Good afternoon.

I'm Kevin Wilk, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, and welcome to the Tuesday, April 7th, 2026 special meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council.

This special meeting is called for the purpose of holding a closed session related to the following conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation, one potential case, and conference with legal counsel existing litigation of one case.

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 item previously mentioned.

After an opportunity for public comment, unless somebody walks into the next five seconds, the city council will reconvene for the closed session discussion.

So let's reconvene.

We are going on second.

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 lectern, 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, good evening to this full House.

I'm Kevin Wilk, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, and welcome to the Tuesday, April 7th, 2026 regular meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council.

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

One nation under God, individual with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

And City Clerk Susie Martinez, would you please call the role?

Councilmember Darling.

Here.

Councilmember Dimini.

Here.

Council Member Silva.

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Francois.

Here.

And Mayor Wilk.

Here.

All right.

Um is a proclamation for Joan Lucasy Gardens at the Heather Farms.

And I invite Joan Lucasy to please come forward to accept the proclamation.

So Joan Lucci first connected with the garden at Heather Farms as a young mother, regularly visiting the picnic, explore and learn about the plants and flowers with her children.

Later she returned as a volunteer to support garden maintenance and propagation, eventually joining the board of directors and working her way into the interim co-executive director position.

Joan has served as the executive director at the gardens at Heather Farms since 2014.

And through her leadership, she's guided the gardens at Heather Farms through a transformative era of growth and stability, strengthen its financial foundation through grant writing and major donor cultivation, and expanded programs and facilities that significantly enhance the garden's reach and impact.

And whereas she has led and supported numerous capital and programmatic improvements, including new greenhouses, 82 community garden beds, a compost station, a tool shed, a children's garden and little library, an 8,000 square foot climate discovery garden with modern irrigation and low water plantings, upgrades to irrigation and facilities, restoration projects, including the waterfall and trellises, commercial kitchen improvements and expanded children's science and education programs.

I need a breath after all of them.

In part in partnership with local agencies and school districts.

Her guiding values of honesty, equity, determination, gratitude, patience, and humor have shaped her leadership and service, reflecting a long-standing commitment to nonprofit work and community engagement.

And after more than a decade of dedicated service, she now concludes her tenure with appreciation for the staff, volunteers, and community members, and a sense of gratitude for the daily privilege of working in a space that she deeply loves.

And therefore, I, Kevin Wilk, mayor of the city of Walnut Creek, on behalf of the Walnut Creek City Council, do hereby recognize Joan Lucasy for her extraordinary leadership, lasting contributions, and dedicated service to the gardens at Heather Farms and Greater Walnut Creek community, and we extend our heartfelt gratitude and best wishes in your retirement and future endeavors.

Thank you.

Mayor Wilk and City Council, thank you so much for such a special recognition.

I really appreciate it.

And I want to take the opportunity to thank the Gardens Board of Directors who are with me here tonight.

Just a wonderful group of community volunteers who donate their time and their professional skills and enthusiasm for the gardens mission.

And that gave me a really solid foundation to do my work, and I'll be eternally grateful to them.

I'm excited to introduce you to the garden's new executive director, Jeremy Peck.

Jeremy has been the garden manager for over 10 years.

So he knows the physical space, he understands the garden's mission, and he understands our culture.

He's beloved by our staff and by our members and donors and stakeholders, so it's really made this transition seamless.

He's here on his uh second day of work.

And I'm really excited to see where he takes the organization.

So thank you.

Terrific, thank you.

So, Jeremy, uh, future councils will see you up here in about a couple of decades.

Well, let's take a photo.

The next our next item is another proclamation for Clean Contra Costa Month.

And I invite Stacey Martin Bonaducci.

Did I pronounce that right?

Bonaduce, uh, programming grant manager with sustainable with state sustainable Contra Costa, and come forward to accept the proclamation.

So the proclamations, whereas our the health of our environment, economy, and community is essential for current and future generations, and the city of Walnut Creek has a long commitment to environmental sustainability, including adopting a sustainability action plan with ambitious goals for the community and city operation and a climate emergency resolution emphasizing the need for urgent action to address climate change.

Earth Day has been celebrated in April since 1970.

Sustainable Walnut Creek organizes an annual Walnut Creek Earth Day celebration.

And the uh City of Walnut Creek supports the collaborative effort bringing awareness and local action of the pivotal issues facing our planet because when we reduce our impact by conserving resources and investing in local solutions, everybody benefits.

And therefore, I, Kevin Wilk, mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, on behalf of the Walnut Creek City Council, do hereby proclaim April 2026 as Cleaner Contra Costa Month to bring the community together in action for a healthy, clean, and sustainable region, and encourage residents to find resources and join the challenge at Cleaner ContraCosta.org.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Wilk and Council.

On behalf of the city staff and our partners at Sustainable Contra Costa, we are honored to accept this proclamation.

This month, Earth Month, isn't just about a title on a calendar.

It's an open invitation to every resident in Walnut Creek.

We know that climate action can sometimes feel like a massive overwhelming concept.

But the cleaner contra cost a challenge turns that big idea into what we call everyday wins.

Whether you are a busy parent looking for a quick habit shift, or a homeowner planning on a major upgrade, this free online platform is your one-stop shop to access to cost cost saving resources, lowering your utility bills, which I'm sure everyone will love to do, and track your household impact in real time.

We are especially excited to announce that this week marks the launch of the water wise challenge.

Right now, we are in friendly competition with our neighbors.

And every time you log a water saving action, like fixing that leaky faucet or switching to a smart irrigation controller, you earn points for Walnut Creek.

To date, over 949 Walnut Creek households have already saved nearly $85,000 and kept kept 180 tons of CO2 emissions out of our atmosphere.

Let's double those numbers this year.

It takes less than two minutes to sign up.

You can simply go to CleanerContracta.org, join a team, or start your own.

And when you do this, we save resources that our entire community thrives.

So let's show the rest of the county what Walnut Creek can do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Picture time.

All right.

Because two proclamations is never enough, we have a third.

National Public Safety Telecom Telecommunications Week.

And I'd like dispatcher Zachary.

Oh my gosh, I should have looked at your last what's what's your last name?

Rekal May, forward to accept the proclamation.

So whereas emergencies can occur at any time that require police, fire, or emergency medical services, and when an emergency occurs, the prompt response of police officers, firefighters, and paramedics is critical to the protection of life and preservation of property.

The safety of our police officers and firefighters is dependent upon the quality of accuracy and information obtained from citizens who telephone the Walnut Creek Emergency Communications Center.

And whereas public safety telecommunications are the first and most critical contact our citizens have with emergency services.

Public safety telecommunicators are the single vital link for our police officers and firefighters by monitoring their activities by radio, providing them with information, and ensuring their safety.

And each dispatcher has exhibited compassion, understanding, and professionalism during the performance of their job in the past year, and therefore I, Kevin Wilk, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, on behalf of the Walnut Creek City Council, to hereby declare the week of April 12th through 18th, 2026 as National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week in honor of the men and women whose diligence and professionalism keeps our city and citizens safe.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, City Council.

I just like to, it's an honor to accept this proclamation on behalf of all my colleagues and our team.

Um I thank them for their um commitment to excellence, their sacrifice, and their resilience, and we look forward to continuing to commit to the city of Walnut Creek.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And as we know, speed and efficiency is paramount to safety, and so appreciate all that you have your colleagues.

My brevity is also I have to get to work too.

No, I don't I mean at work, but okay.

Both are good.

A picture?

Yes.

And anybody in the audience that is affiliated.

If you receive the calls.

Thank you all.

That's it.

Okay.

Now we have a presentation from Marin Clean Energy or MCE, and I invite Ciara Donato, bilingual community development manager forward to present.

And I should mention that Cindy Darling, uh, Councilmember Cindy Darling is uh our liaison to MCE.

And Councilmember DeFini is my alternate, and he got to go this month, and so he got his first full exposure to MCE.

And it was it was fun, he tells me.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you so much.

Good evening, and thank you, Mary Wilk, members of the city council and staff for the opportunity to speak with you today.

Um, as mentioned, my name is Chiara Donato.

I'm bilingual community development manager at MCE.

I've been there now for three years, and my role really is to serve as a liaison to staff and public officials in Contra Costa County.

I'm glad to be here tonight to share some updates about MCE and our engagement efforts in Wanna Creek and discuss potential partnership opportunities to help Wanna Creek meet their goals to reduce energy-related greenhouse gas emissions.

And just as a quick refresher, MC is a community choice aggregation program.

So what that means is that we enable cities and counties to purchase clean renewable electricity on behalf of their residents, businesses, and municipal facilities.

The City of Warnick Creek is a member of MC's Joint Powers Authority, and we've been providing electric generation services and customer programs to the community since 2016.

Thank you.

So I'd like to start with uh a little brief introduction on what community choice in California is.

So MCA is California's first community choice aggregation provider.

We are a not-for-profit public electricity provider, and we've been serving customers in Contra Costa County since 2013.

Since our launch in 2010, CCAs or community choice aggregation programs have grown across the state with 25 agencies now serving over 15 million electric customers, as you can see on the map here of the state.

Um, to better illustrate how MCE works, we have a visual here.

So on the far right, you see MC, we buy and build clean and renewable energy for you.

So that could be solar, uh wind, or other kind of renewable products.

Um PGE continues to deliver that service.

So on their lines and polls, MCU just replaces the electric generation portion, offering an alternative choice and access to more renewable energy.

And then the benefit is the customer.

So you at your home are using more cleaner air, renewable energy, have more stable rates, choice, and local control.

So as I mentioned, we're at not-for-profit agency.

That means MC is not funded by tax dollars, but directly by the revenues from ratepayers.

Our structure as a joint powers authority creates local oversight and transparency through public board meetings.

We are directly governed by elected officials from each of the 38 member jurisdictions that we serve.

Each city, town, or county that MC serves, appoints an elected official to represent their community.

And our board meets monthly at a public meetings to determine policy, rate, programs, and other administration decisions for MCE.

And a thank you to Councilmember Cindy Darling for your climate leadership and for serving on our board of directors.

Here you can take a look at MCE's growth.

So MC launched in Marin County originally in 2008 with a vision to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

By 2010, we began serving our first customers, setting the foundation for growth.

Today we are proud to serve those 38 diverse member communities throughout the Bay Area, reflecting on our commitment to expanding our reach and encouraging widespread adoption of renewable energy.

You can see when Wanna Creek joined in 2016 highlighted there.

Over the next couple of slides, we will talk about that your energy options and choices.

So choice is power.

With MCE, you have a choice.

Previous to that, there was only one choice.

Today, folks can choose to get their generation or electricity from PGE or choose MCE's options.

MCE offers two main service options as an alternative.

We have our Deep Green or Premium Service, which is made up of 100% renewable, so that wind and solar we were talking about.

And then we have our default service, which is the light green option made out of 60% renewable.

Both of these services offer a much higher percentage of renewable energy compared to PGE's 23% product.

And quickly, I wanted to review understanding MCE rates.

So a few points to understand about MCU rates is that MCE rates are only for generation.

So that's where your energy comes from.

We set our rates for electricity generation typically about once a year, and all of those rates are reviewed publicly by MCU's board of directors and improved in a voting meeting.

MC's board of directors recently approved a 14 rate reduction to effective April 1st.

And I also want to spend some time talking about discount programs, as we all mentioned, utility bills are really high right now, and it is something that is top of mind for us.

We know energy costs have been historically high, and a benefit of MCE's model is that we help ensure locally controlled rates.

In addition to the local rate setting, all MCE customers are eligible for a number of statewide bill saving programs.

Those include income qualified households can receive deep discounts on the energy bills from programs such as the CARE or California Rates for Energy Program.

There's also the FARA or family electric rate assistance program and medical baseline.

And in addition to all of the statewide programs, MCE's board also recently approved an additional 10 million dollars in funding for the MC care credit.

So this is a separate program on top of the Care and FARA that's a bill relief for income qualified households and small businesses that became affected on April 1st.

This slide is an example of residential cost comparison based on the average residential usage in our service area.

So you will see three options the three options that we discussed earlier, each with their breakdown.

Where you see the biggest difference is on the PG ⁇ E fees line.

This is a charge known as the power charge and difference adjustment, or the PCIA for short.

What this is is an exit fee from PGE who entered into energy contracts, assuming they would be purchasing power for your community.

All right, so now I want to talk more about MCE and the city of Wanna Creek's community engagement efforts and how customers have benefited from MC programs.

Again, our agency focuses on reinvesting in the community through the customer programs to help lower bills and increase access to clean energy for everyone.

For Wanick Creek, what that looks like is that 90% of customers in the city are enrolled with MCE.

7% are actually enrolled in our Deep Green Premium Service, and 11% use the solar programs that we have, 8% are enrolled in the care discount, and 4% are on medical baseline.

On the customer program side, that means that over $386,000 have been provided in direct customer rebates for the purchase of electric vehicles.

112 electric vehicle charging stations have been installed throughout the city on our rebate program with over 230,000 in rebates distributed through that program.

And over 1.7 million dollars have been distributed in energy efficiency programs.

So this is for upgrades to homes and businesses to help them save money.

We're also investing in Wanna Creek, the Wanna Creek community through sponsorship of local nonprofits and community-based organizations like Sustainable Wannack Creek, Sustainable Contra Costa, Sustainable Rossmore, the Wanna Creek Chamber, Meals on Wheels, the upcoming Earth Day celebrations this month, and Save Mount Diablo, just to name a few.

We also not part of the city sustainability schools is to have more energy efficiency buildings.

Through MC's energy management programs, we've worked with city staff to help improve municipal buildings, resulting in reduced energy consumption and increasing savings.

The city also has deep green champions like the Ruth Bancroft Garden and Nursery, who are local businesses, nonprofits, and public agencies that have made a public commitment to using the 100% renewable energy.

Municipal accounts also opted up to our deep green program since 2018.

This month we are actually recognizing Habitat for Humanity of East Bay Silicon Valley for the McLaussian Advocacy Award at an upcoming board of directors meeting.

This is for their environmental leadership and impact on the Esperanza Place in Wanna Creek.

This is a model project of zero net energy developments.

And it looks like they're actually producing more energy than it consumes.

We're also partnering with sustainable contra Costa and investing over $5,000 to support local sustainability campaigns and their sustainable leaders in action, which is their youth leader program.

So as mentioned, um, the programs earlier are our main focus in reinvesting into our member communities through the various customer programs.

Some of them are highlighted here.

We have our workplace and multifamily charging program, which is an up to $4,500 rebates per charging installation.

We also have our energy efficiency and demand response programs available for small businesses, commercial and industrial, and the energy management programs that we talked about earlier.

So with that, I'll close here by saying that MC is the first and longest operating CCA in California.

We were built by energy customers for energy customers, and we have set the standard for many of other CCAs in operation today.

We value environmental responsibility and care for our customers through community model.

And since 2010, we've eliminated over 500,000 metric tons of carbon emissions.

We invested over 358 million dollars in MC communities, and supported over 2.9 million labor hours to buy and build cleaner energy to serve our communities.

With that, I'd love to open it up for questions.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Does anybody in the council have any questions?

Hi.

So if somebody wanted to talk to MCE about accessing some of their programs, what do you have their number for their community for their customer service center?

I can pull that up.

On this slide, I do have the email, but happy to share.

Email is always a good one.

Yes.

And it's a great resource.

I figure we have a big audience today, so I'm just taking advantage of you since you're here to spread a little gospel.

But it's it's a great program, and I appreciate the staff coming tonight to give everybody an update.

And we were proud to be able to reduce the fee, the charges this year.

Um we are hoping that in the next year we have heard that PGE is going to be raising their rates, and so we will continue to try to beat their rates as much as we can.

Thank you.

And I do did add some flyers in the back that definitely have our phone number in there as well.

Right.

Yes, ma'am interested.

Thank you for being here tonight.

And uh great presentation.

It answered, I think every question.

I had one though.

In terms of the just big picture, is the idea that CCAs will replace PG ⁇ E and Southern California Edison and the other utilities in terms of being the energy provider because they won't be able to meet the renewable portfolios that the state's going to require going forward, or what what's what's that future look like?

That's a good question.

Um we always like to say that we are partners with PG, right?

Because they're definitely still there for the infrastructure.

Um I would say it's not to replace them, right?

We have different missions.

Um ours is to have more renewable energy for our community.

Um it's also based more locally.

As you know, um PGE or Edison has a much larger area, so our programs are that's why they're more hyper focused on the community.

Um as you know, prices are really high right now, and there's a lot on the energy markets, I think coming into the future, right?

We don't have an maybe enough energy for all the folks here, so we definitely don't talk about the idea of replacing P ⁇ E, but working together to make sure to serve all of our customers and have the energy for you know, as the future moves on to more technology.

Um we have a virtual power plant, which is the idea that all of the smart technology will then be connected, right?

Um, be able to switch on and off to help us on hot days reduce energy consumption.

So we definitely need everyone's support.

I hope that answers that part of your question.

It does.

Uh and that makes sense.

And then in terms of solar installations, is a homeowner still able to partner with MCE in terms of getting rebates for that and putting that energy back into the grid?

Yeah, definitely.

Um so always a good clarifying question because when I am out in the community, folks are like, do you do solar installations?

Um so we're the energy provider similar to PGE.

Um after you do get a solar installations, we have similar programs for those who have solar, so you get a certain you know cent per kilowatt back into your pockets.

Um so yeah, we have those programs, and then part of that uh program I mentioned earlier about the virtual power plant.

There's opportunities too.

If you have a battery with storage for your solar, and then you want to sign up to have it switch off at a certain amount of time or certain amount of energy consumption and helps put that back on a grid.

Um, there's an incentive for that as well.

Terrific.

Thank you.

Cara, thank you.

Appreciate the presentation.

You mentioned you have flyers in the back, and if you're not going to stay here through the whole meeting when people are leaving, you can certainly put them on the back area and people can pick them up.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Right.

Next on the agenda is the consent calendar.

And does any council member wish to pull any item for discussion?

Oh well, that may be a first of my tenure.

2C.

2C up, it's not a first.

Okay.

Uh 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 the remarks.

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

So if any speakers would like to speak on an item on the consent calendar only, this is your time to come up.

Okay.

Uh seeing no speakers, I'll ask uh if council member I'll move to approve two A B D and E.

Second.

We have a motion and a second.

Uh we'll we'll throw that one to Mayor Pro Tem Francois.

Susie, could you call the role, please?

Councilmember Darling.

Hi.

Mayor Pro Tem Francois.

Hi.

Councilmember Davin.

Hi.

Councilmember Silva.

Hi, Mayor Welk.

Hi.

Motion Care.

All right.

Councilmember DeVinny, if you'd like to bring up your item.

Yeah, it's um it's more of an uh just an information uh piece for the public.

Uh this is in regards to the Contra Costa Clean Water Program, and it's something that we've uh put into effect to manage mostly stormwater, but uh emissions from uh stormwater and other eliminations into our water system.

Um from it's it comes from the the Clean Water Act, it's a federal piece of legislation, and it's an unfunded mandate, so the um the requirements for treating water and for treating stormwater are becoming increasingly um uh strict and so they're requiring uh increased investment and increased um money from the city in order to perform these these um cleanup and monitoring systems.

So it's something to be aware of that um as we continue to um fund this, that there may be a time where we need to look at an alternate way of funding stormwater cleanup, and right now it's being paid for primarily through development fees and uh with overflow into our general fund, um, but there may come a time in the future where we have to look at other ways to try to pay for this ongoing cost.

That's all.

Yeah, all right.

And uh with that, I move to adopt the uh resolution authorizing the city manager to execute the amended and restated Contra Costa Clean Water Program Agreement as stated on the consent calendar to see.

I'll second.

We have a motion and a second.

Susie could call the roll, please.

Councilmember DeVinny.

Hi.

Councilmember Darling.

Hi.

Councilmember Silva.

Hi, Mayor Pro Tem Francois.

Hi.

Mayor Welk.

Hi.

All right.

Okay, next item on the agenda is public communications.

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

Under the Brown Act, the council cannot act on items during uh 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 allocated at this time for public communications for items not on the agenda, meaning not on the public hearings.

Additional item, a 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 that the time is 6.35.

And we will take public comments on items not on the agenda until approximately 7.05, and then the remainder of any such comment at the end of the open session portion of the meeting.

And come on down.

Good evening, Jan Warren.

I live in the woodlands, and uh just wanted to talk about a couple of bills.

You were just talking about power, and uh Senator Becker has a bill SB 913.

I just heard about heard him present on uh today.

And uh, you know, we have a lot of power stored in all kinds of gadgets, and it's just a matter of trying to be more efficient in terms of how those are used and how you're allowed to do different things.

So he is working on that.

The other bill that uh I really came to talk to you about has to do with housing and affordable housing and SB 1117 Cervantes.

Uh spoke about the uh ADUs and JADUs and how they've grown in the the state of California.

And um it reminded me of our impact fees and the difficulties in having enough money to pay for all sorts of things that the city needs to keep running and yet keep down the price of housing.

Uh and so this particular bill uh is is working to if you want to put in an ADU for 750 uh square feet, you want to bill that and put it in your backyard.

Um they're wanting to say, okay, the first 750 square feet will not we will not get uh attach any impact fees to it above it.

Let's say you put in 1,500 square feet, then they'll subtract and you will pay impact fees on 750 square feet.

So they're trying to make it a win-win so that the cities get some money, and yet people uh actually continue to build.

And it made me curious about what we're doing in our city uh in terms of I know we we've also put in a lot of ADUs and permitted them here, and I um I don't know how many of those are actually being rented out and how many are just going to family members, but uh it's always an interesting topic.

Thanks.

Thank you, Jan.

Any other public comments?

Thanks, Mark.

Are you ready for another person?

Nope, come on up.

You're next.

Hi.

Uh good evening, Mayor Welk and members of the city council.

My name is Kitty Cole.

I'm a walnut creek resident.

I actually know many of you from uh various things.

Um you knocked on my door, uh Craig, when you were running for city council, so I remember you vividly.

Um I'm here to talk about the Master Gardener Program of Contracosta County.

A lot of people know about it, but what we've really learned is not everybody knows about it, and we want to talk about it two things.

My colleague is sitting with me, she's gonna come up right behind me since 1983.

This is our mission statement, by the way.

Since 1983, our program has provided trusted science-based information to help people grow healthier gardens in more sustainable communities.

We offer practical guidance at in many locations on topics such as vegetable gardening, soils, pests, roses.

That's my topic, and uh wildfire defense.

We also support 49 school gardens in the county, helping young people develop a curiosity about gardening and in particular growing food, and that's at all levels of um education, elementary, middle school, and high school.

There is a half-acre parcel of land that I don't think everybody knows that you actually own.

