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 SB707, 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 9 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. All right. Well, good evening. I'm Kevin Wilk, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, and welcome to the Tuesday, September 1st, 2026 regular meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council. And if you'd please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. And City Clerk Susie Martinez, would you call the roll, please?

Council Member Darling? I'm here. Council Member Devaney?

Here.

Council Member Silva? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Francois? Here. Mayor Wilk?

Here. All right. So the first item is a proclamation for Emergency Preparedness Month. And I would like to invite recently retired CERT member Don Prosnitz to receive the proclamation. Additionally, I would like to take a moment to recognize Don with a certificate of recognition in honor of his retirement after 16 years of service to Walnut Creek CERT and our community. And since completing his CERT training in 2010, Don has been a leader in building and strengthening the emergency communications group. He helped establish critical radio infrastructure, secured grants to modernize our emergency communications capabilities, developed training and used throughout that's used throughout Contra Costa County and led our volunteers in regional and statewide emergency preparedness exercises. Through his expertise, leadership and generous commitment to mentoring others, Don has helped ensure that Walnut Creek is better prepared to communicate and respond when disaster strikes. Don, thank you for 16 years of dedicated service and for the lasting impact you've made on our community.

Yeah, Finley don't believe any of that.

All I can say is it's been a privilege to serve this city for so long, a city that has returned so much to my family, to myself and my family. We've lived here almost 50 years, so it's been a privilege.

Thank you. Well, thank you, Don. Now, don't go too far there. We are going to take a picture with you, and do we have a proclamation? This is not it. What? Is it up there? Let's do the picture, and then we're going to grab the proclamation and we'll do a...

Right.

So family shot first. And we'll get one, two, three. OK. The official, please.

We need the face again. One, two, and back a little bit. There we go. That's fine.

There we go. Now we see your face.

Okay, next on the agenda is the consent calendar. Does any council member wish to pull any item for discussion? And does any member of the staff wish to pull an item for discussion?

Yes.

Yes.

I have questions on item 2G, please.

On 2G, so we'll pull 2G. And does any member of the public wish to provide public comment on the consent calendar? Either please come forward here. Thank you. Or if you're remote, please use the raise hand feature or press star 9 if you're calling if you'd like to provide remote public comment. If you're attending in person, please complete a speaker identification card and come forward and line up behind the lectern at this time. It doesn't look like we have anybody in person. Do we have anybody?

And we have no remote comments.

No remote. Okay, then. So can I have a motion on the remaining items on the consent calendar? All right, well, then I will make a motion on the remaining items. I move to approve items 2A through F and H. Second. We have a motion to second. Suzy, could you call the roll, please?

Mayor Welk?

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem Francois? Aye. Council Member Darling? Aye. Council Member Devaney? Aye. Council Member Silver? Aye. Motion carries.

And okay, so now item 2G.

Thank you very much, Mayor. The item is a five-year agreement for a contract for services and for software services for basically ticketing in the arts and recreation department. So my first question is, is there a separate system that the Lesher Center uses, or will this be the same system?

Chris Farrow, Arts and Rec Director. The leisure uses a separate system for ticketing. This is used primarily by our recreation and parks folks for facility rentals, picnic rentals, and then program registrations.

It was in May that when we approved the first year of the agreement, so this is now approving five years of the agreement.

Actually, this is a replacement of the previous action. There was a staff error. So previously what was approved was the implementation fee, the technical account management fee, and the annual subscription. So the 582.674, which on page two, if you look at that table, what was included in the original ask was columns one, two, and four. After the approval, staff, as we were moving forward with ActiveNet, realized that we take in transaction fees, and it's basically a pass-through. So we're charging those using the system, a transaction fee, and then we're paying that transaction fee back out. So we did not include that in the original ask and we need to because it is both a revenue and an expense to us. And even though it's a net zero, we still need council authority for those funds. So we recalculated the amount based on including the transaction fees. And since we were coming back to council, we also decided to add some hardware just in case we need it. As of right now, we've been told by the active net that our current hardware, the things that we use to scan, for example, or to swipe, will work with the new system. So that's why we hadn't included it, but since we were coming back to Council anyways, we thought it's probably in our best interest to include some hardware costs just in case we run into a place where we need to replace some hardware to be to work with the new system. So we did that as well. So the total amount when you include those transaction fees is $1,798,358, but I want to know that all of those transaction fees will net out. We just need to ask for council approval in order to pay the expenditures, but we will see that on the revenue side as well.

So let me clarify, make sure I understand. Transaction fee seems to be like the bank charge for using a credit card or debit card. Correct. So these are standard fees and this is not a guaranteed amount. This is just an estimate based on certain levels of revenue.

Certain number of transactions that we've experienced in the past and then projecting out, yes.

And does this system allow us to, we recently, at the last meeting, approved our user fees that included a resident benefit payment.

Discount. Discount.

Does this system allow us to do this?

It does. Great.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Do we have any other questions on this item? Okay. And Council Member Silva, would you like to make a motion?

Move to approve item 2G in the consent calendar, which is the authorization of the city manager for a five-year agreement with Active Network for recreation management software services in an amount not to exceed just about $1.8 million. Second.

We have a motion and a second and a third.

Council Member Silva? Aye. Council Member Darling? Aye. Council Member Devaney? Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem Francois. Aye. Mayor Welk.

Aye. All right. So next on the agenda is public communications. This portion of the meeting is reserved for comments on items not on the agenda. All remarks should be addressed to the City Council. Please do not use profanity during your comments. 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 for the item to staff. Consistent with Section 9.5 of the City Council Handbook, 30 minutes will be allocated at this time for public communications for items not on the agenda. Additional time for public communications for items not on the agenda will be provided at the end of the meeting if necessary. Written comments submitted have been posted to the city's website for public review and are included in the meeting record but will not be separately read into the record. And this time I'll note that the time is 6.14 and we'll take public comments on items not on the agenda till approximately 6.44 and then the remainder of any such comments at the end of the open session portion of the meeting. Please use the raise hand feature or press star nine if you're calling in, if you'd like to make a remote public comment. And this time, if anybody would like to make any in-person comments, then please come forward, fill out a speaker card. I see Mrs. Warren has one in her hand, and you'll have two minutes.

Good evening, Jan Warren from the Woodlands. It's maybe technically not a city council question, but maybe you can direct me. A month or two ago on Next Door, somebody was talking about the, we get a lot of action on Ignacio and I live off of Oak Grove. And there was a car that was on fire. And it was between our city and, like on the line almost, the way they talked about it, our city and Concord. And of course, we're a consolidated fire department. And so they were, you know... Distressed that it seemed like you know, no Walnut Creek people were coming out or something and so I was just curious Is there a contact for the con fire or the whatever it's called now? To ask how that's done You know somebody calls in and I guess it's like a dispatch that would go and say hey so but would they pull someone possibly from our station and from a station in Concord or Do you have any idea who I could talk to?

Well, con fire, I mean, obviously you would call 911 if you saw that, and they would decide where it's coming from. What I would suggest is we have our chief of police in the back of the room, and he'd be happy to talk with you about that. But if anybody sees a car on fire on any road that you're on, call 911 and let dispatch figure out who's going to get there. Yeah.

Thanks, Jan. Kevin, if I could add that con fire is a county, Jan? Well, I'm just going to let you know, Confire, that's a county district, so they're not responding based on city boundaries. And when there's a fire, there's often more than one unit deployed, so someone's responding and they're not concerned about the city lines.

I'm aware of that. I'm understanding the people's position.

Oh, okay. Thank you, Jan. Do we have any other questions? Any other public comment here in the chamber? All right. Seeing none, do we have anybody online?

No one online.

And nobody online. So we will close public comment. And we will move to council member and staff announcements, reports and activities or requests. City attorney, do you have any announcements? No closed session announcements. City manager, any report?

Yeah, I do have one update this evening, Mayor Dan Buckshi, City Manager. As many of you I'm sure are aware, yesterday was the last day of the legislative session in Sacramento for the state government. This would be the 2026 session and it is the second year of a two year session. I just thought I would give a very high overview just to give a sense of scale. terms of what's occurred so in 2026 the state legislature introduced 1846 bills so think 1846 new laws that were introduced of those 1103 were approved by the legislature and moved through so more than um you know roughly half or a little more than that Of that, 177 have been signed into law. 926 remain with the governor for his review. And he has until August 30th to take action on those bills. Or I'm sorry, September 30th. Yeah, thank you. It would be hard to do, wouldn't it? And I would just highlight there are several bills that are quite impactful to Walnut Creek and to other cities. I won't go into those details, but I do anticipate some budgetary pressures as a result of these bills if they are passed and other regulatory changes that we will and challenges that we will be dealing with our intention is to have our consultant from towns and public affairs provide an update likely in october with more details about those bills once we know what's actually signed or vetoed by the governor thank you dan and uh

Now we have City Councilmember reports on AB 1234 activities. Let's start over to Councilmember Silva.

How did I know you were going to turn and look at me first? Thank you, Mayor. So two items that I wanted to spend a little bit of time on. The Diablo Regional Arts Association, which is our partner and our fundraising partner and program support partner for the Lesher Center of the Arts, held its regular board meeting yesterday. It's one month. until on Broadway, which is October 3rd, which is the annual fundraiser where they focus on raising funds to support arts access programs and other special programs at the Lesher Center. And the arts access program really brings children from underserved local schools into the Lesher Center to experience some of their very first theater performances, such as A Christmas Carol. The discussion focused on the upcoming event and what is sold out, but you should go online at DRAA.org to see if you might get a single ticket if it's available. They also described that Martina's refining company basically launched a partner program with the local elementary school in Martinez and with the DRAA to provide after school enrichment programs that are choral about choruses and singing and it is for grades K through 5 and they have 60 children signed up for it and this basically reflects the value of the partnership that we have with DRAA the Bedford gallery kaleidoscope which is its current show will close on September 13th kaleidoscope is a play on words it's all sorts of images that are, it's kaleidoscope, as in kaleidoscope. And then the new show will open at the end of the month called Portraits in Tufts, so it's textures and textiles. And Center Rep's opening night for Glass Menagerie is next week, and it should be a great show. Last week was the August meeting of recycle smart which is the central Contra Costa solid waste authority. We are in the process of implementation for the new franchise agreement which will start next spring and one of the things we learned last week at our meeting and Councilmember mayor pretend friend. So I also just joins me on that board One of the things we learned is that there are 68,000 single-family households that we collect trash and recycling and organics waste from in Arenda Moraga Lafayette Danville Walnut Creek and the unincorporated areas that surround us and about 30% of those Single-family homes will be having their day of pickup change in March with the new Routes and the new trucks. So there's a major campaign communications campaign that's going to be happening and all of us that were there said that our cities will be supportive of it with our whatever outreach we have and whether it's PSAs on Walnut Creek TV, the Nutshell, city managers, the e-newsletter, because it's going to come as a shock to people. Now, there's lots of ways to communicate, but it's a third of the number of people, the households that we have in the territory. The other thing that's going to happen starting November is one of the concerns that we have with the landfill, the black cart, is that people overstuff them or they leave extra trash in a bag next to the containers. And these are a problem for a number of reasons. Trash left on the ground is, even if it's bagged, can sometimes end up in the storm drains. And then our public works people and the clean water people aren't happy. Plus, it is more likely to damage the cart when they're tipping it and cause trash to fall on the streets. Republic Service currently in their contract is allowed to charge $10 time there's an overage like that and now they have the technology on the trucks to be able to know that every address that has overstuffed that means the lids not shutting tight overstuffed or left it by a bag at the side so they're also going to be reaching out and letting us all the customers know that this these charges will start and it's really important to realize that if you have it's every once in a while it's understandable but if it's a regular occurrence what you really need to do is right size your cart and pay for the cart that you need which if it's most people are at a 32 gallon cart and if you need a 64 gallon cart then you should get a 64 gallon cart and you won't be having over over charges and Mayor Pro Tem are you going to report on the schools or do you want me to Okay. I'll let Mayor Pro Tem do that. And there have been a lot of activities and events and more to follow in the coming months.

Great. Thank you very much. Well, actually, let's go to Mayor Pro Tem.

Can I ask a follow-up question on the over stuff? I'm just curious. Is this all the containers? Just the black. Just the black. I was thinking the green waste in my mind, you've always got a branch that's sticking out of the top.

And that's not so much of a problem. It's really the black waste where they find the greatest level of it. And one of our colleagues on the board suggested you make friends with your neighbor because maybe what you do is just take your bag down to your neighbor's bin.

Thank you for clarifying.

Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. I'll start with Recycle Smart and Council Member Silva. I just want to give a shout out to our great staff at that authority who not only put us in a good position to have new contracts for collection and post-collection services tenure contracts two years in advance of the date that we needed them, which is next March, but also now have prepared implementation plans, pretty detailed implementation plans, and worked closely with all the providers, including Republic and MDRR, to make sure that we're going to hit the ground running next year, which I have every confidence that we will. We did get our annual report, school progress report, and I'm pleased to announce that several Walnut Creek elementary schools as well as middle schools received Waste Buster Awards, which means they were successful in diverting 75% of waste from the black can or the garbage can that went to organics or recycling. So these kids are getting the message and doing a great job and we all need to follow their lead. It was also interesting that Las Lomas High School kind of clocked in at 71%. High schools are kind of the hardest demographic to get them to change their behavior, as many parents will know. And that's true when it comes to diverting trash from the black can. But Las Lomas is doing a good job, and I think Northgate's numbers were up there as well. So that's recycle smart. I'm going to let the mayor, um, mostly report on the partner city event with the youth delegation from Kita city, Japan. But thank you for including me in that. That was a really fun event at the leisure. I know it was a week long event and there were a lot of behind the scene tours with staff, but we, um, I participated in the reception at the leisure rotunda where, uh, It was meaningful to hear from the students, 15 students from Keita City who had prepared a really beautiful PowerPoint and spoke very good English in terms of and presenting their city. So look forward to welcoming that delegation next year, or you all will. I was able to step in for the mayor for an Eagle Scout Court of Honor a week or so ago, and it's always really just a delight to participate in those. It's quite an honor to see the years of accomplishment that have led to this pinnacle and the adult leaders who are there every step of the way encouraging these young men on. Evan Okines, Robert Peterson, William Pickett, and Nathan Wong. And their projects ranged from constructing wooden steps to help the zookeepers at the Oakland Zoo access the lion exhibit more safely, to creating windbreaks at Contra Costa sustainable farms, creating owl boxes for endangered species at the Lafayette Reservoir, and a backpack and school supply drive. monument crisis center so well done to all of them and let's see i attended the rossmoor board meeting last week and was able to give them an update on our july and august activities they were attentive as always had good questions they are interested in participating in the general plan update i assured them that they would be included in in an outreach effort there, and they had some questions about our EV strategic plan, which I was able to give them an update on. Let's see. Rounding things out, I was able to step in for the mayor for ribbon cutting at Avante Aesthetics here on Main Street. Beautiful facility. They do specialize in facial treatments and skin care. I think I will be back for a visit sometime soon. I wanted to congratulate Omar and Aisha. Apparently they have several, they're Pakistani Americans that own several skin care type businesses in Pakistan and other businesses here in California. And this is their first location in Walnut Creek. So I was glad to see them there. And the chamber was there giving them a warm welcome as well. And then finally, along with Council Member Silva, I attended the Moonlight on the Mountain event on Mount Diablo, a fundraiser for Save Mount Diablo. which is up on the mountain, kind of going up the South Gate. And it's always a fun evening. It's a beautiful location, great food. It got very cold. So even with the blankets, people were kind of making a beeline for the buses while the live auction was still going on. But next year, we'll all come prepared. And that's my update.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Let's go to Council Member Darling.

Thank you. A couple things. We all got a chance to, I think you were there, you were there and I think you came with a specific crossing and got a tour of the new construction there and it was fascinating because the building is still inside and the inspector walked us around and explained all the different safety features that go into these multifamily buildings. So that was quite fun. You can tell I've been on vacation a lot earlier this year because I have traded my farmer's market, and I've been at the farmer's market two weeks in a row now, which is always an entertaining time. We, a number of us went to the Chamber of Commerce's candidate forum this morning to hear from our, there are two seats open and two people running, so we got to hear from them. Other chamber news, their 100-year celebration will be October 29th at Cali Craft, so beer drinkers unite and head out to that. Angela Ashley and her husband opened their house to a reception for the new chamber CEO, so that was really fun. I think most of us made it to that. The biggest things going on right now for me really are the MCE world. At our last meeting, we walked through, you know, we'd had an ad hoc group working on the response to the Marin civil grand jury, and we have a draft that was approved at the last meeting. That draft is being finalized for the chair's signature, and I should be able to distribute a copy of that to folks here in the city. But basically, we went through each one of the grand jury's discussion items and either agreed, partially disagreed, discussed, did a bunch of different things. But basically, we talked through in that report the things that we're doing to make the operations at MC work better. And that will be what we are doing between now and the end of the year. The next board meeting in September, we will have the CEO search firm coming to us as a proposal, as well as the first report. We had a consultant that's working on governance because it's a very large board. The agency has grown tremendously. It's four different counties, 38 cities, or 38 member agencies. So we're going to be hearing from that. The other thing that we are looking at with the California power grid is very complicated. And we have been looking at how we are procuring our power to make sure that we're maximizing the greenhouse gas benefits. are cost effective in that we have been holding a series of workshops a number of the folks in Walnut Creek and in Contra Costa County interested in sustainability have been coming there is a survey in the field right now that is due by this Friday and I've circulated that to the members in Contra Costa County that are interested in sustainability and MCE if anybody else would like a copy of it I can get that to them but Overall, we have a lot of work to do between now and December, and we are looking at making sure that we are an agency that can work together effectively and represent our multitudinous multitude of ratepayers in a way that makes sense. So that's my report for tonight.

Thank you, Councilmember Darling. And now we have Councilmember Devaney.

Thank you, Mayor. I have a brief report this evening. I was able to attend two chamber events this last go round. One was the business and social hour at the new Convivo workspace on Tree Boulevard. Very nice workspace. So if someone's looking for something like that to get out of the house, Great destination. And then I want to thank Dan and Angela Ashley. Angela is our chair of the board for the Chamber of Commerce. They opened up their home and we were there to celebrate Katie Burrows, the new president and CEO of the chamber. And that was a very nice event. So thank you to them. And that's all I've got.

Thank you. All right. Well, lots been covered. But a few of the things and I'll just expand a little bit upon what the mayor pro tem had mentioned about the key to the city students exchange, which is really phenomenal. In fact, I had many families that were Northgate families came to me during the event saying, how wonderful this was for their own family to be able to have that and share that experience. And if we think about how it was 30, 40 years ago, you'd have an exchange program. Maybe they'd share a couple of letters and that'd be it. But now between social media and emails, I mean, these students may be friends for decades and visit each other in their own countries with their own families. So it's really phenomenal. And We already have talked about the 10th anniversary of when we had a partnership signing with them nine years ago. And so next year, the mayor will come out. Council members and leaders of Keta City will be out here next October. And we'll put on a show for Walnut Creek for them as well. And you're not getting out of that one. You may not be sitting right here, but you're going to be here as well for that. So anyway, terrific. We look forward to more exchanges with not only Kita City, but our sister cities, Necheto and Sheafolk in the future. I had the, what, a true pleasure to cut the ribbon for the 35th anniversary of Springfield Montessori. Now we cut a lot of ribbons here. We go to new businesses. We don't have a lot of personal involvement with those businesses. We just met them and we wish them luck and we hope they're here for a long time. My kids went to Springfield Montessori and they went there 27 and 25 years ago. And so it was truly a pleasure to be able to see the executives running Springfield Montessori and bringing back some of the former teachers that my own kids had. And this is how, this may be the best endorsement that I can actually give of Springfield Montessori. Of course I remember the teachers. They remembered my kids. They remembered Shane and Darielle when they were two years old and one year old. They remembered their best friends. They remembered the grandmother of Darielle's name, Bubby. I mean, amazing. And this is the care that they put into... the kids that truly become part of their own family too. So it was truly a wonderful experience to be able to cut the ribbon on that. And thank you to Mike and Cassava for joining me on that one. Also had the opportunity to meet with UCSF Benioff with their government relations person and talking about, obviously there's a lot of investment that's coming from UCSF and Benioff right now. talk really about how we'll be able to open those discussions and future opportunities in working with them. So just a nice welcoming meeting on that one. You heard about the meeting of the Chamber CEO, Katie Burrows, and the meeting of the candidates today. I will wrap it up by saying that There's gonna be some interesting things that I'm hoping to see with Walnut Creek downtown over the next few months and into next year. I haven't been at one of the meetings now for about six weeks. We'll have another one in two weeks. And one of the things that we're talking about is making more of a tie-in between the Lesher Center and some of the businesses that are downtown and what we can do to really help to foment those ties. And if you're coming to a performance, there could be an opportunity to be able to get a discount and save some money at some of the other restaurants or services downtown. So we're working on that, and I'm looking forward to seeing how that progresses. And I'm not gonna say much else about Walnut Creek downtown right now, because the last time I spoke at this city council meeting, that comment went viral. And we were mentioned on People Magazine as the viral comment of the week and the nation, evidently. And so I'm not gonna talk about nicknames. Just gonna say let's close this portion of the agenda item.

And that is my update.

So next on the agenda is a consideration item for policy direction on regulation of short-term rentals. And I invite Community Development Director Erica Vandenbrand forward to provide the presentation.

Thank you very much, Mayor Pertem, Council. I am Erica Vandenbrand, the Community Development Director, to talk about the regulation of short-term rentals. So the request that we have of Council right now is to, we're seeking a policy direction on the regulation of short-term rentals. So what is a short-term rental? Essentially, it's a rental that occurs less than 30 days, and it's typically a home or a portion of a home or a room during that time period. The reason why that we'd like to consider you to consider some looking at whether or not there are changes needed in the regulation is that since the ordinance was first adopted there have been several things that have been happening. So one is that there's an affordable housing crisis in the state and that whenever short-term rentals of homes are you know done or you know as a business it takes away the potential stock for longer-term housing and Other trends are that short-term rentals are an increasingly desirable lodging option that people look for to have a more home-oriented environment, whether they're on vacation, traveling, or recovering from a medical procedure or at an event. Then there's technology. Technology has made great advances that has really reduced the friction and essentially the interaction between homeowners and visitors to quickly connect and then transact these rental agreements. So we've all heard about Airbnb, VRBO, et cetera. And so it's really, you can get into this as a business with a very low bar. Then there's clarity. So the city, as do many cities actually, we currently regulate the short-term rental through a bed and breakfast ordinance. And then this requires a conditional use permit. So that in order to bring a business into compliance, they have to go through a fairly lengthy process to be able to operate within the city's parameters. Then of course there's administration so that there's program administration enforcement and that while it's certainly possible and we do regulate the businesses this way and enforce, it creates some challenges for us with clarity. And then there's the transient occupancy tax, that there's revenue collection that until folks come into compliance, it's very difficult to compel compliance with collecting that tax. Now, one of the other changes that's happened is that under state law, these platforms are now required to provide data to us as jurisdictions online. on who's operating where and how many days, et cetera, so that there's the ability to more efficiently collect that tax revenue. So this is a snapshot of short-term rentals in Walnut Creek. You'll notice a couple of things. You'll notice that there are 111 properties advertised, but certainly the map that's there doesn't have 111 properties on it. That's because things change on almost a daily basis. So it's essentially looking at inventory within the marketplace. These data are provided by our business license folks who've been tasked with trying to help us look at the different numbers with this. So while there may be 111 properties advertised across the different multiple platforms, there are over 265 listings for those 111 properties. Yet of that, only 13 are registered and are applying their business licenses and some level of the TOT. And of these, only three have conditional use permits having gone through the entire process to essentially operate legitimately within the city. What we also found out from HDL, our consultant who's responsible for our business licenses, is that their estimate, based on their best guesses, is that the amount of additional TOT that the city might realize if we were to more, I guess, make it easier to be able to access short-term rentals would be just under $169,000 in revenue. So to give you some perspective, how do nearby jurisdictions regulate short-term rentals? So the cities of Brentwood, Concord, and the town of Danville each prohibit rentals under 31 days. So they essentially ban short-term rentals. Others, like Dublin, use the bed and breakfast ordinance, as do we. And then still others, like Orinda and San Ramon and then Contra Costa County, use short-term rental permits. So, you know, a more administrative permit type of process. And then, in addition, you know, in all the reading test notes on the right-hand side, there are some nuances about, you know, is it hosted, not hosted, operating, you know, certain number of days and so forth. Is it a conditional use permit? But I just offer this information to you just as, you know, sort of a gestalt of what's going on. So given that information and what you know about short-term rentals, we are requesting guidance about first, should short-term rentals be allowed in the city or should they be disallowed? However, if they are allowed, should the city continue to regulate them as a bed and breakfast or develop a more streamlined option for consideration, for council's consideration? and should council provide direction on that in that manner? What aspects might you be interested in getting feedback on from the planning commission in the community? So things like should a short-term rental be hosted or not hosted? location restrictions, if any, maximum rental duration, operational requirements, and then permissibility of events and anything else. So I think that just to also give you a little bit of context, our current bed and breakfast ordinance has no more than one week and it has a week duration. It has 500 feet away in certain locations from arterials and collector streets. It does not require that a host be present. So just to give you some, I guess, information about that. And so with that, any questions?

Okay, thank you, Erica. Do we have any, I'm sure we do have questions. Let's start with Council Member Devaney first.

All right, thank you for the presentation. I'm curious, so we're using HDL companies, right? And we've, are we right now in a relationship with them where they're helping us with like discovery and compliance of short-term rentals and collecting of TOT?

So we have them available for that action, but we need to be able to get more clarity on what we're actually enforcing and how and each effort to bring into compliance, there's a significant amount of work that needs to be done so that, as I had noted earlier, that to regulate a short-term rental requires a conditional use permit, and there's a whole body of work that needs to occur with an applicant to bring that forward to Planning Commission. So with 111 opportunities to do that, it takes a little bit. but that was but to understand that that is within the scope of the contract that we entered with them was to help us with that collection and so um yes they have that capacity and ability i think that we have um you know we have had a lighter touch with them just simply because um they you know they've been collecting tot tax for us and so forth as part of the business licensing process but as part of the workflow, one of the things they ask is are they a legitimate business? Have they gone through and gotten the conditional use permit? And so that's where there's some, you know, we are out in the community trying to get folks to actually go through the process to be able to have the conditional use permits.

