We'd like people to come in when we have a bring any myself.

All right.

Yeah, I know, but I need them physically present.

Lovely to have everyone join us.

Okay.

Let's do it.

We don't need anything.

You've got this.

All right.

Um, all right.

Good every ready in the balcony.

Two thumbs up.

Two thumbs up.

If the balcony is ready, we're all ready.

All right.

Welcome everyone.

Uh, to the City of Alameda City Council meeting.

Tonight is Tuesday, December 2nd, two thousand twenty-five.

And I'm going to call the meeting to order.

And um, we're going to start with a closed session.

And so I, well, actually, it's a special city council and successor agency to the community improvement commission, used to be known as redevelopment agency meeting, but um we're starting with that closed session.

So I would like the um city clerk, Laura Weisinger to please call the role for the city council and the special the successor agency to the community improvement commission.

Council members bowler.

Jensen?

Prior here.

Mayor Ezy Ashcraft.

Here for present, and Councilmember Desog will be here hopefully soon.

All right.

And um, would you please?

Oh, well, we have a consent calendar, and this is just the one item.

It's routine.

I'm gonna ask the city clerk to please introduce it.

This is designating the negotiators for um faction the to go with the faction closed session item.

E.

Okay.

All right.

So did I have a motion?

Yes.

Councilmember Jensen has moved approval.

Councilmember Bowler has seconded all those in favor.

Um please signify by stating aye.

Aye.

That motion passes unanimously.

Um so then, Madam Clerk, would you?

Oh, do we have any public comment?

All right.

So then I'm um going to adjourn the meeting to closed session to consider the following items that the city clerk will introduce, and then I'll tell you about a little agenda order change.

Okay, clerk.

For A is public employee appointment hiring pursuant to government code section five four nine five seven to title description of position be filled as city manager.

For B is conference with labor negotiators pursuant to government code section five four nine five seven point six.

The city negotiators are the city manager, human resources director, and Jack Hughes from Libra Cassidy Whitmore and Assistant City Attorney Organizations are the International Association of Firefighters, Local 689, and Alameda Fire Chiefs Association under negotiation are salaries and play benefits in terms of employment for C is Conference of Legal Council Potential Litigation, potential initiation of litigation pursuant to government code section 54956.9 subsection D4.

Number of cases is one with the city initiating litigation as plaintiff, the potential defendant is the Port of Oakland.

For D is Conference of Real Property Negotiators pursuant to government code section 54956.8.

The property is 2317 Central Avenue of the Alameda Theater.

The negotiators are the city manager, base for use and economic development director, uh, economic development division manager, assistant city attorney, negotiating parties are the city of Alameda, SACIC, and the Alameda Theater in Citiplex under negotiation or price in terms of lease and loans.

For E is Conference of Real Property Negotiators pursuant to government code section 54956.8 property is Bay 200, a portion of building 22 located at 2501 Monarch Street at Alameda Point.

The city negotiators are the city manager, economic development director, economic development division manager, administrative management analyst, assistant city attorney, and the negotiating parties are the city of Alameda and Faction Brewing under negotiation or a price in terms of lease.

Well done, Madam Clerk.

So the little agenda change we're going to do because our colleague, Councilmember Daesog, is running late.

We are going to start with the port settlement item, which should be really short.

And that item, Madam Clerk, is item for C.

So if I could please have the council and any staff related to item 4C, come on back to 391.

I'm told it's warmed up now from the boiler.

How do we give us a h do we give us a h do we give us a h do we give us a h do we give us a h do we give us a h do we give us a hug Hi, everyone.

Welcome and again.

Apologies.

Um, we um welcome to the city council meeting for the city of Alameda today.

It's Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025.

The council has just returned from closed session.

The council did not finish their closed session as much as they talk.

So we'll be going back after we finish our regular session, but we're going to get to you very soon.

And also, we've had a little problem with the boilers.

So the room's been a little cold.

And we invite you all to stay for the duration of the meeting because we need your body heat, but it's just optional.

I don't have the power to keep you.

Anyway, um Madam Clerk, could you please report any actions taken in closed session to date and whatever magic?

So we'll return back for 4A and 4B, which is the employee hiring and the labor, but 4C, that council discuss that matter and approve the settlement agreement.

And then 4D, which is the theater and for E, which are faction, are not going to be heard tonight, and they'll be addressed at the next council meeting.

So if anybody was here, well there's a closed session items.

No, we let the staff go.

Okay, great.

So with that, I adjourn the closed session.

And I am call calling the regular city council meeting to order.

And we will start with the pledge of allegiance.

Um council member Tracy Jensen, would you please lead us in the pledge?

Please, right.

I pledge allegiance to the United States of America into public programming.

Thank you, Councilmember Jensen.

Um Madam Clerk, may we have the roll call, please.

Councilmember Spowler.

Jensen.

Here.

Prior.

Here.

Mayor Ashcraft.

Here.

Five present.

Okay, the next item is agenda changes.

And Madam Clerk, I um have one uh agenda change I would like to propose, and that is item 7A, which is the appointment of our new social service human relations board member.

I would like that to go before 6A.

6A is a continued regular item, but it'll take a little while, and I'd like us to be able to um to uh introduce and swear in our new well to vote on and then swear in our new Social Service Human Relations Board members.

So that's my um request that 7A goes before 6A.

Okay, and then um we have no proclamations or special orders of the day.

So then we go to oral communications.

These are non-agenda items, and we take 15 minutes now at the top of the agenda.

And um and uh people can speak for well, it depends on how many speakers there are, but before we do that, because we do have a number of speakers today.

I'm just going to give the uh ground rules for Alameda City Council meetings, which is to say, some of you have heard this before.

If you've been to meetings before that the city council meeting is a business meeting, it is not theater, it is not a sporting event, therefore we do not applaud, cheer, boo, jeer, do the wave.

We don't do those things.

We just sit respectfully and listen uh to each speaker as they speak.

And when it's your turn to speak, you come on up to the microphone, make it yours, adjust it gently to to your level of your mouth so we can hear you when the city clerk says your time is up.

Please stop talking.

And um, and I ask people, I remind people to just be on their best behavior because there are often young people in the audience or young people watching.

We want to set a good civic example, but beyond that, public speaking can be very stressful.

I'm a former litigator, I'm used to speaking in public.

Not everyone is, and I would feel terrible if somebody didn't get up to speak because they were afraid someone would laugh at them, boo, you know, jeer, make a comment.

So we don't do that.

We this is a safe space, it is a public forum, it is your your city hall and your right to listen and to be heard, but we we do it respectfully.

And um, and if you have signs, it's fine to hold them, just not over your head where they might block someone's view.

And um then I need to read this magic language that we never want to have to use.

But California Penal Code Section 403 states that it is a criminal offense for any person to, without authority of law, willfully disturb or break up any assembly or meeting that is not unlawful in its character, other than an assembly or meeting referred to in Penal Code Section 302 or elections code section one-eight three four zero.

First violations will receive a warning and continued violations will require additional action, which could include police intervention.

I have said that, and we won't need to refer to that again.

And so with that, Madam Clerk, do we have speakers under item four?

We do we have three so three minutes each.

The first is William Morrison, followed by Randy Rentschler, followed by Jim Strayler.

All right.

Welcome, Mr.

Morrison.

Come on in.

Thank you.

A little bit different.

I get three minutes of shape instead of two.

Very quickly.

Knowing how everything has to work here, I have three different items to try to get across very quickly.

The first item is associated with a transfer transportation issue in the current efforts to construct, I think it's called the Tilden Ummit Project.

And one of the things that I would like to point out, if it can be pointed out, is that that involves also possible changes to railroad track coming into Alameda.

And I'd like to point out very quickly that railroads are the underpinning foundation for manufacturing economies.

Alameda did have a manufacturing economy.

When I moved to Alameda, there was manufacturing starting at Tilden and going to Grand.

The interesting thing about manufacturing is that it actually costs less to service than residential or commercial, and it pays more.

So economically, from an economic development and government fiscal attitude, you should look towards keeping the railroad.

So I urge you to go through and check what is happening there to at least save the right of way.

You can cover it, you can encapsulate it, but it's still there.

Okay, that's the one item.

Second item very quickly is Transportation Commission is going to be talking about neighborhood greenways in their uh session.

I would like for you to address with them and discuss the possibility of instead of using Versailles as your north-south greenway in the east area of the of the island to use Pearl Street.

And that's one of the areas you can ask them.

I can't.

And that's the last thing I want to talk about is except for my three minutes of fame.

Most of the time, as a non-governmental person and non-staffer person, I have no say whatsoever as to what happens here.

I think there even public uh meetings that you have are informational, but they really kind of like sit down, shut up, and we're gonna tell you what we're gonna do.

And I want you to think about how you can possibly uh involve people more in what's happening.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, and great timing.

Our next speaker, Randy Renschler.

Welcome, Speaker Rentschler.

Thank you, Randy Rentschler, Madam Mayor, members of the council.

I'm here just to recognize and thank Jennifer Ott in our last official act here.

You know, thank you for your many years of service.

Um, yours is not an easy job on a good day, but especially so when a community is under change.

And in your tenure and the many jobs you've had in Alameda, there's been a lot of change, and you've borne it well, so thank you.

I want to thank you for a couple of specific things.

My hobby horses.

One, all the bike lanes, particularly those near the schools.

So thank you for managing that change.

Uh it's can be hard, but it's gonna be perfect, I think, uh, to balance out this community.

And also thank you for the roundabouts.

Especially so that little one, which I think is on Pacific and Chestnut.

Um hopefully you can use that as a template um to fix all the mistakes my friend Andrew Thomas made.

Um so in event, thank you again.

I want to wish you and your family the very best into the future, and I'll try not to hold a grudge for it.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Jim Straylo.

Welcome, Speaker Straylo.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members, staff.

Um we I was not very happy with how the council and transportation commission snuck in some of the uh neighborhood calming measures uh into the Gibbons area, but I decided tonight that was gonna be a little bit more kid gloves.

So I wanted to talk about what I'm gonna nickname the Gibbons ribbons.

It's not just Gibbons Drive, it is the Frontside Homeowners Association puts up red ribbons and red bows uh throughout the neighborhood during this uh holiday season, and I encourage people now to come and visit us because it is very festive.

It is the neighbors themselves who put up the ribbons and bows, uh the areas kind of between uh Versailles, uh Fernside, High Street, and Central with a little odd shape here and there, but it's mostly along Gibbons Drive and take a look at that because it's like all these streets that are connected to Gibbons Drive.

It's a neighborhood, and it's very uh wonderful.

I encourage people to go visit it after I leave tonight.

I will probably go visit that, and then I'll decide to oh look at those intersections that you're gonna make some uh changes to uh with some roundabouts, and then go over to Thompson Avenue because I thoroughly enjoy that every year I've lived in Alameda for 70 years, and you know, for most of those years, I can remember going to Thompson Avenue and uh and still enjoying going there, do it mostly on a bicycle or pedestrian.

That's the safest way to do it.

But I wanted to wish everybody uh seasons holiday greetings and uh if I don't see you next, uh happy new year.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Our next speaker, that was our very nice.

See how civil we are in Alameda.

Um, okay, we move on to the consent calendar.

Um, and these are routine items that can be approved by one motion unless council members remove an item for discussion, and the removed items will be heard after our regular agenda.

Council meeting, council members may speak for up to three meeting three minutes on um consent calendar items.

So, first, are there any consent calendar items the council wants to pull that actually wants to pull in here after we've finished our no?

So then the next question is um actually I have to slip in another one because this is a little unusual today.

Madam Clerk, do you have any announcements about the consent calendar?

Yes, thank you.

So before voting on compensation increases for certain executive staff, the Brownak requires the council to publicly announce the recommended increases in tonight's agenda.

There's item five H, which um sets the salary at one uh for the interim city manager position at 175.6 cents per hour.

Um item five I memorials memorializes past salary increases going back to 2022 for the city attorney and city manager, and a resolution as required by Cal Purz without any modification to the current or prior salaries.

In addition, there is a uh hearing 5L on the um consent calendar, which is the community development block grant housing and community development needs statement.

And now is the time for public comment on that hearing.

All right, so then we come to the question of does council have any questions or I would even say comments on any of the consent calendar items, council member Jensen.

I actually have a question and a comment, and I have requested, and the city attorney has um facilitated the the this item to have the the approval, the Adam Pollitzer who will be approved in this item to be here too.

Um, because I have a question for him.

Oh this is 5H recommendation to approve agreement.

Okay.

So I will promote him to be a panelist and we'll put him up on the screen.

Is that oh no?

Uh I the count council can certainly ask questions and comment as well.

So uh wasn't sure if we're going to be for him to to comment.

Right.

Okay.

Okay.

And um, yes, and I was planning to introduce our new interim city manager at the end of the consent calendar, but we'll um we'll go ahead and can we promote him now?

We have him up on the screen.

We're just waiting.

And for the the public who's watching, um, we have um chosen a new interim city manager.

We need to do this vote.

His name is Adam Pollitzer.

And there he is now.

Welcome, Mr.

Pollitzer.

And as I'm sure you were listening, you heard that council member Jensen um wishes wants to ask you a question or good evening.

Good evening, um, Mr.

Pollitzer, and welcome to your virtual appearance here at our city council meeting.

I did pull this item off of the consent calendar because I wanted to um uh I'm so sorry.

If you've pulled this item, we will have to wait until the regular agenda.

Rather than pull it, yes.

Um, and that would be I would ask that you uh introduce yourself, please, and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Very nice to meet you all virtually.

Um a big thank you to the council, uh to the mayor, the vice mayor, and the council members.

Uh, I'm super grateful um for your support and appreciate you all in trusting me and leading your team as we move through this transition.

Um this is an exciting time for the city of Alameda.

You have an exceptional leadership team there, your executive team, and I'm really excited to work alongside them.

Uh, you all know how hard working the rest of the team members are that serve your departments.

And again, uh I was very lucky uh to have a tour this afternoon uh by your city attorney.

Um I have to uh even I have to thank you for your patience and just being so responsive to the million questions I have and had for you this past week.

Um I'm also excited to meet um the members of the community, and I hope when you see me out and about at events um or around City Hall, you come over and introduce yourself.

I really do want to learn as much as I can about the City of Alameda and its community.

Um, and then I also uh want to thank uh City Manager Jennifer Ott um for her service.

Uh Jennifer, you're a true leader.

Uh I wish you well as you move on to your next uh adventure with the city of Hayward.

And again, thank you for your service to the city of Alameda.

Uh lastly, most important to me is my family, um, my wife and best friend of the last 35 years um has stood by my side and supported me as I take on these um fun uh interesting um interim jobs um since I've retired.

Um I retired from the city of Sausaledo back in 2020, and since then I've served as interim city manager twice for the city of Emoryville.

Uh I've served once for City of Clayton and the town of Fairfax.

Um so these um these are really um great opportunities for me to continue to grow professionally and continue to learn until I look forward to working uh with this council uh and with this executive team and with this community to do the best job I can to serve your community.

So thank you all uh for having me tonight, and I look forward to seeing you all um uh many of you on Saturday at the walking tour and uh and most likely at the uh tree lighting event and then uh bright and early Monday morning.

Um so thank you, thank you, thank you, madam Mayor.

Thank you.

Um, and and welcome aboard, Adam.

We are um well, we're gonna vote on you soon, but uh we're excited to have you join us.

And as you mentioned, you'll be joining the walking tour of Alameda Point Housing.

That's also noticed to the public and hopefully um uh the tree lighting ceremony, maybe your family, um whoever's around would like to join you.

All right.

With that, um we'll let you go back off camera.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, and then um let's see.

Do we have any more questions, council questions on any um of consent calendar items?

And then Madam Clerk, did you say we have a public speaker on the consent calendar?

We do.

Let's have our public uh speaker.

And John Brennan.

Welcome, Speaker Brennan.

Thank you, Mayor and Council members.

Uh I just want to thank the city again for your eight years of partnership for the Alameda Warming Shelter, which we'll be hosting at Christ Episcopal Church this year, and also partnering with uh New Bridges and uh Trinity Lutheran uh this year.

This year three things are different, which are all possible.

Is this a consent calendar item that?

Oh, right, right.

We've got the ex-manager, yeah.

Sorry, go ahead.

Go ahead, sorry.

I just want to highlight the three things that we were able to add this year because of of our partnership, which is an additional month of running the shelter in April, um, adding a case worker who will work with our guests to navigate a path forward for them, and finally our laundry program.

So we'll be able to offer laundry to shelter guests as well as to our weekly shower program.

So thank you in advance for the funding and approving this.

Thank you.

Um was that our only speaker?

Yes, all right, great.

Okay.

So then any council comments on any of the items.

Um I I will say that I um on the the warming shelter item.

I was um Reverend McHale texted me today to um let me know about the shower and laundry program, which is really exciting and the case worker edition is wonderful and will be life-changing.

Um, so all right, everybody.

Well, we have um we need to to vote on the consent calendar.

Do I have a motion and a second to uh approve the consent calendar?

Um so oh, Councilmember Daiso, did you have a comment?

Of course.

Uh I will have to recuse myself.

I'm using your microphone, please.

I will have to recuse myself from item 5G.

So um uh when I vote that I hope that will be taken into account.

Okay, the janitorial services.

Oh, uh no, Park Street um and Webster Street.

Yes, uh-huh, the janitor services to there, uh-huh.

Okay.

Okay, so we will just note the um recusal of our colleague from five, it is 5G.

Okay, so do you want to um make a motion for the balance of the for the make a motion and with noting your abstention?

Sure, yes.

So moved.

Okay, it's been moved.

Approval of a consent calendar with the noted um uh specifications has been made made by motion made by Councilmember Days, seconded by Councilmember Bowler.

Thought so.

Uh all those in favor signify by stating aye.

Aye, any opposed, any abstentions.

That motion can um passes unanimously.

And so then this is where we're going to skip ahead to item 7a.

Madam Clerk, would you introduce item 7A for us?

Yes, uh it's an adoption of a resolution appointing Chantal Carter as a member of the Social Service Human Relations Board.

All right, um, so what we're looking for is um a motion and a second to approve Chantal Carter as our newest member of the Social Service Human Relations Board starting January 1st of 2026, made by so moved.

Made by Vice Mayor Michelle Pryor, seconded by Tony Councilmember Tony Daysog.

All those in favor signify by stating aye.

Aye.

That sounded unanimous to me.

Um, and so congratulations.

And Madam Clerk, I you'd like Ms.

Carter to come on up to take the oath of office and maybe say a few words to us.

Hi, so nice to see you.

And and while um Ms.

Carter is signing um the oath, I would say that I noticed Scott Means in the um in the audience, who I believe is are you the president of Shrub currently?

One of our social service human relations board members, and so glad you got to meet your newest colleague.

Welcome, Chantel Carter.

You want to say a few words?

Yes, um, thank you so very much.

I appreciate uh I'm very humbled and honored uh first for the nomination, and I look forward to working with the board.

Um we met earlier today and tonight in the elevator, and so I'm extremely excited.

Uh, again, humbled.

Uh, I've been in Alameda for five years.

I bought my condo about a year and a half ago.

Um, I'm working from home, so I'm excited to be more involved in the community.

So thank you.

You want to tell us just a little bit about your impressive background?

So um I started my career off uh in the district of Columbia.

I started uh where I worked, my first job was working for Bernie Sanders and his staff when he first became a senator.

I did a switch over from his uh house when he was from the house.

Uh, and then from there I worked uh in law enforcement in the District of Columbia.

Um I served uh for a couple different agencies, and I worked very closely with our community.

Um, part of the LGBTQ community.

So when I worked in community policing, I worked with our uh LGBT communities, such as our transgender uh folks that were working in the streets, as well as also our unhoused individuals in the district of Columbia, um specifically in the 7th district in the fourth district.

And so uh I lived in DC for 10 years, and then about 10 years ago I was recruited into the private sector, uh, where I've worked in crisis management and business continuity for uh you're probably like your I will say your fortune 100 companies uh extremely humbled to be in the private sector and outside of my day job.

I hang out with my dog, and you'll probably see me walking on the trail watching the sunset at night.

So thank you so very much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, and thank you for saying yes to the uh nomination.

All right, thank you so much.

Great to see you again.

Okay, so then we go back to our regular programming, which is item um well, six A, which we didn't finish from before, Madam Klerk.

Would you please introduce six A?

Yes, this is a workshop to discuss updates to the inclusionary housing ordinance in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act.

This workshop is categorically exempt from further environmental review pursuit sequel guidelines section one five two six two, feasibility and planning studies.

Uh good evening, and do I understand Mr.

Time that you can introduce yourself in a minute?

Do you need 15 minutes for your presentation?

That would be lovely.

Okay, so council.

What we need to do housekeeping-wise is um I need four affirmative votes.

Five would be even better to give um Mr.

Time, Mr.

Buckley, whoever is doing this presentation a full 15 minutes.

It's just adding five minutes to the 10.

Motion made by Councilmember Desuk, seconded by Vice Mayor Pryor.

All those in favor signify by stating aye.

Okay, welcome.

Go ahead and introduce yourself.

Yeah, 15 minutes.

Thank you.

Uh good evening, madam mayor, members of the city council, Alan Ty Planning Building Transportation Director.

Joining me tonight is planning services manager Steve Buckley, and we will be tag teaming to uh give the council an update on our findings of our review of the city's inclusionary housing ordinance.

Um tonight is a workshop, though, so no action is required of the city council, and we're mainly here to present our preliminary findings, our recommendations, working with the planning board, um, and really to seek your input and direction on next steps.

Okay.

Um as you know, the city doesn't build housing, the private market does, and um market conditions primarily drive uh what gets built and when uh inclusionary ordinances step in when the market fails to produce enough housing or uh enough affordable housing to meet local need, and they do that by requiring um a share of new housing construction to be affordable.

During our last housing element update, we had discovered that our current inclusionary ordinance, which requires an across the board 15% of new housing built to be affordable, uh doesn't quite meet our actual local need.

And that requirement has been in place for the last 20 years, and specifically the breakdown is of the 15% is 4% is uh for the very low income category, 4% uh low, and then 7% moderate income.

So our housing element program directs us to look at these percentages and recalibrate it.

We have to understand that there are broader market forces at play that affect uh the housing market, and currently our housing market's very slow of our housing eight-year housing goal from 2023 to 2031, uh, which is 5,350 units uh to date since January 1st, 2023, we have issued permits for 447 units, not quite 10%.

Um, so really the question that we have in front of us is what can we do to jumpstart housing construction?

