Okay.

Yeah.

So let me know when to go.

Go.

Okay.

Well, welcome to this special meeting of the design review commission October 22nd, 2025.

May we do a roll call, please?

Thank you, Chair.

Uh Commissioner Case.

Here.

Commissioner Riley.

Here.

Chair Newsom.

I'm here.

Uh Vice Chair Basting is on vacation, and she has phoned in her absence of many weeks ago.

And so, but we have a quorum.

Great.

Okay, so moving on to the consent calendar.

Um, it looks like we have one item on the consent calendar, which is the adoption of the twenty twenty six council of commission and council calendar.

Um, any discussion about that?

Okay.

So we just take a roll call vote then.

How about that?

Yes.

Yes.

We'll make a motion to adopt it.

Okay.

Okay.

Commissioner Case.

Yes.

Commissioner Riley?

Yes.

Chair Newsom.

Yes.

Motion carries.

Okay.

And I don't believe there's any other items to pull onto the consent calendar.

So we'll just move on to public communications.

This portion of public communications is for items not on the agenda.

Um, under the Brown Act, commission cannot act on items raised during public communications, but may respond briefly to statements made, or questions posed, requests clarification or refer items to staff.

Do we have any public communication beyond uh what's going to be in the public hearing?

No cards.

Okay.

We'll move we'll move on.

So before we go to the public hearing, um, let's have a disclosure of XPA communication.

Has anybody contacted either of you regarding the public hearing?

No, no.

So we're going to move on to the public hearing.

And I believe there's one item.

And it's the Porsche dealership.

And it looks like staff has a presentation, so let's go ahead.

Good evening, Commissioners.

Simmer Gill, senior planner with the city.

We are here tonight to gather design review commission's feedback on the proposed Porsche dealership and service center that will be located at the corner of 2nd Avenue and North Main Street.

The applicant, Stephen Scanlan, along with his team, is here tonight, as am I, to answer any questions that you may have after the presentation.

And just to quickly orient you with the site, it does consist of three parcels that will be merged for project construction.

And the site is zone service commercial, which does allow automobile dealerships that are permitted by right, and a design review is required for the construction of a new building.

The existing buildings on site will be demolished for project construction, and the surrounding area consists primarily of commercial and retail uses, and there are residential uses to the west along second AV that leads to Varton Court.

And here's just a closer look at the buildings on site.

And here's some site photographs.

As you know, the Mass Ays Bar and Grill is fronting North Main and several other smaller buildings.

And here's the building at the corner of 2nd Ave and North Main.

And there's some more buildings tucked away in the back of the back of the site.

So moving on into the project request tonight is the demolition of all of the existing buildings on all three parcels, and that will be to construct the new three-level auto dealership that will offer vehicle sales and service.

The site modifications include frontage improvements, which is new sidewalks or replacement of the existing sidewalk on North Main, and new public walkways within the building.

And the project also proposes tree removals, new landscaping, as well as new signage.

So tonight the design review commission's role is to provide a study session.

So really just to provide that initial feedback on the building design, as well as the signage and the other associated entitlements, and provide a recommendation to the planning commission.

So the planning commission could then consider the design review, the signage and the tree removals, as well as the planning commission will then review that and make a recommendation to council for the proposed plan development rezone, which that both of these hearings will be scheduled at a later time.

And here is the existing condition of the site.

Here's the proposed layout.

Access will be provided along a 26-feet wide drive aisle that leads from both second AV and North Main.

And I wanted to point out that the building has been a setback to maintain a setback along all property lines, but I wanted to focus on the rear, which is the west property line, as that is the closest to residential properties.

The building is set approximately 30 feet, if not more, from that from that property.

And here's just a closer look at the building access, the main entry which leads into that showroom is along the core at the corner of North Main and Second Ave.

And then if a customer is pulling up on second avenue, then they can go into that customer, the service customer arrival area and drop their vehicles there for repairs.

And the remaining the remaining accesses are all for employees only.

So customer access is only through that main entry into the showroom or for their vehicles to be dropped off for service.

And to the bottom left, you see that rooftop parking.

There's a ramp that leads up to the rooftop parking, and that is again for inventory vehicle parking only and employee access only.

And the same goes for the service service shops access as well as the parse delivery.

And then on North Main, there, as you access from North Main, there's a lower level garage entry into the partial basement again for employee use only, and that stores the inventory vehicles.

Here's just a closer look at that floor plan.

It's the partial basement is located beneath the main showroom and the vehicle repair area.

There are 87 vehicles that could be stored there for inventory, as well as employee parking if needed, and other support functions such as bicycle parking, parts storage, and car washes.

And here is the main first floor, which is broken up into three areas: the customer showroom and the service shop, which has 22 service bays, as well as associated support spaces such as offices.

There's restrooms and elevators and stairs that lead up to the other floor.

And then here is the second floor again, a partial open air roof design.

There is a secondary showroom with customer amenities as well as more office space, as well as 76 inventory spaces, again for inventory parking only.

So now moving on into the request tonight for the planned development rezone, is the project is requesting this to make minor deviations to the city's development standards related to floor area ratio and building height.

I did want to point out that as part of this PD, it is required in the MUNI code that the PD complies with the regulations and provisions of the general plan or any other specific plan.

So it does provide them that flexibility to make minor deviations, but the project, the dealership is meeting the intent of the zone, which is a service commercial zone that allows auto sales and services.3 FAR that is permitted for the site, floor area ratio.

I have taken that language straight out of the Walnut Creek Municipal Code, which really defines what floor area ratio is.

So the PD tonight is asking for flexibility to exclude additional accessory areas or support spaces that are not customer occupied or customer oriented.

And the proposed PD will then redefine FAR excluding these following following areas.

The PD will also calculate when calculating FAR will use the gross lot area to calculate the FAR on site.

Again, a little different from the way our current MUNICOD reads.

And here is just a layout of all three floors, and there's the FAR legend, which basically the peach area that you see is the area that's included into the FAR, which is again the customer facing spaces or for the use of customers, which is to repair or service their vehicles.

So the service bays are being included as well as the showroom areas.

And all of the excluded areas are in pink.

But it's primarily parking spaces or mechanical rooms or storage areas.

So where are we doing this?

I did want to point out that older dealerships consisted of detached single-story buildings that are spread across larger lots with separate areas for all different operations.

And I provided a photo below to the left of the existing dealership that's further south on North Main Street that's currently there now.

And as you can see, all of the different functions are broken up or into separate areas.

And the repair shop has expanded across the street, where I said the extra space shop spare shop space, because the existing site is maxed out, there's no room left for the necessary operations of the business.

So the modern dealership design has shifted because it's become more multi-level and it integrates all of the operations into one single building, where a large portion of those areas are service related areas and not really customer occupiable space, but because it's within the building, it then becomes floor area per our current definition in the Muni code.

And so again, it is a our code is a bit dated.

It's built for single-story service style parking dealerships as you see below, and several other ones in Walnut Creek.

So the PD tonight is requested so it could provide that flexibility to exclude only the support areas from the FAR, really to distinguish between what's functional space, what's accessory space versus customer space.

And the approach does meet the 0.3 FAR intent, and the PD will also reflect that customer facing space and recognize today's vertical design for dealerships, which does consolidate everything into one building.

The maximum height allowed is 30 feet on the site.

As mentioned earlier, there is a bit of a slope on this site.

The grades range from 124 feet to 135.

The highest slope that you see occurs on the southwest corner, which is at 100 135 feet, and the steep slope does drive the height variation.

And if you see on that photo, too, the masses site is around 124 feet.

So there's a bit of a higher slope on this end near second AV.

So the current code measures height from the lowest grade, so it is reading taller on that second avenue site because of that reason, but the mass is unchanged.

And here is the proposed PD, which will define base elevation as the highest existing grade on site.

And this exhibit here does depict that where we would take that measurement, which is 135 feet, where and then we would measure uniformly to the top to meet that 30-foot cap that still applies.

So it's going to extend up to 165 feet to the top of the parapet.

And this approach does allow a fair measurement on a slope site.

So we're not adding any additional height to this project.

And a similar approach has been used, applied for three other projects in Walnut Creek that had similarly sloped sites as well.

So the PDE is essentially redefining or defining the base elevation as the highest existing grade on site to really better represent the building's actual perceived height around the adjoining properties.

And here are the building elevations.

This is the elevation facing North Main Street, and listed here are the materials that are proposed.

We also have the actual material board, should you want to have a closer look?

However, it does consist of a mix of black-gray ribbed metal panels, silver metal panels, as well as a white aluminum panel that'll be applied vertically next to the showroom entrance doors.

And what you see at the bottom, the rendering is really is taken from that west corner angle because here you see the ramp in relation to the service center building side of the elevation.

This is the building facade facing the canal.

And here is the west rear facade that'll be facing the residential or towards Barton Court.

And here are some renderings.

This view is from the corner of North Main and 2nd Avenue where you see the primary showroom entrance doors.

And this rendering also depicts the proposed landscaping along both frontages as well as the street trees.

Here's North Main.

As part of this project, the applicant is requesting to remove a total of 21 trees.

17 of these trees have been approved by the city arborist as they were of poor health, and because of the species, the City Arborist was able to apply that approval.

There are four highly protected trees, which I have bubbled here in green.

There are three valley oaks and one blue oak, I believe.

That's the closest to the North Main, the green circle that you see along North Main is the blue oak.

And these are being removed as part of this project, but will require the planning commission to consider their removal as part of the design review.

And if removed, the applicant will be required to pay into the trees, into the city's tree fund, the tree value, the valuation of all of these trees combined, which will then be used to plant highly protected trees elsewhere in the city.

And here is the onto the north and west, what you see are the 14 off-site neighboring trees.

All of those will be protected in place during construction.

I also wanted to point out the towards the north, which is the upper portion where by the canal, I bubbled that in blue because that initially that tree was being removed.

I believe it was a black walnut.

I believe it's a black walnut, but it was being removed, but the applicant is going to protect that as part of this project.

And that that is why it went from 13 in my staff report, it says 13 off-site tree, that's the 14th tree.

And here is the landscaping plan.

12 street trees are proposed that range in size from 24 to 36 inch box and a mix of species.

Are also proposed as well as five-gallon shrubs and a mix of five-gallon shrubs and ground cover will be spread across the site.

And what you see here is the proposed steel fence that'll be installed along the north property line and returned to the west corner property line, and then the yellow highlighted portion is the proposed eight-foot-tall split face CMU wall that'll be installed.

Now moving on into the signage, the applicant is proposing two wall signs, two identical wall signs, and they measure 91 square feet.

So they're using the panel to create a flat surface.

And the total sign area with the two monument signs included will be 274 square feet.

A sign exception is required because in the city sign ordinance, 200 square feet is allowed for any commercial single tenant in a building.

And here is a look at the primary monument sign.

It's 24 square feet in size, well below what is allowed for auto dealers in the sign ordinance, which you could have up to a maximum of 74 square feet for it's for purpose of identification and visibility, but they're proposing a 24 square foot sign.

And 14 square foot service sign.

This essentially acts as wayfinding because it's going to be located further into the project site, closer to the repair area.

And now moving into the parking, 49 surface parking stalls are provided, primarily for customers and vehicle display.

And then in the basement, there's additional stalls, I believe 87 and 76 on the roof.

Again, these are for inventory or employee parking only.

The surface parking is dedicated for customer parking.

But I also wanted to for the record point out that under Assembly bill AB 2097, this project is within a half uh a portion.

So the way the bill reads is even if a portion of the site uh of the project site is within um that half mile radius from in this case the Pleasant Hill Barge Station, it qualifies to be reviewed under AB 2097, which exempts the parking requirement.

Um, however, in this case the uh applicant is providing parking, so just wanted to point that out.

And uh this project does meet the city's design review standards and guidelines.

Um, a completed uh design checklist has been provided to you by the applicant uh showing compliance.

There are there's one guideline and one standard that hasn't been met.

Um one is that our guideline requires that display parking be covered or integrated with a building element if it's fronting a street.

In this case, uh it is fronting North Main.

There's I believe 13 uh display parking uh spaces that but it won't be covered because that's part of the Porsche branding.

Uh they they do have the covered showroom inside that has more vehicles, and um the other one is a standard which requires for any new building parking needs to be at the side or rear or within a structure.

Um, the parking the customer parking is on the surface level, uh it's located along the primary frontage, but um both of these um would need to be waived by the uh planning commission as part of their consideration.

But I believe the second one um really makes sense because under the building code uh accessibility requirements, ADA accessible stalls should be located as close as possible to the entrance of the building.

Um so if this was at the back or rear, they would have to come all the way around to the front to access uh the showroom.

And uh so staff tonight is requesting DRC to comment on the proposed building design as well as confirm compliance with the city's design standards, and um staff's recommendation again is to really get uh have the DRC review and comment on the following topics that are listed here, as well as provide a positive recommendation to the planning commission to move this project forward.

And uh that is all I have for my presentation.

I believe the applicants team also has a presentation for you tonight.

And for the record, uh the city did receive two letters um uh from neighboring properties related to this project, and I believe a copy of those letters have been provided to you as well as additional copies have been placed in the back for the public.

Thank you.

Um any questions for me, okay.

Not so much for you, but maybe for the applicant.

Okay, so the applicant will come up for his presentation.

All right.

So the assuming applicant has a presentation.

Yes.

So let's go ahead.

Good.

Thank you.

Go ahead and introduce yourself, of course.

You know the rule you know the drill.

I'm learning it.

Good evening.

Um thank you for having us here.

I'm Steven Scanlon.

I represent uh Porsche Walnut Creek as the applicant.

And I have with me um James Spence and our from Camp and Camp to also uh answer any questions that you might have.

Um I want to hit some high points in the new urban dealership vernacular.

Um this is sort of this this building is sort of a prototype in in similar fashion or it's sort of a prototype in that we've integrated everything into the building.

Things that would normally be outside the building out in the footprint have been now brought into the building, it's enclosed.

Um we've we've shifted all that into external program to the internal.

Uh also the new dealerships, the demand for inventory is much less.

So we're able to shrink the footprint and provide a vertical inventory as opposed to having it out on seven acres, which was the old style dealership.

Um we've brought, as I think Sarah mentioned, we brought three buildings into one where the current dealership is located on on three in three different parcels.

Um this dealership uh it's designed to the Porsche standards, and it's really designed around the new sales and customer experience in the automotive world.

Most customers come and are 70% complete on their transaction before they actually get to the dealership, and then when they come to the dealership, it's usually about closing and maybe a test drive.

And the uh the actual service process, unlike the sales process, is uh much more valet and porter oriented.

So people come in, drop off their car, go to the waiting room or or grab a rental car, and then um the staff moves the cars around internally.

One of the nice things about this dealership is that everything is computerized.

So when you bring your car in, it's it comes in, it's quickly assessed, it's all by appointment.

There's no queuing, um, there's no vertical, there's no stacking out in the street, everything is inside the building.

It won't even it won't even be in the parking lot.

Um what we like about what we what we think is impactful, um, we will be reducing traffic on the street.

The dealership where it's currently located on those three building sites is now being consolidated, and all of that movement will be internalized.

So we won't be having uh vehicle traffic on on Main Street or or for that matter, second.

Um the dealership's being relocated, so what's already in Walnut Creek for traffic generated by Porsche is just moving a quarter mile away.

So, we don't believe we're gonna be adding any traffic to it.

In fact, we think we'll be reducing it because of the internal capture.

Um, because there'll be less traffic, um, we expect that the air quality will be reduced will be improved and there'll be less emissions.

Um, everything is put in all of the uh all of the emissions inside the building are captured and filtered, so we won't be dumping that out into the into the environment.

Um the building is fully enclosed, um, and it has STC rated assembly, so there'll be very little noise, if any, out into the out into the public.

And we're particularly respectful of the adjacent residential neighbors.

So we built a sound wall to help further mitigate that, and where the dealership is located, it's above the residential, and then the sound wall steps up from there.

So the signal the the acoustic footprint should be significantly reduced, if there's any at all.

We've also moved the circulation between second, the majority of the circulation is between second and the building and north main and the building, and most of the service circulation is north of the building.

We don't we have very little circulation on the west side, it's only to only for moving cars in and out, and that's all done by the employees.

Um all the lights are shielded, um, and all of the sign and lighting it are operated in fixed hours.

So it comes on in the morning and goes off at night, so there'll be very little light spill into the adjacent residential community.

Um water, we've already completed the uh storm water hydro modification and filtration design, and we're compliant.

So we won't be dumping into the street.

We go directly into storm.

Those are sort of the high points.

And now, James, I'll let you kind of walk through the operations.

Good evening, everyone.

Uh, my name is James Spence.

I'm with Ginsler.

I'm one of the architects on this project.

Um, I'd like to start by thanking the commission for uh carving out the special session for us tonight.

I know it's not your regularly scheduled night, so we do appreciate your time.

And um, fair warning, I will probably end up pronouncing at Porsche, which I know uh makes me sound like that friend that just got back from their abroad trip and pronounces things the weird way.

But uh it's I'm gonna blame it on having to work with automotive dealers that much.

So just apologizing for that ahead of time.

Um Simmer and Steven have already done a great job kind of walking you through the overview of our project.

I just wanted to run everybody else through uh more of the operation side, how the client is going to be um running um the business as well as what the customer journey looks like through that, and then a few more specifics as far as the design is concerned.

So we have our site plan here.

Um what I wanted to start with was kind of an overview.

We do.

