berkeley for the first half of two thousand and thirteen with me our investigations captain andy greenwood and operations captain eric upson for this work session i'll begin by providing a brief overview of captain greenwood will present crime data focused on the first six months of this year and captain upson will present our analysis and response strategies will then be placed to answer questions to begin the mission of the berkeley police department is three fold to protect and ensure the safety of our community particularly by preventing crime to provide respectful and professional public service and to be an accountable transparent highly ethical organization working with our available resources our sworn staffing remains virtually unchanged for the past three years we're striving to be as efficient as possible this year we're looking at repeat call locations including false alarms we're working to determine how we can efficiently deploy our officers were also investigating how technology might help us fulfill our community safety mission in the most effective and cost effective manner overall this year our goal has been to see no increase in overall crime for twenty thirteen and we essentially met that goal in the first six months of this year i want to begin by first recognizing the importance of our community particularly in how we address crime we work very hard to share more information including crime information on a regular basis having more information about crime in our community can sometimes be concerning to people we believe that our c is stronger by having that information about crime knowing what police are doing and knowing what they can do to reduce their risk of being victimized understanding crime information particularly when we're dealing with so many numbers aided by providing context while the increase in berkeley crime last year was lower than that of the region our goal for this year has been to hold the line and prevent any further increase as mentioned in the report for the first six months of the year we're seeing indicators of a regional increase in crime one example of this being robbery graph illustrates how crime can affect not just individual cities but also the region we began to see this increase early in the year and have been putting a lot of time and effort into stopping it for example for the first six months we saw a twenty four percent increase in robbery but for that same period our officers had forty nine percent more arrests for robbery in addition we're partnering with other agencies to reduce crime we're continuously working with the community to educate them about preventive measures that people can take to increase their safety and now all introduce kept in any given would present more detailed crime information for the first half of tw good afternoon mr marin members of the council i'm captain andrew green with the investigations division commander this afternoon i'll start with a brief description of the crime types that will be covering then i'll give you an overview of our five year trends comparing the first six months of each year then we'll focus more directly on this year compared to the first six months of last year we'll look at some crime data and discuss some strategies we've been using to impact crime in berkeley tonight will be reporting on u c r part one property crimes including burglary larceny which includes petty theft grand theft auto theft auto burglary auto theft and arson and violent crimes including homicide rape robbery and aggravated assault will start with a look at the trends over the past five years keep in mind that all of our graphs show the data for the first six months of each year the crime types are color coded to allow for easy comparison within the categories we also show the numbers below for your reference this first slide shows overall part one crime in berkeley for the past five years as you can see the overall rate for this year closely matches the overall rate from last year it's slightly above our historic low levels in two thousand and eleven and remains below the two thousand and nine in two thousand and ten levels this next slide shows our five year trend for property crimes we see a slight decline from last year and levels well below rates from took the two thousand and nine in two thousand and ten finally with this slide we look at our data for the five year trends for part one violent crimes the challenges facing us and fact many others in the region is immediately apparent you can see the increase in size in the green band which represents the increase in robberies this year we'll take a much closer look at robberies later in the presentation and also briefly go into our homicides including those we've had in the past few weeks in a few moments next we'd like to move to a look at the first six months this year versus the same period last year for the first six months of tw overall partner in crime is nearly flat with an increase of point four percent that is to say less than one percent while this is a desired outcome a closer look at the data show some do creases in several categories were offset by increases in others and that we still have work to do first we'll look more closely at property crimes we had a slight drop in property crimes this year you may recall last year an increase in thefts and larcenies drove our overall crime rate up this year we saw a drop in larcenies thus far and a drop in auto thefts and in fact auto theft dropped by about eight percent compared to a sixteen percent increase in the county and a four percent increase statewide a ten percent increase in burglaries offset these drops unfortunately we'll discuss more on burglaries later in the presentation and now look at violent crimes as we saw earlier the increase in robberies accounts for a significant rise in part one violent crimes this year the green represents the number of robberies we've had but before we get deeper into that discussion we want to give you an update on the other violent crime categories which will take column by column below in the graphic first homicide we had one homicide in the first six months of the year as compared to last year three last year this year's first homicide the february fourth murder of zante jones has been closed with several arrests and is now making its way through the court process unfortunately as you well know we've had three homicides since the end of june two cases the july seventeenth murder of jermaine davis and the september eighth murder of anthony might eris are both under active investigation finally as you may have recently heard detectives made an arrest last week in the august first homicide of dust and bind them which occurred at delaware and san pablo that suspect is now in custody and he's been charged with murder turning now to rapes are you see are rapes are even with last year as we saw with last year's increase acquaintance rapes often involving alcohol are the most frequent type of case we investigate there have been no stranger or street attacks th and thirteen and we'll talk a little bit more about prevention efforts later in the presentation finally we move to aggravated assaults are going assaults are even with last years these assaults typically involve disputes between acquaintances friends or spouses that escalate into violence and more serious injury very few involve a random attack on a stranger and most of these are closed by arrest as the suspects are frequently known often well known to the victims so we'll turn now to our biggest challenge robberies with an increase of forty three cases over last year about a ten percent rise and i'll turn it over to captain upson to discuss the dynamics of robbery that we're seeing and thank you captain greenwood as mentioned i'll be talking as evening about robbery and burglary trends more in depth are now assess of the problem and our response strategies first let's look at where pedestrian robberies are happening pedestrian robberies in the first six months of the year in berkeley as you can see the areas with the greatest concentration include the south campus area downtown and south berkeley next let's look at what's being targeted here you can see an increase in the targeting of i phone smartphones and i pods that's an increase of sixty seven percent in that category this increase was by far the greatest among categories and alone counts for nearly the entire increase in the robbery category smartphones as a target of robberies is consistent with what is being seen regionally now we look at what people were doing just prior to being targeted here we see that sixty eight percent of victims of pedestrian robberies or walking alone at the time they were targeted here we see in this slide that fifty seven percent of victims had their phone in their hand when they were targeted in the previous slide you can clearly see a consistent theme in a majority of these instance when we saw this trend of elop ing we could began messaging prevention through various resources which captain greenwood will discuss in greater depth momentarily we hope this message resonates with you and the community and that you continue to help us message of few important crime prevention ideas always pay attention to your surroundings when you walk especially when walking alone show your awareness to anyone who is watching do not have your smartphone or the device out and visible do not wear your phones or ear buds in your ears while you're walking as this can really reduce awareness of your surroundings and when possible when you're walking especially in the evening or early morning hours consider walking with others in addition to our crime prevention messaging we have undertaken numerous other responses to this issue we have partnered with neighboring agencies including bart and the university of california berkeley police department to leverage resources and information to address this problem that affects all of our constituents we have been running a regular robbery suppression unit in conjunction with the university of california police department this is a two person unit with one you see officer and one berkeley officer focus on robbery suppression in the south campus area we target this shift based on the most updated data from our crime analyst as to where the most likely day and time of occurrence will be we have been sharing information with the university of california berkeley police department bart p d and oakland p d on robbery suspects and trends we recently conducted a joint community awareness event with bart p d at the north berkeley bart station where we conducted a series of live robbery and reenactments in a controlled environment to demonstrate to those coming to and from bart just how quickly these robberies can occur and to provide some crime prevention tips patrol officers have been applying a number of techniques to respond rapidly and efficiently to robberies when they do occur with great success as evidenced by our forty nine percent increase in robbery arrests these successes cannot happen without a great partnership between our operations division and our investigations division and the robbery detectives who have done an exceptional job of closing out cases finally we have greatly improved our internal information sharing to quickly get information out about robbery trends suspects and follow ups to ensure a faster and more coordinated response and finally we focus on the basics responding quickly to reports of in progress crime sharing information deploying ourselves to maximize the chances of apprehending any fleeing suspects and following up on a rest with further investigation where we can and i'd like to give you a couple examples of some of this work in progress in april of this year officers responded to a rapid series of three pedestrian robberies a witness was able to obtain a partial license plate number are south and cars have oakland d radios in them one officer with an oakland p d radio remembered hearing a similar robbery in oakland with a complete plate that matched the partial plate in our robberies he broadcast a description of the vehicle in the license plate a sergeant heading to a natural exit point from the city for these robbery suspects picked up the vehicle and made in an foresman stop the occupants were identified as the suspects in the robbery which had just occurred the two suspects would be found to be in possession of a handgun for i phones and a macbook pro laptop detectives further determined that the suspects were responsible for not only three robberies in berkeley but robberies throughout the area including robberies and  property was returned to its rightful owners and the suspects were charged with numerous robberies in another incident in august we had two robberies targeting elderly elderly pedestrians in the same day this information was quickly put out within the department two officers recognized the methods of operation of the suspect in question and provided a possible name back to investigators investigators were able to use this information to identify a possible suspect the information was shared back to patrol shortly afterwards the suspect was taken into custody and charged with four felonies so now i'm going to take a moment to cover burglary trends in this slide you can see that there has been an increase in burglaries and commercial burglaries there has been and increase in burglaries via force and i'd like to discuss this trend in hopes of reinforcing some critical crime prevention information with you most typically with residential burglaries via force we are seeing what appears to be individuals going door to door during daytime hours if someone answers the door the suspect or suspects will have a cover story a ruse usually involving an effort to sell a product once refused at the door they will move on to the next house if there is no answer they will go to the back of the house and attempt to make entry often via door kick this is why it's critically important to have reinforced several key recommendations to our residence number one if you're home make sure they know someone is home but do not open the door have your phone in hand if you feel they are suspicious let them know you are going to call the police call the police we are happy to have an opportunity to stop and identify possible burglars if they're legitimate they will be able to demonstrate that a strong neighborhood watch organization can be one of the most valuable tools in preventing this crime and we are happy to provide safety reviews of homes and businesses through our community services bureau upon request is important to note that we continue to have a large number of both commercial residential burglaries committed via unlocked or open doors and windows again we have been making efforts to communicate crime prevention messaging through the community and asked for your assistance with  as i mentioned part of our response has been to attempt to educate the community on crime prevention tips our improved internal communication an excellent partnership between the operations division and the investigation division has enabled us to respond quickly to burglary series and we have axle success in closing these series out our strategies for responding to burglaries are simple respond rapidly with multiple officers to any in progress reports of a burglary obtain and submit any