Good evening.

I'm Cindy Darling, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek.

And welcome to the regular meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council.

The City Council is conducting this meeting from the City Council Chamber.

This meeting is being video streamed and can be viewed live or later on the city's website.

As some attendees may be participating in their first Walnut Creek City Council meeting, I wanted to welcome everyone and talk briefly about the public comment process.

For each agenda item, there will be an opportunity for public comment on that item.

Thus, if you desire to speak to an item on the agenda this evening, please hold your comments until the city council considers that item.

Additionally, we have a section on the agenda titled Public Communications, which is for public comments for items not on the agenda.

Any comments during public communication should not relate to an item that is on the agenda this evening.

Consistent with section 9.5 of the City Council Handbook.

30 minutes will be initially allocated for public 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 portion of the meeting if necessary.

If you desire to provide a public comment, please complete a speaker identification card and line it behind the lectern at the appropriate time.

Wait your turn, and then when you approach the lectern, please state your name, City of Residence for the record.

You will have two minutes to address the city council.

Please keep in mind that this is a city business meeting.

The City Council has adopted rules of decorum to ensure that meetings are conducted efficiently and effectively, and that all members of the public have a full, fair, and equal opportunity to be heard.

The City Council Handbook outlines decorum expected in the council chamber and can be found on our website.

All remarks should be addressed to the City Council.

Please do not use threatening, profane, or abusive language, which disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the council meeting.

Again, each speaker will have two minutes to make your remarks.

Written comments submitted and received up to two hours before the meeting have been posted to the city website for public review and are included in the meeting record, but will not be separately read into the record.

Good evening and welcome everyone.

My name is Councilmember Matt Francois.

I'm filling in for Mayor Cindy Darling this evening.

And welcome to the Tuesday, September 16th meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council.

If you'll please rise if you're able and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

One nation, I'm under our indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Councilmember Davin.

Councilmember Francois.

Here.

Councilmember Silva.

Here.

And Mayor Darling is absent due to a planned vacation.

Excellent.

So we have a quorum and we can conduct business.

We're going to start off tonight by issuing a proclamation and recognizing Hispanic Heritage Month.

And as many of you know, from September 15th to October 15th is our annual celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.

Hispanic and Latino people compromise a majority of uh racial majority in California as well as in the country.

And this week we celebrate the Independence Day of several Latin American countries, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

Today, in fact, is Mexican Independence Day, and the 18th is the Independence Day of Chile.

So we're very excited to be able to recognize this important event, and we have a special guest here tonight, Francisco Rios from the Monument Crisis Center in Concord.

And I'd like to present you with a proclamation from the city and allow you to make some remarks.

I'm here with my wife, and uh I've been uh here in the United States for over 30 years, and uh this is a pleasure to be here with you guys.

So I'm gonna read, so be patient.

Thank you to the city of Warner Creek for acknowledging Monument Crisis Center and allowing us to accept this proclamation on behalf of the Latino community.

It is thanks to the support of the communities such as the City of Warner Creek and the many individuals, families, and organizations that support not only Monument Crisis Center, but the community as a whole.

We have clients from all over the world with a rich and diverse background during the 2020 24 25 fiscal year, Monument Crisis Center provided assistance with our six core programs and served over 14,000 individuals, and of those more than 52% are Hispanics.

Our staff also combines different cultures, and many of our staff and board members are also Hispanic.

By the way, one of our clients who is a senior, she receives food from us once a week and spreads the love by cooking soups and sandwiches to feed the homeless and the day laborers.

What makes the Hispanic community important and interesting?

Are all those things that make the Bay Area, California, and the entire country great?

Like food, music, traditions, work ethics, family values, and friendship with everyone without any distinctions or discriminations of creeds, nationalities, or gender.

We, the Latino community, make America great every day with all the colors, sounds and flavors that we bring to share with the vast community here in the United States.

Vivan Los Tacos, Las Quesadillas, Pozole, Menuro, Carnitas, Arapas, Arepas, Gallo Pinto, Horchata, Pupusas, Asado, Mariachi, Banda, Viva Toda La Comunidad Latina.

I thank everyone here today for embracing us, the Latino community.

As a member of the Monument Crisis Center and the Hispanic community, I am very proud to accept this proclamation.

And thank you to the city council.

Thank you to the community for your support.

Thank you for having us here today.

And if you guys want to visit us at Monument Crisis Center and see how we work, you're welcome to come down and see us working.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chase.

Thank you.

I'd like to invite your wife who's doing some videographing up, and we'll take a picture with the council.

Oh, great.

Thank you.

What do you want the picture?

Right here?

Okay.

It's a big one.

Thank you.

Thank you guys.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jenny.

Oh yeah, we will.

Okay, uh, next on the agenda is the consent calendar.

Do any of my council colleagues wish to pull any item for discussion?

Mayor Pro Tem Wilk.

Okay.

Does any member of staff need to pull an item for discussion?

Not looking like it, so now turn to the public.

Would any member of the public like to address the council on an item that's on the consent calendar?

Come on down.

Jan Warren Woodlands item D having to do with the CDBG funds.

And I wish I could remember what they stand for.

Anyhow, I just wanted a couple clarifications.

It gets a little confusing with CDBG because we have our funds, but we do certain things with the counties and our other cities.

And so it talks about the uh 2025 pit count and shows 40% of Contra Costa County unhoused populations and they're in shelter beds while other 60% remain unsheltered.

But then later in the presentation of the report, I think it's just talking about Walnut Creek.

That was the county.

And on page six, it uh it's talking about the CR 10, the racial and ethnic composition of families.

There's been assisted by the funds here in Walnut Creek.

And so I assume that means this list of of ethnicities have somehow been benefited from the CDBG funds that Walnut Creek has used.

And the other piece of that same thing is it talks about on page 11.

Uh the Country Costa County homeless population decreased by 21.9% or from 64 to 50, and that also seems to be strictly to Walnut Creek.

So I just appreciate the clarification.

Thank you, Jan, for your careful reading of the report.

Uh staff.

I think this is any immediate responses are probably something that we can look at and make sure there are any clarifications before it's uh submitted on to HUD.

Does that sound right?

Okay, any other um public comments on the consent calendar.

All right, then I will entertain a motion.

Move approval of the consent calendar items A, B, C, D, and E with the corrections submitted at the DIS for the um CAPER report as well as the direction to staff to check on those statistics related to the homeless and whether those I think I think she's right that the homeless pop count that we had was specific to Walnut Creek and not the county as a whole.

Second.

Any further discussion or debate?

So we have a motion and a second.

Would the city clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Silva.

Hi.

Councilmember DeVini.

Hi.

Councilmember Francois.

Hi.

Mayor Pro Temwilk.

Hi.

All right, moving right along.

Uh next on the agenda is public communications.

For those of you who have been here before, you know that this is the portion of the meeting reserved for comment on items that are not on our agenda tonight under the Brown Act.

The council cannot act on items raised during public communications, but we can respond briefly to statements made or questions posed.

We can also request clarification or refer the item to staff.

So consistent with our city council handbook.

We've set aside 30 minutes at this time for public communications for items not on the agenda.

The time is 6.15, and we'll take public comments on items not on the agenda until about 6.45.

And then we'll put off the any remaining comments until the end of the uh of the agenda.

So this time I'd invite any members of the public that would wish to address the council uh on an item that's not on the agenda to please step forward and reminder that you'll have two minutes.

Hello, city council and city staff.

I am Diane Young.

I have the honor of co-chairing this wild and wonderful thing called Community Service Day, which was founded in 2011 by Cindy Silva for her mayor's project.

And yes, she's still the driving force behind our continued success.

2025 marks our 15th anniversary, and big changes are afoot.

Community Service Day has always happened in early October.

These days, schools who are the source of many projects and volunteers are taking fall breaks in October.

Therefore, we are moving Community Service Day to the spring of 2026.

To bridge this transition, we are looking to take a page for our pandemic playbook.

In 2020, we created a community food drive.

The generous people of Walnut Creek gave over 19 tons of food and almost 19,000 dollars to the Contra Costa Food Bank.

This year we're doing it again on September 27th and hoping to really blow it up.

There are many ways to help.

More volunteers are needed to staff collection sites at seven local grocery stores on Saturday, September the 27th.

You can also give via dozens more collection points, including schools, libraries, churches, and more.

Twelve thousand Trader Joe's grocery bags will be distributed throughout our neighborhoods next week.

If you're lucky enough to receive one, you may follow the directions on the bag, and a lovely volunteer will pick it up.

There's also a virtual food drive.

Every dollar donated buys two meals.

These opportunities are listed on the city's website.

Just enter Walnut Creek Community Service Day into your favorite search engine.

All the cool ones know about us.

Please mark your calendars and join us for the Walnut Creek Community Food Drive on Saturday, September 27th.

Thank you.

Thank you, Diana.

Thank you for volunteering.

Next speaker.

Good evening, Council members, city staff.

My name is Jim King.

I am a resident of Alamo, but I've been a business owner in Walnut Creek since 1981, a member of the Walnut Creek Masters Swim Club since 1987, and chair of fundraising for the Walnut Creek Aquatic Foundation since 2015.

And it is in that capacity that I meet with you tonight.

I address you tonight.

I want to extend our sincere appreciation for your continued partnership and vision for the new aquatic center.

A brief update.

And its construction and long-term sustainability has reached its first goal.

We now have pledges and cash in hand of approximately $655,000, about 22% of our goal.

Some of you will recall we uh set the goal uh some years ago.

We appreciate uh that uh we are making progress toward that goal.

It uh is not something we expect to achieve by the end of this year and possibly not by the end of next year, but certainly within the time horizon set out in our memorandum of understanding.

Uh, we uh feel very confident we'll be able to reach that goal.

Um so far we've had individual donations ranging from $100 to $300,000.

We've had three naming uh opportunities that have been claimed.

The response from the community has been overwhelmingly positive.

Donors are excited to be part of something that will serve all ages from swim lessons for children to therapeutic programs for seniors.

Several families and local businesses have expressed interest in naming opportunities, as I mentioned a moment ago.

Umcoming efforts include a continued outreach to major donors and grant-making institutions, hopefully for naming the center itself.

Uh finally, finally, I would ask your support that you would share the campaign with your networks, that you would attend some of our our upcoming events.

We'll have a table at the farmers market on the 27th, along with the food raising people, and the Walnut Creek Masters support our uh or provide uh an opportunity at the annual short course meters meet on October 3rd through the 5th.

And finally, I would like to uh encourage the council and staff to make a pledge or a contribution to show a leadership uh role.

Uh and you can do that by going to our website, WSCAquatics.org.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr.

King, and thank you to the Aquatics Foundation for the partnership on this.

We appreciate it very much.

Thank you.

Good evening, council members and members of the community.

My name is Kayla Turnage, and this is my colleague Sophia Clemann, and we are the new district field representatives for Assembly Woman Anna Marie Avila Ferrias, who is honored to serve Assembly District 15.

We are eager to get to know each of you and foster a strong collaborative relationship between the assembly members' office and your city, council and board.

As your point of contact, we're here to serve as an ambassador for the assembly member whenever she's unavailable to connect directly.

We look forward to working alongside you and the community projects and coordinating future meetings with her.

We're also pleased to share that our district office has officially moved to a new location downtown in downtown Concord across to uh Toto Santos Park.

We'll be hosting a new year's grand opening and invitations will follow shortly.

Hi, Sophia.

Um, as she said, we're with the state legislator and that it is now recessed following the conclusion of the 2025 session, and Assemblymember Avila Farrias will be spending more time in the district and is eager to connect directly with constituents and with you all.

We're excited to invite the community to several upcoming events.

First at the Tarara de Antonio, which is our fall harvest fest and pumpkin giveaway.

That will be held at our district office Friday, October 24th from 3 to 7 p.m.

We'll also be hosting a Thanksgiving turkey giveaway, and that'll be uh also at our district office on Thursday, November 13th from 3 to 7 p.m.

also.

We will also be hosting a young ladies' empowerment tea party.

That will be in Antioch, and that will be sun Saturday, December thirteenth from 11 a.m.

to 2 p.m., a stocking stuffing community event, which will be held also at our district office in Concord.

That'll be Friday, December 12th from 6 to 8, and then a toy drive giveaway at our district office from on Thursday, December December 17th.

We welcome your partnership and community and participation in these family friendly gatherings, which celebrate the season, support neighbors in need, and engage our community in activities that reflect the unique spirit of our district.

Thank you for allowing us to share these updates, and we look forward to seeing many of you at these events.

Thank you.

Nicely done, and I think we have a question from uh council member Silva.

Yeah.

Thank you for being here tonight.

You know, since redistricting occurred after the census in 2020, I believe the assembly's the district fifteen is different, its configuration is different than it was in the prior decade.

I hate to quiz you, but which parts of Walnut Creek are in District 15.

Do you know offhand?

Offhand, I'm not quite sure which parts.

Are you sure?

It's along that border, and it's about 400 constituents, so it is a much smaller portion.

Yeah.

But I can get back to you with the specific areas if you'd like.

I actually know.

Oh, okay.

Sorry.

It's up near the Lenardi's grocery store.

Gotcha.

Thank you.

That's not where I was thinking.

Okay, we might have another question for you, ladies.

Thank you for both being here.

If I may request you leave your your cards or some uh contact information.

Absolutely, yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

And I too just wanted to thank you both for being here.

And it sounds like you're gonna keep your boss busy this fall season with a lot of fun events.

And uh it speaks volumes that you know you have 400 constituents in Walnut Creek, but you came and presented tonight.

So thank you.

Yeah, yeah, we'll be back.

We'll see you guys soon.

Okay, take care.

Any other members wishing to address the council on public communications?

Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to council member and staff announcements, reports, and activities.

I'll turn to the city attorney and ask if we have any closed session.

We have no closed session reports, thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mr.

City Attorney, and to our city manager Dan Buckshai.

Yeah, good evening, uh Dan Buckshai City Manager.

One update this evening regarding the state legislative session that just concluded on Saturday, September the thirteenth, which I should note was extended one day from the standard session, which is fairly unusual.

There were last minute negotiations, and the legislature agreed to extend this session.

I thought I'd just give everyone a sense of scale.

