City Council - Regular Meeting

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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. Pursuant to California Government Code section 54953.4 SB 707, members of the public may also participate remotely via Zoom. If you are participating via Zoom and would like to make a public comment, please use the raise hand feature or press star nine if you're calling by phone during the agenda item on which you wish to comment. Again, 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 meeting. 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. Well, good evening. I'm Kevin Wilk, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, and welcome to the Tuesday, August 18th, 2026 regular meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council. And if you'd all now 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. And City Clerk Susie Martinez, would you please call the roll?

Councilmember Darling. Here. Councilmember Devaney. Here. Councilmember Silva. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Francois. Here. Mayor Wilk.

Here. All right. First, we have a recognition of the Diablo Valley, excuse me, Diablo Vista Chorus. So I invite members of the Diablo Vista Chorus to come up for a certificate of recognition. The Diablo Vista Chorus recently earned an outstanding score of 701 at their May regional competition, an achievement reached by fewer than 30 choruses in the Sing United International Organization. This milestone not only earned them the title of regional champions and a place in the international competition in Seattle in 2027, but also made them the first chorus in our Pacific Shores region to ever surpass the 700 mark. You're gonna sing for us, right? Both the directors and singers have now earned the Distinguished Master 700 designation. Earlier this summer, the chorus also celebrated its 70th anniversary, marking seven decades of musical excellence. Congratulations on this remarkable milestone and win, and we have a certificate here.

Thank you for this recognition. We're very pleased to have Walnut Creek be our home and represent this wonderful city in international competition next year. I hope that as we have shows leading up to it, everybody comes to them.

Great, and why don't you introduce yourself?

Oh, sorry. I'm Laura Patch. Her pronouns, I sing lead, which is the part that has melody for our chorus, which is a barbershop-style chorus. And this is Kim, who's one of our leaders, and she sings bass.

I do the oompas.

The oompas, okay. Well, let's get a picture together.

That was the saddest thing when she had to give it up. Congratulations. Thank you.

Okay, and our next item is a presentation of Center Rep Season Update. And I invite Matt Morrow, Artistic Director for Center Rep, to provide the season update.

Hi there, Matt Morrow here, the Artistic Director of Center Rep. We are the resident professional theater of the Lesher Arts Center. Thank you for the opportunity to share more information with you on Center Rep and our plans for our 59th season. But first, allow me to update you just very briefly on Season 58, which was a banner year for us as we celebrated the Lesher Center's 35th anniversary. Our new production of A Christmas Carol was a resounding success, with the San Francisco Chronicle proclaiming it was like, quote, hearing the story for the first time, and quotes the most open-hearted and genuinely Christmassy works of art, acts of work of art can take. We are very proud of it. Our season finale of Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill was the highest grossing show in recent history. And we ended the season at 120% of our revenue goal. We're all very proud of the work that we're accomplishing within the city and the larger community of Contra Costa County. While I'm pleased that Center Rep is defying the headwinds, the theater industry as a whole is enduring right now. I'm going to acknowledge that we couldn't do it without the city of Walnut Creek, so thank you for your belief in the power of live theater. Now onto season 59, which is brazenly titled Dreamers and Daredevils. Bursting with theatricality and humanity, Center Rep's 59th season pulls back the curtain on what it means to live life to its fullest, to dream big, and love like there's no tomorrow. This maximally entertaining season is filled with laughter, light, and visceral stories that will keep you on the edge of your seat. So we launched Dreamers and Daredevils with the legacy revival of Tennessee Williams' masterpiece, The Glass Menagerie. This quintessential American classic raises this interrupt boards in a poetic look at family and longing. This modern masterpiece redefined American theater when it premiered over 80 years ago by conjuring a living memory on stage. Center Rep's legacy revival examines the cost of personal freedom, the depth of sibling bonds, and the consequences of seeking the truth. So this classic made me fall in love with the theater when I was a young person, and I know it did a lot of people feel the same way. So we look forward to sharing this story of family connection, lost and remembered, as it's one of Tennessee Williams' most personal plays. We follow this classic with a rip-roaring revision of a spooky season staple, Dracula, a comedy in terrors. This is written by Gordon Greenberg, yes, and Steve Rosen. This show straddles the election season and begs the question, who needs a good belly laugh right about now? Bram Stoker's legendary monster comes to titillating and scintillating life in this fast-paced outrageous adaptation that will leave you breathless with gasps and laughter. Told by only five actors, performing almost 20 characters, Ridiculous is the name of the game in this gothic horror turned tour de force of physical performance. This unhinged madcap comedy beckons you to come to the dark side for a rollicking good time. And then for the holidays, we're thrilled to welcome back our new production of A Christmas Carol by Harrison David Rivers. And we're proud to once again partner with Access Dance Company, the Berkeley-based dance troupe of neurodiverse and disabled performers in bringing this joyful family tradition to life. And the new year brings a new work to our stage with the Bay Area premiere of a new play called You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World! That's the title. It's a new play written by Kiko Green. Welcome one and all to a sequenced celebration of life, family, and the profound connection we all share just by being alive. When M's parents receive some life-shattering news, their small yet mighty family of three must grapple with the life they've lived as well as the one that they haven't. This hilarious and heartfelt joyride of a show zooms through the waking and dream lives of its family, guest starring child environmentalist Greta Thunberg, on a journey of acceptance and deliverance. So buckle up. Who knew the end of the world could be such a thrill? And finally, we blow the cap off the season with a rarely seen classic musical that just had its first revival in New York City after 25 years, and it's Bat Boy the Musical, story and book by Keith Farling and Brian Fleming, music and lyrics by Lawrence O'Keefe. Deep in a cave in rural America, a group of teenagers discover a creature living in the dark, a half-boy, half-bat in need of a home and maybe just a little sip of blood. When the local veterinarian's family takes him in, they name him Edgar and teach him how to live like a human, fangs and all. However, gaining acceptance into their small town beset by economic hardship is a bat of a different color. Pinned by one of, quote, one of the 21st century's finest musical theater talents, that's the New York Times, quote, and powered by a pulsating rock score, this rarely produced cult favorite whips together horror, heart, high-voltage humor into a frothy yet sharp satire about prejudice, fear, and everyone's need to belong. It's rumored that Batboy is heading to Broadway next season, so you heard it in Walnut Creek first. If there's one theme that is the through line to season 59, Dreamers and Daredevils, it's courage. Courage to dream, courage to change. courage to love passionately, and courage to find joy and humor even in the darkest of times. That's season 59. Just as a quick addendum, we're continuing our access programs of free and discounted programs, tickets to make sure that our work is available for everyone who cannot afford the price of a ticket. And our wildly popular pay what you can previews will also continue. Our student matinee program serving over 1,000 kids will also continue. And we're adding a teen ticket program where parents and grandparents can bring their children and grandchildren for the reduced rate of $30 a ticket. And our arts education program, Young Rep Theater Lab, will also continue next summer. Now that's it for Center Rep. Any questions?

Great. Thank you, Matt. Do we have any questions about the upcoming season?

Thank you. Now I already have my tickets, but how can people get tickets?

Go to centerrep.org.

Don't look at me. Look at these.

Centerrep.org. Centerrep.org. Check us out there. You can find all the information right there. All right. Yeah, thank you.

Terrific. Thank you very much. You're welcome. All right. Okay, next on the item on the agenda is the consent calendar. And does any council member wish to pull any item for discussion? Or any member of the staff wish to pull an item for discussion? I don't see any here. So does any member of the public wish to provide public comment on the consent calendar? Everybody just consents to this. All right. So do we have anybody online for the consent calendar?

We do not have any in public comment.

Okay.

So in that case, I will move to approve 2A through E. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Susie, could you call the roll, please?

Councilmember Darling? Aye. Councilmember Silva? Aye. Councilmember Devaney? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Francois? Aye. And Mayor Welk?

Aye. All right, moving right along. Next item on the agenda is public communications. This portion of the meeting is reserved for comment on items not on the agenda. Under the Brown Act, the council cannot act on items raised during public communications, 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. And 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 at this time I'll note that the time is 6.17 and so we'll take public comment. on items not in the agenda until approximately 6.47, and then the remainder of any such comments at the end of the open session portion of the meeting. Please use the raised hand feature or press star nine if you're calling in if you'd like to provide a remote public comment. And at this time, we'll take in-person comments, and then I'll ask the city clerk if there are any members of the public who would like to provide remote comments after that. So let's start right here. And if you are going to make a public comment, please line up to the side here. And if you have already filled out a yellow card, great, please provide to the city clerk. And if you haven't, this is a good time to be able to take care of that.

Hi, Jan Warren from the Woodlands. Since I already turned in my card where I was going to ask about Being able to participate via Zoom that I found out about at the Antioch City Council meeting, I just want to say thank you.

Well, you can thank the state legislatures of California for enforcing that for every city in the state now. So we're all doing it. Thanks, Jan.

Hi, Council. Good evening. Thank you for your service. I'm a longtime resident of Walnut Creek. Family moved here in 1962. I'm also first graduating class from Northgate. We're having our 50th year anniversary or reunion this year, just FYI.

And what's your name?

I'm Glenn McPhee. I'm here to talk to you as a member of the Walnut Creek Racquet Club. Longtime member of the tennis club there. Past president, on the board of directors, city liaison, captain, player, long time. We have an incredible community at Heather Farm. We have the second largest public club in the state. Largest one in Northern California. We have over 1,200 members at any given time. We have teams. We are a magnet for players that come to Heather Farm. Lifetime is our provider. Not speaking about them, but they do a great job. We're very happy to have them. But what I do want to talk to you about is... lights for our tennis court they are frequently going out there outdated equipment bulbs and fixtures are difficult to find, to source, we can go months without lights. I mean, not all of them, mind you, but several, enough that it really impairs our ability to play. Our standards are so high that even when they find lights, there's only like a couple of lifts because our standards are so high. that our vendor can even get. So we go a long time. And I want to urge you guys to keep that on the front plate. I know there's a lighting initiative going on about the baseball field, or Lifetime I know I've talked with is also anxious to participate in that. And I can't tell you enough how much it would mean to us. So again, thank you all.

Thank you. And can I ask, would this be Public Works? Our director of Public Works, Rich Payne, he can meet you in the back and just make sure he gets any information on this. You got it. Thank you.

And I used to live in the woods.

Okay. Next speaker, please.

Hi, my name's Tristan Placone. I've been a resident for about 15 years. I want to say I think you guys do a great job. I love living here. I've never felt the need to express any concerns until recently. And that's about the flock cameras. Although I trust our police department, flock cameras can be accessed, our flock cameras, by departments and agencies from all over the country. So it's incredibly prone to abuse. We've been seeing it this whole year already. A woman traveling to get an abortion outside of Texas was tracked by Texas in other states, arrested when she got home. There have been officers and agencies and departments fired for using flock cameras to stalk their wives, ex-wives, ex-girlfriends in other cities serviced by other departments. I can go on and on. Even the LAPD is now canceling their flock contract due to its abuse potential. And so my biggest concern is imagine if the DOJ then starts deciding they want to see who attends the next No Kings protest here or who votes where on election days, et cetera. The abuse potential is crazy. There's other alternatives we can do that can't be accessed outside of our department or our county, depending on who you choose. So I would like for you guys to add as an agenda item on a future city council meeting discussing possibly changing from flock to something else and also getting a presentation from the police department and city manager about fog.

Thank you. Thank you, Tristan. And I don't know if anybody else is speaking on this issue, but if you stick around toward the end of public comment, we're going to have some questions for our police officer and police chief who can potentially answer some of this.

Hello, I'm Josh, lived here for three years now. I'm also talking about, I'm here to talk about the flock cameras, the 40 flock cameras that are here in Walnut Creek. I don't have a grand presentation for it. I would just like to raise the issue as a concerned citizen who doesn't want mass surveillance. and who thinks that there could be a better way to get what everybody wants. Obviously, we want to be able to find people that are committing crimes, but at the cost of what? Innocent people do not want their movements tracked and stored for weeks, potentially, and used across counties and states.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm William Painter. I am a lifelong resident of Walnut Creek. I'm also here to talk to you about flock and my concerns with it. I was recently talking with some friends who described a scenario where they were looking to avoid flock cameras on their journey across Colorado and found it impossible to go from one part of the state to the other part of the state without crossing a flock camera. That is what these systems now represent. They are an unavoidable fact of life, especially here in the Bay Area. These are public spaces, places where people live, where they eat lunch, where they pass by on their mandatory path to work, cannot be avoided in a place where they call home. This is my home. And I would invite the council and everyone in this room to imagine for a second what it would feel like to have someone point a camera into your living room window or into your kitchen. And when you raise your voice in concern to be told, oh, don't worry, we are just looking for criminals, such an invasion of privacy cannot be taken without, I think, the maximum amount of public comment. And so I would ask the council before reviewing all of these that you create an agenda item about this issue and you seek the maximum possible public comment on these questions, because I think they are incredibly important to my sense of safety in my community and in my home, as well as everyone else's. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, mayor and city council members. I'm Angela Ashley. I'm chair of the Chamber of Commerce in Walnut Creek, and I'm here to introduce our amazing new CEO, Katie Burrows. Katie came to us with an incredible resume after a rigorous interview process. She just has an amazing background, went to Duke, MBA from Kellogg School of Management, and an amazing work history, but what really stood out was her even nature, her friendly manner, her intelligence, her finance history, and she has really hit the ground running and is doing an incredible job. So with that, Katie.

Thank you, Angela. Good evening mayor, council members. I guess I have to be friendly here because she just said I was. It's an honor to be here tonight and it was an honor and is an honor to be selected by the chamber board to serve as the president and CEO of the Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce and to join you as a partner in thoughtfully planning and managing Walnut Creek's continued growth and success. Angela told you a little bit about me. I'm originally from the Boston area, came out here in 1998, lived in San Francisco, came out to the East Bay in 2004, and have, from Lafayette, where I live, watched Walnut Creek grow and just become this vibrant, wonderful city. And I know that takes a lot of work, and I commend you and the people who came before you for all of your work to make this place the place we enjoy today to live and to work and to play and all the things. So moving forward, I look forward to strengthening the already strong relationship between the chamber and the city council. And I look forward to helping to grow Walnut Creek into a a strong community and into the future. So thank you so much for your time, for your leadership, and for your dedication to this community. Just to plug, we do have a candidate forum on September 1st in the morning, so please look for that. We will have the candidates there, though we know they're uncontested, opportunity to meet them. And we're celebrating our 100th year anniversary this year.

Do you want to tell, so you've said September 1st, and what time and where?

It's at 8 a.m., and it'll be in the Walnut Creek Library.

The Oak Room, I take it.

Oak Room. Yeah, only thing open, I found after I circled the library this morning.

Well, thank you, Katie. Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming here and introducing yourself. We look forward to having you, and we do have a great relationship with the Chamber of Commerce, and Angela, thank you as chair, of course. And our liaison to the Chamber of Commerce is Council Member Cindy Darling. And so you may have a question or comment to make too.

I just wanted to say welcome. I know we've had a chance to meet and talk about what your plans are. And I wanted you to just describe to the Council Chamber what you think the biggest things that you want to get done in this upcoming year are.

Yeah, there is so much to do. The Walnut Creek Chamber has... several different parts of the organization as you know. So one of the main things is focusing on the events that we have and making sure that those are really top notch and attracting the communities from far and wide as well as here. Also wanting to make sure that the relationships that we have are strong and that we continue to attract new businesses into the area. I think there's so much wonderful work going on already, but I think there's opportunities to grow. Also, trying to get youth, not youth, but young professionals more involved in the city and in the Chamber. So that's something else that we'll be looking at doing.

Yeah, great. No, I really enjoyed working with you as you've come into the chamber, and I think we all look forward to being in partnership as you go forward with your new job.

Wonderful. Thank you. I look forward to working with you.

Thank you for coming. And now I will mention that I know that we have some representatives from Kita City in Japan that are here and of course as many people know We had a delegation of myself Councilmember Cindy Darling and Cindy Silva that went to our partner city Kita City just this past March and With our with students from Kita City that are here this week we have representatives from the government here and would you like to come up and and Speak now and welcome.

Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Maki Sato, and I'm the manager of the international exchange section at Kita City office in Tokyo, Japan. It will soon be 10 years since Ornette Creek and the Kita City signed our partnership agreement. I hope that the exchange between our two cities will continue to grow and flourish. It is an honor to be here at the City Council today. I look forward to learning more about your city. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. And again, we appreciate you all coming. And as you mentioned, next year will be 10 years. And we understand that Mayor Yamada will be coming out next year with some people from Keta City to celebrate that 10-year signing. And we look forward to that.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Arigato. Do we have anybody public communication online?

No, no public commenters online.

Okay, so we'll close public comment now and we will move on to some questions. Oh, you're right. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thankfully, we have five of us up here to keep the mayor in line when I say I'll do something and make sure I follow through with that. So we had some questions about flock cameras and I'd like to invite Police Chief Ryan Hibbs to come and Well, let's do it this way. You heard what some of the concerns were. So why don't, if you're able to address those, then I have some questions that I was able to take as well, and we can see if there's any responses on those as well. So the floor is yours, Chief Hibbs.