And I can add to that if you would like. So in terms of, As Erica has noted, they primarily do our business license. They also can do this service. We have chosen prior to having this discussion to input that we have not asked them to proactively enforce and collect the TOT and ask them to come into compliance for the reasons noted that if we had 111 come in to actively comply, we couldn't handle that type of volume at this point because of the process involved. What they have been doing, those that have come in and have requested to pay, they're certainly collecting and doing the business license. But we also felt that we should not go out and actively ask all 111 to be paying the TOT if we're not giving them an avenue to come into compliance. And given the current regulations and how burdensome it is, we don't think we can handle that type of volume all at once. So we wanted to have this discussion about how to proceed with some potential changes. If the decision were to continue with the bed and breakfast ordinance going forward, we'd have to talk through about how do we try to sequence that work so that it's manageable if we expect all to come into compliance under the current regulations.

And if we did create a more streamlined process, would we outsource that to a third party to handle that for us?

So if we created a more streamlined process, we could outsource a portion of that in terms of communicating the initial requirements. But there would still be work involved by city staff. But it wouldn't be nearly as labor intensive. And it wouldn't need to have all the preparatory work and legal costs that are associated with a conditional use permit process with the Planning Commission.

OK. I saw 111 was the number. I think our last meeting, and I looked the number up myself, I got something like 197 off of error DNA, which apparently does look for duplicates. So do we feel like this is a more accurate number? Or why the big difference in those two?

So this is a snapshot in time that our consultant gave to us. And as I had indicated, it changes on a daily basis how many are advertised out there in the marketplace. And then one of the other nuances to this is that it may read, if you will, or be characterized as a Walnut Creek short-term rental, but it could be an unincorporated Contra Costa County, or it could be giving a Walnut Creek address, quote-unquote, in a neighboring jurisdiction that bans Airbnbs and short-term rentals and so forth.

So our feeling is that the 111 number is more accurate than the 197, or we're sort of like... I'm trying to get a sense of the scope, because when we estimate the 168,000, when I look at that number and think about... Well, if we got like half of the properties into compliance and they were generating, say, I think currently the place of the short-term rentals are about 70% occupied and they're averaging like $175 a night. Those are the numbers that I looked up. You can correct me if there's a more accurate number. But that would generate more in like the four or five plus 100,000 in TOT. So I was also looking at the 168 and wondering how we arrived at that.

So I don't want to speak exactly on behalf of our consultant. But what they've conveyed to us is that, again, they are able to look at any point in time. And so you at a different point in time may have seen more advertised. you know different parameters and so forth but they looked at that and then what they also tell us is that whenever there's that what their experience has been in the past is that whenever there's a significant effort to bring short-term rentals into compliance Some people will drop out of the marketplace so that that diminishes the number of short-term rentals. And then of that, of those, the remaining folks decide whether or not they want to, you know, go through the effort for, you know, how many days, et cetera. And again, it depends on the type of regulation, whether it's hosted, non-hosted, et cetera.

I have a legal question. My understanding is that there's been laws passed that sort of compel now these online platforms to remit TOT directly to the cities. Is that accurate? And does it require us, say, passing an ordinance to sort of press them on that? Or what does that landscape look like?

The new laws require them to report that there are short-term rentals happening in your city that are being facilitated on their websites, so Airbnb, BBRO. They don't actually require them to remit the tax to us. The city collects the tax.

Okay. I read that some cities are collecting the majority of their TOT through the platforms.

You can collect them through the platform. The host needs to identify the tax as part of the rental, and then the individual renter if you will pays it um i'm not exactly sure whether the dollars are then remitted directly to the city or they're remitted to the to the owner who then remits them to the city okay because as you recall with tot those are remitted to the hotel operators and then the hotel operators remit them to the city on a periodic basis i think the airbnbs operate the same way okay

And I think I read there was a city that had sort of passed some sort of legislation or ordinance locally that didn't allow these platforms to operate in their city unless they, you know, helped with the TOT, like, portion of it, whatever that looks like.

I mean, that may have been correct before, but by state law they're now required to help.

Okay, all right. And with ADUs, I have a question about ADUs. I believe in 2020, we passed an ordinance saying that there would be no short-term rentals, that ADUs would, we would no longer do short-term rentals on ADUs. Is that accurate?

that is correct and that was based off of state law state law also allows us to prohibit adus that were built prior to that but that would be a discretionary action on the part of council i understand that since that law was passed at the state level in 2020 there's been some

some manipulations of it and that uh that might not necessarily apply to all adus at this point after the year 2020 from a state law standpoint does our current is that is that a an accurate picture or do you believe that 100 unqualified we can confirm that but my my understanding of it right now is that

ADUs that are built pursuant to the recent ADU state laws are prohibited from being used for short-term rentals.

But that might be if they only allowed that, if they used the law to build it, so to speak. That's correct.

If they relied on the law for the purposes of getting the ADU built, which is the way at least most of the recent ones have been built, have been pursuant to the state laws because they are more expedited and

uh more streamlined in their approval process than what were historically um local zoning requirements associated with adus so it's probably safe to assume most people are using that but would we would it be wise for us or or should we look at um our ordinance and see that maybe we should revise it to say something like um only eligible uh short-term rent or short eligible adus may be eligible for...

So our current ordinance currently prohibits ADUs that were constructed since 2020 to be used as short-term rentals. So regardless of whether it is following state law or whatever. So that could, in the case that you offer, be construed as being more stringent.

More stringent. So maybe just an opportunity to look at eligibility for those. Okay. That's it for my questions right now. Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. You asked a lot of mine, but just to clarify on the collection of the TOT, because I had heard information, I think similar information to Council Member Devaney, that it was kind of more of an automatic process that Airbnb would remit the TOT to the city, but it sounds like they'd They would inform us that there's a registered short-term rental on their platform, and then we would still need to hire a consultant like HDL to collect the TOT?

So maybe a different way of explaining it is that these certain platforms and certainly the ones that are more sophisticated like VRBO and Airbnb have an ability to essentially do that accounting feature with them so that you as a business owner are able to track and then remit your business taxes and so forth and keep track of your income too so you can pay your federal income taxes.

As the conversation goes on, maybe that's something. Obviously, if there's a way to streamline the process further, that would be good. And then I'm curious in terms of from both legal and planning perspectives, if we were to streamline the process, would we still have the enforcement ability if a business is operating once or more times as a nuisance? If it was just kind of a business license type permit, to what extent could we revoke that?

So forgive me, my colleagues that deal with outdoor dining, but the closest analogy is that with an operator's permit. And so it's very similar to an AUP or CUP having been required for alcohol and then with outdoor dining, and so those have processes associated with it, but whenever we went over to our outdoor dining, there was an operator's permit that provided very clear direction on here are the norms, et cetera, here are the things you need to comply with, and if you're in violation of it, this operator's permit can be pulled. The same thing could be true in the way that it operates in other cities so that based off of that versus going through a more complex and lengthy and legally costly process to pull a conditional use permit.

Okay, that's helpful. And then in terms of the 170 or 190 folks that don't currently have a permit but want to continue to operate short-term rentals, what's staff's plan to bring them into compliance?

Well, our first plan was to ask the question of council policy direction on whether or not you wanted to ban or continue to allow it. So with that question, once that is answered, then we can develop a plan to be able to follow policy direction so that if council's choice is to continue on in the bed and breakfast model, then things would remain largely the same for all the same reasons if council instead were to choose to go to more of an operator's permit type of program then we wouldn't you know need to essentially stand up a program much the way that the outdoor dining program was stood up and you know come up with parameters and so forth and then bring that to council um you know for adoption along with the new ordinance

And just finally, do we have kind of any estimates of what the cost and time would be to obtain an operator's permit?

No. We can certainly look into that if that is council's will to go to a different type of regulation of short-term rentals, but we didn't want to get too far down the road in presupposing council's will. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Darling.

Thank you. And thanks for the presentation and all the thought that's obviously gone into this. I know in Orinda, the big impetus for their ordinance was the party that went horribly wrong up there. What's been our experience with calls for service from PD for the short-term rentals? Have we had much of that here?

So it was much more prevalent during COVID, less so now. But PDE responds for that. Most of the types of feedback we get about the short-term rentals are from neighbors. Some of it might be noise-related. Some of it might be people not being able to find their short-term rental late at night and knocking on the wrong door. In talking with PD that hasn't been you know calls for service at short-term rentals hasn't been a significant You know call reason for calls for service So I know the bed-and-breakfast ordinance limits it to within 500 feet of an arterial or collector Street does that effectively does that

Actually, does that make no never mind when you're out there, or is that a relatively difficult requirement to comply with? Just thinking about keeping people on the edge of neighborhoods rather than deep into a neighborhood.

So it's... think you know it's just it's a criterion that someone would need to comply with but there are numerous homes that are on that you know that meet that criteria so as to whether or not it helps or hurts the ability to operate that business we haven't seen any evidence one way or the other okay and then if we go through this and come up I know when we originally were working on alcohol permits

there was one set of standards. And if you're willing to live with that, you could get the easy permit. And if you really wanted to push things, you could get the hard permit. Is something like that possible here? For example, if somebody is on site, limits people to a certain number, they could get a more easily acquired permit. But if they want to have a site where they can not be there or do different things,

So that's definitely possible. There are examples of that in the information provided in your packet. Usually those, you know, the differences, et cetera, you know, it's like here you have a permit type of, you know, process. And then if you want to do something different, usually, you know, they've mentioned it in the context of having events and hosting events and so forth and that, you know, would go through a separate process, getting a special event permit as an example. You know, certainly in the example that you offered that there's the potential to, if you want to have it hosted, do it one way. If you want to have it unhosted, then you go through, you know, presumably a conditional use process.

Okay. I would just add, if I may, you know, a consideration along those lines if we were to head down that path. is the complexity in terms of the application process and explaining that process through potential applicants. And then it does make enforcement more complicated. If we get a complaint, what's allowed or not allowed, having to know that by address as compared to knowing across the board what are the standards. So those would be some trade-offs and considerations if we had a bifurcated approach.

Yeah, it's good to get to know because it's okay. And then if we were to do an operator type permit, would there still be notice for neighbors to come and express their opinion on it?

unclear, and the reason why I say that it's unclear because there is the, in most of the examples that are out there currently, it's done through a process that doesn't require that notification, it's more administrative. Trying to insert that requirement in there as a condition of receiving an administrative permit

an idea where if you apply in the first year of the program, your application fee is much less. But in out years, just some way to get people to want to come to see us. Upfront discount. Upfront discount. Yeah, that's it. Or you today.

Again, we were first focusing on the policy question, does council want to ban or continue to allow this use? And then in terms of operational kinds of things like you're talking about, that would be a next step in the process if council's direction is to continue to allow our use, but to do it differently than what we do now. Okay.

Thank you.

Council Member Silva.

Thank you. Thank you very much for all of this work and for the continued patrol of some of our interesting operators. So let me start with CUP versus operator permit. I was on the Planning Commission, but it was a long time ago. My recollection is a CUP basically is more permanent than an operator permit, which could be, in fact, you get it and you get it renewed, et cetera.

So I can answer this and how we're doing it more recently. So I'm not going to step on our city attorney's toes, I promise. But the conditional use permit typically runs with the land. However, the way that we have been working through the process more recently is that once that operator ceases operations at that site, then the permit would sunset. It's different as you had noted from the operators permit type of idea Most of the examples out there have an annual permit that it's done on the calendar year basis and that you You know have an incentive to come in early in the year as opposed to later and that you know everyone renews for that particular year and so and it's easier to both identify a violation with the operator's permit than it is with the CUP and to address it from a enforcement standpoint. Because to address the CUP, it has to also go through a planning commission process as opposed to a more administrative process that's also subject to appeal, et cetera. But it's a lot easier.

So 111 1111 no matter what the number is one of the issues I think is that some of the operators that are advertising on these platforms you cannot tell where if they're in the city limits or if they are in an incorporated city how can we Actually figure that out. Is there GIS is there do we have to make the elections department do it to figure out if that?

Address is actually eligible to vote so the On the platforms themselves. It could be a little bit ambiguous But once the city has a specific address we have GIS capabilities that we can find out on Is this advertising within the city of Walnut Creek, but they're actually in Concord, for example? Are they in the city of Walnut Creek, or are they unincorporated Contra Costa County?

So 111, has HDL had an opportunity to consider the location-related?

So we haven't gone down that path yet, and the reason why is because we wanted to get policy direction from council about whether or not we wanted to ban, because that's one pathway and one set of enforcements, or do we go a different route as a city?

Are we allowed, I noticed in looking at, even in our bed and breakfast ordinance now, and looking at Orinda's short-term rental ordinance, proximity and concentration. So 500 feet from a major arterial or collector street is... location specific and then there's the and you can't have more than three and within a certain distance because they there is a lot of concern about oversaturation whether it's adult care facilities alcohol sobering facilities and this as well are we able to specify that

So we would look into it further. As a practical matter, we have many collector streets. So the 500 feet or more is not a huge delineator of exclusion or inclusion. In terms of looking at saturation and so forth, There are possibilities, and we have GIS capabilities, but then the platforms themselves and the ability to sort of cycle in and out, because one day you have 190, another day you have 111. And so we would need to be very vigilant and also have a lot of clarity about what the parameters are that council's looking for in terms of what that density looks like.

Under state law, are we able to limit the size? Or is it only specific to ADUs built after 2020 when that law went into effect with the concessions and the streamlining?

So when you say size, could you please clarify?

I mean, could we say you cannot rent a home with five bedrooms as a short-term rental? which is more of a single family neighborhood home. I mean, are you able to restrict the size to something small that would be considered larger than a hotel room but smaller than a permanent home?

