All right, welcome to the Thursday, May 21st Walnut Creek Transportation Commission meeting.

Will the secretary please take a roll call?

Student Commissioner Kirsch.

Absent.

Commissioner Ash, absent.

Commissioner Guerrero.

Commissioner McMahon.

Vice Chair Patch.

Present.

Chair Crowling.

Present.

All right.

Moving on to public communication.

So this portion is for anyone in the public who wishes to address the Transportation Commission on matters within our jurisdiction that are not on the agenda.

So if you'd like to address the Transportation Commission for an item not on the agenda, this is your opportunity.

We have no members of the public wanting to provide comments.

Alrighty, thank you.

Then we will close this portion of public comment.

Moving on to the consent calendar, I believe all we have is approval of the minutes of March 19th, 2026, our prior meeting.

So I'll just poll the commissioners if they have any edits, upgrades, or changes.

Um Commissioner Guerrero.

No changes.

All right.

And forgive me, I'm still got new commissioners here.

Commissioner McMahon.

Nothing.

Vice Chair Patch.

I'm good.

And the chair has no comments.

Uh so motion.

I motion to approve the minutes.

I second.

All right.

Motion made and seconded.

Let's do a roll call vote, please.

Uh Commissioner Guerrero.

Hi.

Commissioner McMahon.

Hi.

Vice Chair Patch.

Yes.

Chair Crowling.

Hi.

All right, consent items are closed.

Moving on to item four consideration items.

So item A, electric vehicle charger program analysis and recommendations.

Does staff have a presentation for us?

Good evening, commissioners.

Good evening.

All right.

So I'm Candace Reagan Mumby.

I'm the city's sustainability manager, and I've been working on this project with Gina Iker, who's one of our public works managers.

She'll be here to help answer questions.

And so we're going to give an update on some analysis that we have been doing about the city's EV public EV charging program.

So tonight we'll cover a bit of background on the chargers that we have and how they relate to the city's sustainability goals.

Then we'll give more detail on the current state of the chargers and some of the performance gaps that we'd like to address and some of the opportunities that we came across in the analysis, and then we'll talk briefly about the next steps.

So to get us started with the sustainability goals, so the city adopted a sustainability action plan in 2023, which is how we're really organizing all the city's efforts across different uh topics to reach state sustainability goals and also to reach the council's priority of environmental sustainability and climate action.

And for Walnut Creek, our largest area when we look at our greenhouse gas inventory, so we try to measure community-wide where our emissions coming from, the largest category is transportation, and that's you know, really do as you all are very familiar with to our suburban development.

You know, we're very dependent on passenger vehicles for folks to get around, and right now most of those are gas-powered internal combustion energy vehicles.

So really from the levers that the city has control over, encouraging folks to transition.

Well, ideally to drive less, and then if they are gonna drive to drive EVs, is one of the biggest um ways that we can hopefully bring down greenhouse gas emissions from the community and our impact on the climate.

So because of that, we have some goals in the plan that really relate to EV chargers and other EV adoption, and one of the goals is to have the city have on our property 70 charging port ports by 2030.

And we'll get into a bit more detail on what we have now, but we are on track with our fleet chargers.

We have, I think it's 52 right now, so we're we do think we're well on track to meet that goal.

So before the plan was adopted, we already had public EV chargers.

The first ones went in about 10 years ago, and so they that program itself has its own set of goals to make sure that it's it's being successful.

So these are the four uh areas that we look at.

First, we want to make sure that the infrastructure is sustainable, and we think of that in two different ways.

You know, one we provide this asset of parking to the community, and so we want to for folks for EV drivers, we want them to have access to chargers.

But we want to make sure those chargers are assets that are lasting that are in good quality and that are something that can be well maintained and managed.

And then once we put that infrastructure in, anything we have access to for the community, we want it to be highly utilized.

So make sure that folks are charging at them, but we also want to make sure that you know we're filling a gap in the market, and so the folks we want to hit the folks most who wouldn't be able to charge somewhere else or would have challenges charging elsewhere, and this is something that might drive them towards switching to an EV by having this access.

And then, as with anything we do, we want to make sure folks have a superior customer experience when they are utilizing our programs.

So getting into the detail of the chargers that we own.

So the next slide after this is a map with um kind of laying out where they are, but right now we have 40 chargers that are available to the public, so 40 ports across 23 chargers.

So some of the charger structures, you know, they have two ports on them, and they're located in our downtown garages, and then we have a couple outside in the small lot at City Hall, and then some more at Sheetland's Civic Arts Center.

And then if you're looking at our chargers within the broader context of, you know, as a driver's driving around in Walnut Creek looking to charge, where could they go?

Um, this is an area we're we're planning to do more detailed analysis on.

Right now we only have data from some other public aggregators, and it's a quickly changing market.

Um, so our estimate there is that there's somewhere from 150 to 250 chargers in the radius of Walnut Creek and our very close neighbors.

So our our public charging ports of 40, that is a chunk of that, but there are a lot of other options out there now.

So these are the maps I was mentioning.

So the one on the left shows the green dots are from uh the US Department of Energy data on where publicly available chargers are, and then the orange ones are our chargers, and I'll just point out if I oops know how to use my clicker.

Um, so you'll see this orange dot here is on the one on the left, and it's not on the one on the right, and that's because these are our fleet-only chargers at the corp yard.

So those are chargers that we own, but they're not available to the public.

The one on the right just kind of highlights what we just talked about in the past slide.

Most of the publicly owned chargers that are available to the public are in downtown, and then we also have a few over at Shaitlands.

So taking a step back from that, you know, what do you need to make sure that you have a modern successful EV charging program?

And what's shown on this slide here is how a lot of public agencies and municipalities have thought about it for a while.

You just need a charger, and then the cars will come, and that's how a lot of the grant funding is, right?

They they'll help you pay to put the actual thing in the ground, and then kind of the high level you think of it, you're good to go then.

But actually, there's a lot of other elements that you need to make sure that it's successful, so kind of you don't have to absorb all of all of what's on the slide here.

I think the three things I want to point out is you need two different types of staff.

You need staff who can provide maintenance on the chargers, so actually switch out components, whether that's you know them degrading over time, vandalism for lots of different reasons.

The chargers need um they need work, and then you also need folks on the customer service support side so that when a customer is using the charger, they can reach someone if they're having an issue.

And then you need some data tracking to make sure that the chargers are being communicated with, and that also we can kind of see how they're being used and operated.

So, right now, our model we definitely have this part down, but we've been sort of using a few different structures to try and fit in the other pieces, and so the way that that's looking for us is that there's nobody in the city who it's their their main responsibility to manage the chargers.

It's sort of something that different teams are doing on top of work that they already have, and so from their labor, from materials and mainly from the electricity going into them.

We're spending approximately 250,000 a year to provide this asset to the public.

As I said before, we started this about 10 years ago.

Some of the chargers are original, and so we're starting to see the aging in that infrastructure, but we've also seen a lot of them go out for various reasons.

So we're trying to keep on top of the equipment that we have.

And then because we're managing it all internally, we have different systems.

We don't have the most modern data tracking on, you know, who's using the chargers for how long.

A lot of that is there are more modern ways to be able to track that, and then that could help us look into how to expand them potentially in the future.

