$31,173,188 Budget, Municipal Services Special Tax for tax year beginning July 1, 2021, Special Municipal Sewer Tax and More on Monday, JUNE 21, 2021 Council agenda

On Monday, June 21 the City Council will vote on adopting the 2021-22 Budget, the Municipal Services Special Tax, the Special Municipal Sewer Tax, the Operating and Other Funds Budgets, as well as the Schedule of Fees and Charges, and Appropriations (Gann) Limit.

Personnel costs are budgeted at $1,193,071 (6%) higher than 2020 -2021, while the total budget increases 10%.

Closure of the Community Pool in 2020 was helpful to City finances,  since it has operated at a loss after the City took over its administration.  The Budget presumes the pool will be closed the entire 2021-22 fiscal year.

Special Municipal Sewer Tax estimated revenue of $2,802,000 for the 2021-22 tax year:

Single Family Residence Property Size:

0 to 4,999 sq. ft. $625

5,000 to 9,999 sq. ft. $712

10,000 to 14,999 sq. ft. $821

15,000 to 20,000 sq. ft. $957

Over 20,000 sq. ft. $1,127

Commercial Properties:

0 to 10,000 sq. ft. $1,127

Over 10,000 sq. ft. $1,554 

Multi-Family Residence:

per unit $521

Parcels Divided by Tax Code Area Line $625

The City Council previously approved loans totaling $800,000 to the Sewer Fund from the Equipment Replacement Fund and the Facilities Maintenance Fund.

The Capital Improvement Projects Review Committee suspended its activity due to COVID-19 but is expected to convene during FY 21-22

Read Staff Report here

June 21  – AGENDA DETAILS: SCHEDULE AND PARTICIPATION

On Monday, June 21, Piedmont City Council will receive a report from staff on the 2019 Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory and Climate Action Plan 2.0 implementation status.

The City completes a greenhouse gas inventory annually and presents the results to the community. The inventory is a useful tool to measure the City’s progress towards its emission reduction goals. The 2018 Climate Action Plan 2.0 set emission goals for a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030 and an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050, both based on a baseline year of 2005.

The inventory helps City staff and community members keep track of progress and determine ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The inventory details both community emissions from households and businesses, as well as emissions stemming from city government activities and facilities.

The inventory Piedmont uses keeps track of emissions inside City boundaries, but does not include consumption and emissions outside of the City. For example, the inventory includes emissions coming from electricity that is used inside the City, but does not include emissions coming from flights that Piedmont residents take outside of the city.

While Piedmont is one of the highest emitters of greenhouse gases per capita in the Bay Area, there are ways to reduce emissions.

The inventory and Climate Action Plan 2.0 provide further information on actionable measures to help reduce Piedmont’s greenhouse gas emission footprint.

On Monday, the City Council will also consider an agreement with East Bay Community Energy for the installation of two dual port electric vehicle (EV) charging stations on Bonita Avenue and parking restrictions for the four spaces served by the EV chargers.

The installation of direct current fast EV chargers to serve Piedmont residents, business owners, employees, students, and visitors will help the City meet the goals of the Piedmont Climate Action Plan 2.0.

INVENTORY: To learn more about the inventory, please read through the staff report published here (http://piedmont.hosted.civiclive.com/cms/One.aspx?portalId=13659823&pageId=14120439), and attend the City Council meeting on Monday, June 21, 2021 at 6:00 pm.

CHARGING STATIONS: To learn more about the proposed EV charging stations, please read through the staff report published here: (http://piedmont.hosted.civiclive.com/common/pages/DisplayFile.aspx?itemId=17786422)

VIEW THE MEETING: The meeting will be recorded and uploaded to the City website here (http://piedmont.hosted.civiclive.com/cms/One.aspx?portalId=13659823&pageId=14122987) if you cannot attend the meeting live.

Staff report 621 Green House Emissions with map

June 21 – AGENDA DETAILS – SCHEDULE AND PARTICIPATION

The Council is refreshing the prohibition of parking in red zones.  Maps are provided of the locations throughout the city.

READ the full staff report with maps showing locations.

No Parking Red Zones and Maps

June 21 – AGENDA DETAILS  – SCHEDULE AND PARTICIPATION

The warmer it gets, the more we use air conditioning. The more we use air conditioning, the warmer it gets.  In 1990, there were only about 400 million air conditioning units in the world, mostly in the US, today there are over a billion.  Since 2000 every record for peak electricity use in New York City has occurred during a heatwave, as millions of people turn on their air conditioning units.

