city council i am a chief of police michael meehan here to present a report in 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 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 pleased 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 can community 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 is 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 i've 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 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 preventative measures that people can take to increase their safety and now all introduce kept in any good mood to present more detailed crime information for the first half of tw good afternoon mr marin members of the council i'm captain andrew greenwood the investigations division commander this afternoon i'll start with a brief description of the crime types that we'll 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 to 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 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 paolo 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  and thirteen and we'll talk a little bit more about prevention efforts later in the presentation finally we move to aggravated assaults are given 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 our analysis of the problem and our response strategies first let's look at where pedestrian robberies are happening this map shows all 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 earphones 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 evidence by our forty nine percent increase in robbery arrests these successes could not have happened 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 to two suspects were 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 else read owen emeryville that evening 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 to officers recognize 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 burg 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  next 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 axel 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 and 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 when a 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 four 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  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 the department prints in 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 brochures 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 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  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 for journeys sororities 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 c 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 these 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 and i'd like to discuss some couple of success stories  as i said our efforts of 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 in a storage facility the erik order contacted 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 now 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 born 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 victimization and doing so with an informed and engaged community thank you that is our presentation we are pleased to answer your questions 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 last months of the francisco san jose of a fencing operation where they found and recovered numerous items cell phones i pads and a lot of those lot of those items were return d to the rightful owners i'm wondering how we concentrated in the on trying to track down where these thieves are taken the cell phones to for 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 you've 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 now that the council has put forward an item recommending that the carriers do that and i fully support that and 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 free service we'll do it for anybody who requested from us that's great i mean d like to ask if you could talk a little bit about how we actually try to penetrate or deal with the king 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 and 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 the rate at which you actually made arrests in these homicides was just amazing it was to 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 were really very impressed with the fact that your department you know the whole departments involved in this has been able to track however it is you do it in 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 sincerely and you're raise 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 the ballistics trace in the butt but these seems 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 i'm spring 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 little to do a little bit 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 want to thank you for lieutenant 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 is i don't know 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 sobered 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 so i'd like to mislead and make a comment about it actually finding people would be interesting to to look at see what you know what we actually capture and what we actually you know cover so there's any way to do that obviously you can do the saving but maybe in the next six months it's possible you know like like all these happy to do that good and the other thing i want to mention is is that even though these horrible homicides took place i gather it's one thing to say that there were known by the the police department the people involved but s train robbery is change already 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 historical pattern i think i think historically we see 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 in 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 pin map and i don't know th 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 map and the beat structure and also we had an increase in burglaries and i suspect they might have a different pattern than the robbery pattern and how i know 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 no 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 save 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 beach structure kind of frozen do we need to beat structure is that 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 fitted to 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 from the community the beach structure 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 can you know you could give us some debt all depending on the type of call it or emergency level what the response time actually is yes our new computer system the dispatching system can produce reports regarding our response time actually you can get pretty granular regarding for example we could 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  get some sort of like when we have some of that that in a future report i don't know it's the right categories show it maybe for some of the violent crimes but for looking at the 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 last comment is for us i also want to thank the chief in the staff for the report i thought it was an excellent report i think i appreciate that you've been proactive when you see trends and problems and responding and trying to counteract them like that's really great and i said 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 a concedes 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 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 injuries are zero all the whether nobody is there or are there peoples in some sort of intermediate category you know there's also that so we have to make onesies 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 department in concert with the city's h r department and at some point the future we'd love to talk about it but i'm very hopeful that that will have a serious impact and a helpful impact on our staffing  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 on a 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  trend it says walking alone it doesn't specify day or night our crime analysts look 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 you know eighteen to twenty five is it mostly mean we've actually done analysis kind of a victim assessment and so we have found that there's no differential differentiating between gender so males and females are pretty much equally victimized but it tends to be younger people so generally people who are in the eighteen twenty five and thirty we see those as the most frequent victims ok and do you have a sense from your detective you wonderful the text of course of these individuals doing it or is this an organized effort oh 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 cases 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 it has been working for somebody or no it's being i would call that know 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 was willing to think maybe i can find one and i'm going to rob somebody of it so the consistent thing is put yourself in a way be aware of 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 suspect need 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 us 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 or else 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 message in the south campus area it's an excellent idea we actually you may remember we did that upon moran i want to say two years ago when we were having an increase in auto break ins so it's an excellent idea  and apparently there's a difference between potential people that are coming back and of course you don't want to fill 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 it's fake and so there's always going to be again a fairly significant gap but it but if there is someone who says 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  look 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 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 if 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 in a two person teams in the area they made a lot of as a result in ohio state stole this flying officers and also parking enforcement once the game concludes then the officers that we have out on the street we're paying for it but then the university also contributes officers to that but the manager i had a little disagreement and now it's 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 least compromise and do it halfway because we're about ten short or more than that we've been down one hundred fifty 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 aides best friends and close fans family members they include service dogs psychiatric service dogs guide dogs hearing alert dogs and medical alert response dogs they perform a wide range of tasks including assisting people with vision loss assisting people with mobility and 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  selfless ways in which all types of 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 ro 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 resolve that on behalf of our mayor tom de city of berkeley does here by declare the first week in october two thousand and thirteen as international assistance dog week 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 good 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 in 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 bay wolf 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 are 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 ward 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 use so i thank you all we thank you all and hope to see what our gala event as says whereas the coastline is one of california's most important resources both environmental economic as 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 sustenance of its natural an economic value whereas the 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 this saturday september twenty seventh from nine a m to noon city of berkeley staff devoted shoreline volunteers berkeley 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 eventual 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 thanks or someone  you 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 for hit 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 and 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 and i hear you tell us where there's people are supposed to come 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 vied everyone to participate thank you again for the proclamation  sorry it's my privilege to read this proclamation honoring roger diwan hunty roger would you like to come up 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 now 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 here by 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 that 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 intercooler an important part of the lives of our community our studio the beat berkeley performing arts our students and teachers or mall type ethnic multicultural diverse community of perth a perfect  reflection of this wonderful and unique community that is berkeley 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  we're 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 if you'd like to leave now we're going to have just a moment so you can have that opportunity without tom destructing people so congratulations for roger and his wonderful work we really appreciate and thanks for coming out to celebrate it with him thank you thank you very much when our go to the part of the agenda where we have put on presentation when a city manager do you have any comments about a manager i do not mr mayor thank you so also now we go to the public comments for items not on the agenda we have water the weirdest thing you can do for the environment is to buy bottled water sixty percent of water bath or 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 antibiotics will have some some of the victims i wouldn't even have a second well of antibiotics and people thought we would lose their limbs or die from it which is where it's happening with viruses you have for instance the flu virus  there's a cross walk that no one stops and that's where you need three years where all the young kids star e i and happy valley gone to university could get killed because he's drive his don't stop 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 look i we need to look  it 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 number d 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 wade 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 audience wishes to speak to an item that's so that if i had actually written the previous council and i had remembered it as create 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 do this well my concern about the item is that it refers to s 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 personnel 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 it speak it's always been important but it's become more important in the past year and a half because of the increased incidence 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 are some of the people working on the local sexual assault and awareness day so i think we're very lucky to have them bringing together all these groups working together ok i will hear  us hi my name's ella i want to invite you all to attend on october twelfth at twelve thirty p m at the trinity united methodist church in the corner of 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 great met sense of porting survivors supporting yourself workshops will be led by folks from various  