The city owns, and we garden, and it's called our garden.

It's at Shade Lands and uh North Wickett Lane, in case everybody doesn't know.

It's owned by the city.

It was built and is maintained by us and our volunteers.

There's 275 of us.

It's open to the public, and it's literally serves as a living classroom where people take courses, and uh it's every Wednesday at 10, and Dorothy is going to talk about that.

Um last my want to tell you that we have our big what we call our great tomato plant sale this weekend.

It's the 11th and 12th two days, and the following two Wednesdays, and it is a giant thing that where we sell 30,000 plants, by the way, in four days.

If you haven't got come, you should come.

It's really amazing.

We have more than 70 varieties of tomatoes along with many other vegetables and herbs and everything is four dollars, and we start everything from seed, so they're really spectacular.

You can't get 70 varieties anywhere.

Is that it?

Oh can I say one line?

Is that okay?

Quick line.

Okay, one line.

Um it's a well-loved uh tradition, and every year we give 12 to 14,000 pounds of food from this garden to the uh monument crisis center in Concord.

So there I am.

I'm gonna put flyers at the back too, just because I heard the other person could.

Okay.

So thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Dorothy Abeda, Pleasant Hill.

Uh, but I spend most of my volunteer hours at our garden in Shade Lens here in beautiful Walnut Creek.

I want to tell you a little bit about the services that we offer at our garden.

One, it is open every Wednesday from 9 to noon for you, the public to come visit us, see the wonderful things we're doing, and you can bring your plant questions with you and talk to the Master Gardeners there.

During the growing season, which starts this year, April 15th, runs through October 29th.

We also have fabulous master gardeners that will be giving you advice in hands-on workshop demonstrations.

We have 29 weeks, 29 different topics.

These workshops are free to the public.

They are at 10 o'clock, they run about 90 minutes long, and please come visit us.

The other thing that happens during the season is that at each of these events, we have an Ask a Master Gardener table.

This is where you get to ask your personal questions.

Bring in a sick plant, bring in photos of a tree that you don't know anything.

Trees are my thing.

Um we are there for you.

We are uh the Ask a Master Gardener Tables are all across the county at all the farmers markets at special events like the Wind Festival, Martinez Beaver Festival.

Um access this resource, and it is free to you.

We only give scientifically uh vetted UC approved information.

Lastly, if you can't make it in person, we have an email address where you can send photos and questions to our fabulous master gardeners.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Dorothy.

Dorothy, can you hold on?

We we have a question.

Just a minute.

Dorothy, come back.

Dorothy, wait.

Can you pro for those who not on the here to grab a flyer?

Can you provide the email address and your or your website?

That's okay.

No, I can't.

And I caught because I never email us.

That makes sense.

Um, but uh you can just Google, you know, that word.

Um see Master Gardeners of Contracosta County or Contra Costa County Master Gardener program, and we will come up our schedule of 29 um talks are posted on our website April 29th.

I'm gonna show you how to plant a tree the proper way.

And you said 10 a.m.

what day of the week?

Uh every Wednesday, all throughout the year.

We're open from 9 to noon.

The talks are at 10, but 9 to noon, the Ask a Master Gardener table is there.

Our fabulous uh master gardener volunteers are there, and you will get the best treatment you've ever had for your garden questions, better than anywhere else.

And you can sign up for the email because I get them on the regular, and a lot of this information comes in your regular.

Sign up for our email.

We we will give you the email.

Because I I took some really sad tomatoes to the Master Gardener table one time, and they they told me why they were sad and what to do.

Disease questions.

Yes.

Yes.

So anyway, I've been getting it, and it is great information.

I always really appreciate it.

Thank you.

And my tomatoes are still sad, but it's fine.

Very happy answers.

I have a qu uh a phone number for you.

Would you like me to read it out quickly?

And I also have the email address.

It's at the very bottom of the flyer, and it's probably a point six, so I'm hard to see this.

But anyway, I think it says 925 608 6683.

And the email is C C M G.

So Contra Costa Master Gardener, C C M G at UC A N R dot EDU.

Should I say it twice?

Are we good?

One more time.

One more time.

Phone number 925 608 6683.

The email is C C M, as in Mary, G at UCANR.edu.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Nobody in Walnut Creek has a reason not to have excellent gardens now.

Yes.

Do we have any more public comments for tonight?

We have one more card for public comment.

I would love to have a public.

Oh, five of these.

Okay.

Thank you.

I mean.

Okay.

So seeing no more public comments, we'll close the public comment portion of our meeting.

And move on to the next item.

Which is council member and staff announcements, reports on activities or requests.

So let me first ask our city attorney do you have to report any closed session actions?

Uh there are no reportable actions from this evening's closed session.

And city manager, any reports?

Yeah, good evening.

Uh one update uh for your council and for the public.

You'll recall that your council authorized an outdoor dining incentive program and allocated 100,000 for incentives for businesses for restaurants downtown to build outdoor dining.

Uh restaurants could receive a grant of up to $10,000.

Please to share an update that so far seven outdoor dining pods as we are referring to them have been built.

Um the program was set to expire March 31st, but we had the option for a final extension to June 30th that did go into effect.

So if there are any restaurant tours out there that are thinking about pursuing the outdoor dining program, the time is now to get the application in and get that built before the end of June to make the most of that incentive program that's available.

Thank you.

And uh there's up to three more that that we have grant for, is that right?

That's correct.

Okay, final three.

Uh let's start then with Councilmember DeVinny for any announcements and activities on AB 1234.

All right.

Well, good evening.

It's been a a busy past few weeks.

Um I attended the MCE board meeting that we just learned about in uh Cindy Darling's uh council member darling's absence.

And uh while I was there, we discussed um AB 1761, which is um a piece of legislation that's uh being put forth uh to help deal with these PCIA charges.

So those again uh as a reminder are the charges that PGE is charging consumer uh choice aggregates like MCE for leaving PG ⁇ E and getting their power from MCE.

And one of the issues has been that it's felt like those fees have been fairly high and that there hasn't been a lot of transparency as to how the fees are being generated.

So what 1761 would do is it would create transparency by um by uh for the PCA charges.

Uh it would make PGE disclose the data they're using to um for their calculations and how they're coming up with them, and it would allow policymakers to audit those uh charges.

Um CE did um give money to offset the uh rates that are going up or went up because of the uh PGE charges, and uh fortunately MCE put away a rainy rainy day fund uh called their operating reserve fund, and they transferred money from that uh to help uh with rate stabilization.

Uh that uh helps with low-income uh customers and also uh helps reduce the impact of PGE charges on MCE customers.

So that's it from the MCE board meeting.

Um I was uh enjoyed attending the Taste and Toast events that was went on March 25th at the Broadway Plaza.

That was a uh WCEF or Walnut Creek Education Foundation uh fundraiser in partnership with the Walnut Creek Downtown Association.

It was food, wine, uh live music.

They had a stage with performances from WCI and Tice Creek students.

Um arts, music, library, and science programs uh in uh Walnut Creek schools.

And um the county side, uh I want to uh acknowledge the retirement of our uh fire chief uh Louis Brochard.

Uh Chief Brochard uh had over 30 years of service in the fire department, 18 years at the uh Contra Costa Fire Protection District, and seven years as the fire chief.

Uh there was a retirement ceremony with bagpipes and uh you know formal um presentation.

It was it was quite impressive, and so I I want to thank him for his service and and wish him well in his retirement.

Um I was uh able to attend the pre-opening for a restaurant here in Walnut Creek, North Italia, uh delicious uh food and uh beautiful atmosphere.

So I want to welcome uh the restaurant North Italia to uh Walnut Creek.

Um personal front, uh I launched an internship program for students uh in the area in Walnut Creek to um to work with the uh you know city government um and it was set up on a quarterly program, and we just graduated our first two interns.

So uh I want to um give a big thank you to uh Andy Lincoln from uh Diabo Valley College, DVC, and Sophia Lochman from Las Lomas for completing the program.

Very impressed with their efforts and their engagement, and I want to wish them all the success on their future endeavors.

I know they'll do well.

So for any students in Walnut Creek looking to intern, please reach out to me.

Um on the Walnut Creek uh visitors bureau.

I attended their board meeting as a liaison to uh visit Walnut Creek.

We briefly we got an update on their marketing strategies for the World Cup, um, policy updates on how they're doing sponsorship funding.

And uh now if you go to visit Walnut Creek, there is a little AI tool on the side that you can press, and it's very cool.

You can ask it for recommendations on restaurants, uh help you plan uh trip in Walnut Creek or uh hotel accommodations.

So encourage you to visit the um visit Walnut Creek website and try out that AI tool.

They had a uh human trafficking uh seminar uh recently at one of the hotels, and it was very informative, very impactful.

Um it is uh a huge problem uh not just regionally but you know across the state and across the nation and the world.

But this was uh specifically geared towards helping small businesses uh recognize when uh human trafficking is occurring and uh to increase awareness and reporting.

So they are planning a part two in the near future, so I will um bring back that date once we have the um the date of the seminar.

And finally, um sister cities, uh we partner in Walnut Creek with uh Nocceto Italy and Soy Folk uh Hungary, where we have a a youth ambassador exchange.

Um my son is uh that's for eighth graders in Walnut Creek, and my youngest is in eighth grade this year, so he was part of that youth ambassador exchange in the fall.

He went to Noccetto, Italy, and uh we just um received our um our youth ambassador from Noccetto uh was stayed with us last week for um almost nine days.

Um his name was Emmanuel.

Uh it was a tremendous experience both for the Italians, Hungarians and for the students here in Walnut Creek.

I want to thank very much uh Deborah Nipp and Kristen Decker, who are the youth ambassador exchange directors at Sister Cities, and um a big shout out to uh Jen Pickett, who was our um uh coordinator for the Italian side of the uh program, which we were uh um a part of uh Mayor Wilk and I welcomed them to City Hall on one of their days, and um we didn't number of outings with him to uh from anywhere from down to um uh Mirror Woods, uh Monterey, uh San Francisco.

The last night um some of the kids in our group uh played music in the band for the kids from uh Italy, and it was just a really special experience by the time they left on the bus.

I think every kid in the program was crying and saying goodbye.

And um, I know they'll um that those uh relationships they made will last, and I think in the spirit of the sister cities exchange, trying to understand folks from other countries and other cultures and build those connections.

I think it was very successful.

Thank you.

I couldn't agree more.

Mayor Portem Francois.

Okay, thank you, Mayor.

Uh I too had a busy schedule since our last council meeting on St.

Patrick's Day.

Uh first off, I attended uh Councilmember Silva and I are your liaisons to the Recycle Smart Board, Recycle Smart is that joint powers authority that manages garbage, recycling, and composting, not necessarily in that order.

The our mission is you get three cans, right?

And the idea is put as much as you possibly can and legitimately can in the blue and the green cans and as little as you can in the in the black cans.

And so at our last meeting, um, because council member uh Silva was absent, we elected her to be chair this coming year.

So no note to self, don't miss a meeting.

You might be promoted to chair.

And so she'll be overseeing uh it's a uh 12-member board made up of Walnut Creek, Danville, the county, Arinda, and Lafayette.

And so we have a good good group of people and uh trying to get good services for the community.

We also had a mid-year budget review, and I'm pleased to report that the revenues are pretty constant because we all pair garbage rates and they go in, they get paid to re uh public services, and then part of it comes to the the authority.

So that that part we're well situated on.

Expenses were 48% of budget.

So at the mid-year mark, that's exactly where we want to be.

I also wanted to announce that there's there's a free compost giveaway.

This year it'll be on May 2nd.

And for our area in Walnut Creek, we have to travel to Danville if you'd like your free compost, and go to the Recycle Smart website to sign up so they can expect you.

May 2nd in Danville for the free compost giveaway.

Uh had an opportunity to meet with, he's not so new anymore, but I still consider him new.

Uh Ryan Hibbs, our police chief, and we had a great one-on-one conversation, and uh really pleased that he's at the helm 16-year veteran of the force, so he knows our community extremely well.

And I know I got came away with a very positive feeling that uh that the city manager had made an excellent choice and that we are all in good hands and will remain a safe community uh under Ryan's leadership.

Let's see, and this is in no particular order.

I attended the economic development working group uh committee of the chamber of commerce.

Uh that was on March 18th, the day after our last council meeting, and it was essentially a broker's update uh of the various different uh economic sectors in the city, so retail, office, and medical, and this is pretty standard for Walnut Creek that retail we continue to be a very strong market.

Our our vacancy rates for retail citywide are less than 5%, and we're doing better than the statewide average.

Where we're struggling a bit is on office, and we're not alone on that, but we're struggling more than the statewide average, particularly in the downtown shade lands area where we have vacancy rates of 20%, and the state is looking at vacancy rates of something like 12%.

So we have more work to do on that, but we have uh programs in our economic development action plan to address those vacancies, and we'll that will certainly be a subject of conversation as we embark on our general plan update here over the next few years.

See, last evening I was pleased to attend uh a gala for uh recognizing the library foundation's uh authors uh event, which will be on April 25th at the library.

It's an opportunity, uh it's a fundraiser for the library, an opportunity for you to dine with a local uh author.

Learn more about what the library foundation, all the programs they put on and help fund those in our community.

I should have led with this one because this was one of my favorite ones.

I attended uh uh the opening of a brewery here in Walnut Creek.

They when somebody asked me to come to a brewery, I left uh raise both hands and say I'll be there.

Uh it's bare bottle, which is located right across from Trader Joe's on South California, and uh they transformed the former Pinkies Pizza Place into uh a great kind of community hangout.

You see people walking back and forth to it, hanging out, kids playing uh skee ball.

It's just really it's a great addition.

I think they're gonna do really really well there.

Okay, we're rounding it up here.

Uh attended as a liaison to Rossmore.

I attended their board meeting, which is always uh nice to see.

They have a good always get a good crowd there.

And um gave a full report, they're very interested in what's happening at the city, and they appreciate the updates I give them, mostly focused on what we've done in our recent council meetings that ask questions about uh implementation of our housing element and talked about kind of the update we had just provided to the state that we have more work to do.

We had uh about 200 units uh identified or building permits issued last year, and our state number is more something like 55, 5800 units.

So they wanted to know how we were gonna accomplish that.

I told them the programs that we have in our plan, and they were happy to get that update.

And then uh let's see, last but not least, uh I attended uh a talk at the Leisher Center.

The Leisher Center, in addition to great arts programming and uh theater productions, has a newsmakers series, and it's a series of of eight to ten speakers over the course of a year.

Uh last Tuesday night it was Rick Steves, the travel writer, and he did uh a great talk kind of summarizing uh similar to what council member Davin was talking about with the Sister Cities program, how we connect with people from other countries through travel and break those barriers and make good connections and relationships.

And so it was it was really uh it was great to hear them and uh look forward to other speakers.

You don't need to subscribe to the whole series.

You can buy a ticket just for somebody that you're interested in hearing from.

That's my update.

Thank you.

All right, I'm gonna actually go next here and take the handoff uh regarding travel and international exchange, as we had just heard from Sister Cities as well as from the Rick Steve speaker.

So over the last couple of weeks, I led a delegation that included council members Cindy Darling and Cindy Silva to Kita City, Japan, which is while not officially a sister city, they're a partner city, and we signed an agreement with them uh nine years ago.

There's been a lot of student exchanges between Seven Hills School, so middle schoolers back to Kita City, Kita City coming here as well.

There's also been exchanges uh with Las Lomas, and they have a Japanese language program.

And so they've really been very involved in a lot of conversations.

And I started working with them about six to eight months ago to see we would like to uh as we've been invited before, that when I am mayor and we have our council, let's go, and they invited us.

Uh it was a tremendous opportunity to meet with the mayor and council there.

Keda City is uh just to give you there's there we are uh at the table when we had first arrived, they had about 50 people, including the mayor and city council and uh and executives from City Hall out on the sidewalk waving US flags and cheering at us as we arrive.

We're like the USA basketball team when we came.

Uh so when they come here next year, we're gonna need more than a few people on the sidewalk.

I'm gonna be reaching out to everybody here and and beyond.

Uh, but it was terrific uh this this exchange with them, and as we heard from both Councilmember DeVinny and Mayor Pro Tem Francois, building bridges and exchanging cultural conversations and discussions, forming these relationships with government peers overseas and with residents is needed now more than ever.

And we recognize this.

And to give you an example, even though to give Walnut Creek is 20 square miles, we have about 70,000 people.

Kita City, which is on the outskirts of Tokyo, about 20 minutes from central Tokyo, is eight square miles, and they have 350,000 residents.

So it's so you know compact, dense housing, but we share a lot of the same goals and interests and commonalities when it comes to running cities.

And this understanding is just so hugely important.

I think everybody in this room understands how important that is.

The more you meet people and understand people, the less they become the unknown, which then people become fearful of.

So the second thing I have to talk about is not nearly as fun, just and that this is my last thing, so you'll uh I'll be done at that point.

But I am the liaison to county connection.

And to give a quick background here, our bus system, County Connection was notified by the Department of Transportation in September of 2025, so just about six months ago.

The issuance of non-domiciled, which means le legal temporary residents, not permanent residents, not citizens, but the issue of uh regarding the issuance of commercial driver's licenses, including commercial learner permits, we're going to be implementing a suspension of processing any new commercial driver's licenses or learner permits or the renewal of commercial driver's licenses.

This has impacted county connection.

Non-domicile commercial driver's licenses staff has been monitoring this closely, and there are individuals who are legal residents, but they're here temporarily, who were not due for renewal and were not required to take any action at that time in November of 2025.

But due to the direction of the Department of Tran of Transportation, they were issued, they were issued uh notification that their licenses would be canceled in 60 days or on January 6, 2026, unless they met the new federal guidelines.

And in late 26, the DMV issued a secondary notice informing these drivers that the cancellation was postponed for 60 days or on March 6th.

Now, what all this means is that drivers primarily are the ones that are impacted here, if and many drivers of public transit are here legally but temporarily, and this is their means of uh of support.

They have now had their licenses canceled.

And they have been told that when the DMV, the California State DMV adheres to the federal guideline policies that have a variety of different aspects to it, that they can then reapply for them.

But there is no notice of when this will happen.

Uh these due to the regulations with public transit, all of these employees that have been impacted have uh, which are six.

I should say there's six for county connection, but there are hundreds and hundreds across the state with all the public transit agencies that they've been put on leave, unfortunately, unpaid leave, until they're able to get commercial driver's licenses.

Uh this uh while we've been working with the Department of Transportation, we don't know when they will uh clear California DMV to be able to re-license these.

Unfortunately, we do feel that California is being targeted in this instance by the DOT.

When I hear more of when this has been resolved, I will bring this forward to our city council and to all of you.

I just found out about this a few days ago.

Uh I'm upset about this because these are people that are here legally, and we need them, we need drivers, just to let you know that when it comes to public transit, the hardest jobs to hire for drivers, and so we are now telling drivers that want to work that you can't.

So I will have more to this uh to bring to this in the months ahead.

Can I build on can I go next?

Yes, Councilmember Silva.

Uh so we are about to learn at our next um recycle smart meeting that the same thing is happening to garbage truck drivers.

So all of you are gonna see an impact.

It doesn't matter whether you ride the bus or not, your garbage collection, we're gonna have to have a conversation about how the routing will work and what the cost implications are because it's overtime.

And it's to the tune of maybe six drivers in the in our service area.

So on that sweet note.

Yeah, other than that, life's great, keep on going.

Other than that, Mrs.

Lincoln, how was the play?

Um so I was fortunate to be able to be with Councilmember Darling and Mayor Wilk in Keda City.

And if you looked at the photo, our spouses were with us as well as Mayor Wilkes' adult children, so it was a family vacation.

Let me it was self-funded.

I think that's important to put out there.

We spend our own money, this is not taxpayer dollars.

So a couple of takeaways from the visit besides the very important message, which is this is how we ensure world peace is one person at a time in relationships and really understanding what's happening in the world.

Um we were taken on two tours that I thought were fascinating.

One was we visited one of the mint print, one of the printing shops for the yen, their currency is actually in Kita City.

And we have got an insider baseball.

Look, this is not open to the public ordinarily.

Well, we got to go in and watch it.

But we had to set our cell phones into a lockbox because we couldn't take any pictures.

It was fascinating, very interesting, and the number of colors on the money is incredible.

And the second thing is we went to one of the center, the national earthquake centers.

So if you think we have earthquakes in California, they have a lot of them in Japan.

And we I should have brought the video.

And they simulated a 7.0 earthquake for two minutes.

And the way it works.

And they use this with um youth and adults, and they bring them into the simulator and also a museum that shows how they need to really strap the walls, strap the furnishings to the walls, et cetera, in that environment.

So that was um fascinating and enjoyed that.

The other two things that I thought was interesting was to really understand that um Keda City has 350, 360,000.

It is surrounded by Tokyo.

It is not a suburb the way we are a suburb of San Francisco.

This is the way West Hollywood is in the middle of Los Angeles.

I mean, it's that intense.

It's 14 million people in Tokyo and 40 million in the peripheral area.

So it would be like the nine county Bay Area having 40 million people in it because Japan is the geographic size of California.

Japan has 40 million people.

No, many more million people than we have.

We have 40 million in California.

So it's California's population is basically in the Tokyo and its suburbs and surrounds.

They're efficient, they're courteous.

Those bullet trains, they have a system that we need here, and we're working toward it in transportation, where a single pace system, a single card can get you on a bus, can get you on a train, can get you on a subway and can get you on a bullet train.

As well as you can buy a bento box in the 7-Eleven.

But the other thing is to observe how they cue up because they're respectful of each other.

They care about people so much in their culture.

But the other thing is you were talking about the intensity of development and how many people there are.

So it's about the size of Walnut Creek, except it's very different because it has historic streets that are 400 or 500 years old and little houses, but it also has eight to ten story apartment buildings because their focus is on people and how to house people.

And that's what my takeaway is from their culture.

Couple of other things to mention.

Community service day is Saturday, April 18th.

That's a week from this Saturday.

There are 33 projects.

There's something for all ages and all abilities.

Be sure to sign up.

You can get to it from the homepage on the city's website.

And that the Leisure Center has two things to take note of in the coming days.

Lost in Yonkers, which is Neil Simon's very famous comedy.

It's playing at Center Rep through April 19th.

And Dance Theater Harlem will once again be here for two days in a couple of weeks on April 24th and 25th.

And you can get tickets at LeisureArts Center.org.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Darling.

Okay.

My Japan Epiphany was every toilet seat that I sat on in Japan was heated.

And I just can't describe to you until you experience it.

It's it's that's my takeaway.

These guys describe the rest of it, and I really appreciated the hospitality of Keda City.

It was great to meet with them.

