City Council - workshop

Good afternoon, I'm Kevin Wilk, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek. Welcome to the Tuesday, September 15th, 2026 special meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council. Under California law, public comment at special meetings are limited to subjects on the agenda only. Therefore, public comments will be received during the item. The study session item is Update on Development Services, Team Process, Improvement Projects, and Outcomes. And I invite Administrative Analyst Kathy Arana and Senior Planner Ben Schuster forward to provide the presentation.

Hello. Good afternoon, Mayor Wilk and members of the council. Thank you all for being here today. We appreciate the opportunity to share an update on our process improvement efforts. I'm Kathy Arana and I'm joined by my colleague Ben Schuster and we're here on behalf of the entire development services team. and we will be guiding you, sorry, today through the key insights and outcomes of this improvement work. Over the past several months, the team has been focused on identifying key opportunities, driving targeted improvements, and building a more efficient process. Today, we're excited to highlight the progress we've made, as well as the progress we're starting to see already. Sorry, as well as the impact we're starting to see already. Throughout the presentation, we'll be joined by select members from the Development Services team who will be sharing more about some key insights that are underway. So I'll be giving a brief introduction of our presenters today. We have Cassava Washington from the Economic Development Division. And from our Engineering Division, we have Ryan Cook. From our building division, we have Jessica Azevedo and Samantha Sampson. And from our planning division, we have Allison Rustick, Jessica Gonzalez, and Gerardo Victoria. With that, we're excited to share with you today a story about our Lean Green development team. To start, let's take a moment to recognize and thank everyone who participated in our process improvement efforts. This work is not easy, improvement takes time, and a willingness to really look at how we operate. Everyone on the team has committed a great deal of time to these efforts, and we know this work is not yet finished. What is especially meaningful about this effort is that it brought together staff from three different city departments, the city manager's office, the public works department, and community development department, as well as multiple divisions, building, economic development, engineering, planning, and traffic engineering. While each group has its primary areas of responsibility, we were able to come together as one development services team, also known as a DST, to improve our permitting process. The core improvement team consists of 33 city staff, including our three executive team sponsors, along with our consultants, Partners in Public Innovation, also known as PPI, and a number of customers who opted to participate in the process. In addition to this core group, many other members of the DST were also involved with the process improvement efforts. Many of them are here in the audience today. And so what will we discover today? As we move through today's presentation, we want you to come away with a clear understanding of why we needed to change, what we learned, and where we're going next. We'll start with what prompted us to take a closer look at the way we do things. From there, we'll share what we heard directly from our customers because their experiences helped shape where we focused our efforts. You'll then see how we built a new culture around lean and turn customer feedback into action with the process improvement work. So by the end of today, we hope you'll not only understand what changed, but also understand why it changed, how we got there, and the difference it's making for our customers already. And now we're going to hear from Ben about why change is needed.

Thanks, Kathy. Let's start to unpack why change is needed. So we as a city, we process many different types and sizes of development applications every year. And historically, we've faced some challenges in consistently processing those applications due to unclear procedures, poor communication, limited visibility into the approval process, as well as some other challenges. And these issues have been exacerbated due to a reliance on informal training, a lack of undocumented processes, and extensive staff turnover since the COVID-19 pandemic. And because our goal as a development services team is to deliver consistent and exceptional customer service throughout the entire permitting process, we needed to reevaluate our business practices and redesign them to meet our current customer needs. So I think it's important to note that the work we're talking about today is a long time in the making. And the city started permit process improvement efforts about 10 years ago with the blueprint for success version one and version two. And those efforts really laid the foundation for today's lean work. And while those initiatives lost momentum because of the COVID-19 pandemic, that same pandemic also created an opportunity for us to rapidly develop digital service offerings in response to some immediate customer needs. And then coming out of the pandemic in 2023, the city picked back up its process improvement initiatives with the desire to be nimble and responsive in a post-COVID world. And so that effort culminated in our permit counter refresh in the fall of 2025, excuse me, as well as the start of the lean work that we're sharing today. So to better understand what those customer needs are in this post-COVID world, we needed to talk to them. And so we did that through what we called a voice of the customer session that was facilitated by our consultants, PPI. And you can see on your screen here some of the feedback that we got from our customers from that session. And it was a mix of positive and not so positive. But all of it I think was really powerful for us as a development services team to hear. And I think you can kind of see on your screen the key theme that we heard coming out of that session was a lot of fear and frustration around our current process. And so I think the work that we're undertaking right now is really about how can we move away from a process that our customers fear into one that's going to allow us as a city to meet its potential as the epicenter of the East Bay. So how did we actually bring about change? I think it's really important to note that there's something fundamentally different about this improvement work. And that's been the primary emphasis on creating long-term culture change rather than just generating a one-time list of improvement efforts. And so to bring about this culture change, we did a couple of things. So first, we went through a series of workshops and trainings to learn a common language around lean business concepts. We're going to talk about that in a few minutes. And we learned kind of lean principles such as root cause analysis or process mapping. We then started gathering as an entire DST every Tuesday morning, and we still do this, for 15 minutes. And we just do a check-in on all active development projects citywide. And this has helped create kind of a baseline of understanding and situational awareness for the whole team when it comes to developments. And then those lean concepts that we learned, we kind of started practicing them right away through a series of quick wins. And these are kind of small, bite-sized improvement efforts. And then every week we celebrate those. And I think all of that work has led us, most importantly, to thinking about ourselves as not just the planning division or the public works department, but instead we are thinking about ourselves as a development services team. And that's really awesome to be part of that. Okay, so we've said lean now a couple times. I'd like to take an opportunity to briefly explain what lean is. So in a nutshell, lean is just a way of thinking and it values continuous process improvement that seeks to identify the root cause of an issue and then address that. So since today we're talking about the city's permitting process, we might think of that in the following way. So first defining the problem, the city's permitting process today does not align with current customer needs or expectations. We then quantify the problem, so that might be things like how long is it taking for customers to get their permits? Or how often is a customer confused about what the next step in the process is? We then try and understand what is the root cause of their frustration? Is it lack of insight into the process? Is it lack of handoff between steps in the process? Is it something else? And then finally, we address whatever those frustrations are by providing clarity, transparency, and expediency throughout the entire process. And then we evaluate the impact of any changes we make, and then we continuously assess as a regular course of business. So now Kathy is going to come back up and introduce some of the changes that we're making.

