call the regular meeting of the rent stabilization board to order a roll call would also like to move six a seventy to the beginning of information just to make sure we get to it premium property and finally i would like to suggest this since we haven't all right at this time we will go into closed session pursuant to government code five four nine five six point eight real property negotiation and under the law under the brown act i need to say the following that the negotiators are executive met the board authorized executive director jay collect to go shoot the best deal possible and sign a letter of intent up to fifty thousand dollars with whichever of the two spaces they find he finds a clear benefit for so budget and personnel committee that would be moving which is also under budget and personnel and there's nothing new on contract negotiations that we have to talk  to reach him sure we will be meeting again this week friday not having my notes in front of me from our jeanne meeting i'm doing this from memory we have and we've been working on getting our set up so that our moving closer to being able to do registration line that's moving forward instability with our partnering group what partnering group is that  a website there's quite a bit material and information available for landlords to help them make sure they do comply with the law however there's not going to be any routine monitoring of whether or  not to excuse me the carbon monoxide detectors are actually installed so the one thing that we wanted to ask the outreach committee to do we need to look at doing a mailing at some point both landlords and tenants to everybody letting them know that it's the law of the city the city's already done and mailing to property owners but from our side maybe doing it so that they that it is the law and and also directional instructions on where they can find information about what kinds of detectors and where to install them and that's all on the city's website but this way if a tenant doesn't have one they'll at least know that they're supposed to have one and get in touch with their landlord make sure they're income so if and that's it addiction section eight i spent a good amount of time this spring meeting with the legal service providers in reviewing the contracts as you guys have probably guessed since now we've seen and approved those contracts here at the board in addition of course there's the regular reports and the revised version of the foreclosure distress properties report is in the packet as you might remember the last version of the full closure report was missing a page so this is updated it's a breakdown we're getting right downs not just by the number of units but also the number of buildings so that would have big building goes into foreclosure it doesn't look like there's a spike in foreclosures we now know it was just one big building  and finally the committee has spent a good deal of time talking about some changes to the relocation assistance and other provisions under both the owner moved in and of action protections for tenants and the way we're going to be moving forward with that is that we're going to have a very general training we've asked for to happen at the next board meeting if possible about current protections for tenants under owner move in alice and that will be a full board training in august to bring everybody up to speed on what the law says now and also to take a quick look at what other places say but we don't envision in august the board month and currently attempt to get on the housing and advisory committees agenda for probably next month to discuss this to get their input and then bring it back to the  committee the planned meeting for this thursday july eighteenth unless i or j hear from other committee members will be postponed until next month because the primary reason to have the meeting was an agenda item that was taken care of by the by a different committee that's on the action item  the property owners including people and members participate fully and constructively in this process and to further that i'd like to point out that thursday july twenty fifth at the north berkeley for senior center there's a public  meeting about the proposed city ordinance to require better fit of software buildings possum known as phase two of the soft story ordinance which is something that i and many members on the red board have been working on for many many years way too many years but over that much closer now also i'd like to point out that if you choose for whatever reason not to go to the july twenty fifth public meeting run by the planning department you can also set a date july twentieth according to this magazine that you pay rent hours on top of the month i pushed that have a special catch up meeting and i just sort of wanted to threaten everybody that i'm going to bring that up in august if we can start getting through our agenda and law have to come in for a special day and stay after school to get caught up thank you kathy all right so now we'll move on to the action agenda so i don't five a one is proposed amendments to the adopted fiscal  year thirteen twenty fourteen light and budget and staffing models the materials that were distributed at the last meeting were included in the stream we did packet and then there were additional staff person to the basically and what we've done is we've highlighted where the changes are so you can see specifically what the changes are most of them are just changing the tense of the board is adopting to  and what's also in your packet is what you adopted last year versus what's being proposed so here what i've done is i've done a comparison between what you adopted on june seventeenth  pie chart comparison of the adopted two thousand and thirteen budget and adopted two thousand and fourteen budget in a few