call this regular meeting of the rent stabilization board to order roll call lake report number thought if we could just add in to the that one long sentence at the very end to discuss disaster preparedness for ten report it's kind of our summer vacation started the legislature adjourned last month's governor brown finished signing bills a week ago yesterday and so we have our final report here as often with a landlord tenant and other housing issues there were some good things that happened some not so good things that happened and so go over those was you and happy to answer any questions that you may have when we came before you were saying that the legislature was on the verge of having two thirds supermajorities of democrats in both houses and a democratic governor and there are still musical chairs going on the senate is finally full with twenty eight democrats and twelve republicans the assembly currently has two vacancies one of which will be filled very shortly and the other one probably in december but maybe early next year so folks we're thinking there might be a lot of progressive type legislation but it's a two thirds majority there's a lot of more moderate democrats and as a result it kind of toned down the session this year less than one hundred bills were sent to the governor which is a small amount for california it's the third lowest since we went to a full time legislature in one thousand nine hundred sixty seven and there was a block of there is a block of moderate democrats you may remember a guy named jim acosta who was a through the bills that were signed some of these if you have questions and the others have to answer those must be forty three walk was a bill that we've talked about in the past that allows tenet's and others to sign up on an on bill sort of thing with their electric company with p g and e and that allows them to invest in green energy facilities that would be sited on offsite not  apartment complex sort of residence but schools industrial places so they would get a deduction on their bill to invest in that and then they'd get a rebate on their bill for the energy that was produced a r to earlier failures was signed this year that will go into effect january first along with most of these bills go into effect january one and so we're anticipating that that and e and southern california edison still had some concerns with the bill but the governor signed what's in place now yes before e eight so was to clarify the state housing law survivors being able to terminate a long term lease on thirty days notice if they're on a month to month they don't really need this because they could just give a thirty day notice but if they're in the middle of a lease and they need to to get out  some to terminate without further penalty once again the tenant groups supported this california apartment association supported this testified in support some of the smaller landlord groups opposed to the very end asked for a veto and what they wanted was easier ways to even the alleged perpetrator without going through shit showing of nuisance or a showing of illegal activity in the supported and we've been getting pieces of it year by year a few years ago we got the requirement that if the tenets having problems she or he could ask for the locks to be changed the deadbolt that was of a couple years ago senator you bill this takes the other pieces of it that was in the current law to terminate this lease there has to be a statement by a police officer some kind of  police report or some other official more official type report to back up leaving the unit this bill says that the survivor can also go to a counselor or a health care practitioner anybody slice and get a statement from them and allow a term nation to be supported by that documentation the only thing that's left from s p seventeen forty five i looked it up was  that bill also allowed if you went to a clergy person you could get a statement but disability didn't do that so i guess we've got one more piece to go after next  couple's a b eleven twenty seven chow which was originally a speedy five ninety seven more of this was a bill that was i guess i'm done with the good news now we're into the vetoes this is another bill that the rent board supported in its earlier form and this was to set up a court interpreter program for indigent parties either  defendants to have court provided interpreters a pilot program with three counties with some funding that the judicial council those are the folks that ministers the courts they had identif some funding for this pilot project the governor vetoed the bill and he had a kind of an odd reason for it he said they already have the authority to do this pilot project so he said they didn't really need it judicial council disagrees and the governor's legal opinion really has no effect on the ultimate outcome of things so i did check with judicial council earlier  late last week and there were two parts of this bill one is to work on a plan for a statewide interpreter services and the second part was this pilot project they are going to go ahead with the planning part they don't have any plans at the moment to do the pilot project whether they'll do another bill next year and discuss more with the administration what's allowed or not they're there they haven't decided  that's where that one stands at the moment next bill is twelve twenty nine atkins this was a disappointment a week ago sunday that governor waited till the very last day know i think everybody is familiar with the palmer decision and the reason for the bill that it was impacting inclusionary rentals only left homeownership zoning alone or inclusionary alone  california apartment association again was neutral in the bill they were not opposing and some of the smaller landlord groups were opposing the builders were opposing it's even imagined the realtors were opposed strongly  the governor's reasoning his sort of major reason which we're not so sure about is the supreme court california supreme court just did just take the case from san jose where they're going to decide some issues around inclusionary zoning but that court case would not have affected inclusionary rental in any significant fashion so it seems to be just kind  of i would say excuse but from our point of view it's not a very good reason for vetoing the bill what might be more at issue here is that he does not think in deciding vote against the inclusionary ordinance and he just didn't think it was didn't produce for many minutes and he also thought that it burdened the production of housing too much to put it there so he seemed to have policy reasons to oppose us this creates a problem this is the second time through with this bill we tried it before and did not get it through the senate we got through the assembly in th bare majorities twenty one votes and forty one votes assembly got it so the governor and of course the veto that so looking at what to do we need to figure out a strategy with the governor it's likely that we would wait a year to see what the supreme court should have their decision out in may or june and at that point for two thousand and fifteen figure out ok here's what they decided here's how we can address the governor's officially to your bills this is the first year of a two year session so technically all the bills are still alive there will introduce a new bill but some of these will be around again next year one buildings condos co ops and apartments the bill failed in assembly housing last spring he is committed to carrying on with the bill and there is a working group composed of tenant groups health lung association those kinds of folks and the authors office looking at some ways to get something in place which some of the discussions are very similar to what is going on here in berkeley about the different ideas at the state level we've talked about a registry we've talked about going forward with only you know sitting tenets if they're smoking they can stay in place but no new tenancies would be able to smoke again some other ideas like that so that will continue to be an issue next  ban smoking if they choose to do so i would add electronic cigarettes to that ability to ban and as i understand there's health issues concerns on both sides yes they're and tenets together as a state wide group and some of the other ones is maybe fourteen zero seven brett bradford which would replace the current lifeline phone requirements in california through the p u c with a discount for either cell phones or more landlines but it would only be eleven eighty five a month so it's much less of a subsidy than what the bills that were directed to support on behalf of the rent board and it failed on the senate floor it got up to i think eighteen votes at the end and i believe when we came here and discussed this before it did have the three parts to it about security deposit interest requirements that the deposit be kept in an identified account and also the requirement that if a  landlord was found to wrongfully was withhold it deposit from a tenant that there would be damages statutory damages order instead of just the landlord returning the deposit  in an effort to get the bill senator little cut back the bill to just that requirement about damages and it did still fail the landlord groups were strongly opposed it was sponsored by tenants together and western center and serially foundation also supported it i want to mention another bill to give you a flavor of where the legislature was thinking about this so this bill was going to direct pretty much direct judges to award damages if there was a showing of wrongdoing there was a nother bill on a different subject where the there was this case where was a dissolution of divorce case and the one man's daughter was a stepdaughter of her spouse he abused the daughter and the courts hands were tied because we have no fault divorce in california and so the woman was ordered to pay the husband that ex husband who abused her daughter spousal support so there was a bill to say judges in this case do not you cannot award supposal support and this bill failed also because it was thought that judges should have the discretion t you know we trust them they'll do the right thing but we're not going to make a rule about this this is going to be discreet judicial discretion so that bill passed saying that abuse of a child is three we got to think about what what kind of a bill we need to to to do to get it passed it's going to be heard again in january senator leno has indicated he's willing to to bring it up but we have to figure out what we're going to do there let's be seven fifty the water submitter bill this issue has been going on for fifteen years we got very close this year portman of california apartment association western center the landlord and tenant groups worked very closely some of the billing companies the third party billers that do this were opposed to it and came out on more opposition at the end we'll years past but it did pass and was passing got signed this year and it's proven it will prevent this practice where some park