Good afternoon.

I'm Kevin Wilk, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, and welcome to the Tuesday, December 16th, 2025 special meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council.

This special meeting is called for the purpose of interviewing commission candidates and potential action on appointment and holding a closed session related to the following conference with legal council anticipated litigation and conference with legal counsel existing litigation.

Under California law, public comments at special meetings are limited to subjects on the agenda only.

Therefore, public comments will be received at this time for the items previously mentioned.

After an opportunity for public comment, the city council will conduct the commission interview and hold closed session.

Commission interviews will not be video recorded, but can be viewed in person.

And at this time, we'd like to open public communications.

Yes, for the items on closed session.

And would you please state your name for the record?

I'm sorry.

I'm Scott Rafferty.

And you know, it's it's been a long time coming.

Uh Tom Bud, I think it's been six years since he said he was going to sue Walnut Creek, and I explained he had to move here and change his genetics, but that seemed to have uh put that off.

Uh, I mean, I think I've said this to some of you privately.

Uh we live in the most integrated part of uh probably the state of California between Martinez and here.

Uh there is a little more disparity than there used to be uh in the Latino population, and between their precincts that are 3%, and there's some that are 11%.

Uh so it's it's possible that there might be a claim.

But this one is based on 30-year-old data, 30-year-old uh ballot questions, uh, and uh I I it breaks my heart because I think it creates a lot of cynicism.

Uh, and uh, so frankly though, keep in mind there are alternatives, there's possibly uh you know ranked choice voting.

Uh and districts, most cities Walnut Creek size across the country are in districts.

Uh, it's a little bit different here in California, but not much.

So it's not it's not a complete uh disaster.

Uh you know, I I know where you live, obviously all of you do.

I'm not gonna talk about that right now.

Uh you can decide whether it would be in the city's interest to be more representative.

That was a big issue in Martinez, and it has nothing to do with race, it's just in that case, uh so I think it's an abuse of the law.

I'm unhappy about it.

I'm sorry.

Uh, and I I will help you in any way I can.

I'll do whatever analysis you'd like.

Uh and uh I can I did mention I think privately to your attorney, there's I think you should let the public speak on who the demographer's gonna be.

And uh there's a couple that are not, would be controversial.

Thank you, Mr.

Rafferty.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

Right.

Uh I don't see anybody else here for public comments.

So we're going to close public communications and we will now move upstairs to interview commission candidates and action appointments.

I'm Kevin Wilk, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, and welcome to the regular meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consistent with section 9.5 of the City Council handbook, 30 minutes will be initially allocated for public communications for items not on the agenda.

Additional time for public communications for items not on the agenda will be provided at the end of the open session portion of the meeting if necessary.

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

Wait your turn, and then when you approach the lector, please state your name and city of residence for the record.

You will have two minutes to address the city council.

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

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

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

All remarks should be addressed to the city council.

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

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

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

Well, alright, that was the first time I saw that too.

Alright, I'm ready for my close-up, Mr.

DeMille.

Good evening.

I'm Kevin Wilk, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, and welcome to the Tuesday, December 16th regular meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council.

And if you would all please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

One nation under God.

And City Clerk Susie Martinez, would you please call roll?

Councilmember Darling.

I'm here.

Councilmember DeVini.

Here.

Councilmember Silva?

Here.

Mayor Protem Francois.

Here.

Mayor Well.

Here.

All right.

The first item on the agenda is a presentation by John Muir Health.

And unfortunately, Kaiser Permanente is unable to join us this evening.

But if Sharon Jenkins and Paul Deringer with John Muir Health, please join us at the lectern.

All right, thank you, Mayor Wilk.

And uh other council members for having us.

Yes, I'm not with Kaiser, so I am Paul Derringer, Chief Strategy Officer with John Muir.

We're gonna talk a little bit about some of the challenges that the health system is facing, but also grounding that a little bit in what's going on with us, who we serve, and who we are, and a little bit about current events.

So really important to ground John Muir is who we are is not-for-profit, locally governed, community-based.

All of that is really important when we talk about the kinds of challenges we're facing and why we're responding to them the way we are.

Provider of exceptional care close to home.

This is particularly important.

I know many of you live in Walnut Creek.

I live around the corner from the Walnut Creek Medical Center.

My kids were born there, and I live in the flight path of the traumacopter.

So we can see it every day, and it's a very personal mission both for us and our families.

An essential service provider to everybody, including Medical, and we'll talk a little bit about why that's important when it comes to some of the HR1 cuts that are pending.

An economic and community anchor, particularly as we think about the role as not just a provider of care but also an employer and a provider of community benefit.

And the challenges we're talking about are not just about John Muir.

This is really about the entire community.

And so we'll talk more about how that plays out across not just the hospital and the health system, but also our community partners and private businesses and employers.

So this is a busy slide, but basically, we've been in Walnut Creek specifically about 60 years.

At 65, the Walnut Creek Hospital opened, and you can see from the 65 photo to the 2025 photo how it's changed over the years.

We've continued to invest in expansion of facilities and services.

Most recently, if you've driven past the Walnut Creek Hospital, you'll see the UCSF, John Muir Health, Gene, and Ken Hoffman Cancer Center.

This is important for a few reasons.

One of which is it allows us to bring really cutting edge cancer care into the community.

It also is about a 280 million dollar construction project.

Half of that was financed through philanthropy.

And so it's a really great for us testament to community faith and support in the system.

So as of 25, we are the only independent not-for-profit community-based and locally governed health system in Contra Costa County.

The award slide, the reason this matters, when we talk about higher levels of care close to home, you don't have to go over the bridge or down the peninsula to get really excellent care.

We have centers of excellence in a number of really wonderful programs spanning from maternity, orthopedics, gastroenterology, and we have magnet recognition and nursing excellence at both of our hospitals most recently for the fourth time at our Concord Medical Center.

This is important because when you have families and patients who are able to get care where they live, it really reduces travel time, it reduces expense, and for us, it's how we continue to invest in the community and the programs we make available to our patients.

I mentioned earlier the Bering Pavilion.

It is a beautiful space.

And again, people can get basically everything except transplants, we do in the cancer center and adjacent.

So we talk about a central service provider.

What does this really mean?

We serve everybody, no matter what your ability is to pay or what kind of insurance you have.

One in four Contra Costa residents are served by the health system.

So again, this is very personal for us in terms of who we serve and how we do it.

About 340,000 lives served in 2025, including 55,000 Medi-Cal patients, over 1,200 physicians affiliated with the health system, and we are about to celebrate the 40th anniversary serving as the county's only trauma center, so level two trauma center here in Walnut Creek.

About 20% of our business is Medi-Cal, and we are the largest provider of medical hospital services in the county, including the county.

And about 90% of our community benefit is attributable to unpaid costs of Medi-Cal.

So it's going to be about 200 million this year.

So we lose about 600 million a year on government payers, Medicare and Medi-Cal, and about a third of that is Medical.

And 10% of the state's child acute psych beds are located at the health system.

So there are a number of very unique assets within the health system, and this is one the need always outstrips the available supply, but it's something that we're proud of, and we're continuing to commit to providing the community.

So we are keeping on keeping on, even though we do continue to see chronic underfunding of Medicare and Medical.

All of this is happening before we even get to talking about HR one.

And that's part of why this is important because this the current state is really important to understand how the health system works and what we do and how we do it to understand how big of an impact we're talking about.

We talk about an economic and community anchor.

We're people business.

So we are by and for our people, and there are a number of ways that we invest in our people both inside and outside the organization.

We're the second largest private employer in the county.

So again, we talk about things that impact business in the county.

That is also us.

We are our patients.

We are also a huge source of economic support.

We are now, as of this year, in the top quartile for employee engagement, and our average employee stays over 10 years, which is a great testament in our view about their commitment to and connection with the organization.

We trained over 1,400 health professionals in 24.

So this is not just about the caregivers of today, but also how are we training the caregivers of tomorrow?

And that starts to tie into our community benefit, and really looking at we have over 200 million in community benefits spent last year, and about 35 community not for profit community benefit partners.

This is uh, and what there's another slide we'll show kind of who some of those people are.

But for us, there are a number of services that are critical to have in the community.

We are not necessarily best positioned to do it ourselves, so we try to select really high quality partners who can help us ensure that those services are available to our patients and families.

About 20,000 people last year who were reached through our community benefit.

So some of the partners, this is not a complete list, but when we talk about those community partners, there are so many things beyond the direct provision of medical care that affect health, and one of our commitments as a health system is ensuring whether it's you know housing security, food insecurity, you know, uh job training and others, that we're addressing those holistically in the community.

All right, so let's talk a little bit about some of these challenges.

That's just kind of level setting on where we are as a health system.

There are a number of things that are converging right now.

This is not unique to John Muir, although there are some unique local impacts.

Uh, seismic safety mandates, it's about a $2 billion with the B.

Cost of coming up to compliance with the 2030 seismic requirements.

That is on top of over a billion that we've already invested in our campuses.

This is relevant because as we look at where is that money going to come from, we are already seeing chronic underfunding for Medicare and Medical.

This is before any further cuts to the safety net.

HR1.

If all of those cuts stick, we'll talk more specifics in a minute, would put a very significant pressure on our revenue and our ability to continue to provide community benefit.

And also when we talk about affordability, it's something that is on everybody's mind.

It matters to everybody, ourselves included, and so we've continued and will continue to take steps to do what we can to make health care as affordable as possible.

Uh HR1 is making that increasingly difficult.

All right, so when we talk about HR one, this is the question we get how bad is it really?

Well, the answer is it's really bad for everyone, including health care.

But this isn't really about health care.

Uh, the economic consequences are really gutting the safety net both on food and health care.

That ends up having some consequences both inside health care and beyond.

We'll have reduced medical enrollment if the county's estimates hold, it's up to a third of our current medical enrollees could be off the rolls.

That means that when they seek care, they will defer that care, and when they come in, they will probably come in through the emergency room, and then we will see rising levels of uninsured and bad debt accruing to hospitals.

Direct and indirect revenue constraints, this comes in the form of both rate cuts, but also when we look at our ability to access other forms of funding through federal programs, those get increasingly strained.

We will see rising number of uninsured patients, longer wait times in the ER, higher volumes.

We're already on track to see about 140,000 visits at our two emergency rooms across Walnut Creek and Concord, they are highly efficient and they are packed.

And then because people are going to be deferring care, when they come in, they will be sicker, they will stay longer as that happens, that strains bed capacity because you can only bring a patient in if you can get a patient out.

And so when we think about what is the impact on us, if everything sticks, we'll lose about 300 million in revenue, and working families here in Contractor to see their premiums go up 15% or more.

This is on top of five years of 30% increases in labor.

We talked about the $2 billion in seismic.

So, in terms of what is the impact, if HR1 really goes through all the way, is going to force some very difficult choices for Jamir, Kaiser, Sutter, everybody in the community about services, facilities, jobs, community benefit support, and access ultimately.

So I was told I had to bring some optimism to this particular conversation.

There is good news.

The good news is we're coming from a position of real strength.

We do have money in the bank.

We are continuing to improve our operating cash flow as a business, and that has gone uh up year over year, and we're approaching sustainability, which is where our goal in the next two to three years.

Uh we have really excellent people, both on the employee and our physician side who are super committed to making sure the community has the care that it deserves.

And while there are a whole host of things that we cannot control, the things that we are focused on right now are the things we can control.

So we have a really deep commitment to continuous performance improvement, continuing to make sure we have access, that our service to our patients is as good as it can be, and that we pull as much waste out of the system as possible so it's at a price they can afford.

And that is really where we have our teams focused daily.

There are a lot of other things that our frontline workers uh need to be concerned with, and we are trying to make sure that they have clarity of what we need from them every day.

So access, service, and efficiency is really where we have the most focused.

Um, and we are committed to staying here and serving the community to fulfill our mission.

Unlike other for-profit hospital systems, we don't get to leave.

Uh, we are committed to staying here.

Our doors are open 24-7, 365.

And so we are committed to serving the entire community.

It is getting more difficult every day.

Um, but I will say there there are rays of hope.

We have really great people coming into the organization, doing outstanding work uh caring for people in our hospitals, in our clinics, and we're committed to remaining uh in the community to do that.

So we can go into in the interest of time.

I want to make sure I was to keep this relatively brief, but happy to entertain any questions uh from any of the council members.

Um, but just remember when you think about John Muir, this is the most important stuff to remember.

Locally governed and community-based, it is a huge part of who we are and what we do, higher levels of care closer to home.

We serve everybody.

Economic and community anchor, and the challenges that we're facing are not just about us, it really is about the entire community.

Thank you.

I think I appreciate the update.

Obviously, uh these are concerning, and I think uh we're just one area, one city and one county, but I'm sure that there's hospitals across the country that are dealing with a lot of these same issues.

Um don't get sick.

Um do we have any questions?

Yes.

I just had I had two actually.

Um your estimate of how much the premiums are going to increase on workers, is that direct cost to them?

Because the other thing I have heard when we've discussed this at the Chamber of Commerce is that as hospitals struggle to in the face of the medical reductions, they are that is going to end up showing up as premium increases to employers.

Is that 15% include that?

That's that's the premium increase.

Okay, so that's the premium increase that that will go to employers and then employers have to pass on to their correct, and that is assuming just the immediate impact of the HR one cuts that does not account for if progressively over time we continue to see shortfalls on government payers, which is about three quarters of our business.

It will naturally put pressure on the remaining 25%.

And then I know it's probably not a big issue for John Muir here, but we hear discussions about community hospitals that are out in the more rural areas being unsustainable with the kind of um costs that are going to come out of this.

Um have you looked at what that might mean for additional folks being lifelite or are coming here?

No, it's a great question.

For most of the services that we provide, it would be less of an impact for kind of more distant facilities to close, but we've seen the impact of what facility closures do to emergency departments with doctors closing.

So we know that whenever a local hospital closes, it puts immense structural pressure on the people who remain.

And it's one of the reasons why when we talk about how this affects everybody, this is an ecosystem.

You know, we we do share patients across our facilities, but we do keep an eye on it.

I think about half of California hospitals today are not going to be able to meet seismic, and that's before anything else happens.

Has the legislature I know Sutter is having to really go through and rebuild some of their hospitals in the East Bay.

Has there been any discussion in the legislature about those seismic standards and extensions or we had all but the most important vote agreed to an extension uh last year, and so I think that there are some ongoing conversations, and we remain hopeful, especially in light of some of what's happening right now, that we will see some form of an extension, but until we see it, uh we have to plan for 2030.

Yeah, and and we all want our hospitals to be seismically safe, of course.

It's a matter of getting there without everybody going bankrupt.

So thank you.

And thank you guys for everything you do.

You had my children there, and my daughter did get the LKL or pulled out of her leg in your emergency room.

We appreciated that.

I think we've all spent time there for one reason or another.

