A regular meeting of the City Council of the City of San Ramon was called to order on September 10, 2002 at 7:00 p.m. in the City Council Chamber, 2222 Camino Ramon, Mayor Tatarka presiding.

PRESENT: Councilmembers Cambra, Dickey, Hudson, Wilson and Mayor Tatarka

ABSENT: None

STAFF PRESENT: City Manager Jim Randall, City Attorney Tom Curry, Police Chief Brian Lindblom, Parks and Community Services Director Jeff Eorio, Development Services Director Joye Fukuda, Assistant City Manager Jim Estep, Acting Public Services Director Jeff Gault, Economic Development Manager John Dillon, Employee Services Manager Janean Myers, Acting Building Official Alina Roshal, and City Clerk Judy Macfarlane

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PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

Cub Scout Pack 201 from Country Club Elementary School led Council, staff and those present in the audience in the pledge of allegiance.

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Mayor Tatarka read the proclamation declaring September 11, 2002 as a Day of Remembrance.

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Mayor Tatarka: Before we start public comment, I want to acknowledge the requests I received regarding the intent of public comment and its understanding on our agenda. Public comment is your time to address the Council, to bring items of interest or of concern. It is your time to talk and Council’s to listen. It had been the custom of this Council not to respond to statements made in public comment, otherwise it would become an unnoticed agendized item and thus could be a Brown Act violation. This is the resident’s time for items not on the agenda. If you have any specific questions, the appropriate staff or Councilmember will research it and follow up with you.

Also brought up at previous Council meetings, is the necessity to state your name and address. It has been the City’s custom to ask, and most residents have complied, although according to the City Attorney, in a memo, only to state your name is the only requirement.

Now let me state for you in our agenda what public comment states. At this time, those in the audience are encouraged to address the City Council on any item not already included in tonight’s agenda. No Council action can be taken at this meeting on issues raised during Public Comment. Comments should not exceed five minutes. If this is not considered sufficient time to address the issue, please arrange with a member of the City Council to have your item placed on the agenda for a future City Council meeting. Thank you.

Kathy Southern: I live in San Ramon and I work for Forest Home Farms and we are holding our annual Victorian Tea this Sunday. It is in honor of Ruth Boone who donated her 16-acre farm to the City of San Ramon and we would like you to dress in Victorian attire. It is $15.00 unless you are a senior or a child and then it is $12.00. We are also going to have a speaker coming to the tea, and her name is Michelle Rivers and she is going to be explaining the finer points of tea and I would like to pass this book around to the Council to see. She will be selling these books and signing them and we will also have vendors and it will be a lot of fun. Wonderful food, just come and find out and wear your hat. If you do not have a hat, we are selling them. Hope you can all make it to the tea, it will be a lot of fun. Thank you.

Mayor Tatarka: Thank you. See you on the 15^th.

Vice Mayor Wilson: What time is the tea and where?

Kathy Southern: 1 to 4 this Sunday at the Community Center. Tickets are selling out fast.

Margo James: I did not have time to put my name and phone number on these but if you would take one and pass it down please, I would appreciate that. I appeared before the City Council in April in the public comment session also. At that time I had written to Mayor Tatarka and the City Council requesting to be put on the agenda and was I was told that since I had been talking with staff about this issue, I would not be put on the agenda so I chose to come to public comment this time I decided to just come and speak during public comment rather than risk being turned down. I am President of Thomas Ranch Homeowners Association. I live at ************ in San Ramon. I have been a taxpayer and citizen of this city since March 31, 2000. William Lyons developed this, built and sold us our homes. New Cities Development Company was the one that prepared the common areas and the individual lots for construction. William Lyon did not disclose to prospective buyers that neither it nor New Cities ever posted performance bonds to insure that the homeowner association common areas at Thomas Ranch are satisfactory. This means that the only bonds on the property are by New Cities in favor of the City of San Ramon. The HOA is not protected for developer’s errors and omissions in any of the common areas. William Lyons did not disclose this to us and would like to know why bonds were never posted. Wm. Lyons did not disclose to prospective buyers that they bought the Thomas Ranch Development from New Cities and that New Cites was responsible for finalizing the common area landscaping irrigation, street, sidewalks, street lamps, drainage and slopes. Thomas Ranch HOA has incurred thousands of dollars in consultant fees to determine if the slopes, irrigation and landscaping was done according to specifications. So far as we can tell, they were not. Wm. Lyon has not helped us out financially and keeps referring them to New Cities for relief. We have no contractual relationship with New Cities. We are frustrated and angry and feel that the homeowners are taxpayers in this City are held to different standards than developers, and here is why. When my landscaper installed irrigation for my lot, a city inspector came out and told him to put the sprinkler control above ground and to tape or paint the pipes. Did you know that no City inspector was around at the time the irrigation contractor installed irrigation pipes in the common areas that run over the v-ditches on the hill, other words, totally exposed to the air. Industry standard is to bury these pipes as they are plastic and they can break. They still have not been put underground. The city inspector told my electrical contractor to cover any electrical outlets with plastic caps. Until my husband and I brought it to his attention, no one in the City noticed that the developer had installed a street light 25 feet away from its location on the plot map and 25 feet away from the intersection that it was designed to illuminate. That has been replaced. Please tell me where the city inspectors were when the landscape contractor for the developer installed the common area irrigation pumps worth tens of thousands of dollars. We believe that two of the pumps were switched. I say we believe because the landscape consultant who designed the system refused to speak to us until the prior week because New Cities was not given permission to do so. We had been requesting that permission for months prior to that date. Since two of the pumps were not working, we have not be able to irrigate major portions of the common areas this summer, and as a result, we have dead and dying plants. We have engineered slopes in the common area hills behind our homes which is part of the developer's original plans and the proposal was approved by the City. The slopes are fill ladies and gentlemen. To date, neither the city nor the homeowners association has been given the as-builts by the developer to show that this work was done properly. We suspect they were not. So, we hired a slope engineering expert to investigate. There is already evidence of erosion with some gullies being waist deep. During the rainy season, a three-foot deep pond developed at the top of the slope and remains wet for several months. At least one v-ditch indicated in the original plan was not installed. We refuse to accept turn over in the common areas until the as-builts are produced and we can verify that the slope is engineered properly including subterranean drains. As far as we know, City inspectors did not actively monitor this work when it was being done, why? As part of the conditions of approval for this development, New Cities was required to develop and maintain a wetlands mitigation area by the California Fish and Game. This mitigation area was supposed to be protected by a deed restriction when the common areas were deeded to the HOA. Guess what - no deed restriction was filed. Guess what - the mitigation area is failing. Guess what - once this was brought to New Cities attention that the deed restriction had not been filed, they asked the HOA board to accept the deed restriction. The first deed restriction amendment they presented to us did not even have a legal description of the property that was going to be covered by the deed restriction, so we refused to accept. The next time around they gave us legal meets and bounds description of the area covered by the deed restriction not what was supposed to be accomplished by the mitigation area. We therefore refused to accept the deed restriction, wouldn’t you? How can we maintain it if they don’t know what we are supposed to be protecting. I am sure the Sierra Club members who initially opposed this development here in San Ramon and later pushed for the establishment of this mitigation area will be thrilled to know that since the mitigation area here is failing, and that someone forgot to attached a deed restriction. New Cities and Fish & Game are talking about installing a mitigation area somewhere else in California. How will that affect the quality of life here in San Ramon? Will that meet the spirit of the City’s conditions of approval? We have lived in this development and have been paying City and County taxes for over two years now. That means Thomas Ranch homeowners had paid over $1.2 million in property taxes to the County of which I am certain the City gets its share, yet we had not had regular police patrol in our neighborhoods because the City has not yet accepted the streets. Thanks to interventions from City employees, New Cities had petitioned the City Council for a resolution to provide this service. You approved it on July 25, 2002. However, we still do not have police patrol because New Cities had not yet paid for a small street sign to post on the City’s street light informing motorists that the vehicle code would be enforced on private property Why have they not done this? City employees told them they had to do this in June before this was even approved. Why haven’t they followed up on it? Last year Thomas Ranch homeowners paid $11,460 for street lights and landscaping as a levy on our property tax bill yet when several of our street lights went out last winter, they were dark for over a month. Why? Well, the City had refused to replaced the burned out bulbs because the City had not yet accepted the improvements from New Cities Development. And New Cities just plain refused to do anything because no one was forcing them to. Speaking of the streets, you might be interested to know that there is water coming out of the asphalt in at least two spots and algae developing in some of the gutters because the water does not flow to the drains properly. If these problems are not accepted before the City accepts the streets, all of the taxpayers in San Ramon will have to pay to correct these problems at a later date. We would really appreciate it if you would make New Cities take care of this now before the taxpayers of San Ramon have to do that. Our homeowners are tired of seeing algae and mud accumulate in the streets. People have slipped and fallen, and algae is not healthful. One bright spot, thanks to City employee intervention with the developers, we now have twice monthly street cleaning. This of course was after a year with no street cleaning thanks to the lack of concern from the developers. Finally the City employees got the developers together and said "guys, you have got to start cleaning the street." We went over a year with nothing. A City engineer arranged a meeting between our landscape consultant, the HOA, and representatives from William Lyons and New Cities on August 29 to be held at Thomas Ranch. Will you blame us for being a bit suspicious when the location of the meeting was changed at the last minute? And only our association manager, our consultant and our board members were not informed of the location change? At that meeting, when my representatives finally got there, we were told by City employees that we needed to work out a compromise with the developers. Why should we? The City did not work out a compromise when my contractors' work did not meet their standards. Why should developers that the City allowed to come in to San Ramon be held to different standards? So, why am I here? Well, as you can tell I am angry and I am not the only one. There is 140 homes out there and when we have board meetings, the homeowners come and yell at us, the board members. So, it’s my turn to passing it on to you guys, we need help. I ask you to help us get these issues resolved. Help us get William Lyon to accept its responsibilities to the HOA, and make Thomas Ranch the outstanding development that it can be. The one that was promised to us individually when we purchased our homes and the one that was promised to this City when the developer asked for permission to accept this property. Thank you.

Mayor Tatarka: Okay, I have allowed you to go a little bit over five minutes because I think you were told inappropriately about not being able to have this agendized, and you have some concerns and I hear you and am aware … I will work with the City Manager and we will get your ten questions answered and get on this right away. Okay? Thank you Margot.

