on these arterials to collect this data. but is this data that we're already collecting from the traffic department? I imagine you already have your eyes on these challenging ramps. Is there new equipment or are there preparations that we're making as a city to prepare for monitoring and or is that being done purely from the CCTA Caltrans standpoint?

Maybe I can add just one more note related to that. I don't know if you guys are aware that CCTA is also doing a more countywide smart signals project that are being deployed in other major arterials in the county. So part of that work will also have a way to collect data. I just wanted to add that before Matt comes on for that question. There's other... initiatives or strategies as cct is deploying outside of this what we're talking about on the signal side that can help really inform the ramp metering project the county-wide smart signals that's ongoing i know we're going to construction in a couple months and then we're also doing a phase two of that i'm hoping to cover more areas and even deploy more smart signals technology as part of our strategy for smart signals will help kind of inform the uh the ramp metering how the connection between them And then the other thing is InnoVase 680 has a coronet adapted traffic signals project that is a companion piece to ramp metering, but that doesn't have as much funding, but that's something we're thinking about on how to make them all connect better, the arterial, especially at the ramp junction and the termini.

Just want to add that before.

Thanks. Yeah, we definitely have some existing data sources, mainly traffic counts and some intersection turning movement counts. So this is like how many people took a left at this time of day at a certain intersection. Actually, right now, as part of the general plan, we're deploying, we're collecting those counts at 20 locations citywide and along a bunch of other 20 segments of streets. And so I don't know how much of those overlap here, but I think we can get a general idea about how many vehicles are flowing and essentially what's the performance of our intersections. So that can provide a baseline. And then the other aspect here is the probe data. I mean, I think with the cell phones, we're able to anonymize those and provide aggregated information about speeds on any roadway. in the city and we have our own subscription service that we could look at and then it sounds like they're going to be doing their own study independent that we could verify and make sure that their data is accurate and we agree so we do have a few data sources that that we could use for a before understanding thank you

Okay, why don't we bring it to the public communication now. If there's anybody from the public that would like to make a comment on this, now would be the time to step forward and ask any questions that you may have or any comments you may have as well. There are speaker cards back there. Once you're at the podium, please introduce yourself and the city of residence for the record. Consistent with city policies related to public comments, each speaker will have two minutes make your remarks written comments submitted if any have been posted the city's website for public review and are included in the meeting record but will not be separately read into the record so if there's anybody that would like to speak on this particular agenda item please come forward now once twice okay we will then close the public comment portion of this and bring it back to council for discussion and or a motion

i had one follow-up question i think for matt just in hearing about kind of some of the improvements that are being made and it sounds like most of it's happening within the right-of-way and i appreciate my colleagues concerns about the arterials and about the challenging nature of some of these on-ramps we haven't really talked about lawrence way and we have our major city corporation yard located there with A lot of ingress and egress of trucks. Is that being factored into the plans? Do we have concerns about how that's all going to work?

Yeah, so the Lawrence treat Boulevard area that will be I think you're speaking more of the express lanes project that whole Interchange will be modified in terms of ramp metering though once the express lanes project is complete the ramp metering will be installed on the Lawrence way on ramp and We don't want to put on a ramp meter before the completion of the Express Lane project because we'll just wipe it out and it's kind of wasting money to put something up there that's going to be demoed. For the Express Lanes project, the modification to the Lawrence Way area is that the Treat Boulevard off-ramp will now be elevated above the Lawrence on-ramp. So it's called braided ramps. So basically it gray separates. The treat bowl of our off ramp folks will be above Lauren's on ramp. That really alleviates the weaving movement that happens there. Those who are trying to get off treat are weaving with those who are trying to get on from Lauren's. And additionally there's the truck scale at the end of treat so you're also competing space with the trucks. So as part of the Express Lanes project is the operational improvement to basically gray separate the lawns on and the tree off. And the impact to the Corp Yard is something we're studying. We actually had a really good meeting with your staff this week and went on a field visit to really understand the current operations of the Corp Yard and CCTA working with our designer will really minimize the impact to the Corp Yard and making sure that the Corp Yard operations will be Will be made will be made whole whatever improvements we're making but we've already tweaked our design for the express lane side to really minimize the footprint of any impact that we have and Working with your staff to better understand what will work best for the corp your operation Okay

So help me understand how far back, if you're going to elevate the TREAT off ramp, where does that start?

