City Council - workshop

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good afternoon i'm kevin wilk mayor of the city of walnut creek and welcome to the tuesday july 21st 2026 special meeting of the walnut creek city council this special meeting is called for the purpose of holding a study session related to the following 2050 general plan update city council kickoff under california law public comments at special meetings are limited to subjects on the agenda only therefore public comments will be received during the item identified And I'd like to invite principal planner, Crystal DeCastro, to provide the presentation.

members of the council. I'm Crystal DeCastro, principal planner and project manager for the general plan update. Tonight marks the beginning of an important effort to update Walnut Creek's general plan, our community's long-range blueprint that will help guide the city's future through 2050. Our current general plan was adopted in 2006, so that was about 20 years ago. So since then, Walnut Creek has evolved, state regulations have changed, and now there's new opportunities and challenges that have emerged. This update is an opportunity to take a thoughtful look at where we are today and work together to develop a shared vision for the future. So we're excited to be here tonight to have this conversation with council and the community. So let's take a look at tonight's agenda. First, we'll provide an overview of the general plan update and process and how we're approaching the work. Second, we'll talk about engagement strategies and what we've heard so far to date and what we're hearing from the community and the stakeholders. And finally, we'll have a discussion on key issues and outcomes for the general plan process, which will help shape the direction of the update. Since this is a study session, we're not asking Council for any type of decision or formal action tonight, and nothing like that is being requested. So with that, I'll turn it over to Eric Yurkovich with Alta Planning and Design, the city's general plan consultant, who's going to go through the update and lead us through the discussion. So, Eric.