months if you want i can give you a similar pie chart based upon your actual specific in saying that for each position i wanted to see the salary for each position and she explained that to me here my understanding is that i would do as i've done in the past which is explain the cost by unit and rather then since i don't none of the documents do i list each individual staff person and staff people are divided among  do you anticipate any additional changes in staff for the future year and i guess my concern is that we don't have a situation where we may need to   that's why you're in i think twenty seven out of twenty eight years that i've been doing budgeting in the city we come under and salary and benefits of from what  thank you so just to clarify so the in your experience the change the deviation from the proposed budget would be a cost savings based on delay hire ok and again the only way it would go up is if i came to you and as for ask for more money more money in specific positions look at thank you i'm trying to be brief because of the times i'm sorry dominica to off but currently are desperately needed for the over stuff like kathy i will say this mostly for my fellow commissioners and not for executive director collectin because i sit on the budget personnel committee and he's heard me say this before i'm really excited about getting an additional support staff person it's completely in line with what the board has asked for and i'm a little concerned with the general staff reductions but i think that given the looming healthcare costs we really had no choice and i mean at least we know that we're not really reducing staff so much as now we're staying with the open positions that have been open for a while are going to be eliminated i hope that it won't always be that way i hope that one day will the actually be built to go back up to twenty five  but this is a pretty fancy footwork and i think it works pretty well i also want to thank director collect because i also had questions about specific salaries and he was able to direct me to a website in the city of berkeley  that lists all of the salaries for all of the staffing positions and i was able to go through there just to assure myself that our salaries are comparable with other city departments for example a community service specialist one makes approximately the same amount as a librarian one and a staff attorney one makes a chunk of change maybe six thousand dollars a year or less starting salary then a beginning police officer out of the so i think that our salaries are in line with other city salaries what i think of those i won't say we have a union thank you anyone else did come up with a recommendation and i'll just read briefly i didn't do a full background report or anything but that we asked that the city council take the following action and then the berkeley municipal code by adopting a definition of mold and mildew similar to the definition in chapter of the san francisco housing code and designate the presence of mold and mildew as defined as a distinct side of a code violation to revise the rental housing safety program schedule a certificate certification checklist to includ additional check box to indicate the presence or absence of mold and bathrooms closets and other and three direct the appropriate city departments to develop informational materials and guidelines for residence on mold do want to make one a couple notations is that c n n money had stated that over thirty percent of brand new homes had contained some form of mold in it but i think this benefits protects you know not only tenants but also protects landlords from liability so i think this is a good move forward with thanks for working on this ok so i'll make the motion you've moved the recommendation is there is that is there any further discussion them of the situation the council did take action to postpone until it looks like probably october but what they postponed was a number of things happen there including the referral back to the planning commission and the request that both the draft that they had before them and the language from june fourth be considered side by side house it was also referred to housing advisory committee they have that petition which very specific petition asking basically all the things that we wanted to a letter from the council the neighborhood associations which raised a couple of new things and one from the berkeley architectural heritage association questioning whether there might possibly need to be sequel review because the the language the council proposed was a significant change from the demolition ordinance as it is now  have would have a huge impact on neighborhoods and and historically services if it were to be enacted the way it is so it's unclear to me what will happen with that but that also the question of whether or not this would require seek review is also referred  as i said under the will be meeting with the four on the four by four committee with the council in september and this will probably be the topic i'm hoping that we'll  just agree to go back to the original june fourth language and that or something very similar to having the replacement units at sixty percent affordability at sixty percent of area median income was already basically the compromise the point in the middle really of where we would like to be even though if we were to look at full rent control if  to write the letter and the only reason i pulled it and put it on action was that one of the few things that we had talked about during our last meeting was possibly putting out a press release and i just wanted to make sure that folks are on board that when the chair sees fit when the item may be coming back before council that the rent board do do a press release and i was pretty sure that was part that was one of the things that