Um Councilmember DeVinnie.

Yeah, I just I just wanted to say yeah, thank you for coming here tonight.

Um I know I'm personally vested in the hospital, but um I just I think it's such a um a resource for our community.

I mean it's a it's a top-notch hospital.

Um, it's a great organization.

And when we think about the things that really make Walnut Creek great, it's not just our you know, downtown and open space, all these things like having that, having John Muir here in Wanna Creek is one of the things that really makes us a great city.

So, you know, thank you for what you're doing.

Thank you.

Agreed, really appreciate that.

Thank you for the presentation.

All you pickleballers, don't break bones, don't tear ligaments.

And uh we are f while Kaiser's not here, we are fortunate to have two hospitals in our city.

So Mr.

Derriger, thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, next on the agenda is the consent calendar.

Does any council member wish to pull any item for discussion?

Yes.

Which one?

Three.

We have sixteen items on the consent calendar, and I wanted to pull three.

Item E, item H, and item N, as in Nancy.

Okay, any more?

Item O.

Item O.

Okay.

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

Does any member of the public wish to comment on an item on the consent calendar?

As a reminder, each speaker will have two minutes to make their remarks, written comments submitted have been posted to the city's website for public review and are included in the meeting record, but will not separately be read into the record.

Again, this is only for items on the consent calendar.

And uh Jan Warren.

Good evening, Jan Warren from the woodlands.

Um yeah, a lot of items.

So I want to focus just a minute here on the uh storm drain fees.

And um I know that I just read that we are doing some some good stuff again planning too.

But uh when it says that um let's see, fee based on private development estimate 15 years still fully funded, no other funds available.

So this is still funded.

Do we actually have funding?

It was I was confused as to whether sounded like maybe we didn't have funding.

And I just wanted a clarity on that.

Uh in terms of in lieu park fees, um I just want to talk about trees, of course.

I assume that the trees are buried somewhere in the in Lou uh park fee.

And uh shout outs to uh uh group who has uh redone the the ignatio valley nicely uh on the landscaping, but I was curious about that.

Um and I just wanted to highlight for the record since there's so much in here tonight, the um and we're always uh some some folks are comp like to complain about parking.

Um, so just a reminder uh on the traffic impact um fees and how much one parking place costs.

And uh let me see if I can read my writing here.

Fifty-three thousand six hundred and eighty-three dollars in 2024.

So um walk, bike, whatever.

Um appreciate all the maneuvering on the on the I had uh problems talking to my meter tonight.

It didn't want either of my cards.

I had to put it in a lot, but I was m did manage to do that.

So I just want to wish y'all all a wonderful new year and appreciate all the work you all have done all year long.

Thank you.

Thank you, thank you, Jen.

That's not mine, but I'll put pick it up.

I'll probably knock it off.

Do we have any more public comments on items on the consent calendar?

Okay, seeing no more speakers, I'll ask the council if anyone would like to make a motion with regard to the consent calendar for items to A through D, F and G, I, J through M.

Did not make this easy, and I think that's it.

So moved.

Second.

We have a motion to second.

Susie, could you call a roll, please?

Mayor Mayor Pro Tem Francois.

Hi.

Hi, Councilmember DeVini.

Hi.

Councilmember Silva.

Aye.

And Mayor Well.

I'm curious.

All right.

Let's start with item two E.

Thank you very much, Mayor.

And before I start, just a quick question.

The member of the public asked us some questions.

Perhaps we can get those addressed during at the end of this.

The end of the consent calendar comments.

That would be great.

Thank you.

Um item two E is the approval of the curb management plan, which I think is very thorough, but I had a three comments.

Is there a member of okay?

I'll just make that.

So we saw this as a study session item on September 2nd, and we didn't have an opportunity to see the full plan.

We saw summaries of the plan, and there were three items that I would like to make a recommendation on.

Um one of the goals is to promote the availability of the garages in lieu of parking on the street.

And uh one of the comments that we had that night was also that we could market the availability of the garages better, and I think that should be integrated into the narrative.

The second is um recommendations nine and ten.

This was about e-bikes, e-bike availability, micro micro mobility, and if it's possible, we had mentioned that night when we were talking about it that they're the desire to improve the availability of micromobility devices also is juxtaposed against the usage concerns that we have.

And maybe we can put a footnote on the plan so we don't sound tone deaf that we don't recognize that.

And I know it this is just a point in time, but somehow say that we are you know, at the at the point the plan was adopted, we are working hard to address the issues of usage and you know ensure the safety of writers and and users, etc.

And my last comment is about the recommendation 15, which is about events and the um encouraging more events as we move forward, downtown events.

And I think it's important to recognize that those events are done in partnership with organizations like Walnut Creek downtown and the farmers market.

Otherwise, if we don't acknowledge that in the narrative, even if with a few words, there will be an assumption by those who read the plan that the city is assuming that they would be doing sponsoring and organizing those events.

So there's just a few suggestions.

I also had a question about item E.

Um, no, during those discussions we were um looking at utilization of the purple spaces and the sort of most perimeter areas.

I know that, for example, in the side street by um Lake Dorito Brothers and where the Saw place used to be that I see meters there that are now purple.

I think they were recently installed and they are rarely used.

And we talked about offloading a little bit of the demand inside of the parking lots by opening up perhaps more um monthly parking passes to be used in some of these underutilized areas of parking meters.

Where where did we end in that?

Um yeah, so uh good evening.

My name is Brianna Byrne.

I'm with the city's traffic engineering group.

So the recommendation to essentially open up those spaces.

It's it's held within re-imagining employee parking.

I'd have to look up the exact recommendation number, but we because this is a planning document, we didn't want to say do this, do this, do this.

So it would be housed within there.

There's a couple other practices that neighboring agencies do that we would also look into is just what best fits Mulnut Creek and those those situations.

Still working on those specifics, but the document covers that area.

Yeah, it would be yes, it'd be something we looked at when we dive deeper into that recommendation.

Okay, thank you.

I think it says reevaluate the city's monthly parking program.

It's a pretty broad statement.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, no, though the narrative's a little longer.

Yeah, and for the were you was your question answered as well or I guess I'm turning to my colleagues and saying if I make a motion to approve the plan with the recommendations to the ne the minor recommendations to the narrative, would I get a second?

I think you will.

I move that we adopt the curb management plan as presented with the three recommendations, minor recommendations to the narrative.

I'll second.

You paused.

Yeah, Susie, could we have a roll call, please?

Councilmember Silva.

Hi.

Mayor Well.

Hi.

Councilmember Darling.

Hi.

Councilmember Davin.

Hi.

Mayor Pro Tem Franco.

Hi.

Motion carries.

Okay.

Next we have 2H.

Thank you very much.

This is an item about extending the 2019 engineering and traffic survey and retaining existing speed limits on various streets for an additional two years.

Our resident traffic engineering expert.

Good evening.

So for those that don't understand what this really is, can you explain under what state how we set speed limits on streets and what this is really what we're really doing here and would it, does it enable speed limits to be reduced or increased?

What generally happens?

Good evening, Matt Redmond, City Traffic Engineer.

And this item here is uh allowing our speed limit signs to be enforceable by radar with this extension of the engineering traffic surveys from five years to seven years.

So we're just extending it by two years, keeping the speed limits the same.

And so if we go back in two years and what would trigger a change in the speed.

Um and then they basically just need to be reevaluated every five to seven years.

And what are you evaluating for?

So you are collecting um radar speeds of vehicles as they go by.

You collect about a hundred and you determine uh how many are uh going or about eighty-five percent of them what's their speed is and that's generally what the posted speed limit would be.

So if 85% of the traffic that you survey on the South Broadway extension is going, I'll be extreme 60 miles an hour.

Okay, sometimes it feels like that.

What then do we have to do?

Uh so if that's the case, generally we have some rules, some additional tools.

We can bring that down maybe to 55 or 50 if it is 60 on Broadway.

But we can't put it at 25.

It would not be enforceable by radar from our and from our engineering traffic.

So this is state law.

Yeah, it's under the California Vehicle Code.

I always heard that this is really to prevent communities from creating speed traps by having lower speeds that are really not what's happening on the street.

Yeah, we definitely want uh enforceable speed limits so that you know our teams can actually enforce it.

Yeah, give a ticket.

That's that's held up in court.

Okay, thank you.

Oh, yes, another question.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Matt.

Um, I didn't pour through the entire report, but I did search for kind of my street or some other local streets and notice that they weren't referenced.

What what's the general rule of thumb in terms of local neighborhood streets and the speed speed limit?

Yeah, so for certain segments of streets like those residential streets, um, they uh can be classified as prima fasci, which essentially allows them to be posted at 25, and they don't need uh engineering traffic survey to be posted at that, and they're still enforceable.

Okay, thank you.

Do you have a motion?

Move to adopt the resolution extending the 2019 engineering and traffic survey and retaining existing speed limits on various streets within the city for an additional two years.

We have motion to second.

Susie, call the roll, please.

Councilmember Silva.

Hi, Councilmember Darling.

Hi.

Council Member Davini.

Hi.

Mayor Pretent Francois.

Hi.

Mayor Welk.

Hi.

All right, next.

We have item two in.

Thank you.

This is um an item on which we're entering into a consulting services agreement with an engineering design firm for a property at Homestead and Walker Avenue for a stormwater detention vault project.

And I have a few questions about that project.

Okay.

So we've been working on this for a while.

I think even before I was on council, which is 20 years now.

So I think.

So could you explain what the problem is that's been happening at Walker Homestead and Walnut and what this solution is that we are moving forward with?

Okay.

Yes, my name's Alex Wong.

I'm the senior engineer with the capital improvement program.

Um so yes, um right now the uh stormwater runoff that originates from the Oakno Loop uh area is not fully captured by the existing storm drain system.

This results in the uncontrolled flows that just comes down Oakno Loop onto Walker Avenue and it pools onto the adjacent properties near the Walker Homestead area.

So we've um three series uh we've done preliminary engineering and we have completed these hydraulic models and developed to evaluate the different alternatives for correcting this filling problem and um due to utility conflicts uh stormwater retention and the controlled release of the stormwater was identified as the most cost-effective solution.

Um so this uh proposed design includes a stormwater retention basin that's gonna be placed at 900 uh homestead avenue, which is all runoff from the 10-year storm event that's in excess of the existing um stormwater system.

Um, so we bought the house at 900 walk homestead walker homestead at the corner.

And we're going to put a retention, a water retention system underneath the house, or are we going to remove the house and put it just underground?

Yes, it's a remove of the house and it's a big underground vault system that was.

So it's a big tank underground.

Yes.

And then what happens to the water over time?

So let's say we have a massive storm and it rains a lot for twelve hours, there's a lot of water, it goes into the retention basin.

How does it get out?

Yeah, it's uh there's a pump system that's gonna be installed inside the vault, and it'll meter the water out so there'll be enough capacity to for the water to uh be uh evacuated from the and basically what will it look like on the ground where the house was?

What is it likely to what is the neighborhood likely to see?

Yeah, so on top of the vault, uh we're looking at uh picking just a passive area where the maintenance vehicles can go in and service this vault and the pump, and then also um with that we're looking into landscaping this area into like uh green infrastructure to uh treat a runoff uh water, and then also uh looking at putting in sidewalk along the frontage of uh Walker and Homestead, so that creates a better uh pedestrian area.

And we're we're funding now is the design phase two, so the detailed design of the system and the land around it and how it would runoff.

Yes, that's what this uh this final design would put together the construction documents for.

And then what is it gonna take to do?

How long will it take once this design is ready?

Is twenty twenty-eight?

Yeah, we're looking at 2028.

Um there's still needs to be a lot of survey that needs to be done.

There's a lot of utility coordination, there's like a lot of power poles out there, so something that might need to be moved.

Um just some geotechnical studies that needs to be done for the vault, and um just still a lot more modeling and hydraulic modeling that needs to be done just to verify the design, everything's supposed to go the way it's supposed to go.

And we built something like this up at the top at the top of Tice Creek in Rossmore, did we not some years back?

Um, some similar.

Something similar.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Alex.

Any other questions on this item?

No, all right.

Like to make a motion.

Move to authorize the city manager to enter into a master consulting services agreement for engineering design services for the Homestead Avenue and Walker Avenue stormwater detention vault project in the amount of 1.1 million and authorize the transfer of remaining budget from one account to another account in the amount of just nearly 500,000.

So again, we have a motion to second, Susie.

Councilmember Silva, hi.

Councilmember Davin.

Hi.

Councilmember Darling.

Hi.

Mayor Pro Tem Francois.

Hi.

Mayor Welcome.

Hi.

Motion carries.

All right.

Next we have 2.0.

Yes.

Okay.

So I I pulled uh item O, which is our liaison and city council uh committee appointments.

And uh the reason I pulled it is because I haven't received I did not receive this year a uh an appointment as a liaison.

Um actually last year I didn't receive uh any functional um appointment as a liaison.

I was um I was appointed to sister cities, but uh council member Silva was already a a board member of that organization, so I served no functional purpose on that um as that liaison and therefore um saw no value in that position last year.

So um, you know, last year I also expressed interest in in uh attending some of these liaison appointments in the form of even a um just a member of the community um to observe and um learn and perhaps participate with public comment and what's going on in these different liaisons like our chamber of commerce or downtown association or Osmore, um Diablo Regional Arts Association.

Um I was told that at the time by the council that um my uh attendance at those events would be sort of infringing on the appointed liaison's position and therefore um you know would not be welcomed.

Uh I was uh asked to be patient and uh you know wait for the new year.

Um and so I have.

I've been I've been patient, uh worked I think in a collaborative manner with uh the council this past year, worked diligently, worked in good faith.

Um and now in my uh second year I've uh again received no uh liaison appointments.

So my um request in the name of fairness, you know, good faith and collaboration amongst the council.

I like to put forward the motion that um I replace council member Silva as the uh liaison to the Diablo Regional Arts Association, as she already she has two assignments, uh everyone else has one and I have zero.

Okay, so um as council member divinity mentioned, we do have five liaison appointments, and uh councilmember silva, you are listed as um currently as the uh DRAA representative for this next year.

I actually had it for this past year.

And uh Sister Cities, you are a board member for sister cities, is that correct?

Okay, so which is you're listed as ex officio then for uh this year.

And and and I understand the issue on here.

If somebody was a board member on any of these different committees, it becomes a little bit awkward to then have a liaison as well.

Um the council member divinity proposed a change.

Um, since it was specifically for DRAA, I guess we'll add is this something that you would support or not?

I think this motion is still on the okay, well, before we before we have you would not, okay.

Um we have a current draft listing on here.

Councilmember Davin made a motion.

Is there a second on the motion?

So I would like to expand just to touch then, um, especially when it comes to you know my request to participate last year, even as a member of the community, as um just an observer, and I was told that would infringe on their position, whoever was assigned there, and yet I was given an assignment with someone who was already on the board of that committee, so clearly it was sort of a double double standard.