And then we are seeing at some of our sites, folks are coming there specifically to use the chargers, maybe not to access the city facility that's there as well.

And so sometimes they have a more charger focused mindset, and that can provide some conflicts with the actual use at the site.

So for example, our Shea Lynn site is a preschool.

There's lots of pickup and drop-off and people moving around and lots of kids, and some folks are, you know, coming in and out of the parking lot just for the chargers, and so that has led to some conflicts just in the different priorities of users at that site.

So the chargers went in around 2016 2017 to start in the 2018 rethinking mobility plan.

It's kind of understood that there would there could be reasons to start charging a fee for the chargers.

Currently, we do not charge for them, but coming out of that plan, a fee range was established so that we could elect to charge, charge money for the use of the chargers, charge to charge is uh kind of how we refer to it internally.

So as I said, right now we're not utilizing that fee, but it has been sort of updated through different fee structures since 2018, and currently the adopted fee range is between 16 cents to one dollar per kilowatt hour, which is how you measure you know EV charging versus per gallon.

And we've been doing some research and looking at what other publicly, you know, city-owned chargers in Contra Costa County what folks are charging for those, and from our research so far, most of them are charging a fee, and it averages about 36 cents a kilowatt hour.

So this next slide, it goes back to those goals that I talked about previously of what are the goals that we have around this EV charger program and having public access, and uh this slide here kind of has a color gradient to show how well we're doing right now at meeting each of those goals.

So the chargers are highly utilized.

If you drive by them most of the time, you'll see there's there's usually people in most of them.

So from that one, we are doing well right now.

The community access is more of an orange uh medium success because our understanding is that there's they're kind of like the best kept secret in a way.

So there's a small group of people who know these chargers exist and know that they're free and are highly utilizing them, but it's not generally known amongst the community, and because they're so highly utilized right now, we don't necessarily promote them very much because there's not always availability at them, right?

And so we're really trying to target folks, as I said earlier, who might not buy an EV otherwise.

So with them right now, with them being free for everyone, it's cheaper generally than charging at home.

So we do see that this those folks who know about them are using them a lot, so that's that's kind of a there's a few different ways to look at that.

In terms of the sustainable infrastructure, right now, because we don't have the dedicated internal staff and the management company of the chargers changes on how you can replace different parts over time, it takes a lot of communication back and forth between our staff and the charger companies, and so it's been challenging to keep them up and running and replace them quickly.

So that leaves our darkest red is the quality customer experience.

So even though we have these high utilizers, we do hear from them a lot when chargers are down, they can be down for a long time, and then as I mentioned earlier, it can right now cause some challenges with other facility users as well.

So we think that there are ways to improve this.

So our recommendations to um improve the program.

There are third-party operators that we could contract with who would be able to provide 24 7 customer support, which is not a model that we're able to provide right now, and then also provide proactive maintenance on the chargers.

And they have more modern tracking systems.

There's a lot of different flexibility in how we set up a contract with someone like that.

And you in the contracts can set minimum required uptime is how it's referred.

So making sure the chargers are working, you know, 95 plus percent of the time, things like that.

We can set turnaround minimums for response time and all of that.

So it can be very closely managed, but it's also in a way that's done by a third party.

So it doesn't have to take up as much of our staff time, and it's also folks who are more expert in this.

This is what they do all day, every day.

Generally, how those work is that the fee that you are charging for the use of the charger, they take a cut of it, and the cut depends on how much you're having them do.

So there's quite a bit of variability there, and we're still sort of researching the exact model of what's out there on the market and what might work well for us.

But in order to do that, you have to be charging a fee for them to take a cut of.

So in order to make that work, we would suggest beginning to charge a fee for the public facing chargers.

And our goal that we'd recommend is to still set the rates lower to start lower than our comparable neighbor cities, but the goal that we still want them to be accessible.

We still want it to be something that would be much cheaper than fueling a gas-powered car, um, but give us enough funding to keep the system sustainable.

And maybe for folks who could be charging at home, maybe they have slightly less incentive to be using the city chargers, and then that would free up space for those folks who don't have that option to charge at home.

Because this would be new, and we'd be still kind of figuring out the logistics, we'd make sure to regularly review those rates and ensure that it's creating the behavior uh that we are that's our goal.

So this is our last slide before we take feedback and questions.

Uh so we're coming to you tonight to get your feedback on this analysis and um your thoughts about this plan.

And then in July, we're gonna take this to City Council as part of a larger plan that we're developing that also looks at goals around our internal fleet.

And if we get approval of the plan from council, then we would spend late summer and early fall doing that vendor analysis and really getting a much better understanding of what exactly the economics of that would be.

If we move forward with that direction, then we would do targeted outreach to the users of the chargers before, likely around early 2027, would be when we might see a fee be implemented.

So that's the overview of that for you tonight, and I'm happy to take any questions and receive your feedback.

Thank you.

All right, so we'll do commissioner QA.

So, how about we start with Commissioner Reckmann?

All right.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

That was really good and really clear, and that's awesome.

Um, yeah, so I think the one thing that I was kind of thinking when you're talking about the data for these chargers and like the locations.

I don't know if we can go back to that map real quick.

Um, but I think if possible, can we get as much data as possible before we make like too many decisions of like where the private chargers are, where the public chargers are, like who's using what, like how often are they being used, so then we can actually like, you know, put more in in the place they need to go instead of you know putting extras in if they're not being used and stuff like that.

Um so yeah, with the data just collecting that data, is that like doable with you know, before this all gets completed, or you know, do you have to start making money first to be able to collect that data?

Because I know that takes time and that's a whole process too.

Yeah.

Yes, that's a great question.

So I think the way we're thinking of approaching it right now is sort of stabilizing the charger network that we have now, improving that customer experience and the maintenance of it first, um, which we think that this, you know, getting a third party in will help with that.

It will also get us better data on what those users at those facilities are like.

Uh, but I think before we expand the public chargers, we want to do exactly that, get much better data on which are already publicly available, also see if we can understand what might be coming down in the market.

What are the trends?

What are some of the private facilities that you know might put their own chargers in, and so we can look at exactly that where are we really fill filling gaps?

Another layer I'll mention that I want to look at an analysis is the housing stock that we have, you know, where do we have older multifamily where it's gonna be the most challenging for folks to charge at home and do we have you know city owned property around that or nearby that we could utilize so before we expand anymore that that is the direction we'd like to go in.

And then just for the private garages do they currently charge like the main ones in downtown or the private chargers in in Walnut Creek in general.

Yes I don't have the rates um on hand but that is our understanding is that they do.

Okay.

So we could match theirs or get kind of close or be like under theirs basically.

Let's see.

And then yeah is there any other cities that are kind of you know doing this on like a similar size to us that are doing a really good job of this like either through a private partnership or they're doing it themselves that we could kind of um you know copy what they're doing a little bit.

I this is something that I think cities in general are struggling with it and it's the I think it's the maintenance end of that I think we are there are the vast majority of cities are charging something at this point which is then allowing them to fund and it's uh there are different models of is it internal staff is it external which charger company do they work with I'm on a lot of email threads of like what is the most reliable EV charger brand so I think we are all kind of figuring it out together.

But that is something that we think about is our drivers especially are driving to our neighboring cities and they don't really care if they're in Walnut Creek or Pleasant Hill or Concord they want a similar charging experience so that is something that we try to coordinate with cool well thank you so much.

