President Citros, it is Monday, November 10th, and we're um gonna go ahead and get uh started with that training board meeting.

Um board member Sahiva, do you mind reading us uh leading us in the pledge?

Yep.

A pledge of agents to apply of the United States of America and to republic for which it stands one nation, under guide, individual delivery, just for all.

Oh, God.

All right, meetings call to order.

Let's go ahead and do roll call.

Yes, good evening.

Um, let's see.

Board member Wang.

Here.

Board Member Sue.

Here.

Board Member Sahaba.

Present.

Board Member Hom.

Here.

And President Cisneros.

Here.

Okay, we have a quorum, and board member Ruiz is absent this evening due to illness.

Okay, great.

Um we have agenda item two.

Any agenda changes from uh staff or nothing from me now.

All right.

Um any non-agenda public comments.

Anyone in the audience here live or online could speak for three minutes or anything not on the agenda.

Do we have any speakers?

No hands raised, no speaker slips.

We have one for non-agenda, Mitch Ball.

Okay.

With construction on the Webster and Posey tube about to begin, Alameda will likely be facing high traffic congestion in the next few years before the Oakland Alameda Access Project finishes.

I work in between these two tunnels and often pass by the congestion uh that already exists when I bike to and from work.

The city's made meaningful progress in enabling people to use other modes of transportation in recent years, from bike lanes to the water taxi, and vehicle miles traveled are reducing.

However, there are still ways that people are being artificially incentivized to use cars, and the city can end these incentives by simply enabling enforcement of a 30-year-old California state law.

For those of you who don't know, parking cash out law has been on the books since 1992, but often goes unenforced like it is here in Alameda.

The intent of this law is to prevent employers from subsidizing car use more than uh they subsidize any other modes of transportation.

This law requires qualifying companies to offer employees who don't drive to work the ability to cash out their parking space and receive cash or alternative transit subsidies instead, equivalent to the cost of each parking space.

This could be huge for individuals who can't afford to own cars or families who can't afford to own multiple cars.

Additionally, for those who currently drive to work but could use other modes, this could be a great incentive to stop contributing to rush hour traffic and road maintenance costs.

These people deserve to be properly compensated for the true economic consequences of their decision.

Alameda just needs to do two things to enforce this law.

Firstly, adopt a financial penalty for businesses that do not comply with this state law.

The state law explicitly grants cities the power to do this.

Secondly, change zoning to require new commercial leases.

Have their parking unbundled unlisted as a separate adjustable line item in the lease.

This makes calculation of the cost of parking easy and allows businesses to save money by reducing their parking footprint.

Additionally, it also benefits commercial lessers as it allows them to identify land unclaimed by lessees that is prime for infill development in the form of new jobs, homes, and property tax revenue.

As you're all well aware, we have huge swaths of asphalt all over Alameda.

Much of this goes unparked and is for all intents and purposes vacant land, but just hasn't been formally recognized as such.

Unbundling parking is not a radical policy and is in fact already required of all new residential development in most of California.

Alameda can go farther by requiring that all commercial and residential leases in Alameda on development, both new and old, offer only unbundled parking.

It's not fair that tenants and employees who don't or can't drive are made to pay for parking that they don't use and don't want.

It's a distortion of the market that encourages speculation of effectively vacant land.

Unbundling parking, an enforcement of parking cash out law, reduces car congestion, protects the environment, encourages new development during a housing crisis, doesn't have any high construction costs, and instead actually increases tax revenue and provides financial relief to the city's road maintenance budget, as well as Alamedans who need it the most, and so should be implemented here in Alameda.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Any other speakers?

No more speakers.

All right.

And with that, we'll go ahead and close the non-agenda public comment.