forensic evidence for analysis communicate quickly and frequently regarding any series trends and persons of interest and investigators pursuing suspects in leeds where possible making arrests and recovering stolen property and i'd like to give you an example of that in  d in an example that happened in january we had a series of burglaries that appeared to have been committed by the same suspect numerous internal bulletins discussed a series ensuring that our officers were fully aware of the situation our first break in a series came  suspicious resident saw a stranger knocking on the door of his neighbor's house the neighbor question the suspect who quickly walked away but not before the neighbor was a neighbor was able to get a picture of him from behind this suspect was well dressed in each incident he was spotted most likely to support his cover story of his door to door activities the information regarding the series was shared internally and externally to the community including the photograph a fingerprint lifted by a crime scene investigative unit during one case one of the cases returned a hit on a possible suspect detectives quickly followed up on this information obtaining a warrant for the suspects arrest he was subsequently arrested and at the time of his arrest found to be in possession of stolen property from fo berkeley burglaries and one in kensington the deck detective subsequently serve a search warrant at the suspects residence and found evidence from four more berkeley burglaries and one in oakland in total he was tied to thirteen cases of burglary or possession of stolen property through this investigation i now like to turn it back over to captain greenwood to discuss some of the crime prevention strategies and thirteen has been to keep crime from increasing in berkeley the school informs our work in terms of responding quickly ineffective excuse me the school informs our work in terms of responding quickly and effectively it in progress crimes in vigorously following up through detectives work on case investigations and in pursuing suspects wherever they go in order to make arrests and bring them to face consequences for their crimes this school also informs our crime prevention efforts we believe that keeping our community informed through sharing basic crime prevention information is one of the best ways we can build and maintain trust decrease fear and increase community safety in terms of robberies for example is kept an option is absent as mentioned the takeaway for all of us is simple be aware smartphones are the most likely target for robbers and knowing that avoid walking with your smartphone out invisible don't use ear buds when you should be alert to your surroundings and stay aware of your surroundings these are basic crime prevention measures that we can all do we now like to share some of our other crime prevention efforts as well our monthly newsletter produced out of the community service bureau has been extremely well received by the community this newsletter emphasizes various crime prevention measures that share success stories and provides a wide range of information on our department and other city services in fact for our very interested and fully engaged public that apartment princeton distributes a wide variety of crime prevention and personal safety brochures and handouts as well these are available at neighborhood watch meetings or for any occasion where we can pass along information pushers and handouts include personal safety tips burglary and auto burglary prevention measures as well as suggestions for reporting suspicious activity and for increasing construction site security another example of our work to increase crime prevention and community safety is through our collaboration with our colleagues at the university of california police department he's me again we've worked with you c p d and on our own doing presentations for various student groups on numerous topics including for example sexual assault awareness and personal safety these presentations include definitions scenarios and the role alcohol can play in personal safety and the importance of watching out for each other and of calling the police immediately if you see someone being victimized or assaulted crime prevention measures are also covered with particular attention to street robberies and personal safety burglaries and out of burglaries and alcohol and drug awareness and mental health issues have also been discussed these presentations are current student co ops various student organizations fraternity sorority and so forth through our work through our work with the u c p d we're well aware of their efforts to educate you see students and staff as well for example we're working with you c p to support their efforts to ensure students who are victims of crimes are aware of the support safety and on campus resources the university community provides our investigators now provide a resource card to victims who are affiliates during our follow up interviews we're also adding this valuable resource information into the next printing of our victim of violent crime brochure to ensure that anybody who can take advantage of the resources is an educated about them and in a position to do so through our work with you c p d and getting the word out on prevention of personal safety we're working towards the common goal of making a safer city for everyone and i'd like to discuss some couple of success stories  as i said our efforts a crime prevention are also informed by identifying problems and doing outreach to see if we can make a difference an example of this is that when we saw a pattern of burglaries and thefts occurring at a storage facility the erik order contacted the business and discussed the measures that could be taken to reduce these thefts these included increasing site security adding video cameras for video recording and increasing and enhancing signage as a result thefts dropped off significantly from this site and as a final example where we've seen patterns of auto burglaries occurring in large parking lots are eric coordinators now reach out to business owners working with them to make should make their lots less vulnerable to auto burglaries we can share information about the timing and type of thefts we see suggest signage for example about not leaving valuable items visible in your car and suggest video monitoring possibilities and when it may be best to consider a visible security guard to help deter crime where merchants and property owners have worked together on these issues we've been able to bring down the number of out of burglaries on these sites i'll turn our back to chief meehan to conclude our presentation overall part one crime is essentially flat for the first six months of the year keeping with our goal authorized warrant staffing is essentially flat as it has been for the last three years and where we've seen increase in crime we've implemented strategies to try to deal with it while our goal this year is to see no increase in crime no amount of crime is acceptable and we remain focused and committed on reducing crime and victimization and doing so with an informed and engaged community thank you that is our presentation we are pleased to answer your questions ok thank you very much for the presentation so i just want to and as are any trends between the first six months of the or worse of the last six months of the year i mean things usually the same order they they tend different times like in strongly about a crime prevention message is that we tend to see an upswing in in robberies going late into the fall as for the exact reason i say be hard to say but we often see sort of a surge in robberies in the in the last months of the report it's you know it's always interesting to see which categories of crimes go up or down some of it is cyclical some of it is matches national trends and some of it is just particular to berkeley i was glad to hear your recommendations about cell phone security and prevention password system some of them you know some of them have g p s tracking and what have you and you know i guess some of them can be programmed just to shut down pads and a lot of those a lot of those items were returned to the rightful owners i'm wondering how we concentrated in the on trying to track down where these thieves are tak the cell phones to four fencing operations we have we don't have any pawn shops in the city so we don't see so much of the transactions happening there what we do see is a lot of the transactions happening online and unfortunately once they go online it's very hard to track some of the companies are more cooperative with law enforcement than others and many of them occur outside of the city and frequently even outside of the region so those transactions are much harder for us to stop that's why one of the things that we think is more important than even stopping that is and i think alluded to a council member is the technology exists to break the phone to turn it off and make it a useless piece of equipment for whatever reason in this country other countries have done it but in our country there's been an unwillingness on the part of the carriers to make that happen and know that the council has put forward an item recommending that the carriers do that and i fully support that see relating to residential  is not a home invasion robbery if i could just take one moment to just emphasize something i kept the number mentioned we do provide a service where if somebody wants us to come out to their home and do a safety survey we are happy to do that and show them areas and their home that they can be made more secure that's a and thank you for the report i've had a lot to do with your department in the last six months we had two homicides in the vicinity of delaware and san pablo and so i'd like  gang activity that is i'd like to ask if you could talk a little bit about how we actually try to penetrate or deal with the gang activity and i have more questions after so we do see what i would call gang activity but much of it is self identified so one of the questions that we have is what is a gang member who is a gang member is it somebody who says they are but takes no action is it somebody who takes action but denies it is it somebody who simply hangs around with other people who are gang members so it's a little bit of a challenge for us to decide what is and what is not a gang member that said we do see some indicators we certainly see gang graffiti in the city that's something that we analyze and we're actually doing what i think is a much better job of not just analyzing and looking at individuals but trying to understand the linkages between those individuals because it really helps us in our crime fighting efforts and then finally the other thing that we're that i'd like to mention is that we're going out to the schools and we're doing gang prevention education particularly in the middle schools which for us is as shown to be the most effective time to to interdict kids in their lives and prevent it from getting into gangs in the first place you know i have to say that the the the rate at which you actually made arrests in these homicides was just amazing  your credit that you were you followed up i don't i don't know how you did it i don't think you want to share that with us necessarily but the fact that we've had so many arrests people we we're really very impressed with the fact department you know the whole departments involved in this has been able to track however it is you do it these are people who live in other cities much of the time and  make arrests is been pretty amazing i was at the barber league gun violence roundtable today and oakland and the chief of police in san leandro raised the issue of the fact that when they collect guns through however they collect them they want to trace the history of the gun all the way back and one of the most important methods of doing that is a ballistics trace in the butt but these seem to take about two hundred dollars per trace and i wondered if she was saying that often they exhaust their budget because they're collecting so many guns that they can actually do that historic trace back which does give them a lot of information and i wonder if some point you could let us know if we have a problem are we doing ok with those with those checks because i'm springing a question on you right here really i will tell you that even though we of course have to work within our budget we are willing to spend money where we need to spend money and so there's no constraint on the detectives if they feel there's a lead to productively that they should follow their permission to do so for you melt them down exactly that that said and i leave it to it a little bit in my presentation we are actually looking at technologies to help us better investigate crimes where we don't have to send things out to a crime lab every time which is incredibly expensive and getting more so we could actually do things here locally and much more quickly so that's something that we're investigating and so i wanted to thank you for  utenant frankel's time working with me on that intersection and that we're doing this design approach first we hope to have those high def video cameras into the liquor store as i do that how long that's going to take but it would be nice to get that pretty soon and then we'll be paying a visit to the to the liquor store talking about environmental improvements there it's been exceedingly troubling that these homicides have happened like this seems right on the street and not very late at night so we're all very celebrate by that and you know we we need to be working in partnership the neighbors are very clear about that we've had very big meetings they will continue to work on drilling down into this thank you presentation of questions first of all do you guys keep track of how many arrests are categories that you've made and interesting because seems like this department at this time one time has just been so exceedingly go and it's not random it's these people and know each other it's not like the citizen that we need to be worried about walking on the street there so i live in a good shot i mean there was always a possibility but generally speaking in those homicides are directly connected in one way and  jan twenty third teen and i'm curious do you think this map reflects in general the pattern of this kind of robbery south campus west campus and north campus is this historical pattern i think i think historically we see more robberies in that area that is if we were to say there's a density map that we see robberies occur they seem to be in the downtown and south campus broadly speaking in the downtown and south campus areas as well as areas  south berkeley i mean it would appear to me that the south campus area has ten to twenty times the rate that the north campus has is yeah you're looking at actual penn map and i don't know the distribution of or i don't believe the distribution of robberies in that map would vary that much if we looked at years past ok thank you know i want a couple of things one i want to second the mayor's comments and it was really nice showing the percentage of arrests for robberies and i had i think good really nice to have that information in the future for as many crime categories possible to show that there's closure the second one following