and growing through the cracks in the mud holes when it rains i think you know it would be considered something that needs to be done so i wanted to put in the good word for killer especially the black  grizzly peak and moran marc good afternoon my name is isabel gaston and i live at five four eight wildcat canyon i have been working closely with and with susan to bring their attention to the state of canyon primarily for the sake of the cyclists on the road as most of you know it's a very very busy road for cyclists and we really appreciate the time that susan placing wildcat as a priority for having paved in the next year thank you thank you thank you very much have a presentation for you tonight and then we have time for some questions afterward i just want to also emphasize that this is a work session around the process and the process that will be using going forward and we will be coming back to you on november nineteenth today we have with us today i'll introduce the rest of the commissions that work together on this later on but here in the audience we have the public works commission vice chair is margo also have a long standing member  thank you so measure thirty million dollars that by itself says a lot it's not nearly enough to handle all of our problems but certainly want to thank the  voters for approving measure and expressing the trust in us that we're going to do something good with it three points that i want to hopefully make right now in austin during the rest of the presentation is that first we've entered into what i believe is a very positive community engagement process in collaboration with the public works commission secondly we will excel array the paving plan and improve the overall condition of city streets while incorporating green infrastructure and we will begin construction in the spring of next year that's our plan so background a little bit quick summary of how we how we got here council work session in november of two thousand and eleven where public works presented some information about the payment management program and the  auditor presented a very excellent report on failing street's time to change direction and we want to thank the auditor and her staff for that work was very helpful and then in november of two thousand and twelve the voters of berkeley approved the thirty million dollars bond measure by vote of seventy three percent we came back here in march march nineteenth and with the public works commission and talked about how we're going to work on a process to figure out how we're going to spend the money and how we're going to accelerate the five year plan and incorporate the green infrastructure with our goal of increasing annually the spending on the street program by between five and six million dollars for about five to six years program development going to focus on three elements to achieve our goal the first was the collaborative community gaijin process the development of the new five year street plan to incorporate some of the community comments and the  measure dollars and to work to realign our project delivery system so that we can deliver the additional projects that we're saying we will we went through extensive community engagement or public participation process a collaborative effort led by the public works commission and from our perspective in the report the primary outcome was a scorecard evaluation criteria they also had a number of other outcomes and recommendations and  just a little while we'll go through and explain that participation process and what the outcomes were the program implementation what we're looking to do is what we always try to do is to prioritize the projects and in this case as part of that privatization incorporate the scorecard criteria we want to begin construction and incorporate green infrastructure in the spring of two thousand and fourteen the first phase of our construction evaluate the street improvements that we construct over the spring in the summer so that we come back again in the fall as we do with the rolling five y plan and bring that updated plan to you more fully informed by what we've put in the ground and what kind of success we had the process to prioritize the projects the tools were using is still the pavement management system which uses the street saver program which is the first thing that we run and what that does is takes into consideration the condition of the streets and so which ones would make the most sense to put some money into and what type of treatment method you should use with the goal of increasing the pavement in condition index to the maximum amount citywide then what we do is take that list and we run through the street repair policy which includes looking at  other programs utility coordination and a lot of other issues like that and we can talk in some more detail but that's the very similar to the policy that was adopted which gets revised often and we bring the street plan back  november and what we've added is the scorecard evaluation criteria which again i will talk about a little bit more detail when ray goes through the process to finalize the five year street plan i think what i want to make sure i don't lose everybody on this part of it here is two plus three equals five and i make that point because the first one fiscal y fourteen and fifteen what we intend to bring to the commission on thursday and then for council consideration of ever nineteenth is the first two years of the plan to be fully populated with a list of specific streets and what we're looking at is from the current plan we have about ten miles of streets that we're going to pave reconstruct or apply surface treatments to and we're looking to keep every street that's in the current first two years and then a whole lot more and some green infrastructure and that would be up to about it's looking like maybe twenty four miles streets that we would do some work on in the first two years of the plan and then what we want to do is have a chance to put that in the ground in that first year we have some green infrastructure elements we have a cistern that we think we can put in we want to do work in some different parts of the city and try some different treatment methods and what we can learn from that over the spring in the summer we then can apply and have a much more informed plan that we bring back to council in the fall when i say informed for the outlying years the three years sixteen seventeen eighteen and in that will have been the list of specific streets out for a full five years we plan to present on the one thousand like a says the first two years with a list of their e specific is exactly what we plan to do in the outlying years categories of overlay surface treatments reconstructions and green infrastructure for the primary reason one we want to learn from what we put in the ground next year so we can be better informed we don't know exactly what some of these methods are going to cost us and we don't want to populate a plan out in the years say seventeen and eighteen with a lot of streets that people see that are going to be paid because we have this long list and then we realize well we're going to blag green infrastructure or do some more reconstructs here that's going to cost some money and that's going to pull some streets off the paving plan and so we don't want to have that problem where somebody sees their street there and then we pull it off so we will be working closely with the commission starting probably in the spring  and have a lot more time to put together the plan for the five year rather than try to make all that happen between now and november nineteenth so how do we get there we're here today to talk about progress  the process on this thursday that the public works commission will have the five year the two plus three plan commission subcommittee has seen what we have for the whole five years with the pave it magic system run we working with them on that and on november nineteenth coming back here for council consideration of that plan and bond sale approval the project schedule is we're looking to begin construction  st improvements in the spring of two thousand and fourteen the design work for a large portion of our r paving program has been underway and then we'll continue to do the design work for the green infrastructure in the street reconstruction we're looking at moving from say ten dollars twenty four miles of streets in those first two years in fiscal year fourteen will be incorporating about two and a half million dollars of measure funding and in years out from there we're looking at five to six million dollars each year and now i'd like to turn it over to read and he can talk about the public participation process and describe in some more detail what is different about how we're going about evaluating and prioritizing streets in that third step good evening let me begin and the apologize to larry and on behalf of margo larry and is in the rest of the public works commission pleased to be here to represent the work that we've done we have completed over the last several months i recall being in front of you in march where we presented our ideas for conducting a public participation participation process and i believe the words of wisdom that you had for us at that time was to take forever to do it get in there do it gets good input get it done and the citizens of berkeley are mostly looking to see the streets improved so i'm happy to be here today to to report back to you that it was done on time and very successfully and with a lot of very good public participation the next slide i'd like to introduce the team that worked for many hours to organize this there was a planning team of about twelve individuals and the public works commission that was the lead to commission but we worked very closely with the community and environmental advisory commission transportation commission parks and waterfront commission and all of them really participated very well and they enrich the process another important participant was of women voters the berkeley albany and the emeryville chapter they ensured that the process was transparent and that the public was really made to have public access to it and participate it to the full extent of public work this commission's work together we conduct it this three community meetings in may june and july in october we are here in front of you to tell you about our recommendations will be back again with andrew and his staff in in the event and this is all in line with getting the projects rolling at the beginning of the year with this diagram in the three circles in the middle there are two bars one on top and one on the bottom and they would indicate two processes that were moving in parallel one of them is the process to get public input to help prioritize the work and on the lower bar there is a city staff moving along with their  process to make sure that they're getting the streets ready to look at all the technical issues and staff resources to help move this along to be ready to implement the program next light with the community meetings they were held at three different dates they're shown here on the slide as they were all very well attended and planned many of the council members were also able to attend but the community meetings were held at different times of the day two of them were in the evening on weekdays one was on the weekend they're also held in different places two were in the south berkeley senior center one was at the north berkeley senior center and this was all done to help encourage more participation from the public so they were all well attended we made it very interactive notes were taken and documents were sent back to the participants  so the community meetings summary here in a very brief form is that the muting meetings were very collaborative both in terms of the commissions that work together and then also the public participants that were there the public input was made in several different ways at the meetings we had breakout groups so there were more deep discussions on the various subjects we had open microphones and we had andrew and phil and  f were there to help answer questions on the spot we took notes and then we posted the notes and made them available back to the public and other means that they helped to make sure that we had public input in the outcome of the public process we you have attached to your meeting agenda is this report that looks like a green color and the report is measure am integrated streets investment plan this document was written  to sort of document all the process that were happening that had happened the input that was received and then the outcomes so i hope you have time to look through that report and in a very brief form here in four bullets is really the sink recommendations that we had and i would refer you to the report to get more details in there but we used a program matic approach to this and so identifying the goals and target outcomes of the program was identified in here the development of a score card evaluation criteria it was one of the primary outcomes of it we received a lot of good public input to develop that and having an outline of an updated planning process so our annual cycle where does measure am fit in and how it will be used is also documented in here and then the use of performance metrics to ensure that what was set out will be done and reported on some annual basis or some of the primary outcomes or recommendations in addition to that more public participation was received in other forms and one of them was the city staff made available their email address which is engineering dot info we've received many comments i've listed here over fifty but they keep coming in so it's probably seventy or so by now and they're from all over the city with a very insightful and meaningful comments that the public has provided my understanding is that council members have also received quite a bit of input and quite a bit of that was shared with us also and thankful for that kind of comment and also in the breakout group sessions we had we had a very good discussion and then as we develop draft recommendations there were brought back to our last and third meeting revealed with the public to be sure that they had a chance to hear what we were planning to recommend and get their input on that and quite a bit of this information is been available through a website or a web page on the city's website here's a link to it but the public was able to get that information online and i think that was also helpful to them  as we've mentioned about the use of a scorecard the city has in the past used their computerized program called street saver to evaluate a condition of the streets and then to have it  recommand what needs to be done and what's the cost and what priority it is but as a measure am is more complicated than that incorporating green infrastructure incorporating other city programs this  idea of a multi criteria evaluation was was developed through the discussion when the public public meetings and we called it a score