Commissioner Guerrero thank you it's a good presentation.

Just a couple questions of the 2500 that we spent annually how much of that is is to pay electricity so I believe I have it written down I think it's a hundred and fifty five thousand yes that's estimate okay and that comes out of the city budget to to pay that yeah so right now it's this all general funded that 2500 and do any of these um charger stations support solar power in order to offset that or is that something in consideration?

The only one that's at a facility with solar is City Hall which we currently are not monitoring that's that's a whole nother challenge the the um solar panels on City Hall are they are operational but we also need better data tracking on those um but yes ideally I would say that that is setting it off offsetting it a bit.

I'm not sure if we've thought about putting solar in any of the other facilities yes so ideally the EV chargers would be on their own meter which could still interact with the solar on the building but um you can get an EV charger electricity rate from MCE our energy provider that's more favorable to the type of charging for that.

Some of ours are networked on their own meter and some of them are not so that would be a goal over time too is to get them on their own meter but probably wouldn't happen necessarily for all of them before we would like to implement this.

So I assume a lot of this information was developed by from from Black and VHS yes yeah so we worked with them that's was our consultant on this plan yeah and do they have more data as to what Ryan was saying as far as other cities that have been successful as far as you know how to go by implementing it and I guess to follow that, you know, is solar uh powered, you know, charging stations that that support the infrastructure, is that something they recommend?

I'm just kind of curious of that piece.

That wasn't something that came up in the analysis or something that we've seen directly from other cities.

I think uh even if the electricity that the chargers were using was fully offset by the solar power or some other alternative, you would still have the maintenance costs and the networking cost.

So there are still costs, but obviously electricity is it's more than half of the rate we're paying now.

But um, you would we would still see those maintenance challenges and those sorts of things where a third party could help address that.

Got it.

And then what's what's the difference between the uh the lots uh that like Tesla runs where you see all the Tesla charges like by the gym or you know, um across from Heather Farms and you just put those in now.

Like, are we benefiting?

Uh are we profiting at all from any of those uh private ones?

So none of those are on city property, so they're they're all managed privately.

Um we did look at models to, you know, potentially lease city spaces, which is something that some other cities do, and then the third party can do 100% of that.

But that would be, I think we were looking at how do we solve the problem now in the short term with the charters that we have, and from our analysis, you know, transitioning that to the third party is what makes sense because um uh someone who would come in and lease a spot, they don't want to buy our old infrastructure or work with our aging chargers.

So when we go back to looking at expanding, that's something that we'll we'll keep on the table to consider, but I think in the short term that's not something that is likely to solve the issues that we're having.

Okay, uh, I just have one last thing.

Um, could you show me the where you talked about the different um the customer and the network and the little map that showed like who deals yeah.

So right now, how is how is that managed?

These pieces right here, like who who actually does that for us?

Yes, I'll bring Gina for that one.

So I just want to understand a little bit.

Good evening.

Uh Gina Eicher, public works manager.

So currently, right now we have some of our signal technicians who are not EV experts, but they are able to go out there and make repairs to our EV infrastructure.

The phone calls go to our traffic operation um center, which really only monitors they're in the field most of the day, so they don't even get the calls until the end of the day.

Then they're able to kind of go through their email, you know, their voicemails.

The following day they may be able to go out and take a look at it.

90% of the time right now, we do not have the infrastructure in place that allows us to make repairs.

So the way that the chargers were originally set up is that they used to be modular.

That's not really the case so much anymore with the current vendors that one of the current vendors that we have.

We have to replace an entire system every time that we have a charger go down.

So and a lot of that has to do with just the way that we had it, the existing contract is.

So there's quite a bit that we can do to improve that experience and to allow for people to have easier access to the charging systems.

Got it.

So this outside or third party would definitely relieve a lot of the stress of this.

Yeah, we have to make do a contract every single time something happens.

So we end up going through and whether they get damaged or it's something that just because of the time in them, we end up having to do individual contracts to get these repaired, and so that takes time in its own too.

Sure, okay.

Thank you.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Patch.

Uh the nice thing about going after other people have is that a lot of my questions were already answered.

So a couple that I do that we haven't talked about.

Um, do we have a plan in place to replace the old ones already?

Like I know you said you're not looking at expanding the locations right now, but if they're already failing, are we looking at replacing the 10 plus old 10 year plus old ones?

Yeah, so we are sort of well, as Junior was talking about, you know, when we get to the point of needing to repair them, especially now that um the modular model is kind of going away with some of the brands, we are looking at when it makes sense to take them out entirely and replace with um a company that maybe we've had a better experience with.

And we have replaced some, I believe the ones at the library.

Yeah, the if you see the blink model chargers, those are the newer ones that we've worked with.

Um so that is something we're we're doing over time, and that's coming out of the general fund still right now.

Okay, and um kind of similar to the Tesla question, but not specifically Tesla.

Have you thought of any corporate sponsorships that like they are sponsoring specific charging ports?

And they might be in charge of the maintenance.

Um my understanding where the market is now on that is that those and the Tesla, this is true for those.

They're generally the DC fast chargers, which we didn't really talk about charging levels in the presentation.

Uh, but just for full background, you know, there's like level one, which is plugging in at home into a regular plug.

There's level two, which is what we have, it's sort of an in-between energy level.

Um, and then there's level three or DC fast, and so those are we generally cost more per kilowatt hour because they're they're you know expending energy much more quickly, and so my understanding where the market is right now is a lot of though that sort of model is that DC fast charger, kind of more charging hub folks coming in and out within like 45 minute increments.

Um, and so the folks aren't the companies that are doing that are not looking at the level two that's the service model we have right now.

So I think that would kind of be opening a whole nother um possibility that would need to be part of that next level of analysis for where might that kind of model make sense for us too.

Sure.

Okay, and then if we do start charging people for using the chargers, um how much of the contract and electricity are you hoping to offset with the charging?

Like are you trying to get to a hundred percent or is it half of it?

That is we're I think we're trying to get to a better place than we're at now.

Um because of the lack of sophistication in our data tracking right now.

We we don't really have that understanding.

And I think uh we also we'll have to see how it affects our customer demand, how much utilization we're having.

So we honestly aren't sure what how that's going to level out in the end.

It will definitely we're not gonna be profiting off of it, that's for sure, right?

I think it's still gonna be probably subsidized even to some degree, but much less than it is now.

And that's what over time is we're gonna track the rate, especially early on to make sure we're kind of hitting that right mark.

So that was a long way to say, I'm not sure.

Fair enough.

Um, okay, and then my my last question um is you know, I don't know how to phrase this actually.

So I'm gonna I'm just gonna skip it for now.

We'll come back to you.

All right, thank you.

Great presentation.

Um got my top question.

How much of the money was going to electricity?

Um, so I'll I'll ask the flip side question.

So the other approximate 100,000, what would be the biggest buckets on an annual that we're spending on that's not electricity?

With our current model, yeah.

The next biggest bucket is the contracts that Gina was mentioning with uh maintenance staff, that's about another 60,000, and then the rest is sort of spread across our internal staff time that if we are purchasing the equipment ourselves that's needed to replace it, um, and then the the limited networking that we do have the fees for that.

Okay, great.

Um speaking of the data networking.