So what happens with, I don't have a picture here. I should have maybe put it in the backup slide. But in the future, those exiting on TREAT will get on the loop ramp where North Main is right now. So North Main exit is a loop. So TREAT focus. People who are exiting on street will take that loop ramp and it'll come up and then it will elevate over Lawrence. I'm happy to provide a visual afterwards to Matt perhaps if he wants to distribute it to you all and happy to come and speak on that project if that's desired. I know it's hard to visualize, but I'm happy to, we have pictures and visual on it at our presentation. So yeah, you get off on Tree, if you want to get off Tree in the future, you take the loop ramp as if you're going on North Main, but you will then come up and there will be a like through to go parallel to 680 and you'll be higher up than Lawrence.

A lot of interesting construction.

Yes. But that will greatly alleviate the whole weaving issues that we have at that location.

That's this far on my iPad. You had to zoom in. Oh, now it's sort of. That will be interesting to see. I would be interested in seeing.

Okay. I'm happy to provide the materials to Matt, and if you desire a presentation, we'd be happy to come back.

There's a lot of commercial properties as well as the carpyard.

Comments? Overall, I'm excited for this project that the recent CCTA workshop I went to, they were polling electeds and other stakeholders around the county as to what are the most important things traffic related. And the number one choice was always the traffic congestion on the freeways was the biggest thing that people talked about. anything that we can do to improve that um you know i think that's great i just hope it doesn't come at the expense and the offset of spending more time on the arterials and the on-ramps and so um i'm glad to hear that in the mou we'll continue to have those discussions and appreciate that process so sounds like a great project though great well um

Basically the action that's recommended is of executing the memorandum of understanding. So if anybody would like to make a motion.

I appreciate the time effort you guys have put into this and so I am prepared to move to authorize the city manager to execute the MOU for the interstate 680 corridor ramp metering projects on behalf of our city I'll second and I just wanted to make a comment too thank you for the presentation thank you for coming here tonight we didn't have a lot of public comment but I suspect in two years we might you start building things up in the air yeah

so just would encourage you and it sounds like you're on it to do the outreach that you're talking about robust outreach explaining to people how this is actually going to be a benefit and improve their lives and then i appreciate your comments about working with our staff about any potential impacts to the corp yard or any city facilities and if you could just keep doing that we would appreciate it

Right. And to that point, not just letting our transportation and public works team know, but also communications manager who can put that out through our own social media channels, that would be helpful. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Oh, we Oh, we didn't. Oh, you're right. I guess we have to vote.

We should vote on this. All right.

We have a motion in a second.

Councilmember Devaney.

Aye.

Councilmember Darling. Aye. Councilmember Silva. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Francois. Aye. And Mayor Wilk.

Aye. All right. Now it now it passes. Oh, we're good. All right. See Mayor Pro Tem. We need you to need you around. Right. Okay. How are we doing? Good. All right. We'll move on to the next item, which is adopting resolutions approving the assessment report and the annual levy of assessments for the Walnut Creek Tourism Business Improvement District for fiscal year 2027 and setting a public hearing for July 21st, 2026. And I ask Economic Development Manager Mike Neiman-Ford to provide the presentation. Thank you, Mayor.