But that question really addresses a much broader issue, and we have to be mindful that we're not here to solve the broader economic factors at play, uh, but we can look at our inclusionary housing ordinance to see how we can make make it a little bit better.

There are two policy major policy drivers that's framing the staff approach to this update.

Number one is state law requires state law actually sees inclusionary ordinances as potential barriers to housing if the requirements are set to be too restrictive.

Um so the law also requires cities to provide alternative options.

Staff would say that our ordinance today do provide options, but there is an opportunity to look at expanding those options.

So uh our recommendations tonight follow this theme this theme to create more opportunity for developers.

Uh also state and regional funding is increasingly um uh tying uh funding to affordable housing policy.

And so we're we're looking at best positioning our city to be eligible for the funding.

Our work to date is guided by a working group consisting of uh housing human services staff, malamed housing authority, we're guided uh by subcommittee of the planning board, and along the way we've been fortunate to work with uh for-profit developers, and we've spoken to nonprofit um uh housing developers as well.

And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Steve who will walk through some of the technical findings.

Thank you.

Um, welcome, Mr.

Beckley.

Uh good evening, yes.

Um, so I'm gonna dive into a few of the details that are also in your staff report.

Um as Alan mentioned, uh, we're looking at the inclusionary requirements, and there's a there's a distinction actually between rental housing and ownership housing.

And so some of what we're looking at is really um teasing those apart because the development economics and the community needs in those two different categories are different.

Um, so we're talking about uh those ratios of very low, uh low and moderate being adjusted independently for those two housing types.

There's also uh an element of um not just providing the housing units in the development projects, but there's um an idea about um allowing fee payments in lieu of providing those units, and it's very common, and right now the city is very restrictive in how we allow those fee payments in lieu of providing the units, and so we're evaluating how we might expand that alternative as well across both of those housing types, and then as Alan mentioned, we're we're really trying to at this point uh not solve all of the macroeconomic problems of the world, but just focusing on this particular element of um the development economics, we want to try to maintain essentially the same sort of development cost uh to the developer in terms of the subsidies that they're currently providing for these types of units.

And there's a uh spreadsheet system that actually has been developed for the for the region that we can refer to that has been validated and gives us a tool for sort of doing that apples to apples comparison.

So we've we've been doing some of that.

We also um had a consultant uh who's uh really a national expert and happens to be here in the East Bay, and so we've been working with street-level advisors to help us talk through some of these issues.

Uh, some of the key findings are again at these sort of different price points for very low, low, and moderate, that moderate income uh rentals are not really doing much for us.

Um the income categories end up being essentially market rate, and a lot of those units have been sitting empty.

Um, and so we were that's a key element that we've known about uh in the housing element that we're trying to address by perhaps reallocating those moderate income rentals to different categories.

Another finding was that the very low income for sale units are are tricky in terms of finding people who qualify and can make the payments, and that it's a very deep subsidy provided by the developer just for that one household, and one of the things that we'd like to do is perhaps reallocate those units so that subsidy can be reallocated for more households to be benefited for people who can make those payments.

One of the things with uh ownership housing is you also have your HOA dues and your property taxes and your other expenses that are sort of added on to what might typically be a maybe an affordable mortgage, but then it just sort of accumulates extra costs that complicate providing affordable ownership housing, see.

Um the idea of in loo fees is kind of also maybe sometimes referred to as mitigation fees, but this there's there's sort of a uh push and pull between really you're either providing the units or providing a fee.

And in this case, this is in lieu of providing those units, and one of the things that we've been doing for in Alameda is we only allow that fee for projects of between five and nine units.

It's sort of a stop gap measure where those projects are really too small to provide an inclusionary unit, and so we allowed them to pay a fee instead.

But we're thinking that there's a there's a best practice of allowing everyone to potentially pay the fee, and it would be allocated on a per square foot basis, which scales to the size of the project and the size of the units, and it's really best practice around California.

So we're recommending that we really evaluate everything on that sort of per square foot factor.

Um we uh need to really look deeper into the nexus between the fee and the impact of these projects on housing, and so that's a next step that we're preparing to undertake next.

So we're not we have some ideas about the fee, but we are not asking you obviously to pick a fee tonight.

Um in fact, we think we could probably uh draft an ordinance and come back to you later with a fee.

Um other uh sort of element in affordable housing provision is whether those units are in each sort of building or project, or if we can sort of cluster them in a separate building, perhaps on a separate lot.

I mean, we've been doing that in Alameda.

A good example is Little John Commons and the Del Monte development project, where the senior housing was developed in a separate building on a separate parcel, but really sort of as part of a master plan for that site.

And so the developer provided a finished lot with utilities run to it, and it's graded and ready to build, and then the nonprofit developer or the or the city can go ahead and actually complete that project while the market rate developer is focusing more on the market rate apartments, and maybe mixes in in that case, they mixed in moderate income units in their project, but then the low and very low are met, or even extremely low special needs sorts of housing, can be provided by a more specialized developer who's who's really focused on that kind of development.

Finally, one of the variables is just how long are these units deed restricted?

And right now the city ordinance says 59 years.

Best practice is really sort of in perpetuity or at least 99 years.

I'm gonna hand it back over to Alan.

Thank you, Steve.

So uh this being a workshop, we have some extra slides in here that we can come back to.

Um overall, we've been working this past year with our working group and the planning board and developers.

Uh when we brought this back to the planning board last month, the planning board was uh generally supportive of the staff recommendations, and the planning board actually concerning how slow the housing market was, uh, had asked staff and you encourage staff to actually expand the range of options in terms of the percentages.

If 15% at uh low income works for uh developer in the rental market, that's great.

But if they can do five low and five uh very low, and that also works with them for 10%, that should be another option.

Um so there was support for expanding the range of options and increase flexibility, and the planning board really emphasize that point.

Um, from the developers, uh the larger developers would like an option to uh pay inLU fees, and even suggested um reducing a fee as low as ten dollars per square foot as a way to jumpstart development and construction now.

We have developers in our pipeline who are who have planning entitlements, but they're not pulling building permits because of a variety of economic factors.

Um staff's responses we agree if there is some room for the council in the city to uh in the near term uh create some incentives to jumpstart the construction, but also just keep in mind that look, council can go as far as even waiving inclusionary housing, but the school district will still collect their school fees.

East Bay Mud will still collect their connection fees.

And so, how far do you go in terms of trying to incentivize construction?

But but it is it is kind of a fine balance.

Here's a summary table.

This is really the I would call it the switchboard for council to to look at the different options tonight.

And if I were to summarize uh our work thus far, really, Alameda housing needs have evolved.

Our 15 across 15% across the board's uh requirement no longer meets our needs, and particularly we need a separate, we need to understand that there's separate economics uh applying to rental uh units and ownership units.

On the ownership side, we believe focusing on moderate income units will provide the uh best bang for the buck, if you will, meaning addressing in terms of addressing local need, and on the rental side, focusing on the lower uh low income categories.

In setting new ratios, we have an opportunity to provide more options.

Um the current INLU fee framework that's limited to projects of five to nine units, could be expanded.

Um, and the expansion of the in-loose fees isn't just to give developers a way to pay out of the requirement.

Um, in fact, talking to uh uh like the McKay project, for example, some local funding would actually give our housing authority and nonprofit developers a way to leverage uh outside resources as as a local match.

So, and and if you think about it, these uh the uh Alameda uh the collaborative uh they are providing not just housing but also services for special needs population.

So um, and then also uh the discussion about um cluster development has been successful, but we need to more formally provide a framework around it, and then really this update is an opportunity for us to incorporate best practice, such as extending the term of affordability from 59 to 99 years.

So that's wraps up our high-level uh summary of the work, and we're looking to have a discussion tonight.

Thank you.

Well, then, because you had I think second seven seconds left to go.

Um, thank you for for both of you for the presentation.

We do have public speakers, but before we go to our public comment, just question does council have any clarifying questions by Smayor Pryor?

Okay, yeah, I have a few.

Um just I don't, um, so the rental vacancy uh right now in the on in the city of Alameda, it's from my understanding, is it under five percent?

Uh I don't have that on top of my head, but but on the rental side, the main issue of that we're trying to tackle in the study is the fact that Alameda incomes are high enough where the market the I'm sorry, the the moderate income category is essentially market rate.

No, I I understand all that.

I guess what I guess what I was trying to get to is um the need for making this adjustment and to being more inviting to develop to developers and wanting to have uh and this, you know, I know you were you were talking about rentals and then also ownership, but um I believe the rental vacancy is under five percent, and then a healthy percentage is like five to seven percent vacancy.

And so my question is, well, I guess I was gonna I was I was asking for confirmation because I think that is a good reason to look into um incentivizing um I don't know these options.

Anyway, that's why I asked.

Agree, agree, and and but what we also know is on the moderate rental side, those units are vacant.

Yes, and I do think that's a problem.

I put a little check mark by there.

Any other clarifying questions?

Do you have more?

Yes, I do actually.

Um for the low income and very low income, and that is uh considered at a percentage, like I think so I'm I'm asking for clarification.

Is the very low income like 50 percent, and the that's and then the low income 60 to 80 percent?

Yes, actually.

Uh can some clerk bring up the slideshow again?

Uh we have some we have a table that uh shows the income categories, and yeah, and then I have a question about that.

Um, right there.

Yeah, okay.

Is that is that something that is like a just like is that a descriptor given by the state or or is that something that we are defining?

Like the city of Alameda saying this is what we consider 80 60 to 80 percent.

Yeah, so so these standards are actually established at the federal level by the HUD.

Okay, and then with each county based on demographics and incomes, the dollar amounts go with it.

All right, yeah, I wasn't sure if we can adjust that, like so.

That's why I was asking.

Um, and then for the inlue fees, um, if that is something that we would consider, could we also consider it for a finite period of time?

You know how right now you had mentioned the city of Alameda is only doing units, rental units between uh five and nine, and then so an option is maybe we'll go more than five.

Yes, city council can certainly set the policy for a duration as a pilot, yeah.

Cities have tried different programs like that.

Um, but to create some certainty for development because development usually spans several periods of time, we want to be very mindful about the timeline and and also be cautious.

This is not one of those ordinances where we want to tinker with every year because you have you could have projects and title in the pipeline.

But yes, those are certainly options council can.

Well, I guess.

Well, uh, and then do we like, well, I guess like for example, in the ordinance, if we um like right now, we're looking or we're hoping to get 25 dollars a square foot is right and for rentals and then $50 a square foot for ownership for ownership.

So um I know that's something that was in consideration was a lower fee.

So that's I guess what I I meant.

Could we say yes, we will do an INLU fee for $15 a square foot, but we're only gonna do that for two years.

And then after that it'll revert to $25.

I didn't know if that's something we could consider.

Absolutely.

And um, around the matter of inloof fees, we need to do further study, feasibility study and nexus study, but with the council direction that we could certainly explore that and come back with options for your consideration.

And then the last question is you had talked about a clustered option.

And is that just an option for housing development or or and or what we could do with inLU fees if we got them or both?

It is actually both.

So the clustered option currently for Alameda, because we don't broadly uh provide developers opportunity to use the inLU fee.

The clustered option allows us to comply with state law by saying we do have alternatives to meeting our inclusionary requirement of providing on-site units.

A classic example would be the Del Mani project and Little John Commons.

That is an example of a clustered project.

Where the clustered project is beneficial is again it provides funding for uh targeted uh programs for a specific demographic need.

In that case, that was senior housing.

And the uh expanding inLU fees allows the city to then pull larger funds to then offer to either the housing authority, nonprofit developers, where they can then use that money as a local match to leverage outside dollars.

And and again, it it is this is not inLU fees aren't simply a way for developers to buy their way out.

I know on the surface it's appears that way, but it is important that we recognize for some of the um uh special needs population supplement uh supportive housing, they need not just the uh housing but the ancillary services too.

So this is what really jump starts those organizations.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Any other clarifying questions from council council member Desuk?

Um on the subject of clustered housing and INLU housing, uh INLU fees, um, I think the overarching um issue um regarding these is not just you know the um economics of a developer or even the economics of a household, but rather the goal to create an inclusive um integrated community, with the fear being that INLU housing if it was you know not part of it.

So, with regard to cluster um housing, um did the planning board um consider um strategies or maybe we might or have staff considered strategies to make sure that even clustered housing, if there's like a nonprofit um development of 25 units that's part of a larger 400 unit, but it's it's kind of set aside, has staff or the planning board considered you know strategies to make sure that even though the cluster might be on site that there's still ways to um encourage integration um uh you know community um social um you know um interaction.

Absolutely that's a very good question, Councilmember Desag, and and absolutely um the the whole idea of clustered housing um again on a surface sounds contrary to the city's practice of wanting to integrate affordable units with the market rate, right?

And so the the whole recommendation to formalize the process is so that we can incorporate some specific criteria.

If this is just your standard affordable homes, no, we like those units to be integrated.

But if this was senior housing, this was a supportive housing or some special needs housing that requires special services, then yes, you might meet the criteria for clustered housing option.

So, yes, that would be part of the uh a next step in terms of the staff work to develop that framework.

Okay, I'll later on I'll give share more thoughts on on you know how to integrate you know the clustered into the larger project.

Thank you.

And just piggybacking on council member day sock's question, you've used the example of um uh Little John Commons as cluster housing, which I I do see, and I do remember that it was built first because that is senior affordable housing there is probably no or no lower hanging fruit than senior affordable housing everybody wants to support it nobody objects to it but more controversially would be say affordable housing housing for lower income residents where we get pushback and and then I'm also cognizant of the principle of affirmatively furthering fair housing so to council member daysogs um question did the planning board come up with strategies for for doing that to make sure that we're not putting the market rate housing here um maybe on the east end and the affordable housing yet again on the west end at Alameda Point.

Absolutely that has come up in the conversations and again the the work would be the um right now we don't have any we currently don't have any criteria around clustered housing so we want to develop the rules around it so that we're not creating the segregation that we're we're referring to.

Okay but it's fair to say we recognize that is that is yes fair to say the planning board didn't get that far.

Yes okay and this is a workshop so good to know council member um Jansen did I see your hand up thank you um my question my first question is about the um the in LU fees was that part for five to nine units was that established in when the ordinance was was established yes uh about the five to nine unit thanks and I can I can tell you um uh the the council specifically wanted to limit the use of inLU fees because and there's pros and cons because um for a city of our size where land resources are finite not providing inLU fees or re or I should say requiring on-site affordable units provides a guarantee that you have those units right if a hundred unit development proposals came in you're gonna get 15 units right whereas uh collecting in LU fees sort of punts the delivery of those units a little bit further down the road so council 20 years ago made the decision that no we would only provide that in new fee option to the smaller projects that's very helpful and to um the mayor's point that sh that um came up earlier are those in loo fees do they tend to go into a fund or are they immediately used to build somewhere else or how how do the fees become effective and and go to to provide housing yes so uh I think there's something on tonight's agenda about that too um yes so so the funds so the funds are commonly distributed to uh entities like the housing authority um and recent example would be the North housing project phase one I think it benefited from roughly three three hundred to four hundred thousand dollars of that those monies um but other when you look at other cities and their ability to leverage local dollars we're talking about millions of dollars and um so my other question is about the NLU fees is um it it seems like the the parts being just the the fees being discussed are I think on your chart one was twenty five dollars a square foot and so those fees would be per square foot would it be the average of all of the the the fifteen percent or the five percent or whatever of the units that would have been built and an average of the square feet of all the other units in the complex that are market rate I'm trying to understand how that how the inlu fee how it's calculated yes yes so so it is a based on net square footage so it is a net square footage of all of the residential floor area of that project so if that was a hundred thousand square feet, it would be a hundred thousand square feet times twenty-five dollars.

Well, but for the current um in LU fees it it's twenty eight thousand one forty-nine per unit so the the the what what is being considered is different, quite different from what is in place now.

Correct.

Um one of the downsides and of of the dollar per unit is you could have larger units, you could have smaller units.

That metric isn't scalable.

Thank you.

That's my question.

Any other clarifying questions before we go to public comment?

Let's go to public comment, Madam Clerk.

Okay, so we have two in person and one remote.

Uh so they'll get three minutes each.

The first is Andrew Rosenberg and then Sean Murphy.

Okay, welcome, Speaker Rosenberg.

Hi, good evening, Mayor and City Council members.

I'm Andrew Rosemer with Pacific Development.

Pacific Development was delivered the launch department community in 2023, which consisted of 368 units, and as many of you are aware, was phase one of the Alameda Marina Master Plan.

I'm happy to share that we've secured all the necessary entitlements and building permit approvals for the second phase, which is the foundry project.

This will include 260 rental units along the waterfront, and once built, we'll complete the 801 units uh of the master plan at Alameda Marina.

As stated in the street level advisors report, and by a few people here tonight, medium density projects are simply not feasible today.

This is because of high construction costs, large impact fees, tariffs, high operational costs, increased financing, insurance, and property taxes.

We do agree with staff that the ordinance revision should include a series of different options for the inclusionary ratios, in move fees, collected options, and term links.

The NMO fee option is a very important tool that needs to be available for developers for both rental and for sale projects.

However, the fee must be set at a value which allows projects to be financial in today's climate.

The recommendation of $25 per square foot for rental projects and $50 per square foot for sale projects are simply far too high.

The foundry project cannot support any on-site BMR requirements, whether that's 5% low and 5% very low, or even just 8% very low income as recommended in the staff report.

However, we can commit that this project is financiable at $10 per gross square footage of the residential area.

For the foundry project, this would equate to roughly $2.5 million of an inlu fee.

The foundry project is truly so already, and we are committed to building this very important housing project, but we need the inclusion or housing ordinance revised so we can build this project next spring.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, Sean Murphy.

Welcome to Speaker Murphy.

Good evening, Madam Mayor.

Sean Murphy, Pacific Development.

You'd heard just my colleague Andrew Rosenberg.

We feel is a good case study for this inclusion or housing revision.

But it's important to note that the foundry project is unique in its location.

It sits on the waterfront.

It's a key component in that last piece of that 801 unit master plan, which is a combination of for sale housing, rental housing.

And it's different than a typical project that might sit as an infill project somewhere else in the island.

And this project completes the master plan.

And that master plan, it's it's important for us to step back and understand all of those other elements that that master plan delivered, which include a $35 million seawall that protects this portion of the northern waterfront through the end of the century.

Three-quarter mile of Clement Avenue improvements, which include that cycle track that's very well used today, which we're thrilled about, which is part of that cross island connector.

Four acres of open space and uh construction together with the foundry project of a parking lot for marina-related uses.

Because we sit on the waterfront, it's soil stabilization.

We have very shallow water table.

And so all of these components, together with environmental remediation of not just the fee land, but also city tide land, uh all of those components go into that calculation.

We want to build more housing.

We are deeply invested in this island.

Uh and for us to do that, we need your leadership as we look at this inclusionary housing revision.

And yes, for this case study, for this feasibility for us to build this project, and we want to start early next year to bring forward an in LU fee at a reasonable valuation, which we've put forth at $10 a square foot based upon the calculation that was articulated by planning director Allen Ty.

We really need as an island to continue to build more housing.

This is a great case study that's ahead of us.

We're truly shovel ready.

So we look forward to your continued leadership in this workshop to bring this as a reality.

And I just want to finish by thanking City Manager Jennifer Ott for your tireless leadership in this city.

We are in debt to you.

So all the best to you and your family as you move forward.

But we are suffering the loss with your departure.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, we go remote.

Yeah, we now have a three remote speaker, so the time will lower to two minutes each since we reached that threshold.

And the first one is Andy Wang.

Welcome, Speaker Wayne.

Good evening.

I'm Andy Wang and I'm on the planning board.

I've already weighed in on this topic during the planning board's workshop on this, but I'm speaking again tonight because I want to put a fine point on one thing and echo staff's point on this.

Beyond entitling projects, the city has a real interest in getting units built and occupied after the point of approval.

And in these precarious moments in the market, timing does matter to be clear.

It's well understood across the Bay Area that a lot of housing projects aren't financially viable right now because of a combination of high construction costs and high interest rates, in addition to other costs.

It's certainly true that there's very little the city can do about those things, generally speaking, and that's been a core piece of the discussion regarding the inclusionary housing ordinance to date.

That while we're updating it for state law compliance and tweaking it to better target income tiers most in need, we are not addressing what's called project feasibility, primarily because we think we can't.

And generally speaking, that may not be wrong, but also as a separate matter, we can't afford to sit out the question and not even take a look.

When a developer of a 260 unit project comes to us and says they can make it work if we adjust the inclusionary requirement, we should sit up and take notice.

We should put our own pencils to paper and get to the table for that particular project and for any other.

That doesn't mean we should codify changes to our ordinance based verbatim on what developers are asking for.

Our solution could take the form of a housing production and economic relief package passed in parallel to the housing ordinance update.

It could also take the form of project-specific packages.

I would advocate, whatever the case may be, that Alameda has a responsibility to do what it takes in this moment to get housing built before we miss the moment.

Because in the end, as I've said, 15% of zero units is zero units.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, uh Eric Clock.

Yes.

Hi.

Hi, welcome.

Hi, thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

Uh, my name's Eric Clock.

I am the senior community manager at Launch Apartments at the Alameda Marina.

We are a 368 unit community managed by Graystar.

Um Graystar currently manages more than 950 rental homes on the island, which is over 10% of Alameda's rental housing.

Um, puts us in a really unique position to understand real-time demands and challenges facing both residents and housing providers.

Um Alameda is at a bit of a crossroads.

Um we can all agree that more housing is necessary, but it does have to be the right mix of housing that matches the actual demand.

Um if we don't continue building, we risk creating a greater imbalance between supply and demand, which will drive up rents, competition, and make it harder for people to remain in the city.

Um our BMR units at launch, for example, have remained largely vacant for nearly two years, even after reducing the rents 21%.

Our live work spaces have remained 100% vacant during this duration.

Um it doesn't show the lack of interest in Alameda, it's just the clear misalignment between uh product income type for people searching for homes here.

Construction costs have increased while rents in Alameda have decreased since 2021.

We do fully support the creation for more housing, but we need you know reasonable in lieu of fees, and um that gives the opportunity for the housing authority to build, renovate more affordable homes in other locations as well.

We just got to keep that momentum going.

If we slow or stop the plan path for new housing, that imbalance will widen and the entire community will feel those effects.

Thank you again for your time and your leadership, and I'm always available as a resource uh for current and future residents of Alcameda.

Thank you.

Thank you, our next speaker.

Sophia DeWitt.

Welcome, Speaker DeWitt.