Thank you, Ben, for providing that background and giving us an overview of lean. So what are we changing? Our improvement work focused on three main areas, increasing clarity, enhancing communication, and improving efficiency throughout the permitting process. So work centered around these three thematic areas with the goal of achieving the following outcomes, clarifying permit requirements, assisting our customers early and often, building consistency across the DST, making relevant information easy to find, and documenting our processes. So we're going to hear from various representatives from the process improvement team to talk about some of the key improvements that are underway within each of these three areas. And so for clarity, what are we changing to improve and enhance clarity? Allison will come up and share with us some of the customer resources the customer education team is developing.

Thank you, Kathy. I'm Allison Rustick, associate planner. Early on, we considered the customer's experience, and we realized one way that we could help them to better understand our complex processes would be to document them. We made a goal to create clear, informative, and visual tools that would help customers feel more informed and better prepared to make their projects a reality. One educational tool that we developed is the customer journey map, which visualizes the entire DST process. We know that no two projects are exactly the same, but the customer journey map is intended to serve as a high level guide throughout the life of a typical project from start to finish. Although 12 steps may seem like a lot, this graphic illustrates the complexity of the development process to help customers see the bigger picture of how to get from an initial concept through permitting, construction, inspections and project completion. It can be referenced at any stage of the process to help customers understand where they are, what milestones lie ahead and how to keep their project moving forward. The four tracks on the lower half of the sheet, as you can see, indicate how different parts of the process can overlap with each other and which divisions take the lead at different times. To build upon the customer journey map, we also have four additional reference sheets that are customized to each division. The handouts are designed intentionally to coordinate with the customer journey map. Each one is structured with the same components but contains information unique to each division's process. Here's just an example of the planning track information sheet. At the top of the worksheet, you can see there's a timeline that highlights the steps within that division. Below is a summary of the typical steps to obtaining an approval. And then there are quick facts to the left which indicate purpose, lead department, outcomes, et cetera. We also have unique tips that make the process flow smoothly for the customer and we have potential next steps as well as contact information and resources at the bottom. Another way we're seeking to improve clarity is through redesigning the comment letter. Planning, engineering, and building permits all include an application review cycle during which the applicant will receive written feedback on their proposed project from a variety of DST partners and external agencies. Our new template attempts to improve the reader's experience by making information more easily accessible. Here you can see an example of a current building comment letter. In the customer experience interviews, as well as in our day-to-day experiences as staff, customers consistently cite that comment letters are a pain point in the development process. Feedback is highlighted that comment letters can be difficult to navigate, next steps for applicants are unclear, and the reviewer's comments can even be redundant or conflict with each other. To address these concerns, we're building a template that incorporates a clean, modern design that clarifies the staff contact information and which comments need actions to move forward. It prioritizes the customer's overall experience of reading the letter. This slide shows an example of a redesigned planning application status letter. It summarizes the project or application that's been submitted as well as the status of incomplete or complete and the comments that have been provided by staff. Attached to the cover letter are the review comments. This pilot design will organize comments by area of interest listed on the left part of the slide rather than the traditional format of listing them by division. A benefit to this organization is that comments from different divisions on a similar topic may be clustered together. Additionally, each comment is displayed in a card or a block to distinguish them from each other. A closer look at the design of the comment block shows the intentionality. Each one has color coded tags along the top. They indicate the comment ID number, the division, the round of review, and the action status. A comment topic heading identifies the main idea of the comment. And below that, the comment itself, there's a description of why the comment is important and the suggested advice for how to move forward. There is also space to link reference materials as well as a direct contact person for that, a direct contact to the person that provided that comment. The goal of this design is to make it easy to locate a comment, reduce questions, and speed up the response time on the applicant side to ultimately make the process review smoother and more efficient. Next, Ryan will present another initiative addressing clarity.

Good evening, council. Ryan Cook, senior civil engineer. So for this one, we're gonna discuss a little bit in terms of how we're looking to clarify communication associated with one example being our building plan review turnaround times. This is, on your screen, an example of our existing policy bulletin that was created in 2009 that outlines what the turnaround time is for if you submit for a building permit. This, obviously, it's a lot of text through here, which makes it difficult to follow, and a large table with a whole bunch of numbers, which really outlines, has a lot of information about different departments and how long they're gonna take to review. We've highlighted just the blue column there, which is really the main information that an applicant is seeking, which is, what's that maximum amount of time that the city's gonna review? But without highlighting that and everything, it's very difficult to follow. So what we're looking to do is, this is an updated brochure that we'll have out for that, which really improves the design and clarity for the expectations. We have one for both residential and commercial. The first column on the left is for the first submittal when you submit and what that expected turnaround time is. We've simplified it into weeks just to give an easier concept and also and then any subsequent reviews will be on the column on the right. And so this is something that we're looking to implement across multiple types of bulletins that we have and information that we proceed following a similar type of bulletin, yeah. So next up is Cassava to talk about external agencies

Thank you, Ryan. I'm Cassava Washington, Economic Development Specialist. So one of the challenges we identified with our development projects is that external agencies often control pieces of the permitting process, whether that's fire, electric, sewer, any of our utility agencies, regulatory agencies. So for us, this started as a quick win to create an internal comprehensive database that had all of our external agency contacts so staff knew who to call when they needed answers. And as we worked through this, we realized if it was difficult for staff, it may also be challenging for the customer. So we created the external agency map. And this pairs beautifully with our development services customer journey map and just enhancing clarity through the permitting process. The external agency map clearly identifies the external agency to contact, the role they play through the permitting process, as well as where customers can go to find additional information. So this simple tool clarified the process for the customer and also makes it easier for staff to navigate through the process. So with that, we're going to highlight a few projects that are underway to enhance communication. Next up is Jessica and Jess.

Hi, good afternoon. I'm Jessica Azevedo, Permit Center Supervisor for CDD.

And I'm Jessica Gonzalez, Senior Planner. And we will be presenting new services to expand engagement opportunities to better meet customer needs. And so in an effort to improve our customer communication, our team has created the framework for updated enhanced services which we are calling the development consultation services. The new services will help us to provide opportunities for our customers to engage with us throughout all stages of their project. And so how did we develop these services? We met with developers throughout the city of Walnut Creek and we asked them what challenges they experience, what they need from us, and what would make the development process more streamlined and predictable for them. And so what we heard is that every project is different and unique. Early project review such as our existing preliminary review team application or PRT provides helpful feedback and guidance. and that customers appreciate being able to easily meet with city staff at all stages of their project to assist with the permitting process. And so with that feedback in mind, we created the development consultation services to provide early project review, clearer guidance, and flexible access to city expertise. And so here's an example of our current preliminary review team application or PRT, which we are preserving as a service, but we're expanding to include an optional customer meeting. And so we recognize that the PRT is not a one size fits all. So we've also increased our options by adding two additional services. And so now I'll hand it off to Jess and she'll get into those. Thank you.