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 a 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 alys 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 that empowerment we can show sexual assailants that likely is not going to take sexual violence lightly so i would encourage this event and i think it's a great opportunity to reach out to the community and aid survivors as well as show that the city of berkeley is serious about the issue i'm also having a workshop in the workshop on resources in berkeley as well as shop around reporting i worked with the u c berkeley campus on the federal complaints to u c berkeley square in the going through so i think it a big opportunity to coordinate with the city and have us all been a part of a really great movement 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 vacancies the overall vacancy rate in the telegraph area is about eighteen percent and the vacancy rate at the telegraph channing mall is about sixteen and a half percent so currently we are reviewing two applications that were submitted by potential applicants  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 we've not they provide 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 a cheap little tricky to get in some store and the community must have a place to go and berkeley and telegraph difficult 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 factored since we were never incurred such a bill in nearly three decades we are requesting the city's understanding of the sun and on president charges also the merchants in berkeley has been very difficult with one of the worst recession in us history over the past five years my business has declined significantly approximately sixty percent now i am having a hard time to pay my rent during the last five years there were four new fraud in no way stores opened one telegraph and business in less than three years during this terrible recession our rent increase even higher than the consumer price index when the consumer price index increase around one to two percent our rent increase of four percent annually this around to increase is too much to take in this terrible economy i provided a copy area we need to rent just a moment i just soon as possible to stay in business that c d o berkeley should be supporting small 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 open the framers workshop in the 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 se 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 i huge risk my parents and i decided to expand our business this year and take over one of the largest vacant spots in the say their game all shockingly it was extremely hard to least the space for the city but the space not up to code electrically and all forty 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 th either game all bringing in an outside agent will not magically bring these bacon spots up the 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 outsource family my fellow small family run businesses to continue to serve berkeley 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 famous 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 writing family businesses and all their employees survive this dark time telegraph is currently here 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 ready good evening my name is rayco redmond and i am volunteer and events quarter nater 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  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 embodies the only way out of this intolerable suffering and destruction that endangers humanity at its core is a new synthesis of repetition 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 out of vital center of intellectual cultural and political  in activism its wide range of books touch on issues pacing humanity brings cutting edge internationally renowned artist scientists authors poets and films to berkeley from cornell west and come to revolution books from all over the world to talk about why the world is the way it is and how it can be radically different professor and a host spanx tr ricky vincent says revolution books is a perfectly institution and institution of inspiration for generations of young people searching for ways to remake society through the ideas of writers around the world  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 this most recently this huge tax levy that just came out of the blue are unfair and unsound revolution books has rented from the city for twenty seven years and our understanding is that the bookstore is pain right now fifty percent more then the city is attempting to rent the vacant spaces in the mall you know it's outrageous instead of this might charge in a fair rent and working with the stores in the mall 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 would 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 cru 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 urge the city council telegraph shops reiterating what everybody has stated the challenges we're all facing right now it's amazing that the city has curtailed their hours to we have to look at budgets and all that stuff and we get assessed bills 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  from my count was about ten to fifteen thousand people a month however that's the tour related and it's barely coming on to full five hundred or six thousand people over there so i'm looking forward to your help your guidance as well as a mutual understanding that we need to revive telegraph to what it used to be what berkeley stood for and what it stands for  thanks mark draper volunteer with revolution books and i bought a statement mary pocket 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 wanted to me to meet her statement the berkeley community forums and book talks at the store these presentations of range from a blues legend talking about his life to former prisoners who turned their lives around and are now students at u c berkeley too young indian woman who spoke about  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 to 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 and i understand that the city is offering cut rate rents to learn new tenants into the seats of the gate mall in this time of sugaring businesses that isn't understandable tactic but at the same time rent for the bookstore just keeps climbing and they are bailing fairly staying out closure it makes good sense to lower their end can order to help them continue their vital services to our community i heard 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 wrong or having out of business mine because he comes up to me or my neighbors now even though we even though or media announces that economy depression is and the day after day and the day after day we know the real economy just still the same bad or wars i and we our past to go through this bad situation and or so we more thank you thank you for the tenets for telegraph channing mall but it was never assessed and so what happened this year is the the finance department met with the tenant  when basically an 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 not a city time so what we're doing is we're basically building what we should have been drilling all along right for the county right because i know this like the university of california when they move into something a place they still have it was us for interest right and they still pay a little bit i think there's a lot of concern on the behalf of the council that we need to figure out how how and why we're going makes or how we might consider making some reductions so does a recommendation on the item would 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  like i mean obviously this tax this tax was accounted for so it's so it means that you're operating it's gone up so something's got to go right so you there we have to reduce our rents or you have to pay more right than well i think we can look at the terms of the seems possible and then look at their individual 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 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 is 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  y think it's going to be important to meet with them and i think there's should be some resolution like you know right away like ok come to the group soon 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 reductions to made at that point so mr mayor 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 leas straits and we can also look at what are those lease rates are comparable in the market and we can provide you all of that information i guess i'm just trying to figure out a way that they you know don't g so in any case when we say that if we find make a determination that we're we need to make an adjustment to rents it will make it retroactive so that we can cut your capture in the future but i mean right  to 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 what 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 the 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 periodically 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  wondering no one knowing so it's now the counties alerted and we need to pay that will it may be you know i need to what i should say is 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 dismal 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've 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 they were essentially in a triple net situation they were going to be paying the property taxes this is just another name for the property taxes on that 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 those taxes are d now 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 friends of the library i assume would not be liable for paying that possessory interest because they're a five a what a three they don't pay the rent anyway so i just if somebody wants i just did some quick numbers on 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 space's 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 vacancies prices counterfeits 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 proper bulls 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 that 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 unit so we have we have a product right now we have about two hundred  thirty three thousand dollars in revenue so how much is the step projecting the cost of the contract with the lease or manchu nature maybe well the reason we didn't our fears because we have no idea so to get the bids and right so we're getting the so has money been budgeted in this its 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 toward certain rip certain repairs or certain other improvements well and that was true when we had a staff person involved in managing this as 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 th 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 and soused it's of a negative nature and we will have very little avenues for remedies of these things  we're also could possibly lose union jobs as well and so i think the privatization thing ought to be the last resort but i think if we analyze all the factors that we're talking about and 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 the i don't think the city the city manager of a lot of things so it's not that we don't have managerial talent within the city so we ought to apply those things if there are some deficiencies we need to work on them not throw the baby out with the bathwater ok so let me see if i can recapture and we can put this in the form of a motion of good luck but i think that understood and it was 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 and i but right away to make arrangements to sit down with them and then will i'm we're proportion to the rest of the runs we also the and then i think that we should then come back with some recommendations i think one of the problems was that we have a core percent increase and you'll increase and  once lower you know 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 so that's sort of solution i would like to look at maybe making some adjustment on the on the rent rent increas come back to us and then 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 contract i just think i just want to say that it's going to be worthwhile to move in on the action absolutely and everything that you've mentioned we have already started to look at sense the meeting with the tenant so we're i we're already in 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 of 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 down side 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 four percent whichever is greater young woman we can look at that we definitely do look at that ok thank you very much well so we'll try to resolve the sums as soon as we possibly can go everybody hopefully in business and doing well we're not going to go to item number which is on date on the status of electrical vehicles infrastructures in berkeley the first time i want to thank all the staff from all of the departments public works and planning and transportation and aegina sustainability and for all of the work that you've done to date on  trying to deal with this very challenging issue of 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 charges 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 i pulled the i am because i really feel that we need to do we need to but i didn't know we had a presentation or we were just going 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 sarah 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 access or thanks so much for the introduction and interest so to date 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 inexpensive over the counter many 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  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 properties 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 dual port level to charging station we don't have funding right now to do this we're constantly on the lookout for that we 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 lisa's but that gives you some idea of the capacity is at the panel cost to get to that next step so the level two charging stations range from about it's on the order of six thousand plus dollars installation at that point 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 capacity to add any more charging stations is once you have the capacity there and the conduit run then the cost to put in the chargers around five six thousand dollars for a charger but if so with new construction what we can do is control  the the capacity and make sure that the wiring kind of which exist so that we lower the insulation cost the maximum extent possible so a new construction we can do that existing construction the retrofit cost can up that significantly  my name is david glaser and my wife and i are electric car owners we live in west berkeley and we would like to in charge install a 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 used 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 will speak after me by the way i should add that  at least for a residential installation 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 the 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  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 congratulate the 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 our 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 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 photovoltaics 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 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 with 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 