Hello, good evening uh city council.

Um Reverend Sophia DeWitt, Alameda resident and also Chief Program Officer at East Bay Housing Organizations.

Um, and I'm speaking uh this evening uh to emphasize the critical importance uh of inclusionary housing ordinances to the goals of um creating affordable housing and housing for all income segments in the community.

Um so we're very much interested in this IHO update and the work that the council is beginning tonight, and just want to emphasize that um we are um excited and interested to see staff's recommendation of perhaps including a percentage of very low-income units as part of the inclusionary uh requirement to help meet the needs for that income segment, um, and also that anything that we do with the IHO should make sure to help further um the goals and the requirement for affirmatively furthering fair housing in Alameda.

Um, and just uh to also say that as the um as and if in LU fees are adjusted in the new ordinance, that will likely require uh a new nexus study to make sure that um those new fees um truly truly meet the need meet the cost uh that is current out there in the market.

But we very much look forward to continuing to follow this process and uh working with the city and other stakeholders.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Reverend DeWitt.

Our next speaker.

That was our last.

Oh, okay.

So with that, I will close public comment and we will go to the um council for their input.

Um, who would like to start?

Well, I'm I'm happy to, you know, offer some comments.

Council Member Diesel, call on you.

Thank you.

Um, I think, you know, in terms of what is the correct um in LU fee.

I mean, I think you know that's it's a great time to start the conversation.

Um, one of the things um we might guard against is uh either you know locking us into an INLU fee that's too high or locking us into an INLU fee that's too low.

Um so maybe if staff and I'm sure staff and and the planning board and members of the community have already thought about this, but maybe we can have an inLU fee and then a system by which um uh certain costs can be backed out to the extent that the costs are verified.

For example, um, the um developer uh this evening mentioned a range of costs um that they have borne as part of their project.

Um, so you know, to the extent that that you know um uh it's allowed.

I'm not sure that that you can have a flexible, I'm not sure that you can or cannot have a flexible INLU fee, um, but to the extent that that you know we can set an INLU fee and then have a process by which entities verify and confirm that that there are certain costs that can be backed out and then and justify lowering it, then great.

That way, you know, whatever is done in Alameda Point is not the same as what's done in the northern waterfront or what's done in the east end of town because there might be different um uh challenges um there.

So that's on the INLU fee.

To the extent that it is possible to have kind of a calibrated um in LU fee, that would be great to meet the concerns of uh building uh the development community saying that the INLU fees are too high, and to meet the concerns of city staff who is saying well the INLU fees should be set at a certain amount.

So that's for further discussion.

Um, going to the topic of um uh we talked about earlier um uh having um clustered um affordable housing.

So by clustering, what I'm visualizing is just you know, um hypothetically there might be a 400 unit affordable housing.

Now in the typical system, the um I mean 400 unit um project of market rate, but in the typical system, the affordable component is kind of like here, scattered within the 400 units.

The concern I have, and I think what we need to guard against if we do clustered housing is that you know 400 units of market-rated housing are here, but then you know uh 100 feet away is you know, 40 um uh housing.

So it's kind of like to me, unless there's some kind of strategy to integrate the two communities in a way, I still see that as a form of segregation and economic segregation.

So, and I do think that you know, at the heart of um of the affordable housing um spirit is is basically desegregation.

Um so I think you know, if we can give further thought as to how even within the clustered housing, we can create integrated communities.

Um on the matter of NLU fees, I mean way back, you know, in 1997, 1998, you know, INLU fees were a very dirty word.

Um, you know, people would come to city council meetings and um basically, you know, argue against um uh INLU fees um, you know, saying developers are basically buying their way out, you know, instead of having a community that's you know economically mixed, um, you know, it's basically, you know, a gentrified community.

So it is kind of interesting to see in the year 2025, not a single um uh correspondence email or something on the topic of NLU fee.

Um, largely because you know, I think people understand that building um affordable housing even if in a clustered um uh way is very difficult.

So I think um uh even advocates who still live in Alameda, um many you know recognize that that inLU fee is is a necessary um compromise.

I didn't say necessary evil, I said necessary compromise.

Um but I would say though that um I think even if we do use INLU fees that that we should you know strategically or systematically think about how to use INLU fees in a way that um promotes uh segregate uh desegregate desegregated communities that promotes a fur affirmative um further, affirmative furthering um uh fair housing.

Um so for example, you know, we might think about how do we use INLU fees generated from a project on the northern waterfront or at Alameda Point.

In those communities here in Alameda that through the housing element process we have identified as you know those communities for which a for further affirmative affirmatively furthering fair housing um is a goal.

Um so that um so that we're kind of still using the INLU fees with creating a desegregated community in mind.

So to be more specific, if we use ILU fees to create more affordable housing where there's a already a concentration of affordable housing, I I don't know if if if that um uh achieves that end of of a desegregated uh community um because I do believe that at the heart of what we're talking about is really you know the thing that people were talking about in the 50s and the 60s of you know making sure that we put into place systems that by which we begin to economically socially desegregate our community um and so that's why a conversation like this is is vital um so I look forward to you know um hearing more um from staff and members of the community um and hopefully you know the to the things that I I raised you know we could take a look at um and you know we can work things out uh with our community and with the the developers um and with our staff.

Thanks, Councilmember Desog.

We'll go to Councilmember Bowler next.

Um thank you.

I th I want to uh commend Council Member Daysog.

I think he had some really important insights there and obviously looking at a historical perspective of the progress we have to we do have to be flexible I think and one of the things just to not repeat I I want to just emphasize the idea of um kind of meaning the moment we heard um one of our speakers talking about that and and looking at you know some of these projects and opportunities when we have an opportunity to to move forward and particularly some of the discussion was about reallocation of some of the uh requirements I mean to have um units that are sitting empty right now is really not an unfortunate reality and so I really want to encourage city staff to move quickly in the areas where we can before we have invest the time in the you know in the Nexus study and some of that work perhaps there's some immediate more immediate fixes that we can make and I just uh you know I'm I'm happy to uh to see there's been some community interest in the subject we do know that many Alamedans are concerned about affordable housing and I'm hoping that you know future discussions there's I think another challenge for the city will be to get even more public participation in this process so I would encourage staff to to uh to think about that as well.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Pryor yes I um I'm also gonna agree with a few things that council member Desog said um I I was um I had mentioned earlier um you know if we could offer like for example ten dollar square foot fee hypothetically and then um have it revert to 25 dollars but I liked what council member daysog said well what if you know developers are offering different things based on their locale you know can we be more flexible and I thought that was a really interesting point I don't know how um I don't know how that works in reality but I thought that was a uh a really I liked that idea um and then also to Councilmember uh Bowler's point uh bowler's point is you know we have moderate um rentals that are vacant um and and a housing crisis I I think I'm really glad we're looking into this because we need to get people in those um in those homes um and then if you know if we have also empty homes to own that cannot um that people aren't living in I you know that's a big concern so I'm glad that we're looking into it and I support the recommendation that you're making about that um the other thing um and I also wanted to uh touch upon the um cluster um housing I think that we've been really responsible um at the city about creating um homes because we don't want economic segregation like council member daysog said um and I do think in like like specific examples like senior housing.

Because I my mom, for example, lives in affordable senior housing down in Los Angeles, and it's this beautiful apartment, and it there's so much dignity and um so I can I've seen it where it works and it's amazing um and so that is something I could get behind, but having you know just entire families just living in one place, yeah, I I think that's not something I would get behind.

But I I like that we're looking into this and all the different options.

Um so thank you for bringing this forward.

And before I go to council member Jensen and then myself, I'm going to pause and just add, because I I think it might be asked for some clarification about a Nexus study.

What does that mean?

What does that do?

Why is that required?

So we have Cara Silver from the City Attorney's Office subject matter expert on this topic.

Um would you come up and enlighten us, please?

Thank you.

Sure.

Yes.

So a Nexus study is typically done when the council is imposing a fee, and that fee can be for um park development or a variety of other public services.

In this case, um, we would do a Nexus study for the option of imposing a fee in lieu of providing the onslaught on-site housing.

And the way these um housing um in lieu fee nexus studies typically work is that they look at the amount of um employment that is generated by the housing project, and so things like additional Amazon deliveries, additional um, you know, food deliveries and and storekeepers and uh you know, retail shops and and that type of thing, all of the all of the types of job classifications that support market rate housing, and then it um the nexus study makes a policy decision that instead of having people live off site um or in a different community, that the lower income wage earners that are um necessitated by the new development should be housed in the local community, and that the developer should pay for the cost of a certain percentage of those employees, and that the cost of housing employees should not be borne either by other communities or by the city's own affordable housing programs, and that's really the sort of the the up-to-date way of of looking at at these things, um, especially now that cities are not able to provide affordable housing on their own.

And so to that end, would it be complicated or even possible to offer um, you know, uh sort of like an introductory in LU fee that then ramped up over time?

Yes, so um the um the in-loof fee requirement is designed to ensure that the developer is only paying for the portion of the fee that is attributable to the development, and so any lower cost that is essentially being subsidized by other people uh in some situations by the city um would be fine.

So it's always fine to lower um the the cost that is determined in the nexus study.

What you can't do is increase that in loo fee above um the amount that is set forth in the study.

But what would the city lose if it decided to set an in-loo fee that was less than the um the costs attributed to the project?

Right, and and typically cities do do that because it is it's very expensive.

If a unit costs, say, you know, um $500,000 to build, um, it it is very difficult to um for the project itself to pencil out, and so it is common in the Nexus study to join that with a feasibility study and determine um what the appropriate percentage um did uh reduction is is warranted.

Um and um what happens though is that when the city then collects that say let's say the nexus study shows it's five hundred thousand dollars per unit and the fee is set at four hundred thousand dollars.

Of course, this is a the fee would be set on a square footage basis, but let's use that figure.

Um so if the city received four hundred thousand dollars, they wouldn't be able to build a unit um itself with that money.

There's a there's a gap there.

Um, but they that's where the city um partners with other nonprofits or perhaps the city provides the land, and so that gap is typically absorbed by the city or by a nonprofit.

Thank you so much.

And um city attorney, did you want to add anything?

Um Madam Mayor, the only thing I want to add is that the council's conversations about setting the precise fees would be informed by the outcomes of these studies because that would give the council the actual baseline for you to decide where you want to set the fees so that you you know you have a roadmap based on what the Nexus study will show you.

So it would be premature to do that at this point, and probably not lawful.

But anyway, um, all right.

Council Member Jensen, on to you.

Thank you.

Um and that's a kind of a good segue that the Nexus study.

I um heard uh Miss Silver point out that we that often the is in the case in San Francisco and other places, the INLU fee goes to provide um the opportunity for the city to partner with a nonprofit or to even donate land that the city may own.

And so I bring this up because um I'll ask for clarification from the planning and building transportation director.

You mentioned earlier in the presentation that there's 447 units have been entitled out of 5,353 units that are part of the um regional housing needs assessment.

And so of this 447, can you tell me or the can you tell me what they are mostly or or can you give me an idea of how where they are?

Yeah, uh the majority are actually um ADUs, I think more than half are ADUs.

Uh we have a fairly robust ADU program.

Do you want to just explain what age is?

ADUs or accessory dwelling units or backyard granny units, um, and the remainder are uh made up of uh new town homes at phase two of Alameda Landing, um, Lancy homes, as well as uh some of the uh construction at Bay 37, that was wrapping up, and also the uh project, the true mark development project that is um at Clement and Grand.

So, um then can I ask you, I'm just trying the although Almeida Housing Authority isn't here, you they were alluded to briefly in the presentation, and can you um do you have an opinion or provide any information about the uh I know that they did the North Housing Project and that's been completed and is being um occupied.

Uh can you tell me if what the other projects that you're aware of, either where they have the Alameda Housing Authority has land available to build new projects or uh like the pro the poplar or other sites, parplore um uh uh in terms of use of use of INLU fees.

Well, I'm gonna get there, yes.

Okay, but yeah, so so to assume that the in LU fees would be going to support a development as it has with the North Housing.

Uh McKay, the McKay Wellness Center was another project that benefited uh uh from some city funds.

Um, you know, the uh uh various projects at the collaborative uh shape also can benefit.

Um, the reshape project shape.

In that case, that was uh city land contribution.

There are many, many various channels where the city can support um and partner with nonprofit organizations to provide housing, and so what the regional housing needs assessment uh anticipates because it based on the the zoning changes and the general plan changes is to have more housing, including ADUs, which you've mentioned, including um what might be called infill or opportunity housing where housing already exists to to make more units where there's a single-family home and um as well as the opportunities at the all of the shopping malls in Alameda.

Is that correct?

Correct.

So can you just give me your thoughts about how um a housing trust fund?

I I this is where I'm going.

I the housing trust and the NLU fees are uh obviously something that we need to move forward and address and think about so that we can have more housing so that we can get the developments that have been entitled so those can be built.

But what I'm wondering, and what I'm um seeking information about is how would, given our limitations in land, we don't have a lot of extra land to donate to a nonprofit or to donate to a developer to use these fees that might be put into a trust housing trust.

So, where might these fees be used?

Could they be used for infill or opportunity housing to support um section eight vouchers, things like that?

What what do you see might be the opportunity?

Yes, and council member I think yes, that those are all possibilities, and and you bring up a good point that staff uh and I believe I acknowledge earlier is when we when we consider the pros and cons of INLU fees and for a city like Alameda where our housing opportunity sites are finite, there is some concern that yes, we create a pool of funds for the nonprofits and housing authority to identify sites of to build, but market rate developers might also be competing for the same sites.

So that that is a consideration.

But there's also situations where uh where state funding sources may be available for certain type of housing where the nonprofit organizations and the housing authority may be better positioned to have local funds as a match should leverage that money to start construction now, whereas the market conditions may not be perfectly there for a market rate developer.

So I think those those are the different economic factors that we would have to balance.

And but when we look at other cities and their approach, it's always a uh diversification of these opportunities, and we and and our consultants recommend that that really is the best practice because you want to position the city's program to be ready to leverage any opportunity that can may come available.

Well, and that's kind that goes to my my point, I guess, is how given our constraints, especially environmental constraints and uh the limitations of the available land, that we do have a great partnership with the housing authority, and we have our own housing authority, but there isn't the opportunities to build more projects, just housing authority projects that could easily utilize any IN LU fee trust are limited.

So, what about the looking at the general plan changes, the regional housing needs assessment?

What how could INLU fees be used to support what we've already the changes that we've already made to in fill and opportunity housing?

Yeah, so uh what we've identified as uh a good use of INLU funds would be really for the special needs housing, the supportive housing, particularly where we have services and the council may direct staff to say, hey look, let's create uh some guidelines around the use of the funds and maybe and even including the clustered options, clustered op only when it is for special needs housing.

Only when it it there is an identified need for a partnership with nonprofit.

So council can certainly we can certainly set those parameters around when those opportunities are available.

And do you anticipate that the Nexus study will provide more guidance in this?

Uh not the nexus portion, but we would do uh more of the feasibility analysis, look at specific case studies.

I think I think there could be um more work done talking to the uh nonprofit providers to see, hey, look, given the Alameda map and sites available, where where could you see future opportunities?

And that could probably help us gauge uh the level of uh local funding that might be needed in their future.

And is there any this my last point or question?

Is there any opportunity?

And I I'm trying to get to this.

I'm trying to hear a yes or some kind of support for any possibility of of the any inlook fees going into a housing trust that could be used to support existing housing, existing rental housing, the housing that is um the main rental housing on the island, which is small five to five to fifteen unit uh housing for mainly moderate or or a little above moderate um renters that are owned by smaller um organizations or mom and pop landlords.

Yes, council member, and what you're referring to is often referred to the uh rehabilitation and preservation of existing affordable housing, and that's often a staple of uh affordable local affordable housing programs.

And currently, I don't believe that uh the city because we we don't have avenues to collect a lot of funds.

I don't believe there's a lot of investment.

But let's be creative.

What do you think?

I'm gonna um do you want to speak first or assistant city manager Willich?

Because I saw her hand go up first.

I'm gonna call on you, assistant city manager.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, the city does have a residential rehab program.

Um it's not funded by INLU fees, it is funded by CDBG funds.

CDBG, you said correct.

Yeah, and city manager all yeah.

I was gonna say I've managed I've been a part of uh working for another city that had a lot of a trust fund that had a lot of funds and what and the you can put certain things in the ordinance as to what you might use that for, but then you can also adopt guidelines that more specifically figure allocate how that money is spent, and then you can also, you know, usually you wait for enough money to be in the fund that you can make a difference and how it's allocated, and then we can come to you with a notice of funding availability.

Let's say you have two million dollars.

Well, that might be if you think nonprofit housing needs about 40 to 60,000 per unit of local subsidy, so a project might come to you and you might get proposals, and then the city council could decide how to allocate that towards affordable housing projects.

So you have a lot of discretion and how that money gets spent.

I would recommend not putting too much detail in the ordinance because then you have to change the ordinance every time, and then adopting guidelines or uh or dedicate or directing staff on the NOFA, the notice of funding availability, how you want that money set spent, and you could decide to spend it differently for each tranche of money that you get, right?

But you do have to wait to get enough money, and that's the that's kind of the fundamental policy question is do you want it to just get built with the project right away when the development gets built, or do you want to use that funding, you have a little more flexibility for how that's spent and tends to be towards lower like very low income units.

You do tend to be able to leverage more higher subsidy units, but you have to wait.

Thank you.

Um I'm gonna segue right on the housing trust funds um uh question, and Mr.

Thaya is smiling because I bring this up all the time.

The um there is an existing organization, it's the Silicon Valley Housing Trust Um Fund, and it is not supported by bond measures, it is um it goes back um to the year 2000, and it started in the Silicon Valley where they have families and companies like Adobe, Cisco Systems, Applied Materials, KB homes, and some very generous folks who have contributed to this housing trust fund, but it has now in those years has contributed 690 million dollars invested in affordable housing but also helping get people into housing with down payment assistance and those kinds of things.

And the reason I bring this up now is that in the last year, the Silicon Valley Housing Trust Fund has located an office in Oakland.

It's downtown Oakland on Broadway.

City Manager Ott and I went to their opening reception in less than a year ago, and they would love to do public-private partnerships.

They would love to work with us, and so I've um just you know um really uh hound it, Mr.

Ty, that I want us to explore some of those options because great to start our own trust fund, but if we could put some of the money in and leverage those funds, they're there, they're ready.

I get their emails so I know what projects they're funding in the East Bay, and it drives me crazy that Alameda's not on that.

Um question for you I thought I heard, but maybe I didn't hear correctly.

Councilmember Jensen asked, could inloof fees be used to support Section 8 vouchers?

My understanding is that Section 8 vouchers are federal, they come from HUD, or they're VASH vouchers for formerly homeless veterans, and we don't man, do I wish I could control things at the federal level, but we sure don't.

Maybe the implication was that they could be used toward building housing, Section 8 housing, but the um I anyway, can you just clarify that point?

I'm sorry if I had uh misunderstood the question, but I might have correct.

No, the the Section 8 vouchers are HUD Federal Federal funds, so they're not no connection to um local IN LU fees.

But the housing that's created could have a tenant that uses Section 8 vouchers.

No, that that's a fair point.

So um a lot has been said by my colleagues.

I appreciate I don't want to be repetitive.

Councilmember Desag, I'm with you, and also with Reverend Sophie uh DeWitt who called in that there was a reason that these programs, inclusionary housing programs, were started.

And yes, I think a lot of us viewed inLU fees as a way that developers could get out of doing it, and the amount of the fees was never enough to to build the housing, and so I I have some concerns.

Um but I do want us, and especially this is a workshop to inform the council.

I would love to see city staff work with EBHO, the East Bay Housing Organization.

They have tons of experience in developing affordable housing and doing public-private partnerships, and um Reverend DeWitt, as she mentioned, is an Alameda resident.

Um, I also want to acknowledge the folks from the Alameda Marina Development.

I think you're now called Pacific, um, Pacific Development.

They this project has done a stellar job and everything that the Mr.

Murphy and Mr.

Rosenberg noted, the seawall that was built and the um the Clement cycle track that's great and the open space and still more to be developed.

In a case like that, perhaps there is a carve out or an exception to be made to recognize that maybe they've put a lot in already and they don't need to pay the same inloof fees that we charge other developers in the city.

I would not use their example as the starting point and to say everybody should get away, should only have to pay um ten dollars a square foot.

But that is something that can be arranged in an agreement with the city.

It's a it's a one-off, but it is not, it it would certainly not be my starting point.

But I do want to acknowledge that that our developers and including the Damonte developer did much of Jean Sweeney Open Space Park was was um their amenity.

Um, so I um, and my question um maybe for you, Mr.

Ty, is the launch it was noted, and I saw it in the staff report too that the live work units, however many there are at the launch are vacant.

They're they're they just haven't been um uh occupied, the need apparently isn't there.

Can they be converted to regular units?

So uh technically they are work-live units and they are designed under Alameda ordinance, they are um work spaces first.

So under the building code, they are designed as workspaces.

Um, I I think you know what let's not spend a lot of time on that.

That is not the most pressing problem.

Um, and um, okay, and then um the you did talk about how far the city council could go to incentivize construction, but it isn't just a matter of the city council incentivizing construction, right?

There's so many other factors, and I think you you mentioned them, um tariffs and the cost of materials and the cost of labor and so many things.

So is it is it a matter of timing of being ready uh to to you know strike when the iron is hot, but I just I also want to manage expectations.

It's not as though the city council decides to modify our inlu fee requirements and suddenly the floodgates open and everybody wants to do construction here, is it?

No, so um there's more to this broader conversation about what can we do to help housing the housing market today and what's really within our control.

Um tonight's workshop focuses on the inclusionary housing ordinance.

That really is but one piece of a much larger construction uh uh conversation around this issue.

And next spring when we bring our annual report on the housing element, I think that's when we would staff would want to have a broader conversation about hey, what is happening as a whole, what are some of the uh factors that are really within the city's control items like working with the uh housing trusts and looking for other ways to uh partnerships, um, that would be the uh a good opportunity to explore those options.

Um and then coming up in I believe 2027 when the city has to do a midpoint uh review of the housing element, and I think that's where we would um explore um some further actions that we can take uh related, whether it's zoning requirements, whether it is uh other other you know processes permitting streamlining to facilitate the fees to facilitate development.

I think that would be more appropriate time to have that a broader conversation about um those matters.

And I'm just gonna go back to a statement you made toward the beginning of your presentation that the state sees inclusionary fees as barriers to housing.

