Piedmont Middle School students, Piedmont CONNECT, League of Women Voters of Piedmont, and Stopwaste.org are jointly presenting an informative environmental conservation evening for the whole family at the Piedmont Community Hall, 711 Highland Avenue on Wednesday, April 22 from 6 to 8 p.m. Exhibits will feature solar energy, electric cars, how to save more water, sound water conservation landscaping, and how to better recycle green waste.

The City Council is expected to allocate approximately $400,000 for capital projects through the budget process.

The Capital Improvement Projects Committee (CIP) will review resident proposals for projects to be undertaken by the City.  The meeting will not be broadcast or recorded for future viewing.  Those interested in observing the committee’s work can attend the Thursday, April 16 meeting to be held in the City Council Conference Room, City Hall, 120 Vista Avenue. The meeting begins at 7 p.m.

Read the agenda.

The City has submitted an application for Hampton Field to the East Bay Region Park District for Piedmont’s one time WW Bond Fund entitlement. The March 12, 2015 application included a California Environment Quality (CEQA) certificate of compliance for the Hampton Field improvements.  The construction costs for Phase One are estimated at $542,685, including staff time cost of $10,000, and $180,000 consultant expense for a total project cost of $732,685. The WW application request is for $507,325, the amount available for a qualified project in Piedmont.  No local matching funds are required.

It is anticipated that the East Bay Regional Park District Board will approve Piedmont’s WW Bond Fund proposal for Hampton Field improvements in May. Construction work that includes drainage and tennis court restructure is expected to begin in the fall.

On Saturday, April 11, 2015, the City of Piedmont will be paving Moraga Avenue between Pala Avenue and the eastern City Limit with Oakland.

The work will begin at 8:00 a.m. and should be completed in a single day. 

 This work, which will include the filling of potholes and replacing temporary patches, is the final step in the sewer construction that has been going on for several weeks. Due to the logistics of working in a busy street, it will be necessary to have traffic control measures around the work areas with traffic delays and disruptions on Moraga Avenue during this work. Please follow the instructions of the signs and flagmen present.

Your awareness, cooperation, and patience is appreciated.  If you have any questions related to this matter, or would like the City to be aware of any special circumstances, please call Chester Nakahara, Director of Public Works at (510) 420-3061 or email him at cnakahara@ci.piedmont.ca.us.

The disparate treatment of residential water consumers in various California communities has received national media attention this week.   The April 6, 2015 New York Times reports that California water policy –

“is a case study in the unwise use of natural resources, many experts say. Farmers are drilling wells at a feverish pace and  pumping billions of gallons of water from the ground, depleting a resource that was critically endangered even before the drought, now in its 4th year, began.”

In July 2014, while some Piedmonters were consuming 100 – 150 gallons per day or less, residents in some hotter locations used more than 600 gallons per day. Even after Governor Jerry Brown’s demand of a 25% consumption reduction is fulfilled, the four to one or greater differential of water use will remain in many areas. And some communities still do not meter water, instead charging residential customers a flat rate for unlimited water use. A few make no charge for water, according to The New York Times.

On April 7 Richard Howitt, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural and Resource Economics, at UC Davis, told Bloomberg Surveillance that yards in hotter areas of California should look more like Arizona. Howitt, a lead researcher at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Studies recommends California’s agriculture sector convert to higher profitability crops. “Cut down on low value crops, continue growing carrots.” 

Howitt continued, “The agriculture sector has got to realize that water is now a commodity, not political, and must be treated as such. Our agriculture would have to change its way of operating in a long term drought. We would only grow those crops that would really be very profitable. There are margins for adjustment in crops.”

Meanwhile the Central Valley agriculture well drilling frenzy has lowered the water table by as much as 50 feet, The New York Times reported. Land is sinking as much as one foot per year, damaging roads and bridges. Nevertheless, no limits on well drilling or groundwater exhaustion have been established for agriculture.

At its Tuesday, April 14 meeting, the EBMUD Board will review the District’s  year-end Water Supply Availability and Deficiency in this historic drought. The Board will decide on potential actions, which may include mandatory conservation restrictions, drought surcharges and excessive use penalties.

Read CA Water restrictions on urban and suburban communities  March 27

At a special meeting on March 31, 2015, the City Council made appointments to fill vacancies on commissions and committees. Drawing on the talents of fourteen applicants for nine vacancies, the Piedmont City Council made the following appointments:

CIP Review Committee

Susan Herrick

Civil Service Commission

Sandra Rappaport

Patricia Forsyth

Park Commission

Jonathan Levine

Jamie Totsubo

Planning Commission

Susan Ode

Public Safety Committee

Ryan Gilbert

Garrett Keating

Recreation Commission

Steve Roland

April 6, 2015

Service to Oakland International Airport (OAK) – 
The BART to OAK Airport service will be operating to and from Coliseum Station. If you are going to the airport you may go into the station as usual and take the shuttle train. Enter the station through the fare gates and go through the station, up to Platform 3 to catch the shuttle train. From the Airport, you will take the airport shuttle train to Coliseum Station and go through the fare gates and down to street level to access the bus bridge.