Good evening, council members. My name is Eric Yurkovich. I'm a principal at Alta Planning and Design. Super happy to be back with you this evening. As Crystal said, this is a really exciting opportunity for us to have an opportunity to begin a conversation with council about the general plan update to really root it in our shared values for the future. California requires that every community in the state maintain and periodically update their general plans. These are really roadmaps for the future. Everything from our homes and our neighborhoods to our roads, the services we provide to parks and open space, they're all part of the sort of thoughtful planning processes going forward. Once adopted, the general plan becomes a document to really help guide decision making by the city, Council, by commissions, by staff on issues around land use, transportation and mobility, housing and other issues of community concern. The plan itself sets forth a 20 year vision for the future, building on the assets and great things about the community, but also addressing the challenges and vulnerabilities that every community faces in the future. But what I like to say about a general plan is it's not just about planning for the future. It's about making sure that we understand the pressing concerns and issues today and that we tie together those future vision, goals, strategies that we implement in the general plan with the concerns of community members today so that everybody can have a chance to participate in thinking about the future. Now, California law requires that every community address those mandatory elements on the left side of your screen there. The city recently adopted two of those elements and updates, both the safety element and the housing element, and we're not going to be updating those through this process. We are also going to be talking about the other issues of community concerns. So we're going to be talking about arts and culture, healthy communities, economic development, and more. So while general plan law is very rigorous in some ways, it's very open that we get to talk about issues that are of community importance. Now, I think at the heart of every general plan update is an update to the land use and mobility plan for the community. The land use really is the organizational feature for a community where we think about how spaces come together. Where do we put homes and neighborhoods? Where are community amenities and businesses going? How do we mix them together? Those land use decisions affect a lot of everyday choices that individual members of the community make. So how we travel, our health and sustainability, the places where we gather, socialize, and recreate within a community. So it's important when we talk about the general plan to make sure that we share out how it actually impacts individuals' daily lives in the work that we do. Our job through this general plan process isn't to start from scratch. There's a ton of work that's already been done here in Walnut Creek that we're really here to build upon. So it's our team's job to honor the work that you've done as council commissions and community members Lift that up, learn from the lessons learned in those processes, refine the goals, the policies and the implementation activities within the general plan to reflect those. So our goal is really to build on all that great work that you've done through all of your planning and implementation initiatives here within the city. Now because general plan updates last three to five years, sometimes eight if you're unlucky, We try and really break the process down into these sort of digestible chunks where we're doing certain technical analysis and then community engagement at the same time. So for this update, we broke it into these kind of five phases. And we're really in the first phase where we're assessing baseline conditions in the community, reviewing existing policy to really understand what's on the ground here today. We've also started engagement processes where we're asking people about their vision for the future. What principles should guide our work and what are some of the key issues and opportunities that we want to solve for as part of this general plan update. And that's what we're going to be here to talk to you about this afternoon. We take all that foundational material then that lays the we kind of package it up at least the foundation for the important work we do and looking at land use and mobility in the city. So how does the city evolve to meet its growing housing and jobs needs in the future. What do those look like? How do we do that? How do we get people safely to their destinations? We take that information and we pull it together into revised policies, implementation activities, and goals for the city. That all comes together into your general plan, which will go through an environmental review process, all released to the public. And that feedback that we get on that general plan will then come back to you all ultimately for consideration for adoption. Now, through each of those phases of work, we'll be doing different kinds of engagement with different members of the community. Because one of the key elements of our work really is the engagement strategy itself. We have a partner organization plan to place who you'll see throughout our community engagement activities when we start to go to the public who we helping lead those. initiatives so we can really meaningfully engage members of the community in a conversation around the future. Now our engagement process really focuses on creating meaningful activities for folks across a wide spectrum of neighborhoods and subpopulations within the city. And to do that, we have a series of both outreach activities and then engagement activities that we'll go through during this process. Those outreach strategies are really about building an educational foundation, motivating engagement, sharing out information to members of the community. We've already started a lot of this work. We have developed an engagement and communication strategy where we've mapped out community partners. We've defined common terminology that we're using through the process. and started to think about how we're going to track and monitor engagement over the lifetime of the project. We've also developed project branding and a project website, which I'm going to talk about in a second. And then we have a variety of different engagement activities. And this is where we go out and we talk to community members. We listen to ideas. We share out ideas with them and get feedback on those. These include your more traditional community workshops, pop-up meetings, online questionnaires. We have one-on-one meetings with community partners and focus groups where we can get different perspectives and lived experiences engaged in our process. And then we have a series of informational forums where we'll go out in kind of a less rigorous style and talk to folks about, we'll bring together kind of regional leaders, city staff, project team to kind of talk about issues about housing, economic development, parks and open space here within the community. really to build a level of education for the process. Now, one of the things that is really important to this process is getting a good representation of voices within the community. And one of the ways that we're going to be doing that is working with community partners, those community partners. And this is just a, a small slice of those committee partners within the city it they really help to represent some of those voices in some cases and then they can be a conduit for us to engage their client clients and subpopulations in those groups so we've already started these community partner meetings i'm going to share a little bit of the feedback we received from some of those already but we're going to continue meeting with community partners throughout the entire engagement process. And you can see those related to arts and culture and to schools, sustainability and mobility, kind of the whole gamut of general plan topics. Now, one of our key outreach activities was launching our project website, which went public at the end of June. It's a great resource for all things about the general plan. So we're gonna be posting meeting materials there, our technical reports, we have information about upcoming meetings, and then we're going to have online questionnaires and mapping exercises for community members at different times during the process. That's available at walnutcreek2050.com. And then finally we wanted to share we will be coming to Council and different commissions within the city throughout the process and what we've tried to do is stagger those at particular times during the process sometimes like tonight with you all those are more study session where we're just here to brainstorm ideas and get your ideas so that we can then take that and help shape the next step at other stages are going to be coming to you all for direction and decision making so We've kind of tied all of these meetings to particular times and segments in the process. Now, as I mentioned, we began our community partner meetings in June and July, and we met with 40 different representatives from community-based organizations, regional agencies, local nonprofits, business organizations, and more here in Walnut Creek. Our goal was really to, one, learn a little bit more about the work they're doing, the clients' populations that they serve, but also to hear from them about what their priorities are for the general plan and how we can better engage them through the lifetime of the general plan process. We're summarizing a few of those common themes we heard. those meetings about honoring Walnut Creek's identity really bring about the qualities of place the downtown the schools the parks and open space all those things that make Walnut Creek unique and special we heard a lot about balancing both meeting the needs for housing but also meeting the needs for businesses within the community here and really investing in those businesses we heard a lot about making and improving mobility here within the city and then sub-region to make biking pedestrian activity and access to transit safer and more convenient for folks to help meet your climate goals and we heard a lot about investment in arts cultural organizations in the city and really creating a lot of safe and wonderful places for social gathering that can showcase your open space, your parks, and your arts together as a group. And then finally, we heard a lot about fostering healthy and resilient communities. So everything from making sure the city's climate ready to wildfire resilience to making sure to address housing affordability and homelessness. Likewise, we had a study session, our first joint study session, with five different commissions, so planning, design review, arts, transportation, and parks, recreation, and open space last month as well. We heard a lot of very similar themes in that conversation as we heard in those community partners' conversations. But one thing I do want to just emphasize in this list, since it's very similar, is that when we talked about transportation there's a lot of talk about adaptability and what does transportation in the future look like and how is that going to affect walnut creek and how are we going to address that in the general plan update so we heard a lot of similar themes in those meetings but a little bit more detail from some of the commissioners in that respect and then we also heard a lot about engagement from those commissioners We should do it often. We should do a lot of it. We should reach out to subpopulations like the schools and the youth to make sure their voices are also included in the process. So next steps. Over the next several months, we have a number of both community engagement activities that are going to be ongoing as well as technical work that we're doing. For the engagement side, we'll continue those community partner meetings. But we're actually going to start more of our community wide focus in engagement. So starting in August, we will be doing a series of kind of pop ups around town at community events really to get the word out about the general plan, tell people it's happening, drive people to the website, get them signed up for the online for online and email communications, and then also to let them know about the upcoming community workshop that's going to be happening. So in September, we're going to have our first community workshop that's going to focus on developing the vision and guiding principles for the general plan itself. And then we're going to ask people about what they think are pressing issues and then how to bridge the gap between the vision that they have and the issue that they see. So what are the big ideas they have to do that? So we'll do that both in this community workshop as well as an online survey or questionnaire for folks who are unable to participate in that online event. And then finally, as I mentioned, we're doing a lot of technical analysis. We're going to be publishing a series of, I think, eight different, seven different studies that will go, once we're done reviewing them with city staff, they'll get posted to the project website so people, for yourself, for commissioners, and then community members can review those existing conditions reports. So this evening this is as Chris crystal mention this is really just an opportunity for us to have an initial discussion about the general plan and get some of your ideas about vision and issues and big strategies and successes for the general plan itself. This would not be the first time you have an opportunity or the last or the last time you have an opportunity to talk about the general plan. But today we want to hear what what's one word that you think about for the vision of one creek today and one word in 2050. What are the most pressing issues you see today and in the future? And then how do we bridge that gap between that issue and the vision that we have for the future? What's the strategy that we do? And what makes a successful general plan, in your opinion? Is it outcome-based? Is it process-based? So think about how would we measure the success of the plan when we're complete in the future? So I just want to thank you all for letting us Take your time this afternoon. Appreciate any thoughts that you have today.