Thank you, Mayor. Well, good evening. Ryan Hibbs, Chief of Police. I did appreciate hearing the comments made by the public in regard to flock cameras and privacy concerns. What I'll offer, I did hear a couple things that were... maybe need some addressing. So the first is that outside agencies cannot access our FLOC data without us giving them permissions. And so that's by both state law and by policy. Additionally, we are barred from sharing any information from FLOC cameras or LPR data with the federal government. And just recently, FLOC actually closed their network entirely to the federal government. So at least for now, they've locked down their data. And I guess the best way to kind of think of FLOC isn't as a large surveillance network because these are still photographs, it's not continuous video, and we're not tracking the movements of general citizenry. What we're doing is anytime there's a criminal investigation and a plate has been given to us, or we get information of a vehicle that we're conducting a search on, meaning that we've got a vehicle description That is always part of a criminal investigation. It's a right to know, need to know database, which means we actually have to have a criminal investigation to conduct a search, a search of the flock database, not a vehicle search, I should clarify there. But any agency that wants access to our flock data must ask us first, and we operate within the state law and policy guidelines, which prohibit us from sharing with any out-of-state agencies and any any federal government agencies I've heard the comments about the officer in Texas I know that that's happened again we don't share that information with outside agencies so they wouldn't have access to it and the police personnel that are searching databases trying to stalk people that's a criminal offense and so we take that very seriously and what I would offer is that the reason you're hearing about those stories is because the guardrails in place are working so All of that to say, I certainly appreciate the comments about trusting the police department. I think that we've earned that trust, and I think that we take that trust very seriously, and we wouldn't want to violate it. With respect to this sort of overarching surveillance network, I would kind of offer that we should look at the cameras more as checkpoints rather than a continuous surveillance network.

Okay. Thank you. So if you'll indulge me with a few questions and then we'll fire away some other questions from the council as well. So how many currently, how many license plate readers do we have? And just to confirm flock is that technology, right? It's the license plate readers are a hardware.

Yes. So what flock generally does is it captures a license plate, a still photograph of a license plate, and then it uses the technology to read the plate and then compare it against the whatever California typically or, uh, sorry, license plate databases. So it can run out of state plates if the plate is out of state. But generally speaking, what it does is it runs it against the California DMV and compares it against that database to confirm whether the car is a criminal vehicle or it's been stolen.

And how many LPRs do we have?

We have a total of 37, 35 fixed cameras, and two mobile trailer cameras.

Okay. And have they helped in catching criminals?

They have. In fact, recently we We solved a human trafficking case involving a woman in broad daylight that we wouldn't have been able to generate a lead on other than having a partial plate.

So our Walnut Creek Police Department is excellent. We've heard that from our residents. I think we all believe this certainly here at the dais. But are you able to prevent every crime? No. And so in your experience as a long-term police officer and now police leadership, is the likelihood of criminals who are not caught likely to commit a crime again? I'm sorry. You lost me there. Is there a preponderance of likelihood that somebody who commits a crime and is not caught could likely commit a crime again? Yes. And what kind of tools then does the Walnut Creek Police Department use to catch criminals after crimes have been committed?

Surveillance, you know, video cameras from businesses, traffic cameras. We do have to write warrants if we're going. And I totally understand the concerns about safety and tracking movements. I'm in the same boat as well. I, you know, I don't – I – I have all kinds of VPNs and things like that. I don't want my data sold to data brokers either. What I'll offer is that the pieces of technology that we've used have been in place for a long time, and again, this is a right-to-know, need-to-know database, so the abuse of it is a criminal offense and fireable. So if an officer, under my purview, violates that, it's a no-brainer, then we're firing that officer. The other thing I'll offer is that we audit this system weekly, to ensure that we're not sharing data inadvertently with other agencies outside the parameters of what state law and policy allow. And we receive a report from FLOC on a monthly basis, I think, correct, Captain Slater, to let us know if we've shared any license plate data with out-of-state agencies inadvertently. And to date, we have not shared that data with any outside agencies at this point.

So it sounds like, since it's against the law for an officer to access flock data to stalk or harass anybody, it would seem to reason that they also cannot use databases and any other tools in the police department to also stalk and harass. I mean, they have the capability to do that, but it would be against the law for them to do that, correct?

That is correct.

So, thank you. Those are my questions. We have, yes, Council Member Devaney.

So you've been clear about the fact that you don't share the data. There might be a concern that FLOC or FLOC's leadership could hack our system, could extract the data if they wanted it. What say you to that?

That would be a violation of our contract, and I would terminate it immediately.

and you would know if that's happening.

That is correct.

Because that's audited on a weekly basis.

We audit it, and they send us a report as well as to agencies that we've sent data to. Again, they need our permission to access that. This is not an unfettered gateway into our database.

Did you look at other... LPR, license plate reader technologies besides Flock?

We did.

And what are the decisions when making that decision to choose Flock? Why versus these other companies?

We were actually in contract with another company up until last year, as I recall, last July. And that company's technology wasn't, A, as secure, and B, the pictures that the cameras generated were outdated as well. So the issue was that the clarity on the photographs wasn't as good. But with Flock, we could also search something as seemingly benign on a vehicle description as like a lumber rack on a truck. So we get, it narrows down the filter so if we don't have, if we either have a partial plate or no plate but we have a pickup truck with a lumber rack, it can filter that, all of the other vehicles out and narrow our search.

And I think you addressed this with that answer, but when you looked at the other companies, were there other companies where you thought, oh, this company might be more secure, like they might have mechanisms in place to prevent data hacking or data sharing, other things? Did you compare them on those fronts?

That was one component, but in addition to us evaluating the vendors that were out there, we ran this through our city's camera committee as well, which is comprised of a number of different members of the city as well. So it's not just a law enforcement view on this. It's a more holistic approach to it.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Chief. Appreciate the update. One of the speakers, I think this was meant just as maybe an extreme example, was talking about cameras focused in people's living rooms. Just to clarify for the record, the license plate readers, my understanding is they're generally in public locations on public roads centered in and around the downtown area.

That is correct.

So no cameras focused in people's private areas, their backyards, their bedrooms, their living rooms, nothing like that.

That's correct. And to give some context to the photograph that, that a flock reader will generate, it's the vehicle itself and the plate, but there's very little captured around it. So it isn't, it doesn't even capture the driver. They're typically rear plates. And again, this is once the, the, information is captured. What ends up happening is the there's a photograph and then there's a readout of the numbers as the system read it. So then when that alert comes through, if we're alerted to the presence of a stolen vehicle or a crime vehicle in our city, that alert goes to our dispatch center who then with their own eyes late, they look at the comparison to note one of two well tend to know the whether the plate number is actually as captured as accurate and is actually the plate that's on the car. Once that happens, then they run the plate themselves through DMV in the database there to make sure that the plate is still, you know, whatever the crime is, whether it's a stolen car or it's otherwise associated with a felony crime, they confirm that the plate is accurate, it's on that car, and that it still shows as an alert within the DMV database and that the information Flock has isn't outdated. Then we call the agency that entered the vehicle as a crime vehicle in the first place to make sure that the vehicle is still outstanding before we even consider making a stop on it. So in over 10 years of having LPR technology, I'm pleased to report we've never made a stop on somebody strictly on an LPR read for that reason, and that's why we have the guardrails in place that we do.

Okay.

I'm wondering, too, you mentioned that the – outside agencies can only access our readers with our permission. Can you give an example when that's been done?

So not a specific case example, but generally speaking, the more common searches or things involved with our vehicles involved with like hit and run, you know, so somebody captured a license plate on the cell phone or they were able to jot down the plate before they called us. We can run it, but we can also, we also can search that plate through flock to make sure that they were in our city and at the location that the hit and run occurred. So they wouldn't necessarily call us on hit and run, but if they have a plate number, they can access the DMV database themselves. So it's pretty rare, but I'll point one thing out about information sharing. The best example I can give is when we had a homicide back in 2021, even though this wasn't the flock system, we would not have been able to solve that crime without the flock or without the LPR camera because there were no witnesses to this crime other than the victim, who obviously wasn't able to provide a plate. But we accessed the countywide system to find the right car and the right plate, and then we were able to follow up on that case and solve that homicide.

Thank you. Council Member Darling.

And I know that when the license plate is into the system, that it's only retained there for a certain amount of time. How long do you guys keep track of that license plate once it's read?

Currently, the system is set to retain that information for 30 days. That is in line with the governor's guideline on data keeping with respect to license plate readers. FLOC's current recommendation is to narrow that down to seven days, which would give us enough time to follow up on a cold report. But typically speaking, most FLOC searches occur specific to crime vehicles occur within that time frame, which is why they decided that was the way to go.

And we're looking at that right now.

We are evaluating changing our data share, our data holding policy, yes.

Thank you.

Mr. Member Silva.

Thank you very much. So a couple of times you've used the phrase we don't share data or we have restrictions. Where is the data stored? Is it in a cloud or is it in hard drives here in the police department?

It's in a secure cloud that is unique to us.

Do you have to authorize somebody to get access to it, or is this sharing with Concord?

We do have to authorize somebody, but typically how we would handle that is we would access it and send the information that we have, provided that they've met the parameters of right to know, need to know.

Okay. So our data is not floating around in cyberspace.

That is correct.

For everybody to get a hold of.

That is correct.

Thank you.

All right. Well, I appreciate you coming forward, answering the questions and some of the concerns. And, of course, we've been hearing about this in the media. We've been hearing about this just in general other cities. I appreciate you providing that information to us and the community.

Well, and one thing I'll offer, too, is I know I said it before, but I've been very public about this as well, is if the contract is broken through any means by FLOC and our data is shared with agencies that it is not meant to be shared with and is not allowed by law to be shared with, we will break that contract immediately.

Great. Thank you, Chief. Certainly. Okay. Well, does any council member wish to make any further comments, a motion, or anything else? All right. Thank you very much, Chief. One more question? Oh, is that the Chief? It's like Columbo. One more thing.

I think the public is, there's a heightened awareness of this in the public across many spheres. How hard would it be to give us an update in three or four months on what you're learning? Because this has been almost only about a year that we've been using this particular technology by this particular vendor.

Absolutely. So to put the contract into context, we're under contract with them for two years. So it expires next July. That is something that is constantly under evaluation. And as part of our ongoing technology audit, when I took the job, I wanted to make sure that we weren't overspending on technology specifically. And that includes overlapping technologies or technologies that would better serve us in the community. So one thing we're committed to is continually evaluating flock, but also creating a public portal so that the public knows how many agencies we've shared with outside of Walnut Creek. and to assure the public that we are not sharing with agencies out of state or the federal government.

So would we perhaps might have the chief come back maybe in early January and give us just an update on what's happening? Because if we're making it available to the public, you can tell us in a public arena too.

Positively. And you give updates usually at least once, sometimes twice a year anyway, so maybe we can just include this into future updates. Happy to in any forum you'd like.

I just had one other question, maybe for the city manager. I recall when the contract came up, it's not done by staff kind of in a back room. It comes before the city council for approval at a noticed public hearing. It's listed on the agenda. There's public comment period provided. And so that will happen next July, it sounds like.

Yes, there's certainly a dollar threshold for contracts that come to the council. I assume any contract for license plate reader would meet that threshold, and if it did, we would certainly bring that forward. Okay. Very good.

And if the people that came to talk tonight wanted to follow up with you or with the gentleman sitting in the back of the room that knows a lot about this?

They will have our contact information. We're happy to address it before they leave, but they will have our contact information before they leave.

Thank you.

Certainly.

Great. Thank you. So on that point, our police chief and captains will be in the back if anybody from the public would like to speak with them in the next few minutes, because we have closed public comment prior to the questioning here, and we will bring it back to council for our next agenda item. Thank you, Chief. Thank you. All right. So next is council member and staff announcements and reports on activities or requests. Do we have any closed session announcements?

Mayor, this evening the council had two closed session items. One was involving real property negotiations. The council provided direction to your real property negotiators on that matter, and there's no further reportable action on that. And the second item was related to anticipated litigation, and there's no reportable action on that as well.

All right, city manager?

I do not have an update this evening, Mayor.

Okay, next we'll move to council members. And Council Member Devaney, why don't we start over here?

Okay, all right, good evening.

Let me get my glasses on.

So over the past few weeks, attended a few events from the city. I had the pleasure of attending a fundraiser at the Trinity Center with Mayor Pro Tem Francois. It was a fundraiser poker tournament. I've realized I'm an average poker player. Made it about halfway through the event, but had a good time and we raised money for Trinity and that's a great cause. I, on a personal note, had the pleasure of taking an extended backpacking trip with my kids, and so I did miss some events here in the city I would have liked to have attended. I missed a national night out, but I'm sure we'll hear about that from other council members that were able to make it. This past Sunday, I staffed our booth at the Farmer's Market. and I'm always, I think as has been mentioned, impressed with the engagement from the community, the intelligent items that are brought up, and we'll be following up with those community members that I met, and we'll continue those discussions. We had a meeting for Visit Walnut Creek, our tourism board meeting, and I'm the liaison to Visit Walnut Creek. This was held at Ruby Lou's, which if you haven't had the opportunity to visit, is a restaurant here in Walnut Creek that has very unique decor and a really great fun vibe. So if you get a chance, go check out Ruby Lou's. We had some great news come out of that meeting. I think it's next April. We're gonna have two events here in Walnut Creek. There are two events that will run for three years. We signed a three-year contract. The first is with a premier global cycling series that tours, and we secured that race to take place here in Walnut Creek. It's going to... It's gonna start out at the Sports Mall. It will... wrap around Morgan territory and finish, the finish line will be the top of Mount Diablo. So 64 miles, 7,000 feet of elevation gain. That should bring a lot of attention, tourism to the city, and will also just be a super fun event. So I'm looking forward to that. Next April we're also hosting a half marathon here, which we did sign that for the next three years as well. So that will be a fun event as well. Some good news to report as far as hotel occupancy. Our hotel occupancy is up 10 to 20% from this time last year. I asked the group of hoteliers, I think I said that correctly, what they attribute that to, and the answers were they're doing a great job with marketing. The return from COVID, the COVID recession is sort of, The return to hotel visits is just, we're just sort of recovering. We're actually just seeing it this year. That there's spillover from Oakland and San Francisco for events that are taking place in the Bay Area that folks are wanting to come stay here in Walnut Creek. And that the stability of our hotels, that our hotels have maintained in good standing and been around for a while and done a good job advertising and they're attractive places to stay. that is starting to take hold and that Walnut Creek's reputation as a place to stay, a place to visit, continues to grow. And so that was a great thing to hear. Ends my report.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Okay. Thanks, Mayor. As Councilmember Devaney mentioned, I, too, am an average poker player, I've discovered. But it was a fun event, the tournament at the Trinity Center. I want to give a shout-out to Molly Klopp, who's the chair of the board of the Trinity Center and also a planning commissioner here in the city. They had a good turnout. And the thing that I learned, which I'll forget the next time I go to a poker tournament, is that you're supposed to fold. 80 to 90 percent of the time instead of playing 80 or 90 percent of the time so but glad glad attending and glad you came as well did staff the farmers market booth a few times since our last meeting in case you don't know one of us on the council will be at the farmers market on Sunday on Locust Street generally from about 10 to 12 and I agree it's a fun it's a it's a nice opportunity to to be able to engage with the community, to answer questions, to find out where people live, where the closest park is, show them trails in the open space area that they might want to hike at. And so always enjoy that, and I want to give a... Also, a shout out to staff, because generally on Monday morning or Sunday afternoon, I'm firing off a couple of emails about questions that I've received and generally getting responses back by the next day and getting that information to the resident. So it works. And keep it up. Enjoy doing that. along with the mayor, attended the quarterly meeting of the mayor, the mayor pro tem, the city manager, and the commission chairs and vice chairs, which is always a great opportunity to learn about all the hard work that our commissioners are doing and how grateful we are for how much time and energy they put into their activities. A COUPLE OF HIGHLIGHTS FOR ME, OUR LIBRARY COMMISSIONER HEATHER LURBY MENTIONED THE FOUR EXTRA HOURS THAT THE COUNCIL VOTED TO FUND FOR THE DOWNTOWN LIBRARY IN LIGHT OF THE IGNATIO LIBRARY BEING CLOSED THIS FALL UNTIL LIKELY MID-NEXT YEAR FOR SOME SERIOUS RENOVATIONS. SO WE'VE ALREADY GOT THAT LINED UP. THE DOWNTOWN LIBRARY IS OPEN. THE FULL, THE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF HOURS THAT ARE OFFERED. And it's in place before Ignacio is closed. Some of the other items, the EV chargers we'll be talking about tonight. The Transportation Commission mentioned that. The Arts Commission mentioned the great mural program that the city helped fund in and around, kind of zebra tattooing on Main Street. If you haven't checked out those murals, make sure you do. They enliven the downtown area. experience and our pros commissioners mentioned staff took them on some tours of the parks so that they can get familiar with that and planning for the next phase of I guess it's phase three of the Heather Farm project after the new pool and the community center are constructed you know what's next for the Clark Swim Center. And then I'll just close it out that I was honored to attend with several of my colleagues the memorial service for Sue Rainey on Sunday at the Lesher who was not only a mayor and a presence in Walnut Creek for 12 years, was one of the first council members elected to the Moraga City Council, helped get that city incorporated and the thing Many things I admired about Sue, but she was just a super classy lady and an approachable person, but her sense of humor, how she put people at ease, and... She always stayed involved in Walnut Creek, even when she wasn't elected. And when she was elected, she didn't just treat her job as ending when the gavel goes down. She would call up people, she would get donations, she would make things happen, and she was committed to the city. So miss her and miss her presence and grateful for her service.