This is uh Porsche's new Gen 5 design.

Um so it's it's a couple of steps up from the current dealership that is a quarter mile down the road.

Like Steven said, we are effectively integrating and centralizing all of their program, three buildings worth currently of program into this one central building.

It's going to be a three-level building with multiple operations, mainly servicing the showroom, sales, and then the service the shop.

So the existing topography does grade down when you go north on the site.

So our design, our building design is kind of reflecting that, which is why we have those three levels, the third of which, the lower level, which is kind of what we call the deem the basement.

Most of that will be covered on the west, south, and east sides.

It will start to reveal itself on the north side of the site.

It's fully revealed on the north side, but most of it will be subterranean.

And then the as far as the rest of the program is concerned, we are, like I said, taking a lot of that operation and moving it inside.

So we're helping to mitigate a lot of the noise that is generated from those types of programs.

So traditionally on an automotive site, you might see an exterior car wash, you might see detail bays that are covered with a canopy, you might see an external or sorry, an exterior oil and compressor storage, with just a lean to covering it.

All of those are going to be enveloped into our project, which will eliminate any kind of noise transmission around the site and around the neighborhood.

We know that we are directly up against the neighborhood on our west side of the property line.

We want to be able to respect their, you know, be uh respectful neighbors and try and mitigate as much noise as possible.

So we are kind of taking all of that program, moving it inside.

As far as the customer journey is concerned, there are two approaches to the project that the customers have.

There's one where they drive their own car in to park and enter the sales building.

That's the one main entry to the southeast site of the building that Simmer pointed out earlier.

They can park on site.

We have ample on-site parking kind of along the south and west or east sides of the site, and then they enter through that main uh showroom entrance.

Or they can bring their car in to get serviced.

They would pull into the service drive, either uh pull on off of North Main Street and work their way around the site, or they could pull on to 2nd Avenue and then into the service drive.

Like Steven said, most of these are made by appointment, and the porters there are very quick to grab the cars once they're parked in the service drive and pull them either directly into the shop or they'll pull them out of the service drive and onto the roof or down to the lower level basement.

So there will be very little queuing.

Most of the time it will extend maybe to the covered part of the service drive, but it will it will never go out into the kind of the fire lane area that you see there.

So the turnover is very quick.

That is something that they are uh very focused on as far as the Fletcher Jones team is concerned.

So that's one, so those are the two uh customer journey points and how they interact with the site.

We uh tried our best to kind of separate the um the employee kind of circulation around the site from the customer.

So the while the customers might be using say the south and the east sides of the site, the customers are all going to be using the inventory and service vehicles around the west and the north sides of the site.

So they will be taking the vehicles from the service drive either directly into the shop or like I said, out and onto the parking deck on the third level or underneath the building into the basement.

Um they will be uh doing all of that through the entry points we have.

We only have one entry point into the shop that's on the west side of the building, and um, and then we have the other entry into the shop, which is interior, it's actually gonna be from our service drive.

So all of the that one's going to be enclosed, and uh there won't be any exterior exposure to the shop there.

Um, and then another thing I wanted to touch on was the uh parts and vehicle delivery.

So they will have vehicles delivered to the site on the large trucks.

Those trucks will park on the north side of the site of the building, at which point they will unload the cars.

So this will be away from the customer interaction, customer circulation, and then same to do with the parts.

So the one area we have on the north side of the building will be our parts delivery where they will receive all the parts, typically after hours, and then the truck will pull off the site onto North Main.

We also do have a trash enclosure in that same corner.

You can see a striped loading zone there.

So that's where we'll have our trash picked up, and then in that same corner, we do have our enclosed oil and compressor room.

They will have trucks that will come and park in that same area to unload all of the waste oil and take that off of the site.

So we've tried to centralize all of that operation in the same area of the site.

So another part of the site that I did want to focus on real quick is the sound wall on the west side of our property.

So, like I said, we want to be very aware and respect the neighbors that we have on the west side.

We do have an eight-foot wall CMU CMU wall that's going to be painted, the uh Porsche black that you see the ramps been painted as the sides of the ramp has been painted as well.

So the diagrams we have on the left side of the page there are kind of showing the relationship of that sound wall with the building, as well as the neighboring sites to the left to the west of us.

You'll notice that those sites do grade just like ours do.

So towards the south of the site, we have about an eight to ten foot difference between the neighboring site and ours, at which point that eight-foot wall would then start, and then as you work your way north, that eight to ten feet becomes four, becomes two, becomes zero.

Um so it starts to level out, but we still will have that eight-foot wall blocking any kind of sound transmission that might be coming from from our site.

And then the diagram up top just kind of shows a quick elevation sketch.

The red would be the elevation of that wall as it steps down the site as it grades down, and then uh the rendering is just an extra shot showing the relationship.

It's got the wall off there to the left and showing kind of that drive down and the relationship to the building on the right.

A couple of slides showing our photometrics, so we are working with our lighting engineers to make sure that there's zero lighting spill.

Um we want to make sure we have uh zero foot candles at our west and north property lines.

We will be implementing uh shielding, observing dark sky.

We will be having, like Steven said, timers on our lights, so that they are shut off at the right moments to respect uh the lighting regulations and these are just showing photometrics on the street with the new lightings.

Uh new lights being added.

Um the thing to point out on this page is um uh kind of a lighting pole design that we're modifying for this project.

So it's the picture you can see there in the bottom right corner.

This is something we've implemented on other jobs with parking roof decks.

Um we just want to make sure that these lights are directed towards the parking, not towards anything else and away from the property lines.

So these are the lighting poles that we'll be implementing here on our parking roof deck as well.

We'll have some wall packs on the building side, which is on the south side of the parking deck, but around the rest of the perimeter on those parapets, we will have these uh shorter kind of light poles that are directed uh directly towards the inventory.

Um this is showing the FAR calculations in the regions that Simmer touched on earlier, following that FAR.30.

The parking designations is something else we wanted to touch on.

So making sure that we have ample parking for our customers on the surface lot, and then uh obviously enough parking for uh the employees both on the service lot and um in the basement level.

So just to walk you through the floor plans real quick, just to give you a brief overview of the program.

So this is our lower lower level, the basement.

Um we have one main point of entry into this basement that's on the top right corner.

Um there is a small two-foot ramp that goes down into the lower level.

The vehicles will be brought down that way.

Um they have employees that can walk down that way as well.

Um we have parking mostly for inventory down here.

We do also have a few extra program elements.

We have four car washing stalls in the bottom left corner.

Um just northeast of that, we have two detail bays, and then just to the right of that, we have a photo booth.

So, like I said, we're moving a lot of our program interior that would typically be exterior, and um most of that's going to be um underground.

Um the rest of the uh program up in the uh top right corner is going to be parts receiving, uh which will be loaded onto a parts lift and taken up to the main floor, and then we have our oil and compressor room, a few electric uh electric panel rooms as well.

And then we are going to have um uh an elevator that does come down to this level as well as an egress stair that you can see next to the uh car wash stalls as well.

And this is where we'll also have our uh bicycle parking.

This is our main floor.

So we have our two-story open atrium showroom there to the bottom left corner.

Um, this is where most of the uh sales will occur.

Uh we have a um kind of uh we have two different cafe areas, one on the first floor, one on the second.

We'll have restrooms both on both on both floors as well.

Um, and then we have our service drive where our customers will pull their cars in.

The cars will then be portered into the shop afterwards, and the customers can walk directly into the service advisor area.

Um, they can then walk through the merchandising area into the cafe.

Um we also have uh what we call an owner's collection room.

It's the new car delivery.

So this is where the customers will end up after purchasing their car.

They'll be walked through kind of the the bells and whistles of all their car, how to operate everything.

They'll take that vehicle, they'll drive out the overhead door, and they will turn on to uh second avenue uh towards the intersection as they drive off with their new vehicle.

So that's kind of that that process there.

Um, and then uh turning up to the shop.

We have a total of 22 stalls in this shop.

Um, and then north of that, we just have all of the uh program support for the shop.

So it's gonna be parts bins, tools, things of that nature, and then of course, restrooms and break rooms for the techs that will be working in that shop.

Um I think it's important to mention, like I said before, we only have one exterior entry into this shop.

It's the one there on the left side.

So that is facing the west side, but it is a high-speed overhead door, it's a Ritech.

So those things are up and down in a matter of seconds.

Um so when the cars drive in and out, uh, there might be a little bit of sound that comes through, but for the most part, it's going to be shut for most of the day.

Um we are implementing um the ST uh ample STC ratings for these walls so that all of the tools and everything uh happening within the shop is uh dampened as much as possible so that nothing will be kind of escaping the uh the shop there as far as sound is concerned, and then we do have uh our stairs wrapped around our elevator.

Uh that's the same elevator that goes down to the basement floor.

You can take that same elevator up to the mezzanine level or the second floor level two.

Um this is additional service or sorry, additional uh shop uh showroom space, additional sales.

Uh we do have a uh kind of uh intermediate certified pre-owned showroom, which is where you can see those six darker vehicles there in that box.

So that's gonna be kind of interior showroom for customers to kind of walk around more cars without having to actually step outside just yet.

And then, of course, uh to the north of that we have our uh parking roof deck.

Um, like I said, we'll be um lighting that with those specifically designed poles.

Um we will have our um HVAC units on this roof deck as well that will be servicing the shop.

Those will be adequately screened with the um the same uh ribbed metal panel that that we have on our sample board there, so that all of that will be uh adequately screened.

We also have a gate, a security gate um on the west side, just at the top of the ramp.

So that will be for security purposes, it'll also be for screening purposes as well, um, just to screen any of the cars that you might be able to see when you're driving along second avenue.

Just a few uh pages touching on our signage.

So we do have uh two wall signs, yeah, yeah.

So I'll go quickly through these monuments, and then the elevations just touching on the um the materiality, the finishes.

So um we have the Porsche silver metal panel that's going to be wrapping the uh main showroom building, and then we have our Porsche gray, which is a kind of a very dark gray ribbed metal panel that's going to wrap around the shop area, so that's going to be on part of the east side.

Um most of the well, part of the north side, the other part is going to be a stucco that's painted black to match, and then that ribbed panel will also wrap its way around to the west side.

Um, any other exposed uh kind of precast will be have that same stucco uh that that's painted painted that Porsche black.

And then there will be uh a little bit of uh white accent metal panel that's shown right next to the main entry door to the showroom.

And then to touch one more time on the fencing, it is a design master forte product, so it's it provides a little bit of screening, um, also uh uh anti-theft measures for climbing the fence, uh, but also kind of uh more of an elevated design for that for that fencing there to the north side of the site.

And then to wrap it up, just a few renderings.

So uh starting from the top left corner, we have the uh shot from second and main.

Um so this is the main uh shot of the building showing the showroom and the entry there to the right.

Uh we wrap ourselves around to the north main side.

Um we have a shot of the shop there, we will have glazing that goes into the shop, and then the bottom left corner we have uh our monument sign in front of the shop on North Main, and then the bottom right corner just showing the ramp uh shot from North uh Second Avenue.

So uh I believe that's all I have.

Thank you for your time.

Thanks.

Do we have commissioner questions?

Um I had a question.

There was a comment in the um comments that we received that requested that there be a right hand only turn on second avenue.

Is that programming that could be considered?

I believe it is, so just to clarify no right turn.

No right turn.

I was gonna I was gonna say I think they want to turn around.

Right.

Everyone come this way.

No, the opposite of that.

I think we can I think that's totally um uh we can approach that with our wayfinding signage that we'll have on site.

Um, so we can um certainly add the uh no right turn or left turn only, whichever verbiage the the city would would approve of.

Okay, and then my other question was because there are some significant mature trees being taken out, and I realize there are limitations of the site, but is there any opportunity to put in like one more significant tree somewhere?

It's just a question.

So we do have.

I mean, I I might um we we will be putting the street trees in along North Main and Second Avenue as far as a more um significant tree.

Um would we be looking at placing those in that area?

I know that we want to be respectful of the um kind of frontage there, so um I think there might be an opportunity in the um the northeast corner, I believe, is where we'll have I think the most flexibility there.

One of the pro let me just jump in here.

One of the problems with the tree type, and we understand the significance, but like the city standard, the the trees are not listed for street trees in the city because of all the damage they do.

They're highly destructive to the hardscape foundations and all of that, underground utilities.

So, what we'd like to do is provide a fund and move them someplace where it's appropriate and they can be retained.

But I'm afraid that if we put them on the dealership, we'll run into the same thing in you know five to ten years where they're starting to destroy things, and we we run into the same impacts that we're trying to avoid.

Okay.

Okay.

Those are my questions.

I had two questions.

One was very similar to Commissioner Case regarding the traffic flow on 2nd Avenue.

Um respecting that left turn only request that the neighbors have made.

And just if you could do a little bit of clarification on what you see that entry that entrance being used for, um, I think that it would help the people in general kind of understand what what you see that as the main purpose of the entry point.

South the south entrance off second street, yeah.

Correct.

So um I personally believe that the well the intent really will be that will be more of an exit for the cars coming out of the service drive and pulling into second avenue and towards the intersection.

So whether they're pulling their car out after it's been serviced of the service drive, or if they're pulling their car out of the uh new vehicle delivery space that I was touching on earlier, um, they will the shortest drive is to the second avenue curb cut.

So they will, I think instinctually go there and then turn towards the intersection to leave.

Um so I think the while the main point of entry for the customers will be on second or sorry, North Main Street.

Um we view second avenue as more of a secondary entry point, um, just because there's not really any signage there.

We have the monument sign on North Main closer to that curb cut there, directing the customers to pull in.

So the curb cut on Second Avenue will serve more so as a point of vehicle egress out of the site and towards North Main and away from the building.

Great, thank you.

Um and the other thing that I was hoping you could give a little more detail on are the hours that the lights will be on.

I know that there's you talked a little bit about the shielding and the dark sky, but if you could just if you know for the record when those those lights will be on.

I can't tell you specifically what those hours will be.

Um I know that the the client is very open to you know the city's needs and and if there are certain hours that we do need to follow, we can certainly um integrate those those standards for those timers.

Um unfortunately I I'm not uh very aware of if they have a uh regular hours where they switch on and off versus their their operating hours.

Okay, thank you.

That's it.

I have a question for staff.

So we don't have an operational plan or conditional use permit that's part of this application, not required here.

Auto sales um and service is permitted by right.

Okay, it's a design right now.

Right, you said that, okay.

All right.

Um, yeah, I mean, I think the the one of the things going back to these comments is I mean, both comments that we we've seen, and I assume we're gonna hear in a few minutes, is basically barring test drives along second avenue, like bar like limiting traffic.

Is that something Portia would be willing to agree to?

As in, so are we talking about directing the cars to North Main and not having the test drives on second, yeah.

On second.

Um my understanding is that second is is a bit of a dead end if if you turn into the neighborhood, correct so they would really sorry, it continues.

Okay, it continues, okay.

Yeah, okay.

I I misunderstood.

I am sorry.

Um, so what I so you when you turn on to 2nd Avenue, you're turning into a neighborhood.

Typically, test drives aren't aren't going going through neighborhoods, they typically like to bring them on to more uh main avenues.

So um it's it's not a Porsche requirement per se that they need to take their test drives into certain types of areas so if we have a um a stipulation that says these cars and any test drives out of the Porsche dealership need to go directly onto North Main Street and head north or south that's completely agreeable.

We just I think logically it doesn't make a lot of sense for them to take the cars into the neighborhood um I've uh that's typically not how they they operate those yeah yeah I mean okay so then thanks for that explanation um I think you you actually you've actually answered a lot of questions I mean I think it maybe what I'd like to do is look at that west elevation a bit and really we've talked a lot about the experience I want to talk about maybe what the neighbor's experience is so we have and you have some sections that show the relationship of the of the neighbor's land to the property um I mean it's it looks like it's how much uphill do we think from from the neighbors so it depends on which part of the site you're on when you're on the northern part of the site you're pretty much your level for the most part um if as you come down as you come south on the site it goes from about zero to about eight or nine feet towards the south side of the west property line.

So I mean we've talked a lot about sound but like visibility cutoff from the the building the the wall to a certain extent will block most of what you see it of that building right um correct the the plan wouldn't allow the addition of trees it just isn't isn't enough room and that's I mean that's one of I'm just that's one of the challenges with allowing a higher FAR is you just get higher density um but I mean it's you guys are well set back so I think not much you can do I mean if you talked a bit about noise spill are you looking also at the at um mitigating noise from the rooftop equipment bleeding onto the neighbors is that is there is there a good distance so that was part of the reason we place the the rooftop unit on the east side of the um parking deck away from the residential area it will be screened um well enough with the uh the metal panel so that should uh mitigate noise coming from that that rooftop unit um and it should be as far as we can place it from the west property line to to help with that okay and then I mean second street is is a little is it's a narrow street there aren't a lot of improvements it does this project do any improvements to the on the public realm on second street yes we will be um adding a sidewalk to second avenue um there will be landscaping improvements along that as along with that as well is it getting any wider is second avenue getting any wider as a result of this I don't is it I don't know if if we're widening the there's a street there are two um there are two uh requested dedications one on north main for 50 foot half width and one on second half for a 30 foot half width okay all right um I just wanted to make one comment too about the site thing if you look at the if you look at that section um the site wall ends up being about in the in the steeper section towards the southwest it ends up being somewhere in the neighborhood of of 16 to 17 feet if you're standing there and you're looking up your sight line likely shoots over the building and then above that you're gonna have the canopy across it, so it's it's pretty I I walked it myself.

