The Walnut Creek City Council held a special closed session at 5:00 PM followed by a regular meeting at 6:00 PM on April 15, 2025, in the Council Chamber at City Hall. All five councilmembers were present: Mayor Cindy Darling, Mayor Pro Tem Kevin Wilk, Councilmembers Craig DeVinney, Matt Francois, and Cindy Silva. The regular meeting included presentations, public hearings, and a briefing, concluding at 9:06 PM.
Good afternoon. I'm Cindy Darling, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, and welcome to the Tuesday, April 15th, 2025 special meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council. This special meeting is called for the purpose of holding a closed session related to the following uh consultation with Walnut Creek PD regarding security safety training for public facilities. Does any member of the public wish to comment on a closed session item? Seeing none, um, the city council will reconvene in closed session. So thank you very much. All right, good evening. I'm Cindy Darling, the mayor of Walnut Creek, and uh welcome to the Tuesday, April 15th, 2025 regular meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council. The City Council is conducting this meeting from the City Council Chamber. This meeting is being video streamed and can be viewed live or later on the city's website. As some attendees may be participating in their first Walnut Creek City Council meeting, I want to welcome everyone and talk briefly about the public comment process. For each agenda item, there will be an opportunity for public comment on the item. Thus, if you desire to speak on an item on the agenda this evening, please hold your comments until the city council considers that item. Additionally, we have a section of the public agenda on the agenda entitled Public Communications, which is for public comments for items not on the agenda. Any comments during public communication should not relate to an item on the agenda this evening. And consistent with section 9.5 of the City Council handbook, 30 minutes will be initially allocated for public communication for items not on the agenda. Additional time for public communications for items not on the agenda will be provided at the end of the open session porting of the meeting portion of the meeting if necessary. If you desire to provide a public comment, please complete a speaker identification card, the little ones, and line up behind the lectern at the appropriate time when I call. Wait your turn, and then when you approach the lectern, state your name and city of residence for the record, and you'll have two minutes to address the city council. Please keep in mind that this is a city business meeting. The City Council has adopted rules of decorum to ensure that meetings are conducted efficiently and effectively, and that all members of the public have a full, fair, and equal opportunity to be heard. The City Council handbook outlines decorum expected in the council chamber and can be found on our website. All remarks should be addressed to the City Council. Please do not use threatening, profane, or abusive language which disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the council meeting. Again, each speaker will have two minutes to make your remarks. Written comments submitted and received up to two hours before the meeting have been posted to the city's website for public review and are included in the meeting record, but will not be separately read into the record. And so now please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. All right. Councilmember DeVinny. Here. Councilmember Francois. Here. Councilmember Silva. Here. Mayor Pro Temwell. Mayor Darling. Here. All right. This time I'd like to invite up President Ernesto Avila from the CCWE and Director Luz Gomez, who represents Ward 2 for East Bay MUD to provide a short presentation on our water and utility districts. Welcome, Ernie. Give me give you an annual update of what's happening in the world of water and contractor water. Going to the first slide, what many folks may or may not realize is the Contra Council Water District is its own special district in terms of having its own members of the board representing five key regions or the multiple regions within Contra Custom Water. We're separated into uh divided into five regions that are noted here. I am currently serving as a president of the board with Antonio Martinez as vice president, and we've got a great uh board of directors. I think the one of the things that most folks don't realize is that we did a little bit of a tally, and we have about between all of us about 120 to 130 years of water and water utility experience. So just to let you know if you're in good hands in terms of the kind of policies we're dealing with right now, but most folks may not realize that, so I thought I'd share that little tidbit. What most people also may not realize is that we get about 99% of our water from the Bureau of Reclamation. So Bureau of Reclamation through the Central Valley Project is the main facility and set of facilities that provide us water in Walnut Creek and throughout our region. If you were to try to figure out how what our water supply situation is at any given time, look up what the situation is or how full Lake Shasta is. Lake Shasta provides just about all of our water.