Great. Thank you very much. Why don't we first start out with any questions that we may have directly here, and then we can have more of a collaborative discussion between us as well. So, Cindy, why don't we start with you on the left?

Thank you very much for the presentation, and you're creeping away from the microphone. Come back.

We'll probably have questions. If we have questions, you're going to be the one to answer them.

Well, or staff.

Or staff.

So thank you very much for the presentation and for your work to date. Is this an update? It's not a general plan amendment, but I've heard presentations on, oh, you can do updates and just do minor tweaks, or you need to do updates that are major wholesale renovations, remodels. What do you think we need to do here, and what does this plan really reflect in terms of the level of four years' worth of work?

It takes a long time to do a general plan, especially when you want to do good, deep community engagement. That takes a lot of time and effort to do. This is a general plan update. So we're going to look at every aspect of the general plan and update all aspects of it. Since the city's general plan was last stopped in 2006, a lot has changed in state law. A lot of the city has changed during that time. So we want to reflect new values, the direction and ideals that you want to achieve, plus all that state law. Now, You can do general plan amendments. State allows you to do, I think, four of them every year. But those are generally minor updates or single element updates. This is a real comprehensive update looking at all the elements.

I'll take one question at a time.

All right.

Hi. Again, thanks for bringing this here. It's always fun to think about. I had my Diet Coke before I came in, so I could think in those kind of terms. So one of the groups, do we have an outreach strategy around the youth commissioners and the youth in general? Because they communicate so differently than we do.

They do. They really do. I have a middle schooler and a high schooler and I can confirm that they communicate very differently than us. Yes, it's part of our broader community engagement strategy. So overall we are, we talked to the commission, the joint commission meeting about like who are the kind of the key populations and we heard a lot about the youth being a voice that we want to make sure is included in the process. What we often do for youth is we work through community partners, right? They don't necessarily want to hear the nearly 50-year-old planning consultant standing there talking to them about general plans, but we often will go to their events. We'll work through PTAs. to share out information and engage them in the process. So that'll be part of the broader engagement strategy to make sure that we are at events where there will be youth, right? And making sure that we connect with them when we're there to gather feedback from them specifically. And then we're obviously working with a lot of the commissions themselves and their youth representatives I know on some of those commissions overall. So they were part of that joint mission, the joint meeting last month. I think we'll continue to be part of the process as we move forward.

Yeah, I was thinking that the Youth Commission itself might be a good one to bring in on those, but that's just... Absolutely. And then as far as... Council Member Silva asked, we've been looking at this... General Plan Big, General Plan Small. How do we right-size the amount of effort? And I was wondering if in your... You're looking at the data that we have. What are the areas that you think are the high-value targets, and what are the areas? I know the emergency response and the housing are kind of like, okay, we got that. But where do you think the higher priorities are?

I think one of the things I like about general plans is you get an opportunity to think cross topic about things. So you did a housing element update at the same time you The general plan process allows you to think about new housing, new jobs, and how we get to and from those through the mobility network, what community amenities are necessary. So it gives us an opportunity to think a little bit more broadly about tying all of those topics together specifically, which I think is the advantage of a general plan as opposed to a single element update, which we do from time to time or two elements at a time. So I think that's an important part of it. key issues I mean we've heard about traffic we've heard about open space we've heard about housing business retention we've heard a lot about those issues generally through our community engagement so far I you know one of the things I think all communities are struggling with now is meeting housing needs not just the last eight years now you're gonna have to in by 2050 you're gonna have to do it two and a half more times right so the general plan should help set you up so that you can meet not just the next housing element cycle but you know, two and a half cycles into the future, right? So we want to try and right-size some of the development standards, locations to allow that to happen in the future to set your staff up for success in the future.