because in 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 to 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 residents 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  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 on the floor sure and i have a i want to read of one amendment to the motion the city manager has requested so my motion is to request that the city manager determine appropriate staffing commissions to develop 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 instead 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 additionally i would like to direct the city manager to move forward with aggressively seeking funding to install one port level t charging station in oxford plaza garage and one to a 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 there's a lot of the possibility of using funds from the vehicle license and smog abatement fees which was 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 toss we're talking about sixty sixty total sixty took about thirty yeah  five or ten years it doesn't have infrastructure yeah i believe from the estimate that 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 under want to do you know but they may be using it all up so my question and i find this incredibly frustrating and having these people come tonight and talk about it i mean you know it took us six months to develop a process for a park let's i think council member when graphs 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 things fairly quickly especially with a pilot program and i think we did again i think right now your pilot program home charging commercial charging stations might be the easiest permits to get out of the planning department in total the public right away brings a lot of but i just want to point out that part of the park process has started we're going to have spaces in the public right of way and we've developed a set of guidelines and rules and in the 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 it 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 might point out if all but 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 if they have a pilot that we could use the leverage off of turns out the resident talks of them found out he was going to have a 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  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 the good news for us in terms of the obstacles i think they they can all be addressed you know what we're looking at the experience that other cities of had with regards to the eighty eight 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 standards because it's a limited public utility or public use so we're dealing with that we have seen cases where city of sebastopol in off street locations has had to make there's 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 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 we have a good head start on that make that happen below ground is a little more u nseen obviously but there's a lot of utilities and 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 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 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 opportunities 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 we'll have a policy in place to allow people who don't have off street parking to have electric vehicle charging and people who want to give their power away to have electric chargers and maybe tenants who don't have access well you know i have a overarching concern i mean we take up these policies was greenhouse gas reduction whether it's any number of 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 a policy we're willing to take some measures to ensure  t the policy is developed and is available for people for instance i 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 is 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 because you know i remember the early days of the 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 so  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 away means in aids what we're trying to save the planet from destruction you know we can hold on to the policy and lose the plan 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 once more we're going to thank you i guess i 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  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 dollar 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 rebate 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 a recent press release  that outlines all of those things and gives you a link to get more information on the programs thank you thank you roemer thank you for sending that out ok you know i always feel you know when organizations i sit on i keep raising this issue about process we're going to hear from the staff and then from them the commission ok mr mayor elizabeth green from the playing department will be leading off the presentation tonight and i will let her introduce the other members all right good evening and thank you for presentation tonight my name is elizabeth green and i'm with the planning department and i'm joined today by captain andrew greenwood of the police department  housing health services and charlie pappas who is representing the medical cannabis commission and we're here today to discuss the proposed medical cannabis regulations and just to give a little background we conditions on the adoption of the licensing process and standards for medical cannabis dispensary and that's why we're here today because if we if you adopt these regulations that will allow a fourth dispensary to be considered by the council  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 twelve twenty six a new chapter in the document a supplemental report which has two items it updates of information in the city managers report and it provides two charts with information from berkeley dispensaries as requested by the council at their july sixteenth meeting so the first document involves amendments to the municipal code chapter twelve twenty six and this is the existing chapter related to medical cannabis access in berkeley and this is basically to amend the definition so there's a better distinction between collectives and dispensaries because there seems to have been some confusion about that in the past but the primary difference between the two does not change and that is that dispensaries can only locate in commercial areas and collectives can only locate in residential areas and must be incidental to residential use the second document is a new chapter of the municipal code to regulate dispensaries and collectives this will replace and codified the operating standards that have been developed by 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 measure t call for regulations for dispens commission felt it was important to develop regulations for collectives as well collectives are located in residential neighborhoods and are meant to be incidental to residential uses the regulations for collectives focus on those characteristics that will reduce impacts neighbors for this reason collectors will not be defined by the number of members because of freedom of association issues but rather by the number of trips which will address the potential traffic impacts to the neighborhood and all the 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 collectives will also have some of the same standards that dispensers have such as operating standards product safety and record when developing chapter twelve twenty seven there were a few points on which the commission and staff disagreed so these are highlighted in the ordinance and you'll see there there's alternative a which is the commission recommendation and alternative b which is the staff recommendation and just to go over them briefly staff believes that security bars should be mandatory for all dispensaries the commission does not in terms of operating standards for collect 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 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 their subcommittee 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 commission was that only potency would be a mandatory test not contaminants and the reason for this is that there is no standard to standardize or certified testing process for contaminants meaning mold  pesticides and so any testing that would be mandate mandated would not be meaningful testing for contaminants would be an optional category in the ranking process so if a if a dispens wanted to do their own testing they could do that as 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 before 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 what's before you today are a number of documents and we are asking that you adopt changes to chapter twelve twenty six  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 work hard on and i would like to add the best for the last two years has done great and helped us commission immensely i think this commission is 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 stand for 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 and where the where the commission is evolved and this we in the next month or two we will be making a competency test for each we each one of each person applying so that we you know we feel that it's a pass fail 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  it's a it's it's a it's out of out of i don't run to ten people will be will be picked and it's based on proposed location of business their business plan their 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 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 ten people it would probably be cut to four or five and the bonus round includes what what professional services dispensary might provide it's far as medical you know medical advice if you had someone on your on your staff is i nurse or doctor that would that would probably give you all the points 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 it's community benefits and hance product safety know how much testing you do any 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 keep it open to a union or what 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 the 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 then then 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'll make it easy on the counseling 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 there 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 the community why i couldn't agree with you more and so i know it's it was that way it was that way six or seven years ago when there were there there aren't a lot of locations there probably you know if if two or three more so have several questions so my first question is measure t talked about collectives and dispensary is it in talk about cooperatives which i think is in well in the proposed ordinance  where we hear scuse me page that's the sixty four of the packet it talks about collectives it talks about of medical cannabis cooperative and talks about a medical ca dispensary 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 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 suggestions what's the difference between a cooperative and a collective a cooperate of actually has a definition and state law there are specific forms of corporate organizations that are defined as cooperatives there is no definition of collective in state law we toyed with the idea of actually defining collective in the way that it's commonly understood like for instance some the collectors around town but that didn't really match what the industry refers to as a collective so we abandoned that and refined the definition of the word and so as you see it so you would said that my understanding of the difference to a collective a dispensary is not highly accurate could you please well as a matter of law it's not accurate i mean it may be the practice ok but there's nothing that says  can't 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 legislation is what we say it is in berkeley for berkeley the basic difference is the one that mentioned which is a collective is defined as incidental residential use it's not a retail operation it's a 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 them dispensaries you at least tend to hear about ok and then i guess at a question about some page seventy seven of our packet article three of the section about  limitations on collective operations says he cash on hand shall be minimized to 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 is as a residence so the collective is is something that is happening that's incidental to the residential if you're going to have the idea behind this is that we don't want some kind of entity that has enormous amounts of cash on hand operating in a neighborhood because that would not be dispensary so i guess this really just gets to my fundamental difference between a collective in a dispensary it 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 way we think of 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 and given what we've seen happen in the legal dispensary sort of opened up in of collectives they're really just in force with tool because all legal collectives we don't know where they are they're not a 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's much easier to enforce if you have specific standards that they're basically not going to me and so if they're in violation that we we pursue it as a code enforcement issue yeah collectives have also have restrictions number of trips per day amount of medicine there and also amount of money there so are membership diversion dispensing packaging and labeling quality control records in terms of finance and operations and then confidentiality of information so more restrictions on them right now you know as long as you're not disturbing your neighborhood we don't know that they're there i know of one that has a business license but i haven't heard of it from zone completely in a residential zone that they be incidental to residential use and that they're and so by that meaning incidental to the residential use numbers number of we don't have any regulation on that right now  actual characteristics that cause problems rather than the number of members you can have a collective and it will be interesting to listen to the testimony on this but you can have a collective with one hundred members but if they're staying put and not well then round and sly you you actually raise a third entity which is a businesses that are not dispensary what what it what were you referring to businesses so again that would be anything that is doing some kind of distribution of 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 ok so charlie i'm concerned because when i looked at the pie chart it looks as if only about eighteen percent of the eight 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 said 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 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 to be the best candidates but that's up to a process and that's to livery 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 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 said there is the spencer east 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 is 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 commonwealth also state and local regulation and of course and that's why i think it's so important accept are i recommend well i don't know if i'm going to do that on the number but i have to say that i'm glad we're moving forward with some definitions some restrictions some standards because it is kind of like the wild west out there now