And so I just don't understand how the council, in good faith, could for a second year assign the liaison appointments to everyone but me.

I can someone from the council please speak to that.

Can I make a point of reference?

I believe there are more assignments than just five.

These are the liaisons.

The liaisons to our um bodies within the city.

So right.

So there are a number of different groupings of appointments, and of course, as we've talked about in the past, you've got a couple of other appointments as well, but we're talking specifically about the liaison appointments that are within the city itself.

I would actually take it under advisement for the following year since this is now already part of what we have within the agenda.

That if any council member wants wishes to be on a board, whatever the board is, that that becomes uh by default their liaison appointment, because I can see the challenge that we would have here in conflicts moving forward if we had multiple board members on different on different boards, and then we have different liaison appointments for those different boards.

So I can see the challenge there.

While it doesn't sound like we have a second to make the ch the change for this year unless somebody has changed their mind, uh, this is something that will have to go under advisement for the following year.

And so the four of you are on the record as being okay with me having no assignments, you all having one, and Cindy and uh Councilmember Silva having two.

You know, I want I want to speak to it because I I think it's a it's a fair point that council member Davin raises that there should you know likely be five liaison appointments.

I know we call sister cities one, but it really isn't one, so uh, and I'm not quite sure how to solve that at this particular moment.

At times past, we had talked about breaking the chamber assignment between the chamber and the visitors bureau, so that there would be kind of five actual working liaison assignments that would impinge on council member darling's assignment.

But if you know that might be a way to I would be happy to um have you as represent us at one at uh visit walnut creek, I you make those, it is an interesting meeting, a lot going on with um human trafficking and other things that we're working with that community on.

If you I would be happy to um make a motion to appoint you as the liaison to uh visit walnut creek, and what if we also made council member DeVinny the alternate for chamber of commerce in case you were not able to be there for any of those meetings?

I'm always there.

Yeah, it could be my alternate for that.

Okay, um, I will be on vacation every now and then now that I'm not mayor.

I appreciate very much that accommodation.

And so uh, I'll make the second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second.

Thank you, Councilmember Darling.

Hi, Councilmember Davin.

I council member Silva, hi, Protem Francois, mayor welcome.

I motion carries.

Okay, and you'll get to do lots with the MCE, don't worry.

Uh all right, that brings us to the end of the consent calendar, although I do want to mention on item F.

I didn't pull this, but I did want to make a point of it.

It's extending the downtown permitted outdoor dining structures or pods incentive program.

So we have had that go through the end of December, uh December 31st, and it provides a grant for any of the restaurants that would like to be able to build these outdoor structures.

We see several of them happening around town.

I just saw one actually at is it La Cochina, is that the the Mexican restaurant next to Vanna was just building one?

They get a ten thousand dollar grant, and we have approved through the consent calendar for that to be extended through March 31st.

So that's approved.

And uh I see Kathy Eminway at the back for Walnut Creek downtown.

If you could let uh the the downtown district know they have another three months still, and as liaison to Walnut Creek downtown, I'll mention that at the next meeting as well.

And that brings us to the end of the consent calendar.

Which means we have public communications.

But all of you have been sitting anxiously waiting for for 50 minutes.

So next on the agenda is public communications.

This portion of the meetings reserved for comment on the items not on the agenda.

Under the Brown Act, the council cannot act on items raised during public communications, but may respond briefly to statements made or questions posed.

Request clarification or refer the item to staff.

Consistent with section 9.5 of the city council handbook.

30 minutes will be adequate allocated at this time for public communications for items not on the agenda.

Additional time for public communications for items not on the agenda will be provided at the end of the meeting if necessary.

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

At this time, I'll note the time is 650.

And we'll take public comments and items not on the agenda.

It'll approximate until about 7:20, and then the remainder of any such comments at the end of the open session portion of the meeting.

Before we get to this, I'd like to refer to our city attorney for a closed session, because I think that may actually relate to what some of the people will be talking about.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

And council, I'll you'll use this opportunity to make the report out of closed session, which would be coming up.

There were two items on closed session at the special meeting that the council held before this regular meeting.

There was no reportable action from closed session.

Um of the two matters in closed session related to the lawsuit filed related to the pickleball courts at Rudgear Park.

We wanted to advise the public that the city has filed uh what's referred to as a demur in that action.

There was a hearing on that recently.

That matter is under submission with the court right now.

So we're all awaiting a final ruling on that, and we will report that out to the council once we receive that.

Thank you, Mayor.

Mr.

City Attorney, I followed you on the demurbit.

Can you explain to the layperson what a demur is?

Sure.

A demur is a motion that a party can file in response to a lawsuit that asks the court, um, assuming all of the assertions in the complaint, the court has to assume them all to be true.

Um the court is then asked whether or not it can make a decision on the status of the case and potentially either dismiss the case or allow it to go further on to trial.

Okay, so now is the time to talk.

So uh if you could if you haven't filled out a speaker card, please do so if you attend to talk.

You'll have two minutes.

Please line up to the left here against the window.

Provide the speaker card to the city clerk.

And I know there's a lot of people here, and anybody that can do math has just figured out that if you have two minutes, we can only get to 15 speakers within the the first half hour.

So you don't have to take your full two minutes.

You can get your point across within 15 30 seconds or a minute, and we can get more speakers in there.

Otherwise, you'll have to wait till the end of the meeting.

Let's start.

Uh please step up.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Appreciate the opportunity to speak.

My name's Eric Eglund, uh born Walnut Creek and uh and have four kids here.

Just asking the the council as soon as legally possible to restore the park hours uh to pickleball to what it is for normal park.

We feel like the restrictions were implemented in in a kind of arbitrary way, and that's caused thousands of students and working people to be denied the ability to use the parks.

That's funded by all of us and controlled by you.

I have four children educated at Walnut Creek Public Schools, and pickleball is officially taught as a PE sport at middle school and high school in Walnut Creek, yet we're denying students the ability to play that same sport after school during the week.

So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, you cannot play after 1 p.m.

So people with regular sort of day shift jobs and students cannot play after school.

So I think you know, this has been happening for years.

It feels unfair to those people, including myself, and I just came from the court that I drove 20 minutes uh to get to, uh, not because it would seem more authentic, but just because I love the sport.

I grew up playing tennis on those very same courts and uh in in Rudgear and am grateful for Walnut Creek Park.

So as a bigger message, thank you to the council for how well you manage our city's amazing resources, including our park.

So the ask is uh to you know rectify this by restoring those pickleball hours as soon as possible.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hi, I'm Rohan Roy.

Um back home for the holidays.

I'm in college right now.

Um, same deal with Mr.

Eglin.

Really think the eight to one four days of week is pretty ridiculous.

Uh, my parents work very hard, and a big part of their lives now that I'm out of the house is pickleball, and I think it's really unfair for Howard they work to have to drive so far to use the courts.

Um, back home with some friends.

We also like to play and have busy schedules, and I think those limited hours really hinder our ability to have a good time back home.

So yeah.

Thank you, Ms.

Roy.

Next speaker.

Hello, I'm Derek Haney, uh Walnut Creek resident living about a hundred yards from the Rudgear Park pickleball courts.

I am here to uh in support of restoring the court hours, and I would like to thank the city for helping me.

I'm very fortunate as this year I was able to quit my job in tech and pursue a career uh coaching and playing pickleball.

I was able to do this because of the Rudgear Park pickleball courts.

That is not an exaggeration.

Without these courts being so close to my house, I would not have discovered the game.

I would not have been able to play it so frequently that I would get actually good at it, and I would not have found the passion to go and teach other people in playing this game.

I discovered this game while teaching my son who's in the back here uh tennis.

We kept walking by the pickleball courts, going to the empty tennis courts on the other side of the court uh of the park, and seeing all these people, you know, laughing, having a good time and playing pickleball.

So we decided to get a few paddles and play pickleball.

So instead of coaching my son Tuesdays at about 4 p.m.

uh after school in tennis, I started coaching him at Tuesdays after school at 4 p.m.

in pickleball.

Unfortunately, now the park is closed on Tuesdays at 4 p.m.

And every weekday except for Fridays, my son cannot play pickleball after school.

We've had to move the lessons to the weekend, which works sometimes, but we have uh, you know, sports activities, birthday parties, trips, and so forth.

And so his lessons have become few and far between.

Restoring the court hours would mean a lot to me and my family.

We love the park and we love seeing pickleball in the neighborhood.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You may be the envy of maybe most of the room here.

Hi, I'm Chris Hunter.

I'm a resident of Walnut Creek, and I've been affiliated with pickleball in the city since uh 2012.

From 2013 to today, pickleball has been at the Rudgear Park.

Back then the club had portal nets, and we managed the courts for the city.

In 2015, we had a grand opening of four dedicated courts with Mayor Simmons attending the ribbon cutting of the first dedicated pickleball courts in Northern California.

In 2016, I was the president of the club and could see that we needed four more dedicated courts because players preferred them to the portables.

So we saved our dollars.

In 2018, we had another grand opening of our eight dedicated pickleball courts.

Cindy Silva, Kevin Wilk, Kevin Safine, and Mike Vickers all attended the ribbon cutting.

And we're amazed to see that over a hundred players showed up that day.

In 2012, the club helped manage the protocols for COVID with the city to keep players safe.

We had nine solid years at Rudgear without a single complaint.

Then there was a lack of city oversight.

The club got laxed with some of its rules.

The city cut the hours and days twice, and here we are.

Those problems have been addressed.

We need to add hours for our afternoon senior couples and after school high school kids and evenings for families to play.

All this has been hurt by these hour cuts.

Past and current Walnut Creek board members know a lot about pickleball and are more than willing to help the arts and rec, the city council, or the pros.

We want to keep pickleball in Walnut Creek.

We've been down at Rudgear for every day since 2012.

We know a lot, and we can help help this.

The club needs to be part of the process going forward.

I want I want Walnut Creek to get serious about uh sports for active healthy adults, and this sport should be at the top of this city's list after being here for 13 years.

I still believe we can get it done.

And Merry Christmas, happy new year.

Thank you, Chris.

Hi, I'm Kisten Lannham, Walnut Creek Pickleball Club.

And I just wanted to point out that uh the I think it's the complaint, I don't I don't know why the defendant is my microphone.

Sorry, sorry.

The main complaint.

He when he bought the house in 2018, it was stated that there were pickleball courts right across the street.

He has as a buyer has a due diligence to find out if the noise is going to bother him, if there's any issues with the house, if it's not.

We had, as you just heard, that we had full courts at that point when he bought the house in 2018.

So I've highlighted that.

Maybe you can share it with the attorneys that are helping with that.

And I would really like to see the city council maybe help promote to move this along and get some sort of remedy, whether it's sound walls or something that may help that move along.

The club is willing to participate in some improvements or whatever may cost be arise as long as we get more hours.

So that's it.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Luis Mora, and I spoke a few times to the council in the past.

Wanted to say just a few more words about pickleball.

So as you know, we the club met with the city and uh neighbors in good faith and to try to resolve the issues, and we lost almost half of our playing time.

And then the neighbors turn around and sued the city to get rid of pickleball courts.

That's good faith on their on their side.

And as was mentioned before, the this current times don't work for a lot of people, students, working adults like myself.

My prime time is eight to two.

And the weekends, no, we can start until 10.

In the summer, that's hot by then.

No, we can only play in the morning.

It's cold.

We want to play in the afternoon when it's warm.

So it is just it's not working up.

Another thing is, you know, a few neighbors complain, but for every few that complain, there are tens, as was said before, that live in the neighborhood and like the courts.

And there's hundreds of pickleball players around here, right?

So this just gives you a sample.

It's you if you want to satisfy the most people, you know which side to satisfy.

A final point is that Warner Creek is a destination city, which means a lot of our sales tax that funds a lot of programs come from people outside who come in and spend money.

There are many reasons to come to Walnut Creek.

It's a great restaurant, entertainment, and pickleball.

So you want more people to come to play pickleball, not less, right?

So based on all of that, my request is that we go back to the old schedule.

Play every day from 8 a.m.

to sunset, and we need more courts.

That's basically my message.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr.

Moore.

Next speaker.

Hi, I'm Kevin Mora.

I'm a resident of Wanna Creek, and I'm a college student as well.

Um, so I'm confused as to why the courts are closed in afternoons during the week.

Um that's when my friends and I have time to play.

Um, and because the courts are closed, uh that really limits our time to play pickleball.

Um people who live around the courts uh should expect to hear noise because you know activities happen at a park and activities generate noise, so they're always there will always be some noise around a park.

And um please consider um opening the courts or um yeah, keeping the courts open uh for the youth who play pickleball.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Mark Nolch, uh 20 plus year resident of Walnut Creek.

Uh, according to Lifetime's recent report to the city, they trained over 900 pickleball students in 2024 and expect more growth in 2025.

Local coaches are also training hundreds of hundreds more beginners on how to play the game.

But when these newly minted players are ready to hit the court, there's nowhere to go.

Walnut Creek has a household income of about of about $180,000.

Yet we only have eight public courts in the entire city serving a population of 70,000.

The pickleball community has been waiting for years for the city to do something to relieve this pressure.

But the city has not proposed any solutions after three years plus of studying the matter.

The pickleball community and neighbors alike are frustrated and confused as to why nothing has been done.

The tennis courts at Rudgear Park were recently resurfaced, even though they are mainly vacant.

In the meantime, the pickleball courts there are falling apart due to lack of maintenance.

Walnut Creek has recently boasted of a triple A uh bond credit rating.

Measure O and other sales taxes generate over 42 million dollars annually to the city for services and facilities.

Many residents here are not interested in competitive swimming.

Can some of these funds be redirected towards pickleball facilities?

And again, to quote from Life Times Report to the city, interest in pickleball from a programming and recreational play perspective continues to be in high demand.

The current pickleball resources limit the amount of recreational play, class instruction, and other opportunities to grow the sport in the area.

The lack of pickleball resources will not solve itself.

I implore you as leaders of the city to take action.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, Mayor and City Council members.

My name is April and I'm 10 years old.

I live in Warner Creek with my parents, sister, and grandparents.

I love playing pickleball because it helps me exercise, make friends, and have fun outside instead of being on a screen.

I love with I love play I like playing with my family, and we have competitions.

My mom is plays the best out of the family, and she teaches me.

Now I am better than my dad at pickleball.

I love playing pickleball at Ruggear Park.

People are so nice to me, and I really like to be able to play with adults.

I would love to play pickleball after school.

Thank you.

Thank you, April.

And April, you did a very good job.

Thank you for coming down.

I know this is what you wanted to do on a Tuesday night.

Yes.

Thank you.

Mayor and Council members, thank you for the opportunity to speak.

My name is Sylvia, and I've been a Walnut Creek resident and homeowner for the last 11 years.

Rudgear Park is not a quiet meadow.