card because like a baseball you know it's kind of keeping score and evaluating multiple things so we just adopt that that terminology and called it a score card but really the intent of it is to look at more than street condition to look at issues of traffic calming and flooding and door ability and other things so it's a multi criteria you know evaluation process and we called it a scorecard evaluation criteria and it received the input from the community meetings from andrew and his staff and then the working team itself worked through quite a bit of it to come up with the both the criteria as as well as the weighting the score card in the flow development is on page eleven of the report and there are criteria main criteria and sub criteria and this is really just a summary of the main criteria so it doesn't it doesn't include everything just put it in this form so that you could read it on the slide but i would last that you refer to page eleven of this report which shows more completely what we're thinking about in terms of the criteria and so you can see on there there are issues or criteria related to leveraging funds dura billet t ready to implement i e shovel ready is it ready to implement quickly it has issues of health and safety traffic calming coordination with other city programs addresses by bicycle and pedestrian plans it has elements of consistency with the watershed management plans to mitigate flooding green infrastructure consistency with climate action goals etc so you can tell it's more than just street condition and then we had waiting criteria on the right hand side and these criteria were vetted with the public process to give us input relative to the balance that it should have so it may look simple but this took quite a bit of work and input to come to this point and this is what the city is now incorporating into part of the new process ok i'll turn it back to andrew thank you ray and what we have here is there's two slides that came out of the report that was produced by the public works commission is attached and i go through part of this quickly because the current process you see in the first box runs st save record with city programs now the words go through the street saver program and then run through this city's street repair policy the same as before except now we have more money to apply so if you look at the lower arrow there's more of the maintenance projects the paving and the surface treatments that w happen and that would go over and get into the plan and then the green box with the arrow there says reconstruct and those are the ones that we took a look and we added the scorecard to take a look at some of the other criteria that we could apply to determine which of these streets that we have we've run that we could put into this into the system put into the plan and the actual scorecard as ray said took a lot of work to try to create that try to bring together the comments and and synthesize them into one document it also was an interesting project for i shant and his staff to try to figure out how to how to actually apply it and implement that in a very meaningful way so that's part of what they've done and we'll be talking more at the commission about how we used it so it's a slightly different version than than what's in on page eleven but all of the spirit of it's there and all the information is there but to try it there are some redundancies so we work through that will be sharing that information more detail with the commission and then the last part is that department recommends the full plan to council for consideration after it comes from the commission the prior to zation process is a little bit more about preparing the reconstruction designs the field verifying but it points out incorporating the green infrastructure but the the box here that i want to focus on was the monitoring of the performance and we'll talk a little bit more about that later but that we will be tracking or you know keeping the miles the street improvements by which category how we're spending the money what the pavement condition index is and what types of green infrastructure installations we've been able to put in where they are w impact that they've had an awesome taking a look at the life cycle costs of these infrastructure elements that we've implemented the actual use of the measure and funds here in the first fiscal year two thousand and fourteen we had  existing funding of about three point four million dollars and we're looking to incorporate about two and a half million dollars of measure m funds in this first year the city existing fund from the various revenue sources will primarily be used for the surface treatments the paving the overlay primarily accelerating the pavement condition index improvements while the measure of the bond money will be primarily used for the street reconstructions and the green infrastructure the performance and reporting that we've touched on very briefly there is miles astri's the p c i the green infrastructure lifestyle cycle costs and then we'll be coming back to council on an annual basis when we come forward with the five year plan the five year rolling plan and in the fall of two thousand and fourteen is when i say we come back with this november we're looking at two years with specific streets and three years of estimated levels of spending in the various categories and then next fall or more for more a fully informed look come back with a fully populated five year plan and a report that lets you know you know what did we do what did we learn how do we apply what we learned and incorporate that into updating the five year plan and one magic here right now is in looking at the the way that the funding will be applied and the additional funding in those first two years which would be two and a half about eight and a half million dollars more in those first two years we're looking at in the currently adopted five year plan that the pavement condition index at the end of those two years would be around fifty nine which essentially would remain stagnant we're barely holding our own just kind of keeping ourselves from getting much worse although it has been trending down with that level of effort with the influx of funding what we're hoping and what we project is that we could see a pavement condition index citywide around sixty seven from those first two years because a big part of the effort there is to get the street conditions improved and to test and work on a number of the green infrastructure elements that we can learn from for what we want to do in the outlying three years so the next steps as we mentioned the public works commission on thursday will be taking a look at the plan and hopefully discussing that with the public that's come november the one thousand will bring it forward here to council for consideration and doss of the bond sale approval and the next step all in that the best part of course is construction beginning   last winter spring and you showed me research showed us this calendar i you know given my cynicism i thought fat chance and and yet we are right on schedule so instead of taking what i think typically been a two or three or four five year planning process you guys pull that off so ray thank you and your commission the other commissions that participated and you thank thank you and your staff i think you did a tremendous job and i attended one of the public meetings my staff attended the other two and and they really sound like they were productive the one i was at was productive and there was a lot of input from a lot of different interest groups so thanks i have a few questions so you're thinking in the next two years we're going to was it two years or one year that you're going to do ten to twenty four miles of st has about ten miles of paving and surface treatments and the the plan that we're putting forward the first two years will have about twenty four miles because i had a concerned constituent call me and they were looking at the  theatres and the residential streets and they were and they lived on a residential street which isn't in particularly good shape and they had done calculations that basically said if we stay on this cycle and maintain the streets that their street will never be paved  is that i mean if i if i take what i know will run out of money in five years but let's say in five years we go back to ten miles we have two hundred seventeen total miles of streets in the city which would mean on average once every twenty years a street would be that is that true well and that's assuming we didn't have to go back to any of the other streets because of the you know pavement failures for one reason or another  or reconstruct cost being too high and limiting the amount of malice that we could do so that was part of the problem is and will continue to be is that there's more work out there to do than we can do but with the influx of funding that we have and using the scorecard criterion adding that we are able to through that process identify and place into the five year plan some of these other streets that otherwise would not have gotten in there for thirty or forty years by taking into consideration some of these other other elements one of which is something i will say that it we added staff and that was the maintenance purdon if we're sending a crew to the same story over and over and over again we're wasting a good deal of the maintenance resources trying to keep one block together and if we factor that in as well it makes sense to go up there and try to put some of the paving dollars into that so that the crew can be repairing potholes in more highly traveled areas and working on maintenance cracks sealing and things like that so those are the other kinds of considerations that we're trying to put into play one of the promises we made to the electorate was that we were going to leverage this money and so i think it would it would help the council and i think the public to appreciate this if in your annual report to us you identified the the leveraged money that we got out of this thirty million dollars that that we voted for so i hope you can do that the other thing is there's always this temptation when there's some money there's a general fund contribution to road maintenance and i  i personally as a council member would want to make sure that stays it in there that we don't get tempted to use bond money to agree the whole structure really is based on the measure and money coming on top of the annual allocation so that that's what they're working with and i think we really have to be disciplined to maintain that and then i guess just going back to grants i don't know what the opportunities are out there but i staff person or will we have a staff person or a consultant who will be combing the available buckets of money out there to make sure we get more than our share of wheat we are currently combing those buckets to see what the opportunities are and our deputy directors quite familiar with them as well as lauren and then as far as any help that we might need in applying for grants yes we're taking a look at whether we need consultants or which of our staff can help us right does grants and looking at any of our available staff to do that so when we see the opportunities we make sure that we we have al or selves up there thank you congratulations again on the way i'm going to echo thank you thank you very much to the public works commission to read in particular to public works staff and to the league of women voters who really helped facilitate the process only did you have a really successful process but i think you've given the city model for future processes for us to follow i attended some of the meetings and i was really impressed with that with how productive they were  and i have to say i haven't seen that before in and city meeting so i was very pleased one of the things that i'm concerned about  or some cable company comes along and starts thinking what authority do we have to control that to limit it and is there a way to schedule these things so that that doesn't happen that is one part of the existing street repair policy is that kind of coordination with the other utility companies and if we do a repaving we pave a street there is a five year moratorium where they're not to come to do new work like that now in the case of a broken pipe that you know that happens in our case sewer lines we try to make sure that we have done all of that work prior to the delivery system and also taking a look at the inspections and the follow ups and using better tracking methods through what we're doing with sela and our work work order system which is starting within the sewer program but eventually being able to use that in other areas too so we do a better job of tracking getting back inspecting those areas our own contractors making sure we take a look at it within the twelve month window that we have for the guarantee of the work but also really making sure that we're inspecting the work that's happening from you to it's difficult with a lot of the utilities because they'll come in pretty quickly and do their work and be gone but if it's inadequate work we can require them to repair ok great oh one more question fiscal year fourteen we look at that being into two contracts and then in fiscal year fifteen it will be two or three contracts and how we break out some of the green infrastructure or one of those may be a stand alone project there is it will be an experiment to some degree especially in the second year depending on how much of that work we can do next summer versus the summer of  that we're adding a number of the surface treatments where we're trying to to keep the overall condition of the streets if we have a street as the auditor talked about in her report extensively that at a good good level that you want to keep it there rather than having it deteriorate so some of those surface treatment methods would be something like that so in the second year we're looking at maybe sixteen miles of streets in the city so we also have to gauge what kind of impact that has on traffic so we actually might be in some cases constrained by that and not just that the funding or the types of treatments so we that's what i said we really need to learn what we can and can't do and works and what won't work for us here great job team and i would like to emphasize the word team from the very beginning  in doing the staff work to create the measure and then to the citizens many of whom are in this room who were out there on the campaign trail to help educate residents as to what our intention our purpose was dug in their pockets and put some money into the campaign to produce materials and then and then shepherding through this wonderful process so that's it's just really an example of what what we can do when we're serious dedicated and we really have a very important thing to work on so i'm have just a couple of questions when we when we when we first planned goal of protecting the outflow into the bay and abating flooding clean water cleaning up the water and the outflow and i