Thank you, Jessica. Here is an overview of our development consultation services. We have option A, concept consultation, option B, preliminary review, and option C, ongoing consultation sessions. By offering these three consultation levels, we can better support projects based on their individual needs while balancing customer service with appropriate cost recovery. Let's dive into the details. Option A, our concept consultation, is a 30-minute no-cost meeting recommended for customers exploring an idea. Staff from multiple city departments meet with the customer to verbally go over zoning requirements, potential permits, and next steps. Option B, preliminary review. This is similar to our existing PRT process recommended for customers with conceptual plans seeking details seeking detailed written feedback. Multiple city departments meet to review the proposal and provide written comments. We've added an option to go over the comments with the customers. This service is a one-time flat fee. And option C, ongoing consultation session, provides flexible meetings at the customer's request to address project needs. recommended for customers needing continued support and coordination with city staff throughout unique situations or challenges during permit review. This service will be deposit based and billed hourly. Here's a sneak peek at our new draft booking page for service option A, concept consultation. A customer would go onto the website, add a few details, select an available concept consultation date, and they would meet with city staff from planning, engineering, and building department. It would be that simple. Our team is excited and proud to bring these customer-focused services to the city of Walnut Creek in the new year. We didn't just start with a program. We started with a conversation. We listened, we learned, and we tailored. And now we're ready to deliver. That's our approach to development consultation services and ultimately to better customer service. Next, we'll hear from Samantha Sampson to talk about additional efforts we're undertaking to enhance communication.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Samantha Sampson, permit technician one. Another effort to enhance communication is to assess public facing materials on our city website. So far, we have identified and removed over 60 documents that were no longer needed and over 100 documents to be updated. Documents were removed if the information was no longer relevant or if the information was already available elsewhere on our website. Updated forms will be rewritten with a customer-focused approach, similar to some of the educational material we just saw. In addition, we are working to restructure the design, layout, and content of the DST website. As an example, this is our existing permits webpage, which highlights some common issues found throughout our website. Pages have a mix of information, they don't guide the customers to helpful content, and are not service oriented. To overcome these challenges, we're working on a new structure for our DST web page content. Some key changes include a new DST hub page to highlight the most requested services and most applied for permits shown on the left. And on the right is an example of an individual service page which provides clear guidance that leads customers through that particular project or service journey. Another exciting effort that's underway are changes to our permit application portal, Acela. Here are some snippets from our current permit application portal. It suffers from an outdated design, is difficult to navigate, and does not provide clear information on the exact permit type a customer may need. We are addressing these challenges in two phases. First, we are redesigning the look and the feel of the portal to optimize the customer experience shown on the left. And second, we are configuring a permit wizard which guides customers through the application process by asking a series of questions intended to lead the customers to the correct application and start it for them, shown on the right. And now we will hear from Gerardo to talk about some efforts to improve efficiency.

Hi, I'm Gerardo Victoria, associate planner, community development. So what are we doing to improve efficiency? One major effort we'd like to highlight is documenting standard operating procedures. By mapping our processes, we were able to identify areas where SOPs were missing or needed to be updated. Each team prioritized the process and updated an SOP that created a consistent path for both city staff and customers. So far, we've completed the following SOPs you see on the screen there. As an example, planning design review for planners to process design review applications. PLANNER REVIEW OF BUILDING PERMITS ARE FOR PLANNERS TO REVIEW BUILDING PERMIT APPLICATIONS. COMMERCIAL EXPRESS APPLICATIONS ARE FOR PLAN CHECK ENGINEERS TO EXPEDITE QUALIFYING COMMERCIAL BUILDING PERMITS. ENGINEERING REVIEW OF BUILDING PERMITS ARE FOR ENGINEERS TO REVIEW BUILDING PERMIT APPLICATIONS. THE GOAL IS TO ENSURE THAT EVERYONE IS FOLLOWING THE SAME PROCESS WITH A CLEAR AND CONSISTENT STEPS FROM START TO FINISH. Finally, efforts are underway to track and report on various metrics that relate to our permitting process to enhance efficiency. Here's an example of a dashboard that tracks metrics for building permits. We are currently working on identifying metrics to capture and build dashboards for planning and engineering permits. This allows us to track our ongoing successes and identify new areas of improvement. And now back to Ben.

All right, thank you, Gerardo. So that's a lot, as you can probably tell. I was wondering why everyone's looking so tired the last couple weeks. But what we covered today is really just a part of everything that's underway. As you can see on your screen, we have over 50 major initiatives that are currently underway to improve various parts of our process. And those quick wins I mentioned earlier As a team, we've completed over 60 of those to date. And while those are small by nature, they've collectively had a large positive outcome on our process. So we've covered the work. But what does this all mean for our customer? So it means a couple things. And we're going to share a couple highlights here. So first, if we look at some building permit data. On your screen, this is for commercial building permit data. And we looked at 2024 to 2025. That's in the orange. And the green is 2026 to date. And on the left-hand side is average customer response time during the permit review phase. And you can see that even though there's still a lot of work that is still ongoing, that we've already seen a pretty dramatic decrease in customer response time. That's about two weeks. And then on the right-hand side, that's city processing times, a more modest decrease so far, but we do anticipate that as we roll out all of the permanent improvement efforts that we would see a continued decrease in processing times. And so those decreases in processing times are kind of complemented by what we're hearing anecdotally. So on your screen here, is a snippet from a survey that we send out to every single customer that comes to our permit counter. And so for 2026, you can see that 90% of survey respondents strongly agreed with the sentiment that they were satisfied with the outcome of their visit to the counter. And so now Kathy is going to come up and share some more positive feedback we've been hearing and then bring us home.