Mary Lou Oliver: Just a quick comment about public comment and I think Madame Mayor you just handled that very well. When you first made your comments about not responding to members of the community who came up to the podium to speak at public comment, I was fearful that a presentation, a very good presentation, such as the one that was just made, would be dismissed with just a "thank you." And, if you are going to be implementing the policy where you do refer this things to staff, and look into it, I think this is a very good thing. I think the residents don’t want to come up here for public comment and think that nothing that they say will have any impact. There should be some response, I would whole-heartedly agree there should not be dialogue between the Council and the people who come up to speak. But I think people have to understand that they have been heard, and that something either will be agendized or the matter will be referred to staff or in some cases, just merely that a staff member will contact someone and explain to them what the situation is that would alleviate some of their concerns. So, when you first made those comments I had not planned on speaking but when you first made those comments I was very concerned that someone that went to the effort of making a presentation such as the previous one, would just be dismissed with a "thank you for your comments." So, well done.

Pat Boom: As you have heard this evening, Forest Home Farms is a 16 acre historical park and it has been donated to the City of San Ramon by Ruth Boone. Ruth donated her property for a reason, and someone needs to speak for Ruth at this point in time. She wanted her property to commemorate her husband and for the people of the Valley to learn about the past. She would not be happy with the fact that you are politicizing Forest Home Farms. You have cancelled the advisory committee for the past three months and you have not explained why. Everyone has seen the "white house" on San Ramon Valley Boulevard – that’s the David Glass House – and they want to know when will it be open to the public. Since you have cancelled the advisory committee, there has not been any input on the interior restoration so it sits there quietly, and nothing is being done on it. There have been 32 very active volunteers at Forest Home Farms this summer. They love being involved with the Farm, they love working with staff and they have asked the same question that I have, why are you doing this? The historical property is more important than any one person. Stop politicizing Forest Home Farms, let it get on with the business of opening to the public. Thank you.

Victor Petersen: Two issues tonight, first a brief question for the residents and maybe for the Council. Could you use a spare $50,000 every two years? San Ramon certainly could. We spend at least this much money every election because we hold our elections in odd-years with no one with whom to share the cost. That is because everybody is now holding their elections in even years. We have learned before that even year elections have two-to-three times greater voter turnout than odd-year elections. Over the past 15 years, four local agencies have switched to even years, Contra Costa Sanitary District, Dublin San Ramon Services District, the school district and the fire district. These public agencies are all run by officers elected by the public. How did they accomplish the change to even years? In every case, these agencies voted to extend everyone’s term on the agency board on a one-time basis, one-year, to accomplish the transition. Most recently was the fire district in 1999. In addition, the City of Walnut Creek also changed to even year by extending everyone’s term by one year and the City of Livermore went in the reverse direction back in 1982, again by Council vote only and by extending everyone’s term by one year to accomplish the transition. None of these agencies or cities asked the voters, they just did it. On this November’s ballot in San Ramon is Measure H. It will change San Ramon’s elections from odd to even years, the same way all of these other agencies and cities have done it by a simple one time extension of all Council seats. Previous San Ramon Council’s have discussed the issue of even year elections one more than one occasion, simply put, no previous Council has ever been able to get its collective act together to make this happen. This is the first Council to tackle the issue and they chose to place it on the ballot for the resident’s to decide unlike these other cities and agencies. Why? First of all, it is the resident’s that vote and the residents who vote should decide the issue. Secondly, by having the resident’s approve the even year elections, no future Council can change it back without voter approval. I think that it is important. I also have one more interesting piece of information, another Contra Costa city, Richmond, has placed a measure on this November’s ballot as well, Measure L in their city. What will it do? Guess what, it will change their city’s elections from odd to even years. And how will they accomplish the change? Guess what, they will add one more year to everyone’s term on council on a one time basis, just the way everyone else has. They have Measure L, we have Measure H. Same, …..across the board, another Contra Costa city. So I would ask the public to please save tax dollars and increase voter turnout and support Measure H. Thank you.

Del Nagle: I am a 29 years resident of San Ramon, speaking tonight again about the Crow Canyon Gardens green waste containers that have finally been emptied. One now has a tag that states is must be on the street by 6:00 a. m. for pick-up…. A not so subtle hint not to use them. And there are signs posted that they are not to be used by…but the chairman of the Park Commission said the containers should be available to everyone. So regular garbage containers are being used for green waste. You walk through the gardens, there are five plots that were not planted at all this year while there is a waiting list and people are asking about plots. There are weeds knee high ready to scatter their seeds everywhere. And there are other issues that are unresolved, for instance the posting of notices of meetings. If you have questions or you would like to tour the garden, Mr. Randall has my phone number. The City of San Ramon has park and maintenance departments and in my opinion someone is not being held responsible.

Mayor Tatarka: Thank you. We will address your concerns. Mr. Randall is taking notes.

Toby Brink: As part of public comment this evening, I would like to take the opportunity to introduce myself to those of you who do not know me and to provide with an update on what is going on at the San Ramon Chamber of Commerce. My name is Toby Brink. I am president of the San Ramon Chamber of Commerce and I have been here for a little over two months. I look forward to working with those of you who that I have not met and would like to bring you up to date on the developments that have taken place so far since I began in this position. First of all we are looking to increase our communication with members. Beginning of October we will unveil a new website and we hope to link up to the City website to start a partnership in that regard as well. That is really here to provide not only our members, but the community at large with information about what is going on in the San Ramon business community and the San Ramon community at large. It will be www.sanramon.org. By January we hope to provide an improved newsletter that will we distribute not only to our members but to the community outside of our membership to keep members up to date on our upcoming events and recognizing our outstanding members in the community and also promoting new businesses that are an active part of our community here. We also want to really serve our membership to a greater degree and to this end we have started a professional development series which will start next Thursday, September 18^th and will have for a 12 month period in consecutive months on different topics of professional development interest and those are open not only to Chamber members but the community at large. We offer discounted rates on advertising in local papers from monthly luncheons offer networking opportunities and also we are hosting a Candidate’s Forum next month with the Assembly race in mind – the 15^th District Assembly between Donna Gerber and Guy Houston, that is October 2^nd at the Crow Canyon Country Club. And we also offer our members special rates on medical, dental, vision and disability insurance. That is something a lot of people don’t know. At the Chamber luncheon today we recognized the following businesses in the community who helped make San Ramon an outstanding place to live and work; The Bay Bank of Commerce, Bank of Walnut Creek, Carpenter Robbins Commercial Real Estate, ChevronTexaco, Club Sport of San Ramon, ENGEO, ERA Golden Hills Brokers, IBM, it’s a long list, I apologize, Lincoln Financial Advisors, San Ramon Regional Medical Center, SBC/Pacific Bell, Sunset Development and Villa San Ramon. Our goal next year really is to encourage more businesses to apply at a broader range of sizes, everything from the small, mom and pop business to the larger corporations here in town. We certainly recognize that both are essential to a vital economy so I want to thank you for the time this evening, and look forward to talking with you in the future. On that note I would like to encourage you to visit our …..offices which are at 12667 Alcosta Blvd., San Ramon. If you keep an eye out we will be announcing an open house probably the end of September-early October and look forward to speaking with you at that time and getting feed back from you as to how we can improve the Chamber’s activity book in the business community and the community at large. Thank you for your time.

Mayor Tatarka: Thank you very much.

Mark Said: I am a resident of Thomas Ranch and I just wanted to come and raise two issues of concern that I had that I would like to address. One is the what I see is the varying standards of the inspection which has occurred for the private developer up there as opposed to individual homeowners. I can point you to a couple of examples, one is one that I am very familiar with was a street light that was put in the wrong location, I made several entreaties to the developer, he would not change it until I actually talked to a member of the City engineering staff and he convinced the developer to put it where it was supposed to be where it was, it was originally put on the plot map and they refused to move it until Mr. Curtis in the engineering department got on them, contacted them and contacted the developer and made them move it. I would say that we have also discovered through the homeowner’s association that v-ditches were not put on the slopes above the housing development where they should be. We are also discovering that irrigation pipes were put above ground rather than buried below the ground particularly when they go over the v-ditches. Now I contrast that with what, with what we have experienced, we have had several homeowner’s who have got stop work notices posted on their doors when they, when they have not taped their irrigation pipes appropriately. And things like that. It just seems that there is a varying standard of what the developer up there, new Cities and William Lyon, were held to as opposed to the private homeowners. I am not saying that the standards, the have been applied to the private homeowners are too strict, I am saying that the standards that the private developer was held to were too lose. What I would ask the City to do is to do a study, an ….. study of what happened, why these things were not done, and I think there needs to be a fairly wide sweeping investigation. The second thing I would like to bring to your attention is a matter that occurred over this last weekend. As you may know, there is a concern about the streets being turned over to the City and getting police protection, police patrols up there. Over the weekend we have had at least one, at least I have heard of at least one break-in of a car and perhaps two that occurred over the weekend. Now it is my understanding that this comes down to a simple matter of posting a sign and who is going to pay for the sign to be posted to say that even thought the streets have not been turned over and accepted by the City that the police patrols will continue to be out there. This, where you are putting, where there is a dispute to who is going to be putting the sign up and turning it over to the City I think that you are putting the residents’ property and their well being at risk by not permitting the police to be up there. I think that we need to get the sign up there and I don’t know what it takes, I don’t know if we need to go down to Henry Ranch is where William Lyon is developing another development and maybe we need to have a lemonade stand down there, talking about the poor, the poor development, the poor, the poor reactions we have gotten to our complaints because we have been stonewalled at almost every turn. So I would ask the City to look into that, it can’t be very much to post that sign out there and the question of pointing fingers whether it is New Cities whether it is William Lyons that should be paying for this sign, it seems to be trivial compared to the well being of the residents of Thomas Ranch. That is all I have to say, thank you.

Mayor Tatarka : This Council is listening to you. Mr. Randall has been taking notes and I also know that the Community Development Director, Joye Fukuda has been taking notes as well as Brian Lindblom who will be answering your questions and we will address your issues. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. I have one more public comment card, it's Jim Monroe.