Uh, for those that are work with these matters, we have a sense of that scale, but I think though for folks that don't, it's always quite telling just to see how much activity occurs in Sacramento.

Two thousand three hundred and ninety-seven bills were introduced to the legislature this year, meaning potential new laws were introduced.

And of those, 804 were passed by the legislature.

And that number is actually down a bit.

It's normally between a thousand and twelve hundred in any given year, but this year a new rule went into effect that limited any one member of the legislature to introducing no more than 35 bills over the two-year legislative session, and this was the first year of the two-year session.

The governor on average tends to veto about 15% of bills, which means we will likely have around 680 new laws come 2026.

In terms of the impact to the city or to residents, obviously there are many.

There are those that uh we track through the California um League of Cities as well as through towns and public affairs and other networks that we have to try to understand the impact to the city.

We are receiving those updates.

I anticipate that the city will be asked to weigh in on some of these bills, whether to support or veto.

It's too late to amend at this point.

Either the governor sub signs them or vetoes them.

We'll work that through our legislative committee of the council and send those letters and if needed, bring something to the city council if it could be done in a timely manner and if it's it's warranted.

And then in addition, in terms of process, once the period in which the governor can sign, which is up until October 13th is complete, we will likely be bringing an update to the council before the end of the calendar year with a review of the legislative session.

And that is it, Councilmember Francois.

Is there any questions for me?

Any questions of Mr.

Buckshai.

I'm not seeing Mayor Pro Tem jumping towards his mic, so I think we're good.

Who'd like to lead us off on council member updates and reports?

How about Mayor Pro Tem?

Is it okay if we start with you?

Sure thing.

Hi, everyone.

Uh first of all, wanted to mention that I'm in Boston.

I am chairman of the board of our county connection bus system, and there's a national uh public transportation authority conference this week, and I led the delegation here, which is why I am in Boston.

I return tomorrow.

So this is why I'm uh remotely remotely calling in today.

Just a couple of things to mention.

Uh first of all, on the conference itself, as long as I'm here, we were talking about innovation and that one of the things that really uh excited me the most is I am hearing about a proposal, anyway, to have a small autonomous vehicles or uh uh essentially train of some sort going between Antioch and Brentwood.

And how that will impact us is if that comes to fruition, that will be fewer people that are coming over the hill over Railroad Avenue, Kirker Pass, and NASA Valley Road to get to the freeway.

People or or even to go to BART, people will be able to go directly from being in Brentwood or in Oakley.

So that was exciting to me.

It's years down the line, but uh we'll keep our fingers crossed that that actually happens.

We're having a little problem hearing you and uh working with our audio staff here.

Is there a way to adjust the volume on your device?

Let's see.

Are you not hearing me very well now?

That's better.

Oh, that's better.

Okay, great, great.

Did you hear what I had to say or should I repeat it?

You tail trailed off at the end there about some service between Antioch, uh, Central County.

So there's a proposal that uh currently uh Tri-Delt is working with another company to provide autonomous small trains essentially to go between Antioch and Brentwood, which would certainly help any traffic that's coming over Railroad Avenue to Kirker Pass through Gnacia Valley Road.

Essentially, should that be completed in the years ahead, it'll alleviate some traffic that's coming through Walnut Creek on YVR.

We'll keep our fingers crossed.

There's a lot of dominoes to have to fall before that actually happens.

I was part of a panel a couple of weeks ago by the League of Women Voters.

It was in the library in downtown.

There were five panelists, including myself, the Concord mayor, county supervisor, superintendent of Contra Costa County Schools, and the Vice Mayor of Antioch, all discussing how we'll be impacted locally with the federal budget cuts to our local communities, or through Doge as we've heard them.

Lots of important information was discussed, and interest interested residents will still be able to view it now on Walnut Creek TV channel and on the city YouTube channel.

So I uh I encourage people to watch that because if we hear that there's going to be 300 million dollars in cuts across California or those kind of things, uh, what does it actually mean for us on the ground in Walnut Creek?

And some great information came out during that panel.

In addition, the city hosted a an event that the public was invited to for an opportunity to see about the environmental impacts of the Heather Farm Swim and Community Center.

Thanks to Rich Payne and his team for putting this informative session together, some uh great involvement from the community on that.

I was invited to uh Los Lomas.

This was a first for me, where they had a mock rock dance competition for homecoming week.

It's a great turnout, fantastic participation and enthusiasm with hundreds of students, and uh great to see Las Lomas and Spirit of School back in session there.

I also wanted to quickly mention that there is a new organization starting up called Friends of Civic Park.

And uh the first meeting is going to be on September 27th from 9 to 12 p.m.

People can help make our walnut creek, the actual creek itself a more sustainable environment.

Uh so people can meet at the bridge at Civic Park again, September 27th on Saturday from 9 to 12.

The first day will include removing invasive plants and focused efforts on improving the creek environment for native species and opening up the vistas of the creek.

And lastly, I just want to mention that the Jewish High Holidays begin next week, which includes Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yem Kippur, the holiest day of the year.

May the new year be a sweet one for our entire community of residents, Jewish and non-Jewish alike.

And that's my report.

Okay, thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Uh, Councilmember DeVindi, would you like to go next?

Sure.

Good evening.

Um just a few things to report.

Uh, this last uh weekend, I uh was at our booth, the farmers market, and there was uh great engagement there.

Um it's really nice to meet members of the community in person and get a chance to, you know, follow up with them, answer their questions.

Um afterwards, I was over to the uh Head West uh market on uh Main Street.

So that's an event that uh the Downtown Association has uh hosted on Main Street Downtown.

It's got local artisans, crafts, uh merchants, uh great food and music.

Uh the next one will be December 14th.

Uh, I think it starts at 11 a.m.

So you could actually hit the farmers market and then walk over to the um headwest uh market.

Let's see, in addition, um I uh moderated an event for um uh Uplift Home Care, which um was put on by uh Marlene and uh Adam uh Bartlett, the owners at um the coin coffee shop.

Uh shout out to uh DJ and Tristan for hosting the event.

Uh it was basically honoring our caregivers and um really showing sort of their struggles um as well as the tremendous uh empathy and dedication it takes to be a caregiver, sometimes a very thankless job that's going on behind the scenes, and really affects everyone in the community at some point.

So that was a really great event.

Um I attended the uh elected official webinar for planned parenthood uh yesterday, and they um announced that the uh federal funding uh had been cut to Planned Parenthood for the next year.

So um, you know, only about three percent of the services from Planned Parenthood are say abortion related.

A lot of it is primary care, um, STD testing, uh, fame um contraception, uh cancer screening.

So through direct funding and also funding through Medicaid or Medical, uh that will mean about a $300 million dollar loss for the state, and it will affect uh health care here in Contra Costa County to the tune of about five to seven million dollars.

So additional strains for our health care system.

And then to uh to wrap things up on a happier note, we celebrated my dad's 90th birthday this past weekend, so happy birthday, Dad.

Nice.

Happy birthday, Mr.

Davinny and Councilmember Silva.

Thank you very much.

Well, I will announce that or mention that a couple of weeks ago we had a meeting of the housing and community development subcommittee of the council, and we reviewed the process for requesting our for submitting an RFP and requesting proposals for affordable housing developments that might come forward.

And we also reviewed our quarterly update on our progress toward the housing element.

So we have been progressing toward a full policy, and it is now adopted.

So it's just one further step to closing a gap in coverage that's out in East County for the radio system.

The Association of Bay Area Government's Executive Committee will meet this Thursday evening, and the primary topic of conversation will be priority conservation areas, which are being adopted and amended so that we can continue across the nine county Bay Area to preserve green spaces for natural spaces, working gar uh working agriculture, and other priorities around climate change, etc.

And that's a really really important project, and I'm glad we're making progress on that.

I will mention that I watched the webinar yesterday from the League of California Cities on the bills that the cities around the state think are particularly important, those to support and those to suggest the governor say no.

We received a Cal Cities Action Alert today by email from Samantha Brightman, who is our red regional public affairs manager for Cal Cities.

I'll mention a couple of these.

Nope, it's Senate Bill 456.

It's called the Community Beautification Act, but it's actually to rescind and make exempt muralists from being paint painting contractors.

For some reason, the state regulatory authorities thought that muralists should be contractors.

So the state legislature had to propose an exemption, a very narrow exemption for these muralists, so that we can continue to have murals and have painting contractors be contractors.

So that is on the governor's desk.

Also on the governor's desk is assembly bill 650, which is Diane Patents out of San Mateo.

This is the planning and zoning housing element legislation, which would give us a longer period of time to actually do work on our housing elements, and just as importantly, require the housing and community development department of the state to be clear in their feedback and make it clear what they need us to do.

I will also mention that Assembly Bill 620 is on zero-emission vehicle rentals, and as we look at our sustainability action plans, some of the challenges we have is you can buy an electric vehicle, but you have to have the charging infrastructure available for it.

And this, if this adopted by the governor or signed by the governor, this bill would allow municipal agencies such as cities, counties, and special districts to rent electric vehicles so that the charging infrastructure would be part and parcel of the rental agencies infrastructure and provider and what they would provide to our cities.

So I think that's an important way to expand our infrastructure for electric vehicles.

And there are many others around wildfire, around theft of metals, etc.

etc.

After all, there's 800 to choose from.

So thank you very much.

And I will give another plug for the food drive.

We need lots of friendly people to stand in front of grocery stores inviting customers on September 27th to donate food.

So it'll be lovely weather.

It's an easy task, and no one gets mad.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

So I'll round it out with uh thank you, Councilmember Silva, for reporting on our HCD committee.

We will get the quarterly report on housing element update, and that's it's uh something that we've normally only received an annual report on.

So I think it highlights the importance of the housing element that we'll start getting quarterly updates on that and making sure that we're staying on track to meet the many objectives and goals that we adopted in the housing element.

I'm glad to hear there's some legislation that might give us some more time to do that in the future and and more clear guidance.

But uh impressed with the progress that's being made.

Happy that we have uh an amount of affordable housing funds that we can go out to uh request proposals for for uh new affordable housing projects next year.

So exciting things happening on that on the housing front in the city.

On last week I attended the chamber meeting I sat in for the mayor, who's the liaison to the chamber, and received an update on our general plan update, which uh from the community development department and our our director Erica Vandenbrand uh provided that, and we it was that's one of the five or four priorities that the council adopted earlier this year.

We'll have a report on that later, but it was interesting to get the feedback from the business community on what their focus uh in terms of the general plan is, and not surprisingly, economic development is high among them in addition to kind of land use and making sure that we're allowing for balanced land use, not just housing, but uh jobs for the housing.

Um, I think Mark Orcutt from the East Bay Leadership Council.

When he was asked, Well, how would you define uh economic development?

He said, Well, very simply, it's it's policies that help businesses start, stay, and grow.

And so that's the they're interested in having that kind of ethic represented in our general plan update, and we're just kicking off the project uh the process.

Uh, there were other comments about emerging technologies and how you know we've got a zoning code that that reflects maybe the the 90s or the early 2000s, and maybe wasn't envisioning um autonomous vehicles or artificial intelligence, and so the challenges with bringing it up to speed and being relevant and fresh when it's a 20-year document.

So we've we've got some challenges ahead of us, but I think we're up to the task.

Um after that meeting, I I attended the Walnut Creek uh downtown meeting.

I serve as the the liaison to that body this year.

One of their signature events is coming up later this month.

It'll be hosted again in Civic Park on our uh September 26th and 27th, and that's Oktoberfest.

And it's a it's a great time.

There's bands, there's beer, there's leader hosen, you know, all of the above, and there's plenty of volunteer opportunities.

So if you're interested in kind of serving at a ticket booth, or if you're of age and able to serve wine or beer, please sign up on Walnut Creek Downtown's website.

They also gave an update on their vision plan.

Each of us had the opportunity to provide input on that earlier this year.

They have a draft of the plan prepared by their consultant.

Their board now will be meeting internally to provide feedback on that plan and then roll it out to the larger public probably later this year.

We got an update that uh good news uh an original Joe's is hopefully likely going to be reopening uh sometime in October.

If you hadn't heard shortly after their opening, they had an unfortunate kitchen fire which closed them down.

The city reacted very quickly from the permitting standpoint, and so now it's just a process of getting the work done, getting the new uh equipment in.

But October, fingers crossed, we'll have another grand opening celebration for original Joes.

Um also uh received a report that Abercrombie has opened in Broadway Plaza, and uh pinstripes unfortunately uh has closed down and and turned the space back to Mace Rich, but um, there's they're already in conversations about uh a potential future entertainment use or breaking up the space for other retail uses to activate um that that large uh uh commercial store there in Broadway Plaza.

And then finally uh Walnut Creek on Ice is celebrating its twentieth anniversary on November twentieth.

So it's been 20 years, if you can believe that.

It's gonna be a big celebration.

I'm told they're expecting all of us to be there with our ice skates on.

So I'm putting it out now.

You have time to practice your uh double toe loops and triple Lutz's uh November twentieth, 20th anniversary for Walnut Creek on Ice.

And speaking of birthday, birthdays, it's uh I'd like to acknowledge that it's former mayor Kathy Hicks's birthday, and I won't say how old she is, but I want to wish her a very happy birthday and uh thank her for her years of service um to the community and continued service even after the council with the Walnut Creek Library Foundation.

So with that, we'll get to the business at hand.

We have two consideration items on the agenda for tonight.

The first one is an informational update on bond financing for the new aquatic facility and community center project at Heather Farm Park.

And I would invite, yeah, uh, I tell you what, while you're loading that up, why don't we take a quick five-minute break?

And we'll be back with our programming in five minutes, seven at six fifty.

I know.

Good evening, Councilmember Francois.

Oh, sorry, we haven't started.

Can you?

Good evening, Councilmember Francois and members of council, Kirsten Lacasse, administrative services director.

Tonight we are providing you with an overview of the bond financing related to the new facilities at Heather Farm Park.

This evening we have Craig Hill from NHA Advisors as well as Chris Lynch from Jones Hall to present the information.

Good evening, City Council.

Craig Hill, NHA Advisors.

We're serving as the city's financial advisor, and I think going back in our records, we were involved all the way back to the Blue Ribbon Committee.