Thank you. So if we recall the feedback we received at the beginning of this work, customers feared the process, noting that it was holding the city back from reaching its full potential. And now we've started to hear the following. From Signature Development, overall, we've been very pleased with our experience working with Walnut Creek to date. And from Rolla Gaben, partnerships like this are what make Walnut Creek such a special place. We truly value the relationship. Your commitment to honoring our timeline has been instrumental in ensuring that we are on track for our groundbreaking from Lindsay Wildlife Experience. And from Jeff Dudum, the collaborative approach I am now seeing across the city makes me even more optimistic about Walnut Creek's future. So customers are now expressing excitement and optimism about the process. And in your pockets, you'll find complete letters from our customers. So as we reflect on our journey today, what have we learned? We learned that change was needed due to shifts in customers' needs. We heard our customers were frustrated and afraid of the process. We embraced a new culture that leans into change and collaboration. We made improvements to enhance clarity, communication, and efficiency. Our customers are now experiencing a better and more efficient process. And our customers are pleased and excited about their future here in Walnut Creek. So what's next? All of this improvement work will continue as we aim to roll out our revamped permit process early in the new year. The changes we're undertaking are reflective of the cultural shift that has spread across development services. And as a team, we're dedicated to finding creative solutions, celebrating change, and embracing our customers' needs, which allows us to build better together. And with that, we're available for any questions.

MR. Great. Thank you. Comprehensive presentation and lots of detail. So let's – so we'll open it up to questions. Who would like to start here? Great. Thanks, Mayor Portem.

Thanks very much for the presentation and for all YOUR COLLECTIVE HARD WORK OVER MANY MONTHS. THIS IS REALLY EXCITING TO SEE KIND OF THE FRUITS OF THIS LABOR. I KIND OF HAVE A SCATTERSHOT OF QUESTIONS YOUR PRESENTATION KIND OF EVOKED AND BASED ON MAYBE SOME RECENT PAST HISTORY WITH CLIENTS IN OTHER JURISDICTIONS From my own personal experience, where in the process can a homeowner find out, do I need a permit for this? Is that easy for the average homeowner to find on our website, or are we taking steps to make it easy for them?

Thank you for that question. Currently, it is available on our website, and also the customers are able to call our front counter or come in. We are making improvements to our city website to make that easier to find. and just like an easier flow to navigate their way around our city website.

I think that would be helpful. I'll save that for comments, I guess. I'll stick with questions now. On the comment letter process, was there any discussion or consideration given or was it identified as an issue? Some of these questions or comments are not necessarily objective in nature or could lead to issues down the road and discussions before an occupancy permit. I'll give you an example from a recent project, which the comment was essentially repair damage caused to the roads by the project. You know, so no one really had done any PCI evaluations of the roads before construction and after construction. So are we trying to avoid kind of that situation, or how would you kind of rectify avoiding comments like that?

That's a great question. I think, you know, there are some comments by their nature that are very hard to be 100% objective. And I think that's a good example of one. I think really the intent and the focus on the comment letter was to provide more clarity early on as to what the expectations are, to provide more of a communication pipeline to whoever's making that comment so that discussion can be had. Because I do think it varies on a project by project basis, to your point. And so it was more around that than trying to achieve full, you know, objective comments for everything, because I just don't think that's possible, unfortunately, right, in the permitting process. It's complicated.

That makes sense, and I think that's honest, and I think it can be... I don't know to what extent it's been a pinch point in the city, but I think it has been. It can be a pinch point, obviously, in getting projects over the finish line to occupancy. Another one would be the utility contact. I think Ryan had a comment maybe on that. Yeah.

I can give a little bit more input as it relates to the example that you provided in terms of some of those more generic type, not specific comments. Throughout the example that you saw was for our planning application status. Those are definitely going to be much more objective in nature. Those more subjective and or other ones are oftentimes more conditions of approval that could put in there. contractor or developer shall repair any damaged roadway that's caused or something like that and then when they get into permitting it's usually we make sure that there's specific notes and stuff and we'll be very clear in terms of what that looks like on plan sheets and then we usually also have various like general information guidance stuff that talks about some of those more general ones and then they get addressed as we go into construction pre-construction meetings and stuff and what those expectations are and how they get addressed so that way it's more clear to the both the developer and contractor as they're they're building it so what what that expectation is before final that's helpful so kind of two different parts in the process and you try to provide as much clarity as possible in the comments on the permit yeah okay

On the external agency contacts, that seems extremely valuable. So it's outward facing, too, for the applicant if they're running into an issue with AT&T or PG&E. They know who the utility is. It's often, you know, like trying to call Microsoft, getting somebody to answer the phone.

Thank you. The database itself, that is just for internal, that's an internal resource. the external map will be available for the public. And we do have some contact info there, but it's not specific to, you know, the person, but more general. If that would be needed, I think we'd be able to provide that, but just our database itself is internal.

Any further, Ryan?

Utilities are a little bit more up my alley on a lot of this stuff, what we deal with. Utility agencies are always a challenge, considering we don't have any sort of authority over them. And the fact that some of them, particularly say PG&E, there's a bit of a revolving door in terms of personnel that works there. We work diligently to try and keep our internal contacts updated, especially for emergencies and other things. The information that we provide out to applicants and stuff is going to be much more general to either a general line or email or just their website in some cases because there is no one specific contact at those. them so but we continually work with it and we try to help them and guide them we reach out on behalf of the applicant sometimes to some of our contacts internally if they're coming up and struggling getting stuff done because we can kind of usually know who to get get a hold of and get some better answers but not necessarily that we have them contact some of those more specific people that's helpful yeah two more I think

On the preliminary application or the preliminary review team, what's the cost in general turnaround time for that process? It's time and material basis, I imagine, but on average.

Yeah, so the three new concepts, the option A is going to be of zero cost. one-time thing. The option B, which is the kind of mirrors the most closely to our existing PRT process, that is, I believe, a $1,000 flat fee for commercial and multifamily projects, and then that is still free for single-family development. And then the option C, which is the ongoing consultation services, that's an initial deposit of, I believe, $3,500. And then that's billed at the hourly rate of the different staff involved.

And is it about a 30-day time frame? The meeting is held and then you get a written letter back from the city with everyone's comments?

For option B. Yeah. I believe our current turnaround time for those is about a week, one to two weeks? Yeah, about a week after. Oh, that's great. Yeah.

Hmm. Okay, and then just finally on the performance indicators, I know that that's still being developed and you gave the one example of the city processing time and it's ticked down a little bit. So I assume that's going to be one of the ones we'll be watching. What are some of the other general ones that you're thinking about?