So it sounds like it's really the sinew between the things and then making sure for those things that are going to be challenging that we give ourselves enough capacity so that we're ready for them. Exactly. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you very much for the presentation. Exciting effort underway here. You've touched on it, I think, in response to Council Member Darling's questions about kind of setting us up for success in the future and trying to make it so that we're not just putting a plan that's into a time capsule and 25 years they take it out and go, wow, look at how dated that was. But what are some of the thoughts and strategies, and I think some of the commissions mentioned it too in terms of mobility, but in terms of land use too, because we're We have this evolving regulatory landscape with the state kind of, you know, it used to be, okay, housing goes here and jobs go here and schools go there. And that's been changed and I think will continue to be changed. And so how, how do we in a, Not an easy question, but what are some of the thoughts and strategies about making this a relevant, adaptable, flexible document that's not just current today but still looks fresh in 20 years?

You ask a really important question, I think. And if you just go back in time, say, 10 or 15 years when we were doing our planning work, we were looking around and we were saying, well, okay, where are opportunities to add housing in these commercial districts, right, in office districts? And we started creating these mixed-use districts all over the Bay, around transit like you did here in Walnut Creek. in neighborhoods like employment neighborhoods around the Bay. And that's been really important to make all these areas mixed use to allow housing to come into them, to allow commercial spaces to exist. But we've also had this effect where now housing can go everywhere in the community. I think it's important as we plan for the future, not just to think about how we meet our housing needs flexibly and adaptively, but also how we maintain strong business focus within the community. Because I think what's happening within state laws, there's this pressure to meet our housing need over time, which is really important to meet our housing crisis. And what we're doing is giving up a lot of employment lands at the same time, right? And that's really important for cities as you've lost funding through Prop 13 and other resources that The tax revenue, the business license revenue are really important to communities to maintain the services that you provide. So I think we need to balance the two and we need to figure out what the right balance is for Walnut Creek so we can kind of help you thread that needle as best as possible. A lot of people say flexibility, like you can do anything, but I'm not sure you always want to do that in every case, right? You want to maintain some economic cluster here so that you can maintain success as a community going forward.

That's helpful. And then, you know, we talked a little bit about community engagement as well, and we don't have a ton of public here now, but I think that the approach is to gather feedback in multiple different ways and formats. Is that right?

That's correct, yeah. We have a series of different kinds of engagement activities from online questionnaires, so if people don't want to go to public meetings or can't, meet at those times, to kind of more traditional workshops for folks to come to, to these kind of one-on-one meetings with community partners so we can hear and get a different representation of voices in the process.

Great, thank you.

Craig. I'm looking forward to the process. I don't have specific questions at this time. Those have been good questions that were just asked, so I enjoyed hearing the answer to those.

Yeah, I mean, overall, I like the approach. I think that the outreach is going to be critical. I see that all the different events that we have, whether it's the Locust Street Festival or I think even Uncorked perhaps, maybe not Uncorked. But anyway, we always have a booth there. We have staff that's there answering some of these questions, hopefully visible where the public is able to engage in that. So all of that kind of outreach is going to be really important. You mentioned the discussion topics. There were really the four here. And how would you like us to go about discussing them? You asked about everything from one, there we go, one word of what would describe Walnut Creek and what are some of the most pressing issues. I'm sure the business community is going to have a lot of questions that come about this. We each hear them over the course of our entire tenure here, everything from why can't we have a title company or a real estate company of some sort on Main Street or Locust to cannabis shops, and that's something that we've talked about here for the last several years. we really pointed to the general plan as being the place that this could be discussed and I really I guess we leave it to you and staff to determine how and when that is discussed whether or not we end well I mean the question being whether we entertain that and how we move along that discussion so it it seems like we should really just start going down these discussion questions one by one and discuss among ourselves. And hopefully there'll be enough information to be able to pass to you by the end of this.

Could I make one friendly amendment? I recommend doing question one and then doing two and three at the same time because they are sort of combined and then doing the third.

I love combining bullet points. Makes it easier.

Can I get clarification on something? Sure. The mayor... Of course we could go down deep diving into the 42 different issues that we, are we supposed to stay higher level at this point and let it percolate from the bottom up to us again? I mean, or are we supposed to go, let's do cannabis, let's do a summer concert series, let's get a band shell. I mean, what do you want?

think if you want to give us the higher level feedback is important but if there's like an example or two you want to give us with something so you can illustrate what you mean by that higher level topic I think that would be helpful great all right so the first one is what's one word that should describe Walnut Creek today and one word that should describe Walnut Creek in 2050

Oh, Council Member Darling. Yes, I'll call on you. You look very excited.

I'm very excited because I thought about this when I did my homework. And I think one of the ways I would describe Walnut Creek is resilient. You look at how we've come through the last 10, 15 years. We've done a really good job with the economic viability of Walnut Creek. I've talked to other cities around us.