and i think there are definitely some problems 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 so 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 it does a collective ha grow their medicine on site that's not a requirement typical active 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 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 know you'd come together and share your knowledge and so 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 characteristics think of it as 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 that can still have an 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 well if i can expand on that a little the regional food facility law regulates the facility and if someone doesn't say oh i'm making enemies here it would be inspected i assume if they asked for an inspection and if it met the requirements so i get a permit but 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 became the commercial facility produce 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 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 i believe now 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 what i think you know the short answer is i think we've got a little off track that 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 facilities they don't go and inspect your flowers see if there's wheels in it they don't expect or care see if they're fresh so it is not it appears to be a problem but it is not a problem some can call and have their kitchen if under law or their commercial facility inspected and signed off and permitted as 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 content and the amount of t h c is definitely one of the or one of the this is a this would be slightly different kind of more like day care because you do have some cha fact that can be generated where as you know generally a home occupation doesn't have traffic depends to mention a few general things and that one is i share a consumer miles concern that there's a very large number of patients at the three dispensaries over twenty four thousand who don't eat 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 neighborhood service these are regional draw facilities and so i think that has to be considered in the drop in the zoning again all commercial zoning districts are not the right place to put dispensaries unless you're going to put some limitation on the numbers ok  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 y 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 a safety concern this is supposedly a medicine it 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 d in the neighborhoods are ok because that's where we're going to hear a lot of complaints when there are 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  think it was severe yeah i think there's lots of issues in my collection of dice to bring in a pretty night 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 it or 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 resident jurors is just ridiculous it's going to have impact on traffic and as council member was not proport out i mean these are been the road issues and problems that we have is mostly been the collective's and the residents and where the fire has tak place that burned down in san francisco and all around the community they've been in these small homes with all these 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've 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 a vatten roll bars and gates and and windows and security system and dogs and a moat but there is nothing for the collective nothing you can be of 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 camel foot like you have to have in the parking lot or some of the other that you have to roll gates and bars this isn't that a cobra juana i think we have swung this pendulum way too far and let the locals only we're saying that dispensaries must be in commercial or well 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 all these other tons of restrictions will make it even more impossible and make it very financially difficult  the last thing i'd like to say and mr pappas i will the commissioner was the commission's recommendation and i think staff agreed you know i have no idea where with site six medical dispensers but if you guys on this diocese side to do it every three mile you rule and minute is that there should only be one per district you will not make west berkeley medical marijuana haven berkeley that's not what i want to see if you want it in your district vote for it 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 the speaker's ok that none of those three dispensaries appear to have a large number of complaints being made about their operations is that two is any one of those three have a lot of people complaining about them so we have three dispensaries that arch that are providing medical cannabis to a large number of people with a higher satisfaction you know customer satisfaction ratio then think the recommendation of six dispensaries is actually very conservative of an counterproductive because we have over one hundred collect those within the city of berkeley most of which are you know arguably illegal in one way one little way or another and under these policies we're making dozens of those existing collect if this applies to existing facilities which it appears to where making dozens of the existing collectors illegal in more ways if we had dropped these restrictions and those collectives are in residential areas and yet our general consensus is we want most of this activity in a commercial area not a residential area and yet we're forcing people to go to the hundred collectives in residential areas because we have so few dispensaries i think you know if you actually believe in the concept of taxation and regulation the dispensary are the most clearly regulated the most clearly taxed the less the leas confusing and then any of the collector so it makes the most sense to increase the number of dispensaries at least to six if not more because those are the places that have the most regulation the most clarity and they're in commercial zones so i think you know all the conversation about we do keeping the number of low is actually the  city is forcing the problem into residential areas because we're artificially restricting the amount of dispensaries that are strongly regulated that are in commercial areas we want it in commercial areas let's make more in commercial areas with clear regulation so i i don't think the number of six is enough but i would i hope that we could at least vote on that way for all to the planning commission because we found something to the planning commission is going to take many months to get through the planning commission because they have one hundred other things that they're looking at so we should at least start the process of trying to increase the number to a more reasonable amount and as conservative as the number six is it's better than leaving it as low as it is now so i think we need i think we need comments and you know some of my gree with some of the or the other thing and some of you know it's not all that well founded and all it elephant in the room to me is the economic tension between the dispensary s and the collectives on one hand the dispensary is our hot more highly regulated taxation associated with it and heard a proponent of the dispensary say to me that his goal is to get rid of the collective's you know that's his policy goal and of course it's rooted dispensary they're not drawn exclusively from the immediate area there are people in berkeley they go to oakland and other places so i mean that statistic alone is not this is new territory for all of us in the city and for other cities and so we're kind of groping our where along and i respected idea that this is a work in progress and want to be forced now what's being suggested is going to be you know put into the crucible of other ideas that have come out of the council itself so i just think we ought to take some account and be aware of that there are some economic forces at work here you know i would like i would not like to see the collective's cast into siberia you know and left to the vagaries of law enforcement as to how you're going to deal with people in neighborhoods who are exchanging marijuana and so forth i don't want this to become a criminal cast aside as operating outside the law and therefore subject to prosecution and so forth so i think we need to waste on with these things at the very very beginning when we had the  hearings and the subcommittee met it really emerged that there was there was a real dichotomy between the talent the resources and the folks associated with dispensary zz and those with the hardscrabble kind of collective movement and we were in vision in some kind of the toyman should meet someplace now we're finding out that one is going to craft be forced into even legality and the other is going to be in a shrine and legal status so these are some of the things that i'm concerned about you know our prisons are ourselves like other states are doing from those old shackles of beliefs that keep us from moving ahead cautiously but resolut to address something and the challenges that face in this whole country and then many many states and communities are finding solutions to this finished by asking this under state and or our own just to berkeley residents not all of us can live in berkeley we're fortunate to live in berkeley and thank god for that and i just want to say that you've all brought up great you know great points intelligent points and i look forward to dealing  embassy business licenses some haven't so there's some that we know and there's some that we don't so for those that we don't know that exists that are operating outside of our knowledge how will we enforce these new regulations how will we let them than one hundred that those collectives know what the new regulations that we may be adopting are so that we can ensure that they comply with them so for more ok so anyone who wishes to speak now lose hello thank you for allowing us to speak on this issue tonight i've attended the last two years of meetings at the medical cannabis commission here in berkeley and i really admire the process and the work that they've gone through to try to produce a set of regulations that govern ascend astri i don't consider there's two parts of it one is an industry and the other part is somebody is is and is a service that really takes care of patients and one of the issues that we're talking about here is this issue of collectives that you all of brought up tonight and if i can just bring up one or two three points collect in our collective that i'm a member of and we've been a member of it before it was called a collective before there was proposition two fifteen we  began providing cannabis for aids patients in one thousand nine hundred seven because we found out that the only thing that would help people who were suffering from the wasting syndrome was smoking medical cannabis today there's a lot of other ways to get cannabis and deliver that into people's homes and to people's bodies but in our in our collective here in berkeley and i'm a twenty six year member of this community owned a business here for twenty six years in west berkeley my wife owns a business here for the last three years and we own a home in west berkeley so we're very invested here but in our collective patients get free cannabis they get high quality free cannabis you don't get that at any dispensary if you get anything free it's not very good and even if you pay for it it's not very good unless you pay a lot of money i'm not putting down dispensaries but collectives are the only way that people like that have a mass aids cancer who are own disability can get  is they can go in and pay four hundred dollars and be p g or any place else in that's what high quality cannabis cost and that's the role of collective thank you so how many members are in your class ten and nobody would know about  places that you had problems with dispensary suranne commercial areas they're all sacramento street owned a white and and chata and san pavlo so the three dispensers you had promise with are all acting as commercial places and they all want hi my name's michael baucus i consult her on california on the science of medical cannabis i just want to tell you tonight what's missing from your process medicine i have tended lots of commission meetings heard from no physicians no experts on herbal medicine safety the result no standards for clean medical cannabis no safety screening no toxic mold of bacteria screening no pesticide residue screening and now that's optional in this proposal safety is optional in your proposal you're supposed to believe that safety screenings cost too much you're supposed to believe that the lack of standards for those screenings interferes with having them that's wrong my response to those contentions is one word that i can use here the standards for safety are simple no toxic molds no pesticide residues and you have to be able to approve it and any of a dozen product testing labs within ten miles of this building can do it today u s attorney haig is watching berkeley's next move if this process is about revenue and bars on windows rather than science and medicine your new dispensary will have a very short life span berkeley could take the lead on medical cannabis quality or they can just take the cash and look the other way this will remain medicine even after the drug war collapses you need standards for this city's future you need safety screening and  problem if you have control over your cultivation and your dispensary is have centralized cultivation then they can get testing during the process of cultivation so all of their meds are tested once they do a normal agricultural crop test they do a random sampling and test it and it's either clean or it's not if somebody's showing up at a dispensary with a backpack and they pull out of an ounce and they sell it well that's a lot of money to spend on testing one ounce so it's all about so much problem finding a place to rent and i know mr pop us will testify that i have an intimate knowledge on trying to find a dispensary and berkeley and it's because in my opinion gordon the real estate agent controls most of the commercial properties in berkeley and he refuses to rat to a dispensary i want to address you and the confusion  between collectives co ops and dispensaries i think if you don't want to step on anybody's toes but if the whole residential collective thing is to me and there's always going to be people hanging out in a residential house selling weed it's uncontrollable but if collectives were a group of people getting together in a commercial space buying and selling them on some cells in the person who rents commercial space open to people with cannabis medical cannabis dispensary cards thank you ok everyone else very positively for a long time and we really appreciate the community allowing us to exist and continue to support us because that that is that is the only reason that we exist at this point we do support the commission's efforts to expand our regulatory structure locally i know that there's a lot of questions about collectives and simply that i wasn't really prepared to address those and i have limited time so looking at just the proposed regulations twelve twenty six and twelve twenty seven anticipating that the rest of things will be discussed later some of the things that we'd like to be considered for twenty seven ten and it gives a six month period of time to come up to compliance with the new regulations as a new parent of a nine month