It's a community park with playgrounds, baseball fields, uh basketball, tennis, and trails, you know all this, right?

And for eight years, I mean, sorry, for years, the eight dedicated courts have given many, many, many of us over hundreds per week, from very young kids like my daughter to senior people a free and healthy way to stay active and connected.

I've made so many friends on the court that I wouldn't have otherwise met.

And I recognize that a few neighbors are unhappy with the sounds of pickleball, but Walnut Creek already has a noise ordinance, and the city has already reduced the court's hours and even close one day a week.

The question isn't can someone hear pickleball, the whether managed daytime recreation in a city park is uh unreasonable.

So I and many others here today um believe the answer is no.

People who live next to a park can fairly expect the normal sounds of community life.

Kids laughing, balls bouncing, music playing during a uh a group of regulars playing volleyball, though they're almost every weekend.

League games in pickleball.

So to take away or further restrict pickleball court hours, would give a very small group of neighbors veto power over a public asset used and loved by many more residents and visitors, and also if basketball, baseball, playgrounds, and other sports are acceptable during daytime use, it is inconsistent and unfair to single out pickleball.

Um a park is meant to serve the broader community and not function as a private quiet zone for the adjacent homes.

Please protect Rudgeer pickleball courts as a true community resource.

And don't let a small number of complaints take away a healthy uh intergenerational activity that aligns perfectly with Walnut Creek's values.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hello.

I'm Jill Schenkel, board member of the pickleball club.

And I want to emphasize that pickleball today is still surging, it is not waning.

It's definitely a sport that more and more citizens are going to want to take up and play.

And as club members, we see this growth firsthand, and we're out here advocating not for ourselves, but for broader community access to the sport that we love.

We're thrilled that the city's rec department now teaches pickleball in the schools.

And when you were first seeking instructors, people from our club stepped up and they continue to coach in your programs.

In March, some of my friends taught 50 middle school students at Foothill and WCI, and just this month, they finished up yet another eight-week school program.

Just like everyone else, these students learn the sport, love it, want to keep playing, and as many people have mentioned, and it doesn't make sense, our courts are closed and locked when most students can play.

Seems like the this is something we can solve.

I also want to remind you of Walnut Creek's history as an outstanding place for pickleball and commend you.

Our club recently celebrated our tenth anniversary and honored our founders, including Dick Hildebrand, former mayor of Walnut Creek, and our club's very first president.

He and others worked so hard for public play in public parks.

And due to their efforts and to yours, in 2015, we are the very first city, as Chris mentioned.

We should be proud of that in Northern California to build permanent courts.

Some of you were there on opening day, the mayor cut the ribbon, people came from all over just to see pickleball courts, real pickleball courts for the first time.

And because of this fantastic fantastic facility we've all enjoyed, we developed fantastic players who compete and win at the highest level of amateur tournaments.

These are elite senior athletes.

They perform well on a national stage.

In fact, our most recent champions, who some of you know are here tonight, they're national champions, Melinda Shaver and Steve Martin.

We're very proud of them and hope you are too.

To close, we know it's been challenging with the lawsuit, and we really appreciate you fighting for us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We've got about 10 minutes left, so hopefully we can get everybody in line.

Hello, mayor.

Wilken, council members.

My name is Jeff Elfont.

I'm a resident of Danville, but a business owner here in Walnut Creek, and as the other prior speakers, I'm a pickleball player and love the sport and would encourage you to maintain the current hours at regular park, or if not, possibly expand them or find additional facilities, perhaps at Heather Farms.

I'm going to make my comments very brief because you've had such elegant, eloquent presentations prior to my uh coming to the mic.

But I'd also like to take this time to thank Chief Knox for his service to our community as he leaves being chief.

Thank you, Chief Knox.

And thank you to the incoming chief and the police officers of Walnut Creek.

Thank you, Council members.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Don Means.

I'm a member of the Walnut Creek Pickleball Club.

I understand there could be a potential settlement uh discussion coming up that hopes to resolve this issue.

Uh so I have a few observations I'd like to make.

One, um, if there is a form formal settlement discussion, I would suggest the city basically start from scratch, which means restoring all of the hours of play and negotiate from there.

Otherwise, there would simply be no recognition of a concession that's already been made, and basically we begin negotiating with ourselves, and that doesn't make a lot of sense to me to uh the petition references the steward court study as a sort of, I guess, surrogate for the potential impact impacts of the current site.

This study suggests and recommends that acoustic sound barriers uh would have provided effective mitigation for potential noise from the pickleball play at that location.

I again I don't speak formally for the club, but I certainly would not uh see a problem with that as a potential solution.

And finally, the there are a number of claims the neighbors uh made in their petition that I would say, well, exaggeration, speculation, conjecture, whatever you want to call it.

But what I did not see in the petition were any site-specific analysis or studies to substantiate their claims.

Um, as an example, it's too loud to work or watch TV inside their homes.

They can't back their cars out of the driveway because it's unsafe.

People urinating on their lawns.

I mean, I could go on, but I I think you get the point.

Um, but nowhere did they provide any evidence of these occurrences, no noise studies in and around the uh residences, no traffic studies, I mean not even a chemical analysis of the urine to prove it was human.

Just unsubstained uh assertions.

And just because they say so doesn't make it so.

I couldn't end here without commenting on one of the claims.

The cl the sh petition claims there's a minimum of 50 hours of pickleball per week.

Well, a little bit of algebra.

I was able to back into their assumptions.

To get to that number, you have to assume pickleball play would go to nine o'clock every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, basically every weekend of the entire year.

As far as I know, no one's playing pickleball last week until nine o'clock at night.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Brad Falk, and I'm here tonight to talk about pick a ball as it's more than a game to me.

For me, pick a ball is an antidote for a very serious medical condition that I have.

And while this fight is often challenging for me, I have found it to be the greatest weapon that I have to slow down the progression of this disease is playing pickleball.

My doctor has been absolutely clear that the healthiest, healthy, consistent exercise I get from playing pickleball is the single best thing I can do to slow the advancement of my disease.

So this sport is not just a recreational hobby for me.

It's literally a life-changing medicine that transforms my life.

So I am here tonight to speak on behalf of not just myself, but for other people like me with medical conditions, and for every family, child and senior who has found their own joy and health on these courts.

The truth is that Ruggier we are bursting at the scenes.

We have only eight courts, and the demand is overwhelming.

We see people waiting far too long just to get a chance to play a game that is so simple, so social and so healthy.

So my ask tonight is twofold.

One, please consider restoring the original hours at Rugger, like everybody else has said.

This simple change would allow more families and kids access to the courts.

Secondly, please consider adding more courts.

Thank you for your time and for considering a change that is truly life-changing for many of us.

Good evening.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Hi, my name's Karen Means, and I just want to first of all say thank you so much for defending us and I feel like you're defending us in this lawsuit.

I know you're s defending the city, but we really appreciate the effort.

Um one of the things that the city attorney referred to was like accepting the claims in the in the petition as true.

And the there's some in there that are just nonsensical.

So for example, they say that it's up to 88 decibels at their house.

So we all know that sound deadens as you get further away from the sound.

Um, so if you're like at a rock concert or something, you want to get away from the speakers if your ears are hurting and go all the way to the back to get away from the noise.

So there's a a thing called the uh inverse square law that talks about how much sound gets deadened.

And so I worked backwards.

So eighty-eight decibels a hundred feet from the court would be roughly a hundred and twenty decibels on the court.

So, because I was trying to figure out like I wear eye protection every day.

Do I need hearing protection on the court?

And a hundred and twenty decibels, according to the American Journal of Audiology, OSHA, and the World Health Organization is extremely painful and can almost immediately cause permanent hearing damage.

So I would argue that their claims are not necessarily uh or shouldn't completely be accepted.

They don't have substantiate that eighty-eight decibels anywhere in their petition, but they mention it a few times and talk about it.

So um I would support people.

I like our court hours back, and um, and again, I appreciate you guys taking this up with us, and I'd also like to point out we do have hundreds of people there every week, and I don't know that there's been any issues that the police have been called.

That we have issues, that there's fights, that there's arguments, that there's difficulties at the court where just a lot of people getting together, playing a very joyful game and having a great time.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

You got five minutes.

Can we do it?

I think so.

All right.

Uh hello.

My name is Tom Mackinson.

I'm a homeowner resident in Walnut Creek.

I do not live near Rudyir Park.

However, I live very close to Heather Farm.

Heather Farm has organized sports activities, soccer, baseball, uh swimming events, equestrian events, uh concerts during the summer.

Uh when you live near a park, there are benefits and there are some costs.

That's normal.

That's what community parks are all about.

And I think it's very dangerous for a group, a board to uh look at a small park in the in the community and give deference to objections by a small group of homeowners about noise.

Um if you're gonna do that, you couldn't run into that same target in the larger parks.

Civic Park, Heather Farm, um, where the where there's even larger investments uh in athletica um facilities.

So I just want to keep that in mind.

Uh I'm I believe that a community park is uh a resource for the entire community, it's not limited to the immediate neighborhood.

Um, and we're blessed in Water Creek to have a number of very nice parks.

I'd like to keep it that way.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi there, my name is Julie, and I'm a resident of the city.

Um I also live right across the street from Heather Farms.

Uh, and that's how I got introduced to pickleball was through the arts and rec classes.

Um, I'll just I can only give a little my own personal experience and and it has been joy, and I've been delighted and and quite surprised by the sense of community I have found there, more so than any of the extensive uh school volunteering, board position on a swim team, Casa volunteering.

The the number of people and the just the the experience of community there has been really a surprise and a and um I think a treasure.

So I appreciate the club and it is a very well-run club compared again.

I've had a lot of experience in volunteer committees, and um they're right up there.

So I thank them.

I thank the city for the eight courts we have.

I occasionally play in San Ramon, they have four courts.

I notice the difference.

There's a vibrancy in this in at the park at Ruggier Park.

Um, and we do need more courts.

Um we do need more time on the courts as well.

Um, but I just wanted to share that little sliver of experience.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh yeah, my name is David Johnson.

Um recently I work moved to Walnut Creek with my partner, been here about a year or so where we live in Rudger Estates, uh Cardigan HOA, like right right, you know, make it a uh uh seven iron to the to the middle of the courts.

And um I think from my perspective, since it's been a lot of anecdotal things that we don't experience a ton of noise.

I walk to the courts every day, and yes, it can be annoying, but at the same time, everybody's brought up the point of fairness.

There's a ton of people here talking about it that love the game, they love the the camaraderie, they love the you know the just the sense of community basically.

I mean, she she talked about earlier, but I mean that that's the big thing to everybody, and it it's sad that a small group of people can come in and tell all these people when and what they can do.

I mean, I I I sold a home.

Excuse me, uh across from John Muir when the guy came in and I was thinking about this, and that place is so noisy, it's it's unreal right across the street from John Muir.

Those people knew what they were getting when they bought that condo at John Muir, the one that I sold.

These people who live across from these pickleball courts that don't make half the noise as that knew what they were getting into, or a lot of them did.

So I think in the point of the whole thing to me is about fairness.

If if you represent us, you will help and do what is fair for the community.

That's thank you.

All right, let's get our final speaker.

I think you just made it under the gun.

Yay!

My name is Steve Martin.

National Champion?

Yep.

At seventy-five.

Wow.

I love your comedy too.

That joke, yeah.

Yep, thanks.

Um by now you're aware of the tremendous growth of pickleball and the huge demand uh for court time.

The lawsuit is dragging on without a real solution on the horizon for both sides.

My proposal is to solve this dilemma by moving the courts to a new location where there is not a problem with local residents.

One side on the list for new courts is is the southwest corner of Tice Valley Road and Ross Moore Parkway.

This is adjacent to the Tice Creek Sports Building that the city runs.

No homes are nearby.

Kevin Safine rejected this site because lights were going to be added to the current large grass area that is used for both soccer and baseball.

There would be no room for pickleball courts, he said.

Recently I went by this area and noticed that there are four new light poles added to the four corners of the grass area.

These lights would not interfere with soccer, baseball, and pickleball.

I measured the grass area and it is quite large, about 500 feet by 400 feet.

I did some preliminary sketches, and that showed that all three sports could coexist together.

In the last week, an architect has been retained by the pickleball club here to prepare professional drawings for the city to review, showing how all three sports could coexist.

The only request from the adjacent church minister was to put the courts on the opposite side from his church, which would be on the north side, closest to Tice Valley Road.

This should be no problem to put those to courts there.

The next hurdle is how to pay for the courts.

Ten courts are being proposed to handle the huge demand that we have for court time.

From measure O, the city has set aside 77 million dollars for the complete overhaul of the Heather Farms Aquatic Facility.

If just one percent of this amount is directed toward building ten courts, this would pay for the entire project.

One percent is seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars.

Sounds like a lot of money, but in comparison to what's going on with the aquatic center, it's not.

There would be no cost for restrooms or or other facilities.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate your time.

Thank you very much, and thank all of you for for coming and speaking and being respectful.

And uh there are other cities that would have 15-20 speakers and it wouldn't be as uh civil as this.

I really appreciate that.

So I'll bring public communications to a close.

I want to ask the city manager first of all if there's any clarification that you would like to make regarding Tice Valley.

I know that was an issue uh a location that we did look at at one time.

I don't know if anything is changed, but um that may be something just to address if if we don't feel that's appropriate at this time we can handle that too.

That's not a couple of things.

One, this item's not in the agenda, so we shouldn't have too much of a discussion.

Secondly, as noted, the city is an active litigation defending a lawsuit, so I'm mindful of how much discussion occurs on the public record at this point in time, and just emphasizing that what the city attorney stated in that the city has made a motion to have the lawsuit dismissed, and we are waiting to hear from the judge on that finding whether the the lawsuit will be dismissed immediately or whether it would be allowed to go to trial.

Um hopefully find that out soon.

So reluctant to have too much discussion.

We have evaluated numerous locations at Tice in the past, certainly open to any suggestions if there might be something there to look at that might be viable that uh was thought that previously would not be.

So that's something that we can take a look at.

Great.

Thank you very much.

And I appreciate that uh Walnut Creek is physically active.

That's a good thing.

Yeah, Councilmember Silva.

Thank you.

A couple of um members of the public were citing the facts as presented by the plaintiffs.

Can you explain again what the law says under a demur or a whatever you explained?

Correct.

So that we understand that we're not in a situation of fighting the facts.

That's a that's a lot of things.

That is correct.

When when a court considers a motion called a demur, the court in considering that assumes that the facts that are set forth in the lawsuit, the complaint, are uh factual.

So there's no disputing the facts at this stage.

It doesn't mean that the city accepts that those facts are accurate or that even the court ultimately accepts that those facts facts are accurate.

It just means that when they're ruling on this motion because they're ruling on a matter of law, they accept the facts as they are set forth in the complaint.