They're resilient.

you know, their sales tax are declining, they're struggling. And we have been really resilient through COVID, through this, through that. So that would be my word for today. But then that resilience is coming from the connections within our community. And that's where I want to see us go in 2050 is improve those connections. And those connections are everything from the connection between nature and health, The connection between the different cultures. We are becoming much more multicultural here in Walnut Creek. And we need to make sure that we maintain those connections. New and old residents. We have a lot of folks that have been here, like all of us, 25 years. And now we are picking up younger families coming into downtown. We're picking up more... less traditional type of housing arrangements every neighborhood has got a few ADUs in it now and those are everywhere from one friend of mine or disabled brother lives in it the people across the street it's a rental but how do we connect those things together so to me that's the biggest one and in that the mobility connection is probably one of the most important, and that gets to the transportation system as a whole and how do we move that.

You're getting to number two.

I know. I'm sorry. No, I'm still on next year or this year and 2050. So connection, resilient, and connected are my two words.

Okay. All right. Council Member Devaney.

Sure.

And just for clarification, though, I thought we were supposed to do one, two, and three together. we were doing two and three together two and three together councilmember darling decided to combine one and two together i see okay no i'm doing just one all right all right that's today and the future okay that was right okay so i mean one word is obviously challenging but i guess when i think about one word to describe walnut creek i would say family um just like family oriented you know we've got um a diversity of activities that you know from parks and services and open space and um you know we've got you know beautiful neighborhoods and yet an attractive downtown and places to go and do things that you know good school districts it makes me think that you know this is and and that's why we moved here a place where where families want to move and where families want to stay because it also leads to this spectrum of ages that we have because people that live here tend to stay here too so we wind up with folks who've been in the community for 30 and 40 years so that that would be my word and I I'm not trying to be corny here but I think I would keep the same word for what I hope it will continue to be in 2050 which is still a place where people can move to that. They want to move to that. They want to raise their family in that, um, to talk about the sinew between, um, different, um, cultures and people that everyone feels welcome here, that it's a place where people want to move to and raise their family and then stay. And then their kids want to move here. Um, let those be my words. Right.

Great.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is hard to encapsulate it in one word. I think the one word that comes to my mind is community. And I think that that, you know, it's reflective of all of us in this room, but it's reflective of the connections we have with people on a daily basis. And then kind of all the nonprofits and all our staff, but all the people that make up the community from, you know, library to arts to athletics and that sense you get it's sort of the the sense I always got at city meet where even if the kids didn't go to the same school there were connections and the parents had connections and the kids had connections and they were all together at one city event at one city facility just having a really good time and and connecting with one another and So that's the same word I would use to describe what I would like to see Walnut Creek look like in 2050. I think it's a real strength of Walnut Creek that we should hold onto and preserve.

I'd like to go next.

Can I add just onto my family a word? That we can have family businesses, too. That we can still promote a city where, or we can maintain a city where people can open businesses and small businesses can thrive.

Great. I kind of build on what we just heard from Matt and from Craig. I would say livability or quality of life. which it's not unique. It's certainly something that we've heard about for as long as I've been on the city council. But everything we do is based upon the livability feature of living here. It's the feeling of safety, community, family, raising children, the sports that's here, shopping downtown. If I think back to when I first was growing up here and went to high school here, if we wanted to have anything more than pretty much a hamburger, we had to go to Berkeley. And now we've got how many different types of cuisine that are just in downtown and art center. So it's the quality of life here that I think really with that livability describes today and also should describe it in 2050 because everything that we decide upon and future councils decide upon whether it's housing or transportation anything else we have to keep that livability in mind and that people want to whether they're living working visiting recreating or or shopping that it's that quality of life councilmember silva i'm going to use my two words

I'm gonna start with welcoming. That's where I think we are today and what we've been and over time like the 40 years that I've lived here One of the things I've noticed is what we're more welcoming. We welcome more people and different people we have convinced the community to be welcoming to housing and Because I hear more communities all over the state basically describe harrowing council meetings where people are objecting to housing, which is basically meaning they're objecting to neighbors and new people. So we're welcoming. We're welcoming to new ideas, new people, innovation. And I think as we move forward, we need to be adaptable because in order to remain welcoming to new ideas, welcoming to livability, to families, et cetera, we have to be adaptable because things change really fast and they come with smart. And so adaptability is going to be important for us.

Great. Thank you. We're on track so far. That's sounding good. All right. Give a thumbs up there. So the next questions, two and three combined, are what are the most pressing issues facing Walnut Creek today and in the future, and how can Walnut Creek address those issues? So why don't we start with Mayor Pro Tem this time? Okay.