Some Piedmonters are concerned about their energy-wasting air conditioners, which pump heat outdoors, blasting their neighbors with hot air. As the City shrinks side setbacks, cross-ventilation becomes less available and less effective.  To avoid this costly contributor to their  environmental footprint, they wonder about experimenting with greener alternatives when temperatures rise this summer.

PG&E Advice on Cooling Your House in  Hot Weather :

Keep shades, drapes, and curtains drawn

Ventilate your attic.

Your attic can reach temperatures exceeding 140 degrees.

Plant shade trees.

Shading your house with trees can make a surprising difference. Deciduous trees planted on the east, south or west side of a house, the sunniest sides, can reduce your cooling load in hot summer months by up to 30%.

Planting shrubs next to your home can also help. Vines or trellises placed directly on a west wall can lower the wall’s surface temperature by as much as 40°, making it easier to keep your home cool inside. Ground covers and lawns can also help keep your home naturally cool. A lawn is 10-15° cooler than bare ground.

Install shade devices.

Shade screens and tints on windows and glass doors, as well as window and wall awnings, are very effective forms of passive cooling. Shading windows and walls on the sunny sides of your home can cut your cooling needs considerably.

Ventilate when it’s cool outside.

Opening windows when it’s cooler outside than inside can often cool your home down into the 60’s with simple ventilation. In the morning, close up the house to trap the coolness inside.

Consider a whole-house fan.

Because some nights are cool, but have no breeze, you may benefit from using a whole-house fan to force cool air through your home.

If you use air conditioning:

Set it at 78°. You can cut your system’s operating costs by 20% or more simply by setting your thermostat higher. If everyone did this, the U.S. could save the equivalent of 190,000 barrels of oil per day.         Read all PG&E Advice

Air Conditioners Are not Green, Compromising Piedmont’s Stated Climate Action Goals

Window air conditioning units and through-wall sleeve air conditioning units typically leak large amounts of energy. Central air or ductless mini-split systems are significantly more efficient. In addition, their  hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) emit pollutants that put holes in the ozone. AC systems require enormous amounts of energy to operate.

Piedmont’s Climate Action Plan and Goals do not require elimination of AC when an existing home is sold or even prohibit AC in new construction.  The townhomes developed on Linda Avenue were designed with cross ventilation for natural summer cooling.  However, the City insisted they be equipped for air conditioning instead.  Some older Piedmont homes have lost their access to natural cross-ventilation, as infill building has reduced air flow.

Shaded Public and Private Open Space Offers Natural Cooling

Piedmont loses open space every year as construction project gobble side setbacks and diminish backyards.  Preserving Piedmont’s remaining vacant land as private open space or public parkland not only would bolster quality of life, protect environmental assets and but offer citizens an alternative to energy draining air conditioning.  

Advice on Treatment Overheated Individuals

The combination of  overheating and dehydration reduces the body’s ability to cool itself.  Wired magazine recommends the Wilderness first responder treatment, “sip cool water, and nibble a salty snack.”

An intense heat wave can require rotating power outages when increasing use of air conditioning causes electricity demand spikes.

Power traded on Friday for Monday jumped to $151 per megawatt hour (MWh) at Palo Verde in Arizona and $95 in SP-15 in Southern California. . . the highest since the February freeze.

California is the U.S. region most at risk of power shortages this summer because the state increasingly relies on intermittent energy sources like wind and solar,        Reuters reports.

If rotating outages are needed, PG&E will post information at this page to show the order in which PG&E will likely proceed, if ordered by CAISO to turn off power. Estimated restoration times are 2-3 hours after the outage actually starts. The situation remains dynamic and shutoff times may change.

As Piedmont attempts to find housing locations to meet its Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA ) of 587 new housing units within 1. 7 square miles in our built-out city, other Bay Area cities are being questionably assessed fewer housing units.

Atherton, certainly a fine city and one that adds significantly to the Bay Area, has over 4 square miles with a very low housing density of 7,168 high income people.  Yet, it is being assessed to provide only 298 new housing units, while Piedmont is being assessed to provide 587 new units.

For this cycle, the town [Atherton] is required to plan for the development of 298 new housing units. Some 74 would need to be very low-income housing, 43 low-income, 51 moderate-income and 130 for above moderate-income, according to the report.