old i'll tell you right now like you're going by really fast who would like to see that six month grace period extended to a twelve month grace period so that we could actually achieve all of the goals that we're trying to get forth and implement hire the right people retrain adjust our systems to the new template and anticipate an environment with state regulations are very likely to come in the next year to her two years from now on without having to rebuild it the consecutive year where we assume small things like there's a mandatory requirement for written records we'd like that to include digital records as an option as well so that we don't have to have all this paper everywhere that l requires more discussion and please keep in mind that many of the best people who produce these controlled edibles like mr baucus is discussing these people don't live in berkeley th one of the reasons why is because they look towards alameda county and i think we're poor that process looks confusing we don't understand the process even berkeley doesn't understand the process even perfectly doesn't seem to anything down pat yet even berkeley seems to be overly concerned about danger in crime and so perfectly has successfully scared the neighboring cities to voting against dispens and now you are saying well gee how can we have to have all these people from other cities come to our dispensary says because you have successfully scared so many city governments elsewhere the entire county of contra costa has vetoed dispensaries because they don't understand it because they're afraid of it and the reason why is because i think perfectly and oakland both have this they haven't been transparent enough they haven't been open enough there's this focus on fear mongering and confusion and if you if you show the rest of the bay area and the rest of the state this is say this can be done scientifically this can be done to promote community growth whatever than other cities would be less afraid and they would open dispensaries and then the burden of having all these people flooding and berkeley won't be there so you just have to show who particularly the other side of the hills that this is doable that this is save  that the principals at the operating dispensaries are long time activists and so we've all worked really hard to try to make berkeley a model seems to be a thing where we're kind of thought of is big business which is so surprising to me as a twenty five year activist the thing with the collectives that it wasn't that you know we cared about the financials is that for a while for collectives there was no rules so people were opening it was supposed to be incidental residential use people were coming in calling themselves a collective seeing literally hundreds of patients a day there was some people calling themselves collective serving alcohol open till two in the morning because it was a free for all because there was no rules and at the time we were horrified the dispensaries that we work so hard to create a good image of cannabis within the community so i just wanted to clarify it wasn't a financial reason i think that there's absolutely room for small collectives it's just that the free for all had had to stop so i think that that was the important definition or the separation and we have been talking about opening a food dispensary first a very long time and it just seems premature to talk about six ten unlimited numbers when we haven't even gotten to the fourth dispensary yet let's let's get the fourth one open and  let's clarify some rules and see what happens and perhaps revisit at a later time thank you so much and i just want to say that the city of berkeley is so amazing and this process has been really enlightening and why it would be my intention people don't want to go this way and i'm happy to go with one of the people to like this to go through and make these choices the alternative a alternative b and there are those so i discussed this issue with the city manager but in the proposed section twelve twenty seven one two zero the limitation on collective operations right now to propose hours permissible hours for a collective is eight to ten p card for a prescription and i think that's great i would really actually like to go a little bit further and asked that there be the position have a medical treatment plan where they specify some range oh i mean you're getting collective and i down in west berkeley who said they had about ten members i don't i don't have any objection to them being quote unquote open until nine or ten at night i mean i might  would like to see a limitation on the number i don't know whether it's in forcible obviously the city has no intention of enforcing most of these regulations we're going to rely on neighbors to do that might that's that's my guess i don't go and then i wanted to ask mr pappas when these groups come forward to apply for the fourth dispensary do you think half of them are going to be identifying the same site given the limited number of sites that are available in berkeley oh it's a good question but you know you don't have to have a specific cite tell a third round you have to you could end the second round you could say mark these are the i'm considering well how our how am i going to explain to you my my program to not impact a neighborhood if i don't have a site that i'm talking about well if you have stiff you have two or three but then you have two or three neighborhoods where you you could see you could you know say what you do in each neighborhood if you got one or you know hopefully you know you will be in the second round and you walk with you and you will have several members and that is i think we do have to we do have to look at the safety issue and the testing issue my recollection was that i've toured both the b p g site was down at grace and i've toured their new site i thought when i toured the toward the original site that they were testing their ten testing is is a noose is new in the medical cannabis industry probably did just the last three years maybe four and i don't want you to i don't want you folks to think that the commission has spent lots of time on discussing testing we we have and not to mr barker the satisfaction mode we hear him and we will we want the best possible medicine you know the safest medicine and it's just hard to work out and it's it's you know the frenchies told us there was a cost factor for some certain kinds of testing and cheaper for others so it's  issue when we come back i'd like to hear what the costs are here what the level of testing is because i think it was done before they were in business obviously making a profit and and so why not today  and finally i do want to try to understand i still haven't had a definition of what a nonprofit operation is and what and what it says in the ordinance is that people are going to receive reasonable compensation something to that effect and i would like to know who and how that's determined for next time not for tonight ok so i sure some of the things i'd like to see one i agree with some of my colleagues on this dyess we should only have four dispensaries that the voters of berkeley voted for if we go to two more dispensaries and i think this council could reevaluate within a couple  years once we have the four in place and operational and running hopefully successfully i'd really agree with several members that we have to limit the number of people that belong to collective fifty or one hundred in the medical cannabis i also agree with the comment that was made earlier from b p g that there should be a twelve month grace period to comply with the regulations for those existing dispensary that seems very reasonable agreed time does go by fast and twelve months seems like a reasonable amount of time in the fine i think digital read records let's save as many trees as we can i mean the look at these nice fancy i pads we now have digital data we should there and accept that ok well yeah i think we should limit the number of people who can belong to any given collective i think they should be required to either have a home occupation permit or something that would give us a database of all of the collectives in the city and where they're located i mean we require a permit almost to change a lightbulb in this city you know and so to operate as a collective you know with the impacts on the neighborhood i think we should know where they are i think ten trips a day is a high impact especially in congested areas where parking is an issue but i also and i also would like the testing to apply to edible things can be insidious and for mold to get that big before it's removed means that they're pretty insidious and so you know these kind of things in my mind as a public health just have a very quick question mr greene can you tell me why there was such a close vote on the definition section by there was such a close vote on the yeah yeah it's twelve point that well you could actually see it on the first page because there was twelve point two six zero three you know we have five yes votes to no and two and then there was a couple of and i'm just i went to twelve point two six zero three zero that's the definition section and i just didn't understand what that there must have been discussion about why people didn't i believe that the issue was just the definition of what a co operative was and how we were defining that because there are a number of different types of cooperate different types different types when you look at it from a from the states definition of a cooperative and the again the way that business is run you know this goes way beyond medical cannabis is any kind of business that is considered a cooperative there are many different definitions and types of cooperatives so there was a lot of discussion about what kinds of cooperated would be included in our definition and then there were some members of the public who didn't like the idea of having cooperative as it got first of all it was five to two with two absent so it wasn't as close there was this got burned up with the question of the kind of corporate form that collectives could take and there have been subsequent suggestions that we loosen that up which i think we're ok with  i think the main reason was that people still don't get the distinctions in the ordinance between forms of organization and types of operations and unfortunately the same words are used to refer to both and i think they were afraid of being regulated if they were called you know it's a requirement of state law you can't get around it yeah i mean it's i know that it's in there but i just what what part of the resistance was the larger law doesn't really work for them and there was some resistance to defining the term  know because then i'm going to get into editorializing if i answer that question i think it had to do with not being able to retain an adequate degree of  control to operate efficiently so here's what i see here's a proposal you guys ever hear in all this i think there's a number of questions number of concerns right there we're under no great pressure like we have to adopt this tomorrow recommendations by the commission and by the staff for bring all that you take all that forward bring a forward and then we asked did we look at the following questions on the missed some please let me know what the cooperate is we'd like to see the clo the question of where it's going to be because so you know that we remember i was there for berkeley patient groups why office went through and took a drawing around every circle left it took a half a mile and there was no importance i mean they found a place but there's almost no place i hate to see bill go through this whole thing and then find out that that's not going to work i thought the idea that a lot of support groups that we look at the art of the financial statements of the work with the with the agenda committee to figure out when that's going  with the reality that's actually happening in the city and dispensary is work allowing more dispensaries is a perfectly logical thing to do and if you want it regulated and in proposals to reforest and so for the purposes of our discussion we're going to take all of them up at once so that means that means we're going to hear from the staff and we're going to hear from you all and then and you're both representing the commission on good environmental health my name is chris ray's i first my name is chris jaime i first ways this issue with laurie last year laurie said we've got a great commission process that same with they can do well the two commissions found that the at malcolm debate is valid that the public deserves to be informed which is not which is not happening now and that the council should act i don't know why laurean lind watered down the the commission's recommendations perhaps for the same reason that the f d a failed to act on the recommendations of its science advisory panel which said that amalgam safety should be re light at the current science the mercury issue today is like the lead issue decades ago in both cases the science on chronic toxicity is complicated such that industry has been able to sta regulation like the story of the lead the story of mercury will soon be told and you the berkeley city council now have a role in that story riordan and i i just want to thank city council member daryl morey for his leadership in employee health for the city of berkeley for the transgender surgery and i want to thank the rest of the berkeley city council for their leadership in caring about people's house especially on the previous item council member anderson you know the issue of testing and i think this is similar to that we have here a very mild proposal just to you know give people the information about amalgam at a time when they'll be able to make a decision and there's a lot of people that are not scientists that don't want you know working at in a science field then actually made it need to hear about this you know and i think it would have a disproportionate benefit for purple who have less money so i strongly urge you to show continue to show the leadership you have in caring for people's hi i'm kelly gallagher i'm playing a video if we can play the merkley berkeley city council maybe you so much you have people giving up time for this ok could we hear from them so i can keep track of the people who are giving up time so that we can get this is a maximum of three minutes four minutes we need three other people to yield their time into the microphone please three other people to yield their time into the microphone thank you have over their over their products the risk is not assessed in terms of any absolute amount or characteristic of the toxicology but in the context of the of the risk and benefits in clinical use you were here for the previous panel researchers and scientists that testified that said that  when you choose to when you brush your teeth when you have hot coffee or a hot substance in your mouth vapors are limited and when you choose some of it flakes off over pretty time goes into your and your body has ever been a study done on cadavers people that have had a lot of fillings in their mouth to see what the mercury content is in the brain as you know the studies that they cited of this are the same studies that we reviewed in our process of looking at the literature and how that relates to our classification is to look at the product in actual use and to look at the risk and benefit all implants including hip implants jaw implants that are made of metal have metals that leach into the body of plastic material so volatiles and we assess all of those exposures it's not a question whether or not there's an