That is definitely one that we'll be watching. What were the other ones that were planned that we're wanting to capture?

Yes, so a couple different things. One is what we shared today was processing time specific to building permits. And so as was mentioned in the presentation, we're looking to build out similar processing time metrics for other types of permits, so planning entitlements, as well as engineering, so site development permits. And then there's other things related to some of the work. So that would be a good example. So something we might think about with the customer journey maps, for example. How do we know that those are actually landing with our customers? And so something we kind of learned from our consultants, PPI, is to think creatively about metrics. And so something might be like, Are we seeing a reduction in the number of phone calls to our general permit that are looking for kind of general guidance through the permit process? Because we would anticipate that based on, hey, we've provided all these educational materials around the process, right? So that would be an example.

Excellent. Thank you very much.

Council Member Darling.

Thank you, and great job, guys. I know this is really hard stuff. It seems so like, why can't you just make it easy? But it's never that simple. Starting with the meeting options that people are having, do we have a concept of how many people are going for option A, B, or C? Do we know what the distribution is?

With option A, we've heard customers express that they would want something like that. We don't yet have metrics on how many will avail of that option, and we'll look at that closely, too, as we roll out the new program.

And then with the option A, it strikes me as that's a great place to capture where your education materials might be lacking a detail. Have you guys thought about how you could include a quick debrief after the meeting? There are some questions that customers come up with over and over, and if you could find a way to capture those and fix them. Oh, I see.

So we – and this is a really – good question to kind of remind everyone of you know lean right lean one of the most important parts of this work i think is the culture change and then with the lean framework of being a continuous process of improvement and so to your point right i mean that is that is literally just baked into this idea of what lean is and so so i would say yes you know as we as we've kind of changed the culture of our development services team that this would be one of the of natural outcomes of what would happen, right? Hey, this question keeps coming up over and over again as people are exploring just a business concept.

that's a great opportunity for us to provide you know some targeted materials clarity yeah exactly yeah okay and then one of the other things and my experience with permit stream lighting is related to large water projects which is probably a very different animal than adding garages but one of the things that frequently held projects up or disputes between the applicant would say, yes, it is adequate. The staff would say, no, it's not. And the applicant would say, yes, it is. The staff would say, no, it's not. And they would fight about that for a while. And we ultimately ended up coming up with a dispute resolution process. These are obviously big projects. Do you have those kind of conflicts on projects on a regular basis, the yes, it is, no, it's not type things?

I think, um, with the redesign comment letter that we have that will roll out, you know, in the new year, um, we're wanting to capture those. And so if there's something that seems objective, you know, we'll, we'll state our source, you know, where there is a muni code or some ordinance so that we have something to point them to, to back up, you know, that decision or that justification behind what direction they're being given. Um, and if it's something can in the gray area, and open for a decision to be made later on, that communication line will be open so that we can come to that together.

Okay, so there's a way for them if they're not happy with the answer they're getting to understand why that answer is there. To provide, yes. And then I really like the external agency map. I love the little grease trap underneath the restaurant. One of the things with external agencies that might be useful is, for example, we all know PG&E interconnections are difficult to get and a big source of delay. Have we come up with tips on how to deal with the agencies or nice things to know?

Right?

You bring up a very valid point there. Yeah, so this is one of the things that we consistently are trying to communicate very early. And we make a very strong point even as early as what is now our development consultations. One of the first comments we always have is reach out to Central SAN, reach out to PG&E, start those conversations right now. we let them know especially based upon the project type that they have what what we expect to see in terms of what they need are they gonna need new transformers or is it the new grease trap or and stuff like that to let them give them a sense of what those costs are and what those time frames are especially with some of the long lead times when if we expect PG&E to take two years well Very quickly, FYI, make sure that you're accounting for this and stuff. And so we really try to communicate early and often with that. Great. And we repeat it. We repeat it throughout the entire process. You know it's going to take you. Yeah.

You know. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. Just to build on that, the new customer journey maps actually call out, please contact the utility companies early because of this exact reason. So we are, to Ryan's point, making sure in multiple different avenues that customers are aware of this requirement.

Okay. That sounds good. No, I like what you guys are doing. It's really great. And I appreciate the enthusiasm, too. So thank you.

All right, Council Member Silva, you're ready.

So first and foremost, thank you very much for this work. It's exciting. You can tell you're excited about it, and I think the customers are giving you good feedback that they're excited about it as well. As a communications person by training, one of the challenges is to ensure clarity, and you've focused on that. Consistency, lack of redundancy, and basically conflicting comments. I like what you're doing, which is rather than doing it, sorting it by who made the comment, sorting it by what the comment subject matter is. But generally, somebody needs to check before the report goes back to the customer that everything is clear, consistent, lack of redundancy. How are you doing that? Or maybe you're not. I hope not.

So with these redesigned comment letters, there is an owner. And it falls in the planning division. And so they will review all the comments before it does go back out to the customers. Though at the different stages, it will hit the division. the different divisions, the last person that it hits before it goes to the customer will be in the planning division.

And does that letter say, if you don't understand something, call? It definitely does. Quickly? Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Any areas, yes.

Thank you for the presentation, it was excellent. My question and what fascinates me is that 15 minute meeting that you have every Tuesday. Are you going through all of the projects that are active and sort of like everyone's checking in on those projects or do you just cover a few? And the reason I ask is sometimes the process stalls and the applicant, I'm thinking of some feedback I got recently, the applicant thought it was you know, waiting for the city, but the city was waiting for the applicant and months went by and meanwhile the business is, hey, what's going on with this, you know, and so no one really knew where it was. Do you have a mechanism to see when something has stalled so you can check in with them and make sure they're staying on track?

Yeah, it's a really good question. So I think there's a couple pieces to your question. So first is it is not all projects. very purposely struck a balance between the amount of time we're spending with the entire development services team and the types of projects. So there's an internal list of criteria for which projects we talk about, but generally these are larger commercial projects. So think of like restaurants in the downtown or a new auto dealer, for example. These are the types of projects. We've developed a system over time of different ways to flag things. So we have, for example, pins that literally go on this board. And we have a chili pepper to indicate this is a hot topic. We've gotten a lot of public inquiry. And then we also have a little clock pin that indicates, hey, this is something, to your point, that we haven't heard from the applicant in a while. So someone needs to follow up. And one of the, I think, benefits of all of us meeting every week is a lot of times there are no update. We know that projects aren't moving necessarily week by week. But it allows for a built-in kind of flag of, oh, hey, There's been no update on this project now. It's been three or four meetings. And then in that moment, there's the flag of, hey, can the project manager or whoever reach out and check in on the app? Or can economic development reach out as kind of a customer care touch point and see what's going on?