Atherton is in the midst of Silicon Valley where housing demands have rapidly multiplied,  especially for hotel maids, restaurant dishwashers, gardeners, office cleaners, and other low income workers.  Why is their assessment less than Piedmont’s? This is merely one example of the questionable methodology being used when assessing and allocating housing units to various cities and communities.

Many cities, as Piedmont, have barriers to safe and appropriate increases to population including: open space, roadway widths and designs, infrastructure, limited public transit, fire safety issues, pandemic impacts, etc.  Yet, these factors appear not to have been considered when the Association of Bay Area Governments assigned allocations.

Cloverdale, CA’s population before the pandemic in 2019 was 8,754,  three-quarters the population of Piedmont.  It’s proposed RHNA for 2023 -2031 is only 278,  less than half the allocation to Piedmont despite Cloverdale’s available open space  (more than 3 sq miles compared with 1.7 sq miles).

The New York Times May 30, 2021 reported that 36,000 people moved out of San Francisco in the final quarter of 2020.  Many moved several hours away from the Bay Area, especially east to the Sacramento area or the Sierras or north to wine country or beyond. 

The LA Times wrote that Fresno is the hottest real estate market in the US, and rents are skyrocketing .   A new 255 unit rental development opened in 2020 and all units were taken within months, despite it’s high rents “one-bedrooms go for as much as $2,600 a month — a price rivaling those in Los Angeles beach communities.”  Since 2017, average rents in Fresno have increased nearly 39%, the fastest in California.   Read the Los Angeles Times article here

Fresno’s population is reported as 525,010 as of 2019.  In 2020 Fresno had 11 units of affordable multi-family rental housing constructed, falling 503 units short of its RHNA allocation.  An enormous shortfall in the current assigned housing production to be completed by next year.   Read Report here.

Piedmont resident Michael Henn points out that Oakland created an Area Specific Plan that “protects” Rockridge from high densities, despite its excellent walkability to  the BART station and major bus lines. 

PIEDMONT P D LAUNCHES TRANSPARENCY PORTAL WITH LICENSE PLATE READER DATA

Piedmont Police Department  ALPR Transparency Portal is First-of-Its-Kind in the Nation

 – Acceptable uses, usage statistics, number of cameras the agency owns, other law enforcement agencies they share data with, specific statistics on the number of vehicles captured, Hotlist alerts, and searches performed over the past 30 days.

PRESS RELEASE –

In our ongoing effort to strengthen our relationship with our community and increase transparency, the Piedmont Police Department is pleased to unveil the public ALPR Transparency Portal, a partnership with Flock Safety.  The Transparency Portal is intended to encourage open communication between police and the public around Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology.

Chief of Police Jeremy Bowers stated, “This first-of-its-kind program demonstrates the Piedmont Police Department’s commitment to openness, accountability, and integrity.  ALPR technology has been a critical tool in our public safety efforts. It’s important that our community has the ability to understand how we are using this technology in the furtherance of public safety.”

The Transparency Portal serves to provide the public a view into the Piedmont Police Department’s ALPR usage specific to its use of Flock Safety cameras, data retention, and policies. It provides a landmark approach to transparency and accountability by providing the public with anonymized audit logs of police usage of the technology. It also displays usage statistics, including the number of cameras the agency owns, other law enforcement agencies they share data with, and specific statistics on the number of vehicles captured, Hotlist alerts, and searches performed over the past 30 days.  The Piedmont Police Department is working to transition its ALPR system entirely to Flock Safety which will eventually provide the public with more insight into the Piedmont Police Department’s ALPR usage.

While ALPR technology has proven to be an effective tool in preventing and solving crime in Piedmont, the Piedmont Police Department also recognizes the importance of being transparent and effectively demonstrating its use of this technology.

Flock Safety has provided license plate reader technology to the Piedmont Police Department since 2020.

Flock Safety does not employ facial recognition, adheres to strict security standards and encryption standards, and does not share or sell customer data to third parties.

The Piedmont PD Transparency Portal can be accessed through: https://transparency.flocksafety.com/piedmont-ca-pd

Piedmont Police Department

budget PUBLIC HEARING FY 2021-2022 Taxes

Budget Advisory committee to meet after the Council first considers the 2021- 22 budget and tax levies.  The Committee was formed following a major failing by the City when allowing the undergrounding project in upper Piedmont to go over budget by $2 million due to incorrect contracts, funding, and oversight.