you were authorized to do already but not having because so far there has been no press whatsoever about this very large change that could especially with the way the zoning codes have been amended to allow bigger buildings further back from all of the major chord doors so  you know we're not just talking about maybe tearing down a two unit building on you know san pablo ave we might be talking about tearing down a two unit building two blocks off of pablo avenue or two blocks off of university or you know a couple blocks you know the for bigger buildings has been expanded such that i think people don't really realize when they think about it and when they hear about demolition that the rw the talking about the possibility of tearing down perfectly fine buildings that don't don't think it's the direction that berkeley has chosen to go and i'm concerned that regular citizens in berkeley have no knowledge of this discussion taking place at that whatsoever so i want to see some press so that the public can come and have some input that i didn't do a press release because at the time in the county when everything was right on top of it and having just what various people in the community know it wasn't just me quite a few people heard what was happening and it just went out there and it was all of a sudden people popping up saying wait a minute this is not what we thought was going to happen when the rent board and planning had agreed and we were protecting existing housing and protecting the affordability of the new housing in a one to one replacement that was one thing now  but you know i do think it would be very good to try and get this get the word out that this could be a huge change and a couple of community folks have forwarded other comments that didn't relate to the two units or more that we were talking about but by changing the ordinance there was some issue about single family homes and what it would mean in terms of being able to demolish a single thing the new draft may not cover that so i'm hopeful that the plan is deaf and our staff can take a look at those if there's specific questions or  no i was just concerned because it was last seen pretty important in qana timely that we you know get filled in on it and that everybody who is reading through their packet made it to last information item by moving it up so this this time it was given a whole new lease right there wasn't just a term of the tenancy that was changed but the where there were lots of them i'm sorry but the more there are lots of terms that were changed yet yeah the tenants out there who are not reading this item could we just talk a little bit about what this means that you can't make a unilateral change in a lease don't have to sign leases they say different stuff than their old lease right  substantial violation of a material term of a lease agreement however if the landlord has tried to unilaterally change the terms of the lease agreement the tenant has to have consented to that change in writing in order for it to be enforceable that's one protection the second protection is that a landlord may mandate that a tenant sign a new lease agreement but only if it's substantially identical to the one that just expired so those are the two sections of the ordinance and the eviction protections which which deal with the subject also the board of the year and a half ago i believe passed regulation thirteen join me to go into more detail but if it's when it doesn't have a written lease at all well then circumstantial evidence would prove what the terms and conditions of the of of the of the lease agreement are and if those can't be reasonably replicated in writing then the tenant can't be forced to sign a lease agreement so the tenant never had a written lease do they have to sign a lease if the landlord writes down with the landlord thinks the terms  are if i want to understand your question correctly no there needs to be sort of a meeting of the minds of the time that that there's a there's a lease agreement signed for the first time as to what the terms conditions are and if there are if there isn't there would that would be is one particular landlord that sense of being to one particular tenant well the reason we were concerned about this is that premium properties manages a great number of properties in berkeley and what we wanted to make sure that that from this may tenth letter that their principal understood that this type of of unilateral change in terms of tenancy was prohibited we didn't get a response and that's of the reason that we wrote the all of the tenants for premium properties or is two hundred eighty five letters that one out for the july tenth letters that just went out last week and we sent out two hundred eighty five letters to all tenants regarding this matter because we didn't get any response from the premium properties regarding the letter that was sent two months ago and in addition staff plans to contact the owners of those buildings to let them know what's going on ok thanks i'll just say one thing about this is that premium properties is not new to rent control they've been around since the  issue with another property and i'm wondering is this standard operating procedure and what we can do to maybe be more effective at forcing the ordinance yet that's a good question you know oftentimes when new landlords come in they they request that that sitting tenant sign that new landlords lease agreement so it's a question that we often get the rent board from tenants as  i obligated to sign this new agreement now that i have a a now that there is a new property owner who owns the building and simple answer is no is that the thought that new owner steps into the shoes of the old honor now it can be difficult for that new owner if leases weren't passed during the the transaction but that the law simply