No, that's great, and I can appreciate that you probably only have time to cover the really big projects, but if there was some mechanism for the little ones, like if they stall too long, just making sure that they also get sort of incorporated into the going through things, which it sounds like you are doing. The other thought I had was that this is a big culture shift, and I can see that everyone's enthusiastic and it's exciting to see. What mechanisms are in place so a few years go by, maybe we're drifting off course a little bit, we're managing the little things, but maybe there needs to be another reset from a big picture standpoint? Is there like an every few years process where you kind of go in and look at the,

big picture again somewhat akin to what you've just done but in a lesser a lesser degree so we do currently have like these weekly meetings and these serve as a good check-in touch point on how things are going and if we do feel that you know things will need some sort of We do plan, you know, a workshop or an added training or just an added time or event or space to create for the team to reconnect and refocus and realign, like, you know, these are the projects that we're working on. This is something that we need to, you know, make sure we bring to the end zone and to just to keep trying to achieve our goals. And then also with what we're learning with Lean is that it is a continuous improvement cycle, right? So we're trying to stay with that. And that is our intent.

Thank you. So thank you for your response. That kind of leads into a question that I had. What is our response timeline when we do get a question from a customer? I typically get emails when people say I've been waiting for, I was promised I'd hear back in a week, and now it's been three weeks and I haven't heard anything. And I hate having to go to Erica, but I do. And so I just want to, is there some kind of an internal process that we commit ourselves to get back to a customer at a certain time.

If I could answer that because so many of those questions are directed to me. We have a lot of infrastructure behind the scenes with our Acela program so that there are reminders and so forth and sometimes perceptions or timelines that are given by contractors to customers and so forth differ from whenever things were actually submitted and so forth. So we essentially have a time clock, and then we have reminders and so forth, but we're also not infallible. And so one of those things is to actually reach out to customers Let them know, hey, we're a little bit behind, and this is where you are in the process, and then we'll get back to you. It's also important to note that an important part of this continuous improvement is continually hearing from the voice of the customer. So back to your earlier point about how do we keep – you know, keep improving. We've incorporated processes in here to actively hear from the customer. And if we start hearing things like that, it flags for us that there's something that we need to look into further.

Well, that's great. I mean, Erica, and for your response, to me anyway, and I'm sure the rest of the council is phenomenal. I mean, you get back I mean, I'm expecting to hear back in a day, and I often hear back within an hour. And I do love the fact that you will fact-check the customers as well. I remember one particularly said that we heard it was going to be a week, it's been a month, and it turned out the contractor hadn't even submitted it yet. So they're obviously not telling the truth to the customer as well, and that's interesting. So I appreciate that. One quick more question. I don't know how the fees work typically when there's consultation, but the fact that We have several people that were customers that are well-known business owners, whether it's landlords or owning restaurants. And of course, we have a few in the room right now. The fact that they're supportive of this tells me that we are truly on the right path here, which is great. How are we comparative to other cities when in charging consultant fees, whether it's the $1,000 flat fee or whether it's $3,500 retainer?

With the recent fee study that occurred and then with our adopted master fee schedule, we did, our consultants assisted us in comparing against other neighboring cities of a similar size. And these numbers did compare. It was competitive with their rates. And then also our rates, we are held to our cost recovery, so we cannot go over 100%. And we did keep it at, we tried to maintain a conservative level. We didn't do full 100 on a lot of these rates, just to make sure that we keep our customers happy and satisfied.

Great. Great. Well, so I'm going to finish up with a softball question, at least I hope it's a softball question. So do you feel the whole process is going to go over well with our customers and developers in Walnut Creek?

Yes.

Are there nods from the audience here? All right. Very good. Do we have any public comment that's on the line? And nobody in the room, I take it? Great. Well... MR. I'll – first of all, we'll close the questions. MR. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. MR. No, no.

MR. I just wanted to add a few comments before you wrap up as well. MR. Yeah. MR. But I wanted to wait and see if there were any – if there was any public comment.

MR. So it looks like no public comment. MR. Oh, we do have a public comment. MR. Well, Jeff, you can just come right down the middle.

Mr. Dudum. Hello. My name is Jeff Dudum. I want to thank all the people in the room, especially the ones that work with the city, for just being awesome in those meetings and taking our approaches. Some of them weren't kind. Some of us have been frustrated over the years with the way things have been. And I kind of look at the documents page of the 60 plus. That was until about four years ago. what it was like to just do a simple project in the city of Walnut Creek. So if everyone's looking at that page, is that stressful? It's confusing. not what you want to do especially for the average person who doesn't have the education to sort through that four years ago the city of Walnut Creek there was a shift and Erica I think that you have added a lot to that and I know this is a top-down making things happen but by bringing Erica in not only changed for you to make that phone call, but for us as customers to be able to get in there and understand and ask why and get an answer that made sense to us. And I think that that is where I would start off because I thought originally, because I got my first skateboard ticket here and my second cruising ticket here, it was just me that was making it difficult from the 94 to 2020, kind of how it was a tough ride to get anything done here. And again, it wasn't the skateboard or the cruising ticket. It was difficult. And what we went through in that meeting was a total culture shift. You know... I just worked on a project just recently and all the words and all of us have different jobs, different fields that we work in. And when we come into meetings like this and we get a wonderful presentation and you sit there and you hear this, how does it actually really factor in? And working with... Keep going.

We'll say you're speaking for the customers.

Okay.

Right. So keep going. I'm curious how we're going with this line of questions.