Good evening, Mayor Wilk. members of the City Council as well as members of the public. I'm Mike Neiman and I'm here to introduce this next item which is an annual assessment report for the TBID which stands for the Tourism Business Improvement District. As you know the city of Walnut Creek has had this district established since 2010. It's managed by the Walnut Creek Chamber and Visit Walnut Creek DMO, which stands for Destination Marketing Organization. And it promotes our city and attracts visitors. There are currently eight hotels in the city. Two are in unincorporated county, but they're part of this district. And this district is funded by an additional 3% assessment on the transit occupancy tax. which is collected from visitors by the hotels in the district. As part of this district, there is an annual assessment and it consists of two steps. The first one is tonight. It's to receive a report and presentation from the district and set a public hearing date, and then the second step would be a public hearing that would be set for the next council meeting on July 21st. And with that, I would like to introduce Nicole Hankton, who is the interim CEO for the chamber.

Yay!

Good evening everyone, back up again. Thank you for your help at Art and Wine, Cindy and Cindy and Kevin, it was a great, great festival, very proud of it. Okay, here we go for our renewal report for fiscal year 25-26. Obviously, as Mike touched on, these are our eight hotels, Marriott, Embassy Suites, Renaissance Bay Club, Residence Inn, Holiday Inn Express Hilton Garden Inn are one of our newest ones and Super 8 previously Motel 6 and then there was another brand for just a hot second and now we're at Super 8 and Diablo Mountain Inn. Total room inventory of thirteen hundred and eleven rooms in Walnut Creek. These are our partnerships and memberships that we maintain this fiscal and we plan to move forward with Helms Briscoe is a third party organization that helps Organizations book rooms and book conference space. Cal Travel is an organization that keeps us abreast of everything that's going on in California related to TBID funding, tourism funding, and how much we have coming into California and how much it trickles down to us. Destinations International is a very strong marketing organization association that the DMO belongs to. MPI, Meeting Professionals International, helps us with leads. We belong not only to the Northern California chapter but also the Sacramento Sierra Nevada chapter which kind of helps us converge and cover most of Northern California. Associations West is the associations market. So there are several associations in California and our membership and partnership with Associations West has been beneficial for regional meetings for all kinds of associations. We tried a membership with BAPTA this year, Bay Area Business Travel Association, and also GBTA, Global Business Travel Association. We are also very strong with sports, so we joined Sports ETA as well. Partnerships and sponsorships. So this is more partnership driven. We have a partnership with Copa Soccer Training Facility where we have signage Displayed inside the facility they list us our hotels on their website We get a lot of visibility in their newsletter and their socials so that has helped with event tournament organizers Ultimate field house has also been a beneficial partnership where we bring tournaments to them and they bring in their own tournaments we are also listed on their website and the hotels are happy with the return on the tournaments that come to ultimate field house as far as rooms go and Of course, our partnership with the Walnut Creek Chamber in regards to East Bay Women's Conference and the Art and Wine Festival. Specifically for Art and Wine, we run a hotel trolley from, we have two routes. One route takes three hotels and the other takes the other three hotels and we don't include that. We're going to be running mostly up in the Sacramento area and also in the San Francisco Bay area and it just, gives highlights of Walnut Creek. We have what we call micro-docs, micro-documentaries, which are two minutes long. And then we have.