Jim Monroe: I am here tonight to commend the City Council, I am sorry that I arrived late so that I could not hear some of the other public comments. I don’t want to be repetitious however I would like to remind the citizens of San Ramon that as of this time last week a heliport was approved by the City Planning Commission on the south most parking garage at Bishop Ranch 3. The heliport was adjacent to the respective City Center and within 150-200 yards of the City park. It was a done deal as many done deals have been done here for many years in the City of San Ramon. I once stated that Alex Mehran, the developer of Bishop Ranch proposes and the City disposes pretty much like Alex proposes. This was historic because this was the first time ever in the history of this City, that Bishop Ranch had something approved by the Planning Commission as it has many, many times before, and it was appealed and for the first time the appeal was upheld. The City Council overturned the ruling of the Planning Commission sighting the excellent appeal put forth by Melody Lundgren and the signatures from more than 400 citizens and the public comment, which was almost totally opposed to the heliport. I think it was an outrage that it was proposed here in this valley to begin with but Bishop Ranch was determined, specifically Mr. Mehran wanted to fly his helicopter in and out of here on a regular basis. But it also opened the possibility for many, many more flights to disrupt this narrow valley. The City Council vote was 3 to 1, with 1 abstention. I wish to commend Councilmembers Cambra, Dickey and Mayor Tatarka for voting to uphold the wishes of the citizens of the valley. And I wish to condemn Councilman Wilson who spoke for several minutes about how he wanted to do the right thing for the citizens and then voted for the developer and Councilman Hudson who abstained on the basis that the vote was coming late at night so he had no comment and he had no vote. Well I’m sorry that unfortunately a lot of business for this City is done late at night. And if you can’t function late at night, or refuse to vote, then maybe you ought to resign. Because that is when the business of the City is being done and if you are not willing to do it, then you should not be on the Council. Now this is a personal attack and I am aware of it, and I have heard what Mr. Lemon has said, saying that we should not be allowed to come up here and speak forthrightly to the members of our City Council because they are constrained, they can’t respond. I will meet you any time, anywhere. You set it, I’ll be there. I am going to bring up one other thing. Three weeks ago I sent a letter in to the newspaper, the San Ramon Valley Times, which said I was fed up with the malicious distortions in letters to the paper and I said that the real outrage was the City Council, the previous City Council, not this City Council, the City Council made up of people who were basically pro-development and pro-Herb Moniz, who was the City Manager at that time, had negotiated a contract with him which extended his contract another four years and gave him a 33% pay raise this in a time of fiscal constraint. It was three weeks ago. Two weeks ago I brought this forward in public comment, it was on television. Mr. Hudson objected. The next morning there was a letter to the editor from Dave Hudson, San Ramon City Council, saying when did we override Mayor Nancy Tatarka’s objection and give Herb Moniz a 33% pay increase. When did the Mayor report that, blah blah it goes on about this. And he says the contract calls for 6 months, all right, I want set a few things straight. I don’t know what Mr. Hudson’s idea was, maybe he figured if he just said the big lie…

Mayor Tatarka: Jim, Jim….

Jim Monroe: No, I am going to finish, the big lie….

Mayor Tatarka: Jim…Jim….

Jim Monroe: The big lie that it couldn’t be rebutted, and I couldn’t get another letter in the newspaper….

Mayor Tatarka hits the gavel…..

Jim Monroe: ….I have the facts here if anybody wants to read them, it is here and I will have it printed….

Mayor Tatarka: Mr. Monroe-

Jim Monroe: and it shows what he wrote was not true. Thank you and good night.

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Mayor Tatarka: Alright…..moving on to approval of minutes, 7.1, the minutes of July 23, 2002.

Cm. Dickey: Mayor Tatarka, I do have some corrections.

Mayor Tatarka: Are they significant that we need to bring them back?

Cm. Dickey: There is a phrase that has to be inserted on page 33 and several corrections on page 34. If you would prefer that I speak with the Clerk, I can do that.

Mayor Tatarka: I would prefer that that be done because it sounds like they are extensive just by looking at your notes.

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Mayor Tatarka: Okay, moving on to the consent calendar. Consent calendar items are considered routine and are acted upon by the City Council with a single action. Members of the audience wishing to provide public input may request that the City Council remove the item from the Consent Calendar. Okay…anyone in the audience wanting to remove something from the consent calendar? I don’t have any notation of that, . Anyone on the Council?

Cm. Dickey: Mayor Tatarka, I would like to…actually, I just have a simple question on 8.3, but is it possible to get that or do I have to move it to another …

Mayor Tatarka: Is it a simple question?

Cm. Dickey: It is basically about the dog park and the …Mr. Eorio, could you help me out here? The simple question was I noticed several months back that there was a change order for – in the amount about $10,000 for the new Alta Mesa Dog Park to have decomposed granite – is that the term?

Mr. Eorio: Correct, decomposed granite is the surfacing material of the dog park.

Cm. Dickey: And back, months or years ago, when the first park opened up, I know we had talked about chips in both places and I wondered how the new park was changed and why it was changed to decomposed granite.

Mr. Eorio: Based on some concerns that dog park users had with the Del Mar site, we think we came up with a good option for the new dog park based on parks throughout the country. We are-our proposal is that we would see how the new material works up at the Memorial Park site. Once the users have a chance to be up there and spend time with their dogs, see how they like it, if we think it is an appropriate medium or if there is something else we should be looking at we will come back next year with the budget as a CIP to take a look at the Del Mar site to see if something more appropriate could be placed there.

Cm. Dickey’s motion to approved Items 8.1 through 8-7 was seconded by Vice Mayor Wilson and passed 5-0.

FINANCE
Register of Demands dated August 5, 18, 20, 25 and 29, 2002 and September 1, 15, 2002 in the amount of $2,766,533.28

Resolution No. 2002-97
Authorizing the Mayor to execute an agreement with CCS Planning and Engineering, Inc., to provide engineering consulting services for the Bollinger Canyon Road Plan Line Study (CIP 5379) in an amount not to exceed $198,299

Resolution No. 2002-99
Authorizing the Mayor to execute an agreement with Oracle Landscape for construction of the Del Mar Drive and Dog Park Landscaping Enhancement Project (CIP 5383) in an amount not to exceed $43,400

Resolution No. 2002-100
Authorizing the Mayor to execute an agreement with MCK Services, Inc., for the construction of FY 2002/2003 Pavement Management – Phase 1 Project (CIP 5317) in an amount not to exceed $236,038.50

Resolution 2002-102
Designating the Fostoria Overcrossing of Interstate 680 as the "Thomas E. Burnett Jr., Memorial Bridge."

Resolution No. 2002-104
Approving residential traffic calming improvements on Marsh Drive, south of Norris Canyon Road

Introduction of Ordinances
Adopting various model building code ordinances and amendments and setting public hearing for September 24, 2002

Vice Mayor Wilson: Just one comment that, with the dog park, the chips also prevented a, helped also, because they were cutting the dogs paws.

Cm. Dickey: It is more than that, they get caught in their throat, it happened to my dog.

Vice Mayor Wilson: Yes.

Mayor Tatarka: Thanks for the response. It was great.

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Mayor Tatarka: Okay, written communication. I do have written communication dated September 10, 2002. Dear Mayor Tatarka and Councilmembers Cambra and Dickey, on behalf of the community of San Ramon and it’s many residents we want to thank you for supporting their wishes in upholding the appeal we filed with the City regarding the land use permit for the heliport. When we first began this appeal process, people immediately told us that we would lose because of "whom" we were dealing with. We understood the reputation Sunset Development had in our City, but we felt this item was far too important not to try. On the evening of August 27^th, you sat through hours of testimony as to whether or not this heliport was a positive addition to our City. You intently listened to both sides of the argument, asked pertinent questions and formulated an opinion. We understand the position you were in weighing the requests of the city’s largest employer to those of its residents, It is apparent that all of you felt that the issues of safety, emissions and quality of life were far more important than the convenience of a very few corporate executives. This is not anti-business; it is pro-community. We would like to applaud your integrity in placing the concerns for the overwhelming majority of residents who participated in the debate over narrower business interest. This position is long overdue. We will always be grateful for the leadership you showed our community that evening. As we communicate to those individuals who stood by us, we will tell them of your support and commitment to our City. Thanks you form all of us. Sincerely, Rena Waterson and Melody Lundgren.

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Mayor Tatarka: Okay, we are moving on. Item 10.1 Transportation Advisory Committee Annual Report, presented by Gordon Kimber, Chairperson.

Mr. Kimber: My pleasure this evening to present to you the annual report for the Transportation Advisory Committee. I know you have a copy of the report including the committee membership and the by-laws so I propose to limit my comments to the accomplishments of the committee and so save you time.

The residential traffic calming program has involved quite a lot of the committee’s time however it places us in an interface between the City and the residents and so I believe it is an important contribution of the committee not only to traffic and personal safety but to good community relationships also. It is time well spent. We have held public meetings, involving traffic concerns on St. Denis Drive, Castleton Court, Cuenca Drive, Morgan Drive and Dos Rios Drive. One of the meetings for Castleton/Cuenca, it was actually held in a resident’s home and had a wonderful participation. As a result of our meetings recommendations were made to you for a raised crosswalk at the cross valley trail, speed humps on Del Mar, and a recommendation for similar humps on Marsh Drive that is before you tonight. Transportation Advisory Committee had developed criteria for a new warrant for all-ways stop signs on residential streets. It too is before you tonight and it says here I would urge you to approve both, and you have already done one. The difficult problem of parking near California High School surfaced again, this time near the pedestrian bridge along Mangos Drive, Ensenada and De Anza Place, areas of permit parking were approved on our recommendation. Transportation Advisory Committee also reviewed and proposed recommendations for City-wide circulation projects and therefore ……..as part of the Capital Improvement Program approval process. Our City now has a total of 28 commercial and non-commercial transit shelters installed throughout the City from a program involving the Transportation Advisory Committee. Structures not only provide shelter for transit users but have added, I am told today, $8,226.31 of revenue to the City’s general fund since the program has started. We have also been involved in the review of the San Ramon Traffic Monitoring Program. Transportation Advisory Committee has also been involved in public meetings with residents of Brockton Avenue regarding pavement markings for safety reasons. Finally I wish to add a personal comment; it has been and is my pleasure and I believe that of the entire committee also, to work with the City staff on these transportation issues. Staff are not only most professional but simply good company to work with. They have facilitated our work, communicated with concerned residents with plans, graphics and even computer generated pictures illustrating the potential outcome of projects. They have met with residents not only during working hours but during the evenings also. I also know of a traffic survey they conducted on a Sunday as the ……..……..so the resolution of the particular issue. It is a splendid example of the work often beyond the call of duty and I believe you need to know that. Thank you for requesting this report, if you wish, I will try to answer any questions you may have or I will refer them to staff.

Mayor Tatarka: Any questions of Mr. Kimber? At all? Thank you for the report. And I will add my appreciation also to former Transportation Director John Dillon who helped previously in transportation with that and our other staff, Lisa Bobadilla, Phil Agostini, and I am trying to remember everybody that is in that department, Steven Spedowfski. I know that they all work very, very hard and thank you very much, so I am echoing Mr. Kimber’s comments. Okay, very good. We are under Citizen Advisory Committee Report and under that is Item 10-2. And this is a resolution 2002-103 adopting new warrants for all-way stop sign control on residential traffic calming street. And, Mr. Phil Agostini.