I don't doubt that somewhere along the way that was said.

But as we both discussed yesterday in a meeting with assembly member Bonda, we were in her office yesterday.

The state has made so many pronouncements, so many laws about housing, some of which conflict with each other.

Um one of them um gave city staff and I think everyone on the council and you consternation when a development team came in and announced that they were going to do a development at the um Harbor Bay Landing shopping center to build housing there, which is to say to take down everything, the safe way, everything, and build only housing.

That was by state law.

Luckily, by the way, for anyone who hasn't heard that developer has withdrawn that proposal.

Um and we are talking to our state legislators about making changes to the law because that clearly showed that there was a problem.

So my point is just that the state says through the legislature or what have you says a lot of things about housing.

I think we have to balance it, and I think we have to keep in mind what is the problem we're trying to solve.

I mean, as much as I would like to help people make even more profits on their developments.

My first um concern is that we house Alamedans, that we, I mean, we heard about the warming shelter today, which in part people being then sheltered is a function of not enough affordable low um rent homes.

I mean, there's it's very complicated what goes into being homeless, but we oops, I'm out of time, so I am not gonna belabor the point.

Anyway, this was a workshop.

You've gotten lots of input for us.

Thank you so much for your time.

You, Mr.

Buckley from City Attorneys team.

With that, we're gonna close this item.

Um, and so we are moving on to item um seven B.

Okay, um, so come on up, everybody who's um involved in this, and um you can do this in it in 10 minutes, right, Mr.

Long, your presentation.

Yes, Mayor.

Brilliant, just the answer I wanted to hear.

You want to go ahead and introduce yourself?

And welcome.

All right, thank you, uh, Madam Mayor and uh council members here.

My name's Justin Long, I'm the recreation parks director.

We're here to present our annual uh recreation and parks user fee schedule.

This is something that we bring every year uh to you all in December.

It was brought to the Recreation Parks Commission in November for their recommendation to approve or to recommend it to you.

Um, and so we'll kind of get on to make this quick for you all.

So, as a background, we try to limit our um fee increases and target them in a very balanced way.

So, but some of our high-level impacts, as you well know, uh we are subject to inflation just like everyone else.

We have rising staff costs, material costs, tariffs.

Even we've had to pay several of those bills on lots of our equipment.

Um, so we try to minimize what we do increase.

Um we also try to look at in the market what are our competitors.

We have a lot of after-school programs, we have a lot of programs.

We want to make sure we're in balance so that we're not charging more than what is happening in the market, but also what is you know, relative to our costs and make sure we're in alignment.

Um, and again, uh, a lot of these, you know, we like say we try to keep them low.

This year, most of our program fees stay within a three and five percent increase for residents and non-residents.

Last year, that was between 10 and 15 percent.

So, as we're catching up on some of these fees, they're not they're not increasing as much as some of them.

I will say that we do have some fees in this proposal that are far higher than that percentage, which we'll talk about in a little bit here.

Um, also we have some increased costs.

We anticipate the Emma Hood Swim Center coming online, and so there's gonna be additional operating costs and additional cost to the school district that'll come out of that.

So I just want to let everyone know that as well.

Um, and so here's sort of how we structure our overall um process where we focus on uh individual um uh benefit is higher cost.

So if you're taking a whole private swim lesson, or if you're taking a private program just for yourself, or renting something like a rec center for yourself, those tend to have a higher cost recovery.

Then we go into kind of our group benefits or group classes, our larger uh things because we can service more people at the same time, so we can actually economize costs so which really help us, and then we have high benefit where we try to keep a lot of costs low, like our community recreation program where we bring recreation out to the housing authority, and also uh we brought back our parks and playground this summer.

So you could drop into a park at four different locations and just spend the day with our staff, and it was totally free.

Just like we run our after-school pro or our summer camps that are a cost, these were absolutely free for people.

And we also try to focus on um like for our senior programs because of the way we've structured it, we've been able to keep a lot of our programs at a lower cost for our seniors so that it's it's more attainable for them to access our programs.

So, getting to um some of our higher rates.

So last year I presented a three-year implementation plan to raise our rental rates on our um our pool users due to the fact that they were far below market at the time, as you can see in 2024, our youth were paying two dollars and eighty-eight cents a lane, and our uh adults uh renters and resident runners were paying 411.

Now, I want to make sure that everyone understands there were also lifeguard fees on top of those.

So that does not include lifeguard fees.

Um, so we presented a three-year plan.

So we're now at 2025, presenting into 2026, and so what we would be doing, what I'm proposing here today is to do what over a four-year plan to make it more gradual for our user groups.

Uh, it'll also come in alignment with the Aquatic center coming online.

So this will get us through all of 27, and so hopefully the Aquatic center is online toward the end of 27 and the beginning of 28.

So this will align with getting to a market rate value, which when we presented the Aquatic center operating plan, our economist BAE, who developed our operating plan and determined that the market rate in that year would be approximately $15 an hour per lane.

So here's just some highlighted fees that we have.

As you know, in the past years we've been increasing our field rental rates.

We've been doing it incrementally by a dollar each year.

We've done so again here.

We also are getting a lot more park open space rentals, and so we did a nominal increase there.

And again, here we are with the increase to our swim team rental rates.

And then also we've added a category where now we are getting a lot more people into our adult sports program.

So we need to have more officials.

We just didn't have an official price for how to charge for that.

So we've created those here for you.

The $98 an hour for the resident and the 11 for that.

We pay for all the officials to be there, and this is a way for us to try to recoup some of those costs.

Like I say, overall, everything is between a three and five percent.

We didn't do much for our picnic or facility rentals because we determined we're pretty at market right now.

Actually, I think our picnic rentals are probably you know at top of market, but we're currently we're we're in a reasonable position on this, and with a small increase on youth programs again, that was really just to accommodate for that 3% cost for part-time staff.

As you well know, my department is responsible for the majority of the part-time staff here.

We have well over 150 uh in the summertime, so upwards of 300 at times.

So we have a lot of part-time staff members.

So we have some new fees for 2025.

Um, so we've discovered that we've we've built partnerships with lots of organizations who also need storage for a lot of their sports events.

Um, these come in various size containers all the way up to uh even a shipping container.

Um, but we've also discovered sometimes it's hard to keep track of these, and it's hard to keep track of those who are utilizing them.

Um, and so we wanted to create a process where there's an annual fee, so we'll kind of encourage them to have contact with us and so that we can manage this better.

Um and so that's gonna range for from a small container behind like a basketball or a baseball to all the way up to a shipping container, that's the 50 to 100, and then we've got um we have several battery packs that we have to operate at special events so that we no longer have to use gas generators.

So we have those in our uh facility and we want to make them available for community groups to be able to use them, such as Blue Brews and Barbecue or other groups that get citywide permits.

We put the caveat on the citywide permits because these are expensive pieces of equipment, and we want to make sure that we know the organizers and how we lend them out.

Um, and then uh this last year we bought a mobile wheelchair lift so that we can make sure that all of our outdoor events are accessible.

Um we were having to previously rent these, and they're often cost well over two two thousand to twenty five hundred dollars, and we would even have to go pick them up.

So we decided to buy one and make them accessible to all city events and other departments so that we can sort of economize those uses.

And that was the fast version of kind of going over our the main highlights for our uh fee increases.

But um, as you can tell uh in the staff report, we've um met with a lot of user groups when we proposed these fees, we emailed them to all of our groups.

Um we also held an online meeting for the users to join us and ask questions, make comments.

Um we also again presented this at the Recreation Parks Commission.

Um, there were several speakers that came out from Alamuna Masters who were in opposition to the pool fees, and which is one of the reasons why we reacted by stretching out further.

Um, and as we know, we're just approving 2026.

The target is 2028, and so we'll evaluate that as we continue as we get closer to 2028 to make sure that it is market rate.

So, with that, I'll open it up to questions.

Thank you, Mr.

Long.

Um, are there clarifying questions from the council vice mayor prior?

Um, yeah, I I was contacted by you know some uh people from the masters, and I I I have a question because um we charge for the lifeguard, um, but other places don't.

So I do is that something that we can look into waiving, or I just wanted to hear your thoughts about that?

So, most organizations do this in a variety of ways.

So uh for example, the city of Emeryville charges seven uh 50 an hour per lane, but then you have to have two lifeguards, which they charge you for 23 Sama change an hour.

So when you divide it out by their whole six-lane pool, you end up at a 14 plus dollar an hour rental.

Now, some facilities just have regular operating hours where they just are providing lifeguards.

So if you're renting lanes during normal business hours that you're operating, they just throw them in.

And so there's a variety of ways in which they do that.

Um, and it has been a variety of uh like I say, when you're trying to do research in Apples Dapples, it's a little difficult how they all do this, but um the majority of them are charging for both, or like I say, in some of these, it's only for some.

I think for us, um, if we were going to be operating with our current programming, given the number of lap swimmers that we're getting between that hour, we wouldn't be open between 5 30 and 6 30 in the morning because uh five people per hour and two lifeguards, and not to mention we're often have four lifeguards on at this time, and so that's a basically a cost of a hundred dollars an hour for potentially five lap swimmers to show up at 5 30 in the morning.

So, again, it that's not I'm not saying that's the way it's going to be forever, but again, that is often the case.

And so, and again, as we get our new aquatic center, hopefully we'll be able to change that by having regular facility hours in the future.

Um, Mr.

Long, do you have statistics for the number of early morning swimmers or statistics at all?

I don't have any statistics with me.

I'm I'm talking, I our uh aquatic supervisor Stacey Thomas is here, and she can speak to that if she doesn't have any statistics with her, but she is the manager and supervisor of the facility and can probably speak more to the number of folks that are there in the morning.

Okay, I have a few hardcore swimmer friends, and I'm sure I don't know everybody who shows up early, but um if you do have that, you don't have that information.

Hmm.

Okay, um, well, I know we have a lot of public speakers, so we might hear from some of them.

Any other clarifying questions?

Um, counsel, were you done with yours, Vice Mayor?

You were done with yours questions, or did you have more?

No, that was okay.

Okay.

Um, Madam Clerk, we have public comment.

We do, and I'll call uh the first three.

There's 12, so we've got two minutes each.

Um Maria Ducy, then Ann Delp and Linda Gilchrist.

Um, yeah.

Come on up when your name is called welcome.

Good evening, Mayor Ashcraft, and Vice Mayor Pryor, as well as council members and others.

My name is Maria Ducy, and I swim for Alameda Aquatic Masters.

The recreational and parks commission recently approved recommendations for new fees for youth and adult swim teams.

Each lane that is occupied during a swim team practice will be charged these fees.

To me, all teams should be charged an equal fee.

It does not matter the age or ability in a swim lane, because we are people who enjoy being in the water and swimming with a team, listening to our coach, laughing, having fun, and learning to be better swimmers, especially in all four strokes.

We are staying active and healthy, and we'll find ourselves in a routine that is a way of life for many fond years.

Please look upon all swim teams as equal and value our presence as we represent this city.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, and then Linda Gilcrest, then Barry Parker.

Hello.

Hello.

Good evening, honorable Mayor and closer to the mic.

Oh, sorry.

Good evening, honorable Mayor and city council members.

My name is Ann Dell, and I'm an Alameda Aquatic Master Swimmer and have been for 28 years.

I'm here to talk about the proposed pool fee increases.

Alameda Aquatics Masters team has been the longest standing aquatics organization in Alameda going on 43 years.

We are a coach team, 50% which are seniors, 52%, which are women, and 85% are Alameda residents.

We serve all levels of swimming ability, from beginners to competitive swimmers, fitness swimmers, traffics, and open water swimmers.

Our coach makes sure there is a space for everyone.

We are a nonprofit community-based organization, just like the youth swim program.

Swimming is a lifelong activity, and I have seen over the past 28 years, children start on the youth teams, move to high school swimming, and then join our team once they have turned 18.

This makes my heart happy.

For me, swimming has been a solution to all problems when it comes to my well-being.

This team is my family.

Our goal as a team is to pay the same proposed rates as the age group team, which is keeping in line with surrounding communities.

We do not want to be priced out of being a master's team here in Alameda.

It's a service that's not provided by ARPD.

Thank you for your time and understanding.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, uh, Linda Gilcrest, then Barry Parker, then Michael Grace.

Welcome, Speaker Gilchrist.

This woman taught my children to swim.

Good evening, Mayor Ashcraft, City Council members.

My name is Linda Gilchrist.

Over 40 years ago, when I was still coaching age group swimmers, a group of parents approached me about starting a fitness-focused swim group for adults.

That group became Alameda Aquatic Masters.

From the beginning, Alameda Aquatic Masters built a strong and collaborative partnership with ARPD.

Because we are nonprofit, our dues covered only pool fees and a modest coach's salary.

When we found when we found ourselves with a small surplus at the end of the year, we used those funds to support and improve our community pools by through cash donations and targeting those cash definitions to specific pool projects.

We saw this as part of our responsibility and commitment to the city.

Over the years, Alameda Aquatic Masters has donated funds for numerous facility improvements, some of which being the lane lines at the Alameda pool.

And when they fell apart, we paid for a brand new set.

We brought a second set in from another pool to back up that set.

Those are very expensive.

We replaced the pool flags.

We painted the locker rooms.

We resurfaced the floors at the Alameda pool.

In addition, we awarded two scholarships every year to deserving high school students for lifeguard and water safety instructor training.

Many of those swimmer many of those kids worked for the city as lifeguards and instructors.

So why does this matter?

Well, because our relationship with ARPD has always been rooted in stewardship, partnership, and a shared commitment to our community community.

Unfortunately, we're not seeing that partnership reflected today.

The AAM community is now facing a drastic increase in pool fees, an increase so steep that it could put this 42 time.

Thank you, Stephen.

But you can submit the rest of your if you haven't already submitted it.

You can you could submit the rest of your remarks by email if you haven't.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you.

I'm sorry, your time is up.

Thank you.

Time is up.

Yeah.

Okay, and next is Barry Parker, then Michael Grace, then Annie Horn.

All right, come on up, Dr.

Parker.

Madam Mayor and members of the City Council.

My name is Barry Parker, and I was born in Alameda and have been a competitive swimmer since 1952.

Why have I continued to swim into my 80s?

The benefits are numerous.

Masters swimming workouts are full body exercise that improves cardiorespiratory endurance while increasing blood flow to the brain.

It increases bone density, is a low impact exercise with minimal risk of injury.

It is general on the joints and improves flexibility.

These are all physical benefits, but the psychological and social advantages are just as important.

Swimming with a coach on a team improves efficiency and builds confidence in achievement.

There is a sense of community that combats isolation and mood elevation decreases depression.

There are many studies about regular and long-term moderate to vigorous exercise that show a significant reduction or delay in the development of Alzheimer's or dementia.

Swimming is an exercise that can be done at any age, and swimming with the master's group achieves all the physical, mental, and social benefits.

I come here tonight to point out that currently there is a disparity disparity in the increase of water fees for the master's program compared to other swimming programs, including lap swimming.

And it might put the cost out of reach of many swimmers who need such a program.

Master swimmers, half of them over 50 years old, show up for workouts beginning at 5 30 a.m.

and noon.

They use the same hourly amount of water, heat, and chemicals used by other groups.

So why are their fees so much higher?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker.

Michael Grace, then Annie Horn, then Drew Schwartz.

Welcome.

Honorable mayor and city council members, my name is Michael Grace.

I'm a lifelong Alameda resident and have been on the Alameda Aquatic Masters team since 1985 with the founder and the Gilchrist.

I have been on the board since we became a nonprofit in the 90s.

I learned to swim in the mid-60s at Franklin and Lincoln Pools and swam with the youth team known as Alameda Swim Team before Alligators.

Then I joined Alameda High School swimming and water pool and continued swimming at the collegiate level.

Masters adult swimming did not exist in the late 70s, so I expected that after college I would end my swimming career.

Now our high school and youth swimmers can see that there are swimming opportunities after high school and college.

The benefits of Alameda Aquatic Masters to the city are numerous.

Consistent year-round, we have a new stream for ARPD, renting pool space during low demand hours, 5 30 a.m., noon evenings, which I hope are coming back soon.

And in the cold, rainy, dark winter months like now.

I heard a new song that reflects how swimming has been beneficial to me as one of the older swimmers on our team.

The main course is too young to be old.

Swimming with the support of the city has kept me young and fit.

I am not old, even though I am considered a senior.

Too young to be old.

To me, these lyrics expressed health.

Swimming helps us stay young and healthy.

At the November 13th ARPD commission meeting at the one hour and 45 minute point in the recording, the director of ARPD stated that it was a city council and RPD commission directive to keep youth and senior costs low to keep the programs available and accessible.

Our Alameda Aquatics Masters Swim team has about 50% seniors.

Due to the large proposed fee increase to our team, our senior swimmers will be adversely affected despite the council's directive.

Thank you for listening to our concerns about the huge increase to our pool fees.

Please consider a rate for the master's team that is the same as the youth teams.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Annie Horn, then Drew Schwartz.

Welcome, Speaker Horn.

Horn?

Come on up.

Hi, good evening, honorable honorable mayor and council members.

My name is Annie Horn.

I've been an Alameda resident for 11 years and a member of Alameda Aquatic Masters for almost as long.

Our master's team has been critical for my physical and mental health as well as for my sense of belonging and community in Alameda.

I realized how crucial masters was to my well-being when I was pregnant with my daughter.

Swimming was my medicine through complications of pregnancy and the overstimulation and mental exhaustion of motherhead.

At practice, I was supported by a community of parents, grandparents, dualas, and fellow swimmers.

The health benefits of swimming are numerous.

The quiet of the water, the rhythmic breathing, and the mind-body connection combined with a structured workout, is powerfully therapeutic.

Swimming with a coach pushes you physically in ways individual lap swim does not and prevents stress and injury from poor form.

Importantly, swimming is a low impact exercise that allows swimmers of all ages and abilities to build strength and endurance in a safe, sustainable way.

This is especially important to our teammates who are seniors, recovering from injury, cancer survivors, and pregnant mothers.

Our team is asking you to reconsider the proposed pool rental fees so that swimming in Alameda remains accessible to a diverse community of swimmers.

A 62% raise in three years is unsustainable for our team.

While the extended um fees schedule is a welcome step in the right direction.

We feel the end point of fifteen dollars plus lifeguard fees is still unsustainable.

We suggest aligning with the market rate for similar facilities in the East Bay, and please consider the removal of the adult nonprofit category and have one nonprofit category at the youth team rate.

Thank you to the council and the time is that.

Thank you.

Drew Schwartz, then I'll go to remote speakers.

Welcome, Speaker Schwartz.

Good evening, honorable mayor and council members.

Uh my name is Drew Swartz.

I'm an Alameda resident and have spent over 150 hours this year at Anson All Swim Center as an Alameda Masters swimmer and lap swimmer.

We support a consistent per lane rental structure, but the proposed adult resident team rate raises serious concern.

The regional data we submitted, covering nine Bay Area cities, most in the East Bay, show no other publicly run pool charges different rates for youth versus adult nonprofit teams.

There's simply no market that supports different rates, contrary to what is suggested in the staff report.

The average lane per hour rate across these cities, including lifeguards, is ten dollars and seventy-four cents with the highest comparable rates in the 12 to 14 dollar range.

By contrast, Alameda's proposed uh adult nonprofit rate would uh be over fifteen dollars per lane per hour for 2026, rising to over 19 dollars per lane per hour by 2028 once you factor in lifeguard fees.

While the extended run rate is appreciated, it does not resolve the fact that the final rate in the proposal exceeds market rate and is a 30% year over year increase.

It's worth noting that ARPD provided market rate numbers that represent only a small said set of data and some figures that are not directly compar uh comparable, and so you may find uh some more context in our uh communication.

At the same time, lap swimming and a card is spin aquatic fitness classes are priced below regional market rates, highlighting the inequity across adult aquatics in Alameda.

Some programs are underpriced while Alameda nonprofit uh adult teams are well above market price, creating inconsistency.

Other East Space cities differentiate youth in uh adult rates for fields and courts like ARPD, but those cities don't have those differentiations for uh for aquatic lane rentals.

We urge council to ensure that rates for adult nonprofit aquatic programs reflect regional parity and internal fairness rather than making Alameda an outlier.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker.

Uh, we'll get it to remote.

Uh Alwin uh Carvalho.

Welcome, Speaker Carvalho.

Good evening, Mia and Council members.

My name is Olwin Carvalho.

I've been a resident of Alameda for 32 years.

I give me a nineteen ninety-three when I was 33 and I'm 65 now.

A recent senior citizen.

I'm also a cancer survivor.

I was diagnosed with stomach cancer seven years ago.

Fortunately, with the help of my doctors, I've been able to fight it so far.

Swimming has become an important part of my physical and mental swimming gives me a full body work without the stress of joints and other exercises.

I joined the Alameda Acquitting Masters just a few months ago.

I was and still am a bigger swimmer.

I'm not an illite athlete.

But the Masters Club welcomed me anyway.

Every time I swim, there's a coach on deck giving me tips, encouraging me, challenging me, helping me to improve.

It's done exercise into something I can actually look forward to.

Something that keeps me connected and engaged.

AAM isn't some exclusive club.

It's a it's 136 of our neighbors trying to stay healthy and active.

Over 50% of us are seniors.

Some of us, like me, are dealing with health challenges.

I'm here tonight to talk about the proposed internal heist swimming pool fee increases that will affect our club.

Right now, AAM members pay $90 a month, which is already quite steep.

With the increased fee proposal, our membership costs would increase significantly in 2026 and 2027.

I would like to request the city to work with our board members, some of whom are experienced in swimming food management on solutions that will keep access to the pool affordable so that seniors like me can aid in place in this community will love.

Thank you for listening and thank you for your service.

Thank you.

Our next speaker.

Welcome, Speaker McDonald.

Thank you.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor and City Council members.

First and foremost, thank you for your time.

My name is Amelia McDonald.

I am the proud current head coach of Alameda Aquatics Masters, and I coach across nearly every level of aquatics on this beautiful island.

Masters, Club Youth, and High School.

I'm speaking tonight because the pool is not just a facility.

It is one of Alameda's strongest intergenerational communities, and masters is a central and binding agent in that.

In our swim lanes, we celebrate life together, and the last couple of years we've had a marriage proposal.

We have welcomed new family members, celebrated new jobs, wonderful anniversaries, and great adventures.

This last summer we had three generations of ladies represent Alameda during an open water swim race.

One of my 11-year-old swimmers, her mom, a blossoming master swimmer, and her grandmother, a lady who could swim most of us under the table.