up on the pedestrian robbery map and the beat structure and a o we had an increase in burglaries and i suspect they might have a different pattern than the robbery pattern and how i know the staff has been looking in to passing modifying the beads  but i suspect the burglary pattern looks different than just maybe i'm wrong ok but i've seen also sometimes car thefts and they certainly look different than this and it seems like one may need some flexibility i mean you have a certain number of people on patrol but you have some arbitrary boundaries on beats though i gather they work within four areas ok how much flexibility do you have when you're you know we see an increase in sa robberies and burglaries of shifting resources to match where the crime is happening at that time may you know may change six months later as you catch some of the people to do it but i mean are these beat structure kind of frozen do we need to beat structure is it just a matter of you know that you have a certain number of people per your four areas and the area coordinator gets to deploy them as it is guess fit match the current public safety needs the current beat structure was created several decades ago presume it's out of date based on perhaps different populations certainly different crime certainly different staffing and so that is something that we're beginning to look at now and this will also be a public process will certainly want input from the community to be structured as it is now we have eighteen beats that we try to fill throughout the day it does limit our flexibility to some degree and but when there is a need and we have to shift resources will do so but yes it can be a hindrance based on again a structure that was created a long time ago i have two other questions one is the a member for five years ago we had a reports from the fire department where we were concerned about response time and they had some detail statistics do we have data with a new computer system where we could you know  you could give us some debt on it depending on the type of call it an emergency level what the response time actually is yes our new computer system the dispatching system can produce reports were guarding our response time actually you can get pretty granular regarding for example we can look and say what's our response time from the from the dispatch of the call to the arrival on scene that kind of data is that we get some sort of like when we have some of that that in a future report i don't know what's the right categories show it maybe for some of the violent crimes we're looking at a response time data if we're looking at since you've asked us to look at that arrest for example maybe we could just go by those categories and take a look and see what would work the that the staffing levels the same this year as last year can you tell us what that stepping level is and how close are we to being fully staffed and correct what's being done on that front certainly we are we are authorized one hundred seventy six i assume you're talking a sworn staff were authorized one hundred seventy six sworn officers currently we're at one hundred sixty seven so we have nine vacancies when i look back over the last three years we've averaged about nine to nine have taken sees every year the primary reason for that is we don't hire until somebody has actually left the department so we don't preach higher so once somebody leaves the department we begin the hiring process working with h r it's a fairly involved process takes up to a year to put somebody on the street and so there is always going to be a little bit of a gap between what we're authorized to hire and what we have on the street currently we have four people four officers in background and we also have two hundred what we call personal history statements that we're reviewing from my recent recruitment that we did and are there officers that are now not able to work because of injuries or all the vacancies or whether nobody is there or are there people's in some sort of intermediate category you know there's also that so we have to make one sees because we haven't been able to hire yet or we're working on hiring we also have vacancies because people become injured or they become ill that does happen interestingly we're actually putting together a fairly advanced wellness program for the entire you first i want to thank you for your reaching out to the community with your newsletter it's a wonderful newsletter chock full of lots of information and i enjoy reading it and i also forward it to my constituents who list of about twenty five hundred people and then they forward it to their neighborhood groups as well so it's getting out there and i think everybody really appreciates the effort to reach out to them and give them information seeing a trend it is walking alone it doesn't specify day or night our crime analysts look at that hard every every week and it just to look at the primary target times and we are seeing a lot of evening late late evening and early morning hours targeted especially you know we've seen a lot on friday friday night or early saturday morning but we do see some  other patterns as well that crop up in the afternoons as well it's a lot of targets of opportunity we think and the age range of the victims are you seeing it you know eighteen to twenty five is it mostly students who are being victimized by these robberies yeah i think it's mostly seen actually i think the most the largest category is twenty five and over both man and women actually the largest generation or less i mean we've actually done analysis kind of a victim assessment and so we have found that there's no differential differentiating between genders so males and females are pretty much equally victimized but it tends to be younger people so generally people who are in the eighteen to twenty five and thirty we see those as the most frequent victims ok and do you have a sense from your detective the text of course of these individuals doing it or is this an organized effort how it can be individuals often it's more than one person for example one person drives the other person does a robbery it's not uncommon for there to be two people or three people involved so the case has become complex in terms of proof right one person does robbery proving the other knew that was happening when they pulled the car over to the curb that sort of thing so it's not i'm pretty confident that it's not a one gang or working for somebody or no  that no it's acting on their own and the common thing about victims are you know we think about age but the common thing is walking at night the cellphone out invisible remember it's the cell phone which has a value because it can be sold and resold so that cellphone is an object of value upon sight to someone who's thinking about doing a robbery is willing to think that i can find one and i'm going to rob somebody of it so the consistent thing is to put yourself in a way be  your surroundings so you know when the go ahead just just to add to that i think what we see is is the idea will come that they know that the suspect needs some money they'll find some like minded friends to go and commit crimes and the next day it might be a different group of associates loosely affiliated and we see that pattern repeated and it really is just impulse and opportunity that we're seen and i would just call your attention to the first slide which showed that when you look at things regionally robbery is up throughout the entire region and it's not being an island where of course feeling the some of the effects of that i'm just wondering you know those signs that on the highway they say buckle up  you know whatever and we have those street signs that have messaging like kenneth the museum about st university where i know if we could try to use those to send this and apparently there's a differentiation between potential people that are coming back and of course you don't want to feel those vacancies but is it possible for us to get a jump on hiring with those vacancies where we know somebody is not coming back they're actually retiring or something so that we don't have that long wait with staffing levels yes we still have a fairly significant wait only because even when we do know when somebody is going to leave and we have a firm date we can plan and we can prepare for testing but we still can't fill the position to tell us vacant so there's always going to be again a fairly significant gap but it but if there is someone who submitted their retirement paperwork and they're not going to they're going to be ninety days out the group of two hundred that the chief mentioned i mean they will start going through and doing backgrounds and be prepared to actually make that hiring offer so we can do some of that i would just emphasize also that we have not lowered our standards at all it's still very difficult to become a berkeley police officer just the background alone takes one month for each candidate so again we're very very thorough ok well that's good  into that and get back to you with that i'm not aware of a particular rise but i think the distraction by device might be one of the things that's covered in the collision report and i certainly can check on that for you thank you very much ok well thank you thank you for that one oh is not as large as oakland and rich probably but just wondering whether that would be something that type of technology is something we'd be interested in in the future because shot spotter which is the primary company that does that is a private company i'm pretty confident that they're not going to allow us to put it in the city without us paying for it and there's really no way that i can see to simply expand it from one city to another because it does require the installation of equipment that said that would be one thing what can you tell us about the increases in this is this due to just a concentration of people in one area and people see it as a rich environment for crime or just something else going on council member i think you're right on point with that we we definitely saw a large number of these incidents at the beginning of the year and that's not uncommon we see a spike at the beginning of the school year that ramps off over a few months and we increase staffing in the area accordingly and with this particular game we knew we were going to see some very large numbers and as a result we partnered with the university to put twelve additional officers and two person teams in the area they made a lot of on the street we're paying for it but then the university also contributes officers to that the manager i had a little disagreement and now it's resolved so listen we want to thank you guys for this presentation with it's really excellent you know we're we know it's a tough tough road out there you know a you it's very quick it's just if we're authorized to press hundred seventy six but we always have less so would seem wise because things like the streets are dangerous we don't seem to have enough traffic cops and some of the pathways are scary sometimes and so we could have more by cops so if you could if we're supposed to have one hundred seventy six if you'd arrange it so that we could actually get more so we could actually have closer to that at well thank you mayor bates i'm really delighted to be reading this item it's recognizing international assistance dog week and we have a couple of our fans right here in the front because i think most people don't know very much about service dogs and they're being used a lot more in very critical situations this is recognizing international assistance dog week two thousand and thirteen assistance dogs transform the lives of their human partners people with physical and mental disabilities they serve as devoted companions helpers best friends and close fan family members they include service dogs psychiatric dogs guide dogs hearing alert dogs and medical or response dogs they perform a wide range of tasks including assisting people with vision loss assisting people with other disabilities alerting people with hearing loss and remarry remaining alert to on coming medical conditions which they can sense berkeley adopted and implemented service animals welcome in berkeley as a policy and program one year ago international assistance dog we celebrated every year since two thousand and ten provides an opportunity for us to raise awareness of the selfless ways in which all top types of assistance dogs help people with disabilities live more comfortably and safely bergan university of canine studies the home of assistance dogs will host a gala in berkeley on october fourth two thousand and thirteen to support increased training and placement of service dogs and i believe that's happening at the ed roberts campus the city is taking a leadership role in recognizing the rights and responsibilities of persons with disabilities and they are service dogs as well educating the public on the need to provide accommodation in cafes and restaurants and elsewhere now therefore  that on behalf of our mayor tom bates the city of berkeley does here by declare the first week in october two thousand and thirteen as international assistance dog we in order to reaffirm the city's commitment to respect celebrate and recognize assistance dogs and their partners this week and throughout the year in our community and i hope to present this to you hazel weiss and maybe you can say a few words could evening a mayor and council members and everyone here today and thank you all for your ongoing support for service animals for people with disabilities in the city of berkeley and you and we all together have truly been leaders very quickly since last year when the service animals welcome resolution was passed we have posted on the city website the service animals welcome sign that anyone can download and put up anywhere they want and it's got the resolution number on it making it the official city policy which is great the information bulletin that was written and prepared by staff was mailed to every single business license renewal and the entire city of berkeley and it's my understanding that every new license application will include the bulletin with that information which is absolutely outstanding there was an article that i hope you all saw in the baywatch magazine in the july issue said berkeley a pioneer in welcoming service dogs i brought a copy but i believe everyone has seen that already talking about it we are truly a pioneer and this is the first place that we know of in the country in the world where this is been done to have a show of support and lastly almost raise funds for service dogs for veterans for wounded warriors and for other people with disabilities it is that six p m at the at robert's campus and i brought a whole bunch of flyers that i believe i can put out on the table so that anyone here and here and i'll be forwarding more formally some of you have managed to get to are ready thank you all and behalf of the commission on disability has been the the star war group as well as the community health commission on all of this so i also am representing the position of the commission on disability on which i serve so i thank you all we thank you all and i hope to see what our gal day whereas the coastline is one of california's most important resources both environmental economic is used for recreation