If you if you can share briefly what kind of data elements do we get today, and what are the ones we don't get that we really want that makes having one of these providers really beneficial?

Right now we do not have a system in place to regularly monitor data.

So it's sort of like a project to get the data updated and dig into that.

Um so what we would be able to get with this is more of a our understanding, and we're we'll find out the details of this when we do the RFP and really understand what the vendors are offering, but our understanding for the research we have now is it's more of like a dashboard model where you could regularly check in what days of time what times of day are they being most used how long are folks staying at them there's also likely the ability to get understanding of repeat customers versus different customers.

So all of that would really give us better insight to who is using it and and how they're using it and how's that behavior maybe different than some of our other parking customers in those facilities as well.

So with the existing free model or if we got one of these companies in place but we were still going with free how would we identify like the repeat customers or who's using it like what what data if anything do we capture from the people driving up and plugging in today.

Yeah do you want to that part?

So the the data if we were to try to go we would have to get another contract in place that would allow for us to better monitor that it really depends if that that's a good answer right now because we really don't know what our options are.

So we're really looking to kind of when we do when we go out to try to get a third party vendor we're really going to do more of like a request for qualifications and have them tell us what it is that we're missing out on because we don't right now we don't know what we don't know.

Right.

Because I think when we if we go to a fee model we're gonna get credit card numbers and we'll know we'll know who's using the system right so it wouldn't necessarily be with credit card numbers I think that they actually users have to have like a sign on it like an app like an app that they utilize so they don't do with credit cards because we don't we there's a whole compliance thing with that yeah exactly with it thank you.

So there is an entire PCI that we model that they have to follow and that's all part of the process that we would have to go through.

We would be getting way more in the details if I started to explain the fact that sometimes the vendor's not even involved in that.

So it is just a totally different um option but we don't know what we don't know right now and so we're really looking to see what kind of models are possibly out there and that would allow us by going out you know to search out a third party vendor we would be able to see what the options are and maybe they could provide us information even with what we currently have but we won't know that until we go out.

So here's a a question and this is a question I think that would be a it's a pass-through question I think when you're asking vendors would any one of these vendors have the ability to wait for it have a discount free pricing kind of like a validation model.

So if someone comes just to charge they would spend a little more per kilowatt hour but if they came to charge but aid at original Joe's or one of our other restaurants maybe they get it for half price or free.

It'd be an interesting to ask the vendors if anybody could do that.

Yeah.

Excellent question we'll we'll pass that question along.

Because if we're gonna give people free electricity it might be nice to get them to spend money downtown right?

Yes.

Or or in the other locations.

Correct.

I think you've already answered this question.

I was gonna ask if our chargers today are all the same vendor and model.

They are not we actually have two vendors that we're utilizing right now.

And if we went to one of these newer vendors would we would we wholesale replace out all these charges.

Not necessarily and that is not our intent.

Our intent is to utilize the existing infrastructure and have them be able to work on the oldest infrastructure you know as it's needed.

We can determine what that looks like it can be anything from a full replacement to use what we have until it dies.

Got it right so we can determine what that looks like.

And I I know in the in the the letter or memo we received as a part of our packet.

It talked about if we did it internally, we would need it sounded like it said one full-time person.

Yes.

And even then, one full-time person wouldn't be able to offer 24-7 service for repairs and or you know, necessarily being able to get, you know, chargers running up and running again.

You know, we won't have an inventory on hand to quickly swap things out as when you have a vendor in on hand.

They have those options.

Okay.

So it sounds like something's more viable beneficial to outsource than I always hate to see jobs outsourced if the city can I think that's that is our recommendation is to look at the third party vendor.

Got it.

Um those are all my questions.

Um Vice Chair Patch, did you?

Your questions got to what I needed around the data.

So we're good.

Okay.

Awesome.

All right.

Any any further questions from any of the commissioners?

I had one other question, actually.

Um I don't know if you said this, if I missed it, but did you say what the cost per charger is for like to replace one or to put one in?

Like average.

I know there's a bunch of different ones too, but yeah.

There are a lot.

Currently, we're seeing anywhere from eleven thousand to fifteen thousand.

It's a lot of money.

Yeah.

It is a lot of money.

And if you do like a bunch in a row, does it get a little bit cheaper because the infrastructure's kind of shift?

No, so it depends on which company we're talking about to right now, because like I said, there is one of our vendors is allowing for some modular upgrades and updates.

Um, another one, if there's a hose that's broken, they want the entire head replaced.

And so, whereas before, you know, and the model for one of the vendors is drastically changed from when we we originally um went with them.

So that's kind of the other thing that's pushing us to move to a third party vendor that can help us better manage this.

Okay.

Cool, thank you.

Oh, I did do one more question.

I'm sorry.

So, originally we put these in 2017, we don't charge for them.

There must have been a plan or some kind of idea of of why or you know what we were gonna do with these.

So, my question is more like if these are level two, and they don't charge very fast, and then we charge charging a fee, what's what's the incentive?

Uh, I don't have any V, so I I don't know if I can answer this.

I'm asking what's the incentive to use a level two that's not as fast, and now they have to pay a fee for it.

And will they?

Yes.

So the intent when they were first put in, and you also think you know, 10 years ago the EV market was in a very different place.

Uh and so it really was we won't charge a fee now.

The goal of this is to try and encourage folks to transition their vehicles and freeze better than a fee, right?

And now there are so many more chargers available and different charging models and benefits from MCE.

If you charge at home, you can sign up for a special app that assists with that.

There's a lot more options out there, and so um from a convenience versus charging perspective, customers have more distinction there.

So I think the goal with charging a fee is really to make sure it's a sustainable system that is providing the quality customer experience.

I think another benefit that we've we believe we will find from their analysis is that it will target more the folks who really need those chargers who aren't able to charge at home who aren't able to charge at work.

Our feedback so far, um, you know, from folks has been, oh, if you charge, you know, at kind of this level, I'll probably just charge at home.

You know, it takes that convenience out, it's gonna cost a similar amount.

Uh, but it's really for the folks who, you know, live in an older apartment or don't have on-site parking that for whatever reason they're not able to charge at home.

Um, or they're already accessing our facilities, and it's something that you know can be a benefit for them when they're there.

Maybe it's convenient.

Um, thank you.

Vice chair, anything?

So I did have one more question.

Um I appreciate the engagement.

Um, see, you know, we care.

You know, when you buy solar panels for your house, now, you can also, you know, essentially lease them and put no money down, and it's like a power purchase program.

Um, are do any of these vendors, just out of curious curiosity have a model where we don't have to do the capital investment?

It's it's their chargers, they do everything full service package, we pay X, customer pays Y, and hopefully we can break even.

The model is more we lease the parking space to them and then it's their infrastructure, they set the rate.

Um there's there are some parameters you can put around it, but that that's a bit more what that would be.

And so it wouldn't be a necessarily like our parking fee, it would be their their fee on their space that they're leasing from us.

Okay.

So that's what we've seen some other cities do.

I I'm I'm not personally aware of, though this might be out there, like that gets more complicated when it's inside our garage, right?

Where we're charging.

So that works better at a surface lot.

But yeah, that's more the model we've seen for that.

There are some providers who do that.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

All right, then I think we've concluded commissioner questions.

So for the record, I have to ask if there's anyone in the public who would like to address the commission on this topic.