Beautiful.

We also support each other in small ways, like the random not so great Tuesday, where you still get up at five in the morning to do something good for yourself.

And we support each other in big ways.

Parents transitioning their kids into college.

We're there for those kids as they go into adulthoods, offering them lanes during their breaks and when they come back, knowing that there's a community happy to have them here.

Masters is where people find belonging, purpose, and strength, no matter where you are in life.

We follow people through all the different transitions in life, uh, mental, physical, and everything.

This year we have two new knees and one new hip.

Aquatics in Alameda is a lifelong circle of support, and it is integral to Alameda.

Raising fees drastically, uh cut risks cutting people out of the very community that supports them.

We aren't asking for anything extravagant.

We are asking for a pricing structure that keeps this community accessible to every generation that depends on it.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker.

Back to in person.

Uh Dara Jones, then Lisa Klein, then Stephanie Lapachay.

Hello.

Hello.

Honorable mayor and city council members, thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.

My name is Dara Jones.

I'm an Alameda resident and serve on the board and as an assistant coach of Alameda Aquatic Masters.

We are not opposing fee increases.

We understand the financial reality of the aquatic system.

Our request is simply for a sustainable structure, one aligned with other regional communities, and one that does not price out a long-standing program that has supported the city for decades.

Our team serves adults learning to swim for the very first time, returning after long breaks, recovering from injuries, or managing chronic conditions, and we adapt workouts for all abilities.

We have been a consistent year-round revenue contributor, 52 weeks a year for 42 years.

This consistency is especially notable since we still cannot run our full pre-emmahood schedule, even at heard me, I've been talking all day.

Even 18 months after its closure, the loss of that facility reduces participation opportunities and access for Alameda residents who rely on coached adult swimming.

We are being asked to pay more while receiving less access.

We recommend aligning with other e-space cities by removing the adult resident team category and allowing the youth resident team rate to include all resident nonprofit teams, including adult programs.

This would have an annual financial impact of about 26,000.

To put that in perspective, ARPD reported over 500,000 in aquatics revenue this year with one aquatic facility.

The new city aquatic center is projected to generate 2.7 million annually.

Against those numbers, our request has minimal revenue impact, but on the city, but is essential for our team's survival.

Alameda Aquatic Masters essentially breaks even every month, and any fee increase must be passed.

Oh, thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Lisa Klein, then Stephanie Lapoche, then Anne McCormick.

Welcome, Speaker Twine.

Good evening, Honorable Mayors and Council members.

My name is Lisa Klein.

I've been a member of the Alameda Aquatic Master since moving to Alameda 20 years ago, and I'm a current board member.

I want to thank you for considering the points uh shared by my fellow board members uh thus far this evening.

You've been hearing and we'll hear more from several of our team members about their personal experiences as well.

But before they uh speak, I want to underscore from the board's position really our critical concern.

We do appreciate the revised staff recommendation, which spreads the increase out over longer period of time, but it is still a very steep increase for us.

Um it is it would significantly impact the sustainability of our four-decade old nonprofit program.

You know, we've heard we're deeply committed to the sustainability of the city's pools to serving the communities.

Our members and their children participate in youth and recreation and school swim teams, they take ARPD lessons, and they work as lifeguards.

Um, so we really really do value this partnership with the city.

We're very appreciative and expect that uh really excited about the new pool to come.

We understand that prices need to rise over time, and we are prepared to pay our fair share.

However, we respectfully request that the city eliminate the adult resident category, apply one resident team category to all uh all nonprofit groups for the aquatics program, and this approach achieves regional parity.

Thank you for your time and consideration and your leadership.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Stephanie Lapoche, then Anne McCormick, then uh Jeannie Merrill.

Hello.

It's way past my bedtime, so I will try to get through this fast.

You're telling us it's late and we still have several agenda items, but go ahead.

Honorable mayor, city council members.

My name is Stephanie Lapshey.

I've lived in Alameda for 20 plus years, have swam with the Alameda Aquatic Masters team almost as long, and I feel like I've been fighting for the pools in this community for um as many years also.

I've attended more than Miss Lapachet.

Oh, I've attended more meetings than I can remember regarding keeping pools open, um, fixing pools, funding new and existing pools.

Every time I say I'm not gonna come and speak, and I feel compelled to come speak.

Now it looks like after all these years of fighting, I might not get to enjoy the results of my and the community's efforts.

Uh, the proposed fee increase will significantly impact the ability of Alameda Aquatics Masters team to continue to operate as you've heard from many speakers.

While I understand the uh need for ARPD to have money coming in, um, I think this increase needs to be reconsidered.

Um, just on the what I've noticed over the past few years, we've struggled to keep our um team membership up because of the closures and maintenance issues and lack of emahood, which I know which is also been prolonged.

And so I think it's a really bad time to be pricing out a group that's been here for a long time when you have two new pools that have been open and to lose the master's team to help those pools be successful would be a shame.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, uh Ann McCormick, then Genie Merrill.

Welcome, Speaker McCormick.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the council.

My name is Ann McCormick.

In the past, I've been here talking about utility issues, but tonight I'm a swimmer.

And and I swim with the memo swim team, a second master's team in Alameda, who's been here since uh 2020.

And in solidarity with the Alameda Masters, so many good points were already made tonight.

If you're not converted to swimming by now, you should uh keep listening.

Um, I really want to talk about what was brought up most recently.

This is really an existential threat to our program.

And as the last speaker said, extremely bad timing giving the maintenance issues and limited access that we have, that has been affecting our ability to recruit and retain members.

Also, what wasn't said in the chart from 24 to 25, our fees almost doubled.

We are absorbing that amount now, and the doubling again over the which is 30% over the next three years, is just not possible.

The money's just not there to maintain the program.

I do want to say in solidarity with City Hall, the pool heater, boiler at NCNL is also not working.

So we have no access.

It's uh just not available this week.

Um, and echo the comment about the the two fee structure.

Some people think of master swimming when you hear it as sort of an elite group.

It is not.

You've heard that uh described tonight.

We have a number of seniors, we have a number of single mothers, we have a number of renters in Alameda, and keeping a fee structure accessible is really primary to the program.

We would not be able to continue to swim in Alameda with the proposed fees increase.

We would have to continue to expand our program in San Leandro and other places.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Jeannie Merrill.

Welcome, Speaker Mirror.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council members.

My name's Jeannie Merrill.

I'm an Alameda resident and a 6 30 a.m.

swimmer with Alameda Aquatic Masters, and I can say there are many swimmers at that hour and and uh we have to fight for spaces with the 530 folks who um filled the pool.

Um the proposed uh 60 percent increase, I think you've heard tonight is is just too tough.

It um stretches affordability and would limit access uh to a great resource uh in the city of Alameda.

It's good for our health, it's good for our community, and unfortunately the proposed adult swim lane fees are are not limited.

Uh, they're not balanced and they're not minimized.

Um, and we respectfully ask that you reject the proposal and consider applying a consistent and fair rate, similar to the rate applied to uh the youth rate to all swimmers.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, that was our last speaker.

All right, good job, speakers.

Um, we are going to close public comment.

And um we're going to open council comment.

I will take a quick lead on this and just say I very much appreciate all the time and effort staff has put into its recommendations.

Um but I've listened very carefully to all the speakers who I think raise excellent points and um and we've gotten lots of correspondence and it's attached as an exhibit.

My ask would be, and here are my concerns with the um these programs, the aquatics team, and so many seniors on them.

Seniors are sometimes low income, and yet we want them, and as mayor, um, one of my top priority is the health and safety of our community, and so we want to provide those opportunities for people to stay healthy, to avoid health care or to help them heal or rehabilitate from injuries and whatnot.

And so I um haven't done the deep dive part in the pun that um some of the speakers have about other um other um teams and what they're charged, but I it is hard for me to justify charging this team more than we would charge a youth team, especially because as I said, it's you know, for some folks, this is probably a stretch to their budget, and if you stretch a budget too much, something has to get dropped, and I um I wouldn't want it to be um swimming.

So my ask would be that staff go back to the drawing board and figure out.

Well, first of all, I I'm not sure we've seen the comparison of what the what it would mean to um to not to keep these fees the same.

I mean, obviously they're not saying let us swim for free, but they're saying just charge us what the what the rest of the youth teams uh what the rest of the swim teams are paying.

Anyway, um that's just top of mind because I'm very moved by the speakers and all the correspondence we've heard, but I would also like to hear from my colleagues.

Council member Bowler, and by the way, it just it did want me, makes me want to just go and jump in a pool, all the benefits.

I swimming was my work out all during law school.

I got up to swimming up to a mile.

I don't think I could do that today, but maybe I just need to have a coach again.

Councilmember Bowler, your thoughts.

Um I would agree.

Well, that was short and sweet.

That's how we get out of here before midnight.

Um Councilmember Days, I don't know your tennis player, but your thoughts.

Well, first of all, you know, um the in general the topic tonight is about um fees um for recreational um rental uh recreational spaces and also recreational programs.

And I mentioned this largely because, you know, except for um basketball teams, um, I think youth basketball teams rarely do people really attend these meetings.

So when you know people uh attend um the the proposed fee increase meetings, recreational fee increase meetings, you know, you have to sit up and take notice.

Um but even prior to this meeting, I do appreciate um the time that um uh certain members of the swimming community took to kind of um provide me with some information and upon you know meeting with them at the coffee shop to me um the information that they provided really spoke for itself, um and and I and I really think that the um individu that the community has really done their research um I mean they they've seem to have provided a lot of data that I don't think anyone's really challenging that really supports their their position.

Um but I also want to make sure to say to um Amy Woolridge, to uh Justin Long, um just Stacey Thomas, you know, we certainly appreciate you know the work that that you do on behalf of our city to make sure that you know the recreational program um is uh financed as robustly as possible, but in a fair manner.

So we appreciate your your work.

So let's make sure to say that.

But I think for tonight though, you know, um I you know the fact that you know people you know, Woody Allen says half the battle is showing up.

Well, there's a lot of people who showed up.

So um, so I think we we, you know, um if someone said, you know, to to for staff to work it out, take it back.

I think I think I heard that I would definitely um support that.

Um I do think that the swimming community um did provide a lot of compelling um uh information.

But I also want to make sure to say to Mr.

Long, to Amy Wooleridge, to uh uh Jennifer Ott and Stacy Thomas, you know, we appreciate you know your work, we really do.

Um but maybe on this one, let's let's take a look at it again and uh see how um we can try to make it the um youth rate that people are saying that there's one uniform rate um hopefully the youth rate um and um so that I would definitely support that.

Sorry I wasn't as succinct as uh my colleague uh council member bowler.

It would have been hard to be more succinct than Council Member Bowler, Councilmember Jensen, let's go to you.

Um I appreciate all the information provided.

I I there's a couple things in the report that that struck me, and one of the one thing was that um that there's no increase to as um the ARPD director pointed out, there's the other fee increases are from five to ten percent if there are if fee increases at all.

And the other thing that um that I noticed is that the other pool fees are not being increased or not proposed for increase.

And I wonder if you could comment on that.

Is it that are they not are these maintenance costs just related to the lab swimming, or is it that the only program that's never that's so far under market as opposed to the drop-in fees which are not being increased?

So one of the um Council Member Johnson, one of the things we heard in the last couple of years when we brought fees forward was trying to keep access for our seniors who aren't on private teams like masters who have access to the pool.

So we did not increase our drop-in lane rates for that.

Um it's also one of those things where our our swim lessons we're trying to keep them attainable.

Again, I think one of the goals we've heard from this council is that we want everyone to learn how to swim here in Alameda.

We want to make sure that our group lessons are at a reasonable rate, that at our semi-group lessons are a reasonable rate, which we're not touching them in this year.

We've tried to keep those rates really low so we can get access to all of our residents to get that uh access for swimming.

Well, thank you.

And um you that brings up another um question that I have, I guess.

It's it's with regard to the drop in rates, and I totally support and agree that we want to encourage swimming by everyone.

Our drop-in rates are have three tiers.

They have youth, adult, and senior tiers.

And I um I it's apparent to me in listening to the report and and understanding a little bit.

Not that I'm a swimmer, um, as Councilmember Desag knows, I'm on the court more often, but um these fees the these teams are either youth or adults.

So there's no, is that true?

There's no senior team, and any senior would be part of the adult team.

Is that correct?

That is correct in how it is currently structured.

Well, then just to point that out because it sounds and we've heard from many seniors who are participants in the aquatic masters, and so it would seem that we should really address or at least support those seniors who are swimming with the masters by uh uh effecting some subsidization of the fees.

My final suggestion or question I guess is um with regard to the inclusion of the lifeguard fees.

I have heard you've mentioned this with regard to how the limited number at particular times of day, the number limited number of swimmers uh who are participating in any time of day, certain times of day, and it and then on the other hand, there may be more swimmers or maybe two teams as I understand it at certain times of day.

So the allocation by hour of lifeguard fees to individual swimmers may be something that I would suggest that be looked at, whether that could be allocated differently, and it looks from other data provided by the aquatic masters and not that those fees are perhaps um perhaps assessed differently in other cities and it might be more effective.

So can I add a clarifying question for you, council member?

Um so um when you're renting the pool, for example, if you want all nine lanes, we require two lifeguards.

This is for safety factors, this is for access.

If you're only accessing a portion of the pool, like six lanes, like often the masters does, they only pay for the one lifeguard.

So we reduce that and the department for utilizing the other two lanes for lap swim, we split the fees together, so we try to lower that cost.

I see.

Well, thanks for clarifying that.

So those are uh those do depend on the number of swimmers from each team.

Well, which depends on the number of lanes rented as how we bring it down.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Those are those are my suggestions and questions.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Pryor.

Um I would also uh I also want to say thank you to staff for you know, obviously just working so hard and diligently um and trying um, but I I would like us to look into um either um seeing how we can subsidize the um lifeguard fee um and or um reducing our the rates or having the rates uh be equal to the youth um organizations.

And that's my comment.

Thank you.

And um, Director Long, if you could just um answer a question.

I have you you mentioned um a policy to charge private teams more.

Is that did I hear that correctly?

And when you say private teams, what what are the expectations that that go into that?

Because because and I'll just I'm I'm not trying to set you up, but it sounds like this is a pretty grassroots um effort.

We're not talking about you know a fancy private club, it's that you know this organization has been together for 40 some years, whatever it is, it's not ARPD.

I understand that, but what um help us understand the distinction you're making.

Okay, so um, Madam Mayor, to clarify um when we're collecting fees for recreation activity, whether it's renting a pool or renting a field or renting the gym, when a group is taking public access away from the general public is how we assess fees, like for example, our picnic rentals.

If someone wants to reserve one for their private party, it's no longer available to the general public.

So Alameda Masters is a nonprofit group here in Alameda, and they rent the pool from ARPD for a period of that.

That's what I meant by private team, not that they are a commercial or that they're a revenue seeker, they're a nonprofit team and they represent a good portion of the community that likes to swim in our facilities.

Um do you think they're just placing many non-team swimmers at 5 30 and 6 30 in the morning?

Again, a lot of the time when we do our allocation, we've been allocating them almost the entire pool because it's time that they've requested.

So it's hard to tell whether who would show up between those hours because we're not offering programming during that time.

Okay, all right, thank you for that.

Um you can sit down.

So what I would say is um, I'm gonna finish my sentence and then I will call on people.

Um what I would say is that I would like staff to look into it.

Sounds like we don't want to leave recreation parks department with a shortfall.

On the other hand, I'm aware that there's some oh funds say from fund balance, um, maybe it's one time money, and you all know better than I do where some funding might come from.

But but I don't I don't have a clear understanding of what it would mean to the budget if we just charged all the teams the same team rate, there will be some difference.

So then let's look at how we how we backfill that difference.

I I'm not gonna short the recreation parks department.

We love your programs, you're hugely popular department.

All of our departments are.

Let me hasten to say that.

But um, but no, it's you do great work.

But in this particular case, I do think we need to just look at this from a different lens and do things a little differently.

Uh, do you both want to speak or you were just directing me?

Okay, yeah, I because I would always defer to her first.

But anyway, assistant city manager Weldridge, former recreation parks director, Amy Wildridge.

Yes.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I I I think I hear everything that all of the council is saying, I understand makes sense.

Um, and I think that a couple things I wanted to put put out.

Um, one is that I think uh it'd be really helpful to I can work with Justin and his team.

Um I think it'd be really helpful if you adopt the remainder of the rec, consider adopting the remainder of the recreation and parks fees tonight and hold aside um I would defer to Director Long either hold aside just the the rental feeds or hold aside the aquatic fees in general and as a category and and we can look at those as a whole, um, and then we can bring them back on January 6th.

It puts it a few days after the beginning of the year, which is when their fees start, but I think um we can work with it.

Um I did want to point out, and and Director Long can add as needed, but um having uh as you mentioned directed the recreation parks department for many years, the I just want to point out in terms of aligning with the youth fees, where that is problematic is it would set a precedent for all of the other athletic facility um fee structures for the gym, for um athletic fields, so um all of those for for as long as I know all of those facilities we have emphasized supporting youth in sports and getting kids out there.

Um so we've always had for all of the fees you'll see in there, there is a lower fee for youth than there is for adults.

Um so that would be one thing to consider if if you change that for um the pools.

The other thing is that the adults are already at a higher fee than the youth, so if you line them with the youth, you're giving them actually a discount or you're bringing the youth up.

So there's a differential there already that we would need to figure out a way we rectify, which we can, but I just wanted to point those out for consideration.

Um I'm starting from the beginning of your remarks.

I felt like I wanted to ask you if you wanted to make the motion, but I won't.

Um I would respectfully disagree with your assertion that if we charge all swimmers the same fee, it will mean that we have to do that for our gyms for our basketball.

I I don't think so.

I think this is something where we say, you know, swimmers, it's a pool, it's you know, a swim team, and gosh, if we have an activity that you can do just about from cradle to grave, it seems like just such a natural progression.

We taught them to swim as little ones, and they swam through, you know, kindergarten swim and on up and high school swim team, went to college, came back, could afford to buy a home or rent an Alameda, and um continue to to be a swimmer here.

So I I can differentiate between that and also the fact that this activity seems to have a higher percentage of seniors participating in it, that which is not to say that you know 80-year-olds don't play basketball and all that.

Did anyone see the article in the chronicle on Sunday about the 92-year-old who still runs the dipsy and gets medals?

Anyway, I digress.

But so I do I can I can make some um I can definitely make some distinctions, but thank you for um sharing that that concern.

Um Mayor, may I just make it?

I just want to I'm fine with the recommendation, we can come back with those fees, that's great.

The only other things I just want to make sure there's clarified is that I mean two things.

One is that we do subsidize 50 percent of the aquatics program.

So this this question of whether or not we're partnering, I just want to make that clear that we only recover about half of our costs through revenues.

And the second thing I just want to mention is that when we have the aquatic center, the way that the operating plan currently is, is that it would be $15.

So we just we also need to be thinking how we're gonna get people to where the aquatic center is, or we may need to revisit the subsidy for the aquatic center too.

So those are just gonna and then there are things we don't have to decide now, but there are things that over the next several years we're gonna have to figure out how to set the fees for the aquatic center that are gonna be more expensive, but you have time to do that.

And I would say respectfully, we will cross that bridge when we come to it, but also um there's a lot of things that cities spend money on, and I would have to say that subsidizing a swim program has to be one of the better expenditures of money.

I mean it's life-saving, it's life-maintaining, but thank you.

I mean, that is just to look at the equity, with all that, but you know, because we do in that.

I appreciate that.

Vice Mayor, I see your hand up.

Oh, and I was just gonna say, I think if one of the things we look into is subsidized, sorry, it's late.

Subsidizing the lifeguard, then the fee schedule is kind of moot.

So that's because it's the fee schedule coupled with the lifeguard fee from my understanding.

So having both is what makes it um way too expensive in short.

Um, that's all.

I was just saying, as um as things are being considered, just to see how that costs.

Well, I think what what I'm looking for is um I I think the um this isn't city Manager makes a great suggestion.

We and you need to move these fees um forward.

We can have a motion where we approve the balance of the fees.

I would want to carve out, I really do want to look at the aquatic um fees.

How can we how can we do it as broadly as possible on the aquatic side, Ms.

Waldridge?

Sorry, I'm pulling it up.

Um, but there is this is where my iPad freezes.

So you'll get there before I do.

I'm getting a new one.

And I'm open to find only doing a page.

Oh, I got it.

Um, and Director Long, if you have any suggestions too, since you're very familiar with this of which sections you'd want to hold out to look at.

So we can hold out the pool rental section, which I believe is on the page one.

Do you want to exhibit one?

And then we can um look at the aquatic section, which is on page um three.

So we'll suspend all the aquatic ones and bring those back.

And what is the document you're looking at?

It's not the res.

This is the fee comparison schedule.

Okay.

Right.

So there's there's a so the recommendation is is the entire aquatic section.

Um, because we can look at things like group classes and and all of that and and really look at it holistically, which is on page toward the top of page three.

Yep.

And the pool rental is separate on page toward the bottom page one.

So we're we're pulling out the pool rental and the recommending pulling out the pool rental in the aquatic sections for further review and to bring back to you on January first.

Okay, do I have a motion to that effect?

Yes, of course.

Oh, thank you.

Uh, director long, thank you so much.

Uh would that mean uh that we would still have the existing fees in effect in those areas?

In other words, if staff needs to take more time and can't get it done by Jan.

That shouldn't matter, right?

Well, that won't matter.

Um, Councilmember Bowler, um, we don't actually change the fees for aquatics until mid-February, which is when the next allocation would happen.

So we do have time to review it.

Thank you.

We're gonna dig in the sofa cushions to find that extra money.

Um okay, so would you like to make that motion?

So moved.

Okay, we have a motion by council member bowler, seconded by Vice Mayor Pryor.

Any further discussions?

Seeing none.

All those in favor, please signify by stating aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, any abstentions?

That motion passes unanimously.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you, staff.

Um and now we are taking a 10 minute break because you have gone almost three hours without a break, which breaks my rules, but I just want to hear all these speakers.

Okay, everybody, it's um 10 24.

Please be back in your seats at 10 35 and we will go on to our next item.

Okay.

How do we give us a h do we give us a hug Okay, um, welcome back everyone.

It's still Tuesday, December the second, we're hoping to keep it that way.

Um we've lost a little body heat in the room, so we're gonna have to talk fast.

Um Madam Clerk, would you please introduce the next item?

Yes.