exposure to the question is whether the expose whether there's evidence of the exposure causes clinical of these other substances you're talking about steel plastic is that is that consistent with mercury as far as toxicity well my point is is that we know is it i mean is it as toxic as mercury to the human body it has to be put in the context of the level of exposure and what the effect is and how that's offset offset by the benefits you mean to tell me cadmium is as toxic as substance as margaret is that what you're saying come on what i what mercury vapors leach out of the tos yes we do group and it and that it is in jest it into the body in part yes we do room and it gets into the bloodstream yes and it goes to the brain and other organs of the body  mercury has a cumulative effect in the brain that is less that is less certain but there's literature on both sides it's the clinical impact though that is the standard for taking action on medical devices not not the toxicology not the ability to take preventive actions but with the actual observed effects you know i don't understand why the i'm many people in this country probably the majority don't know that there's mercury in a  you authority and information about products has to do with the labeling of the products and only rarely does the f d a actually directly intervene in the way that products or describe or present informed consent that's practice of medicine which the f do then why don't i would make that request that the it in talk to me about the materials it is an issue of consent if someone's going to put something in your body you should be told by the way we're going to put mercury in your and i'm also kind sick hello my name is dr norma solarz i'm a dentist i've been practicing at a local federally qualified community health center in oakland for thirty two years and i came to state that this discussion of regulating the use of dental amalgam for health reasons is a distraction a red herring so to speak i want to remind the good people assembled here that the greater underlying cause of harm disability and potentially death is untreated dental disease lack of access lack of financial resources or the lack of education the children and adults cared for its safety net clinics will be substantially harmed if overreaching city regulations are enacted the dental profession is already in compliance with regulations that control the consent process and the use and disposal of dental amalgam let's focus on the real known causes of dental disease and disability thank you good evening my name is andrea of inter and i'm here on behalf of an organization called clean water action for the last ten years i have been at the blood and sweat and a lot of tears are working on cleanup plans for both  delta for mercury and while the problem on the environmental problem is certainly not cause strictly by dental amalgam it's a historic problem we have no more capacity in our environment for mercury waste now we have found that when they waste is diverted out of dental offices there is a reduction in our waste water and that is a significant benefit however it does not resolve the problem because you still have toxic waste that has now been collected and has to be managed we certainly believe in stopping pollution at the source but more importantly we believe that people have the right to know what all of the ramifications of their choices are so they can make informed much my name is my name is mark l feel we're here because the f d a has not responded to studies presented at their safety hearing three years ago since then there have been four realities of the best study ever done and then two amalgam that study indicated safety the four new studies all show harm and two of those new studies which the health commissions have nuts yet had a chance to see show a direct relationship with the number of american surfaces and biomarkers of harm in response to what we're told in response to that we're told amalgams are cheap they're durable and they're the best for certain jobs but what happened to the safety question rather than discuss the studies we're told that the f d a says amalgams are safe but that's why we're here in the first thank you mercury free and happy to say for thirty two years and one hundred eighty was the last time i did one dr kennedy here is going to be testing former vapor coming off of this gentleman's amalgam fillings we tested initially about one micro cubic millimeter in the area and would be testing him to see what's coming coming off his teeth after he's been chewing for a while for the last twenty five years i've been hearing from organized dentistry it won't last this composite will wear down the leak it will cost sensitivity it can't be used where the teeth cannot be dried i have never not been able to place a composite resin where i would previously have placed mercury amalgam in the manufacture and dental school instructions it is stated that murky amalgam needs to be placed in a dry field otherwise it will expand and corrode the results in cracking this this results in cracking the two structure that does not expand then that leads to larger fillings eventually crowns and often progresses to needing root canals and eventually extraction this entire progression can be entirely avoided by making the first filling a sealant or composite not mercury amalgam then the two thousand minimal damage due to drilling it is strengthened hundred percent back to what it was it doesn't do that then the two has minimal damage due to drilling and is strengthened if it has composite like i said to one hundred percent whereas it with was amalgam it would be seventy percent loss of strength to that too hundred five there have been excellent composite resins for post here teeth if placed according to the composite resin technique not mercury amalgam i've personally had the opportunity to do it for many years and follow my patients and i see that twenty and twenty five years they're holding up just fine so there's a lot of stories about saying they don't put their foot in right they do have you got a measurement and it started out with one and we steam a whole lot higher than that with more murky amalgams in the mouth are we doing another winner similarity when comparing toxicity of composite resin to mercury amalgam would you expect anything else opponents like to bring out b p a in residence to counter the mercury danger amalgam results of the risk analysis that never shown anything near the same degree of toxicity as m amalgam it was like comparing a small moon of jupiter to the sun i don't believe the stories from these people and organizations that continue to hide behind claims that are just that only claims show me the science is the model of the international cademy of all medicine and toxicology  for over seventy five years consumers and dental professionals have looked for the american dental association seal of acceptance on products that a t f seal stands for quality and effectiveness manufacturers who apply for the seal must meet certain criteria they must provide objective data supporting the products safety my name's dr michael i'm a former consumer representative on the dental products panel at the f d a the mailroom was grandfathered in in the seventy's having been on the market for almost two hundred years and if a mailroom is taken to a class three by the f d a class three would require manufacturers to prove safety which they never had to do they've never done any safety studies on this product they're not going to spend the over a good evening i'm not going to hopefully take too much time other than maybe clear away some of the confusion i am practicing dentist for fifty two years practicing biologically i'm considered a biological dentist today i would consider a biological dennis's the dentist that's concerned with the possible toxicity is that we've been putting in the mouth and the possible substitute that we can be using i used to teach at and therefore i thought it was a nerd and we now know there is a scientific and possibility and i'm not going to go through the toxicities of mercury many individuals have already addressed that and you should know that just by looking at google everything i say here to you can verify ok but i'm saying that this is important what you're doing today really there's a lot of already laws mandated that this is a concern and this is a deep concern that you have an opportunity of doing something about it many of th students many of the dentist here students that i taught i'm here i'm here kind of responding to my bucket list saying that before i die i'm seventy nine before i die i have a responsibility to clarify the confusion smell it we didn't see it and the big thing when we'd go to the physician with our symptoms of mercury toxicity with they would do conventional blood test in urine test you do not find mercury in conventional blood test in urine test it holds up in the fats that's why it causes the neurological disorders that you're seeing so the big problem is that mercury is a toxin that affects people differently depending upon the susceptibility of the ho genetically physiologically nutritionally exercise so these are the very things that we're concerned with today is a toxin it should be not in our mouth it shouldn't be and planted in our teeth it should be on the face of the planet it's a toxin and there's enough laws already right now that says for to us hey how can the r a d already has agreed that we should have a separator in the office how many of us have the separator when there's already a mandated by the e p a saying that we should have separat but we have we have i guess said by the a da no we will do it voluntarily that was in two thousand and ten we have not voluntarily put separators in office today and we're polluting the environment look at an e p a two thousand  tell you so all you're doing is you're caring for the mandates are already there mercury is a toxin it's not an issue there's no safe dose for mercury and the people that are saying there's no scientific evidence when i started to  research this i was astonished to see the number of articles that show me that mercury is toxic and now i can see on television to see the vapors coming out of the tooth kennedy played the smoking tooth and you can see the stuff coming out of the tooth and you've got the drawing paper analyzer a thousand dollar instrument it's mostly it's toxic i'm overdue but i'm sorry ed the most important thing is are you have the information to make a decision that's or i'm also speaking in support of council member rego and pose as opposed to the compromise in the hope that we might get something with teeth when intended oh well i am a berkeley resident i do vote eighteen twenty that's when the stuff was first introduced we've been suffering with the effects of this for two hundred years for one hundred years we've known that mercury off gases from these feelings that experiments very simple take a tooth with a filling in it stick you seal both ends you bend it ninety degrees you hold the tooth and at body temperature you put the other end in liquid nitrogen and you wait all right vaporizing mercury collects in the cold and then you can measure how much you get right so this isn't rocket science we've also known the health effects of mercury for at least five hundred years and medicine used to use it extensively for treating syphilis and in fact until the early one nine hundred s the only things that medicine had to offer us were m psychology right now while i was writing my thesis in psychology i then got very very sick and had to discover that this was not a matter of emotional problems these were a matter of talks a lot of problems neurological problems good evening i'm here to yield my time to kristen mills heaving air steam council my name is kristin mills i'm a traditional natural path and co founder of californians for green dentistry mercury is the number one hazardous non radioactive substance on earth there is no safe level of m exposure and so you lose level particularly in neurotoxicity there is no threshold below which mercury exposure is safe mercury is notorious for a cumulating in the body and is known to produce symptoms in disease including chronic fatigue berkeley has long been a fire in the forefront of progressive and environmental thought in california we continue and continues leading the us with cutting edge ecological and health initiatives we are certain that you will continue your commitment and promotion in favor of the safety and well being of your citizens and remain a significant and vigilant stewart of our environment thank you maybe wanting to speak so you do the mouth and we usually talk a lot i will be playing it one minute severs so and i have been a dental hygienists for twenty years the purpose of this presentation is to show you that dental mercury controls the immune system it controls oxygen transport it controls cholesterol and dental mercury initiate auto immune diseases like am as a ls leukemia and diabetes university postgraduate studies show the viability the ability of white blood cells to kill bacteria can be close to one hundred percent in healthy humans with the exposure of the amount of mercury that can be found from the placement of the eight amalgams that the average american has the effectiveness of the lymphocytes can drop to flat line dead in one week after mercury exposure here we have four diagnosed patients with m s this represents eight spinal taps before and after dental mercury removal after demo revisions the second column shows the toxins have disappeared all four patients show dramatic improvement including one who got out of the will chair permanently red cells are transportation system for oxygen each chamber globin molecule can carry further oxygen molecules mercury has a higher attraction to him a globe and then the oxygen does lead to molecules of mercury bind to him a globe and and that binding site is permanent and you have lost fifty percent of your oxygen saturation how would you feel with fifty percent less oxygen could this be related to chronic fatigue and one of the most surprising things in my studies is that mercury controls cholesterol the low cholesterol is went up ten twenty thirty milligrams per cent and the highest came down ten twenty thirty forty five to be about eighty a hundred new cases per year then the introduction of high copper amalgams came in one thousand nine hundred seventy six which gives off fifty times more mercury than prior to nine hundred seventy six the first year at eighty eight one hundred new cases went up to one hundred twenty three thousand new cases and it continued to rise since then the invention of the high copper amalgams was paid for and patented by the good old american dental association which is why in my opinion so many of them are here today to protect the investments  s also increased after one nine hundred seventy six and same thing with diabetes i hope this information can convince you that it is time to stop this travesty whether you are rich or poor man or female child or an adult does not belong in your head so on a poll council of berkeley in my opinion tonight you can either protect the american town association or you can protect the people of berkeley tonight it is your vote thank you to ever attend the u c l a school of dentistry and when i went there i had a different background than everybody else i also i hope we all wake up i was the other purpose i graduated from u c davis and worked in the human performance lab for four years while i while i was at the u c l a i worked as a first exercise physiologist at northridge hospital i worked very closely with critically care critical