And that's my thank you, Mayor for Tim, and I guess I'll go next and we'll just make our way down the line here. But it was a very nice memorial. And 1 thing that will always stick with me with Sue Rainey is how she respected whoever she spoke with. She dressed to respect. She was respectful whether she was meeting somebody on council and she wasn't or whether she was meeting somebody from the public. She was just a presence and will indeed be missed. A few other things that I do. When you're in town for the two weeks, there's a lot going on. So while I wasn't able to be at the Trinity Center fundraising poker tournament, where I would have had a full 90% of the time, I was serving at the Trinity Center auction winner for their big fundraiser, And it was at a private home, a gourmet meal, and I was one of the servers along with Molly Klopp, who's on our planning commission and chair of the Trinity Center. And it was fun, and what an evening out it was, like being at the French Laundry right here in Walnut Creek. I was also at the Festival Opera, Opera in the Park, and they had their big Opera in the Park event, great turnout there. There was the mural ribbon cutting and kickoff that happened a couple of weeks ago, and we had that in a few different places. But if you haven't seen the murals yet around Walnut Creek, check it out. It's on our city website. We just put out an update on the mayor's minute through the city website as well. and mentioned where you can find them around town. Our Congressman Mark DeSaulnier did a town hall at Joybound talking about the importance of our four-legged friends and all that he does in Congress for that as well. And so there was a terrific turnout at that town hall. There was the Walnut Creek PD National Light Out. It was the biggest one that I had seen yet. It was really a phenomenal turnout and also wasn't 100 degrees, so maybe that helped with the turnout as well. Of course, that's national, and it's the same night all across the country when that happens, so hopefully next year, if you didn't make it, come check it out, and bring your small kids, because there are the fire trucks and public works trucks, and it's just a great experience. We had another Locust Tree Festival a couple of weeks ago on the first Wednesday of August, and again, I think that was the biggest one ever. There was at least five. I've heard as many as six or 7,000 people that came, but it was certainly at least 5,000 people. perfect weather evening, and next year I look forward to even more success on those Locust Street festivals. And I am noticing a trend around town that I thought people were calling Walnut Creek the Creek for short, but I'm seeing more and more the Nut. And there was a booth that was selling hats and shirts called the Nut, and next thing I know, I'm walking around the streets downtown and there is people with the Nut paraphernalia on, so... We'll keep an eye on that one, on that trend. Thank you to the economic development team in Walnut Creek downtown for being and helping to shepherd in our visit with Mattson. Mattson is the big shipping cargo liners and they have their headquarters now in Walnut Creek, just maybe a quarter mile this way. In fact, their whole office looks like a ship, it's really amazing. Beautiful, though, we had an opportunity to meet and greet the CEO, and we welcome Mattson being right in downtown Walnut Creek now, and this is, of course, a global company. Continuing on, Rotator Taproom had their anniversary, and there was a big event over there as well. In fact, seeing that along with Calicraft and some of the microbrews, it really is a renaissance going on in this particular area. Council Member Silva and I went on a tour of Heather Farm. Check out the progress there. And thank you to Public Works and Public Works Director Rich Payne for helping lead that tour. If you haven't gone by Heather Farm, check it out. There is now the footprint for the pools that have been excavated, and it looks like a city that's happening around in that area. So there were at least 40 or 50 people that were working that day. It is coming right along, and right now we expect it to be finishing on time at the end of next year. So thank you again for that particular tour. There was a Lindsay Wildlife experience fundraiser for their big fundraiser of the year. That happened last week. Everything seemed to happen the last couple of weeks. I guess kids are back in school and families are here. So all of that continued. In fact, the farmer's market in Shadelands asked if I would be present there for this last Saturday. So while we are present at the Sunday farmer's markets downtown every week, I was at the Saturday one. on this last Saturday, and there's all sorts of different questions that come on over there. Quickly, I was part of the lobby day with the East Bay Division of Cal Cities. We went up to Sacramento last week to lobby for Walnut Creek's position and Cal City's position on some important bills that have been considered now in state assembly and state senate. including pension, wildfire, and how much PG&E is going to be held responsible for that, and for some of the mitigation there of the energy companies, public safety, and housing. These are all topics that we were discussing with about a half a dozen different legislators that were up there prior to, of course, coming out of committee and being voted on that by the Assembly and the Senate. And then lastly, I will talk about county connection. the liaison to our County Connection Board. There's upgrades that are happening at our bus stops, shelters, and carve-outs. We're going to be seeing that occurring over the next year. And as an update to the Youth Ride Free program, in June of this year, we are up over June of last year. You have an idea that we had about 11,600 riders that were youths that rode free a year ago in June. This last June, 13,700. It's about an 18% increase. July is already looking more than that. And while CCTA took over the outreach to schools and local government. They're focused on the social media ads, and it has obviously done a great job because people are aware of this. And, of course, the youths that ride free today, we are hoping that they ride free as adults. I'm not ride free as adults, but they ride as adults, and they don't necessarily have to bring their cars everywhere they go. So long update. I apologize for that, but it was a busy month.

Mine was not quite as busy as these guys. They wear me out. I did make it a national night out. I was coming down from the cabin, so I was undercover as a cabin person. I always loved visiting with all, I mean, Joybound was there, and I think there were some people here that almost took dogs home. They were on the phone to their spouse. He's really cute. But also Moms for Man Action, a lot of other groups that are interested in public safety were there, and it was really a great night to visit with folks and catch up, even if I was undercover. This morning, Chief Hibbs came to talk to the Civic Affairs Committee of the Chamber and really rolled out a lot of the good news that he's been able to share with us about how close they are to being fully staffed, how the crime statistics in Walnut Creek have continued a downward trend, really did a great job answering questions. I also had a chance to have lunch with Angela Ashley and Katie Burrows to welcome her to this to the city and I think she'll be a great addition to the Chamber of Commerce. Everything else is all things MCE as I As I explained last time we were together, our CEO, we are in the process of looking for a new CEO. We have a committee that is in charge of recruitment. They expect to have a recruitment firm on board by September. and they will also be coming back to us to report in on who we have as the interim CEO. We've had our COO, Vikin Kasajian, acting, and they are deciding what they're gonna do about that. In addition, we have the civil grand jury, Marin's civil grand jury report that MCE is responding to. I've been sitting on that committee And we have a relatively complete report that is going to go to the MCE full board as a draft this Thursday night, answering a lot of the questions that the grand jury asked. And it's our chance as the board for MCE to say, here's where we agree. Here's where some things are a little different and help us. get our message out to people. One of the other things, and this had been in progress prior to all the other changes, but MCE is really grown tremendously in the last 15 years. It now represents four separate counties. We'll have 38 member agencies. More than half of the demand is actually here in Contra Costa County. More than half the board is actually Contra Costa. It's not Marin Clean Energy anymore. And so we have an outside governance consultant that has come in and he's working with the board to talk to us about what are some things that we should think about at this 15-year milestone to make our governance more efficient as you can imagine with 30 I think we have 34 board members because there was some consolidation in Napa but 34 board members it's hard it's a hard lift and so we're looking at different ways to make it more efficient give us the right oversight tools and ensure that the agency works well So those things together are, you know, kind of getting the agency reset. There is some good news with all the heat wave that we've had. For those of you who remember, I think it was 2022, we had a big heat wave in October and everybody, I mean, we all got the little thing on our phone from the governor, turn the air conditioner down. The system has held up really well in the heat dome that we've had recently, never even getting close to the maximum amount that could be fed into the grid. And that in many respects is the batteries that we've brought online, the additional fixed things like wind energy and geothermal energy, And the emphasis that we've put on helping our biggest clients, our biggest power users, find ways to adjust away from high power use from four to nine in the afternoon. That's when the system gets most stressed. That's the message we want to get out. When we were younger, it was two to five. Now it's four to nine. So figure out a way to reduce your electricity use from four to nine at night. And the system is holding up really well. I'm looking forward, as the co-chair of the MCE board, it's been a busy couple months, and I've talked to a lot of my staff about feelings and emotions, and we're working through things, but I think we're, as an agency, going to come out of it stronger and better able to serve our customers. So that's my update.

Great. Council Member Silva.

Thank you very much, Mayor. I will start by mentioning one important item that's related to trash and recycling and the pickups. Happy to report that SB 922 is sitting on the governor's desk to be signed. This is the bill that will give cities the right to recover the costs of the impacts that garbage trucks, these hauling trucks are the heaviest things on the road and they damage the roads and there was A court case that said you can't collect the funds, but it looks like the fix is on the governor's desk and ready to be signed. And so we're all encouraged to send a note to the governor, hey, Gavin, sign, sign, so that we can secure and fix our roads.

We've sent that letter.

Great.

The mayor signed it. Yes, we did.

Yes. At the mayor's conference this month, we were in Oakley, and the mayor was there, and I was there, and we received a report from Contra Costa Water District, which serves half of our community on the pipeline rebuilding project that they have going on. And that was informative, but of course it happened the same night that there was a water main break. Well, it was a 10-inch pipe that broke at North Main and Sunnyvale. How's that road looking? It wasn't a garbage truck that damaged it. It was water. It's amazing what a water surge can do to a road in just a few hours. I was honored to be able to attend the Gardens of Heather Farm last Thursday evening, the reception they held for the retirement of their executive director, Joan Lucchese. She put 10 years in as the executive director and was guiding them through some really interesting times, including a flood in the building out there. But all's well that ends well. Jeremy Peck, who's been the general manager and the garden manager, is now the executive director. and Joan is going back on the board of directors. So it was a lovely evening in her honor. And two was at the Locust Street Festival, and I think that format is really working well, the way it's stretched along Locust and a little bit onto Bonanza and Cypress. And so I look forward to seeing it continue in that format in the future. And I will finally mention as the end of this that Just a few more weeks left, but we had the filing period for city council election closed last Wednesday, and we have two candidates who filed to fill the seats that Mayor Pro Tem and I are leaving, and they will be on the ballot, but they're the only two contenders on the ballot for the two seats. So congratulations to both Brendan Moran and Cherise Count.

Thank you, and congratulations. Yes, obviously, your being on the council for these last 20 years and Matt for the last eight will not go unrecognized. We'll have a lot more to talk about that.

We're going to embarrass that.

We'll have a lot more to talk about that in the months ahead. It's 7.15. We've been meeting since 4 o'clock, so why don't we take about a 10-minute break? We'll be back at 7.25.

Thank you. Thank you. 🎵 🎵 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for watching!

All right. Welcome back. And the next item on the agenda is a consideration item titled Presentation of the Draft Electric Vehicle Strategic Plan. And I invite Sustainability Manager Candice Rankin-Mumby forward to provide the presentation.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. I'm Candice Rankin-Mumby, the City's Sustainability Manager. And I'm joined here tonight by staff from our Public Works Department and our consultant, Black & Beach, to provide you an update on the... Electric Vehicle Strategic Plan that we put together and to get your feedback on direction for our public charger program. So tonight we're going to start by just giving a bit of overview on the background as to why we decided to put this plan together. And then we'll go through the results, starting with our fleet analysis, which includes the practicalities and the charging needs of electrifying the city's fleet. And it also includes an analysis of the cost comparison between an internal combustion engine fleet to a partially electrified fleet. And we'll take a break for questions then and then we'll finish off by talking about our public charging program and some proposed changes to make it more successful. So as you are well aware, one of our city council priorities is to remain a recognized leader in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving other sustainability goals through our sustainability action plan. That plan was adopted in 2023, and the analysis that put that plan together found that 60% of the greenhouse gas, so climate-causing emissions in Walnut Creek come from the transportation sector, and that's really primarily from driving in gas-powered cars. So encouraging members of our community to take County Connection more or electrify their cars is one of the biggest actions that we can take to really impact our community our impact on the climate. Because of that, we have these three high-level goals in this sustainability action plan to expand adoption and electrification of EVs, to increase the availability of EV charging and then to electrify our fleet. And so the direction in the stable action plan is really high level, and so this electric vehicle strategic plan is really intended more internally for staff to give us those details into how to implement that direction that we've gotten from you, particularly for our fleet and then the chargers that we manage. And so with that, I'll turn it over to Gina Eicher to give some context on our fleet.

Good evening, Gina Eicher, Public Works Manager. One component of the EV strategic plan was to really take a look and assess our existing fleet and determine where there's potential for converting to zero emissions vehicles. The city uses a fleet replacement policy that guides when to assess vehicles for replacement. An example of that is our public works non-safety vehicles, so trucks and then city pool car vehicles. These are assessed at about 10 to 12 years and or 100,000 miles. One thing I wanted to note that over the last few years, like the last five years, due to budgetary constraints and some regulatory uncertainties, we've done quite a bit of extending the life of our vehicles. And you're gonna see some of these results of the extension of these vehicle life use in the report that Black & Veatch is going to be presenting tonight. That being said, we have already began to transition our vehicles. And so in our current fleet, we have 12 fully electric vehicles. We have three plug-in hybrids and then 25 non-plug-in hybrid cars as well. With that being said, in order to give you guys more actual details about the analysis that was done, I'll turn it over to Will Einstein with Black & Veatch.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Will Einstein with Black & Veatch. I'm very proud to be here tonight to share some of the results of the report and the analysis that we did for Your team, Black & Veatch has its largest office in Northern California in Walnut Creek and many of our employees live and work in the community and we're really pleased to be part of your community and able to help you with this important study as you assess how you're going to transition your fleet to a greater number of electrified vehicles. When we do these kinds of studies and help cities like yourselves through the analysis of what it takes to electrify your fleet. We often start with, and in this case, start with a full analysis of the fleet working with your team. It's been a true pleasure to work with Candice and Gina and Eddie on the team in particular and really the amount of knowledge and understanding they have about your fleet and how you work is tremendous and we really appreciate that because it makes our job a lot easier to help you do the analysis. We start walking through that fleet analysis and really understanding where things are at. We then go through, and I'll walk you through each of these stages as we do this, we go through the analysis of the costs and the infrastructure that it will take in order to begin that fleet electrification, usually on city property and facilities like you have, and then the costs associated with what it would take to make that investment and start to make that transition. A question that often comes up and I think is really important here is why in California in particular are you making this transition? A big chunk of the reason that you're thinking about is certainly the goals that you have set forward as a community. Another big piece is the state of California through the California Air Resources Board in 2023 implemented the advanced clean fleet rule. While that rule was pretty wide and broad at the time, it's been narrowed down substantially since then, but still very much in effect for jurisdictions like yourself and the state working with its local jurisdictions to continue the progress of transitioning fleets to electrified vehicles. One of the key elements in this transition and some of the changes that have happened since CARB made its core setting of the policy was the transition from 50% of your vehicles purchased have to be zero emission. It used to be, say, through the end of 2026. So beginning next year, you would have had to go to 100% of your vehicles would have had to be fully electric. and meet those requirements. In this case, the CARB recently extended that timeframe so that you now have until 2030 in order to make that. We'll talk more about how that flexibility helps modify some of your plans and provide you more flexibility as you do that over the next couple of years. ACF covers the medium and heavy duty vehicles associated with your fleet. So we're talking about vehicles that have a gross weight larger than 8,500 pounds. So you're thinking extremely heavy pickup trucks in that case and everything up through street sweepers, dump trucks, those kinds of vehicles in the medium and heavy duty space. Public safety vehicles are exempt. from the regulation and it doesn't apply to the light duty vehicles and we'll talk a little bit about what that looks like in this sense. When we talk about the fleet that you have, in our analysis 175 vehicles in the fleet in total, 66 of those somehow fit into the ACF regulation and fit under that category of having to match or factor in the procurement when you go to replace a vehicle of whether it's going to be a battery electric or a EV of some sort into the space. There are 109 vehicles that are not regulated by ACF regulations, 69 of those are police vehicles, and then the remaining 40 are light duty vehicles, usually in some case that is not part of the ACF definition. So when we talk about, as Gina mentioned, the city of Walnut Creek has set forward a very well-benchmarked, very strong Fleet replacement policy, Gina rattled off the numbers which are great, which is 10 to 12 years of use. You go through the process of analyzing the replacement of those vehicles or when they hit 100,000 miles. The charts on this slide outline sort of the state of the vehicles, both that are covered by ACF as well as that are not covered by ACF regulations in this space. As you can see here, the bulk of your vehicles are low mileage. We tend to find that with cities like yourselves because your vehicles just don't have that far to travel within the city, but more importantly, the age of the vehicles and how long they've been in operation in your fleet when you think about replacing them and how that fits in. In the case of Walnut Creek, both your vehicles are of low mileage as well as the majority of them are well within the younger end of your fleet replacement policy age. That provides the city with some of the flexibility that Gina mentioned as far as working to provide flexibility and analyze when you're going to make the decision to replace a particular vehicle. The vehicles that sit in that space of being 11 plus or more years old are some of the ones that we analyzed as far as how they would be impacted by ACF if it were to at the time it was going into effect. That we did the analysis, many of them we're going to have to start getting replaced in 2026 so what you see here is a lot of the vehicles that were slated for 2026 have now been can now be stretched into the. phase of the 2030 timeframe between now and 2030 essentially. And so that process will begin. We do this analysis over essentially working with your staff. We identify what year you would like to have the ending of the analysis. So in this case, 2040. And this assumes that essentially every vehicle is gonna get replaced at least once over that timeframe. So this maps out how that occurs. So once we're done analyzing the fleet and what it takes, we go through the process of analyzing the number of chargers that you will need in order to do that. In the case of Walnut Creek, your team identified not one but two different locations in which they wanted to put charging, one being your core um fleet and corporate yard on lawrence way and then the second being at heather farm on a piece of the public works property at the heather farm complex where they would like to install faster charging to enable vehicles that are out and about in the city to be able to access higher speed charging if they're not going if they needed to or if they're not going home back to lawrence way base to be charged in the evening So for DC, basically when we worked through that plan, we determined that for DC fast charging ports would make sense for the Heather farm corporate yard. Um, and that would cost roughly $500,000, um, to put in a big chunk of that is being planned for and coordinated with PG and E now. Uh, and so that process is well underway and then the 10 DC fast charging ports and 24 level twos that are identified for Lawrence way. have been laid out and conceptually designed with your team and then really at this point it's a matter of determining when the best time is to start investing in the infrastructure to put those chargers in. The nice thing about the phasing of the chargers and the investment of the infrastructure For this is you can make the investment of the charging infrastructure, but you don't necessarily have to put the actual chargers in at the time if you don't have the vehicles to need them. So making one investment for infrastructure and then making a second or phased investment to go with the chargers that support the vehicles is, you know, a often good way to phase it into accommodate any budget concerns and those things. So after we get through the process of identifying the cost, doing the layout, the conceptual diagrams for where things are going to go in the process of setting up the strategic plan, we then sit down and talk about the total cost of ownership analysis. Total cost of ownership analysis, or TCO as it is in industry jargon, the acronym for it I guess is the best way to say it, It's an analysis that really tries to apples to apples compare the costs of owning a vehicle of different types of fuel and different types of infrastructure for doing it. So it takes those total costs of running that vehicle, in this case, over the time period from 2026 through 2040, and how that evaluation of those costs occurs for you. In this particular case, we analyzed that scenario on a... under three, we analyzed three different scenarios. One was a non-transition scenario, not necessarily feasible because you do have still a requirement to begin the transition because of ACF, but it gives you a sort of what I would call a business as usual case to compare costs to from the standpoint of absent regulations, what would occur. Then the second case we analyzed was transitioning all the ACF core vehicles as we called them. So those are the vehicles that are They're required properly to be transitioned over time by ACF and the regulations. And then a case that we came up with with your team called ACF Plus, which is looking at that core element of costs for transitioning the vehicles and then analyzing if you did some additional light duty vehicles as it made sense on top of that, which aren't necessarily covered by ACF, what would you do, and what do the costs look like for doing that transition in that sense? Under total cost of ownership, we'll talk about this a little more on the next slide, but really you're looking at the fuel costs, you're trying to compare replacement costs, maintenance costs, purchase costs, and then the infrastructure costs associated with serving them. So when we look at the costs associated with serving them, it's important to remember, and I like to think of these slides as a transition and directional slide because all of these are snapshots in time and using data that in some cases is data from the end of last year as we did the study. A lot of things are not necessarily captured and influenced in this, one of them being recent increases in fuel costs associated with this. So some of these fuel costs are costs that don't reflect and were calculated prior to the most recent run-up in gas prices in the state of California. But it's important to take a look at this and say, okay, total costs over the period of time, you can see the numbers there. The ACF plus numbers from the total cost standpoint reflect the fact that you're putting in more vehicles, but essentially we held the amount of charging constant for that, so you have more vehicles utilizing the same amount of charging and investment infrastructure, and so there's a bit of a lower cost there associated with doing that. Another important element to this is that you'll notice that on the infrastructure side, there is no black bar associated with the fuel in the Essentially the no transition case and the fuel associated with Liquid and fossil fuels because that infrastructure is already in place and so If you took what is in some of those cases that infrastructure or the cost of putting in liquid fueling infrastructure today That would sit on top of the black bar to the right Which would narrow the gap between? the blue and the green bars associated with the total costs and As it relates to vehicles and O&M, the vehicle O&M maintenance costs certainly have been falling as an owner of two electric vehicles myself. Maintenance for electric vehicles is substantially less on the daily basis or the yearly basis than it is in owning a combustion vehicle for those of you who may own them. And then the other element in this that's important is the vehicle price and cost of ownership. We've all seen the price and cost of goods on a manufactured basis, going up and down. In some cases, light-duty vehicles from the standpoint of pricing, when you compare battery electric vehicles to combustion engine vehicles, they're getting a lot closer in some cases. But then for specialty vehicles like you may buy, they're harder to get. There aren't as many of them being made. And so in some cases, you see those cost premiums still occur. So as we look at the findings in that space, I would say that that is one area where should there be more vehicles made, particularly in the medium and heavy duty space, that those costs will become more competitive over time. But again, it will come back to the manufacturers starting to manufacture in total quantity a lot more of those vehicles. So then as we look at trends associated with cost components, and I touched a little bit on these, the cost premiums I think are going to continue to evolve over that time period, and that's why I say The total cost of ownership gives you a good indication of where you're at today, but it's an analysis through 2040. It's a 15-year analysis, and so a lot can continue to change in that space, both with the cost of the vehicles, but also seeing the cost of batteries. I would say this is the one space associated with EVs that is coming down. in sort of their representation of the total cost of the vehicle. The battery is the most expensive element in the vehicle, but battery prices all over the place are continuing to fall. And so hopefully those will continue to bring down the prices of the vehicles that go with them, or at least help offset some of the increases. We talked a bit about EV fuel costs less from an electric standpoint. It's certainly more stable from a pricing standpoint. Utility rates don't change as often as the price of gasoline at the pump does, and so you certainly get stability in addition to a little bit more predictability over time. Another important element to remind you of in here is that we took, wherever we could, we take a conservative approach to how we do these analyses so that you understand from a budgeting standpoint sort of where your, what I would say your maximum Cost could lie what we didn't include in here is significant incentives and rebates partly because most of the major some of the major federal incentives rebates have changed over the last several years some of the California ones have changed some of them have come back. But what's important here is that they're not in this analysis what this study will do is provide your staff. and you with the information to begin working on the plan to start getting shovel ready at some of your sites because getting shovel ready at your sites makes you much more eligible for grants that help support infrastructure when they do come back or rebates that might be available for purchasing vehicles. And so those incentives and rebates are not in here so they would certainly help improve the financials in certain situations. And I think that is all the comments I have in this portion. I know we're going to take questions if you had them. Again, super, I have to say, your team's fabulous to work with. We really enjoyed working with them. They're thinking about and asking all the right questions and really appreciate the opportunity to work with City of Walnut Creek.