owners were using a special provision that allowed residents to take over a mobile home park and convert it into a co op or a condo mobile home park resident on so they were using that to convert it with just one resident they manage to convince and once they got the one resident to agree to it and rent control came off of the whole park so this a bill says you do have to take there's already a survey required of residents this the bill to establish a permanent source of affordable housing funding create the bill doesn't actually divide up the private rental housing construction would be a big component of it and everybody's  idea supported this last year especially after some amendments were taken the feet comes from a seventy five dollar surcharge on certain recording certain documents the bill as amended or the earlier version of this bill was amended last year to say that wouldn't apply to sales transactions so it would not be a transaction or realtors usually involved in the so they support it last  year they had some internal meetings and discussions and they decided to oppose the bill this year so it got out of the senate still passed it got all the way to assembly appropriations senator to sell the ok from concord the author decided to hold it there and hold some discussions with the realtors and other groups and the governor to who's not real thrilled with increased fees of any kind to figure out what he might do next year any changes that might be possible it requires a two thirds vote to get it to get two thirds in the senate but assembly was more problematic so he's looking at that this will move forward next year so that's thank you major ones and happy to answer any questions about this one or the gigantic chart upgrade they were saying well let's have them that you don't have these batteries that run out that it should be a ten year battery which i guess lifting on something there feasible at this point are almost feasible the other requirements one of them was that it had a button so you can turn the thing off when it's going off after you've burned your dinner or something that was he's either pushed so there were some other requirements there so there's been some concerns on the part of the industry that they're not going to be able to supply enough of these so they wanted to delay the mandate for a year and like many of these sorts of things legislature thought you know we think you can do it and we'll see how it goes the the current law allows the change that this bill was only about when the date they had to be offered when that would start so you'd think that this is coming back in the next fifteen it's not likely to come back because that dates already going to go by thank you  for this information my comment was i think it's important that you put the governor's statement on a b twelve twenty nine those very helpful to understand his rationale  i think this information this whole package here that you gave us should be prominent on our website i don't know if we should add that as a friendly amendment to commissioner harz item seven seven later think about that right but i mean prominent because this is very important and  report section i'd like to have it on the home page i mean there's a bunch of stuff on there already it's very very important so we could have put it in the report section but because it's an update to the reports put a link on the main page for a while is the twenty groups in the land or groups have compromised a bit the state of the current law is unclear and under the current there's a public utilities code section that says if you have s tters you are allowed to pass through your costs of the master meter from the water utility and that's all so does that mean truly only that water amount and not the the monthly hookup for me doesn't mean landlords can charge an administrative fee because they're not making a profit on that part but there is a cost involved in sending out these bills so the state of the current law is is a bit unclear so everybody is operating from the position of we'd like this bill to get some clarity on these issues but we're not willing to go so far as to give up for example one of the landlord groups wanted a late fee if the construction if you have submitters installed you're going to go under these rules because both sides want one set of rules they don't want to set the rules for new construction after twenty fifteen or sixteen and so we were trying garbage i just want to ask that the safe and sustainable committee take a quick look at how this might change things in berkeley i know i'm just constantly hearing from all of my neighbors are that there's a plague of rats in berkeley these days and of course we heard some very passionate testimony from a tenant who spoke at public comment during our last board meeting and in addition to that i was helping a friend of mine who was going through some problems and  dr control has to do that and it just doesn't seem cost effective to me to send to inspectors out there one property for the same problem you know code enforcement sites for the holes that the rats get in to the houses but not the rats themselves in and then after control sites for the rats but not the holes by which the rats get into the houses so if we just had save and sustainable kind of check in on how this this new law might allow berkeley to have you know some of attached to that as your second attachment is a resolution that you will adopt the see evening and the corresponding third attachment would be regulation of the thirty six which establishes the the general an to regulation sixty nine which provides for change in space or services and allows the board hearings and nerds and and the board on appeal to a just sentence runs upward or downward based on  creases or increases in space or service and in the past the board has rejected that where a landlord unilaterally removes space or services  tenancy that they would have to move if those service so basically what this change to the regulation does is simply codified that longstanding policy and makes it clear in the regulation itself which provides the authority for the board to make those adjustments that the board will not accept petitions that seek to unilaterally or rather where the landlord has unilaterally removed a space space or services well that without the express written consent of the so we will still accept petitions where the landlord removes a service if the tenant has signed off on and saying i'm fine with having that service for moved and then the board would decide rent decreases in other words my heater doesn't work so my rent is ten percent less when my heater is not working and once that heater is restored then i will get i will have to pay my full rent again in this instance if the landlord says i'm taking away your garage or your use of the yard or the third bedroom if i or your laundry services or whatever  the the i suppose my assumption is that that that's not being removed permanently that's not being removed temporarily that's being removed permanently and therefore the landlord a seeking adjustment to the rent for that removal right but i guess the landlord would he or she would restore it possibly restores a service or a space then he or she could come in and ask for a we have disallowed landlords in the past from doing it is because it's basically seeking an advisory opinion from the board in that if i'm able to remove this service or space what is going to the news inform legal status that over the past the last three years the board has received approximately one such petition for year extensively at the committee level both in september and october it's my impression that we certainly should spend a lot of time here talking about this regulation that affects such a small here is what we often see when we change regulations about small matters which is that we realize that what we do is not one hundred percent clear and since this is what we do we want everybody to know that this is what we'll do and so we need to change the regulations if we want to change the way we do it that would be different but i can't imagine why we would want to say it's ok if somebody had a parking space how to driveway had a bedroom for twenty years to take it away just just to sort of bootstrap on what commissioner and i think she said it very well just from a legal perspective it doesn't matter how many of these receive we receive this change subject or rather shelter's us from any judicial challenge for the administrative rejection of these petitions so if we only receive one of these every ten years i would say that this change is necessary given that we the regulation and the hunt cited to basically that our our services our our and our pre petition filing services are very thorough so we are able to capture a lot of these folks in the safety net however there are some that get through and there are some landlords who file petitions based on the unilateral move space of services it doesn't happen often i think mainly because most berkeley landlords don't actually remove these services and that's and that's a good thing however in the matter whether it's once a year or five times a week i mean it's still important i think what this is it's really clear simple housekeeping basically cut a firing what is clearly hundred i know it's eight o'clock but i want to say something i was in the committee meeting when this was discussed in legal staff when commissioner one did raise the issue and i'm glad you did i thought that the legal staff at that time answered the question in saying that when a landlord comes in and has this question it's not codified and caught a finding it clarifies it for the landlord and the tenant and makes everyone understand the rule clearly and that is the reason why we're addressing this issue now and i thought that that issue was clear in the subcommittee meeting but i mean it's clear to me so i'd like to call the vote then both parties will have an opportunity to address the board the appellate will go first for five minutes the respondent will get seven minutes and then the appellant will have another two minutes to respond i would like to remind everybody that this is not decision this is the third time the tenant has appealed a run for decision and since april two thousand and eleven the first petition she withdrew because it was untimely filed the first appeal was withdrawn the board actually ruled on a very similar matter to the one before you tonight in the petition number two or sorry five one five one on july sixteenth two thousand and twelve board meeting in this appeal does not operate correctly that a reduction in kitchen cabinets space and grit and grime and cabinets which she alleges is due to a cockroach remediation that happened some time ago as discussed in the hearing at examiner decision and the legal staff recommendation the hearings and reward for all these conditions is consistent with the amounts awarded in past run for decisions including one that the board itself ruled on in july of two thousand and twelve last year for the reduction of the