I'm guessing that was 15 or so years ago.

So it seems like a while, but it's great to see these projects moving forward.

2011.

2011?

Okay, 14 years.

We're really going to try to highlight four main things for your consideration tonight.

The main one is one, let's talk about the project and how we can finance it using municipal bonds.

Two, we'll talk a little bit about the need to form a joint powers authority.

So Chris Lynch, who will be joining me on this conversation will be talking about that.

We'll also talk about the actual proposed financing structure, which is a subset of the bonds called a lease revenue bond.

And then finally, there's a little bit of training that you'll all have to uh hear quickly, which is the when you issue an obligation, what we consider um continuing disclosure and some of the uh disclosure obligations.

Uh and then finally, we'll get into some of the numbers, which I always like, and and Kirsten will be uh talking a little bit about how Measure O is going to work.

So, real quickly, just for setting the table about what we're going to talk about, this is obviously a critical moment and finally being able to fund what is being proposed to be the award of the project later this year.

But we're anticipating in order to accelerate and get this project built, instead of waiting year over year to collect measure O revenues, we're going to actually leverage those uh through a form of financing.

This Measure O, as you all know, has been around since uh early 2023, so we've got three years of data.

This is great information from a credit perspective to know how well the city's sales tax operations are working.

We're also proposing that everything we talk about with this financing will be lining up with the term, which you have about seven years left on measure O.

So from an academic perspective, let's talk about municipal bonds in general.

So public agencies have the ability to go out and borrow money.

You think about it in terms of either going to the voters and raising a sales tax measure.

You also have the ability to within your budget to do financings like a lease revenue bond, and we'll get into that a little bit more.

The government, the federal government, gives public agencies the ability to borrow at what we consider sub-market rates because you can borrow tax exempt.

That means anybody who's interested in buying the city's bonds will get the benefit of both not paying federal and state um interest or income tax.

We use municipal bonds for what we call bricks and mortar or capital projects.

You cannot borrow money to basically pay operations or salaries or ongoing operational expenses of the city, but you can certainly use it for things like city facilities, which does include libraries, city hall, public safety facilities, obviously recreation is why we're here tonight.

But it also includes utilities like water and sewer.

There's, as you can imagine, a lot of your peers out there looking at ways to accelerate road improvements.

We all kind of went through a period of time where it seemed like the roads were degrading faster than we could fix them.

So a lot of the cities in Alameda County and around the Bay Area are really trying to find ways to accelerate and generate dollars to deal with roads.

Who buys these bonds?

Traditionally, and if you think about it going back 50, 60, 70 years, it was all individuals and banks.

What's now happened is we still almost have half of the tax exempt bonds or the municipal bonds that are issued being purchased by individuals or their financial advisors on their behalf.

The balance is going to mutual funds.

You think about a Schwab tax exempt money market fund, as well as banks and insurance companies.

In order to actually sell the bonds or or get the funding that you're you would have through the issuance of debt, there's really through three avenues.

The first one is what we would call a I'm gonna go right to left, a bank loan or a direct placement.

This is really, think about it almost like a mortgage where there's a standard form document, there's not a lot of flexibility to the city.

It is here's the rate, here's the terms, sign it, we'll give you your funds.

You're dealing with one individual investor, and that would be the bank.

The other is to use a broker dealer or an investment bank through a negotiated sale where the city would go out, actually find a broker dealer or solicit a broker dealer who would then go out and aggregate or find multiple buyers to buy a portion of the overall financing.

So we'll show some numbers at the end, but whether we're talking about 40, 50, 60 million, however much is needed to finish the project, they would be the ones gathering a bunch of individuals or a bunch of banks or mutual funds that would add up to that amount and through that process they would set the interest rates.

The competitive sale process is very much like what the city's used to for public bid projects.

We actually set a date, Tuesday, eight o'clock, bring your envelope with the lowest interest rate that you're willing to buy the city's debt or buy the city's bonds, and the low rate wins.

So we don't know until that moment, and it's instantaneous when five to ten different broker dealers will come to the table with their best bid what it is.

As you can imagine, it generally they know they have to sharpen their pencil because they're gonna have competition on that day.

We anticipate the city is a very strong credit.

You do not issue debt, so this will be very exciting for a lot of folks to be able to get their hands on Walnut Creek paper is what they would call it.

And so at this point, we are anticipating that this structure.

Should the council approve it in November, would be recommended to be through a competitive sale.

I'm going to turn over the actual, we're going to drop down now into the actual proposed kind of structure of the financing and let Chris the attorney get into those details.

Thank you, Craig.

Good evening, council.

My name is Chris Lynch and I work at the law firm of Jones Hall.

So we will act as the city's bond council and disclosure council.

So the bond council helps the city structure the deal in compliance with state law and provides the tax exemption opinion that investors rely on to buy the bonds and give lower tax exempt rates.

As disclosure council, we help the city comply with federal securities laws, and I'll spend a little time talking about what that means.

This slide lists the four most common types of financing by cities in California.

And I'm going to start with the second through fourth and then hit the lease revenue bonds.

General obligation bonds are approved by for California cities, approved by a two-thirds vote of the registered voters, and they can only be used to finance acquisition and improvement of real property.

School districts are actually the most common issuers of general obligation bonds because their threshold for approval is typically 55% compared to the two-thirds for California cities.

The second structure is called utility revenue bonds or enterprise revenue bonds.

Many cities have water, wastewater, solid waste enterprises that they need to issue bonds to finance improvements for that enterprise.

I know that's not the case for the city of Walnut Creek.

Those do not require voter approval, but their rates are subject to Proposition 218.

The third type that's listed, the final, the bottom entry is special tax and assessment bonds.

These are additional special taxes or assessments levied on property for a specific purpose.

So Melarus is typically used by developers to finance the public infrastructure needed for a new project, and assessment bonds are often used for things like utility undergrounding or septic sewer improvements, and this type of financing can also be used for perpetual public services.

The final source of financing through bond financing is the lease revenue bonds or certificates of participation.

In that structure, cities can enter into lease financings payable from their general fund from any unrestricted funds.

And in your case, measure O as a general tax approved by 50% of the voters plus one is considered a general tax that can be used for any purpose.

So in this case, that would be available to pay lease payments that the city would make to finance the aquatic and community center.

So lease revenue bond is payable, as I said, only from the unrestricted funds within the general fund.

It sounds exotic, and I'll run you through the structure on the next slide, but I can tell you that lease financings have been used by California cities, counties, and school districts since the 1940s when the California Supreme Court first upheld this structure as being available for this purpose.

Okay, so this simple, non-confusing structure diagram, will explain all you need to know about lease revenue bonds.

So the general structure of a lease revenue bond is first you need a second party called a joint powers authority.

And the city takes an existing city asset.

In this case, we may be talking about the Leisure Fine Arts Performing Arts Center.

We may be talking about City Hall, and the city leases that to a third party called the joint powers authority.

The joint powers authority leases that asset back to the city, and the city agrees to pay lease payments that are equal to the debt service on the bonds.

The bonds are issued by the joint powers authority and they are payable from the lease payments made by the city.

The proceeds of the bonds realized from the sale of the bonds by the joint powers authority are used to finance the project for the benefit of the city.

So joint powers authority, I want to make sure I do a good job explaining that.

So in order to do a lease financing, you need a counterparty.

In most California cities, they formed joint powers authorities with their redevelopment agency as the counterparty for their lease financing structures.

Unfortunately, as you know, redevelopment agencies were dissolved and replaced with successor agencies.

I understand your successor agency is soon itself to be dissolved because it's satisfied its enforceable obligations.

So your existing joint powers authority between the city and the successor agency will no longer be available to be used for financing.

So staff is going to recommend to you for this financing, this proposed financing, that you form a new joint powers authority.

And this the second party to that joint powers authority would be the city's housing authority.

The city council acts as a legislative body of the of the park.

I said housing authority, I meant parking authority.

The city council acts as a legislative body of the parking authority.

The city council would also act as a legislative body of the joint powers authority.

Joint powers authorities have two sets of powers, the common powers of its members, which includes in your case the power to lease and and acquire real property, and then it has the authority given it under state law, including the authority to issue lease revenue bonds.

Would you like me to pause there and answer any questions about joint powers authorities?

Um I would say probably five to several more minutes.

I'm gonna spend a little time on federal securities laws.

Let's pause there then.

I'm sure we're gonna have a lot of questions on that one.

Yeah.

Council member DeBinny.

So the parking authority, um, that is a government agency, right?

For the JPA, you need to have like two government agencies that that bond isn't it sort of just a subcategory of Wana Creek uh city?

How's that seen as a separate agency?

That was one of the the questions I have.

It was established under state law that allows the cities to establish joint uh parking authorities, and the city council declared itself to be the legislative body of that parking authority, but it is a separate legal entity.

All right, and then uh another question uh so we're leasing possibly the leisure center or city hall to this JPA.

And I guess any amount that we determine could be zero, could be, because I I mean if we have to lease it back at the full payment for the the bonds uh debt service, then I imagine we're not leasing it to them for very much money.

So, yes, the lease payments will be approximately equal to the debt service or be equal to debt service on the bonds.

Under California law, that lease payment needs to reflect fair rental value for the asset being leased.

So one of the things that we will help the city do is evaluate the leased assets, evaluate their value, both the replacement cost insured value of the improvements and an estimated real property value, and then given the short time period of the bonds, only eight years, uh usually with over 30 years, we just look at the the aggregated value of the real property and improvements and consider that to be its fair rental value.

So we usually look for approximate relationship between the principal amount of the bonds and the value of the leased property.

Here where you have amortization over a much shorter time of eight years, we may need to have a relatively higher value than the than the actual principal amount of the bonds.

I mean you're talking about the improvements to the swim center.

No, we're talking here about the the leased asset, so Leisher Performing Arts Center or City Hall.

Now I want to emphasize it's not a mortgage, so nobody will come and take those assets if you don't make your lease payments.

What they will more likely do is sue you on an annual basis to for you to make those payments.

Um but the there's not a risk of losing city hall or the leisure performing arts center in this context.

But if we have to lease that building to the JPA at fair market value and then lease it back at fair market value, where's the delta?

Where's the where's the the debt service?

Well, so the the lease payment made by the joint powers authority will be a lump sum payment equal to the proceeds of the lease revenue bonds, and that will be used to finance the aquatic and community center.

One time.

That's right.

And then the lease payments made by the city will be semi-annual payments in an amount equal to the semi-annual principal and interest on the bonds.

And the other the city staff, I believe, is planning to recommend that upon completion of the aquatic and community center, it would replace the Leisure Performing Arts Center and the City Hall as the lease asset.

If it's not of yeah, the reason you do that is under the California cases upholding lease financings, if the the improvements that are being leased are under construction and not available for use and occupancy at that time, then you can't commit to pay lease payments for them.

So we pick another asset to start with, and then when the assets that's being financed is complete, then it can be substituted in as the lease property.

And I said again, I'll just want to highlight, I know it sounds a little exotic and complex, but it's been a standard feature of California public finance since the 1940s.

Thank you.

Okay, okay, uh Councilmember Silva, any questions.

So if I were sitting at home listening to this, I would probably have changed the channel by now.

But the question would be in my head, well, why somebody's gonna use the phrase shell game?

Because that's what it feels like.

It's moving these moving parts.

Why do we need to do this leasing option?

Why not just float the bonds ourselves?

So pay the debt as it acquired as it acquired accrues.

So California cities, counties, and school districts only have the power to do the things that California law expressly authorizes them to do, subject to limitations in the California Constitution.

Okay.

So the California Constitution says that cities, counties, and school districts cannot commit future year revenues without a two-thirds vote.

So the lease financing structure is tied to use and occupancy of the leased asset.

There can be no acceleration if you don't make your payments.

If there's damage or destruction to the asset, we make sure there's insurance available to rebuild the the project so that the lease payments can continue to be made and we pay for rental interruption insurance during the construction period.

So the courts have upheld that this meets that requirement because you're not committing to pay more than each year's payments from that year's revenues.

Okay, so it meets California law that was established obviously before the 1940s, because this system came into place as a solution to meet the requirements of the California constitution.

So the California constitutional provision I mentioned is is considered by the California Supreme Court to be a balanced budget measure, and so that's why it's important to focus on the annual nature of the payments rather than any rather than the payments in their aggregate.

You can't be obligated to pay the aggregate amount, you can only be obligated to pay the annual payments.

So unlike the federal government.

Walnut Creek has historically not incurred any debt.

So why is debt at all being recommended for this project?

Will the city manager weigh in on that?

Sure, I can speak to that one.

The other option would be to accumulate the funds over time, as we know the primary funding source, not the only funding source, but the primary funding source is Measure O, which is generating roughly 12 to 12 and a half million dollars a year, of which about 9 million is being set aside for future payment and construction of the of the center.

So if you do the math, we're looking at a 77 million dollar facility, it would take roughly nine years of saving those funds, assuming there's not inflation on the cost of the existing building, which there would be.

So in reality, it could take a decade or more to save that money in order to build a new facility.

So the debt financing is very similar to the concept of buying a new house where you take a loan and make the annual payments or monthly payments or semi-annual in this case on the debt service so that you can build the asset sooner and then pay off the asset over a set number of years as opposed to savings as you go, which as I mentioned could take a decade or longer in this instance.

So essentially this could in fact be saving us money by doing it.

It uh I don't know about saving money, but it could on construction costs, yeah.

Construction costs were inflating at a greater rate than the interest rates on the bonds, then yes, it could save money.

It would depend on how interest rates and inflation change over time.

Thank you.

Okay, I think we're set for now.

Okay, so uh we'll get back into a little bit more of the nuts and bolts on what happens if you are going to go out and borrow money.

And I I'll first start by saying city manager is absolutely correct.

The the real financial analysis that you would do on this project is uh we're borrowing money at a fixed rate, so we would know on day one exactly what the cost of funds are to the city.

We're expecting that this is going to be in the three percent range, three to three and a half.

But the you know the speculation is well, what would the construction cost increases be?

You know, if anybody wanted to bet, would we say that over the next six, seven years would the rate be higher than three to three and a half percent, right?