tourism fishing and other vital coast industries and whereas the city of berkeley is strongly committed to the wise management of the coastal zone into the stores than it's of its natural an economic value whereas this wise management requires public awareness and support and a sense of shared responsibility among the citizens three shoreline workers the business county and other local institutions and whereas this year on the saturday september twenty seventh from nine a m to noon city of berkeley staff devoted shoreline volunteers berkeley residents students and others once again will take part in an organized cleanup of our shoreline and whereas all citizens are being encouraged to participate by removing a litter either at the shoreline or near their local creek or on their block since most litter of eventually ends up in the bay and eventually out in the ocean where all animals become in danger so now therefore be it resolved that i tom bates the mayor of the city of berkeley do hereby declare saturday september twenty first two thousand and three as short and clean up day in the city of berkeley and courage everyone in the community to participate in the activities which promote a clean shoreline environment and to help us make trash extinct so  thank just a clarification this saturday is the twenty first and it's two thousand and thirteen and i invite everybody to come if you can't come to the cleanup this saturday please go out in front of your house and pick up ten pieces of trash fair walk down to your local storm drain and pick up ten pieces of trash there because eventually we're going to pick it up next year so we invite you to come definitely this saturday all ages are invited if you don't feel comfortable leaning down and picking up trash then you can help us collect the data because the data this makes this the largest research project in the world because it's an international cleanup happens everywhere in the world over these three hours time timeframe means it's going to be happening all day long all around the world and in order to change the laws and create a good environment we have to collect the data and the totals of the data get sent to the ocean conservancy in washington c and then the laws are changed to prohibit marine dumping or perhaps at large businesses that are contributing to marine plastics so we need everybody's help to for this event and we invite you all down council people please come down  join us and the public please join us we need more people every year and thank you very much for this proclamation well look forward to seeing you there where there's people are supposed to go thank you we're meeting behind at the corner of university and west frontage road at the berkeley marina we're going to be cleaning about thirteen miles of shoreline but the staging areas are right there behind the sea breeze market in the nap dirt storage area which is getting tidy as we speak and we usually pick up tons of trash in a three hour period so it's a really easy way to feel really good about the environment and i am vite everyone to participate and thank you again for the proclamation  to the microphone hunty has been a dancer and teacher of dance as well as a choreographer since one thousand nine hundred ninety nine and where as roger is now executive director of the beat berkeley performing arts has been connected with the court house athletic club one thousand years and has previously given ten more workshops in juneau alaska rumania and hungary and whereas roger teaches his own style of modern jazz blues both children and adults and has become a mentor artist of young audiences of nab northern california for over twenty five years as well as engaged for twenty eight years with the  commons and whereas roger is a founding member of oakland city dance city center dance theater and is a faculty member of the dance department at california state university in a word and has conducted workshops from alaska to hawaii as well as new york san francisco mexico and europe now therefore be it resolved that i mayor tom bates on behalf of the city of berkeley do hereby declare september i would like to begin by welcoming everyone here tonight and i have a special thanks i'd like to give to mayor tom bates and the members of the city council the city of berkeley susan felix lo broke joan levinson and all my friends and extended family i'm overwhelmed i'm being recognized for this prestigious award and i thank you for it with my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation all the continued support i have received over the years has been an inspirational journey for me we are indeed fortunate to be living in the city of berkeley where the arts are held in such high regard and play and in trickle an important part of the lives of our community our studio the beat berkeley performing arts our students and teachers our mall type ethnic multicultural diverse community of perth a perfect  reflection of this wonderful and unique community dead is perfectly we are all proud to participate in and be a part of the fabric of this community in which everyone is welcome and dance in the arts encouraged and nurtured are going to go into the regular part of the program some people who are more than welcome to stay here but you're more than welcome to leave or would like to know we're going to have just a moment so you're going to have that opportunity without them disrupting people so congratulations for roger and his wonderful work ok thank you thank you very much when i go to the part of the agenda where we have some presentation for the city manager do you have any comments about a manager i do not mr mayor thank you so also we go to the public comments for items not on the agenda we have water that we're just saying you can do for the environment is to buy bottled water sixty percent of water bottle is not quite as good as tap broth or and some of it about ten percent is harmful just because it comes from a w could get killed because his drivers don't stop even past drivers and it's similar to duran and telegraph that little intersection i think there is a need to correct this problem before someone gets to be crippled or worse killed it's going to happen one day i would like to see if they have some kind of grades or something we need to look into for public question thank you first i'd like to refer lewis's comments to the city manager and then we had passed out this evening an amended version that includes the letter to the department of education on i don't numbered the support survivors of sexual violence by sending a letter to the department of education and support the local sexual assault awareness day on october twelfth so i'd like to cheryl and many many folks in the community of berkeley know her as a pioneering theatre artist with disabilities she started out with the disabled students union when she was a student here but she became known throughout the country for her activism with the rai crips theater group with the axes stance troupe and her she authored sassy girl memories of a poster child gonna rock i and ended up getting a national endowment arts solo theater fellowship so we quest that we adjourn this evening  also care of the concern that we already have a policy in a suit going to your item and i certainly you answer that i had actually written the previous council and i had remembered it as previously creating a policy requiring an annual evaluation but when i went back and read it all it actually said is that we would consider having a policy and it didn't actually make it a policy so that's why i followed up with this item that actually says that we will actually have an annual evaluation because when we voted on my previous item it just said that we would consider whether or not to why well my concern about the item is that it refers to some documents at the bottom that make it very ambiguous as to what it's actually transmitting and it's very troubling to me because these are person matters which have to be handled very carefully you know people's people's careers are involved and so i am not opposed to setting the policy but i want all of those attachments that were referred to at the bottom  removed or i wouldn't be able to vote for it in fact i would i would move to table with all of those attachments are the information report they're not part of the action i well do i have the floor i'd like to move to table this side of  become it's always been important but it's become more important in the past year and a half because of the increased incidents happening and we've had a whole bunch of activities going on related to this and and the folks  here to speak as part of public comment some of the people working on the local sexual assault and awareness day so i think with a lucky to have them bringing together all these groups working together bancroft and dana we're having our city of berkeley sexual assault awareness day it's absolutely free open to all interested community members i will consist of a series of short workshops including resources and reporting  supporting yourself workshops will be led by folks from various area organizations and certified rape crisis counselors from organizations such as berry women against rape and some folks from u c berkeley hi my name is arielle butler and i am a student at u c berkeley i just wanted to say that this is an this event is an absolutely excellent opportunity to reach out to the most silenced community among us in berkeley survivors i think it's also a chance to teach and to learn and it's an absolutely great opportunity to teach how to listen and how to aid survivors i think that as a community listening to survivors is a great way to empower them and some of that empowerment we can show sexual development and a robin orton from public works who can also answer questions if need be so the report in front of you provides an update to city council on the plans for managing the filled and vacant rental spaces at the telegraph channing mall  the telegraph channing ma which is formally known as the south or gate garage has fourteen retail spaces and sixteen thousand square feet of run triple space and there are currently two bacon sees the overall vacancy rate in the telegraph area is about eighteen percent and the vacancy rate at the telegraph channing model is about sixteen and a half percent so currently we are reviewing two applications that were submitted by potential applicants  tenet's excuse me and in terms of managing the moma future we have issued an r f p on august thirtieth to find a leasing and management agent who under the direction of the city manager would have the overall responsibility for managing the mall and that would be include things like marketing vacancies evaluating prospective tenants paying expenses coordinating routine maintenance etc we also we also had a meeting on august thirtieth with  the telegraph channing merton merchants all of whom were present to inform them about a number of issues including the plans to hire a management agent and they talked with us about some other issues that we will be meeting with them about once they provide a copy service food shoe repair things that people need every day we need to support these people because without them telegraph avenue is just fast food and cheap little tricky to get in some store and the community must have a place to go and berkeley and telegraph economic times we are a family owned business that prides itself on serving the university and the berkeley community my brother and i have attended u c berkeley to remain a part of a business and community that holds high values and traditions despite the poor economic climate we have managed to keep our doors open without compromising our business model we were surprised to be assessed to possess a very tax which we have never been billed for in twenty seven years of business we are in the latter part of the business here and our budgets have already been calculated the possessory tax was never a factor and since we were never incurred such a bill in nearly three decades we are requesting the city's understanding of these sudden and i'm president charges also the merchants of say years my business has declined significantly approximately sixty percent now i am having a hard time to pay my rent during the last five terrible economy i provided a copy of this c of coding to this table we overpaid approximating the twelve months worth of rent over c p i one of my neighbor a business owner told me that he's a landlord area we need to rent an adjustment i just soon as possible to stay in business the c d o berkeley should be supporting small bennett i said my time to my sister good evening mayor tom bates and city council members my name is chelsea bennett and my family owns the framers workshop in berkeley i would like to start by thanking mayor tom bates for his continuous support as a customer at the framers workshop and not only attending the opening of our sister store the framers outlet even cutting the ribbon at our grand opening ceremony thirty six years ago my mom opened the framers workshop off of telegraph she then hired my dad and so became our family i grew up on telegraph avenue and sadly have watched it go downhill year after year my family and i have watched business after business close o telegraph and in the say their game all unable to survive in this brutal economy while we have struggled as well i'm proud to say that mainstream hard working parents have been able to keep our doors open for the last thirty six years in berkeley  huge risk my parents and i decided to expand our business this year and take over one of the largest vacant spots in the se there gate mall shockingly it was extremely hard to least the space from the city with the space not up to code electrically and all eight windows defaced we had to pay close to thirty thousand dollars of our own money to bring the city's property up to code and habitable shortly after we opened we like all the other mall renters were hit with a huge bill from the city out of nowhere no notice no letter no call just a bill for over three thousand dollars and must pay by next month's notice it's no secret the dire state to say their game all is said and so i hope you can understand our worries and fear when hit with such a large bill we know firsthand the difficulty it takes to lease a new space from the city and i truly believe that a private leasing company will not be the solution to the vacancy problem in the  game all bringing in an outside egypt will not magically bring these fake and spots up to code the mall itself isn't even up to code and so please rather than spend what small budget the say there gate mall has on out city job to a private leasing company recommend to the city manager of say their gate mall tenants receive emergency rent relief something that many landlords on telegraph are currently doing to help their time and survive please help family my fellow small family run businesses to continue to serve berkley help these small businesses served by in the big box world we live in today help us keep telegraph full of mom and pop stores what telegraph is all about we need a meeting with the city manager present within the next ten days we need to figure out with the city our landlord how we can survive the framus workshop itself employs seven full time employees who all make above minimum