counter cutting board not consider these photos on appeal as they were in front of the hearings and with her and she did not have an opportunity to review them and short the tenant does not present a convincing argument to adjust the hearings amorous decision the decision should be if they can any questions to withdraw my claim for the exhaust next i want to address the statement made by the legal staff i have asked that the kitchen cabinets be restored so that i may use them to store my property more specifically my medical supplies that i require for my discipline i explained this during the hearing i never said planet orange was responsible that claim came from the previous owners because they were because there and maintained the original amount of storage space my belongings and medical supplies wouldn't wouldn't i guess it wouldn't have be would be stored in boxes in b calculations because i believe my rant would be eight hundred eighty one dollars and forty seven cents and not eight hundred and nine eight hundred and ninety one dollars and forty seven  cents after the ike that i guess the one percent reduction was applied said he said that i didn't turn some photographs and a timely manner and i had until january eleventh two thousand and thirteen to turn this information in which i did and i do have a copy of the board email on the photos that you talked about is that not in the record council sorry the she submitted miss garner submitted three photos that were not in the record of the three photos if you look at bates stamp page those those photos were not a part of the record before the hearing so those are the ones that i'm asking the board not to consider given the hearing salmon or in making her decision did not have the benefit of cassandra how long have you been there in my the currently fifty almost fifty one question i have is on page eleven and i didn't see any disputing evidence on its under my calculation i think this is because sandra's communication the talks about the i'm sorry i just saw page eleven so it talks about the original kitchen countertop was ninety four point four inches and it lost fifty one point two inches and that was i believe the reason why it was one percent you duction is that true the permanent reduction am i incorrect on that that's that is correct yes one percent those those calculations did not seem to add up so i'm just the hearings am or were one percent the cabinet space that is missing was almost inaccessible before because it was behind basically behind a wall so you would have to reach around to get into a cabinet space so that was just walled off by the former owner because it's just a more efficient use of the space what you can to build a cabinet in in the area where it was previously built was it almost didn't make any sense so it space yes i did and in fact i had earthquake equipment there so it was excessive all i mean we don't have we haven't had like a major earthquake like that but i was able to access x access to that cabinet and i also provided pictures where you can cool clearly see that it was near a stove and that door although it didn't swing all the way open excuse me i mean like all the way open it did open like a minimum of ninety degrees which is enough you know because sandra do you know a page that's on that picture because i wish i could have seen the site because i know having lived somewhere for fifteen years and you know a substantial portion of space is taken away that can be very frustrating but i just initially when i submitted the information just like the council yes thank you legal counsel mentioned i initially said method to information additional information i was informed i couldn't so the only focus was on the the miniature covered the cutting board and the two drawers that were missing and so i was informed that i had to put the additional space aside and file for a new petition which i did and so this additional and i forgot your question because i want to on file that she would review those and she did mention but there's no picture and here it does not i mean from just scanning it i can't i don't see it no  she mentioned it in the key fifty to sixty four and on page seven she mentions you know looking at you know question where do you store your emergency preparedness kit now now all that stuff is actually and storage ok so that's really concerning for  me as a long term tenant and not being able to have excess access to a place that she used to use i mean we don't have any hard evidence in terms of photos here but i'd like to see that one percent increase to three percent working on ten issues in san francisco i get a little confused sometimes so i just want to ask staff when we institute a temporary grant decrease because of the loss of space or services how does the rent get to go back up for example in san francisco the landlord actually has to to allege compliance but doesn't need to get the rent boy there to certify it and then they send a letter to the tenant with a red increase it is the rent increased still you know it's not frozen so in other words this could be fully implemented could be but has it been like i don't know  subject of the compliance decision that was the reason that this petition was held but this isn't dealt with several other issues that were not a part of the appeal the what mr garner is asking from from the board i assume seventy nine it's a very thorough discussion of the i remember the previous case and and so the previous case dealt with a temporary reduction this one is dealing with this is this is granting a permanent reduction of one percent at any increase well you'd have to discuss that what i was really asking is for the things that the landlord fixed has the red gone back up that it very well should have from the hundred ninety one forty seven right and she is and i sent her an e mail saying that's what she needs to pay because if i've done the temporary reduction and she continues to pay the old part and so i called i called mr sieg in the other match the other matter i asked him if you know she should be because i did the temporary directions that she should be paying it's new about it and he i believe he told me that no because that the decision was on appeal in the interim a compliance decision has been issued so the compliance decision basically dealt with some of the outstanding items yet to be repaired from the decision miss garner is is has alleged that that hearing conversation has revealed that perhaps the owner is confused about what rank she can be charging now and i trust that although that is not at issue in this appeal the staff will follow up with her to make certain that she knows what's going on yeah so if we up hold legal status recommendation and settle this appeal tonight or we change it or what it whatever will the tenant have to pay back rent for whatever the differences now back to when the compliance decision was well i mean it depends on what's been charged but the rant should be as of  march it should be yes i need as of march for the version should be eight hundred ninety one dollars and forty seven cents so so so say she's been paying ten dollars less a month i mean i'm just making this up right now just for the ease of matter she had overpaid in february and i'm sorry i guess well how much is being paid right now eighty one so the thing is that has to do with the minus the ten dollars that i was a for know this is actually so here's my question ok let's take numbers out we're not talking about so a landlord has a compliance decision has a decision where he or she has to fix something and gets a compliance decision and that says yes you have fixed everything and the rent can go back up to whatever it was before to ever now we're in the middle this appeal here so say we did in this case we decide that yes we don't mess with the compliance aspect of the appeal at all and it's really not in the plans part is before us anyway that said my question is this now is the tenant liable to pay whatever the so in the footnote i note the legal stuff actually disagrees with the hearing the salmon is determination that any red sealing protection for the loss of cabinet space  just wanted to note that it's odd that it's not pop part of it's not addressed as part of the legal status recommendation i'm sorry what you mean by that it says why but ok i mean we decide one way or the other all the time for and that's kind of the point of appeals and recommendations like someone someone loses in a way that said so for the two folks in front of us for the property owner in terms of service dogs there's lots and lots of records out there to show that a service dog is a service dog and i think that's it's not part of the yes i know i'm trying to get through that quickly secondly i think the issue that we just talked about about on our action items about changing changes in space or services it's amendment to regulation twelve sixty nine about the dishwasher about it seems to me it is it c be seen as a negative act to remove a service like a dishwasher and it's definite loss of services because it's a preexisting surface feature of the unit and clearly it's been there for a while i don't remember if there's anything in here about how long but i would suggest that trying to remove it is not in the best interests of the moving forward in a positive way with the tenet also it's only be once a week i can't imagine that has anything to do seems that if there is this issue i mean i'm talking about all this content sation it seems that while the dishwasher probably isn't the problem opening maybe if there's weather is permitting opening the window much close can get we need after people testify a time to ask them questions and those questions may affect how the discussion goes so immediately after testimony there should questions and stead of all these statements that we wanted right into the discussion because then by the time we get around to clarifying something that may affect the discussion it's already the discussion is already that was already in motion on the vote on the floor so it's i again suggest to the chair that after testimony we ask questions of staff and the apple and the respondent before we start making arguments because that's the way i've always seen every court proceeding work that i know so you get you clarified and then you discuss and the clarification usually edifies the discussion ok that said i'm very happy to y so here's a question what's wrong with a dishwasher did you really object to it i would ok it's not clear in the discussion it's mentioned that the dishwasher was objected to but i don't understand why it became an issue or anything i could use of it but it's not part of this appeal it's not an element so you know why it was because it was whether or not it came up as part of just  crime on the shelves issue that we authorized would authorize you to fix it i'm not sure what you want us what are you asking for i need the space i mean i can't store stuff it's not sanitary i mean the owner complains about sanitation and she's mentioned it in the hearing so she's still filled