And if you were getting further behind, it would be like painting the Golden Gate Bridge, where you would get done and you know, realize you gotta just keep going because you can't get it done fast enough.

As part of issuing debt, aside from the legal structure that Chris just went through, um, we need to effectively get a report card for the city that investors then can know the city's likelihood to repay the the obligation.

The rating agencies, as you know, will uh they have a credit score that they will give you, similar to our personal numbers, except it's grades, like in school, and they break it into five categories.

There's the local economy, which you don't as a governmental agency don't really control, but you guide, right?

So, how well is your local economy?

Financial performance, you've got absolutely great policies in place as as was mentioned, the city's always paid cash for most of its improvements, so it hasn't had to get itself uh too far leveraged in in terms of debt, but there's financial performance piece, there is the management.

You know, what are how does the management work from a city council down to the executive and then department heads?

Um there's the debt and liabilities.

In your case, almost nothing.

We were I had uh one of my colleagues, Mike Meyer in front of you all uh last year regarding your pension liabilities.

Um, that is considered also a debt, right?

For most cities, it's actually the biggest debt you have even over any kind of bond issues.

So, and then the other one is fund balance or your financial position, your balance sheet.

Uh so they will look at all of that, and in put sticking it through their sausage making machine, they will come up with a grade.

Uh these are the three primary rating agencies that are involved in municipal finance.

Moody's standard poor's and fitch ratings.

Um, they have very similar scores.

Obviously, triple A is the best one, that's what you want.

Federal government does not have that.

And then it works its way down double A all the way down.

Investment grade is still in the triple B category.

Anything below that triggers a lot of investor types, uh, some of the banks, some of the um mutual funds, they can't invest in anything below investment grade.

So that's where you think the uh some of the corporate, the junk bonds that you hear about, those all usually fall in the into that bottom category.

But the idea, and we would anticipate that the city will be high double A category, if not potentially from a GO perspective, um, right up there against the triple A.

So I'm gonna turn it back over to Chris to kind of go quickly through some of the disclosure information that you'll need to know as part of making uh the approval process in November.

So just on the rating, I think it's implied, but the the higher the rating, the lower the rate?

Yeah, I apologize for not saying that.

That's absolutely right.

The stronger and higher the the rating category the city gets, the more aggressive and the lower the interest rates will be that you'll get from investors.

Generally, can you speak to kind of what the difference in gradations are between a triple A and a double A?

How far do you drop down?

So it since I'm a finance guy, let's let's talk the math.

So if you were right now borrowing money, let's just say for 10 years, triple A, as a tax exempt, you would be let's say right at 3%.

If you were a double A, so you were just one notch down, you would be 305 to 310.

So just 10 basis points, and then it's kind of like a hockey stick.

It did like then you drop to a single A, it's probably up another 20.

Um, and you get down to the triple B category, you're probably 50 basis points difference between triple A and a C and a triple A and a triple B.

Councilmember DeVinny had a question on this as well.

So that with when you go out to the bond market, you can time the market.

Is that something that we need to do?

Or are we um just picked our date and we're going out for it?

What were your thoughts there?

Well, I had four kids, and my crystal ball is broken, so I can't tell you exactly which day.

Uh we don't uh, you know, we will probably want to stay away from any elections, and the only one would be uh the potential state calling for their uh November election.

But we we we will be able to set the date looking out two to three weeks, and we our firm is constantly watching the market for supply.

You obviously want to be out there when the state's not doing two billion dollars worth of bonds, right?

Because those investors are gonna be staring at that and maybe missing an opportunity to be involved in purchasing the Walnut Creek bonds.

So it's we will set a date hard.

It'll be a Tuesday or Wednesday, most likely at eight or nine o'clock in the morning.

Which week we do it will actually be a function of where you are in your in your bid acceptance and award of the construction, right?

Because what we're really trying to do is align this with what you hear from staff when you get those bids in.

Where did those bids come?

Are they low?

Are they high?

Are there ad alternates in there that we want to maybe consider because that's what we're gonna, you know, the this financing is going to be the balance of the money that you need for the project, and at that point we'll figure out when you're going to award, when you're gonna need to start drawing money, and we can work backwards from there.

And are you doing like investor outreach and sort of trying to um entice people to come to to bid on the yeah, there will be uh a period of time where the disclosure document, which is what they'll rely on, and Chris will talk about that a little bit more because we can't be having you know telling one person one thing and another person something else, so you we will have the formal offering memorandum, which is called an official a preliminary official statement, and then that will get distributed and blasted nationally to create that um, and and there are certain channels that that goes into that then are uh is exposed to all of the buyers who would otherwise be buying California paper, okay.

So I mentioned when I started that one of the things that we help the city do is comply with federal securities laws.

Craig mentioned there's a disclosure document sent out to potential investors called an official statement.

So I'm I'm here to talk to you about the federal securities laws that apply to your distribution of an official statement, and I'm gonna try to give you a very high-level background on it, and then talk about what your responsibilities are under federal securities laws.

Um so I'm gonna I'm gonna focus on four things that you should walk away from.

First, you should know that federal security laws regulate the city's distribution of a disclosure document that we're talking about.

Um second, that city staff and elected officials are expected to take reasonable steps to make sure that that disclosure document includes all material facts and the securities and exchange commission or the SEC, which regulates federal securities laws, has given us pretty clear guidance on the type of steps it expects you to take.

So I'll I'll explain those to you.

Um third, city staff and elected officials actually risk personal liability if they don't comply with federal securities law.

So it's really important to be aware of it.

Um and then fourth, on October 7th, staff will recommend that you adopt a set of written disclosure policies and procedures that I believe, if followed, and I'll describe what those are likely to say, if followed will help you comply with federal securities laws.

Um both of the laws that I will describe today were adopted in the aftermath of the Great Depression, which saw widespread invest uh widespread fraud at the expense of investors.

So for your purpose, you should know that the 1933 Act, which was the first general federal securities law, and the 34 Act both limit or prohibit fraud in the sale of municipal bonds.

The 34 Act created the Securities and Exchange Commission to enforce those laws.

The SEC has adopted two sets of rules that you should be aware of.

One is Rule 10B5, and that requires the disclosure document that you're gonna send to investors to not omit any material facts and not to misstate any material facts.

So what's a material fact?

A material fact is a fact that there is a substantially like substantial likelihood that it would have a significant weight in the deliberations of a reasonable investor.

In other words, an investor looking at to buy walnut creek lease revenue bonds, will want to know what is the health of your general fund, what are the long-term risks, what are the you know primary sources.

So we're going to make sure that that disclosure document includes the facts that a reasonable investor would want to know about in investing in the city's, in essence, the city's general fund.

In 1989, the SEC adopted a second rule applicable to municipal bonds, Rule 15 C212, and it required recreated a requirement to comply with certain rules on a continuing basis on an annual basis and when certain significant events happen.

So starting with the official statement, I we worked on a lease revenue bond that the city of Walnut Creek did in 1997 for its golf course.

This is the cover of that official statement.

And so that's the document that gets distributed to investors.

It has to include a description of the terms of the bonds and the financial and operating data that is material to the repayment of the bonds.

We will draft that document with in collaboration with Craig's firm and with the city staff.

And we will you'll see it's going to be a hundred-page document that describes all of the you know revenues and expenditures and budgets of the city of the last five years, and we'll talk about risks that to future payment.

As I mentioned, there's now a continuing disclosure requirement.

So if you issue bonds in the manner that Craig has described, you will sign a continuing disclosure undertaking that will require you to do three things.

One, post your audited financial statements each year on a site hosted by the municipal securities rulemaking board.

Second, to update the financial and operating data that was included in the official statement at the time of initial disclosure on an annual basis, so that investors can track how things are going along and make trades on that basis in the secondary market.

And the third thing, there's a list of 16 significant events, such as bond defaults, uh rating changes, uh bankruptcies, certain significant events that the SEC has determined are so important that when they happen, you should tell investors about it.

So when and if those events occur, you'd be obligated to provide information about that to the market.

Okay.

Yes.

May I ask a question?

Could you go back one slide?

Audited financial statements.

Are those the city's audited financial statements or are they audited financial statements of the JPA, which no doubt would really only have these minimal transactions?

Exactly.

It will be the city's audited financial statements.

And so in the official statement, we'll include revenue and expenditure tables for the last five years, and we'll include budget comparison to budget to actuals for three or three to five years, and you'll be updating both the budget and the financial the revenues and expenditures each year when they're completed.

Okay, your ACFER, which you approve on an annual basis will just get attached and submitted.

Okay, I mentioned that the SEC has given us a clear explanation of what elected officials and staff should do when they approve an official statement.

And I'll give you a little context.

In 1994, Orange County declared bankruptcy.

It had pursued an aggressive investment scheme, relying on above market rates of return to balance its budget.

It sold notes on an annual basis and was investing those note proceeds, and it did not tell any of the investors the purpose of the notes that it was invested in these risky investments.

The Board of Supervisors, when it approved the official statement, it did so on consent.

It didn't deliberate in an open meeting.

And even though they were aware that their budget was dependent on these above market rates of return generated by risky investments, they didn't tell investors about it.

So in the wake of the Orange County's bankruptcy filing, which did not eventually result in any debt service defaults, the SEC brought an enforcement action against the Board of Supervisors, the county, and members of staff.

And then they issued a report to emphasize the responsibilities of elected officials in their exercise of their duties under federal securities law.

And the report highlighted again that the supervisors knew of the risks and they did not take make reasonable steps under the circumstances to make sure they were telling investors.

So the SEC said that they expect you to take appropriate steps under the circumstances.

But they also indicate in that report they don't expect you to read the a hundred-page document word for word.

That's certainly fine if you wish to, but what they really care about is if you know about some fact that could affect the city that would impact its ability to repay the debt service on these bonds through its lease payments, then it expects you to make an effort to ensure it's disclosed, either by talking to staff, talking to disclosure council, raising a question, hey, have are you have you guys disclosed this issue?

So that's the level of oversight it expects.

Elected officials may not authorize disclosure while recklessly disregarding facts that there is a risk that the local agency won't repay the debt.

So in training sessions like this, I like to include this this slide because it highlights what the SEC has told us that local agencies should do in order to comply with federal securities law.

Now it issued this guidance in the wake of an enforcement action that they had brought against the city of San Diego.

So first, issuers should adopt written disclosure policies and procedures.

And again, that's what staff is going to recommend you do on October 7th.

In those disclosure policies, you will see that it proposes that there be a disclosure working group established.

The city manager, the city attorney, the finance director, and then department heads, depending on the type of financing that's being done.

The disclosure working group would then work with outside consultants, disclosure counsel, municipal advisor to prepare the disclosure document, and the disclosure working group would not send that official statement to the city council until it concluded that it had met the securities law standard.

In other words, that it included all material facts about this financing.

At the time of the that the city council is being asked to consider and approve the financing and consider and approve the disclosure document, which in the case of the aquatic and community center, I understand may be scheduled for November 18, you would receive a staff report.

And in the staff report, there would be about a page summarizing the information I'm giving you here tonight about compliance with federal securities law, so you have one more opportunity to hear about it and understand your responsibilities.

And then the resolution under state law following Orange County must be docketed as a separate matter of new business and can't be on the consent calendar, and we'll probably in addition to the staff report in the presentation.

We'll talk again about this, that it has to include material facts.

So second, um staff should provide appropriate training to elected officials about their responsibilities under federal securities law.

SEC is really focused on the training bit.

So that's what we're doing here tonight.

That's what will be in your staff report, but it's important that you hear this and understand where your responsibilities are.

Third, local agencies should focus in their disclosure on the big picture issues facing the city.

I told you we're going to generate a hundred-page document in the city of San Diego.

The SEC reported that they had a hundred-page document, but they had ignored the gorilla in the room, which was their under underfunded pension liability.

Fourth, local agencies should disclose the good facts with the bad facts.

The official statement is not a marketing document, it is a disclosure document, and it discloses the financial health of the portions of the city that are going to repay the bonds.

So for many issuers, it is pension and OPEB liability that is the key financial risk.

It could be litigation, it could be a large employer or taxpayer leaving the city, it could be deferred public infrastructure or a structural imbalanced budget.

Any of these things could be the big issue that's facing the any particular local agency, and it's your responsibility to make sure that those risks are just as well presented as the strengths of the city, and I know there are many.

Finally, the SEC thinks that local agencies should hire competent professionals.

That was at question in San Diego, where the audit of financial statements misled, it was not did not present an accurate picture of the city's financial health.

So again, it's info important to always make sure you're employing competent professionals to guide you through these processes.

Okay, finally, you should know that the SEC has punished individuals when they acted with an intent to defraud or with a reckless disregard for whether they were misleading investors.

In Orange County, the SEC found that the treasurer and the assistant treasurer had knowingly committed fraud, even though they did not personally benefit from the investment scheme.

They were trying to generate more money for the county, but still they defrauded investors.

And they were they were fined and had house arrest.

In San Diego, the SEC filed securities law charges against a wide list of city staff, including the city manager, assistant city manager, and treasurer, and the SEC alleged that their audit of financial statements, their rating agency presentations, and their official statements were misleading.

And the district had to pay a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollar fine, and so did the general manager and assistant city manager.

So the key point here is I'm not trying to scare you, but I am trying to make sure you're aware of it, and I'm I think it's really important you know that the punishment comes for knowing intent to defraud or a reckless disregard for facts.

And I believe the process that we're talking about here, working group presenting you with a staff report and an official statement that they've concluded meets the standard is the type of thing that will ensure compliance with federal securities laws.

Okay, just two quick points.

Uh obviously the mayor isn't here tonight, so we'll make sure that she gets this training so that she's equipped to participate in on November 17th or 18th.

And then in turn, there's going to be a large disclosure packet that the working group puts together that will hear at a regular uh consideration item.

And then on an annual basis, is it's just an update to that document or what what happens?

Yeah, so so first of all, there's the audit that just gets attached, and for most of the information that needs to be updated, it's already in the audit.

Um, but to the extent it's not, there might be a couple tables, large employers or uh measure O revenues if it's not clear in the audit, although I think it will be.

So for the most part, and many cities just do it, they make sure that whatever they're obligated to disclose under their continued disclosure obligation on an annual basis is included in the audit, so it's wrote and there's no risk of failing to do it.