Um I'll keep my report real brief.

Um we have State of the Chamber this Thursday, 745 to 845 at Shade Lands.

And then the last note on MCE, we did have a meeting this Monday to approve a new power scheduler.

We're bringing lots of new power resources, renewable power resources in, and we're hiring a scheduler to help us better get those into the California grid.

We have the Cormorant Project, which is in Daily City, it's enough battery storage to fire up 321,000 homes.

And we have the Mulquini Wind Project in east of here that's uh another 30 or 40 megawatts.

So we have a lot of new power coming online, and we're working to better integrate it into it.

And with that, we'll stop talking about the world and how to make it a better place.

And move on with the councilman.

Well I like talking about how making it a better place.

Uh so next, so thank you all for your comments.

Uh I think that we got out of this theme is that it's important to uh make connections across the countries.

Uh next on the agenda is the public hearing for the adoption of resolutions levying annual assessments for the downtown Walnut Creek Business Improvement District and downtown Walnut Creek South Business Improvement District for fiscal year 2027.

And I want to take a moment to explain the process for public hearing item number 5A.

In order for the city to levy assessments for the downtown Walnut Creek Business Improvement District or BID and the downtown Walnut Creek South Business Improvement District, or S bid, the City Council must first conduct a public hearing at which it must hear and consider all protests against the levy of the assessments.

If written protests are received from the owners of businesses in the proposed area, which will pay 50% or more of the assessment prop proposed to be levied, no further proceedings to levy the assessment shall be taken for a period of one year from the date of the finding of a majority protest by the city council.

If there is no majority protest, then the council may adopt the resolutions, confirm the assessment, report submitted.

Written protests must be received by the city clerk at or before the time fixed for the public hearing.

At this time, we'll now open the public hearing for item number 5A for the downtown Walnut Walnut Creek Business Improvement District and the downtown Walnut Creek South Business Improvement District.

I invite anyone with an undelivered written protest to present it to the city clerk immediately.

Now no further written protests will be accepted.

And I invite economic development manager Mike Neiman forward to provide the presentation.

Thank you, Mayor, and good evening.

Um council members, members of the public.

I'm Mike Neiman, your economic development manager.

And this item, as you mentioned, is step two in the process to adopt new fees for the business improvement district and the South Business Improvement Districts, both of which are located in downtown.

At the last hearing on March 17th, you have heard a presentation from downtown on their accomplishments and their annual report uh for the fiscal year 2026.

And this is the second step in the process to complete uh staff had uh expeditiously sent out uh protest ballots to all businesses located in both the business approvement and south business approvement districts, and we have not received any protests.

Um with this, the second step would be to complete the uh adoption of the resolutions and uh hence is the recommendation in front of you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mike.

Um do we have any questions?

No questions.

All right.

Well, then I will open up the item for public comment.

Please step forward to the podium.

If there is anybody here to talk on this item, please also complete a speaker card available on the counter near the entrance doorway, or I think at the front.

Once at the podium, please introduce yourself and city residents of the for the record consistent with city policies related to public comments.

Each speaker will have two minutes to make your remarks, written comments submitted if any 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.

I do not see anybody for public comment.

So I will close the public comment portion, bring it back to council for any discussion and or a motion.

I will move to adopt the resolution levying the annual assessment for the downtown Walnut Creek Business Improvement District bid for FY27 and the same thing for the S bid for FY27.

Second.

We have a motion to second.

Let me first ask City Clerk if there's a majority protest and if they have been received.

No bid protests have been received.

Thank you very much.

Then we can have a roll call.

Councilmember Darling.

Hi.

Councilmember Silva.

Hi, Councilmember DeVinney.

Hi.

Mayor Pro Tem Francois.

Hi.

Mayor Welk.

Hi.

Motion carries.

All right.

That is the shortest item on the agenda.

I don't think the next one will be as short.

Uh, are we all okay at this point?

Don't need a break?

Okay.

So the next item is a public hearing regarding two appeals from the decision of the planning commission on February 12, 2026, approving design review, vesting tentative map, density bonus, and tree removal, and drip line encroachment permits for the Mitchell Town Homes project, application number Y24 through 026, location 2775-2855 Mitchell Drive, 2730-2880 Shadowlands Drive, and a portion of 2125 Oak Grove Road.

Forgive me.

APNs 143-040-099-143-040-100 and 143-040-079.

We're in the unusual situation here of having two separate appeals for one item.

And I believe probably most of you are here because of these items.

The public hearing procedures are as follows.

These rules are designed to provide the appellants and the applicant the ability to present their arguments, provide rebuttals, and be heard at this hearing, as well as to give everyone a full voice in these proceedings.

So I will open up the public hearing at this point, and we'll have our staff presentation first.

And I invite staff to provide it.

Good evening, Mayor Wilk and members of the council.

My name is Timmer Gill, senior planner with the city, and we are here tonight to consider the two appeals that were filed on Planning Commission's decision of the Mitchell Town Homes project that will be located within the Shaylands Business Park.

And because this is a de novo hearing, I will present the entire project and cover all of the project details that are listed on this slide before I go into the points of appeal.

And because this project has many parts, I do appreciate in advance your patience as I get through everything.

Since this project was appealed, the entire project is up for consideration tonight.

Therefore, certification of the EIR and adoption of the mitigated monitoring and reporting program, as well as approval of the project entitlements that are listed on this slide, do require council action tonight.

And just to quickly orient you with the site, it is zoned plan development, and it is a 22-acre parcel that consists of 11 office buildings.

That's known as the Walnut Creek Executive Park.

And the surrounding area consists of a mix of office, commercial, as well as residential uses.

And just for some site context, directly across the street from the project site to the along the south elevation is the Via Monte Senior Housing Facility, as well as the Orchard Shopping Center, and further east on Oak Grove Road are the residential uses known as the Woodlands Community, and of course, all other uses as shown on this slide.

And just to quickly go over the project site boundaries, the highlighted yellow is the project site.

And I did want to point out that it does not extend the project frontage, does not extend onto Oak Grove Road, and all of the 11 buildings within this footprint of that yellow dashed line will be demolished for proposed construction.

And the adjacent parcels that or the use is that front Oak Grove Road, the three-story office building, the Bank of America building, as well as the Montessari Daycare, these will all remain, and they are not part of this project, they are all separate parcels.

And just to quickly touch on some project timeline.

On October 18th of 2023, the city did receive a SB330 application filed under the Builders Remedy Provisions.

And on April 9th of 2024, a formal planning application was submitted to the city.

And since then, this project has undergone approximately two and a half years of review, including multiple rounds of plan revisions, environmental analysis, multiple public hearings, as well as a 90-day EIR review period to gather public feedback.

And then on February 12th, 2026, the planning commission did approve the project and certify the EIR.

And within that 10-day appeal period, the city did receive two appeals, and that is why we're here tonight.

So the next few slides, I'll quickly go through the various state housing laws that this project is being processed under.

Start with SB 330 and the Housing Accountability Act, which essentially states that the city's review is limited if project meets all applicable cities' objective standards.

And the project cannot be denied unless there's specific health or safety impacts that cannot be mitigated.

And the project also is limited to a maximum of five public hearings in order to follow the streamlined project meeting process under SB 330.

And tonight is the fourth public hearing.

Under the builders remedy provision, it does allow developers to propose housing projects that are that exceed local zoning or not consistent with the zoning, and no legislative actions are required for a builder's remedy project, such as no rezone or general plan amendment.

And the city's authority to deny such a project is limited and must be supported by statutory findings.

And as you know, the existing zoning, which is planned development that refers to business park development standards, does not allow residential uses.

And under the builders' remedy provisions, the government code section that's outlined here, it states that if current zoning does not allow housing, then the alternative best fit development standard must be applied.

And no legislative actions could be required.

Because this is a multifamily residential project, the city did determine that the most comparable zone would be the multifamily M2, as well as the multifamily medium density range, which does allow 14 to 22 dwelling units per acre, and this project is proposing 19 dwelling units per acre, so it falls within that range.

So in addition to the business park zoning standards as well as the city's design standards, the M2 standards would also apply to this project.

The project is also utilizing the density bonus law, which does allow waivers and concessions to development standards if a project is providing affordable units.

And here I've just defined what a waiver is and a concession for the public.

And the applicant is proposing 55 low income units exceeding the city's 7% inclusionary housing requirement.

Therefore, is could receive up to an unlimited waivers to all the city's development standards.

The applicant is requesting 10 waivers tonight and no concessions.

The waivers are related essentially to building setbacks and storage space per unit requirements in the multifamily zone.

And that table is included as part of in the resolutions attachments one and two tonight.

Moving into the project proposal, the 422 unit three-story townhome development does consist of a mix of building types that range from two plex to seven plex.

Each unit has a two-car garage and outdoor decks, and the units are arranged across 82 buildings, and the height varies from 38 to 40 feet.

955 parking spaces are being provided.

542 new trees are proposed as part of the new landscape pallet.

Frontage improvements include new sidewalk along Mitchell and Shade Lands Drive.

And though not required or triggered by this project, the applicant did work with the city.

And consistent with the Shade Lands multimodal plan is providing a roundabout at the intersection or at the corner of Shade Lands and Via Monte, as well as a raised crosswalk and bike lane extensions that will extend beyond the project frontage along both Mitchell and Shade Lands.

The applicant is also providing a monetary contribution.

And the applicant tonight does have a presentation, so I'll let them go into more detail of that, the specifics of that.

So the EIR did analyze all of the project impacts in compliance with CEQA and listed the topic areas listed under the CEQA guidelines or appendix G and included on this slide were studied as part of the environmental review of the project.

And the ones listed to the left of your slide did result in less than significant or no impact.

Therefore, no mitigation was required for these topic areas.

And the ones listed to the right did have potential impacts.

However, the impacts would be mitigated to a less than significant level with the implementation of the mitigation monitoring and reporting program.

And these MMRPs will be enforced through the conditions of approval prior to any work on this project.

And the EIR did conclude that there would be no impacts that remain significant or unavoidable.

So the EIR did go through a robust public comment process, and approximately 65 comment letters were received.

All were responded to in the final EIR, and those are included the entire package for the draft DIR as well as the final EIRs include as exhibits A and B of your packet tonight.

And listed here are really just the common theme of comments received from the members of the public.

And the moving on to the subdivision, which will create 82 lots and 49 parcels, and here is the new the site layout.

Here is the proposed site plan.

Access to the site is gained from both Mitchell and Shade Lands Drive, which will then connect to a series of internal roadways within the development.

I did want to point out that there's no through access for vehicles to cross this site from Mitchell to Shade Lands.

The applicant intentionally designed his project that way, and he can touch on that as part of his presentation.

But they are providing a central walkway through the site, which essentially allows the public to cross from Mitchell to Shade Lands for easy access.

And this project will be developed in two phases.

Again, the applicant can go over this.

Here is a detailed architectural site plan.

Again, seven building types laid across the development, and two architectural building styles are proposed.

One is neighborhood one and neighborhood two.

And this, I believe, this architectural site plan gives you a better idea that access to a neighborhood one will only be gained from Mitchell Drive, and for neighborhood two, you can only access it through Shade Lands Drive.

Neighborhood one has six building types, neighborhood two has four of the larger building types.

And the unit sizes range from 1300 to 2157 square feet with two to four bedroom units.

And each one provides a two-car garage for each unit, with the exception of plan one in neighborhood two, which has a tandem garage design.

And here are project renderings, really just essentially to show you what this will look like once it's developed.

To the top left, that photo or rendering would be if you're standing at the intersection of Viamonte and Shay Lens and looking into the project site.

This also shows a depiction of that roundabout that's proposed.

And here are the two architectural styles that are proposed in neighborhood one.

Four color schemes are proposed as part of this.

And the same for neighborhood two.

There are four separate color schemes proposed.

And I believe we do have the color material boards if you would like to pass it around.

But the project has uh the architecture of the buildings have been designed to comply with the city's uh design standards, and um, if needed, the applicant could go more into the design details.

So the project is removing 449 trees, of which the city arborists did uh approve 73 based on the size, health, and species of those trees.

The remaining 376 uh trees do require uh city council approval to remove.

I did want to point out that none of these are considered highly protected trees per the city's tree preservation ordinance.

The applicant is also preserving the existing eight mature trees that are circled here in green, and as well as the off-site 19 off-site trees that are circled here, and many of these are highly protected oak trees that are being preserved.

And here is the proposed landscaping palette.

I know there's a lot of little dots with colors, but I think what that's trying to show is the 542 new trees that range in size from 24 inch to 36 inch box.

And to the far left of your slide are all of the trees that are proposed along the project frontages as well as the perimeter of the site, and the remaining trees as listed in the landscaping plan are scattered throughout the site.

Okay, so the next few slides I will walk through the key issues raised in both appeals with staff responses, and both the uh appellants issues are summarized here.

So the first appeal received was from Steve Elster with Friends of Walnut Creek, and he did uh raise a question regarding the builder's remedy that it does not apply to this project because the city already had a substantially compliant housing element.

So staff's response to that is under state law, it explicitly states that substantial compliance is HCD certification or a court decision.

And uh the city did have an adopted housing element, however, it was not HCD certified at the time.

Therefore, the project does qualify to be processed under builders' remedy.

The second point raised was that the EIR did not sufficiently analyze senior living alternative.

Uh the EIR did analyze and eliminate the senior living alternative as infeasible, and as because it did not serve the project goals, uh, such as providing affordable affordable housing as well as any multimodal improvements to that area.

The applicant has also stated that they're not a senior housing develop developer, so I believe it would not be viable for them.

And because this was uh raised as a point of appeal, um, the first Carbon Solutions Environmental Consultant that assisted with the EIR also prepared an additional senior alternative analysis, and I believe that's included as attachment 18 of your packet tonight.

And that did conclude that the impacts would be similar if there was a senior living on site or greater.

Therefore, the EIR does remain valid, and there have been no new facts or evidence that's been presented to the city that would trigger additional environmental review.

And the third point raised was the EIR traffic analysis is not adequate.

Staff's response is that ER the EIR was evaluated, did evaluate the vehicle miles traveled as required under CEQA.

The EIR also evaluated the level of service for congestion, though not required under CEQA.

And the results did state that intersections would continue to operate at acceptable levels and the impact would be less than significant.

And the traffic analysis did conclude that the project would generate fewer trips than the existing office use on site.

And the traffic conditions on Ignatio Valley Road will occur with or without this project, and that was what was concluded in the EIR.

And no additional mitigation was required for traffic.

I also wanted to point out that in addition to the WTRANs traffic study that was prepared for this project and reviewed by the city.

The city did get that traffic study peer-reviewed by a outside traffic engineering firm, Fair and Pierce, just to confirm that are the conclusions valid or just to confirm those conclusions, and that was FAIR and Piers did conclude the same outcome.

All CEQA required notices followed that same noticing procedure.

And the city also provided more noticing beyond what is listed here for this particular appeal hearing.

As you see to the right, the site notice was expanded beyond the project frontage.

So beyond both Mitchell and Chaylands, there were posters placed along several along Oak Grove Road, one at the corner of Citrus Circle near the new Chick-fil-A restaurant, and one between the two shopping centers in Cena Grande and the Orchards, as well as further to the west on North Wiggett Lane, just to capture if if it was not just to be able to capture more for tonight's public hearing, and as councils, I think standard practice for any appeal projects, it is published in the newspaper as well.

And for the planning commission, all of the same criteria was followed, with the exception of the newspaper publication.

Okay, so moving on to the second appeal tonight, which was provided by Mike Heller representing the Via Monte community.

He did raise concerns regarding the construction impacts to the senior living residences across the street.

So staff's response to that is the EIR was evaluated, did evaluate air quality impacts per the Bay Area Air District guidelines, and it did include measures to reduce these impacts to a less than significant, and those are conditions of approval of this project.

And the mitigation were the standard construction measures, and there was a health risk assessment also done in the EIR that did evaluate construction emissions from the project, and it did conclude that the existing roadways are the primary contributors and not the project construction.

The assessment also did show that there would be no significant health risk impacts from the project that cannot be mitigated.

And there's been no evidence really supporting the need for additional measures such as a solid barrier.

And the project is required to comply with all federal, state, and local city regulations related to asbestos hazardous materials and construction practices.

And the third point raised was that the concern of the number of trees that are being removed as they improve air quality.

Staff's response is that the tree removal is approval and replacement followed the municipal code requirements, and 542 new trees are being proposed due to the loss of trees on site and also preserving the existing redwood trees in the central open space area and the Valley Oak, I believe, is at the far left corner of the site, and then the off-site perimeter trees are also being protected in place.

And I believe first carbon solutions, the environmental consulting could speak more on this, but it was stated in their memo that the new trees would provide long-term canopy and more carbon absorption and air quality and environmental benefits to the site.

The third point raised was concerns related to traffic on shadows and emergency access.

So the EIR did evaluate traffic and emergency services as well as access to the site.

And the existing and projected conditions evaluated Shaylands Drive as well, and no adverse impacts would impacts to the roadway operations, was what was concluded.

And the site design does maintain adequate access to emergency vehicles.

And this project was reviewed by the Contra Costa Fire District as well as the Walnut Creek Police Department to confirm and verify that there would be no impacts to the emergency response times with the development of this project.

And the fourth and final uh point of appeal from Via Monte was regarding construction and monitoring and uh staff's response says the project uh will comply with the city requirements, and uh there is a pre-construction meeting that is required prior to issuance of any permits.

Uh so this is standard city practice where the city staff meets with the applicants team and they are required to notify all properties within a 300 foot radius, at least two working days prior to start of any work.

Um this has also been added though as a standard uh practice and we follow this, and I believe the applicants team provides a copy of the notice to city staff to show confirm compliance.

But given that this has been raised by the uh members of the public, uh we have added this as a condition.

And the errata you have before you tonight includes this condition, which would modify attachments one and two.

And the applicant has also been coordinating with the Via Monte residences, and we'll keep open lines of communication.

But again, I'll let the applicant speak more on that.

So, in summary, all of the issues that have been raised tonight through the um appeals have been addressed in the EIR and the project review, and the appeals did not identify any deficiencies or did not identify any feasible alternatives to really lessen those impacts.

And there's been no evidence in the record of any specific adverse impact to public health or safety, um, and no impacts as part of this project will remain significant or unavoidable.

And the project does comply with state housing law, the city requirements as well as city standards.

And the EIR, the project design as well as the mitigation measures uh address the concerns, and the planning commission's uh decision was uh supported by findings and uh substantial evidence in the record.

Uh therefore uh the staff does recommend that the city council adopt the two resolutions denying both of the appeals and affirming planning commission's decision, as well as certifying the EIR, approving the project entitlements subject to the conditions, and um the adopting the uh errata to attachment one and two that does include that new condition that I've addressed.

And uh so apart from myself, we do have several staff members from the city as well as First Carbon Solutions, who is our environmental consultant that assisted the city in preparing the EIR.

And um, for the record, a total of 77 public comments uh were received, um, and those are included in your packet as attachment uh 19.

And I believe there are um several letters both in support and in opposition.

There's been a mix of both in that packet, and um the applicant also has a presentation tonight, and with that I do conclude my presentation, but happy to answer any questions go the other way.

Thank you.

Thank you, Simar.

So I just want to set the table here for uh the people that are here in the audience about how this works on the public hearing and and questions.

So typically after every presentation, uh which would be by the appellants, the applicant, there's also rebuttals.

Um the council asks questions of each one of them.

But I want to be cognizant that uh you've all been sitting here for an hour and 45 minutes.

And if we have the present after potential questions now, there would be possibly up to another hour of presentations by the applicants, by the applicant and the appellants.

And so as we start questions on the council, I want to be us to all take that into uh awareness that we've got people that want to say that want to say something here, and so let's try at this point to limit questions to essential questions that are burning desire to ask because we're going to have the opportunity to ask questions after everybody has spoken at the end as well.

So with that, we'll open up questions to some more.

But again, I want to keep that.

I'm gonna hold my questions till the end.

I'm gonna hold my questions at the end as well.

Okay.

Good hold.

All right, we're gonna hold right now.

So with that, thank you all.

I'm sure the audience thanks us as well.

Um, with that, uh let's bring up appellant number one.

Uh Friends of Walnut Creek, Steve Elster, and you will have 15 minutes to um to present, and then uh we'll go from there.

Appellate number one, I feel like this is the uh the old dating game.

Uh good evening, Mayor Welk and City Council members.

My name is Steve Elster, and I'm here on behalf of Friends of Walnut Creek.

We're not here to oppose housing.

In fact, our proposed alternative of a senior living center would add more than twice the number of homes to our area's housing inventory compared to the proposed development.

We are here because this decision rests on unresolved legal and analytical issues, and because you still have the opportunity to evaluate this proposal without inapplicable legal constraints and to require a more complete and defensible record before proceeding.

First, the project has been processed under the assumption that it qualifies for the builder's remedy.

That assumption is incorrect.

There's no debate that the city's housing element is substantially compliant.

As you can see, uh if you take a look at Exhibit 1 in our appeal, you, our City Council, adopted the city's substantially compliant housing element on August 1st, 2023, which was later confirmed by the state.

The issue here is the date on which the city's housing element was substantially compliant.

Exhibit three shows that the HCD concluded on October 24th of 23 that the housing element adopted on August 1 was substantially compliant.

If the city or an interested third party were to bring the issue of the date of substantial compliance to a court, we believe that a court will find that the housing element adopted by the city on August 1 was substantially compliant on that date, and certainly prior to signature's application.

A court would need to do two things.

First, apply government code 65585.03 to determine when the housing element was in substantial compliance.

That statute reads in relevant part, uh a housing element shall be considered to be in substantial compliance when the local agency, here the city, adopts the house when the local agency adopts the housing element, and either of the following apply.

The HCD determines that the housing element is in substantial compliance, or a court determines that the adopted housing element is in substantial compliance.

The first part of this statute speaks of when the local agency adopts the housing element, which Walnut Creek did in this case on August 1st, 2023.

The second part of the statute says that the HCD or a court determines that the adopted housing element substantially complies.

The only temporal language in this statute, when the statute uses the word when is based on when the local agency adopted the housing element.

Exhibit two is signatures application.

Second, a court will apply government code section 65589.55 to determine if the city's housing element was substantially compliant on October 18th when signatures submitted its application.

That statute reads in relevant part uh for purposes of a local agency's approval or disapproval of a housing development.

A housing element uh shall be considered in substantial compliance uh only if the element was in substantial compliance as determined by the court by the department or a court when a preliminary application was submitted.

If the court determines that the city's housing element was substantially compliant when it was adopted by the city on August 1st, or at least sometime prior to October 18th, then the answer to government code 65589.55 is yes.