excuse me as she told you that you can't do something to fix it that some trying to understand the obstacle i'm under the impression that i'm not supposed to make alterations to the building without permission and and that would be i because that's not you know if i were to have someone do something to the cabinet thirteen that's some of the problem with the january and february write the  so yes so the december three day notice had nothing to do with you that was right from the previous landlord acting without his  just for clarification because we've gone back and forth several times the changes in construction were done under the property owner so as the acquired the property and you know of course they did everything they needed to do to make you know ok so that we wouldn't have these problems you know part of that let's not so it was in the decision was not issued until after until after they had already taken ownership so anything that had to do with the bates ok it doesn't matter page eight the hearing examiners cision should be affirmed however at three perhaps three percent permit reduction due to loss of cabinets this means it's a compromise everyone's a winner because sondra took away the stove fan complaint tonight the grit and grime would be taken away and the kitchen cabinet space if you look at pa seven there is no counter evidence other than cassandra's claim she's claiming thirty seven percent of the cabinet space but the record says it's unclear whether the cockle ations are correct and i would assume that she's honest about so there's no competing evidence to what she's claiming and so i think three percent is reasonable and if it's a compromise there's just three percent i'm throwing it out right and you end and it's a percentage of a percentage so if you take one hundred percent and the kitchen is worth a certain percentage of that hundred percent in the cabinets are worth are certain percentage of that hundred percent so taking three percent would be a very large portion of the actual kitchen itself it would make it almost like a stove or something you know something that's a lot more important it would be it would be inconsistent i guess with the pass run or decisions on you by understand that ok so one of my issues is that she doesn't have an emergency kid anymore and she used to store other things there and i'm just concerned that nobody cares about what her situation is in terms of storing emergency equipment i mean it's in storage now that's why i asked that question and it's really compelling to me that she does now does not have the inner space because of the situation if we want to reduce it lower than three percent i'm open to that let me ask a question if we affirm the hearing exam there's a decision as is recommended does that mean she does not get that one percent permanently you know she does can i also mention one point five to five that's correct and i also mention that there is there is currently space kitchen cabinet space it's sort of laying fallow because it's just waiting for somebody to to clean that that out and then that can be used as well so there's what you see in the pictures is very usable space it's just not being used so there is a great portion of that small kitchen that is has gone on use because miss garner refuses to use it i've heard her say that and she refuses use her all in that case i'd prefer to keep the recommendation clean as it is and not mess with it because it sounds like there is opportunity now who's in a public space it's clear that there's this opportunity to go forward and clean these other shelves i would have to hire someone to do that ok that's ok i have i have a question before i make a decision about the women and even though i can't together right but it would be three percent on top of whatever it is already one percent for the cutting board but i believe that there's also a reduction for the cabin space in there the permanent reduction is for the loss of cabinet space and that's ten dollars per month that's the permanent reduction is that the one percent that's referred to here on page six as a loss of cutting board you know that was a prior award a nice temporary but there's also a one percent reduction for loss  doesn't matter because just to reject but we can do substitute if she's interested but actually are inclined to to for the same reasons that jesse said  e never felt totally comfortable with the very complex system that hearing examiners used to determine the dollar value of award but i also have never really spent a lot of time trying to understand it and i think that the board being consistent in the amounts that it awards over time is really important and that they're hearing officers complex system you know upholds that and i think that if we have a problem with how little there are wording in specific cases that appear before us that we should address the underlying issue of whether or not we're warding enough across the board through this crazy math system but we shouldn't go tampering with the math system every time something comes in front of us it just says that all those other decisions might be good too and i mean i'm not the hearing examiner and they have a really complex system that they think is fair that they've used for a long time and so it's m something like this should be professionally done and she should have to do it anyway and i think that i'd like to see that done at no expense  planet orange to come in and inspect and and determine that it was not a part of the cockroach remediation this is likely the result of tact paper being removed and that's the grit and grime right so i mean it  you know the board certainly could do that but i would i would prefer if there was some evidence referred to that provided for that  stand tell me yes webster yes stevens yes motion carries i want to thank both of you for coming in the decision will be in the mail and i just i want to say you have a new landlord and maybe you should look at this is an opportunity both of you to get in and figure out how to make your living space livable and i say that there's there's no reason it's been said that filing multiple evidence and make our decisions that i think should be discussed because of equity issues that concern me i guess i want to bring it up now but i want to know the proper time at which we can discuss things like this decision that we this sort of thing to subpoena understand the general area that a tenant cannot have a decision made in of he'll by the tenant to come out to further detrimental i'm also interested in also the issue of when we say that these responsibilities run with the property so that when a landlord owes money to a tenant the and the property changes hands that in many ways runs with the property and the rent reduction is still is required from the new landlord to pay for it i understand the reasons for that but we don't do it the other way that is to say when there is a debt remaining from the tenant to the landlord and the changes and we don't even consider the possibility that the new and don't you automatically get that i think these a new landlord not at the time it was still a demand right no but for instance in this matter there's there's some complicated back and forth over the nonpayment of the december of the december rent that left three hundred dollars and sort of a vacuum where the old landlord had it it's not wasn't clear to me in reading this that the new landlord shouldn't we shouldn't consider the possibility if it's within our powers that the new landlord may have a claim on that amount of money i just want to discuss it ok i'm not trying to discuss it now i can see that it can be complicated that's why i didn't bring it up during here ok so would you prefer that those normally things that have to do with hearing procedures would probably go to irene anything like that so your request that we a decision will be in the mail and we're going to take a five minute break at this point ok we're back in session personnel committee but we didn't we didn't vote no we were generally favorable but we didn't take about housing ordinance this is for me it's actually also from the four by four and very specifically from the council member just five way of introduction i think we'll just talk about what happened at council also the memo that i wrote on behalf of all of us outlining very detailed amendments to the ordinance that they were considering what happened at that meeting is that from my perspective the last six years of work sort of went out the window and they went from the enforcement mechanism of private right of action to instead ask for the enforcement mechanism to be similar to what we have for the barking dog ordinance which would be involve inspectors and citations so that's just a brief introduction to to what happened that jesse talk about anything else related to that is to give you background we did have a four by four committee meeting and at that at that committee meeting council member again presented what he thinks should be the next step in the discussion along the lines of what tobacco free housing will look like and i'm recommending that we endorse did not adopts the proposed ordinance the main concern that several council members raise was the enforcement of the ordinance that was proposed by staff as a priority of action was not an effective or appropriate way of enforcing a no smoking ordinance there was a concern that private action would require that you know neighbors have to spend you know time and resources filing complaints in small claims court that it wouldn't be effective there was a general view that city enforcement would be a more effective way of of enforcing a ban on smoking in multi family housing what was the best approach to for the city to enforce a ban was also something that was discussed there was open discussion about declaring smoking in multi family housing a nuisance which as the board knowns could be automatic grounds for the fiction of the just cause provisions of the red ordinance which you know very seriously concern me ultimately what the council had directed staff to come back with is ordinance based on the the parking dog ordinance which would despite what the council said still require that neighbors have to file complaints there was this dogs ordinance would still require that neighbors have to file complaints with the city think they would have to be to complaints that would but would have to be made in order for the city to follow up and ultimately i believe that fines could be issued by the city for violation of the ordinance so it still would be very time intensive and still could promote neighbor to neighbor conflict and i'm particularly concerned about you know whether this particular approach could still be used as a vehicle for tenants to be evicted from their units who don't have no smoking provisions in their leases so you know most units in berkeley have no smoking classes the people that most likely probably don't have those clauses are long term tenants who have lived in units before they can see decontrol and in my pinion i think that  