So if this were to go to trial, if our if our request to dismiss the complaint is denied, and this were to go to trial, then there'd be a debate of the facts.

That's correct.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

All right.

Um our next item on the agenda is council member and staff announcements, reports on activities or requests.

Alaska City Attorney, do we have any closed session announcements beyond what you said?

No additional ones.

Thank you, Mayor.

Okay, city manager reports.

Yes, I do have two items this evening.

And I'll uh maybe wait for just a moment here while the audience is clearing out for a bit.

I'm just glad they didn't bring any balls to hit at us.

So I would like to uh introduce and invite our new arts and recreation director, Chris Farrow, to come on up.

Extremely pleased that she is joining our walnut creek team.

Her first day was just yesterday, so she is very fresh on the job.

And Chris, if you'd like to say a few words.

Sure, good evening.

Uh nice to meet everyone.

Chris Farrow, brand new director of arts and recreation.

And uh I'd just like to share a little bit about myself.

Um, 30 years in recreation, um, started in 1995 at Livermore Area Recreation and Park District.

Uh, since that time, been with a few municipalities, also have done some nonprofit work, uh, YMCA of the East Bay.

Um, and then also in my history is some uh theater special event and box office work.

So it's the perfect marriage of all of my experience, and I'm really thrilled and excited to be here.

So thank you to the city manager for the opportunity, and I look forward to working with each of you.

Well, welcome.

We look forward to working with you as well.

And as you can see, we have a very active community that is very involved in half of your job.

It wouldn't be Parks and Rec if there weren't pickleball conversations.

So thank you, Chris.

Thank you.

Any any other comments?

Great.

Just welcome from all.

Thank you.

I think we're all probably gonna be eating with you one-on-one over the course of the next uh several weeks.

We look forward to that.

Great, thank you.

Thanks, Chris.

Yes, and then the other item is I would like to uh invite our current police chief Jamie Knox up to the podium and recognize and acknowledge Chief Knox on his outstanding career as his last day before retirement is this Friday, that he will be active on the job.

Just a little bit here as uh your council recall, Chief Knox started in July of 2021, so about four and a half years ago, which I'm sure all of us will recall was a very, very difficult time, especially in the police profession, and Chief Knox inherited, which was a very depleted department at that point in time.

He's made uh tremendous effort over the years to bring our police department forward to where we are today.

We are in tremendous shape, and that is in large part due to the leadership provided by Chief Knox.

So thank you for all that you have done.

Thank you, and I understand there's someone here to speak.

One of our chief's advisory board members, if that's okay.

Let's bring Mary Taylor up.

Good evening, everyone.

My name is Mary Taylor, I'm a resident, and you'll be thrilled to know I don't play pickleball.

Um I wanted to um acknowledge um Chief Knox as he goes off to play pickleball or whatever he's gonna do.

Um as you said, when he came to Walnut Creek, it was a very difficult time.

There was a huge lack of trust with the community.

Uh he made his intentions known to have an effective uh law enforcement or law enforcement officers in a department that keeps us safe, but that also focused on fairness in our diverse uh community.

Um he's led, created and led a department that is respected and extremely professional and inclusive.

Um the department reflects the makeup of our amazing community.

As he said, I was uh asked to uh invited to serve on the chief advisory board, and that is about listening and uh discussions that uh might not occur.

So that was a wonderful experience.

Um there's always more work to do, but he and his department has moved the city closer to the end zone, and we want to thank him for his service to our community.

I know.

Thank you very much, uh Mary, and thanks for your service on the board, and thank you, City Manager Buckshire just for the opportunity and for your leadership and your mentorship.

One of the best bosses, if not the best boss I've ever had.

And this council I've worked at several cities, four different cities as a manager.

This is one of the most high functioning and uh collegiate uh just professional city councils that I've had the pleasure of working with.

So thank you for your support.

Thank you to the men and women of the police department for their dedicated service.

I want to thank my colleagues, the uh executive team for their support uh over the years, and um to my command staff who has been with me every step of the way, and I I certainly wouldn't be here without them today.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Do not go very far.

I'm not so I I think I think a few of us want to say something, I'll I'll lead it off.

So I was mayor in 21 when you were uh when you were brought on and hired.

Uh, we when we had a chance to meet, we talked about what you were looking for.

Of course, as city manager said, it was a challenging time here.

We were still in the middle of the pandemic.

We had Walnut Creek had become sort of ground zero for a lot of different protests and rallies and uh and a lot of challenges, and we knew there were challenges when it came to balancing the the needs of enforcement along with the community.

I remember talking about we wanted to have somebody that was a community officer and uh and somebody that really understood and was able to have those community discussions and it was like walking on the edge of glass.

And Chief Knox, I have to say that you exceeded the greatest expectations that I had for you.

I was thrilled when we brought you on, and I absolutely thought that you were gonna be able to do the job terrifically, and you exceeded that.

Thank you so much for your tenure here and uh and you go out while I'm mayor again, so uh full full circle on that.

And if my other council members would like to share a few words, I'll jump in.

Just because I'm fast on the button.

And I this was gonna be a contest between Mary and I to see one if one of us could make you cry.

I don't know if we'll be able to get there.

Um I had just started on the council in 2020 when things were pretty dark, and I really appreciate that you came in and said you wanted to rebuild the healthy police culture.

Um, you know, my thing has always been we want officers that are well-educated, well trained, well supported, and fully accountable.

And I think you've always bought into that and are looking for the same thing, and I really appreciate that.

The other thing I really appreciate is um you are a data nerd.

You are a data nerd, extraordinaire, and and that actually goes really well with the idea that we treat everybody with respect, and then we don't look at who looks like a criminal, but we go by what the data shows, and that leads us into a culture where people feel like they're treated fairly.

They're not guilty because they look guilty.

They're guilty because they are guilty.

Um, not that you guys decide that, you just decide that they need to go for a ride.

Um, I also appreciate how much you've been supportive of all our officers.

I know it was a very tough time back in 2020 and 2021.

And the support that you've offered to the individual officers and the help that you've given them to to kind of reform a cohesive unit.

It's been great to watch everybody come together and we really appreciate all that you've done for the city.

And I'm not gonna make you cry, am I?

Sorry.

And also thank you for the all he he gives everybody a cell phone number.

And so you can just call the man at really random hours and find out things.

And I really appreciate that.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

One of my neighbors had a call for service.

I was like, why is there a car in front of my house?

He's like, calm down.

It's not you, it's not you.

Somebody else.

Don't worry.

There are a lot of things that I could say that um my colleagues have already said, but what I'd like to do is read into the record tonight a message from Fran Gibson of Rossmore.

And I assume you have seen it, so this won't surprise you.

I I read it a couple times so I wouldn't cry.

She says, I come before you t she was unable to be here tonight due to a mobility issue.

She says, I come before you tonight to express my deep and abiding appreciation for the leadership and vision of our soon to retire Walnut Creek police chief Jamie Knox.

In my 50 years of public health community work, both professional and voluntary, Fran says she has never met a more gifted and talented public servants servant than Jamie Knox.

She has had the pr abiding privilege and honor of working with two f former governors and one president.

And she says that you, Chief Jamie, is the best of the best, the top at the top, and have served our beloved city with a collaborative, bright and compassionate stewardship that always stays the course.

She says you are emblematic of boosted community trust and public safety, tempered by what Buddhists call our one true nature.

So she says on behalf of Rossmore EPA, which is the emergency preparedness organization, she wishes them the very best in your retirement years.

And thank you for your service to Walnut Creek for the last five years.

Thank you for reading that into the record because I I was moved by her comments, and I'm glad you had the opportunity to read them.

And Chief, I I just you were the right man at the right time for the right job.

And uh we were so fortunate that you came to our community in talking to the recruiter for the new police chief, we talked about what a contrast.

Uh in environment and culture it was in just four short years, and you are largely responsible for that.

Uh you know, and it it's not just what you've done in in our city, but what you've done in many other cities in San Leandro and Marin County, where you started your career up in Placer County, years of of dedicated service to public safety, and you know, we were in com you were in complete alignment with our priority of having zero tolerance for crime, but also implementing policing for the twenty first century.

And I I uh often think of my father who I have a ton of respect for and was a reserve police officer in the city of Campbell, and now does jail detention ministry work.

So here's a guy who who gets it, who sees full circle and understands that people make mistakes but they're not mistakes.

And I think um I really applaud you for bringing that sense of of commitment and community service to our community and the outreach that you've done with the Chief's Advisory Board, and we're gonna miss you, but we wish you well job very well done.

You you left this place much better than you found it.

So thank you.

You've earned your retirement.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

Yeah, uh thank you.

Um we only overlapped this last year and uh we met um while I was campaigning.

So I never sat down for a coffee with a police chief before.

I don't uh know any other police chiefs personally, so I was unsure what to expect when we sat down.

I was sort of intimidated uh by the process.

Um, but I I understand how you were able to change culture because after talking to you for just a very short period of time, I um was impressed with your um communication, your analysis, your uh approachability.

Um I left that conversation, you know, feeling like I'd made a friend.

It was just such a nice experience talking to you.

So I I can see and and I've witnessed over the past year how that um that quality that you have has has really been transformative.

So um we were lucky to have you here and uh wish you a very happy retirement.

Thank you very much.

It's been a pleasure to serve.

Thank you.

Now don't quite go hold on, hold on, hold on.

One more thing.

Well, two, because we'll have a photo as well.

I'm gonna come up here.

This is from Senator Tim Grayson, also signed by assembly member Rebecca Bauer Cahan, who now in the California legislature there is now a resolution for police chief Jamie Knox by the whereas, and I'm not gonna read all of this, there's a lot, but you'll have um you can now frame it on it right on your wall.

Police Chief Jamie Knox has announced his retirement after providing stellar leadership to the Walnut Creek Police Department for more than four years of his 30-year law enforcement career and an acknowledgement thereof, he merits public recognition for his many fine achievements.

And at the at the bottom, resolved by Senator Tim Timothy Grayson and Assembly Member Rebecca Bauer Cahan that they take immense pleasure in recognizing and thanking police chief Jamie Knox of the Walnut Creek Police Department for providing the highest level of service and protection to the Walnut Creek community and extend to him sincere best wishes for rewarding and gratifying retirement.

Joint members' resolution number 352, dated this 15th day of December, 2025.

So let's start.

Council Member Silva.

Thank you very much.

Happy December, happy nearly the end of the year.

I'm I'll start by mentioning that about a month ago, the week before Thanksgiving, I had the privilege of attending the annual city summit of the National League of Cities.

There were about 3,000 in attendance from all across the country, and I think there were two things of note.

Um was that there was a lot of discussion, including in the exhibition hall, on how to use artificial intelligence technology to improve and augment streamline the permitting processes, and they focused on how that could be helpful in streamlining the housing process.

It was focusing on permitting and cross-checking of permitting and applications.

So I've referred some of the information that I received to community development director, Erica Vandenbrand, and one of the vendors is the grandson of one of our former mayors from the 1960s.

So that was very interesting.

The second topic really focused on the nation nationwide housing crisis and a couple of factoids that were mentioned.

This is not just a California problem.

The median age of first-time home buyers in this country is 40 years of age, which is very different.

They just get we're getting older and older be off before we can afford to buy a first home.

The other is that uh recent study shows that the cost to build four units of multifamily housing, not a big apartment building, four units versus the cost to build two units per square foot.

It is 10% more expensive the more units you're building.

And this has to do with what parts of the permitting code and this building code that you're using.

So there um the presentation was from representatives from Memphis, Tennessee, Salt Lake City, and Dallas, Texas, and they talked about how you can look at the building code for ways to better accommodate housing and lower the cost of housing and what they're doing around the country.

So I thought that was very interesting.

Last week the League of California Cities had its annual meeting in Southern California to actually establish our advocacy priorities for the 25-26 year.

These are the priorities that we will focus on in our legislative work.

And so one is to protect and enhance local revenues and expand economic development tools.

Two is to strengthen partnerships with the state to improve public safety.

Particular concern was the lack of funding that the state has put in toward Prop 36.

Number three is to secure investments to prevent and reduce homelessness and increase the supply of affordable housing.

And the fourth is to strengthen climate change resiliency and disaster preparedness, and that included rel issues related to wildfires and both how to harden the homes and the properties, but also the insurance costs and negotiating those.

So there's more detail on that.

But thank you very much.

And more to follow, and I will not give a report on Recycle Smart.

I'm gonna let my colleague do that.

Alright, next, Councilmember Darwin.

Just a quick recap on where we are with MCE.

As I've talked to in the past, energy prices last year were considerably higher than they had been.

So we're looking at that, turning around and doing well.

The other challenge that we have right now is the rates that you all are charged by PG<unk>E include the generation rate for MCE and the power charge and difference adjustment, which is what we pay PGE for stranded resources when we all left and joined MCE.

PGE has been pushing through the CPUC to readjust that and use a new methodology that has not been used in the past.

That's because the old methodology doesn't favor them anymore.

So they want to change the methodology.

We are pursuing as part of the community choice aggregation association, protesting those policies and seeing if we can get the CPUC to recognize what a burden that is going to place on all the MCE customers if they offset some of the rates of PGE.

We also are working to make our board a little more functional.

We've had some challenges because of the the funding challenges, and we're doing better, so that's good.

Couple other things that went on.

We did meet at the finance committee for my last one, and you guys already approved all that stuff.

I did get the secret backroom tour from Brian Hirahara of the new Calicraft because they're not quite open yet, but it's gonna be really cool.

I think they're looking at December 20th to open.

Um, and I was also really glad to hear that it wasn't the city that was keeping them from opening, so that's always too bad.

And the last thing I wanted I got to do as mayor was I came down here and we signed all the bond package, and that was like my funnest thing in the whole wide world to do as the end of my year as mayor because that means we not only do all the hard work of all the staff here across the board.

We saved money, we're getting the project done, and we're moving forward to meet our commitments, and we will have uh money to do some other fun things.

Not all pickleball people are gone, I can say that.

Mayor Protein, Francois.

Okay.

Thanks, Mayor.

I we didn't get to report on the things that we had done kind of around Thanksgiving time, and I think all of us were at all these events, so I'll just tick them off.

The tree lighting event over at Civic Park was great event, hot cocoa, Carrollers, uh fun event.

Uh we were at the ribbon cutting for the turf fields at Heather Farm Park, which felt like a great accomplishment and super appreciative of the Walnut Creek Soccer Club and the public uh private partnership we had with them to get those fields built, and there were a ton of kids uh all around us playing on the fields already, which is exactly what we were envisioning.

So that felt good.

In terms of active activities, I want to give a shout out to Forma Gym for I think it's 30th, something like that anniversary turkey trot that happened on Thanksgiving Day.

There were 5,000 plus people in attendance, a lot of families, a lot of young people running, walking, community like we heard about earlier today.