The city's housing element was substantially compliant when signatures submitted its application, and the builder's remedy does not apply.

We expect that given these facts, a court would determine that the city's housing element was in substantial compliance prior to when signature's application was submitted.

That would mean that you, our elected city council, are not constrained by the builder's remedy in evaluating this proposal.

This is not a technicality.

If a fundamentally it fundamentally changes the framework for evaluating this proposal.

The applicant's proposed development would, among other things, require the destruction of numerous office buildings in the shadows and uproot many businesses and jobs located there.

That is not permitted under the city's general plan, but if the builder's remedy applies, the city has little say over the elimination of these local businesses and jobs.

Second, the EIR fails to do something CEQA explicitly requires.

It does not adequately analyze a feasible alternative, a senior living community.

The feasibility of a senior living community is particularly obvious because there are already two senior living communities immediately adjacent to the site.

A senior living community would also generate less and materially different traffic patterns with far less peak hour commuter traffic.

Exhibit four is the ITE's traffic generation rates for a senior living community.

Exhibit five in our appeal compares the traffic generated by the proposed townhomes to the traffic generated from a senior living community with more than twice as many people.

A senior living community with twice as much housing would likely generate less traffic than the Mentral townhomes, and the timing and direction of the car trips generated by a senior living community would differ substantially and favorably from what this development would generate, such as by not contributing to peak AM outbound traffic towards downtown and the 680 or peak PM inbound traffic.

Other environmental impacts would also be reduced or avoided by a senior living community instead of the Mitchell townhomes.

Under CEQA, an EIR must meaningfully evaluate alternatives that could lessen environmental harm, and that did not happen here.

Even under the builder's remedy framework, if it applied, the city must still consider whether a feasible alternative could avoid specific adverse public health or safety impacts.

And that analysis was not done.

Feasibility is not simply what would allow a developer to maximize its profits at the community's expense.

There is also nothing that says that feasibility means protecting the purported applicability of the builder's remedy to a developer's proposal.

Clearly, a senior living community adjacent to another senior living community is feasible and should be properly considered.

Third, the EIR fails to accurately disclose and analyze the project's real world impacts, especially traffic.

The results of the traffic study are no better than the underlying assumptions made to generate those results.

Here, one obvious error is the traffic studies use of ITE code 710, which is applicable to general office buildings, such as those in downtown Walnut Creek.

The report should have used ITE code 750, which is applicable to office parks such as the shade lands.

This error renders the study's results suspect, such as its conclusion that this development would actually reduce traffic.

In addition to using the wrong ITE code, the traffic study also emphasizes a reduction in net daily trips, but that metric is misleading.

What actually matters to the people who live in this city and what the EIR does not properly evaluate is outbound traffic in the morning and inbound traffic in the evening, which are precisely the times and directions when congestion is already at its worst.

The EIREIR even admits those increases will occur, but does not adequately analyze them.

Ignatio Valley is already operating at unacceptable levels.

Treat Boulevard, another key corridor, is not meaningfully analyzed at all.

Local streets will experience cut through traffic, increasing risks to children at nearby preschools, residents, and the folks living at Villamonte.

And this is not theoretical.

The project would concentrate traffic at fewer driveways, increase congestion near a senior living community and preschools, and create new safety hazards during both operation and construction.

These are specific, foreseeable, and unmitigated impacts.

CEQA requires full disclosure, not selective metrics that obscure the true effects.

Fourth, the city failed to provide meaningful notice to the residents most affected.

While the city may have met or did meet the legal requirements, the reality is this.

The neighborhoods that will experience the greatest traffic impacts south of Ignatio Valley and east of Oak Grove were not adequately notified.

As a result, those residents were effectively excluded from this process, and that undermines a core principle of CEQA and public governance, informed public participation.

When the people most affected don't even know a development is being considered, the process cannot be considered fair or complete.

We're not asking for denial tonight.

We're asking for a responsible, legally sound process.

Specifically, before you make any decision regarding this proposal, we ask that you one, consider this proposal without the limitations improperly imposed on you by the builder's remedy.

Two, require a supplemental traffic study that applies correct ITE codes and is otherwise credible, analyzes directional peak traffic, evaluates treat boulevard, and evaluates impacts on surrounding neighborhoods.

Three, a supplemental EIR analysis of a senior living community alternative, including whether it reduces traffic and safety impacts and whether it remains feasible and affordable.

And four, provide it provide expanded notice so that all affected residents are aware of this proposal.

This decision is not just about one project.

It is about whether Walnut Creek applies the law correctly, fully discloses environmental impacts, and gives its residents a meaningful voice.

Right now the record does not meet those standards, but you have the opportunity to correct that.

We respectfully ask that you do so.

Thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

Again, uh council can ask questions now or wait until later and uh specific.

Okay.

Um thank you very much for your comments.

Um would you please provide your background professionally and you know, do you practice municipal law and environmental studies?

I am an attorney, but I don't practice municipal law.

And what about your experience in environmental work sequa?

Uh nothing professional.

Okay, thank you.

Other questions here?

Okay.

Um there'll be a rebuttal and there may be questions later.

Okay.

Thanks.

All right.

Next we have appellent number two, Mike Heller.

Uh and group.

15 minutes total with one or more speakers, and please come to the podium.

All right, here we go.

There is slide number one.

A mayor, uh city council, thank you.

I'm Mike Heller.

I'm one of the eight signers of this appeal.

Live at Via Monte Senior Living right across Shade Lands from the proposed project site.

We have uh several hundred seniors living there, median age 68, all sensitive receptors, no matter how you look at it.

So let's check down.

Means this.

We did it.

All right.

So wanted to comment up front.

We're not here, and then the purpose of this appeal is not to suggest that you deny this project.

What we would like to put before you some examples of considerations, particularly impacting the seniors at Via Monte that were either not considered or considered in uh in a light way, and uh it needs uh further look.

So if you were to approve this project, we would like you to add additional uh conditions of approval.

So these are the six items that were in our written appeal.

I'm sure you've had a chance to look at those.

I'll say a few words about each one of these.

I like the language of the uh air resources board, the fugitive dust, implying there's I guess dust that behaves, stays on site, and the fugitive dust that tries to escape.

So we're worried about the fugitive dust.

We think a uh great uh help in this would be a solid barrier along the perimeter of the construction project.

So uh something solid wood would probably be best.

The applicant has met with us and said they uh will put a solid panel, like you see in the green picture, uh, on the chain link fence.

They are going to have a chain link's fence, but it would be a call it improved chain link fence.

And that would definitely we've told the applicant that would be a big improvement.

But as you can see in the right-hand picture, unless it's uh fairly heavy gauge material and properly maintained, this isn't really going to be very successful in uh capturing that fugitive dust.

Now, our second point has to do with asbestos.

We don't need to say much about this.

One of the key elements of the regulation involving SMS removal and disposal is notification of the relevant uh regulatory agencies.

Uh we simply would like a condition of approval that says we'd like to be notified also.

We have seniors who might want to take a walk outside, and we might want to say Wednesday would not be a good day to take a walk outside if we knew what was going to happen on Wednesday.

This is an aerial view of part of the site.

Uh you can see all of the existing um trees that are in this this portion of the site.

Uh mature trees.

We are simply dismayed at the small number of trees that can be preserved.

Naturally, a project of this density is going to require removal of a lot of trees.

But it's very sad that of the 103s, for example, only seven would remain.

And beyond that, uh the trees that are to be planted, this is good, but there's no redwoods to be planted in the plant pallet, uh, the replacement trees.

The good news is the applicant is uh intending to use 24 inch or 36 inch tubs, which will help the shade get uh replaced a little quicker than it would be with smaller nursery sized trees.

Item four is continuous air quality monitoring.

We are uh intrigued that uh neither the applicant nor the city seems to think uh monitoring the air quality is a good idea or necessary.

Here's here's some things that would be accomplished if we did monitor the air quality.

First, most of you know that the most dangerous part of bad air is not what you can see, it's what's known as PM 2.5, very small particulate matter which is invisible to the naked eye.

If you look on the Bay Area Air Quality District website, there's a big uh explanation there of the health effects uh of this.

If you wait until you see a cloud of big dust uh coming towards you, if you're a senior with asthma, COPD on oxygen, you might be well on your way to the ambulance before you even notice something is wrong.

But suitable air quality monitors would have alerted you to that.

Now the mitigating measures in the AIR say, well, what we'll do is we'll minimize the amount of dust and particulate matter that's generated.

That's a wonderful idea.

But how will we know if these measures are successful?

How will they be uh gauged?

Again, you can't tell just by looking for a cloud of visible dirt.

We have a lot of people living at Viamani who have health concerns, respiratory issues.

If the air quality is as good as the EIR's consultants hope for, then this would be very reassuring to say we're not just hoping, we're actually able to show you that that's true.

On the other hand, if air quality monitors say the air quality is not good, it also identifies two things.

How bad is it?

The EPA scale is what's used in these uh monitors that we are looking at.

And it also enables you to very easily distinguish an ongoing problem from just a blip.

So if we have one badly tuned uh dump truck that's sitting out idling for a while, and the sh particulate matter spikes up, uh, looking at the output from the sensors will say, but it went away in 10 minutes.

So it's not something we need a big uh big effort to deal with.

So here's what the sensors look like.

They, as I mentioned, um concentrate on the PM 2.5 index standard.

They're laser-based.

Each of those sensors sends data every two minutes to a website which is publicly accessible.

You can access it, the applicant can access it, residents of Via Monty can access it.

No registration, no passwords, no fees, nothing.

If you select on your computer or phone any one of these, this is the walnut creek area I'm using as an example.

You see this sort of data.

The left shows you for today.

This is showing you in the EPA scale.

Are you in the green satisfactory error?

Yellow caution, red creeping up the scale.

So it shows you right now and for earlier time periods in this day.

On the right, you see data for the last five days.

So this is one of the ways you see what's uh what's just a temporary thing and what is a long-term systemic problem.

This data, by the way, is from a sensor that's at the corner of Almond and Shue, just a few blocks from here, over past the Lusher Center.

So the staff report says we don't have any uh evidence or data uh that relates to the possibility of ambulances being delayed by congestion.

Well, no, we don't, but we have a lot of photographs, and we have a lot of witnesses who could tell you that the traffic is already a bad, and uh as other speakers have mentioned, this is particularly true during the morning and evening rush hours.

The applicant has described to us that their belief is that the roundabout and the raised crosswalk, which hasn't been uh previously mentioned, will in concert will help to slow down traffic, which might have the effect of discouraging some of the Ignatio Valley drivers who like to take a bypass and zip around shadelands just to avoid the oak grove shadows intersection.

Uh that remains to be seen, or hopeful, but we also know we can see that left turns are a common cause of traffic backing up.

So an additional thing we would like for you to consider is making the easterly driveway of the project right turn only in and right turn only out.

So there wouldn't be any delays due to left turns due to the traffic there.

Now remember the westerly driveway from the project comes out at the roundabout.

So that would be the preferred exit for new residents who could easily go excuse me, any direction they wanted to.

So we talked about asbestos.

So it's not just the asbestos we're worried about, the demolition itself, all of the haul trucks that are going to be idling and waiting to get filled up and loaded and so on.

Um we'd really like to know a week or two in advance.

Again, should we have our bocce tournaments on Thursday?

Or should we better stay inside on Thursday?

So very simple.

Here's the summary.

Here are the conditions of approval we would like to see you add to this project.

An eight-foot solid dust barrier along shade lands.

That would be wonderful.

But at least we could include redwoods in the new trees to be planted.

We'd like a condition of approval be that the applicant provide some funding for us to establish and maintain for four to five years a continuous air quality management system.

It's completely automated along Shaylands Drive.

Right in, right turn in, right turn out at the Easterly Project Driveway, and weekly or bi-weekly distribution via some mechanism of the construction schedule, particularly demolition and activities that will entail a lot of uh truck traffic, a lot of idling traffic.

The applicant had said they'd be happy to have a point of contact via Monte to facilitate communications.

We'd welcome that, but we need a bit of advanced notice, or we can't schedule activities for our senior community.

So again, we like housing.

California needs housing.

This is a place where housing could without too much trouble be built.

But we'd like the neighbors and in particular the seniors living right across the street to be given a little more consideration.

I'd like to ask if you're able, anyone who's here from Via Monti, would you stand up just for a second?

So speaking on behalf of all my fellow seniors, thank you for your attention and considering how you might ameliorate some of our concerns in this project.

Thank you.

And thank you very much.

Everybody that just stood, I'm just curious.

You can just raise your hand, you don't have to stand up again.

How many are here in support of the appeal that was just presented by Mr.

Heller?

Okay.

Thank you.

We're also here the first year.

Under we'll we'll get to that with public comment later.

Let me ask right now if we have uh council questions specifically for Mr.

Heller at this time, or anything that you would like to ask later, we can certainly hold up for that.

Just to let everybody know here and at the Dias two.

After this, we'll have the applicant present, and then we're gonna take a break.

So that we have a chance to take care of what we need to as well.

And then we'll come back at that point for public comment.

So do we have any questions for Mr.

Heller?

One question.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Heller, for your presentation on behalf of the of your community.

Were these um same eight items presented at the planning commission meeting, or has this list been elaborated and expanded since the planning commission hearing?

The uh the concerns were all part of our uh input to the planning commission hearing.

Uh what we've obviously learned after studying the EIR and the final EAR is that perhaps uh more detail, more specifics were appropriate, and so that's what we've done here.

So this was in response to the post-planning commission opportunity.

The environmental documents were available at the planning commission and approved by the planning commission.

The direct the draft EIR, yes, and then which became final, I guess.

So, for example, the question about the air quality monitoring systems, you did not present that at the planning commission.

Okay, thank you very much.

Questions down questions?

Yes.

Mr.

Heller, before you sit down, sir.

I hear voices.

Yeah.

Yes, please.

I thank you for the presentation.

Uh I had a similar question in terms of kind of the the, you know, there's a presentation in the staff report that indicated that there was a meeting between uh Via Monte and the applicant where some of these concerns were addressed, and it I I recognize that perhaps not all of them were resolved, but maybe if you could summarize some of the ones that you felt like if you felt like you made some progress on your concerns being addressed.

So I mentioned the first item about adding the green solid paneling to the chain link fence.

So that was suggested by the applicants uh or presented by them, and we think that's a great idea.

That would be a positive step there.

Uh would might be better, but that might work.

We don't know.

So that would be one.

Um we had discussion about the um driveways, the easterly driveway of the project is directly across from the Via Monte driveway.

We only have one driveway, there'll be two from the project.

Ours is coming up out of an underground garage and is short.

There's not much stacking room there.

So backups and so on are to be avoided.

Uh the applicant wasn't in agreement with that idea, or we didn't reach any conclusion.

So that would be examples.

I appreciate that.

And just for clarity on the, you know, I'm familiar with you on your phone.

You can look for the air quality index and see.

And it's generalized, right?

It's not you're asking for something that's more localized just for Via Monte, is that correct?

Yes.

So the map I showed you of the Walnut Creek area, every circle on that is an existing air quality monitor, a sensor that's operating.

And they every two minutes upload data via the internet to that website that you saw.

So what we'd be doing would be adding some more circles on that map that would be along shadows on the front of our building facing Shadelands.

And we'll probably put one in the back as a control to be sure there's nothing depending on the wind direction and all of that.

Okay.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Certainly.

Councilmember DeVinny, any questions at this time?

Okay.

Thank you very much for the presentation.

Mr.

Heller.

Thank you.

And at this time, we'll have the applicant come forward.

I'll have 30 minutes total.

Um after that, we're gonna take a break for a few minutes.

And uh first we will hear from the applicant.

Good evening.

Good evening.

All right.

All right.

Well, good evening, Mayor Wilk and uh council members.

Uh on behalf of uh signature development group, my name is Jonathan Fern, I'm senior director of development, a senior vice president of development, and um behalf of our whole team, we are uh happy to present our Mitchell Drive Townhomes project this evening.

I will not need 30 minutes, uh, but this is a novel hero hearing, so I will take you through some of the things that we talked about during planning commissioning.

So just to talk about the site plan quickly, we all know it's 422 uh total townhomes, uh two acres of publicly accessible open space scattered throughout, mainly uh focused on that east-west spine there in the middle of the site.

Uh we are incorporating many of the elements of the uh Shade Lands Multimodal Plan, including widened sidewalks along Mitchell and Shade Lands, as well as extended bike lanes, which we'll talk about a little bit later.

We're also, as Simmer mentioned, uh retaining those seven redwoods uh in the central Redwood Grove, and we've organized our central open space around those redwoods.

Uh we are increasing uh the tree canopy from what exists today, 488 trees to 542 trees, 11 public parking spaces uh organized on those uh internal roadways there, including third 30 bike parking spaces uh organized in the uh publicly accessible open spaces.

As Simmer mentioned, 55 units available to low-income households.

That's nearly twice the city code, and then meaningful uh uh measures towards the city's Reno requirements for both low-income and above modern income households as well.

We are, simmer mentioned, we have two quote unquote neighborhoods, which really really uh really uh are different product types.

Neighborhood one, uh our in-one product, if you will, uh focused on uh the north side of the of the property, the north half of the property, our in two product on the south side of the property.

Uh but we're constructing the project in two phases.

Uh phase one is the eastern half of the property, basically, and then phase two uh is the western half.

We are doing it in phases.

We we know we can't absorb 422 units all at one time, so we do want a phased approach to this.

Uh the reason why we're doing it in this fashion is to have a diversity of offering and product types, so we're having both product types in each face.

That's why those phases are designed in that in that way.

The simmer mentioned we also did want to have variation not only just amongst the the architecture itself, but uh colors and variation as well.

So this just shows that each of the two product types has has uh has two different architectural styles and then four color schemes each they aren't the same color, that's just those colors just show different color schemes.

We did want to be uh intentional about how we were designing this and looking around uh the built environment that was around us to be contextual to that.

Um so kind of starting with this graphic on here in the middle, um the 2800 Mitchell Drive continuing care retirement community that is approved but not yet built.

Uh that's about three to four stories along Mitchell, uh about 40 feet in height.

It's about 39 units to the acre as you go along to the eastern uh our eastern boundary, the remaining uh building 12 of the Walnut Creek Executive Park, three stories in height, about 35 feet.

Uh and then obviously to our south is the Via Monte Senior Living Facility, four stories along Shade Lands, 40 feet in height, about 50 units to the acre, and then the Shadeland Sports Mall uh and the Shade Lands Post Acute facility, 30 feet, 24 feet respectively.

In comparison, we're three stories uh in height, as mentioned 40 feet to the uh to the to the tops of our of our um our roof lines, but that has a little bit of architectural variation uh that's put in there.

They're actually a little under 30 feet to the uh ceiling of the third level, which is the highest living area.

Um but as you can also see, 19 units to the acres are significantly less dense uh than the two residential uh projects uh that are around us.

Uh so we feel uh this is very appropriate for this area, obviously a step up from the woodlands, which is to the east uh of Oak Grove Road, uh, but significantly under what we have out there today.

That said, we knew we didn't have all the answers when we started this off, and so we did want to be uh cognizant and we want to incorporate community input where we could.

Um starting off, you know, we went to the design review committee last July last June, uh June of 20 June 2025.

Uh, one of the things they asked us to do was to look at our central open space in particular, was there a way that we could better uh aggregate our open space to make it a little more usable?

What we mean by that is if you look at those these blue arrows here, that shows um where we were uh proposing our stormwater detention basins.

Those are basically on grade stormwater detention basins, and as you can see, the central lawn, which is the light green in this in this image, uh, was a little chopped up.

And they were saying, well, can you use an alternative stormwater treatment system, which they're calling Silva Cells, which is a subgrade stormwater treatment system to better aggregate and make this aggregate the central lawn and better and make it more usable.

Uh so we looked into that, and as you can see here, we were successful in doing that.

Um you can see that we now have a but much better aggregate, much better open space there, it's much more connected, much more usable.

In addition, we're proposing a small children's playground there as well.

Um, so we think this is a better plan.

Uh and this is uh what would what we think it'll look like once it's complete.

We also look for other opportunities to use this system uh so we could have additional areas where we could uh have usable open space.

So we identified these two areas.

Uh this the one on the left is on the west side of the site, uh, the one on the right uh is is adjacent to the dog park on the eastern portion of the site.

Uh and as you can see, we were able to make both of those areas a lot more usable, really expand the dog park, um, which we're very excited about.

Uh but what we also were able to do because of this uh was to introduce more trees.

Uh the Silva Cell system actually needs trees to work.

Uh the roots of the trees actually uh interact and and and do a lot of the stormwater treatment.

Uh and that added about 32 more trees from what we originally had before we went to the design review committee.

So uh we were at least happy to be able to uh install more trees.

In addition, uh the design review committee uh asked if we could have a little uh focus a little more on pedestrian connectivity uh both through the site for folks that don't uh live uh within the proposed development, uh, and then um for folks that would live within development out to uh Oak Grove Road.

So uh what we were able to do is uh design a pathway that led out the eastern side uh of the of the development through a through a gate that will get you out to Oak Grove Road.

Um and then we widen the sidewalk uh along that central spine to make it a little more prominent, a little more welcoming uh for folks uh from the general public.

So that's what you're seeing here.

That sidewalk got to be uh about eight foot uh in width.

We also heard um uh a comment on our architecture that uh for our N2 product, we had balconies that were actually facing uh the interior alleyways uh that where cars come to go into the garages.

Question was well, why can't those balconies face outward onto the streets or the paseos?

Uh we took a look at that and actually said, you know, that's not a bad idea.

Um and so what you see here is us incorporating that.

Um what you see at top is the before front elevation where we did not have balconies and the bottom is the after uh front elevation where we did incorporate those balconies and move them from the rear to the front.

So we think that was a good move and a good suggestion.

Um, and I think it makes a better project.

In addition, as we all know, there are a lot of comments around safety uh on shade lines, um, and so I think the uh penal instance have spoken about the raised crosswalk.

What we had been told is that the issue was that it was difficult to make a left turn out of that out of the uh Via Monte Senior Living Community uh driveway onto shadows because there were pods of cars that were coming off of Oak Grove Road, uh, and there was no break in those pods for them to make that left turn movement safely.

Uh so what we did in response to that was propose that raised crosswalk, which will uh ideally slow those cars down, so they'll have to really slow down to get up over that crosswalk, uh, which will make that left turn a lot more easy, uh easier for folks to do to really create those breaks.

In addition, um the the roundabout was something that obviously city staff uh was wanting to see as part of the build out of the Shadowlands multimodal plan.

So uh we again uh thought that that would make a better, safer community, so we agreed to do that.

In addition, uh bike lanes, this is what we would ordinarily be um uh required to put in uh if uh just for a typical project, that's just bike lanes on your project frontage.

