Public Hearing to Consider the Proposed 2019 Water Quality and Flood Protection Initiative; Adoption of Resolution Finding that a Majority Protest Does [Not] Exist, Directing a Property Owner Ballot Proceeding for the City’s 2019 Water Quality and Flood Protection Fee and Directing the City Manager to Vote “Yes” for City Owned Parcels; and Introduction of Ordinance Amending the Alameda Municipal Code by Adding Article IV to Chapter 18 to Establish the Water Quality and Flood Protection Fee. (Public Works 351)
Okay. It's a public hearing to consider the proposed 2019 Water Quality and Flood Protection Initiative, adoption of a resolution finding that majority protest does not exist. Directing a property owner ballot, proceeding for the city's 2019 water quality and flood protection fee, and directing the city manager to vote yes for the city owned parcels and introduction of ordinance . Amending the Algerian Civil Code by adding Article four to Chapter 18 to establish the water quality and flood protection fee. Thank you. And I think I start first. Okay. So to the audience that thinks this might seem scripted, it is there is a legal procedure and language. And I'm I'm not going to be too spontaneous here, but we will have a chance to hear from anyone interested. So good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I thank you for being here. The public hearing this evening is the conclusion of the notice and protest period for the 2019 water quality and flood protection fee process. Notices of this public hearing were sent out on August 14, which began the notice and protest period. This public hearing gives property owners and residents another opportunity to obtain additional information about the proposed fees and services and to provide any additional input or comments to the city and to lodge a written protest against the proposed fee. After the end of the public comment portion of this hearing hearing the protest period will close. The procedure for today's public hearing will be as follows. Number one, first, we will hear reports from city staff and consultants about the city's need for stormwater services and the proposed fees, ordinance and ballot proceeding. Two Next, we will open the public hearing so that the public can speak about this measure and ask questions. Three At the conclusion of the public comment period, there will be a final call for written protest to be submitted, and then the public hearing will be closed. The clerk will then tabulate and announce the total number of protests submitted and whether a majority protest exists. If there is no majority protest, the Council may adopt the resolution finding that there is no majority protest. Consider introduction of a stormwater fee ordinance and direct the city clerk to proceed with the balloting process. All protests must be in writing and must be submitted prior to the close of the public hearing written protest, which must contain your name, the address or parcel number of your property and a signature should be submitted to the city clerk. So as that you so Miss Zorba. And, um. And so now will the staff and the consultant now make their presentation? Good evening, Madam Mayor. Members of the City Council. I am Liam Garland, Public Works Director and happy to be here tonight talking about one of the most significant items in my time here in the city of Alameda. Tonight, we're discussing the potential for Alameda to decide whether to adopt a water quality and flood protection fee. Tonight, what I'd like to do is walk through a slide that basically shows where we've been and looking at this issue where we are today and where we might be in the near term. And then talk a little bit about the scenario of moving forward versus not and finally, talk about the immediate steps in front of us tonight. If you look at the left side of this slide, you'll see the bottom part is cut off. Sorry about that. You'll see that the discussion about the mismatch between our existing stormwater fee, which has been flat for 15 years and the stormwater systems need for revenue. We first really started discussing that back in 2015. Since then, we've had two adopted capital budgets that highlighted the issue of that mismatch between our the revenue we're getting from our existing existing fee and those stormwater needs. We had a discussion in early 2018 in which we talked about city wide infrastructure needs, and these stormwater needs were part of that discussion. We came back in, I believe it was April of 2019, to approve a contract to get Jerry Bradshaw and SSCI started on the underlying fee study. It was at that of that council meeting, that council directed staff to explore two potential approaches for a stormwater fee. That all culminates on July 16th, 2019. So not too long ago, where council approved moving forward with a property related stormwater fee. Interestingly, on that same night of council had its first chance to really engage with the Climate Action and Resiliency Plan. And one of the most important near-term actions recommended in that Climate Action and Resiliency Plan, particularly on the adaptation side, was to fix the mismatch between the revenue, the existing revenue for