It's pretty screened.

Yeah I I get it.

Yeah.

Um any other questions?

Follow-up questions.

Okay, so then we're gonna open it up to public comment.

I see we have a couple of cards.

If there are people you need to turn in a speaker card to speak.

So if you haven't, get going and we'll get started with the few people we have.

Uh, the back.

I have two cards here of Tammy Kerr.

And please introduce yourself.

And you have two minutes.

Hi, my name is Tammy Kerr.

I work for Eco Performance Builders, and we're at 1511 2nd Avenue.

Um so I guess my, you know, our concerns are basically just traffic.

Um, we're kind of on the corner.

It looks to me kind of where our um warehouse is situated, is kind of across where one of the driveways on 2nd Avenue is going to be.

And we're home performance contractors, so we've got some box trucks, we get lots of deliveries um all day long.

So, you know, UPS, FedEx, Amazon, some from Big Johnstone, lots of big trucks.

We've got a couple box trucks.

So, um, you know, we see how crazy the traffic is on 2nd Avenue, and it is a narrow street.

Um, so I I think that's part of it.

We have lots of people that walk their dogs in front of our office, kids riding bikes and families, and um, you know, I walk on that street pretty much every day on my lunch hour, so you know the traffic is a concern for us.

Um, my other question, just um, you know, as I was seeing this coming about, is just how is that gonna affect our business too?

Um, even just during construction, because you know, we've got box trucks that are we've got to get our deliveries out to our projects and having things come in.

We've got at least eight people that work in our office, and um, you know, just kind of thinking about the logistics and the day-to-day and how that that's going to affect our business.

Um, you know, this looks it looks beautiful, but I think it's just mainly just a traffic, and um, you know, how is that going to be um on such a uh such a side uh kind of a narrow street with um a lot of residential people and then um us trying to do our business.

So that's just just a concern that we have, and just you know, question we like to raise.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Next person.

Um we've got uh Jessica Clark.

Hello, this is gonna be probably a little bit of a repeat of the letter, but um my name is Jessica Clark.

I'm a long-term and actively involved walnut Creek resident and Larkey Park neighbor and homeowner off second avenue.

I've spoken in front of this commission before regarding my serious concerns as a neighbor with the other proposed development at this site from the previous owner developers who had purposely allowed this site to fall into disrepair.

But this time I am here generally in favor of this proposal with a few specific requests for your serious attention and consideration.

Second Avenue, starting directly behind the proposed dealership, is a family-friendly residential neighborhood and an extremely narrow 25 mile per hour speed limit street where pedestrians and bikes, primarily families and children, including my own, share the narrow, undivided roadway with vehicles traveling in both directions as there are almost no usable sidewalks along second avenue, and I don't think they're gonna put sidewalks into the neighborhood for this project.

Um to walk pets, access the numerous schools, pools, parks, etc.

within the neighborhood.

Out of as such and out of consideration for the neighborhood residents safety on behalf of myself, my children, and my neighbors, I respectfully and emphatically request the following reasonable conditions be explicitly incorporated as part of the dealership's approval.

Explicitly in writing, prohibit all test drives from both sales and service on second avenue into the residential neighborhood as part of the conditions for approval.

Also, post-it no right turns, signage for vehicles exiting the proposed second avenue driveway to help reinforce the above condition.

And we have had test drives from other dealerships in the past.

We've uh notified the PD and um it's been cut back, but a dealership right there seems more lenient to that.

Um additionally, I respect the commission's expertise in design and know you will do your due diligence to ensure ensure this major project that will be longstanding as the gateway to our neighborhood is and remains aesthetically pleasing and appropriate.

Um I'm kind of concerned with that fence up at the top, the one down further down north Maine has kind of a very unfinished look at the top.

So just give special consideration that and just um abundant and highly aesthetic landscaping.

Thank you.

Uh it'd be Pam, is it mid-matty?

Patty.

Uh I'm sorry, Patty, yes, correct.

Sorry.

Hi.

Hi, I'm Patty Mitchell.

I'm uh homeowner and resident of uh the Larkin neighborhood.

Um I have also uh stood before this commission uh as part of Largey Park Neighbors United.

We're a group who had opposed initially the in and out as well as the Amy's drive-thru.

I support everything that Jessica has um brought to the table in terms of limiting the access in and out of the neighborhood and it being a gateway to our neighborhood.

That said, I'm pleased to be here to um support this project.

Um, that corner is awful.

It looks terrible, it has looked terrible for years.

There's been fires there, there's been unhoused individuals that have um spent time there, and um this dealership I think is a real asset to our neighborhood, and I um appreciate everything that was brought up today by the developer and the architect about um their considerations for it being within a neighborhood, but also the footprint that they're um putting out there for both the design and the landscaping, and very much appreciate the fact that there will be while we don't have a sidewalk all the way down second Avenue, having that sidewalk there in the front and around the side is a great improvement.

If they would like to go ahead and continue that further, we'd we'd really love that and appreciate that.

But we're here not to um, you know, to not to inhibit any development, and we're very, very pleased um that this project is taking um place at this location versus um versus a drive-thru.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Steve Signorelli.

Thank you very much for uh leaving this open for our public comment.

We really do appreciate it.

Uh as noted by others, we are actually welcoming this project because prior efforts have been haphazard and honestly distasteful uh for the community.

Uh that being said, I'm going to read a letter that from my wife who's not able to be here tonight, uh, and I will quote it.

My name is Natalie Signarelli.

I live at 15 Varton Court, directly behind the proposed Porsche dealership site.

While I'm not necessarily opposed to the project, I hope we can work collaboratively to ensure it is developed and responsibly and safely for nearby residents.

I do have official a few initial comments and questions.

Number one, demon demolition and air quality.

Given that many families on our street, including young children and elderly residents, I would like assurances that all proper precautions be will be taken during demolition to minimize release of toxic chemicals, dust, or other airborne hazards.

Clear communication with nearby residents regarding demolition times, timelines, and safety measures would be appreciated.

Building height and grading.

She notes I would like clarification on how the proposed 30-foot building height will appear from adjacent homes.

I think we've seen some clarification with the documentation provided.

A visual rendering or elevation map would help neighbors understand the real impact.

I have major concerns because I've spoken to the original neighbors that have lived there, and they noted they used to have a view of Mount Diablo.

That is long gone with the current buildings.

We'd like it restored.

Since they're securing their products, we need 10 o'clock lights out.

It's a neighborhood, people need to sleep.

And we appreciate that the dealership traffic.

We just need to make sure everyone's kept safe.

Thank you for your time.

Thanks.

The last card I have is is Lana.

Georgieva.

Hello, everyone.

Well I've enabled them as before.

But I'm here because I will be the immediate neighbor with the proposed project.

So I'm 24 Varden Court, so I'm right there.

So I also have concerns about the demolition because currently the building right now it's two feet away from us.

So um I'm not sure how they're going to seal that because there'll be a lot of Crowley poly scroll crutches rats dust asbestos everything.

And again we have young children, we have elderly and we have people with very severe medical conditions.

So we kind of want to know how that's going to be addressed also with the height of the building um I kind of want to know in terms of like sunlight and privacy how that's going to affect us.

Also traffic with our cul-de-sac currently a lot of cars make U-turn for some reason they get lost whatever they make a U-turn so I think with that there'll be more um traffic on the code sac and that's going to be an issue because we have eight children just on that call de sac that play all the time so we want to make sure that they're going to be safe.

Also pedestrians there's a lot of children because very close by so a lot of well a lot of people walk on second avenue.

So safety um is also an issue um light pollution uh pollution um also I want to know because um I think you mentioned there'll be like light poles and so my concern is one of the concerns obviously is like the third floor will be a parking lot with a light poles.

So with that how is how that's going to affect yes our like lights and privacy is because we're like right there so if it's like 30 feet setback so this is the difference so this is my house this is going to be the tall building so my question is is everybody's gonna look at our backyard.

And also you mentioned the the wall that you'll be building will be eight foot and then going down to four to two to nothing so I just want to like more clarification on how that's gonna affect us which house gets how much how thick is gonna be the building basically like safety privacy um and noise with the car deliveries um if you have like um you mentioned the car deliveries will be um after office hours so how that's gonna affect us how how noisy that's gonna be um for us the immediate neighbors uh trash pickups because trash pickups are very very loud um and noise in general with the is mentioned car washes compressor devices tools and is if the shop is going to be on on our site or or somewhere else so yeah thank you very much you guys thanks uh one one more card Eric is it Eric Datum yeah my name is Eric Payton I didn't plan on talking today but I figured I would I am part owners of Mass A Sports Bar with my sister Melissa Barrett um we sat here technically it'd be five years two hundred and twenty eight days ago sitting here to buy one third of the property and the city denied the project which was devastating to the longevity of my family my life and everything and at the end of the day there's nothing personal in this it's just business.

I've met this gentleman Steven before three or four years ago.

He's been respectful.

I've talked to the new owner of the property, Foggerzone Jr., I have a cell phone number, which is unfathomable about this.

I think the disheartening thing of all of this, I'm not deposing this project.

I am sad that no one up here has asked where's mass Mass A's going.

Have you talked to Mass Ace?

We've been there for 31 years as a family owned establishment.

I have a recommendation for both of you.

I want to make this a public record that if we decide to, and we've been actively looking for another piece of property, whether it's our goal is within two miles.

If we decide to stay in Walnut Creek, you guys have all said that we will be given a 2 a.m.

liquor license.

We're not changing our business plan.

We've been the same thing.

So keep that in consideration if we decide to move somewhere on Walnut Creek, that you will take that into 100% consideration and not be kind of we're a newbie in town.

We've been here for 31 years.

But tonight when you go to bed, before you go to bed, look yourself in the mirror.

None of you asked where a business has been there for 31 years and asked where's Mass A's gonna go.

Have you talked to Mass Ace?

And I'm like I said, I'm not I think this is a great project for it.

I wish I was there.

The gentleman that owns the property was a gentleman beyond measures to come speak to me man to man and talk to me.

I wish I could stay.

I said I would buy our partial again.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the outcome, but I just wanted to put that on record that I want you guys to be able to look me in the face in case we decide to stay in Walnut Creek to give us that respect.

Um moving forward, it's been that long.

We were preying on our soul that it would get approved.

It was three to two votes that it didn't go through, is unfortunate.

But you have to do what's the best for the city, and our goal is to be around forever.

So if the things go forward, don't say we're closing, we will be moving somewhere, somewhere close.

So thank you very much.

Thanks.

Any more uh cards?

Any other comments that I would see you uh I'm sorry, you've you were already up, right?

Yeah, on behalf of my wife.

I had two little bullet points that were worthwhile.

That's you you've had your time.

I sorry, sorry, two minutes to two minutes.

Um okay, so um then let's move on to um commissioner comments, right?

Close oh, close the public hearing.

Any commissioner comments?

Yeah, I can kick it off.

Um, so I appreciate the comments about noise and demolition and all that.

Um I'm gonna stick to our charge on our list here.

So, in terms of site design, I appreciate that it's moving the building as far as it can from the residences.

I think it's treating the grade well.

I don't have issue with the um exceptions to the FAR and the height or the uh square footage of the sign.

All of those seem reasonable to the site design for me.

Um the building architecture is you know suitable for the brand.

Um the landscape plan.

I mentioned I wish there was a way we could mitigate with bigger trees, but I understand their utility issues, so I'm fine with that.

Um, same with the tree removals.

I understand the site design impacts that, and I already spoke on the signage.

So those are my comments.

Go ahead.

I have no additional comments.

Okay, so what else do I have?

Um I think in terms of conditions.

I mean, I think um the no right turn is is something we'd like to like to recommend.

Um in addition to that, I think it'd be beneficial if if there's something like they can do with the curb and so forth to make it to encourage people to turn left as opposed to just having a sign.

I think that might be helpful.

Um, regarding the the light, the lighting and the hours.

I mean, I think because there's no conditional use permit, that that cannot be imposed to to this type of a use, as I understand it.

So the only thing we can do is really just reinforce what they've already offered, which is you know, zero light spill to adjacent properties.

Um I think for me, what's particularly important is is on the west side facing the neighbors.

I mean, it we need full cutoff, so sometimes you can have um those type of lights and you can still see the light source.

No light sources should be visible from from the west side.

Um and that should mitigate the concern because there won't be any lights spilling onto the property.

Um I think there was discussion about air quality and demolition.

I think regarding demolition, I I'm an architect at pull permits.

There will be set hours, the city has set hours, and they have um air quality limits, all those other other things are will be a condition of the building permit, I believe.

And there's nothing, I don't think we can we can impose those conditions because they they already in the building permits they already exist, right?

When you get a demo permit?

Well they do, uh we've also got some what have become some quasi uh um con typical conditional um uh I'm sorry.

I'm having trouble with the typical conditions, yeah.

Use your words, yeah.

With uh conditions of approval, sorry, um that would that that have been used in SQL land for 20 years as far as idling um the types of of machines to use uh water for dust, dust control, riprap at the at the driveways to keep mud from going out on the street.

We've we we've got all that, yeah.

Yeah, so it's all this you're not asking us for CQA or recommendation on CEQA, but I think it's all generally there, right?

So, well, correct, and and we're still with the the we're still not quite sure what that recommendation is going to be.

Um likely some type of a um um of an of an exemption, we're not sure, but even then we can still impose those conditions.

Yeah, okay.

I mean I mean lastly, I think you know I had a comment here basically to thank the poor dealership for staying in Walnut Creek.

Uh, because I know you've been here a long time.

I I think I think we really appreciate it.

I think Mass A's, I I've been there, it's a great business.

Frankly, why didn't we ask the question?

Well, I think I thought everyone thought you owned that building, and it was your idea, so that that's it coming from me, but definitely encourage you to stay here in town.

That's all I have.

It's catching up.

Okay, so um we have just I think I've captured most of the issues here and then the recommendation from design review.

Your speaker's not on.

It is not.

Uh the recommendation from the design review commission would be um to support that left turn only.

Um that's for t that's for test drives and anybody leaving on the second no right turn.

Um possibly to look for a physical um uh solution to work with the sign.

I'm not sure what that would look like, but we can we can take a look at it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Is everybody on board with that?

Yes.

Um the planning commission should have a be presented with a time for lights out.

Um light sources should be screened as opposed to just spill over.

Yeah.

Correct.

Especially on the rooftop, yeah.

Um and then um conditions for demolition, which uh, you know, I mentioned earlier, are are are quasi standard conditions.

Okay.

I think that's all I got.

Did I miss anything?

No, no.

Um it seemed to be that there was there was support for specifically support for the deviations in development standards for terms of height and FAR, uh, and there was support for the signage and that it was seemed to be in scale with the development.

Okay, good.

Okay, okay.

So are we Are we voting on this?

No.

No, these are just recommendations because the Planning commission acts.

Correct.

Okay.

Um then we're gonna move on to the next item on the agenda.

Which is commission considerations.

So do we have any?

Commission consider for staff anyway.

Um, just to remind the chair and vice chair that there is a meeting Friday morning.

Um with the mayor and all the chairs of the other commissions.

Breakfast will be served.

Uh, and I believe that you were you received an email with um the upcoming calendar.

Yes.

For the commission.

The vice chair won't be here, so if anybody wants to come, come on along.

I'll be there.

Yeah.

You're right across the street.

Commission member and staff reports or announcements.

I think you just gave them, right?

I just get okay.

Adjourned.

All right.

Um, Okay, there's a lot of the other.

Welcome to At the Theater.

I am Matt Bollinger for Walnut Creek Television.

Tonight we have a very special show with George Winston.

This Piano Virtuoso.

We're playing several numbers from the Leisure Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.

We'll also sit down and talk to George about his career and about his newest piece of work coming out soon.

Welcome back to At the Theater.

I'm now joined by George Winston, piano virtuoso here at the lecture center in Walnut Creek.

How you doing, George?

Nice to meet you.

Well, I wouldn't say virtuoso, I'm still working on it.

Oh, I don't know.

I've heard a lot of I've heard a lot of pianists, and it's funny how your music has really kind of touched so many people's lives, especially in nature.

I mean, that's one of the interesting parts about your music as a person who's very visual and works in the visual arts.

When I listen to Forest, for example.

Beautiful sounds, and it really it's the visuals that really kind of draw me to you so much.

How do you pull the inspiration?

Do you actually have to go somewhere to actually inspire yourself to actually create music?

Well, because I grew up in eastern Montana, Miles City and Billings.

So the changing of the seasons of the Great Plains is the primal thing for me.

But really anywhere on the planet has its season that it's in, it's topography.

It has whatever the Earth energy is there.

So I'm glad to be able to go to a lot of places and just soak all this in.

So it all goes into the music for me, you know, all the places that I go one way or another, directly indirectly, depending on just what I'm taking in that day, what the place is.

And I'm glad I'm just I'm just grateful to be able to go to all the places I go to.

So mainly mainland America, uh, a little bit uh Asia, uh particularly Korea and Japan, usually every year.

Mm-hmm.

What about Yosemite?

What do you think about Yosemite?

Is that ever inspired you for any music before?

I've never I've never been.

You've never been to UCM?

Believe it or not.

We've got to do a project together.

I've done I've gone to most 200 mile race radiuses in the in the you know continental U.S.

But uh not for some reason that's alluded to me.

One of these days I've got to do it.

Next time I'm in Fresno or something, I've just gotta go.

I know it's it's on my list.