Mr. Agostini: As you know, as Gordon has elaborated, the Transportation Advisory Committee has been charged with overseeing all aspects of the residential traffic calming program. One tool in residential traffic calming improvements is the use of the standard all-way stop sign in traffic control. Currently the City has adopted stop sign warrants for two types of all-way stop signs. Those are high volume streets and low volume streets, actually moderate volume streets. Where 4,000 average daily trips a day on a street is the dividing line between those two. The existing warrants for those stop signs are really representative of conditions for our collector on our arterial streets. And there has been quite a bit of discussion amongst the traffic committee members that we needed an additional warrant for all-way stop signs which would be applicable to the local residential streets and that reflect the lower traffic volumes and fewer accidents that we have on those streets. The recommendation before you for adoption of Resolution No. 2002-103 is for a new warrant to be developed and implements for all way traffic control on these residential traffic calming streets. A copy of that new warrant is attached in you packet as part of the residential traffic calming staff report at the Transportation Advisory Committee, sheet B-3 marked in your packet. And with that, that concludes my presentation and if you have any questions or clarification I can give, I would be happy to do so.

Mayor Tatarka: Okay, I don’t see any lights. Any questions or comments for Mr. Agostini? I guess not. I do have a speaker; it is Mary Lou Oliver. 10.2

Ms. Oliver: I was just checking to see if Dos Rios and Norris was on list for checking for warrants and it is which pleases me greatly. I would also respectfully request and I did so through the police department web site but I have not seen any activity on the corner of Bollinger Canyon Road and Norris Canyon Road, going, I don’t know whether you consider it going west bound or north bound, but coming up the hill from the freeway toward Norris, that is an all-way stop there. The, at nighttime, it is a very wide street there is a stop sign in the center, there is a stop sign on the right. Automobile lights, especially if anyone is coming towards you, do not illuminate the light, or the stop sign that is in the center. And the stop sign that is on your right is almost totally obliterated by trees if you are not , until you are almost to the word on the street that say "stop". I had hoped that that would get trimmed back because I come up that way at night all the time and you do not see that stop sign. I have seen it run at least one-half dozen times especially early in the morning when the commuters are coming through. My husband walks that every morning. It is pretty often run both well, the Norris crossing Bollinger toward the Bishop Ranch get run a lot but that is intentional. It accidentally get run coming up the hill from Bollinger so I had asked for police patrol there, we have not seen it but I thought I would bring that to your attention.

Mayor Tatarka: Thank you very much. I see Brian Lindblom making some notes also our City Manager on the trimming issue. Thank you. Okay, I guess this Council needs to adopt a resolution. Public comment is closed.

Cm. Hudson motion to adopt Resolution No. 2002-103 Adopting new warrants for all-way stop sign control on residential traffic calming streets was seconded by Cm. Cambra and passed 5-0.

Resolution No. 2002-103
Adopting new warrants for all-way stop sign control on residential traffic calming streets.

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Mayor Tatarka: Very Good. Great. Thank you Transportation Advisory Committee and thank you staff. Okay. Let’s see. We are moving on to unfinished business 11.1. Performance review of the City’s solid waste collection contractor. Staff report by Kevin Carunchio, Program Manager. Hello, Kevin.

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Mr. Carunchio: I want to lay any concerns that I might be providing page by page analysis of this 92 page performance review, however, tonight I do want to provide you with a little background regarding the City’s franchise agreement with Valley Waste Management, some perspective about that agreement and then touch on some of the key recommendations and issues identified in the performance review including issues that have been or are in the process of being address, some areas where the company has demonstrated marked improvement and in some areas that remain for us to continue working on. And then turn it over to any questions you might have of myself or company representatives, and acknowledge any direction that you care to provide and moving forward with the addressing of issues in the report tonight.

The City’s franchise agreement with Valley Waste Management provides for residential and commercial solid waste collection services as well as the collection of green waste and recyclables from residences in the City. The City entered into this agreement in 1996, following a competitive procurement process and this process and resulting franchise agreement are unique in several ways. Two of the most notable associations are that one, it provides the residents of San Ramon one of the most comprehensive recycling programs in Contra Costa County. And, secondly, it provides San Ramon residents with the lowest residential garbage collection rates in the County for six years running. I might add that the City Council has never had to endure the process of raising residential garbage collection rates during the term of this agreement and it is very unlikely that you will have to face this unenviable task before the term of the agreement expires. The term for the franchise agreement is 8 years, it comes up in October 2004, the City retains sole option to extend the term for two consecutive terms of one year each. So that brings the maximum term of the agreement to 2006. The franchise agreement does the City with the ability to periodically contract for an independent performance review of the company’s services. And states that the primary purpose of the review is to examine the company’s efficiency and cost of operations relative to improving service and/or lowering cost. To implement this provision, the City staff issued an RFP for proposals to conduct a performance review and three consulting firms responded. The City Council selected Brown Vence Associates, the same consulting firm that helped us in the procurement process to conduct the review. In recognition of the fact that San Ramon does have the lowest residential garbage rate in Contra Costa County, and then probability of being able to further reduce those rates, the RFP specified that its the City’s intention to focus primarily on quality of service issues rather than identify potential reductions in contractor compensation. Essentially this is acknowledging that it’s tough to get blood out of a rock. As a result, the performance review which you have been provided a copy of in a previous agenda packet, focuses on, set forth a number of recommendations in several key areas, including management services, city-company communications, operations, customer service, public education and financial issue. The review covers the period from October 1996 to October 2001, and I think it is really useful to go ahead and view the performance review as a snap shot in time of the company’s services under the agreement. Keep in mind that during, and subsequent to the time that the performance review was initiated, conducted, and completed, Waste Management continued to provide collection services here in the community, continued to refine and make improvements to those services, both independently and in concert with City staff. As a result a number of the issues which were of significant concern when we initiated the performance review were, or that came up during the performance review have already been addressed or else in the process of being addressed. These include communication-this is an area that really receives considerable attention in the reviews, I am sure you have read, and it is something that we have already taken steps to address. As soon as the preliminary results of the review were shared with staff and company management, we began a concerted effort to improve communications. This included relying more frequently on e-mail and telephone calls, even if there wasn’t a "problem" to address, just to check in with one another, to see how things were going. Staff has also initiated more face-to-face meetings with company management and throughout this process, and not just issues identified in this service review, but in the provision of day-to-day garbage collection services in the city, issues have been raised and been addressed and I think that throughout this process it has become evident that Company management are demonstrating an increased familiarity with our rather unique solid waste collection contract. And that is another area that, as you know, received quite a bit of attention in the review so there is a lot of improvement in that and I think that is really demonstrated by the company’s recent response and resolution to a rather large hydraulic spill over on ......... Drive, both in terms of repairing the street and making restitution to affected property owners in the area. And that is but one example. Another area that is really a bone of contention when we started this performance review process was early collections. In fact, I think is probably the primary reason that we went down this road. Although early collections has been a periodic problem, a reoccurring problem from the time we entered into the agreement, back when we initiated this, we experienced a spade of complaints from residents about early collections. Since that time, two things that have occurred that have virtually eliminated any early collection complaints that I receive, first of all, company management initiated an amendment to its contract with its collection truck drivers, specifying the collection times identified in the agreement and making sure those were commiserate in their driver’s contract. Secondly, City staff began working with the police department to have officer’s site any drivers found to be collecting on City streets before 6 a.m. Those two actions seemed to have eliminated the early collection problem.

Education materials were another big issue. The provision of public education materials identified in the agreement and there were a lot of them, promised to the City. The quality of those materials was also an area of concern. Since the performance review as initiated, the company has created and filled the public information manager position and to date, staff has experienced work with the public information manager has been very pro-active and beneficial. One of the things we are currently coordinating is an updated residential services brochure, which should provide the proof in the pudding for the way things are going. As I will discuss in a minute, there has been a number of other community programs put forth, responded to by the company, again, another real change in the services received in San Ramon.

Code enforcement. This is another issue identified in the report in terms with working with City code enforcement staff. One of the really exciting things that has been put in place since this review was initiated is that the company is installing digital cameras in all of its collection vehicles. This will have several benefits to both the company and the City. It will help the company to document whenever a customer might not be setting out containers in the most appropriate manner or dealing with short service, creating a litter problems that under the current franchise agreement their drivers are required to clean up. With the digital cameras in place, they can document the situation and refer it to City staff to go ahead and work with. There is a code enforcement violation being documented, we have already been the eyes and ears of our code enforcement staff out there and certainly if an account is undersubscribing the services, it would be a good way to document that and require a higher degree of services to preserve the health and well being of the community. So that is real exciting development.

Also, community programs. In my report, I talked about working with the company to have more of a presence in our new school recycling program. And develop a compost give-a-way program as promised for residents in the community. Now that last item, community compost give-a-way is really going to be dependent on the status of the San Ramon Recycling Center and tied to the recent permitting of a new composting facility at Altamont Landfill.