We have no members of the public wishing to provide public comments.

Thank you, Mr.

Secretary.

Then we'll close public comment and we will move on to commissioner comments.

Um let's go reverse or how about vice chair patch.

Uh thank you for this presentation.

It's great.

Um, I actually just recently went to London and I was going to reach out to you because I saw some cool things around EV chargers, and then I saw this was on the agenda, and I was like, oh, I can just wait now.

Um so that's kind of cool.

Um one of the things that I saw in London is they have shell charging uh units attached to telephone poles and um street lights.

Um, so the city like basically leases the street lights to shell and shell charges, but like they're responsible for the maintenance and stuff.

And so that's why I asked about corporate sponsorships.

Um I know you're not looking to expand, but that might be something to start thinking about and considering.

Um, and as you're looking for a third-party vendor, I would definitely ask them or include in their qualification um portion what their creative solutions are to this issue, right?

Because as you said, you know, we have 40 ports, but we have goals of installing a lot more than that.

Um, so knowing not just how we're maintaining it now, but how the expansion is gonna work would be really important.

Um I have found as you change vendors that that can be complicated.

So if we could find a vendor that actually works with the growth plan as well as the maintenance plan, that would be really important.

Um also on the data front, I would be really curious if they can tell us which of our locations are full most of the time, so that maybe that's an indicator that there needs to be more chargers there or a higher priority on maintaining those chargers versus like if the other areas are not used as much.

Um as a person who lives in a multifamily complex who cannot install a charger.

I understand the importance of these uh publicly available chargers.

I do think it's reasonable to start charging for them, um, especially if it's a nominal amount that kind of just covers the electricity or um a portion of the maintenance coverage.

I think that as we move forward, the communication on that and why we're charging instead of free is gonna be it making sure that we communicate on that will make sure that it's successful.

Um, and hopefully we'll address some of the user conflict that you're experiencing at places that shouldn't be charging just for charging purposes, right?

Um I would also look at if the vendor can have a robust plan for placing the old ones.

Um, it's really disappointing to hear that they're not module anymore.

That's just a from a sustainability perspective, really irritating to me.

Like, why are we wasting materials instead of just replacing the thing that is broken?

Um, and I understand that that comes from the charger vendor itself and not the person or the company that's gonna maintain them, but if they have those relationships or they have insights in how we can not have to create waste as we're replacing old chargers, that would be great to hear.

A lot of my comments are just about the expansion, which you're not focusing on, but also I love that we're doing this.

So I'll probably just send you an email about ideas that I have for expanding our EV chargers in general so that we stay on topic here.

Commissioner Guerrero.

No further comments.

Thank you.

That was good presentation.

Commissioner McMahon.

I really love that we're focused on sustainability for this.

And I think electric cars are just gonna continue to get more popular, more popular as gas prices go up and all this other stuff is going on, and as the car prices get as the electric car prices get cheaper, more people are gonna be buying them.

So I think it's definitely something we should focus on.

Um I totally agree in just some of the comments and what the agenda said that you know, having people pay for it will make it more sustainable.

We can keep up these chargers, they can have more uptime, they can be safer too.

That's something we'd actually didn't really talk about today.

But I I know like six months ago there was a fire in one of the garages, and you know, that caused a big issue too.

So, you know, like having money coming in ensures that these are all safe, and uh, you know, protecting the cars and protecting the people using the garages.

Um I would say like we should try to gather as much data as we can and use the money that we do make from this for that data, and um I second what my other commissioner said in terms of communicating that to the public, in terms of like, you know, we want to we're charging, but we're gonna we're gonna use this money to make the chargers better.

We're gonna put them in places where people need them, and it's not something that the city's trying to make money off of.

Um, and it does seem like the most efficient way would to be higher hiring a private company to do this, like they're the experts at it, they know what they're doing.

So that's would be my recommendation for that.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Um good presentation.

Um looks like we have pretty good growth of EV chargers across the city.

Mostly, you know, the commercial chargers.

See the Tesla ones popping up a lot.

Um so I don't have a lot of comments.

Um I know we're trying to.

I know a part of doing the free was trying to help people who were in the lower income brackets is another part.

And I don't know if there's a possibility to income qualify for free charging while having fees for the you know the more of the masses.

You know, I think unfortunately the the hard thing for the people you might want to attract with the uh free charging, the biggest barrier is really not the charging fee, it's the cost of getting the the EV itself.

Those are you know, and even to get a new gasoline car for somebody's expensive these days.

Uh, but I I think this is great.

I would just offer up we're here if you're interested when you get to the stage of you've picked like your top two or three vendors and have different models, um I'm sure my fellow commissioners would love to kind of see the options and give input and ask questions before you pick the I don't certainly not a requirement, but it's uh we're here if you want us.

Um that being said, oh, we have another comment.

Vice Chair Patch.

Um, our chair inspired me.

Potentially, I'd be curious to know if there was like a monthly program instead of a per usage charge, right?

Like you purchase into this number of credits for the month, and you get to use one of the chargers.

I've no idea if that would work, and that would obviously depend on what vendor you go for, but it might be a way to offset some of what my fellow commissioner was suggesting on lower income individuals.

So I think the purpose to tonight's session was just to give feedback.

So I don't think there's any motions required for this one.

So we will close this topic.

You just wanted to hit your gap.

I just wanted to hit the gap.

It's you know, it's very satisfying.

Just wait till next year.

You'll get to to feel the satisfaction.

All right.

Moving on to our second uh consideration item item B.

Update on bike to wherever day 2026.

We'll have a brief update on the bike to wherever day events at Broadway and Newell and Civic Park.

So we're ready for staff's presentation.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh good evening, commissioners.

My name is Henry Rood, Transportation Planner for Public Works.

Tonight I'm going to be giving you a quick update on the activities that the Traffic Engineering Division organized for bike to wherever day.

That was last Thursday as part of our larger bike month effort for 2026.

So to begin with, our morning location, this is the energizer station that we've been hosting at the city, but for the COVID interruption for about 10 years.

This was until last year, hosted in front of City Hall.

Last year and this year, we moved it to Broadway and Newell at the crossing of the Iron Horse Trail.

This is an area where we have a larger uh roadway improvements project underway.

So this is also a chance to do outreach with people directly on site.

And additionally, just being closer to the trail is a much better way to get cyclists on their way to different places.

So like last year, we had significantly higher numbers of cyclists come by than the city hall location.

We had two about 200 this year.

Also on the trail, pretty close by, but there didn't seem to be any issues.

Many cyclists are happy to visit many or even all of the energizer stations.

And you know, we all offer slightly different things, so it worked out pretty well.

It also that morning allowed us to advertise our evening afternoon event in Civic Park, which is what most of this presentation will be about because it was a big change.

So you can see here a picture, it's called the Bike Rodeo.

Uh so this is a almost like a festival in Civic Park.

So compared to the Morning Energizer Station, which is just sustainability and traffic engineering hosting like one table each.

Uh this was a much much larger undertaking.

We had partnerships with local vendors, we had an obstacle course for cyclists, we had information booths for many more city departments and some local organizations.

So just to give you a sense of the scale, this is a map of the event.

Um, if you know the civic park layout, that bottom left corner is the bridge into the parking lot.