Working with Simmer and Steven, I know Simmer's not here right now, but bringing in Henry and Fangbin, Ryan, Andrew, and Mealy into this meeting and doing the A approach was something we talked about in that meeting. And it was an actual live demo, I think, of what we all talked about. And we were working on a project that wasn't easy. And there were a lot of questions that were probably never brought to this group before. And everyone was incredibly helpful. And by the end of our first meeting, before I even left there, Fangbin was giving me copies of things to take and digest. Ryan was incredible. Henry was incredible. Stephen. I mean, it was like nothing has ever happened in the city of Walnut Creek before. So what you heard... in words, in beautiful demos on the slides, was actually, it's already run. And then the second meeting was, okay, we're there. With following all the rules and the regulations and everything that you would normally do, they gave you a decision at that point to go. And if you as a customer said, okay, I want to take this risk and go forward, I had a much better feeling than the guessing game, which was from before. So thank you to everyone that helped with the project in the last month. Since 1994, I've worked on 18 projects in downtown Walnut Creek. It's been fun, but as I will tell you now, these wonderful opportunities that we are being provided are just going to be in Pleasant Hill and Concord's, and don't give it to them. It hands shortly. So what we have to do, like Craig said, is we got to keep on top of it. We got to keep with technology. We got to keep talking to the customer. So we're not just sitting down for five years and going, oh, now we're behind the times again. I think that's really important to think through at this point. But I would say that the real life example worked. So what you heard today on slides is actually to make a difference for people the one thing that we need to do is we need to get to the landlords of the city of walnut creek and let them know about this process because there's a few of them one of them's not in the room obviously right i'm not talking brian would definitely send them down for option a but there's some of the landlords who maybe not know we'll just have them sign a lease and no matter at that point if they sign that lease you know, then it doesn't matter how good the city of Walnut Creek performs. It's not going to be fast enough when they're paying rent. So I think that that's a big piece of it. So that's all I have. Thank you very much.

No, appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for coming down and speaking, Jeff. Looks like Brian's aching to speak too.

Good evening or afternoon. Brian here. I wasn't going to speak. but I can't let it just be Jeff. And I'll stay into the two minutes, so. I just want to say that thank everyone for this process, staff. I do want to acknowledge that Eric has made a huge difference. I've been around a long time in this city, I won't say how long, but I went through the blueprint for success, was it a decade ago, probably? And there were some good changes, but we always said that it's really, There was improvements, but it was a cultural issue. And to be honest, in that process, I remember saying, because there was a lot of discussion of metrics, they went to Palo Alto and they said, it's all about metrics, permits, and I said, what is, how long does it take for a permit, for a building permit? And kind of deer in the headlights, and we never saw a number. And I expressed this in our meetings with staff, and I said, we went through this, No, everyone says, oh, it takes 60, 90, 120 days, but there's no real number. And so in our process and what you saw on the screen was the first time I've ever seen a number. It's like then we know where we are and how we can improve. So I think that was holding themselves as a staff and as a group, as a services, accountable. So I think that was huge. Um, another recent event, and I don't want to embarrass you, Jessica, but, um, it really was a kind of a refreshing, um, event that we, um, are, uh, splitting, uh, demising the vineyard vine space. And we're going through a master sign program amendment and it was going along the process. Bottom line is there were some delays and, uh, um, there was some staff transition, I'll just say that. And bottom line is that I was panicked because, darn, I'm gonna go over two minutes. I won't go long. That I was panicked because the worst thing from a landlord standpoint is when they're ready to get their sign, and they say, and we say, well, we don't have it approved yet as a landlord, and then it gets into, it's a nightmare, and then they say, we can't open without a sign, so I was losing sleep, and I got an email back from Jessica saying, hey, you know, we had issues on our sides, we apologize, we're just gonna, instead of going to a signed subcommittee, we're gonna go straight to Design Review Commission, And we're comfortable with that. And for me, before that, I was going, God, we've got to sign this committee. It could be a month and a half down the road. Bottom line is it went... Great, we got approved, I slept much better. But just the spirit of customer service of that they took responsibility and said, hey, we had issues on our end. And I said, hey, there's no harm, no foul, it's okay. But I think the attitude told me that there is that cultural shift going on at staff level, which in my 20 plus years, 25 plus years, I haven't seen. So I'm very excited. Thank you everyone in this room for all the effort. and leadership, and I think it's gonna be great for Walnut Creek. Thank you.

Thanks, Brian. Anybody else from the public? Okay, city manager Dan.

Yeah, I just wanted to share a couple of summary level of thoughts about the impetus for this, and some of you may recall that Actually, when I started here, one of the primary goals you gave me was to see further improvement in development services. So nine years later, here we are. It's taking a little longer than planned, but there have been... That is actually a true statement. Obviously, we had a big disruption with COVID, but one of the impetuses for this more recently... is knowing how much things changed in COVID, knowing there were considerable vacancy rates, knowing that other cities were changing. We wanted our development service perteming processes to move from being a hindrance to a competitive advantage. Now, we want to get to the point where not only is Walnut Creek known for its intrinsically high value in terms of being a destination for the many reasons that it is, for not only housing and jobs, but for entertainment, for it to live, work, and play, but that going through this process is the model, uh, preferably in all of California, that it is a great place to do business and get through that process. That's really the goal that we are working towards. And what this started with was considerable focus and training on customer service with the goal that we are a customer centric organization, not only for development services, but citywide. And as I'm sure every staff in here hopefully could repeat, cause they've heard me say at number numerous times, We all have jobs here at the city for one reason and one reason only, and that is to provide service to the community. We're not here to flip a profit. We're not here to return shareholder value. Certainly we want to be very resourceful with taxpayer dollars and very prudent with those. But at the same time, we are here to provide service. So it's really started, as you heard, with the culture shift and focusing on the customer. A big piece of that is understanding the customer mindset and hearing from the customer regularly. making great progress on that front as you've seen. We're also obviously then working to be more efficient and streamline our processes, reduce any redundancies to really look across all of the different divisions and departments through a unified lens so that we are as unified and streamlined as possible with really, to put it really simply, we want to allow projects to go through better, faster, cheaper. That's really what everybody wants at the end of the day, and that's what we are Working towards, and along those lines, one of the things that we've heard, and it ties into both process and the customer service piece, we've heard consistently for many years, even going back to the early blueprint days, which predate me by a year or two, is that developers want certainty and they want flexibility. They want to know roughly how long something is going to take, what that process, what the next steps are. so that there's that certainty and within the regulations that we have that we can be flexible. How do we get to yes? There are many cities or many regulatory agencies that have a why it can't happen mindset, a no first. We want to have a mindset of how do we get to yes, assuming that the project falls within the parameters set by the council and that we can work with. So that's where we're evolving. That's where we're at. We started this, I don't know if this was mentioned or not, focusing on restaurants. And the reason being is we wanted to focus on kind of midsize businesses that's applicable to many other types of businesses. We also intend to subsequently apply the lean process to housing is our next focus after we finish this phase and then obviously expand from there. And then ideally we have numerous people trained at the city on lean processes. We can begin deploying this, to other parts of the city beyond development services to really engage that mindset of continuous improvement that lean offers. And then lastly, I just did want to acknowledge the entire team. As noted, this is a team effort that focuses community development, our engineering departments, our public works team. economic development and all of our outside agencies. So it's been a great effort and really nice to see this progress over the last many months and all the progress and all of the excitement and interest in this project has been really rewarding to be a part of. So thank you to everybody involved.