A couple of other community programs I just want to touch on that I think really demonstrates this market turn-around and sort of pro-activity on the part of the company, there is one subject, that’s e-waste. As most of you are aware, electronic waste, specifically TV. monitors and computer monitors can no longer be thrown into the garbage. They are considered hazardous waste, we do it for cell phones, digital alarm clocks, all kinds other electronic products to follow in terms of being classified as hazardous waste. To help us respond to this situation, the company is currently providing on-call bulk ........ collection services, both televisions and computers for the price already agreed to by the City Council six years ago before these items became hazardous. And that is $35 for on-call collection service. So we will be promoting that in the newly developed e-waste promotional materials. Secondly, and just as exciting is the company’s agreement to go ahead and work with the City to provide an e-waste collection event as part of the next household hazardous waste collection event scheduled in San Ramon. That event is scheduled for November 16^th, it does require an appointments and we will be promoting that heavily to the community. But again, I think that 5 years ago, had this issue come up, we might not have had quite the degree of cooperation. So I bring that up to demonstrate the improvement, similarly we are currently working on developing a food waste recycling program for restaurants in town. This would probably be done on a pilot basis but it is one of the few recycling programs we have yet to implement here. So another exciting development. And a little closer to home, the company is providing recycling containers at tomorrows Memorial Park dedication ceremony to respond to the………. I think to the 1,500 cans of lemonade the City is going to be giving out, so on very short notice, the staff was great on arranging for those, for dropping them off and picking them up. So I think those are all real positive developments and the review does identify a number of areas where the company has demonstrated marked improvement in the past couple of years. Total customer service complaints have decreased over the past two years, the current district manager has been in position for three years which is a degree of stability we have not had enjoyed in the past and I think that is shown in a lot of the improvements that I have just discussed. Collection services appear to be provided in a pretty efficient manner and not withstanding the one blip we had on the screen a couple of years ago and it appears that the vehicle maintenance process, the recent spill notwithstanding really improved. I’ll tell you, the number of accidental spills that I get calls about decreased dramatically in the last five years. So it’s not to sound like an apologist for the company, the report does ..does identify a couple of areas where we still need to work out with the company, I am confident that we are going to do that, these are areas of litter prevention and pick-up by drivers, the type and format of reports, just really what information do we need and how is it beneficial, we don’t want to take information that we are not going to do anything with, it does not really serve anyone. Certain fee issues, timelines and follow-through on some commitments and requests, we do need to double check just insurance coverage just to cover all of the bases thing, and then driver-customer service staff communications and follow-up on customer service issues. Again, I get a lot less calls than I used to but we are going to make sure that everyone is talking to everyone to get these things resolved, and the best service possible to the San Ramon residents. On one more esoteric realm, we would like to get some notices on waste characterization studies, which are used as a basis for the fees being remitted to the City. And finally, I want to work with the company to make sure a billing audit program is done and making sure the company and the City are getting the revenues due for the services being provided. Staff does plan to continue to work with the company to address these and other key recommendations identified in the review as reasonable and/or as directed by you tonight. I want to note that in addition to having met with representatives from Brown Vence Associates, and having had several opportunities to submit documentation as part of the performance review process, the company has been provided an opportunity to review and comment on the final report and a letter providing those comments has been included as attachment B in the staff packet. Finally, by way of conclusion, the review makes a number of recommendations for improving Valley Waste Management’s performance under the terms of the contract, some of these recommendations have already been implemented, we are working on addressing the other ones, but I think it is important to remember efficient collection services are being provided and customer services has continued to improve over the last couple of years and while there is certainly room for improvement in performance, so also worth remembering we have one of the more comprehensive residential recycling programs which has been an integral part of the City achieving compliance with 8939, the requirement that we recycle over 50% of our waste by 2000, and thereafter, and at the same time doing all this with the lowest rates in Contra Costa County which is no small feat. That concludes my report, I’d like to answer any questions you might have of me. If you have any comments or questions you’d like to directly direct to company representatives, Annette Borges, the District Manager, Andrea Stevensen, the Municipal Affairs Manager, for the Western United States, are in attendance tonight and I am sure they would be happy to answer any question you may have of them. Thank you.

Cm. Hudson: Congratulations, Kevin, again, on another rapid fire report. November 16^th - the appointment only. Where is this at, is this a pick it up at the home or can you give us some more details. You kind of went over that one quickly.

Mr. Carunchio: November 16^th event will be held at a location in San Ramon that I am not allowed to disclose. One of the reasons to require appointments is to ensure adequate traffic flow through the event both for safety reasons and to ensure that no resident has to wait an inordinate amount of time in line to drop off their materials. In October I suggest residents check the City web-site for information on how to go about making appointments also there will be ads in the paper, information put out with the e-water materials and flyers sent out in circulars from the local newspapers.

Cm. Hudson: But the plan is this is the kind of thing where you put it in your trunk, you pop the trunk, somebody takes it out and you move on.

Mr. Carunchio: Absolutely. Make your appointment. Put your pesticides and your computer monitors in the trunk.

Cm. Dickey: This is a, actually, I have a question on retrieving the oil waste if you are changing the oil in your car. How is that picked up and how the containers are redelivered to the homeowner or the resident. Because I am, I have difficulty with that. The container goes, but it never comes back.

Mr. Carunchio: I think this is one of those fine tuning issues that we need to continue to work with, you are not alone in bringing that issue to my attention. One of the things that we have done is used oil ramp funds that the City receives to help retrofit trucks, the recycling trucks with oil container racks that should be filled with empty containers, sometimes they are not because they tend to blow out, so we need to take the time to tie those down. When a full container is picked up, the driver is supposed to leave one. I have also tried to keep an extra supply of containers in stock at the recycling center which is not any sort of excuse for not delivering a clean one at the curb side but if you or anybody else does not get an empty container, feel free to call the company first and myself and we will get you one right away.

Cm. Dickey: I just figured this was a great time to ....... the people in the audience.

Mayor Tatarka: Okay, any other questions? I just have one, I get this question all of the time. There is a lot of confusion, people simply ask me where should I put my cans, on the sidewalk, my driveway or in the street. I get that all of the time. Can you answer that?

Mr. Carunchio: Well, ideally, what we like is on the fine art of levitation, have the cans balanced directly on the edge of the curb so as not to block the sidewalk or block the driving surface. And that is not real reasonable, but the City code is very descriptive in both matter, so what we prefer residents put those right up with the wheel butting up right against the curb, in the street, or right on the edge of the sidewalk but not so as to block the sidewalk from a pedestrian traffic. In some cases, I think this is where I get some calls from it, are residents being served on cul-de-sacs sometimes are told to put their containers at a slightly different array, what essentially has to happen there is that I meet company supervisors and hopefully the resident out there and we developed a customized array for the containers to come out because frankly the cul-de-sacs are so tight it is difficult for the truck to make a pass, and if there is a car in the way, there is certainly no desire to damage property so that it becomes even more difficult to make that turn and maneuver the arms, kind of like a little Star Wars toy, but what we have done in that situation is basically actually have the containers come out from the street in an arrangement that allows for collection and being in a cul-de-sac does not bring up quite the safety concerns we’d have with people putting their containers out on the street. So, if that is coming up, the best thing to do is to call the company and ask for an appointment, so we can, you know, develop a solution specifically for that cul-de-sac.

Mayor Tatarka: Any other comments? One other comment, with this presentation and the answers to his questions, Kevin Carunchio, you can see, has a handle on everything that is happening with our waste collection and the contract was have. So, everyone can be rest assured that if there are going to be any concerns or any problem. Kevin is going to be right on it and going to make sure that it gets handled, so I want to commend you Kevin, I don’t think any of us have any questions because you have done a very, very through report and answered mine and I thank you very much, we are in very good hands, and thank you.

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Mayor Tatarka: We are moving on, and this is 11.2 Resolution No. 2002-95 Authorizing the Mayor to execute an agreement with Odenberg, Ullakko, Muranishi and Company, to conduct a forensic audit of travel and related expenses for City Councilmembers, Commissioners and the City Manager in an amount no to exceed $20,000, staff report by Jim Randall.

City Manager: I will be fairly brief with the staff report. Essentially, over the last several weeks, staff has received a number of requests for information concerning travel expenses by city council, city commission and staff. The requests have ranged from records going back a year, records going back to the incorporation of the City. The magnitude of these requests in terms of the amount of staff time it would take to respond quickly became a concern. And we don’t have finance department staff just waiting to do these respond to these types of requests and they are extremely time intensive to locate the records and to be able to provide and make them available for persons asking for the information. Furthermore, there have been questions concerning the amounts of the costs for the various trips, there seems to be a number of different interpretations of what costs should apply and the information that we have provided in certain cases is simple not accepted as being accurate. Accordingly it was my proposal, it is my proposal here that if the Council wishes to proceed to respond to these requests, that an outside audit firm be contracted with to conduct what is referred to as an forensic audit. I am proposing the firm Odenberg, Ullakko, Muranishi and Co., because I am familiar with them. They have done these types of audits in the past and should the Council choose to go ahead with this type of audit, I would recommend that they be approved to do it. I received the proposal that is attached, it was at that time just for the City Councilmembers, since then requests have expanded it to include commissioners and further back to the 1983 incorporation date. And the cost would increase to approximately $20,000 to be able to fulfill that entire project. So with that, I would simply present it for your information and if you choose to proceed, that is fine, and if you don’t choose to proceed, that is okay too. But it is just that staff, we do not have the staff capability to respond to the various requests we’ve gotten, the ones that have come in under the Freedom, or excuse me, the Public Records Act, we have responded to, the others have simply been calls, e-mails, requests If you notice the minutes from the July 23^rd meeting, several of the speakers said if you are going to do this then you out to go back and do that and some other things, so that is why this is before you and I will leave it to your discussion and discretion.

Mayor Tatarka: Okay, any questions of Mr. Randall. Mr. Wilson?

Vice Mayor Wilson: The majority of the requests are coming from individuals and are we going to – it’s $20,000, I think that is what is what really concerns me. That we are spending $25,000 for basically an audit, from individuals who are requesting this, are we charging them for the requests or how do we recoup some of our funds, if we decide to do this.

City Manager: When requests are made under the Public Records Act, we can only recoup our costs for copying the records. And that is $.10 a page. If it requires research and a compilation of information that is not readily available to pull from files, or is not available to pull from files before the individual requesting the information to go through the files and retrieve the desired documents, then we can charge an hourly rate for that, but what we have done up to this point under the two Public Records Act requests is to provide the information although in one case it took a number of days for finance staff to be able to even identify the records and pull them out to make them available. What we would do with the audit since there is such a variety of requests, I don’t know how we would you know individually assess people, I would think that we would simply have to say this is something that the community has asked for, members of the community and there are probably aggregate, a dozen of people who have asked for various things over the last several weeks. And that would be a public report that would be responsive to those requests. But I don’t know how you would be able to charge individuals for that unless somebody wanted to purchase the whole report, you could do that and charge for the full report. Yes Mr. City Attorney?

City Attorney: Yes.

Cm. Dickey: Mr. Randall, sometime back, we had discussed hiring a facilitator for one of the advisory committees and actually we were considering two facilitators. Did we have any idea what those facilitators would have cost us at that time? A ball park figure?

City Manager: I really did not have a ball park figure.

Cm. Dickey: Could I assume.....

City Manager: For the type of activity we were talking about, it would probably have been $2,000 - $3,000 per function.

Cm. Dickey: Thank you.

Mayor Tatarka: Any questions? I have one. For clarification for sure, in reviewing the staff report and I got to the contract, the fees are different that what is the contract for. And I wanted some clarification on that if I could.

City Manager: The original proposal had just encompassed the City Council and the City Manager and the suggestion came from a couple of the requestors that we add City Commissioners as well. And that adds a number of additional people and that increased the cost to the $20,000 figure. So we would get an amended contract, so if you chose to go ahead with that or you could go ahead with a more limited audit.