i'm just concerned about disparate treatment of tenants versus homeowners and creating incentives for long term tenants to be evicted by using this ordinance as a pretense so i voted against the motion that the council had adopted because i was concerned about not only the how what they're proposing would affect tenants and their ability to stay in their homes but i also think there are better approaches such as the ordinance that this board in the i think we have an opportunity to change the direction and to bring it back to a place where we have a strong way of having a strong ordinance that isn't forcible that would prohibit smoking in apartments and condos but  same time would not create incentives to their thoughts long term tenants so with that in mind i had written a proposal which i presented to the four by four committee and for the most part the committee was very favorable to what i written and in fact they asked that you know i speak with the director of the health housing community services department to to go over some of these issues and make sure that they're going to be in the ordinances staff will be bringing forward so even though we talked about you know the barking dog model there was a discussion about fines you know and many of the other things that the rent board and the health commission staff it spent many years to to develop in terms of i think it's very important that we not only create a ordinance that doesn't you know promote disparate treatment of tenants and homeowners and that has a strong force of mechanism but at the same time also has many other good ideas that the commissions in the staff that spent so many years to develop so so what i'm suggesting is that we the council adopt an ordinance that includes  and all new leases signed after may first two thousand and fourteen language expressly prohibiting smoking in units or in common areas which is consistent with the stuff ordinance that all initial leases are run agreements also notify tenant the failure to provide either of these lease provisions would allow the tenant to break the lease without penalty which is similar to the language that was in the staff ordinance that we would encourage and get tenants assign voluntary lesa in the letter from the report that the report has expressed an interest in creating a registry one of the things that we need to make sure is in the ordinance is a requirement that the landlords provide the information to the rent board you know those  subject to rent control of those units and aren't subject to reconcile so that the registry will be effective and the board will have the information to be able to keep track of which units have you know no smoking provisions in their leases so that's one policy that we need to adopt in order to work with the report to make the registry happen and requiring signage and that we allocate staff resources to enforce this ordinance and that we have progressively increasing fines based on the the number of violations that of the ordinance that happened and we had mandatory mediation which was one thing that the report had recommended which i think i very important to try to address some of these issues i think in the most part some of these issues are most likely get addressed without you know going to the city if there is mediation involved prior to filing a complaint with you know another thing that i'm suggesting is that we and this is i think described on the last page or by a memo to the four before committee that we make sure we have adequate staff and funding i think we should explore potentially  using the rental housing safety program as a way to enforce assortments and then another thing which i suggested to the committee that we should consider is this ordinance would ban smoking in multi family housing condos and apartments but it would not affect single family homes if you have a child somebody in the under the age of eighteen a senior citizen or you're renting rooms in a house you could smoke and that person could be exposed to secondhand smoke and that does create a health impact as this ordinance clearly states there is a health impact from secondhand smoke especially on on children and just as there is a state policy which prohibits smoking in cars where children are in the should be a policy in which smoking in houses single family homes where children occupy that should be prohibited to because  of the significant health and long term health impacts to children i'm not suggesting that that be necessarily incorporated in this version of the ordinance i think we should move ahead with the policy so that we don't become the you know the fiftieth city in the state of california to adopt a smoking ban in the creek i will know most recently adopted a smoking ban but i do think these are issues that should be explored in the future to make sure that you know if our concern really is public health and protecting people from secondhand smoke we should have the strongest and broad as policy possible so what i'm asking the council to do is take a step back and let's let's ensure that all the all the good work that's been developed you know you know and all the great policies in terms of requiring lisa denims requiring notification be in an ordinance in addition to an ordinance that would be enforced by the city but be based on fines not by addictions and i think that could be a really effective model and can make berkeley one of the one of the strong as smoke free multifamily housing ordnances in the state of california so so you know i'll be happy to answer any questions a board has but that in summary is what i'm proposing jesse and then judy and  ordinance i'm still an easy and i mention this at the four by four of the use of the barking dog model because it is and you mention this in your memo there is no actual proof required for someone can get victim unlike any other way of violating a lease as far as i know looking at matt brown right  k probably anyway all it takes is two different numbers complaining and then you are fined and then you're in violation release so there might be a little more process to it but we don't know and unlike the park and dog situation the effects of smoking linger and that's the whole health issue is that it does linger so if we are serious about this and want to be equitable about it the city should pony up the funds to send out an inspector sniff the air look at the ceiling oh look it's yellow yes those fines would be levied against this smoker correct ok just to be very clear about it ok the other question i have  it well basically what the council wanted to see happen is that landlords through the provisions of leases will be the ones to enforce a smoking ban that the city would not be investing staff resources to enforce this policy so would be putting the burden on property owners to you know notify tenants tenants if they're in violation of their leases which they could do anyways under the the previous version the ordinance that this board had endorsed but nonetheless if this is a city policy and this is a priority for the city government we should be the ones we should be also enforcing this policy and not putting the burden soley on property owners so if i hear correctly their message is that the property owner would also be working with their tenets who complain about so and so and so and so next door's and so forth yeah i right i mean there are sort of two different enforcement paths that have been discussed one is if your lease says that you can't smoke then if a tenant notifies the landlord or i guess that the landlord is becomes aware on their own initiative that a tenant is smoking in contrary to what the lease says then they would have a responsibility to tell the tenant you hey you're smoking you're not allowed to do that and i believe one of the things that  the council had talked about was some sort of initial warning that would be required to be provided to other by the city or i would assume although it was an explicitly clear by the property owner to the tenant before any  citations or any of the corrective action was taken but yeah i mean once the landlord was on notice that there was a violation then it would be up to them to decide how to how to how to deal with it well i would be supportive of that and i think we need to look at a process of a warning a process from landlord to ten and this is your first warning it's come to my attention a second one year and then that process be clearly outlined if we even need to develop a form or something so then it's on record with the rent boy then that would be part of the database so that way we can enforce it more objective with the violator who smoking because otherwise you know it's just one word against the other commission i think it's an excellent suggestion and something i'd certainly be willing to suggest the city council and if i may evidence would really be necessary for it to rise the level of the city issuing citations if it's just two complaints if i don't like my neighbor for example you know i can get my myself and another neighbor to complain whether or not that's true or not then the person would be on path to either be evicted or to be fined and is that really the best way of enforcing this so i think we need to think more carefully about how what evidence would be required how  enforcement would happen but moreover mediation warnings education all those things are things that could help address the issue more effectively thank you the questions are it used to be when we were working on this for six years that you had to be a tenant in order to file a complaint is that still the way it's going to be where is it stand now do you question that's why i think that's part of my technically my rhetorical question the we had also been very concerned though i don't sense private action seems to wandered away not that it was that good to begin with the question of repeated citations we had suggested that you can only have three actions against a potential accused smoker a year in order to keep the maximum fine to three thousand dollars if i remember your kind of not even looking into the distance it sometime something similar we suggested that they limit the amount in when that recommendation went to council last may council was generally sympathetic they modified the specifics of it they were suggesting that one party could only bring there is some limitation that's reasonable on how much somebody can what the  council had asked to come back with in may was i think a limit on how much the individual tenant who smoking would be liable for to fifteen hundred dollars fine however but it's not clear whether still basically what the staff recommendation was would create a tort between an individual and another individual and so if i sue that individual we could limit the individual damages that that one individual could seek from the other individual but i don't know if we can limit the total damages at all individual people that's not what i meant my concern maybe maybe so but my concern was that the same two people involved with a smoker to complain or could complain