our stormwater system and its needs. Out of that meeting per council's direction, we initiated the first step of a two step process to consider for Alameda to consider whether to adopt a new stormwater fee. That first step started with mailed notices to all property owners in the city of Alameda as of August 14th. That essentially opened up the process that we're closing today, and that is to have a written protest submitted. And if those written protest, a majority of property owners submit a written protest, then the city council cannot move forward on a ballot. Let me stop for a moment and just go back in time again, which is to talk about the remainder of August and September, where staff engaged with local community organizations to let folks know that this process was going on. Held two community meetings to further inform the public of posted online and in various social media about various aspects of the stormwater system. And now coming back to you tonight to hold the public hearing, should council decide to move forward with the balloting process for the second step of this process? Those ballots would go out on or about October 10th. So not too far from now they would be out and have to be delivered back to our city clerk by November 25th. Then they would be tabulated and the majority vote of those votes cast would win. So if there are more yes votes than no votes cast, then yes would win and vice versa. Those results would come back to City Council at the second meeting in December. And if Alameda did approve the fee, the that would be on Alameda property tax bill in November 2020. And that was a lot in terms of timeline. But it shares a little bit about where we've been, where we are and where we might be headed. If if Allen means do have the opportunity to to weigh in on the fee and the fee is successful. There are three main community outcomes. First, we're going to be able to continue a lot of the significant work we're doing to protect the Bay by removing trash and pollution from getting into the stormwater system and into the bay. So this is 200 inspections we do every year of construction sites and various businesses to make sure that they're implementing the best stormwater management practices possible. It's installing over 250 trash capture devices over the past several years that also require four times visits per year to clean those devices, to make sure that we're getting that trash out of the system and that they're not leading to flooding. It also, if Allen means you have the chance to support the fee and indeed do, it also means a more sustainable storm drain system where we have help to solve the mismatch between the existing revenue and those stormwater needs. It also means that public works can continue. It's 24 seven emergency response with our storm drain maintenance workers out before, during and after storms even in the middle of the night to make sure that storm drains are clear and that the 11 pump stations 126 miles of storm drain and 96 acres of lagoon are operating properly. And finally, our Allen means if if they do get the opportunity to support the fee, they'll be helping to protect property from flooding, especially given that the fee includes revenue dedicated to capital projects. And we know from the adoption of the last capital budget that $0 in stormwater funds went to stormwater capital projects. We also know that there's more than $30 million in high priority needs in our stormwater system and that it's especially important to be addressing those capital needs given sea level rise and climate change. What happens if Allen Medians don't have the opportunity to take action or have the opportunity and there's a majority of no votes? We don't know exactly what would happen in that instance, but we know there'll be some mixture of measures. Overall, the fund will be depleted. Our levels of service will be reduced. We'll have a more reactive program with longer response times. We'll be reducing our storm drain maintenance both before, during and after storms. There will be less street sweeping, and we'll continue the status quo of not having stormwater funds available for capital projects. You put all that together and that increases the risk of a catastrophic failure in our stormwater system. It also means that the city is less prepared to adapt to climate change and sea level rise. Finally, the next steps for tonight are obviously to hold the public hearing on the water quality and flood protection fee. Adopt a resolution to either of a majority protest or not. Further, I'm going to spend a minute on the third ball in bullet point here, which is to direct a property owner ballot proceeding and to direct the city manager to vote yes for city owned parcels as detailed in the staff report. There's about 111 parcels out at Alameda Point for which the fee free of charge would be around $320,000. We think about half of those fees will be passed on to our lessees out at Alameda Point. And then there's another 138 parcels in the rest of the city with total charges of about 50, almost $56,000. You might be wondering why it is that government parcels are charging a fee, and this is because it's a prop proposition to 18 compliant fee. There are no exemptions under the fee and those charges have to be have to be charged for government owned parcels versus private property owners. Finally, the last action considered for tonight and recommended by staff is to introduce the ordinance underlying the water quality and flood protection fee. This ordinance summarizes the administrative procedures for staff and this Council to, on a yearly basis, make sure we set the right fee, that we get it to council and then to the county to make it on the property rolls. With that, my report is finished. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. So, Councilor, at this time you can ask questions. Who's got a question? Councilmember Desai The CPI adjustment factor is set at 3%. A CPI adjustment factor for the fee is set at 3%. I'm wondering, is there any reason why we should differ from what the Prop 13 allowable 2% increase? I mean, what's the argument there? Well, first, I want to make sure I get clear information out to the public, which is that there is a cap on the annual adjustment of 3%. If the I think it's the San Francisco Bay Area Consumer Price Index is less than that. That is what that annual cost increase would be, but it's capped out at 3%. I'll just add that if you look at construction costs, they're escalating from year to year, well above the cost of the CPI. So it's important that we at least get up to that that 3% level. And the other questions, Council member Odie. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. Just a couple quick questions. So you alluded to this in the staff report. The this is all going into the stormwater fund, right? You will there'll be a new closely related fund called the Clean Water and Flood Protection Fund. And all of these all the revenue and expenses will be tracked to that one fund. And then can you just remind us what the purpose of that fund is and why it's underfunded today? And you know what what we're going to see kind of going forward if this is approved. Sure. So the existing stormwater fee has been flat for more than 15 years because there was no cost escalator or no CPI increase that could be applied. So that's challenged, number one, with the fee. And then the other challenges with the fee was that fee was never designed to capture all of the capital improvements required of the stormwater system. And it's certainly given it was back in the early nineties when that fee was first contemplated, was not thinking about climate change and sea level rise, which we know are urgent issues. Thank you. And then two other quick questions. There was I read through the protests, and I think if you protest, does that mean you don't get to pay the fee? I think I know the answer, but I want to hear you say no. Okay. And then lastly, I heard you mentioned that we as the city are going to pass on some of that fee to tenants. If if that was a discussion we wanted to have as a council for property owners, we could do that. Right. You could not today. But we could have that discussion. You could? Yes, that's true. Let me make sure that I'm being as clear as I can, which is there's some confusion with the word pass on out. So I'm going to say back in a slightly different way, which is that what we've looked at is that a fee as applied to an apartment building would result on an average sized apartment building with an average number of units here in Alameda. And if that fee went from the landlord and was covered through rent increases, it would be 1/10 of 1% of an increase. That is well within the annual general adjustment that is provided for under the municipal code. Does that does that answer the question? Yes. Thank you. As other questions. Council members. I have a couple, Mr. Garland, and thank you for your presentation. I to read all the letters that the protest letters that were attached. There were a few letters in support, I will say. But of the the protest letters and I also attended part of the presentation you and staff did at Lydecker Park, which was as that very informative. So what is the continuing themes in a lot of the letters I read is was the question of why only property owners but not renters pay this fees since everyone will benefit from clean storm drains and protection from flooding and sea level rise. So can you answer that? So with a property related fees such as this, the way proposition to 18, it requires that property owners only be balloted to decide whether that fee can be applied to property owners. So it's by law that this form of fee can only be borne by property owners. Okay. And then the the fees that are collected, assuming this is approved, will go into a special fund. Can the city divert revenue from that fund for other other uses, say, to backfill the general fund if it gets low? No. So by law, all of the revenue and expense related to this proposed fee has to stay within that clean water and flood protection fund. It can't be moved by staff to another fund. It can't be moved by the council. Nor can the state or county or federal government appropriate those funds for a different purpose. Thank you. And finally, there's no sunset clause in this measure. Do you want to speak to that