So there are examples of that. And certainly in our current bed and breakfast ordinance, it has a maximum number of rooms and number of people per room. So I can't see why not.

the council has pretty broad authority on setting those types of requirements you can ban them if you want to and so anything that is short of a ban is generally within the authority of the of the council i think that answers the additional questions that i had thank you thank you thank you and i think most of the questions i had have been answered um

One that I wanted to check on with you, I know these are all snapshots in time, but do you find that there are more short-term rentals that are available downtown, like in multifamily housing versus outskirts of neighborhoods?

It popcorns around, and so sometimes if there's a major event happening in downtown, there will be a propensity to rent out a short-term rental so that there's access to Lesher Center or to an event. And other times, there are weddings or other things that are happening Elsewhere and so proximity to Heather farm or you know other amenities etc are also there so it depends and There's not a hard and fast rule about where Okay, I would just add for context and correct me if I'm wrong on my housing units here But roughly speaking we have about 34,000 housing units in Walnut Creek and we have somewhere between 100 to 200 units

short-term rentals that we believe are operating so on a percentage basis it's very small we don't see a large cluster of any in one particular area or another it's a fairly dynamic situation given that it's a very fluid platform and it allows people that flexibility to rent or not rent so it is kind of bouncing around i don't think we have a high concentration in any one particular area of the city okay thank you um i think that's my questions for now

Mayor, I wanted to just follow up on one issue. I did check the Airbnb website. They do have the technology to allow for direct remittance to cities. It does require that they be required through some mechanism, so we can check that further if the council would like to see what kind of mechanism is required. I am aware that many cities collect TOT from short-term rentals in the same way they collect TOT From hotels, that is the property owner, the business operator collects it and then remits it, but Airbnb at least does have that technology in their system.

Thank you. Great. All right. Well, Eric, probably don't go too far because we'll have some more questions afterwards. But for right now, we'll bring this to the public. And does any member of the public wish to provide public comment at this time? Please come forward or use the raise hand feature or press star 9 if you're calling if you'd like to provide remote public comment. If you are attending in person, please complete a speaker identification card. Line up behind the lectern at this time. And written comments submitted have been posted to the city's website for public review, are included in the meeting record, but will not be separately read into the record. Each speaker will have two minutes to make their remarks, and all remarks should be addressed to the city council. And at this time, we'll take public comment.

Good evening, everyone. Thank you. My name is Lisa Blanco, and I live in the woodlands. And... Oh boy, this is kind of, I could see the bit of the rat's nest this is because as a resident, I feel that residential zones should be for residents, midterm, long-term residents, and not rented out. On the other hand, they're happening anyway. And is the city benefiting from that in any way through TOT or what have you? And I think as a resident, I don't care for them. Call me Lisa Nimby Blanco if you want. And I don't think that they add to a neighborhood. They take away from them. But I do see the... see the point of coming up with maybe a better policy for these. And I think a couple things are that, neighbors, residents, actual residents should be involved for our input and then also that I know that the surrounding areas pretty much don't allow them and that at least one of them the owners have to conduct the STRs. So anyway, that's it. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

My name is Pamela Trail.

I live in the Woodlands also. Oh, sorry.

My name is Pamela Trail. I live in the Woodlands also. I agree with Lisa's point, the city is not benefiting financially. They seem reluctant to collect any fees for people who continuously violate in the face of the rules. And I don't think they belong in the residence. And for the last public meeting that took place for this issue, there was only three days notice given to the public. for their comments and that's not enough time for people to contribute their thoughts and I think the zoning should all and permits should be done by a site by site and in consideration It should be looked at if there's elementary schools nearby or daycares or places where young people gather. In our neighborhood, there's an elementary and a daycare two blocks away, and that was not mentioned in the last council meeting. There needs to be some kind of a background check for the safety and community of the public and who's responsible for this. background check and who do these checks include and the council decisions should be respectful of the people who elected them and permits should not be given to repeat offenders and action should be taken against their repeat offenders and my comment is specifically directed to you in the end of the last meeting regarding Hector Krause giving him a lifeline

maybe he could get a permit when he continues to violate even this week thank you miss trail next speaker please hi jan warren woodlands um hard for me to read my notes um i do appreciate this topic being brought up i think it was time pass time for us to look at what's happening in the world today, how things are being used that people don't use their housing or cars or anything else like they used to. So it would seem like if you had a more reasonable process, more people would comply. I think it should be set up so the remittance is included. I mean, anything we do, we go like, you rent a car, you know, you've got a whole line of things. I just got through setting things for a vacation. And they don't always tell you all of them, but you pay for them. So my thought also has to do with what happens in HOAs. A lot of people have HOAs. I don't know if that matters or not. And it seems to me that whether it's a neighborhood or a high-rise, we're building a lot more housing that's high-rise, so I don't think you should discriminate from one or the other. If they have something that they want to rent and they're following the rules, maybe they're young and need some extra cash to make their bills. Who knows?

but at any rate i do think we ought to continue to explore it and see how we can improve on it and thanks for looking at it thank you jan looks like we have no more in person public comments we have any comments on the line we have no one on zoom okay so we will close public comment bring it back to council for any further questions or comments and let me just ask erica it looks like um So you're looking for some specific policy direction requested Short-term rental should they be allowed at all and how regulated, and then if it should go to Planning Commission and community for discussions before coming back to council for a policy.

Correct. So the very first question is a yes or no one, and then if yes, then, and then if no, then it's still.

Right. Okay. So, yes.

There were two questions that were asked from the public. Could I get answers to those? And the first is, how was the last hearing noticed and the hearing that was in front of the Planning Commission in –

So the hearing was noticed in multiple ways. It was noticed in the newspaper. It was noticed through all the standard options and so forth. We had gotten notification, though, from neighbors that the notice that had been posted, and we have documentation of it being posted on the property, and then also on nearby lamps had been taken down. As soon as we received that notification, we reposted it.

did homeowners or property owners a certain distance from the property receive postcards or mailed notices so they followed all the standard notices and so yes so could you reiterate what those are or maybe the attorney can only because the public is wondering if they may not have been within the distance zone to receive a postcard Did you want to take that, Steve?

So essentially, you know, postcards were sent out. It was on the city's website. It was sent out in the, you know, all the notifications in terms of the newspaper and so on, so that all of our standard processes, you know, were put into place. And so in addition, they're posted on the residence, the site, and then they're also posted on lamp posts, street lights, et cetera, that were there. So we were very diligent in posting that with all of the required postings.

And how many days prior is our posting requirement?

Oh, that's like a pop quiz.

She's waving her fingers at you. So 10 days? Thank you. I can count that high. OK. My other question is, what are we doing with regard to the one that we disallowed? We upheld the Planning Commission decision. Are they still operating? And what is the enforcement mechanism that we have under the law?

So we were notified of a potential short-term use occurring most recently. I myself went out and posted a notice of violation at the site, and there's an active code enforcement case occurring.

So what under the law are we allowed to do to that? I mean, can we lock the door?

No, we would have to. So we would first do as Erica did. You would post it. and try to get voluntary compliance. If we don't get voluntary compliance to it, then we would have to get a court order to shut it down.

So that's going to be a multi-month process?

It can be faster on an expedited basis. When there's a violation of a land use regulation of this sort, when they're just operating without any permits, you can go in on short notice to try to get a court to issue at least an interim order stopping that type of activity, which we will do if necessary.

So it is an active case.

It is an active code enforcement case.

Thank you. So, well, as long as we're with you, Council Member Silva, any further comments or maybe just if we want to be able to go down.

Answer the questions. Do you have, are these the questions? Those are the questions right there. All right. I think we should allow short-term rentals. We have them in use in very good ways for people to be able to supplement their income, to be able to rent a small room. My husband and I were in Seattle last weekend. Hotels were unavailable due to a bridge being rebuilt and so in order to be within blocks of our Children we rented a short-term rental that was in the basement of a house. It was Lovely, it was not what someone would rent for a long-term basis because it had a studio style kitchen and the very tiny bathroom It was all very nice, but it was not in lieu of them renting it for permanent tenant I think the bed and breakfast ordinance has run its course. Bed and breakfast is a more commercial operation and I think we need to have a short-term rental ordinance so that we can make it clearer and easier to implement and I think we should use a user permit not a conditional use permit unless for some reason they're asking for things that we want to have more stringent permitting on and finally I'll mention that I think For a variety of reasons, these need to be owner occupied or host occupied because if you rent a room in a hotel, there is someone there managing it 24 by 7. So for the safety of the visitor and the safety of the neighborhood and the safety of the property, there's someone monitoring it. When we were in the short-term rental in Seattle last weekend, the family was living upstairs. I could hear them kind of walking around every once in a while. we weren't but It was good to know that because it was good to know that somebody was available to tell us If we there was a plumbing problem or something like that but I also think that without the arenda issue happened because the owner was not on property or anywhere near the property and So but how would that work if it were a multi-family housing?

I? If it were something in the Lyric or one of the places that it's a one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartment.

You want to know how the Ave was doing it? Because there was a new apartment building that wasn't filling up fast enough about five years ago, and we were finding rentals. But there's management in an apartment building, not in a condo building or a townhome building. So that's a different issue. But I'm just... I'm just...

So you're saying that would count then? If it were a condo in a multi-family housing, that the fact that there's on-premises management would count as owner-occupied for somebody who's looking at short-term rental?

If there's on-premises management there, if it's an apartment, if it's the Lyric, it's an apartment building. So the first one you mentioned is rental apartments. Okay.

I don't know about condos and townhomes because generally people don't own two in the same building although they have but we'll have to condition and I'm just kind of going through the yeah I wanted to ask a question about the host because we don't currently have that requirement right so what if it is a single-family home and the owner would not be on premises when it would not be hosted

So if they're seeking to rent out the entire home, then that could present complications. However, if they're renting out rooms or if there is an ADU on site and the owner is living on that and then they're renting out the home itself, that's another scenario.

Yeah, you're correct, Council Member Francois. owner requirement on-site it would effectively preclude entire house rental for the most part with a few exceptions that Erica noted

I think what we'd have to figure out is how many of their full house are being rented, because the Arenda, it was full house being rented, and it was a problem. The one in the Woodlands, the guy went out, he wanted to start a commercial business, and basically he was intending to rent multiple single-family homes around the area. This was not his, and he was going to turn them into a property management agency. do we want that to me is not what we should be allowing in single family neighborhoods that's not the intent would you have a proximity then if an owner lived within 500 feet of the pro or how to well we have we yes there's a proximity i mean but it was comforting for the neighbors for the visitors and for the owner to know that their property is being yeah the i wrote down risks out of control event No one for the city or the neighborhood to contact. Because if no one's nearby, who do you contact? And everybody needs to feel comfortable with this in their neighborhood.

What about the last couple of questions there? Maximum rental duration, operational requirements, operational requirements.

Well, hosted, non-hosted, local restrictions such as proximity, saturation, maximum rental duration, I think we're – I'm not into making it permissible to host events in single-family homes in residential neighborhoods. That's a commercial enterprise.

All right. Thank you, Councilmember Darling.

Okay. So it's interesting. after I got the list of who bans short-term rentals, I looked up and every one of them has short-term rentals listed on Airbnb. So they're in the same position that we're in, which is they say you can't do it, but people are doing it anyway. And given that slipperiness, I think it's better to go ahead and bring people into compliance so we know who they are, so we have control of the situation. So I would not favor banning it because we will be back here. right away I do think going for an operating permit makes a lot of sense something that is easier to administer and anything we could do to automate those is to the good the owner occupied I have two minds on this on the one hand that was the problem with Orinda but on the other hand the Joaquin Ranch Airbnb that was shut down by the Planning Commission a few years ago, the owner lived there. And they still managed to irritate the neighbors. So owner occupied, owner is only as good as the manager, the person, and how proactive they are. So I am interested in learning more about that. I don't have my heart set one way or the other. I can argue that one both ways.

Can I ask you a question? Yeah. But with no owner required, you definitely don't have on-site management.

I think it's something that we need to think about carefully because I think if we just say you have to be owner occupied, that would still have let the Joaquin Ranch one go forward, and that one ended up. really being problematic for the neighborhood I didn't I wasn't in the hearing because my house is within 500 feet of it you said yeah let me go over to cross the street for hours but it's not the panacea it's not the cure-all it's not perfect I think clearly no special events I think that especially in single-family neighborhoods but same is true of our multifamily housing you don't want to have and I know that you don't want to have the bridesmaids hootenanny in the apartment next door I would like to see standard safety requirements as far as parking occupancy things like that as part of the permit I do think How you keep the neighborhood informed is going to be an important part of this. I can see with an operating permit, that makes it more difficult. And so we'll have to think through that carefully. I can think of a couple different ways you could do it. One is frequently when we have daycares that are coming in, there is a requirement for them to provide contact info to neighbors so that if pickup and drop off gets to be a problem and people are parking in front of people's driveways, they know who to call. So we'll have to think through how the neighbors get recourse sort of calling PD on a Friday night. I'm not sure what the answer is there, but we do need to find a way so that our neighbors, it doesn't spin out of control before we find out there's a problem Special events, safety requirements. I think that's most of the questions for me.

Mayor Pro Tem.