Okay.

And is it the timing is coincided with our act for it happens so that those efforts can be combined sometimes?

That's right.

So the typical time limit for turning in your continued disclosure, which isn't wildly popular with investors, is nine months after the end of your fiscal year.

So I know I'm guessing your ACFA is generally available in December or January, so it's you have until March 31st to turn into continued disclosure.

Great.

Councilmember Silva.

So continuing on that subject, the professionals help the working group of city staff prepare the draft or the preliminary disclosure document that has the good and the bad.

And that will that good and the bad be thoroughly presented to us at a council meeting.

So the normal process, and you can derive whatever process you'd like, but the normal process is my firm would sit down and go through publicly available information, budgets, ACFARs, uh other types of information and prepare an initial draft of the disclosure document.

And the first part of the document summarizes the bond structure, and the second documents the city's finances.

We then would circulate it within the working group, and with again with this charge of making sure we're including all material facts.

We would work with city staff to make sure we'd ask a lot of questions.

Often we can't complete everything.

Um we'd ask questions and they would add their own updates on that information.

The normal process would be once staff and we and Craig's firm felt like the document included all material facts of which we're aware, it would come to council for approval, it would be included in the agenda package.

You would get the document and you would get it as many days in advance as you'd like to have it.

One of the reasons we're doing this disclosure training, what seems like a long time ahead of that process is we don't want to wait until you've gotten the document and haven't had a chance to think through these issues.

So we're, you know, we're we're front loading the training, but um the goal is that you would have as much time as you want to read it.

Normally it just goes on the uh for most public agencies on their three or five day council agenda, and they have a chance to review it then.

So when is looking at this?

Is this on the 18th, or is there is it before the 18th?

I believe the plan is to bring the financing back for approval on November 18th, and that would include the legal documents and the disclosure documents.

That's correct.

And I would also add, and correct me if I'm wrong, Chris.

Prior to this coming to the council on November 18th, the rating agencies would also have a thorough review of the county's financial situation and provide their ratings.

That's another check and balance that helps ensure that the information is correct.

Uh what I'm also envisioning, the reason the timing's a little bit tight here is we have some some deadlines that we need to meet.

One is that the bonds, I'm sorry, the bids are due back from the contractors October 23rd.

We can't turn it around quickly enough to give you an update in November.

And the reason we want to have this approved in November, no later than December is you may recall, we have the agreement with the Aquatics Foundation we heard from earlier that we need to enter into at least award a contract by the end of the calendar year to ensure that that Aquatics Foundation agreement remains in place for that three million dollars.

In addition, we want to move uh quickly on the project and meet the commitments that we shared with the measure o folks.

That's a long way of saying we have a couple updates between now and then.

I'm also envisioning we have the option to brief all of you individually on where we're at, talk through questions ahead of time to make sure you're all comfortable with the information by the time it comes to you at the second meeting in November.

These are complicated documents, and the the point size of the type looks really small, but I know I'm looking at a really small screen.

So, hand out magnifying glasses if it's as small as it looks like.

All right, thank you.

Mayor Pro Tam, any questions on the SEC disclosure requirements?

Okay.

I think we're good.

Thank you.

Okay, so next I'm gonna talk a little bit about preliminary analysis and recommendations.

And so as we've talked about, and you know that the financing is only a portion of the funds that are needed for this project, so based on the engineers' estimate of 77 million, we have provided for you here a source of funds for the full project amount.

And so we have nine million in the general funds, seven million of that came from the facilities reserve.

The measure owed nine million dollars set aside in the budget each year will have accumulated to 27 million by the end of the current fiscal year, and then that leaves approximately 41 million in bond financing.

And again, this is based on the engineer's estimate.

So that may change, but this is the information we have now.

And so those funds will be used for the construction as well as soft costs for the total of 77 million.

And so may I ask a question?

Could you go back?

Certainly, sure.

Does the uh these are assumptions?

But does the 300 to 400,000 in issuance costs included in the 77, or is that going to sit, is that still to come?

That is still to come.

That would be part of the bond financing.

Okay, thank you.

Kirsten, can you just refresh our memory on how many more slides we have?

Uh, four.

I'll make them, I'll try to go through them quickly.

Some of its information that you've heard, so throughout the presentation.

And so staff is proposing a financing term of eight years to align with the expiration of Measure O in 2033.

If project bids come in significantly higher than the engineer's estimate, staff will seek direction from city council on the term.

Extending the bond term beyond the expiration date of measure O would provide the city flexibility on having a lower debt annual debt service payment.

However, if it went beyond that eight-year term of when measure O expires, the general fund would be responsible for those payments going forward.

So the structure of the lease revenue bond requires a tangible asset for collateral, which was mentioned earlier.

So based on what we know now, we are recommending the leisure facility, but as was discussed earlier, that will depend on the valuation.

So it may end up being leisure center and city hall once we've gone through that process.

But again, once the new facilities are completed, the recommendation would be to transfer that lease to those new facilities.

The annual debt service payments will remain the same throughout the lease term, so they are fixed.

Measure O adopted budget has set aside that $9 million annually to pay for that future debt service.

So this chart on the slide shows the annual debt service payments for three scenarios.

So assuming we might need between 40 million and 60 million to complete this project.

And what's important to note here is that even at 60 million for an eight-year term, the annual debt service would still be less than the nine million dollar budget that we have set for our annual debt service payment in measure O.

So next, I want to just touch on the financing timeline.

And so we we've talked about some of these along the way, but this is kind of the complete picture of the timeline.

And so tonight, sorry, we kicked off the financing project back in August, and then tonight we're here for the financing overview.

And then we will be back on October 7th to request the approval of the JPA as well as the adoption of a resolution.

This is a reimbursement resolution that would allow the city to use bond proceeds to reimburse costs incurred within 60 days prior to the adoption of that resolution.

So that would just be an option that we had if we wanted to exercise that.

Then in early November, there'll be the credit rating presentation to one of the credit rating agencies, and then they will provide the city's rating in mid-November.

At the November 18th City Council meeting, staff will request the approval of financing from the JPA and City Council.

So as was mentioned earlier, this will be a competitive sale, and the interest rates will be set in early December and the project funded in late December.

And so with that, we welcome your feedback.

And because this is an informational item, there's no action requested of you this evening, and staff and our consultants are here to answer any questions you may have.

Okay, that was that's great.

Great presentation team effort, uh a lot of good information and uh important disclosure information that we need to be aware of.

I'd like to open it up now for public comment.

Any member of the public wishing to address the council on this item will have two minutes, and if you haven't filled out a speaker card uh beforehand, you're welcome to do so afterwards, or we might know who you are already.

Any public comment on this item?

And uh, okay, I'm not seeing anyone rush to the microphone.

So there's gonna be other opportunities.

Obviously, this is a big endeavor, it's a large project.

It sounds like it's one of the maybe the second time the city has used uh lease uh bond financing, not the first, but we haven't done so, at least in my tenure on council.

But we'll have other opportunities and check-in points for people to make comments on uh these milestones as we move along.

Um, any follow-up questions from the council on this item, okay?

Councilmember Silva.

I'd like a little explanation on the reimbursement legal requirements.

I understand a 60 days that we're going to be asked to adopt a resolution, but what can be covered in that and what costs a lot of the soft costs of the design costs have already been spent, correct?

Correct.

Are those eligible?

I mean, so they would have to be costs that were incurred 60 days prior to the adoption of the reimbursement resolution.

So when we come right around August 1st, then if we're doing it correct.

So it would be any cost associated with the project that occurred from October 6th prior the 60 days and these be third party costs as well as yes.

So this requirement is driven by federal tax law and the I the IRS impose this limitation on local agencies issuing taxes and bonds to reimburse prior expenditures if you want to do that you have to declare the intent to do it and there's two types of cost regulated by um a reimbursement resolution hard cost and soft costs the 60 day rule of reimbursing costs incurred no earlier than 60 days before the declaration of the reimbursement intent applies only to hard costs you can you do not have to be limited that 60 day period for soft costs.

But the limitation on soft costs is it can't exceed basically more than 20% of the financing this resolution is being recommended to you by staff just to preserve flexibility.

Uh capital facilities that are used for governmental purposes owned and operated by state or local government.

If there are unique rights by private organizations such as for example the swimming organization then sometimes there's a limitation on on issuing taxes and bonds so it's important to preserve access to as much equity as we can have as we structure this financing to make sure that the equity can be allocated to things that maybe taxes and bonds couldn't finance such as portions of the project used um by on an exclusive basis by third party organizations.

That's the couple of bullets in the middle of page three of the memo all right thank you.

Council member DeVinny so a couple quick questions uh in this process who are we designating as the trustee so we did do a competitive process and the trustee would be US bank okay which is our also our resolution that's okay yes um and then I was wondering and we have a I think a written debt policy and uh I was wondering this um in the scenario of sixty million dollars over eight years we'd be uh we'd have payments of uh you know eight million four hundred thousand if our operating budget is around a hundred million does that exceed some thresholds that we're supposed to keep our um debt ratio say less than five percent or is there some written policy that that that states that our debt policy that was recently adopted by this council does address that but that is specific to debt service that is being paid out of the general fund and so this is being paid out of measure O so it's not subject to that same limitation.

Okay.

I thought measure go was going into the general funds.

No one's staying in the it's actually in a separate fund.

Okay.

All right.

And then my list did just to clarify that it is part of the general fund but it's in a sub fund effectively at the general fund.

So if you're looking in the aggregate it is part of the general fund we have a subfund in which measure O is tracked separately for reporting purposes not only for this activity but also when we report out to the public we want to make sure we're tracking all revenues and expenditures for measure o very specifically so we can report out to the voters how it's been used as opposed to commingling it more generically with all the other funds that come in.

So it wouldn't violate our debt policy in that regard then in fact I believe we have a statement in the policy that allows for this my last question is uh say we go out for 60 million and we use 50 what what do you have to do with leftover bond money?

It'd be a nice scenario to be in but yeah what what would happen in such a case.

So one of the things we'll do actually as part of the structuring of the financing is to make sure that you have authority to finance this um the aquatic and community center and other uh authorized invest uh other authorized projects.

Um it's generally not a good idea to have leftover bonds and have to use them to pay down the bonds early.

Um that's not an efficient use of funds.

So my assumption is that staff working with NHA will structure the financing in a way that you're sure that you'll use the bond monies.

Uh tax law requires you to have a reasonable expectation of spending eighty five percent of the proceeds within three years.

So the assumption is that you'll intend to use your bond monies first and you'll use your equity second.

So you may have leftover equity, but you wouldn't have leftover bond money.

Yeah, if I could just add to that one of the decision points that will be made in the future, we don't have enough information depending on how the bids come back from the construction firms, is going to impact how much debt we issue.

And one of the considerations would be depending upon the amount, how much of that other money that we have saved already, do we want to use versus issue more or less debt to potentially preserve some of those other funds?

And that really depends on what the numbers look like once the bids come in, but that'll be a key consideration that gets to your very point.

So that you wouldn't have to issue all 60 million in bonds all at once.

You could do it in a phased process so that you're not borrowing more than you need for the project.

Well, we should know that total cost of the project, and obviously it would be some variation for potential change orders and that sort of thing that we would want to account.

I'd defer to our advisors if we think we would issue one debt or issue it in tranches over time.

I'm guessing giving the shorter duration of this use, it would be one tranche, but I'll defer to that.

Yes, that's correct.

Um we would be only suggesting that there be a single financing uh multiple series that you run up transaction costs and new, you know, paying additional rating fees and things like that.

Uh our financing plan anticipates once we have a good idea of where the bids are coming in for the project, and we've validated with staff uh the fund balances that we have for measure O to probably build the contingency in on the cash side on the measure O side and then kind of go hard on what we believe we're really comfortable financing, knowing that the cash in a worst case scenario, we draw down more on the reserves.

We uh the the example that the administrative services director gave you was here's our fund balances we have now, and we need 41 million.

If the project turns out to be 77, we would probably be recommending that we hold back a certain part of those measure o revenues as your contingency.

So maybe you you are borrowing 50 million or 48 million or something, so that you have that comfort that you're not gonna run out.

You don't want to be short, right?

As you're as you're blowing through this.

Uh to Chris's point also about the expenditures, we understand this is a pretty aggressive project to get done in time for the season.

Um, and that we're thinking it's 24 months uh to get uh to blow through not only the cash but all the bond proceeds as well.

Any further questions, Councilmember DeVinny?

Nothing.

Okay.

Mayor Pro Tem.

All right, we're setting.

I just had a maybe one or two final ones then.

In terms of the schedule, the bids come in on October 23rd, but we're doing the financing on November 18th.

So we that's okay, even though we haven't awarded, haven't signed a contract with a contractor yet.

So that would happen in the same evening.

So the intent would be that if we came on November 18th with the contract award, we would also come and request the authority to do the financing.

I think that makes a lot of sense.

And then in terms of kind of the contingency costs, I recall that the facilities reserve was there's more in the facilities reserve than just the nine million, and I think might it might be helpful for us to know how much is in that account too when we come back and make the final financing decision.

I can tell you that separate from the money that has already been dedicated to this project, there's a 11.7 million in the facilities reserve currently.

Excellent.

All right.

All right, I think we've exhausted this topic.

If the and uh thank you all for uh really good counsel and advice on this.

Um how are we doing?

Do we uh should we power through?

It looks like we probably have at least another hour on the next sign.

Why don't we take uh 10 minutes?

We'll come back at 8 o'clock, so an eight-minute break.

Okay, welcome back.

Uh next on the agenda is another consideration item or update on 2025-2026 city council priorities.

And I would invite staff to provide a presentation.

Great.

All right.

Well, good evening, council members, members of the public staff.

Uh Joe Carroza, assistant to the city manager.

Uh, I'll be kicking off tonight's presentation on council priorities and the September 2025 update.

Uh so thank you for this time this evening to present this update.

This is the first update since we came to council in May to present the scopes of work uh for your pre your council priorities for 2025 and 2026.

So, by way of background, in February of this year, a council identified five priorities uh for calendar years 2025 and 2026, and they're listed here on screen uh in alphabetical order.