But what we are doing is we are extending those bike lanes on the north side of Shade Lens all the way from Oak Grove to North Wiggett, and then on South Side of Shade Lens from Via Monte to North Wiggett.

And then on Mitchell, we're doing it from our Western Project Frontage all the way to Oak Grove Road on both sides of the street.

So in addition to what those community benefits that I just talked about, as Simmer mentioned, we're doing a monetary contribution for traffic enhancements at the Ignacio Valley and Via Monte intersection, a monetary contribution for traffic enhancement, the Oak Grove Road and Contra Costa Bike Trail intersection.

We don't want to get involved in kind of the liability with that, so it's better that the city kind of do that enhancement rather than have us do it.

And then a monetary contribution for meeting islands where the Contra Costa Bike Trail meets Oak Grove Road as well.

So this is just a summary of all of the things that we've done with the project as a hearing community input as well as community benefits.

There's no health and safety reasons for these.

We were doing these because we thought the project got better and we thought it would benefit the surrounding community as well.

Big reason why we didn't have to do these is because as is mentioned, uh we did a traffic study, or the city did a traffic study, wasn't our traffic study, uh, and that traffic study has uh resulted uh as has concluded that we have fewer trip trip uh trips uh than what is there today, and that's on a conservative um measure of 80% occupancy versus the 100% that we could have taken, but we did 80%.

Um but I understand that that doesn't necessarily comport with what people are seeing uh on this on the street today, uh, but I do want to go through a quick timeline that we went through at Planning Commission, as we all know, uh the COVID pandemic hit in 2020.

Uh this office park, as well as many offices around the world uh emptied out.

Um but what happened is this property was repurchased uh in 2022, uh, and then the application uh for this project was submitted shortly thereafter in 2023.

Our form of application was submitted in 2024, and then here we are today.

All this is to say is that uh the current owner has just not uh because we've had this project on file and we have been processing it, the current owner for good reason has not been looking to retenant the property.

Um and so somewhat ironically, because of this project, um, what people are seeing as a what they would see what people are seeing and are thinking as a permanent condition, certainly wouldn't be that way.

If this project were to go away, it would be denied.

Obviously, the uh current owner would look to re-ten it uh as soon as possible.

Um but all I have to say is that I think Shade Lands has uh over the last 10 to 15 years really started to remake itself as a very diverse area.

Uh obviously they've introduced residential uses such as the Via Monte Senior Living Community and the and the 2800 Mitchell CCRC.

Uh they've with the Orchard Shopping Center, they've introduced retail uses, there's residential serving uses like the Straitland Sports Mall, other you know, uses like Calicraft Brewing.

Um, but we just believe this is a great place for housing for a project like this because um, much like everybody else that lives there, uh there are uh amenities here that these uh future owners will ideally get to uh utilize, walk to, um, and uh they could be uh a very a good benefit for for everybody.

So titlement schedule, we've gone through that.

Um you know, we started this project again about two and a half years ago with our SB 330 submitted in October 23, six months later, uh came back with our formal application.

Took about a year to get through all the city comments and reviews, uh and we did we were we did that in May of 2025.

As I mentioned, went to the desire review committee in June of 2025.

The EIR uh was released in late summer, uh, as Simmer mentioned, it was a 90-day review uh comment period, spent a lot of the end of 2025 responding to public comments, went to went to planning commission February of this year, got unanimous approval, um, and here we are today.

So, just to touch on some of the comments and of the appeals from uh the two appellants uh for the Friends of Water Creek.

We talked about this, uh the Builders Remedy uh not applying.

You know, we had a um uh a city council study session just uh April of last year, which discussed this topic.

It's been top we discussed it over uh many times.

Uh the city attorneys uh then reaffirmed the applicability of this of this project uh under the builders remedy provision.

Uh that was further emphasized by the planning commission.

Uh and then we've had state laws such as AB 1886 that are that have really clearly stated and clarified the legislative the uh assembly and the the legislators intent that is the HCD that is the is the uh determining factor of who of when a housing element is substantially compliant.

just uh April of last year which discussed this topic it's been top we discussed it over uh many times uh the city attorneys uh then reaffirmed the the applicability of this of this project uh under the builders remedy provision uh that was further emphasized by the planning commission uh and then we've had state laws such as a b 1886 that are that have really clearly um stated and clarified the legislate legisl the uh assembly and the the legislators intent that is the HCD that is the is the uh determining factor of who of when a housing element is substantially compliant related to the senior living alternative uh again um you know all alternatives uh are not necessarily necessary to uh be reviewed um there are no significant impacts um that that alternative um identifies that aren't uh significant impacts from our project um that proposal obviously as they mentioned would significantly increase that the uh the density um and it actually would constitute a a denial of the builders remedy project because it would it was exceed the uh 20 percent limitation we have under SB330 um we've talked a lot about the EIR the EIR um it first well first of all LOS is not something that is is is needed to be studied under EARs any longer but both VMT and L and LOS were studied as a part of the project as simmer mentioned this the traffic report was reviewed not only by an outside consultant uh but it was peer reviewed by an outside consultant um and again we don't have uh any um traffic was not uh she shown as a significant impact um uh from our project uh in the EIR um so uh we are not contributing to additional trap traffic trips as we've seen and so uh it's just not clear what um the the uh the appellant was was was really trying to get at there um for an inadequate noticing again they admit that it was noticed correctly uh the EAR as I mentioned was out for twice as long as required uh and we got a bunch of comments from from folks outside the noticing radius so I think it's pretty hard to argue people didn't know about this project uh about 60 letters we got from outside the noticing radius during that extended comment period for the VMati residents uh as I mentioned we did meet with them uh after receiving their appeal letter um related to the eight foot barrier as we mentioned uh we well we will be putting in a green screen fence which will uh which will prevent uh dust from escaping the site um uh above and beyond best practices related to hazardous building materials uh we will be hiring uh a qualified consultant to do uh a survey uh of all remaining uh if any remaining um asbestos and lead bed paint within the building we will then hire a qualified demolition contractor to remove that prior to the demolition of the buildings uh it is worth noting that a lot of there's a lot of uh remediation has already been done uh within those buildings um just as a result of the tenant improvements and in in in in a lot of the uh in the a lot of the office suites so um that obviously ostensibly didn't affect anybody when that was done um but certainly we will follow all rules and regulations we can't pull a building permit without showing the evidence that we're hiring these qualified consultants and contractors do this work related to tree preservation again uh we studied and restudied could we save additional trees uh we unfortunately were not able to uh that said we are as I said mentioned significantly increasing the tree canopy from an existing condition um and we were able to find an ability to um increase the count by 32 trees by uh implementing a different stormwater treatment system as I mentioned I also say that redwoods don't really thrive in this area they are a coastal tree they require a lot of water um and so that was another reason why we uh propose trees like oaks and things that thrive better in in a drier area such as such as Water Creek.

Installation of air monitors again we are going to be following the best practices related to around air quality I think it go needs to be stated that all of the individual units at the Via Monte senior facility are equipped with MERV 13 filters which filter out 98 to 99% of all construction dust 85 to 90% of all PM2 particulate matter there was a concumulative health risk assessment that was done as part of the EIR that said that a lot the majority of the risk actually came from nearby roadways not our construction so we just think this is kind of misplaced we don't know exactly where uh the sensors will be picking up these particular matters they'll they can pick up stuff far away as as unfortunately uh when when uh Napa and Sonoma were having forest fires they were picking up articulate matter from the forest fighter so it's just something that is really really hard to uh really pin down where these uh where this is where these uh sensors are are are uh and what they're picking up is coming from um the right in ride out again as I mentioned what was articulated to us is that it was difficult to make the left turn out of the uh Via Monte uh senior facility uh driveway that was the reason why we did uh propose that raised crosswalk to deal with that issue otherwise we can't really understand why this is not similar just to shade lens and wicked it's a basically a four-way uncontrolled intersection um and we think it's so you know if if you can manage that you should be able to to manage this and weekly updates uh again we will have uh you know uh on the fence uh somebody you can call for any issues uh if they would like to if the Via Monte folks would like to nominate somebody to kind of uh interface with our superintendent we'd be open to that so they can uh you know give updates to to their fellow community members um but again uh we're uh we're going with best practices with that as well so that's it uh we look forward to the discussion

Um weekly updates uh again, we will have uh, you know, uh on the fence uh somebody you can call for any issues.

Uh if they would like to if the Via Monte folks would like to nominate somebody to kind of uh interface with our super intended, we'd be open to that so they can uh you know give updates to to their fellow community members.

Um but again uh we're uh we're going with best practices with that as well.

So that's it.

Uh we look forward to the discussion.

If you have any questions, uh we're certainly here and open to take any of those.

But thank you for your time.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Burns.

Do uh this council have any questions at this time for the applicant.

Nope.

Okay.

Then we are going to take a what it's uh 8 35.

Let's take a break until 8 45, and uh we'll be back here.

All right, and we're back.

So note if um we can all note that the both appellants and the applicant have had an opportunity to speak, and they will have an opportunity to address the council again at the close of the public testimony for rebuttal.

The order will be in reverse of the presentation that we just heard, so they each have an opportunity to address the council first and last.

And and I guess middle.

Um so before we start the public testimony, just a couple of quick things.

Let me first ask how many intend to speak.

Raise your hand.

Okay, quite a bit.

So you will have up to two minutes to speak, but let's also understand that everybody wants to.

We just we have 17 cards.

If you haven't filled out a comment card yet, please go to the back and fill out a comment card and bring that up.

Everybody who wants to speak will have the chance to speak.

You don't have to take the full two minutes.

Just want to make that clear.

If if what the if what somebody has said before you agree with, you can say, I agree with what Bill said.

And I think we should do or not do whatever it is you're going to say.

You don't have to take the full two minutes.

When you if you do take two minutes and the red light blinks and you hear the tone, I'm going to stop you then.

I'm not being rude.

We just have to give the same the same allowance to everybody.

If you take an extra 10 seconds, everybody can take an extra 10 seconds.

So let's really keep to track on that.

You can see the time countdown for yourself.

Group spokespers will have 10 minutes if you are part of a group.

And no one else can and no one else can speak from that group.

You are the loan speaker if you were representing that group of 10.

So at Via Monte, if you wanted to have one person speak on all of that, that's fine.

You get your 10 minutes, nobody else can speak.

Um, so that would be in lieu of any of the other members.

I'll ask you to identify yourself if you are a group spokesperson and to identify the group.

And of course, if you're an individual speaker, please identify yourself.

You can you can mention where you live if you would like.

Um, and then afterwards, when you are done, if there are questions that come up that the council want to refer to staff, we may or may not ask questions at that point, and then we'll go to the rebuttals.

I should have asked this before, so let me just ask this right now of the council.

Has anybody had any ex parte meetings with anybody that's been involved in this particular item?

Yes.

Uh about it must have been last August, I believe.

I was I had a meeting with the applicant and their representative where they explained the project to me and provided general information.

Uh it was probably around last August that I met with the applicant as well, and I also met with Mr.

Heller and the Villamonte group.

December, maybe was it December, January for a meeting as well, just giving me their their perspective.

So I had each of those meetings.

And I had a meeting with the applicant, I believe it was in September.

Um, I just was looking for an update on what community benefits they were including in their proposal.

Um I had a meeting with the applicant in July, I think, last year, um, to get an update on the project.

Particularly in post the DRC meeting.

Okay, great.

And I had a similar meeting where they provided information to me about the project.

Okay.

Thank you.

And now we will start the public comment portion.

Uh, what I will do, um let's do this.

Let me let's start with the comment cards.

And I will call up five speakers, and if you can line up against the wall, we'll have the first person first, and then every few people I'll continue to do that.

So we can just get a continual rotation of speakers and we'll cut down some of the time here.

No need to stack the deck on this one.

Okay.

When I cheering Councilmember Darling is telling me no cheering.

So but it's a good point to bring up because there will be people that say things that you want to hear, and there will be people that say things that you don't want to hear.

Uh we don't we want to make everybody feel comfortable when they speak.

And so this is not a March Madness basketball game.

This is something where it's if this is serious testimony, we want to be able to have people feel comfortable with what they say and not feel intimidated.

Okay, when I call your name, uh please start to line up.

Steve Rothman, Sally Doherty, Suzanne Rheingruber.

Is it Anne Meyer or Meyer and Dong Ma Dongmai?

Is that is that right?

Okay.

So if you can line up along the side, and we will start with Steve Rothman.

Yes, thank you.

I'm a resident of uh of Viamonthi, just so you know where I'm coming from.

Um as I see this, the builder's remedy is intended to remove unessential and discretionary local restrictions from a project which includes affordable housing.

It is clearly not intended to prevent building codes or other essential requirements or state rules from being enforced.

Climate change and global warming are recognized as significant concerns by the state of California as are initiatives to counter and reduce their effect.

Green space is an important issue for the state, and there are many related state programs to encourage and enable these efforts.

The existing site for Mitchell Townhouse project currently includes many green zone attributes, notably a large number of mature redwood trees, and the builder is planning to cut down almost every one of those trees and bulldoze and level the entire site before the entire site before starting construction.

The plans show some grassy areas as well as new small trees.

I believe that at least several small groves of redwood trees should be selected to remain to serve as the basis of a for a green zone to continue to benefit the neighborhood.

It's important to note that these magnificent trees need their proximity of a grouping to enable their root systems to support one another.

Just putting a handful of trees, leaving a handful of individual trees is not going to accomplish anything, those trees are going to die.

I recognize that keeping these trees versus building on every square foot of the site would marginally decrease the overall project profitability.

But the project should still be viable.

Thank you.

Economically.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

You just you can just come in line.

I'm Suzanne Rheingruber.

Oops.

Okay.

I'm kind of short.

I'm Suzanne Rheingruber, and I live in Villamonte.

And I'm here to ask you to please make sure that the air quality would be good for all of us.

We're older people, and we have problems.

I'm not even the worst one.

I have.

It's hard to say.

I have leukemia, which ruined my immune system.

I have asthma.

I live with an inhaler.

And first of all, I was born and raised in Hungary, and as a teenager, I have contacted tuberculosis.

But I was fortunate.

My uncle was an American physician.

He sent me the medicine, but not before it had damaged my lung.

I'm here before you having two tumors on my lung.

And those fussy, those little things what they call you called, I don't even remember what will come.

It would demise me.

I'm a happily married to a man, and I would like to keep my money together as long as I can.

So please, I'm asking you.

No, I'm begging you to look at us as your parents or grandparents and make sure that our air is correct enough for us to breathe in.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anne Meyer from Viamonte.

I just want to raise the issue of liability.

We have pointed out several things that could happen, especially the around traffic in the traffic circle.

If uh an ambulance is delayed because of that, who gets sued?

We know about these problems beforehand, and we're not dealing with them.

And this really um uh obviously bothers me.

It bothers me that in the name of builders' misery builders' misery.

We're we're making things unsafe for the people who are gonna move in.

And we want we want housing for these people, but do we really want these little boxes?

Is that what they want?

They're so desperate they'll take anything, and this is what you're giving them.

Nothing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm gonna call up the next several speakers, please line up on the right.

Bob Asfor, Howard Gruber, Brianna Morales, Maddie Reagan, Stephen Black.

Hello, thank you everybody.

My name's Dome.

I say I'm coming from 2010 to 12.

I come here, I want to talk.

Please speak into the microphone, it's a little bit coming from 2010, 2012, Oak Groove Tribe, Warren Creek.

We I don't speak English well.

Okay.

We formally all to the Prozost Project of 42 22 unit three star the hometown.

First reason, the project will bring a lot of simple on bear airbound pollution to accent risk resistance.

In addition to uh innocent trial super noisy from about supplemental 2000 cards.

The cards high speechy for racing between tiles and the cement route for uh so forth pro products, a lot of toxic dust.

Um toxic pollution from ties, zero E 316 uh article.

The toxic dust can flow anywhere, follow down our house, our yard, our where race organs such as can go to our brain, lung, blood, uh everywhere.

So this I sent the recent who are not avoided least uh thank thank you, thank you.

I'm um Howard Gruber, I'm a pediatrician.

Um practice 34 years in Berkeley, and thereafter was chief medical officer at children's hospital in Oakland.

And uh besides that uh did uh global medicine in Honduras.

And all in all these uh capacities, one of the first things that we thought of is how do we represent the children.

I noticed that you have an unrepresented constituency here.

That is the kids.

Uh if you walk down as my wife and I do often Mitchell Drive, how many schools do you count?

Five or six.

Three of them have preschool children in them.

They're very small.

The reason that I passed this out is I'd like you to look at the highlighted statement in there, which is fortuitously just came to me three days ago.

Um noticed the needs that children's have, children have in order to be protected by uh adequate air quality.

And so what I'm here to ask you is to take those children into account as you look at the uh the demolition project, especially in the quality of the air.

And that's at the other side of the project, the Mitchell side.

So that totally is my message, and I hope you take those children into account.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Kruber.

Dr.

Gruber.

Next speaker.

Okay.

Um good evening, uh Mayor Wilk and City Council members.

Uh, my name is Stephen Black.

Uh, I'm a resident of unincorporated Contra Costa County in the Walnut Creek area, uh just over by uh the Pleasant Hill Bart.

And uh I'm here tonight to express my support for the Mitchell Town Homes project because uh my neighbors and I are being priced out of the region we call home.

As all of you know, uh the median home price in Contra Costa County has more than doubled in the last decade.

Ordinary people can't afford to live in areas where they work, not because they've made bad decisions about their career or you know, education or anything like that, but simply because we haven't built enough homes.

According to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, Walnut Creek needs to build 5,805 homes in order to meet the regional housing needs assessment requirement for the 2023 to 2031 cycle.

Uh despite this, the publicly available data right now shows that the city has permit permitted just 85 units in the first two years of the cycle.

Now I know that doesn't include uh the 2025 numbers yet, but it clearly shows that we have a long way to go.

Um regardless of what good intentions the appellates here tonight may have.

Every delayed project, every successful appeal, every procedural obstacle keeps the city further from meeting the needs of its residents and worsens the housing affordability crisis.

The Mitchell Town Homes project embodies what the state legislature intended when it passed the housing accountability act, a meaningful number of homes with affordable units included, built where people need to live.

The appeals before you tonight don't change the environmental record or identify new evidence.

What they do is ask this council to use processes to delay or deny housing that this region desperately needs.

I respectfully ask the city council to deny both appeals tonight and demonstrate that Walnut Creek is part of the solution to the housing affordability crisis.

Uh thank you.

Thank you.

Speaker.

Hi, my name is Bob Asfor, and I'm from Viamante.

Uh I'm going to take this time to just talk about traffic.

Uh it has been stated, and I'm gonna paraphrase just for saving time that the number of current commuters will be replaced by future commuters.

So instead of driving in to Walnut Creek, they'll be driving out, and that the traffic is going to be minimally impacted if not yet less.

Uh this is uh equivocally incorrect.

We are not replacing commuters with commuters, we are replacing commuters with 422 families.

The commuters that are driving into Walnut Creek now are driving in 240 days a year for a nine to five job.

The 422 families are living in Walnut Creek 365 days a year, 24-7.

Uh, in addition, they will be getting mail six days a week, plus the occasional Amazon package.

So what I'm saying is that uh here's some statistics.

The average California family is composed of three members, two of which have driver's license, and the family owns two cars.

So what I'm saying is that the MTP project is going to triple the amount of people living in Walnut Creek and increase by a factor of two and a half the amount the number of traffic.

That this is just basic math.

Uh the other thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna throw this away and just back up and say that I agree with what Mike Heller had said about traffic.

Uh and that's enough.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

I'm gonna read the next group of names.

Jan Warren, Susan Lee Vick, Alyssa Stone, Lisa Moore, and Wendy Taylor Tanellian.

And Sally Doherty had sent had given a card and she hasn't spoken yet.

She had to leave our buses had to go at long with our people, more than half of them.

So many speakers will not be present.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yes.

Good evening, Mayor Wilk and Council members.

My name is Brianna Morales, and I am with the Housing Action Coalition.

We're a member supported nonprofit organization advocating for housing at all income levels across California.

And we're here tonight to strongly oppose the appeal and urge the council to uphold the planning commission's unanimous approval of the 422 homes that include in the Mitchell Drive project.

This project repurposes office buildings into high quality family-sized homes in a walkable, job-rich area with grocery stores, schools, transit, right outside of the door.

The affordability here is a standout, with 13% of the total project being reserved for affordable housing, nearly double the city's standard requirement.

And this is a meaningful commitment to ensuring families and essential workers can actually stay in Walnut Creek.

Beyond the housing, we are encouraged by the neighbors, the neighborhood benefits, among them being two acres of public open space and critical safety upgrades like the new roundabout and whited sidewalks.

These are direct responses to neighbor feedback, and they would make the area safer for everybody.

With the help of other organizations that want to see new homes here, like East Bay for Everyone.

If we're serious about addressing the housing crisis, it needs to start now in well-resourced areas, in more homes for families, in affordable units for families.

Along with that, we also want to point out that there is a strict legal obligation to approve this project because it meets all standards with no findings based on the grounds of the appeals.

The Housing Accountability Act requires to deny the appeals.

And HCD has stated that they are watching this project specifically so that we can align with state law.

So we really hope that we do not put this project at risk.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well timed.

Good evening, Mayor Wilkes, City Council members.

My name is Matt Regan.

I'm here representing the Bay Area Council, about 400 of the largest uh employers in the region.

Um, as the previous speaker said, no secret, uh, we are in the midst of a generational housing crisis in California.

Um the National Association of Realtors just published information that for the first time in our nation's history, the median age of a first-time home buyer crossed 40.

That's a collective failure that we all bear responsibility for.

Um, 40,000 Californians every single year leave this state and move to Texas.

40,000.

Again, collective failure of civic government in California to build sufficient housing to meet our own population growth.

Now you have in front of you a project that um I think meets all of the standards that um have been set out by the state in order to meet housing accountability act and builders' remedy.

Your staff have made it very clear that it these these laws do apply to this project.

Um the you know the appeals I don't think pass even the most basic laugh test.

Um the the checks in the mail.

We tried really hard to get it in on time.

These have already been tested in court, and the state has made it very clear what an uh what a uh uh uh uh an approved housing element constitutes.

You have to have it in your hand stamped by the by HCD as approved.

If you do not have an approved housing element, there are certain things that kick in.

You lose discretion.

The state has said that our response to the housing crisis is to take discretion away from bad actor cities.

So you will lose discretion, you will lose state funds for roads for public safety, you could be liable for fines up to sixty thousand dollars per month per unit that you do not approve, litigation and attorney fees, and punitive damages if they find that you willfully ignore the advice of staff.

And then finally, receivership.