wage and are offered health benefits we're talking about helping eight families small run family businesses and all their employees survive this dark time telegraph is currently it we're not asking for the moon we're asking for help and it's something that you all have the power to change thank you are you ready good evening my name is rayco redmond and i am volunteer and events coordinator at revolution books and as you've heard the city's policies are threatening to drive or when there's a power point for you the city's policies are threatening to drive revolution books and other small businesses at the say their game all out of business worsening the economic downturn on calligraphic avenue this harms these businesses the avenue and jeopardizes what makes berkeley unique and the role it can and must play in the world today it's unfair unsound and unnecessary so why does berkeley and the planet need revolution books with aleutian books and bodies the only way out of this intolerable suffering and destruction that endangers humanity at its core is a new synthesis of revolution and communism developed by berkeley native bob avakian a new conception and strategy for a radically new and much better society revolution books operates on a shoestring but has been at a vital center of intellectual cultural and political  in activism its wide range of books touch on the issues facing humanity brings cutting edge internationally renowned artist scientists authors poets and films to berkeley from cornell west and his book on the black panthers and recently emergency programs imposing the war against syria but threatened war against syria check out our website revolution books from much more or better yet verse at the store institution of inspiration for generations of young people searching for ways to remake society through the ideas of writers around the world  support revolution books is a berkeley institution and it does need your help so policies like an annual four percent rent increase every year in adequate improvements at the mall and  recently this huge tax levy that just came out of the blue are unfair and unsound revolution books is rented from the city for twenty seven years and our understanding is that the bookstore is pain right now fifty percent more than the city is attempting to rent the vacant spaces in the mall you know it's outrageous instead of this my charging a fair rate and working with the stores in the city can be part of reaching out to the thousands from the university and the greater berkeley community and bring them back to the book stores music stores and other small businesses have been the anchor of telegraph avenue and what makes the avenue a global cultural and historical destination and today bookstores everywhere are under duress our all volunteer staff at revolution books has been involved in a sustainer drive and i passed these brochures out last time to the city council  to build a network of support from people who know and love what the bookstore does to make up the one thousand to two thousand bucks a month needed about our sales to keep the doors open ran adjustment will be crucial crucial to enabling revolution books and the other small businesses here to survive and thrive we join with the other businesses in the mall and have many ideas about how to improve the infrastructure and reach out to the university and berkeley community we  budgets and all that stuff and we get assessed builds that we were not anticipating it comes into a way that we dip into savings or go out and look for something i don't like to extend my line of credit or anything like that because its sales have been down the mall used to be a traffic place altogether with the foot traffic from my call it was about ten to fifteen thousand people a month however that's the jury of it and it's barely coming on to full five hundred six thousand people in there so looking forward to your help your guidance as well as a mutual understanding that we need to revive telegraph to want to do is to be what berkeley stood for and what it stands for thanks to mark draper volunteer with revolution books and i bought a statement mary parfitt who is a retired educator and a forty year homeowner in berkeley wanted to come and speak to you but she was unable to come but one of the me to meet her statement the berkeley city council revolution books is a berkeley treasure and a berkeley institution i have patronized the store for many years in a variety of ways they have a very fine collection of progressive and radical for the rich or indeed the only one in berkeley but the edition i attend many of the community forums and book talks at the store these presentations of range from a blues legend talking about his life to former prisoners who are turning their lives around and are now students at u c berkeley to young indian woman who spoke about the atrocious treatment of women in her country i've gone to poetry readings in concerts at store i've learned a great deal about the world as a result of the literature and the in store presentations as you all are well aware that it is very difficult for bookstores make it in what was once called the athens of the west we all still mourn the closing of cody's books therefore i urge the city council to make provisions to help the store stay open for some time now revolution books has been putting out pleas for donations to keep the bookstore open i understand that the city is offering cut rate went to learn new tenants into the sea in this time of sugaring businesses that is not understandable tactic but at the same time rent for the bookstore just keeps climbing and they're barely barely staying at closure it makes good sense to lower their rent in order to help them continue their vital services to our community are you to help this fine berkeley institution stay in business page on the same situation with this bad economy in this more i have been watching ellie to seven stores which are nice neighbors went out of business we cannot simply agree that they didn't work hard did something day after day and the day after day we know the real economy just through the same bad or wars i and our past to go through this bad situation and or so anymore thank you thank you entity has a has a has a possessory interest in a property so for example we're not we're not we don't pay taxes and but when you have an entity that is a for profit business that is that we've heard you know a lot of people here want to speak to us and allow them to them that opportunity but i think it's important to refer this to you and have you actually meet with people and come back with us because i think there's a lot of concern on the  council that we need to figure out how how and why we're going make some how we might consider making some reductions so there's no recommendation on the i don't think we'd like to take a look at the leases and take a look at what's happening in the area mr rodgers has been working on this and as he mentioned in his remarks i believe he's working with ms orden to schedule a meeting with the tenants there so we will certainly do that was so is a possible our next meeting is going well actually situations and then possibly you know maybe maybe the rent for the next month could be reduced fortunately to what they have to pay for your results from what you could make that recommendation to us so when we met with the when the when  public works and with the tenants and finance there were a number of other wish issues that were raised in this was one of the issues and what the tenants were told is that we were going to look into these issues and then column meeting with them so we're planning to column meeting and be contacting folks in the next week and and then setting up a meeting when most of the individuals can attend that we can discuss here are the issues  and after we've actually had a chance to look into them we also have to look at the leases there's a lot of different things for us to look at ok well i think you were going you know full stop a little but i think it's going to be important to meet with them and i think there should be some resolution like you know right away like ok you're saying they pay their rent and more in the beginning of the month right or the end of the month whatever so maybe there could be some you know  i think what we'd like to do is look at what the leases are we can provide the council the actual dollar extent of what this tax equates to as against the full lease of lease rates and we can also look at what are those lease rates are comparable in the market talking council member thank you and i'd like to second the mayor's concepts that that he suggested in terms of some of the priority issues to consider i also want to add the that request that before a company is hired because there's currently been an r f p issued with the concept that we might have a private company come in and deal with some of the management this this building has operated for over fifty years with city staff and union workers dealing with these issues generally very effectively for most of those fifty years and i'm worried that if there was one if there was a problem you know with one employee during the course of you know a series of years that doesn't mean that a city employee can't handle this work i think there are numerous any of berkeley union employees who would be perfectly capable of handling this and we don't have to contracted out to a private corporation to skim thousands of dollars of profit off the top and take that money away from what could actually be done within the building so i think in addition to concerns about you know the the businesses which i share i'm also concerned with a bit you know i guess i'd like to request that we get a report back on  before the conclude before we do a contract even even though the city manager probably would have the power to do a contract without us voting because it's probably going to be less than our limit i'd like to request that that come back to us before a contract is entered into so that we can consider if it's possible that this could be done in house and i do think that the issues of rent adjustments  e when we voted for these various leases i don't i don't believe there was any discussion that rents were going to be increased by double the cost of living i think there was a general expectation that well you know whence are going to have to go up and so there should be some increase peer article the but i doubt if anybody on the city council and probably the city manager didn't think that that our leases would be going up double what the cost of living is so i think i think that's important information to look at and review and evaluate  deciding how we're going to move forward on this thank you very much i just have a very quick question and i couldn't let that you're already had agreed to meet with people and you were in the process of setting things up who's been paying this tax  wondering no one no one so it's now the county's alerted and we need to pay that well it may be you know i need to know what i should say as i should check with finance because i don't know who's been paying the taxes maybe that the city has been paying the tax i don't i don't have the answer to the question so i can certainly get that for you but just it's curious about this which is a new thing we haven't we don't deal with this very often  well first of all i must take issue with the idea that we should be managing this property we do a lot of things in this city very very well i'm not sure we have the scale to be managing a commercial property like this so i think we should definitely compare the two in terms of cost because the gross income from the building when phil will be around when filled will be about two hundred sixty or seventy thousand dollars if we devote  a half time employee to managing this small i hate the word i wish we could come up with something else this court that you know that would eat up a quarter of the rents that are coming in so i think we can get it done a lot more efficiently possibly outside so we should compare those those costs secondly i do think it's important that we get some comparable rents i know that there is a court slash mall across the street that that walks through  to bancroft so we should we should look at that and make sure that we're competitive i do having been a run a small business and my wife ran a small business for many years i'm sympathetic to small businesses i want them to succeed i frankly think we might be able to get more rent from a national chain i'd prefer to have a small business in there not withstanding the mayor's wonderful efforts at  generating activity over the last three months on telegraph avenue i find that court a really dismantle dark dingy place smells like urine a lot smells like some other things a lot and  it could stand cleaning up and i don't think we're doing a pretty very good job of managing that property in that sense and number two if i lived east of telegraph avenue i wouldn't know that it exists so i think and i have argued i'm not a big fan of signage but advertising small businesses i'm a fan of and i think that we could do some signage coordinated up and down telegraph avenue that would direct people to those services that are available in that mall because again we want to support small businesses that are providing local services and finally i guess i would have to say to some you merchants shame on you for not asking what the possessory interest tax is if it really is in your lease and and the city was saying that you were going to pay it because that if you read your lease before you signed it and it's in there you should have noticed it and asked shame on us if in fact we buried it in some small print and didn't point out to those merchants that this that they were essentially in a triple net situation they were going to be paying the property taxes if this is just another name for the property taxes on on that building and and it is true that if not if a nonprofit organization like the city rents out space to a for profit organization then though those taxes  due what i might ask is if the city attorney could check and see if we rent to a nonprofit and i don't know if revolution books is a nonprofit you're not incorporated ok so if there are some non profits in there obviously your report and it looks like the average rent is maybe a buck and a half a square foot and but it looks like from the numbers you provided in the report that you're off you're asking less than that for the two current spaces is that correct the two current spaces that that's still under consideration about what that we're still looking at rentals in the surrounding area to determine what the cost would be i think th is about a dollar seventy three a square foot proudly not counting the two vacancy prices and it's i mean i think we have to be careful because rents on telegraph avenue itself are not going to be comparable to what we might expect in this small area i agree we want to see some probables i think also in i think we should have a management firm do this i don't think the city does as well i agree when i go to this place it's not very inviting but very attractive politically correct we want to get some something that will actually draw people there which hopefully will help the other businesses as well collecting rant but the cost of