Or your economic development division. So before I started telling you about this new action plan, I did want to caveat that while the two of us are your economic development staff, our city's economic development efforts extend much broader. So when I talk about economic development in this plan, some of it is headed by our division, but a lot of it is done by other staff and mostly in collaboration with other staff, because the key essence of economic development here is the quality of life. So a lot of projects we work on closely with community development, with public works, with the police department, and all of these staff are committed to the quality of life here. So we'll start with the background. We've always done economic development planning in this city, but the 2018 effort has been done on a five-year cycle and that's been historically done here. However, since COVID hit, there's been a lot of change in the economy and to be more proactive and more adaptable to some of the rapid changes, the city turned the next economic development to an action plan which is more task oriented and that was presented to you all in 2023 for the 24-25 cycle. There was a lot of community outreach and a lot of input received and there were 12 tasks identified within that document that we have implemented and carried forward. Those tasks were mostly focused on the city's office and retail base, promoting this location and the city's image creation and support of the existing jobs, support of the key industries, which are healthcare and auto sales, exploration of emerging industries, and partnerships. I mentioned some of the partnerships within the departments within the city, but also external partnerships with economic development organizations outside of the city. So the idea behind this new document in front of you tonight is to extend this two-year cycle into the fiscal year 26-27 season, and I'll highlight some of the baseline trends as well as the thinking that's encapsulated here building on the work and the input that has been done to date. So first, a number of accomplishments for the 24-25 action plan. We have completed many of these tasks. Our staff promoted Walnut Creek as a premier destination and a place to do business. We've done that through interviews with the media, articles, what's new section, and sharing of the positive and success stories on our website, as well as many other strategies. We hosted broker forums in collaboration with the Walnut Creek Chamber where we have closely collaborated with the broker community to make sure that we understand what the current trends are and stay abreast of the new and emerging trends to make sure that we capitalize on those opportunities. We reinstated the mayor's business retention program and we're happy to report that we are on track to complete four a year with two already completed this year alone. I will also implemented an outdoor dining pods grant program last summer and happy to report that it's been a an award winning program via caled and we have now have seven pods and before the grant expires in June, we have several more in the pipeline which we're really happy about. We also engaged a consultant in the lean process designed to improve the permitting process here and focused on streamlining permitting. And we have been underway since last year and involved in that effort through the permit review team and you'll see the updates going to council later this year with how that process is improving how the city is processing applications from customers. We've also continued to provide exceptional service and support strategic customers such as Madsen and Five Star Bank, which were our major success stories from last year. These are two major office tenants that came to town. we've continued or adopted an ordinance in collaboration with walnut creek downtown enabling an entertainment zone and are excited to see the entertainment zone events come to light first one in the beginning of july and the second one in the beginning of august via the local street festival We've also completed an office demand market study, and that's something I'll touch upon in a bit more detail later. We continued meeting with hospitals and tracking opportunities in healthcare as those emerged, given that healthcare is a critical employment cluster in the city we've also continued meeting with auto dealers providing support for their operation and tracking opportunities in that industry given the significant impact that we are receiving from auto dealers via the sales tax and employment We've also supported various tech-focused efforts, more notably in collaboration with the Chamber via the Funders and Founders event, as well as an ongoing collaboration and partnership with DVTI, Diablo Valley Tech Initiative. We also operate the city's economic development website, social media. I mentioned that we share a lot of success stories and promote the city. We are also the city's data broker, and we track a lot of data and build customized reports in efforts to attract business and publish economic indicators. Those are available on our website, WalnutCreekConnected.com. And lastly, we continue to partner with stakeholders, which include Walnut Creek Downtown, as I mentioned earlier, the Walnut Creek Chamber, as well as Diablo Regional Arts, East Bay Economic Development Alliance, and Contra Costa Partnership, among others. So I mentioned the office study. And we have conducted a study last year, which is called the Spacewalk Analysis, where we have retained services from economic forensics and analytics to look at what the future of employment is via looking at employment growth, identifying the portion of that employment growth and converting that to demand for office and comparing that with supply of the existing office stock in the city. And you could see that the finding of that study is that given that we have somewhere around 13 million square feet of office space, no one knows what the future of office is. There's a lot of changes that are happening with the return tool. work with the changes in employment densities and the types of industries that are occupying office space. But given a range of likely scenarios that you could see in the chart in front of you, the consultant found that we have somewhere between three and 20 years of future employment growth that could be accommodated in the current office space, depending on the scenario. and this is important because this is an example of the data point that is supporting the general plan update which is a very important effort that we are embarking on that will be a feeder for a lot of the data that we collect and that also informs policy discussion about how do we continue keeping a balance of uses and how do we continue keeping a jobs housing ratio that is focused on employment given that we're seeing some of the more recent trends with particularly older and obsolete portion of the existing inventory being converted to other uses. We also wanted to share a composition of the local economy. Here you see the top six largest industry clusters. Not surprising, healthcare and local government are the top two, and these are large office drivers. There are also relatively higher wage generators, as well as the third one, professional scientific and technical services. And then you see number four is restaurants. We have a very large cluster of eating and drinking places in Walnut Creek, with over 120 in downtown alone. Those have not historically created higher paying jobs, but they have been important for creating a quality of life, attraction of tourism, as you heard in the prior conversation, and also sales tax generation, which then has the spillover uh effect from visitors to some of the other industries that that these visitors support we also see a lot a large nursing and residential care facilities cluster here reflective of the gradually aging population and then the sixth one is insurance which is really part of that what we call fire which is um finance insurance and real estate which is part of that core demand for office users which we have historically seen here in walnut creek but due to some of the changes in office we're starting to see a reduction in in that office user base As far as the fastest growth industries, local government's been one, healthcare continues to be really strong, and a lot of our local office demand is driven by healthcare in particular, and specialized office space that they look for. So again, part of the general plan process would be looking at how can we enable that growth, how can we create a policy environment uh that is friendly to uh healthcare uh reusing some of the existing office space inventory