Uh it's definitely I've I've been there several times, and I'd say once again back to your music.

It's when I'll play something like Force example, a lot of the tracks on that disc have a lot of inspiration for Yosemite to me.

Now, obviously you've worked a lot of influences in your life.

I mean, you've had, you know, Ray Manzaric, a big influence of your earlier days of the door doors.

When I when I grew up, I was listening only to instrumental music.

The only vocalists I listened to were a bit of Ray Charles and Sam Cook, but it was all instrumental adventures, Floyd Kramer Kramer, Booker T and the MGs.

There were a lot of great instrumental groups in the late 50s, early 60s.

And you know, I heard vocal groups on the radio, but um, you know, I was more of a Tijuana brass fan, Booker Key and the MG's fan, Jimmy Jazz organist Jimmy Smith.

Then I heard the doors and I just said this is the greatest thing I've ever heard.

It they re I got their first album, just they weren't known at the time outside of LA.

It was just because it said Ray Manzara.

And I put it on and said this is the greatest thing I've ever heard.

I've got to get in Morgan playing the band, and that was January 67.

And that album, the door's first album is like one long song.

And that's the second time that it happened to me.

The first time it happened to me was December 65.

I was a fan of animation, so I watched the very first of the peanuts episodes, Charlie Around Christmas.

And I was much more of a fan of piano of organ than piano.

But that piano drove me crazy, especially Linus and Lucy, like it drives everybody crazy.

And I wasn't aware it was Vince Garaldi because I didn't I missed it on the credits.

I was aware of him from his hit Cast Your Fate to the Wind from 62.

Uh but anyway, I in six December 65, I went to the record store the day after just to go to the record store, and there it was up on the wall, Charlie around Christmas, and I got it, looked for that song, Linus and Lucy.

And I said, This album's like one long, beautiful song with twelve different parts.

So that was the first time that happened to me.

The Doors first album was the second time.

And um Vince didn't push me over to being a player, but the doors did.

But uh Vince Garaldi is the person who I play the most songs of.

The three composers I've tried to play all their songs are Vince Garaldi of the Doors and New Orleans pianist Professor Longhair.

Wow.

And we were talking about the next record, and that'd be out January February two called uh Love Will Come, the Music of the Vince Garaldi Volume Two.

In uh 96 I did volume one called Linus and Lucy.

Right.

The second and final volume, but I just love Vince's songs.

I don't play that much like Vince.

I'm much more of an R and B player.

He was a very much a jazz player.

And but I love his songs and find a way to I've tried them all.

All the cues on all 16 of the peanuts he did.

Probably tried 200 of his things, and you know, these particular about 45 worked out, and uh, I don't know.

And then I love it.

I'm just it brings so much uh life to get some platinums, I mean December.

One of the most beautiful.

I mean, Thanksgiving.

That that is a number, I'll tell you.

And you play that number Thanksgiving the holidays a few times during that time of yeah.

And how do you, I mean, when you're writing this music, uh, do you obviously you go places, but do you meet people?

Do things inspire you in situations that actually, I mean, obviously as a composer, you've got to kind of get away and kind of gotta go to your own space after these moments.

How do you kind of transfire these these images?

Well, I've never tried to compose a piece.

I just have normal life.

You know, I'm I've got my routine and my work and drive to work like everybody does, and um, things we gotta deal with personally and with the work like everybody does.

So I it's just living normally, you know, trying to play the best concert possible.

That's a little abnormal, but being a dentist is an abnormal too.

Everybody's job is really unique, and we're all really doing the same thing, just trying to, you know, find our own way that we like to do it, you know, synthesize what we've learned from our inspirations, our influences, grow, develop our own styles, uh, keep being inspired, trying to try to help others that have questions.

Um, but it really is just living life normally and then occasionally, usually at the piano, not so much away, uh, something just kind of emerges.

I went well that reminds me of, you know, Eastern Montana in October or something.

And if it has a picture with it in my mind, then it stays around.

You were mentioning visuals.

The same thing with interpreting pieces of somebody else.

If it gets if it gives me a picture, it it stays.

If it doesn't, it's not the composer's fault.

It's no there's no fault here.

But if if a visual doesn't go in my mind with it, even though I'm not a visual artist at all, you know, you know, I don't draw or take pictures or anything or video or anything, but um, my way of doing visual arts is to sound, I suppose you could say.

Is this a lot of those images have you ever do you actually create, I mean, your pictures that you choose to have behind your on like in a live concert, or is it actually just that's just somebody's own expression of it.

But in on stage, you've never had images behind you on stage, it's all just conjured up by everybody's own image.

Yeah, I like to just keep it plain, let the music do all the work.

Well, that's funny because I I read a little article, I guess they're saying that you know you come out there and you're stalking feet and you're very, you know, that's so you don't get the Yeah, the thumping, huh?

Yeah, to try to eliminate that.

You're very, you know, mild manner type of guy, you know, and for somebody a lot of people who are as talented and have such great skills, you seem like a very normal down to earth type of person, which I think is very unique.

Well, I am a student, you know.

I um I'm about halfway there in what I want to do on the piano and the guitar and the harmonica.

So, um there's no big deal about it, you know, to me.

It's just trying to play better every day and be a better person, whatever that is.

Now that's what what does that mean?

That's a whole other conversation.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

That's true.

Being a good person's an important part of life.

And obviously, you've played a lot of different venues over the years.

Is there a venue that you think of that maybe you a concert you just remember so visually as being one of the most important, or maybe the the most I would say maybe not important, but the best word for it, best experience for you?

Well, maybe the Mont the uh Custer County high school auditorium in Miles City, Montana.

Oh wow.

And there's a lot of wonderful venues.

I since I grew up there, that's special to me because the Alberta Bear Theater and Billings, which was the Fox Theater, where I went to movies as a kid and um just all the venues, but those those two amongst many others really stick out.

Because I grew up in those places.

Well, what do you do for hobbies?

I mean, obviously, you obviously are playing the so much around the country.

What is it?

What's your what's what's George doing away from the piano?

Um, guitar or harmonica or producing other artists.

And I wouldn't say their hobbies, I don't think I have any hobbies.

And maybe reading the latest cosmological discoveries, you know, the Hubble and things like that, but that inspires the music, a sliver, you know.

But the earth is my, you know, it gave birth to me.

And to cats, which I love so much.

So it's really just uh, it's very interesting.

Like, where does the earth end in a rock begin?

Where does the earth end in a tree begin?

You know, in the rainbow, where does blue end and green begin?

You know, all the where does the earth end and I begin?

I mean, I'm walking around, but so it's it's an interesting um I I think it's not definable to my own self.

Like are my s all my cells are the are they me?

If I lose a cell, I'm still here.

Mm-hmm.

If I'm gone, the earth is still here.

If I'm gone, it's it's it's um interesting thing, you know how leaves fall off the trees and then they fertilize the earth and you know, um new leaves come up and you know, living beings pass on, they fertilize the earth and somebody else gets a chance.

You know, it's amazing.

It's an amazing uh little universe, this planet is.

And then, you know, later we'll be interacting with the rest of the universe, and you know, and then that'll be the planet, you know, a billion years from now or something, and that'll be that the you know, a whole not whole another, you know, uh concept of evolution that that the whole universe is a is a is a is a black spherical planet.

If that's what it is.

That that's that's the deep question.

And maybe there's an infinite amount of little bubbles going along with us, other ones.

That's we'll know it someday.

Wow.

That you you just kind of blew my mind.

I'm trying to focus on your work and you these these conversations are so intense.

We got spaced out.

Yes, we did.

I mean, but your your music, like I said, it does draw you into different realms.

And I think that's the interesting part about everything comes back to your music.

And obviously, you inspired so many people, and there's so many people around the world who obviously enjoy listening to your music.

What do you think when you have these clamoring fans who come up to you sometimes and they're they they they just want to be part of you?

I mean, part of your life, part of your music.

How do you uh you feel humbled or what what's what do you feel like?

Well, nobody really does.

I mean, just want to sign something or ask a musical question.

So it's pretty normal.

You're not you're not like the Rod Stewart or the the Robert Plant of the world.

Well, I don't know what anybody else does.

I have no I'm so busy trying to keep it together, I don't know what anybody else does with their life personally, but it's it's pretty much just normal if I have time to talk or make an email, you know, a question in to the office, you know, if they've got a musical question in particular.

Wow.

Down to Earth, George Winston.

Because I when I first started, I would stand, go to dances without a date and stand by the organist and behind the organist and take notes and then in intermission, I would ask them, what'd you do during that the Smith by the Cat by Jimmy Smith or what do you do at End of I Feel Good by James Brown?

And only one person never wouldn't tell me.

Everybody else told me.

So anybody wants to ask me something about what I did, I'll tell them.

If that's what they want to learn, that's something that certain passage or lick that I did.

Only one person didn't tell me, but he he went away mumbling, Lydian mode.

Okay, sharp four.

Okay, I got it.

So he told me even though he didn't want me to, so you know I like to be a a good librarian of the the information that I've put together, it's on the website, everything about everything that I've been able to put together, Hawaiian slacky or tunings on harmonica, anything that I can help shorten somebody else's journey a bit.

We've all got our journeys are all shorter because somebody else did something.

That's so true.

As long as they are, they could be a lot longer if nobody had done anything or imparted the information.

Sharing, sharing our knowledge, I mean, obviously sharing your stories today on at the theater.

Thank you very much, George.

Nice to meet you great time with you.

I can't wait to see you on stage tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Oh, the other, oh, yeah, I'm not sure.

Hello, everyone.

Thank you so much for being here this evening.

It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Walnut Creek Library Foundation's Live from the Library, a series of free evenings with authors, scholars, community leaders, and entertainers.

I'd like to take a moment to thank our Life in the Library season sponsors, Minuteman Press of Lafayette, and the Friends of the Walnut Creek Library.

And on behalf of the Walnut Creek Library Foundation, I want to thank each of you for your support.

You provide support just by being here, and some of you provide financial support as well.

That's important because even though these programs are free, it does cost money to put them on, and we wouldn't be able to do it without a little help from our friends.

Here's a look at some of the events and activities the foundation has sponsored recently.

Just to let everybody know, you may hear closure announcements leading up to 8 p.m.

But please don't be alarmed, you will still be able to exit the building when the program ends.

You can uh visit our website to support the Walnut Creek Library Foundation, or if you're so inclined, there's a tip jar in the back.

I was lucky enough to participate in a presentation similar to the one that you're all about to hear earlier this year, and I was inspired, which is why you're all here this evening.

Um it was an honor to meet Wei Taekwok and to learn more about sustainable Contra Costa then, and it is even more exciting to welcome them to the library tonight.

Uh Way Tai Quak is a climate activist and volunteer public speaker, formally or excuse me, personally trained by former Vice President Al Gore and his nonprofit organization, the Climate Reality Project.

Tyler, switching notes here, Tyler Snorden Feltz has been part of Sustainable Contra Costa since 2014 and has taught home composting workshops for 20 years.

Since we are a small but mighty group this evening, I encourage you all to take advantage of these experts' presence and their knowledge.

After their presentations, we'll have time for all of your questions, so think of them now, don't be shy.

I'll be coming around with a microphone so everybody has a chance to uh have a conversation with these two um these two fabulous experts.

There are also materials from Sustainable Contra Costa and the switches on out on the tables out there.

The switches on is a nonprofit that can help uh make home and appliance electrification simple.

Um so definitely take advantage of those materials as well.

Without further ado, please help me welcome our guests this evening, Wait Tyquok and Tyler Snorton Falls.

Thank you, Lauren.

Okay.

There we go.

Good evening, everybody.

Thank you so much for coming out on a Tuesday night and coming together here.

Um before I get started on my talk, I wanted to just share a little story of how I ended up in front of you today.

Uh, because uh back in 2006, uh my wife Violet and I went to see a movie in the Arinda movie theater called An Inconvenient Truth.

I can't believe it was 19 years ago that movie came out, but uh by show of hands, how many people happen to have seen that movie?

Uh so documentary film about uh global warming and climate change and our and Violet is here today.

Thank you, my wife.

Yeah.

Uh hi, Violet.

So um, we got out of the movie theater that day, and I remember thinking, gee, if what we saw was true, that then that the temperature of the planet is rising, we probably don't have a hundred years to solve this problem.

It may just be 30 or 40 years.

Um, and at that time, my children, Gareth and Shelley were six and nine years old.

Uh, and I thought, gee, uh, it's gonna be too late for them, their generation to solve this problem.

You know, whether I liked it or not, the adults of today, we had to be the ones to take action.

And so I suddenly felt this big burden that on my shoulder after coming out of the movie theater.

Now, I'm sort of an analytical person and I try to study everything and read up on it, so I actually spent the next three months going, spending all my free time reading everything I could to see whether global warming was happening.

Um, and I came to three conclusions.

Number one, the temperature of the planet is definitely rising.

Number two, that humans are the likely cause of that.

And number three, that our political leaders were doing absolutely nothing about that in 2007.

It was, remember, drill baby drill, which I I've heard recently again.

But uh, and that just got me so angry because at me as a normal person here in the Bay Area, if I could figure this out in 90 days, how come our political leaders were not doing something about it?

So I was really pissed, actually.

So I decided, well, if they're not gonna do something, then at least I'm gonna try to do something.

But what?

We're just like normal people.

How do we combat this massive problem called climate change?

Now at the time I was an advertising executive working in San Francisco at my own ad agency.

I had 35 employees, I'd run the business for 17 years, and I had great clients, good employees.

Everything in my life was going just fine until I saw that darn movie.

And so I, you know, every day I'd go to work and or I'd come home from work and I'd be brushing my teeth, and I'd say, what did I do today to be part of the solution to climate change?

And every day I pretty much had the same answer.

Absolutely nothing.

I was busy with my clients, my employees, I was stuck in traffic.

I had all excuses.

But it wasn't before long that actually I started to get depressed because I knew that every night I would come home and brush my teeth and realize that I had not done anything, and uh I I couldn't pay attention in meetings anymore.

I I really the job and the company I loved, I I couldn't do it anymore.

Um, and I realized, and the reason why is I realized that not only was I not part of the solution as I committed myself to be that I was part of the problem, because I knew climate change was happening, and yet I still did nothing about it.

And that really got me very depressed at the time in 2007 or 8.

But I'm not here to depress you.

Uh, I just the happy parts to it, I ended up quitting my job, selling my company, and trying to find a new career that I could be part of the solution.

That's how I got into the solar energy business.

Five years later, I decided to get trained by Vice President Gore to come out and give talks to try to do more and educate the public on the science, the impacts and solutions to the climate crisis.

So that's why I'm here in front of you today with Tyler, because we're gonna talk about you know the problems that are happening, but also more importantly, the solutions worldwide as well as the solutions here in Contra Costa County.

So we're just delighted to be here and have you as our audience, and so with that, let's get started.

The first place we should start out is to look at our home, our planet Earth.

This is the picture taken in 1968 by the first of the Apollo missions, this first human photograph of our planet.

And one, I love this picture because that's the blue marble, that's that's where we all live.

And it turns out it's such a special place because it's the only planet in the universe known to sustain life.

You can imagine how delicate our air, our water, our temperature, the conditions to sustain life.

It's precious, and this is the only planet known to sustain life.

Now, what's happened to our planet since that picture was taken in 1968?

This is a NASA animation of the temperature of our planet with blue and white being colder than average, yellow and orange being warmer than average, and what you'll see as you get into the 1960s, the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000, 2010, 2020, a lot more orange and red.

Same data from 1880s when weather instruments started being used to the present.

Here's a clear trend that the planet is getting warmer, right?

The hottest year ever measured was last year, 2024.

In fact, 10 of the hottest years ever measured have been the last 10 years.

So 20 years ago, when we saw that movie, you know, what's happened?

It's continued to happen, it's gotten a lot worse, right?

So last year in 2024, out here in the West Coast, we hit a lot of records.

You can see that uh Death Valley, 129 degrees, Palm Springs, Palm Desert, 124 degrees.

These are the records we don't like to be breaking, right?

So uh worldwide, what's happening with these rising temperatures?

Well, let me just give you an example in Pakistan and India where they warned that these warmer temperatures back in 2022 could cause the glacial lakes to collapse.

And so in Pakistan, what happened in 2022 summer?

There was a lake that burst upstream, and the waters came crashing down.

And just to really say that the infrastructure that we're building in our society is really not really to accommodate the warming temperatures and the consequence of the climate crisis.

One other example here was of a British hiker who happened to be up in the mountains in Kyrgyzstan that summer, and he happened to have his phone and he heard some noise and he looked up, and he witnessed a glacier collapsing and coming down.

Let's see what happens.

Well, at least we got the video.

So he survived, he survived, and we got the video.

This picture here taken by the International Space Station of our planet from the sideways, is really showing us the atmosphere, that blue atmosphere.

Sometimes when we go out and we see the blue sky and we look up, we think it's infinite.

Like, how could we puny human beings do anything that could possibly impact the planets with all that infinite space?

But it turns out that actually if we drove a car to the top of the blue area, it would only take us about six minutes to get there.

It's like from here to Oakland.

That's that's about the distance of our atmosphere.

It's actually very thin.

And so, so when we fill up that thin atmosphere with greenhouse gas pollution, and this is just a quick example of the many types of greenhouse gas pollutions out there, whether it's from flying air transport, uh burning forests, landfills giving up methane, industrial agriculture like cows burping methane to coal plants burning and so forth.