Tonight's presentation is intended to share uh how these priorities are moving forward and uh to date and what's on the horizon.

This evening you'll be hearing directly from the staff leads uh who are uh moving these projects forward by managing the the accomplishments and turning these into real projects and accomplishments and priorities with the help of their teams and beyond.

Uh and so that will be Mike Knight Mike Neiman, who will cover economic development and downtown vitality.

We'll hear from Candice Rankin Mumby on environmental sustainability and climate action.

Erica Vandenbrand for general plan update.

Park and recreation facilities will be done by Rich Payne, and then public safety and social wellness will be covered by Captain Ryan Hibbs.

While these leads are the drivers and representatives of the work and accomplishments done to date, uh these priorities cut across many departments in the city and are accomplished by the support and collaboration of many teams and staff members.

And as a reminder, significant progress has been made on many of these priorities to date, but much work does remain in the coming months and years, and some priorities like the general plan update will uh extend well beyond the two-year cycle.

So for some logistics tonight, each of our leads will come up and present the significant accomplishments and work to date uh for the their respective priorities, and they'll do that so in a high summary level fashion.

Uh and then they're going to, before they pass the baton to the next lead to cover the next priority, pause.

They'll solicit any feedback, any input, and take any questions that you have.

Uh and then with that, I'll go ahead and pass to our first person, Mike Neiman, who will cover economic development and downtown vitality.

Thank you.

Good evening, Council.

Mike Neiman, your economic development manager.

And I'll start with economic development.

Uh there is a lot that goes into economic development.

And uh the work that we're doing is largely encapsulated through the economic development action plan, which is a two-year plan adopted for the 24-25 time frame.

There's been a lot of uh effort, thought, thinking, and community input that's gone into that effort.

And there are many goals uh that you can see that are uh captured in that document.

They include uh looking for a strong resilient forward-looking economy.

There's a lot of business support effort efforts uh permitting regulatory environment improvements downtown continues to be uh one of the major foci for economic development.

Uh there's an effort for higher paying jobs, and uh there are various policy uh considerations and performance tracking as part of that.

The efforts are broken into four major goals or objectives.

The strategic objective number one is continue building a resilient, inclusive, and diverse economy.

A number of accomplishments in that regard since you've last heard from us are re-initiation of the mayor visits.

That was the program that was restarted after a delay, where now we conduct these on at least a quarterly basis with the mayor.

And there's also a number of other less formal business retention efforts where staff continue building relationships and working with the business community through various efforts, communications, and various facets.

We also launched a size up data tool that is a tool largely for small businesses.

So these kinds of performance metrics enable existing business owners but also prospective business owners make better decisions about locations where they can maximize revenues and reduce costs or identify where they may be uh varying from some of their competitors.

We also expanded outreach to specific strategic industries, having building relationships with the healthcare industry, the technology industry, and uh the auto dealer industry as well.

Uh and we also continue to collaborate with the chamber on the upcoming funders and founders event.

This would be the second event scheduled for November, and the goal for that event is to promote to put the funders together with some of the potential tech industries and create uh more awareness and momentum around health tech and other tech options in the shade lands uh that would be uh complementary to the sports mall and some of the uses that have already evolved there.

Strategic goal number two is to continue creating a business friendly environment.

You could see a number of accomplishments here that have been completed by the community development department that Erica will cover in a bit more detail that include uh a launch of the parcel viewer platform on the website.

There's also an approved contract now for the lean process improvement that will improve the permitting process for our customers, and we're excited to see the lobby uh open up shortly, and we have gotten a lot of positive feedback from the public on that.

Also, within the economic development division, uh we have continued to engage property and business owners as well as brokers and build new relationships as we better understand some of the challenges and opportunities from the private sector so we can continue accommodating them and building a resilient economy.

And lastly, we have continued serving as a single point of contact, making it easier for businesses to navigate the city hall process, more notably the outdoor dining program.

A lot of the restaurant owners, their experts in running a restaurant, but not necessarily applying for some of the outdoor dining program elements.

So we were able to build relationships and help them navigate the process, making it easier for them.

And with this, I will invite Erica to talk a little bit more about some of the community development uh accomplishments within the within the specific economic development goal too.

Thank you very much.

Mike, I'm Erica Vandenbrand, the community development director, and um development is a team sport, and whether it's economic development or development services, and one of the things that's going live tomorrow is a parcel viewer, which takes about five different places currently on the city's website, and you have to go and hunt and pack for you know when you're trying to go through and do a development, as well as several other outside of the city websites, such as the county parcel data, and essentially combines it into one place, which will make a very powerful tool for our development community to be able to use.

And so just wanted to have that announcement there.

Aha, there we go.

And uh following up on what Mike had said, there's been a substantial effort that's taken place both with an Apex Customer Service front first floor lobby as well as the development services team, really focused on creating an ideal customer journey, so that we have been focusing on the physical space on the second floor to be able to have a welcoming, very customer-focused approach for seamless navigation, efficient services, and then sending our customers away with a smile on their faces, which I'm sure you will all appreciate.

But this will be realized at starting on October 6th when we open the counter on the second floor.

So it will be open for service, except during the noon hour, but then even during the noon hour, people can pre-arrange for special appointments if that's the only time that they can come in.

And we will continue to offer services basically from uh you know from the development services uh counter, both over the counter in person as well as electronically.

And then last but not least, um this is a preview of things to come, but it's what we have been working on for um a long time.

You have all been asking for permit um metrics and so forth.

So we have an initiative underway, still not ready to launch to the public, but we felt it was important to share with you that the entire development services environment will be able to be captured in terms of um the workload and the number of permits coming through and so forth, so that uh and looking at that over time, but then in addition, probably one of the most frequent questions that you each get, and certainly we get is where how long why is my permit taking so long?

So individuals will be able to look up online under their permit number and see where things are at and um see who actually is uh holding the uh you know next action, whether it's city staff or whether it is the consultant.

I'll turn it back over to Mike.

Thank you.

So I'll cover the next two goals for economic development.

We have a total of four.

The third goal is continue enhancing the downtown experience and tourist attraction.

We've made some accomplishments there.

More notably, we designed and want to thank council for adopting the outdoor dining grant.

It was very well received by the restaurants.

We are happy to report that the first uh outdoor dining pod has already been established under that uh grant, uh largely due to the financial incentive that we were able to provide, and we are working with a number of other restaurants that are currently going through the application process that we're guiding them through and are cautiously optimistic that you will be seeing several more in short order.

Um we also continue collaborating with downtown Bolna Creek, uh visit Bolna Creek, uh the hotels, other organizations to to continue bringing events, vitality, and new experiential experiences to downtown.

And strategic objective number four is to promote the city brand as a premier destination.

We're known for a distinguished quality of life, and we want to continue uh creating the narrative that enforces that and positions us well ahead of the competition.

So we do that through um a number of efforts.

One of the accomplishments that we have completed was was an office market study recently.

That is part of some of the analysis that will be going into the general plan update to right size some of the land uses and making sure that we can ensure that all land uses in the city continue performing well and support job generation.

We continue, we have also we're we're currently developing an interactive database that helps us better measure uh performance over time.

We'll already have an annual uh data fact sheet that we're putting out, and in addition, we will soon have a more interactive dashboard that compare that compares different uh metrics over time.

Uh, we'll continue operating the city's uh economic development portion of the website, which serves as the city's window on the internet into the business-friendly nature, and is um something that is looked at by prospective tenants, things along that nature, and we're also operating the LinkedIn platform uh sharing some of the positive narrative about accomplishments and and further uh enhancing the city's image.

And lastly, we are currently uh working on updating the city's economic development action plan uh for the next two-year cycle, and we will be bringing that effort forward to provide you with an update in the December-January time frame.

And with that, I am happy to answer any questions related to economic development.

Okay, uh, thank you, Mike.

We have four priorities to go.

Mayor Pro Tem is on East Coast time, so maybe if we can limit our questions to on this topic to one or two real pressing ones, uh we can get on.

And it was a great presentation, very thorough.

So we got a lot of good information.

Any questions on economic development?

Just I had just one on the the pod that came in.

Do you know how much that ended up costing?

Yeah, we were told that the total all-in cost was about 45,000.

45.

Yes.

Okay.

Since you asked one question, my one question would be um for Erica.

What what do you see like best case scenario?

What's your vision for that walk-up experience?

Are people walking into the first floor and being greeted?

Is there something in our are they, you know, is it you know there's a sign on the elevator that says go up to the second?

What is that initial customer experience look like?

So um Smidar and others on the development services team have been really instrumental.

So you've been if you have recently been through um, you know, City Hall, you've noticed a couple things.

So one is that on the first floor, a lot of the monitors and everything have been um taken away, they've been moved up to the first floor, otherwise, um, so that people aren't left with a um you know a presence that is not friendly.

So that on October 6th, we'll have wayfinding signage, we will have um directionality so that people go to the are directed to go to the um elevator, so signage will be there.

Go up to the second floor, you'll be greeted by um you know, human individual, and then if we're able to have, you know, if we have paid uh the people there right then that are not working with other clients, they'll be able to be served immediately.

Um otherwise we have a queuing system so that you get your you know place in line so that they'll be uh very seamless, and then um you can go from person to person to person to have that experience, no longer having to go to the information booth to be led up and so forth, because the elevator will be there for other things within City Hall, they'll be able to go to the information booth and have things directed there, one question.

So if you had a crystal ball and what you know after, actually, you've been here a little over a year, I think, maybe a year and a half.

What is our greatest opportunity and what is our greatest challenge when it comes to economic development?

So I will answer this question more in the general plan context because they're kind of layers from strategic to them, yeah.

But I would certainly say that we have a number of strategic opportunities from our central location and being really well positioned within various modes of transit in the East Bay, uh having the momentum and business clusters that are well established, given that location, having the quality of life elements, educated labor force, having a downtown that is a jam from almost any kind of an experience.

Um there's certainly a lot of assets to build on and all of these work synergetically as an opportunity.

I think, in terms of a challenge, certainly uncertainty about the future of workspace, specifically as relates to office, and having some of the conversations about how can we best position ourselves for the futures of shade blends, and also making sure that we remain having conversation about how do we remain a regional job center with an increase in market pressure for housing and some of the regulation that is making housing um something that we're seeing a lot more where it at times it's eating away at the supply of land that has traditionally been uh job serving and supporting some of the um higher paying jobs that we uh have been able to develop here.

So I think those are some of the um conversations that are really important in the general plan context.

All right, thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem, any questions on economic development?

No questions at all.

I just want to really thank uh Mike and Erica for some of what's been going on to date.

Uh I'm hearing fewer complaints and more accolades about the department in general, which is great, so thank you.

Thank you.

And uh next we have sustainability.

So I'd like to introduce Candace.

Good evening, council members.

Uh as Mike mentioned, I'm Candace Rankin Mumby, the city's sustainability manager, and I will be discussing our environmental sustainability climate action topic tonight.

This uh priority area focuses or aligns very closely with our sustainability action plan that was adopted by the council in 2023.

So we're gonna touch on just a few of the highlights of what we've been accomplishing over the last few months here on creating a more sustainable community and addressing um carbon emissions and our impacts on the environment.

So first we'll touch a bit on the work we've been doing in generally in the building space, and we really focus on this as one of our main areas as there are carbon emissions that come from the use of energy in buildings, so either from natural gas power in the building itself or what is being put into the electricity.

So a couple of big highlights here.

One, uh, there's been a lot of work done over the summer and this year on the Leisher Center and its HVAC systems to make them more efficient and modern.

And so this is gonna have a variety of improvements.

One should definitely reduce the carbon emissions uh and make it more efficient.

That will also provide energy savings and also bring better comfort to our patrons uh within the leisure center.

So this is really one of those big win-win-win areas in the work that we do, and we look forward to doing more of these types of facility improvements throughout the city.

The second note here is on um ongoing work that we do, partnering with uh MCE, our community choice aggregator for providing energy.

Uh, they work alongside PGE to provide energy to the vast majority of accounts within Walnut Creek, and we're working on trying to get more of those accounts on their 100% renewable deep green plan.

This is for those folks who have just a little bit extra flexibility in their uh energy budget.

It can be a really low effort way to make a big impact on your household's uh energy footprint, and it's especially helpful for renters or other folks who might not be able to put solar on their house, it's a way for them to still have a hundred percent renewable energy.

So we promote this through our different newsletters and social media and activities, and that's continues to be ongoing.

The last note on here is a less of an accomplishment and more of just an update on kind of a change in the environment since we last spoke with you in May.

So Assembly Bill 130 was adopted by the California legislature in June, and it's that's a large bill with several elements to it, but uh one in particular applies to the ability to adopt reach codes or or amend the building code in general over the next six years.

There are some exceptions to this that relate to allowing certain cities to make adjustments for environmental sustainability reasons.

Our analysis with RC Attorney's Office, we've our current status is that that would not apply to us.

So this means some of the updates that we came to with in May, we're not going to be able to approach in the next two years the way that we had expected because this law will apply for the next six years.

So staff are we're still sort of analyzing this change and looking at what other opportunities we can have to still achieve our goals just in different ways.

So more to come on that, but we'll likely be able to come up with some creative solutions to still be working towards reducing carbon emissions from residential buildings in the city.

The next topic that we're gonna cover is uh our upcoming gas power leaf blower ban.

So staff have transitioned internally to the vast majority of cases using electric leaf blowers.

Uh now that that's kind of been taken underway, we're really focused in our division, and this is kind of our number one topic right now of working on bringing forward to you the uh proposed policy for uh community-wide gas-powered leaf blower ban.

This is something that was a commitment made in the 2023 Stanley Action Plan.

So we know that this will have a really big impact on our community, so we're doing a lot of work on outreach at the moment.

We've sent postcards to about 400 landscapers, HOAs, and property owners, alerting them to the fact that this is a policy that we're looking to undertake.

Our office assistant Sophia is following up and calling each of those contacts as well so that they'll they'll hopefully receive that information in one of those two ways.

And then we're making several updates on our website.

So we have a dedicated web page, the URLs on the screen.

If you just type Walnut Creek Leaf Blowers, uh, you'll also likely find it.

That's continuing to be updated with more information and resources translated into Spanish as well.