care people there was a spinal cord unit with all the work i've done i also had to educate the dentist the leaders only on mercury i wasn't invited back no surprise besides doing research and with humans i've degrees in psychology so i've had a chance to look at this profession and wonder about it you know we've been using mercury far longer than one hundred sixty years to come such one hundred eighty years i don't understand why my colleagues can argue to continue to use technology that's old neurotoxicity means nerve poison and yet they talk about allergies probably a few people are allergic to mercury but everyone in the room here is toxic to it the dentist i'll tell you right now are under educated when it comes to physiology how do i know that i taught pre med and dental students at u c davis exercise physiology so i know and when i got to u c l a and took the courses in physiology honestly speaking didn't enhanced what i already know m was told that i had scored higher than anybody in the history of the school on the physiology exam so by then the school was about twenty years old so you magine hundred students per year that puts me at the front of the line of two thousand people so when you start comparing with the dentists no i tell you right now they don't know this stuff they haven't studied toxicology they haven't gotten the information they need on physiology and the citizens here are asking you to take a stand like you have on other things you know it's the policymakers that will that will do things now how does this all work physiologically your mouth is in the middle of your head your thyroid's here your pituitary sear they communicate and they distribute hormones your brain is up here you have twenty the vegas goes to the heart lungs and digestive system all of those are being polluted by mercury all of them and when you look at the facts of taking mercury out of people that's when you see people get healthy epidemiological studies don't tell you things you've got to detox people like i've been able to do in my office i would invite all the other dentist to do the same thing and they'll learn what i've learned meteor one of the difficult process is that you have in front of you is in most cases when you get the controversial issue the safest place is to rely on an expert unfortunately what's being sold to you is that the dental association wants to portray itself as being an expert in truth if you look at whatever he sent out to the first thing you should know is to american dental association in a lawsuit that had to do with their claims about safety about dental mercury amalgams the most important thing that jumped out with that is if they claim that they don't have any duty of care whatsoever secondarily the other part that you should not recognize is that there is an unfair competition if somebody actually follows the law what happens is that they're going to dress differently they're going to act differently and they're going to tell them that the mercury amalgams don't work and unfortunately means it's unfair competition  good evening bateson esteem city council members my name is in i am the executive director of californians for green dentistry and the international court for the international cademy about medicine toxicology also known as i  and being in public health i'm used to being the odd man out in terms of discussions on an opinion so the things i'm here to talk to you as a you see as the double chord major for the berkeley free clinic in eighty three i helped unpack and set up early what is now the lifelong which would be over sixty's clinic and after i graduated i went to work for like a maker since i am bi lingual i have spent the last twenty seven years of my life working towards increasing access to quality care to patients regardless of their level of income i have a real concern with problem with any time any government agency tries to come in and help us by regulation you increase the barriers to care we have fought very different very hard the last few years to reinstate adult done to and i'm very happy that it will be back in state in may my only alternative right now to patients that do not have insurance is to extract their teeth if you walk in tell to bits with a broken arm and you have medical your only option is in town p take your arm and that's the only options that we have is down to us right now under the medicaid program twit's been said this evening is that dental composites in california medicaid benefit you have the option and you have the choice regardless of your level of income i have to offer you anything and everything possible implants regardless of your ability to pay but many people have a lot of problems with being able to pay for services so we're trying to control the costs but that doesn't mean you don't get patients options because patients decide we believe that we go through the treatment plants explain what the materials are what the costs and the cost benefits are contrary to time my colleagues composite restorations do not work in everyone's mouth in particular if you have  patients who have very limited access to care and we need to put in what work the best for the longest amount of time i think it's really important that you need to look at who we serve because this is not private practice these are not people who have constant access to care are unintended consequences to any decision that's made i was on a state down a board i was one of the authors of the downturn stock sheet i recognize many of you cuz we were having this discussion twelve years ago and we're still having it i'm hoping that in the next twelve years this won't be the discussion we'll have to be had and instead we can put all of our energies towards preventing what causes dental caries because it's a communicable disease instead of having these arguments that increase barriers to care thank you by four minutes has been shortened but that's ok i'll speak quickly and you can keep up the powerpoint basically shows you that we've been in this argument for ever and ever and it is a very simple argument it is are you going to tell the patient what you're using the dentist call it royal mineral soon to cover up the fact it was mercury then they call them silver fillings cover up the fact is mercury what you're seeing here tonight is the disingenuous argument that you're taking away a tool that they need to use on poor people you know it's the worst way to fix a tooth it makes it big in the tooth as to be extracted later drilling a filling into a tooth and putting composite in it brings the strength back up to one hundred percent drilling a filling and putting an amalgam in it takes the strength of that tooth down seventy five percent putting a filling in it brings it back up none that's why you have broken teeth that's good for business and if you really wanted to increase access for dental care well then you would have trade associations stop blocking assistance and dental nurses from assisting in dental care as they do in other countries in alaska they fought a dental nurse being able to fly out into the boondocks to render care and there's only fourteen us in alaska in there but they don't want anybody to other than the dentist to do the care that's access to care they put barriers to access to care and then complain about it i'm sorry it's also a conflict of interest when the same people have the only insurance company that provides the medical coverage and then they don't want to give them an option what would be the harm if you told the patient oh by the way today i have chosen a mercury filling for you i think it's the best way to fix your tooth that's all you're asking and that gets them excited because they don't want to tell the truth i'm going to go with the i'm going to show you a twenty five year old filling that they touched and murky came to the surface there's a horribly on ethical experiment and one of the questions i ask is how can you tell their line their lips are moving how can you tell they know they're lying it's how they choose to present their data they did a case controlled experiment on orphans they did not even they were receiving mercury fillings and then they said oh group a is the same as group b well a case control experiment at two hundred fifty kids when you go back and you separated out the child they got one filling they haven't had children with mercury fillings in the controls that's called cheating you move those children over it was a government study they can't hide the data the children are two fillings three fillings for fillings five shillings and what they showed was that the more fillings the child had the more impaired the kidneys were so when you want to talk about a cheap filling how about dialysis how much of that do we have to put up with this is the national institute of facial research a horribly unethical study should never been done it's designed to fail but when you actually take the data and they can't hide the data that showed that the damage to children's kidneys and if the child  and i'm perfectly resident in district four and i am also a dentist at one of the local community health centers in our patients are primarily low income and i'm also very concerned about the impact of restricting amalgam use and what that could implicate for patients that are low income are their patients regardless of private practice community health clinics rich or poor are given options when it comes to their teeth and there  of options and amalgam is not perfect but composite is also not perfect and so i do not feel personally comfortable as a dentist recommending composites to my patients i let my patients make up their own decisions we've been using amalgam for a long time we haven't been using composites for that long and i don't come fully feel i can recommend composites to patients because we don't yet know what there may be in composites including already we found  alternative that you're offering them or do you just virtually give it to them because the law compels you to first of all i've been around california is that we have to make available to them a copy of the dental material  explains the different options all of the different materials and so when people ask me i sort of measure their level of interest most people want to know either smile or durable or what's least expensive or they choose t composite on the basis of a static so some people entirely leave the decision up to the dentist and they say whatever you think is best other people want to have more detail conversation me personally if i have a patient that isn't coming to an obvious decision i will not place a filling out some you know i composite is definitely say first time that there is mercury amalgam some people consider that to be an issue i tell them that composites have a glue they tend to break down we tend to have to change the more frequently and again if the patient can't come to a decision with a dental metairie fact sheet and the information that i'm giving them and they're not comfortable making an obvious decision i tell them to go home there's lots of information available that they can look up and come back on a day when they're prepared to have a decision on a filling repeats i just have one quick question so say i'm a patient and i had already had one filling your practice and i i am going to get a subsequent filling my understanding of the state laws that you only get the fact she wants do you give the fact sheet to the patient every single time  to give the fact sheet once were required every time the treatment on a patient to determine what their preference or most appropriate treatment is for the day so that specifically happen every time they have an exam and also you know once you've had the decision or the conversation you may not continue to discuss it but it just depends but definitely at least at each exam they're given their options and usually at each appointment a massive patient is made an obvious you know i was indication to you what they want to be so but they don't necessarily get the facts of the subsequent fillings that they may get so the fact sheet needs to be made up and so we can either give them a copy it's available in the clinic if they want another copy they can have a detailed online you don't give it to them you know that's correct discussed it with them and they've made their decision why would you go for the time after time again having the same discussion once they've indicated to you what they want  hi thanks for the time i'm a general dentist in berkeley been a dentist for thirteen years and i just want to make some points well there's clearly disagreement toxicology and i want to dental school and i've heard both sides and i think the dentists should be should be able to make these decisions i i happen to fall in between you know i i myself you know i can you know believe in to some of the toxicology and you know amalgam to us is talk sick for us putting amalgam is toxic to us and to my staff and to remove amalgam is even more toxic even to the patients so i don't recommend removing amalgam just for the sake of removing it because you're really exposing a lot more mercury in the vapor so i just want to have i still have the authority and you know we have various studies out there dentist can read all the studies there's different studies that support different sides we want to have the option to choose and also i want to give you this ou good evening members of the council a couple things i'd like to address response to what the dentists just said to you first of all this idea of b p a there has been research there have been risk analyses done on the risk of b p a first is mercury and the risk is considered negligible as is concerned versus mercury you can do the research if we had more time we could actually present the research we'd be happy to do that for you in terms of the poor people argument we see that as a red herring there's no restriction of access here we're still giving people the option of getting whatever fillings they want we just want them to have scientific information that's all we're requesting finally i'd like to talk about politics very quickly mr cabot telly i'm i'm i'm very upset you just released this amended compromise we saw last week so that you does not mean permit i'd like to make a motion to extend the time for another twenty minutes fifteen minutes ok i move that w suspend the rules then extend for fifteen more minutes to eleven forty five may i have a few extra seconds s thanks i'll be very quick look mr capital you missed mail you guys were charged with printing compromise you clearly didn't do that as i discussed last week you released half an hour ago why didn't you release this when people had time to look it over please vote in favor of mr a go and work shop so you can actually have the time to consider this thank you want to hear from that do the toxicity i just believe that there are better restored of materials out there and i think you're barking up the wrong tree when you come in after dentists it's the insurance companies that are requiring the the dentist to do the they said that dental amalgam dental dentists are that the largest contributor of dental amalgam in the wastewater of course we are were the only ones that use dental amalgam mercury when mercury goes into the waste water mercury comes out of the out of our watershed out of good evening council members my name is pamela spike i was the chairperson at the time that this was considered at the health commission just as a quick review and i and sure that you're all in fairly well up on this  health commission was approached in the guards to looking into mercury amalgams from a public health and medical point of