or potentially even creating new office space personal services has been one of the fastest growing industries here some of it has gone into mixed use buildings others has replaced retail and also the personal services a lot of it is not known for HIGHER WAGES, IT'S BEEN AN IMPORTANT INDUSTRY DRIVER BECAUSE IT'S SOMETHING THAT HAS KEPT RETAIL VACANCIES LOW AND HAS GONE HAND IN HAND WITH TRADITIONAL BRICK AND MORTAR RETAIL. AND THEN YOU SEE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND THE FIFTH CATEGORY, RELIGIOUS, GRANT-MAKING, CIVIC AND PROFESSIONAL IS LARGELY NONPROFITS. AND THEN THE SIXTH FASTEST, AGAIN, IS NURSING AND RESIDENTIAL CARE FACILITIES. Here's an example of the type of data that we collect and present. This is an annual snapshot that also lives on the economic development website. Not a lot of surprises there for 2025. You could see that Walnut Creek continues to be an affluent community with a highly educated labor force and what's interesting is we have a population of 70 000 and roughly just as many employees which means that we have just as many people here during the day from employment as we do in the evening when some of the uh some of the residents who may work elsewhere return home Now, this number has been, again, affected by some of the changes in the recent office shifts, because with employment from home, not as many employees come to the office, or at least five days a week has historically been the case, which again brings up some interesting questions about the types of office employees, with health care typically being the most proof from the strength where healthcare employees do show up to work more frequently than some of the more professional and financial service industries. I also wanted to highlight some of the recent vacancies. And these are broken down by land use. You could see that the retail industry continues to be strong in part because of the emergence of the services that have been occupying traditional retail space. Retail in general has been turning to be more experiential. So we're hearing from brokers that there's going to be this continued growth in the service industry. going forward and we're seeing a lot of it even in downtown where we see an emergence of gyms and other types of services. The occupancies in downtown are particularly strong now. We're also seeing a trend where a lot of restaurants have taken up previously retail spaces. So that shows a strong demand for the eating and drinking places over the traditional brick and mortar. And we're also seeing that the downtown retail has been particularly strong. We've seen 20 million visitors in downtown alone last year, so you could see that in part reflected through low retail vacancy numbers. As far as the neighborhood shopping center goes, the number is a bit higher. As far as office, it's no surprise office has struggled all over the state and the country as a whole since COVID. We have been somewhere in the middle with the city wide average vacancy of office being 20%. Some interesting trends is since COVID, there has been a segmentation within office. And many communities are seeing that strong, well-positioned buildings with high amenities and a lot of occupancies have done even better, especially when landlords have invested in amenities. And you're seeing a little bit of that around downtown because those are the office buildings where proximity to downtown is the amenity. So a lot of them continue to do well compared to BART. but also what's interesting is Shadelands has the lowest vacancies and that's another trend because a lot of the office inventory in Shadelands is older and it's class C and what older class C is the most affordable office so this particular strength in Shadelands shows that there is still a strong market for affordable office space and some of that space through the build a remedy project may be lost as well as some of the other proposals. So the question for the general plan would be how do we continue? Certainly when you look at the region, a lot of office space is being repositioned. For example, Bishop Ranch alone is taking most of the Chevron campus, former Chevron campus I should say, some of the other offices that have been vacated and converting that to residential for example. Now, that will certainly reduce vacancies at Bishop Ranch and make us a bit more competitive on the regional scale. At the same time, the opportunity to support jobs at Bishop Ranch will not come back. So that creates some questions about the right balance from the land use perspective in Walnut Creek as well. And then hotel, you just got the presentation, so the citywide hotel occupancy is 75%. An average in the industry is about 70, so we are doing better. And to try to attempt to answer the question if we are oversupplied or not, it's really hard because hotel, is a highly cyclical industry. So I'm glad to report that we're doing well now, but hotels have also been affected by COVID, and the range in hotel performance has varied widely. So it's really hard to say long-term, and it is important to caveat that a lot of our hotel performance is part of a much larger tourism ecosystem, not only with the tourism that's happening in San Francisco, but even national tourism with a lot of changes national tourism trends such as policy of visa issuances and things like that. So we will continue seeing some of that reflected through the numbers on the ground level in Walnut Creek. For this 26-27 action plan, we have continued conducting outreach and we've spent several months doing robust outreach focused on the business community. We have shared the draft document with over 40 stakeholders. and it includes a mix of a vast representation of businesses. Of course, the boards for Walnut Creek Downtown and the Chamber, as well as the board for the PBID in Shadelands, as well as the TBID. We've talked to brokers, developers, businesses of various sizes, landowners, consultants. We've shown the draft plan to educational institutions. as well as the local and regional economic development organizations. And this document in front of you encapsulates the spirit of the 24-25 action plan. It's largely business as usual, and the strategies remain a course. A few smaller changes that we have made is while we retained the major strategies and goals, we did reorganize the document a bit. We did continue to capture some of the prior market studies. There's been a number of market studies that were completed in 2023, office, medical office, and retail. We've incorporated the 2025 office market study that I just shared the slide with you off. We've refined some of the tasks that have already been completed. And we've also probably most notably added measurable goals for tracking performance. So going forward, we will be not only sharing the completed tasks, but also the goals that I'll highlight in a second. We thought really hard about what the right metrics are to measure the performance. And there are no perfect metrics because similar to the hotel performance, a lot of the economic development performance in the city just depends at least in part on some of the macroeconomic factors that are beyond the control of staff. but nevertheless there is at least some correlation between the efforts of staff and some of these so this reflects the best thinking as reflected through the outreach and you could see here that uh local unemployment rate continues to be an important one and with we set a rate of five percent or below i will be looking at year over year business license growth for the city Sales, tax growth, website visits to the economic development website. This is an important window into the city for many prospective businesses. And we'll continue looking at vacancies, office, retail, and hotels, as I just showed to you earlier. These are some of the baseline indicators of where we are. You could see that employment right now is about 70,000. Unemployment rate as of April, which was the latest month available, is well below 5%. That's a very encouraging number. We did experience business license growth decline slightly between the 24-25 period. We're hopeful that that trend will reverse in 26. Sales growth comparing Q4 from 2024 to 2025, which is the last available data, is largely on par. It's reflective of largely the rate of inflation, so it's flat otherwise. We now have a baseline number for the website visits at 11,700. And we've also decided to track average commute time for Walnut Creek residents. Again, there's a lot of macro factors that affect this as well, but it would be an interesting one to report based on the input we've received. And with that, I will pass it on to Cassava to talk about our strategies.