I'm generally in agreement with Council Member Darling. I guess the talking of... about the owner occupied I'm worried about how that would be implemented from a practical matter and especially given the 111 or 179 where we don't currently have that requirement and so how would we go back and and we'd essentially say they can't be if they if it's a single family home then they can't do it No, the ones that don't have permits that we're trying to bring into compliance. So I think if we imposed right now at this point in time an owner-occupied requirement, I think it's a big administrative enforcement issue for us and for staff to try to bring them into compliance. So I'm sensitive to that. I think what I'd like to see, I'd be okay with an operator permit provided there were guardrails that said if it's being operated in a manner that's adverse to public health safety and welfare as Reasonably determined by city staff the operator permit goes away and that can be done immediately And it requires enforcement as the city attorney said I think if you're if you are or have been in violation of you can't reapply for a permit for 12 months. It's similar if you've been denied a permit. You have to wait at least a year to apply again. I'm okay with giving someone the discount for compliance, but if they don't comply within two months, they're denied and they can't apply for a year because I think the goal is to try to bring people into compliance and get this regulated and know I hadn't thought I had I mean you brought up the the neighborhood notice you kind of see that going both ways that it's I think it will be regulated by staff as an operator permit then there's really not an opportunity for a notice public hearing you could do it a different a couple of different ways and provide notice to the neighbors that an operator permit is going to be issued unless a request for a hearing before the zoning administrator is said. I don't think we want to make it necessarily appealable all the way up to the council, but maybe there would be an appeal There would be a hearing process. There could be before the zoning administrator. I saw your eyes get big. That's one way to do it. I mean, it could be an administrative use permit, too, which is, I think that's how those are run. It's staff level, but it could be appealed. Zoning administrator issues, and then it could be appealed to the planning commission. So, let's see. I like the direct remittance a lot. I think we should absolutely look, and I know there are several different platforms, but it sounds like one of the biggest ones has that, and I think we should go forward with that. Absolutely no special events. What else? I think I covered, I think I covered it all. So yes, sorry, I didn't go through your questions. Yes, short-term rentals should be allowed. What other aspects in terms of operational

I think maximum rental duration was the only other one that you didn't mention.

So currently we have no more than a week. I'm okay with that.

I actually missed that one when I was doing my comments. I would be in favor of up to 30 days. One of the bigger uses is people that are relocating to the area, and those would not tend to be problems, or traveling professionals, traveling nurses, traveling people and those. So up to 30 days could work for a situation like that.

Council Member Devaney?

And while I'm thinking about it, like the 30-day idea, too, I think about people going on vacation, too. Maybe they want to rent out their home. They're going for two or three weeks, and that gives them some flexibility. One of the things I think about is what I didn't like about the last round we had discussion on this was that we see this idea of residential homes being turned into commercial rentals, right? So this was someone who not only didn't they own the home, but they were renting it from someone else and then turning it into a commercial space. So one suggestion I would have, that we consider is you know should the person have to live in the house for at least six months to be able to rent it out so more than half the year that would be I think a pretty reasonable thing to do I think if we do that it will cut down on this residential being turned into commercial it will be more homeowners that are choosing to rent it out for periods of the year and I don't think that we need the collector contingency. I think all residents should have the opportunity to rent their house out on a short-term basis. I would recommend we only administer one short-term rental per resident, so we don't wind up in situations where people collect houses so they can rent them out. I don't think we need a conditional use permit. I think it should be a much easier, almost like a, what are we calling it? operator is that like a buy right type thing if they just they meet certain criteria yeah um currently we have five guests i mean i'm not i'm not so sure i mean we're a family we often travel and we rent out a home and we sometimes have six or seven people right we've got like us five and like maybe our parents or something we're trying to find a home um I don't think it's unreasonable to increase that maybe to eight. I don't think that's a party size. I still think that's family oriented. And then I think that when we issue this permit for the short-term rental, they should have to display that on the listing whenever they list it on one of these platforms. So it's easy for us to pick out who's out of compliance, right? There's a rental. It doesn't have a permit. You're out of compliance. then that would be a violation in and of itself. I think we should look at escalating penalties so that we're not dealing with folks going long periods of time without having consequences for being out of compliance. And I think that if someone is applied for the permit and is remitting their TOT, that the renewal process should be very sort of just you know, over-the-counter type thing or just online. Like, if they're in compliance and they're remitting their TOT, they should be able to renew.

Can I ask you a question just to clarify? If they are in compliance means that they have not violated the terms and conditions of their permit, right?

Right. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so I wouldn't restrict. I don't think we need to come up with like a density or location criteria. I don't think we're at that level. I do think if you live in the home, and you have an ADU that's eligible to be rented as a short-term rental, that we shouldn't put limits on that. I think if you live in the home and you have a space that you want to rent out, that should be allowed. I think that with these types of changes, we might see an overall decrease in short-term rentals if we have folks needing to live in them for six months, which would increase our housing stock. But I also think that if we make the process

easy to comply with it'd be increased compliance and increased uh tot for the city okay thank you um i mean obviously we short for rentals are something that's in existence it's uh i mean there the the cat is out of the bag on this and now we're trying to figure out ways to corral it and put some and and where to feed it and how to and uh and how to take it in but it's been part of the challenge that I have just emotionally on this is that here we are approving all of these units and there was just a course at the Planning Commission last week approving a eight-story development right in the heart of downtown and We're doing that, of course, to increase the housing stock. And I have a concern that, all right, are there going to be investors that are going to be taking up these to be able to rent them out as short-term rentals? And now we're just losing housing stock along the way that we're trying to do the best we can. to meet the numbers and to do what's right. So there are challenges there, but I do think short-term rental should be allowed. The question of a whole house versus in the multifamily units, I think it's just hard to say owner occupied. If we go somewhere and my wife and I bring our son and daughter and their significant others, that's six. And if we're going to rent a house that's two or three bedrooms, where is the owner going to stay? So we don't have a lot of mansions in Walnut Creek, and a lot of these are just three or four bedroom places. So I'm not sure owner occupied is really pragmatic. And certainly when we're talking about multifamily housing, while there is property management on site, I think it becomes more of a challenge than anything else in being able to try to meet that. I like, so yes, so I think we do need to develop a short-term rental agreement on this. I do think we need streamlined options for consideration. Absolutely not events. I mean, whatever planning commission decides what are events, I don't think we should be able to have those. Maximum rental duration, I think, 30 days makes sense. And I think that the other requirements that we've heard, I think, in general. The one thing I would say regarding ADUs, since Council Member Devaney brought this up, is that was specifically related to these housing that is using the streamlined state mandates to be able to build an ADU. I don't think they should then be able to turn that around as a short-term rental.

they're doing that to be able to take advantage so that we can provide more housing for people not more rentals for people so that's the one no understood and i agree and so uh to be clear i understand there's state law around that and i understand that it's there to maintain our housing stock for people taking advantage of the streamlined process so those should not be allowed to be rented out as short-term rentals but if you have an eligible edu that maybe was pre-existing or you didn't take advantage of those streamlining processes

I would agree. So we're on the same page there. I would agree with that. Well, we're a little all over the board on this, but is there enough direction to move forward on?

So I think there's a gestalt of things to create a conversation with the community and Planning Commission and then circle back around.

OK. Can I make one other?

Sure.

As it went down. So I will correct my word from owner occupied to hosted, because that was the word that was in front of us. And if somebody built an ADU and moved into the ADU on their property, which I know someone who did that, then they can rent out the house, whether it's for long term or short term. I mean, there's a way to do it.

There's a way to do it. Yes, there is a way to do it. Okay, so great. Well, thank you very much, Erica. That was a much longer discussion than I thought it was going to be. How are people doing here?

What's that? Can we take a break?

Yes, all right. Let's take a 10-minute break until 8 o'clock. And we're back. Next on the agenda is a consideration item titled Update on 2025 and 2026 City Council Priorities. And I invite Assistant to the City Manager, Joe Carrozza, forward to provide the presentation.

All right. Thank you so much. Good evening, council members. My name is Joe Carrozza, assistant to the city manager. And thank you for your time this evening to present on, yes, the update on the five city council priorities for calendar years 2025 and 2026, which were identified in February of 2025. So tonight's presentation is going to include two things. First, that update that we're here for on the significant work accomplished since the last update to Council, which was in May of this year. And then I'm going to go ahead and close the presentation tonight with something a little bit more forward looking, which is for the calendar years 2027 and 2028. upcoming city council priorities. I'm going to go ahead and provide a brief overview of in progress and plan community outreach to inform those future council priorities. So as done in the past, you'll be hearing directly tonight from the leads for each of these five city council priorities. And these staff leads are those that are ensuring that these priorities become implemented and turned into real projects and accomplishments. And so you'll be hearing from them, which is economic development and downtown vitality, which will be Mike Neiman. Candice Rankin-Mumby will talk about environmental sustainability and climate action. General plan update, you'll hear from Erica Vandenbrand, Rich Payne, to cover park and recreation facilities. And then finally, Chief Hibbs will cover public safety and social wellness. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and pass it to our first presenter, Mike Neiman, to talk about economic development and downtown vitality.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, Mike Neiman, your Economic Development Manager. And I will give you an update for the economic development priority updates. As you know, we have four major council priorities. The first one is continue building a resilient, inclusive, and diverse economy. So we have made a number of efforts on those fronts. First and foremost, we are developing a healthcare marketing campaign, and we are getting ready for a healthcare conference season. We have two in November that we're planning to roll the campaign out for. We are a sponsor, we'll have a booth there, we will be marketing to recipients there, and we also have a digital presence following up on those efforts. As you know, healthcare is one of the critical industries that we are targeting. We also continue collaborating with educational institutions and other tech partners on various initiatives. Tech is another area of focus to build a diverse economy here in Walnut Creek. And we are sponsoring Small Business Development Corporation Startup World Cup event next Thursday, actually. It will be at the East Bay Cal State campus in Hayward. The second objective is to continue creating a business-friendly environment. A number of efforts on that front include assisting the Shadelands Property Business Improvement District with developing and getting an entitlement for their master sign program. Signage is one of the critical priorities there for creating a more distinct area within the Shadelands. I will continue process improvements, training, and implementation. And that's the lead effort. And as a matter of fact, at the next council hearing on September 15, you will get a much more robust update on what various progresses and updates that staff has made in that regard to streamline the permitting process and make the customer experience more friendly. And we also continue an ongoing outreach to local businesses, property owners and other stakeholders. This, of course, includes business retention efforts, communications, information sharing, things along that nature. The third objective is enhancing the downtown experience and tourism attraction. The focus on downtown over the last year has been on the outdoor dining program, which has really activated the streets with pods. We have implemented council's direction for implementation of these pods by deploying the $100,000 grant. And thank you to this council for allocating the funding exactly a year ago. We're happy to report that over the course of a year, all of the 100,000 has been deployed and 10 new pods have been delivered. And we estimate that that generated about four to one private sector investment, but most of these pods being north of $40,000 each in construction. So the 10,000 per restaurant have been leveraged really well and has transformed the landscape on many blocks across downtown to the tune where we have actually even won an economic development award for the implementation of this program. We've also implemented an entertainment zone in collaboration with Walnut Creek downtown and happy to report that they have successfully hosted two events under the management plan that they had conceived under this ordinance umbrella. And both events have been very successful and reported positive feedback from a lot of operators and restaurants in downtown. and we've attracted about 11 000 visitors through those two events alone so there's more in the works for next season and the last objective is promotion of the city brand as a premier destination and high quality of life community as we are so i'm excited to share that we have just last week launched a new data dashboard And it can be found on Walnut Creek Connected website. And you could see here it's an interactive data dashboard that captures 20 major data points. And each one of them you can click on and play around with the data going from historic to current. And we're currently in the process of sharing this with the development community, with prospective businesses, and also we are seeking input on it. We plan to continuously update the data, but also if there may be other KPIs that are helpful, it's something that we will continuously update as we get along and make sure that it captures the most important and robust data as a living document. We've also continued coordinating quarterly stakeholder meetings, and those are with our partners, the Chamber, WCD, Lesher, We've also continued to support the general plan update through primarily through a data support and working with economic sub consultant. And lastly, we've completed the city's economic development action plan, and that was the document that we brought before you in June. which is a two year document and documents the action steps for the city's economic development efforts in the next two years and we're well underway in implementing the goals of that document. And with that, I will pause for questions, thank you. Do we have any questions for Mike?

It was nice and thorough and glad to hear that our grant program was a success too. Council Member Silva, did you have?

I just wanted to say thank you for the report, but it was concise. It was focused on the things that have been recent and key achievements, so great job.

Thank you, Mike. I got to play with the dashboard, and I found out things when I was looking. I came across it the other day. I didn't, we always talk about how many healthcare jobs, and I'm like, whoa, that is quite a few, so good job.

What is the percentage of the healthcare? It used to be 14% of the jobs, but-

I don't have it off the top of my head. You have to go look at the dashboard. But I would encourage you to look on the dashboard. It will be there. All right.