actually making any repairs to any of which so the mall or any of the spaces in the mall would be borne by the city so our facilities management would take care of that they would take care of those repairs but that money would come out of the revenue that was generated from the rental of the units so we have we have a project right now we have about two hundred  thirty three thousand dollars in revenue so how much is the staff projecting the cost of the contract with the lease or manchu nature maybe well the reason we did in our fears because we have no idea so get the bids right so we're getting the so has money been budgeted and this is budget for that well depending on what comes back in terms of the proposals that will tell us what the cost would be and then we have to look out whether  with the money the revenue that we have what's cost effective so it will be coming out of the revenue that will be coming from the rents of the commercial spaces yes so what you say is around two hundred thirty three thousand dollars last fiscal year so we'll have to decide you know are we how much money is going to go towards this leasing and marketing ation how much is going to go towards certain rip certain repairs or certain other improvements well and that was true when we had a staff person involved in managing this well so i mean that that the part of that staff member salary was paid from those rats i'm just trying to get a sense of how we're going to pay for this and what and what the money from the rents would maybe going toward the privatized in some way or another the city loses control quality control you know these management companies i'm not going to single any out but they have a way of their expenses growing to accommodate whatever the revenue stream is and what's left over you know sometimes you know it's not enough for maintenance and other things and this situation at least we have some control over things we have a den of fireable problems that we can address probably with the help of the tenets as well as the city if we farm this thing out we lose control of that and the complaints will come to the city about whatever ensued it's of a negative nature and we will have very little avenues for remedies of these things resort i think if we analyze all the factors that we're talking about in jointly do it with the tenets that we could probably come up with an approach that would keep them in business and keep the city  in a better state while dealing with this i don't think the city or the city manager of a lot of things so it's not that we don't have managerial talent within the city so we i think the understanding is that i guess deputy city manager william rogers is going to be available to meet with the people who are here this evening probably not make arrangements tonight but right away to make arrangements to sit down with them and then we will and we're also going to look at comparables which we won't be able to do right away but we'll be able to start looking at what's available crosses for other kinds of garages and things so that we can get some assessment of whether our rents are out of than it was just turned out to be much lower i think prior to two thousand and two it might have been much higher than four percent but that's sort of solution i would like to look at maybe making some adjustment on the rent rent increas come back to us on the same time that you're back i would like you to come back as soon as you can but i would like also to hold off on the management contract until we can look at the whole picture and how it's all going to come together i'm not averse to a management process i guess i should just resign well i thought maybe it might be a good idea when you're meeting with the tenants to poll them as to how they feel we've been managing the property let's see what kind of a job we've been doing i think we're pretty clear on that based on prior comments from the really not well not well and then the other thing that we might want to consider is a lot times in a commercial lease the rent increase will be the c p i but not less than something nor more than something so it protects the city on the downside to protect the tenant on the upside so we might reconsider something like not less than two percent nor more than six percent assuming i mean we've all most of us have lived the staff from all of the departments public works in planning and transportation and energy and sustainability and for all of the work that you've done to date on trying to deal with this very challenging i electric chargers you've done a great job today however we have a lot more work to do and it's kind of shocking to find out that the city of berkeley has only two charge available to the public and other cities in the state of california have many many more and are really making a huge contribution to creating a comprehensive network of electric charges throughout the state they were available to the public so that's why is because i really feel that we need to do we need to work harder at providing electric chargers for the public i believe tom that there are some speakers here in the public then i didn't know we had a presentation or we were just to give you a very very brief one so i'm erica thanks at the planning development director i'm joined at the table by with neil this new who is the manager of the office of energy and sustainable development we have for the job and all the transportation division manager and we have several more innocent planner and oh yes d these are the main folks that have been working on the various aspects of electric vehicle infrastructure that we've been doing and so i'd like sara to just sort of very very briefly give you just a couple highlights of what we've done over the last year in terms of trying to make electric vehicle infrastructure more available to folks in berkeley excess or thanks so much for the introduction and interest so  the city is work to streamline the permian process encourage private investment in electric vehicle charging infrastructure and to install publicly accessible charging station equipment specifically we've created an easy and expensive over the counter permanent process to approve off street residential charging stations we've expanded the a plug ability of this process to really fully support off street home charging and so far i've had about seventy residential charging station permits go through that process we've also launched a pilot program earlier this year that streamlines permitting and provides personalized assistance to berkeley businesses who would like to install charging stations in their existing parking lots as a service either to their employees their customers or the general public and until the end of this year any businesses who go through this pilot program can also take advantage of a federal tax credit towards the installation costs for new construction we've added a condition of electric vehicle charging readiness this is a now a condition of zoning approval for new development projects specifically ten percent of registered parking spaces and three percent of nonresidential parking spaces when the lot has over twenty spaces must either include outlets that can support level two charging stations or have conduit and electric capacity electric panel capacity that could support an easy future installation of these charging stations also as of july first of this year the center street garage now features two modern level two charging stations this new station which was donated to the city by city car share opened july first and it's been used all but three days through the months of july and august often for two or three charging sessions per day another thing we did this summer is we hired an electrical engineer to do an assessment of a variety of municipal property looking at the electrical capacity for adding charging stations and what the costs of that would be cost estimates for purchases and installation of these charging stations arranged based on the specific location but it's a little low of about twenty three thousand dollars up to about fifty four thousand dollars per level two charging station we don't have funding right now to do this we're constantly on the lookout for that  do know that future grant funding is primarily targeted towards workplace multi unit and d c fast charging as well as continuing to provide rebates for vehicle purchase and leases but that gives you some idea is pretty quick and easy it's much more expensive if that's not already in place and certainly if you don't have panel capacity which is why when we had our engineering assessment on we found that in many places like center street garage we just don't have electrical charger but if so with new construction what we can do is control the capacity and make sure that the wiring conduits exist so that we lower the insulation cost the maximum extent possible so with new construction we can do that we would like to and start charging station at the curbside in front of our house our driveway which dates from the model t era is shared with the neighbors and is too narrow to accommodate two cars prior to getting our e v the arrangement with the neighbors was that each family use the driveway one month and then parked in the street in alternate months we naively assumed that we could get a permit from the city to install a charging station by the curb to use during our street parking months after we found out that this was not permitted i decided to petition the city and i've joined with two other residents who speak after me by the way i should add that at least for a residential installation it it cost more like fifteen hundred dollars to install a charging station and i'm not sure where the six thousand dollars figure comes from so it's not normally permitted but i know of residents i've heard by you know word of mouth and i've seen that people are running cables across the earth sidewalks over the trees or they're illegally putting trenches under them and you know there are only dozens of car electric car owners in berkeley now but we want there to be hundreds and thousands and and so i think there should be a legitimate affordable way for people to have a charging system at the curbside and been educated on the whole issue of the public right of way which i wasn't aware of before but i think that it needs to be a concept of it needs to be modernized because the truth is i didn't i didn't do my homework i went in to to test drive a nissan leaf and the darn car dealer got us to buy it right there and i went then later on i found out that we don't have staff who has made the great improvements on the permitting processes for on on site all the things that that sarah mentioned i think that's great but in the report that you got from city manager the key weakness is what david pointed out that is anybody who has a no garage or even no driveway really it's a  nonstarter they cannot even think about getting a lector car because the city does not permit it's illegal for them to charge on the curb and that's really the only option they would have is if they can use the public right of way to set up a plug or an outlet on the curb ok and that's just impossible to do right now so i want to underscore that point that that is the weakness in the report and i think that's that's where the city needs to make improvement because the you know the context of it is the climate climate change plan ok and  larger vision for this is actually to have alternative energy sources for charging these things ok so photovoltaics that's the most practical thing we're not going to have too much wind power in berkeley i don't think i mean there's lots of win photovoltaics and we want to see more photovoltaics around and people can put them on their rooftops but there's also a public right of way possibilities for putting photovoltaics like awnings over parking spaces photo cs over parking lots but if we can't get the permit to put the electricity in the right of way that's like the minimal first step thank you kramer we have to plug in cars charging at my home we have solar and because we have plenty of electricity from that solar system i would it's so cheap i want to give it away so that people who come to my north bay area can who want to shop at monterey market and top off for an hour to go to a concert or school they have a place to go and they can get back to san jose this is a real opportunity  what the city is doing is great i think they could emphasize more availability of one twenty volt which is perfectly adequate for many people and much cheaper and the two forty the reason difference between the fifteen hundred and six thousand dollars is we're talking about network chargers for six thousand with a whole business model for charging and at that point you've got annual fees as well we don't necessarily need that and the reason the three of us are talking about individual chargers is that with the city not paying any funds we can use the residence as a resource to provide far more charging for the public i would jump at the charge if i didn't have to spend two thousand dollars per meeting encroachments fees all those kinds of things and others would do  so two years ago i spoke before the council and talked about this and said this was an opportunity let's not let's let power also beat us to it they did beat us to it but we can we can and this berkeley being a charging desert b standards conditions and guidelines for a pilot program to allow for electric vehicle charging in the public right of way and return to the city council by the end of the fiscal year of calendar year because they can't do that fiscal year with a proposed solution to this challenge i mean it is a challenge but i think we can fix it i think we can find a solution dition only i would like to direct the city manager to move forward with aggressively seeking funding to install one port level two charging station in oxford plaza garage and one port level two charging station in the chanting telegraph garage based on the engineering report that we receive those are the two most economically feasible places to do it plus it has the added advantage of dispersing the charging in different places of the city and then there's the possibility of using funds from the vehicle thousand dollars yeah i think that was what the engineering estimate was if we move forward to specific ones we can get obviously much more detail estimates but that's sort of the range of the talks we're talking about sixty sixty to sixty talking about  development there well yeah in five or ten years it doesn't have infrastructure yeah i believe from the estimate we got it is basically bringing the service capacity into that area wow we've got a major fire station right there is that under some under we want to do you know but they may be using it all up ok ok so my question and i find this incredibly frustrating and having these people come tonight and talk about it i mean you know it us six months to develop a process for park let's i think council member when grass item was i don't know was it five ten years ago that you asked for it i mean i was looking at the last paragraph two years ago under home charging where he's were basically say it's so problematic but we'll keep looking for solutions i mean is it i don't i'm just i'm really frustrated this public right of way thing  really gets to me so can you