states that the but the landlord has no authority to obligate a tenant to  sign a new lease agreement even under those circumstances i guess what i'm asking is maybe a larger more rhetorical question the law seems fairly clear but in my experience it kind of seems like in the real world it's the wild west and landlords just do whatever they and i'm wondering what are we looking at this as an indicator that maybe we need to change the way we're tackling these lie think the that this stuff that came up with an awesome response which is that they wrote first to the landlord assuming that night be an isolated case and said you know please contact us and let us know that you're up on this law and they waited two months and when they didn't hear from the landlord they sent a letter to all of the tenets i think that's a pretty awesome way to deal with it i didn't mean to suggest that steph was negligent in any way but it does seem that there's a there's the law and the law is very clear but then there's the real world and many tenants are loathe to  landlords that something like this is specifically prohibited by the ordinance  if the problem is in most circumstances that we see that when a new landlord takes over a building if the problem is that they are trying to enforce a new leas terms on existing nazis perhaps the board should add that at the time that we are notified of a new landlord taking over management or ownership of a building send that landlord a letter explaining that this particular practice is for him by the ordinance or maybe we should send a letter to the tenets of our or everybody well let's put it in your court   multi unit housing ordinance first came up and then when it was continued to may twenty eighth so that item was presented to council both times if you look on page two and three of the board board in the in the commission had five specific recommendations for changes basic overall both the commission and the rent bo were very favorable to the proposal the council was looking at but they did suggest five specific changes which we did communicate that to the council council  took action and that's on the cover item for the for the agenda item is the minutes of the action that was taken the item has to come back basically what they asked for was he provided city staff with some direction on how to rewrite the ordinance go through some of the changes the first is the rent board and then the health commission recommended that leases prior to being able to file a private right of action that first attempt informal informal resolution or mediation and by attempt to what we were thinking is you can't force another party who is violating the ordinance to go to mediation but you least have to try and allege that before you bring the action into to small claims court language the council guidance a council gave to staff was encourage but don't require mediation so let me just cut to the chase because a recurring  theme in and analyzing the actions the council took will be to actually see the language that house staff interprets this and in the language that staff and back with in september october  i'm not sure what it means to encourage but not require and mediation looking again at the top cover page of the action the council took  council agreed with the board to be a reasonable limit the amount of liability that each tenant smoking tenant would have in one year as we pointed out in the staff report of that went to the board and then the board's response to council we think there was an unintended effect possibly being thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential liability we didn't think that that a common goal council directed staff to require tenancy applications the applications to include information about which units do not have prohibition in the lease regarding smoking i believe that was in response to the board's recommendation and when i say board i'm going to means board and the community health commission i'm just going to do the short cut from now on but that  board recommended was that all new leases must provide notice of which units in the building do not have leases expire so they again will see what staff comes back with but at this point you would get that information when you apply rather than it being explicitly stated in the lease so you could argue that that's good or you can argue that it's bad depending upon whether you want that  quick question so that's actually before they get to the point of signing the lease so it's not better for modification i mean if you're looking for a place that doesn't have smoking then when you apply for the apartment if it could be if i know i didn't i never kept my leases i never when i was a tenant i never kept my applications but you know if you were fine with having a neighbor who smoked you would then continue with your application but if you weren't you would look somewhere else for the place but if it wasn't there and i applied in there and you know if the information either wasn't there or if i was a smoker and the other lease information wasn't there so what we wanted was in something in the ordinance that says you may do something voluntarily what that's going to look like you know we don't know but you can or you may not yes we enable people to do with their already unable to do so i'm not sure whether it requires legislation but i think hooves council wanted to require disclosure and condominium sales regarding the smoke free ordinance basic basically they tried to make explicit that the same rules that apply rental situations would also  apply when there's a condominium requiring signage in common areas regarding the ordinance in ad disclosure language that landlord be required to provide tenants at the time of application  thought that nobody objected to putting it in the applications we saw the benefit