Okay. Well, thank you and thank you for the presentation. Council, yes, Council Member Derling.

This is going to sound like you might not know the answer to this, but I've always been curious. The focus on converting the heavier vehicles over to electric and not the lighter vehicles, it seems like the lighter vehicles would probably be a much easier type of vehicle to transition. Do you know what the thought process is?

My, excuse me, my understanding at the time that ACF was put in place, because ACF, that's one thing that has stayed consistent is its focus on medium and heavy duty vehicles, is that You have to remember that it was coupled with ACT, which was the advanced clean transportation rule that was much more focused on light duty vehicles. And so I think from a CARB and a state policy standpoint, they were looking at ways to influence two different things, two different markets in two different progressions of where they're at. Unfortunately, some elements of all those regulations have been changed. over the last several years, and so it's a little less clear where those rules will lie, and particularly into the future. But they were thinking about them more as a package, I guess, is the best way to think about it, and that's my understanding of how it works.

And then from an operational standpoint... It sounds like we are focusing on the heavier duty vehicles. Have we looked at whether or not there is cost savings on the lower, the lighter weight vehicles?

So part of what was in the comparison between ACF and ACF Plus was that opportunistic approach of looking at light duty vehicles when it made sense for your fleet team to procure them. So working through At each opportunity of saying, okay, we now need to replace this vehicle, which ones does it make sense? And certainly when you're doing the pairings of other vehicles, if you do have to buy an internal combustion engine vehicle in this timeframe between now and 2030, you have to pair that with a non-EV vehicle. with an EV, so in order to do that, you start to add in some of those vehicles that you might not have otherwise replaced.

Okay, and then I know when we adopted the Sustainability Action Plan, we had a big discussion about law enforcement vehicles and whether or not they were included and at the time it was felt that the batteries couldn't withstand the rapid charging and the constant deployment. Is that still the general conclusion as far as law enforcement?

I would say that there's a lot of law enforcement agencies I've seen testing out more and more of the new types of light-duty vehicles and how they fit in. The range of light-duty vehicles has got longer. The challenge for a lot of other jurisdictions we've worked with have tended to start with emergency vehicles that, are not necessarily used for pursuit or other types of activities, support vehicles, those kinds of things to start and learn. I mean, a lot of this is learning range, et cetera, and understanding that. The other element is they drive a lot of miles. They do. And so you really have to kind of think through the charging cycles and how they manage the use of the vehicle on a day-to-day basis. And so that's part of the conversations we usually have with representatives of law enforcement teams and jurisdictions as that happens. In this particular case, we decided that the city didn't want to include those yet, so that part of the study couldn't.

But it sounds like, for the most part, everybody's still looking at pilot-level projects. Nobody said the city of Fremont hasn't just started.

The only cities, and I can't think of one off the top of my head, but I know there are some cities who have made declarations and gone all in, but they tend to be very small jurisdictions.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate all the effort. Thank you so much.

Council Member Silva?

Thank you for the presentation. Just out of curiosity, in case somebody in the audience doesn't, I can interpret what heavy duty, medium duty, and light duty are by the way you talked, but perhaps you could give a couple of examples of each of the categories.

So a light duty vehicle would be a normal passenger vehicle under 8,000 pounds. Kind of simple way to think about it is everything up to a basic pickup truck.

Okay.

There are some pickup trucks that straddle the line, so then when you get into pickup trucks like your jurisdiction uses for parks and other utility type of activities when you put a lot of weight on them, they get to be heavier vehicles. And so heavy pickup trucks and then box trucks are in the medium duty category. And then to a certain degree, delivery trucks, those kinds of vehicles, you start to see like all of the UPS, FedEx type of trucks are medium duty. And then heavy duty trucks, certainly anything that is a tractor trailer type of vehicle, but heavy dump trucks, cranes, other things that have many axles fit into the heavy duty category.

I have a series of questions, not necessarily in any order. Battery life. When you look at the continuum of odometer readings and number of miles on the vehicle, how do you calculate battery life expectancy on the vehicles in this electric environment?

In an electric space, Not too dissimilar from maybe if you own a boat, you think about run time of your engine when you own a boat in that case. In the case of electric vehicles.

I don't think about that other than it's a boat floating in my bathtub.

There you go. There you go. In the case of electric vehicles, you think about charge cycles. So it's not so much how far it's gone, it's how many times the battery has been charged that matters. And so as you're looking at that, It's the type of charging it goes through. Slower charging over a longer period of time tends to be better for the battery than lots and lots and lots of fast charging. The plan that we've worked with your team on is much more focused on the lower end of slow charging that meets the needs of charging vehicles overnight as opposed to and during in-between shifts and those kinds of things as opposed to constantly fast charging a vehicle, which can be harder on the battery.

So what are we talking about in terms of battery disposal? Because I know that was an issue in terms of the environmental consequence of stockpiles of batteries.

I am not an expert on the end of the life cycle of batteries. Oh, you're just at the beginning, huh?

All right, I'll ask somebody else that question. But you do mention overnight charging. And one of the things Mayor Pro Tem Francois and I serve on the board of Recycle Smart, and we were just negotiating a new contract for 15 years. And one of the questions was where would- If we had to go to electric garbage trucks, where would they park them in the corp yards when you still have trucks that are taking fuel, petroleum? Right. The danger of putting one too close to the other. What are the issues at our own corp yards that you've encountered when you talk about the layout, etc., of the corp yard and both corp yards?

Well, in general, you want to keep the two fuels separate, but it doesn't mean that, you know, I mean, we're not talking two totally separate locations in that case.

Is it between from here to that door or is it further than that?

I don't know that I know exactly where your liquid fuel charging is on your site.

Good evening, Mayor, council members. So I can answer. I'm Eddie, the fleet supervisor for the city. So at the Lawrence location, we've identified that the best location would be on the east side of our lot. So parallel with the BART station. Right, I can see it on the diagram.

I just don't remember. I know there's one fuel, a couple of tanks next to the major doors and the offices.

Correct. So just to lay it out, it's probably between the first charging station and the fuel island. I would say it's probably about 150 yards, 100 yards, somewhere around there. So it's got a safe distance. The good thing is our tanks are underground, so they're not exposed. The only thing that would be potential, you know, the potential of catching fire would be the fuel island itself. But again, you're pretty far away from that, so.

So then overnight charging, you've got things plugged in. How do we maintain the safety of it overnight if there's, you hear about this all the time now, batteries, explosions, et cetera. I know it's dramatic. How do you keep, what safety precautions do we,

Yeah, so I can speak from experience. So typically with battery fires themselves when you're charging, what typically happens is there are fast chargers that are being utilized. And when you use fast chargers, it creates a lot of heat as it's charging. And sometimes what happens is there's voids in the battery pack. It's supposed to be a completely sealed system. And sometimes those voids will occur, which introduces oxygen, and the heat builds up, and it basically self-combusts. In our case, with the level 2 chargers that we'll be utilizing there, it's not a slow charger per se, but it's not charging at a rate that is similar to like a DC-DC fast charger or the Tesla superchargers, as you see. They don't recharge at a high rate such as that. So the heating and the charging won't be as hot as if we were to do fast charging.

So is it safe to say that we don't need to fast charge overnight?

No, so the intent behind fast chargers, and this goes back to us identifying Heather Farm, was that Heather Farm was central. So in the case that when the time comes, if we were forced to purchase electric dump trucks per se, duty cycle is a big thing right now. And you can imagine, just to put things in perspective, a dump truck right now typically hauls about 30 tons of asphalt. And when you have that much weight, the battery won't last as long. So the idea was that, hey, let's have a central point, and we have identified Heather Farm as being the best central point, if you will. We can have that dump truck go in, plug, and it'll fast charge for about 45 minutes, maybe to an hour, get us to about 80%, and then we can continue on. So, again, we wouldn't use the fast charger for overnight, per se. It is something that we would like to use throughout the day when people are around and we can keep an eye on that.

And my last question, you're the person to answer. Operations and maintenance of electric vehicles and the high-tech vehicles is much different than internal combustion engine.

Yeah.

What are you doing for training of staff, et cetera?

Yes. So I will say that my team, including myself, we are trained and certified on high voltage isolation. So anything that has 600 volts or more is supposed to have a secondary isolation mechanism. So, for instance, firefighters are trained on how to isolate high voltage systems from the vehicle as well. So staff is continually trained on the technologies as they change and come along.

My last question, I apologize for having so many, but maybe these were questions you all had too. What if the power grid goes out and we're using, I mean, how do we, public works and public safety, if the power goes out, they're on call. How do we get them on call if you can't use the vehicles?

That's a good question. It has been a challenge for those of us that were here New Year's Eve of 22 into 23. It was a long, long stretch. And that is probably the biggest concern that we have as a public agency. And we don't share this concern. There's a lot of problems that other agencies are seeing. And to answer your question, we do have a backup generator at the corporation yard. How much that can sustain or keep us going during an emergency event, that's the unknown. And I think that's the big variable on why we haven't gone electric 100% as of yet. It's just the duty cycle is the big factor there that we're trying to figure out and how we can work around that when that time comes.

Thank you. Thank you for your indulgence. Thank you.

Other questions?

I had a few. Eddie, you've done the analysis, and we're confident that the 14 chargers is the right amount to serve our fleet now and in the future.

Yes, so it would never be a one-for-one, and the thought process is there is that we would develop or create some kind of charging schedule, if you will. As an example, with our current vehicles now that we have in our fleet that are electric, they don't charge every day. The users will probably use the charger, you know, for instance, on Monday, and then they may not use the charger again until Wednesday. Again, that is a variable component. If there are cases where this truck is being heavily used, then situations change. But for the most part, what we will do is develop a charging schedule or strategy, if you will, so staff, there will always be some kind of charger available.

Okay.

And in terms of how long, the contract to do the chargers will come back to the council at some point, I imagine. How long from authorization of that contract to installation are you anticipating?

Yes. So the public charging is going to be a separate contract. And I could probably have Gina speak on that. Because the city-owned chargers would be separate from the public.

Yeah, but the city one, though, in terms of how, what's your lead time in order to get those installed?

I'm sorry, I misunderstood the question. So it's a variable right now. The last time I did that study was probably about six months ago. And at that point, the charges were about a three-month lead time. I don't know what it is now. It could have improved. A lot of it was post-pandemic recovery with hard goods and whatnot. So that could have improved over time.

And then kind of following up on one of Council Member Silva's questions, is there a scenario where we would build in battery storage with the chargers?

That's come up in discussion. I think right now we're kind of taking baby steps and we're trying to focus on getting the infrastructure in place and then when that time comes with that capability we may expand that out but that is something that we haven't had deeper discussions on but it goes back to again emergency response. We want to be able to make sure that our crews are ready to go if we need to and so that's one of the only ways that we could potentially have that readiness there.

The mid-range, not the Tesla fast chargers, but the mid-range ones, are they comparable to, like, what's in the library? Yes.

Okay. Yes, and then the household chargers that you'd plug into a 120 outlet is something that would take, you know, pretty long to charge overnight.

And then last one from me, and I'm not sure who, probably not Eddie, but on the ACF Core versus the ACF Plus, If I'm understanding it correctly, we're not required, we're not mandated every new purchase to be 100% EV until 2030. But we have vehicles now that are reaching the end of their useful life and that will need to be replaced between now and 2030. reading the analysis correct, if the ACF plus scenario where we would swap those out with zero emission now would result in a cost savings comparative to if we waited until, if we replaced them with a combustion engine and they waited for them to reach the end of their useful life then and replace them in 2035 or something.

So I think the important thing about the ACF plus scenario is you're opportunistically looking at, okay, a replacement's coming up, If we go with an EV and the premiums make sense for the purchase of the vehicle, but the maintenance and the lower fuel costs offset some of that, plus you've already invested in the infrastructure, and so you're really in a place of making that transition and starting to do that, and so that's where any savings.

When do we make that decision, or is that a staff decision?

It's a case-by-case decision based on what your staff tells me.

Okay. It is, you know, I think one thing to highlight, too, it is... Not every type of vehicle is available. And so it's really, that's probably one of the biggest challenges because, you know, just to throw out some stats, since 2023 there have been 12 failed EV companies that have started and never, they never launched. And so to answer your question, it's very contingent on what, for instance, if I had to replace a street sweeper today, I may not be able to find a full electric one. So it's a very case by case. There's not a one-all cure-all, if you will, with purchasing vehicles or equipment.

Yeah, it was more related to light duty.

In the case of the light duty, you're really looking at the opportunity to add that in in order to at the time of the decision. It has to do with the age of the life of the vehicle at that point and deciding whether that vehicle can be extended and whether it makes sense to purchase it as an EV because there are more EV options in the light-duty space than there are in the medium-heavy-duty space at this point.