Hello. I'm Cassava Washington, Economic Development Specialist. Thank you for having me. Mike covered all of the homework that we did in the last AD Action Plan, and I'm going to cover the group project, basically. In other words, you heard the why and the how, and I'll focus on what's next. For the fiscal year 2027-28 Economic Development Action Plan, we identified six strategies. As Mike just demonstrated we're doing good work in a great community. And so many of these strategies build upon existing efforts and successes. I'll provide a high level overview tonight of the action plan and the action plan has all the details. So you guys have that attachment. Our first three strategies focus on growth, investment and maintaining Walnut Creek's position as the East Bay's premier destination to live, work, shop and do business. Strategy one will continue promoting Walnut Creek as an economic epicenter of the East Bay by building on key regional partnerships and leveraging our competitive advantages, including our strong health care sector. and also working with organizations such as the Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Bureau, the Walnut Creek Downtown Association, the East Bay Economic Development Alliance, Workforce Development Board, Contra Costa, and Diablo Valley Tech Initiative, just to name a few. Strategy two, we'll continue our efforts to attract and retain businesses, particularly industries that provide quality jobs and help diversify our community or our economy rather while attracting new businesses is important maintaining and supporting the businesses that we already have is just as equal is important so we'll continue with our mayor's visits our walk about wednesdays with the chamber our business pop-ins with the walnut creek downtown association as well as other informal efforts sometimes the best retention strategy is solving the problem before it becomes one. So strategy three focused on continued died downtown vitality and quality of life enhancements. And that's with working with our partners to enhance the visitor experience support events and outdoor dining and ensure downtown remains vibrant welcoming and competitive. And we'll also do we'll also track best practices to attract visitors. While these first three strategies focus on our economy today, the next three strategies focus on Walnut Creek for long-term success. Through implementation strategy four of the general plan, we'll explore opportunities to align land use, economic development, and market realities while identifying ways to strengthen and balance our commercial corridors and employment centers. Strategy five, we'll also continue supporting the auto industry, which remains one of the city's And finally, strategy six, we'll continue serving as the business resource and the city's data broker.