be a little more detailed about what are the impossible things that are standing in our way well first answer then i'll turn it over afraid because you know the public the public right away is entirely in my  the private side and again we can eliminate things fairly quickly especially with a pilot program and i think we did again i think right now your pilot program charging in commercial charging stations might be the easiest permits to get out of the planning department  process to do it and it just seems to me we ought to be able to do it i mean i hate it in palo alto is putting these things in the public right of way ok if i will just if i could just ask mr job because we have looked at this extensively in the last time that came before us from the commission who actually recommended against the right way so if you could just go through some of the issues that we will be we're very happy to look at it we're actually very grateful for the direction to go back and look at it so but if you could just go through so you get a little overview of what some of them are i might point out a fall when he starts installing them before we do we're going to be in big trouble i don't have the authority to make that up so i'll start with the easy part which is with regards to the city of palo alto  which does have an on street charger we talked to them to find out what process they undertook to establish their program but they have a pilot that we could use the leverage off of turns out the resident talks of them found out it was going to be hard time getting a permit it just went off and did it and then the city discovered after the fact that it was there and rather than force the resident to take it out they said well pay some nominal fee and will they'll kind of let it stand so reestablish that policy i think that we still have the opportunity to be the first city that creates a policy to allow them so that that's a good news for us in terms of the obstacles i think they they can all be addressed you know we're looking at the experience that other cities of had with regards to the requirements because this would be certainly in one context a public benefit if you're providing it for anybody to use it has to meet accessibility become accessible and in some cases maybe have to remove some in order to make enough space for accessibility we don't want to run into those things after the fact we want to plan those in advance the public right away we see a tremendous number of competing uses for what's going on above ground so what parking spaces get used for we don't want to necessarily create a situation where you know someone with a little extra money says i'm going to solve charging station now becomes my private parking space it has to remain publicly available we don't want to create battles between neighbors and we want things that will work out well so we're we've already thought through some of these things we have a few more steps to go but i think i have a good head start on that to make that happen below ground is a little more unseen obviously but there's a lot of it's we just need to figure out how we're going to do things so that we don't create conflicts with existing laterals again not at all insurmountable but it is just something we  need to think through make sure we have a good policy in place the last thing we want to have is a pilot program that goes through and we find out at the end that it's failed and we are in a position of maybe having to ask someone to take out their charger i want to get it right so those are some of the things that we're looking to go through in this process and we've had really good conversations so far between staff on a lot of the things that we could conceivably do so we have a head start sounds like we should be optimistic we all get i just came back from santa monica where there are two parking to evie chargers in the public right of way on montana avenue and you know they seem to have figured it out i mean cities are doing it and it's unfortunate that we're thinking so much in a way because we've lost all these funding opportunities you know all of these cities got literally millions of dollars to install chargers two years ago and now those funding opportunity for don't exist anymore we've lost down and it's really sad now we're going to have to really be creative to find the funding to do what we need to do so i i wish the staff well on this project and i hope that by june the policy in place to allow people who don't have off street parking parking to have electric vehicle charging and people who want to give their power away to have electric chargers and maybe environmental initiatives and policies we put in place and they have political value obviously you know but they need to have substance to them so that when we embrace  policy we're willing to take some measures to ensure that the policy is developed and is available for people for instance  think correct me if i'm wrong i think in albany every single family dwelling has to have a garage right ok we don't have that situation in berkeley so we have lots of places that don't have garage and therefore access to the charging stations on their own property but i'm really pleased with the spirit that we need to address this and find some ways to do whatever we need to do so you know other kinds of things that people resist because you know the inconvenience the expense of whatever and when we have a policy like this that we've collected connected to a global policy to save the planet you know we need to find whatever methods and means we have available to us to make the policy real so that actually reaches people and people will embrace it and not see it as an unfunded mandate from the from the government has to be you know and like i said i'm pleased with the spirit of you know facing these challenges and trying to do something about it but it's a big problem and it's going to take some flexibility and may take some rethinking of what it means to the public right of way means in age where we're trying to save the planet from destruction you know we can hold on to the policy and lose the planet you know so we need that kind of thinking to go into this and i'm glad that we have staff and people you know committed to that so thank you very much  thank you i guess i want to commend everybody for their can do attitude in approaching this important subject i also want to point out for especially for the people in our audience here or in our t v and radio in internet audience that there actually is money available until december thirty first in multiple categories of funds are available a homeowner can get a one thousand dollars tax credit a business can get up to a thirty thousand dollars tax credit and if you buy your lease an electric vehicle you can actually get a california  and a federal tax credit of twenty five hundred to seventy five hundred dollars all of i believe all of those programs are continuing until december thirty first and some of them are going to expire so if you're if you've been thinking about doing an electric car probably doing it before december thirty first is going to be your most cost effective decision and our city staff very intelligently sent out a notice to the media but i don't know if the media have actually put it in the newspapers yet and it's important for people to know there is a deadline for some of these funds of december thirty first and if somebody from the public wanted to learn more about this do we have a way to tell them how to get that information yes we do there's actually a press release on the main city of berkeley website with links to all of the programs that you mentioned so on the main city of berkeley web page if you scroll down we do have we're going to hear from the staff and then from the commission ok mr elizabeth green from the department will be leading off the presentation tonight and i will let her introduce the other members of  s to be considered by the council the commission worked with a lot of public participation to develop three documents for the council's consideration and they are modifications to the existing definitions in chapter twe the previous medical cannabis commission and as you can see there are a number of sections of this document the primary ones are listed above focus on those characteristics that will reduce impacts to neighbors for this reason collectors will not be defined by the number of members because of freedom of association but rather by the number of trips which will address the potential traffic impacts to the neighborhood and other regulations involving limitations on cashing product on hand and signage so that there aren't impacts beyond those that are normal for residential use will also have some of the same standards that dispensers have such as operating standards product safety and record keeping s and dispensary we understand there's no smoking permitted either because of the no smoking ordinance but staff goes further and says there should be no consumption at the sites of those types of  businesses the commission would like to have some sort of consumption there either vaporizing or edibles available to patients and then finally in terms of product safety the question is can commercial kitchens be shared by cannabis and non cannabis products can have cannabis products and on cannabis products to be made in the same commercial kitchen stuff would recommend not doing that the commission doesn't have a problem with that the third document is the ranking and selection process so in order to use the regulations to allow for a fourth dispensary there must be a fair equitable way of selecting any new dispensary the first three rounds of this process as outlined above will be reviewed by a three person panel of city staff and the council would select the final dispensary out of the top five candidates with a recommendation from the medical canvass commission during the commission's many meetings and committee meetings many issues were discussed to particular interest in our testing and the number of dispenser so in terms of testing what was decided and it was agreed to by staff and the pesticides and so any testing that would be mandate mandated would not be meaningful for contaminants would be an optional category in the ranking process so if if a dispens wanted to do their own testing they could do that and it could give them extra points in the selection process and then in terms of the number of dispensary the medical cannabis commission believes there's a strong need for additional dispensaries in berkeley one recommendation tonight from the commission for you relates to increasing the number of dispensary is from the four that could be permitted by the code as it's written today up to a total of six and pappas will address that in his presentation later so to recap for you today are a number of documents and we are asking that you changes to chapter twelve twenty six of municipal code adopt a new chapter twelve twenty seven adopt a resolution establishing a ranking process for the selection of at least a fourth dispensary and then also refer changes to the number of dispensaries to the planning commission working yes good evening the mayor and council members and city manager and city attorney and secretaries i am indeed charlie pappas district six commissioner thanks to susan and i have been designated by the other commissioners to explain this permit process to you that we worked hard on and i would like to add the best for the last two years has done great and helpless commission immensely i think this commission is very well formed a lot better than the last one because we're you know from each district and more diverse group we have three women we used to have four and we have an african american and we are we are not just activists and we are members of the community and i'm r as you know answer any of your questions about the the permit process which we work very hard on and this might seem a little complicated but it's four rounds and i think i can think i can explain process is basically application requirements which is you don't have a felony record and there will also be you know who you are and your i so it will we will judge their knowledge of medical cannabis the laws of california maybe the application slightly medically we're we're just going to be starting on this next week round two is an issue ranking and neighborhood their neighborhood compatibility how they relate to the neighborhood what plan they have for that and their safety plan to what safety and security they would provide and if they were or if they received that the new dispensary and round three is more complicated i think there's eight or so points with different it's it's a bonus round and out of the gen people you  be cut to four or five and the bonus round includes what what professional services dispensary might provide as far as medical you know medical advice if you had someone on your on  who was a nurse or a doctor that would that would probably give you all the points are not in that category i don't have the points in front of me but i can flip to him if you want to know that and out there it's community benefits and hance product safety know how much testing you do on your real do on your products and environmental benefits that's how your story i you know what how efficient your story run with i guess with power and things like that labor and employment what labor employment practices you'd you know you would use whether you'd keep it open to union or what wage you might offer what benefits you might offer to your workers local enterprise that is points if you are a resident of berkeley location which is also in round t but this location will be your final location which you would have had secured or secured on the basis of receiving the ok from the council the qualifications of principals  that's that's the owners and you know what experience they might have with medical cannabis and and you know and you know furthermore and  consolidation that would be if more than than one or two people applying for the dispensary permit in round two if they join together then you get a certain amount of points and in other words if they said well we will make it easy on the cou or just have you just give it one last person to decide about round four is that is the selection with which beth mentioned that is the council decides but that also will be a recommendation by the commission of the top five four five candidates so the commission is basically only involved in this process and forming it and the competency test at the beginning and at the end recommending which of the candidates we think might might best serve location and that's i couldn't agree with you more it's it was that way it was that way six or seven years ago when there were there aren't a lot of locations there probably you know if if two or three more are we here scuse me page that's the sixty four of the packet it talks about collective talks about of medical cannabis cooperative and talks about a medical cannabis dispens so that the difference between a collective and a dispensary to my knowledge is that collective you cannot charge money to members of that collective to receive medical cannabis re dispensary you can if that is in my correct in that not really but to get your question about co operatives cooperative is a term that's used in state