Mayor Tatarka: Okay, which would be ....

City Manager: The $10,000 would be for City Councilmembers, and the City Manager’s, since incorporation.

Mayor Tatarka: If I understand in reading the contract it says for the incorporation in 1983 a date and we would obtain a listing of ............... councilmembers, mayors and city managers and performing the following tasks. This is under the $10,000.....

City Manager: That is the $10,000 contract....

Mayor Tatarka: What would make it the $20,000 contract, would include....

City Manager: Would add City Commissioners, the Parks & Community Services Commissioners and Planning Commissioners.

Mayor Tatarka: Any other questions? Yes, there are some Public Comment, Dave. Oh, I am sorry Mr. Cambra, I did not see you light.

Cm. Cambra: If this were to be done, or I should put it the other way, if this weren’t to be done, how would we go about providing this information which I am assuming we are legally obligated to provide since this is public information.

City Manager: We are legally obligated to provide it if people ask for it as a Public Records Act request. The testimony that occurred at the City council meeting was simply along the lines of if we do this we ought to this, this and this as well. The e-mails were along the similar vein, the two requests that did come in as Public Records Act requests have been responded to. I don’t think we have an obligation unless it comes in that context.

Cm. Cambra: Second of all, will this audit give us any insight to procedures that need to be reviewed that are not current, that need to be updated, because there has been discussion of that......

City Manager: It might. We are reviewing it, the procedures, we are reviewing the travel policy, there may be some things that would come out of this that would be helpful, but that would not be the primary purpose of it.

Cm. Cambra: Right, sort of as a side benefit. This report, what information would be contained in the report and how would it be provided to individuals.

City Manager: The information to be contained in the report would be identification of deviations from City policies and procedures with respect to travel expenses, and travel reimbursements. It would be.....I can’t say exactly the format of how they would present that, but it would be presented to the City of San Ramon, it would be available in multiple copies, for the Council and it would be a public record.

Cm. Cambra: So if everything were all in order you would have a very blank report.

City Manager: You would have very uninteresting reading.

Cm. Cambra: Thank you.

Vice Mayor Wilson: For $20,000.

Mayor Tatarka: Okay, I am going to go back to one other question, .......... the light of Councilmembers, talk to me about the cost of the report if someone wanted it, if the public wanted a cost of this report we would charge them, is that correct?

City Manager: We could charge the copy cost.

Mayor Tatarka: We could charge the copy cost of that. Okay. Now my other question to you is if we didn’t do this and we had staff as each individual citizen or whoever came in and asked for this information, can you give me any estimation of what staff time would be or what the cost would be staff time if we had people doing this on and off and I mean I am trying to get a handle on if we didn’t do this and proceeded with doing it on an as requested basis, do you have any idea....

City Manager: It would depend upon the magnitude of the request. The largest request that we have addressed to date sought information only back for one year. And it was a fairly extensive request in terms of the records that were requested to be made available. But it did take one staff person several days to pull that all together. If somebody submitted a public records act request going back to 1983, that would be a huge task. Pulling out the records and going back and identifying the appropriate records.

Mayor Tatarka: In other words, depending on the magnitude of the request, from the individual, from the resident, it is very difficult to judge, so we could have some individuals asking for things back to 1990 and some individuals asking for specific things so it would be varying across the board. So it would be difficult....so that is one of the reasons why you brought this forth as a complete audit, to do it at one time, to avoid that staff cost.

City Manager: That is correct.

Mayor Tatarka: Any other questions? Okay, great. I do have public comment. Mary Lou Oliver you are first because we continued it from last time and you had your card and I did have it with me.

Mary Lou Oliver: I apologize for being so chatty. This is really what I came to talk about, not the other two issues. I originally had absolutely no objection to going back, it might be a very interesting study. I though maybe I could offer some suggestions on ways to perhaps save a dollar or two. One might be to approach this from a budget point of view. Going back through all the previous budgets, looking at the amount allocated to the City Council expenses, and whether or not that was an over-run or not over-run and in the years that it was over-run, that would be a good place to start an investigation and help you target things that would be a simple approach at least to finding where there might be some hot spots. Also, the number of $45 comes up fairly frequently, I thought maybe I could shed some light on that. I know that Internal Ops was working on some new travel policies. That $45 was originally set up in 19 – probably 84 or 85, I don’t think we did it right off the bat as a per diem. And when you planned travel, it came before the City Council that the City staff handled all the airline tickets, whether or not a rental car, all of that was done, you were just handed your travel packet plus the check for $45 per day for each day that you were going to be there. Anything you spent over that, was you own responsibility. That number of course by today’s costs would be somewhat ridiculous. But, at that time, it worked. The only other things that might be large expenditures in some previous years were for cell phones and mileage. After the Loma Prieta Quake, it became important to staff that all of the councilmembers have cell phones. And at that time, those who did not have their personal cell phones were issued City cell phones. At that time, I think the average cost was like $.40 a minute so some of those were fairly high expenses. I would be happy to answer any questions about some of the policy, some of the not saying they were right or wrong, but the reasons for some of the policies in the past. Early on when we were setting up the city, there were several opportunities and absolute necessities for off sites because we had so much to learn on such a short period of time to learn it. Just such things as putting together ordinances and running meetings and how to set the City up so that we were not vulnerable financially and liability-wise. So from I would say from about 1983 to 1986 or 7 you will find some fairly expensive off-sites for the whole Council and the City Manager attended. They were usually two-day and three night, I’m sorry, three day and two nights where it was intense meetings with facilitators and several times there was press there too. So, as I say, if there is anything that I can do to help do this process I know it is kind of difficult and when you do have requests for information like under the Public Records Act you do kind of have to come up with it. So, I know that it is going to be difficult to go through those records, I think you could possibly do it for a lot less than $20,000 and I would certainly hope so because that money could be put to such good use elsewhere. If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them if you have any please feel free to contact me either on line or Judy has my e-mail addresses I am sure. Thank you.

Mayor Tatarka: Thank you for your comments.

Rosalind Rogoff: I am also concerned about the cost of this it just seems like an unnecessary expense and I am not really sure how needed it is or according to Jim Randall, there were two requests that went back a year but there were some mentions a public comment at one of the meetings that we should go back to 1983 so it was not actually asked to go back to 1983, I don’t see a reason to do it. However, we do have obviously have local resources such as Mary Lou Oliver, Dianne Schinnerer, all the past mayors who would I am sure would be willing to cooperate and provide you with whatever information they can about whatever things travel, whatever expenses they had, rather than bringing in an outside consultant and paying them money. I think if you are going to do an audit of this kind it should be done in reverse, start from today, work backwards and go back probably 5 or 10 years rather starting from 1983 and working forwards and if you do need to bring in an outside audit firm, do it on possibly like a year-to-year basis so that you do 2002-2001-2000 and so forth, rather than at some point I don’t see any reason to continue going back unless you uncover flagrant issues.

Mayor Tatarka: Thank you.

Victor Petersen: Certainly I am not in favor of wasting money. Maybe a brief comment on how did this all get started. Mayor Tatarka was I believe the first Mayor in this City to travel to the National Mayors Conference and should be congratulated for that –spending her time to do that. Unfortunately a small handful of citizens decided to jump on a small technicality that the trip should have been formally approved in advance. Evidently it wasn’t, everybody on the Council knew the trip was being made, so did staff. Evidently it was one of those things everybody missed. Some people tried to may a lot of hay out of that, but it was corrected and I believed Mr. Wilson’s comments in the retro-active approval mentioned there was obviously no ill intent here. And that is quite correct. And I think that spawned some requests, spawned some requests for travel in this one particular instance and then also spurned some requests to say well if you are going to look at this then you need to look at everything back to 1983. Um, certainly we should not just look at the last 10 months with a microscope that would be the size of Sherlock Holmes, and ignore, and ignore the other Councils, if there is going to be any kind of scrutiny over was all the t’s crossed and the i’s dotted. But I am very much in favor for moving forward and not backward. And I see this a moving backward. I don’t see any benefit to the citizen’s to dig in with a microscope and try and look at all past council’s to see if there was some minor procedure missed or something. If there was any expenditure that was large enough to raise a red flag for you certainly would not need an audit to see it, it would have been known at the time. But certainly I am in favor of an all or nothing proposition so my suggestion would be to table this for now, but keep it aside if – if you start getting floods of requests for full information rather that "piecemealing" it I think you just ought to do it, get it all in one place at one time and anybody that wants it has it. But I would ask all the citizens who have maybe made requests saying we need to go back to 1983 to say they haven’t stepped forward yet and maybe they wont and I think the only thing that would drive them forward is if some people are going to try and put a microscope on this particular council while ignoring, while ignoring the past. So I think we should put a positive stamp on moving forward and hopefully we can do that and maybe just set this aside for now and see what happens. Thank you.

Mayor Tatarka: Now I don’t have any other speaker cards to this issue so I will close the public comment period and put this before the Council. And lets see.....Dave.

Cm. Hudson: I know I am going to regret this but for the second time in two weeks I agree with Victor Petersen. There must be something in the air. This really came about for all the negative reasons that have been talked about but there is a positive reason that we should be looking at here and that is that new Councilmembers knew nothing about travel plans and there was nothing handed to them and they did not know policies and procedures something was missed, whatever the reasons, but about a month ago or maybe two, we passed a Resolution No. 2002-90 and we were asked to take a look at this – in Internal Operations. So, to keep it very simple I asked for all the records back for a year and I have all records back for a year. And the Internal Operations is Donna Dickey, myself and Jim Randall. And they are public hearings. And we are going to be discussing travel policy at....and now it could be as simple as we started out to be as the $45 per diem the right way to go. Or it could be more extensive to say this is what we are spending, this is how we are doing it, how do we get this information to the Councilmembers so they know what they are allowed or not allowed to do or it does not end up in the paper where they can read what they are supposed to do or not do. I think it is a very simple operation to pursue this at the Internal Operations as we were asked to do out of Resolution 2002-90, and if for some reason it turns political, and in that matter, bring it off the table and ask for more. But to go back to 1983 and I know there was one person who asked, I wont go through the name it is in the minutes, and to have no more than a report which is intended solely for the use of management, I don’t think you are going to serve the purpose to allay anybody’s fears that somebody is doing something under the table. And as I look at what you are getting for I don’t think it is the actual things that were discussed a month or two that anybody would be able to use this one way or the other as is stated in our staff report. One person is looking for a point to make their......point so what I would ask is that the Council stay with this until we take a look at this in Internal operations with the information that we have and try to do this in a positive manner to development some kind of booklet, pamphlet, paper, whatever you want to call it, document showing you what our travel policy is, if it is antiquated, where needs to be changed and move on instead of trying to point fingers at who spent what.