Attended the Library Foundation's uh Walnut Creek Library Foundation's holiday party a week or two ago, and that was a fun to catch up with folks and hear about all the good work that the Library Foundation is doing.

And then let's see on the recycle smart.

Uh we had our board meeting last week, and I'm pleased to report that our independent auditor looked at our financial statements for fiscal year 24-25 and gave us a clean bill of health.

So we got a clean report, no issues reported there.

We also walnut creek also requested uh each of the member agencies, and there's six of them, including Walnut Creek, has a reserve account, and we can withdraw funds from that reserve account for certain projects, including ones that rely on recycled material.

So we were able to uh make a request to withdraw funds from our reserve account to go towards resurfacing of the all abilities playground, which needs it.

I think this is the first time the the green area will be resurfaced uh since it was installed about 10 years ago.

The mound areas where the kids slide down gets resurfaced more frequently because it wears out quite frequently, so good use of and we'll be using recycled materials for that, so great to see that go forward.

Uh I know uh council member Silva reported on the waste characterization study.

I missed that report, but we had a follow-up the last meeting, and I'll just note that we're we're doing a great job in terms of walnut creek is they they looked in our trash and figure out if you're putting the things in the right bin.

Uh so very little should go on the black bin, you know, paper, plastic, metal, glass should go on the blue bin, and then anything organic, uh, including food scraps needs to go into the green bin.

Um so where we could do better, where there's room for improvement.

Well, maybe I'll start with what we're doing really good.

We're doing really well at uh paper and glass.

We could use some improvement on metal and plastics, uh, and also room for improvement on food scraps, so that those are materials instead of going into the garbage, those can go into a compostable uh pail or or bin and go into the green can.

We're doing a great job getting our yard clippings in there.

We need to get our food scraps in there as well.

And then finally, we did have funds in excess of reserves, and so we'll be allocated.

Each member agency gets allocated by tonnage.

We tend to have the most tonnage here because of our commercial operators and most of the residents, and so we'll be adding to our reserves and have healthy reserves, about $7 million dollars that can be used uh for for rate adjusting and balancing over the years because we're likely looking at increases in rates in the years ahead.

So we'll be drawing on those that reserve account to help smooth that out.

That's my report.

Thank you.

Next Councilmember DeVinnie.

Yeah, so it's been uh busy holiday um stretch.

There's been a number of um city and regional functions uh that many of us have attended, including the uh mayor's uh holiday uh meeting and uh uh party in Panol.

There was the uh League of Cities uh holiday party in San Pablo.

Um, attended the uh NorCal Carpenters Union.

They have uh a huge event in San Francisco there, moose feed, which I understand actually did begin with eating moose, uh, but this uh this time it was um uh just a stew, so uh I don't think it was moose.

It was moose food.

Yeah, beef, I believe.

Um attended Senator uh Grayson's um uh holiday greeting, met him for the first time, our state senator, and um also met with the community over in uh Larkey for a neighborhood meeting about some of the concerns they're having there with uh East Bay Mud and traffic concerns on San Luis Road.

Uh, we also are on that Thanksgiving time where just prior to the um the uh turf uh ribbon cutting, we're at the Trinity Center, many of us for um meeting their new director.

Uh and I'm probably going to um mispronounce her name, but it's uh Peda Demera.

Uh so it's a pleasure to meet her.

Um let's see, and uh finally uh yeah, I want to congratulate, extend congratulations to um Lieutenant uh Holly Connors of our Wanna Creek Police Department for her promotion to upcoming to captain and to um Sergeant Michael Watson, Sergeant Andrew Haw for their upcoming promotion to lieutenant.

Oh, thank you.

And uh had a few things.

Uh I about gosh, probably was five weeks ago or so now, but there was a building in trades parents' nights open house that was at Concord High School, and this was really a chance for parents and students to see what a different track would look like beyond an academic track, but a trade track, and so there was all sorts of different booths and demonstrations and really giving students an opportunity to see hey, there is a valuable track in the trades.

You don't have to necessarily look at going to a college for an academic degree, but there are different degrees that are in the trade aspect.

This is something that I've been talking about for 20 years.

I love to see this because as we all know, there are some students that just don't want to go to college because they're not looking for an English or history degree or or engineering, but they want to work with their hands and a trade degree, I think is great.

I'm really glad I was really glad to see this.

It was very well attended.

I did want to mention a Christmas Carol is playing now, it's through this Sunday.

Uh many seats are sold out.

If you want to go, you better hurry up because there's not going to be a lot of seats left.

Uh councilmember Darling mentioned our finance committee meeting.

We'll be talking about some of that later in the agenda as well.

And I do want to mention that after I took I took over the gavel as mayor on December 2nd.

We had a reception, and I took a red eye to what I felt was a very important summit that was happening in New Orleans the next day.

The mayor's summit, the U.S.

mayor's summit combating anti-Semitism.

Now, we've known there's been anti-semitism, unfortunately, rising over the last decade, and we've seen it even here in this chambers.

Uh, but and we all talked about the fact that, well, thankfully, there hasn't been an incident recently.

And lo and behold, we have this.

There's 200 mayors together.

Not everybody was Jewish.

There were there were mayors from all over the country, including still Mayor Eric Adams from New York.

We had the mayor of New Orleans and Denver and uh and many larger cities than Walnut Creek, all together united to fight hate, whether it's anti-Semitism, racism, anti-LGBDQ, anti-ethnicity, whatever it is, all standing up against hate.

It was great to see we shared information and came back.

And here on the eve of Hanukkah, we all woke up to the horrific news on Sunday about the anti-Semitic killing that happened in Bondi Beach where 15 people were killed, Jews that were celebrating the beginning of Hanukkah around the world.

That was the very one of the very first Hanukkah celebrations.

So anti-Semitism is there.

Immediately, there was talk amongst the people that the mayors that were at the summit.

A letter was put together signed by now what must be well over a thousand mayors and elected officials across the country, including many of us on this dais that are going to the Sydney mayor with our deepest condolences and standing united together against hate.

We had our menorah lighting in uh Walnut Creek at Broadway Plaza on Sunday night.

A couple hundred people showed up there.

We did have some extra security, and thank you very much to Chief Knox and Captain Hibbs for ensuring that we had extra uh extra police protection there as well.

There were no incidents whatsoever.

It was a great festivity, and it's a reminder that even in darkness, likeness will continue to proliferate and people will celebrate whatever it is that their religion, their ethnicity, and what their traditions are.

And I really appreciate that.

We're still in Hanukkah.

Happy Hanukkah to those that celebrate out there.

We still have several more nights.

Tonight's the third night.

And uh and with that, just know that your city council is here to protect everybody and stand united against hate from here and wherever it exists.

So with that, why don't we take a 10 minute break and we'll come back to our agenda?

All right, welcome back.

Next on the agenda is a consideration of acceptance of the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2025 annual comprehensive financial report or ACFER.

I invite Administrative Services Director Kristen Lacas forward to provide the staff presentation.

Good evening, Mayor Wilk, Mayor Pro Tem Francois and members of the Council, Kirsten Lacasse Administrative Services Director.

Tonight I'm going to be presenting the fiscal year 25 annual comprehensive financial report, and we'll refer to it as the ACFAR throughout the presentation.

So tonight we'll go over the key sections and highlights of the ACFA as well as a piece of the process and how it works.

We're going to talk about the fiscal year 25 ACFA results, and that will be on a government-wide basis, and then we'll be talking about the general funds category, which includes the General Fund Measure O and pension trust.

And then we will also cover some budgetary results in our governmental funds and our enterprise funds.

So I'd like to take a moment just to discuss the differences between the fourth quarter revenue and expenditure update and the ACFER.

And the Q4 update was on the agenda earlier this evening.

And so in the Q4 update, the focus is on current year operating revenues and expenditures.

Therefore, multi-year projects, the expenditures are not included.

That's typically with one time funding.

So we don't include that in our Q4 update.

And they're funded with one-time resources.

The analysis provides results for how the city did compare to budget.

It also provides the comparison of actual revenues to actual expenditures, which becomes the contribution to fund balance.

Alternatively, the ACFAR focuses on the long-term financial position.

So it includes the city's capital assets as well as long-term obligations like the pension liability.

It includes multi-year operating project costs for the fiscal year.

It also includes unrealized gains or losses in market value of investments.

Although this is a paper gain or loss, accounting standards require that we disclose the impact to revenue in the financial statements.

There are other adjustments made that are specific to accounting requirements as well.

And one example is the long-term liability reserve balances.

So we need to recalculate and adjust those annually.

Even though they are long-term obligations, we are required to set aside funds to cover the full amount.

We have required reserves that we fund, like the fiscal and catastrophic emergency reserves, as well as setting aside reserves for purchase obligations that will carry into the next fiscal year.

Once all of the necessary adjustments are made, we are left with the unassigned fund balance.

The item on the allocation of unassigned fund balance was on the agenda earlier this evening as well.

And to help illustrate these differences, I will provide the calculation in the general fund further in the presentation.

So the city's annual comprehensive financial report is a set of audited financial statements and is an indication of the organization's financial health.

The audit must be performed by an independent auditor who is required to follow generally accepted government accounting standards.

The ACFRA provides a standardized financial report document that the public can use to compare multiple government entities on the same basis.

This is, as you saw with the attachments, this is a very lengthy report with a lot of financial information.

So in lieu of reading the entire document, there are some areas that we recommend focusing on.

The independent auditors report is where you'll find the auditor's opinion, and whether the auditor has concerns regarding our internal controls.

The transmitted letter provides you with a general overview of the city over the past fiscal year, fiscal year 25 initiatives and projects accomplished, as well as an overall economic outlook.

The management's discussion and analysis is where you'll see an overall summary of the city's financial results compared to the prior fiscal year.

It provides financial highlights and variance analysis, and you can see this in an abbreviated form, as well as the explanations for those changes year over year.

More numbers can be found in the statement of net position and the notes to the basic financial statements, which provide a lot of background information.

The statistical section provides a 10-year history showing the financial position of the city as well as demographic and operating information.

So next, I just want to talk a little bit about the process.

So the audit process actually runs from May through December.

And so what happens is the auditors prepare a list for us, a PBC list or prepared by client list, which contains about 75 to 80 items.

Staff in the city prepare that.

Some of those items include the trial balance, financial policies, bank statements, and year-end closing entries.

The auditors then perform random sampling of our financial system transactions, which includes AP, payroll, as well as testing our internal controls and a review of our adherence to our own policies.

Staff closes the year in July and August and then the auditors return for final field work, followed by analysis and preparation of the ACFAR, and the issuance is typically in November or December.

And all of those factors come with all of those factors combined, the auditors come up with their opinion.

So for fiscal year 25, the auditors did opine that our statements are fairly stated in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States, and this is considered a clean opinion.

So I want to touch briefly on the statements in the financial section and the different components.

So we have several different financial statements.

We're going to be talking a little bit about the government-wide statements, which is what it sounds like.

It is the statements for the entire city.

And they're divided into governmental activities and business type activities.

Governmental activities include the general funds, special revenue funds like grants, and internal service funds.

Business type activities are funds that charge customers directly for services, and they're referred to as enterprise funds.

And we have two, the parking fund and the Boundary Oak Golf Course Fund.

And you can see our governmental activities make up 93% of our funds.

So during the year, the city's net position increased by 5.1 million to 336.3 million.

And it has increased 11% since fiscal year 2022, which is a great position to be in.

The pension liability decreased due to the higher than anticipated investment returns, which occurred in fiscal year 2024.

It's a 9.3% return, but there is a one-year delay on our CalPERS actuarial report.

So we're seeing that effect in fiscal year 25.

Capital assets increased over fiscal year 24 by 7.2 million, and this is attributed to capital assets that were placed into service during the year.

One of the larger ones was the driving range.

So this slide shows the total fund balance in the general funds, and again that's the general fund measure O and pension trust.

And that fund balance is $123.7 million, and these are the different categories of fund balance.

They are listed in the most constrained to the least.

The non-spendable fund balance of $4.6 million includes those items that actually cannot be spent, and one of those items is the interfund loan to the Boundary Oak Golf Course.

The restricted category is made up of our Section 115 pension trust.

That increase of $3 million over the prior fiscal year is from interest earned.

Our committed fund balance of $26 million is made up primarily of the city's reserves.

It increased by almost a million dollars as a result of funding both funding the catastrophic reserve for both fiscal year 26 and 27, which was adopted in our budget.

The assigned category classification has $56 million, and it's made up primarily of the general fund portion of capital projects, the general fund facilities reserve, and measure O reserves, and the increase of $8.3 million over last year's primarily the measure O Reserve.

Unassigned fund balance is the least restricted.

The 6.4 million consists of items that are set aside for specific purposes, like the general fund contingency, council contingency.

We have carryovers, which we'll talk a little bit more about that when we're talking about budgetary information later, but these are items that carry over from one fiscal year to the next.

Additional detail related to these classifications can be found on page 97 in the ACFAR.

So next I'm going to cover some budgetary results for our governmental funds, and that would be for the general fund and measure O specifically.

So overall, our general revenues in the general fund came in over budget by 1.37 million.

Property taxes came in lower than budget by about 430,000, and that's a result of successful appeals of assessed values based on commercial vacancies.

Our sales and use tax came in lower by just over 1.6 million, which was primarily a result of a change in reporting in the auto and transportation industry group related to the point of sale location.

This was a 2.3% decline over fiscal year 24.

These losses were primarily or offset primarily by interest earnings and one-time revenue that shows in the other revenue category.

And so what you see in that category is $1.75 million that I just mentioned that was received from the Speaker Development, as well as $150,000 additional that was related to the Walnut Creek Soccer Club MOU.

If we exclude the one-time money that we received, we actually came in under budget in our revenues by about $600,000.

Our department revenues came in under budget by approximately $1.3 million.

It's important to note here that community development department programmed $1 million of revenue related to development, which has a corresponding expenditure appropriation.

So in this case, if the revenue is not received, then the costs are not incurred.

So you'll also see a corresponding million dollar savings on the expenditure side in community development.

Arts and recreation revenues are below budget due to lower registrations for classes and camps, as well as lower preschool class enrollment due to the implementation of the universal transitional kindergarten, which began in fiscal year 24 and is continuing in 25, or continued in 25.

Some of these revenue reductions were offset by increased rentals.

Police revenue was lower based on lower receipts of reimbursable overtime, and again, there's also a corresponding savings on this expenditure side as a result.

As far as department expenditures overall were under budget by 3.63 million.

65% of those savings is related to vacant positions.

The overage in arts and recreation is all attributed to an increase in utility costs.

Our utility costs have increased 27% since 2023.

And this increase affected expenditure citywide, but it impacted arts and rec and public works the most.

The majority of the transfers out were to capital of $3.4 million.

This included our annual allocation of $1.9 million, $1.5 million from the facilities reserved for the Heather Farm Synthetic TERF Project, the slight savings of $80,000 is due to less support needed in the open space fund.