or could because people would complain who would who the council doesn't want to offend so the council's not going to do it that's why but i think i'd like to sum it up in this way that the council believes them that a man's home is his castle so long as his name is on the deed thank you didn't get the opportunity to turn to you and say and that would you politically correct me to ruin their point completely voted the majority to direct the staff to come back with this horrible thing that they're doing what are they doing i mean under what circumstances are they ignoring not just our independent bodies unanimous but the unanimous opinion of their own appointees all of them on two separate large committees have chimed in on this where where is this at the what is the council's relationship to our input now if we go and we say here's a better thing to do listen to this now why should they listen to us now when they totally ignored everybody before what's going on and well if i may say and this is my personal opinion  i think there was a there was a concern by you know scouts or my own maybe a few other council members that the private of action wasn't the best approach and so let's try to come up with some other approach and i think i personally felt the discussion was very confusing and there was a lack of a lack of understanding a lot of elements of the purpose of the ordinance and this thing just basically got developed on the fly there wasn't really a lot of thought about the implications of it or what what would be a better approach and so this is just sort of what the council sort of settled on at the end of a long discussion and now that that you know now that that's been sent to staff we have an opportunity to reflect upon what the council has recommended and you know i think what i'm suggesting is consistent with what the intent of the council was which is the city should be the one to enforce the ordinance although i'm suggesting a better approach to enforce the ordinance so i think you know what i'm suggesting and he because it follows all of those the along the lines of what the council wanted i think you know it could it could gain support in the council to be a doll you're convinced that are endorsing this will actually help you i think so a couple comments you know i think when i look at the penalty structure i know that's not set in stone but it seems quite high at the fourth the fourth penalty of twenty five hundred that's just a comment i wanted to note that the council's going to hear the second response ordinance revision or referral to the city manager and i want to deceive the council would consider such a thing where under the second response ordinance if you were say a house and you have a big party the neighbor can say oh you know you're allowed you're in violation of the noise ordinance but currently there is no such thing as appealing a warning so what i'd like to see is this ordinance have a possibility to have an appeal on the warning because there are neighbors who don't like each other and fabricate things and i don't want to add a joke that commissioner blake would want to do but i'll keep it to myself single family homes i'm glad that  talked about that at least today because as everyone knows from the last time we talked about this i'd love to go to single family homes renters of single family homes but after due consideration i like to go to homeowners as well  and one last comment has a council through the discussion of the smoking ordinance considered banning tobacco in berkeley i recently had a conversation with someone who used to work in that the back o prevention industry the nonprofit sector and said that she believed this perfectly legal to ban tobacco sales and i didn't get the exact information because it was in conversation in passing but as a counsel consider that yet we have not i think that's that's a good several years ago and the council voted to refer this the planning commission a proposal to limit tobacco sales adjacent to schools and there was a state bill that sort of had suggested that and so i brought that to the city council city council preferred it and it's not on the current planning commission work plan i think given with it given the discussions we're having on this ordinance you know it's something we should definitely you know pursue because we we do not want to be that we don't want our students in our youth to have easy access to tobacco and restricting the locations in the schools but where they can buy tobacco products is one way of addressing  yeah i think that i think i'll certainly keep in mind your comments commissioner on the whether the maximums citation should be twenty five hundred dollars i think given that the council had suggested fifteen hundred dollars that may be an appropriate amount but and i think your idea your other idea was an excellent suggestion that was one of the pillion the warnings yes and can there be a possibility of appealing every single citation thereafter as well as part of the package that would i would assume that's the that i mean we have a similar model with regard to parking citations where you can appeal individual citations so that could be something we know we could suggest i do i think it is different i mean i think the goal is to discourage people from smoking so the city will want people to pay the fine so that there's some it sends a message that they need to comply but certainly something we can consider i think i would imagine that there may be some concern on the part of the city manager about adding additional staff work in forcing this ordinance but that's a decision the council to with thanks for all your work on this just  of a barking dog you need two neighbors to complain correct ok so if you live in a duplex there's one neighbor so therefore duplexes are  highlight this couple of sentences here on the introduction of jesse's memo that in may a council directed staff to provide sufficient notice to residents over years not before they faced liability and that that notice was going to be performed by the city in coordination with information about smoking secession classes which is a conversation that i haven't heard in a long time but i'm actually funding helping addicts quit smoking they have their few classes in berkeley trust me i've been to several but in october at their discussion if that comes to fruition in this stuff language the council shifted the obligation for notifying tenants to the truncated the period they want to implement this they want to pass this and have people getting fined by march so it seems to me that this could actually raise some issues for landlords and some people may know that i am one what if you don't notify your tenant and they're aggrieved by smoking is the landlord then liable somehow what if the tenants complained to the landlord about the smoker and the landlord takes no action is the landlord now somehow liable interesting lee a while back at a berkeley property owners association meeting you know there was a little bit of what's going on in the city talk and one of the speaker said that the city council in the report were spending a lot of time talking about smoking which is silly because everybody knows that nobody smokes in berkeley anymore so i don't know maybe the lemon don't have an issue with this because you know they only have one complaint the year or  but that was because they were just they were kind of making fun of us are wasting our time about smoking so i just thought i'd mention that but i mean i would think that landlords i mean i'm worried except you know i only have one tenant and they don't smoke and i'm worried about them complaining about me but i would quit on thanksgiving so so but i brought up the issue of at the four by four meeting because as we all know that's the reason that i so involved with tenants rights i said you know so what if the smokers the owner who lives in the apartment building right we are saying they said that the these complaints were tantamount to signing a citizen's arrests that was the words the staff used at the four by four and so i said you know so you're asking a tenant to sign a citizen's arrest against his neighbor the landlord for smoking don't you think the tenants might be intimidated and not want to do that i mean we keep hearing stories about how tenants don't even want to come to the board you know so i just thought well you know want to be intimidated about starting a citizen's arrest against their their landlord but the mayor said no if they were disturbed by the smoking enough that of course they would do that but i think this raises a lot of issues about equity because we don't have an anonymous complaint system in berkeley for anything and although that's supposed to cut down on frivolous complaints it really just cuts down the complaints period all the time i'm worried that people are going to play about their landlords i'm worried that landlords aren't going to take action against they pay high rents and are going to take action against tenants of pay low rents i would really like to see some equity back in in this then i also want to say though that banning the sale of cigarettes would mean that there would be absolutely no place that i could ever walk to buy half and half because all of these stores are very very dependent on cigarette sales to be in existence and having independence is a terrible having corner stores is a really important day i mean that's where i meet most of my occupant in a multifamily building what the council is suggesting and it's unclear to me that it's going to come back with actually declaring smoking in multi family buildings a nuisance if they do that brings up it which means that essentially you could lose your housing for being a smoker based on a complaint true or not by your neighbors that it's only true if you're a tenant it's not true if you're an owner occupant landlord it's certainly not true if you own your condo new small so they're actually proposing something that would be discriminatory based on economic status and how  much you were able to own and that that is the underlying thing that really concerns me about the whole discussion i remained agnostic about the enforcement mechanism the reason we went down the road of basically the tenant going up to the tenet is because in large part that's what the city staff thought they could manage they thought that they could administer an ordinance that did that they don't have the resources to  have enforcement so if that's the framework we're working under how do you make that fair now the framework has changed and there is going to be if they go forward with this as they said there will be deep unfairness built into this and that that's what concerns me the most i'm not convinced at all that making a law about this is the best way to achieve what we want in a smoke smoke free up tobacco free community i don't think we need laws for everything to do this there are a lot of people who work on this issue who believe so i mean the thing i wanted to be a fair law and the direction the council laid out is inherently unfair