i know that you don't have a lot of information right now but i'm hoping you'll have more when we come back on november nineteenth about just what the possibilities are but if we're doing paving in in year one and two then will we be able to incorporate some of these features or enough of them or how do we stage it with the possibility of getting grants for some of these really important and necessary prudence we will be incorporating green infrastructure in those first two years we'll be doing some various surface treatments as well as i mentioned one of the cisterns that in the watershed management plan and then a five fifty for those in the potter watershed and so we'll make sure that we can find one of those that works that that overlays with work that we need  and would be beneficial to help with the localized flooding as well when we construct that and learn from it and we can come back on november nineteenth in that report and put a little information in there about what opportunities we know of that are out there and what we've done to position ourselves to be able to get those grant grants if and when they become available but that also is one of the reasons why we're giving you what i said the two plus three plus five because if we get an opportunity like that and we need to leverage and use some of the that the that the finding that we have from the city finds and shift some measure around money to cover that that would pull some streets off that could have been paid but would be a wise choice if we could leverage you know two million to get eight or something  money where our group which is the barrier group usually shares about twenty five to thirty million dollars a year now the bigger pot of money is the proposition one eighty and it comes around every year proposals or do generally in january or february this last year they had thirty one projects submitted for a total project cost of five hundred million they selected ten and they awarded ninety one million dollars in grants towards those projects now the prop one he is something this is round two we expect around three to be similar in funding become available and the package will be announced sometime in december and we are prepared to take a look at that and move forward with our our proposals in terms of large projects that currently are a little outside of the measure ember pozole but also we can take a look at packaging some of those projects that andrew was talking about in the like the fifty four and the part of watershed into a package deal and so many of those as well but we did everything to support ourself and get in position so we can compete this coming fiscal year and next fiscal year in the in the proposal so and how well we positioned because we do have our watershed management plan and we did pass this means we had the watershed management plan f step was which we did last november was to take that plan and submit it into the bay area group and have them incorporate the whole plan into that so that we can qualify to be competitive for both eighty four and prop one hundred five and that ever go forward with that the water bond they've been working on and that would change the the total match funding whatsoever now on the property for there's a twenty five percent match but could be way based on if you can how well you demonstrate your your impacts to the dac communities a disadvantage community project and like we have a lot down here in the in the lower west end so a lot and so they go away that that commitment they're worse on that they did consider in prop one he they like to see at least a fifty percent match in that but they have taken consideration for one hundred percent from your request here in the last couple rounds but again if the water bun passes there is money in there that can fund that and virtually that would look either reduce or eliminate the of the fun looking forward to that thank you so i was looking at your examples of flooded areas and i remember when we had a major event and we had a high tide we had big community meeting i think we had  francis all briar and a number of residents came from the north side of the west part of berkeley to talk about how their entire basements that they lost so many things and i know that you're giving these as examples but they're on the south side and i just want homes hoping that those reports that came out of that public meetings were somehow folded into the intelligence that we have about where the major flooding occurs so i'm going to be referring some spots to you that i i know people have their topography that is sort of unusual and i don't want to get into in this district that district thing i certainly don't want to do that  having said that though i know that i'm frequently frequently hearing about cedar street and i hope that the division of percentages which is on your page eleven it's ten percent collectors fifty percent residential twenty five percent discretionary or tiriel ten collectors fifty residential twenty five discretionary and demonstration which i hope we mean permeable materials to on some of our streets those where those developed because of basically those are how our streets fall in percentage wise that that's generally what the percentage of breakdown is of our streets or how did it how do we come out with those percentage s they've been in there for a while and that's something that we're going to take a look at their policy to see if we want to continue to be constrained by that or not and that something council can make a decision on if you bring the policy forward and make some changes i don't know that that would be here in this one would come up in november when we come back but jeff can explain how it got there in the first place and what the purpose of it was you know with those percentages you have been around for quite a while and the idea was that the larger street with the higher traffic volumes gets a majority of the funding and the exception to that is that you see that arterials are down to ten percent and that's simply because they were eligible for a lot of the federal grant fund projects so that's the way it was originally established and it's been that way for quite a while you know i'm sorry i just didn't actually could you just one more time that  the impact of our policy which i think is a good way of encouraging people to cycle more is a small crack in the street that will not bother the car in any way can be deadly to a cyclist as we've seen in some of the personal lands on their head or lands on your wrist or whatever breaks your wrists it can be very very expensive so i think that is something that one has to keep in mind is berkeley said we want more people to cycle we want to use the streets and so we have to keep them in trying to get clean and put but i think comes from a recap as helli touched on this i want expanded but that's expectations i'm hearing from lots of constituents or is this expectation out there we're going to fix all that delayed maintenance of like twenty four miles the streets in the next two years we have two hundred seventeen i'm sure we have more than we probably have seventy or eighty that need substantial work so we're not go fix them all so they're to come and i want to make one is i want to acknowledge as the mayor was rather prescient on this and advocated that we should ask for fifty million in the mano sure and some of us like myself didn't listen to  for thirty years which was retrospect i think in the states but i think there is high six patients is very important that we uses thirty million well and there is some significant improvement people feel there is improvement so that we can at some point ask for additional resources to fix the rest of the streets so this is this is crucial it's not can just be business as usual it has to be done well this is people going to be looking careful this is a new get a lot done and so that people appreciate that and lastly i want to ask this question you touched upon it was a little bit council member miles comment about the percentages and this comes up some time what if you've got a one block residential street that hasn't been paved in fifty years and it's full of parcels it's not a bicycle lane it's not an arterial it's not a collector you know even on your scorecard you have one hundred points you know you get ten points in st xavier's so even if it's in that condition only gets ten out of the hundred may never come up but do we have a catastrophic situation where it's so bad that somehow it looks at it and say  helpful thank you well i was very glad to hear that staff is already looking at grant opportunities because i remember when we talked about putting measure them on the ballot and most recently in march but that was one of the issues that  that came up was how much it could go towards related watership projects how much is going to go towards the street paving staff it said that you know these grand opportunities can provide additional resources to have many more watershed projects integrated with the street repaving so i'm very glad to hear the steps look at those opportunities and i hope that we are successful in getting additional funding and not only leveraging that funding but you know assuming that will be a measure on the twenty four thousand ballot to renew measure b and hopefully it succeeds that may provide some additional funding as well to berkeley to also increase the number streets that will be really rehabilitating i have a few questions so you had stated that the currently budgeted city funds that some of that will go towards ongoing maintenance of streets and that's a measure and money will go towards rehabilitation i would imagine there are some streets where they don't work require total reconstruction but rather filling in cracks is all the measure and money going to go towards reconstruction and the city budgeted funds will go towards you know slurry sealing and filling in cracks is that how the streets we need to work on applying the street repair policy which would consider bicycle areas etc and then the scorecard evaluation to identify which streets need to be worked on and then we take a look at the funding that we have and as much as possible we're going to apply the measure am funding to real capital projects to reconstruct project green infrastructure is cetera if we do see that well the need here is so great for some of these other streets and some of this other work then some of that money might go to overlays or something like that but the way that it's working out in the way that we have as far as the money that we have existing and what we have coming in from measure and that the reconstructs are way more expensive per mile than the resurfacing or the surface treatments that for the most part that's how the money will end up being spent is truly putting the bond measure into capital projects because i'm just trying to think how we can maximize the funding and i mean many streets require complete reconstruction but you know in as much as we can increase the number of streets it would be addressed that may not require reconstruction you know that's something to consider and then num have already talked about the percentages know that there are many stretches of major arterials that have already been rehabilitated sacramento st martin luther king but there are some that haven't you know for example oxford street  i've received comments from people in my district and some other council districts that oxford you know specifically north of university needs some attention and that is a major arterials so obviously those arterials have gotten a lot more resources than the collector streets but i think it's good and should be on the basis of priority so i certainly understand where the ten percent came from but i think we should just take a look at our policy and how the percentages are allocated and just to ensure that we're focusing our resources on on the streets that really need them including the ones that are most heavily traveled on which are they a then before streets that are above active creeks it's just a suggestion obviously if you have a if you have a major street that's above an active creek you know there's there's probably more of a susceptibility that they'll be damaged to the pits the pavement over time has staff consider potentially having those streets be permeable rather than asphalt some cases yes if this give is close to a creek that could be good use but part of what you also said is that if it's implying that there's a lot of movement of the soil in those areas that would be very bad place for us to do that because we do not want to exacerbate any  existing landslide problems or other areas of instability so we have to pay close attention to that but there are we're certainly looking at we're looking for those opportunities to where we can do it where it will make sense to do it ok well i just want comments have been made by my colleagues that i really appreciate all the work that not only our staff have done but also the the public works commission the parks commission the commune environmental visor commission and not only conducting this process and hearing from i think coming up with a really great model for us to evaluate which street should be funded and and also to ensure ongoing public input so thank you so very much for your work in bringing because they don't meet the criteria that many of the streets are adjacent to either collectors arterials and there would be an economy of doing those streets at the same time policy contiguous blocks as much as possible and those are when we we hear your concerns and we heard that a lot at the community those streets that would never get in the plan and so it might be that there's a percentage of those that we have to look for each time a percentage of streets that would never otherwise get in the plan we've got to find a way to put some of them in there and so we're trying to establish a process that we can do that so that it's legitimate because there's a lot more streets that fall into that category than we have funding to do some work we're trying to find some way of really saying work we're looking at it and we're looking at it with a consistent process thank you or your murmur much for the presentation i think one of the tech boys unfortunately there were a lot of years in the councils were not in a position or didn't choose to put money into investing in our streets as a consequence over time you know we've had these things building up and building out to be the place where we really have the storm drains deferred maintenance and i mean we have a lot of problems but we do want to keep going on the streets we don't want to give up and want to make sure we can do some about the watershed at the same time so there's a wonderful infrastructure i'm not sure how much money you're putting into that so when you get all these categories in how flexible because the streets seem to be fairly flexible and so the green infrastructure that bay and they're not cleaning the water but there they are so big development can be built