And then we have an email newsletter for folks who can sign up if they're interested in learning more and staying up to date.

So we're trying to make sure that everybody knows this policy is likely coming because it really is going to be important for compliance reasons to see the biggest effect from it for people to know that it's there.

So this is a big focus, and we expect to be back to you very soon later this fall with more information on that policy.

And then, in an effort to keep things brief, we do only have one more topic that I'll highlight from the report today, and that's our efforts around reducing generated and landfilled solid waste.

And so this these updates really focus on our efforts around events.

So we permit a lot of events, either we have rentals within our facilities or we help with permitting for events that take place in public spaces, and those events can generate a significant amount of waste, particularly if they have food involved.

And so we are working on updating the uh guidance that we have for folks who rent on, you know, what they can do voluntarily, and then we're also looking at the permitting process to see if we can improve potentially more stringent requirements there, what impacts that would have on our event providers.

And then we also work closely with uh Walnut Creek downtown, who, as you know, put on a lot of wonderful events in the community, and they also really take seriously the waste generation elements of that.

So they reached out to us about you know, potentially brainstorming on ways that we can help them.

They're already doing a really great job, but you know, how can they go even another step further?

And so we're looking to partner with them in their 2026 event season on just uh taking some of those potential guidances as a kind of a test case at their events and really using their knowledge to help us make sure that whatever recommendations we're making are practical for the community.

So that's the last uh overview slide that I have, but happy to take questions on anything that I just mentioned or anything that's included in the report group.

Any questions on environmental sustainability?

Councilmember Silva.

Thank you very much for the report and for all the work that you're doing in this arena.

It's complicated, it's a lot, and there's a lot of moving parts.

I know that regarding the gas-powered leaf blowers and outdoor equipment.

One of the concerns that I anticipate us hearing is that it's more costly, tariffs, extra batteries you have to carry, how efficient is it, etc.

Are we collecting data on that so that we get so we get that full picture?

Yes.

When we discuss it.

Yeah, thank you for that question.

So we're doing uh, in addition to the outreach that I mentioned, we're doing a lot of research on sort of the policy development side of that.

So there's kind of two big sides of that that I think address your question.

Uh one is reaching out to other cities and organizations in the state that have adopted gas power leaf lowers bans and to done analysis on them.

So the number, there's different types of restrictions, but at least a hundred cities in California have some sort of leaf blower uh restrictions.

So there's a lot of options to look at for folks on what they've seen there, and you know, some of those are more recent, some of them have been around for a while.

And the other side of that is we are looking at sort of the commercial side of it and trying to understand that perspective better.

So that's part of this outreach to leaf uh to landscapers, understanding folks who are potentially using electric already and how that is going.

Um, but we've also been reaching out to retailers.

So we met with ACE Hardware earlier this summer and talked to them about kind of the offerings that they have and the um the work that they do to sell electric equipment.

Uh one note that I'll make is that you can't sell gas-powered landscaping equipment in the state anymore, so whatever you buy has to be electric.

So there are definitely a lot of variety of options out there, and and the market is changing, but we're doing our research to kind of gather that information and we'll and definitely provide it in the report that we bring back on the potential ban.

One of the things to keep in mind, and I know that this is not the agendized item, but it's a big it's a big item for people, is that with the change in the labor market?

I think there are fewer landscapers, and efficiency of the work they have to do is going to be pretty paramount to them.

Otherwise, they're going to have to charge all of their customers more for the same work.

So, just a look.

Thank you.

Councilmember DeVinnie.

No, I just wanted to thank you for the presentation and uh the work you're doing in this area.

Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Uh I echo those comments.

Thank you.

And again, thanks to you and the team for uh the involvement in the uh in the discussion last week with the residents for uh all of all of the climate change and the environmentally friendly aspects of the Heather Farm Community Center.

I too echo the compliments.

Uh and would just I know we got some public comment about um kind of the status of our fleet and EV chargers, and perhaps in some future updates we can get more uh statistical information on are we on track?

Are we meeting them the metrics and milestones?

Yes, the way it's set.

Yeah, the reason I didn't touch on that topic much at all is because we're coming back to you, I think it's scheduled next month with a whole topic just on the REV fleet and charger.

So we'll be able to get in a lot of detail there.

There you go.

And on the leaf blow blower ban, uh, is that a typical goes into effect 30 days after the ordinance is adopted?

Yeah, it's a a typical municipal code update process.

And I imagine there'll be some sort of public education component uh for a period of time before any heavier enforcement of that.

Yes, we have options on how we structure that.

So staff will make a recommendation, but there will there'll be flexibility.

Okay, and I'm violating my own rule on one question.

On um what challenges do you see in terms of you know at the federal level some of these incentives going away with solar and kind of the carpal stickers and things like that?

Yeah, it's definitely a changing environment this year.

So for folks who aren't aware, there are several federal incentives from the IRA, the inflation inflation inflation reduction act, excuse me, um, that are expiring either at the end of September, so very shortly, or some of them are expiring at the end of the year.

Um they'll likely make you know the cost of buying electric vehicle or doing some of these updates to your home.

They'll make it more expensive.

So we have been trying to get the word out about them now so that people try and take advantage of it at the time that we have now, but we do, it'll be one less tool that we have in our toolbox next year, and we're just gonna have to rely on on other opportunities.

Okay, thanks, Candace.

Thank you.

And I'll pass it back over to Erica to talk about the general plan update.

I am still Erica Vanibrad, the community development director.

Um, the general plan basically is uh and the update that we'll be doing to it is um pretty much looking at the long-term vision for the next 2025 years and putting together the pieces of the puzzle in order to help get us there.

And you will all have a much greater um time, etc.

to take a deeper dive about the general plan at a special stud at a study session on October 7th.

Um so I won't belabor the point.

But as we get ready to do the RFP for consultant assistance, what we have been doing is we have been out in the community reaching out to them and um asking them questions about what makes Walnut Creek special, what makes Walnut Creek great.

And the information we've gotten back is that people love um the walkable downtown, restaurants, shopping, a sense of community and safety as a community.

And the graphic that's over there is basically a timeline of the city that we use as the backdrop as we're having these conversations with the public, as we did with the um Locust Street Festival.

And for those that didn't have an opportunity to see that, uh, we are going to be at the trunk retreat event, and it will be a hauntingly magical um endeavor.

So with that, just wanted to um also let you know that uh council member Francois um stole my thunder about the reaching out to the business community and his report out, so I don't need to go over that again, but we have been reaching out not only to our um constituents to find out what kinds of things are of interest to them, but also to the business community and then certainly staff here within the city to be able to have a better understanding of what's needed to be able to have success from each and every department within the city and helping develop the um general plan, and so as we issue the RF the request for proposal.

So with that, there's more to come on October 7th, but I'm here to answer any questions you have.

Any questions on the general plan?

It's exciting.

I was here during part of the last one, the very end.

Um I appreciate that you've reached out to the Chamber of Commerce, um, the Locust Street Festival, Walnut Creek downtown.

Have you thought, or could you put into your bag of tricks to actually reach out to the historical society and convene some of their members?

They are a vast resource of the path information on the past, and I think that perspective might be very helpful.

We are certainly going to be um very inclusive, and in that is, you know, one of the elements of um that we're you know attempting to capture with the um RFP, the request for a proposal for the consultants to be able to gather, you know, the past um information as well as all the demographics and so forth as we look toward the future.

Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem, any questions on the general plan?

Okay.

Thanks, Erica.

Good evening, members of the council.

My name is Rich Payne.

I'm the public works director for the City of Walnut Creek.

And I'm here tonight to present to you on the parks.

Let me see here.

There's a little bit of a delay.

The parks and recreation facilities.

There's a lot going on right now.

All you have to do is just drive in uh Heather Farm Park and really around town.

There's uh a ton of work.

And so I'm here to present uh just update you on some of the work that's happening.

And uh just wanted to remind you that this work is uh a lot of this work is funded by the Measure O that we discussed tonight, and then along with our capital budget, and also we have some grant funding associated with these projects as well.

So I'm gonna be covering uh there's a little bit of a delay here.

Sorry about that.

You have to be patient.

Okay.

Um I will be covering uh four objectives uh that were set by uh your council, and the first one is the park and facility improvements uh we were working on.

I'll give an update on the aquatics and community center.

We'll talk about some of the pedestrian friendly development that's happening in our community, and then I'll end with uh sort of an update on what we're doing or plans, our future plans for the Clark pool site.

So uh as I said, there's a lot happening out in our parks uh in terms of our facilities.

The ball field lighting project at TICE has been completed.

If you've been out there in the evening, it's it's kind of a cool project.

Uh the lights are LED and they're very directional, so we don't have a lot of spillover, and I think that um that's a nice touch to that park.

It doesn't uh create uh light or uh yeah, the light pollution that normally comes off of large fields like that.

Our synthetic turf project is on its way.

If you've been out there, like I said, there's a construction zone out there everywhere you look.

Uh ball fields one and two are obviously uh receiving the treatment and along with uh the field to the north.

So and um the sub-base is in place, and I know that uh the turf is on site and uh is going in as we speak.

So that one is moving forward.

Uh the next one on the list here is the court resurfacing at Arbolado and Rudgear Park.

If you've been at either one of these uh facilities, you'll know that uh in the past they've been they're looking pretty rough.

Uh and uh the re resurfacing, as you can see in the picture, looks fantastic and very inviting for the public.

And I was out at Rudgear the other day and uh saw uh you know basketball pickup game happening.

So it was really cool to see that.

Um I think it in the past it's been an unutilized space uh and with the improvements is really drawing people to that site.

And then um, and then um uh I know Mike Vickers has been busy and and team have been out uh doing pop-ups and reaching out to the public uh to talk about the amenities uh that uh you know are projected to go into uh Civic Park and Walden.

And we've been getting a lot of feedback.

In fact, I think over 600 uh folks have given feedback uh on this on these two projects on these playgrounds.

And so we're gonna be taking that uh information, the feedback that we got from the public back to pros and present that to them and get uh some direction in terms of uh options.

So that's what's happening there.

And then I'm happy to report that uh phase one is moving along.

Uh, as uh you all know, we've got our permits in place and the project has started, and many of you take uh took a tour out on site, and it's an impressive uh project to to look and see at the um the progress that's being made, specifically at the expansion of the lake.

Uh that whole area along the pathway looks totally different, and then um and so there's still a little bit of work to do there.

We've got to do the planting on the bank and and uh finish uh that element of the work uh you know, along with some trees and some other things along that bank.

And then uh the focus now is turned to the cement pond and really constructing that uh that new edge line of the pond in preparation for phase two.

And uh phase two, I'm uh I'm pleased to say that it uh went out for solicitation for bid last Friday, and so we're uh eagerly waiting for those bids to come back as our city manager mentioned.

Uh we should be getting those back uh on uh October 23rd and then bring it back to council on uh November 18th.

And I just want to acknowledge um staff not only public works, there's a lot of work that went into uh getting bringing that this to this point.

Uh we had three plan checks, a lot of work from our architect, our uh Griffin or uh and Nolan Tam uh put a lot of work into it, along with our engineer staff and our building department.

And I just want to say publicly uh thank you for getting us to this point.

There's a huge milestone, a lot of work went on and a lot of dedication uh from staff to make this happen and given the deadlines that we've been given uh as you heard earlier tonight.

So it's been uh real tight schedule and I will say city staff rose to the challenge and it was really uh great to watch.

Nope, I think I hit it too many times, sorry.

And as I mentioned, Clark Poole uh will be looking.

I think I I skipped one, I apologize.

Okay, and then along with uh all the uh projects were that are happening in our facilities, out on the streets we've been working uh doing a lot of work specifically from our traffic maintenance or traffic engineering.

Um I will say a lot of these projects were grant funded, and just uh go down the list here, uh crosswalk safety uh improvements um in a lot of the areas, uh specifically in the Larkey area.

We've been getting a lot of feedback from that neighborhood, so there's a lot of work happening in there.

Uh the expanded sidewalks on park side, um, just filling in some of those gaps uh for our pedestrians uh along Walker and and uh Jones and then all uh along the Walnut Boulevard in front of uh the uh Walnut Heights School right there, just filling some of those sidewalk gaps and making it safe for pedestrians.

Our trail crossings, a lot of enhancements with um, you know uh beacons and and um just really defining some of our crosswalks better so that more visible, making it more safe for uh pedestrians to cross those uh wider streets.

And then along with that, uh a lot of these projects are in design, including this one, the the high uh quality uh bike facilities.

This is a raised uh bike facility in uh some of the designated locations.

Um and that work is in design, it probably won't happen until next year.

So and then taking us back to Heather Farm.

Uh we'll be looking at um uh uh the uh reimagining this site uh later uh in the fall or winter of uh 2026.

Um in the meantime we've done some uh study uh on the sound, the existing sound, so that we can use that as a baseline as we get closer to you know uh looking at that site and how um sound will be uh impacted by whatever improvement that we make uh moving forward.

So um with that I'll take any questions that you might have.

Mayor Pro Tem, any questions on park facilities?

No questions.

I just want to make a comment that when Rich says the cement pond like Beverly Hill believes, it makes me smile.

I was trying to place that reference, thank you.

Councilmember DeVinny, any questions on parks?

No, uh thank you for the update.

I know we've got a busy department uh with all the projects going on, but uh appreciate your work.

Councilmember Silva.

Thank you for the update, and thank you to your entire team and all of the city staff and the contractors that have been working on all of this.

I appreciate the nutshell has been doing updates on where we're expending the measure O funds, but it would be really important to not only have construction signage up, but like out at Tice Valley, the change occurs.

People will forget that there was a change.

Perhaps we can do some we have a sign shop.

Yes.

Maybe they can do some signage that says, you know, before and after or something like that.

Just to keep front and center that the voters came together with us to do all of this.

It wasn't just about a pool and a community center.

It's about a lot of different projects in the city.

Just a thought.

Absolutely.

It's great feedback.

Thank you.

Councilmember DeVini.

Do do we have signs up that are saying like paid for with measure those being posted around?

Yes, those signs are on site.

Yeah, but I think it's a good touch to look at maybe you can get promoting industry.

I know the county's done that with a few of the things they've passed where they'll actually like have it right on the street when you're driving by.