Uh seventh C is a workshop to discuss Alameda's infrastructure needs regarding shoreline flood protection, sea level, and groundwater rise and disaster mitigation.

Sorry, I forgot to tell you.

Yeah, was that it?

Okay, and we are just gonna launch with um Danielle Miller, we'll introduce yourself.

Welcome.

Hi, good evening.

Uh, Madam Mayor, City Council.

My name is Danielle Miller.

I'm sustainability and resilience manager, and I'm um here tonight to discuss infrastructure needs for the shoreline for flooding sea level rise, groundwater rise, and update you on the work we've been doing to date.

Um so I'm gonna start with the history of our shoreline really quickly.

Um we've undergone significant transformation over the last century, and much of our current shoreline was made by filling tidal marshes, mud flats, and open water to create developable land.

Um, we're now undergoing another period of really significant um transformation.

And as we plan for this evolution, we really want to consider not only what we have to do to address these urgent risks, but to imagine what's possible and how adaptation can bring opportunity for positive change on the shoreline as well.

Um, so sea levels, groundwater rise, and heavy rainfall are all increasing due to climate change as we know, and these risks will continue to grow.

Um without adaptation, higher seas can overtop the shorelines and damage our infrastructure.

Ms.

Miller, I apologize.

I need to vote to give you more time.

Pause that clock, if you will.

Council, um, Ms.

Mueller needs at least 15 minutes, but I think we could give her 16 or 18 or whatever, because there's a lot in this one.

I know it's late.

But do I have a motion to add time?

Sorry, I didn't do that first.

Vice Mayor.

I move that we add eight additional minutes.

So eighteen minutes, you've got, and is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we've got seconds all over the place.

I heard, I saw Tony, but I heard, I'm sorry, Councilmember Jensen.

Uh, although it's been moved by count by Vice Mayor Price seconded by Councilmember Jensen.

All those in favor, please signify by stating aye.

Aye.

Aye.

That motion carries unanimously.

You have 18 minutes.

Please carry on.

And apologies again for interrupting.

Thank you.

So these maps show different levels of sea level rise and how they can impact our island with extreme tides.

And our shoreline vulnerabilities really depends on the elevation and exposure to waves, and those areas that are built on those former tidal marshes are really the most at risk.

Can impact our infrastructure from below.

We may also, in addition to shoreline protection, need to upgrade our stormwater systems inland to help alongside our flood defenses.

We're already experiencing the impacts of climate change with more severe storms and frequent flooding.

And last year in December, we had an atmospheric river that was associated with a king tide that really gives us a glimpse into our future without adaptation.

We had some significant erosion and threatened infrastructure on the shoreline from that storm.

So our approach to this challenge, as you have heard, is to bring everyone together.

We're stronger together, and Sea Level Rise doesn't respect jurisdictional boundaries.

We formed Oak, led by Alameda, the Oakland Alameda Adaptation Committee in 2021 as a coalition of shoreline communities, agencies, and stakeholders to coordinate flood protection and sea level rise adaptation in the Oakland and Alameda sub-region.

We meet quarterly as a large group.

We have our next quarterly meeting next week.

We have a steering committee, we have working groups focused on specific project areas, and we've obtained significant grant funding to date, which I don't think would have been possible without the collaborative approach that we've fostered.

We have our Oak project partners, includes our key agencies shown here.

We have amazing paid community partners, some of them joining us today, as well as some really incredible top-notch consultant, expert consultants leading our team.

And then the general Oak membership is much broader.

We've got individual residents all the way up to the state and federal government.

We're really wanting to bring everyone together to solve these challenges.

So that's really exciting.

I traveled to Oceanside a couple weeks ago or a couple months ago to cut kick that off.

Oops.

So while much of our shoreline, including the places that we love are vulnerable to flooding from sea level rise, we do have opportunities to protect and preserve the places that are most important to us.

Some of the priorities we've determined through our community engagement are shown here, preserving the beach and the recreation, maintaining public access and residential neighborhoods, historic buildings and districts, maritime uses and habitats.

And we'll continue to refine that list over time as we engage with our community.

But we know some things won't stay exactly the same either.

And there will be challenging trade-offs that we do flood protection, but that can improve our stormwater management, have more waterfront public open space, economic diversity, and so forth.

And so I think it's really important for us as a community to continue to think about the ways that we can enhance our shoreline.

This is a list of projects from our hazard mitigation plan, which is a FEMA approved plan and lists kind of all of the projects that we're looking at in the near term uh medium term, and sorry, and the immediate and the immediate projects.

And we're focusing on our near term projects right now.

And so this table is showing a timeline of the projects we're currently working on.

They address many of the near-term priorities from the map on the left slide, and you can see the progress we're making on each of the priority projects.

In recent weeks, we were awarded a state SB1 grant to complete our shoreline plan and a Prop 4 grant to advance our Bay Farm Island project.

We've also applied for other grants for sand placement and concept design with measure AA at South Shore.

And we're working with the Army Corps of Engineers to get an appropriation for our Alameda Point Northern Shoreline.

So we estimate a total cost to address our near-term needs of 295 million dollars with about two 26 and a half million obtained to date from uh city general fund as well as grant sources and other local funds.

But there will certainly be additional needs in the future beyond what we know about today.

We've been very successful with grant funding so far, and this year we saw some new grant opportunities come online, like Prop 4 that was passed by voters in November, and then we saw things like the FEMA BRIC grant go away.

So there's been a little bit of uncertainty, and Alameda is not the only community requiring significant shoreline investments.

BCDC estimates 110 million dollars to adapt the San Francisco Bay, 110 billion dollars, excuse me, to adapt the San Francisco Bay Shoreline just to 2050 with about five billion dollars committed so far.

And that's across our entire region.

So again, we've been really successful in attracting grant funds for this project, but there is going to be competition and funding sources are uncertain going forward.

So it's important that we have some additional sources of revenue to support this work.

And I just wanted to highlight, in addition to the projects we're working on, we are also working on a regional shoreline adaptation plan, which is going to be a comprehensive long-term shoreline strategy.

We were awarded the SB1 grant to continue this work and it will help us meet the new state BCDC requirements, shoreline planning requirements.

You accepted the grant on that on the consent agenda tonight, so thank you for that.

And we submitted our notice to of intent to proceed with a with the plan last week.

You can see where we are in the process, and what's coming next is developing more strategies, land use and policy updates, funding and implementation pathways, and then approval by city council and submission to BCDC, and of course, lots of community engagement.

And we had a big sea level rise planning fair a couple of weeks ago.

Some of our community partners led it.

We had 150 participants, and some really great work.

If you go to our website, we have all of the boards from that workshop are available.

We have a survey, we've been working really hard to get the word out about that survey for people who weren't able to attend.

And then this weekend, King Tides are coming again, our first ones of the year, and we do have a king tide walk that CASA is leading with East Bay Regional Parks at Crab Cove on Saturday morning.

So we hope you can attend, and I'm gonna quickly turn it over to Sarah to close us out.

All right, got one minute.

Oh, does that include that?

No, we have to add the other number.

Sorry.

Good evening, Council, uh, and Mayor Sarah Henry Communications and Legislative Affairs Director.

Um these are the costs that uh Danielle had placed earlier for the estimated costs of the projects that she was mentioning, the adaptation projects on Bay Farm Island, Estuary Shore, South Shore, and Alameda Point, totaling around 290 million dollars.

As you know, this is our fourth workshop in a series of the city's infrastructure needs.

We talked about streets and traffic safety where we put together a table where we identified 275 million dollars in needs, city facilities and public safety, where we identified $300 million in needs, libraries, recreation and parks where we identified $250 million, and then of course these needs for flood protection, sea level and groundwater rise, and disaster mitigation.

These projects that we've discussed, they're in the strategic plan.

They're in a bunch of other city plans that have been approved.

Thank you very much.

And the time is that we didn't get to add the eight.

Once we start the time, we wasn't adding.

No, once we start the timer, we can't change it, so we had to add the eight after.

So okay, okay.

I'll be very motion before 11, so please be brief.

Thank you.

In total, we do need to raise uh more than a billion dollars to complete this work.

We've been collecting your input, council, and the community's input in these workshops.

Uh, and we will be conducting polling in the next couple of weeks to hear the community's priorities.

Uh one of the things we're asking is how we can fund these items.

Uh we, as you heard from Ms.

Mueller, we're working on grants, we're working on all sorts of funding sources.

But in addition, what are some possible revenue measures that we can explore as a city?

And so we will return to the council early next year to discuss these options with you.

And with that, we're available to answer any questions.

Thank you so much.

And council, we're gonna hold your questions for just a minute.

And by the way, I I do love this photo, but could I just observe that we need a new aerial photo that shows our drought tolerant?

We have we have replaced that lawn at water guzzling lawn at city count at City Hall with um drought tolerant and native plants, but pretty picture.

Okay, um, council, we haven't had to do this for a while, but before um 11 o'clock strikes, we have to consider what new items we will hear after 11 o'clock, because it's now 10 52 p.m.

And bear in mind we have two fairly meaty closed session items we are going to return to after this.

Um so the remaining items are um well, we're gonna finish the discussion on on this this one um 7C, and then we've got 7D, which has to do with mylar balloons.

There is um a council referral 10A.

Um is that anything that could be bumped to the next um meeting?

That can be yes, I think.

So that'd be okay.

Okay, thank you.

That might just help get us out on the same day that we started this meeting.

Okay, so then what we're what we need for affirmative votes on is to hear um well to finish hearing.

We've started this one, but to also hear 7D, the mylar balloon item.

Um, and then we we are going back into closed session after that.

So do I have a motion and a second to hear item 7D?

So move.

A second.

Okay, it's been moved by council member um Jensen, seconded by council member Bowler.

Any questions, any discussion?

Okay, all those in favor signify by stating aye.

Aye.

Okay, um, and that was unanimous, right?

Okay, so we will hear um and then we will bump um 108.

It'll, you know, we'll hear it at the end of the next regular agenda.

Um, so back to um, and again, this was a um this is a workshop.

So um anything anybody wants to say, any questions?

I just want to say we're so fortunate to have Daniel Mueller on our staff and uh I love the work of the Oakland Alameda Adaptation Committee, and truly we're stronger together, and this was a way that we made sure that we weren't um causing unintended consequences by the things any of our neighboring jurisdictions are doing to protect themselves from sea level rise and and climate change.

We don't want to have unintended consequences, negative consequences impacting our neighbors, and they've been very effective working together.

So thank you all for all that.

I know we've got representatives in the room.

Um anything anyone wants to add?

Ask.

And we have speakers, public speakers, okay, but any clarifying questions before we go to the okay.

Let's have a clarifying question, Counselor Jason.

Quick clarifying question on the um summary of adaptation infrastructure costs.

It's nice to see that the Alameda Point Northern Shoreline at project cost of 20 million dollars.

We seem to have um pending funding um current or pending funding of roughly 20 million dollars.

Does that include um I think they're supposed to be at the furthest tip of Alameda Point at the where the runway does that include kind of like creating um, I think it's uh maybe a two-acre, I don't know how how long, but um tidal marsh, letting the water in.

This um this 20 million dollars that's identified there is we have a Army Corps US Army Corps um appropriation for 20 million for 15 million dollars with a five million dollar local match.

Um we it's been authorized, sorry, and then we need to get it appropriated.

So we're advocating and we've written letters to to ask for that to be um to be included in the Army Corps' work plan so that they will do that project.

So we have to do a little bit of work to actually get the money, but it has been authorized by Congress.

Um the portion, it's a levy that's sort of right um to the west of the ferry terminal, the Main Street ferry terminal, a small section kind of right around the Main Street neighborhood, and that's the piece that we're focusing on for that.

Um because we have the 15 million dollars, so we have to scale the project to.

It includes some major stormwater infrastructure, so we've really narrowed down the outfalls that we can have to get the the stormwater from the streets and the public areas, and so this includes some of that, so and then help stabilize some of the shoreline as well, which supports some of our other facilities, so it's a really big benefit to both flood protection and um stabilization.

Okay, I think as part of the VA project, I'm not I can't quite remember uh as part of the long stalled VA project um or the hospital the columnarium, etc., that there's supposed to be some two acre area where we're gonna um at the furthest tip where we're gonna let the tides take over, basically, kind of like what we're doing at the um park.

The DPA park, yeah.

It's actually probably gonna be part of a regional park that the park park district would work on with us.

Okay, yeah.

And where would the five million dollar match local match come from?

That is still to be determined.

Okay, all right.

Any other clarifying questions before we go to our public comments?

Okay, thank you, Ms.

Miller.

Um Madam Clerk, public comment.

Uh we have four speakers, so they get three minutes each.

Uh the first is uh Lauren Isle, uh Mitch Ball, and then Melipsa.

But Lauren's up first.

Well, welcome.

Uh good evening.

Uh good evening, Mayor and Council members.

Uh, my name is Lauren Isell, and uh I'm a longtime Alameda resident, uh former waterfront planner for both of the Bay Air Big Bay Airports, and um here tonight representing um community action for sustainable Alameda.

We are one of the Oak Partners along with the City of Alameda uh and about um half a dozen other community-based organizations.

And I'm here to um just tell you a little bit about what the community partners have been doing over the past three years in support of Oaks work to help educate uh and inform and engage our community members related to some of our flooding vulnerabilities and some of the proposed adaptation measures.

Um, just so you have an idea of how much work has been done to date um engaging the community about some of these issues.

Um, in particular, we've helped hosted uh uh over six different um in virtual and in-person workshops in and around the community over the past three years.

Um we have hosted numerous uh waterfront walking tours and kayaking tours, um, some of which um some of you have been on.

Uh we have uh presented uh the findings of the vulnerability analysis and our challenges at numerous events and fairs uh across the island over the past few years.

Um, but most importantly, what we've done is we've gone door to door in almost all of our vulnerable neighborhoods, those neighborhoods where people are vulnerable, not just to the physical threats of uh of flooding on our neighborhoods, but those disadvantaged communities, those special needs communities, um, the communities where folks may not have English as a first language, so that we've been really reaching out to the communities uh throughout the island.

We've worked with the HOAs, and we've um done presentations to community-based organizations, uh, to the schools.

We're working with school programs, we're working with some of the faith groups, um, and a whole bunch of different other partners along um on the island.

So, uh, and they've all responded um with uh great deal of um gratitude to the city and the staff members for um coming this far and being as proactive as we are, and also a great deal of concern about what the challenges that we like that lie ahead.

Uh, and also um have recognized and and um said that they very much support whatever the city is doing now and in the future to uh save our shorelines and to protect us and the cities uh the our fellow residents' needs and interests have been supported.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And next speaker, Rich Bowl.

Welcome.

Hello.

We've had four great workshops detailing all the important things our city needs to fund.

I wish we could spend just as much time discussing how we will acquire these funds, because I believe that what we take money from is just as consequential as what we put money towards.

While we should acquire grants when we can and issue bonds when we must, almost all municipal funds ultimately come from taxes, and some taxes are better than others.

Just like how the things our city decides to fund are an expression of our values and priorities, where we choose to draw taxes from are also an expression of what we deprioritize.

This is not an empty expression, as economists have shown time after time, the taxes discourage whatever economic activity they tax.

Sales taxes discourage consumption of goods and services, income taxes discourage work and employment, and capital gains taxes discourage investment.

And while I appreciate that measure E passed last year to fund our schools, we must acknowledge that because that parcel tax taxes floor plan square footage, it now discourages residential development, which is quite a shame because the number one issue our city currently faces is the housing crisis.

Two workshops ago I suggested that a new parcel tax should instead be applied on lot area.

This idea is strongly supported by many economists who research parcel taxes, as taxing land causes the least market distortion.

Theoretically, taxing land would discourage land area.

However, with some very limited esoteric exceptions, land area is finite and cannot be gained or lost.

What taxing land does instead is encourage people to do more with less of it, actually improving the economy rather than stifling.

Taxing lot area has a strong tax benefit linkage as well.

Larger lots are surrounded by longer roads, and underdeveloped land means further distances between destinations, making a larger proportion of trips done by motor vehicle for longer distances, causing more road damage, costing the city more in maintenance.

Underdeveloped land, including vacant lots, parking lots, and single story big box stores are the largest hotspots of crime according to the EPD's 2024 annual report.

And so we should expect the owners of that land to contribute more towards the police force.

Regarding today's discussion, it's very reasonable that if you own more land, you should pay more for its flood protection.

Lastly, well, Prop 13 does prevent taxes upon assessed value, making progressive taxation more challenging.

Taxing lot area is still progressive, as opposed to taxing number of units or floor plan area.

A lot area parcel tax puts very little burden on multi-story apartment renters and condo owners, a somewhat similar burden on single family homeowners who tend to be wealthier residents, but a lot more burden on large commercial landowners of big box stores, parking lots, golf courses, and vacant land.

I understand that the referendum for an infrastructure tax may not come from the city itself, but as private citizens, you are all still leaders of our community.

So encourage city staff and council members to advocate in whatever manner is appropriate for a smarter, fairer, and more equitable form of taxation in the form of a lot area parcel tax.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Malipsa, and then Ruth Abbey.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry, did I mispronounce your name?

Hello.

Hi.

The name is Ms.

Isa.

So Missipsa, the king of the media, North Africa, 2000 BC.

And um, what's your name again?

Laura.

The name is Messipsa.

Um I would love to talk to you about the um flooding issue in Alameda.

If we were to adopt planting trees, just like in the park, where is the park on the shoreline with big trees and everything?

Do we have flood out there?

No.

The only part of Alameda where we're risking flood is the lower part towards the shoreline.

Is no trees, right?

And then the draining system that goes into the beach can be flooded back, has to do with clocks and everything else that goes into the draining system, sewer system, whatever that might be.

Alamida was landfill, but if we think about risk of major, let's say tsunami, seismic activity, the Hayward fault comes back and floods the entire island.

The highest point is 33 feet.

We have a hospital that's approximately at that elevation.

We should think about the evacuation plan towards Auckland Hills, and this population, lovely population of Alameda, of saying if we ran into a situation of major disaster, this is the road to escape, or this is the highest point.

I think the city of Alameda should adopt a highest point of the island.

We should think about this place as an island that has three forest roads that could be easily flooded.

We've got a tunnel that can be easily flooded, we've got three, four bridges that could be also easily damaged, flooded, rush of population running out, and we should think about how can we implement a very efficient, very cost effective, agronomically talking, we've got the most beautiful trees that could like love oak trees, whatever that might be that can grow.

Thank you so much.

Alright, our next speaker, Ruth Abbey.

Welcome, Speaker Abbey.

Good evening, Madam Mayor and members of the city council.

I'm Ruth Abbey from Community Action for Sustainable Alameda.

We were created to support the city in the implementation of its sustainability and climate action plans.

And I just wanted to echo the um comments of my colleague Lauren Isell and the and acknowledge the tremendous leadership and support that the city staff have provided on this issue in planning in regional collaboration and obtaining grants.

But I just wanted to remind the city council that uh we will need to show um skin in the game uh if we are to uh obtain the kind of funding that we need to really keep our um our islands safe from the impacts of sea level rise.

Um, as you consider future uh investment in infrastructure.

Everything that we do for libraries, for public safety, for our park and rec it will um is for not if we are not investing in keeping our island safe.

And um uh I uh our role has been to elevate the acknowledgement of the community in that we should be concerned, but not freaked out about the future, and I feel as though we have done that.

People are very supportive of future implementation of the city's plans, and I just wanted to uh support the work that the city has done and um commend the city for working towards that end of looking forward to 2030, 2040, 2050, 2100.

We'll be here for a while.

So appreciate that opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank you so much and thank you for all the work that Casa does.

Our next speaker, that was our last speaker.

Okay, we um will close public comment on this item.

Anything anyone wants to add?

All right, we're moving on to balloons.

We will close this item.

Thank thank you, everyone.

Um, good work and and thank you for all your time in the comments.

Okay, Madam Clerk, will you um please um introduce this item?

Uh recommendation of our direction on an ordinance to ban the sale and distribution of mylar balloons in Alameda in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act.

This action is categorically exempt from further review pursuant to CL Guidelines Section 15061B3, the Common Census action.

And I need to promote uh Tim Haynes and Alan Harbottle.

Okay, there should be coming in.

There, they're coming in, yeah.

Hello there, hello there.

I don't know why their videos and cameras are on, but uh, there we go.

Okay, is he here?

Yeah, he's just muted still.

Uh you're still muted, Alan.

Oh, uh yeah, um Tim will Tim will be handling the presentation.

Good evening.

Uh, I'm here in support.

Who is this?

Uh Tim.

Can you can you hear me?

Who is this speaking?

Alan Harbottle.

Okay.

Uh Mayor, Vice Mayor, and City Council members.

This is Tim Haynes, the general manager of Alameda Municipal Power.

I'm not sure that my video is on.

It doesn't look like you, so maybe not.

Hi, but but I recognize your voice, so uh if you're comfortable continuing, please do.

Thank you very much.

If if we could go to the next slide, please.

In July, you asked staff to uh develop options for prohibiting the sale and distribution of mylar balloons.

The staff report recommends a combination of permit-based restrictions, expanded public education, and consideration of the citywide ordinance to address the risks posed by mylar balloons.

If you go to the next slide, please.

It phases out metallic balloon sales statewide beginning in January 2027.

The ban is in full effect in uh 2031.

The reason for utility sponsorship of the Mylar balloons uh bill um are the known cause uh is that Mylar balloons are a known cause of power outages and safety risks at the city council's urging AMP staff has reviewed ordinances from eight California cities, noting a wide range of approaches and enforcement models.

City staff is developing restrictions on mylar balloon use as a condition for event permits and use in public space.

You go to the next slide, please.

There have been 54 mylar balloon incidents over five years, seven have caused outages, four of those outages lasted less than five seconds, affecting 2,000 to 8,000 customers.

AMP doesn't track outages with that limited duration.

So I can't really say how much mylar balloons increased the total outages that AMP customers experienced.

However, the uh three of the outages range from one to two hours, affecting about uh up to 200 customers.

We estimate that in 2021 and 22, mylar balloons contributed to one percent to two percent of uh AMP's total outages experienced during that period of time.

Um the final point on this is that we estimate that it costs about 25,000 uh for each of the outages that occur based on uh labor and equipment costs uh from these from the mylar outages.

If you would go to the next slide, please.

As I mentioned a moment ago, the statewide ban on mylar balloons will begin to phase in a little over 13 months.

If city council wants to move more quickly, it would be helpful for staff to receive guidance on several items.

The first is do you want the enforcement of the ban to be a compliant driven, or do you want it to be actively enforced?