and the water you know isn't flowing down into so that's what concerns me and i didn't really hear anything about that but i know there's money for that in there and that's a major thing about preventing the flooding in west berkeley it's not really cleaning up the water and the environment and when this when this issue was passed it was mr worthington said you've got to bring up the environment you've got to talk about cleaning up the bay and so you did and that isn't doing it that's for development and development paves over the earth when many question the worth of trying at all the conventional wisdom said you should not choose don't do it just wait you might loose a new group formed to help with the fight the amount can foundation for equal rights they enlisted the lawyers for bush and gore that was pretty controversial to berkeley that we had gore's lawyer and bush's lawyer both on our side and who know fellow well the supreme court s president what could have been an obscure legal brief in the end that helped the multitude to find relief from the negative nature of proposition eight they established equality for gay and straight president o called them from air force one the day their supreme court case was one after such a victory they could not wait camel harris married them first in our state called them chris and sandy or call them sandy and chris they opened the door to more marital bliss their own family values have been on display with their kids and career each and every day sandy's information joy in life second is being each other's lawfully wedded wife berkeley was the first city council in the country in a previous century to endorse marriage equality so it seems expression only fitting about perry and stare did you know did i mention they live right here and that's the end of the p and now we're going to have the council members who sponsored the item will share the reading of the official proclamation starting with the the first openly gay african american council member of act in berkeley couples across the united states as well as clearing the way for the repeal of proposition eight and the resumption of the issuance of marriage licenses for same sex couples in the united states  finally be allowed to obtain a legal marriage license from the state of california nearly a decade after their engagement in two thousand and three largely to their own tenacity in a hard fought legal struggle and where as both women have long served the city of berkeley and its residents perry as an advocate for educational reform and steer as a member of the county's public health department whereas the contributions to equitable and just marriage rights for the state of california represent only a small fraction of the lives of these two incredible women dedicating to serving the public through advocacy for  perry the united states supreme court held the decision of the district court that proposition eight is unconstitutional effectively negating the amendment and clearing the way for legal marriage perry and steer as same sex couples as well same sex couples across the state of california and where as perry and steer are longtime residents of berkeley which is fitting considering the berkeley city council was the first city council in the nation to endorse marriage equality their efforts and in overturning doma and proposition eight greatly reflect berkeley's commitment in ensuring and protecting basic human rights for everyone regardless of race gender or sexuality so much for that terrific honor and for inviting us here this evening we have been engaged in quite a battle and we couldn't have done it without the love and support of our family and our community and you're a big part of that we  both grew up in small towns in more conservative parts of the country where if we were there fighting this battle i am certain that we would not have been supported and treated with respect in the way that we were here and it made the battle all the more possible to know that you were here taking care of the citizens of this city but also that you would welcome us back when we got here so on behalf of sandy and i want to say to all of you in the leadership in the safe environment you create for our children for other people's children and for the people that will spend their lives in the city thank you because really that's what everyone in this country deserves fortunate enough to get to carry the torch forward to success so thank you for all of those who participated so long ago and making that happen because many people have benefited over the years and it's a tremendous gift that you gave to families in this community  you very proud of you thank you thank you so i have i have taken the liberty of inviting the very first to domestic partners who were recognized by the city to join us for this photo op many people in berkeley already know barry warren and rahm and they were the first domestic partners so i would like to have them come up and join us with dignitaries being honored tonight and then all the council members and the balloons in a photo day and celebration of our local native community and it's really it's a privilege to be able to read this proclamation of members of the indigenous peoples take committee to come to the podium or as the year two thousand and thirteen marks the twenty first anniversary celebration of indigenous peoples day in the city of berkeley begun in one thousand nine hundred two in commemoration of five hundred years of survival and renewal of native cultures in the face of political and cultural repression and where as the indigenous peoples day committee a community group of local native people and others have once again organize the annual celebration within indigenous peoples state powell and indian market in martha king civic center park on saturday october fifth two thousand and thirteen and where as the indigenous culture flourishing in the berkeley area since the time of the immemorial was a sustainable and peaceful culture based on cooperation among neighbors on respect for the land and for all creatures living on it and this indigenous culture was disrupted and destroyed in perfectly as in almost all parts of this hemisphere and yet it is still survived and were as the indigenous peoples day powell in indian market has brought greater understanding to the people of berkeley regarding native cultures and the enormous contributions they have made and continue to make to world culture now therefore be it resolved by the council of the city of berkeley that we hear by proclaim saturday october fifth two thousand and thirteen as indigenous peoples day in the city of berkeley and here by offer our gratitude to native people on behalf of the people of berkeley and recognition of the indigenous care for this land and in honor of indigenous culture and philosophy which are needed now more than ever if this plan is to survive and we urge all  attend the berkeley indigenous peoples day powwow and indian market on saturday october fifth from ten to six in martha king civic center part so it's my privilege to present this proclamation thank you council member again my name is gino birch hello i'm the coordinator for the two thousand and thirteen indigenous peoples day power and indian market we would like to invite all members of the city council as well as those that are viewing us tonight on t v and listening to us to join us across the street at civic center park from ten am to six p m to celebrate the twenty first annual indigenous people's day  because again this is the very first indigenous people in the world and they're all over the place now we even rank on wikipedia nonetheless we've managed to maintain our cohesive identity which is much related to being a group of people who meet around the kitchen table mostly the girls we have to founding members here by the way from all the way back twenty one years ago and three three i'm the newcomer i've only been eleven years for me that's like you know an indian time that's like nothing in any case the fact that the city council in the city of berkeley are able to stretch as far as to accommodate again a group of people sitting around a kitchen table and planning this and making this happen every year all the way to marriage equality in the supreme court is just phenomenal and the fact that we fit here and that we derive an enormous amount of spiritual sustenance throughout the year that carries us forward is just wonderful so again thank you very much for your continued support learned in school they learn from their earliest time learning how to become addition and learning how to become a indigenous people on this continent is something that we have to reach out to learn many of us did not learn it you know at home or in school so we're very very excited to be here and we've already had some great support from visit berkeley and the downtown berkeley association who welcomed us and our partners in this initiative and again we hope that as part of this expansion plan you join us because the san francisco marathon brings economic impact of forty million dollars every event to the city and we hope to be able to bring that kind of economic impact to berkeley over the years and also support local businesses and we actually have some current sponsors and partners that are local and pyramid brewery in weatherford b m w and more to jason event development manager jumping fences the one that created the route and i've been working with your various city departments for over a year at this point to bring this into the city of berkeley to talk a little bit about the route i think you've got maps in for you at this point we really want to create a route that highlighted the varied terrain of berkeley from the city center to cal the university have been out to the marina and i think we've got something that kind of encompasses all of that we've had a really really enthusiastic responses event we already have four thousand almost four thousand people registered and we expect have about six thousand people by race day so and we've been really overwhelmed with the response we've received from the the running community in the bay area about  this so looking at the route the events you can see there it's sunday november twenty fourth starts at eight a m right out here by the park makes a loop around downtown on mill via duran oxford passing by cal then heads west on university ave all the way out to the marina the runners will make a little outing back down to emeryville and back north then they head around cesar chavez park through a shore state park and finish up by the water at our finish line at golden gate fields it is not just a half marathon there's also a ten mile and ten k event for those that don't are quite ready for a thirteen point one and they start and finish the same place but obviously take a few short cuts along the  way well have fun cheers stations along the route to keep people going we've enlisted some local artists to create our mile markers as well to give a little bit of local flavor along the way again i've been working on this for a little over a year now we've had numerous meetings with police fire so that's been really outstanding externally we've been working with some regional partners east bay regional park district city of emeryville gay fields caltrans they're all on board and supporting what we're doing another little practical thing is since the emails to  moore's and our gains offices because we're traveling directly through your districts i've gotten responses from a couple but i'd love to find out even more about if there's any neighborhood watch groups neighborhood associations anyone that we can reach out to just hopefully to get them our close to the hearts of the berkeley community so we're really happy to announce that our official charities are the berkeley public schools fund the berkeley food and housing project and the berkeley partners for parks so we've been working with them on fund raising awareness and support  this proclamation is being given to the youngest person that i have ever given a proclamation to in my seventeen years of being a council member and you'll  learn why we are recognizing somebody at such an early age the proxy the proclamation whereas ryan has generously asked family and friends to donate to the sierra club instead of receiving gifts for his bar mitzvah in honor of zeke's distinguished effort on climate change whereas girl ryan has shown initiative in helping create lasting positive change whereas he is a model young citizen who has taken an incredible trip berkeley do hereby recognize and proclaim zeke good wine as a valuable and contributing member of berkeley and the bay area community and a true leader on the environment take it away background and chemistry we have real trouble real problem every day we don't do something very quickly about fossil fuel stole it and fracking which was invented by the way by halliburton dick since i've been trying to rent a space and it's getting to be really very unreasonable yes yes yes yes we're lost over six hundred thousand bucks within the last ten years but don't blame it all on us ok it was bad terry i was not very up to business students have as much money was the high tuition they were getting charged by the university and overall people weren't spending as much money but we paid all of business another point i'd like to meet in the last two years the city of berkeley collected zero rent who are paying line sounds in his own store i sure can afford a thousand two thousand three thousand very highly paid she doesn't want to deal with best buy she knows he she knows how to get a good price and what service what i can have put somebody in a house monday sunday evening or morning she couldn't i couldn't get her to meet somebody there you have all of th of the people creating item number nine on the updates after completion of consent calendar were not able to be here this evening so we'd like to request holding that over until october fifteen hello my name is leland trainmen and some of you know me i chaired the domestic partner task force that wrote the first domestic partner policy working with tom and barry and a whole bunch of other people back in one thousand nine hundred three eighty four  seven years after the city of berkeley and the school district of berkeley passed a domestic partner policy they opened their own domestic partner registry back then there were two reasons to do that one was symbolic nothing recognized publicly our relationships but the other was a very practical reason and that was the practical reason was actually the more important of the two and that was when unions went  to companies to bargain for domestic partner benefits marital benefits for same sex couples these these companies would say well we don't want to be in the business of certifying anybody's relationship and we could say well the city of berkeley certified for you so there was a very very practical reason despite the fact that registering gave people no rights whatsoever legally but it was very important that we had