This is not very original, but I think that I started thinking of certain things, and then my mind went a different direction. I think really the most pressing issues are reflected in the priorities that we've adopted. And I don't know what they're going to be in the future. But I imagine, I mean, I think the ones that we've articulated in terms of public safety, economic development, parks and recreation maybe broaden that to infrastructure I would say and climate change will be ones that will still be relevant and pressing issues in 2050 and so you know but I think that that and I would so how do we address those well staffs come up with great work plans and especially for ones that require more frequent updates like our economic development plan. It's like a two-year plan instead of a five-year plan. But I think what I kind of envision is that those writ large public priorities that kind of we've identified find a home somewhere in this general plan so that we embody the larger policies and goals we have to each of these priorities and then it'll be with enough flexibility that they can be implemented in various different ways that we keep it at a policy level but that we find a home for them in the general plan thank you

thank you um yeah I you know when I was going through the priorities I did kind of naturally default to some of the things that we have been identifying consistently as priorities over the years and for example sustainability and climate change we all recognize that for our city to continue to be a family community livable adaptable, it has to be able to function in the new world that we are in. Public safety writ broadly has been a priority I think the whole time I've been on council, and that will continue to be a priority. And that's public safety not just Do we have an officer to respond to a call? It's do we have a way to help somebody with a mental health crisis? Do we have a way to help a young family that's struggling with their rent? Do we have a way to deal with teens who are struggling in this world where everything is on your telephone? And you don't ever call anybody on your telephone, at least they don't. And then economic vitality and resiliency in the face of change. I think that is one of those things we have said for a long time economic viability is important and there are real challenges coming down the road. self-driving cars, use of AI. We saw the huge switch to work from home during COVID, and that's going to be with us for a while. That is part of our world now. And so we need to think about, well, what else? I mean, We could all ask AI, what else is coming? But we need to have that flexibility and we will have to recognize that economic viability is going to be something we'll have to revisit very frequently. Connected modernized infrastructure. We've done a great job recently on getting a bunch of different things done, but there is still a lot of streets in the city without sidewalks, a lot of places where if you were to ride your bike, you'd take your life in your hands, a lot of the stormwater infrastructure. There's different things related to infrastructure that we're going to need to continue to focus on. Climate change and that's it. Simple. Just go do it.

Well, there's a long list of issues that we face, and they're reflected in our strategic priorities. They're reflected in what's being said to us and done to us on a regulatory level. I think our biggest priority, if I had to press it, would be how do we, I'm going to use the word adapt, but how do we set a tone and a temperament in the way we work such that we're open to the ever-changing model of things going on? And looking at things from a regional perspective as opposed to it would be very easy to become parochial and internalize when things get really tough. But when things get really tough, you actually have to go more open and broader because the region and the state is going to be applying pressure on us as well as our neighbors. And so I think any of these strategic priorities have a regional nature to them. and i think we're going to have to and so how do we do this is we have to keep talking to our neighbors we have to keep talking to our community and think taking the time to talk and ask questions and take input in is going to help thank you councilmember devinney well there's been a uh

outlined here a number of issues that walnut creek is facing and that are important and pressing issues i guess what gives me the most angst when i fast forward like 20 years is thinking about you know we're gonna have more housing we're gonna grow we're gonna densify is is transportation like how are we gonna get around the city and i see areas of the city already you know feeling and have been for some time but continue to feel the stress of of transportation challenges so um how can we address those issues it's interesting because the the region is looking at that issue right now and they're you know they're putting together their tap their transportation something plan what is it expenditure plan yes um and so uh know we have an option of looking at some of the information that they're collecting as well but i see that as a big challenge for walnut creek and i and i don't really know what the answer is but it's you know we talk about these sidewalks we talk about bike paths how to make the streets usable not just for drivers but with autonomous fields vehicles coming the way they might need to access curbs in a different way than than how we've historically used that how we're going to address parking I'd say that generates maybe the traffic and those types of issues generate the most complaints amongst the city, and I see that as being one of our biggest challenges moving forward.