law it's also defined in the attorney general guidelines and at the request of a number of the advocates we adopt a definition that's slightly looser than than the a g s  what's the difference between a cooperative and a collective a cooperative actually has a definition in state law there are specific forms of corporate organizations that are defined as cooperatives there is no definition of collective and state law we toyed with the idea of actually defining collective in the way that it's commonly understood like for instance some a collector's around town but that didn't really match what the industry refers to as a collective so practice ok but there's nothing that says you can't the money can change hands in a collective so then what then and then that raises the question what is the difference in a collective in a dispensary then and for that one you know dispensary is not terms using state law so the election is what we say it is in berkeley for berkeley the basic difference is the one that that mansion which is a collective is defined as incidental residential use it's not a retail operation residential district and it's very limited that's not to say that people haven't had illegal dispensaries that they have called collectives but those are not collectives and we should be clear about that a dispensary is a retail operation is not allowed in residential district it  generally will have a lot more members i think one way think about it is legal collectives you don't know where they are and you don't hear about the dispensaries you at least tend to hear about ok and then i guess at a question about some page seventy seven of our packet that article three of the section about limitations on collective operations says he cash on hand shall be minimizing no more than a thousand dollars may be retained overnight so i guess this really gets to my question about you know does money exchanged hands in collectives and if so why is this provision in there well the answer is that it can and so the idea though that again the primary use of this site a residence so the collective is is something that is happening that's incidental to the residential use so if you're going to have the idea behind this is that we don't want some kind of entity that ha dispensary seems like the way that we are interpreting the law collective is just sort of a smaller scale dispensary in a residential area because if money does change hands then how is that not a retail transaction it's  you know it is essentially a retail transaction it can be it's not but the term that the way we think about it is it's not a retail operation and you know it's not a store it's a house where people may exchange goods or labor or money as the case may be yeah i guess my concern is the the open ended ness of that given problem and we don't have to deal with it it's really a question of semantics when someone calls himself a collective then we can either say well you're violating all the standards as a collective so get out or we can say you know really a collective or find some other violation and that's it much easier to enforce if you have specific standards that they're basically not going to meet and so if they're in violation that we we pursue it as a code enforcement issue yeah collectives out of also have restrictions and not from memory not every they are membership diversion dispensing packaging and labeling quality control records in terms of finance and operations and then confidentiality anything you have dispensaries which are doing retail distribution of cannabis and then you'll have other types of uses like you could have a wholesale bakery for example so as long as they were not distributing from that site then that would be subject to rules governing collectives so charlie i'm concerned because when i looked at the pie chart it looks as if only about eighteen percent of the  of the people who are patronizing dispensary are coming from berkeley and and yet you your commission is asking for for three more in addition to what we have now and you say that you see that there's a great need for that but we're clearly serving berkeley with the dispensers that we have now why would we need to add more dispensary said perhaps become the dispensary capital of the east ba it i did hand out a paper i don't know if you've got it there was the commission approved a list and of reasons and also some reasoning and i i updated it before the commission did vote on it this last time but some of them may not be the best candidates but that's up to a process and that's delivery services to in berkeley the but i haven't seen the pie chart but i think it's from the other from the you know from the other the three existing dispensaries and i think there's the reasons for additional dispensaries and it's going to be it's you know three would be the most and one or two is probably what you're going to get because they're like the mayor go after dispensary so that are that the city validates and it's if you read the call memo and as i read it today a couple times and it says there are eight point programme it's really what all decisions will be based on  you know whether that's true or not they really wanted state legislation unfortunately the state didn't come up with it last week that was very disappointing and but i think you know in the state and local regulation of course and that's why i think it's hopefully additional dispensaries will eliminate the need for collect well i'm i'm want to ask you some questions when you say incidental to residential use that means somebody in the collective needs to live there that's all it means yes and it has to be primarily a residential use we don't say how much of a proportion of the building has to be residential and what can be given over to cannabis though i actually do say that in twelve twenty six we do have a limit as to i believe it's twenty five percent of the house can be used for growing cannabis so does a collective have to grow their medicine on site you know that's not a requirement of a collective so they purchase it from someplace they could yes or they could have members bring it i think the idea generally when people first had this grand idea of collectives was that everybody can kind of bring to it what they could write so if you knew how to grow but you didn't know how to produce it or you'd come together and share your knowledge and o collect is that it's a way to distinguish between retail operations which are large and collectors which are essentially incidental residential and small what this does is try to say a little more clearly what incidental residential means in terms of actual impacts and characters that i think of it is a private buyers club and in a residential area that's all we think about it's not what we want a lot of those you know we want right regulation even ten visitor trips a day can have an impact on a neighborhood and even if you limit visits to ten pm they can still have have an impact so i have i have some concerns about that collective thing i'm also concerned about the oversight of edible edibles right now my understanding is that there's no oversight of  is that true yes that's correct and i personally think it's important to have some oversight so if the edibles were being produced in commercial kitchens there would be some health department oversight not currently the health department regulates retail food facilities under the california uniform we took some of these law and  does not include medical cannabis or other drugs so it's not regulated at the state level the fed level or by the local health department if i can expand on that a little retail food facility regulates the facility and if someone doesn't say oh i'm making manny's where it would be inspected i assume if they ask for an inspection and if it met the requirements i get a permit that the problem comes in is when someone says i want to license a medical marijuana commit kitchen that's that's what we can't do but we can license or sell facilities we can the commercial facility produce the edible cannabis under california law under certain circumstances yes however what we're proposing here is that for commercial kitchens they would be kept separate so you could only have if you were going to create disagrees with that right i mean in the best of all worlds we would be able to produce edibles in a situation where they would also be health inspections because right now you don't know what you're eating frankly and you don't know under you don't know under what conditions those edibles were produced and there's there's no mechanism for inspecting  that maybe can speak to this better but the college food industry does also give an option that is a non commercial kitchen and those would be inspected by local jurisdictions is that correct  well the cottage food law went into effect in january and it does allow home kitchens to be used for the the production of food sold directly to the public or indirectly however it doesn't address the cannabis edible issue but we propose it as a possible model that we can use to address the from brooklyn and wounds but i think you know the short answer is i think we've got a little off track but the permit the food facility permit relates to the facility is it clean does it have the right kind of equipment does it have hand washing or their commercial facility inspected and signed off and permitted has a clean adequate santer facility we don't tell them what they can cook or not cook their we don't inspect the food that comes in and goes out on a daily basis and they don't have to put on a label they don't have to label what's in it that it is addressed in a different part of the ordinance it is yes that's what the content and the amount of t h c is definitely one of the one of the requirements a this would be slightly different kind of more like day care because you do have some child could be generated whereas you know generally a home occupation doesn't have traffic depends upon the that's that was measure ass in two thousand and ten when we doctored the tax we have for people now we've got probably forty people that don't want to be brief i have a lot of questions but i'm going to save them for afterwards or maybe put them in writing but i want to mention a few general things and that one is i share a counselor or miles concerned that there's a very large number of patients at the three dispensaries over twenty four thousand that i need eighty percent come from berkeley so one of the things i think this has an impact is on where you might locate additional dispensary is they would not be appropriate in some commercial areas which are neighborhood sort of these are not neighborhoods are these are regional draw facilities and so i think that has to be considered in the drop in the zone and again all commercial zoning districts are not the right place to put dispensaries unless you're going to put some limitation on the numbers  the second one i like a lot of what the commission has done trying to specify standards i like a lot of the way you're going to evaluate the new and i would like to add an additional category for the need for a new dispens we make a lot about locally grown produce and i think one of the things you could point source is your cannabis is locally grown ok and that should be one of our goals so that should be one of the one of the rules that the the other big big what two big other things one is i think we should be testing for more than just t h c we should be testing for toxic stuff pesticides more whatever and information should be available this is  safety concern this is supposedly a medicine that should be safe and if it costs more well you know we should make it safe and lastly i have a number of concerns also about the collectors which on the residential areas ok i think to say that you can have an unlimited number of members and you know members of a collective could be thousands tens of thousands you put no limit on is crazy there should be a little different they are in a neighborhood they should be neighborhood serving and i'd really like to see that members of a collective be restricted to berkeley residents not to dispensaries but the collectors which are in bedded in the neighborhoods are  because that's where we're going to hear a lot of complaints when our problems in fact the problems we've had in berkeley has not been with the dispensers it's been rolled collectives and i'd like to make it very clear that if you're going to be a neighborhood you know you know you should yeah i think a lot of issues a lot of my colleagues in the dice are bringing up here tonight so i'm hoping that we're not to vote on anything tonight that we are asking the staff to bring back some important information and so this will be a better process as we continue to to learn and and gather information on this important issue i agree with several my colleagues in this diocese i think we have to restrict we have to the number of people that belong to collectives thousands of members in residential areas hundreds of members a res jurors is just ridiculous it's going to have impact on traffic and as council member was not proponent out i mean these are been the road issues and problems that we have is mostly been the collective's on the roads of it's and where the fire has taken place that burned down in san francisco and all around the community they've been in the small homes of all you grow lights and everything else they're bringing down their house or bringing their neighbor's house we really should have a control on the number of people that belong to collectives i mean that's all we have to spend three that's the commercial outlet in it in the commercial area that you go to get your medical marijuana that being said i'm not sure why we are so onerous towards the dispensary we say that you got to have one point four candlelight of illumination in your yard we say that you have to have this and we have to have that and roll bars in gates and windows and security system and dogs in a moat but there is nothing for the collective nothing you could be on the neighborhood with any and everything and as gordon wants us even growing in the backyard but there's no restrictions but my point is this i think we've gone overboard when walgreens wants to move into an area and all these mini c v s and longs and all these others we didn't tell them you know what kind of cattle foot like you have to have in the parking lot or some of the other commercial or will our commercial areas have zones and zoning regulations they should be the things that dictate the kinds of security the kinds of light the kinds of signage that we see because i'm afraid that you know with all these restrictions given the fact of its hard to locate anywhere in berkeley that all these other tons of restrictions will make it even more impossible and make it very financially difficult for but i think there should be only one pretty strict if we're going to go to six or more i personally would stay with four and see how that works and then bring it back to the council year from now or two years from now and we can always add more at that time i'd like to hear from the people existing three dispensary s that none of the dispensaries appear to have a large number of complaints being made about their operations is that true is any one of those three have a lot of people complaining about them