Mayor Tatarka: Okay, Abram Wilson.

Vice Mayor Wilson: Very easy, I agree with Mr. Hudson. One thing, is this the only company that we received a bid from?

City Manager: No, it is the only company I contracted when it was going to be $10,000, I did not think that it was going to be that major of an item. When it expanded to $20,000, I would have probably gone out and gotten another couple of proposals or I could have, certainly, but I knew this company, I knew the work they did, I knew that this did this type of work, which is why I contacted them.

Cm. Dickey: My concern is that there have been often incorrect allegations and accusations in the paper and it does not seem that we can ever put it to rest. And I don’t know how we get those allegations, it seems like when the information comes out there is always a rebuttal or some kind of false information that is fed on. And I don’t know any other way to get an impartial assessment to know exactly what has been going on and what has been done in the past and what has been done this past year. So, I am wondering if in fact we can revisit this at a later date after we go through and review at Internal Operations and see if we can get a policy and just put it on hold and maybe refine it a little bit....and see if we need to go any further or if ...........in 10 years as Ms. Oliver suggested look for hot spots if we did want to go instead of going and turning everything up side down.

Cm. Cambra: Well I think we are going to be all in agreement or at least very close to it here and I am hoping maybe I can save some time with this. What I would like to do is make a motion to table this item only, not deny it, not approve it, but just to table it until we find out what is happen at Internal Operations, number one, number two, if we continue to get records pulled, requests, Mr. Randall needs to inform us, the Council, that this is happening and then we can execute it immediately. So my motion is to table this item for this evening.

Cm. Dickey: I will second it.

Mayor Tatarka: Any other discussion? Can’t do it.

Cm. Cambra: I’m sorry.

Mayor Tatarka: Okay, you just shut me off. It’s tabled.

Cm. Hudson: If we vote to do it.

Mayor Tatarka: Alright. C’mon.

Cm. Cambra’s motion to table Resolution No. 2002-95 Authorizing the Mayor to execute an agreement with Odenberg, Ullakko, Muranishi and Co., to conduct a forensic audit of travel and related expenses for City Councilmembers, City Commissioners and the City Manager since 1983, in an amount not to exceed $20,000 was seconded by Cm. Dickey and passed 5-0.

* * * *

Mayor Tatarka: Okay, we are going to take about a 10-minute recess.

All Councilmembers were in attendance when the meeting reconvened.

Mayor Tatarka: Okay, the City Council meeting is back into adjournment. We are on to 11.3. This is a public hearing. It is an ordinance amending the municipal code to change the time for holding City Council meetings. Staff report by Jim Randall.

City Manager: A couple of months ago the City Council approved new procedures relating to City Council meetings recommended by the Internal Operations Committee. One of the recommendations was the meetings, the Council meetings would begin at 7 o’clock instead of 7:30 in an effort to try to end them a little earlier than they have been ending. And this is in the municipal code, that the meetings start at 7:30 and although we have had various starting times for meetings over the years, if we are going to officially make the starting time 7 o’clock, we should amend the municipal code accordingly and this recommendation of this ordinance does that.

Mayor Tatarka: Alright, so this is a public hearing. I will open the public hearing. I do not have any speaker cards on this issue. So I am closing the public hearing and now it is before the Council. Donna.

Cm .Dickey: I move adoption of Ordinance Number next in line amending the municipal code to change the time for holding city council meetings and waive reading, from 7:30 to 7.

Cm. Hudson: I'll second that.

Vice Mayor Wilson: My only concerns are the fact 7:30 is early and residents have to come home and eat and then come here, but in the fact that we will probably end the meetings earlier, I doubt that though, I am the first one that should want this but again, that is my concern and it will probably not end it will give us an half hour to discuss. That’s fine.

Cm. Dickey: Generally speaking, by the time we get through the opening and the pledge of allegiance and the review of the announcements and so forth and so on, we are heading pretty close to, and special presentations, we are heading pretty close to 7:30 anyway.

Vice Mayor Wilson: That’s fine, that’s fine. We can vote on it.

Cm. Hudson: It is also consistent with the Planning Commission. I forget what Parks is doing but it would make it pretty uniform to do it. It has worked out so well – we have been doing it anyway, so why not make it official.

Mayor Tatarka: We have been starting our times at 6:30, 7:00, whatever. I need to have a comment. 6:30 – 7:00 constantly, so I think this is long overdue for all of us and being in sync with the other Commissions, Planning and Parks. Okay, with that do I have a motion and a second, and all those in favor say "aye".

Cm. Dickey’s motion to adopt the Ordinance – Amending the Municipal Code to change the time for holding City Council meetings, was seconded by Cm. Hudson, passed 5-0.

Ordinance 341
Amending the Municipal Code to change the time for holding City Council meetings

* * * *

Mayor Tatarka: Very good. It passes. All right, yeah. Now moving on. This is 11.4, again it is a public hearing and it is for Resolution No. 2002-93 establishing fees and charges for various municipal services and repealing Resolution No. 2002-33. Staff report by Judy Macfarlane, City Clerk.

City Clerk: Additions and amendments have been recommended for the City’s fee resolution. Changes or new fees are in bold and the old fee is noted with a strikeout. At its August 20, 2002 meeting, the Finance Committee reviewed and approved the proposed changes to the fee resolution. Prior to levying a new fee or service charge or approving an increase in an existing fee or service charge, a local agency must hold at least one public hearing, at which oral or written presentations can be made, as part of a regularly scheduled meeting (Government Code Section 66001(a)). At least 14 days prior to the meeting, notice of the hearing will be mailed to any interested party who has filed a written request with the City for notice of meetings concerning new or increased fees. The notice will include the time and place of the meeting and a general explanation of the matter and this mailing did occur on August 23^rd. I did receive a few phone calls considering or asking about questions regarding proposed changes but there were not requests made to bring information to the Council. And they – all their questions were answered. And before you tonight is the public hearing for this resolution – Resolution 2002-93 and it is recommended the City Council hold the public hearing and adopt the resolution.

Mayor Tatarka: Very good Questions of Judy Macfarlane?

Vice Mayor Wilson: Would you, just for the residents, the Finance Committee went through this but the, clarify, would you give a little bit more clarification on the fees and I’d say passports, one of them, did we have any control in the, as far as increasing funds, also the traffic impact mitigation so that there is sort of clarification.

City Clerk: No, for the traffic impact mitigation, is the Tri-Valley Transportation Development fee and it is multi-jurisdictional as you probably all know, the five tri-valley cities and the two counties, Alameda and Contra Costa, this fee funds a specific list of regional transportation improvements and fees are adjusted annually. To keep pace with adjustments in the construction cost index as compiled by the Engineering News Record, a trade journal. And the JPA specifies the fees shall be adjusted annually. So this is how this is done and so this is an annual event and there is nothing we can do about it other than adjusting the fees and going along accordingly.

Vice Mayor Wilson: Right, when someone says why didn’t we do it the last time....the reason is – because we couldn’t – we didn’t know the numbers.

City Clerk: That’s right.

Vice Mayor Wilson: And the other one would be, the other major one is the passports.

City Clerk: The passport processing fees were adjusted by the Department of State and went into effect August 19, 2002. And so this is a nationwide adjustment – we are paying the same as North Dakota is paying, South Carolina is paying, Tennessee, it effects all of us – everywhere. And this is, this passport adjustment fee is applicable to all passport processing offices whether it be a post office, city offices or library. And, San Ramon is only agency that I am aware of that charges its residents $5.00 less than non-residents for the passport execution fee. It is just not heard of.....it is an option, and we do that, provide that service.

Vice Mayor Wilson: It was a substantial increase.

City Clerk: There was a substantial increase in all of the fees, yes. Mandated by the federal government.

Mayor Tatarka: Judy, a question that I have, because we do a lot of passports in this City, quite a few, did we hear from residents about any concern about the raised fee, did they ask questions as to why?

City Clerk: No, they didn’t asked questions as to why, they just, many times, sometimes when you plan a trip, the passport is not the first thing you do and you may put that off and put that off and those that came in the week after August 19^th, said darn, I had been planning on doing this for some time-I wish I had.

Mayor Tatarka: Because of the fee. So you have not seen a problem with that. Plus you got a plug for the passports, too. Very good. So that the public knows the only fees that we are looking at are ones that are just mandated and we don’t have much choice. Okay, so I will open the public hearing for this, I do not have any speaker cards for this, close the public hearing, it is before the Council. Hello--

Cm. Hudson: I am waiting for a motion, then do some discussion.

Mayor Tatarka: Do you have your motion?

Cm. Dickey: I move approval of Resolution No. 2002-93 Establishing fees and charges for various municipal services and repealing Resolution No. 2002-33.

Cm. Hudson: I’ll second.

Vice Mayor Wilson: I’ll second.

Mayor Tatarka: Okay, this item is open for discussion.

Cm. Hudson: It isn’t something I want to open now because we just passed these fees but Judy is being very calm about another one of her passions but at some time we are going to have to take another look at, you know where I am going don’t you, at the weddings. We have built in witnesses, photographers, a designated crier in our City Clerk, it, it, but it is getting to the point where we are starting to do a couple of these things and I did two the other day – Thursday – we are just endless service down here at City Hall. We may really have to take a look at what we are really doing here because it is not just a once in a great while, renting the hall, it’s – I don’t think it could go passport on us. There is a couple – a dozen we have done now so, not this time, next mayors problem-right?

Mayor Tatarka: Yes.

Cm. Dickey: Just for the public’s consumption, we can marry you guys, any one of you. That was pretty shocking to me. I would not have them come to me to do it.

Cm. Hudson: She means we can perform the wedding.

Cm. Dickey’s motion to adopt Resolution No. 2002-93 Establishing fees and charges for various municipal services and repealing Resolution No. 2002-33, was seconded by Cm. Hudson and passed 5-0.

Resolution No. 2002-93
Establishing fees and charges for various municipal services and repealing Resolution No. 2002-33

* * * *

Mayor Tatarka: All right, we are moving on to Item 12.1 New Business. This is an appeal of the Parks & Community Services commission approval of mitigation efforts of the Pine Valley Middle School Sports Park and Parking Lot Project (CIP 8257), Appellants Farman and Karla Robinson and Ronald Fessler. First of all we are going to have a staff report just to give a brief overview for, from Jeff Eorio and then we will have the appellant and then kind of go back and forth here a little bit. Okay.