Another area is um would be: is the restriction on only mylar balloons or on a uh broader helium ban?

And and finally, is the ban in effect immediately, or is it to be phased in?

And if you go to the next slide, um, we'll provide a little bit of information from consultations that we've had that will give you some insight into answering those questions.

We reached out to local retailers and found that mylar balloons account for about 80 percent of the balloon sales, and latex alternatives are seen as inadequate, retailers are unlikely to voluntarily phase out sales and prefer to comply only if required by ordinance, and then what we hear from our peer cities is they typically rely on compliance-driven enforcement, and the public support increases with education.

If you would go to the next slide, please development of the ordinance and its enforcement if compliant-based uh would be managed within the existing budget and um and also uh a point to be made is that the proposed actions are aligned with the city's climate action and resiliency plan.

If you would go to the next slide, please.

That just brings me to the staff recommendation.

Um, and that is that the city council provide direction on an ordinance to ban the sale and distribution of mylar balloons in Alameda while continuing permit-based restrictions and public education to reduce outages and environmental risks.

With that, Mayor, I've provided the uh overview of the staff report and the recommendations, and I'll turn it back to you and city council for consideration.

Thank you so much, Mr.

Haynes.

Good to hear from you.

Um I believe we have some public comment on this item, but um, before taking our public uh comment, uh, do we have any clarifying questions from the council?

Okay, let's go to public comment.

And we probably don't need the video.

Okay, um, how many public speakers, ma'am, clerk?

So far, four.

So they'll still get three minutes each.

Okay, let's hear our public speakers.

Yeah.

Mitch Ball, then uh Roberto Astacio, Ruth Habby.

All right, speaker ball.

Hello.

Last week I received an Instagram ad from an account called the Coalition for Responsible Celebration, urging me to take action because Alameda is considering a balloon sales ban and local businesses need my help.

I found this to be a little funny, as this isn't a balloon sales ban, it's a Milo balloon sales ban.

And you would think that an organization supporting responsible celebration would be supportive of choosing one of the thousands of other ways to celebrate that don't include a single use disposable plastic in a form that is particularly dangerous to wildlife, can easily be transported into inaccessible wilderness, and waste helium, a non-renewable resource required for medical equipment.

So I decided to investigate a little further.

The coalition for responsible celebration claims their mission is to position balloons and celebration products as special and affordable ways to celebrate by promoting safe environmental product practices, driving sustainable solutions with responsible product stewardship.

And while they do technically advocate for tying down balloons and properly disposing them after use, the majority of their online presence is instead focused on promoting balloons and targeted advertising against municipalities banning or restricting balloon use.

This targeted advertising is not just something they carelessly post online to check a box, but something they actually spend money on.

And they're spending a lot of money because these ads have not stopped for me.

So where does this money come from?

Well, the CRC claims that they support local businesses.

They are instead funded by the world's largest balloon manufacturers.

Qualitex, Pioneer Balloon Company, Gemar, Gravo Balloons, and Sempertex, as well as many more.

All of this money is drowning out the perspectives of those who don't have the ability to spam ads in everyone's faces, including the ratepayers of Alameda Municipal Power, Marine and Avian Wildlife dying slow and brutal deaths, and the children in future generations who will have to live with this pollution.

Now, is this the most important agenda item the council will see this year?

Probably not.

But if international corporations are spending money to misinform the public and influence politics about balloons, all the way down at the local level, you have to wonder what other more important topics are being influenced as well.

Large automakers spend millions of dollars each year on Super Bowl ads alone, but you'll never see a single Super Bowl ad for more affordable modes of transportation, like bikes and public transit.

It shouldn't be surprised that now, as a result, some people believe that cars are the only valid mode of transportation.

The housing crisis is terrible for many people struggling to afford rent, but has been extremely profitable for realtors.

The largest funder of political campaigns in San Francisco's history, the source of a whopping 10% of all campaign funding in San Francisco for the last four years, was founded by two realtor lobbyists.

Terrible decisions get made when we mistake dollars spent with the true will of the public.

I urge this council to confirm the banning of Mylar balloons, but also to do a very difficult thing for every other vote you cast.

Before you vote, muster up all the humility you can and consider how advertising and big money lobbying has adversely impacted the spec perspective of not just the constituents who speak to you, but more importantly, your own perspective on every topic you vote upon.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Roberto Astacio, then Ruth Abbey.

Welcome, Speaker Astacio.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and City of Alameda Council member.

My name is Roberto Stacio.

I am a district manager for Dollar Tree covering Alameda.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.

I am here to urge the council not to move forward with the full ban of the sales or distribution of foil balloons because it goes further than necessary and would unintentionally harm responsible businesses like ours.

At Dollar True, we follow a safety protocol every day.

We do not sell balloons intend for release.

We place mandatory weights on every foil balloon.

This practice works.

The real problem comes from intentional releases, not from balloons used indoors for everyday celebrations like birthdays, school events, and family gatherings.

A full ban will also create several unintended consequences.

Customers will simply purchase balloons from a neighboring city or online where they won't receive the safety guidance we provide.

This means less local tax revenue for Alameda and fewer protection against misuse.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Ruth Abbey.

Okay.

Welcome, Speaker Abby.

Thank you for the opportunity to address this issue.

So you may be aware that Community Action for Sustainable Alameda works closely with the Department of Public Works and the Recreation and Park Department on cleanups.

We clean up at the local beaches, parks, et cetera.

And you're all invited to come on the second Saturday of every month at Seaflane Lagoon where we host a cleanup from 10 to 12.

And we think that the Mylar balloon ban is kind of a no-brainer because of its impact to our local municipal utility, but we really ask you to think beyond that ban to also the sale of other completely disposable latex balloons and everything that is completely unnecessary for celebrations.

And in addition, maybe consider things like uh release of confetti and other things.

We spent a lot of time picking up confetti at the local parks, and I think a combination of both a sales ban and a permit requirement.

So if you're going to uh you know use our our local parks, you may not use balloons, you may not use confetti in your celebrations, would be really go a long way towards educating Alamedians about these unnecessarily pollutant, unnecessary pollutants that um go into contaminated waterways, affect our wildlife, and are just gonna be um landfilled at the end of their useful life.

And I think that uh an actual ordinance is important to uh emphasize the requirements of a um an outreach and education campaign.

We would be definitely a partner in doing both.

Alameda has been a leader in reducing impacts of plastic pollution because we are an island city and we are on the bay, and we are impacted by the pollution of plastic pollution that comes from other communities.

So, being a leader, we would really encourage the city to go ahead and adopt an ordinance, ban the sale of um balloons and other uh plastic products.

Join our other coastal communities in doing this, and send a message that we don't need these things to celebrate and be happy in Alameda.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Um any more.

Yes, we now have two remote speakers, so the time limit will drop to two minutes.

Um the first is Maria Stockham.

Welcome, Speaker Stockham.

Stockham.

Thank you, and good evening.

My name is Maria Stockham.

I'm the executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Celebration.

We represent Alameda's balloon retailers, decorators, and home-based businesses that already follow responsible balloon practices, such as weighting, securing and proper disposal.

Our industry does not support intentional balloon releases.

We promote responsible use.

Alameda has a strong community of balloon businesses, including but not limited to Discount City, Debs Deluxe, Georgia's Party in Flowers, Pop and Celebrate, Sparky's Balloons, and Michelle's balloon twisting across from City Hall.

These businesses create celebrations that bring families, schools, and neighborhoods together, and balloon decor is central to their income.

We share the city's goal of reducing power incidents.

We appreciate Alameda Municipal Powers education efforts and see an opportunity to build on that work with an approach that promotes safe balloon use.

CRC partners with the Edison Electric Institute to provide free municipality-ready educational materials on balloon safety used by utilities nationwide, and we would be glad to share these resources with Alameda and AMP.

CRC industry data shows that over 60% of balloon use occurs indoors, and demand does not decline under sales bans.

It actually moves online or to nearby community retailers with less safety guidance.

Meanwhile, AB 847 is transitioning the state to non-conductive, safer foil balloons starting in 2027, meaning today's products of concern are already being phased out.

Given this, we encourage the city to update the event permit rules to allow balloon decor under responsible use balloon permit where participants agree to basic safety steps.

We urge the council to sub to pursue the path that delues that delivers the greatest safety benefit, strengthening education and refining permit requirements.

Your time is up.

Our next speaker, Bruce, and mom.

Welcome, speaker.

Imam.

Hello?

Do we have our speaker?

Yeah, he's are you unmuted?

No, I asked him to unmute.

Oh, there he goes.

Welcome.

He's unmuted.

Mr.

Imam, can you hear?

Can you speak?

He's definitely unmuted.

And that's our last speaker.

Um, okay.

If for some reason he pops up again, we will we will hear him because I think that there just might be some technical difficulty.

But aside from that individual, that was the last public comment is closed.

Okay, but if for some reason you see.

Perhaps if you might have an issue, Mr.

Amom with your um latest version of uh Zoom or your browser.

Um maybe if you update those, or you can also call in.

There is a phone number that you can call in that's at the top of the agenda.

I haven't had to read this phone number until I know that.

669 900 9128.

So you can also call in and then um put in the uh meeting ID.

He hasn't re-raised his hand, so he raised his hand.

Okay, well, um the time hours marching on, so we're going to come back to um uh council discussion, and um since this came from uh council referral from Councilmember Jensen, let's start with you.

Thank you.

Um I'll be very brief.

I um I submitted this policy, and I've spoken with staff and met with um the director of Almeida Municipal Power, and I completely support the policy.

I um actually in fact I would like to eliminate all balloons as has been done in other cities in California, including Lagoonie Beach, but mainly cities near the oceans, because it is very clear and evidence shows that these balloons kill wildlife, contribute to um debris in the shoreline, and in fact, mylar balloons never degrade.

So while I appreciate the need for responsible use and the comments from retailers, that maybe the balloons will come from other places, and perhaps it's that the retailers.

I I'm certain that they are providing information about responsible use of mylar balloons, helium balloons, other balloons, including weights and including uh the ways that they should be disposed of.

The disposal of the balloons, regardless of where it's done, regardless of how responsible it is, regardless of whether it's in a landfill, is gonna be that balloons gonna be there forever.

And so I think that it's up to the city of Alameda to address this problem because it's a fiscal issue, because we have seen we have seen the results of mylar balloons hitting our power lines, and because it's an environmental issue, and because it's the right thing to do.

We don't have to wait for the state requirements to be implemented for the state law to go into effect.

We can take action now, and regardless of whether someone brings a balloon in from outside, regardless of whether this particular plastic balloon is better or worse than a mylar balloon, we have to start somewhere, and I uh just feel very very passionate about this because it's something that we can do here, and if we just throw the can down the road, then how can we claim to be to be responsible and to be green and to care about our environment?

Thank you.

So if I could just ask a couple questions of you, um the um so you would go straight to a ban which would require enforcement.

Do you see the police out doing the enforcement?

How would what would enforcement look like a fine um so um a person would be cited by the police?

Is that what you're thinking?

If if someone were to release a balloon that brought the power down in Alameda, I would see that that person would be in receiving a fine from the police or from public works, or I think we don't require that the police go out and do all fines.

I think that we have code compliance, so I see it as more of a code issue.

Um so my experience with code enforcement is that they are pretty maxed out on the work they're doing now.

Um would so would you want to see additional personnel hired to do balloon compliance?

No.

Um okay, I'm I'm having a little trouble understanding it.

Um city manager, is there anything you wanted to add?

Because we've discussed this a little bit.

Yeah, I mean, all I would say is that if we aren't hiring additional staff to manage this, then I think it would probably need to be complaint driven at point of sale.

I think it would be hard to enforce.

We do enforce, for instance, and MA assistant city manager Woolder can speak to this, but in parks, we do enforce people smoking, but we don't we don't necessarily call the police to do that.

So we'd enforce it the same way we would enforce someone smoking in our parks, um, but we wouldn't we wouldn't be proactive about citing people who have mylar balloons, but or that would be our recommendation.

It would be really it would require additional resources if we were citing people and individuals, but we could do a complaint-based at point of sale without retaining additional resources.

I have a question regarding that.

Do we cite people?

For example, um, we uh allow jumpies in some places in parks, but not in other places.

Would we cite someone if they if they violated those rules, or do we just say um sorry, don't do it next time?

You want to take that um advice of assistant city manager old ridge?

Happy to, Mayor.

Um in parks specifically regarding jumpers, there's not a there's not an ordinance, there's not a so there's no citation enforcement mechanism for jumpers.

Um I I see this like bouncy houses, yeah, like bouncy houses.

But the staff will be moving forward with um uh making changes to rentals, both indoor and outdoor rentals, um picnics, facility rentals, things like that, um, mylar balloons will not be allowed.

And so people will be warned if the if our um park monitors see them with the balloons, um they'll get a warning, and then um, you know, the the air recreation park department needs to set up some kind of system where then you wouldn't be allowed to rent for a certain period of time or something along those lines.

So that's that's the type of enforcement we would have uh in parks.

Right, because we have some other requirements when you when you sign a agreement to rent a facility, a park, you have to agree to certain requirements, and so that's I think mylar balloons would definitely for all of our facilities be one of those requirements that those cannot be used, just like smoking people can't be smoking.

So that's what I would ask for.

And and if someone's smoking in a park, who is it that comes up and cites them?

Um I actually, with with all respect to city manager, I don't think that's the best example.

Um I wondered about that too.

Sorry, I'm sorry.

Um, we actually struggle with with enforcing smoking in parks.

It's usually more the park monitor is just letting some people know and pointing at the sign.

Um, but but this and in in regards to the mylar balloons, um, as city manager said, it would be code enforcement.

Um we we uh strongly recommend point of sale um rather than just people walking around who have balloons, um, we'll manage it on public properties for events for rentals and things like that.

Can I ask a question?

Um I wasn't here and um I think that um perhaps um assistant city manager Wildridge, you were here when the city banned plastic straws, and um I know there was a lot of opposition as I understand at that time, and um I'm not sure whether if the mayor was opposed or not, but I think that the the banning it at the place of sale was one of the effective ways when the way that was addressed, and it is as I understand it's complaint driven, it's not and it's provided when the when the um restaurant is licensed.

I understand that um we provide information to the restaurateur about the city's laws and regulations, and so I would expect that this will be a similar endeavor for the city not to go out and let me jump in since you referenced me and no, I didn't um oppose the ban on plastic straws, but it was done differently and I think very thoughtfully and collaboratively by working with our restaurants, um, our business associations and getting everybody onto the table.

What worries me and why I can't support what you're proposing, I think you're proposing, is to just have an outright ban across the city, point of sale, number balloons.

I don't know, citing people at birthday parties, but is that we haven't really sat down and I don't think and worked with retailers.

We talk about wanting to support small businesses.

When the city manager and I discussed this the other day, she made the point, which I thought was very valid, and an environmental scientist and emailed us this morning, made the same point.

It's the helium in the balloons that is the problem that allows it to because when this was first brought, it was about the the impact when Mylar balloon hits a power line.

I do understand the danger of balloons um and for wildlife and pollution and all that, but there is also a balance and education I think also always needs to precede something as extreme as a complete outright ban.

So I love the idea of starting with our city facilities.

Absolutely, when we're doing our park rentals for or you know, picnic table renters for celebrations.

That's one of the conditions you agree to.

There could be a complete balloon and confetti ban, but I would like to see more outreach to our small businesses, which are struggling, which I think for the most part want to do the right thing, and again, they would be well advised to be reducing their inventory because come 2037 or 2027, the the mylar balloon ban will kick into effect statewide.

So I'd like to see us do some public education.

I think there's some great ways to do it, and then certainly um we can for the use of city facilities.

I I see no reason that we can't craft um a ban there, but that's that's what I could support.

So you're willing to trade off the the amp outages and the potential for people to lose their power and possibly the I you mentioned earlier you're all supportive of health and welfare for Alamedans, but do you understand that that these balloons are going to continue to hit power lines and we can do one small thing to possibly prevent that, but you would prefer to not take that step because it might be that there are three businesses.

Well, there's Safeway and all of the great large supermarkets that will have to stop selling as they've stopped and as the reach stores, as you mentioned, as restaurants have tried stopped selling plastic straws.

But if you feel that strongly that it's not a pollution issue and it's just the helium, then that's you know, I appreciate that, but I can't agree with that.

I think that it is a bigger issue.

It's an issue for our power grid, and it's an issue for our wildlife and our our waterways.

Thank you.

And I think the hours getting late, and so I'm going to assume that's why you've misquoted me a bit.

I didn't say it wasn't a pollution issue, but I said there's a balance to be had.

I could very much get behind the ban on helium balloons.

Those are the ones that are lighter than air that are gonna get up and hit the um the power lines.

If we were carving that um provision, I could get behind that, but again, it is gonna be um complaint-based.

Um, and you know, maybe maybe AMP has a way to track down whose balloon it is, um, but I'm not sure.

It does, but let's hear from Vice Mayor Pryor.

Um I I was gonna say I I do agree with a lot of the points uh that the mayor made.

Um mostly I am concerned about how this does get enforced, but the state is rolling something out in 2027, um, which is great for all the issues that council member Jensen said.

Um I also do agree, I think education is a great way to move forward.

Um I think having the um like the um having staff restrict mylar balloons as a condition for event permits.

Um and then like with regards to saying if you sell a mylar balloon you get a fine, you know, these big businesses like Party City and Safeway, like yeah, they can eat that fine up, who cares?

But it is the smaller businesses, like it it's gonna disproportionately affect them.

Um if Safeway or Party City and you know, all the major box stores were on board, and we knew that.

Um I I could support this, but this I think the idea is fantastic.

I think how it's going to um how it rolls out, who would affects I I just don't think it's gonna have the consequences that we want.

Uh and it just reminds me of like plastic bag bands, you know, where you know what they did is thou the plastic is just thicker.

I mean, so that is how the big box uh stores got, you know, out of not using plastic bags.

Um same with straws.

I I you know, these are things I don't use in my life on purpose, but um a lot of that is through education.

Um, and so I um I'm just concerned about just the time staff would spend, um, considering this that is gonna roll out any in we're in 2026, like, and basically in about a year in just over a year.

Um, so I I just like the recommendations about the um restricted, I don't know, education, just the stuff that's on page three, uh, the last two bullet points.

I have a question for the city attorney.

Um, would it be possible in the city of Alameda to ban businesses other than medical and dental, I guess, but from having helium or from using helium to fill balloons?

Could we do that?

I think you could.

Um, because I mean the what this was brought about in the first place, and the reason that the AMP general manager presented was about the power outages from contact with mylar balloons.

But a mylar balloon isn't gonna get up to the power line without helium in it.

But so you yes, I do.

You do, okay.

Thank you for that.

Okay, other council members want to weigh in.

Oh yeah, sure.

So now that you know it about.

Um would it also work?

Yes, it'll be great.

Well, you know, for purposes of tonight, I just put together um several slides.

Um focusing uh especially on the question of power outages.

You know, um, one of the great things about um our um local municipal utility company is they uh collect great data, and the data you'll find is in the um financial reports that are posted.

And one of the data that they post um uh is the average downtime power outage downtime on a monthly basis.

So based upon that, you can calculate what is the average annual annual, so not just monthly, but what is the average annual to customer um downtime for all for all reasons, not just mylar, but whatever for whatever reason it's down.

You'll notice here that what I put together is data for the years fiscal years 2010-2011 to 2014-2015.

The reason why I did that is because from fiscal years 2015-2016 to today, what the um uh utility company tracks is not the average annual uh average monthly customer downtime, but rather what they track is the 25th percentile.

So it's not either the median or the average, it's the 2025th percentile.

And so uh from 2015, 2016 to today, I can't really calculate the the numbers that that I want to track.

But what we're seeing here is I'm putting trying to put together, create a benchmark of what is the typical amount of downtime that Alameda customers experience based upon the the average uh data that was the available, and and I put together five years worth of data in order to try to smooth out when the aver when the number is high versus when the number is low.

So the benchmark number that I've come up with is that Alameda customers, and there are 38,000 customers, roughly 38,000 customers, probably 97% of it is residential.

So Alameda customers on average, and this is not just the customers experiencing downtime, but also in the denominators is all the other um customers not experiencing.

So on average, Alameda customers experience 9,110 seconds of total downtime per year.

So that's 9,110 seconds, and and the downtime is attributable for many number of reasons.

So let's go to uh table number two.

Thank you.

And so in table number two, this is basically the data that was presented um uh verbally uh this evening, as well as the data that's in exhibit two.

This is the mylar induced um balloon incidents that caused downtimes, and so there were um roughly seven incidences, and the seven incidences um occurred over a four-year period.

Well, that the this is the most current data uh over a four-year period, and so in 2000 in the year 2020, um the downtime for my for reasons related to mylar was um the total, now this is not an average, but the total downtime was 3,600 seconds, and then 2021 it was six, oh I need my reading glasses, 9,900 seconds, and then 2022 2025, it was for both of those years five seconds.

So the reason what what we wanted to do is convert the total um downtime, mylar uh related downtime into another, so if we go to um the third table, so what we do is is we convert the total mylar induced downtimes in seconds to what is the average mylar induced downtime per the total number of customers in Alameda.

So you so, for example, in 2020, the total mylar induced downtime was 3,600.

So you divide the 3,600 by roughly, I think it's in 2020 there was I think 35,000 total customers, and so the number that you come up with is on average, um mylar induced um downtime on average for for the average customer is 0.00185 seconds, and then you see in 2021 it's 0.2775, and you can kind of see the numbers.

So then you compare the average mylar induced town time per customer against the downtime resulting from all customers, uh I mean all causes per customer, and that's 9,110 seconds, if you remember from the first slide.

And so you get you get a fraction of what is mylar responsible for with regard to its impacts on downtime, and it is far less than one percent.

So you can't while mylar has resulted in power outages as a share of all outages that that occur in Alameda for whatever reason, it is such a paltry amount.

Um it really begs the question, um, you know, if you if you're certainly concerned about um 3,000 seconds of of uh mylar reduced downtime, um, you know, you have to balance that against the impacts to small businesses who are involved in in the sales and distribution of mylar balloons who are ultimately gonna have to phase out of that business anyways in five years, right?

I think in 2030 they have to phase out of it, and then in 2027 they have to also begin to do the first step towards phasing out.

So I I don't think you can say that um that mylar balloons are anywhere near a significant reason for the downtime that that Alameda um experiences for all for all reasons.

So I just want to make sure that that we put the numbers in the context.