that for union negotiations then of course the state of california jumped in and in the year two thousand and you know the domestic partner registry is  really window dressing at this point is really that doesn't mean anything but it's wonderful that on the twenty second anniversary there will be recognition of that and the progress we've made on marriage equality and  it's particularly sort of heart wrenching for me because the person who ceremonially opened the domestic partner registry was mayor lani hancock who some was just corrected that i mean i was supposed to have item number nine to the meaning of the twenty ninth not the meaning of the fifteen ok that's ok to modify that  mr mayor we have staff from the health community services department will be making a presentation you'll remember that this last came before you in may and you gave us some direction and staff have gone off and worked on that direction and had some communications with stakeholders so what we have for you tonight is draft ordinance for consideration for first reading i believe there's also been returning with the revised ordinance in response to council direction i'm going to let em song who is our new tobacco prevention program manager as of about six weeks ago so she's a quick study and here tonight she's going to start off the presentation thank you kate and good evening i'm very excited for the opportunity to present here tonight and before i go into the specifics of the ordinance  i wanted to first review why we're proposing it from a public health perspective the reason for this ordinance is to reduce exposure to secondhand smoke as a health risk we know that there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke and that secondhand smoke travels between units through heating electrical outlets and under doorways i'm sure are aware that exposure to secondhand smoke has many negative health impacts living with a smoker increases a nonsmokers chances of developing lung cancer by twenty to thirty percent and it's also a key from a trigger we this slide from the recently released two thousand and thirteen city of berkeley health status report one of the most significant health in equities described in that report is childhood asthma specifically african american children under five years old and berkeley are disproportionately impacted and passage of this ordinance is an important step towards addressing the health disparity and that the effective date is january first twenty fifteen  you guys have requested that we put in an application in there and that is now in there so whenever the tenants of the there will be disclosure about two different issues one is the ordinance requirements it will go over all of the requirements of the ordinance related to that smoking is not allowed in any units that there's a private right of action and that's not allowed in common areas including balconies and decks that will be in there i articulate all of the components of the proposed ordinance limit of fifteen hundred dollars a year added language that mediation is encouraged prior to private right of apartments to be smoke free i'd like to leave you with just four points first the implementation is not difficult for a conscientious landlord second more than eighty five percent of residents are not smokers and do not wish to be poisoned by other people's cigarette smoke third if information about the ordinance is widely disseminated throughout the community i do not believe in force what will be any more difficult than enforcement of our current ordinances regarding not smoking in restaurants and lastly and particularly toward your responsibilities as public officials this is a health and safety measure that especially protects the very young the very elderly and the very to be enforced while other counties have the police and health department enforcing the law the ordinance needs to require many mediation and or other be a third party mediator the importance is not to take too long to resolve this problem like he said it should be taken as long as how the restaurants prioritize dealing with these things bringing them to people that make them  change the smokers behavior now my question about the ordinance is could be could the health department and the police be involved in forcing it and stuff possible to have it take place like within maybe three months or so members of the council my name is serena chan i'm with the american lung association along with the rent stabilization board i've been working on this ordinance for about six years and during that six years time  about twenty six other cities have adopted smokefree housing laws and i actually tonight won a creek will be the twenty seventh city because they're taking their second vote they have chosen to eliminate smoking in all multi unit housing in the city of a creek and their residents have been asking them to help them for over three years so when they decided on when to implement their ordinance it's going to be effective in ninety days what we found out in the city of belmont the first city was that they set up a time span of fifteen months to give everyone time to get used to the idea and folded in what we found out after fifteen months no one took the time and they were just shocked that they had to be  smokefree so basically we're finding that ninety days speeds up the process people know what's happening we don't you don't need to cite people or come after people you just need to get the law in place so that people can feel protected and in the letter that we to you we really all these other cities have enforcement protocols and when you look at the fact that secondhand smoke kills more people in berkeley than motor vehicle vehicle accidents every year it kills more people than firearms you do allocate city resources to protect the citizens from motor vehicle accidents and from firearms so certainly something that kills that many people and that harms and sickens that many more deserves some kind of city and suggested is usually what happens is that tenant has a complaint they take it to the landlord and the manager or they take it to the neighbor and that will happen here but what will happen here is if they are if it's not in their  lease the landlord was say those famous five words there's nothing i can do well in the in the other cities the landlords have to take their responsibility and try to do their due diligence so what happens is it goes all the way down until say a landlord refuses to take any action then they contact code enforcement and code enforcement will send a letter or public health you know it just depends on each city but the health department or code enforcement will send letters to people and  urge them to comply so it doesn't take a lot of money it just takes some effort at the front and you have a city where the smoking prevalence in multi unit housing is probably less than five percent  under nonsmoking units required and then under existing there's a bunch of hundred percent hers does that mean that those jurisdictions prohibit smoking and one hundred percent of the that is correct that is correct there's no grandfathering there is no grandfathering and actually i have a chart from new hampshire public housing wondered what the impact of grandfathering was and so they actually did an extensive indoor air quality monitoring study and i have this chart to share with you should you want to see it and basically they have grandfathered in people who smoked into a building where everyone else was not smoking and then they did their measurements and basically the entire building and no they did not implement any smoking cessation and in public housing well we're actually working with rich and public housing the residents were offered and asked if they wanted a smoking cessation classes and we were told basically and building i placed a color picture it's a second graph down there way on the right those two large peaks are the grandfathered smoke coming from grandfather units in apartment building so you can see the red line way down in the bottom is in fact the same extent so that's the e p a outdoor air quality standards so what you have is the indoor air quality of that apartment complex was in violation if have run control ordinances not any on my list of the other city that did adopt with santa monica and they've grandfathered in the existing people who smoke which is truly unfortunate because it does nothing if you look at the chart people continued and actually it raises expectations only to make people even more upset but we're kind of comparing right and santa monica also has no city enforcement so there's a up at the other meeting when this was discussed but how important the housing issue is with smoke and the fact that smoke in the neighboring apartments remains there for thirty days so it's actually in the neighboring apartments much longer than it's in the smokers apartment and if it can by and with particulate matter gas dryers it does become carcinogenic and some of the victims of this are children with bronchitis issues as well as in our here we have a lot of children suffering from  asthma and song pointed out to us and we face health disparities and i think this kind of multi unit housing smoking ordinance could help with some of those smoke disparities where we have people living fifteen years longer in the hills tha evening members i'm liz williams with americans for nonsmokers rights for a public health organization based here in berkeley and i thank you for your considerate consideration of this ordinance and we are very glad to see the changes that were made from the introduced at which puts that burden entirely on a nonsmoking neighbor if their neighbor is smoking and they're breathing it in their unit and they need to have the time and the means and awareness on how to take a neighbor to small claims court and even if that goes through it would only be for a small monetary fee and not even for abatement of that issue typically mentioned cities smokefree laws of varying kinds have citywide enforcement mechanisms such as code enforcement or the health department to enforce the policy with a variety of procedures including fees for violations would really like to see this type of mechanism added to the ordinance because private right of action should be the last  technical suggestions which i'm going to let what they provided speak for themselves i did want to emphasize a couple of points one of them that has already been made in the way and point suggest to date of july fourth two thousand and fourteen and if we can't do something that would start sort of a tent out then this might be an appropriate compromise and in particular an advantage of moving the date to july is to capture that period of time where the highest  units of course i also wanted too i suggest that the council consider allowing the employed or another governmental entity to sign a d waving their lights if this was in the hands of the property on earth then there would be a lot of we have the ability to how this is done and down the road it could lead to more unnecessary litigation potentially so this would standardize it and finally i wanted to once again or to the council to take another look at providing us with just twelve multi unit twenty that prohibit smoking in the lease we already had a letter from one property on earth missed a few little cool also supports that and if the government doesn't step in here it's like the a c c would and it would make more sense for a governmental entity to do it since they have most of the information thank you again for your work on this and hopefully we can become the twenty eighth city tonight hi my name is carol denny i live in multi unit housing and i'm a cancer patient i also work with americans for nonsmokers rights and the number one cold call we received nationwide is from people who are getting exposed in their own homes from neighbors who smoke indoors just want to see mayor bates no one has to quit smoking to live in smoke free housing all you need to do is step outside there's a misconception that the rent stabilization ordinance is incompatible with clean breathable air there's no foundation for this assumption the rent boards charter is to protect habitability for all tenants if the legal foundation of basic habitability requires access to sanitation heat in the winter drink water it defies logic to suggest that it would somehow preclude breathable air there is no connection between even the strongest smoke free housing regulations and a fiction another red herring there is no truth to the assumption that low income tenants hurt any less concerned about their own and their families exposure to secondhand smoke or are somehow less able to comply with smoke free regulations i hope you're listening to that because that's the basis of the weakness in our law from when i first heard about how weak this proposal was planning to be back last spring i began to call lawyers on my own behalf because my two next door neighbors smoked marijuana and tobacco all day and most of the night and i have cancer which has been determined to be non hereditary i called two or three lawyers a day i've run out of lawyers in the bay area i'm now calling lawyers in los angeles the private right of action is something we've already had for years and is not working we need something stronger thank you  good evening mayor and council members my name is melissa brower i'm actually a parent of a berkeley high student and i also have been a pediatric nurse for over twenty five years in my work as a pediatric nurse i have seen children with asthma and to be exposed to second hand smoke in multi unit housing is really an acceptable for this vulnerable population who have no say and essentially where they live and what they get exposed to so i would and in looking at the ordinance the ordinance is only going to be as strong as how well it's unforced and there needs to be some balance between what you as the city body put into place the ordinance in terms of force meant balance in terms of what the landlord does in terms of disclosure and you know to protect children and also as it's already been mentioned seniors are very much of the world population and i view in the medical world smoking is a pollutant and again we need to protect the children and it's already been pointed out there's a  disparity in the city in the bay area and the thing is it would get and i would advocate that we need to have a strong ordinance to protect our children and again this is also considered we consider it a toxic nuisance i know good evening my name's leslie zellers i'm co chair of the alameda county tobacco control coalition for a collection of individuals and agencies committed to tobacco free alameda county i want to applaud the city council for taking these steps forward and trying to create a smoke free housing warnings for berkeley which is very very needed i understand the additional challenges presented with the rent control city and that you're grappling with how to best address those and i think that the ordinance has come a long