There are many, many sources out there.

But the largest source of global warming pollution actually is just simply the burning of fossil fuels.

That started in 1850 with the first the drilling of the first oil well, does anybody know in what state in America the first oil?

Texas?

Oklahoma?

Pennsylvania, you got it.

Pennsylvania is correct.

Give that lady an extra cookie, please.

Okay.

You can see in 1850, you see the industrial age, you could see through the 70s, most of it's happened in our lifetimes, really in the last 50 years, the incredible growth of uh burning of fossil fuels for everything out there.

And what we're focusing in on here is that actually during the pandemic, uh global emissions dropped by 4% in just one year because the economy slowed down.

But it rose 5% the very next year, so it bounced back quickly.

The other little niche there is the global financial crisis.

So that's about the impact of something that big.

We really have a lot of work to do to work at this.

So, what's the consequence though if the planet's getting warmer?

Does it, what are some of the negative consequences?

Well, one of them is that warmer air holds more water vapor.

And the equation for that is actually that for each one degree centigrade of temperature rise, the planet can hold, the capacity of the atmosphere to hold water increases by 7%.

And that means that as we saw over the last 50 years, as the temperature has risen, that there's already five to 15% more water vapor around our planet right now than there was just 50 years ago.

If we look at an animation from our national labs to show where is that water vapor up there, right?

It turns out it doesn't spread very evenly around the whole entire planet.

It tends to aggregate in these atmospheric rivers that are up in the sky.

And these animations will show you where those atmospheric rivers are.

Now, we here in the Bay Area have heard of the word atmospheric river from our weatherman, right?

Because here, if we look at a map of the Pacific with Hawaii on the left, California on the right, and whoops, sorry, and you see that that is the atmospheric river, which we hear our weathermen talking about actually during this winter season.

This particular picture was taken in February of 2017, and that was the time that those rainstorms brought extreme flooding to San Jose for the very first time.

So we are getting that impact here, but it's happening all over the country, all over the world.

Here's some pictures from the Midwest, Montana, Arizona, and Midland, Texas, where they're getting these rain bombs that they're the rain is coming down much harder and much more severely.

And in some cases, and the weather's cold, it doesn't come down as rain, it comes down as snow.

How many of us remember just not long ago, 2023 winter, where they got like 24 feet of snow from all of that precipitation that was coming down?

Now let's shift years.

That was so far we've been talking about the air temperature, but if we we see actually 93% of the that excess energy is going into the oceans.

And if we go back in time to see how where the energy is in the planet that's you know been soaked up in the atmosphere, in the land, in ice, and then finally in oceans, the deep oceans, the mid oceans, and the surface oceans, you'll see that much of that energy is going into the ocean.

So while we might have a climate crisis in the air above here, our fish and ocean animals actually are suffering quite a bit.

We won't have time to go into all of that.

But it's slightly stronger as its eyewall approaches the coast.

There are extreme wind mornings in the big lake of Florida, and this is such a dangerous and life-threatening situation.

Hurricane Helene from a year ago, I was gonna say that warmer oceans help hurricanes become much more powerful.

That's hurricanes gets their energy, their moisture, and their energy from warmer oceans.

The more warmer the oceans, the more significant are these hurricanes.

This happened in early October last year, October 3rd, and it moved inland and hit Asheville just a year ago.

And then a week later, Hurricane Milton made landstorm in Florida as a category three and crossed over.

And also, yeah, parts of Florida had two feet of rain in a week or a day and caused extreme flooding and damage.

This is all just exactly well, one year ago.

It seems like it's in our distant memory, but it the consequences are really honest.

Now, while on the one hand, just now we saw how there's too much water out there, and that that heat is bringing more water, but at the same time it pulls water out of our Earth and it gets drought.

So you have we have drought and too much water all at the same time.

Around the world, like in China here, they've experienced significant drought, historical drought in parts of China.

This is a year ago in Brazil, where the rivers were empty back in 2022 in France.

And here's a picture I took up at Lake Shasta a few years ago with the reservoirs down of maybe whatever, 18 or 22 percent.

Just couldn't believe how low the drought that we've been having here in California.

But those droughts and those hot weather does actually also have wildfire danger, which all of us are very familiar with now.

And you can see from this chart there's a correlation between warmer temperatures and more fire danger.

Early in this year we had the Palisades fire in Southern California.

It turns out that that was one of the most damaged, five most damaging fires in the state's history.

But six out of seven of the largest fire wildfires we've had in California have all been only in the last five years since August 2020.

It's it's really crazy how this is accelerated.

And we all know that the impact on homeowners insurance, right?

With cancellations, State Farm once cut 72,000 policies, it's really forcing many people to not have insurance or go after the California Fair Plan.

What was supposed to be the plan of last resort has now become the plan of first resort.

I just clipped this from Sunday's newspaper, The Chronicle.

Look at the home page on the Chronicle, the front page, had two stories about fires.

Uh many new homes are now built in Fires Pass, and then the wineries trying to figure out what to do about all these wildfires up there.

And then a third article about the fair plan.

Anybody here in the fair plan?

Yep, 35 expected by April a 35% average raise in the premiums because of the stress on that plan.

All these wildfires also create smoke, and so now worldwide wildfire smoke is causing more hospitalizations than any other type of air pollution.

Here's a boy in Brazil from the wildfires in the Amazon.

The World Health Organization has said that the climate crisis is the leading single biggest threat facing humanity from a health point of view.

But we shouldn't let that ruin our golf game, should we?

That's incredible.

This is really a picture meant to say, like humans, like we just want to, don't tell me the bad news, right?

It's just like, can't I just go on with my life and can't somebody else worry about the bad news?

And I got just trying to keep on.

I mean, this is funny, but it's sort of uh a true statement, right?

That we we we want to avoid that.

But I'm here and Tyler here, we're here to recruit you to say, is this a problem that we can solve?

Must we change this?

And the answer is yes, right?

We're all here to try to do something about it, right?

So uh I'm sorry to have all that bad news, but I I promise now, and I was very depressed 10 or 15 years ago because I thought the problems that we saw were insurmountable.

But um what I have learned in the last 10 years of working on this, 15 years, is that there's so many solutions, and I am today much more hopeful.

I'm not as depressed as I was back then when I had to quit my job and company.

We have all the solutions on hand, and whether that the technologies that are available can help cut global warming pollution in half, even within the end of the century.

Uh, there's wind power, there's solar power, there's energy storage, there's regenerative agriculture, LED lighting, insulation, heat pumps, electric vehicles, all these things are out there already for us to use.

We just have to embrace them more quickly than than we're as quickly as possible.

The International Energy Agency did a roadmap from here to 2050 to say how can human society actually make the transition.

I'm not going to go into all of this, but except to show you that people out there, smart people are planning and thinking what is the policy changes needing to happen.

Uh, everything from appliances and cooling system work, heavy trucks, no new internal combustion engine, car sales by 2035, retrofit old buildings, use heat pumps.

We heard over there, right?

And then uh can and so on and so forth.

So there is a path using these technologies, and if the world could get together and implement them, we could be in a good place.

Over in the UK, the home of where coal-fired power plants started historically, uh, they generate 26 times as much electricity from their wind farms as they did from coal in 2022.

In fact, last year in 2024, the UK closed their very last coal-fired power plant, right?

So the country that started it, they've ended it now.

Why can't other countries go on?

Uh worldwide, the the growth of wind energy has uh had an incredible fast growth path.

Uh wind alone can supply the world's economy 40 times over.

And over in the solar industry, which I work in, and I told you I joined the solar industry in 2009 as a marketing person right there, so you can thank me afterwards.

That's all you.

Yeah, exactly.

Uh well, unfortunately, no, it's actually that the price of solar panels has come down so much from the space age days when it was 79 dollars watt down to like 11 cents watt.

So it's so much cheaper now, really competes head to head with all forms of electricity.

In fact, when you look at the cost of wind and solar compared to fossil fuel costs going back a hundred some odd years, this is a price of coal over 120 years, natural gas more recently, nuclear power rising in cost, wind power declining, and solar, which was very high down.

And if you look worldwide to these paths going into the future, you know, just look 10 years into the future.

I say to my colleagues in solar, we're just winning on price.

We don't have to have a political discussion about what power is good.

It's just just buy it on price, right?

So that's what makes me happy and why I focus like how much solar energy would it take to power the entire United States.

Well, if we could only have 10,000 square miles right there in Arizona, we'd be in a great shape, but that's all you would need to power the entire country.

And uh as I mentioned, uh I uh I don't know if I mentioned this, but I actually am setting up a solar panel factory in Indianapolis, Indiana, the past two years.

And so I spent a good chunk of my time living out there and setting up a solar panel factory that I took this video from a couple weeks ago.

Well, let me just so that's what we're doing globally, that's what this the science, the impacts, and some of the global solutions.

Let's talk about uh what we're doing here locally.

I'll just share one example with you before I turn the microphone over uh to Tyler, and that is that you know, just this idea of can we stop burning fossil fuels, which is the single largest source of global warming pollution, and do we really have to burn fossil fuels in our house?

And so uh in 2019, my wife and I we just said, Well, what would we burn it?

And we said, Well, we have a gas furnace, have a gas hot water heater, we have a gas cooktop, and we have a gas fireplace.

So if we could get rid of those four things, then we could stop burning fossil fuels in our house.

And the more we researched it and we attended talks like this, and the more we learned, we realized, oh, okay, well, that's that's our HVAC, and we could replace it with this heat pump mini split system.

So these are the outside heat pumps.

This is outside of our house, and that's the inside of our house with the duckless mini splits with my son.

My son's here today too.

Gareth, say hi, okay.

That was my younger son.

Uh, the good news is that the IRA does have a 30% tax credit this year, you have to act before December 31st.

If you install it before then, you can get 30% off or $2,000 a year tax credit.

Uh, there's also heat pump water heaters where you can use that heat pump technology.

Uh it's all electric, very efficient, and you can also enjoy a 30% tax credit on that before the end of the year.

Yes, ma'am.

What's IRA?

Oh, the inflation reduction act.

Uh, sorry, yeah.

It's a and so there's a tax credit this year.

I could talk to you about it afterwards.

Uh, for our gas cooktop, we love we're Chinese, we love cooking on a walk and you know, stir fry, but guess what?

We we got an induction electric cooktop, and we're still we're still eating just fine.

So it's it's cleaner and uh we've we've really enjoyed that.

Uh, for our fireplace, we actually uh changed out the gas uh fireplace and used an electric log set there.

Uh so we we we did all that and we were actually able to complete it in 45 days.

Something a project that I thought was gonna be complicated, time consuming, expensive.

We were sort of wrong, wrong and wrong about all of that.

And so we finished it, and then I I called PGE and said, take away my gas meter, and they actually will come and do it for free.

Uh so that was me turning off the gas meter for the last time, and and they they took it away.

Um, now after we lived in an all-electric house for one year, I was just wondering, well, how much did that cost financially?

Was that a good financial decision?

Uh so um I dug out like four years of my PGE bills, and uh what's in blue is my gas bill and yellow is the electric bill.

We're spending a little a thousand twelve hundred dollars a year on energy.

Uh but after we convert to all electric, you can see the electric went bigger.

This was COVID in 21-22.

I don't know why it's so low, but um and in all in all, it was uh didn't cost us more after going all electric.

So I really could say we have 15 solar panels on our house, we uh buy electricity from the grid from MCE for all of us who live here in Contra Costa, many of us enjoy MCE.

We can even opt up to 100% deep green, meaning that all of our electrons, whether it's from our solar system or over the grid, it's clean.

That means we actually live in a zero emission home, and when we plug in our electric car into our home, it's also a zero emission home.

So isn't that hard to have a zero emission lifestyle today in 2025?

And what did it cost?

Uh that one we'll have to talk about afterwards.

Uh, we haven't spent about 40,000 on our home renovation for uh converting all electric.

That but you probably these days you could do it for 30 or something less, even we had no incentives back then.

So my family's grown up.

And uh I'm much more hopeful about their future.

And um, and um and I and so you know I'm I'm very glad that we were able to um make some changes in our lives that didn't make our lives any worse.

And so I would like to invite all of you to use your voices, use your votes, use your choices.

We we make choices every day.

We could either choose to be part of the solution or choose to be part of the problem.

And I was part of the problem, and I just tried to consciously over the last 15 years just you're not change, it's hard to change everything all at once, but every year try to do something that just is a pathway, and it's uh I feel like it, you know, it's been a wonderful pathway.

So I invite you to I'm here to recruit you to do these things also, because we have only one planet that we share together, and we we have it's up to us really to make sure that the planet can survive and we can survive in the planet.

All right, well, with that, I'm gonna turn we're gonna have a QA with Tyler.

I'll take a few questions as Tyler's setting up because we're gonna do a computer change, but then we're gonna uh leave time at the end for questions and answers.

Okay, thank you very much.

Go ahead.

I'll take one question here and yes, thank you.

Okay, is your presentation available somewhere for download online?

Not including the pictures of your family and stuff, but like the animations.

You know, the um tonight's sessions being recorded, and so uh what you saw today will be online, uh, and uh we can get that afterwards.

Um the slides from Mr.

Gore's presentations are are not are for live audiences only, so uh we don't hand them out as slides themselves.

Um, what we got here.

Did you have a question, ma'am?

I was just like, it seemed phenomenon that so far.

I've lived here for 40 years.

It was the coolest summer I've experienced.

Was this what would cause that?

Yeah, so the question uh from the audience, just for those online was uh it lasts 40 years.

This summer in Walnut Creek seemed to be the coolest summer.

We didn't have those hundred degree days as we had in the past, and so um what caused that?

I would say first of all, worldwide, the year 2025 is expected not to be the hottest year in beat 2024, but it will it's on track to be one of the three hottest years worldwide.

Uh of course there are differences in different pockets, but um we we got we got a little lucky in the Bay Area this past summer.

We'll have time for questions of both Way Tai and Tyler after Tyler's presentation.

Okay, thank you.

Is this Mike doing it?

I do not have a slick clicker like Wei Tai, so I am anchored to the podium here.

Uh, but I'm delighted to be here.

My name is Tyler Snortham Phelps.

I am with Sustainable Contra Costa.

Um, and this is a compost workshop, right?

So we're gonna talk about now.

I just was amused that uh Laurel chose that particular tidbit from my bio.

Um, but I do a lot of things with sustainable contract, and I've been involved in sustainability work for many long years.

Uh so what I'm going to focus on is uh a brief overview of what we do at Sustainable Contra Costa, and then dial down to a program that is all about our personal actions that we can take household actions in our lives to directly impact climate change, which weight so compellingly uh made the case for.

We do need to be taking personal action.

So sustainable contra costus often we refer to ourselves as SCOCO, because it just takes too long to say sustainable contra costa.

Uh we believe that by working together, we can really help uh our economy, our planet, and our communities and make them healthy.

So that's our goal is really collaboration.

So we're gonna talk about practical solutions.

So does this work?

Look at that.

Uh so we are a nonprofit that started in 2008.

We've helped thousands of people learn to live more sustainably, making changes to save water, save energy, reduce waste, and build healthier, resilient communities.

Couple of things that uh we focus on.

We just uh finished a program where we gave out induction cooktops, way was talking to you about, to uh folks who would not ordinarily either necessarily know about them, but likely wouldn't be able to afford to make the switch.

And this was a pilot program with a couple of government sponsors.

We are hoping to scale it up.

So 100 cooktops is nice, 10,000 cooktops would be even better.

So those are our goals.

We had uh surveys, we talked to them about it.

How did you like it?

We had instructions, we had uh chef come in and do cooking demonstrations, so there was a lot of fun stuff there.

We also have some repair events that we do in the area of reducing waste, which I'll mention a little more later, uh promote uh sponsored by various local cities as well as Recycle Smart and some of the waste agencies.

We also have a program called the East Bay Clean Air Coalition, which we really appreciate, bringing together a lot of different players, NGOs, government agencies, community leaders, to look at the issue of air quality in East County specifically where they are far more impacted than other parts of the county, as as you may know, uh, with this concept of what they call environmental justice.

A lot of folks in uh lower income communities are also the ones bearing the brunt of the pollution.

So this program, the East Bay Clean Air Coalition, is directly designed to impact that.

And our youth program, which actually has its own slide, is really exciting.

Had it going for about five years now.

Um eighty-five students since the beginning have moved through this program.

They do a lot of different programs.

Uh you can see them here uh marching to protest and advocate for no more oil drilling in Brentwood.

I don't know if you know, but there were oil wells in Brentwood, and there was a campaign to stop those.

But uh there's a lot of other things they do.

They have a newsletter, they have a climate careers program where they bring people from different industries in to share their career path.

Each uh different program that they have is run by a different intern that we uh work with.

We have a staff mentor that helps the interns.

So it's very exciting and inspiring uh youth team.

So basically kind of like a high school environmental club, but for the whole county.

So that's called Sustainable Leaders in Action or SLIA.

Then we uh recently did these repair workshops, which were really awesome, and so many people it turns out are interested in not throwing away their stuff.

Uh we have kind of bought into this uh disposable culture or felt like we were pushed into it uh by the companies that want to keep making disposable things, and yet there is kind of a still an urge there to say, wait a minute, uh I can fix this, I don't need to throw it away.

So that whole repair culture is uh blooming rapidly in the Bay Area, there are groups all over.

Just just Google culture of repair, you'd be impressed.

But what we did is we set up in a couple of different places, El Cerrito and downtown Walnut Creek.