Absolutely.

Yeah, good suggestion.

Thank you.

I like that.

I think that was a concurrence from uh Mayor Pro Tem.

And just in terms of uh logistical challenges, I guess with the turf fields and the soccer club, how's how's that working out?

So at TICE, uh we have we've obviously have a little more flexibility and and I know we've been programming uh that obviously into the evening.

So that's um, you know, I think that's really helped out.

Um obviously uh that'll improve as as we get Heatherform on board.

So that that's happening this this fall is uh Yeah, the the goal is to finish that by uh December.

Have it complete.

So I was just gonna add uh uh Councilmember Francois, you know, staff's been communicating regularly with the Wanna Creek Soccer Club in terms of usage and timing so they're able to adjust their schedules accordingly, and just based on some feedback I've received from there, they're really pleased with the project and obviously really excited to get out there and play on the turf, hopefully in October.

That's great.

I haven't heard from them, so I was assuming that was the case.

That's good.

And then what looking ahead, logistical challenges with the pool community center footprint.

What do you think there'll be some fencing going up at some point and it'll be near the all abilities playground, but won't necessarily it might impact some of the picnic facilities, I understand, but not necessarily the playground.

That's correct.

There's some shade uh structures that are currently in the turf area adjacent to the uh all buildings playground, but the all-bilities playground will remain open and accessible.

Excellent.

Thanks, Rich.

You're welcome.

And I'll turn the time over to Captain Hibbs.

Thank you, Rich.

Good evening, city council, city staff, members of the public.

Brian Hibbs administrative services captain, police department.

I'm here to give an update on.

I'll wait a few seconds now.

There we go.

Uh public safety and social wellness.

So uh within public safety and social wellness, there are five strategic goals listed here.

One is to build an effective and innovative police department, uh, maintain proactive police responses to crime trends, uh joint agency responses to homelessness and mental health challenges, uh crime prevention partnerships and and programs in neighborhoods, the downtown and other commercial areas, uh, and improvements to traffic safe uh traffic transit, pedestrian and traffic and sorry, bike safety and community and regional disaster preparation and resiliency to meet the increasing challenges of wildfires, earthquakes, droughts, floods, and other hazards.

So we'll start with maintaining effective and innovative police department.

The first bullet point might give some folks some pause here.

So uh AI for report writing is something we are currently exploring in order to take some of the labor intensity out of our report writing.

So um I'd like to assure members of the council and the public and city staff that this is all closed source.

So the information is taken from body cam footage and it's taken from our report management system and our computer aided dispatch system uh to generate a police report based on the information it receives out of those three sources.

And what happens is the author is the officer that has to then go in and they essentially edit but there's an attestation at the end of it that includes uh essentially a disclaimer that says that the report was generated by the use of AI.

This is a process that has been vetted through the district attorney's office other agencies within the county are using AI for report writing uh they're reporting up to about 50% reduction in time spent for report writing but we're not seeing that so far in in our trials we are seeing significant decreases but we're not seeing 50%.

Our social media engagement I'm happy to report is up uh and this is actually a little bit of a low number it's up 20% some of the metrics that we use to determine social media engagement include video views and we did recently have a video that went viral based on a a crime tip that we put out the other major technology investment that we made was upgraded or expanded our automated license plate reader cameras which speak to some of our other software a lot more efficiently and they give us um essentially better more actionable data and it comes in much faster so it's made uh it's made our decision making in terms of where we're allocating resources to combat crime and regional crime trends that much better strategic goal number two is continue proactive police response to crime trends and so I'd like to highlight some of the work of our crime prevention specialist who essentially took that program from the ground up and built it and she's taken it and running with it.

Her name is Kira Rahman and she is at the moment reigniting both the neighborhood watch program and building a crime free business watch program.

So um the crime for these tend to go hand in hand obviously the crime free business is more commercialized but but essentially what they both do is they provide training to recipients so whether it's a a resident or it's a a business owner or a manager they get they receive training from us and then they receive the crime free business model is a certification.

So they'll receive a certification that basically shows that they are uh participants in the program and that that they've received the training and based on um the there is actually a crime free business uh national website based on their reporting uh robberies reduce for businesses that participate in the crime free businesses rob the crime free business program robberies reduce about 40 percent 45 forty to forty five percent and then assaults to employees typically are reduced by 30 percent um and that we hope to have that program up and running late October early November where we're about ready to to launch that and then we we talked a little bit about evidence-based policing we are we're very data driven at the police department in order to best allocate our resources to crime and crime trends and issues we want the best data available so um we take that data we analyze it we essentially devote resources specifically when we've we've had to either we've had a reduction in staffing or we've had to reduce overtime hours uh we've been able to to stay on top of that strategic goal number three is joint agency response to homelessness and mental health challenges uh we did recently work with the community development and um public works and the city attorney's office to uh update the homeless encampment protocol.

Um, part of that approach is, and we'll get to this a little bit later, but part of that approach is also disaster response to the unhoused.

We we recognize that they are very vulnerable in natural disasters, and so uh we wanted to make sure that we incorporated a uh we made a uh a policy to to to make sure that we kept them safe.

Um the emphasis with the homeless encampment protocol is to protect environment and public spaces and then offer resources to the unhoused population.

Our approach here is compassion.

So our uh our homeless outreach program officers work in conjunction with CORE to offer the unhoused resources, help to get them off the street, but we also want to make sure that we uh we address public safety and and uh quality of life issues without criminalizing the homeless.

And then core is available.

See, I jumped the gun there.

Uh core is available weekdays, 8 a.m.

to 4 p.m.

and they're on call weekends and evenings.

Strategic goal number four is to develop crime prevention partnerships and programs.

Uh, we did talk about neighborhood watch earlier.

That is a essentially a refresh of that program.

Uh the fraud prevention program.

We've reached out to a number of community groups, including Golden the Golden Rain Foundation of Rossmore.

We do uh conduct fairly uh quarterly updates on uh on fraud issues basically.

So we we present to the community there to make sure that some of our most most vulnerable members of the community aren't victims of fraud.

Uh national night out well attended this year.

Um that's going to continue, and then uh I have shameless plug here for uh under community outreach.

We do have coffee with a cop coming up on uh October 1st from 9 30 to 11:30 at Tell us Coffee on Main Street.

Everybody's favorite, uh traffic transit, pedestrian, bike safety.

We'll get to e-bikes in just a minute, but we did host recently a bicycle rodeo at Civic Park that uh allowed parents, kids, and and members of the community to come out uh and ride an obstacle course.

Uh they did get some education on e-bikes.

Um we are actively working on an e-bike education campaign to go out citywide.

Uh that will be included on our social media as well.

Um we recognize that e-bikes have flooded some areas of the region, and uh we're mindful of the dangers they can cause if people aren't writing them properly.

So I know council member DeVinny has spoken a number of times about his experiences in the ER, and we want to avoid that if we can.

One thing we did start recently was high visibility traffic enforcement.

This is an overtime assignment that is dedicated strictly to traffic enforcement and education, and so officers are deployed out to on an overtime basis or deployed out to hot spots in Walnut Creek.

So uh higher traffic areas, high complaint areas, and um high collision areas.

Uh on that note, in kind of I I would I don't necessarily know that I would point exactly to that effort, but um it's definitely a big part of it.

Uh, our traffic stops and our citation issued are both up approximately 40 45% as a result of of our traffic enforcement efforts.

And then regional traffic saturations and DUI checkpoints.

We've been lucky enough to collaborate with a number of of agencies uh in the region to conduct uh traffic saturation details along with DUI checkpoints and more forthcoming there.

This is to highlight some of the work that we've done with other agencies in June.

We conducted speed saturation, both June and July.

We conducted speed saturation uh the first with with San Ramon, the San Ramon Police Department.

These are typically operations that run about two and a half to three hours, and within that time frame, officers made our officers in conjunction with San Ramon police officers made 31 traffic stops and issued 24 citations, and then in July, we collaborated with Concord Police and made 66 stops and issued 54 citations in that time frame.

And then back to e-bikes.

So uh in August, we conducted uh essentially an e-bike sting in which uh we we basically focused on the downtown corridor.

Uh out of that time frame, we made this was about a two-hour operation, and out of that, we made nine stops and issued one citation for an unlicensed driver, and then we actually towed an electric motorcycle.

Continuing on with improving traffic, transit, pedestrian and bike safety.

Uh the police department is part of a traffic safety working group, which includes traffic engineering and traffic commissioners.

We meet quarterly, and the topics generally talk or generally go to um engineering concerns, traffic concerns, education and enforcement will come up as a part of that, but one of the nice things that this is a multi-pronged approach.

We are not uh enforcement is one arm of that, but we want to take an educated an education approach to changing driver behavior.

That's our that's our goal.

Strategic goal number six, enhanced community and regional disaster preparation and resiliency.

So the big uh priority here is for us to refresh CERT.

Uh we are seeing some challenges with filling uh filling the manager position for CERT, being that it is a volunteer position.

It is a bit of a heavy lift, it does require a level of passion that we need to uh find the right person to fill that job.

So uh but one thing we've also done with the city is uh we have an emergency operations center training for city staff.

Um these are hosted with uh put together in conjunction with an outside consultant that is an expert on emergency operations.

These are training the these trainings are quarterly uh and they include a number of different things like tabletop exercises, scenarios, role definition, um, and the in best practices, and the idea is that we don't when we come into an emergency operations center, we all know what our role is, and we all kind of that muscle memory kicks in and we're able to kind of take on the role instead of essentially uh guessing.

Um and then as part of the I spoke about it earlier, but as part of the of the disaster response, uh we were very mindful that the unhoused is very vulnerable in these types of things, and so we want to be prepared to assist them as well.

With that, we'll open it up for any questions any of you may have.

Okay, thank you, Captain Hibbs.

Any questions on public safety?

I just I just have one question.

Uh I haven't heard anything, which is always a good uh good sign, but what's the latest with the crime downtown or any kind of um downtown activity that uh we would like to avoid?

Has there been any problems, especially on weekend nights?

Also haven't heard anything, and overall our crime is down four percent.

Great.

Thank you.

Councilmember Silva.

Thank you very much for the report and for all the work that the department does.

I think my colleagues would agree with me that what we hear about is crime, neighborhood speeding, and e-bikes now.

Um is it possible if you have the time in the falls at some point to get a little more detail on the neighborhood watch and the and the business crime free program, maybe traffic enforcement to get a little more so that we have a little more in our memory to be able to respond to those inquiries that we get.

Absolutely, we'll be providing an update in the near future.

That would be great.

Okay, thanks again.

Certainly.

Joe, you're gonna wrap it up.

Yeah, with that, I'll turn it back over to Joe Carroza.

All right.

Well, very quickly, thank you to all of our leads for sharing the milestones that we have to date.

Uh, we will be coming back to council in January with our next update.

And with that, that's the close of our presentation.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Uh, can open up for public comment.

Thank you for being patient and waiting.

Uh members of the public have up to two minutes to address the council on our priorities update.

And uh feel free to fill out a card an hour later.

Welcome.

Welcome.

Well, my goodness.

Uh it's so nice to be here with everybody.

I have the names with the faces straight instead of just reading it and getting confused.

Uh I had some points here, and I got most of those answered and learned a lot more.

Uh just a crazy uh thing came to me today.

I was at Safeway, drove in, and uh not a very just like a bumper sticker on the front of this big car that says, you know, new driver in training, you know, be patient or something.

And I remember when there was something on the top, or something was large, and so I don't hardly ever see anyone or know who's learning how to drive anymore.

I have my uh question has to do with um bicycles and um where you where we you know parked them.

I know that there's some uh places you can lock them up and reserve it like the BART, and there's a few places.

I don't know why we have a crazy one over at Del Monte by the Kaiser.

Uh they have I think it's room for two.

I've never seen anybody use it.

And I know sometimes they get broken into like a barred or something.

And so I saw something, uh now I can't find it, of course.

Um, having to do with uh what's coming in terms of bicycles uh and storage and and all of that, and so how do we you know you either think of those containers or you think of you lock it up around a poll or something like we have a lot of, and so I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with next.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you for being here tonight, Jan.

And you're right, we do have everyone here tonight.

Um so it's a w wealth of information, a lot of resources that went into this, and we're very appreciative of that.

I think what you're referring to maybe is the curb management plan that we had a study session on last meeting, which should have further details on bike parking and where where you can park your bike, what types of facilities and what improvements we're gonna try to do in that regard.

So bringing it on home.

Uh any want to start with Councilmember DeVinny, any thoughts, comments, uh, direction to staff, out of boys and out of girls.

Um, is yours.

No, thank you.

Presentations were very thorough.

I appreciate all the work that went into them and the work you're doing to improve the city and um I don't have any questions for now.

Excellent.

Councilmember Silva.

Thank you for all the work.

You make it um an honor to be able to serve this community because you serve it so well.

So thank you.

That was very poignant.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Uh made most of my comments, but again, thanks to staff.

This is terrific to get these kind of updates and just seeing the improvements everywhere, including with the C-Man Pond.

I I love it.

I'm gonna have that song in my head for the rest of the night now.

Um I too would like to thank staff.

I the presentation was extremely well done.

I like the focus on the strategic objectives.

You take a lot of information and put it into very digestible format.

I get I'm particularly excited about you know the second floor opening up again.

I think that that will be a real big improvement.

There are things that get lost through email that you can't do that you can only do person to person, and I think it's a lot more efficient to do it that way, and I think that'll be it'll be very well received.

So I'm excited to see us doing that.

And then at some point, maybe not now, but when the general plan consultant is on board, you know, to the extent there are opportunities to have flyers with QR codes or something we can put at the farmers market.

That's another touch point in a an area where we can engage with the public on that effort.

Uh so if there aren't any other comments in, we'll go ahead and close that item and thank staff.

And we're all almost done, but I would like to.

Patty was a cherished member of our city team for 24 years, and throughout her career with the city.

She made lasting contributions to both our art and recreation programs.

I know she touched the lives of countless colleagues, artists, and students, with her warmth, her dedication, and her unwavering support.

Patty's dedication and spirit will be remembered with gratitude and affection by all who had the privilege to work alongside her.

Thank you all for being here tonight.

Good night.