So you can see we had many booths in that kind of cul-de-sac central area stretching up the path, and then the larger obstacle course by Carmel Drive.

So there's a picture of the obstacle course.

You can see there it's a chance for kids to kind of practice biking in a safe environment.

They can learn about safety practices and improve their maneuvering, just kind of get generally more comfortable on the seat of their bike, driving on the road, uh biking on the road, and um, you know, if they can complete the obstacle course, they can feel more confident about themselves and be better prepared to handle different aspects of cycling.

So uh this was what your extra special attachment was our pedal passport.

Uh the traffic engineering booth provided these to anyone who wanted one.

The idea is that each page uh has a place where you can get stamped by one of the information booths.

So if you go around and visit everything at the festival, you can come back and get a five-dollar gift card.

Which is not a huge prize, but if you're a young child, five dollars at Target goes a long way.

Um and we did have great uh uptick on this.

Target donated us 250 dollars, so 55 gift cards, and we use them all.

And in fact, we had one, unfortunately, one additional person who came after we'd run out.

Uh, but they were very understanding, luckily.

And we also had a Polaroid camera.

Um, so you'd see on that first page of the passport, there's a spot for a photo, so people could directly staple those on and kind of make it more like a real passport, a little souvenir.

Uh, the parents definitely seem to love it.

A lot of the kids uh were excited to get their picture taken.

You can see in the back of that photo there, there's kind of a billowing like yellow-orange curtain.

That was a little photo booth that we had if you wanted to really do it up properly.

A lot of people just wanted a photo right with their bike at the station, but I'd say about half appreciated the photo booth.

So newly this year, we had a much larger collaboration with kind of outside agencies and vendors.

So in addition to the city staff departments and sustainability, who's right here, police, clean water, arts and recreation, open space, and of course public works with traffic engineering.

We also had a booth for Bike Walk Walnut Creek, which is a local kind of pedestrian bicycle advocacy organization.

We also had vendors show up.

This was Soul House Matcha in their debut appearance.

Some of these were doing giveaways and donations, others were selling, but they definitely helped add to the atmosphere and provide more activities and options for people who were attending.

So overall, uh this event was definitely a huge success.

I think we brought a lot of joy to a lot of kids and families.

We helped, you know, dispense a lot of great information about biking, walking, sustainability in Walnut Creek.

There are some lessons learned that we would want to take forward if we were gonna do it again.

Uh the children were younger than we expected.

It was mostly around four to eight years old with their parents.

Uh most e-bike and bicycle safety advocacy is typically targeted more at like kind of 12 to 18 like tweens and teenagers uh who are out biking on their own, who might be riding e-bikes in a kind of unsafe speed or fashion so that they can learn best practices.

Um so that had kind of been what we'd expect, which is why we opened at three o'clock after school gets out.

But we saw that it was definitely a much younger demographic who are kind of just learning the basics of cycling, doing practice sometimes with training wheels, and um that also meant that they the spike in attendance was after five o'clock when their parents could take them directly after work.

We also learned that rodeo is not a great fit for Walnut Creek.

Uh people thought it was some kind of hoedown or something.

It's uh it's not really the kind of place we are.

So uh if we were gonna do it again, we would probably choose a name that's a little bit less home on the range.

Uh we would also probably want to increase staffing.

We had enough to make it work, but it was more strained than we typically like to plan for.

That's just something where you have to kind of do it and see how it goes.

So now we know.

We'd also revise certain passport exercises, like the Mad Libs one.

We had our traffic engineering booth supervising and stamping that, and managing handing out the passports and redeeming them, um, and it could led to lead to some you know holdups and delays.

And we would also have more trash facilities and staff.

Also just something you kind of have to try and see how it goes.

We were considering also adding something to the passport about trash pickup so that the attendees have an incentive to participate and help out, especially for kids.

It's a great way to teach them sustainable practices.

So I just want to give a special thanks to a lot of the organizations that helped us out.

Uh, street sweeping, parking enforcement, and traffic maintenance were crucial to clearing out the area, making sure that everything was clean and ready to go, helping us set up rooted coffee, donated us a giant uh pitcher of cold brew, so even though they weren't attending, their presence was definitely felt.

Uh sports basement and bike link helped provided uh coupons or gift cards that we were allowed to distribute on their behalf.

And Target uh supplied, of course, the prize for the pedal passport, which was huge.

We also had a lot of other city staff who weren't from the specific departments listed who uh volunteered their time to help us with setup and teardown.

And uh we I just wanted to show this picture here of a thank you from one of the attendees.

So with that in mind, I will open it up to you.

We would love to hear your thoughts and insights about how we can make bike month 2027 even better.

Is there anything else you'd like to see at the rodeo?

Uh, which would probably be under a different name if it happens.

And how would you feel about staff focusing our time and resources more on this event and potentially suspending the morning station?

Thank you.

Alright, Commissioner question is how about uh Commissioner McMahon, yeah.

This is an awesome event.

I went to one of um the stations and it was great just being there.

Uh one of my favorite parts of it is the bike to work bags.

We always try to get a few every single year.

So I would say get as many as possible.

And then I don't know, can you guys sell them as well?

Because we would like to buy them, honestly, because we use them all the time.

We lose them all the time.

And I just I want as many as possible.

So a little info about that.

The bike to work day branded uh merch is supplied to us by an organization called 511 Contra Costa.

Uh they provide it to everyone hosting an energizer station.

It's a fixed amount, uh, which is why we always run out of bags so fast.

Um so we're not really allowed to sell them either.

It's kind of part of the partnership.

We agree to host an energizer station, be part of their network, um, and in return they help us with some supplies, uh, including the bags, also uh like chapsticks, they give us some money to buy snacks um and some other things.

So we were this year because we had the morning event and the evening event, we were able to double dip.

So we got twice as much stuff to host twice as many events.

Um, but we can't really scale up and get more bags on our own outside of that.

Okay, much as we'd like to, because we do always run out really fast.

People love the bags.

They're the best.

We love them.

Um, yeah, I definitely agree with changing the name from rodeo because I was confused as well as a bike rider.

I'm like, what's going on with this?

Um, but yeah, I love all the pictures and seems like a great event.

Seems like you do a great job.

Um, I'd love to be considered and helping out with the event.

So if you guys need more people, definitely reach out and uh let me know, and I'd love to be there next year.

That's great.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

We have a volunteer.

Commissioner Guerrero.

I'll throw my name into volunteer also.

Uh I would love to help out.

Um, talking about those uh those bags, maybe we could find another vendor who can make something like it.

And maybe we could uh turn it into a prize for uh sustainability games.

Talked about trash, teaching kids.

Uh I've seen that before where you know they have a certain amount of trash.

It's not dirty, but they get to figure out where where it goes as far as recycling and stuff goes.

Um, and then you talked about having older um uh youths.

So I know tomorrow uh Northgate has their bike to school day.

I don't know if that's something not just them, but maybe you can coordinate with having it on the same day, one of the high schools or middle schools, you know, or biking to school to work uh school day, maybe in the afternoon they can come by after school and they can participate.

I don't know just throwing it out there.

Yeah, it's something we can look into and definitely uh doing direct outreach with the schools is a good way to get more students to come, especially those older demographics, whether or not it's on the same bike to school day that they have.

Yeah, but no, I think it's it's great.

Vice Chair Patch.