So in summary, revenue exceeded expenditures by about $1.59 million, which is the contribution to fund balance.

When we exclude one-time revenue, operating revenues increased by approximately 2% over fiscal year 24.

Conversely, expenditures increased by 6.4%.

And so going back to our fourth quarter revenue expenditure report and how that relates to our ACFAR.

So what you can see here on this slide is that the contribution that we just mentioned to fund balance is $1.59 million.

We talked about setting aside funds for purchase obligations that carry into the next fiscal year.

So while those while those that carry from a prior year are now reflected in our expenditures, so from fiscal year 24, the funding came from the prior year fund balance.

So the use of that fund balance from fiscal year 24 was 1.8 million.

Then we subtract the fiscal year 26 and 27 catastrophic emergency reserve funding of $830,000.

The one-time revenue we received for both speaker and the contribution from the Walnut Creek Soccer Club are being used for specific purposes, so they need to be set aside.

The required accounting adjustments made were the mark to market, which is the unrealized gain or loss, in this case a loss, on our investments of $490,000.

And then the long-term liability designations that we need to adjust for in an example of that is our long-term liability for accrued leave for employees, and so we recalculate that balance every year, and so that affects the fund balance when it either goes up or down.

And so once all of those adjustments are made to our contribution to fund balance, that brings us to our unassigned fund balance of $310,000.

So next I'm going to talk about measure O and how we did on a budgetary basis.

So the measure O transaction use tax revenues came in higher than budget at over $12.5 million, along with $480,000 in interest earnings, so our total revenue was just over $13 million.

This is about $610,000 higher than budget.

The transfer in budgeted at $2.6 million was related to $2 million that was authorized by this council to appropriate from the Heather Farm Aquatic and Community Center Reserve to cover phase one project costs through the end of the current calendar year.

Additionally, council authorized use of approximately $600,000 of fund balance accumulated through fiscal year 24 to fund additional costs for the synthetic turf project, as well as for Walnut Creek Downtown request that was allocated in December of 2024.

For fiscal year 25, the total budgeted expenditures were 5.35 million with actual expenditures at only 4.86 million, resulting in approximately 480,000 in budgetary savings.

And these savings were primarily related to multi-year initiatives with WCD and a vacancy for portion of the year in arts and recreation.

So I want to note that when the expenditure budget for measure O was developed in fiscal for fiscal years 24 and 25, it was at the beginning of Measure O implementation, and we created all of the positions for the vacant where they were vacant when we developed the budget, and we have assumptions that we include when we're developing our budget, and that's for salary range, benefits, and we include a vacancy factor.

Once positions are filled, the budget is not adjusted for the actual salary and benefits of that incumbent until a subsequent budget development cycle.

This practice typically works well, but with Measure O, there are very few positions, and so once they are completely full, we don't meet that vacancy rate assumption.

So what this resulted in is some overspending in public safety and sustainability, specifically related to these factors.

So to improve the budget projection going forward, the fiscal year 26 and 27 adopted budget eliminates the vacancy factor and aligns to current incumbent salary and benefits.

So this will result in a more conservative estimate of costs and help ensure sufficient budget now that all of the positions are filled.

So in summary, the net revenue and expenditures were 10.17 million.

We set aside the 9 million for the Aquatic and Community Center Project Reserve, and therefore the contribution to fund balance is 1.17 million.

So in the ballot language for Measure O, there is a commitment to do an annual audit, which was performed by Mays and Associates.

The goal was to ensure that the transactions were allowable under Measure O based on the ballot language and city council direction.

No exceptions were noted for fiscal year 25.

And this is in addition to the financial audit in the AC for where Measure O is also audited.

On December 1st, the Measure O Citizens Oversight Committee met and unanimously stated they are in agreement with the audit that the city is spending Measure O funds based on the ballot language and city council direction.

So next I'm going to cover our two enterprise funds, parking fund and boundary oak golf course fund.

So the parking fund had higher revenues of just over $8 million, as well as higher expenditures of $8.3 million, which resulted in the use of fund balance of about $37,000.

The primary driver of the increased costs is related to parking meter and citation processing fees.

In June of 25, the city contracted with a new parking meter processing service, which is anticipated to result in savings in fiscal year 26 and forward.

Additionally, utility costs that affected the city affected the general fund also affected the parking fund and exceeded the budget.

Expenditures were also higher than budget by about 510,000.

The reopening of the driving range in March of 2025 resulted in higher than anticipated revenues.

However, the increase in expenditures were also attributed to the driving range.

There were higher concession and operating supplies for the new snack bar operation at the range, as well as the purchase of new driving range equipment.

Boundary Oak Golf Course also had higher than anticipated costs related to a major pump repair, wild pig abatement, and fairway restoration.

Because of the higher revenues, even though spent expenditures were higher, there was a contribution to fund balance of about 410,000.

So what we are asking of you this evening is to accept the fiscal year 25 annual comprehensive financial report, and we are available to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Gerson.

All right.

Uh this way, do we have any questions?

Thank you for the report.

Um just a couple questions.

It was interesting you said that the um due to the the changes in the definition of point of sale, we've had collected less sales tax.

And um, but yet measure O, we uh was above expectation.

How do we explain that difference?

The difference is related to the fact that Measure O is a transaction and use tax, and so if the when a purchase is made online, if it is shipped to walnut creek then we would get that full measure o sales tax however the one percent Bradley Burns would not all come to Walnut Creek if the purchase is made online and so the impact had it didn't have very much effect on Measure O.

I think that's it for me.

Thanks.

Yeah, I had a similar question about the difference between the sales tax and measure O, so thank you for asking that.

On what you mentioned increased energy costs.

What other drivers do you see for increased uh expenditures or costs going forward?

Sure, we had increased costs related to salary and benefits, those were two major categories, as well as our insurance.

Our insurance increased 45% over the prior fiscal year, so that was a big increase.

And our utilities increased nine percent over fiscal year twenty four.

And was that in sh was that property insurance plus uh liability uh all across the board or actually all of our categories?

Okay, that's that's a huge increase.

Well, um you mentioned also the speaker funding that came in for transportation.

I recall there was also a component that was supposed to be for the park, Heather Farm Park.

Is that been triggered yet, or do we already have that?

That has not been triggered yet.

And that was about two million.

I actually defer to city manager, dust off that agreement.

I admittedly don't recall the exact hour figures as you recall.

There was funding to allocate some roadway improvements in and around the project, some funding for Heather Farm Park and some funding for the Leisure Center.

Uh I do recall the Leisure Center component was about a half million.

The roadway improvements were I think of the 1.4, and I don't recall the amount for other farm, but no problem.

And uh the library hours, I noticed there was a little bit of a disconnect that we had budgeted 0.68, but of only allocated 0.52, so do we have extra funds there to fully fund the library hours?

Well the additional was uh carried over from the prior year.

So that was a result of having encumbered that obligation, we got a we had a late bill from the county, which is why it kind of crossed fiscal years, but the cost is I believe around 580,000 to measure oh for those hours.

Okay, and we do something like fifty-two of fifty-six hours and so just we're not funding the four extra hours currently.

Uh yes.

Yeah, yeah, just and just to elaborate is I think you're aware the county provides for 40 hours, the city funds the additional twelve.

The county does have an option in which cities could fund 16 in total.

Okay, yeah.

All right, thank you.

Uh Councilmember Darwin.

I asked most of mine already, I uh just because the subject of utilities came up when we talked about this in the finance committee, we did talk about um the review that's going on to look at our utility bills and look for conservation opportunities.

Um I'm not gonna make Carolyn get up there, but we did talk about that and that they are looking to find ways to um increase efficiency to cut back on the utility bills.

Councilmember Silva.

Thank you very much, and I know this is always a um big lift between June and December each year, so thank you to you and your team of people that have to work with the auditors.

Just to confirm my understanding because there were a lot of numbers flying through here.

We um assigned to fund balance, I forgot that backward unassigned fund balance is 800,000 in the general fund and 2.2 million in the measure o funds, and so and we allocated that tonight to just general reserves, I believe.

Yes, general fund contingency reserve and then measure O was to general measure O reserves.

So, I you know, we look at sales tax, uh the California finance department allocating certain things differently now in sales tax.

We would look at property tax and what's going on there.

What are the takeaways as we look forward in the coming year or two that this tells us about?

And that could be the city manager or you or both of you.

I mean, my takeaway is gotta mind the pennies in the drawer, but I mean I tend to be rather fiscally conservative and look for pennies in the drawer.

Yeah, so we will we are in this current fiscal year and and next fiscal year looking at a very tight budget, especially with the changes in the sales tax, we're really going to need to monitor that to see how it's going to impact us, as well as department revenues.

So we are being very mindful of our spending, and um we'll actually have more information with our second quarter update of where we are when we come forward at the end of February or early March.

But it will be a tight budget year.

And uh, if you don't mind, I'll expound upon that if you don't mind hearing what I stated at finance committee.

I'll I'll largely repeat it.

So, you know, it's obviously good news here overall in terms of looking back in that the audit went very well.

We passed all the uh the third-party review, not only for the general fund, but for all funds, including measure oh, and we did end slightly under budget.

Our goal is to always come in under budget as opposed to exceeding budget.

But if you look at the longer term trend, the amount that we came under budget was fairly minimal in the scheme of things.

We have you know, a little over a hundred million was a hundred and two, hundred and three million dollar general fund, and we had eight hundred thousand dollars left over, which means that we spent over 99% of the budget, which is much tighter.

You may recall going back several years.

We used to have multi-million dollar uh savings at year end.

So the the budget that we just completed tightened up.

I'm sure you'll all recall that when we adopted the budget for the current fiscal year, of which we're about halfway through, we had a six million dollar gap that had to be closed for an operating budget.

And we did that through a number of balanced approach with a number of measures, short, middle, and longer term solutions to balance that.

So it's a tighter budget.

We did dial back some resources to deal with what was primarily escalating costs associated with inflation, and then we now have uh a tightening revenue situation on sales tax due to this change in interpretation as it released to online sales.

So we have a couple million dollars we need to make up out of the gate.

So we are proceeding, you know, cautiously having discussions on a regular basis.

We will likely be intentionally slowing hiring in order to maintain a slightly higher vacancy rate to help offset that two million in order to avoid making other more difficult decisions, but obviously that has an impact on capacity and what uh what can be carried out overall.

So the situation for now is manageable, uh, but it is tighter and it's not you know particularly rosy, and when you give the take the broader outlook.

And I will add that this is not unique to Walnut Creek in any way.

Cities throughout certainly the state and frankly throughout the country are dealing with this this very simple situation.

And and one last point that I'll I'll I'll highlight, because I know we have a lot of discussion about measure O and funding.

There's a lot of ideas for measure O.

The dynamic that we are in is that our operating budget is tight and is tightening.

We do have some funding for one-time things, and that's going to be really important as we consider various requests for measure O or other types of requests of really differentiating what is one-time or short term compared to what is ongoing in nature.

Thank you.

And because I can't help reiterating things that we said in finance committee.

Um we have seen the last couple years and with the new contract and the bonds, some addition we expect do expect additional money to flow into measure O.

And when we talked about this in the Finance Committee, um prudence, if she was here would dictate that we um wait until we see how the pool is going, till we get substantially through construction there, and then really look to see what that additional one-time money is and do that in a more in a very thoughtful way, and resist the urge to whatever.

Or critter, I think would be what my mother would call it, but that was that was one of the things that we talked about in finance.

Okay, good.

Do we have any other questions?

Okay, uh one follow-up based on what we were just talking about.

Uh correct me if I interpreted this you know um accurately uh you said our revenues were up two percent so would that would that be consistent with what we consider our growth?

Actually our typical growth is more closer to five percent so we were low on growth.

And that was my follow-up question yeah so two percent and five is more what historically we've seen yes.

So do when we look at the budget do we look at it from the standpoint of I imagine it's both but do we how do we solve the growth problem or um or you know how does it solve our expenditure problem or what's sort of more of the lens that you you look at that from we definitely approach it from both directions looking at revenue and seeing where revenue is going to go and then if there are other op revenue opportunities that could help offset some of the cost and then we also do the analysis on the costs as well.

Do we have any optimism in the growth department?

Well um we it looks like property tax will probably get better because the assessed values have now it's kind of starting to level out so we may get back to being closer to our normal growth which is more to three to five percent range.

It's a little bit uncertain about sales tax the other areas with the exception of the one we talked about earlier with the reporting have been growing.

So it was just this one category that wasn't doing well and so that should continue to grow.

Unfortunately revenues typically um or I should say expenditures outpace revenues and growth which is pretty typical.

And so we do have to keep that in mind as well.

Insurance costs and inflation and all these things yeah yeah and I would just add to that briefly when it comes to the revenue side the challenge is a lot of it is out of the city's control in terms of what we can impact property tax is set by Prop 13 certainly we can permit more building which would increase the property tax base but that is very very incremental and slight and is a very long range in terms of impacting property tax decades in some cases before you see a negligible difference due to actual building and construction.

Sales tax is is set by state statute as well we have the one percent on the Bradley Burns you know sales tax does fluctuate obviously if we permit more businesses that uh sell taxable goods or services in the case of restaurants that sort of thing that can help but again it's it's fairly nominal and there's a longer term play on that.

The main lever that cities have is fees for services that cities can control to an extent because you have to be largely um tied with the nexus to the actual costs that are incurred we can't just charge more to generate a profit so there is a little more latitude there.

We are doing a comprehensive fee study that'll be coming to your council this this spring or summer you know the challenge though is people don't like to pay more for services and so it's that balance of what's the appropriate amount to charge in order to appropriately recoup costs and help balance the budget and yet ensure that our services are still affordable and reasonable for the public.

Right.

Um with that why don't we open it up to the public if there's anybody from the public that would like to come and speak you'll have two minutes please come up to the podium.

I I would just appreciate it Jan Warren if you would uh explain the change in the sales tax again I know you did but you were going through a lot of stuff I didn't quite get it.

Thank you.

So um and Jan are you talking about it is change in the sales tax like online versus so um we've talked about this a couple of years ago and of course it keeps coming up so the difference between sales tax in person versus online and what does that specifically mean?

I I can speak to that at a general level.

So if somebody makes a purchase what we call brick and mortar store within the city limits of Walnut Creek, you know, of the nine and a quarter percent sales tax walnut creek would with receive one and a half percent of that one percent from the base amount that is known as Bradley Burns and the half cent from the measure.

Everything else is distributed elsewhere with the lion's share going to the state.

So if that sale is made in person in a brick and mortar store that we think of very traditionally, Walnut Creek receives that one and a half percent.

If that sale is made online and the point of sale is determined to be elsewhere, meaning the distribution center from which that shipment is made, that is considered the point of sale, and that one percent goes to that city as opposed to where the person may have ordered it.