view at the end of last year and their recommendations after much of work were that there be informed consent because the residents of berkeley were infuriated when they found out that mercury was being placed and they hadn't  in addition a sort of giveaway was that all other regulations on dentists would continue and that was just to really sort of reward the good work that they've been doing in terms of that and then last but not least they were asked to avoid or limit mercury we were told by the dental group that there would be no way that any recommendations would be complied with that it would have had to be something mandated and they would not be happy with the mandatory  the next thing that happened is that the cea see was brought in and they were to address toxicology issues specifically and i'm going to transfer myself for a second to laura who's  look at the scientific evidence surrounding the toxicology as well as we did look at some of the epidemiology because i'm more of an epidemiologist related to amalgam and health and you know i don't really need to reiterate much but there's a lot out there and you know in epidemiology and in toxicology as well that you know there's not very clear cut evidence usually it's very difficult and but we felt as a whole that there was enough out there you know different agencies like the california a have have listed it on proposition sixty five is a chemical that causes developmental harm so we saw lots of other authorities of bodies that were talking about it like that so we we want to head with our recommendation which is a little bit different than pam's but along that same lines that we felt that the toxicology epidemiology was there that was warranted enough that we needed to take action a request it's non binding in nature so that's not going to really work in terms of making any changes for our residents came the council july sixteenth and was actually  then brought to today with two additional proposals one being the fourth one from kappa tell you this was to be a compromise and it was really a variation of staff proposals  session recommendation as a health care professional and what i would recommend to my patients if you were my patients there's just a lot of data and i don't want you to feel like you have to make a quick decision right now i realise this is very difficult in that you get millions of phone calls every day about this and and i'm sorry the position of the commission is simply that we infer yes that we inform them that we do not have the dentists decide that they can make the decision but that in fact we inform we give  saying i don't think that there's anyone in this room who doesn't care a lot of the the people that we care about who we want to serve and we may have a different interpretation of how to go about it but i don't want to vilify anybody here everybody's here trying to do the best that they can and that's how i feel about myself as well and people who are on the diocese here i think that there is a lot of information that came up tonight that is cause for concern very clearly i'm not a scientist i think that there is there's so much that only so much that we're going to be able to do given some of the things that we learned tonight about who is actually pulling the strings from somewhere  like to go through what council member kappa tele and i worked on which we did based on the environmental commission's yeah i didn't get it chance to mention do you want me to mention what the environmental commission's proposal was really just we don't have too much time but i've used most of what you what you we've used most of your format because it's so comprehensive it covered everything so the resolution i'd like to read the resolution because this is actually what we're voting on the city of berkeley is charged with protecting the public health and welfare of its residents we've adopted the precautionary principle some of the members have have the public have expressed serious concern about the safety of dental amalgam s food and drug administration's most recent labeling labeling instructions to dentists state that very limited or no clinical information is available and i know that was attacked quite a bit on average about twenty five percent of cavities restored in the city of berkeley are filled with dental amalgam and i understand that that's decreasing all the time whereas our berkeley city attorney has determined that requiring local dentists to take specific actions  is preempted by state law so we're going to do as much as we can at least i felt that we we were in going through what we felt we could message to our dental community and fact to the community at large because that's what this is really all about it's informing continuing to inform the community we clearly need to have a better approach to this that works better the health commission and community environmental commission made specific recommendations many of which ha been incorporated into this resolution therefore be it resolved by the council that as recommended by the health commission dentists practicing in berkeley are urged to follow applicable regular regulations regarding dental amalgam practices  separators preventing mercury from reaching the environment the it further resolved as recommended by the advisory commission and and i have to say as  i don't want to say that it was completely recommended by them because it's not a mirror a mirror of what they recommended so be it further resolved that that i'm going to take that whole thing out starting in number one strongly support local national and worldwide efforts to reduce exposure to anthropogenic mercury encourage dentists practicing in berkeley to consider limiting or transitioning away from the use of dental amalgam and that's a change to my two number two i'm alerting the clinic that it reads now encourage dentists practicing in berkeley to consider limiting or transitioning away from the use of dental amalgam request the dental board of california to remind dentists that they have a legal obligation to provide the d v c fact sheet to all new patients and to existing patients of record on the initial placement of any dental restoration including and not limited to amalgams and composites request dental offices to post standard prop sixty five labels or posters regardless of the number of employees provide the dental board of california provide the dental board of california's dental materials fact sheet each patient directs staff to write a letter to the d b c to update their dental sheet support continued education and advisories for berkeley residents about potential risks associated with consuming fish court in the cotton the birthing room of that's from the commission and exposure to mercury from other sources direct staff to provide copies of this resolution to the city state and federal representatives and other cities in alameda county with a request that they use their authority to take the necessary steps to phase down the use of mercury and dentistry right to the f d a and national institutes of health to evaluate the knowledge gaps in the risks in risks of dental amalgam support the u n efforts in use of mercury products right to the world health organization to pledge support for the phase down of use of gentlemen or crew insists that dentists follow the applicable regulations regarding dental amalgam practices in the use of separators to prevent mercury from reaching the environment  that's in this as much as we can get forward i think we all have to work on getting better at this we all want our kids too to have the best everyone should have the best that they possibly can and it really is very irritating that the cheapest seems to be what's promoted by particularly insurance companies but don't we get that picture so i will move this and i would like to say that i'm not supporting a work session i think we've had as much as we can really make decisions about here tonight and that's my proposal so yes yes can i just or close by saying that i had a conversations with marty lynch who's the executive director of our lifelong clinics and they're very concerned about going too far with what was proposed and i hope we have you know we've reached a happy i think given that comes from i have probably more than two minutes it's fair to let someone who's presenting an alternate perspective a little bit more time but well i mean i get all but i'll just speak so i think many of the recommendations been put forward  good but the key difference between their proposal and my proposed ordinance is that the word requests rather than the word require and that the basic to disparage the work that they've done i'm just trying to highlight the difference and the basic reason why the way that the their item is written is suggesting that we we encourage dentists to do things rather not requiring them is that the idea that we're somehow was the advice that we got from the city attorney so i've submitted this evening a legal analysis trying to understand are we preempted or not because this is this is the most important question that we need to answer because if we're not preempted from taking certain action we have a certain range of actions that we could potentially take and my conclusion is that we are not expressed that we're not explicitly preempted from requiring that dental practices provide that material fact sheet right now they only have to provide it once but if you sign up as a patient and you get all this information and you come in subsequently for her feelings down the road you're not going to remember getting that actually in fact you may even have a copy of it so i don't see the reason why we can't require that these dental practices provide the fact sheet which is what my ordinance proposes to do so i think there is i don't think we are preempted but there is an open question as to whether we are printer now and i think we need more information about that and then i greatly appreciate all the work that the nonprofit organizations  providing dental care to people in our community but i don't understand how providing information that they already provide once to a patient would create barriers to care information is never a barrier to quality care and i just don't understand how this would limit the ability for a dentist to provide a mercury fillings in facts they wouldn't be prohibited from doing it it's just providing information so patients can make an informed decision in consultation with their dentists so i think people regardless of income should have the right to know we have a precautionary principle and adopting some sort of mandatory requirement for disclosure and information is important to not only implement the basic principle of our precaution in principle but right now there's no way of ensuring that dentists provide this fact sheet and we need to we need to add more teeth to state law so i think the very had there is and precedent number of proposals that have been put forth on this issue which is why i think having a discussion at a workshop would be more appropriate however if the council's wants to take action to see evening i strongly encourage them to adopt the proposed ordinance because what it will do is simply provide the same information dentists provide once already the patien without the benefit of a fuller and more engaged discussion by this body and by the experts in a more or less controlled environment where they have more than one to two minutes and have had to cobble together  things rather than present them in a cogent way is ridiculous for us to be trying to make a decision on this tonight i mean that's stupid this is downright stupid and it's a another example of when somebody said oh this is going to cost us more money to do something that promotes better health then of course we err on the side of frugality and that's foolishness that's foo do one minute clips on the screen and that's ridiculous that's not how we make decisions that's not how we make intelligent decisions so let's have the workshop tech what are you afraid of what is everybody afraid of when it comes to providing more information to people who have to make decisions about their health now you know everybody on a diet claims to be a big advocate of health in the city well this is one small little gesture in that direction it doesn't mean that you sacrifice everything you believe in but we ought to ed meese believe in informing the public giving the public the democratic right it's not unusual for the people to be out ahead of the politicians and they are on this issue head of us and we ought to be trying to catch up rather than retard t i have no doubt that mercury's and neurotoxins but what i'm concerned about is whether or not the city of berkeley actually has the legal authority to compel dentists to do what you're asking us to ask to tell them to do and jesse pinpointed that's at the heart just you've given us what you call a legal opinion but what lawyer wrote this  this is based on my analysis my office analysis of it was vetted by some attorneys but based on reading the legislative history reading the law and this is providing one perspective just because your city attorney pr perspective doesn't mean that it's conclusive there are multiple legal perspectives that's why we should try to find out get to the ok so you know i think we should ask our legislators at the state level to get internally general opinion because i can because i think we have a disagreement here between our city attorney and your office about what's we go what's legal so counts the council members are making good faith efforts to try to understand complicated questions you know based on the the questions that still remain before us i think it's premature for us to you know take action in a definitive way on this recommendation i think there are some really good language in the new proposal that we got tonight i think there's some really bad language and i don't think that you know midnight that we're likely to you know go line by line and vote for the good words and get rid of the bad sentences so i think having the work session is the most prudent thing for us to do that would give us time to seriously examine it it would give us time to try to research that question is a council member when graph as opposed and really do i do diligence on the question so i think i think it would be counterproductive to have a divided vote where some of us vote for this language and some of us vote against it i think it's far better to actually do our homework and come up w a something that we can release have solid scientific and legal basis to decide i think the work sessions are best chance of getting that thank you but yeah i think we should approach it step by step i don't know why anybody would object to this motion council member miles and my proposal tonight step two would be to find out whether we should have any further discussion and that would be the attorney general's opinion and if the attorney jenner says opines that yes we can regulate beyond this then we can have a workshop although i frankly think that a workshop will not provide any additional information than we heard tonight we would just have larger organized groups on both sides both both contesting the validity of the other side's argument so if we adopt this tonight get the attorney general's opinion if it comes back in the negative then there's nothing more to discuss if it becomes fact that we can select require so anyway let me just say i feel like we should require the dentist to do this but i'm also of the opinion that we don't know if we can so if we go back a surgeon from the legislative council or the attorney general that we can do it we'll bring