Yeah, I would agree with that. I was going to say transportation even before I heard Craig say it. Public safety, everything we've heard here are important for sure. Public safety continues to be, I'm not sure it's a pressing issue, it's just a constant issue. And people come here, they live here, They come down here on the weekends and shop because it's safe. And so we always make sure we want to have that baseline level of safety. And we certainly want to keep that for the next 20, 25 years and beyond. But transportation, what's interesting here and being on County Connection for the last 10 years and alternate to CCTA and Transvec, and of course, Craig, you're now part of that as well. These are issues that aren't going to go away. They're only going to get more complicated. We're seeing that the region, the county, the city are pushing forward in transportation areas that sometimes are moving faster than the public is comfortable with wanting them to see moving forward, whether it's reducing lanes so that speeds are brought down. I can't believe how often now I hear about the Civic Drive as you walk As you turn right on Civic out of City Hall and you're going up to Ignacio, there's that divider now that's in the middle, the two lanes, so that people go slower. I can't believe how often I hear people bring this up to me now. Sorry, Matt. But they do. They bring it up. And we understand why, because it is to slow traffic down. But whether it's sidewalks or mobility for pedestrians, For e-bikes and bikes and scooters and everything, this is going to continue to be an issue. And I remember what it was about six months ago, we were just talking about the county that's putting a bike lane down on Treat between, I think it was like between Cherry and Maine or something, and it's going to end up taking away a lane a little bit sooner, and some of us drive that every single day, and we already see the backup. So these are the things that I think there's going to have to be sort of a pendulum or a lever that we move in certain directions, but also not wanting to go too fast and wanting to see... what the public's ready for and what we're trying to encourage to do along with the county so these are going to be huge pressing issues continuing because just look coming down ignacio every day there's traffic and we see this in a few of our hot spot areas so i i mean there isn't an easy answer to this these are going to be conversations that are going to evolve from the general plan update but also beyond as well and uh Yeah, and we're going to have to help lead the way and help bring the community with us and also make sure that we're paying attention to the fact that there are still cars. And just to finish up quickly, BART is still at only about, I want to say 60 to 70% of pre-COVID ridership right now. There are more cars on the road. because people feel more comfortable listening to podcasts and their health safety and their comfortability in their car. So we haven't seen this migration to people that are doing more public transit. Unfortunately, we're seeing just the opposite right now. So these are conversations, again, that will continue to have to evolve.

Don't you think some of that is a result of work-from-home behavior?

Absolutely.

I mean, because there isn't the volume available to be on BART five days a week the way it was previously. Totally.

I commuted into San Francisco five days a week for 10 years. If I was able to work from home two or three days a week, I might have been willing.

to drive in a couple of days a week to san francisco absolutely but i mean i don't think we should i'd only wanted to add it as a nuance of the environment that we're in yeah well no it's which affects our local economy it affects everything yeah absolutely i mean i i think this conversation that both you and craig have raised in terms of traffic underscores to me

The need to stay focused on the relevance of transit and public transit, having just returned from Los Angeles and seeing the consequences of trying to really address the issue now in time for the Olympics, I guess, that you're really. at a disadvantage, and then talking with the city manager about, you know, at the other end of the spectrum, you know, New York City that has this fantastic subway system that you can get pretty much anywhere in all five boroughs very easily. And BART is not quite there, but I think it's facing challenges, and I think in order for people to go, you know, to feel comfortable going back, I think work from home is part of it, but I think it has to be a well-run, safe clean system and that there needs to be economic accountability on part two and that we need to be sensitive to that and be focused on not throwing transit aside. I mean, they're clearly part of the solution. for our entire region, and I think the consequences of not doing it are really drastic in terms of some of the freeways I was just on.

Completely agree. And when we talk about reduced, I mean, we don't need to get into this yet. This is going to be contemplated for a few months from now. But we talk about reducing public transit due to the economic measures. Those are people that are going to be on the street as well in their cars. So whether or not we use public transit, whether or not people use public transit, they're going to be impacted if there's going to be a reduction in public transit.

What is the saying? Every person that you see on BART going by you when you're on the freeway is a person that would otherwise be in front of you on the road.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just took BART to Berkeley last week and thought exactly that. Okay, so the last question here is how would you measure success for the general plan update? Who would like to go first?

I will.

Okay.

Level of participation in the process. Because you're not going to be able to measure the outcome of a forward-thinking document. All you can do is basically measure the process itself, and it will be level of participation. And the number of people who say to us, I participated and thank you.

Next.

I think about it, you know, I agree with you. When we look at whether or not we have successfully created a general plan that works for people, correct, the implementation, you know, how many people got involved, rolled up their shirt sleeves and did it. Our people in Walnut Creek are spectacularly willing to do that, but it's, you know. But then I think about the success of the general plan as a whole is have we articulated – where we are going, and then how we're going to measure progress towards that as we go. You don't just say, oh, I'm going to New York, and then you never look at a map between here and New York.

66 to Chicago.

Yeah, yeah. But does our plan inspire people to a sense of ownership? Does it inspire confidence? Because we have in there not only we're going to New York, but we're going to look and see, wake up tomorrow morning, are we in Verde, Nevada, or are we in L.A.? You know, so.

That's a wrong turning word. Yeah.

In the Caribbean.

Yeah. That's not a wrong term, but anyway.