or would you please speak to that? Sure. So when we looked at the stormwater systems needs and we looked into the future, we didn't see the needs in the stormwater system diminishing over time. In fact, with sea level rise and climate change, the needs in the stormwater system are only going to grow. And so that is why there is not a sunset provision there. There is a protection, however, for property owners paying the fee, and that is because of Proposition 218. The Council is bound to only set the fee to recover revenue for the stormwater systems needs. So let's assume for a moment that I, your public works director, am wrong and that sea level rise and climate change are not going to be issues in decades to come. Well, then future councils will have the opportunity to lower the fee, which is permissible under proposition to 18, to make sure that that fee is lowered to the amount of needs that are within the system. So if the needs diminished, then the fee diminishes over time. I don't see that future, but that that is a possibility. Thank you, Mr. Grant. Other questions? Councilmember Vela. Mr. GARLAND. There have been in some of the protest filed, there was a reference to the requirement that the program fee expenses are fairly distributed among property owners. And a question about, um, you know, the definitions for multi-family residential. Could you speak? Sure. A little bit. Let me start dancer and I'm going to ask Jerry Bradshaw. And I think how those categorizations occur in and what happens if there's a question about whether or not it was properly categorized. Great. I'm going to start the answer, and then I'm gonna have Jerry Bradshaw come up and finish or amend the answer. So. Oh. Essentially, what the fee proposes is to take all of the stormwater systems revenue needs and then fairly apportion them out to property owners per their contribution to the stormwater system, meaning their properties are of rain runoff that enters into the stormwater system that essentially looks at different land uses and grouping up of those parcels to make certain assumptions about impervious surfaces, remember driveways, roofs, things like that that do not catch runoff and keep it on site, but instead tend to push it off into the stormwater system. That means that the calculus behind the fee is really looking at how to fairly apportion that across those different uses. It doesn't require that it's perfect. And in terms of looking at any particular parcel to make sure that the percent of impervious area for that parcel fits in with the land use, just that it be relatively close and not necessarily perfect. And with that, there's also another built in mechanism in case staff and our consultants get something wrong, which we don't think happened in this instance. But in case we do, there's a way to essentially protest your fees on an annual basis and have the substance of that protest. It's called the disputed fees provision. It's within the ordinance that's in front of you tonight so that we've got to look at the substance of that fee as applied to the parcel and can make changes if they're warranted. Jerry, would you like to add anything to that? Sure. Good evening to you. Introduce yourself and speak right into the microphone, please. Jerry Bracha with SCA Consulting Group. I am the engineer on this that design the fee study for you and thanks for having me up here in general. The the as Liam said, the the the the apportionment of this fee across the different parcels that based on the contribution to the system, unlike your water system, we can't measure how much water comes off. It's much like your garbage rates and your sewer rates. You have to model how much contribution the different properties make. And in doing that, we have to look at the data that's available to build this model, a way to administer it reasonably, so you don't have to redo it every year. So the typical way, in a pretty fair way, time tested, is to create different categories. And that's what you have in before you as the different categories of land use as we close to them on land uses because apartment buildings, commercial properties, offices, schools, those groups tend to have similar characteristics. There's obviously variations within a group, but we have to create some sort of group of buckets to put people in. So within each bucket, you may have some parcels that are up at the high end of impervious and some at the low end. Yet they all pay the same rate. So there's it's not perfect, but there is no perfect system. Even if you drill down on an individual parcel basis, there's going to be flaws and you just have to go back to a reasonableness argument on that. So based on that, that's sort of the basis of how we do this fee, just like you do your sewer fees and your garbage fees. Thank you very much. Any questions? Okay. Any for the council questions? Both Mary Knox White. Mr. Becerra. Mr. Garland. Mr. Garland. Just a clarification, because you started to say that that there's a protection built in to Prop 218 that says if you don't need the money, you can't collect it, essentially, correct? Yes. Okay. You then said that council future councils have the option if they want