Mr. Eorio: Tonight it is recommended that the City Council direct staff to proceed with the mitigation efforts as recommended by the Park s & Community Services Commission and supported by the San Ramon Valley United School District as outlined in the physical implications of the staff report. It is further recommended that the City Council hold the appeal hearing and deny the appeal. The mitigation efforts as recommended by the Parks and Community Services Commission and supported by the school district are outlined and will require change orders in the existing contract with the Pine Valley Sports Park project in the amount of approximately $35,000. There is sufficient funds within the CIP project contingency budget for this amount at this time. Additional mitigation efforts would require Council authorization for additional funding of the project and to the contract 10% contingency limit. The items that are recommended to mitigate the neighbors concerns with the parking lot are installation of a very heavy duty wooden fence with 6 by 6 foot posts; 8 feet tall for the first 4 homes adjacent to the new parking lot, approximately 220 feet in length; installation of concrete wheel stops along the southern parking sections and labeling these spaces as staff parking; installation of the concrete filled steel bollards between the 6 x 6 posts of heavy duty fencing within the impacted landscaping area; increasing density of the landscaping, including trees and shrubs, with the recommended tree, which is an evergreen, "yew pine" in 24" box size. As the Commission feels is an appropriate species for the screening the neighbors are looking for. The installation of light shields on the parking lot lights adjacent to homes and agreeing to turn off parking lot lighting by 10:30 P.M. nightly; and elimination of handicapped sidewalk, which increases the landscape buffer in the immediate handicapped parking area and provide an alternative route of travel of handicapped personal utilizing the handicapped spaces.

It is now recommended that the Council, excuse me, that the appellants present their case to the City Council. I will present the balance of the staff report following the appellant’s presentation.

Karla Robinson: I have appealed the decision that was made by the Parks and Community Services with regards to the Pine Valley Middle School Sports Park and Parking Lot Project (CIP8257). Before I start, I would like to comment that there were documents that were not given to the City Council and Miss Macfarlane passed those out before the meeting and I think that is it appropriate that I go through this documentation. I just – the first....

Mayor Tatarka: We have it in front of us, each of us, the document?

Karla Robinson: Yes, the first one, this is the first notice that we received with regard to notice public hearing, that apparently took place Monday, February 12^th. We received this notice on February 16^th. The envelope here is stamped with a Pitney Bowes stamped February 5^th. We received it the 16^th for a meeting on the 12^th, it was four days after the meeting took place. The next page is the D51002 notice requirement, which states that at least 10 calendar days prior to a hearing on a project and mailed or delivered notice to the applicant to owners of property located within 300 feet of the boundaries of the project site. Clear – violation, from February 5^th to February 12^th is 7 days. I’d like to comment at this time, the first four homes of Cheyenne Avenue, we were the only residents that received this notice. Upon receiving the notice, we immediately called the engineering department and the reason being is because the envelope is stamped engineering. I just flipped through this really quick and I have another whole sheet that I would like to read. And the packet that you received somehow you received in the agenda packet without our signatures, I don’t know how that happened, but I wanted to make sure that everybody saw this was our first meeting that we met at the San Ramon Parks and Community Service Commission on December 12^th of 2001, and these were our concerns.

The next page is from Jeff Eorio, Parks and Community Service Director, and it is dated December 17^th. We received this December 18^th, this was a one day notice for our first non-formal meeting. That took place December 19^th. Our next meeting was approximately three months later on March 14^th. The photo that you received I made copies I’m sorry but this was the original proposed wooden fence. You can see somebody can easily scale that fence. The next documentation was given to the City Manager, Mr. Randall, when he came over to my home and previewed the parking lot from our perspective from our backyard. Ronald Fessler is one of the neighbors and he is an electrical contractor and he was trying to mitigate what type of lighting because this is what he does, he is a professional, he does parking lots all of the time and he was proposing to maybe look at some of these types of lighting. And then at this point I would like to begin – this is a letter that I wrote to Mr. Randall May 20^th 2002.

Sir: We, the property owners of Cheyenne Avenue who are directly affected by the parking lot construction were never notified by the City or school district on any hearings concerning this said project up to recently. Apparently there was a meeting in February of 1999 that none of us received notice. Then again on February 12, 2001. We attended a Parks & community Service Commission meeting on December 12, 2001, requesting a meeting with the neighbors with a list of our concerns. Then our neighbors and we were notified on December 18, 2001 for a December 10=9^th non formal meeting held at Pine Valley Middle School Library. That was a one-day notice. Furthermore, our neighbors verbally informed Jeff Eorio and City and school staffs at this meeting who were present that they had not received any notices prior to this meeting about this project.

A letter, postmarked February 5, 2001, concerning this project was received February 16, 2001 by the Robinson’s home only. According to "Notice Requirements, D 5-1002, there must be at least 10 calendar day notice prior to a hearing on a project and mailed or delivered to the applicant and to owners of property located within 300 feet of project. Our neighbors did not receive this notice at all.

Immediately the Robinson’s called the City of San Ramon Engineering Department to inform them that we received late notice. We called the Engineering Department because the envelope received had stamped Engineering. We spoke to a Janice Carey. We told her the notice was vague and we needed more information on this project and if she could direct us in this matter.

Ronald Fessler a neighbor directly affected by this project attended his first meeting on April 10, 2002. At that time he approached the commission and explained he had never received any notice regarding this project. When reviewing the meeting minutes this is not indicated. The minutes are a brief summarization of conversation during the meeting, not all of the details of conversations are mentioned. The letter was signed by Brian and Melanie Jensen, Farman and Karla Robinson, Donald Scriber and Ronald Fessler.

At this time I would like to comment – and I missed this I should have said this prior, I would also like to comment that this appeal is not an appeal that attracts a lot of residents support, this is a situation that residents are not concerned with until it is in their own backyards. I am here this evening because I am a responsible resident and a parent and this issue must be addressed and corrected by the City. I would like to thank the support that are here tonight.

On March 3^rd, 2001 we received a letter of transmittal from the engineering department with information concerning the first set of preliminary plans for the Pine Valley Middle School renovation. This was from Janice Carey. And I want to clarify this that this was from Janice Carey and not from Jeff Eorio. There is an attachment D-5, Jeff Eorio sent some information to me on December 6^th and he indicates that he sent us information several months ago and I would like to know what that information is because what we received was from Janice Carey. Upon reading the plans we realized that a parking lot was being built abutting our property line with a four foot buffer according to these plans. We were devastated and felt that we were being deceived because of not receiving proper notice.

And now this time I would like to comment regarding the subject of proper notification, apparently this is an issue that happens occasionally with the City. The most recent two issues that I am aware of are the issues with the sewer project that took place on Mangos Drive and the Royal Vista Pool problem. This is something that needs to be corrected, it is extremely important that residents receive proper notification. We did not. If we received proper notification our issues possibly could have been addressed and resolved early on. Instead, we have been forced to take extreme measures and bring this to the City Council.

I’d like to move on, we were devastated and felt we were being deceived because of not receiving proper notification. How could our City do this to us? My husband approached Mayor Hudson after receiving the plans from the engineering department and marched at our son’s Cub Scout pack meeting at Walt Disney Elementary School cafeteria. Mayor Hudson told my husband that he would look into the matter and get back to us. In April, Cub Scout meeting held at Walt Disney Elementary cafeteria my husband and the Mayor spoke again. Mayor Hudson explained to my husband that to not worry about it because you got we got you a 10-foot buffer. He also said that he really had to push with this project and this was former Mayor Hudson at that time. Otherwise the voters would have hung him. This relieved us, somewhat, however we were still devastated over the parking lot, we watched carefully as with our neighbors the long progression of the project. Then on October 2001 these construction started for the grading of the parking lot. My husband noticed curb forms being set up and they were less than the 10 feet the Mayor had discussed. My husband immediately started calling the engineering department - he spoke to Joan who said someone would return our call, no one returned the call.

On November 1^st, 2001, we called the engineering department. Someone said that Norman Shiota from Aztec Consultants, the senior project manager on this project would return our call. Norman Shiota called on November 5^th, 2001, and made arrangements to meet at the project on November 7^th, 2001. On November 7^th, 2001, my husband met with Fred Ronmer and Norman Shiota. My husband asked about the effect and use of the parking lot. He was told that the lot was a day use lot and had a gate that would be closed nightly. There would be some shrubs planted between our fence and the parking lot, which would grow nicely in about three years. My husband told them about our concerns because we did not get any satisfaction, then I became involved. Enough was enough.

On December 3, 2001, I went to the San Ramon Planning Department requesting copies of notification requirements. I spoke to Shinei - I am sorry - Tsukamoto to help me with the copies I requested. He could not figure out at that time who was handling this project. I went home and faxed him a copy of the notice we had received on February 16^th, 2001 regarding the February 12^th 2001 meeting. We then spoke on the phone later in the day. He informed me that this project was being handled by the Parks and Community Services he gave me Jeff Eorio’s phone number and said Charlie Mullen from the planning department might be able to answer some of my concerns. On that day I also went to the police department of San Ramon and asked them if there had been any security reports done on this particular project. They told me that the engineering department would have reports on security issues. I called Jeff Eorio and left him a message. This was the first that we heard of Jeff Eorio.

On December 4^th, 2001, Jeff Eorio called me. I immediately told him we did not receive proper notification the meeting with regard to this project. I also asked him if an environmental impart report had been done the project. He told me the City filed a negative declaration. I asked him for copies of the negative declaration. I also asked him why the lights from the gym were on all night long. On December 8, 2001, I received a packet from Jeff Eorio with all the copies of information I requested he included additional information.

On Monday, December 10, 2002, I called the planning department and spoke to Charlie Mullen. I was questioning why an environment impact report had not been done. Charlie Mullen was very helpful and he explained how we needed to approach the San Ramon Parks and Community Service on all of our concerns. It was then that I wrote a notice with regard to all to all of our concerns for my neighbors and me. We all signed them, presented it at the December 12, 2001 Parks and Community Service Commission meeting. And that is the one that I was telling you that you did not have the signatures.

On December 19, 2001, at the Pine Valley Middle School library non-formal meeting, Jeff Eorio, members of the Parks and Community Services Commission, City staff, representatives of the San Ramon Valley Unified School Districts were in attendance. We stated at this meeting the following:

The current renovation project located at the Pine Valley Middle School has concerned me and my neighbors whose homes are being affected by the closeness of the parking lot facing our backyards. For security, safety, property value, resale effects, noise nuisance, air pollution, lighting nuisance, and whatever m