way but i want to echo some of the points made by the earlier speakers in particular the coalition would like to endorse the recommendations of the american lung association presented by serina chen here orally and in her letter in particular enforcement what we're talking about is for existing tenants the burden that they would be required to do is take their neighbor to small claims court not only is that a big burden financially just logistically who wants to take your neighbor to court it's really it it defies logic that that would be the only option in the ordinance i just it doesn't i just can't quite wrap my head around why the city would not allow for government enforcement i don't think it has to be expensive what we talked about before is a complaint driven program and you don't need a full time person doing this it's just someone to answer calls for those tenants who don't have any other resource and they can validate that complaint which can help bolster their complaint in small claims court as well the other issue i want to specifically call out is moving up the effective date as the ordinance is presented here tonight it is fifteen months which seems far gives them added to smoking so whatever applied to cigarettes must also apply does you're just stupid idea if you took the chemicals in fact not only pretty much most of the chemicals of the same from the normal cigarettes but so thank you i have a neighbor who lives in a condo and she and her little girl in their house and her husband live right above a person who smokes a lot and i don't think the building is very well constructed no matter what they're subjected to the smoke all the time and and i agree that having a neighbor actually take another neighbor to court is is just not advantageous so i know that we  we went the lease route in the private right of action road because enforcement is not inexpensive it's that it's expensive i was wondering we have this residential rental safety program where we actually ask people landlords to check off all of the things that they've done to make the unit unit habitable and we also charge them for that and i'd like to ask the staff to look into using the residential real safety program to do some kind of enforcement mechanism where we actually use the form to enforce what i would like to say which is a complete ban of smoking and in multi unit  don't want to have maybe some times and have at least dependent i would like it to be something we can enact completely that and that may i use the term permeates into all of the all of  that building's apartments so i think that's the big one that's on the table as to whether or not we can actually go that route but otherwise this leaving it up to a lease and and then having you have to register with different places and leaving it up to the tenant to delve into that i think for like small like golden duplexes but what you would we can use this rental safety program form perhaps but i'd rather not go the least direction i'd like to go to complete banning and then have the the tenant use our code enforcement or our health department to some clarification to as i'm trying to figure out how to formulate and helpfully answer the proposal is to ban smoking in unit buildings but it's it's dependent then on the private right of action and then there's this lease situation of the and this does too but the remedy in those units without a lease is the private right of action well how does the eviction issue fold into this because i think that's why this whole whether it's in the has come to four because we don't want to even people but yet we do we have to protect the people who are the adjacent neighbors so there's two kinds of leases there's the existing leases and the new leases or we're calling them what initially says right so for initial leases the ordinance would require a provision that banned smoking correct for initial for initially some reason for existing leases there would be no impairment of th lease term well i nevertheless the individual would be prohibited from smoking by the ordinance would be and then that it would be a private right of action so how could we change that  reason it's structured that way is to avoid the possibility of addiction for existing tenants and resisting leases because of the city were to say essentially this is prohibited this is an illegal act then it could potentially lead to addiction there was a concern that lots of people had that's what i that's what i understand and so if we have a code issue or we have a at the toward it works differently it's it's it's not a violation of a prohibition by the government it's just if you cause this person damage they can see you to recover the damage so you know go to jail for that so they're they're put in the position of having to do that i mean it makes me feel really uncomfortable on the part of the family the suffering there in a condo situation there is no lease there so they would have to take a private right of action and then fifteen hundred dollars is hardly worth it really and consider it we have some work to do on this  consummate i'm troubled by the existing ordinance i mean when you read the scientific reports second hand smoke is very dangerous it kills people everybody agrees on that i passed out from the american lung association we needed something simple a complete ban it shouldn't lead to addictions but it could lead to a fine if you don't observe it i mean why can't we find someone if they persist in doing something and harms our neighbors that doesn't have you know that we and i and i also intrigued i also thought of the rental housing safety program this is a program set up to make apartments more safe and we want to pursue more program in a way that makes building multi unit building say there ought to be a way to craft that that still prote i can't believe that we can't do that if you create a crime or a nuisance that creates the opportunity for you i'm talking a fine a fine is is the remedy for a crime well  have some other specific things that i want to dress ok first of all there's also ample evidence that children fetuses and older people that are very sensitive to this toxic pollution that smokers are emitting the if we have a new fines or should be double fines for people who are exposed in that class category we often do things like that should not be blanket anybody there are sensitive people with scented receptors and they should there should be that i you know we've gotten several lovers it's letters that have said this too that you know there should be enforcement and there should be mandatory mediation and i mean i think it is the send a letter saying you're in violation you need to do something about it lisa get some talking about it gets our attention even if the city doesn't actually you know make a fine it's allows you to raise us up to a level where someone has a say this is serious  and i'm not i don't believe we should do this but i'm just asking a question what would be involved if we were to declare smoking a nuisance will be the process for the city enforcing that and what are the implications of that you mean everywhere in terms of like how it staff and force that because i know it's very it's very labor intensive as for the council the public's knowledge be helpful to get that information because that's been one suggested it's easier for us to answer the question if we change the question to if we made an infraction so i think his research this quite extensively not have to participate they would have to testify because they're the ones who wouldn't and i think that's what you guys with that's one of the reasons why i used the analogy of the barking dog is that code enforcement officer who's going to be called w rarely if ever witness the violation so the complaining neighbor has to be the one testifying to prove the case so that would have to i mean it's sort of there would have to be some process by which and i think you're barking dog analogy is described in this report what we do in that circumstance so just to speak to one of the concerns was raised the routing about putting the onus on neighbors to have to enforce the statute even in the situation where the city when it would be following up to if it was an infraction the neighbor would have to follow completely the cities so there would be if it would involve a neighbor having to complain  and as was stated the implications of it of a nuisance determination are such that that's a grounds for an eviction so that's a concern of mine i think i think there are a lot of remedies that have been put forth in this ordinance that could help one i agree a counselor wasn't we should have mandatory mediation i supported that in may unfortunately that did not get incorporated into the ordinance but that would help rather than create a situation where  the only remedy is to go to small claims court if both parties can work together to try to resolve situations that's best you know the smoking cessation classes help too in terms of getting people to to stop smoking the notice that's required at the time of application edition i think we should require such a notification of the time of ones that the lease is signed that also lets tenants and what their rights are with education the city will be engaged in certainly and i think the registry is very important and i'm actually is one acknowledge that the letter received the rent stabilization board on page three it says the report intends to collect this information for its units under its ordinance so if i know before i'm applying for an apartment which units have the no smoking restrictions and which ones don't i can make an informed choice about where i'm going to be so and that could help reduce some of the conflict so it's not perfect but the real of the big issue is balancing the need to restrict smoking and also not results in the unintended consequence of people being addicted and that's the challenge that's really the challenge and i don't know how you can do that without tipping this tipping the scales so that so is such that if actions could potentially happen i will note to my knowledge that most new leases have no smoking restrictions so those units that most likely are don't have those restrictions for the public i introduced an amendment to the proposed ordinance which would help implement the report having a registry so the reports agreed they're going to do a registry which i think is excellent but in order for them to do  after the automatically renewing leases ordinance that we adopted in january and what i would say is those units that are subject to rent control let the rent board know if you have a no smoking restriction in your lease those that aren't subject to rent control still let the rent board know whether you have a nose a no smoking restriction a lease at the time of initial occupancy so the ramp or can keep track of we know which units have those and don't have those i think that can make a big difference so whether or not you know private action or these other remedies are appropriate or we should pursue new remedies i think at the very least we should also still enable register to happen so i hope in whatever action we take whether tonight in the future that we would adopt this simple amendment to allow that registry to happen it's not the city isn't taking on the responsibility of of of managing the resurrection registry be the rent board all we're doing is ensuring that that information could be made available for the registry to happen there's a lot of amendments that the report has submitted which i think are worthwhile  you know as i said you know if the notice of the rights that tenants have and the ordinance could be provide at the time of the lease that would be beneficial to  i also think that we talked about mediate mandatory mediation there's one section which i also support having moving the implementation date to july first twenty fourteen because there's a lot of new tendencies are going to happening in berkeley in the summer of twenty fourteen there's like about five thousand or more units that turn over at the end of the academic year and we want to make sure that those new tenancies are subject to this these requirements so i think for that very reason it's important also to move ahead with starting in forcemeat sooner i had a question to the city which turnier city manager so section twelve seventy zero three seven subsection b this is about the right for ten to terminate their tenancy without penalty or liability section one says his or her landlord they are able to terminate the tenancy without penalty or liability if his or her landlord has failed to enforce the cla required by subsection a against the person who has exposed the tenant to smoke what has failed to enforce and mean i would read that as eviction because they violated the in the circumstances where there's a restriction in the lease that says you can't smoke and you are smoking that with that's what that would mean ok then ok that's helpful  i also think that the lisa dedham should be on a form and developed by the city because that will ensure that all the information that we want to ensure is provided to tenants is covered rather than leaving it to individual owners to decide what's going to be you know lisa denham or not and then just going through very quickly all these issues and then i guess one one one suggestion is and twelve seventy three five subsection it says violation of section is not a misdemeanor infraction and foresman of the section shall be by private parties only nothing in this section may be used as grounds to terminate a tendency why not say nothing in this chapter is a reason why just a section can we say the chapter if the the is to address spoken in multi unit buildings that's what this section creates remedies for and that's what this exemption is limited to with respect to the rest the chapter we have to look at that we have to think about that that might not be correct ok ok well i i mean i think there's some suggestions if we are to move ahead that we can make to to further improve enforcement and education to parties about their rights under the ordinance but i think you know if there's going to be a registry let's is poison so to allow somebody to continue smoking in that building it doesn't make any sense is not protecting anybody but it seems to me that the key to this whole thing is is the so you're saying it's voluntary yeah because when the lease ends the tenant gets a hold over on a month to month basis on the same terms lease and so there's no provision that for example with ninety days notice something can be added to that lease not as far as i know unilaterally by the land what you're really and where that goes is that let's say that were the case that they could had something after ninety days notice or on the expiration whatever the remedy would then be which is essentially the same as the city cases there's a breach which is smoking a cigarette and there's compliance which is not smoking a cigarette or smoking something that's allowed right that's why it's black and white