All right, I have a couple of questions.

Um, with the morning station versus this, did you see more of those older high school age students at the morning station that was on the trail?

We did uh because Los Lomas is down there.

A lot of them were in too much of a hurry.

They didn't even want to grab a free banana, they kind of just ignored us.

Um, some of them did stop, but it was a lot of kind of older groups, um, including some of the like families with young children who we got to advertise the evening event to.

Um, there was still probably more of those, yeah, like you know, 10 to 16 kids in the morning, um, you know, even if a lot of them ignored us, a lot of them didn't.

Um so, you know, we did mention the evening event to them where we could, but it seems like we didn't, they were not enticed.

And do you feel like it was about the same level as last year at that station as your it was similar?

It was a little less.

Last year we had 219 and this year it was 200, but still pretty comparable.

And our old uh city hall stations would get like 100.

So it's way better than that.

Great, great.

Um, how did you decide to have the evening event at Civic Park instead of any other location?

Uh Civic Park, it's city owned, so we have the latitude to do things like clear out the parking lot for the obstacle course, uh, you know, clear out the area, host all the vendors, get the setup going earlier.

We wanted something that was close at hand uh because all of our staff that is helping out needed to be able to get their materials over there and back in a reasonable time frame.

Uh we had to we used um like city fleet vehicles like pool cars to help transport everything, but giving people the option to just walk back to City Hall or like at the end of the day to walk to Bard or whatever, it makes it much easier for not only our dedicated staff, but also the people volunteering their time.

Um, and it's I don't think we had any issues with the venue this year, really.

It served our purposes very well.

Great.

That's awesome to hear.

Um and then did uh a few meetings ago, we had a great presentation on the bike to school.

It has a special name.

Is that what it's called?

The walk and roll program.

Thank you, the walk and roll program.

Uh did you reach out to them about any collaboration?

Uh so the walk and roll program is also uh undertaken by 511 Contra Costa, who's the bike tour everyday organization.

So we were collaborating with them very closely.

Okay.

You could mention that Cairo had a station up in the trail.

Yes, yeah.

They had a a station dedicated to that further up on the Iron Horse Trail as well.

Yeah.

I figured they had an energizer station.

Wasn't sure about yeah, the evening event.

They were the ones who use the bike blenders, which is why we are not allowed to borrow them.

Okay, that's it for my questions.

Great.

Um when you had the people showing up at the station, uh we're gonna morning station?

The morning station.

We're gathering feedback from them, right?

Or we're getting questions.

Were there any thematic questions or comments from the 200 folks?

You know, that trail crossing is pretty hairy.

It's got a very long signals across very wide uh, you know, uh stretches of roadway.

So people are generally pretty excited about the thought of having a diagonal crossing, about having general improvements.

Um, you know, unsurprisingly, since we were right at that corner catching people going from corner to corner, they were more focused on that than on the other, you know, new AV improvements, but that doesn't mean that they're not meaningful.

It's just uh, you know, what's the demographic you're catching?

So what makes you comfortable with the thought of potentially suspending the morning station?

Because there's obviously something in the back of your mind going, oh wait, maybe we can do without it.

What what's what's behind that?

So uh we had kind of a post-mortem this morning.

Um as I'm alluded to in the presentation a bit, it was very draining on staff time, resources, and energy.

Um so being able to consolidate all of that into the evening event uh leaves us with much more options to make that much better instead of having to stretch ourselves so thin.

Um so it's not necessarily true that we would do that.

It's just a possibility we're exploring um not only for our you know time and energy, but also the people helping us, the volunteers, uh potential donors, uh supplying things, um, or showing up.

Um it's basically just that if we have, you know, one event that's smaller scale and you know not as fun, and we have one that's a much bigger deal, being able to consolidate everything into that could potentially you know have a much better day overall.

I'll add that um we're also looking at impact in terms of the community and engagement, and we just feel like the the afternoon event engages a lot better.

It gives that full experience of a festival kind of going on.

Um getting kids actually on bikes at the younger ages is great.

Um but yeah, the day it's a it's a great great day.

It's a holiday really for us um in terms of celebrating um uh alternative modes.

But you know, it's 7 a.m.

to 7 p.m.

Got it.

Um and there's a lot of steps, you know.

I got my 15,000 steps that day.

Uh it's uh it's a lot of moving stuff, coordination, and not only that, prepping for both events in advanced.

Um so uh Brianna, Henry and I were um holding down a lot of that that effort.

So got it.

And and like all good Hallmark movies, there's always a festival.

Something else I'll add is that the evening event, uh, you know, even if they're just passers by who see a sign at Civic Park, they're coming on purpose, they're necessarily interested.

Uh whereas in the morning, you're just catching some fraction of people on their way who are willing to stop.

A lot of them are just happy to grab a snack and go, and that's fine.

That's what we're there for.

But in terms of outreach, having these dedicated information booths, especially with a prize incentive to go visit them all.

It lets us be a lot more direct and a lot more specific across different areas, uh, just cover a lot more ground as well in terms of outreach and information.

Great.

All all good thinking there.

Um any other commissioner questions.

There being none, we will move to public comment.

Is there anyone in the public who wishes to comment on this item?

We have no members of the public wishing to provide comment.

Thank you, Mr.

Secretary.

We'll close public comment and move to Commissioner Comments.

How about we'll do Vice Chair Patch.

You just like going in reverse order.

I I like to mix it up.

Yeah.

Uh thank you for this presentation.

I am so glad that it was such a successful event for our first time trying something like this.

I mean, that's very hard to do.

So props to all of the staff that made that happen.

Um I was really sad to miss it.

I ended up with a migraine that day, so I couldn't go.

Um, but I it sounded like it was really great.

Um I kind of understand why the children participating in skewed in a younger age, just given the passport that we put together.

Um so I think there might need to be like a second activity or a more complicated obstacle course if you do want to get those older uh children involved and uh participating in a way that's meaningful.

Um, like maybe there is two activities, right?

Like there's a safe space to learn to ride a bike, and then there's an obstacle course that's hard or for those teens.

Um in terms of the the morning station versus this, I totally hear staff on it takes a lot of effort and resources to do that.

Um I'm almost wondering if maybe we need to think about doing the bike not a rodeo rodeo on a different day, like halfway through the year, so you have two events kind of trying to promote bike safety and other modules of transportation.

Just because I think that the morning station does hit a different demographic um than a fun festival family focused situation.

Um, or maybe you save having those morning stations for years where we are looking for public feedback on specific transportation changes, right?

So last year it was really important because we were ha asking questions about the changes um the city was looking to make on some of those intersections where we had the station.

Um and maybe we didn't need it this year because we got the feedback last year, or next year we don't need it because we're not doing anything active.

Um, instead of just doing away with it entirely for all foreseeable future, using it more strategically when we want to do constituent engagement.

Um, and then it sounded like you had a lot of booths for your first year, which is fantastic.

I think two ideas for additional booths is working with the organization downtown Walnut Creek to see if maybe they'll get some of the Walnut Creek businesses to have booths there.

Um a lot of them do have you know bike rocks right in front of their stores, so those might be particular companies that want to participate.

And then the why am I forgetting the name again?

Roll to school rule.

Walk and roll.

Walk walk and roll program.

I got that they had a little energizer station, but it feels like they should have a booth at this festival as well, specifically because they focus on bike safety for kids.