to reduce the. But if the end of the day, I think the protection you meant is I just for clarity sake, the protection you meant to put out there was that if the money is not needed, we can't collect it in the future. Yeah, that's true. In other words, if there's stormwater, the needs of that stormwater system for whatever reason, decline over time or diminished, then the revenue and the fee have got to diminish with it legally required. Thank you. Councilmember Desai. Question So what thought was given to doing basically a door tax approach? Because a concern that I have has to do with, say, you have a three story multifamily apartment, maybe 500 unit 400 unit, multifamily apartment, used to be called Harbor Isle Summerhill. So what consideration was given to a door tax approach as opposed to this impervious surface approach? Looks like Mr. Bradshaw. I didn't quite catch you. You said the vortex or. Door tax. On rain falls down and it falls on whatever down there on the ground. So if you look down the way the rain hits it, it doesn't matter. For buildings, one story tall or ten stories tall is the amount of impervious surface that projects up to the sky. So you can have apartment building with ten units that can sit on the same sized parcel with the same basic footprint as one that has 200 units that might be 15 stories tall. So based on that, if they're on the same half acre parcel, for instance, or three quarter of an acre parcel, they would pay the same fee. And usually it works out pretty, pretty fair, I think, within a class. So what you're saying then is on a per square foot basis, regardless of use, land use type, single family home or a multi-family home on a per square foot basis, per square foot of impervious surface basis, it should be relatively the same. Yeah. And actually, if, if you calculate this for the center point or the average point of each class and work it backwards, it comes out to two and three quarters cents per square foot. Guard loss of class. Now, we don't put that in the study because that's not the rate recharging. We're charging on a per parcel or per acre basis for convenience sake and for the sake of having these categories. But it does work out the same across all classes. It's just that the Summerhill Summer House apartments are just a larger impervious surface. So on a discrete basis, they're going to obviously pay much more than I will pay. Right? Okay. Any further questions before we go to public comment? Okay. So I now open the public hearing for the proposed stormwater fee. If you wish to speak, please fill out a speaker card and give it to the city clerk. Please be ready to speak as soon as the person before you has finished. You may only speak once during this hearing. All comments are limited to I believe it's going to be 3 minutes, because right now we have just five speakers. So listen for your name. Be ready to be on deck if you're the next speaker. And let's get started. That wasn't in the script. Allen Teague and Edward Payne are the first three. Good evening, Madam Mayor. Council members and staff, particularly Liam and his team. Messenger Last January, I expressed my hope that the city would set a bold course to protect Alameda from both the near and longer term effects of sea level rise. I am pleased to acknowledge that a great deal of progress has in fact been made. The resolution before you tonight will give us all a very real chance to be prepared for the near-term effects. Absent absent a majority protest, I urge you to vote for the resolution, and I thank you in advance for doing so. As for the longer term effects of sea level rise, please continue to work at the regional level and state level to ensure that the Bay Area has a plan and the ability to carry it out. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Medved. Our next speaker, Mr. T. I can help. And please give your anything to the clerk, not to individual council members. Oh, I'm sorry. Did I? Who is their next speaker? Oh, it was excellent. Oh, sir, you must be the one after Mr. Teague. First off, thank you so much for passing the proclamation and LGBTQ Heritage Month. Well, History Month. As I grew up gay did not exist, which makes it very difficult for you to determine who you are. Thank you. First off, I want to thank Gerry Bradshaw and Liam Garland for answering my many questions. Unfortunately, they didn't ask one, which was what were the alternative rate calculations that we could do? According to the California Constitution, the local government bears the burden of proving by preponderance of evidence that the cost of governmental activity are allocated on a parcel in a fair and reasonable relationship to the parcels burden on their activity. In this case, a parcels impact on the stormwater management system. Preponderance basically means based on convincing evidence and is probable truth or accuracy, not on the amount of evidence quality over quantity. We have two neighboring pilot parcels. One is a lot filled with a 30 plus unit apartment building, and the other is a large single family home , which was converted to five units. Both lots are just under half an acre. The apartment building has almost 100% imperviousness