Thanks, Mike.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Candace Rankin-Mumby, Sustainability Manager, and I'll be providing the update on the next goal, Environmental Sustainability and Climate Action, which focuses on remaining a leader in reducing our pollution related to the climate and other sustainability goals focused through implementation of our Sustainability Action Plan. So first, we'll discuss some of the work that we've done on buildings since we last talked in May, and a lot of this has focused on energy efficiency within buildings. So facing outward into the community, we coordinated with MCE to send a targeted email campaign to high users of energy between 4 to 9 p.m., which is when energy is the most expensive and also the dirtiest. And so MCE was able to use the data that they have to target 430 households with a specialized email that you see here on the right, really trying to make sure that we're putting the message where it will be most used. And then for our own facilities, we completed the lighting upgrades that had come to council earlier this year at the Lesher Center for the Arts, the Clay Arts Guild, and the Walnut Creek Library. And we used on-bill financing for this program, which is offered through PG&E and allows us to offset the upfront cost and spread it out over time through the energy savings that will be part of the project. Next, we have a lot of transportation updates from this summer as well. So as you know, at our last meeting, we went deep on electric vehicles, focusing on our fleet and implementation of our public-facing chargers. And so staff are working on implementing the direction that we received at that meeting and are working on preparing a procurement for a third-party vendor for our public-facing chargers. So there'll be more updates on that in the coming months. And then wanted to note that From the goal in the sustainability action plan, we're making really great progress on expanding our bike network. So we've expanded from our baseline 15% already, and 3.2%, or about a half a mile of that, has happened in the last year. And we're really targeting that on expanding the bike network, increasing access, and filling in gaps. And you'll get more updates on some of those specific projects later tonight. But it is really important to sustainability, so I wanted to mention it here as well. And then on more outreach and programmatic transportation-related goals, we've been doing a combination of both in-person and online outreach this summer. So we hosted Bike to Wear Every Day very shortly after your last update, which was very successful this year. We had our regular Energizer station that we've done in the morning for several years, and then this year, We added on a bike rodeo in the afternoon, focused on the younger kids, and that went really well. And additionally, during the summer, we were invited to some staff from sustainability, and Mayor Wilk joined us to the Sustainability and Science Summer Camp, which was a new summer camp that was offered this year. It was mostly Recycle Smart programming, and then on Friday, we joined to focus with the kids on transportation-related initiatives, and they were very enthusiastic about the topic. We are also working... to support the Walk and Roll program, which is offered throughout the county at elementary schools, and for those participating schools, they pick a specific day a week and really encourage the students to come on foot, on a bike, or in a carpool, and students get incentives to participate over time. This program's been really well received, and it's gonna be receiving an award at the upcoming Sustainability Gala, and so we've been helping to promote it to more elementary schools in Walnut Creek, and we're seeing more and more participate each year. And then over the summer, we supported the Youth Ride Free program from County Connection, which had, I believe it was in their first month, about 13,000 youth take advantage of that program. And it was a big increase over last year, about 15%. So that was a very successful program this summer. And currently, we have their fall version of encouraging youth pass to class, which offers free bus paths for the first two months of the year to get students in the habit of riding the bus to school and so both of those work on reducing congestion and pollution as well as creating a habit of taking transit from an early age in the area of waste we've given a few updates on a program through recycle smart called rethink disposable which works with local restaurants to who use single use for dine-in to see if they can switch that to reusables, which can save them money, obviously reduce waste, and then also provide an elevated dining experience. And we had low participation early, so we've really been targeting and focusing on that. And over the year, we've essentially filled all the available spots in Walnut Creek for this funding cycle. So we're excited to get those reusables out there so that we can promote these great changes that the restaurants have been making, but they're about seven restaurants are actively going through that process right now. We also hosted our second annual repair cafe, partnering with Sustainable Rossmoor and Recycle Smart, but it was hosted in Civic Park and open to anyone who has a common household item that they think they can fix but isn't operating at the time. They can bring it in and a volunteer who has some sort of repair skills sits down with them and they work together on seeing if they can make the item usable. And so we had really great turnout again this year with 129 items that were brought in, and about 70% of them were either fixed or the person walked away kind of knowing what they would need to do to fix it. It's a really great environment in there. I encourage anyone to attend. We're hoping to host one each year. People, even if their item doesn't get fixed, they feel really good about trying to do it, and it helps add to our culture of reuse and repair in the city. And my last topic is just an update on our... gas-powered leaf blower ban, which has been in effect since April. And so sustainability staff and code enforcement staff are working together to respond to complaints of potential violation that we receive. And we're really focusing on an education-first approach. We're averaging about 150 reports a month. And we have noticed if we get repeat notices, we have steps that we follow up on that. About 85% of the properties, we've only received one complaint about them. So we're hoping that's a sign that the outreach that we're doing is either informing people of a policy they didn't know about or helping them see the benefits of it and bringing them into compliance. With that, I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you, Candace. I actually have a quick question on that last one. So what's the outreach then? If we hear a complaint, what's the next step?

So we send a letter to the property letting them know that there may have been a potential violation, sharing the resources that we have on our website, and we include a flyer that's targeted to landscapers along with that notice so they can pass that information along if that's the service that they receive.

Thank you.

On the reusable foodware, we've had some conversations at Recycle Smart about this. What do you actually mean by reusable foodware? Because quite frankly, if I go into a restaurant and I get it, plated dinner with their plates, that's reusable because it's going through a dishwasher, but I don't think you mean, what do you mean by that?

Yeah, so this program is pretty flexible and part of what they provide is technical assistance, kind of working with the restaurant and understanding their operation. So the photo on the slide is a little small. This isn't an example in Walnut Creek, but it is an example of the kind of the wide breadth this kind of program could provide. The photo on the left would be the before, right? You come in and sit down and you get your food in a clamshell, even if you're eating it in. So they can provide dishes for that. But they'll also assist restaurants, even if it's one of the participating businesses is looking at just reusable straws. They mainly do beverages. So even if they aren't able to transition everything, if they could do just the straws as an example, it still reduces a lot of waste being generated and can save them. They don't have to go all the way, I guess.

The conversation is centered around the dishwashing requirements if they're actually eating in and the food establishments, utensils and food ware, and even that it might not even be available on the site.

Yes. So the technical assistance providers can work with them to see if the certain – there are some that sometimes it works without a dishwasher. There are ways that they can do it. Sometimes it doesn't. doesn't work for every site, but this program actually can fund dishwashers, which a lot of them don't, so that is a really great way about how it's structured.

Yes. Yeah, and thank you for the presentation and a lot of exciting projects you're working on. Congratulations on the work with Walk and Roll. I was wondering with this reusable food containers, did someone reach out to John Muir Hospital cafeteria Because they recently, they're a very high volume, and they recently just made this change. And I imagine that the volume of disposables that they go through would probably equal five or six restaurants in and of itself. But they've transitioned to all reusable foodwares.

Yeah, that's great to hear. I don't think, you know, outside of restaurant, and there's some other schools' programs that Recycle Smart works on. I'm not aware of them reaching out to health care. Yeah. Did it just feel good?

Yeah, it's nice to see.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thanks, Candice. Thank you.

And I'll pass it off to Erica Vandenbrand to give the general plan update.

Hello, Mayor, Council, Erica Vandenbrand, Community Development Director. So just a little bit more than a month ago, we were before you talking about the general plan update and the fact that it's a multi-year community-based effort. It's more of an Ironman than it is a 5K. So with that, I will share with you one slide and what's happened since we were, last in front of council on the 21st of July. So if you recall, there had been a significant amount of stakeholder outreach that occurred in the community, as well as having a joint commission kickoff study session and then coming here before council on the 21st of July. So since that time, we've been out in the community talking with folks about what their hopes, aspirations, and dreams are for the general plan update. We've been at the Locust Street Festival, Once Upon a Street at Broadway Plaza. And then later on this month, we will be at both farmers markets, so that the one in Shadelands on the 19th of this month, as well as the downtown farmers market. on the 13th to share with the community that this effort is underway. And then the, probably for you, the least interesting paper-based type of thing is that we have existing condition reports to document all the different existing conditions throughout the community. And so those have been drafted, they've been reviewed by staff, and we're going back and forth with the consultant to make sure that those existing conditions represent the community as we know it to be today. And those will be shared out a little bit later in the year with both the commissions and then you with council. The intention is that by the end of the year that we've returned and that we're able to share that information with you and to have a further discussion. Most imminently, however, there on Thursday, September 24th, there is a workshop upcoming at the Civic Park Community Center. And so Mayor Pro Tem Francois has agreed to help welcome the community to that on that day. And so with that, it's not nearly as exciting as the last time we were here last month or the month before that. But just if you have any questions, I'm here to answer them.

Thank you, and I'm staffing the farmer's market booth on the 13th, so I'll see you or staff or both. What is an example of an existing condition, and when do you think council will see that report, and will it be before Mayor Pro Tem and I depart?

Good question. So the intention is an existing conditions report. So there are a number of them. Some of them deal with healthy communities. Some of them deal with the state of arts and recreation, our open spaces. Still others document our demographics, our economic development, what's going on, and then our land uses and our transportation, certainly. That is the array of existing conditions, and it's to make sure that we all have the same facts that we're operating from in the community and that all those are documented. Now, in terms of your next question, I was sharing with Council Member Francois earlier, it's like one of these period television shows where you have the staff scurrying around for the big event, and so we're trying desperately to get all this done. We need to be able to work to both with our consultants to get things done as quickly as possible and then also find time on the council agenda. So I will defer that question ultimately to our city manager.

Thank you.

Okay, I think that's it. Thanks for the update, Erica.

Thank you very much and I will introduce Rich Payne, our Public Works Director.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the council. I'm Rich Payne, the Public Works Director for the City of Walnut Creek. Tonight I'll be updating you on the Park and Recreation's facility. This priority includes many of the measure-o projects, specifically a large one, which is the Aquatics and Community Center. So I'll give you an update on that, along with some other funded projects, such as the transportation projects that we have going in the city. So just first off, I just want to recap some of the projects that we've completed using our measure of funding. And the first one here is the ball field lighting project at Tice Valley Park. I'm sure Mike Vickers is looking at this picture and asking, why couldn't you use a better picture? The turf's in pretty bad shape. But I wanted to illustrate this. The lighting has enabled the city to expand the usage at this park. and you can see that it's being well used, so I think that's a success. Even though it's a little more work on our maintenance staff, it definitely is a success. The synthetic turf project at Heather Farm Park is another one. Just anecdotally, my wife and I were here on Friday, drove past the field and looked at the, just looked at what was happening out there, and I don't think there was a square foot of that field that wasn't being used. There were several teams using the field for practice. It was really... YOU KNOW, JUST ILLUSTRATES THE SUCCESS THAT HAS GONE INTO THIS PROJECT. AND THEN I JUST WANT TO POINT OUT THE COURT RESURFACING AT BOTH OUR BASKETBALL COURT AT ARBOLADO AND THEN THE RUDGEAR PARK. SO BOTH REALLY IN TALKING TO MIKE, IT REALLY HAS ACTIVATED THOSE SPACES. BEFORE, IF YOU REMEMBER, THE BASKETBALL COURT AT ARBOLADO WAS IN PRETTY BAD SHAPE AND REALLY UNDERUTILIZED. We've resurfaced it and proved that amenity has really drawn people there for pickup games and other types of activities. Just to update you on the existing park at Civic, we're in the process of, this project has taken a little bit longer. then anticipated one of the delays for this park was just the getting a hold of all the playground equipment. So there's been delays in getting that. But now that we have it, we're working with the contractor to schedule the work and it's slated to happen in the fall. And as it states up there, it'll be about six weeks for that project to happen. Next on the list is sort of our premier project for Measure O. I offered these pictures just so you can kind of take a look at just the development. It's really kind of cool to see just everything coming together. You can imagine how it sets next to the Concrete pond and just the experience that's going to create for the community center in terms of the pool you can see that they've excavated the pool the next steps there will be to add some additional utilities associated with lighting and other things and at rebar it and then the gunite which is concrete that they spray on will go on. I'm told this month, I was talking to the contractor and so later this month we'll see concrete going there. I know the push is really to get all this done before the Supra El Nino comes. So I know that the contractor's really concerned about that. And then of course the next step will be vertical construction. We'll start seeing things come together, and I'll tell you that we're really excited to see that happen, but just to update you, overall, the project is going well. We've ran into a few things associated with the site development, but I think so far, given the magnitude of this project, it's going quite well, so. Next on the list is all the pedestrian bike-friendly development that's going out there. The first one here is the trail crossing enhancements If you drive around town, you can see all these improvements that are being made at all of our trail crossings. And I definitely see, well, it has definitely created a safer environment for people crossing at these intersections. Before, I think they were probably under-marked. Now, you'll see the signs, lines, and legends and advance warnings when you come up on these trails, and it really has improved. SAFETY FOR THE PEDESTRIAN AND BICYCLISTS THAT USE THIS INFRASTRUCTURE. THE BROADWAY NEWELL SAFE HOUSE TO SCHOOL PROJECT IS IN DESIGN, AND THAT IMPROVEMENT IS SLATED TO HAPPEN, I WANT TO SAY, LET ME SEE HERE. Yeah, the construction is slated to happen in late 27, 28. And that really is gonna improve the safety for the school and the other users that use that area to come downtown, including the motorists that use that area. So design is underway for the North Broadway road diet. This is that section between Civic and YVR. Really, it's a wide, really expansive area when you're crossing. You feel kind of alone out there. It takes a while to get across that area. So the improvements and design are underway for that project, and that's also a project that will probably happen in 2028-ish. But there's still a lot of design work that needs to happen with that project. uh... and the same thing goes with the park side cycle track project these projects are similar in that they'll both uh... receive some type of cycle track and essentially cycle track is where they have a divider or something between bicyclists and uh... the motorists and sometimes they'll use a buffer like parking, so they'll push the parking away from the curb out into the street, and this allows some security between the motorists and the people driving. Next one on the list here for bike-friendly and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure is the Oakland Boulevard improvements. This is a section of boulevard from Mount Diablo Oakland Boulevard from Mount Diablo to Trinity. It's almost a connector from all that condensed housing there to the BART station. This one's a tricky one. We've received funding for it, but it's a tricky one just because the elevations are a little bit steep from just the way it was built. It's gonna require a lot of a lot of engineering to put sidewalks and other bicycle infrastructure on this section of street. The next one and I think we're all aware of this project is on treat there. Right now we're working with the county just to make sure that we're coordinating our projects together. This project is slated to happen in late so construction probably in the end of the summer, early fall of 27. And that'll be interesting how that turns out, but I know that there's a lot of angst out there for that project. And the last one here is the Walker Avenue at San Miguel sidewalk. This project is almost done if you've driven through that area. It's essentially a, you know, return for ADA, and given the number of condominiums and other apartments in that area, there is a lot of pedestrian traffic that comes through there, and so this will really make that corner, that section of San Miguel and Walker a really safer pedestrian traffic. And last but not least is the sort of phase three, if you will, of the you know, the aquatics project. As you recall, this project, or essentially, the plan is to remove this from the site, and so this, we recently took to PROS, in fact, last night, we took this to PROS last night, and offered options one and two. The PROS commission recommended option two, and sort of with a, caveat that we plan to use the outreach information collected by the general plan as a foundation to guide the process with the focus on creating the Heather Farm Master Plan update with a focus on really this Clark, you know, kind of reuse of this space here. So if you look at that blue line last time I was up here, there was a question in terms of what that footprint looks like. This is sort of following the fence line So it's a pretty large space that we'll be repurposing. So more to come on that as we work through this. The next update I'll probably have more information for you. And that's all I have. Is there any questions?