The City has not been following the charge to the committee.  Charge example: “Provide a financial review of any new program commitments and funding sources in excess of $250,000 in any fiscal year.” 

On the June 7 Council Agenda the Council is asked to approve a $600,000+ contract for management of the Municipal Pool construction, yet there is no review by the BAFPC indicated in the staff report.

See May 2. 2021 article:    Housing Element Consulting Services $691,230

BAFPC charge

Although the City website states minutes are available, none have been publicly disseminated and there is no evidence minutes were approved by the Committee, as the minutes have never been found on any Committee agenda.

The Budget Advisory and Financial Planning Committee is one of the most vulnerable public bodies to a conflict of interest, yet the City Council does not require compliance with disclosure of assets per state conflict of interest laws. This is not to say there have been conflicts of interest, for none have manifested.

“In the last housing cycle, Piedmont was asked to plan for 60 new homes and the city fell short, issuing permits for just 37 units*. This cycle, the city is expected to plan for nearly 600 new homes.  …

Piedmont’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA)

Jumps from 60 to 587 housing units in the next

Planning Cycle that begins in 2023

An “equity adjustment” formula was proposed that increases the allocations of lower-income units for some jurisdictions identified as having racial and socioeconomic demographics that differ from the regional average. Five jurisdictions that met the formula were excluded.  These jurisdictions were excluded from the equity adjustment to avoid directing additional lower-income RHNA units to jurisdictions with racial demographics that are different than the rest of the region but that already have a high share of lower-income households.

[See the equity adjustment tables which begin on page 31 of this report.}

The equity adjustment identified 49 jurisdictions in the Bay Area that exhibit racial and socioeconomic demographics that differ from the regional average using a composite score developed by several members of the Housing Methodology Committee (HMC). The purpose of the equity adjustment is to ensure that each of these 49 jurisdictions receives an allocation of lower-income units that is at least proportional to its share of the region’s total households in 2020.

For example, if a jurisdiction had two percent of existing households, it would receive at least two percent of the very low- and low-income RHNA units. The composite score is calculated by adding together the jurisdiction’s divergence index score (which measures segregation by looking at how much local racial demographics differ from the region) and the percent of the jurisdiction’s households with household incomes above 120 percent of the area median income (AMI).

Jurisdictions with a composite score greater than the median score for the region are included in the group of “exclusionary” jurisdictions. Accordingly, a jurisdiction does not necessarily need to have an extremely high divergence score or percent of households above 120 percent AMI to be considered “exclusionary,” as a jurisdiction’s composite score only needed to be in the top half for all Bay Area jurisdictions.

The equity adjustment excludes five jurisdictions who have composite scores above the region’s median, but median incomes in the bottom quartile for the region. These jurisdictions were excluded from the equity adjustment to avoid directing additional lower-income RHNA units to jurisdictions with racial demographics that are different than the rest of the region but that already have a high share of lower-income households.

The equity adjustment is the last step in the allocation methodology, and is applied after the methodology’s factors and weights are used to determine a jurisdiction’s allocation by income category. If the allocation of lower-income RHNA units to one of the 49 jurisdictions identified by the equity adjustment’s composite score does not meet the equity adjustments proportionality threshold, then lower-income units are redistributed from the remaining 60 jurisdictions.

Understanding the formula by reading the long tables is challenging.  Piedmont residential locations were rated virtually identical (18, 19) in terms of very low income job proximity via auto (18) and very low income job proximity via public transit (19), and low income job proximity via auto (10) and low income job proximity via public transit (11) despite the fact that most of Piedmont is more than a quarter mile pedestrian path walk from public transit with service for work schedules.

In comparison, Pinole scored 13, 13 low income job proximity via auto, transit. Portola Valley scored 7, 5 very low income job proximity via auto, transit, and 4, 3 low income job proximity via auto, transit.   Ross scored 2, 3 very low income job proximity via auto, transit and 1, 2 low income job proximity via auto, transit.  Tiburon scored 14, 15 very low income job proximity via auto, transit and 8,8 low income job proximity via auto, transit.  After adding other factors, low density Tiburon with a land area of 4.4 square miles for a population nearly as large as Piedmont, was assigned an RHNA of 639, slightly more than Piedmont.

Often lost in the local enthusiasm is the fact that the planning cycle is 2023 through 2031 and the State law explicitly does not require local jurisdictions to produce or pay for the new housing units it is asked to plan for.