So we don't necessarily have a policy on it. It's a case-by-case decision sort of made by staff as the vehicle reaches the end of its useful life. Okay, and then just, I have one last question too. On the incentives, is that something that cities are generally eligible for, even if they were available kind of at the federal level?

So at the federal level for the purchase incentives, yes, and there were credits available against the purchase price of the vehicles. In that case, that's part of what went away through previous federal legislation. There's also, there has been in the past charging infrastructure grants as well as incentives. Those have been modified and changed. California as a state has kept some grant funds in place and is working to try and continue that. But it's every month that changes. Let's just say it that way.

Yeah. Thank you.

Okay. You do? Okay. Most of my questions were answered. The replacement policy, is that like when we do it 10 to 12 years or 100,000 miles? Is that just purely a fiscal analysis of when we should replace vehicles based on cost of ownership and things?

No, so we look at the in-service date and it's not a, we don't just replace the vehicle. So myself or my team will analyze the vehicle and figure out, okay, Though it's hit its 12-year mark, is it really necessary to replace the vehicle? So it's, for the most part, we've extended a lot of our vehicles because, you know, just being within city limits, there really is no need to replace a 12-year-old vehicle. Sometimes we'll get it in the shop and we'll look at it and say, oh, this can go another three or four years, and that's what we'll do. So it has no ties with fiscal year or calendar year. It's just from the date of in-service date.

Right. Okay, so you'll make that. That seems like a good policy because environmentally, right, you reuse is the first mantra, so that's good. The current layout for the chargers, does that include what would be needed if we transitioned all the light duty vehicles?

I'm trying to think here. Yes. And with the light duty vehicles, we're a lot heavier on the trucks that are larger, if you will. So to put things in perspective, I mean, we're talking anything from an F-250 or higher would be required to have a charger with the ACF. As it relates to smaller vehicles, we don't have too many smaller vehicles per se, so sedans.

We don't yet.

Yeah, we don't yet.

If we transition all those vehicles, will the proposed infrastructure cover that?

Yes. So, again, it's really going to be contingent on how we strategize a charging calendar, if you will, or schedule.

Okay. I just request that if we are going to make this investment that we anticipate transitioning all the light vehicles as well, and so we plan for that eventuality.

Yes. So, you know, again, there is another state requirement that we will be mandated to purchase all electric vehicles. So we will be ready for that, and this is accounting for that as well.

Okay. And then a follow-up to that, because I've gone through it personally, as you transition more and more things to electric, as PG&E bills get bigger and bigger and bigger, and then are we looking at our generation capacity as a city and what the cost over time would be for that as well? Is that something that we're sort of parallel looking at that as well?

I could speak on the corp yard. I know that we've had discussions about expanding our solar capabilities at the corporation yard. There is opportunity for us to do so. But again, we've started with just focusing on the infrastructure needs that we need now. And then 10, 20 years from now, then we can start adding more solar arrays to kind of offset that cost.

Yeah, I think some of the analysis is like the sooner you get them, the quicker they pay for themselves type thing, but anyway. Okay, thank you.

All right. Let's open up any questions to the public that might have any questions, if anybody would like. Oh, one more presentation. Sorry about that. Right. I saw the questions.

Yeah, sorry. I'm coming back. So now we're going to talk about the public charger piece, and then we'll wrap up. So the city has provided charging to the public since 2017 and at that time we had a very small number of chargers and then we've added to it opportunistically as opportunities have become available. And we've really assessed this program with these four main goals. So our first goal is to ensure that we're offering sustainable infrastructure, and that's from the definition of sustainable we've been talking about tonight, but then also making sure that we can maintain and keep our infrastructure operable. And then once we put it and make it available, we want to make sure that it's highly utilized and that the public's taking advantage of this offering that the city has. Somewhat related to that, we really want to increase community access to EV charging. And so that's where we get the emissions reduction potential, right? Making sure people are using these and that it's encouraging them to transition from an internal combustion engine vehicle. And then lastly, as with all of our city programs, we really strive to provide a superior customer experience. So currently, over those last nine years, we are up to having 40 public charging ports on 23 cities. different chargers and on the next slide we'll show a map but those are mostly in our garages downtown. And a future phase is to do more detailed analysis on the private chargers that are in the community and future development opportunities and expansion. But at a high level our understanding right now is that there's anywhere between 150 to 250 publicly available chargers either in the city or right outside of it. So that means that our 40 ports are no longer the biggest game in town, but they do still make up a pretty significant amount of the network that's available. So there's two maps on this slide. The one on the left shows where those publicly available chargers are that we provide. And so they're mostly in downtown, our garages. We've got a couple in the surface lot here. And then we have some out at our Shaylin's Art Center. And the map on the right, shows with some US Department of Energy data on where there are chargers in the city, and the ones labeled as orange are the ones the city operates. You'll note that there's an additional orange dot on the right that's not on the left, and that's our Lawrence Way Corp yard. So those are city-owned chargers, but they're not available to the public. They're just for our fleet charging. And we do have some fleet-specific chargers in downtown as well, and that's where a lot of our light duty vehicles charge in the Broadway parking garage and in the library garage as well. So taking a level back, what do you need to run a successful charging network? And what's shown on the slide right now is how it was kind of envisioned back when the market was really starting to develop and when we first got into this game and when a lot of city grants were available for cities to receive chargers. And the thought was really, we put a charger somewhere people park and the cars will come. But now that we've been doing this for a long time, it's actually a lot more complicated than that in order to have a successful network that can provide that customer experience. And so there's a lot more information on the slide here now, and you don't necessarily need to absorb all of it, but it's kind of highlighting that complicated network of pieces that fit together. But the two biggest pieces that you need to add in are proactive and responsive maintenance and customer support. And having that customer support really match the hours of operations of the charger. So if anyone has an issue there, they can easily get a hold of somebody, help them maintain that. And so as this market's matured and we've understood what you need to really manage it properly, our management is a little bit closer to the first version of this chart than the one that's here now. So go a little more detail on that current status. For our charger program, we don't necessarily have one staff person who's focused on it. Different pieces of it are spread across several different staff. and that works well when everything's working well, but they have competing priorities, and so sometimes it's kind of in the mix of everything else. We currently spend about $250,000 a year on this program, and about 60% of that is the cost of electricity, and then the rest is the maintenance and networking of the program. Some of the chargers do require a significant amount of maintenance, especially because some of them are original, and so they are reaching 10 years in service, And so that's something that we are working on keeping on top of. And some chargers have had to been replaced over time. And with the management that we have right now, we don't have very detailed data and certainly not a structure to monitor the uses of the charger. If it's, you know, repeated users, how long they're domiciling, some other, the more robust networks have all that kind of data and can make decisions on management based off of that. And we're a little bit in the dark there. And because of that, And some of the maintenance challenges that we mentioned, we do hear from customers who get frustrated if they come to the chargers that are not operable or they come to them and they're full and they didn't have the data available to know if they're being used. So we're starting to see that from the customers at certain points in time. So I also just want to talk a little bit about EV charging fees. Excuse me one second. So in the 2018 Rethinking Mobility Plan, one of the recommendations in there was to establish a fee range to consider collecting fees from EV chargers in the future. We currently do not charge a fee to the usage of our EV chargers, but there is an adopted fee range that was not updated in the most recent fee study, and that's between 16 cents to a dollar per kilowatt hour. And regionally, our research is that most of the other cities in our area are charging a fee for their chargers. And it averages right now around $0.36 per kilowatt hour, with some of our neighbors looking at potentially increasing that soon. And just for comparison, if you're not an EV driver and you're like, what the heck is a kilowatt hour? That rate is roughly equivalent to $2.50 per gallon of gas for a vehicle with a 25 mile per gallon fuel efficiency, so it is still a lot more affordable than compared to gas out there, but that's kind of where the rates are at the moment. So going back to the goals that we talked about at the beginning of this portion, as part of this assessment, we really looked at how we're doing on each of those four. And we have them here in a bit of a traffic life sort of chart. So the goal that we're doing the best on is the utilization. We see it every day. The chargers are very often being used by folks. We're not entirely sure if this is a small group of people who know about the free charging and are taking advantage of it over and over again, or if it's general to the public, but they're definitely being used. So that's why the community access is more in that yellow-orange category, because right now, Anecdotally, our understanding is some folks, they really know about these free chargers and they're using them. We don't really advertise it right now because they are so highly utilized that there isn't really capacity sometimes. And really, we're trying to target individuals who can't charge at home or at work. Those are the people who we're trying to really encourage the most, who see the most barrier to transitioning to an EV. And so if somebody could charge at home, but they have free charging available, and they want a quick charger, so they'll just charge there instead. they're taking up the space from somebody who might not be able to charge at home. So that's why we're not quite sure if we're as successful there as we could be. We already talked quite a bit about the infrastructure challenges that we're having. And it can take a little while between replacements as we're trying to get parts internally. So that is an area that there's definitely room for improvement. And all of that leads to the customer experience piece. It's definitely an area we would like to improve. So looking at the options of what we could do to improve the situation, a lot of networks of our size contract with a third-party provider who does that maintenance and operation and customer service. And so these are companies that are doing this all the time. In a larger network, they have a back stock of parts. They have a lot of trained staff who can be dispatched out. to respond very quickly, and then they have staffed call centers. So there's a lot of different structures that you can set up with these companies, and you can put in requirements for the amount of uptime that the charges are available for customer response. So this is something where we'd really have to put out there that we're interested in this service and see what proposals we get back to know exactly what it would look like. But from our research, there's a lot of opportunity for improved maintenance, customer service and data that we currently don't have. In order to make that happen, we would recommend to begin taking advantage of the fee range and charging a fee on the public facing chargers. We would want to still keep it very affordable and thinking about the new fee justification study structure that you'll be talking about next, we do see this, this is a different type of fee than that, but it does have that same public and individual benefit. The individual is getting their fueling for their car, but the public is getting that help to meet our emissions goals and also our local air pollution goals. So we would aim to be in that kind of middle cost recovery area, understanding that there is a reason to subsidize part of it. And also, we would need to see how starting to charge a fee affected usage and behavior. And because EV charging has certain fixed costs, but has a lot of variable costs too, the amount of users, that really affects the cost recovery ratio. So we would have to follow that data very closely to see how we're hitting that. It's not something that we can necessarily project very well with the information that we have right now. So we plan to really closely monitor that, especially at the beginning. So that's the end of the content that we have for you. Happy to take questions on that portion. And then just a reminder here, when we get to the point of the recommended actions are to review this plan and provide any feedback, and then to authorize staff to take the appropriate actions to solicit proposals for a third-party vendor for maintenance and operations of the chargers.

Great. Thanks, Candice. Do we have any questions on this portion? Yes. Yeah, questions right now.

Thanks, and thanks for all this, Candice. In looking at this, it sounds like you've talked to the other cities. Have you talked to them about whether any of them are going out at a similar time frame? And have you thought about whether or not you would want to do the quest for a third party vendor as more of a JPA type arrangement or a sharing with other cities?

We do coordinate quite a bit with the other cities, and there is actually a quarterly meeting between the counties and the cities in it that are interested in the fleet and public charging. So we've heard a lot about their experiences. We haven't gone so far as to talking about doing a joint effort like this, but depending on these kinds of contracts can sometimes have like piggyback language in them where you could join someone else's. So that is something we could explore, but it's not something that we've looked into yet.

Okay, thank you.

I have a hybrid vehicle. I do not have an all-electric vehicle. So can you explain to me how much it costs? Mayor Pro Tem has a Tesla, so maybe even he will answer the question. What is the cost per kilowatt hour to go 250 miles? I don't even know. You're not filling a tank.

Yeah, so it is a challenging one to do an equivalency on, and so that's why I tried to give it the $2.50 per gallon if you have kind of a relatively light fuel efficiency vehicle. It's kind of the equivalent of that.

But let's say you're charging at home on your, what are you paying PG&E?

That rate, so MCE, yeah, MCE does, I don't have that number exactly on me because MCE has a couple of different plans that can help. If you have charging, you can get an EV charging plan. If you're charging overnight, you're getting the cheaper rate. If you're charging from 4 to 9, you're paying the most. But our understanding is it's somewhere between that $0.15 to $0.20 kilowatt hour. Wouldn't quote me on that, but that's kind of the window I would estimate. So it's a little bit more affordable than the average rate for the public chargers, but not significantly so.

So why is the assumption that we are going to increase usage of electric vehicles by not charging for power? The cost of the vehicle itself is the primary barrier to begin with, not where I'm going to fill my tank, for lack of a phrase.

So there are some incentives for EVs. There's used EV markets. So there are ways to get an EV affordably if that's something that you are interested in targeting. What we hear the most from the public is the biggest barrier to transitioning to an EV is is not having a reliable place to charge it. So those folks who don't have a garage or necessarily access at home, that's our understanding that the cost of the vehicle is definitely a big upfront cost. But for folks kind of thinking about getting a new vehicle anyway and thinking about how to work it into their life, it's really the charging access is the biggest anxiety in this area.

So access is different than price. Yes. Yes. So this would be a comment for later. I just wanted clarification. Thank you.

Yeah. Is part of the plan to expand the program or is it just trying, is the goal to just maintain what we have?

So right now the way we're thinking about it is to stabilize the program we have right now. We want to get it to a point where our customers are happy and that we feel like we can maintain the program. And then when we look at expanding in the SAP, the goal is to have 70 charging points by 2030. And if we consider our fleet chargers in that, we're up to 52 total ports now. And with the expansion plans we talked about for our fleet charging, we feel pretty confident we can get to that 2030 goal. There'll probably be a lot of fleet-facing chargers. And then the longer-term goals in the plan kind of extend out from there.

But by 2030, the goal for these chargers, the public chargers, is to go from 40 to 70?

For all of our chargers. We don't have a goal specifically for the public. So with the chargers we own as a city, including both our public-facing ones and our fleet, we have 52 right now, and we'd want to add 18 more by 2030.

So can you speak directly then to the public-facing ones? Do we have goals related specifically to those as far as expanding that program?

Not specifically. I believe our 2045 goal is 90 ports.

For the public?

For all of it together. We don't have it broken down by public versus fleet. But to get to that point, we would have met our fleet charging by then.

Okay. I don't think we have more questions from our end. Let's open it up to the public and see if they have any questions or comments. from the public, and if so, step on up.

Hi, Jan Warren, Woodlands. I just have a hybrid. I'm curious, I always assumed When I go into the garage on Saturdays for rallies, that people were paying for them. You paid to go in the garage. You paid to park by the meters. I just assumed it cost money to buy them and put them in. And this is Walnut Creek. So I would suggest some sort of a survey. cards on people's windshield with a QR code and just a quickie thing. Do you predominantly charge at home? I mean, I assume it's just a convenience if it's free. You're going to just plug in when you're here. When you go home, it's less to plug. But I mean, I just... I certainly don't want to discourage people not to come down and eat and so forth because they don't have free, but I don't think that's a real impact. It's just a curious sort of a thing. And we're going to need to spend money on the actual installations. And the maintenance, you're taking staff time, which how do you figure out what is staff time costing us for the repairs and finding the little whatever you need to fix it and get it. It's hard to get things. And they send you the wrong thing that you ordered. So I think that, yeah, I appreciate all of this tonight. It's very informative.

Thank you. If we have any other public comments in the Chamber, please come forward. You have two minutes. And if you would like to provide a remote public comment, you can raise the hand feature or press star 9 if you're calling. You'll have two minutes to speak on this particular item and this item only. And if you have a comment, please come forward.

Hi, my name is Ellen Lang. I came specifically for this, but I didn't really expect to speak. I appreciate the sustainability portion, the first portion in terms of the fleet management, and want to applaud the Walnut Creek Sustainability Program for reaching for the ACF Plus goal. I think that what Councilmember Devaney said is completely true that the earlier you adopt these strategies, the more money you save. And so on that, I'd also like to ask that there be consideration for earlier renewable energy and potentially battery storage to help to defray the cost of charging for your apparently medium and heavy duty vehicles because I think those will have much larger batteries and even with the DC fast chargers, they will making let's see they will take a lot of energy and and making having a strategy for rotating the charging will be quite the calendar CALENDAR OPTION. IN TERMS OF THE PUBLIC CHARGING, WHILE I THINK IT'S LAUDABLE THAT WALNUT CREEK PROVIDES CHARGING AND IS INTERESTED IN PROVIDING LOWER COST CHARGING, I THINK THIRD PARTY VENDORS ARE PROBABLY BETTER AT IT AND MAYBE WE COULD work on having third-party vendors put chargers in places that are more accessible to multifamily housing, in parks where people are. I don't know that there's more room downtown for further charging because they tend to want to have larger spaces for it. I understand the push. Oh, I got a second. Two seconds. Nope, done. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any more public comment from the room here? All right. Then we'll go to remote comments. And again, you'll have two minutes to speak. Please give your name and location. And this will be on this item only.

I'm bringing in call-in user 3. Please press star 6 to unmute yourself.

Kevin Wilk is a dirty, kiku, suck-baby.

Okay, please, please cut. Okay, this was not regarding this comment, this agenda item, and so we will cut that comment. Do we have any further remote callers?

No additional remote.

Okay, then we will close public comment, bring it back to the dais. Any further comments here?

Yeah, want to start it off?

Sure.