BART will close service between the Fruitvale and Coliseum stations all day on Sunday, April 5  just when relatives and friends could be heading to flights. Although there will be free bus bridges provided, riders need to assume delays of at least 30 minutes and as much as 60 minutes.

The next track closure will be from 7 p.m. Saturday, April 18 through all day Sunday, April 19. Future closures will occur on two weekends in May, June, July and finish August 15 – 16. (See complete schedule of closures.) Vital repairs are needed to the equipment and tracks in this section of the system.

Piedmont was the most successful city of all Alameda County cities reaching its housing goal within 98%. 

While some complain, some encourage, some dislike and some applaud, Piedmont’s zoning changes to meet housing goals.  

Piedmont’s method of increasing affordable housing has been based on building second homes on a single family lot or inserting second units into houses within the single family zone.  This technique has been done rather than re-zoning land areas in Piedmont for multi-family dwellings.

Piedmont’s housing increases have stemmed from State requirements for cities to provide planning processes that allow increased housing, particularly affordable residential units under specific conditions determined by individual cities.

While some homeowners have welcomed the income from rentals, neighbors’ primary objections to the second unit plan have been streets clogged with parked cars, loss of parking for service people and visitors, increased noise, and loss of privacy and light and air. Some community members have objected to the loss of a neighborhood feeling, ever changing renters, and a fragile zoning system not conducive to maintaining and improving residences.

Piedmont’s planning staff has consistently recommended allowing increased density and affordable housing through second units in the single family zone as preferable to rezoning small areas for multi-family residential housing. Any rezoning per City Charter requires approval of Piedmont voters, although in recent years this requirement has been skirted, and in one instance, conceded by the City Council.

The allocations of housing needs in the Bay Area are determined by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG).  Piedmont has been extremely diligent in meeting the allocation goals, despite the fact there is no penalty for failure to build the number of allocated residences, as numerous cities have not been penalized for not meeting their goals.  Failure to comply with State laws can befall a city if they have not provided laws and mechanisms allowing increased housing. Some community groups interested in additional affordable housing have sued cities that have not set in place laws giving affordable housing a chance to be approved through their planning processes.

Compliance with State laws and housing allocations refers to a city taking action to allow increased housing. The number of houses actually built relates to the goals rather than compliance. The Piedmont Planning Commission considers housing unit proposals that do not automatically meet the conditions set out in the City Code for second units.  The Commissions decisions on proposals typically involve variances, compatibility with a neighborhood, parking, safety, privacy, light, air, etc. 

City Administrator Paul Benoit’s report to the City Council notes the outstanding success of Piedmont’s compliance:

“a recent report from the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) that compares the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) progress of Alameda County jurisdictions during the period of 2007 to 2014. As you can see, Piedmont was the most successful city of all Alameda County cities with a 98% compliance level.

“Because Piedmont has the lowest number of affordable homes in the County, the numbers above reflect the highest requirement of affordable units on a percentage basis of any Alameda County jurisdiction.

“Rather than up-zone areas of Piedmont for multi-family redevelopment to include affordable apartments, the City instead focused on second unit approvals as a means of obtaining affordable housing without changing Piedmont’s single-family character. The Code was developed to provide incentives aimed at the creation of affordable units.

“The Planning Commission worked hard in their encouragement of second units, while making sure that there would not be adverse impacts on neighborhoods. Their efforts and the City’s success in the second unit program led to a simplified and inexpensive Housing Element Update process and quick certification by the State Department of Housing and Community Development in December 2014.”

READ the entire staff report.

The Council will consider the progress report on Piedmont’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation at their Monday, April 6, 2015 meeting in City Hall. The meeting starts at 7:30 p.m. The housing item is not first on the agenda.  The meeting will be broadcast and live streamed.

Public proposals for capital projects should be submitted on The Citizen Proposal Form, due by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, April 15 to City Hall. Those submitting project proposals are asked to attend the CIP meeting on Thursday, April 16 at 7 p.m. to briefly explain the project.  Projects that fill a  community need are more likely to be on the list referred to the City Council.

The following is an announcement from Friends of Moraga Canyon:

Friends of Moraga Canyon will hold two more Community Work Days to pull weeds and strip ivy off of oak trees in Blair Park on Saturday, April 4, and Saturday, April 11, from 10 a.m. to Noon, in Piedmont’s Blair Park. Everyone over age 12 is welcome. Wear work gloves, and bring clippers and rakes if you have them.

Refreshments provided. Great exercise and good fun!

Ivy growing on an oak tree in Blair Park