and  example the tenant has a party and thinking of landlords who own property in the university near the universe or sororities fraternities red rooms over the summer how do you deal how is the ordinance going to address those kinds of issues and concerns rightfully so i don't know maybe i mean because my understanding of the ordinance is that it's it's it's a lease could effect the tenant for violating the terms of the lease but with regard to a tenant falling complaint with the city presently i don't think that the ordinance addresses that it was unclear to me from the discussion what would happen here but it also brings up the thing that if you if they're going to use that same model then you're not somebody who visits you smoke they come out and cite you can claim a nuisance units and i know this question came up in the landlord workshop you may recall where i think it was one or two landlords property owners raise the issue of their having the right to weren't stated which would there be something about leases so all we can base it upon is what the language that was in what was presented to council going into their october first meeting that required that tenants are responsible both for themselves as well as any of their guests or whatever for both what happened within the unit as well as what happened in the common areas so was risky but  marijuana and the roommate was and it took several months for them to be able to legally remedy that situation so if in the situation of the new roommate were to smoke in addition to the issues of owners being exempt either in practice or in reality here's the both the same thing i think using the issue of killing parking fines is probably not the best way to go i don't know of anybody who's actually successfully appealed parking fine you did i know one person who has successfully his car was  a street sweeping zone after it had been stolen ok so that's probably would apply here but i think any kind of appeal has to have an actual sense of process that's actually that that has a possibility of an appeal being granted correct i mean i think my understanding is say year the city issues and declare something a public nuisance and issue citations you can appeal those citations to the city and moreover as i said with regard to parking citations you can appeal those there's a hearing examiner who hears the complaint and issues a decision based on the law on the facts of the specific case so there is some precedent for what for what commissioner so to be hill suggesting now how it would be implement in this specific case whether that is in the weather that's the best approach given that we want to ensure compliance and create a disincentive to smoking that's something for us to consider very well versed and very determined were going to make any use of it that it was not a way and it didn't help anyone get out either but nonetheless we all went forward in good faith that they were approached given to us anything but no we don't want any of this possible solutions that don't cost so i don't know i mean that's why i think you get people voting for something and then telling you what the four by four committee yes with those are good points and  we want you to follow through on them and we support you when they clearly voted against them in their actual capacity as are so this dynamic between the city managers my understanding of the discussion on a topic first was that implicit in the motion the council of adopted staff is going to be coming back with some information on what will be the implications in terms of costs and staffing in terms of it sounds like implementing this particular approach and it's not presently reflected in the current budget and so the council need to make some resource allocation decisions in terms of that they want to do this how will it happen you know that's why i call the they're really just it is just getting us to the terms that they want to look at this at that we are we going to see it again in the to make committee is the health commission still going to be involved is hack still going to be involved i mean it's all it's all starting from scratch and it's like we've wasted these past six years it's just very frustrating i'm sure for you as well as it is for those of us who are actively involved also with the changes that were suggested by board members and there's a resistor discussion there's urgency now i'm just advisory there's urgency that we do this tonight and we don't know when it's coming back so the sooner the board can make a decision that i'm going to suggest for now that we endorse this i mean it's a kind of situation and i normally would want to send it to a committee and discuss it that we send it to a committee hopefully when i long since i was chair of the committee that we didn't get rid of no no  that outlines the other things that people brought up here to you know and forward to council saying we're endorsing we also say in this that if the council is going to blow up the entire model they've been working with and having us work with for six years so september tenth the council or the city council had an information item given to them by the city manager of the century outlined in this memo under a staff analysis and hope everyone had a chance to check out this brief three page document then two days later the house going to recommission pass something that looked almost exact to this memo in front of you as a result there's a couple typos on the recommendation one hack should be read stabilization board and that the board requests etc that along with the first paragraph september tenth two thousand and thirteen twelve and the reason why i was going to pull this because of time there's a lot of other things on the agenda but since the hack already weighed on this and i know that you know the rules require the city staff if it's communication from a commission to send it within this certain time period i want this to go along with the hack recommendation of counsel so you know i think this is very important the only difference i think from what we talked about last time was where's the money going to come from and the same issue with the smoke free multi unit ordinance everyone's looking for the rental housing safety program that goes along with the cash system that we're talking about and subcommittee and also with the mold and mildew and force mint and i think we need to examine that very shortly before the end of the year and so i would hope that we approve this memo so here's the thing a while ago i came across this e mail that was actually sent to the rent board and somebody for it to me and i was like hey but i'm on the rent board i never got this email and so i said well i wonder what happens when you go to the rent board pay web page and so i went to the red page and i realized that the e mail address on the you know meet the board how to contact the commissioners you know it's as if you want to write what i like to call snail mail you would address it to the commissioners of the rent board at the white board all but the e mail is actually just in for what rent it's the same e mail that's everywhere on the website and so anytime somebody wants to write to the commissioners they just send an e mail and unless it says right if it says at the top as this one did your rent board there's no real way for stuff to know if they were talking about the agency that everyone calls the rent or the people that they call the rent board and so it seemed like we should probably just have a separate e mail address for correspondence that's intended for commissioners and then i started to think about how if we had that it could actually make things easier for staff because we could just have that automatically forward to all the commissioners i mean obviously we don't want staff to be in the loop too because a lot of things that people  about could probably be solved by stuff long before we you know have another board meeting so i'm not saying anything about you know cutting stuff out of the loop or anything like that i'm just saying we should probably separate e mail address so that nothing is confusing and so that staff doesn't have to figure out which emails were intended for the board and which were the public and figure that out by using that e mail address and your recommendation is to send it to my recommendation is if you guys think it needs to be discussed a lot perhaps we could send it to outreach but it seems to me that we could just do it such an you know we can leave it to stuff to figure out if they want to forward it to us you know mechanically or automatically or you know maybe the automatic forward okama later because that's a little more intensive than creating an email address you know we could leave that to staff if we don't want to talk about that at the committee level but what i think would be great is if we could just change that e mail address right away and so the actual you know motion that i would be making if i was making a motion would be change it on the website and anywhere else  presumably this particular piece of correspondence that we didn't see that was intended for us was an anomaly and a mistake i understand what you're saying but this is a little bit like commissioner hans argument about it's only once a year or so why we bother with it i'm trying to think on a policy basis we should carry out this idea and my idea is i do not want to see every email the first case of every them come in so i'd like them consolidated once a month so i can just go over those all the board ones i'll just read them all at once w and every day i mean i don't know how many we get every day i have a more fundamental concern about whether we the ideal partner will even do this for us because they have refused since i have been on this board i thought it would solve a lot of problems and this could be solved if each of us had a city email as other elected officials have but because real yes but because somebody over there has decided that because even though we were elected it says commissioner that we are not entitled to a city email address i haven't raised this because it isn't a big deal people know how to get ahold of me if they want to and i don't know what happened with this particular one we did get to it is in our packet as a separate communication but figure out what information we need to make it happen you can answer that i do work with ideas department all the time so go ahead but that is that we don't even need the i t department all we need do is have someone who has city staff who a user of info rent board and consolidate in an e mail and shoot it to us once a week understanding the problem is that what cathy wants to do is separate out communications to commissioners from that  info you can do that it just takes time from a staffer so you want to know what address i want the public who is trying to communicate to us to have the choice of who they're talking to they talking to the board as an agency or the board as elected i don't think that's tough for them to do either and yes it does involve them it's a simple email address and