And the great thing is, you know, go to the Alameda uh municipal power companies website and there's a load of data there.

But would you support say a ban on selling helium-filled balloons in Alameda?

Um, no, I wouldn't.

Uh I I wouldn't.

Um, I I I think um, you know, if you want if you want to bring together uh uh council referral, you know that that has more data or or more um uh analysis about that, that's fine.

But um, but I think tonight it's about mylar.

So I don't I won't be supporting that, and I won't be supporting the what you're proposing.

So I'm I'm more asking just to take the temperature, and I but I always do want to check with the um city attorney.

I mean, if we talked about a ban on helium-filled balloons, is that within the Brown Act given the noticing of this item?

I'm assuming that mylar balloons are filled with helium, and so it is a it is, I think it's properly agendized.

And I'm not contesting that either.

It's just it's a new subject matter that still requires you know its own um level of analysis separate from the what's before us tonight.

Well, thank you for all that.

Um council member bowler.

Um, you know, I I think about uh different levels of regulation, you know, the state law, the federal law, the local law, and how we have different levels of government to deal with different issues, and of course we have upcoming state regulation of this, which is going to address it in a long term, and it obviously the state government is I mean we don't have to go into all the details, but obviously it's in the best position.

The question is, um, you know, the environmental impact that everyone's concerned about.

How does the how does local government, if they get involved in this, accelerate and to the intent of the referral, which I think was a good referral and has some really important considerations, and I appreciate you know council member Jensen bringing it here.

Um question for the city attorney's office.

Uh I think could there be an ordinance that says something of the fact that um no person shall intentionally release any um balloon regardless of fill into the air.

No person shall use any balloon, any any helium filled balloon on any public area, including any public street, park, beach, sidewalk, recreational area or other city owned or controlled property, and no person shall use any helium filled balloon at any city sponsored event.

Can I just interject that um no person using mylar balloons on any public street would require code and for either very inconsistent enforcement or code enforcement officers patrolling for balloons?

But I I mean I like the let's hear from the city attorney.

I will say I like the no intentional releases of balloons.

Um I might want to see something narrow.

If I were to support it, might be narrower rather than broad.

But let's hear what the city attorney has to say.

Council member, uh I think the council's Brown Act agenda allows you to regulate mylar balloons or helium fill balloons, but if you were to expand to all balloons, I do not think it's properly agendized for this item.

I don't I don't think I'm I think I might have said balloons on the first portion of that, but I let me just modify it because I said it on all the other ones as being helium filled or mylar.

I consider those to be essentially the same, but right.

So I let's if I limit the question to that, is your question whether that would be generally lawful from uh just uh, yeah.

Do you see any legal issues with such an ordinance?

I understand the mayor has questions about enforcement, but in terms of just you know, if there's a fine for, yeah.

I mean, on very first blush, this is the first I've heard of the ordinance on very first blush, it seems to be legally fine, but we you know we would want to do a deeper dive, um, especially given the the lateness of the hour that I I don't want to.

I'm sorry, yeah.

I I know it's it's a little bit but I but it seems to me the heart of the matter is we want people to not use um balloons in the environment.

That's that's the bottom line.

And the the referral is going to impact some businesses, no doubt in Alameda will will either move their their small business, I don't think it's gonna affect the big some of the bigger stores, but they're gonna move their small business out of Alameda or they're gonna close down entirely one or the other because they these balloons are such a heavy percentage.

Now ultimately, to council member, I think Daesog's point and there's gonna be change anyway coming down the line, but if Alameda wants to really focus on the outdoor environment, and you know it's it goes right along with uh education and all that.

So I don't know.

I I'm not I'm not gonna pretend that this is the best possible use of a local ordinance, but I do think that um it would be unfortunate if small businesses are out of business and yet the person who brings the balloon into the environment has absolutely no repercussions other than some type of lawsuit, I guess.

That's what that's my concern.

Well, I would, and I appreciate your suggestions.

I what I would like to do is see if maybe we just focus on changing our city um uh regulations for our public parks, because I think that is probably a large percentage of where balloons would be used for celebrations.

I mean, there's people's backyards, but I'm not sure we're gonna be sending code enforcement into backyards.

But if we said no balloons, um, no helium filters, whatever we said in in city parks, I think that would, and in conjunction with an education campaign, I'd really I think it's it's always good to start with education first and give people a chance, um, and the vice mayor said this too to to change habits on their own when they when you know you realize that oh, there's yeah, that's not a great thing.

Um, but to I I do worry that um, like I said, code enforcement is having a hard time just keeping up with our building safety and life safety uh kinds of things, and so I don't know how much we can divert them to balloons, but I'd love to see the ban on selling helium balloons period full stop in our in our stores, and then a policy about no use in our public parks and see how that goes, maybe what the yield of citations or whatever is and go from there.

But I um I think we're kind of all over the place.

Let's go back to you, Councilmember Jensen.

That's a um a compromise that I can move forward with.

I wanted to um respond to Councilmember Desak's um chart, and I appreciate that that doing the analysis of the power outages and the average.

But um I wonder if you had looked at the the cost, the $25,000 per instance of a power outage, and whether that um that has any impact on your considerations, the fact that it costs $25,000 or $175,000 average over the last four years for these outages.

My sense is that those aren't incremental costs, right?

I meant you're not hiring new labor, uh, so it's not an incremental new cost.

Right.

It's not a new it it's a cost to respond, but for the the people that are working in AMP to respond when the power goes out, and often it does include overtime from what I understand from the executive director.

That's my interpretation of the cost is that it's you're still paying $25,000 whether or not they're responding.

It's so it's not an incremental new cost.

Well, it actually costs money to restore the power, I think.

Well, I think they said it's labor and and and equipment.

So, well, regardless, um, thanks for the analysis.

I would like to make a motion um at this point to a recommendation to have staff return to city council with options for an ordinance to ban the sale and distribution of helium inflated objects in Alameda and to prohibit the use of mylar balloons and confetti in Alameda facilities.

Um, um Alameda facilities.

Well, we have more we have rentals that aren't parks as I understand it, like the Oak Club and Oak Club is managed by ARPD.

Okay, so all the only rentals are on the parks, and I would say parks.

That's I mean we have library too.

Uh I would say any city rented facilities.

Yeah, yeah.

And you council member Desai?

I will freely admit that I had to look look it up on um duck duck go.

Um, but you know, it's not just helium, I think there's other gases that can be used to make balloons float.

Mayor, may I there are because there's in exhibit one there are other examples of other ordinances, and there is Santa Monica, Oxnard.

They they the way they refer to it is um ban sale of balloons filled with lighter than air gas.

Is that how they were to it refer to it?

Um so that we could look at those other ordinances if that is what the direction of the council is.

Um, balloons.

And I don't think you don't necessarily need to adopt an ordinance to ban it on private pro or public property or public facilities.

It would only be if you would want to fine us, fine use fine people, because we do right now, we could use our permit requirements to do that.

But if you wanted to fine people who violate it, then we would need the ordinance on that as well.

Could I have City Manager Woolridge weigh in on what it what do you think about?

I mean, do you find that park users are generally compliant with the um requirements or the prohibitions that come with renting a space?

And what do you do if they're not?

Um yeah, I I would say that it is there's a good process in place.

There's an agreement that people have to sign for any kind of um rental facility, whether it's even the library, but also like the O Club or Rec Center or picnic area, um, and it's it's very easy for Wreck and Parks department to add this to that, so they sign off.

That I understand, and we do that for example in the Oak Club, you're not allowed to use any tape because it ruins the paint, right?

And you can only use blue tape, and so there are very specific requirements.

You can't have candles, so and and so um for the indoor facilities, there's a facility attendant who can keep very close eye on what is and isn't allowed, and if they bring in mylar balloons, they say no, you can't have those.

Um if it's an outdoor picnic area, it's a little bit harder, but we do have park monitors who again could speak to the renters, track it, and then have a system in place for consequences.

And do people put down a security deposit when they reserve or indoor facilities or facilities?

Yeah, you're right, correct.

That's correct, and so we could deduct from that as well.

Yeah.

Um I ask a question.

Oh, just what is the current status of because I I saw in the presentation I heard um that there would be an educational campaign and include that permitting issue, but does that mean it's currently the case that you can't use um mylar or helium or air potential airborne balloons in public outdoor spaces in I mean, excuse me, in city outdoor spaces?

It is um it has not currently yet been implemented.

What we did implement several years a number of years ago is we strongly recommended no mylar balloons, but this would actually ban them.

Um and so uh I I think uh recreation parks director Long was he said he was gonna plan on doing this.

I haven't checked in with him on a specific timeline to do so, but I know he is planning on doing that.

Um, but it's not and in terms of the educational campaign, AMP already does some education uh around this, particularly around celebratory times like graduation, you know, um in June, and I think uh, you know, Mother's Day, things like that.

Um, and so they plan to to work with our um you know, Sarah Henry, our communications director, and work so that we can do a bigger educational campaign uh around this as well.

Thank you.

And then I just I guess a question uh kind of a friendly question for the maybe for the uh for council member Jensen or whoever can explain it to me.

I I heard it talked about maybe there's a compromise type scenario here, but and there was a debate about helium-filled versus mylar.

But aren't those essentially the same things?

So the the the intent of the motion is to still ban the sale of these balloons in Alameda so that no businesses would be selling them in Alameda.

Is that for whether it's for indoor or outdoor use doesn't matter, no sales in Alameda.

To ban the sale and distribution of lighter than air inflated objects, so balloons can still be sold as long as they're not filled with something that's gonna make them flow.

Yeah, thank you.

Okay.

Um, Dessa, did you have to yes?

Final comment.

Final comment.

Yes, my final comment is um, you know, I I I think floating balloons, whether they're helium filled or filled by other gas, um, is part of the fun of life.

And uh I get that there are impacts um to our electric utility, but I think my analysis showed that the impacts is really minimal relative to what really causes the impacts, the outages.

Oh, I'm sorry, your time is that council member.

Um and I I understand what you're saying, and but I will also say it's it's also about the environment.

If you know if seabirds ingest a balloon, it kills them.

And um and they yes, they're they're not good for the environment, but that's I'm just I'm saying that you have to balance we could ban things, and we feel really good about saying we did this, but then people are saying, yeah, but I'm still seeing them everywhere.

Well, that's because code enforcement is left.

So if we start with point of sale, but also a robust education campaign that hopefully works with shop owners to explain and why the and I think most people want to do the right thing, and I you know, that's what I think.

So um any last thoughts?

And yeah, just sorry.

Uh question about, you know, the state laws is going to change it so it's non-conductive material, but I don't think it's going to say it can't be um, you know, lighter than air.

So would there be any exception for businesses that have that can come up with that technology?

Can they sell in Alameda a balloon that's non-conductive but is lighter than air?

You want to take that city attorney or well, I think they can under the state law, but I I'm I'm imagining the council members asking the maker of the motion whether or not the the maker of the motion would like to create a similar exception.

For non-conducted materials, yes.

I'm trying to work towards uh addressing the power outages and addressing the fact that these balloons do not degrade ever, and this causes pollution to our waterways, to our island, to our wildlife.

So I would my motion includes distribution, sale and distribution of lighter than air inflated objects, because I can if I can get support from my colleagues, I can hope that these balloons or mylar balloons or regular latex balloons will be disposed of properly, and if they're not floating away, that they won't be getting into the shoreline or the estuary or or into trees where there'll be um a hazard to wildlife.

So I would like to move forward with that with that with not having as the mayor pointed out, the helium filled with a ban on helium and lighter-than-air filled objects of any kind.

Does your motion also include a robust education campaign?

My recommendation is to first after a turn of the city council with options for an ordinance to ban the sale and distribution of lighter than air inflated objects in Alameda and to prohibit the use of mylar balloons and confetti in alameda facilities.

So it could not be and to restrict the use or educate about the use in facilities or it's just a yes or no question.

Does it include a robust education program?

Cause I think that's really important, and that's what we take from my support.

I agree.

It does include that.

Yes?

Sure.

And city manager?

Yeah, and I would just I don't think we need uh options because we've already presented, and so I would r rather come back with an ordin a draft ordinance if that's okay.

I think you can direct us through this motion to not only return with a draft ordinance that I guess making sure we understand exactly what you're banning, um, but and then in addition, direct staff to do an educational campaign, and that can be part of the motion.

Yeah, or you see that it's okay.

CASA might even help with the educational outreach.

But it would be good to make sure we clarify what the ban is.

Is it the you know, because I'm looking at some of the other cities and they say ban sale balloons filled with lighter than air gas.

So I just want to make sure we get the words and that everyone agrees on what those words are so we can come back with the draft ordinance.

I have another question when it's appropriate.

Yes.

Um I think that you know council member Jensen made some good points about you know beyond the scope of um just the issue of um power outages and the material of the balloon, and yet the state law doesn't seem to go that far, and so I would question what I would want to have a little more information on that, like before we enact an ordinance that that deals with that environmental issue.

It's certainly a fair one and it's a good point, but doesn't mean that we fully at least I don't fully understand it all right now, that piece of it.

So I'm wondering if we could have the referral comeback as multiple options, where one would be, you know, the intent would be that there'd be an exception unless it's compliant with state law, and then you get into the policy debate if that's the right approach or not.

But so we would have both options if that makes sense.

Um Vice Mayor Prior, you want to save us.

Um I'm usually like so I I am very pro-environment, but I I'm really just thinking about like how how efficient or how efficacious can we really be.

Um, because enforcing this is good, like we're spending a lot of time tonight.

We're asking staff to spend more time, and then let's say we have an ordinance, but how are we going to enforce it?

Um, and so that's like I I so that is my concern.

I um I love the sentiment.

Um I would be curious how Santa Monica um, because I'm thinking about high school graduation, you know, Mother's Day and Father's Day, you know, people come visit each other and they come to town with balloons, so um backyard parties, so I so but anyway.

So that's just I'm just thinking we're spending a lot of time in but it's maybe we are.

If I could just jump in, that's why banning the point of sale, I think makes sense and is more manageable for enforcement because um code enforcement could pop in and see that there's this helium tank and they're filling balloons and voila, you get sighted, but but I think that's why keeping it narrow is better.

Yeah, and then again, I'm what I said, um, I think a couple of us said this, but the state is already in the process of banning this, so I feel like that's not the balloons, they're banning mylar, they're banning the mentallic balloons.

So we so if you don't want to go further than well, that's well, this whole thing was specifically mylar balloons, they cause power outages, so that's so now this turned into something bigger, which I think is wasn't on the agenda, and um I'm just still I'm just being focused on the mylar balloons.

Um I and just how staff is spending time because you know, we've been talking about you know, we need fire uh fire stations and climate change that we you know, so I I just in the scope of things and our time and our money and how we're gonna enforce this.

I I'm just I I just couldn't support this.

I mean, I could support it being put on the applications for using um park facilities and other um facilities um in this in this in the city, but in general, I I'm just um it just seems like a lot of labor, but like our ability to to be effective.

Um I don't know if that makes sense, but I I appreciate that city manager, city attorney.

What could we do narrowly that might get a majority vote?

Ban on sale, ban on use in parks, which doesn't take an ordinance, and education.

I mean, something education and um putting it in our permit agreements for our facil all of our facility rentals, we can do that, and we'll we are actively starting to look at how to do that, and already started education.

So you give us that direction by motion that wouldn't require an ordinance, just by motion direct staff to do that, and we will implement that.

If you wanted to take that next step up, it would be some we would suggest in terms of level of effort and staff resources.

If you wanted to do an ordinance, that the ordinance focus on the point of sale, the ban on the sale of of either lighter than gas air gas or mylar balloons, but that we're specific and we really focus on the ban on the sales, and it's complaint driven, so more enforceable.

Okay, anybody want to do anything with that?

So there's no motion, okay.

Well, I mean, I I would say I.

I mean, there doesn't have to be a motion.

Okay, okay.

Yeah.

If so, council member Jensen, you wouldn't support that.

It it can be done, it doesn't really require my support.

I uh you know, as the city manager pointed out, we can change the regulations for the parks, and that would be great.

I I'm really disappointed that.

But what about the sale?

What about banning the sale?

She had said that's what I would like to see happen.

She said that you you must have missed it.

No, that was my motion.

But but we're not getting the support of the council.

So I'm not sure that's true.

Uh my motion was to ban the sale and distribution of lighter-than-air objects.

Okay.

We would bring that in a draft ordinance to you for approval.

And then the education piece.

Thank you, Mayor.

My rec my motion is recommendation to return the city council with the draft ordinance to ban the sale and distribution of lighter than air inflated objects in Alameda to educate the community about the risk to the environment of the balloons and to prohibit this use of mylar balloons and copetti in Alameda facilities.

Any comments, uh folks, staff?

If I may just ask a question, so council member, when you say distribution, does that mean commercial?

I mean, is that basically just a synonym for sales?

Or is that people passing them off in the streets?

Oh, okay.

I could just why don't we leave off distribution?

Simple is better, I think.

Okay.

Um, point of order or question.

Yes, sir.

Um if I if I want to resume my request for a second version though for consideration, is that a motion to amend the motion or take a substitute motion.

That's the main motion.

Which would be to include everything that council member Jensen said and an additional second version of the audience for consideration that would exempt um businesses that comply with state with this the new state law so that they could they could they could then sell lighter than air balloons if they were in compliance with the state law.

Which would I well yeah, no, I I I can't accept that because I would like to do just because of timing because I would like to to um get something in place immediately, and and the state law doesn't go into effect until 2027.

So I would prefer to come back um in 2027 to make an amendment to the ordinance to address the state law.

So you've made an alternate motion, but I don't know that there's a second for it.

Right, but I there's a little bit of misunderstanding.

I think part of it is because the the state law's not in effect yet, so it's it's awkward.

So I understand that my motion wasn't very articulate, but I'm trying to the intent of it is to say that if the technology is available that complies with that upcoming state law, that that's a that should be treated differently.

I say you can one option as one option.

So and that to the extent that that was a motion, it didn't get a second, so we go back to the original motion.

Would anyone like to second council member Jensen's motion?

Well, um I will second it because I think it was a reasonable compromise.

It's not perfect.

Uh but we try not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and I think there's a lot of good in it.

So I will second that motion, and let's take a vote.

Um all those in favor, um, please signify by stating aye.

Aye, aye.

Opposed.

Opposed.

No.

Nay.

Okay.

Um, well, that motion fails, then all right.

Um okay, we need to move on, folks, because it's 1220.

We've got two items we have to get to, but let's go to item eight, city manager communication.

This is the um last city manager communication for city manager Jan Ott, and um it has been an honor and a privilege to serve with you.

Um thank you for everything and uh I look forward to our paths continuing to cross.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Yeah, I I wasn't sure we were gonna get to them because we um but I I am been honored to be here city manager these last three years and have enjoyed working with you and this community and the department heads and the employees.

It's been a real pleasure, and um I've learned a lot and um gotten to know a lot of amazing people, including yourselves.

So thank you so much for all your leadership and support.

Right back to you, thank you.

Um, agenda items.

Well, I I want to make sure to say thank you to you.

So trust me, we're spending more time in closed sessions.

We haven't seen the last of our one speaker under all communications, Karen Bay.

Uh come on up, Speaker Bay.

We're going out for breakfast after this.

No, we're not.

Thank you.

Hello, and city council.

Oh my god, I'm gonna miss you.

I just want to say I I had to come here tonight.

I didn't realize it was gonna be here till midnight, but it's okay.

I did this when John Russo left too.

You know, it's like I I said goodbye.

So um, and I'm gonna miss you.

You have done an incredible job.

Um thank you.

I want to say that.

Um, you know, I drive around the city, uh, this beloved city, and there's not a corner in the city where there's not work going on or work completed or work being planned, and that's all you.

I mean, you're leading that.

You've the accomplishments that you have made in three years, is amazing.

I just want you to think about that.

Three years.

I mean, I'm it's it's amazing.

Um, you you have a multiple portfolios, including developing one of the largest military bases in the Bay Area.

And uh you you do it with you, you say it with it's hard, but you do it with you make it look easy.

I'm just gonna say, you make it look easy, and and you do it with such grace.

I watch you up there and I never see you get angry or upset.

It's just amazing.

So um we I was so fortunate to have you, and I'm sad that you're leaving, but I'm happy for you too.

You deserve the very best.

I wish you all the best.

The city of Haywood is very lucky to have you.

So I guess we'll be okay.

But um, I'll miss you.

Yeah.

Thank you for everything that you've done for our city.

I just wanted to say that.

So thank you.

Good night.

Thank you.

That was lovely.

Thank you.

Is that our last?

Oh, what a nice way to finish.

All right.

Um we're not gonna hear the council referral tonight.

Council communications.

Council, could we agree that we would do our communicating in the back room because really?

Yeah, you know, because last time we didn't do council communications, and I just wanted to say something really quick.

Okay, really quick.

I just wanted to say uh I attended the Island Bowl fundraiser that was held at the um historic Alameda Theater.

Um, thank you uh to um that venue for attend holding that.

And also last time I was gonna say um I along with uh Vice Mayor Michelle Prair and Councilmember Shasey Jensen attended the Veterans Day event at um at uh the Veterans Um Hall.

Um, and the Alameda Orchestra band um was playing wonderfully, yes.

It was great.

That's very true.

That's fun.

All right.

Anyone else have anything to say?

Yep, briefly.

Yes.

On behalf of Alameda's most vulnerable residents who have the supported of an expanded extended care team, improved homeless services, and a successful guaranteed basic income program on behalf of Alameda pedestrians and bicyclists who have safer bike lanes and intersections on behalf of Alameda businesses who have weathered economic challenges with direct and regular support from city staff on behalf of all Alameda residents who will continue to benefit from a balanced budget, safe streets, environmental resiliency, a high quality, low-cost municipal utility, and outstanding city team to meet their needs.

Thank you, Jennifer Ott for your leadership.

All right.

Okay.

With that, we are adjourning the regular meeting and returning to closed session on the fire fight.

Yeah, which for B.

4B.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

And 4A.

Okay.

Council.

You're going to be here for a while.

Okay.

From closed session.

And Madam Clerk, can you report out what the city city attorney just gave you?

Yeah, I have two things to report out.

This one and the other one.

So regarding item four A, which is public employee appointment hiring, staff provided information, and council provided direction by unanimous vote in favor.

And regarding four B, which was labor negotiation, staff provided information, and council provided direction by two votes.

The first vote was four eyes with one no, with Councilmember Desag voting no, and the second vote was five eyes.

Okay, okay, thank you so much.

Thank you, everyone.

Drive safely.

Good night.