We had repair coaches, we called them, where they would come in and fiddle with your toaster or uh sew up the hole in your clothing or repair your lamp, things like that.

And so we are also looking to expand that one and increase the number of those.

There's a lot of different sponsors that we've had.

The waste hauling companies were very supportive of that and others.

So those are some other things we do, and our sort of signature program is the sustainability awards.

We just finished our 17th annual award scala a month ago.

We have honored over 121 individuals, organizations, businesses, nonprofits, schools, governments, it doesn't matter.

Any entity that is doing sustainability work can be nominated and can win, and it's really inspiring to see all the folks doing the great work.

Uh so even if you don't come to the awards gala, which I absolutely would invite you to do, you can go on our website and just look at the description of what these folks are doing in all different areas.

I'll give you a couple examples.

And by the way, the 2026, for those of you who like to get your calendar out, uh the gala's on September 16th, so save the date.

But here's a couple examples.

We always have at least one rising star award.

So that's somebody 18 years old or younger.

This particular young woman uh had a program that dealt with hunger.

Uh, when she started it in high school, they were creating uh food packs and distributing food locally, and they've now expanded it after she has graduated and she's still doing it.

It's called now uh Bites Without Borders, which I think is cool.

So a very inspiring program from Manya Mohan.

This one is our government winner this year.

Uh, just the fact that the mosquito and vector control does a lot to reduce uh the spread of disease to keep uh all sorts of areas, not just our homes safe, and to uh spread awareness and understanding of the different problems that happen with these vectors, these these lovely pests that we have in our area.

So there that was an impressive, and they also have a lot of um green measures in their buildings and uh working hard to reduce their energy consumption, water consumption, things like that.

This was our business winner, which is uh producing beauty products, but they're headquartered right here in Concord, they're a bee corporation, so a lot of their um profits go back into um sustainability ventures, but they also the products themselves are entirely natural, don't have any uh toxins in them, the packaging is all recycled materials.

Um I could go on and on, but that's the general idea.

We always like to see if we can find uh inspiring businesses, and we often give a lifetime achievement award.

This is Kathy Kramer who started the bringing back the Natives Garden Tour, which was a wonderful program to uh encourage folks to plant natives, and she makes some really compelling arguments for putting natives in your own backyard beyond just the fact that you'll save a lot of water.

Um there is a whole situation with the food web in our neighborhoods.

You know, the food web is really collapsing out in the wild areas, and there's only so much we can do because most areas are now privately controlled, and so if it's your backyard, you can do something.

I won't make the whole speech right now, but if you want to know more about this, talk to me because it's it's really inspiring.

Alrighty, so uh we did hear from Wei Tai that things are dire, and also that there's hope and that there's a lot of positive action.

So a couple little things that we like to uh quote is just that the Bay Area's um CO2 vehicle emissions have dropped yearly since uh 2018 with the sensors that are measuring that, uh, and that's partly because of a massive increase in EV uh adoption.

So keep those keep that coming.

That's uh a positive trend.

And then the um cow methane, now it says Ben and Jerry.

I know they've are they divorced now?

I think one of them left.

Uh but it's still an ice cream company, and they still use a lot of milk and cream, and so what they're experimenting with, and other dairy operators are, is this idea of simply adding the seaweed to the cow food, and it uh reduces a huge and causes a huge reduction in the amount of methane that the cows are are burping, which is basically where the methane comes from because of the cow's digestive process.

Three ounces of seaweed into uh the feed results in an 82 percent reduction.

It's really inspiring, and so that needs to be scaled up across the whole dairy industry, obviously, because uh livestock make up a large percentage between 11 and 17 percent of greenhouse gas emissions is what I had here.

So let's talk about ourselves and our households.

Uh we know Americans are concerned about it.

They are uh, you know, research showing 75% Americans feel that this is a major concern and has to be dealt with, but also feel uh that they don't know what to do.

They don't know how to help.

And so our job really is to get that information out there.

And I I want to just pause, I don't have a slide for this, but before I get into the household actions question and point out that that one of Way Tai's slides was talking about voting and finding people who are making change at the political level.

That is hugely impactful, and I don't want to give the impression that if we are putting in our cooktop in the kitchen, then we're done.

There's a lot that needs to happen at the policy level, and there's some issues that can only be solved at that level, and so I don't want to sort of pretend that that's not true because it is, and I think each of us can be as as involved as we can be, and there are organizations doing incredibly powerful work in the area of policy.

So if you uh just want to see what's going on and how you might participate, um, check out some of the I do recommend 350.

350.org is the national version started by Bill McKibben, but there's uh one right here in Contra Costa, it's called 350 Contra Costa Action, and they are literally looking at each city and county law, how is it impacting the CO2 emissions of all of our infrastructure, and what can we do to talk to these assembly state assembly members, state senators, county supervisors, city council members, uh get things shifted in that direction in the policy arena.

So I do encourage you to take a look at those.

So that said, uh, looking at our personal uh action, this app, if you want to call it that, it really is kind of a platform or an app that we recently launched, uh, about four years ago, is a really fabulous tool for us to kind of grasp what is happening in our household with CO2 emissions and what we can do about it.

So it's a free platform, an online resource, uh, it has over 90 sustainable actions that you can take.

These are customized for your zip code.

It is available in both Spanish and English.

And you also might think I know a lot of folks here are concerned about this, you've been thinking about it a long time.

You might say, Well, I'm already doing all that.

Well, you'd be surprised.

Uh, there are some things that we can all shift, me too, every one of us, uh, even further in the direction of uh uh a smaller impact.

So this is the impact we've made here in Contra Costa.

By the way, most folks who roll this platform out, and it's in cities all over the country and even some other places in the world, they just do it one city at a time.

So it's you know the Santa Monica Green Challenge.

We decided, foolishly or not, to take on the whole county, which this is a large county, so we bit off quite a lot, and we're still chewing on it.

Um, but so far you can see our impact since 2019 when we rolled it out.

We have 6,000 households who are members.

Uh you can see the number of uh kilowatt hours saved, gallons of gas, over uh $840,000 uh saved by these folks.

So, how do we calculate all of that?

Well, the first thing you do when you join this challenge is you do a little energy survey, you create an energy profile, and so you say how many cars do you have, how far do you drive in those cars?

What's kind of a heating system do you have in your home?

Uh all those little facts.

If you want to, if you're willing, you can actually hook it up to your PGE profile by logging into your PGE account, and then it will just take that data.

But once you've got that, then you now have your baseline, you have your base level.

So this person's example uh started at 29.5 tons.

Is that what it says right there?

Yeah, and then when this uh screenshot was taken, it was down to 15.2.

That's tons of CO2 emitted by the household per year.

So that's a wonderful statistic to track that.

It also compares your house with the rest of the world, which is interesting.

You can see how uh much more the average American uh outputs, but also how much more we put out than some other countries like China and India, and that's average, right?

You could find rich uh opulent lifestyles in both China and India that are putting out lots of CO2.

But overall, in the general in the country, it's much lower than the US.

So it's down to 13 uh well, it says 15.2 there, but uh then this the platform sets a goal.

So for this person, the goal is down to eight tons per year by 2030, which is two two tons per family member.

Right now it's 3.8 per family member, so it sets the goals for you.

Now that is optional, you don't have to ask it to set the goals, but I think it's kind of cool.

It gives you something to work for.

Uh and then when you're trying to decide what actions you will take, there's a lot of different ways to slice and dice them.

You can find ones that are quick and easy, um, you can find ones that don't cost very much.

You can find ones that are family friendly, in other words, can really be easily adopted by the whole family, like learning how to wash your clothes in an energy efficient way, water conserving way.

And then there's what we call step it up, where you are able to have the resources to do some of these major things, like putting on solar or buying an EV.

But you can also sort it by things for people who live in an apartment.

You can also sort it by water actions versus energy actions versus waste, all of those different other ways of categorizing.

So you find actions that are interesting to you.

And then when you look at what the platform recommends, you get a couple of different things.

First, you see why it's a good idea to do this.

So here's the page for an induction cooktop, tells you all the excellent benefits of having an induction cooktop.

And using a portable one specifically is what it's talking about here.

So you don't have to pay a contractor to come in and take out some old built-in thing and put something else.

You just put this portable one right on your cook down.

All these YouTube chefs that I'm watching now seem to have a portable one sitting on their counter.

So it gives you all the benefits, but then it also gives you the impact.

Now we're switching to a different action.

This one is if you replace your lawn.

How much money are you going to save and in gallons of water also?

Um it's in my opinion a little bit fuzzy to say you're gonna save zero pounds of CO2 emissions if you replace your lawn.

Because there is a direct connection between water conservation and greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

So the reason to conserve water is not just because we're in a dry state and we don't have a lot of water to play around with, but also because the uh use of water actually generates a lot of energy to treat it and transport it, and that energy produces greenhouse gases.

So I have put my little two cents into the platform.

We all have.

We've been asking them to tweak it over the years, and they have.

And so we'd like to see a CO2 connection for water conservation.

But anyway, you get the idea that there is actions and then the result, the impact that you get from those actions.

But the other nice thing is that you now are telling the system, the platform where you live.

You have your zip code in there, so then when you choose to do a particular action, it says, okay, here's how to help you do this, right?

So we're not just gonna say, yeah, good luck, go replace your lawn, figure it out.

This will give you specific instructions with just text right here on the platform.

Do this and do that, but also links to uh contractors or other educational websites, uh coupons that you might find for mulch or other materials that would help you with this, and very specifically in a lot of cases, rebates and incentive programs from your utilities or other government agencies, and there are quite a lot of those.

They are shifting all the time, so you have to kind of make sure you got the right ones.

But in this case, for example, you can see that you would get a rebate if you were in the Contra Costa Water District uh of two thousand dollars.

But folks in the East Bay Mud uh service area, there is also a long conversion rebate program there, and if you were in that zip code, then the platform would show you that rebate.

So you're always going to get the local uh resources that are specific to you.

So that is the cleaner contra cost form.

It is something we're very excited about.

We also run um seasonal challenges every three or four months.

We'll send everybody uh email and say, okay, we're just focusing this time on water or this time on energy, and fill out this form and choose these actions, and here's some fun little incentives to do them, and you can have uh enter in a drawing, for example, to uh win a gift card or something, but really it's just about doing these actions together.

You can even form teams is kind of a fun thing.

You can have your homeowners association or your neighborhood or your bridge club all join and have a funny name for your team, and then you can there's a leaderboard and you can see the points that you get.

And so that whole kind of friendly competition thing kind of pushes us to do more.

Um so that's basically my summary of the cleaner contract cost a challenge.

I can answer some more specific questions about that when we get to our QA.

We also encourage folks to volunteer with us.

We have uh lots of different opportunities to volunteer, including um helping at our tables at public events.

We show up especially in Earth Month.

We end up at a lot of those festivals and public things.

Um, but there's also behind the scenes way that you can volunteer.

You can support us, of course, with a donation.

We are a 501c3 nonprofit.

We are currently running a campaign to raise $18,000 to support those kids.

I was telling you about that youth program, sustainable leaders in action.

And this is our membership program here where you sign up for a monthly donation, and that is extremely helpful for us when we know you know that there's a regular commitment coming.

But even if you just want to make a one-time donation, that's totally wonderful and accepted and grateful.

So that's basically it for the overview of the cleaner contract cost of challenge.

I do have a sign-in sheet that I brought, so I can pass it around if you'd like to get more information and get uh hooked up with the challenge.

You can sign up free.

But there's also on the information table out there, there's bookmarks that has the website on it and a QR code if you want to do it that way on your phone.

And I I did want to just say in my own uh personal musings about the process that that information out there from the switches on program is really powerful as well.

And I encourage you to explore the there's cards that are specific, water heater and HVAC, but on their website, there's just so much more.

Uh, and it's very inspiring to see all the different uh options to electrify our homes, which is a huge one, and then um we were talking about uh most impactful actions worldwide, and I uh want to make sure that everybody's aware of another great organization.

I mean, so Wei Tai showed the you energy, what was it?

U.S.

that had the roadmap.

Yeah, international energy and energy administration, but there's also Project Drawdown, which is inspiring as well, and they've done a huge amount of very detailed research to determine what are the most impactful actions.

Some of them really are primarily a policy choice, uh, you know, like how we get our wind power or setting up these deep ocean generators that generate from currents and things like that.

That's not a backyard action we can all take.

But in the top five most impactful actions that drawdown identified are things like shifting away from an animal uh heavy diet, you know, moving our diet further and further towards plant-based eating, very simple things like that.

Um, you know, there's there's interesting to me in that top five.

I think it's still there.

I haven't looked recently, was this is global, this is worldwide, uh, was education of women because the more education women have worldwide, the lower the population uh spike, you know, the population increase in those countries, but women are more empowered to actually be a partner with their spouse and say, actually, let's not keep having kids.

And they do when they have the education and they feel empowered enough.

And it's just fascinating to me all the little permutations of our own political behavior our our community behavior our society that actually have an impact on climate change so it's just not it's not just the obvious things also one of the things I like to encourage folks to do is look at eating more locally in addition to just uh reducing your animal products consumption because there's a huge amount of um energy use and emissions produced by transporting food across super long distances which a lot of our mainstream grocery store food now is shipped hundreds of miles last thing I'll say is that we have a program and if you sign up on the sign up sheet you'll get our newsletter which is just called Green Movie Night simple idea we show a movie and it's really nice.

It's a simple maybe an hour long sometimes 45 minutes an hour long usually documentary about a particular topic and then we have a discussion about what can we do in this particular arena to make an impact we just did one on Fast Fashion which is this clothing companies just cranking out huge amounts of cheap clothing and the impact especially it has in uh developing countries because that's where the factories are and the waste streams from these factories and the labor conditions but also just the amount of stuff that is thrown away I believe the statistic was something like 10 or 15% of the clothing that is brand new put in the clothing store sits there for a while never purchased by anybody and put in the landfill just thrown away so we had this movie it was very impactful and then we had some folks who are working on this sustainable fashion side of things talk to us about what we could do.

We've done one on regenerative agriculture which Weitai mentioned as a very powerful if it was scaled up globally a very powerful way to impact our our carbon emissions so we're looking at all the solutions and the key I think is that we talk to each other about it don't be shy about bringing it up and that we really work together and and listen to each other so that's my little sermon about that.

Thank you very much I think I hit it on time.

So now we'll uh invite Wait and Tyler to uh have a seat and um we'll uh take questions for everybody um fantastic I'll start over here sorry if you want to use that perfect uh and we'll use the microphone so that everybody in the room can hear us um so it I'll bring it to you so my question is I am considering solar panels but my roof is getting old so I need to do both at the same time and I always hesitate because I don't know what company to go with and I really you know get very hesitant to just hire I'm all on my own and to hire people that maybe I get into trouble.

That's one thing but the other issue I have is whenever I buy something I want to have some idea what is its lifespan and what do people do with solar panels when they reach the lifespan because can they be rebuilt because otherwise we're getting this huge number of panels do they just get thrown away when they don't work anymore how does that I want to hear the answer to that way.

Yeah that was a lot of questions one thank you for the questions and thank you for your interest in going solar uh you are right that if you have an old roof you don't want to put a solar system on your roof because solar panels can last a long time 25 years is the warranted uh typical system life for a residential solar system uh and so if you're if your roof is you know less than 10 years old it's okay to put a system uh solar on top of it but if it's older than 15 or 20 or 30 years you you don't want to go through the labor of putting it on just to change a roof and taking it off and putting it on.

So the sequencing is correct.

The second question you asked was how do you find a reliable solar installer?

And that um there are two ways to answer that for me.

I would say you can um just like how do you find a good plumber or a contractor?

You ask around your neighbors and others who've had a good experience.

It's it's sort of the same thing, but at the same time, here in the Bay Area, we have a nonprofit called uh Bay Area Sunshares.org, Bay Area Sunshares.org, and they are a nonprofit that has been working in this space for about a decade to uh be like the Costco of uh of group buying for solar systems, and they have pre-vetted some installers and pre-negotiated pricing that is typically 10 to 15 percent lower than average in in exchange for like this group brying program.

Their program always launches in the fall in September, so right now it's a great time to call them.

You can get a free bid they'll edit the nonprofit educate us all as homeowners how it works, and then uh you can get a free bid and then they can the the installer can install it say next year.

So Bay Area Sunshares.org is one resource.

What happens to all these panels when they reach their end of life?

Then the last question is what happens to the panels when they reach their end of life, and so as I mentioned, at least it's a 25-year product, and so it's uh it's gonna be it's not a fast fashion that you throw away quickly.

Uh it's actually uh very environmentally friendly.

Um I would say that the energy input um studies have been done by the national lab to show that a solar panel, the amount of energy you put in is recovered in like two years, and the 25 year so the carbon footprint is relatively low, even though it's made of glass and aluminum, which actually do have a carbon footprint.

But the good thing about glass and aluminum is that they're both quite recyclable, and so uh at the end of life, you can melt down the aluminum, you can shred up the glass, and uh Europe is ahead of the United States in the recycling realm of solar panels.

Our country is far behind, but our industry is is only like a decade old, and so we're only 10 years into 25 years, whereas Europe may be 20 years into it.

So you haven't started seeing a stream of discarded panels yet?

They're increasing now, but in the lat, but the industry has been, you know, the recyclers have are coming out, and they're more and more now, but uh America is a little bit behind Europe in terms of recycling of solar panels.

But fundamentally they're made of glass and aluminum, so there is a home for them.