Toes in the Water 2027.

Toes in the water, 2027. I have the sign on my desk.

December 31st, 2027. It's midnight. I know what 27 is. Could you go back one slide, please? So I appreciate that the Prose Commission weighed in on this.

Yes.

And of course they took the most, but I think what they did is they took the broadest option and narrowed it to focus on this space here, not the whole park. Did I interpret what you said correctly?

So kind of. They did see the importance of doing an update to the existing Heather Farm Master Plan, which was done in 2003. And so I think the plan would be to use that, the existing master plan, and update it. There's a few things that are updated. Obviously, we have an all abilities playground there along with the dog park that aren't reflected in there. The fields and all the other things, there's not much to update in terms of the Heather Farm update that was done in 2003, but they felt a need for that.

And you know which part of the park is the third rail that you? Yeah.

And then the folks would be here.

And I would just add, my understanding is that they also asked for some additional information. We may be going back in early October to discuss some of the options with them. And then we'll bring it back to council for further discussion and ultimately a decision about how to proceed.

That's correct. What would your estimation be, like if we're looking at option, if the pros commission, if we look at option one, essentially the timeframe for making decisions versus option two timeframe. Cause it seems like an option two, that could be a couple of years of discussions.

Right. And that was the pros commission's concern. And so the idea was not to wait until the general plan, um, was complete. We were just interested in using, um, some of the data. used in the outreach for the general plan and aligning that data with an additional master plan of this area. So it was kind of a combination and that would expedite any kind of delays in the process.

I'll summarize a little differently in that They liked the idea of option two but wanted it done as quickly as option one. So there might be an option three coming back.

I was waiting for it. We gave them option one, we gave them option two, and they took option three. And that's exactly what they did.

Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. One thing, and I know this isn't necessarily this forum, but as we go through these projects, I know that like just this last weekend, we're out at a soccer game with our kids. We're on these new fields out in Dublin. And everybody's like, you know, 30, 40 yards from the field trying to find a little tree to sit under because there's no shade. And it occurred to me that as we build these projects, like I was looking at the one on Civic Park, and I'm thinking, Is there time to put up some shade sails for the kids over the playgrounds? I know that maybe the ship sailed on the funding, but... Yeah, I think that's something we can look at when that time comes. Yeah, because I know what a premium that is, especially for the kids.

Yeah, Civic Park has a lot of tree shade around it. So there is a lot of shade there. But I see what you mean, especially with these all abilities fields. I mean, not the all abilities, but the synthetic turf fields. Those can get really warm. Thanks.

You spurred a thought there, that parking field that we're not seemingly touching as part of this phase three, is there an opportunity to do kind of solar car shade coverings to generate, you know, we can cross-pollinate in terms of some of our priorities here and make it a little less of a heat island.

Yeah, I think those are all things that we can look at when that time comes.

Thanks, Rich.

You're welcome. And I'll turn the time over to Chief Hibbs.

Thank you, Rich. Good evening, mayor and city council members. Ryan Hibbs, chief of police, here to give an update on the council priority of public safety and social wellness. As a reminder, the goals here are to ensure a high level of public safety by building on efforts to support an effective and innovative police department, a proactive police response to crime trends, joint agency responses to homelessness and mental health challenges, crime prevention partnerships and partnerships in neighborhoods or programs in neighborhoods. The downtown and other commercial areas, improvements to traffic, transit, pedestrian and bike safety, and community and regional disaster preparation and resiliency to meet the increasing challenges of wildfires, earthquakes, droughts, floods, and other hazards. So the first strategic objective is to maintain an effective and innovative police department. And I've spoken a lot about the need to do a technology audit to ensure that we're not using overlapping technologies. And so the idea here is to get not only more fiscally lean, but also to become more efficient. I am pleased to report we have submitted into an RFP process for a new CAD RMS. We did field test a couple different vendors for that. We have not yet received any proposals yet, so I don't know if the ones that we've evaluated will be a part of this RFP process, but we're actively underway here. As far as patrol technology, we are evaluating the addition of in-car cameras to the patrol fleet. Those are commonly referred to as dash cameras, but they're actually not mounted to the dash anymore. They're mounted behind the, or in front, I guess, in front of and between the windshield, the rearview mirror. So that system, in addition to a camera system that covers the prisoner bay, is under evaluation. I'm not sure if we're going to end up purchasing those, but it is something we're actively evaluating. Our social media engagement has jumped since the last quarter. The Instagram followers have increased by 7,000 and then with the Facebook is always probably more utilized broadly and we're now up to 35,000 followers for that part of our social media. Citywide camera systems, we're continuing to evaluate and manage camera technology there and then With respect to our license plate reader cameras, I did make a comment, I think at the last meeting, that we are evaluating and actually building a public-facing portal to outline not just the best practices with respect to data sharing from LPR cameras, but also who we share it with, and we plan on updating that frequently. With respect to continuing proactive response to crime trends and with the community involvement, we are continuing to host Coffee with the Cop events. The last one was on June 16th, and National Night Out was well attended. We'll get to that in just a little bit. Officers, in addition to going to National Night Out, did also attend a bunch of neighborhood block parties, which is the more traditional way that National Night Out is run, but we also found that we got a lot of great engagement and participation by hosting it at Broadway Plaza. So that will continue. about 85 or 90 percent done with one-on-one meetings with all of our staff and these are these are with everyone these are with our sworn police officers and with our professional staff to try not only to improve communication in the department communication but also the goal is to develop action items with the themes that I collate from all of those one-on-ones And with respect to crime intelligence and analysis, we've been with Peregrine now for a couple of years, and the things that this program can do, we're finding more and more every day. In fact, I'm currently working on a new dashboard, informational dashboard for the council as well as a post, not a post, but sort of a change in how that information is delivered. So instead of Excel spreadsheets and numbers and analysis, you'll receive a little bit more of a thorough visual breakdown of what you need to know. And I would be remiss if I didn't plug the next Coffee with a Cop, which is on September 8th at Nordstrom at 9.30 a.m. Where in Nordstrom? The coffee shop at Nordstrom.

The one downstairs?

The one downstairs. Thought we'd make it easy for people, yeah. National Night Out, this was, we had a good attendance as well, but 400 people were in attendance for this National Night Out. We continue to see good crowds every year. Again, it's very beneficial to host it in such a welcoming venue such as Broadway Plaza. Strategic objective number three, coordinate joint agency response to homelessness and mental health challenges. HOP continues to collaborate with the city and with the county in different resources to address people experiencing homelessness. I am pleased to report that there aren't any established encampments in city limits as I think I did the last quarter as well. With strategic objective number four, which is to develop crime prevention partnership and programs, we continued Business Watch. This was the brainchild of our crime prevention specialist, Kira Rahman. This initially started off as a crime-free business model, which is the more common way to build something like Business Watch, but Kira took that in. and ran with the concept. So we've hosted a few meetings to this point, four events so far this year. They are increasingly getting to be better attended, and the idea is to have businesses communicating with each other so that if you see something, say something, but also to open up lines of communication to the police department. With that, our detective bureau presented on fraud, robbery, and business-related crime at Business Watch Lunch and Learn on the 18th of August. And then the crime prevention specialist completed three environmental design evaluations of local businesses. And what that is, that's a service that we offer where the crime prevention specialist will go and make environmental recommendations to the business to increase security and lower the chances that they could become the victim of a crime. And the neighborhood watch program, we've re-stood that up, but it's starting to grow a little bit. But again, that's the revamp from our crime prevention specialist. With strategic objective number five to improve traffic, transit, pedestrian, and bicycle safety, I am pleased to report that overall traffic collisions have decreased 11% compared to this point last year. DUIs, we're seeing a lot more DUI arrests, and that's probably due to our officers' comfort level based on some of the training that they've received. Typically, when an officer is, they go through the police academy, they do receive some level of training as to alcohol and drug detection from drivers. Um, until you go through a more specialized class, sometimes those things can, uh, can slip by. So we did send a number of officers to that training several years ago or a few years ago now, and now it's starting to take hold with the, I mean, we can't really use COVID as an excuse anymore, but, um, we did hire a number of officers through COVID and, um, getting them used to going out and making traffic stops and educating the public again was, uh, it was a bit trying. So, We're there now. We're making traffic stops. We're out educating the public. But one of the products of that is an increase in DUI arrests over the nighttime and weekend hours. Since September of last year, we're at 118 arrests. But I will note that in 2025, year-to-date 2025, so January 1st to September 1st, we had 49 arrests. DUI arrests. And since then, or since January of this year, year to date, we have 89. So that's quite a significant increase and one that is a little surprising, kind of given the ride share that are out there and the opportunities for folks to not drive impaired. But now that we're out there stopping them, they're being held accountable if they're driving impaired. and i did miss one thing uh for pedestrian safety month we are partnering with ross moore on a presentation plan for october those are always well attended uh for strategic strategic objective number five which is to improve traffic transit pedestrian base bicycle safety we continue to work with public works quarterly to discuss not just engineering projects but also community feedback and evaluate roadway conditions and to review crash details after serious collisions So one thing that actually came up in our chief's advisory board meeting was a fairly minor detail about a local parking lot coming out onto a public roadway that Captain Slater has since started to work with traffic engineering to see if we can come up with a solution for. So we'll take it from anywhere we can get it. Any suggestions or feedback, we're certainly open to, and we want to improve our roadway safety as much as possible. On to e-bikes. We receive pretty regularly complaints about reckless e-bike riders, and I know Council Member Devaney, this is a passion project of yours, and so I am pleased to report that we participated in a joint e-bike education on August 18th, so nine agencies in total participated. We were one of them, 45 officers, and that's, I don't think they're all pictured there, but You see the numbers there, and this is not just specific to Walnut Creek. This is a growing issue everywhere, and obviously with respect to e-bikes and e-motorcycles, we want to ensure that people are safe. We want to ensure that they're licensed, and we want to ensure that the public around them is safe. So 194 contacts total made, 56 tickets were issued, 137 warnings or education contacts were made. One was arrested for drug possession, which is always surprising to me on an e-bike, and then we towed one for, I believe, being unlicensed, with the next operation planned for September 17th. With respect to strategic objective number six, which is community and regional disaster preparation, we were provided with updated training on when to use the Contra Costa County community warning system. This was at one of our command staff meetings a representative from CWS came and Made sure a that we were all signed up for the alerts and we were But but be also assured us that the system is working properly. There are times that sometimes we don't feel like we're getting all of the alerts There they assure us that we are and so we are now well informed. I Now I'll open it up to questions if any of you may have some.

Is Officer Young feeling the pressure of people that are going to be on his tails for the award next year?

I can't speak for him, but he should be, which is a good problem for us and the community, frankly.

I was just curious, on the CWS, is that different from Nixle? Because I think I get lots of Nixle alerts.

Yes. So CWS is countywide. It's the county emergency system as opposed to Everbridge, which is one that we have within the city as well.

So we make the call when it goes out on Nixle. Correct. We make the call on CWS. Correct. So we may never hear from them.

We may not, but if we make the request from them, they will make sure that it gets to the right people.

Okay. What's the, I mean, what is the difference? A refinery blows up?

Coverage.

Yeah. Okay.

Coverage. Between that and Everbridge coverage.

Okay. Thank you.

Right.

I think we get one. Can I ask one? What is this? We frequently hear comments that, why aren't we just banning e-bikes outright like Danville? And I go, I don't know. What's really going on at this regional level? Because you have to work regionally because people are crossing borders faster than they used to even.

Well, and, you know, without giving away too many trade secrets, sometimes a planned e-bike enforcement operation is the way to go. Regionally, this works better because, just to your point, Council Member Silva, it is, people do kind of cross over borders. California, the jurisdiction, isn't an issue. It's the personnel and making sure that we have the personnel to catch people on the other end if they take off. One thing we're not going to do is if it's a danger to public safety, if we were to continue a pursuit of an e-bike rider or an e-motorcycle rider, we do need to weigh that out. If it's just the violation of the e-bike or the driving pattern of the e-bike rider as opposed to maybe a violent crime that they're fleeing from, we have to weigh that out when we're deciding whether to continue a pursuit.

Thank you. I think...

Yeah, I see e-bikes doing wheelies all the way down the street in front of my house now.

Yeah, and that's certainly unsafe. And if we were to catch that, then we would initiate a traffic stop on them and write a citation.

Two weeks ago after this meeting, I pulled out of the parking lot. It was going south on South Broadway, or North Broadway. And there were two coming at me from this side and one coming at me from this. They were clearly in the street, but I couldn't even figure out what it was. It was just a light. Maybe you saw the same ones because you were probably ahead of me.