if there is a breach that is the landlord's remedy restriction that way if the city were to declare that it was a nuisance and have a grace period of hour long that would have the same effect in terms of allowing eviction about functionally it sounds like i recall there's two requirements under discussion for the sake of this discussion one is at some point in the future shall have a no smoking on the other is at some point in the future the city declares smoking in a wealthy family housing yeah family unit is a nuisance the end result is pretty much enforced than just a nuisance ordinance from the point of view of the landlord prevailing in admit i came to the meeting tonight feeling guilty because i think my thoughts on this topic got clarified after our main meeting and  so i felt badly coming here knowing how much work a bit put into this and how much direction or lack of direction from me but i must say i'm pleased to hear that that i think most of us are pretty much on the same page in the direction we'd like to go i a couple of questions for the city attorney if i'm cooking crack cocaine in my apartment and my landlord a victory i would think so here and i realize we're trying to balance the rights of tenants in rent control of buildings with the rights of everyone else to breathe clean air and the staff started out with this slide which i thought just laid it out with the reasons for the ordinance right no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke there is no level of exposure to second hand smoke that safe and some of the most at risk populations in our community are kids the highest rates of hospitalization in west pertly for children because of asthma and a lot of that comes from i i'm not going to say it's from from smoking but i would imagine that given given the numbers that council member was me i referred to earlier that living next to a smoker or above a smoker is a serious problem and i just i kind of feel that we need to go back to the troy and boards i feel like the tales wagging the dog we're trying to ovoid people  we're trying to avoid the the e word the eviction word and we're trying to protect the public health and my god you know if i'm going to insist on smoking in my unit and i got kids living around me or seniors living around me or anybody living around me that should take priority and if we can find a way around a vixen and something else and i know we were thick i think a private right of action sucks i mean you're  asking a neighbor to to take their neighbor to court not to call up code enforcement which is a little different you're asking them to go to court number one and i'm think of myself as a fairly sophisticated guy i don't know how to take somebody to small claims court and there's a form somewhere i'm going to have to i think is small claims court here by the way or is that down and open they have it here so i got it i got to come down here i've got to sit at a table six feet away from my neighbor and demand that he be fined a hundred bucks or two hundred fifty bucks or up to fifteen hundred dollars i'm if that doesn't work for me  o and frankly i think that if i repeated lee smoke in my unit and and i am damaging the health of the people around me dammit i deserve to be evicted i'm i mean i remember saying when we first talked about this several years ago are we basically saying that if i smoke cigarettes there's no place for me to live in berkeley and that was pretty much what we're saying i mean you can go rent a single family home which will cost you an arm and a leg or you can buy a single family home which costs you you know three arms and three legs which you don't have so we're basically saying to blue collar workers you know people who can't afford to live in berkeley that that if you smoke you can't live in berkeley and i it's for the young side no you can't smoke in your night or on the balcony or in the patio you can go outside to the sidewalk so so i'm i'm glad hundred bucks and in fact i'd be willing to do a council item that says the first two hundred people who need medicinal marijuana will buy will give you the twenty five bucks because then you can buy a cartridge once every week or two for twenty five bucks and get medicine and i suspect there's some risk in these vaporizers to neighbors but i bet it's a heck of a lot less than smoking a cigarette so i'm i feel to counsel i would like to you know i can i suggest a couple things something i think i have i would like to propose something that gets us there but i guess it's there maybe understanding that everybody's up against something the people who are in the unit who are being exposed and that with their children by the way are up against it but the person who is the smoker is also up against they are addicted and it's it's a big deal for them i mean i used to be a smoker i know how hard it is to quit having smoked in many decades but pursuing the private right of action means that you take you have to sue your neighbor you go to court you that we create a process of warnings for the person who is the smoker that the code enforcement person says i would receive a letter if i were the smoker that said this is happening you know we're neighbors are complaining about it and you you know you have to three warning letters before we come out and actually enforce and let me tell you that this could be a cause for it's if it's not in your lease that you know no smoking is not you could be a cause of conviction of addiction you educate the person that the stakes are high they have to pay attention and then and then you also offer services you offer ability to help patches or you know whatever whatever but you cannot trade off a person's ability to smoke in their apartment and keep doing that against the health of the family and those children there's just no question you can't do that they have to pay attention that it's just deadly and that's the way to get the attention and there isn't any other way i wish there were but i don't find any other way so that's my well i don't think you need to has to be an and i mean i really feel going six months of the family that is just beside themselves living living upstairs from this person who smokes well it's it's dreadful for them so i mean i could probably be we do get their attention and i just i forgot i want to quote one other thing is there were a lot of objection to smoke free workplaces and there are many studies afterwards that showed that none of the air quality improved with the health of the workers and blew through they got a lot less diseases it really improve their health this is a health issue it's a public health issue got to get some of the attention if they at some point if they persist in doing any of that for multiple warnings there may have to pay the old and they have to  i your approach but i just want to say personal experience dealing with fire has it in the hills and letters going out telling people that they have to you know clear their mean in the individual case where the tenant calls and then the code enforcement officer has to somehow verify the complaint and then send out a letter to the tenant who smoke or you're talking about you know they're basically they're saying we've received this complaint t ordinance a question is how would that be enforced and so correct well i'll just say that i but also the other thing about warnings that mean basically if i call and i because i do not believe that we need to create a situation where we are allowing for tennis to be evicted as a way of enforcing this policy the health commission the rent board and staff have to have come up with a good framework whether or not you know private actions of us approaching up a generally good remedies and good ways of educating tenants about not smoking that could help address the issue and i think this is a step in the wrong direction so i will not  member has a good point you know council member when graf and i live next door to one another apartment building and i just don't like her and so i call like i call the city up and say this woman smoking twenty four smoking dope it's against city law ok so she gets the letter that's fine and and we can stop this week a week later i call greg up again and i say damn it she smoke and what the heck are you doing so i don't think we've figured this out yet and it seems to me it's on the one hand i felt like the tail was wagging the dog on the other hand i don't want neighbors who don't like one another  stop explain the barking dog process and maybe that might shed some light on how it could work though we spent a lot of time actually thinking about this and i'm going to ask to describe that we do have a model in the city  and you make a complaint it's very rare that by the time the animal control officer gets out there that the dog is still barking quite frankly so they have an enforcement mechanism that seems to be working quite well for them and essentially what it would involve is that if your neighbor were smoking you would call and complain and they would indeed send a letter that said that there was a problem but only if a second tenant in your unit housing also concurred  they'll send the initial warning letter that just says hey we had the complaint but then the next action that might trigger a citation requires a second person and it also requires that both you and neighbor go down and file what's called a citizen's arrest it's filling out the form so they'll send the warning letter out on just one phone call and they actually will sometimes visit sometimes they send the warning letter sometimes they come in drop it off depending upon their resources but for any actual you know attorney answer the question yet you could be you know you can be evicted for creating a nuisance even if it's not a specifically declared percent a nuisance and you know costly barking dog in your apartment would probably just jerk the neighbors sufficiently to and i just want to say that the biggest issue with a scheme like this is that it staff intensive resources and one of the things one of the reasons we didn't bring it forward as a recommendation nationally as we looked at what the this is a safety issue i'd like that that be funded for the services provided and so i think that that's a different issue than what service is provided when we're expecting everything the inspections so this is this evolving inspection  certain point if it doesn't it well it would in the infraction when it gets to charge a fee for an inspection you have to have a regulatory program that specifies you know in this case the can do various aspects of the condition of the apartment they have to be adequate to the housing code and you know smoke alarms and cetera and there's a regular spectrum for those and for the privilege of being inspected landlords get to pay a fee have to pay a fee that's not the same as a complaint based something happened by your team that your tenant did for her that may intensive in the first year but i think when the word gets out you know we made hopefully will be spending more money on cessation help than we will on code enforcement which is why i don't wouldn't at this point necessarily recommend adding staff but not to pay you do not have to pay it's not something that if you don't have any money and however there's a real loss you know to be looking at if you continue to smoke in your unit and not smoke outdoors but you can always do there's a real loss there there are consequences there are consequences for you as a tenant who smoking and there are phenomenal consequences when your neighbor who is smoking whose whose apartment is the barking dog there is another enforcement which may actually be better suited and that's when we have noise complaints about loud parties it's called the second response ordinance  and you get a warning and say if you do it a second time in the next four months or whatever you get a seven hundred fifty dollars fine so it's a warning and we might want to look at that model of the police actually and that too we can certainly say that i don't know whether i can tell you that it's going to be worth a whole lot and i'll just note that it's and stated that people can smoke outside but you can't smoke in a commercial zone so if you live in apartment building in a commercial district that's not going to work that's not to say that people should be smoke and generally but i'm just raising as an issue the people that will be most most likely affected by this are the long term tenants so and keep in mind those people pay historically low rents much lower than a de controlled unit so it's to mean we are we are creating incentives let's let's be clear and so that's why i'm not i mean i support a strong force of mechanism maybe that's the intent some council members but i will not support doing that why i assume you weren't talking about anybody sitting here right now there is one council member who is absent tonight not participating in this discussion and damn it if that's the person you're referring to that's great but don't ever unpure on somebody else's motives here we're talking about public damage we're not talking we're not talking about tenants and their ability to smoke in their unit and not get addicted i object to that but that wasn't why i was on the que overall i just want to ask the city attorney it would be helpful if the city attorney provided some sample wording to the real estate community in terms of number one  so mr mayor we have a supplemental item that we'd like the council to accept by a two thirds vote which is on your diocese and this is so the report in your package was put together before the landmark preservation commission had an opportunity to meet and taken action so the justification for you accepting this tonight is that o of three items the first item on the top of the packet is a draft letter for your consideration for the council's consideration about a draft letter to the post office for under the section  six consultation process attached to that starting on page two and continuing on is the letter that the l p c had adopted if it finalized to sign with its attachments as their comments to the post office under the section one of six consultation process so and then you should have gotten a letter as well from the post office today that is extending the comment period on the section one of six process for i think another thirty days so what we'd like the council to consider is the draft letter on the front which would add a couple of additional comments although paragraph one is now somewhat obsolete since we did get that  request granted finally so you know you could either believe that in or strike it and in paragraph two i want to make one change it is give me a number to the area of potential  effects second to last sentence the u s p s is not currently included properties to the east on strike same and right adjacent block they did get the ones on the same block they did not get the properties to the east on the adjacent block so if you  address two and you're now who is doing the section want to six process for the post office and