So if anybody hops online, I won't name any online retailers.

I'm sure we can think of at least one big one amongst others.

You order there, it's shipped here in Walnut Creek, but it was distributed from a different distribution center in another city, that city receives that one percent.

Uh the measure O would come to um the half percent would come to Walnut Creek in that instance, but not the base one percent.

So I thought that there was a pool of money that occurred from so that while we don't get the full one percent, there's a portion of it.

And there are some types of purchases that go into what's called the county pool, and county pool is somewhat of an antiquated approach in that it was for administrative convenience for the state when they couldn't easily categorize what something was, where it was purchased, they threw it in the pool and then receive a proportional share.

So if something is bought online and it goes through the county pool, Walnut Creek receives about fifteen percent on the dollar, fifteen cents on the dollar of what it would have otherwise.

If it doesn't go through the pool, then we receive zero.

So when uh when I speak to different groups and they ask what they can do to help Walnut Creek because they know there's potential challenge with grant funding coming from federal, I would say shop in person.

It's the biggest difference that you can make to Walnut Creek Revenues.

Shop in person.

No, it's not always as convenient.

Shop in person.

With with the one caveat that if you go down to Tesla or Rivian, they're shipping this from somewhere else.

So even though you think you're shopping in person, that that tax is not coming to Walnut Creek.

Online purchases go to the point of distribution.

Yeah, and that's a challenge.

Okay.

We'll close the public comment, bring it back to council.

If there's any further questions of staff or any council member comments, um, I see council member gardening is since this is my last swan song as the finance committee person.

I wanted to say I really appreciate the staff, they work very hard to put together a very comprehensive package and really attend to all the details and make sure that we understand where all the bones are buried.

Um, and I would like to move to accept the act for for the fiscal year ending, June 30th, 2025.

Second, we have a motion to second.

Susie, could you read the rule code, please?

Council Member Darling.

Hi, Councilmember Silva.

Hi, Council Member Councilmember DeVinny.

Hi.

Mayor Pro Tem Francois.

Mayor Will.

Hi.

And I agree.

Thank you, Kirsten, and the finance uh department.

Really appreciate this.

A lot of hard work goes in this.

Thank you.

All right.

Brings us to our last agenda item.

Presentation of the new 2025 to 2026 state housing law.

And I invite assistant city attorney Claire Lay to Lie.

To provide the staff presentation.

Good evening, Mayor, Mary Pro Tem, City Council.

I'm Claire Ly, assistant city attorney, and I will be providing you with this short or brief presentation of the new housing laws that went into effect this year, and those are will become effective next year.

And for ease of understanding, I have divided them, extracted the more relevant ones to Walnut Creek as a city, and it divided them into these four categories.

I will be spending more time on the first category.

That's because that's the broader land use sequel changes that have more um lasting effects.

And there are several slides.

I'm happy to guys the questions during or at the end of the presentation.

But again, this is intended to be a high-level overview, and we're happy to provide additional information should the council desire.

So on to the first set of bills, or this is actually law now.

Um this is a part of the budget trailer bills that was um signed into law this June and it went to effect immediately.

So this is AB 130, and it's an incredibly complex bill, does a lot of things, but for our purposes, there are three main components of the bill.

The first one is that it creates a new urban infill exemption under CEQA for housing projects.

This is for um housing developments that are on urban sites.

So think any residential commercial parks, parking, that kind of thing that's under 20 acres or five acres for a building project.

If the project is consistent with either general plan or zoning, either by proposal or by use of state density bonus law incentives, concessions, and waivers.

The project can't be located on sensitive lands, which is somewhat similar to the SB 35 definitions, no open space, conservation easement, wildfire areas, that sorts of thing.

That is 30 dwelling units per acre for Walnut Creek.

And the there's also some historic structure preservation requirements, and the project can't include hotels or bed and breakfast uses.

So if the project is eligible for this infill exemption, the city is obligated to conduct a tribal consultation upon notice by the applicant.

There are specific time frames for that to happen.

And on the project side, the developer is responsible for conducting a phase one environmental assessment.

And if the project is within 500 feet of a freeway, there's some design amenities requirements, and also if it's a fully affordable or over 85 feet in height, there is prevailing wage and labor standards that can apply.

So this is a very straightforward exemption.

We're seeing some projects in other jurisdictions that are starting to want to use it, and so that's kind of expected for for the future.

The second component of AB 130 amends the permit streamlining act, which is the law that requires cities and local governments to approve projects and act on applications expeditiously.

It makes a couple of primary changes.

It defines what is subject to the PSA, and so it's anything that requires a planning entitlement from the city, whether that's discretionary or ministerial.

It also adds some review time frame.

So now we have ministerial projects that must be acted upon within 60 days of a complete formal application.

And for the AB 130 infill projects that we were just talking about, it's 30 days from the conclusion of tribal consultation generally.

So this is sort of a big change because before the developer had to invoke the PSA time frames, the city gets some more time by fairly failing to act pursuing this public notice, but now it removes it so the projects can become effective or deemed approved by by law if the city doesn't meet the timelines.

You saw this a little bit with the adoption of the code update for the triennial code updates, building code updates a couple weeks, months ago.

But it's a six-year moratorium on local amendments unless an exemption applies for these residential projects.

Okay.

So we move on to SB 131.

This is also part of the budget trailer bill, and it is currently in effect.

Two major things that it does.

One is that it creates a single condition or near miss streamlining process under CEQA.

This is not an exemption, but it's more like an expeditious approving process for projects that may call may would have qualified for an exemption, but for a single condition that's similar to the kinds of project that's being described.

And if that's true, then CEQA review is limited to the effects that are caused by just that one condition.

As you can imagine, this would greatly reduce the scope of environmental review, the cost for preparing an environmental impact report, you know, the drafting the public noticing for a project, and it gets them through faster.

And the other categories of change that it does is that the law creates several new sequel exemptions.

I've listed a bunch of them here.

There's some more that's more unique to rural and industrial jurisdictions, but we've seen now that there are some projects that are trying to invoke these exemptions.

Housing element rezoning is one.

That's you know, cities that to do have to do rezoning have been utilizing them.

So these are statutory exemptions, they're very straightforward.

Um, there's not a lot of um eligibility criteria for meeting them.

So it's also expected that you know, these these exemptions can benefit these kinds of projects to move them smoother along the way.

Um I do want to talk a little bit about SB 79.

Um I think the main takeaway is that it does not apply here in Contra Costa County or to Walnut Creek because the law applies to urban transit counties with more than 15 passenger rail stations.

There are only 15 in Contracosa County, so it does not apply.

Um, but otherwise it's a bill that up zones basically areas near transit, overrides local zoning, allows the local government to adopt an ordinance or adopt an alternative plan subject to HCD approval.

Um but for the time being um there is it does not apply here in Contra Costa County.

Um and then this Assembly Bill 507, and I do want to talk a little bit about this one.

It's that it creates a ministerial streamline approval process for what's called adaptive reuse projects, and basically this is repurposing office buildings, commercial buildings into housing, including mixed-use projects.

And this kind of follows uh a bill a couple years ago that makes a hundred percent affordable conversion projects ministerial and by right, and so this allows those projects um to have lower affordability but also but still um be approved ministerially.

Um so here are some criteria, for example, at least half of the square footage has to be dedicated to residential.

There's some affordability requirements.

Um the project can have new structures on the parking lot or vacant portions of the same lot, but subject to certain requirements, such as the commercial portion or the non-residential portion has to meet um the underlying zoning.

And oops, sorry about that.

And because the projects are um by right, they're exempt from CEQA, but they do have to comply with specific labor standards or pay prevailing wages depending on what type and height, location, and those sorts of things.

The city has obligations to approve them within specific time frames, but it can make them go through objective design review, which is basically checking out if the project meets objective design standards.

Um, and lastly, the city can establish an incentive program to provide financial assistance for these projects, and it's basically utilizing the tax increments from the increase in property taxes that are attributed to these projects, and so the city can provide assistance through that manner.

Um, the other component of AB 507 that's different from what we're just talking about is that it makes some changes to housing element law and requires HCU to provide more specific input in its review.

Um, as the council recalls the city um submits a draft housing element to HCD for review, and HCD provides comments.

The city is required to consider those comments and make changes or you know, adopt without the changes, but explain why.

Um so this bill requires HED to provide the specific deficiency in the draft, to include the specific statutory citations about the deficiency, provide the specific analysis or the text that they would like to see for the city to address a deficiency, and then if the city makes changes, it will need to include those specific references.

And so you know, from our experience, it's very can be very challenging for HCD to include those specific um feedback for the city in that process.

So hopefully this will um you know make that process more smooth and direct their attention to what what needs to be incorporated in their comments?

Okay, um, and we shift over to um some building permit issuance issues.

Um, and here are two bills that require the city to consider third-party plan check reviews um and also for the city to conduct inspections of building permanent work um expeditiously and for smaller projects that's under 10 units and you ask why is this significant um I think it's to illustrate that so far the state housing law changes they have been focused on kind of planning entitlement stage um and with these bills and also um a couple years ago there's a bill about establishing timelines for processing building permits there's some shifts in the legislative trends about you know what we do with post entitlement permits and how building permits you know might affect the housing construction process and in order to kind of achieve the goal of stimulate housing production.

So further down line and there are some bills about housing law enforcement there's additional provisions under AB 712 about permitte fees um if an applicant is able to challenge successfully a city's violation of what's called housing reform laws and it's very broadly defined it's essentially any housing laws that we've uh you know come to be familiar with and working with until this adds another layer um of remedies for the applicant if they are able to um prevail on on a challenge um and similarly SBA08 expedites the enforcement actions that's brought by the AG's office um for um claims that allege the city hasn't properly denied a housing project um and then finally SB 786 authorizes HCD now to review housing elements if the city fails to meet a timeline um to adopt programs to remove housing constraints an example of this can include um you know the city said in the housing element that the program will remove certain development standards will change them and make it more streamlined but it failed if it does not meet the timeline of the program um HCD can review housing elements and issue kind of compliance reviews for that um but on the good side it increases the compliance time for cities um from 60 to 120 days if the housing element was challenged and the court said it was not compliant originally we have um the city has 60 days to bring that into compliance but now that timeline's been extended to 120 days.

And then finally there's um a couple bills that clean up the ADU statute.

One for SB 543 it clean up the law to kind of incorporate some HCD interpretations and most importantly the number of state exempt by right ADUs that are allowed on a parcel.

Recall there are some disputes about how many units you have to allow freestanding conversion detached so now it's fully incorporated into the law that you have to allow all types of those um units and then there's a um SB9 which would require the city to submit ordinances and it validates now if you don't submit that to ACD within 60 days of adoption.

And then finally AB 1154 eliminates the JADU on occupancy requirement if the JDU has separate bathroom from the main house and also clarifies that rentals for these units have to be longer than 30 days so no short-term rentals.

And then the takeaway from the set of law is that um Walnut Creek has adopted already um ordinance amendments to be in line with um the first and the last bill and then it's always been timely in submitting these um ordinance updates to ACD.

And with that concludes my presentation I'm happy to answer questions.

A lot of state laws okay.

Do we have any questions on that council?

Thank you very much Claire that's a lot to go through.

Let's just start with the ADU cleanup bills have we identified what if anything we need to do to now our local ordinances to become compliant with those.

So based on my review so far we have done what the bills asked for um that's always a continuous effort that we always you know monitor and work with the staff to to do that.

But that's good.

And can you go back to SB 786?

Okay.

HCD is authorized to review housing elements for noncompliance for removing housing constraints which we have deadlines in the eight years multiple times like we were just finishing up some things this increases the okay so they look for noncompliance they tell us and now rather than having only 60 days we have a hundred and twenty days to come within compliance um is the is so those are news those are kind of two separate provisions the one the first one deals with um currently HCD it generally provides the HCD can review a housing element for compliance and if it determines that it's not they can take further action um and this change specifies that if the timeline is not met then that's grounds for HCD to um initiate that review and then if you know HCD refers the housing element to the Attorney General's office they you know it brings suit or if the the housing element is challenged by um the public um and the court finds that it's not compliant then or before we had 60 days to bring that into compliance but now there's a 20 days to do that.

So kind of good news right so it's yes somewhat good news.

So this reinforces the importance of us staying on our timeline so that we don't fall out of compliance because if we fall out of compliance and we're fine basically they effectively they could decertify our certification which puts us exposed to builder's remedy.

Yeah that is a that is a you know end of the consequence that I'm taking it out.

You know yeah yeah and then the city does you know it's very we're very the staff is very diligent about that right so we're checks and updates and tracking okay.

And then there was AB 507 Frank Kong isn't here we it's built in permit.

Basically it's the um adaptive reuse projects we've had some discussion about these adaptive reuse projects at the Seismic Safety Commission where things are not I mean if you go to do adaptive reviews on a building built in 1970 there is no seismic unless they've done retrofitting to what extent ours are are we allowed to bring them into requirement uh to meet the current building code particularly a seismic or fire code etc the building code requirements you know they're still applicable um this is more on the planning entitlement stage um and also the law has provisions about if you're trying to convert a building that's more than 50 years old um there's some additional things that you have to do like file report so this doesn't ignore the building so it doesn't correct yes it's it's not minister well it's ministerial but yet you do have to meet okay thank you that's right.

Any any other questions just a just a few of them keep it very nice job.

I I think you handled 15 very complex dense laws in 15 minutes.

So nicely done.

Have we received any applications for the A B 130 exemptions or maybe this A B 507 versions I assume that no yeah no we haven't um have you made this presentation to the planning commission yet we have made um more detailed presentations on the um AB 130 and SB 131 because I think they would benefit from it as well and then on 786 is there so it it uh authorizes I guess in a new way, HCD to enforce the timelines that are in a housing element.

Does it subject a city to penalties for not meeting those timelines?

So, you know, following council member Silva's point that the ultimate action the HCD can take is, you know, it could just decertify the housing element.

If it finds that it's not in substantial client compliance, it can refer the matter to over to the training general's office, which you know, they may take additional action.

Um but the process out that's outlined in the statutes more um, you know, it's a it's a steps process.

So HD first takes the steps to review, then it gives the city a time frame to respond.

It's not a long time, but it's a time frame to respond.

Um, and then if there's presumably additional violations, not being cured, then you know the subsequent actions can be can be triggered.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

Looks like no more questions.

Claire, thank you very much.

A lot of information here.

I'm sure that uh as the year goes ahead, we'll be coming up against a few of these.

So uh thanks so much.

With that, that comes to the end of our agenda.

Uh public comment, Mayor?

Oh, I'm sorry.

I guess we should have uh public comment.

All right, no more public comment, no more comments from the dais.

Therefore, we'll close the meeting.

We'll adjourn to our next city council meeting on Tuesday, January 20th, 2026.

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, happy Kwanzaa, happy new year, happy holidays, and we'll see you next year.