And no, they you wouldn't after 25 years um uh you you wouldn't reuse them anymore because there'll be much more advanced technologies at that time.

Thank you for the question.

Yes, that was a great presentation for me.

Well, thank you.

In the ones that I give on climate change, I emphasize the four levels of climate action that I've read about from other sources individual, household community, and then global slash national.

And this is great info for the household level emphasis, and that's very important.

Can you think of for this region, I guess, the most uh impactful ways to level up action to get to the community or regional or even state level?

For example, this county undertook and completed a carbon sequestration feasibility study for the practices that would sequester the most carbon, like take it out of the atmosphere and hold it uh for the region, and one of the most impactful ones is spreading compost on rangeland, basically grass on that uh cows graze on in all the hills around here.

Uh, are I guess maybe this is more sustainable contract with your composting issues, uh, is there an effort to implement that over a large set of grazing land in the area, or for example, uh, I know the recent lawsuits, well, maybe last year, the last two years, the lawsuits against uh bans on gas stoves were successful, so cities can no longer do that.

Is it a fact that the state of California now mandates new construction already have solar panels on it, or like what is the most impactful thing for like a thousand house development to get it off fossil fuels?

Thanks.

Well, so do you know uh I have an answer, but go ahead and the gas stove ban?

I I'm I'm not an expert on this um rangeland remediation that you're talking about, but I am aware of it.

Um we are not connected with any particular programs here in the county, but I think that that is the right direction to go for carbon sequestration rather than some of these high-tech solutions injecting it and other things like that into the ground and building huge facilities to do it is really being shown to be not carbon positive, you know, in a way it's actually kind of useless, but somebody makes a lot of money off of it.

But the solutions like the very simple idea of enriching that soil, sequestering the carbon in the soil in the agriculture uh realm as well, those can be scaled up to be amazingly impactful.

So I would hope to see that.

I'm not I can't say here's a bill that's about to be passed to do that, though I I feel like that is one of the steps that needs to be taken.

I encourage you to see uh the movie Common Ground, which is a sequel to the original Kiss the Ground, which has some really compelling um images of what happens when there's living growing material on the farmland uh versus in the winter when it's fallow.

This is traditional methods when there's just literally nothing but bare soil.

It actually shows the temperature and the the richness of the oxygen in the soil, I mean in the air over these lands that as it changes seasonally.

Um I'm not describing it terribly intelligently, but very powerful the regenerative agriculture and the wildlands programs you're talking about also.

So the only other thing I would say is the more we can kind of put the pressure on shifting our transportation systems away from individual cars.

I mean, EVs are great, and yes, we built a system that is kind of designed for individual driving, but that doesn't mean we can't continue to shift away from it and produce a public transportation system that actually helps and benefits people uh rather than being sort of ignored by most people.

Every day I wake up which we have it in Japan.

Yeah, so we know the rest of the world has done it and it's uh you know, and there's so there's inklings here, people trying to talk about it, but we need to push that much further.

I'll just add one short piece to the the the comment of uh I think you are getting at like what is global, how can we make an impact globally by act doing some of the things that we're doing here in the Bay Area?

By city policies, right?

How can like so this the city of Berkeley uh a few years ago banned uh the use of bringing gas into new construction homes, right?

And that that meant that was not really a gas stove ban, it was a bas a ban against all gas appliances in the new construction.

And uh more and more cities piggybacked on to that in California, 10, 20, 30, 40 cities did that until a court said that the restaurant is the California Restaurant Association sued in one.

Um but my point there is that um cities, one city, Berkeley, of all places, right?

Of course, they they decided to do something pretty pretty crazy, right?

Like saying you can't put gas in a house, and that spawned more, you know, uh and it didn't succeed uh fully, but it does show that one city can sponsor that type of action, and that California is a leader, an environmental leader worldwide, and there are a lot of eyeballs watching us.

If we can succeed at some of these things, those can be, those are taken around the rest of the world.

Uh we banned, if you go to Home Depot, can anybody find a gas leaf blower anymore?

You know that a gas leaf blower is now illegal to sell as of a year and a half ago.

And whoever thought, like Amazon.com, you cannot click on gas leaf blower and have it shipped to California.

So that's an interesting thing.

Gas water heaters in 2028 in the state, it's no longer allowed to be sold.

You cannot buy a gas water heater in the state.

These are very innovative policies at the local level that if they that will just we're gonna prove in California you can electrify everything and hopefully the world will come along.

We're gonna uh take a question over here, actually.

I've had always wondered uh with Amazon.com.

Speaking of that, um, you know, we live on a very short cul-de-sac, and every day there's a UPS truck, there's a FedEx truck, and there's three or four Amazon trucks that go by.

Fortunately, the Amazon ones are primarily now electric.

But has anyone studied, is that better than us individually going to the store.

Oh, yeah, that is a deep conversation.

We've done some articles in our newsletter on that, and it's been uh sort of lightly touched on.

It needs a little deeper research.

There's so many factors.

Um you'd think it's pretty efficient to have one truck delivering 50 or a hundred things instead of a hundred people driving to the store, but you have to factor in the whole supply chain um and the way that they package things, you know.

But there's a supply chain for the store that you drive to as well, and you have to think about the distance that you travel.

It's a very interesting question, so that wasn't much of an answer.

I don't know.

Do you have a better way?

That's not in my wheelhouse.

That's a I wonder about that too.

Well, also the their you know, diesel trucks versus gas and the weight of those trucks on our roads is also something.

I just I just wonder who studied this.

Oh, yeah, I think you'll find some answers, but I don't have them in my back pocket.

Um I have two issues.

One is I have concrete all around my house and it's badly cracking up after 50, 60 years there, and I don't want to have to replace it because concrete's one of the worst CO2.

The production of concrete is one of the worst.

But I have no idea how to fix it, and uh there you go.

The other issue is I'm getting older.

I'm almost 80, I've lost the sight in one eye, and they they want to really make me uh maybe not have a driver's license.

So I started trying to walk to the stores, and hey, I can't really do it very well.

Carrying those groceries home and just ordering Uber or something like that seems really ridiculous.

So it's really an issue, and there's a lot of seniors in my neighborhoods, and so you know, how are they gonna get their groceries?

Well, yeah, neighborhood design is a huge issue, and it more and more people are looking at all the factors in designing a neighborhood, including walkability.

Um but when you're already there, right?

It's not gonna suddenly get rebuilt tomorrow.

So you have a point.

Maybe you should get a little wagon to pull the groceries.

It's very hard.

Those things are very good, but uh that's only a good dressing.

Can you see that?

Oh, yeah.

No, it really is.

Uh you're absolutely right.

It is a problem.

We designed our neighborhoods for a certain kind of person getting around in a certain way, and you can't just suddenly drop a new solution in there.

Oh, everybody will just ride their e-bikes down the middle of the road.

Won't that be great?

No, it doesn't work that way.

Or on the sidewalk, which is even more dangerous, so yeah, I don't know.

That's a great question.

I have been um hearing about some ecological environmentally minded concrete alternatives.

Uh, but you know, I haven't seen any of them actually produced or there are some um some high-tech companies that designing uh low carbon concrete.

Are they really even in uh even here in the Bay Area?

They're putting them into the San Francisco airport as the test, but those have not, to your point, been scaled up, so they're not really you can't go to a home depot and buy it.

Do you want it for a driveway or just a big driveway and the patio and it's both really old in the crowd?

Because the patio could be other things, wood or even.

I might want to research the term permeable papers.

Permeable papers, all right.

Good good, right?

Yes, if it's installed correctly, you can have permeable hardscaping that you drive on.

And it recharges the groundwater uh as well as being the lower carbon.

And we've got a Pavers uh case study right in the front row here.

We're here to share with each other.

Thank you for offering that.

Uh I have a question about advocacy.

Um, because I'd like some kind of tools on how you respond to somebody that says climate change doesn't exist.

Um, because you can't give a half-hour slideshow to somebody, but you also can't just say, oh, you're wrong, it does.

Because that's not effective either.

So I was wondering if either of you had like an elevator speech to give someone in a minute.

Well, I think that's climate reality project.

Yeah, the climate reality project has done a lot.

Thank you for the question.

The question is like, what do you do again with a denier of the climate crisis?

And the the good news is uh as I there was a pie chart there that showed like 75% of Americans care about the climate crisis.

I think you you showed that slide, right?

That's a growing number compared to 15 or 20 years ago.

Uh so I think we're winning the communication uh overall worldwide, and the number of uh deniers is being reduced.

Uh and so uh I would I say like on the one hand you could just not engage with them, right?

If it's if it's not really productive, but if it's somebody who you respect and care about, uh, what we're taught at at the climate reality project is not really to focus on the facts, which they have heard about, but to focus on you and why you care.

Uh and you can say if somebody says, you know, I don't think that's working, so yeah, but you know, from what I've read about it concerns me.

I'm concerned because of the wildfire impacts and the smoke, and I'm I'm scared and of you know, all and so he can't deny that you're scared or worried.

That's a fact that you are, right?

So he this a person can deny what what are external facts, but they can't really deny what how you feel about it.

So talking more about how you feel and your reactions of what you want to do is more of a productive way to have a conversation about the climate crisis and and and maybe to try to see how they could see.

Oh, I I could see that this impacts you.

I'm sorry that that you you know you feel this way, and I can understand why you want to take action uh about that.

Maybe that's the best way to one of the ways to to engage on that topic.

I think that's great.

I wouldn't want to presume to add to the presenters, but you might want to do a search in Yale Climate Communication, but they got some big add-ons on that as well.

That was Yale kind of climate communication, they got a whole word of that.

Yeah.

Right, and they find terms like you don't want to say environmentalists, you don't want to talk about climate change, talk about I care about energy security, or I care about clean air uh stuff like that.

Yeah, we intentionally chose cleaner Contra Costa instead of climate or green in the title of our platform for that reason that it's a trigger.

Yeah, words matter, right?

It turns people off.

Yep.

Thank you both so much.

Um, I was wondering about two things that give you hope, even in this um sort of depressing political climate in terms of uh a move away from wind and solar at the national level, and so what gives you both hope, both locally and nationally.

Golly.

Well, I think nationally what I see is that those um uh programs or attempts, changes in in laws and policies are being resisted.

It's not like oh thank god we can finally be done with those stupid windmills.

It's like, wait, wait, what?

You're you know, and I don't just mean here in our little Bay Area bubble.

I'm I am seeing that there is sort of a sense that we had gotten somewhere and that this is a step backwards.

So that's uh encouraging.

Is it enough to actually turn it around, at least while our current administration's in office?

I don't know.

I wouldn't say absolutely not.

I think it's important to keep trying, but at least the fact that that is the reaction uh gives me hope just as where we've come to from.

And then locally, you know, we work with a lot of cities and the county government.

They're all trying hard now.

They've all got climate um uh action adaptation plans in place.

They've a lot of them have staff members that they've hired.

Uh it's unfortunate we got to this point with fires and collapsing glaciers to get their attention, but it has, and it's so it's percolating up from the uh local government level too, and that is encouraging to me.

And really just being here in a situation like this where uh you can share with your neighbors and feel some sense of connection and positivity, that's always good.

Yeah, and I was gonna say the same thing, like uh the march that we had in Walnut Creek on the No Kings Day.

I i it was really that was really for us, and not necessarily to for somebody else.

It was really to build us up and make us feel coming up Saturday, right?

There's another one.

Yeah, there you go.

So I I think that I really enjoyed participating in that simply because it made me feel better, uh, number one.

So emotionally, I think that was good, and then practically the cost of solar energy is worldwide so low.

So even no matter what, it's growing so fast that this is not about politics anymore.

And and even if the United States slows down, the rest of the world is going faster.

Uh, we're gonna be delayed in the US for a couple years, but it's it's definitely the technology is advancing, and four years from now, you know, it'll be back.

And if we look in the larger picture, uh, I think business solutions, the climate crisis is really encourages me.

A lot of people coming to my door telling me I can get solar for free.

Yeah, that's a model that some people are are touting.

I don't know if you can really get it for free.

That sounds a little too good, but but for um, if they own it and lease it back, you can lease it, uh you can lease it so you don't have to pay a big chunk of money up front, you could spend it over um months, monthly payments.

So, yeah.

We probably have time for one more question.

That's nasty question.

A comment.

A comment, we'll take a I belong to a group called Citizens Climate Lobby.

Yes, and we deal in policy.

We're doing that at the Marty Roach just won our award at the awards gala.

Well that's a 350, yeah, yeah.

So we're involved with citizen climate lobby too.

She was, yeah, quite a while before I got engaged and stuff.

Sorry, go ahead.

She's no longer, but yeah.

Anyway, um, so at the national level, also Sonya, our congressman that we go, we lobby in DC in um June, July time frame.

Um there's about four or eight hundred of us going to Senate offices as well as um legislation.

So we're also now getting involved at the state level, but um, some of the things that they talk to us about is when we're talking to others, talk like a human, right?

Um, and like you said, you know, make it personal and and understand where we're coming from.

There's also a group around there in San Francisco.

They've got various chapters called Braver Angels, and again, that's to help us be able to talk to folks in a respectful manner.

Um, and so there's lots of things that are going on just to re you know, just look around and you'll see a number of different groups trying to make things, and one thing more and more they're seeing is affordability.

You know, so they're seeing the climate.

We're we're we're we were you know, with Biden and other administrations, you know, the big things was security, um from a different depending on who you're talking about again, knowing your audience, right?

What strikes them, and also with um not only with that, but affordability is really now become the things that people are talking about at the state level.

We were trying, we just re-authorized cap and trade, which now the governor's calling cap and invest, and we were really using it from the affordability perspective, you know, so that we can use the funds that come out of cap and trade or cap and invest now to reduce our utility bills, right?

We're seeing things like that, so there's being a shift now that you'll be seeing too that the message is kind of changing again.

Again, we we want to accomplish something.

How we do that is about language, right?

However, we get there, it doesn't matter.

But um affordability is the new thing that we're using.

That's a great point.

Affordability is is what's huge.

And uh just another thing about so I mentioned Bill McKibben's three fifty.org original, but he has a new group called the third act.

Those of us who are in our sixties now, he has a point about this stage of life and what would it mean for you to be really active at that point and learn from each other and do these actions together.

So just Google uh third at Bill McKibben third act, and you'll see what's up there.

Well, I wanted to take a moment to thank you all for being here.

The reason you're here tonight is because I was inspired after listening to these climate leaders, and I hope that tonight has inspired you to go out and uh and and connect with your community and your friends too.

You can do so.

You can start by sharing this presentation, which will be on our website uh in a matter of days, um, www.wclibrary.

And a huge, huge thank you to Wei Tai and Tyler for being here tonight.

Thanks again, everybody.

There's my little sign up sheet here if you want to get more information.

And don't forget to pick up some of the uh materials on the table outside.

Thanks again, everybody, get home safe.

Ik ben het Tutti teeting Also, oil poor enforcer.

On December eleventh, nineteen forty-one, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany and Italy, declared war on the United States.

Until that time, the United States had maintained neutrality, although it had since March of that same year supplied the Allies with war materials through the Land Lease Act.

During the war, over sixteen million Americans served in the United States military.

Many American soldiers paid the ultimate sacrifice to ensure our country's freedom.

We were shipped over in September and became part of General Patton's Third Army.

We went into the Third Army at Nancy, was where we first saw combat.

That's southeast of Paris.

And thought through, I was in the artillery.

I didn't want the infantry, but I enlisted, I could pick out what I wanted.

And I wanted to be an ammunition truck driver because there was a little thrill involved there.

Because all it takes is the round into the load, and you make a big hole in the road.

So that was my duty was to keep the 105 howitzers supplied with ammunition.

There were 12 guns in our battalion.

Three batteries, three firing batteries, four guns.

And when we got to Metz, we thought we were going to spend the winter there because the information was that it was going to be a severe winter and the Germans wouldn't do anything.

We got there on the 14th of December into Metz.

And on the 16th, the Germans broke through on the uh so-called bulge, our dens as uh event, and General Patton ordered us to go north.

Just keep going north till you run into Germans.

We had no idea where we were going.

So the way they moved the division was straight uh his idea.

They leapfrogged the infantry, pick them up in the truck, run them up away, dump them out, go back and get the others and leapfrog them.

And of course, in the artillery, we were hauling our guns and I had a full load of ammo.

So when we got into uh Luxembourg first, the border of Luxembourg is where we met the Germans.

And then it was just misery until January the 20th, 25th when we left.

Because the temperature dropped so low.

We were in snow.

One night it dropped a 19 below zero, and we had kids freeze to death in their foxholes.

It was the night we got captured.

We hadn't had a warm meal for some time.

Bob and I were sitting in our ammo truck.

It was about 10 o'clock at night when Lieutenant Allen, the ammunition officer, came by with his weapons carrier, said, I want, he said, I want you guys to hop in the back.

I want to take you back to the battery for a hot meal.

So he went around and picked up all six of us.

Two to the truck.

And the three batteries.

And on the way, we were riding along with the back flap down.

And all of a sudden the truck stopped.

And the driver, Lieutenant Allen's driver spoke fluent German.

We could hear it speaking to some Germans in German answering.

And Lieutenant Allen lifted the flap and said, Boys, we've just been captured.

Now I don't want anyone, I don't want anyone being hurt.

Be very careful when you get out, hold your weapons with a gun, the barrel up, inject your clip and the cartridge in the chamber, and lay your guns down, put your hands up.