All right. So I... Thank you for the report. These are great topics. They're exciting to talk about and it's a great future to look forward to when we can implement this. The 40 to 70 by 2030, I know it sounds like it's not specified in our sustainable action plan. I think we sort of have to do some of this from a legal or regulatory standpoint. As far as the benefit of the general population converting to EV vehicles, those public-facing chargers you know, I think the most impactful. And I agree with a few of the comments that were made, Council Member Silva and Ellen Lang's comments. Getting more of those chargers in locations that aren't in like garages or downtown and out into the community where, you know, multifamily units are and those perhaps are the places where they don't have easy access to the chargers and might have the greatest impact. I don't feel that the cost is the prohibitive factor for EV adopters of the electricity. And therefore, I don't see great benefit of sacrificing infrastructure and growing the program to save 50 cents or a dollar on the charging side to the, to the user. Cause I think when you talk to people who are looking to buy an EV, the most common thing you hear is, well, you know, it's going to be a pain. Where am I going to charge it? That type of thing. It's not, well, when I went to there, it was two 50 and this place was three. And you know, that's too much. I don't think that's really the, the mentality. So I would say that on that range, that 20 to 40 to 80% cost recovery, I would think of it more from the standpoint of like what's needed to grow the program, to provide more, to provide good service, to provide additional funding so that we can expand the program and have the greatest impact from that standpoint. And I think that will have then the greatest public benefit by promoting the use of the technology. And then, yeah, so those are the two things. Hoping that we can have goals for public-facing chargers and looking at the cost model as what's needed to grow the program to the best that it can be.

Okay, Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the report. Thank you for all the hard work that went into this. It's kind of fascinating to learn about the fleet and how it's managed extremely well. As an EV owner, I would say cut the cord. Don't get a hybrid. Just go all electric. And I think the charging network is there now. It's continuing to grow. And I'm glad to see the city is part of that. I think in new multifamily, it's required that there be EV chargers as part of that. It's probably our existing older... We have a fair amount of multifamily residential in town that doesn't have access to it. So I think that that makes sense. But I also... have had the experience of trying to use some of our chargers here, especially in the City Hall parking lot, and they're not being well maintained, not as a result, I just think it's not less of a priority And because we're not recouping our costs for it and we don't have a vendor that's staying on that, I don't think we're keeping up. And we've had public comments about that in the Shadelands as well. So I think it is the right decision to start charging. maybe not the full cost recovery for it because I think we still want to incentivize the behavior and provide an option for people that aren't able to do it at home. But I also think it's important that they be well maintained so that when someone goes to the charger, it's there, it's ready to operate and plug in and be charged. So yeah, that's basically all I got.

All right, Council Member Darling.

Thank you. Thank you guys for all this. It's fun. I got to drive a full electric car in Norway, which was really fascinating. A couple things to think about. I agree with my fellow council members. When we think about expanding our charging network, I think right now what we really need to do is expand the amount of time that it is up and expand the amount of time that people know that they can get there and get the charge that they're looking for, and that means moving to a vendor. And I think as we move to a vendor, let's look for opportunities to work in partnership with our neighboring cities, either piggybacking off of something they're doing or putting it together because I know it's, the more that you bring to the table, the better deal you'll probably be able to get from them. Thinking about overall strategies with the fleet charging, finding ways to move that charging out of the four to nine timeframe is gonna be a good strategy to incorporate because that's when the cost of electricity is going to be highest and it's when it puts the most strain on the grid. So if there's a way to put timers on the chargers when people, I mean, they're gonna be there all night. So I know it's something that MC offers as a program to people at home But if there's a way we could do it with our chargers, that'd be great. And then I know the battery technology is something that is Slowly maturing so let's keep an eye on it and see if we get to a point where it makes sense to have a battery there because I think new year's day if we have all electric vehicles i don't want to think about how big a generator you're going to have to have to keep those vehicles going and that really defeats the whole purpose of having an electric vehicle um and then so But overall, I think we're in a good place. I like the idea of making the ACF Plus kind of a stretch goal and something that we need to move towards because I think the whole technology is getting to the point, not so much street sweepers, but the other trucks, it's getting to the point where it makes sense to have them wherever we can. and especially if we already have the charging infrastructure. So I appreciate all the work you guys have put into this and look forward to seeing some great results out of it.

Council Member Silva.

Thank you very much for all of the work on this, both from the consultant but also from the staff. And Eddie, thank you for being here tonight. We don't often get to see the guy who's taking care of all of the vehicles, so thank you for you and your team. My takeaway from this report and presentation is that there's We aspire to do more, but we have a constraint of cost because the infrastructure is very expensive and charging for per kilowatt hour, 36 cents is not going to get us another charger. I mean, they're not coterminous, but I think we should be charging for the use of the electricity. There's another aspect to this. It's not just because I don't think that's what encourages people to come use our public chargers. I think that what encourages people to take advantage and what these electric vehicles are doing, they're using our roads and they're not When you're not using fuel, the gas tax that we use to repair our roads is not there. So we do have a consequence of that as well in this. I'm not sure the 40% to 80% cost recovery is correct. I think it needs to be higher because it's really the personal benefit of the access. And I think a third party vendor is going to be very important to this. I like Council Member Darling's idea that if four or five agencies that are in Central County are all going to be looking for third party vendors, at least look together and vet them together as opposed to because just capitalize on the on the issues and the expertise across the various agencies. Thank you.

And thank you for your comments. I tend to agree as well. And at this point, I don't think that the cost of EV charging is preventing people or encouraging people to get cars right now. The fact is that $5 and $6 a gallon gas right now is incentivizing them to get EVs. And I do think that having a third-party vendor probably keeps more consistency. What I hear more from anybody else, including my son who has an EV and people in the neighborhood who have them, is inconsistency in when the chargers are working. And so if a third party vendor is going to be able to have a better maintenance schedule and keep them up to speed, then I say that makes the most sense of all. But I love the fact that we are continuing to move in the right direction. in having an EV fleet, I think, yeah, I think it's all in the right path. So I don't think we're providing any kind of a motion here. It's just the recommendations and hearing from us, right?

Well, it's general feedback, but I think a motion would be helpful with respect to the third-party vendor and the process. And I would add If what I heard in terms of comments, if you want to weave it into the motion to target a higher level of cost recovery based upon the comments, what I heard was between likely between 80 and 100 percent cost recovery target if we're thinking about levels relative to our fee schedule. And then also to look to use that money to expand our public facing chargers as warranted per planning. All right.

Okay, so let me try this. Move to authorize the staff to pursue a third party vendor, potentially in partnership with adjoining cities, authorize them to pursue a cost recovery goal in the roughly 80% to 90%. I still think there is a public benefit in attaining our sustainability action plan goals. redirect the money that comes from that back into expanding the charging points. Did I miss anything?

Second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. Susie, could you call the roll, please?

Council Member Darling? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Francois? Aye. Council Member Devaney? Aye. Council Member Silva? Aye. Mayor Wilk?

Aye. All right. Thank you very much. Next, we have a On the agenda is a public hearing for the consideration of adoption of resolution approving the user fee cost, recovery policy, and authorizing updates of the fiscal year 2027 master fee schedule. And I invite Administrative Services Director Kirsten Lacasse forward to provide the presentation.

Good evening, Mayor Wilk and members of the council, Kirsten Lacasse, Administrative Services Director. And I'm here this evening to present the user fee cost recovery policy and the updates to the fiscal year 27 master fee schedule for your consideration and adoption. So tonight I'll begin by providing some background information and recap the process for the policy and fee updates. Then I'll highlight the key elements of both the user fee cost recovery policy and proposed fiscal year 27 master fee schedule, followed by the changes made since we last met on July 21st. And that will all include council's direction from that meeting. So you are conducting a public hearing regarding the fiscal year 27 master fee schedule this evening. And we are requesting that you move to adopt a resolution approving the user fee cost recovery policy and authorizing updates to the fiscal year 27 master fee schedule, incorporating the amendments from the addendum this evening. So back in October of 2025, the city awarded the Comprehensive User Fee Study Contract to Matrix Consulting Group. Over the next several months, staff worked with the consultants and we had staff from all departments working closely to identify the full cost of providing city supported services and evaluating the existing fees compared to those costs. IN EARLY JUNE, WE BROUGHT THE RESULTS OF THAT WORK BACK TO THE CITY COUNCIL AND BEGAN THE POLICY DISCUSSION AROUND HOW MUCH THOSE COSTS SHOULD BE RECOVERED THROUGH FEES AND HOW MUCH SHOULD CONTINUE TO BE SUPPORTED THROUGH OTHER CITY REVENUES. STAFF INCORPORATED THAT DIRECTION INTO DRAFT COST RECOVERY POLICY AND PROPOSED MASTER FEE SCHEDULED DOCUMENTS WHICH WERE PRESENTED TO THE FINANCE COMMITTEE ON JUNE 23rd FOR ADDITIONAL FEEDBACK. We then return to city council on July 21st to review the draft policy and master fee schedule and receive additional direction before adoption. And that brings us here tonight with the final policy and proposed fee updates for consideration and adoption. So as I mentioned, on June 2nd, staff presented the fee study results and recommendations and received direction on several key areas. Adopt a citywide cost recovery framework based on the level of benefit provided. Include resident discounts where appropriate. Phase in significant fee increases to help manage customer impacts. Provide for annual fee adjustments to keep pace with service delivery costs. Continue market-based pricing where appropriate. AND EVALUATE HOUSING DIVISION SERVICE FEES SEPARATELY FROM OTHER DEVELOPMENT RELATED FEES. SO NEXT I WILL GO THROUGH SOME OF THE PROPOSED USER FEE COST RECOVERY HIGHLIGHTS AS WELL AS COUNCIL DIRECTION FROM JULY 21ST. So the cost recovery policy gives the city a consistent framework for making fee decisions going forward. One of the key principles is that not every city service should recover costs in the same way or at the same level. When evaluating fees, cost of service is an important starting point, but it isn't the only consideration. The framework also allows us to consider community and individual benefit, LEGAL REQUIREMENTS, AFFORDABILITY, MARKET CONDITIONS, AND COUNCIL POLICY OBJECTIVES. IMPORTANTLY, THE POLICY DOES NOT ESTABLISH MANDATORY COST RECOVERY PERCENTAGES. IT PRESERVES COUNCIL DISCRETION TO ADJUST FEES, ESTABLISH FUTURE FEES, OR ELIMINATE FEES WHEN APPROPRIATE. So this next slide outlines updates and direction from the July 21st council meeting. The first two items are the more substantive adjustments to the policy. The policy now defines a resident as someone who resides within the incorporated boundaries of the city of Walnut Creek. The resident pricing is intended to recognize that city residents already support city services through local tax revenues. The term resident discount is now used consistently throughout the policy. The policy does include some administrative cleanup to the document including formatting, updating section numbering and the table of contents to improve consistency and readability. And finally, rather than establishing a single citywide cost recovery target within this policy, council directed that an overall goal or an alternative approach for setting cost recovery goals be considered as part of the biennial budget process. So next I will go through some of the proposed master fee schedule highlights and feedback from the July 21st council meeting. The proposed fees reflect the cost of service analysis and council policy direction. The largest adjustments are concentrated in building and planning. And this is where the study had identified the largest gaps between current fees and the cost of service. Other departments have targeted adjustments balancing affordability, community benefit, and customer impacts. Selected housing division services continue to be subsidized. Market-based pricing and resident discounts are used for fee setting where appropriate. Proposed fees would become effective January 1st of 2027, allowing for stakeholder outreach and implementation. So no changes were made to the proposed fee amounts presented to council on July 21st. The proposed fee schedule provided at that meeting included a detailed comparison of the previously adopted fiscal year 27 fees. The version before you tonight has been prepared in the format that will be published as the final master fee schedule if adopted. The July 21st schedule also focused on fees that were part of the user fee study. So in preparing this final complete document of the master fee schedule, we did incorporate other previously adopted fees that were outside of the scope of the study. These include pickleball, golf, tennis, and the parking rates. We also added footnotes to clarify fee application, as well as an appendix that identifies the special event rental locations. Open space rental fees are now cross listed in public works and arts and recreation for ease of reference for the public. An addendum was issued for tonight's item that restores two public works fees that were inadvertently omitted and changes terminology from actual costs to pass through. And this is where services are provided by a third party provider so the correct terminology would be pass through. SO WHAT WE ARE ASKING OF YOU THIS EVENING IS TO MOVE TO ADOPT A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE USER FEE COST RECOVERY POLICY AND AUTHORIZING UPDATES TO THE FISCAL YEAR 27 MASTER FEE SCHEDULE INCORPORATING THE AMENDMENTS FROM THE ADDENDUM. AND WE DO HAVE STAFF HERE AS WELL AS OUR CONSULTANTS JOINING US REMOTELY TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, KIRSTEN. ALL RIGHT. LET'S START ON THE RIGHT THIS TIME. ANY QUESTIONS?

No, I think we've really discussed this topic and given a lot of feedback and we appreciate you incorporating that feedback and the changes that have been made. So I appreciate the work you've done on it.

Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Ditto.

I have a quick question actually. And how will that appear when we see a resident discount? Will it show like City of Walnut Creek resident discount or is it just going to say resident discount?

In the fee schedule, it says resident discount. In terms of the other documents that we publish for activity guides and that type of thing, I would need to defer to Chris Farrow, our arts and recreation director, on how that will be shown. In our current fee schedule, though, we do have that shaded, and we do have a note that that denotes that it is eligible for the resident discount.

Okay, and I guess the question would be then, is there any place that is a qualifier of what that exactly means? Because to the point that we were making at the last meeting, that there will be people that live in Walnut Creek and think that they are therefore a resident.

That's an excellent point. It is referenced in the policy. However, to your point, most people will be looking at the fee schedule. So we can add that as a footnote for the final published document.

Okay, I think that would be helpful. All right, those are our questions here evidently. So let's open it up to the public. If there's any questions from the public, you've got two minutes. If you're in the chamber here, we'll start there and please come forward. And since this is now opening the public hearing, if you are calling in person, please raise your hand feature or press star nine if you're calling. And we'll start in here. I don't see anybody coming up here. Do we have anybody online?

And there's no one online.

And nobody online. Okay. So let's bring it back to the council. And if there's any further comments beyond what the questions are, those are minimal as it was.

I'm not seeing any mayors, so I'll move to adopt the resolution approving the user fee cost recovery policy and authorizing updates to the fiscal year 27 master fee schedule.

Second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. Susie, could you call the roll, please?

Mayor Pro Tem Francois. Aye. Council Member Darling. Aye. Council Member Devaney. Aye. Council Member Silva. Aye. Mayor Wilk.

Aye. All right. Thank you. How are we doing here? Need a break or? Good. Good to go? All right. All right. Carry on here. So next on the agenda is a public hearing for the consideration of an appeal of the Planning Commission's denial of a conditional use permit to allow the establishment of a short-term rental within an existing single family residence located at 635 Mandarin Lane. And this item is a public hearing. Finding the existing operations did not satisfy the required conditional use permit and bed and breakfast in findings. The commission directed staff to prepare a resolution memorializing its action. Resolution number 4014, denying the conditional use permit for the project, was subsequently adopted at the Planning Commission's June 11, 2026 meeting. And... The public hearing procedure is as follows. These rules are designed to provide the appellant and applicant the ability to present their arguments, provide rebuttals, and be heard at this hearing, as well as to give everyone a full voice in these proceedings. So I will open the public hearing now, and we'll start with the staff presentation.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Stephen Cook, Assistant Planner with the City's Community Development Department. Before you this evening is an appeal of Planning Commission's decision to deny a conditional use permit for the establishment of a short-term rental at 635 Mandarin Lane. The City Council is being asked to hold a public hearing and consider Hector Krause's appeal of the Planning Commission's decision to deny the CUP. Tonight's hearing is de novo, which means the council will consider the application anew and independently determine whether the project satisfies the required findings. To quickly orient you at the site, the project is located at the corner of Mandarin Lane and Sugarberry Court. As shown on the aerial, the lot contains a single family home with an attached two car garage. The surrounding area consists primarily of other single family homes. Now moving on to the project proposal. The property is advertised online as an unhosted short-term rental. The proposed operation would accommodate one party at a time with up to 10 overnight guests and stays ranging from three to 30 days. Guests must also be at least 21 years old to make a reservation. The slide illustrates the existing floor plan and access to the property. No physical modifications are proposed. The residence contains four bedrooms highlighted in red and three points of entry and exit highlighted in blue. The residence is access for manager lane while the garage and onsite parking or access from Sugarberry court to summarize the background in August of 2025, the city opened a code enforcement case after receiving reports that the home was operating as an unpermitted short term rental. The applicant later submitted a CUP application with written authorization from the property owner. During the city's review, staff continued to observe online advertisements and receive reports of short-term rental activity. Staff notified the applicant several times that operating without an approved CUP violated the municipal code. The applicant acknowledged these notices. On May 28, 2026, the Planning Commission denied the CUP. The applicant appealed the decision on June 4th, resulting in tonight's meeting. Since the May 28th Planning Commission hearing, staff has continued to observe the property advertised online as a short-term rental. As recently as this afternoon, the listing remained active and included 22 verified guest reviews. The most recent review describes an eight-day stay in June following the Planning Commission's denial of the CUP. The listing also advertises up to 14 guests, stays as short as two nights, and availability beginning as early this upcoming Friday. Staff was also able to proceed to the payment stage of the booking process. Please refer to the slide for screenshots of such observances. In the next two slides, I'll go over the required findings for a short-term rental. Summarized here are the bed and breakfast in requirements that apply to this project. A green check mark indicates that the project meets the standard. The item in red identifies the one standard the project does not meet and for which the applicant is requesting an exception. This includes extending the proposed rental period up to 30 days. In addition to the bed and breakfast ordinance, the project must satisfy the findings required for the approval of a conditional use permit. The Planning Commission determined that finding number two concerning public health, safety, and welfare could not be made. The Commission cited the continued unpermitted operation despite staff notices as well as public testimony regarding noise and frequency of unfamiliar guests. Because tonight's hearing is de novo, the Council will independently consider all required findings. Now moving on to the points of appeal. the appellant has raised four claims. In the following slides, I'll summarize each claim with staff's response. First, the appellant cites SB 60 and SB 345 and notes that the city has not adopted specific regulations implementing these laws. These laws provide additional tools for the cities to regulate short-term rentals, but they do not change the city's land use regulations or eliminate the CUP requirement. Second, the appellant argues that the city does not have an ordinance specifically regulating unhosted short-term rentals. The city's existing bed and breakfast in regulations apply to this project and do not require owner occupancy. A separate short-term rental ordinance is therefore not necessary for the city to apply its existing regulations, which requires the approval of a CUP. Third, the appellant references another approved short-term rental and questions whether that property complies with the municipal code. Each CUP is evaluated on its own facts and evidence. The approval or compliance history of another property does not determine whether the required findings can be made for this project. Fourth, the appellant argues that the city has applied its bed and breakfast in regulations inconsistently because other short-term rentals have been approved. Although the same regulations apply, each CUP is evaluated based on the proposed use, the project site, the surrounding land uses, and the evidence in the record. Approval of another short-term rental does not require approval of this project if the required findings cannot be made. For CEQA, the project qualifies for a categorical exemption under CEQA section 15301, existing facilities. However, if denied, then CEQA would not apply. Based on the staff report and the evidence of the record, staff recommends that the city council move to deny the appeal and uphold the planning commission's denial of the conditional use permit. Okay, that concludes staff's presentation. Staff is available for any questions that the council may have. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Steven. And so we have several different processes here. We will have the appellant presentation. There will be public testimony. So let me ask, is there any questions that want to be asked right now? Or you can also save them toward the end so that we have the public allowance to be able to ask as well afterwards. I mean, if there's any questions we want to ask right now, we can, or we can wait, but hang tight. Great. All right. Thank you. Thank you. So then let's move to the appellant or applicant presentation. You'll have 15 minutes total to speak, and please come forward.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. Thanks for having me tonight. So, yeah, I operate the short-term rental on Mandarin Lane.