The state can come in and take complete control over your planning and approval process.

So be mindful of what's at stake here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Susan Lee Vick, president and CEO of Joy Bound People in Pets here in Walnut Creek.

I want to share that I am genuinely excited about Mitchell Drive Town homes and the positive energy that we believe it will bring to our corner of the Shade Lands community.

For all of us at Joy Bound, this project isn't just a new development.

It's a rich infusion of life and activity and potential into an area that's been dormant for far too long.

I'm sorry, I'm kind of losing my voice.

I've been CEO at Joybound for about three and a half years now.

And during that time, I have watched our organization and community grow and evolve.

And yet we sit next to a vacant lot, the former uh JGI building, and across the street from a huge office park that's mostly empty and lifeless, and these underutilized spaces have long felt out of sync with the vibrancy and optimism that define Joy Bound and the Shade Lands and all of Walnut Creek.

Our campus is a place where people come to connect and give back and make a meaningful difference.

And the revitalization Mitchell Drive Town Homes will bring aligns beautifully with that spirit.

Increased activity in the area will not only strengthen the neighborhood, but also deepen the rich sense of community.

We work hard at Joybound to foster every day.

And I will admit selfishly that I'm thrilled about the potential for this community to bring new volunteers and supporters and neighbors to Joy Bound.

And because the more engaged our community becomes, the more animals and families we will be able to serve.

So on behalf of Joy Bound's board of directors and staff and volunteers and the tens of thousands of pet families we serve, thank you for the opportunity to express my strong support for Mitchell Drive Town Homes.

I'm confident that when thank you, that'll do it.

Thank you.

Leading a great uh meeting tonight, Kevin.

Thanks.

Thank you, Jim.

Uh Jan Warren, uh Woodlands, 40 years, and when I moved here, those buildings and those trees and everything about it were here just like it is.

So uh I totally uh support this project.

I'm excited about it.

Um I just you know we have built a fair amount of of senior housing.

There's there's the uh senior housing that they were working on the with the the clinic uh hospital piece, and so what we don't have is enough affordable housing for younger families.

Some of those younger families that get a bigger unit, they may have uh a grandma or grandpa with them.

But uh I just I think the uh developers done a good job of listening and and adapting and spending more money uh to try and make everyone happy.

Um and it's just um it's just wonderful to see something new.

Uh we've got the transportation, it's the infill that the state has said you need the bill.

We don't have enough housing, much less affordable.

So let's just approve it and and move forward.

Thanks.

Thank you, Jan.

Good evening.

My name is Wendy Taylor Tonillion.

I serve as chief of staff at Joy Bound, thus the dog hair on my jacket, and I apologize for that.

This summer marks nine years that I will have been working in Shade Lands across from the proposed Mitchell Drive Townhouse site.

And I've had a front row seat to the pre-COVID traffic, to the slump, and then also some generally exciting momentum in the Shade Lands community.

So I'm here to express my strong support for the Mitchell Drive Town Home Project as a next part of the success story.

Because even after decades in the same location, we still hear from people, I didn't even know that you were back there.

This would be some much needed uh energy to this area because inside our campus there's a tremendous joy each day, thus the name.

Um, but that doesn't need to stop at our door.

Shade Lands has the potential to become a true place to be, not just pass through during the daylight hours.

Many of us have had to walk out at night late, and it is dark.

There is no one around.

And my dog is cuter than he is fierce.

I'm probably look a little bit more fierce, so it can be a little unnerving.

Um, and yes, I acknowledge that there's probably more activity, which will be some more congestion.

I have been part of coming into this community and out in school zones, many of the school zones.

So I understand that concern, but congestion's not always just the result of brick and mortar.

It's because it's become becoming a part of a beloved community, and that is a sign of success.

So I thank you for this opportunity.

I'm confident Mitchell Drive Townhomes will be a tremendous step forward for Shea Lands and all of us that love it and know what potential it has.

Thank you.

I'm gonna call the last group of speaker cards that I have.

Mark Orcutt, Gary Lawrence, Donna Colombo, Jason Lester.

And if I if I didn't call your card and you, or you don't have a card, you can stand in line as well.

Yes.

Hello, Mayor Welk, esteemed council members and friends.

My name is Alyssa Stone, and I am the director of community engagement at Joybound People and Pets located in beautiful Shade Lands.

I am deeply supportive of the Mitchell Drive Town Homes project.

I'm extremely proud to work and spend time in Shade Lands and feel excitement when I turn into Shade Lands for work.

Welcoming multi-generational families and new households to Shade Lands is a gift for our community.

And I'll say I would be thrilled to live in one of those boxes.

It's bigger than the house that I own now.

So sign me up.

Shade Lands can be a space for new neighbors to invest in our collective safety, connection, and social structure.

Growing our neighborhood creates opportunities for patronage at local businesses, new students in our schools, new volunteerism, investing in our community, and new roots and relationships that strengthen our ties.

Providing housing for those desiring to invest in Shade Lands makes our entire community more resilient, joyful, and inclusive.

I am so excited to see the lots across from Joybound grow into bustling, loved communal spaces.

We invest today to see growth in the future for the benefit of us all.

We dearly look forward to welcoming new friends, families, neighbors, and you in Shade Lens, our beloved neighborhood.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good evening, Mayor Wilkes and Council members.

My name is Lisa Moore, and I serve as the Chief Advancement Officer at Joybound People and Pets here in Walnut Creek.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak in support of the Mitchell Drive Town Homes Project in the Shade Lands.

This new project is the kind of thoughtful, forward-looking development that strengthens Wannack Creek, not just for today, but for the future we are actively shaping.

Shea Lands Wanna Creek has long been an important employment and business hub.

This project helps it evolve into something even more vibrant where people can live, work, and contribute to the community in a more connected and meaningful way.

At its core, this development is about people.

It creates more accessible and attainable housing options for families and individuals who want to be part of Walnut Creek, including those who already work here but currently cannot afford to live here.

When people can live closer to where they work, we reduce long commutes.

We support more sustainable and walkable communities.

That is good for our environment, and it is good for quality of life.

There are also other clear economic benefits.

New housing brings new customers to local businesses, supports a stronger local workforce, and contributes to the long-term vitality of Shade Lands, but also of all of Warnock Creek.

A more balanced community where residential and commercial uses complement each other is one that remains resilient and competitive over time.

Of course, any construction project of this scale comes with temporary challenges, but those are just that.

Temporary.

The long-term benefits of increased housing, economic activity, and community vibrance will far outweigh the short-term disruptions.

This project represents an investment in Walnut Creek's future, one that supports families and strengthens our local economy.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good evening, I'm Donna Colombo, and um I am an advocate for homeless services and affordable housing.

And having worked for 15 plus years, trying to help people find housing, I can speak firsthand about the importance of a project like this.

We've been waiting for it for a long, long time.

Having worked on two developments, St.

Paul's Commons and the microhomes at Grace Presbyterian.

I can speak with confidence about the seriousness and the thoughtfulness of the design planning commissions, housing and development staff, city council, and legal services.

Fully confident that everything has been reviewed and reviewed and reviewed.

I can also speak firsthand about the reasons that people oppose such developments.

We always hear fears about increased traffic, congestion, air quality, access to emergency services.

And sometimes those fears can blur the benefits of such developments.

Benefits like developer improvements, support for local businesses, housing for people that work in our local businesses like Joy Bund.

I don't work there, by the way.

And it seems there are comprehensive mitigation plans for the issues raised.

It seems the developer is willing to work with everyone.

We need more housing in our community, especially affordable housing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Donna.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good good evening, Mayor, Council members.

My name is Mark Orcutt.

I'm the president and CEO of the East Bay Leadership Council.

We don't support every proposal, but this one transforms an underutilized office site into housing along a major corridor in a location with strong access to jobs and opportunity.

From a regional economic standpoint, housing supply is directly tied to our ability to attract and retain talent, support local businesses, and maintain a strong and competitive economy.

We understand there are strong opinions about how this project came forward.

The builders remedy process has generated important debate and will continue to generate that same debate.

But EBLC evaluated this project on its merits, including density, affordability, adaptive reuse, economic and equity impact, and sustainability.

In our mind, it's a good project.

Traffic concerns along Ignacio Valley Road are understandable.

The environmental review found the transportation impacts would be less than significant, and I believe that analysis is strong.

It's also expected to generate fewer peak hour trips than expected than the existing office use.

So for those reasons, EBLC supports this project, encourages you to deny uh the appeal, move forward with necessary approvals consistent with staff and staff recommendations and state law.

Thank you very much.

A quick question.

When you say East Bay Leadership Council, do you mean you as executive director or was that?

I represent the organization, the East Bay Leadership Council.

Was there a vote they reviewed it and we have a process, uh a public process that we announced about a year and a half ago for how we can begin reviewing projects that come before us, a special committee that reviews that a set of criteria that are made publicly available, um, and then we we move forward with communicating that position accordingly.

One or two people, 20 people, how many roughly uh our our committee I would say was around seven folks from our from our from our membership, strategically chosen with um insights into um uh development.

Thank you.

A subcommittee of our infrastructure task force.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And and if there is anybody else that wants to speak that hasn't yet, please line up against the wall because after the otherwise this will be the last speaker.

Best for last.

Just kidding.

Uh see uh good evening, Mayor, City Council members.

Thanks for allowing me to speak.

Um my name is Jason Lester.

I'm the business agent for the plumbers and steam fitters, local 159 in Martinez.

But um I'm here representing uh over 150 uh Wanna Creek households who belong to the plumbers, the electricians, the sprinkler fitters, and sheet metal unions.

We've got a few thousand members here in Contra Costa County.

Um, for the last 30 years, we've worked to support projects that promote sustainability and equity.

We were the first trade organization in the nation to support account the county's urban growth boundary to help encourage developments like the one in front of you tonight.

We've partnered with developers like signature development to gain approvals and build over 60,000 housing units in this county.

With that history, it's no surprise that we're here tonight asking you to support this project.

We appreciate that signature development has taken the time to hear and be responsive to the concerns brought by the project's neighbors.

For example, they've made an open made the open space uh in the project more usable.

It'll improve they'll improve the uh safety of shadows and have made architectural changes requested by the public.

This is the right project in the right place, and we can only address our housing crisis if we use underperforming sites like this one to create opportunities for homeownership.

Um thank you for your time here in allowing me to speak.

Um hope that you approve tonight.

Thanks.

Thanks for coming.

Last chance.

Three, two, one.

Okay.

We're gonna close the public testimony portion.

And let me first ask if council has any questions or is asked staff to respond to any questions that were raised.

Councilmember Darling.

And thank you.

And thank you for everybody who spoke here tonight.

This is one of those issues that we really think it's important for us to take the time to get through it.

Um I wanted to ask our council a question.

There has been some discussion about whether or not this is a project that is subject to the builder's remedy.

Have you looked at that issue and have you concluded?

Uh yeah, our office has looked at that, and we've concluded that the project is subject to a builder's remedy under current California law.

Thank you.

Any further questions to staff regarding public comments?

Yes.

Uh so either to staff or our CEQA consultant, I'm imagining they're here.

If someone could succinctly summarize I know it's a difficult the the mitigation measures primarily related to uh construction activities, air quality, noise, and asbestos.

It's it's common to those of us who are land use lawyers, but just to uh provide some explanation of what those are and how those are regulated by the state and other agencies and what they're intended to do.

Yes, uh, my name's Jackie Winkle.

I'm a senior air quality scientist with First Carbon Solutions.

We conducted the environmental analysis for the EIR, so I'd be happy to address your questions.

Um the mitigation measures related to air quality include um the standardized best management practices to control fugitive dust that is recommended by the Bay Area Air District, and the Bay Area Air District is the public agency that is um in charge of regulating air quality throughout the nine county Bay Area, and it is their view that they summarize in their CEQA guidelines that um implementation of best management practices is sufficient to reduce fugitive dust emissions to a less than significant level.

So they actually don't recommend or require modeling of fugitive dust if those um measures are implemented.

So the project will be implementing those measures.

Um it includes actions like watering um multiple times per day throughout construction, covering loose soil piles and covering trucks um hauling material in and out, um limiting uh vehicle speeds to reduce dust kick up, um, other actions of that nature.

Uh the second mitigation measure that will be um imposed as a requirement on this project includes the use of tier four construction equipment on all equipment greater than 50 horsepower.

Um tier four construction equipment reduces PM 2.5 emissions by more than 90 percent.

And the reason why that mitigation measure is being imposed is because as part of the analysis, uh we modeled the construction related emissions and associated health risks, um, assuming that the construction equipment would be representative of a statewide fleet average, so equipment of various ages.

Um that analysis, which was conducted pursuant to Bay Area Air District guidance and methodologies, uh, found that the potential health risks would exceed the health-based thresholds established by the air district.

So we then remodeled the um construction related emissions and potential impacts with the use of that tier four equipment, and um that analysis found that that emissions and health risks would be sufficiently reduced well below those health-based risk thresholds.

Um regarding the additional mitigation measures, um does anyone have the MMRP uh asbestos um is not part of the mitigation, but it is a requirement that every applicant, every demolition project throughout the nine county Bay Area must receive um what's called a J permit from the Bay Area Air District to um test for asbestos and then follow protocol if asbestos is detected.

So it's not required as mitigation because it is a regulatory requirement.

Um did you have uh um an additional question?

Just maybe just a little bit of an elaboration on that then.

So in order to remove materials that have asbestos or lead in them, the developer actually has to get a special permit from the air quality district, and it's regulated pursuant to state standards in terms of what equipment the construction workers have to have on, how they remove it, how that is it's not blowing in the wind and in the atmosphere, it's it's regulated.

That's exactly right.

It's it's very closely regulated.

So every demolition project, even tiny demolition projects in the Bay Area must obtain a permit that demonstrates that they've tested for asbestos.

And if asbestos is detected, then there's a whole range of procedures that need to be followed.

And the air district has enforcement officers that enforce this.

And then briefly construction noise, there's limits on hours and then uh use of uh equipment and things like that that are standard for construction noise impact.

That's exactly right.

Um the standardized noise mitigation would be imposed.

Um during construction, uh the project applicant shall implement the following mitigation measures, um, which includes um exactly mufflers on internal combustion engines, um, limiting idling, uh quiet models of air compressors.

Um during all times during project construction and grading, the project applicant shall face stationary noise generating equipment as far as is practicable from sensitive receptors.

Um and the construction construction contractor shall comply with the city's municipal code as it relates to construction noise.

Okay.

Thank you.

Very follow-up question for you.

Yes.

Um the mitigation measures that you said are the standard measures when imposed then reduce the um pollutants to a non-significant level, right?

Are there um and and you did address that the equipment uh as originally proposed would exceed the the parts the particular thresholds?

And so you changed that.

Would there be anything else with this project that would um um uh cause you to want to um impose additional uh mitigation measures?

It sounded like there was kind of a one-size fits-all that you just apply to every project, or do you look at the project specifically and say this is what's going on with this project, and so the standard measures may or may not be appropriate?

Yes.

So for this project, um the driver of the health risks was PM 2.5, and so um tier four equipment will reduce PM 2.5.

So typically if we'll see an impact from air quality, we will look at what's driving that impact.

What's the source of emissions that's causing that?

And in this case, um it was PM 2.5, so tier four equipment will significantly reduce those emissions.

So it was appropriate to apply in this case.

No, um that mitigation reduced um the health risk to well below the threshold.

The thresholds are 10 in a million, and um with mitigation, the the health risks were found to be five in a million.

So it wasn't you know c approaching the threshold, it was well below with with that mitigation.

And you said that, or I'm not sure if you said this, but the the report stated that the roadways contributed uh more to the uh particulate matter than the project.

Can you elaborate on the on what that finding was?

Yes.

So we also um will analyze what existing sources of pollution um are within a thousand feet of the project site in addition to the project construction emissions.

So um cumulatively, when accounting for roadway emissions and nearby stationary sources, which are um a handful of diesel generators in the neighborhood nearby, the cumulative health risks are um around 50 in a million, um and the cumulative threshold is 100 and a million, and the project is contributing about five in a million from the construction.

So below individual thresholds below cumulative thresholds, and you're exactly right that uh the driver of that cumulative um impact is not the construction, it's what's existing.

And I was gonna ask staff, but maybe you're the right person to ask.

There's um we discussed the netting that's gonna go up on or potentially going to go up on the chain link fence.

Um are there um different grades of netting?

There was a concern that if a cheap netting went up that it wouldn't really um capture the dust and it would break down, are there um recommendations from uh dust and particulate matter as far as like what's the appropriate barrier to put on a chain length fence?

Well, this is going above and beyond um what's being required in the mitigation.

So I think it looks like what the applicant is proposing is sufficient to um provide an additive benefit.

Um logic would say that uh you know, a more plastic barrier, I think would work better, but um I hesitate to opine on it, obvious honestly, because it's it's above and beyond what No, I'm not asking you to recommend it as a mitigative measure.

I was just asking you to um give your professional opinion about what what types of material would be best suited for the application of going on to a chain link fence.

So non-porous material would be the most suitable to capture those tiny particles.

So even netting that has you know that's able to pass part small particles are able to pass through would be less effective than you know, like a solid plastic, for example.

Okay.

Um I just want to be cognizant that we are right now responding to the comments made by the public for staff, and I feel some of these comments might be bleeding into our actual questions for staff once the full public rebuttal, once the rebuttals are over.

Well, I was trying to address uh it seemed like a vast majority of the public comments were specific to air quality.

So that's why I was using this time to discuss that.

But no, I mean if as long as they're still along that track, I just want to be cognizant of that.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um during the course of a project, it do you typically monitor like how would one know if things the conditions suddenly changed?

And you're um the the particular matter or the um you know dust or uh admissions from uh a project all of a sudden spiked or exceeded what was anticipated.

How how would how is that normally handled?

Well, we model um potential emissions and impacts using um following Bay Area Air District and California Air Resources Board's guidance and recommendations and the tools that they um recommend.

Monitoring um is not recommended by the air district um as mitigation or as a um methodology for assessing impacts at this time.

Uh so all of the potential scenarios are modeled.

So we're projecting five parts per million, but if all of a sudden it was fifty parts per million, that wouldn't we wouldn't know that?

Correct.

Okay.

Um the same standards, because there was a a comment about making sure that we are addressed the concerns of children.

There's are there specific standards that apply to um construction sites near kids, or is it the same it applies to adults and kids?

We we go by the same health guidance.

Um that's a good question.

And so that's addressed in the modeling as well.

So when analyzing health risks of nearby um sensitive receptors or people, um the uh uh Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment provides recommended methodology, which is also recommended by the Bay Area Air District, and how to assess the potential health risks of different um groups of sensitive receptors.

And so a risk factor of 10 is applied to infants and very young children to reflect that their lungs and their bodies are still developing and to also reflect that they have um uh they have higher breathing rates and so they have a higher dose.

So that is the methodology that we followed for this project.

And so in fact, the preschool that's nearby, um, the health risk to those children was assessed in that manner.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

That's the okay.

Terrific.

Thank you very much.

All right.

So uh our next step in this are the rebuttals.

And so uh the applicant will have 10 minutes total to address any issues you might have heard.

Um you'll have up to 10 minutes.

I should say you don't have to take all 10, but please come on up.

And uh the second rebuttal, or the I should say the first rebuttal, but the second person to speak will be Mike Heller and your group.

And then the last of the speakers would be the rebuttal of the friends of Walnut Creek.

Welcome back.

Thank you.

I'll actually be quick.

I don't really have any rebuttals other than what I stated in my presentation.

I didn't hear anything really from the uh public comment that was new.

So um I will cede my time back.

Thank you very much.

Mike Heller.

Rebuttal on uh you'll have five minutes.

I need to first make a correction.

Some of the ladies in the audience said I said the median age was 68, it's actually 86.

They thought I was taking years off their life.

So at least you're not 86.

I think from some of the comments, uh three key points I want to make.

Housing is good.

Let's do some housing.

Second, the risk assessments.

You we just heard something about the uh special attention given to children.

How about us seniors right across the street?

Where is the special attention there?

Second thing, there was discussion earlier.

Uh the applicant mentioned that we have MERV 13 air filters in our apartments.

That's all very true.

That isn't the question.

As long as everybody stays in their apartment, they can hide under the bed, whatever.

Fine.

What if they want to take a walk around the building?

How do we know?

Is it a good thing to do?

Or maybe they should not.

We have a lot of activities.

Uh we have courtyards that have uh trees, botcey court, menager golf, et cetera.

When should we dare use them?

Or when should we not schedule that sort of thing?

So uh having uh contact for information is excellent.

What we need is advanced notice, or we can't schedule anything.

We don't know without advanced notice, the answer would be everybody needs to stay inside and till we can assure you that all is well.

So for the driveway, uh our concern is certainly left turns coming out of our driveway, uh, but it's right turns as well.

Um if we have a problem getting out.

The other half of that is can the amulets get to us?

So there's some uh review by uh the fire department and police and so on.

Those are using like citywide average response times, what have you?

I bet you uh Via Monte uses more ambulances per month than your neighborhood does.

Just to guess.

So that's what we're worried about.

It's peak traffic, backups on the street, et cetera.

So that causes a problem.

The uh the monitors that we uh have found and think would work well have no fans in them.

They're not gathering air.

They're only assessing the air that drifts in their little intake screen.

So the again, the key here is these are outside air measurements.

It has nothing to do with the air inside our apartments, but rather what's happening on the street on the path around our building.

Dare we take a walk.

So a lot of the uh things that we have suggested would be helped by uh advanced knowledge of the activities.

So we are uh supportive of housing, excuse me, but we're worried that the uh sensitive receptors right across the street are being lost in big models that deal with average circumstances.

We are not the average circumstances.

We are uh likely more fragile, more vulnerable, et cetera.

So we don't want to deny the project at all.

We want you to consider how can you add some conditions that would help some of our concerns be addressed.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr.

Heller.

Which brings us to appellate number one's rebuttal, Friends of Walnut Creek, Steve Elster, and you'll have five minutes.

Thank you.

I just have a few uh comments.

The most efficient and least environmentally impactful way to increase the housing inventory are senior living centers.

When folks move into a senior living center, they're leaving behind uh an existing home in most instances, and therefore just organically increasing the housing inventory to live collectively.

So because of this, senior living centers uh actually create housing inventory on a scale much beyond that of uh new developments of townhomes or of homes.

Uh there's some number of mentions of the results of the traffic study that supposedly the congestion that would be generated, the traffic that would be generated from this project would actually be reduced.

I did want to point out again that the traffic study was based uh we believe on an incorrect ITE code for to uh quantify the traffic generated by the existing uh office uh office park.