thanks dan and uh... so much much like your comments ten years ago when i was first running for city council in uh... there's probably some around twenty sixteen i was meeting with some different business owners i said what's your big issue and they talked about timeliness responsiveness Making sure that you know, why do we just get the feedback saying no that won't work come back again rather than figuring out a way to make this all make sense and how can we be the city that Helps you get there. We've heard all sorts of iterations of loud along the way everything from a concierge to just more responsiveness in general and I think that's the reason why we have economic development and downtown vitality is one of our priorities as well and so my frequent conversations with the business community, developers that are in the residential community, have all focused on that. And 10 years ago, we talked about how other cities like Concord with the verandah and San Ramon with City Center, they're stepping up and Walnut Creek still has this attitude. This is not what I said, but this is what I heard back. Walnut Creek has the attitude of we're the only game in town, and so you have to play by our rules now. Well, yes, of course they have to play by the rules, but I think the fact that we are more of a customer service friendly city and development team is really going to pay dividends. And now we've seen what's happened in these other cities, and they have stepped up, but I think we've really stepped up now as well. I really appreciate the effort that the staff has put into this, that leadership has put into this, and the business community has been involved, because it's not just telling us something and then disappearing, but it's actually being involved and helping the sausage get made. So thank you to the business community at large and the staff. And any other comments on this as well? But, yeah, very appreciative here.

I just wanted to say in 2016 I started our company and I went through the website for the city and it was really hard to figure out what to do, and we did a big remodel in 2018, and it was the same experience. I think, well, wait a second. I do permitting. I know how to do this, and it was a struggle. I love the education materials. They work much better than what was there back then, and I really appreciate it. It's a much better customer service experience, and I really appreciate the enthusiasm and the energy you guys have brought.

again thank you and um it's been a long road but what's refreshing here is that i'm not hearing the following comment that i heard probably 15 years ago, I was standing in the planning department looking out the window at a restaurant, and they had no sign. And I said, I don't understand why they don't have the sign. You can't do business if you don't have a sign that says you're in business. And the answer I got was, well, they haven't come and asked us what to do. to which I said, maybe that they don't have a sign is an indication that they know how to run a restaurant, but they don't know how to build a sign. Perhaps you should make a phone call. That's not what I expect to hear today, because you recognize that the customer may not always be right, but they may always be confused. Thanks.

Actually, good point, because a lot of the restaurants actually are owned by people that they may be first-generation Americans, and so they just don't know the process. So great point.

I mean I think I'm probably going to start hitting on some of the same things but the collaboration between departments is I mean seeing that is truly impressive all viewing yourself as like one team the way that you do. I love the meetings the preliminary the concept meeting then having the preliminary review team and then also having the ongoing consultations the idea that There's a space to be able to access staff and the whole team, not just one department. The fact that when you're dealing with an issue now, you deal with it by issue instead of by department, just sitting on the same points, but it's the collaboration that's taking place. And to what Jeff mentioned earlier, removing the unnecessary, old, or redundant documents. I mean, I can just share my experience in the hospital. It's so easy to form a committee and add a process, add a step, add something you have to click on, add a new sound that goes off. But I always wonder, well, who's gonna go through and for everything we add, remove something? Otherwise, it's just like death by checklists and things like that. That was great to see as well. But really appreciate what you're doing. I think this is super important for the city, for the community, for the businesses. So thank you.

Yeah, you know, Ben, when you said this has been an awesome experience, I could tell that was kind of a genuine emotion from you, and it was infectious to hear that. It was really kind of heartening to hear that, too, that it's been transformative. You know, Jeff's left, but when he said the thing about how we need to reach out to the landlords, Walnut Creek downtown, what I'll often do when I go to a grand opening, I'm like, well, how was the city process? And generally I'll get comments like, well, it took a long time, or But that's at the tail end, right? How do we get them into option, let them know about option A and get them at the front end so that that part can be streamlined? I guess I was also struck by sort of what Brian had relayed and what Erica said when you said we're not infallible and Jessica acknowledged that there were problems on our end. It's not often, there gets to be egos involved, and it's not often someone can just say, I made a mistake. And when we do that, I'm really heartened to hear that we did that and we owned it, and I think the more we can put that into practice when it truly is on us, now if it's on the applicant, we just remind them gently, like, well, no, you haven't resubmitted, the contractor hasn't actually submitted the plan. So the cultural shift seems real, and I'm excited about that, and then... Just finally, I would add a plug for the do I need a permit? Because I think if we can make it as easy as possible, I'll give the example. Do I need a permit to fill in a swimming pool? And the contractor is going to say, you don't need a permit for that. And the typical homeowner will say, I don't need a permit for that. The contractor told me that. They're not likely going to call the city. And I think maybe they'll go on the website to double check it. And then if we can just have an easy one-pager, what do I need a permit for? Pool is probably not a good idea because not a good example. But other ones, do I need a permit to add an HVAC unit or something like that? And with that, it's been a really exciting process. I'm looking forward to seeing this come to fruition. And to Councilmember Devaney's point, we've had these different iterations over the year, version 2.0 and version 3.0, but I view this as kind of an endless loop. Like it'll continue, whatever, maybe it won't be called the lean process, but it'll be this continued pattern of involvement and cultural shift that I don't know that we'll need another, hopefully we won't need another type of program. Yeah. And I'm prepared. I'm pleased to make the motion to accept the report from the development services team.

And I will second that. I'll amend the motion to say and to congratulate the team on behalf of this entire community of the work that you've been doing.

And I'll gladly accept that amendment.

So moved. Can I have the roll, please?

Mayor Francois. Aye. Council Member Darling. Aye. Council Member Devaney. Aye. Council Member Silva. Aye. And Mayor Wilk.

Aye. All right. And with that, we'll adjourn the City Council special meeting and we'll reconvene at 6 o'clock for our regular meeting.

Thank you.