And can you please state your name for the record?

Oh, sorry, Hector Krause. With authorization from the property owner, I'm here to follow up on my appeal on the denial decision from the planning commission that they did on a single finding that the use with a detrimental to the public health, safety, and welfare And I went through the findings as well as talk about the due process for the NIL, a proposed path forward. But before that, I'm actually kind of following what I heard earlier today about how hotel occupancy and marketing of Walnut Creek City is relevant and is working. Walnut Creek today has 198 short-term rentals, out of which only three are approved. Unfortunately, the city lacks ordinances to oversee short-term rentals. As I said, only three or four, because two of them are in one APN, all are managed by city insiders, three by policemen, One for an ex-Planning Commissioner. Wait, where's the clock? Oh, there. As reference, California has 100,000 short-term rentals, generating $7 billion in annual revenue. There's 2.5 million short-term rentals in the U.S. and 19 million worldwide. My property is just one of an existing, well-understood worldwide industry. Why Walnut Creek? Why short-term rental versus a hotel? Well, Walnut Creek, obviously because of its shopping, dining, hospitals, hospice services, weddings, Heather Farms, Hacienda Los Morales in Moraga, Bancroft Gardens, graduations at St. Mary's, UC Berkeley. as well as proximity and being really well located to go to San Francisco or go to Napa. Short-term rental service is a market that is not always served. Through a guest of mine, where five siblings that live all over the U.S. grew up in Walnut Creek, Their mom was in hospice. They didn't know if she was going to die the day after tomorrow or in two weeks. They wanted their own bedrooms, but they wanted a place to mourn, to gather, to share pictures, to cry. They're not going to do that at the lobby of the Marriott. Another factual guest was a family whose wife had a major seizure at John Muir. She needed to be here for two weeks to do the post-op sessions. The kids needed to be there to attend school online. The husband needed a place to work. They actually brought, rented a hospital bed over to the house for two weeks. Again, a hotel could not accommodate that. So short-term rentals being close to 800 people to Walnut Creek every single month. these people eat out, shop, go to Broadway Plaza, buy groceries, et cetera. So this means that the short-term rentals bring $8.8 million in the short-term rental alone, which could be taxed by TOT if all of them were regulated and overseen. Assuming that each one of those 800 guests spent $100 a day, that would mean $920,000 in sales within the city. Restaurant shopping, gas station, whatever. So I was denied based on one factor, health, safety, and welfare. A city staff member stated in an email to me, that public health, safety, and general welfare is not a defined term in the code. In summary, the Planning Commission identifies impacts to public health, safety, and general welfare on a case-by-case basis. Email finishes. Yet the city has no definitions of this. There's no examples, no way to measure them. In the next 10 minutes or so, I will talk about the three areas where due process was violated. The city's own resolution says, and I quote, the bed and breakfast ordinance, WCM section 10.3.09, does not fit this issue. In resolution 4014, the commission states that that Walnut Creek code does not meet my operation, yet still they require me to meet that ordinance anyway. Before denying it, based on the single factor of health and safety. So there are five codes that are relevant to my project and that should be addressed. Hotel means a commercial operated hotel, motel, a bed and breakfast in, or a similar transient lodging. and states that for the purpose of that chapter, the hotel shall not include a short-term facilitator. So after reading SB 346, I am a short-term rental facilitator under approval by the owner of the house. Walnut Creek has no short-term rental ordinance. The city has not adopted SB 60 or 346 or reflected the provisions in the municipal code. I challenge, sorry, what Steven said, because SB 6 and SB 346 do not mention short-term rentals or AB&Bs. Walnut Creek, 10-2-3-1-9, governs bed and breakfast only. and requires it to be the primary residence of the owner, which in this case is not. A bed and breakfast has to be owned by the person that operates the bed and breakfast from that location. On hosted rentals, I completely prohibited under this ordinance, which is a Walnut Creek ordinance. Former Planner Commission Steve Reiser and his wife advertised the Shoe Avenue properties as bed and breakfast, but the CUP is for a short-term rental, not for a bed and breakfast. So there are three during the Resolution 4014. Three times my operation is called by the Commission as bed and breakfast. Three times it's called a short-term rental. And once it's called bed and breakfast while describing a short-term rental. So Walnut Cakes lacks a short-term rental ordinance. Here's just a few examples of other locations in California as close as San Francisco and Murray County that have approved ordinances for short-term rentals completely separate for bread and breakfast. Here's a copy-paste from the Resolution 4014. In the first one, the Commission contradicts itself. The Commission is saying, It does not appear that bed and breakfast use fits my operation. The commission itself is saying the bed and breakfast ordinance doesn't fit a short-term rental in their own denial document. The commission is admitting in writing that the box they put me in is actually not a box for me. That's a self-defeating admission using the bed and breakfast ordinance to deny me while simultaneously stating that the Bed and Breakfast ordinance doesn't apply my operation. So throughout Resolution 4014, the Commission uses indiscriminately the use terms of my operation as Bed and Breakfast, short-term rentals, even refers it to as Bed and Breakfast, also known as a short-term rental. But under California law, Business and Professional Code 24-045-12, SB 60 and SB 346, these are two separate mutually exclusive categories. State law doesn't recognize a bed and breakfast also known as a short-term rental. It's one or the other. Okay. There are more inconsistencies in their use. I'm running out of time. Okay. This slide is a summary from the appeal. However, there's no ordinance that exists for Walnut Creek. Walnut Creek has not adopted SB 646. The wrong ordinance was used. The decision was arbitrary and capricious. because approval permits under an ordinance for short-term rentals don't actually satisfy bed and breakfast. A permit process bill for a bed and breakfast, really a small hotel, shouldn't govern a short-term rental, so it should be void as applied in my case. Okay, the second reason that I'm talking about tonight is that there's no validated incident supporting health, safety, or welfare. Resolution 4014, the notice of planning commission, this is the commission denial in some words. But there were insufficient facts and cannot reasonably conclude, yet I point that there no backup documents, there's no photographies, no dates, no videos, no documented timeframes or whatever incidents are stated or complained about. I check the recordings on my Ring camera on the entry and nobody arrived to the house in August prior to like 10.30 at night and they were complaining that somebody knocked on her door at two in the morning. So finding two from Brazil, The staff recommended approval with conditions. The record contains no analysis of why those conditions could not cure their concerns. The agency responsible for public safety in the city reviewed the proposal and had no concerns and support the approval. Yet the commission denied on public safety. And as I said, there's no records of any of the complaints. The third one is due process and lack of evidence. So the denial of public health, safety, and welfare. The city has no definition of this, as I just said, right? They also talk about compliance history, but there was nothing to comply with because there's no ordinance to oversee a short-term rental. And also, they made a denial predicting future conduct. The commission also relied on predictive future, which is just a speculation. The due process failed. The due process was violated when the low return for the vaccine was applied to short-term rental. There's no evidence of harm. So it was violated on applying the law that applies to bed and breakfast, but was used for short-term rental. Due process was violated when not violated complaints were used. Due process was violated during the hearing on May 28th. My request to you tonight, with all respect, is that you grant the appeal based on those three facts. That there's no evidence of harm or health. The staff find that all 13 findings requested in the business plan and the CUP submission were taken care of, were done even before a request on the CUP. So I'm not asking council to bend the rules. I'm asking you to approve me under the only permit and process available today and to let me help the city in building an ordinance for short-term rentals. I have experience on both sides being a facilitator operator as well as I've gone to two hearings now. So I'm proposing To you, requesting. That's not what I just said.

Okay. Thank you.

Sure.

All right. You'll have a chance for a rebuttal after questions and public comment. Thank you. I would like to recommend that we just move to public comment right now, unless you have a pressing question, because we're going to be able to ask the appellant afterwards, as well as ask staff members, too. So we can go to the public on that, and then we'll come back. Save your question, write it down. We'll remember what they are. I think we all have some. There you go. You can just take a seat for now. We'll call you back up in a few minutes. All right, so now we will have public testimony, and if any member of the public would like to come speak, you have up to two minutes for any individual. I'm assuming we're looking at individual speakers as opposed to a group spokesperson, so you'll each have two minutes, and if you haven't filled out a card, please do. You can do that afterwards, though. You can speak first, then we'll trust that you're going to fill it out afterwards. Come forward. And you'll have, yeah. Thank you.

Thank you, and ooh, it's late, but good evening, Mr. Mayor and esteemed council members. I'm Lisa Blanco of the Woodlands, and despite what you just said to me, I'm gonna say that, picture, if you will, about a dozen other households from the Woodlands who I am here as a voice for, I know, what you just said, but anyway, that was it, my little speech. So these, the crowd behind me of neighbors who feel very strongly that the 6B appeal not be allowed. I think the council will be familiar with the plethora of letters and communications from Woodlands neighbors, residents over the past, excuse me, over the past year or so that are clearly against the short-term rental at 635 Mandarin. We hope that in addition to current letters and commentary for this appeal council, we'll still take previous information and commentary into account as well, those many letters and the strong pushback against the SDR. The planning commission meeting last May was very thorough. The STR manager, the appellant, received about 20 minutes all told to make his case and even with more of Stephen Cook's additional information and then tonight also more. so given the commission's thoroughness and thoughtfulness in denial of the cup myself and our woodlands neighbors encourage council to allow the denial to stand folks in the woodlands are frustrated that this has been a long and ongoing issue that's been allowed to continue for many months despite the city's communications with the owner and str manager to stop and to take down airbnb verbo bookings.com ads So not to get ahead of ourselves, but a common question I've been asked by other neighbors is what happens if council votes with the Planning Commission's denial of the cup? How does the city enforce that cup denial?

Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Judy. And next speaker? No? All right. Okay, so we have nobody else here in the chamber. So do we have anybody online?

No remote public comment.

No remote public comment. Okay, then we will bring it now back to council. Right, I will. So we'll bring it back to council. And, well, do you have any more rebuttal that you would like to speak? You have five minutes as the appellant. We've had one public comment, but you just heard that. If you'd like to come forward, you have five more minutes. You can speak. Well, we'll be asking questions, but right now it's just a rebuttal for the public comment.

Okay, so your questions don't have a time limit.

They will be coming.

Okay, but there's no time limit for them. Correct.

I just want to clarify.

I'm familiar with all the letters that were sent by only six neighbors. One of them sent 14 letters and sent one regarding their last hearing that was nine pages long. So I have group THEIR STATEMENTS OR COMPLAINTS, I WANT TO JUST ADDRESS THEM IN A PREPARED STATEMENT. I KEEP LISTING ON Airbnb AND VRO AFTER A DIRECTION TO STOP AND LISTING IS STILL ACTIVE. EVERY OPERATIONAL CONDITION THE CITY WOULD WANT IS ALREADY IN THE RECORD AND ALREADY MET FROM THE APPLICATION OF CUP AND THE BUSINESS PLAN.

CAN YOU REPEAT THAT SENTENCE? I COULDN'T HEAR YOU VERY WELL. MAYBE JUST A LITTLE CLOSER TO THE MICROPHONE.

YEAH. SO EVERY OPERATIONAL CONDITION THE CITY WANTED HAS BEEN MET, ALREADY BEEN MET. EVERY REQUEST OR GUIDANCE ON APPROVAL FOR THE CUP WAS MET AND CITY STAFF RECOMMENDED APPROVAL. I lied about stays being less than 31 days. The CU publication was for a short-term rental for stays of seven days or less, consistent with the bed and breakfast ordinance of Wyrmwood-Maxima. Short stays are the business model I applied for. I didn't conceal that. There's no code enforcement citation or police report in two and a half years reflecting any violation time at all. Claim, up to 13 cars have been photographed on site. Usually, there's three, four cars. Most people actually Uber. On one occasion, there were like eight or 10 cars. I was at home. My cameras and my monitoring device kept ringing. So I live five miles from the house. So I arrived, and yeah, there was a large group of people. I kicked them out immediately. They didn't even spend the night. The evening that they arrived was the evening that I kicked them out. So I'm very aware of whatever is happening on the house based on cameras and monitoring devices. And I am very quick to respond. I didn't pay transit occupancy, and the tax was due. The outside vendor, the thing you guys use to manage that, and I have been on email communication for several months. I provided upon request the revenue for 2024, yet there was no follow-up from them about, okay, now you owe us this amount or anything like that. I sent an email on October last year asking them if I need to provide 2025 and if they needed by month, just by the year, just an email and a spreadsheet, scan copies of bank statements, and have not received a reply from that email. When I was doing my research about where to, I was debating between here, Mill Valley, and other locations. I called City of Walnut Creek, and I asked very specifically one question. Does Walnut Creek has any regulations for short-term rentals? And I was told no. So I rented a house and operated under that information, which actually, it's true. On permitted short-term rental in Walnut Creek, granting my appeal sets a bad precedent. Actually, it's exactly the opposite. I think I've shown that it would be valuable for the city to have a way to permit them and regulate them. It actually proves my point. And I offer to help on that. Mandarin Lane, by definition, is a single-family home and cannot be a business. It's a short-term rentals operating residential zoning, which is not going to change. Also, throughout this whole process, my character and my persona have been attacked. Several of the communications to the city have said that I hoodwinked, I shootpa, I'm gaming the system,

Thank you. Thank you. Quick question before we close the public hearing and bring back counsel. Are you the owner or the property manager?

The manager.

You do not own the property? Correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We'll have more questions for you. understand okay we're gonna close the public hearing and bring it back to council we're gonna have some questions you can take a seat right now and then actually you might want to take a seat perhaps toward the front row because you may be asked to come up and down a bit before I'm gonna pass it over to mayor Pro Tem to ask questions first but I'm gonna first ask Stephen if you can come back up for a minute and I have one question Maybe a part A and B, and then we'll go straight to this. And by the way, excellent presentation. I understand it's your first time in front of our city council. So thank you.

Thank you.

Was, I'm just going to call it the property, whatever, the house. Was it able to be listed as a short-term rental prior to the planning commission presentation and discussion? Was it allowed to be?

It was not.

Was it, did they have approval to be listed still and be active between the planning commission denial and tonight?

They did not.

Okay. So we'll start with there. Thank you. And let's start with Mayor Bortem and questions.

Yeah. And thanks, Stephen. Really nice job tonight. Appreciate the presentation. I Didn't quite get the appellant's information. I can ask him as well. But has the city collected any TOT from this property?

No, it has not.

So we received complaints in August of 2025, noise, number of vehicles. Can you elaborate on kind of some of the other complaints that were received from the city that led to the city investigating whether or not this property owner or manager had a permit to operate? As a short-term rental. Sure.

So the reported complaints first began with the city's code enforcement division. The city's code enforcement division received complaints from the public acknowledging that the property was being listed online on Airbnb, on VRBO, had reported instances of loud noise at late night hours. of unknown guests coming and going at hours throughout the night, commercial vehicles being parked in front of the residents, as well as confirming with the applicant that there was the operation of a short-term rental.

Okay. And then from the time that the appellant was first notified of these violations and the need that he was operating illegally and needed a permit in order to list it as a short-term rental. What transpired after that point?

Sure. So on August 5th, the code enforcement case was created. On August 15th, my understanding is that the city's code enforcement sent a letter to the property owner acknowledging ongoing reports. Between August 15th and November 6th, The applicant tonight, Hector Krause, did submit an application for a CUP after corresponding with staff receiving preliminary comments of what the entitlement process entails for a short-term rental request. And between November 6th and February 16th, it undergone the standard 30-day review period for completeness. On February 16th, the project was deemed complete, but following that initial deemed complete date, the planning division had not received the required fee for the conditional use permit to be scheduled for a public hearing, and there were modifications to the operating plan following the initial deemed complete status date. And then also, the applicant had advised that they were unable to attend a number of upcoming planning commission dates. So staff had directed that May 28th would be the final date. If not, the application would be closed.

So, and the mayor touched on this, but from the entire time from August 5th, 2025, when staff first reach out to the appellant and informed him that he was operating illegally and needed a permit until he, till the planning commission denial of the permit. And even after that to the today, this property continues to be listed on short-term rental websites for rent after the appellant knows or should have known that it was being operated illegally because he needed a permit.