And then lastly, in terms of the builder's remedy, as you well know, the builders remedy essentially ties your hands and keeps you from functioning in a way that uh you're elected to by your voters and by the city to to do to weigh in on developments such as this, and for that reason, it's not something that should be um uh taken lightly.

Thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

Okay, with that, I'm gonna close the public hearing portion, and we're going to have council questions and deliberations.

Now these questions may be directed at staff, they can be directed at the applicant, or they can be directed at either of the uh rebuttals, or I'm sorry, at the appellants.

So knowing that we all probably have a number of different questions, what I'd like to do rather than have one person take up the next 30 or 40 minutes with their questions.

Let's have each council member limit to 10 minutes at first for questions.

If you have under 10 minutes, great.

But if at 10 minutes, and then we'll make sure everybody has their questions, and then if there's further questions after that, we'll go back and we'll do that again if we need to.

Can I make a suggestion that builds on that?

How about the first person pick a topic and we the rest of us chime in if we are in the same topic area?

And then the next person can suggest a topic, otherwise we're gonna have consultants bouncing up and down.

That makes sense if people are okay with that.

That's fine.

I would second that's fine.

Suggestion.

So I'd like to go first with traffic.

Go right ahead.

Because you're taking notes.

Come on down.

Is it okay if the consultant comes on down?

I assume you're I actually I watched the planning commission meeting, and I believe I saw you there on TV.

So let's start with the ITE code.

And why is the one that you first of all, would you like to introduce yourself?

And um, good evening.

Uh Mark Spencer, I'm a senior principal and president of WTRANs, primary author for the traffic study, which we prepared in conjunction with First Carbon on behalf of the city uh for this work.

Um I'll address the questions as they come up in order.

With respect to the ITE land use code, um the land use code we used in a trip generation manual, which is where we get trip rates from, there's different land uses listed.

Office park is one, office is another, different types of housing and so forth.

The reason we don't use office park and hardly ever use office park, is um all the survey data that goes into making trip generation rates leads to what that rate might be.

Office park has very few surveys.

There's only five office in general office has over a hundred surveys.

So in and of itself, we're like, okay, there's not a lot of survey data to back up what the published rate is.

But more to the point is the definition of office park includes other ancillary uses, a bank, a restaurant, a gym, daycare, something like that.

All of those which don't exist in this particular environment.

So while it may look like an office park, it behaves like general office.

Thus the recommended practice is to look at what the actual use is and go with and use that particular rate.

This was something that we vetted with senior staff, uh, with city staff, but it's also something that the peer review would have looked at, and they also took a look at it and agreed with it.

So it was a very deliberate choice to use the rate that um practitioners would use for this particular study.

So on another related topic, I'm sure you're going to hit this one.

Uh we've heard this on repeated instances, even on the um via Monte project and the complainants about that the potential of that project, that the misunderstanding of the or how you interpret residential versus retail versus office, and why is office more intense.

It it's not a question of whether office is more intense than retail.

It's it you look at the size of the developments.

Retail can be a very intense generator on a per square foot basis.

So something that's small retail, a Starbucks, a 7-Eleven, very high generator for a very small site.

The larger an office park gets, the lower it generates per square foot.

Okay.

Similar to a house.

A house that's 2,000 square feet generates similar trips to one that's 3,000 or 4,000.

A very similar, okay.

So there's there's different sort of economies of scale that kick in.

So you have to take a look at sizes of developments as well as their specific locations.

So in this particular project, when we're looking at housing and the kind of housing that's being proposed, compared to say senior housing.

And and as part of the appeal, we did look at what senior housing would what would that generate by comparison.

Generally, senior housing is considered a low traffic generator in and of itself because you're not generating peak hour trips.

You tend to avoid those, so it's a different pattern of trips.

But if you look at the how many units would be put in versus the number of units of the proposed townhomes, the numbers could come out almost similarly on a daily basis.

And on a on a vehicle miles traveled basis, it would actually come out very similar.

So it's not necessarily an obvious answer that says, well, senior housing from a traffic perspective is going to be less of an impact.

Now I I we get into these conversations about what's an impact under CEQA versus just what's it a an operational effect of traffic.

Okay.

It may not rise to the CEQA level of a significant impact.

And a lot of the things we have in our report don't do that.

It doesn't mean there's not going to be traffic or that it won't be noticeable, or that we have let's, you know, maybe there's we gotta look at these left turns or traffic circles, sidewalks, and so forth.

There are traffic effects that we need to look at, even if they're not technically part of CEQA impact definition.

And that nuance gets that gets blurred, and we admit that.

Okay.

But senior housing doesn't necessarily generate in this particular case, because the number of units, it can wind up generating as many trips on a daily basis.

Which means from an air quality perspective, you still have vehicles moving in and out.

So it's similar in its land use to what's across the street at Via Monte, absolutely.

But you'd have a lot more units, and therefore it's not quite a apples to apples comparison.

Is residential traffic analysis consider the mail, the deliveries from Amazon, the gardener that comes in.

Is that all included in the traffic?

It's all included deliveries, mail, Amazon, Uber Eats, your Grubhub, whatever you might use, all the trip purposes.

Similar to an office building includes deliveries, visitors, a medical office uh would include staff and all of that.

I'll keep it moving, I'm sorry.

No, no, no, no, I was going on all the patients coming in for the city.

Oh, and all the patients going in.

I I know you know you asked to be succinct earlier and you asked the wrong guy to the mic.

So I'm trying, I really am.

No, thank you.

Let me let me follow up on that uh for a minute as well.

So we we've talked about generalities when it comes to the traffic.

There's no question that there is traffic that comes into business areas and offices, and there's traffic that happens that emanates from senior housing as well as uh regular market rate housing like we're talking about here.

Have did you study it based upon the time of day pr specifically from about 7.30 a.m.

to 9.30 a.m.

going westbound on Ignacio and going eastbound on Ignacio from 3.30 p.m.

to 6 p.m.

Yes.

The the changes in traffic patterns and directionality were very much part of this.

Uh and you're right, with an office development that's there now, you have a lot of inbound traffic in the morning, outbound in the afternoon.

And and be let's be clear, we're talking inbound from 680 and from that side and outbound back, you know, towards the west.

When you have residential, you have a reverse situation.

So the traffic patterns do change.

The traffic operations report talks about that in specifically and in detail.

The chip generation table shows that in terms of the pluses and minuses on how that changes in terms of what goes up and what goes down.

So we might have a net reduction, but it's it's there is a change in pattern, and that gets that's part of the analysis, and that was very much considered.

So I'm having trouble.

So I live there.

I live right there, um, not within the sphere specifically at where Via Monte is and where the project is, but I live across Ignacio.

So every single day I'm driving down Ignacio.

And if I go downtown from Oak Grove and Ignacio between eight and nine a.m.

the traffic is often backed up from Via Monte.

It's always backed up from Bancroft.

And and it takes me at least 20, sometimes 30 minutes to get downtown.

There are occasions when I happen to be downtown already at 8 a.m.

And I'll drop drive back home and I'm home in 10 minutes.

Yep.

So are we saying that adding 400 to 800 cars a day, which is if we assuming that every home has one car and and maybe two that are going downtown is not going to add to that congestion in the morning.

Which is if we assuming that every home has one car and maybe two that are going downtown is not going to add to that congestion in the morning.

Well we when there's also school commute traffic too.

Right.

That's not what the report says, though.

What the report says is we're going to take out the office and those trips and the directionality, which is which are off-peak, okay, coming to an office on that side of town.

We're going to add in residential, which will be it contributing to the very movements you're talking about in the morning and in the afternoon.

And what's the effect of that?

What's the effect of that on the corridor on Ignacio Valley in terms of its delay index?

What's the effect at individual intersections?

What's the effect on the queues at turning at different intersections during those times?

We're not saying it's not going to have an effect and it's not going to change the congestion levels that are out there.

We're saying that it doesn't rise to the level of a significant impact.

Okay.

All of those homes, and you've got what 420 or so homes being okay, they don't all leave at exactly the same time.

There's a bit of a spread in the morning and spread in the afternoon.

So while it there is a morning commute and an afternoon commute, there is some distribution and some spreading of that.

So it all doesn't happen at once.

It gets absorbed within the traffic that's there.

That means you would see incremental changes as a result of the project.

Not enough to rise to the level of significant impact, but it's an incremental change in traffic.

And that's been acknowledged and that's talked about in the traffic operations report and in the SQL report.

Wait, isn't there a definition of that?

So there's a definition of significant under CEQA.

And and again, it's part of that splitting hairs, okay.

Whether you use the word significant or is it going to be noticeable?

It's going to be a pretty small change given how much volume of traffic is already on Ignacio Valley.

But it is an increase, absolutely.

Is it going to be something where you're going to say, wow, this is now taking me an extra 10 minutes to get downtown or something?

No, it's not at that level.

Okay.

Ignacio Valley carries a lot of traffic now.

You may argue about whether it carries it efficiently or not.

Generally it really does because of the volume and how much is actually moving through that corridor.

But if you're driving it every day, yes, you do feel that and you have that effect.

And sometimes you may decide, well, I'm going to go a little bit earlier and try and beat the traffic, or if I can go a little later, or whatever it might be.

That's that's the reality of how the traffic works now.

And that's and it's been that way for quite some time.

It's very directional oriented.

But in terms of what's a significant impact under CEQA versus an operational effect, there are differences.

So let's say now we're talking about the feeder roads.

Shade um Shadelands onto Oak Grove, Wiggit, Via Monte, Mitchell on to even Mitchell onto Oak Grove, and those course go on to Wiggit and uh and Via Monte.

Well, some of them go on to Via Monte as well.

So these are all roads that are typically lightly traveled, although during commute times they are more heavily traveled.

And I agree, not everybody is seeing the 8 a.m.

time to leave.

It's it's going to be spread out over maybe an hour, but you're talking about hundreds of cars being spread out over an hour.

Did we study what the impact on those current feeder roads are?

Yes.

So in the traffic operations report, we talk about not just the operational level of service and delay at those intersections, things that used to be under CEQA, but now are under operational effects.

But also the length of the queue in terms of which is you know how many vehicles are waiting to make a left or a right turn at each of those intersections during those peak times, and whether or not those pockets can accommodate the additional traffic or the change in traffic patterns that are occurring as a result of what the pro the project's net change would be.

That was all studied and vetted.

Okay.

Those are my questions for right now.

So I I just had a few follow-ups in too.

In terms of you looked at the access points and potential for conflicts with neighboring developments?

With the driveways across the street and other yes.

And so in your professional opinion, is there an is there a conflict or an issue there that has not been addressed or mitigated?

No.

No, it's been addressed.

Um the the circle and the raised crosswalks are something that has a very positive effect for traffic calming, slowing things down, um, making things safer.

The issue of emergency response is addressed in the traffic operations report as well.

That's obviously something that's very much in the forefront of all of this discussion.

We knew that from from the get-go um when we started this process.

Um and that doesn't rise to the surface of where there would be a change in that response time.

And that went through fire and and and police review as well.

So we've looked at a lot of those things and feel pretty confident that this is going to work even with the proposed changes on shade lens where there's there's bike lane improvements and there's other things that are part of the the multimodal plan.

This project fits well with that.

Can I ask another question about the driveways?

Before we do that, hold on, I just want to make sure to be completely fair, Councilmember DeVinny, then we'll go back to the outside of the right.

Okay, because it builds on his question.

I I may be asking the same question, but um I first I wanted to ask um it was mentioned earlier that these are not um you know just units, they're families, and so the average being two uh driver's licenses, two cars.

What what did you use to estimate the um the the driving age occupancy and number of cars in this development?

Sure.

We get this question quite a bit because if you start to think how do we reason out how many cars are going to be associated with the development and um generally that's not how it's estimated.

What we look at is if you take a number of units, strictly here's the number of townhome units, and there's a mixture of bedroom sizes and so forth.

There the surveys that are done to develop the trip rates, take into consideration the occupancy of those units, how many people live there, how many are adults, how many are children, how many own cars in this type of environment.

And then that becomes the trip rate, the all include like a trip rate that includes all of the different trip types that are made by a family over the course of a day, a journey to work, dropping the kid off at school, going to soccer practice in the afternoon, running an errand, and so on.

That's how you build up the number of trips on a daily basis and on a peak hour basis.

Um if you start thinking about how many people are occupying the units or strictly how many bedrooms, the math doesn't necessarily correspond to how many vehicles you actually see moving in and out of developments.

It it doesn't it doesn't line up that way in practice.

And there have been surveys that kind of try and compare that and say what's the best unit of measurement?

Like what's what would you say is the the unit that you would look at?

And it happens to be just strictly number of units in the surveys themselves and the unit type.

Okay.

In this case, we're looking at townhomes.

There's a there's a distinction of difference between townhomes, single family homes, single family detached, single family attached, and so on.

So when you look at the product type, that that tracks the best when you actually measure it against the number of trips moving in and out of a site.

Okay.

So I mean it sounds like you've you've got a formula to sort that out.

It wasn't just yeah, this is something at the ITE level we've debated quite a bit on and giving guidance to practitioners.

And so that's that's been vetted pretty well.

What does ITE stand for?

Sorry.

Um, like um, you know, if you're a lawyer, you have the ABA and medicine, you have the so Institute of Transportation Engineers is our professional organization.

It's it's of the same level, by the way, as Bar Association and NIT.

Conferences are more fun, but it's it's it's it's who we are.

And um, but it also they produce manuals that say here's a trip generation rate manual.

It's kind of like Harry Potter for us, like the new when we read it, it's like this is gold, man.

And there's park, and there's all sorts of manuals like that.

And I I say it jokingly because it's late and we're a little punchy.

But um, in fairness, within my career, and I've been doing this for about 35, 36 years, I've been fortunate enough to be part of ITE and served on the ITE International Board, and I've been part of review committees.

So this is something that I've gone to the conferences, I've spoken about some I actually know this material pretty well.

Thank you.

And then um I my question is about uh the the right no um left hand turns, I think it was.

Um help me understand this intersection that we're discussing because I'm seeing I'm thinking this is applying to the intersection that has the roundabout, in which case that would that issue would be mitigated.

So what what is the where is this where we're saying you know, right in, right out, and no right turn.

I'm gonna ask uh Matt Redman to come up and discuss this.

This is much of a policy and geometric issue.

Um it's the eastern driveway, though, it's not the one with the circle.

Thank you.

Yeah, I have a slide.

Is in the past.

Hello.

Uh good evening.

10 o'clock.

My name's Matt Redman, traffic engineer for City of Wanna Creek.

And uh yeah, this is this issue with the uh write-in, right out for the easterly driveway that was brought up.

Um this can work.

So I think like an overhead that shows where this particular driveway is.

Yeah, so this intersection right here is Via Monte coming into Shade Lynch Drive, and this would be the roundabout.

So this is not where the let the right-in right out would be.

So we're talking a little further down.

You see that pedestrian crossing sign on the right there.

That is going to be a raised crosswalk, in which case it's like a speed table.

Um so you have to slow down to you know 10, 10, 15 miles per hour to cross.

And then I believe it's just before that.

So it's much further down is the actual crosswalk.

Do we have is there a site plan that's a little easier?

Look for the site plan with the trees on it.

There is a crosswalk way back here in the back of the picture there.

Um and there's a driveway from Via Monte on I think the near side of that crosswalk.

And there is a proposed uh ingress egress driveway on the project site that will be also on the near side.

That's right.

The near side of that crosswalk.

That is the driveway in question.

Where do you picture this?

I can't picture this.

Do we have an overhead?

Yeah, can we pull up?

Let's see.

Um I'll take help.

This is a presentation we didn't see.

You could have done it from that blue and green.

Yeah.

Oh, the next one works.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah.

All right.

Okay, so here we have a site plan, the roundabout down here on Shade Lynch Drive.

Sorry.

What?

Yeah, I know.

So this is the roundabout just to orient.

And we are shifting to the east with this raised crosswalk, and this is the driveway.

So with this driveway, they are proposing a right in and a right out only, and you would not be able to take a left here in or a left out.

Well, why is that?

Uh they're saying uh due to traffic congestion, um, it's not an ideal maneuver.

And that's based on their experience coming out of Via Monte, as far as I understand.

And they is are the Via Monte residents.

I believe so that.

Okay.

And so in my opinion, uh, I don't see any traffic safety issues with a left turn in or a left turn out under regular conditions.

And typically what we're looking for there are sight lines.

So we're looking to make sure that you can view the traffic coming from a reasonable distance, and you can safely make your turn.

Now I realize with congestion, it may be harder to navigate.

However, again, sight lines are okay.

There's nothing being obstructed, there's not like a wall or something.

And so um, in my opinion, I would like to not allow that and leave it free access, right in, left in, left out, anything allowed.

Okay.

As it is across the street.

So, Matt, can I ask what in your opinion, what would justify a right-in, right-out restriction?

Um typically, like if you had a high wall where you couldn't really see out, or if you know, if there was uh a big median that was kind of blocking the view to see out there, um yeah, it would be a bigger obstruction, or like think about like a bus shelter that's just right as you're coming and you want to make a left out, you have to look right.

And if there was a big bus shelter there or some some obstruction, I'm thinking like a big retaining wall or something, then you wouldn't be able to see out, and maybe that left turn, you don't have enough decision time to make that left turn.

Um and again, this is the we're adding that raised crosswalk, that's slowing speeds down.

That increases time to make that decision to make your left turn and and it makes it improves the safety.

And uh Matt, have we done a speed study on Shade Lands?

I believe Shade Lynch Drive does have a uh speed survey done.

And um it's posted at 25 now, and I I believe that that is the speed subject.

I haven't checked that, but the because when I go when I do go there, I have a I my doctor's office is on Shade Lens, and if it's in the morning, I what I found is that a lot of cars are going are cutting off from Oak Grove to try to cut off the Oak Grove Ignacio intersection, and they are going very fast down Shade Lands because they're cutting off they're cutting it off to save time.

So I am concerned that there is speeding that's happening on Shade Lands, and I don't get down to Mitchell as much, but I would imagine most likely Mitchell is the same reason there.

And uh we're talking about seniors that are coming out of Via Monte that uh the reaction times may be slower if they're uh averaging the age of 86.

I'm not trying to put any pre predetermined ideas here, but but uh I know I know my mother who's in her late 80s and slower reaction times, and I there was a concern there.

I'm glad to hear about the raised crosswalks, but I do think that we're seeing uh speeding on shade lens and Mitchell that uh that maybe hasn't been taken into account as fully as it could be.

And I know there's the roundabout as well that would slow traffic, but um anyway, there's There's also bike lanes, which would narrow things as well because we do have parking and a wide cross section on shade lens, and it encourages that speeding.

And so the roundabout, the raised crosswalk, and the bike facilities would all uh help with that.

Uh are we done with traffic?

Okay, thank you.

Next uh we'll let Councilmember Davin bring up the next topic of questions.

Um is that oh applicant still here?

Yeah, everybody's still here.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, applicant still here.

Can I uh Jonathan ask you a question?

So um, yeah, thanks for the presentation, and I appreciate that um you've been uh working with the community to address some of their concerns.

Um in regards to the comments earlier about the screening, would you be amenable to using an impervious surface on the uh the um chain link fence to create a more robust barrier than a porous material?

Yeah, I believe the what what a green screen fence is is some kind of vinyl or plastic sheathing, which is what which would do that exact thing.

So we're all talking the same language here.

Okay.

And then, you know, I'm I'm thinking about this, and I just it seems challenging how one would monitor a construction site and determine what the particulate matter in the air is a contribution from construction, if it's we think one-tenth of what the ambient particulate matter is, and how we would know if the total particulate matter went up how we would attribute a contribution from the construction site by measuring it across the street.

It seems like a potentially challenging um topic.

And I'm aware of these monitors and I um follow them on the city as well.

And um as a doctor, I'm very concerned about particular matter and and the health of of your lungs and your your bodies.

Um have you thought of any way that that might be addressed?

I mean, I know you don't need to address it, so I I certainly not saying that I'm not trying to create some type of mandate, but is there is there some type of discussion that could take place where maybe they do install some monitors and if there's a sudden spike, we take a look at what's going on on the construction site or have uh maybe a visit to see if there's something abnormal taking place that that would um that would be harming the community.

Well, again, I mean, you know, we have uh, you know, as as Jackie mentioned, there's there's a list of best practices that we are going to be following.

Right now, and all of those best practices address this.

This is not the first construction project that has happened in Walnut Creek, is not the first construction project that has happened among elderly folks.

And people have managed to get through those other ones, right?

And so I'm loath to do anything that's not already established by best practices.

I don't actually have a good solution to what else we could do other than what we actually are already committing to.

Um but we'll certainly let them know.

Um we can you know certainly have a dialogue about when those construction activities could take place.

Happy to do that if they want to talk to our superintendent.

Um but yeah, I mean I think we've we there are a list of items.

I think there's a list of horribles that the people can think up, and oh my god, I'm gonna go outside and I'm gonna breathe in a bunch of construction.

I don't think that's actually going to happen in reality.

Um so uh I think we do have a box around this.

Um in my in all due respect.

And I think that's a fair point.

I mean, this isn't the first time a construction project's taking place next to a vulnerable community, and we do multiply them times 10 for the the sake of analysis, and so there are these preordained uh sort of management strategies that the Bay Area Air Quality District has has imposed to address just such a concern.

So um I you know I would encourage you to to purchase the monitors and and just pay attention to what's going on from an air quality standpoint.

You can use it to guide um activities.

And you will have a liaison with the construction sites, so there'd be an opportunity to discuss those metrics if they suddenly spiked beyond what you can already measure is going on in other areas of the community.

So yeah, and then if so anyway, thank you for um responding to that.

So I have a question in this thank you very much.

Um wait.

Thank you very much for your presentation to Ida for your work on this and back.

I'm here.

Um with regard to the air quality issue is really about construction, demolition and construction and grading.

It's not about once you get the foundation port and it's the carpentry and the plumbing, etc.

How much time in this four to five year process over 422 units is actually allocated to construction and uh to demolition grading?

I forgot we have um uh yeah, there's uh we there's uh a chart in the EIR that talks about exactly how I knew there was a chart.

I knew always a chart.

I'm just a thousand pages of EIR, there's probably at least one chart.

Yes, that is correct.

And my second question is is it appropriate for you to be asked to contact regularly a representative of via Via Monte management as opposed to a resident, so that the management at Via Monte is responsible for communicating to the broad his or her broader community?

I think what we could commit to is if there's somebody, whether it's a resident or the management that will they want to nominate that they can talk to our site superintendent and they can be they can come back and give updates.

What I am concerned about is that the residents change management doesn't.

Sure.

If that's what that's if that's that's the the wishes.

Then that's that's okay with us.

So she's drilling in and what is she finding?

Yeah.