Um, and they can, you know, talk to the parents about if they want to volunteer or if their school is not already participating in the program, how they could get the program at their school.

Thank you, Commissioner Guerrero.

I thought it was a good presentation.

And uh yeah, thank you very much.

Other comments.

Commissioner McMahon.

Yeah, thank you for the presentation.

That was awesome.

The bike radio looks super fun.

Um, and yeah, I think it's one of the best days of the year in Walnut Creek, honestly.

Overall, overall.

I really like what Commissioner Patch said about maybe make it two days, or yeah, just so you guys don't have to, you know, be there all day.

And then um yeah, and then you kind of have two days where you were focused on alternate forms of transportation.

But um honestly from the pictures and from your presentation, it looks like you've been doing it for many years, and uh you it is looking awesome.

So I think yeah, maybe just a few little tweaks here and there to just get more people out there and make it better.

Um, and yeah, get a few more older kids in there, I think would be great.

But yeah, yeah, it sounds like you guys are on the right track and uh uh you're you're doing a great job.

So really appreciate that.

Thank you.

Um this was great, it's very cute.

I like the idea.

I also like the idea of expanding it.

Um I guess the main comment I'm thinking of, I always like to think a little outside the box.

So I was thinking about the state of the walnut festival, and you know, it was been displaced from Heather Farms Park.

Some people have suggested, oh, why can't we have the walnut festival at Civic Park?

Secretary's wondering where I'm going with this, but what about maybe growing this a little bit bigger within the confines of civic park and you know, at a minimum make it all I guess call it all non-car transportation mode.

So walking, biking, e-biking, e-scooters.

Um you could also even bring in um Contra Costa County Transit, you know, it's another form of, it's not human transportation per se, but it's another form of non-vehicle, because that's I think that's what we're kind of driving towards.

And if you could bring in more, if you can get more maybe food booths and vendors there, um, and just kind of grow it to maybe make it a little bit bigger.

If you're gonna go with festival, came up with a crazy name, the bike nut festival instead of the walnut festival.

But I know that sounds really bad.

But I'm just wondering, you know, consider thinking a little bit bigger.

You got a lot great facility there, and I think people in Walnut Creek are craving what they're not getting with the displaced walnut festival.

Even if it's gonna be obviously a lot smaller than what the Walnut Festival used to be, and you know, now when they do the walnut festival that when they do it, they do it in Antioch, and so that's really far away.

What could we make this something bigger, but at the same time keep that you know, non-automobile transportation focus as a theme?

That's really my only comment, other than you know, great work on the event, and I think this just like the other item, we don't need a motion.

We're just receiving information, so I get to do it again.

Uh this topic is closed.

Thank you very much.

Here, feel the gamble.

I own a gamble.

All right.

All right, moving on to commissioner announcements and brief reports on activities.

So, do any of the commissioners have any activities they've attended or have any announcements or reports?

Anybody?

We have uh the breakfast to report on.

We can't would you like to report on that, Vice Chair?

I think you would be fantastic at it.

I I don't know what to report on.

I don't know.

I'll just, you know, the every every quarter.

There's a for people who don't know, there's a mayor's breakfast meeting that usually has the mayor, the vice mayor, mayor pro tem, city manager, and then it has the chair and vice chair of all the commissions and committees, and then usually the city staff, usually the secretaries of the various commissions, and we get great update from the mayor on what's going on in the city, the mayor, the mayor, the mayor pro tem, and the city manager, and then we rotate around, and each uh pair of commission chair and vice chairs do an update on what's happened since the last meeting that the various commission.

So it's a great great way to share.

I always encourage, even if you're not chair or vice chair, when I'm not vice chair or chair, I still go.

It's really fun to listen to, and you get a free breakfast with some pretty good food.

So anything that that brings up some memories for you.

All right, any other the only activity I took part in, because I think I mentioned this at that quarterly breakfast meeting.

I did a Friday night ride along with Walnut Police with uh officer Eric Patton.

That was really a lot of fun, very educational, and I encourage others to um request a ride along.

The uh police department's very open and likes to take people along and show us what they do and how they do it.

I was definitely very impressed with I never realized because when you just at a restaurant in downtown you might see one uh police vehicle, but when I was driving around with Officer Patton, I couldn't believe how many times we ran into another officer.

We have a lot of uh active patrolling on Friday and Saturday nights in downtown makes us feel a lot made me feel a lot safer.

So I encourage people to take advantage of the generosity of the police department allowing uh the ride-alongs, so that's all I've got.

Oh, go ahead, Vice Chair.

The uh crosswalk improvement, bike trail improvement on Jones Road is in place and it looks fantastic.

Great job.

Do we have any um report outs from our team secretary?

Well, we have so many.

I'm gonna have Brianna come up and uh, yeah, hi commissioners.

Um again, my or for the new commissioners.

My name is Brianna Byrne.

I'm also a traffic engineer here at the city of Walnut Creek.

Um, so good news, uh, grant updates.

So back in January, Rashad Culver with our capital improvement program presented on TDA grant.

Uh we were going for a hundred thousand dollars to cover a portion of class four bikeways on the old Avenue.

We asked for a hundred, we got eighty.

So, and then the other grant updates, just this past Tuesday, um, we applied for TFCA grant.

It's transportation clean air fund air for clean air.

Um, and so we applied for 220,000 to cover a portion of our parkside cycle track project.

This project um received some funds from our affordable housing and sustainable communities grant that we are awarded a couple years ago, but with the cost of construction and general price increases, we're noticing a deficit.

So we had pursued 220,000 dollars, so we applied on Tuesday.

Stay tuned for updates on that.

And then the last thing I'm gonna share before passing off to Matt on also on Tuesday.

Um, as we're still coming down from our party planning energy, Matt and I got the opportunity to work with our local fire department, uh station number one over on Civic Drive, uh, just literally across the street.

They had reached out a couple weeks ago about our preemption system.

So at our traffic signals, there's a device where um emergency service vehicles like ambulances, police officers, and fire.

They can put in a signal to our traffic signals and ask for the grain.

So they had reached out about some intersections they were having difficulty with.

And so Matt and I got to do a bit of a ride along.

Um I was in the front seat with the laptop remote into our servers, and Matt was at the cabinet making sure that we were getting the preempt.

And so we looked at five intersections.

We were able to investigate a couple tweaks, um, our traffic um signal maintenance guys made a couple tweaks, confirmed some we're working, and Matt and I have some next steps and we're looking to do another ride along with our officers in the next six months or so after we've been able to make it more tweaks on our system.

Yeah that was fun.

Just as a kind of public announcement that the bridge the pedestrian bridge that goes along the Iron Horse Trail over Treat Boulevard it has some repairs and so they will be closing treat boulevard they'll close Street Boulevard at this location at Jones Road basically at night for two weeks time.

I don't know when this will be just heads up.

And if we meet again I'll I'll have a date if they're closer to to working on that.

You should know the general plan study session meeting is in on June 25th at 6 p.m on the third floor which you can take that elevator to get up to so just looking for your uh attendance there.

It's uh basically informational item gather feedback and kind of start that general plan um outreach effort with our commissioners so be a big all the commissioners will be gathering.

And that's all thank you.

Great everyone's favorite topic meeting adjourned.