That's correct.

And the appellant mentioned that he's complied with every condition. There was no conditions because there was no permit and no approval given with conditions, right?

That's correct. The city planning commission denied the conditional use permit, so there are no conditions of approval.

And does the city treat this property any differently than it treats any other short-term rental property? They're all classified consistently as bed and breakfast and regulated as such and require a conditional use permit from the city?

That's correct.

Okay. I think those are... Those are my questions for now. I may have some as we continue on and for the appellant.

Let me just follow up on that for a second. Stephen, so are all, and I have questions later about bed and breakfast or short-term rental, but are every single what we would consider a bed and breakfast under our policy, do they all have CUPs?

Yes, all approved. All the three approved short-term rentals in the city all have conditional use permits that are actively approved.

And other bed and breakfasts or? I'm getting a little confused between what we classify as a bed-and-breakfast versus a short-term rental.

So the zoning code classifies the use of how it operates, although it's referred to as a short-term rental. Rental periods less than 30 days are reviewed against the bed-and-breakfast in ordinance, which requires a conditional use permit. So the three prior projects undergone the similar entitlement process and were approved under those conditional use permit findings.

Okay, thanks. Council Member Silva.

So the three prior ones that we approved, were they operating illegally during the approval process?

They were not. They began operations after receiving the conditional use permit approval. Okay. Do you have anything?

Yeah. So in November, the CUP was filed. Can we put that slide back up? And then you said something about a 30-day period, but it says February 16. What happened between November 6 and February 16?

There were, I believe, two rounds of incomplete status letters that were provided to the applicant to address. And typically, city staff does not issue a deemed complete status unless payment is received, but due to ongoing neighborhood concerns, we expedited the review and completed the review and provided a status letter.

And you deemed it complete on February 16th, which means then it goes to the Planning Commission for the conditional use permit. The application was complete for that process.

That's correct.

Okay. All right. During that time, so from August 5th of the original letter that went out and May 28th when it was denied, what types of enforcement, code enforcement activities have taken place?

I would refer that question to Community Development Director Erica VanderBrand.

Thank you. So it is our habit and our process to try and encourage people to come into compliance voluntarily. And so there had been discussions with Mr. Krause about ceasing listing the property on the various platforms. And then in addition to that, I myself went out and spoke with him on May 31st and explicitly asked him to please stop listing it because that did not demonstrate good faith in terms of moving forward. On the advice of the city attorney's office, we have not gone through and done any active enforcement during the time that this appeal was in place to be able to ensure that Mr. Krause and everyone was given a fair, you know, basically that there was nothing on the record that would identify that we've been taking enforcement action. But it is our intention always to try and encourage, whether it is this or any other type of code enforcement activity, to help support people coming into compliance.

So can, maybe for the city attorney, can you elaborate on the thinking behind not generating code enforcement or not trying to enforce the fact that there's a short-term rental operating out of compliance that's received multiple notices?

Yeah, so it's not that the city isn't enforcing. The city was sending notices out, and they were advising the property manager of the violations. But since they had a pending application for a CUP, We suggested that they not for instance take the code enforcement to the stage where we might have to go to court to get an order to stop it from happening because it's a violation of our code. They had an application pending before the planning commission and the planning commission heard it and now they're in an appeal process before you. So the activities that have taken place through today are illegal and the council can consider that as part of the information you have before you but because they had come in and applied to legalize the use, we suggested that they not kind of take the next step of actually getting a court order to stop them from operating until the city had the chance to act on their CUP application.

Are there other measures that can be taken shy of getting a court order? Are there lesser, like, fines and so forth that would normally be issued or...

is it just so like is it just eviction basically sort of like there's just the final well violations of the code can result in fines and the city could have attempted to impose the fines but that was not considered again in part because they were applying the applicant was applying to legitimize the use and i and i and i bring this up and i'm sort of wanting to hash it out a bit because during the planning commission meeting that was a big part of their conversation was that

the, you know, here's someone applying for a CUP, but they're still operating their business regardless. So even if we don't grant a CUP, they're just going to keep operating. So what are our, they were, I could see their sort of frustration with some, with around enforcement and that issue. The complaints that were generated They were, it sounds like mostly in the regulatory category. Am I correct? Like it was sort of, hey, this is operating out of compliance. This is an illegal operation. Can you sort of quantify how many of the complaints were like public nuisance disturbance complaints versus like compliance regulatory complaints?

So staff doesn't have that data, but we could certainly look into it. My understanding was that the complaints was sent to both code enforcement staff and planning staff, as well as community development staff in general. So some of those emails might have been sent from the same person reporting on multiple occasions. But there were several instances throughout the course of the project review.

it had been a legal operation and so then the regulatory ones wouldn't be there what what types of what types of responses would have been initiated based on the sort of public nuisance complaints like what what was your assessment of those and what what types of i assume we take i assume we take the sort of action regardless of it's legal or illegal for hearing those types of complaints.

Correct. So the information that was received by planning staff, we had contacted the applicant on multiple occasions advising that such or acknowledging that there were ongoing reports of unpermitted activities at the home and acknowledging as well as such activities are unpermitted by the municipal code and actually requested that such operations cease and that advertisements be removed.

but that was the correspondence that was exchanged between city staff and the applicant if i can add to that a little bit too that there were as we understand there were also complaints about noise generating from the use as well as the parking issues that even the applicant has talked about tonight and the staff has talked about so it was it is a combination of both kind of regulatory non-compliance and also nuisance-based type activities of the use and I would just share for the council that the structure of your municipal code, the zoning code in particular, says that there are specific types of regulations that apply to specific types of uses. There's one category related to bed and breakfast, and the code is very clear, the bed and breakfast, and that is how the town, the city has regulated kind of short-term rentals before. That's what the The planner talked about the ones that have been issued before. The town regulates those through the issuance of a CUP for the property to ensure that the uses on the property meet the finding requirements that are in the municipal code for bed and breakfast, as well as don't constitute a public nuisance. And so in this instance, the applicant came forward, willfully violated the law, by operating was put on notice of that and continued to willfully violate the law. And the violations of the law were both regulatory and nuisance-based to the neighbors, if you will.

Because, I mean, in the planning commission meeting, the recommendation by staff was to approve the CUP, was it not?

That's correct. And that was for the planning commission to consider if all applicable findings were made, staff prepared a draft resolution if the Planning Commission did decide to approve the project.

Why did we change the, why does staff feel differently this time when it was presented to the Planning Commission, the recommendations by staff were to approve the CUP, but tonight the recommendation by staff is not to approve the CUP? Is there a?

So based on the public comments received and public testimony received during the May 28th Planning Commission meeting, Those points were considered by the Planning Commission, which resulted in, I believe, finding two of the conditional use permit not being met. And staff agrees with that assessment as recommending the City Council to uphold or deny the appeal and uphold the Planning Commission's decision.

Okay, thank you.

May I also offer that into the record there was public feedback or public comment provided to the Planning Commission that documented many of the things that constitute those public nuisances. So that is part of the Planning Commission's record and their decision making.

Thank you. Mayor, if I may just add one to augment the response that was just provided by the staff planner. The staff made a recommendation at the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission made their own determination. That's what you authorize them to do, to come to their own independent decisions. The action that is before the council tonight is an appeal of that decision. It is not an appeal of staff's recommendation. And the council has de novo or complete authority. So you can either You know, it's within your authority to deny the appeal and uphold the Planning Commission's determinations. It is equally within your authority to grant the appeal and issue the CUP, if that's what you wish to do tonight. Okay, thank you. Mr. Krause, I have a question for you.

Did you know that you were not able to operate this as a short-term rental either up to the Planning Commission time or after the Planning Commission meeting?

I said I called.

Excuse me. So I'm not asking your opinion on our policy for short-term rental. Were you aware that you were not able to operate it based upon the Planning Commission decision?

So you're talking after the Planning Commission?

After the Planning Commission decision. Were you aware that you were not able to operate it? Were you told that you were not able to operate it?

Under an ordinance that doesn't exist for short term.

I'm not asking that. Were you told by staff that you were not able to operate this? And this is why you filed an appeal so that you could operate it. So were you told by staff that you were not able to operate? Yes. You were? Yes. And you decided to actively advertise it and continue to operate it anyway?

Yes, because the code that is not relevant for my place. That decision and that code is violating state law.

Okay, but you decided in violation that you were told specifically to decide upon your own that you were going to violate the rule because you didn't believe the rule applied to you. Is that right?

Not to me.

Well, to your property. To state law. To state law, yes. I have to say I am baffled because you had the planning commission recommending to approve it if you followed the guidelines and you didn't. And even after the Planning Commission meeting, You could have followed the guidelines to get it into place. But I follow all the guidelines, sorry, okay. And then come here and say you understood, and now you have hit all of the different obligations that were required, and ask us to then deny the appeal. But you didn't. You continued to advertise it, continue to operate it in violation, knowing in violation, and then came here and asked us to appeal it anyway. So whether or not I believe there should be short-term rentals there, I mean, I was prepared to ask the public, why don't you want the short-term rental there? But the truth of the matter is, you have flouted the ordinance and our rules to all of us. And now you're asking us to appeal. And based upon that alone, regardless of anything else, there is no way that I can deny the appeal based upon your flouting the violation of this. And so I'm baffled at why you would take that path, to be honest. I guess I don't have a question for you now. The question that I had was, did you know about this? So what I would like to ask our city attorney now is, what kind of enforcement can we do to ensure that this does not happen, continue to happen? Because I do not have faith that this property manager will operate with what our direction is.

If the council were to deny the appeal tonight, and therefore there would be no conditional use permit approval for that type of use, short-term rental, which we characterize under our regulations as being within the bed and breakfast category, then if we continue to see the violations, then we would take enforcement action against them. And if they continue to do it, we would seek an injunction to stop them from doing it. And we would also assess the issue of whether or not fines would be imposed upon them for any future violations.

Could liens be put against the property if that happened?

It's a difficult one, so let me ask you. May I ask the applicant a question? Sure. So, sir, are you renting the property right now? So you have a longer-term rental agreement with the property owner? That's correct. So they... We've been advised that the property owner has consented to this type of request. And so if we had fines that were imposed against the property, we could, I would need to confirm this, there is a strong potential that we could levy fines and lien fines against the property if they were not enforced. We may have to get a judicially ordered ability to be able to levy that, but that would also may be necessary to compel them to stop operating and stop posting it on the websites, the short-term rental websites. Okay, thank you.

Excuse me. Steve, I had a follow-up question. I had a previous, I know the Planning Commission has denied CUPs for other short-term rentals. In the past, have we had a problem? I think the short-term rentals have been denied, just stopped operating. Is that?

So we've had similar situations where someone has operated as a short-term rental. We've sent notices. They've ceased operating as a short-term rental. They came in and... then the Planning Commission had granted them the CUP, but then we have at least two instances where subsequent to the Planning Commission granting them the approval for the CUP, they then chose to withdraw it and chose not to operate as a short-term rental.

So it was clear to them what their status was and whether or not they could operate. Thank you.

Let me ask the city manager. Do we need to get a short-term rental policy? Do we need to do something more to just sort of codify everything?

Staff is planning to bring forward a discussion regarding short-term rental policy for your council's consideration in September. Okay. Thank you.

I had just a few more questions maybe for staff or the city attorney to close out the record on... Have there been other complaints from short-term rentals that the city has not enforced?

No, so that in a post-COVID period, there had been, we'd received a couple of complaints that were actually enforced by the police department. And so people were renting their homes out, having parties, causing noise and excess alcohol and so forth. And those other properties that were nuisance properties, the police came out and then essentially, you know, did whatever the police do and it stopped.

So there's nothing about the facts or circumstances that indicate we're picking on this one applicant or this property owner. To the extent the city gets complaints about how a property is being operated or not operated correctly, we take enforcement action against that owner.

We absolutely do.

And then there's a comment made about public health and safety not being a defined term, but maybe just for the benefit of the The code and the record, that is a standard, code it's it's written in a very broad discretionary fashion so that a decision-making body like the planning commission or the city council can construe what public health safety and welfare is or is not and that it includes things like nuisances like noise loitering excess vehicles operating against city laws that's all kind of under that umbrella of public health and safety that is correct Okay, and then in terms of, and maybe it goes back to the first question about the complaints, but on due process, does the city attorney or staff have, obviously we've gone through a full process here. There was several notices that were sent from the city to you. There was an application process and a hearing process before. the planning commission that took place, and now the appeal rights. It seems to me that the appellant has been provided with full due process here, but is there any concerns from the city's standpoint that we've taken some shortcut or not provided full due process to the appellant?

No, no, not at all. The city has provided all of the due process required. There's been a hearing at the planning commission. There's now been a hearing at the city council. There was clear notices sent to the applicant

during the process so no we have no concerns that there's inadequate due process here i think that's it for my questions any further questions here i don't see any all right i will make the motion one more comment i just i i'm i'm just like playing this logic argument and we have someone who's clearly been flaunting the law and it's not not acceptable not not coming at that premise at all but we held off on fines and other activities so that we could allow him to go through the process to get to the planning commission to attempt to have the conditional use permit allowed but it it was it was basically it was rejected because he was flaunting the law the system that was sort of the argument that was made and you know is that is that the the is that a grounds for denying if if he's in compliance with these other things or were you know or comes in compliance with these other checklist like the checklist was all green the first round through, the staff is recommending approval, but because of the behavior, the pattern of behavior, not of public nuisance, but of not complying with our ordinance, it was felt to be a moral objection, like how can we reward you with a CUP when you've been flaunting our laws?

The way I look at it, it's like we issue conditional use permits downtown for alcohol, and Without it, you have to stop serving at a certain point. If we see somebody downtown serving past what they can serve without a permit, we tell them, you have to stop. You can come in and ask for a permit to do it later, but you need to stop doing that.

Right.

And this is the same thing. And if somebody then says, well... Now they're coming in and asking for it. Well, if somebody comes in and asks for it and stops serving at the time or stops doing what is illegal, then... they could come in and apply and they could comply with the process. If they are doing something that is illegal, they continue to do it. If we told somebody, you can't serve past 10 o'clock at night, and they say, well, I want to serve till 1 o'clock, and they continue to serve till 1 o'clock, they come in and they ask for a permit to serve till 1 o'clock, I would deny them because they were only allowed to go till 10. And they're flouting the law by saying,

while i was applying for a permit to go to one i just kept doing it because i wanted to do it and i see them as almost slightly distinct issues that one is enforcement for bad behavior and not complying with our laws like you you did not you were out of compliance with our laws we sent you notices and i feel like there was an opportunity or there still is to enforce that but then there's like a separate process which is applying for a cup and it seems to

But while you're applying for the CUP, you have to comply with whatever your existing ability to operate is. If that means you have to stop serving at 10 o'clock, you stop serving at 10 o'clock. Other short-term rentals have ceased operation while they were applying for their CUP. Just because you're applying to correct the problem doesn't mean you could keep causing the problem.

I think it would set a terrible precedent to approve something that has been flouting the law every step of the way, and all it does is tell anybody else out there, oh, I can get away with it, too. So I think that it's really important that, which is why I was more than prepared, had there not been violations to now, to at least review the CUP on its own.

Right. That's what's hot. Yeah.

But I can't. in good faith and in good conscience to all the places, the many places that request CUPs, all of these short-term rentals out there that are abiding by proper procedure and the ones that will come forward at some point as well that aren't there yet, I can't in good faith deny the appeal and then basically say, well, actually the rules don't matter. I just can't.

A question for the applicant. You talked about transient occupancy tax. And you talked about getting a request to pay for 24, 25. Were you prepared to pay that, the backlog of transient occupancy tax?

No. I was asked to provide the revenue. I have not received any request for payment.

I'm just trying to give you potentially a path forward because I watched the Planning Commission meeting, the same thing here tonight. You've been denied twice, well, you're potentially being denied twice for the same reason, which is you just won't comply with the process. So just take that for what it's worth. I mean, there may be an opportunity for you, I don't know, to try to get yourself in compliance with the existing law, which is you have to have a CUP to operate a short-term rental. So I think you have all these other ideas and arguments about what the problem is. That's the problem, is you're not following that. So I don't know. if you might be able to make some arrangement with the city, or you can talk about like, if you want to pay the, the TOT that you haven't been paying and try to get back into compliance to come back and ask again, but you, you do understand that's the process that took place here. You,

The process of all requested for me to apply for a PUC was followed to the T. And everything was green.

No, except you continued to operate without a license. We're going to wrap this up right now. My recommendation to you is continue to work with the planning department and community development. Erica Vandenbrand right here is a community development director. If you want to be able to at some point look at this again and come forward and get a CUP, I recommend you go with go through community development. I also recommend very strongly you stop right now advertising because we are now watching that. Now the focus is there and there will be enforcement and there will be serious consequences. So I recommend you stop right now. I'll make the motion to deny the appeal and upholding the Planning Commission's decision to deny the conditional use permit.

Second.

Suzy, could I have a roll, please?

I respect the council decision. I ask that for the record.

All right.

Thank you. I want something on the record.

You don't have the floor right now. At this point, we've closed the hearing, but thank you.

Mayor Wilk.

Aye.

Council Member Silva. Aye. Council Member Darling. Aye. Council Member Devaney. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Francois. Aye. Motion carries unanimously.

Okay. We're adjourning the meeting of the City Council tonight in memoriam of Ed Skoug. Ed was a longtime civic leader in Walnut Creek, serving as mayor in 1987 to 88, and helping shape the community's growth and development. Following a period of rapid growth in Walnut Creek, Ed played a key role through the Measure A initiative in 1985, which limited building heights in downtown Walnut Creek and the commercial areas. Tonight, we honor the memory of Ed Skoug and the years spent in service to the community of Walnut Creek. And with that, we're adjourned.