So the other thing is, could you come up to the we can hear you, but the audience at home can't be.

Uh you're exactly right that the vertical construction comprises the vast majority of the construction timeline.

Um so we're looking at about 1,100 days um of vertical building construction, which as you've noted is uh mostly conducted with electrical equipment.

There's not a lot of heavy machinery being used.

Um the demolition is anticipated to occur over approximately two months, site preparation approximately three months, and grading in about another month and a half.

So over a full construction timeline of between four and a half and five years, uh the vast majority of that will be um construction of the buildings and using um electrical equipment or smaller pieces of equipment, little hammers, small baby hammers.

Okay, thank you.

Um any further questions for the Yeah, I'm not sure if it's just if you can elaborate on the use of tier four equipment, because I think it can we know the code, but how common is it that uh construction projects are required to use that?

And can you explain what tier four is compared to tier one, two, and three?

Sure.

Well, tier tier four equipment is the cleanest um uh least emitting equipment in existence today, and uh it's the most stringent equipment that's available on the market.

Um and it tends to be newer um you know, in the past five years or so.

And tier four equipment reduces emissions of both NOx, which is an ozone precursor pollutant, and PM 2.5 primarily by greater than 90% for both of the two pollutants.

Um there are some contractors who use only the clean fleets, um, but typically you'll see all tier four equipment used when it's imposed as mitigation.

And that's the case here.

It's the cleanest equipment, and it'll be mandated to be used.

Exactly.

It will be mandated to be used.

Um it is in the MMRP, and um Jonathan will have to demonstrate prior to pulling demolition permits with the with the city.

He will show a list of of equipment, every equipment to be used, the serial number verification that it's tier four, um, it's a little construction management plan that will be submitted along with um the demolition permit application.

Okay.

And then I had a question, I think, for Jonathan about the phasing of the development.

Will any of the office space remain open and leaseable while you're constructing the other half?

Yes, um the phase two office buildings.

So there's five buildings in phase two, they will remain open.

You'll see there's like a there's a there's a phasing exhibit that talks about how we have to have adequate parking for uh those buildings and we'll have to uh you know coordinate uh you know our construction activities to make sure that you know um they still are able to occupy their buildings and you know have the uh ability to go to work every day.

Um but yes, they will remain open.

Um will they be leased?

Probably not because we're anticipating tearing them down.

So the tenants that are there today will continue to remain.

I don't think we'll get adding other tenants in.

Is there a the there will there will be the theoretic ability then to transfer current tenants from the phase one buildings to the phase two buildings?

Yes, and some of that is actually happening right now, and some of the phase one buildings we're putting them into building twelve.

Um so some of that is already occurring.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um I got a few questions for you, and uh and some of these I've been holding on to for quite a while because we really haven't had the opportunity to question the past.

Um and I understand this is a build with remedy project, but uh does signature homes, are you the owner of the property?

We don't currently own the property, we're under contract to purchase the property.

Okay.

So when um in the purchase of a property when the purchaser bought this, knowing the zoning was for businesses and lifestyle, not housing, which it that's how it has been zoned.

What was the messaging to the city?

Do you know when the purchaser originally bought the property?

I'm not I'm not I don't know.

I I can't I can't you haven't heard anything?

I have not.

It's it's my understanding that he led the city to believe that he would be putting his headquarters into this area and tenanting it for office and business use.

Okay.

Um did the owner of the property decide they wanted to convert this to housing.

Do you know?

Well, they the application was submitted in October of 23, so somewhere around there, I would assume.

Do we do the staff know when the um when the purchaser made the purchase of the property?

Or even a ballpark?

Yeah, I I would venture it was um early 2023, somewhere between mid-22 to early 2023, somewhere in that time frame.

Okay.

Um that original purchaser of the properties, he still does own the property.

That that ownership of the process.

Still owns property.

Okay.

Um, you know, I'm I'm hoping you can be forthright in this, but why didn't the developer work through normal channels for requesting a zoning change and a general plan amendment?

Uh I think uh just simply because of the risk of doing so.

I mean, I think we had a clear path forward here, and the and that's really the reason why.

So the builder's remedy was more expeditious in being then in working with the city.

And it was a more certain process, correct?

And at what point did you just did the developer decide to submit a builder's remedy application?

October of 23.

Um reason why you waited till the very last possible minute?

I wasn't around when they did it, so I can't answer the answer question.

No.

Okay.

Okay.

Um that's my questions for now.

Thanks.

Thank you.

So I have two more categories of questions.

One is trees.

Okay, wait.

So any it so this is for the developer?

Just want to make sure we're trying to do this if you're maybe there's an arborist in the house.

Trees is trees is a staff issue.

Okay.

So any questions more for the developer?

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh trees.

Let's talk about trees.

Let's talk about trees.

Oh, you're going to play arborist?

I I don't believe we have an arborist um in attendance, Jonathan.

No?

Yeah.

All right, we've had a number of uh comments that save the save the redwoods.

I come from what we have a number of comments.

Save the redwoods more of the redwoods.

They're great trees.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, that would be great.

So landscape architect is here.

Come on down.

So then I'm going to so I appreciate that.

So I was doing all okay.

So I grew up in Santa Cruz, coastal.

I grew up in Santa Cruz coastal environment.

There was a redwood tree in my backyard.

Uh-huh.

Okay.

My father for 40 years owned a nursery business.

When I moved to Walnut Creek and he came to visit me, I said, I want to plant a redwood tree, and he said no.

Would you elaborate on that if you agree with him?

Redwoods are great trees along the coast in the Berkeley Hills.

They get the right kind of cool fog environment.

Around here it's it's oak woodlands.

That you that's what you have.

And those are the trees that do well.

If you put it in uh redwood in, it needs a lot of water.

So you'll see a lot of cities are discouraging that now.

I also read yesterday from the State Park Association about coastal redwoods that they have very shallow root structures.

So they're basically sitting right underneath those foundations of those existing buildings.

Yeah, that could be true.

So demolition of those buildings is likely to damage.

But we we picked ones that are the ones that we're keeping are more out in the open space right now.

And there was a comment about them being grouped.

The ones we're keeping are single trees, or they're in smaller groups of two, and we're keeping them like that.

Okay.

Thank you.

That was what I needed to convert.

That my father wasn't crazy.

No, that's he was right.

I agree with them.

More trees?

Okay.

Nope.

We think we're good.

Good on the trees.

Um, say I have some builders' remedy questions.

I do too.

So uh okay.

I already asked my okay.

We'll start with Councilmember Silva, then I'll follow up with mine.

Well, the one I wrote down yesterday was do we have a choice?

If we if we deny this project or make it infeasible.

Well, I mean what is considered infeasible under the state law.

I mean, what it's it's it's infeasible for purposes of facilitating the affordable housing component of it.

Okay.

So the the first the first basis for the denial of a builder's remedy project is you have to find a specific adverse impact.

Okay, so give me an example of a specific adverse impact, and I don't want to make my joke about a nuclear power plant.

So how about a gasoline refinery?

You could have a situation where instance there was not using not using your example, but something similar, so much contamination on the property that it couldn't be, you know, that for whatever reason it couldn't be feasibly media uh mitigated or remediated to allow residential development on it.

So that could potentially be something.

Um a former gas station site that just was had it it it depends.

Some of those are remediated to acceptable levels, and you have to, and it has to be based on an existing standard, so it's not a new standard, it has to be an existing standard that you have to make your finding on when you're denying a builder's remedy project.

It is the state law very narrowly defines the bases for denying a builder's remedy project, and also Claire, correct me if I'm misstating this, um, requires that not only that you make that finding, but the preponderance of the evidence supports that finding.

Typically, city decisions are based on what's referred to as substantial evidence in the standard.

So if you have conflicting testimony, the legislative body can choose a choice, but in this you have to have a preponderance of evidence, so which means that the more than 50 percent kind of threshold of the evidence has to be in support of the fact that there's a specific adverse impact that the project is is creating.

So Matt Reagan from the Bay Area Council listed uh the consequences, or some of them of uh denial.

Uh correct.

There are significant consequences associated with it.

There can be uh financial penalties associated with it.

Um you could have uh some type of enforcement action by HCD or by the Attorney General's office if they chose to get involved in this.

Um as the council and I think the public may be aware, HCD and I think some of the speakers talked about it tonight.

HCD is monitoring this project.

Um so those are things that the city should keep in mind as they make the decision.

Um I think I have my questions answered.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um that's a good segue, um, Steve, because I got some questions regarding HCD, and I just want since these weren't really be able to brought up with questions of us last year due to the specified timelines and what we were able to.

I think this is important to be brought up, first of all, for my own edification, if not for the rest of the council, but also for um for the public.

So regarding the timeline, we adopted the cur the current 2023-2031 housing element, including the modification authority to address HCD changes submitted on January 27th prior to the January 31st timeline.

And sent to HCD, which issued a letter on March 27th, and I see that right there requesting changes to the housing element.

When were the changes required to be submitted by?

And how quickly, but let's start there.

When were the changes required to be submitted by?

So, Mayor, I'm gonna uh Claire has been the project attorney in this project all the way through, so I defer to Claire on this.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Um Claire Lyas and City Attorney.

So under state law, there is a timeline for submitting housing element um revisions and adoptions to HCD.

So the time frame we're talking about here is after the cities, the cities adopted the housing element, so it was sending it to HCD for certification after the adoption.

So the timeline for HC to review that is 60 days from the city submittal.

Um there is not a further timeline for the city to respond to the HCD comments in that process.

Um but the HC letter does say, you know, the city has to make these revisions in order to become for the housing element to be certified.

So that is the result that the city is trying to try to achieve, and so that the timing follows that the city wants to be certified and so responsible.

So let me understand that.

So they don't give us a time frame or a deadline of when we need to submit them by, but then their own imposed timeline is 60 days to get back to us.

That's that's right.

Okay.

And how quickly did HCD on the March 27th submission, how quickly did they turn that around?

So the time between March 27th and August 25th.

Um so let me start with the letter from HCD on for March 27th.

It contained um kind of lengthy changes, and it's mostly on um affirmatively further furthering for housing, housing mobility, and the appropriateness of the city's inventory sites in the housing element to show if it's um available and suitable for housing.

So that took some time for the city to be able to address that, and during that time, staff um engaged HCD on um several meetings for kind of preliminary review, which is something that HCD had offered to cities, and so they in and as I recall, they were fairly responsive in in being able to meet with the city.

Um so that that involves the kind of steps for the city to address that and to converse with H C D so then on August 1st, the council approved a second addendum of the housing element as requested, which was submitted to HCD on August 25th, 2030 2023, and it shows that right there.

Was this ahead of the well, I guess you're saying there wasn't a deadline that HCD imposed.

We submitted it with enough time.

Right.

And and you know, they took time, and then again, we did meet with HCD staff uh prior to submitting again in October, and so that's kind of the same process.

And how long did they take to respond to to that submission?

Um I believe they took close to the 60 days of the close to 60 days.

Yeah, to be able to do that.

Yeah, just for the council's benefit and Claire can expand on this too.

H C D has a 60-day turnaround timeline, and they generally took the full 60 days to respond.

But the point Claire is also making is that during intervening times, we were having regular meetings with them to try to get them to um and have us understand that the amendments we were proposing to address their earlier concerns were in fact addressing their concerns.

So it was it was an iterative process with HCD, but they were taking 60 days and as the council recall, Wana Creek along with all of the other cities in Northern California were working towards this at their time.

So we were um we would have much preferred shorter turnaround times by them, but we were not surprised because of the volume of work they were doing at the time.

And and so is there an ultimate deadline submission time that we had to be approved by the HCD, was that date a fixed date?

Uh you needed a certified housing element by a fixed date to ensure that you would not be subject to potential builders' remedy applications.

Remember, as as I think Mayor, your question kind of referenced tonight, this particular builder's application, builders' remedy application came in less than a week before we were certified, and after we had, if you will, gone pens down on the housing element.

We had finished it and it was in final public review, which is also a state law requirement, not a city determination.

And it was during that time period that it was submitted.

So there's a fixed date that we need to have approved by the by HCD, and HCD is taking a large part of that delta in between submissions, pushing us closer and closer to that date, while we are responding positively and approving it on council prior to HCD getting back to us.

That's partially correct, but just so that the record is clear, the date to have your certified housing element was January 31st, Claire, right?

2023.

And so any time after January 31st, 2023, we were subject to a potential builder's remedy application, just the city never received one until the very end when it received this application.

So then there came a technical update that we were we then had a can you describe what a technical update means to the adopted housing element that we had already submitted?

Yeah, so as um as I was saying, you know, we had staff had a series meeting with HED, so we went through the the edits and the technical update is is the final set of edits that were um I think it was updating the site, the site profiles in response to public commons that we received about the site's owner owner of developer interest, um there were some modifications to the program timelines for the cities carry them out, um, but they were you know more final changes on the and so when we did then submit that to HCD, it looks like October 13th here.

Was the HCD given an indication that the housing element would be accepted?

Did HCD give an indication prior to 1013 that the housing element would be accepted if the specific criteria requested were amended and if we complied with the requested change.

So the um the from the March 27th letter, the that letter had said if the city makes these changes and adopts as appropriate, the housing element will be found in substantial compliance.

However, because of the lengthiness of the request of changes, that's that's really a generally applicable statement.

That's why we went through that process to um communicate with HCD for to to engage with them about um preliminary review.

And when it was close to October 13th, um, I think we I recall that we met with HCD a day or two before and they were aware that we were going to submit.

It was coming.

Yeah.

And we submitted it, the technical update on October 13th.

And that's where we had that seven days that we had to have it open for public comment.

That's correct.

We did so state state law requires that before it can be approved finally by HCD, you do have to have a seven-day public review period.

So I recall we had a number of those during the time period, but the last one we did, and that's a state law requirement, and HCD will not issue a final approval unless that public comment period is satisfied.

And in reality, we were getting comments, and this is quite common in all cities in California, you get comments during all of those seven-day public review periods, and HCD will often ask you, do you have a response to that comment?

It doesn't mean that they make you start another seven-day review period just because they got the first comment, but we do get comments during that time period, and typically we respond to those comments, and HCD has, you know, when they're ready to certify, they will uh accept your response and certify anyway.

They don't start a new seven-day period.

So they said if you make these changes, we will certify.

We made the changes, we submitted, they had already sort of pre said that that would be accepted.

We go in the seven days, and in that seven days, right at the end, just before HCD approves the housing element and certifies it, we get a builder's remedy.

Do I have that right?

That's correct.

With within the last week.

Can I ask a question in here?

But if at any time between October 24th and when our original deadline was in the earlier January, we could have gotten a builder's remedy project at any point in that time and up until October 24th when they certified, we would have had to accept that builder's remedy project.

This one came in late, but it could have come in at any point in that time.

Once we were passed the initial deadline, no matter how much HCD was saying you're good, you're close, until we reach that final certification, the legislature has made it clear that we are subject to builders' remedy.

It's not fair, but it's legal.

Well, I'm not even going to say not fair.

I I get that it's legal.

It also sounds it feels like a loophole, and it this is this something that it seems in an area, and I can talk about that another time, but in an area that the developer knew was more expeditious to this than go through a normal collaborative process.

Can I ask if maybe and I think council member darling asked us already, but just maybe to put more of a fine point on it, from the legal standpoint then, the substantial compliance, whether or not you have a substantially compliant housing element, the key date for that is when a preliminary application is submitted.

That's right.

And the way that's shown is either by HCD certification or court indicates that you have a substantially compliant.

Yes, that's correct.

And so that's the law.

I mean, I think the legislature has made it clear through this process that that's the those are the rules.

Yeah, and that's um, you know, the that's the current law.

That's that's been codified in statute.

Um the the bill that codified this law also said that it was declaratory of existing law.

And prior to the bill coming um into effect, HCD um first had already issued the same the technical advice letter that that has the same position saying cities cannot self-certify it, it must be HCD compliance um certification.

And also trial courts are following that position.

So are you aware of any authority that would suggest that you're substantially compliant before HCD tells you you are?

Uh we're not aware.

There's no governing case on that.

And in the converse, I know their HCD is monitoring this project.

Have they given any any indication that you could be substantially compliant before they tell you you are?

No, their position has been the same.

Oh, sorry, and I was just gonna say then in terms of the timeline too.

My recollection was between March and August, that there was a fair amount of back and forth with HCD about the sites on the inventory, but there was also a fair amount of back and forth separate and apart from the inventory on the affirmatively furthering fair housing.

Yes, that's right.

And quite honestly, that felt a little more hot and cold than quantitative uh get assurances whether this site's going to be developed during that time period.

It was a new requirement that it seemed like they were figuring out as we were figuring out, and that took time to comply with that new state mandate, that you're not just meeting the numeric number, but you're also providing the opportunity for a diversity of housing types, including missing middle types throughout the city.

Yes, that's correct.

Yeah, I would say the experience is not unique to Walnut Creek.

So just to add up, and sorry, sorry, Craig, I'll get right to you.

So just to add on to that, did state law change from the time of of our initial required housing element submission to what happened after it was submitted and resubmitted and finally approved.

Did state law change at all or direction change at all?

The so the housing element law about what's in has to be in the housing element, um, that was already in place.

Um the statue about the specific substantial compliance date, the new statute, that was not there.

But like I was saying, that the legal landscape um is largely the same because of HC disposition, the the case, the trial court case trends.

So there's not really a noticeable difference, I guess, in the in the legal trends of it.

But it seems like there was a question about self-certification that the courts have now addressed, but it seemed that there was a little bit more ambiguity to that early on until the I's were dotted and the T's were crossed.

Yeah, it's so there was an absence of clear law.

So what people were looking at early on was really just the statute and the wording in the statute.

And what transpired over time.

So between twenty-three and now, twenty twenty-three and now, was as Claire's indicated, technical advice from H C D, which is the regulatory agency tasked with implementing the housing laws.

A specific change in state law, which was very re relatively recent, which specifically now has in state law that only the court or HCD certification is what matters.

There is no self-certification.

And there are series of trial court decisions, not binding on anybody but the parties that have essentially affirmed H C D's technical advice.

And so the trend line was towards what the legislature ultimately adopted.

Um there is uh Claire, as I recall, there's one Superior Court case that could be interpreted to allow some variant of self-certification, but that is an anomaly amongst all the cases.

The re the rest of the cases have been supportive of H C D's timeline, including very recent cases.

Let me try this.

So let me f sorry.

I I just wanted to go to Craig first because I he's been patient while I asked my questions.

Well, and this was this was really honing in on let me just do this one.

I'm not asking a lot of questions tonight.

I'm it sounds like it was more a case of the statute was what it was, and you could read that statute a number of different ways about when a housing elephant was housing element was certified.

You could read it when we did took action in January of twenty-three, we were reading it to read that we could self-certify.

But it became clear as court cases evolved and legislation was passed, and the way that legislation was written, that the people in charge of that statute, HCD, disagreed with our interpretation back in January of twenty-three.

In January of twenty-three, we thought perhaps self-certification was enough, but it became clear in the process from going from there till now that HCD believes and has case law and legislation behind it that says it's not until they certify that is generally correct.

I wouldn't make the point so strongly that we believed we could self-certify.

Okay.

That that was not the intent of the staff, the intent of our office and everyone else, and the council's actions were to have a substantially compliant housing element by January thirty-first, because we did not want to be exposed to builders' remedy.

And and so there were arguments in favor of self-certification at the time.

Those arguments are now both weaker from a case law standpoint and con and and are now have been overridden by state law changes.

That's a much more loyal way of saying what I'm saying.

And ultimately the clock didn't stop when they when we submitted the clock just kept ongoing even though they came back to us.

Well, and we knew on January twenty-seventh that they had sixty days to review it and determine whether it was substantially compliant and certified.

So I I don't recall uh I don't recall feeling like we were done on January twenty-seventh.

I I recall knowing that they had that 60-day period and then they replied and said it's not.

Well, I do recall though I do recall knowing that we submitted it and we were uh we felt that we checked all the boxes.

But the other thing that we knew was that Southern California was ahead of us and they were all hitting this barrier in Southern California.

Our consultants were telling us that colleagues all over the state were saying that the builders' remedy was cop cropping up to the tune of 4,000 units in Santa Monica.

I mean, it was in front of us.

We we are lucky we only got one.

Well, and I guess that was the point, not that that we were lucky, but I I I don't know if any city avoided this exposure.

I don't know if any city that turned in their housing element.

Alameda they got it right the very first time, no no feedback.

And then somebody decided it was more fun to put us through our misery.

So um yeah, to speak to the unfair process, uh, you know, when you when you submit and then they they reinterpret and they bring in new language and you submit again and all that time being exposed to this sort of hammer of uh how uh builder's remedy uh solution.

And that spawned legislation that was then.

Which was not signed by the governor.

It was not signed by the governor because of the political wins that exist right now, which is just you know very pro-housing.

Also because the cities being painted as maybe not being completely compliant with trying to further that agenda.

So I think we behaved very um uh progressively in this manner, trying to get our housing element certified, but we were subject to the the political wins that existed this in the state right now.

So last year's legislation went through both houses unanimously, got on the governor's desk and the LAO, the legislative analyst office, and HCD said it would cost too much money, and HCD said they should argued they shouldn't be required to do our work for us.

I think that's the process flaw right there.

So I I had a follow-up.

Are you were you done with your question?

Yeah.

Follow-up question.

I think it's for Simmer or Erica.

Just kind of something that's crept up, which is the next best fit zone being MF2.

Uh and if that's the case, why does the project still require 14 waivers?

I mean, is is it really the next best fit zone, or is there another next best fit?

Well, firstly, there's we could probably pull up that slide.

Um I have the click on.

Is that yeah, that lists all the waivers?

So the 10, not 14.

Yes.

Um and if you see that there's different because there's different zones that we were trying to make sure this project complies all of the standards.

So when you look at it that way, it's actually not asking for a lot of waivers.

I see.

Yeah.

It's three for the M2.

Exactly.

And it meets everything else, it does meet the development standards of both the business park as well as uh the um M2 for floor area and then height regulations for the business park.

So it meets many of all of these listed.

Other than primarily setbacks, it's really the setbacks, correct.

And the storage requirement that's required for multifamily.

Is that yeah, the 200 cubic feet of enclosed private storage and is the idea that people are going to store things in there where are people going to store things?

It's a requirement.

Um I mean the stored in the units.

The unit or in the garage or two car garages correct.

Okay.

Thank you.

That that's helpful.

That's a clarifying slide.

Any more questions or topics that we have.

All right.

I guess that's our questions.

So let's bring it back to council for comments.

Um actually let me ask our city attorney there.

Uh when the time comes for motions, should they be taken separately for each of the different appellants?

Uh the action is to the act no.

Short answers, no.