It's a different term. I'd measure success by participation, absolutely, but also by ensuring that everybody has seen the outreach. We know that most people that see the outreach are not going to participate. This happens all the time. But as long as they have been touched from some kind of communication where they can say, okay, well, I had the opportunity. I just didn't provide my input. I think that that's a benchmark that we can say that,

of the what 50 000 voters 70 000 residents that we hit a majority of all of them with at least the information that they could participate i think will be um that'll be a measure of success yeah and i i agree definitely with the outreach um i'd like to you know i would measure success as it being a living breathing document that is relevant both to the average resident understand what a general plan is and what it does and to our commissioners i recall being on the planning commission and on the council too and frequently you know is this project consistent with the general plan that they can use it as a kind of a north star and a reference document when making land use decisions thank you and craig want to wrap it up sure well i was going to say outcome

And then Cindy made her comment, and I thought, well, no, that's a really good point. Maybe I should say participation. Then I started thinking about it again. And I'm going to go back to outcome. And the problem with measuring it on an outcome basis is we're not going to know the outcome for maybe another 10 years when we see the effect of the general plan that we've put together. participation 100% I also though you know sort of a philosophical point you know passing say and they'll come up later tonight passing laws through the initiative process sometimes you know our do voters spend more than a few minutes thinking about things and if we leave the process completely up to the input that we get without directing it and sort of guiding it. So then it becomes, you know, is there, is there best, is there best process out there? I'm our best practice. I mean, are there other communities that we'd like to be like, that we'd like to emulate, that we could take example from, you know, maybe people know what they see right now, but maybe they don't know what's possible. And so having some perhaps inspiring ideas to, to show them of what we could do. So if we simply collect data from many people based on a brief interaction, we might miss some of the in-depth analysis that comes from experts. And so I hope that we're incorporating some expert opinion and maybe guiding some of the discussions with the community. Great.

Thank you. Before we take the break at this point, let me ask if we have any people from the public that would like to make any comment, whether in person or online. We now are back to online, and we'll talk about that at 6 o'clock as well. So do we have any people from the public to come in? No? Okay. We'll bring it back to council.

Can I ask if we could do a last question that is a little different?

Sure.

Which would be, are there any pressing issues that we want the consultants and staff to know about that's in our heads that if we don't say it now, we're not going to be able to say it in front of us? So I'll start with it. transit oriented communities this is the big issue with a bag and MTC it's going to hit us in the housing element but I think we have to keep that in mind um housing near transit as we look at this because it's going to come to us in a way that they're going to make transportation dollars contingent on abiding by their policies. So perhaps it's just a good idea to take a strong look at it and figure out how we're going to convince them we're abiding by the policies.

I didn't prepare for this question. So there's lots of things out there. But, yeah, I think knowing what regulatory mandates are coming down the pike and making sure that we're ready for those, whether it be TOD, stormwater, a whole host of other things, making sure we're ready for those.

And, well, I mentioned a couple earlier, which were just making sure that the cannabis – discussion for a storefront actually begins or at least is engaging and uh and also taking a look at our core downtown area to see if there are other kinds of businesses that could make sense on ground floor we do have some vacancies i'm not saying that they're always going to be occupied from any other types of businesses however just having that discussion i think the business community would be interested in having that discussion

So maybe that would be, you could wrap the two of them together in terms of modernizing our approach to downtown and retail.

Sure. Although, yes, although cannabis itself may be something that isn't downtown, but yes.

Not necessarily kind of a variant of that question. It's a... maybe for the consultants. I was curious about, first of all, on the website, is there an opportunity now or will there be at some point relatively soon for someone to sign up for updates? I didn't see it immediately, but there's a lot of boxes.

So there is an opportunity now to sign up for updates on the website. Click to subscribe.

I got it.

Yes, exactly.

And then what new elements will be in the general plan that we don't currently have?

So that's going to be through our process. We'll figure that out as we get more information from the public during the engagement. We'll see what issues or topics they want as alternative elements or extra elements in the general plan.

What are the mandatory ones that we have?

So this is like a quiz for me. Sure. Let me go back. I don't know if we have that on the slide now. One more. So those are the elements we have. Land use, community design, transportation, open space and conservation, and noise. And we already adopted the safety element this year, and the housing element was adopted in 2023. So there are options for additional topics there that you see on the right related to economic development, arts and culture, healthy communities, and implementation. And there's others. It's very open.

Well, sustainability, where does that fit?

Sustainability is part of, we have sustainability climate action plan. So that's a specific plan that we have.

Standalone.

Standalone. It's not an element. It's based on, I don't know if it's conservation, comes from conservation. So it's more of an action item from conservation. Okay.

And then environmental justice, do we do?

So we are doing environmental justice. We are looking at healthy communities. Maybe Eric can talk a little bit more about that. But there are two regulations on environmental justice. We don't fall into the first one, which is regarding certain communities. Or we fall under healthy communities, meaning that, say, if you're next to the freeway, there's pollution impacts. So we'll respond to that more.

I see. And that's okay. I didn't need more details. I was just broader levels wondering what the new elements are going to be.

Okay.

Okay. So one of the things that we have had as a priority for a while is diversity and equity. Does that fit into healthy communities, or is it just more of an approach overall to achieving the things of the general plan?

So it would be an approach overall. It's something that hits on every single element to make sure that everybody, there is equitability for each of them when it comes to housing or land use. or even economic development in an open space. Just access is equity.

Thank you. All right. I think we're good on our end. It is 5.02 I have, so we're going to take a break to our open session, which is at 6 o'clock, and we'll see you all then.

Thank you.