Don't try anything funny.

So when I threw that flap up and looked out and saw those Germans, it was about 1030 by this time.

And it was raining as usual in France.

But I could make out these ugly German helmets.

And there they were, seven of them with their guns pointing at us.

So we all followed the order except for Corvell, who pulled the trigger and fired around off and almost got us all shot.

The Germans, when they had us disarmed, turned the guns around and handed them to us, held them out to us, took their steel helmets off and threw them in the ditch, and one of them said, Comrad, haven't he cigarette?

And we were buddies right then.

I gave uh out cigarettes, I gave out what little candy I had in my pocket, and uh the we we were marching them along the road, followed by the weapons carrier, and Lieutenant Allen said, hell they're not gonna run away.

So one of one of the fellas could go with them to the PW compound, which was just half a mile up the road.

We all got back in the back of the weapons carrier, and we hadn't gone very far when the driver ran smack into the back of a to a six by loaded with German lands, and we got all tumbled up and I I was bleeding pretty severely from a cut on my chin and Bob my partner was cut from the gun site my gun site so we were offered the purple heart and both Bob and I turned it down because I wouldn't want to go through life saying I got a purple heart for a fender bender.

The Germans were coming through infiltrating dressed in American uniforms and driving American equipment.

So one night in particular I was back at the battery and I was told I had guard duty from midnight to four in the morning and to take Porky with me.

Porky was very unreliable I asked for the password and the first sergeant said heck I don't know what it is he said think of something that's a very smart thing to do.

So Porky and I were out on this very frozen dirt road the the fellows were in the barn and the officers were in the bar the farmhouse that was all that was there.

And we heard a jeep coming from the east where the Germans were Porky immediately said I'll cover you from the barn.

Well when he got the barn he couldn't even see me.

But he was frightened he just ran off when the jeep stopped and I leaned down to look under the the top I could see that the passenger was wearing an American uniform officer's uniform because he had bars on his shoulder they were gleaming.

And I knew right away he had to be a German because American officers don't wear bars in combat there was a man in there somebody in the back seat who had a blanket pulled up to his chin and I knew he had a gun on me I could feel it and the driver wouldn't even look at me just stared straight ahead I said well he doesn't speak English.

The passenger spoke excellent English I asked him for the password he said hell I don't know do you and I I didn't know it either so I asked him uh who won the World Series in 1940 and he said I don't follow baseball how would I know that so I asked him where he was from he said Oakland California I said well my God I'm from Berkeley right away I thought of a question where's the best place to get a hot dog in Oakland he said across from roller rink on Telegraph Avenue Caspers across from the Unity High or Oakland Tech rather on Broadway down by Lake Meridado on East 14th well I knew all those locations I said oh hell you're an American I knew he wasn't he said what did you think I was a kraut so I said okay you've got to go if I'd have tried to stop him I'd have been a dead man.

That guy in the backseat would have nailed me and off they would have gone and basically what they did was change roadsides around maybe blow up a little bridge here and there but that was about the most problem they cost us.

So I was glad to get rid of them.

Well when the uh the bulge ended in January about mid-January 24th or 25th we crossed the Rhine start chasing the Germans and it was just go every day because they were just falling back and they were surrendering by battalions companies individuals tell them keep walking we didn't have any way to handle them.

And we went up into Austria and from Austria to uh Czechoslovakia and on May the 9th the war ended and uh we met the the Soviet army in Czechlovakia we returned to upper Austria where we were supposed to prepare to go to the Pacific and President Truman dropped the bombs that ended the war and I voice said, Thank you, Harry.

Zigzagging around uh evading the submarines.

And one of our troops ships got sunk a mile ahead of us, and we never stopped to pick them up.

That was the rule.

The convoy had a go, you had to go.

I mean, uh two sailors on our ship fell overboard and never picked them up.

Just kept on going.

I thought it was kind of cruel, but uh that's the way that that's the way it goes.

But anyway, I landed in Lahar, France, and from there on we took a troop train.

I got to Repo Depot, and he said, Well, I'm sorry.

He said, There's not enough casualties in the Anna Tank where you took your training in or have to stick in the machine gunners.

But he said, Don't worry.

He said the average life up there is a minute and a half.

And that scared the living heck right out of me.

So I got to my uh Company H, 35th Infantry, in Reims, France, uh, right around Christmas time.

We had a Christmas dinner, and right after Christmas dinner, Patton gave the orders.

General Patton gave the orders.

Come on, get going.

We gotta go to Bass Stone.

Where the hell is Bass Stone?

I don't know.

But we found out.

We got to Bass Stone and dropped me off, me and another fella in a foxhole.

This is right out of basketball.

And uh we got in a foxhole, and this fellow started crying, and uh he was 29 years old, he had two kids, and uh said, What's wrong?

He said, Well, he said, I'm my feet are freezing, and and he said, I'm missing my home.

And I said, Mine are freezing too.

I said, uh, what should we do?

He said, I said, Well, you take off your shoes and I'll take out my shoes, or rub our feet all night long, keep them circulation.

So there was a lot of frozen feet up there, and uh I froze my feet that my bottom of my feet were white for 30 years.

Anyway, in Bass Tone, uh we uh set up our guns and so forth.

And it was snowing, it was about two feet of snow, and uh about 20 below zero is one of the coldest weathers that they had there.

The medics up there in Bass Town couldn't get to all the fellows that got killed because uh there was under fire, and there's too many got killed.

There's so many uh got killed there in Bass Stone.

I think the estimate was a hundred thousand Germans and eighty thousand Americans that killed in that one battle within the month.

The medics couldn't get to all the fellas and uh because the Germans would fire at the medics, and the medics uh had the white of a red cross and the white background on their helmets.

No guns whatsoever.

We stayed there for about two or three days, and then we moved up to a ditch along the road with with my gun, with our gun, and a rifleman right alongside of us, and we was to to guard that road.

Well, on a machine gun, you're on the guard two hours and off four.

It only takes one man on a machine gun.

And uh so when I was on the machine gun, the rifleman, we heard some noise, and rifleman said to me, he says, Hey, machine gunner, he said, don't open up fire until I do.

I said, Okay, I'll hold fire.

And all at once we heard some noises, and here come five bare back horses down the road to draw our fire.

So it was my turn to go off.

I went back to a shed about 500 feet, 500 yards back, and uh, where we slept for a couple hours, and all at once all hell broke loose.

There's bullets to start to go through.

This was in the shed 500 yards.

The bullets started going through, and sergeant said, Go on, retrieve the gun.

Help the fellow, you know.

It takes two fellows that carry the gun.

He said, Go up there and help them.

So I ran up there.

The riflemen were coming back.

He said, what the heck are you going up here for?

He said, the Germans are coming.

We're in retreat.

And the bullets were flying around.

I finally got up to the gun.

And when I was pulled a belt out of the gun, I saw three or four Germans take an aim.

I stuck the belt back in and we mowed them down.

And we ran back with the with the uh with the uh gun.

He had the tripod and I had the gun zigzagging.

Otherwise we got killed for sure.

After the war was over in Germany, but uh it ended in, you know, in August, I believe it was, and uh that's the only thing that saved our lives really was Truman dropping it.

The division went overseas October 6th from New York, arriving in Marseille, France on October 20th, uh 1944.

Um we finally got online November 1st, replacing the 45th, 45th Infantry Division.

Alright, I was an infantry scout, and the division in my regiment was outside of a place called Fortress Dubiche in Alsace Lorraine.

It was a city that hadn't been taken, was a fortified city, had not been taken in 200 years, and the division finally took it.

However, on the 2nd of January 1945, I and another fellow were sent out as perimeter guards on a uh 30-caliber machine gun, and uh we couldn't see down the the hill to the road, but uh we kept firing at people we thought we saw.

When they they finally knocked us out with concussion grenades, they being the Germans, and we were um taken down the bottom of the hill and uh frisked and then sent into the fortress.

One of the interesting things was I had in my field jack pocket uh a German rifle cleaning kit, and the idea was that if they found that on you, they'd have figured you had killed a German, and they would do something horrible to you.

So anyway, the uh the person that took the frisked me took the um uh cleaning kit out of my jacket, field jacket pocket, looked at it and looked at me and said, Deutsch.

I didn't answer.

He then tried to give it to a private on the side of the road, and he's the private said, nine nine, which meaning no no, and then he just threw it in the ditch, which I breathed a big sigh of relief.

Um I said, we were taken into the prison, and then over the next few days we were interrogated, but unfortunately the Germans for their part could not speak English that well, so they learned nothing from us.

They then marched us to a few villages, put us on 40 and eight cars, which were meant for 40 men or eight horses, and there were 65 men in the car, and transported us to a place called Ludwigsburg in southern Germany, where we were incarcerated.

I was I felt that I uh my life was saved by a Nisi soldier who was a medic with that 442nd regimental combat team and uh he examined me because he was the Germans were having him examine all the troops to see if they were able to walk from Ludwigsburg to Munich, which was quite a distance.

Um he told me I'd had to stay right there because I had pleurisy.

But the Germans took it to be TB and they kept me in a room with eight Frenchmen and one pole for the remainder of the war.

And thinking I had TB and their treatment was opened the windows wide, of course it was snow on the ground, the dead of winter, and did a lot of other things that I found out later were things that were done in U.S.

medicine years and years before.

We were finally liberated by the first French army, and then I was transported to a hospital in Paris and then flown home to Letterman hospital in San Francisco.

We were awakened early in the morning with a roar of thousands of aircraft painted with white stripes, the invasion stripes, to prevent the catastrophe that occurred at Sicily when naval gunners shot down our carriers with paratroopers.

And we knew that we were set to go into the invasion.

And we had the waterproof all of our weapons and trucks and so forth.

The invasion actually began on June 6th with the airborne operation and then the troops landing.

We were moved down into the Southampton residential areas and then eventually several days after that boarded a landing craft tank, LCTs, for transport over to France.

Well, I can tell you, going in, we uh we could see the bursts on the beach.

We were firing, we were under the fire of the USS Texas 60 inch guns going overhead.

We hit Omaha Beach and proceeded up the uh, we dropped our ramp and uh went into four feet of water.

The Jeep went completely under, but we were all waterproof, and then the beach was littered with the wounded which would go back to England on our LCT.

We proceeded up the uh exit off the beach and went into firing position, firing on St.

Lowe, which was a key city there.

Um after that we got into the hedgerow fighting, which is terrible.

The intelligence people had been informed that hedgerows were in France, but they discounted it because the hedgerows in England were just a few feet high.

We got in there and found 12 foot high, eight to twelve foot high, uh hedgerows, which had stymied the Romans when they came through there.

Each one was well defended.

The Germans and our guys had trouble getting through, and finally they developed a tank uh like a bulldozer that could take down some of those.

Um we drove the Germans out of there and then went into uh stalemate of the type until July 25th, when again thousands of bombers uh caused the big breakout, and that's when Patton's army uh came ashore and went uh operational August 1st.

That's when we broke out of Normandy and uh zipped around in our own Blitz Krig and headed towards Paris.

We're north of France, run out of gas, which had been transferred over to Patton for a quick strike into Germany.

Eventually we uh passed on the north side of France.

Patton was on the south side and entered Belgium on the 3rd September, and uh then proceeded, we were chasing the Boch, the Germans, and uh went on to Master Kallen, and then we got up to the border of Germany at Herline, Holland, and began firing into the 800-year-old beautiful city of Aachen, which was Charlemagne's throne and birthplace, and destroyed that with uh tremendous fighter.

It had no military value, it was a psychological victory for us because Hitler had said we would never uh take a town in Germany.

So after that, we proceeded from there to the Hurtgen Force, which was again not another military objective, but the higher ups felt that it should be taken, and it was a very bloody terrible battle, a meat grinder.

And from then that's when the Battle of the Bulge occurred.

A good quarter of a million men, thousands of tanks, and proceeded to with an assault against some weak divisions that were in there being refitted, and because they had been hurt in the Hurtkin Forest and poured into and made a bulge in the lines, which is where the name come from, came comes from.

From the Ardennes Forest, which is the Ardennes offensive, actually, the real name, and caused panic of all sites.

We had regiments that surrendered and uh it was a cold, cold, coldest winter in 40 years in Germany.

We had no protective clothing, we had people freezing.

I have frozen hands and feet at this point, and uh eventually by the February 3rd we had pushed them back uh out of uh the bulge and back into Germany.

We found the Germans to be well prepared, they had better tanks than we had, they had better equipment, they had winter clothing, and uh we were totally unprepared because the higher ups had felt the war would be over by Christmas of that year, and hadn't stockpiled cold weather clothing.

December 16th they poured out onto unsuspecting units and overran them, and uh it finally ended when we got superior forces in there about February 3rd.

Uh Bastone was cut off, we were surrounded.

That was the 101st Airborne, was in there with the 10th Armored Division, and uh took a tremendous beating, but and the weather was very overcast like what we have today, and the Air Force could not drop supplies or ammo or anything, but they held out, and finally, Christmas Day, the skies cleared, and the Air Force was able to drop supplies and ammo.

They eventually broke out and uh then the Germans began to retreat back into Germany behind the Siegfried line.

Interestingly enough, for France and Belgium and Holland, we were met by the liberated people holding out wine, throwing flowers, jubilant.

As we crossed into Germany, we saw white sheets hanging from windows, a very dour depressed people who were scared to look at us.

They'd been told that we raped and murdered and uh stay away from us.

So that's what we found a complete difference.

But rear Echelon, now they were fighting for their homeland, and the SS troopers committed massacres like Malmadi where they uh gunned down, uh surrendered field artillerymen in a field, and uh we got back at them for that.

But uh then as we pushed on, we began to break out onto the plains, and our tanks could start, and from there we began the big rush towards the Elba River, where we would then supposedly reach Berlin.

Uh, come across uh prisoner of war camps and concentration camps and liberated them.

Uh the POW camps were not so bad.

Uh they were, I guess, better fed other than the Poles and Russians, which the Germans hated, but the concentration camps were gaunt skeletons that we saw.

And without any instructions from higher up sort of to what we should do, we in our kindness wanted to feed them our high calorie caloric uh rations, our chocolate bars and our sea rations, and inadvertently killed a number of them who just couldn't stand that.

Now they have special rations for people that are in that condition.

So we uh overran those and then proceeded on getting lots of surrenders, which all we can do is send them to the rear, and we headed for the Elbe River, one of the big rivers, and we got units across.

We had second armored across, and the Germans tried to knock out the pontoon bridges by floating frogmen down and doing bombing, aerial bombing, and they we first saw the two six ME262 jet planes that came in, and uh uh I got across to see the Russians on the other side, but at that point, by agreement, we were to hold at the Roar, uh at the uh Elbe River and let the Russians take Berlin.

Eisenhower had been advised he would get have a hundred thousand casualties, and there was a whole political thing involved in the Russians taking Berlin.

Uh VE Day came along and they celebrated.

We did not.

We were emotionally and physically worn out, and we also knew we had to go to the Pacific.

We had already were already scheduled for it, but the Russians went a little wild on their side of the river, firing flares, weapons, um, according music we could hear, dancing, their war was basically over.

I joined the military seven days, uh before Hiroshima was lost.

I was in Fort Chairman, Illinois, and there while I was there, I saw thousands of German prisoners of war, and they were elated that the war would soon be over, and that they would go back to their lives.

I ended up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and took what amounted to a 17-week training program.

I went in as a 135-pound kid, and came out 17 weeks later weighing 170 pounds, and I was really uh powerhouse physically because it was very tough.

Ironically, I was trained to be a heavy machine gunner and part of a four-man crew of 81 millimeter mortars, heavy weapons they called it.

Also, I learned everything that they could teach me about fighting in the jungles, identifying Japanese airplanes, even learning 50 or so idioms in Japan because when I went into training, we were still at war with Japan, and the troops now, many of the troops, hundreds of thousands, were being assembled for the invasion of Japan.

Ironically, I ended up in Europe in December of 1945.

When I arrived in Germany, in 1945, the end of the year, 1945, I saw total devastation.

Cities had just been raised completely.

There were tens of millions of displaced people.

These people were not only displaced, they had no idea where to go, where their homes were, where their families were.

The concentration camps, the horrendous concentration camps had been emptied.

And there were actually hundreds, maybe over a thousand displaced persons' camps that were trying to get people back into a more normal life.

And I saw these people and wondered how I got there and what could I do to make their life better.

And only as an eighteen-year-old kid at the time, I realized that this time and place in my life was significant.

I ended up joining the Fifth Infantry Regiment in a little village called Ebelsburg, Austria, that's right outside of Linz.

And the second day I was there, I was in formation, and I saw this corporal staggering.

It looked as if he were drunk.

And the first sergeant walked over to him, put his arm around him, and gently moved him away from the formation, and he went into the building.

His eyes were piercing, his hands were trembling, and he was walking with the help of the sergeant back to the building.

And later on that afternoon, I went to the sergeant and I said, That corporal.

What's wrong with him?

And he said, Oh, Corporal Shields.

He was in the advance group of the Forty Second Rainbow Division that liberated the cow.

And when he saw the survivors, and he smelled the horrible, horrible death camp at the gas ovens.

He jumped on a tank that had a fifty caliber machine gun mounted.

He saw six German prisoners of war.

And he killed them all.

He killed the six men, screaming, yelling, and raged.

Almost insane.

I will never forget Corporal Shees' face.

It was a mask of death.

Walnut Creek salutes all who have served our great nation.

You will not be forgotten.

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