what that what i'm but what i was trying to say is that in the past they've refused to set up email addresses for us and so the first mention the part about it's not being allowed to have emails in my report even though that i know so the motion on the floor is to pass this but not and kathy did not want to accept that is what it was once a month or when it was different for each commissioner i absolutely did not want to accept it but once a week sounds like a good compromise what i'm wondering about is that i thought this was actually a really good way to save staff time because once also hold on so i've got the floor if we're talking about and if we're talking about compiling them once a week then we're going back to it actually being something staff has to do although presumably right now they have to actually figure out which emails are intended for us and send t recommendation back to the board what would they prefer to follow up to our last discussion about making decisions to put the diocese rather than considering them when their possible implications i think it's analogous years or so so my motions on the floor but it depends upon how you want to do it in the past the department has not allowed audit what they would call forwarding you could certainly i assume you could certainly name  just reno right now it's rent at info at rent and it goes to one general mailbox in a staff person looks at that several times a day and exercises discretion about whether it's something that goes to an individual board member the full board or whether it's a staff issue if what you're what you want to do that's why i want to have this discussion at the committee but let's have it if what you want to do is just set up something that says commissioner at basically what your department will allow something like that but it's really the same process it'll go to a staff person who review it that's fine maybe it's clear to the public let me just say the board has weighed in on this in the past and because of problems of and decided in the past number of years ago that they didn't want to receive that they didn't want a filter that's why the mail goes to us that's why the other things go to us because the party that's going to be for you with the hearing you might or might not be allowed to see you might be forced to recuse yourself so that's why i'm saying their number of implications with any of the decisions that you make i think we should have that discussion about what the pros and the cons are so that you can make a conscious decision ok i have there's also brown a addressed therefore i strongly support this and if there are problems with implementation it will come back to the board and we'll find out what what the problem is and then if there are problems then we can forward it to whatever email what are we all agreeing amongst ourselves do we respond individually when we get an email from a constituent i mean there will be kind of rules of procedure that we may want to agree upon before we just say ls have an address i mean that's just one thing that came to mind there may be others it's like i think it might be worth having more time to talk about how we implemented because tonight we were talking about justice just decided for the opposite purpose that the council overthrew six years of careful work because on a whim they didn't want to buy a thing about of they just wanted to get it done and they just did something without considering the ramifications and then our chairs complained and i complained but suppressed because the motion was sort of namby pamby i thought about the mold thing going through when it never still made it to committee when we tried so hard to have it said to committee so we can go through a normal process this does not strike me as an emergency situation in which we must get those crucial emails this week right away staff has raised some very obvious issues some of which concern me like the brown active issues and out of thin air pam came up with another issue which is i could sure we could all come up with difficult issues of how this may raise problems i just do not see the urgency that requires us to go around for the procedure this to committee possibly outreach so that we can definitively outreach so that we can discuss some of the issues that have already come up and discussion and tease out any others to pass on one final thought there before we vote which is we have a lot of training as commissioners and i think that we are constantly reminded about things like the brown act concern and also all of us got elected for a reason that which is that we're all very active in various communities in berkeley and i cannot imagine that other people's experiences are different from my own and that you have people on a weekly basis maybe even a daily basis depending on how often you leave your house talk to you about your role on the right board and sometimes about their own concerns sometimes or just curious and  think that we're cognizant of things like the brown act if somebody starts to talk to me about their particular case i say well have you contacted the rent board and they say yes and i said well you know are you going to i'm going to be you know fil and you know some kind of paperwork on that oh i already did well you know i really can't talk to you about that because i might hear the appeal some day and i would have to recuse myself if i talked to you you know if you you know i would advise that you go talk to if you need top somebody other than the rent board maybe you know you could try these be a community law center because i shouldn't talk to you about that i mean i think we're all pretty well trained on how to avoid the brownouts and i don't think that stop is going to come hold my hand while i go shop at the farmer's market to make sure that i don't violate the brown act i'm a girl the difference camp is that you are speaking to an individual directly one on one i'm concerned about that one person sending an email that all nine of us read and that there might possibly five of us respond to it not knowing where as you have control over the one conversation you have but you don't know that all the rest of us are not hearing the same in that same conversation that's why you always counsel often times when appellant or respondent will send an email the exact same e mail to all council members or schedule meeting with those council members with the council members would do then is fill out a form if they're doing its part by law the next part a communication from that's so i think that concern is nipped right there but you know i think we may need to have a guideline on how to deal with communications and it might be appropriate to send back to committee but since i made the second i'm a stick by that i want to say that i think that's that would be a really good thing for us to discuss the committee about developing a form so that that would take care of all the concerns you know we'd see what the city staff on the i t department didn't want to give us each individual e mails so if it does go back to committee i would love to get that answer because i don't know that answer i can go back in the minutes or whatever and find that out but i find that troublesome given that we are elected officials i understand the other committees or commissions that get appointed or boards i get that i can answer that kind of an answer there's two reasons one they we can board has at the the in the past with the board has requested is use rent info so they all go to one place and we dispersed we could put your current e mail address we could all set up something and some commissions have done so at the mail so it's all in the whatever address what the city has said they won't do is is two things one  give commissioners a city account and to have a direct forwarding those two commission it goes into commissioner and then forwards to other places so if it goes to it's it'll take to it as a board issue wouldn't that be a public record so would we want any communications to me as a board commission to be a public record and that's why i think it's important that that's why he that's why in the past the board has set it up so it goes to rent at the so it goes to one place for that reason so that so that but i think kathy's point is that it's not getting to us in one case it didn't get you apparently but we know what i can tell you is  staff reviews them every day so again all i'm saying is that decisions were made by the board in the past you might want to make a conscious change rather than based upon not receiving possibly not or not receiving one e mail that we maybe got maybe we didn't get so that wasn't your question why can't we have city of berkeley e mail address and that's you know i don't necessarily want one but i all right the next thing and maybe we can do this really quickly are the waivers documents from kaiser so she did actually put in over here it's on the astrakhan her waiver so she did submit the asterisk she submitted documentation and of course we don't want that to be public ok it would just it would be helpful if they put that into the staff analysis because all i saw in the staff analysis was documentation of her travel and i didn't see the asterisk you know just just for the sake of having things be clear and we don't have to think about report so what i had told other people is if there is something that i missed we will have another opportunity to communicate to the council when we get the actual ordinance back i don't nineteenth there possibly going to have it have it as a discussion item prior to that but as far as the actual ordinance was november one thousand and one other question did anyone on the board or on staff that's present go to the second public hearing on cal campus i did how was it was well attended thirteen people i think  yes there you go right the next one is also that the housing advisory commission's recommendations consider substory which is pretty much self explanatory i just wanted to make a comment thank all my  colleagues on the housing advisory commission for this unanimous decision particular the only thing that was new is from the last meeting is that it was before the housing advisory commission yes and the thing with the recommendation is from my perspective they did a number of things but they supported the june fourth model which is the one that we had worked on as the june fourth ordinance as the model for any upcoming one rather than anything subsequent to that and i specifically wanted that if we're going to tear colleagues at the housing buys a commission for unanimous decision yeah yeah it was actually a very very good discussion and it worked very hard it was an incredibly pot i have a question about the us agenda are we still having a closed session oh my god what you say are we still having a closed session yeah can we we go now basically all right at this point we will move into sorry i got to read it  all right we're going to close section pursuant to government code five four nine five seven which is employment contract negotiations for the executive director