I do see legislation coming down the pipeline eventually to regulate these a little bit more closely, but I won't comment on any other city ordinance that outright bans them, but I don't know if they're having any success with that, to be frank.

Since we're on the topic, just today I spoke with our emergency medical care committee, which is a committee at the county level and about e-bikes and e-bike safety and so I hope that in the near future there'll be a stronger county-wide coordination and we'll certainly bring that back as soon as I hear more. Excellent. Thank you.

Thank you, Chief Hibbs.

My pleasure. I will now turn it back over to Joe for closing. Thank you very much.

All right. Well, thank you to all of our leads for presenting. So tonight we discussed priorities from 2025 and 2026 calendar years. Believe it or not, 2027 is going to get here very quickly. So city council will soon be identifying a new set of priorities for those two calendar years. So I want to talk a little bit about that. So at the May 19th city council meeting, City Council did approve staff to go forward to conduct outreach with the community to help inform development of the next two calendar year priority cycle. So since then, staff has developed a two-phased approach to engaging our community with an overall theme of your voice, our future. And phase one was to begin with a broad, open-ended community question or open-ended listening to hear what issues matter to the community. over the next two years. And so that phase, that first phase did start this week. We did launch a in-house designed open-ended survey that was launched and shared in the nutshell, which was delivered to folks this week and is on our city website. And it asks the question, what would you like the city to prioritize in 2027 and 2028? So just an open field, share with us what you're thinking. And that survey will be open to the public until September 15th at 5 p.m. And I'm just gonna go ahead and plug, you can find it at walnutcreekca.gov forward slash council dash priorities, and we will share a social media post on that as well. So the responses we received to that open-ended survey is going to help inform the phase two, which is a more defined community survey, where we're going to ask the public to to rank or prioritize the themes of most value to them. Those themes will be, of course, informed by this open community listening session. So we're currently considering whether that phase two survey will be done in-house, more informally, or if we're gonna go ahead and pursue the support of a consultant Especially if we find from our phase one that there's a lot of complexity to the issues we receive. And then we'll go ahead and provide to city council the results of that survey to help inform as the next priorities are developed. And that is all I have for tonight. Any questions about the survey or engagement?

Could you send us the link to that survey so that we can find it and have it handy on our device?

Absolutely. Thank you. Will that be promoted on social media? Yes. We will do that this week.

Great. All right.

Thank you. Thanks, Joe. And thanks, team.

Nice job.

All right. Which brings us to our final item, the public hearing. So this is the consideration of considering a waiver of the reading and introduction of an ordinance amending the City of Walnut Creek Council member compensation to $1,600 per month. And I invite Human Resources Director Trish Raver forward to provide the presentation.

Good evening, Mayor. Welcome, Council Members. Trish Raver, Human Resources Director. I'm here this evening to provide a brief presentation on council compensation. The agenda this evening includes the history of council compensation, applicable legislation inclusive of Government Code Section 36516 and Senate Bill 329, as well as compensation options for council consideration. Government Code Section 36516 provides for general law cities such as the City of Walnut Creek to establish and adjust compensation by ordinance. There are two primary ways in which council compensation can be adjusted according to that government code section, either based on the city's population size, according to a schedule, or by adjusting based on a modest inflation calculator. This table provides the history of council compensation over the past 50 years, during which time only five adjustments have taken place. The current compensation of $650 per month was adopted almost 25 years ago in 2002. I also want to note that council members are eligible for participation in the city's retirement and health plans and may be reimbursed for technology and travel expenses. In January of 2024, legislation surrounding compensation, council compensation, was adopted to acknowledge that compensation had not kept pace with inflation. As a result, the population-based salary rates were increased and an additional method was added to adjust compensation based on inflation. Based on the population-based salary rates, the City of Walnut Creek, at a population of 70,127, would fall within the population tier between 50 and 75,000 at $1,600 per month. This chart provides the compensation paid to council members in all general law cities in Contra Costa County, except the three charter cities of El Cerrito, Richmond, and San Ramon, who are not subject to these laws. The chart provides the population of the city, the population-based monthly salary according to SB 329 and the current compensation received as of December 2026. As you can see, the majority of cities set council compensation at the population-based salary rate established by SB 329. However, the cities of Lafayette, Orinda, and Moraga do not provide compensation to their council members. SB 329 updated the maximum population-based salary amounts to address in part the current economic environment, the time commitment required by elected officials, and potential barriers to public service. Council members contribute countless hours of time and devote a significant amount of effort and energy serving as their role and council member to a community. No increase has taken place in nearly 25 years and compensation has not kept up with the evolution of the role. Per Government Code Section 36516, any change in compensation would be prospective and does not apply to a council member's current term of office. However, when one or more council members begins a new term of office and becomes eligible for a salary, all members of the council will receive the same adjusted salary. General law cities who choose not to adopt an ordinance relative to council compensation may submit the question to electors at a municipal election. In summary, the compensation now provided to California cities under SB 329 at the 50 to 75,000 population level is $1,600 per month. An ordinance has been drafted for introduction that increases the council compensation from $650 to $1,600 per month resulting in an increase of $950 per month. If this resolution is adopted, the salary rate for all council members would become effective December 1 with the new council's term of office in December of 2026. The Council options are as follows. Introduce the draft ordinance tonight to increase the salary from $650 to $1,600 per month, effective December 1, 2026. Modify the draft ordinance and adjust the salary to a different amount under $1,600 a month for introduction at a future meeting. Modify the draft ordinance to effective date further in the future for introduction at a future meeting. Not introduce the draft ordinance and retain the existing rate of $650 per month. Submit to the electors at a municipal election the question of whether council should receive a salary for services and that amount or provide alternative direction to staff. Finally, the staff recommendation is to move to introduce and waive a reading of an ordinance amending the compensation for the City of Walnut Creek Council members from $650 to $1,600 per month to be effective on December 1, 2026. I don't have a question slide. But I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thanks, Trish. I'll start with a question. I do have a question of What has the cost of living escalated from, or what has it been from the last time there was an increase in 2002? Wait, was that it? 2002? Till now. What has that cost of living increase been?

Well, the cost of living increase changes annually. So the inflation- Ballpark over the last 24 years. I would say what- say what this legislation allows for is 5 percent per year so let's just say for the last 22 years that'd be 120 percent so if it was five percent per year 120 percent yeah which would equate to it would be it would take it from uh to 780 dollars plus the 650 dollars So it would be $1,430 versus the $1,650. So it's less then.

That's if it's not compounded. Correct. That's how the legislation would calculate. But if you look at it from an annual basis, which is how CPI is actually calculated because it compounds year to year, I believe it puts it close to $2,100. Correct.

So had it increased every year, just like salaries increases and contracts and all that, it would be about $2,100 a month right now. And everybody's been at the same $650 a month for the last 24 years.

Correct. And that's what we do with every other salary within the city is look at it from a compounded perspective. Okay.

Thank you. Other questions? Other questions? Okay. public comment if I guess there's nobody here in the chamber is anybody online okay all right well then let's end public comment and if we have any if we have any comments here and and actually I'll make I'll make the first comments anybody can add on if you would like obviously we have a couple of council members here that will not be here taking advantage of this afterwards so I think actually, and what I've found in the last 10 years of me being on city council, people are shocked. at how little we actually make on council, that there is just this small stipend for council. And that it is really a salary. I don't think it's meant to be a salary. But I did do a calculation of general costs when people have asked me, what does a council member make? Or what kind of time do you put into it? And of course, this varies among different council members. We've worked with council members that have put the minimum effort in. And we've worked with council members that have put the maximum amount of effort in. So I'll just base it upon myself, and then people can determine about that. So for council meeting weeks, like this week or a couple of weeks that we have during a month, I find that with the meetings that I have, the preparation, the committee assignments, and multiple other things that are going on, it works out to about 25 to 30 hours a week for me. Non-council meeting weeks tend to be more like 15 to 20 hours a week. Again, weeks vary, but that's what it is about. So calculating that over a month is about 80 to 100 hours that are given. divide that into $650, comes out to about $6.50 to $8 an hour for the time that I'm spending on council. Again, that may vary. Now, we can probably add another 5 to 10 hours a week for mayors who have additional obligations every week. The first time I was mayor, I was shocked at how many things I was invited to that I never even heard about because it's the mayor that are invited to these things. and that was during covet this year it's been far more so that just adds to it so that's just on what we are doing here in our normal responsibilities but we also get invited to 10 to 12 gala and major fundraisers for non-profit causes every single year each one has a cost of a ticket between 200 to 500 per ticket We pay for those out of our own pocket. If we get two tickets to include a spouse, that's $4,000 to $5,000 for just the tickets. And there are, as we know, usually additional fundraising requests during those events, which can be $250 to $500. I mean, obviously, it can be a lot more as well. But that means that the galas alone cost about $10,000 per year for council members who often do feel an obligation to go to these worthwhile nonprofit causes. But the council are always invited, and we always make sure that we have presence at many of them. And so at $650 a month or $7,800 a year, that doesn't even cover the fundraisers, and then add in the 80 plus hours a month. So when I look at all of that, and I look at who we want to be able to serve on council, we want a diversity of of everybody, young, old, different people in different demographic or socioeconomic arenas. People want to serve on city council for a variety of reasons, but none of them are financial. I can promise you none of them are financial. Nobody's getting rich being on city council. But council members shouldn't have to lose money or be in the red every single month for serving either. It'll never be a full-paying job being on the council, but there can be somewhat of an increase in stipend, I feel, which may allow for younger or more diversity on the council, where this can be a little bit more help of a supplemental income to allow for them to participate in public service. So for all those reasons, I do feel that it makes sense for the next council and moving forward to increase the stipend for council members.

Is that your motion?

And I will make, put me on the spot, huh? First of all, does anybody else have any further comment they would like to make on that? I'll ask that.

Let me go. I've been on Planning Commission for 10 years and my kids were right at the cusp of needing somebody there at night and I decided I would just go to Planning Commission and I'd just have the phone right there and if it started going off, I would have to leave. Not having enough money to cover daycare is a big barrier for parents with school-age kids. It keeps us older than, you know, and I want to make sure that we find a way to encourage younger people to begin participating and be interested in running in council. And so I'm supportive of this. I personally have a deal with my husband that I keep track of what I spend, and I don't always tell him everything, that I will not go into debt to be on city council. But don't tell him. I probably do. No, he's in bed. He told me. I already told him. He's in bed.

Yeah, I agree with everything that has been said in terms of the hours commitments, the nonprofits. I think it's been 25 years since it's been updated. And I think the chart basically showed among comparable cities, we are way down. We're not keeping pace with inflation. And so when the time is appropriate, I'll either make the motion or second it.

And actually, Trish, could you go back to that comparative slide?

If I can. So while she's doing that, I could make a couple of comments. I don't even want to do the math as to what the differential is after 20 years on the council. And there was an actual period of about eight years in which I was making less than $650 during the recession, and we didn't raise it back. I think the other reason why this is important is it's not just because of families and children at night. There are jobs when if you leave the job, if you're a teacher, you have to pay for your substitute. And we have daytime requirements that we have to, we have a burden that if we work, we have to take time off. And that is also not accounted for here. And when I was considering running for city council in 2006, I asked four council members What's the time commitment? And the answer, and it was separate, but each of them said, 20 hours a week, unless the year you're mayor, it's 40 hours a week. You're underestimating what it takes to be mayor.

Yeah, you're probably right, but, yeah.

And so, you know, that all adds up, and it is interesting to open the publicly available pay scale for the entire city and notice that we're on the last page. Because it's the lowest paid. We're large. We are.

Right. And I think, again, if you look at this comparatively to other cities, the ones that we are in the same population, I think people feel that Walnut Creek in general, they live in a terrific city. We do the best that we can. We really put the city first and foremost on there. And I know that the headline states what the percentage increase is, but I think that you have to look at, I mean, percentages could not tell a true story. And especially I think in this instance it wouldn't either. It's a, it's an increase that would take us still below where it would be if it was, uh, if it had been indexed properly from the last time it was increased. So, um, okay.

Oh, my opportunity to say I agree with everything that's been said as the newest member of the council. Um, That was actually a bit of a surprise to me, was all of the money that I was spending going to events. You left out meeting people for lunch. That too. lot of coffee yeah there are a lot of commitments outside of um what is probably perceived we're doing that are that that cost money and um so i i don't think like you said anybody with this increase is going to go into this job for the money but i do think that the meaning behind the legislation is good um not not just to lower the barrier to access but to um you know try to at least somewhat keep up with the cost of living for as small as it is. So I also agree with all that's been said and want to be on the record for that.

And if you could put up that slide again, Trish.

We're testing it.

Not the one with the options.

I feel like this is the one you are looking for.

Yeah. I will move to introduce and waive the reading of the ordinance amending the compensation for City of Walnut Creek council members from $650 per month to $1,600 per month to be effective on December 1st, 2026.

And I will second that as the other member who will have no benefit. Including the errata.

Including the errata.

Yes, including the errata. With the errata.

And, Council, just because the increase does not take effect until the council members are seated, we've made the ordinance, the increase effective December 2nd, not December 1st, because you're seated on the evening of the 1st. One day.

Okay. All right. Susie, could you call the roll, please?

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

I think that we've done something for the future of Walnut Creek and to help people to run where they might not have been able to before.

I totally agree. My recommendation would be that we stay on top of it maybe every four years in terms of the inflation, or you do, going forward.

Thank you. And with that, I believe we are adjourned.