says dear miss you are now in the berkeley city council consider the proposed relocation of the berkeley main post office as regular meeting on october first two thousand and thirteen the city council is sending the following comments for your consideration as you respond to the united states post office request for consultation under section one of six to get strike paragraph one to the area of potential effect should be expanded to include all of the existing civic center historic district the u s p s is not currently included properties to the east on the adjacent block despite the claim to include all adjacent properties three the u s p s has indicated that in the absence of a sale the building will be shuttered there is no discussion or mitigation of the deterioration that is caused by vacancy of a building for now three the city has numerous concerns about the terms and form of the draft covenant the city would be happy to draft a revised covenant addressing these concerns including but not limited to a there are actually two resources the building and the murals oh should be addressed at a minimum the loan agreement should be part of the covenant and the city as enforcing authority should have some meaningful role and protection of the resource subject to the loan enforce the covenant including an annual fee on a per hour basis from the new owner for annual inspection and verification of compliance in addition the covenant should provide that attorneys fees and costs an expert cost can be recovered from the buyer in the event the city has to take in for some action d use of building the sale should include lease back of the lobby area for retail post office operations for a significant period potentially fifty years this eliminates many issues regarding access and protection of the murals he access to building if a sale does not include a u s p s lease back for retail operations the new you should be open to the public for hour similar to the current post office operation six days per week during regular business hours an ration of police power the covenant should state explicitly that nothing in it limits the city's police power exempts the owner from complying with all local laws in addition in a special meeting on september twenty third two thousand and thirteen the book the landmark preservation commission took action authorize the o p c chair to submit the attached letter and comments to united states post office as part of the section one of six consultation process as a series chief elected official i am also transferring the l p c's letters and attachments which includes their recommendations and comments sincerely include us leaseback of a retail operations the new year should be open to the public but what about a what about where they have the where they do have a retail portion of the building in the balance i want to have all done well we can certainly add what i think we need because i mean for me if it has to be sold i want to see access to the entire building i don't know people have a chance to read the posts a letter into the public i think it's important for public scrutiny before it come on the room before you do that i think it's important if you would be kind enough to read the letter received from the postal service and publish not informed certainly we got this today dear honorable or honorable council members united states postal service here by agrees in response to your request to extend the comment period for you as a consulting party under the federal regulations implementing section one of six of the natural national historic preservation act for an additional thirty days until november twelfth two thousand and thirteen understand that the city planning commission intends to propose the city council zoning overlay for the property and we would ask the city council not to fast track or otherwise accelerate any pending actions under consideration related to the zoning overlays or resigning of the property to allow for thoughtful consultation by the postal service the city and other consulting parties under section one of six of the national star preservation act postal service trust that the parties will use its time to work i mean the bill solution for the postal service invites interested council members and other city officials to tour the property at a mutually convenient time arrangements for the to i made by contacting dan alvarado alvarado at u s p s dot gov or by phone at four one five five five zero five one one seven sincerely tom russell contracting officer so the first time they've seen talked about even good evening i'm dorothy walker the mayor's picked up on of two of the things that i'm going to say but i'm going to say them anyway sadly the post civil service is rushing as fast as it can to sell her historic post office and they have just given you an extra month to respond to their proposal that the only historic covenant to be imposed on the building is requiring that the public be permitted to see one day a month than one nine hundred thirty seven year old now surrounding the all of it or on the main floor that completely ignores the one nine hundred fourteen original building including the lobby where retail postal functions occur i interested in the fact that the letter they've just sent you does discuss their desire to negotiate which i think is a really important step and you need to take it very seriously we certainly need the council to ask the postal service to include much more in the historic covenant than what they have proposed and this should be spelled out in the draft letter that's before you tonight this is particularly important because to date no public agency has expressed interest in acquiring the post office without restrictions that require much more public access a private organization could buy it or use it for private purposes excluding public uses we need our post office to continue to serve the public in berkeley we need to keep the retail postal service there and we need the the private sector in order to assure continued public use of the building the city should ask the postal service for a preservation covenant that require at minimum that all of the ground floor of the original nine hundred fourteen building be open for public access and public uses at least forty hours a week and your doors ok i just have one more sentence here in addition to seeking this covenant the city must develop other reuse criteria as soon as possible that will control and require any private purchase for developers to use the building for purposes that serve a wide public thank you very forty six expanding the access obviously and time and place to end our ground for the one hundred fourteen building makes sense and and that we need to make sure that it's more than just one day a week thank you very much  very very good points and one of those is that most of the description historic part it's sort of silent on the later edition the space that spend used for ma sorting and i think that there's a lot of historic value there and i think we have to be careful to make sure that's protected one of the issues that has been was raised over a year ago by the city of berkeley was was the seismic status report in the building i think that in negotiations with the post office we really need that report because unless you know the seismic condition of the building it's sort of opens up all kinds of unfortunate cost abilities so i think we need to keep  that i would also i don't understand why the the relief the slip by relief which is really an excellent piece in that's in the front of the post office is not included it's not spelled out as something that's  it's it's mentioned business storch resource but it's not spelled out and i think there should be some language that that guarantees that both sculpture and the the the mural will always remain in berkeley permanently whatever happens to the building those are that's been part of our heritage for seventy five years they relate to the bay area they relate to the city of berkeley they should never go anywhere so the post office  own them but they need to stay here and that needs to be spelled out thanks a tour and i think that's notable and unfortunate that you've been requesting access and have been denied their intent is to place this public civic treasure on the private market and was that stated by a former speaker and only a month extension of time is not sufficient i believe for the adequate review of this issue i strongly disagree with u s p s official and you are now my letter is in your packet actually i was at the landmark preservation meeting and i want to quickly just point out that this was designed for public use as a civic building as a post office and that their analysis requires them actually to go to step four this section one hundred six is kind of illegal at spect that  complicated but the four steps they are trying to stop at step two and there's three or four steps to this entire analysis they would actually have to dismiss any effect is what they've reached this conclusion because they determined that the building would not require any adverse effects to the building as it is instead though a cherished historical monument the wrong move the law actually requires that they consider any change in character of the use of this historic building they don't identify what new use the building would be how the use of the building would change so any empty promise of protection with the vague and undefined covenant is worse than no covenant at all it leaves a hole big enough to drive a huge high priced housing development through it and that is our concern that that not happen please preserve this building for public civic uses thank you hi my name is sally nelson i've been in berkeley resident since the late seventy's and i want to say that the post office really should be remain in public hands it was paid for as you as we have said many times by our grandparents the art inside the mural and this relief were paid for during the new deal by taxpayer money and any notion of selling it shopping mall three miles away so that's something to really consider i think public private partnerships were very popular a few years ago and it's quite clear that there have been a lot of problems have that have been to the detriment of the public and the taxpayers in terms of in terms of the artwork inside i really stress caution there have been some post offices where the artwork has been  what's going on thank you i want to begin by thanking you very much in thanking the city attorney for supporting the national post office collaborate in our efforts to become a consulting party in this venture here in berkeley i've spent the last almost eight days getting a temporary restraining order on the sales of stamford connecticut post office and we were successful at doing that although we have a large bond to post by nine a m eastern thursday morning problem with the stamford connecticut post office it has been on the market for about a year that post office was shuttered it was announcement was made on a wednesday that the post office would close on friday no one knew the transaction was in process the transaction was scheduled to close the following wednesday over a weekend we were able to compile the attorneys get local counsel to support us which is a whole nother drama but we were able to get before two  different judges who have upheld our tiro anneliese pendants on the property we have to remember as a community what our position was when we first to undertook the fight it was to stop the sale of our post offices and to stop them on a national basis because these assets are public assets our grandparents paid for them they are our art they are our architecture if they are not to be squandered and given away to the highest bidder or in some cases the lowest better as a community i would like for us to stand up and say the post office you need to look at alternatives requires shoot for you to look at alternatives think about using these assets as assets think about instead of it's agreed that many of these buildings are outdated because the processes that used to occur in those in those buildings don't occur there anymore so there's a lot of excess space so let's look at doing something to revitalize and keep the post office there provide revenue for the post office instead of having the revenue go to a different landlord and go outside thank you thank you merrily thanks let's stand up as a community as our group is doing and say post office act like a real estate company because you are any company who has that meant that much real estate under ownership is a real estate company act like a real estate company think it think about it create a rate do something that you can maximize the benefit of those assets the public's assets i would like for us as a community to do that i'm not opposed to that post office combining other uses within that facility but those facilities must be maintained within the public domain they are our buildings it's our art thank you thank you ok so i just wanted to town on the right so if you want to if you wanted the council to comment on the letter we need to carry it over to the fifteenth and then it would be ready before you would leave ok that's fine but how long will you be gone so they're giving us until november twel will work with our attorney to make sure we got it all covered i want to make sure we have access that is that she she has her and we preserve all of those treasures let me just say that you know there was a lot of misinterpretation of how your appeal was handled by the postal service commission i thought that was a positive response from them and they said keep this thing open keep talking to the city and work things out i think we should be optimistic but we should also be careful i think actually the overlay got their attention normally you know maybe a few other things we did along the way so we'll have those carried over to the to the fifteenth anyone want to speak to i don't not on the agenda when coming oh i'm sorry hi my name's lynn reardon and i just want to say that you do incredible work here as a body the city council that it really is full time work that some people might be independently but most people are not and i think you're underpaid that's what i'm advocating tonight that you get paid a living wage and a decent amount of money and you're just you know it's it's shameful it's really crazy and you know there's a historical dragging for your low pay at one time and but san francisco address the problem and they weren't all fired you know and other cities oakland and other cities in the bay area have addressed the problem of underpayment of their elected officials and they figured it out you know i think some cities did it by stablished commission and others by linking it to inflation or whatever but you really need to do that and i think the compassion for ourselves is where compassion for other people starts and i urge you to have compassion for yourselves and just vote to raise your salary and i will testify every single time in