different than business attraction and retention. Particularly the thinking is when it comes to other industries, if you convert them to land use, there is a similar progress where you're talking to certain industries, you're attracting them, the retention converts to your occupancies within land uses. When it comes to the auto sales, it's a bit unique because the manifestation of the land uses is a bit different. It doesn't nicely fit into retail or office, and the trend within is kind of densification and even new dealerships going into mix in a layer of the need to understand beyond working closely with them and the impact on land use that that would have specifically within the general plan context.

Okay.

If I could just add a little more background for why the focus on auto If you go back to the plan that was created a few years back, which this is building upon, the city's long had a lot of open lines of communication with healthcare due to the two big hospitals. Healthcare is a little more organized and coordinated. The auto industry hasn't necessarily been that way, and so the big focus was to really outreach to the auto industry, establish those relationships, and try to have more coordination amongst the industries so that we can interact with them, understand their their needs, their wants, their concerns, that sort of thing, and help address those going forward. So that's why there was more of an intentional focus on auto. It doesn't necessarily downplay healthcare or other industries, but recognize the importance of auto in the attempt to strengthen that relationship and to further coordinate the industry overall.

Thank you. Another question watch this was sort of a comment yet even at the baseline for our current office, you know the the black line there, it was 2036 when when we break even. That's not that far away. I thought that was interesting, even in a, just sort of in the baseline. So that would speak to maybe that we're not oversupplied with office right now. And then the question I have is local governance the fastest growing? What's the analysis there?

The downtown office space is performing better than BART, but the vacancy rates, they look pretty much the same. Is there something the numbers aren't showing there?

Yeah, and they're similar.

But as you know, Mejiro was used to fund five officer positions for downtown B, which enhances safety, which is