and drains most of its rainfall into the storm drains. The five unit property has a property, approximately 55% imperviousness, and the vast majority of the rainfall is absorbed into the ground as the imperviousness is separated by pervious material between the back and the front. Both of these parcels will pay the same. Under this parcel, this property proposition. The only difference between the five unit and a single family home, which would be two, three or two or four units, is that it was converted the carriage house into two units, making it five. So the footprints of the buildings are the same as it was in 1900. This is a single piece of evidence that exhibits an unfair and unreasonable, unreasonable relationship of the impact of one parcel on the stormwater system. What I gave you was showing you that 10% of the parcels is supposedly representing 58% of the costs of the stormwater system. 10% of the parcels of Alameda. 10% paying. 58%. On the surface, that does not sound like the actual impact. So I am in favor of funding this project. I want to pay my fair share. I am not asking for my property be excluded or changed specifically. I am looking for fair and reasonable allocation of the costs. I don't see how this Council can make that finding with the current distribution. I do want to fund this project, but I would like to do it in a fair and reasonable way. Thank you. Thank you. Next be. Here. Edward Payne. Then Ken Peterson. Then Ruth Abbe. Mr. Payne. Good evening. My name is Ed Payne. I was raised here in Alameda. I'm here speaking on behalf of six homeowners and members of the Waterfront Homeowners Association. The purpose of me being here tonight is to inform the council members of the hundreds or thousands of tons of debris that is dumped on our properties every year for years from a storm drain. I've got pictures here showing the damage to our property from this from the debris and sediment and rubbish and trash and pollutants that it keeps get dumped on to our property every year. Two surveys showed that in a period of 20 months, 252 tons of debris and trash has accumulated on our properties. Now, in all fairness, I've met with the director of Public Works yesterday morning and we discussed this. We showed them that one of the problems we have is a broken storm drain. Now, the reason I'm here tonight is just to simply inform the council members. And I my hope is, is that a solution can be obtained to stop this dumping of debris from this storm drain onto our properties. Where, you know, we're our properties are being destroyed and these are properties which we pay taxes on. And, you know, we have a right to we've paid a premium for our properties. And I think that it's fair that a solution be found. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Payne. And I, I I'm happy to hear you talking with the public works director and staff certainly has heard your comments that thank you and staff will follow up with you. Our next speaker, Ken Peterson. Mr. Peterson. I think that's me. My hearing isn't very good. So Ken Peterson. Thank you. I'm Ken Peterson. The problem with the stormwater and the effluent is certainly is a serious problem. One of the great concerns currently with the environment has to do with plastics and the amount of plastics that are going into the waterways, the oceans and so forth, and the effect on the life of these small particles that can be ingested and get into the food chain. I was surprised to note that the containment filters that are in the system as proposed use plastic, plastic which can break down and go on into the oceans just exactly what we don't want to happen. And so I'm wondering why they choose a plastic where they can use an organic alternative such as Excelsior or Raffia or some other material which can break down and can be digested by the wildlife. Thank you, Mr. Peterson. Miss Abby. Good evening, Madam Mayor. Members of the City Council. I was a participant in the city's stakeholder process for the Climate Action and Resiliency Plan, and I attended all of the meetings of that plan. I also attended all of the meetings of the proposed stormwater fee and the infrastructure proposal for that's before the city council tonight. This is really an essential part of the city's infrastructure to protect the city from the impacts of sea level rise. And I would urge the council to move forward with this ballot, to put this on to the property owners tonight. And we would look forward to a partnership with the city and getting the word out about the essential nature of this fee. It is so very important that our storm water system be able to carry away the the waters that come from the storm surge, from storms from into our storm drains and out to the bay. And and this will protect the city for years to come. If we want to ask state and regional agencies to support the city in our future, protecting ourselves from this lot sea level rise. We need to ensure that we are doing our fair share, that our residents, ratepayers, our property owners are paying for the systems that we need to maintain to protect our city. We can't expect state, regional or federal. Agencies to fund our problems if we are not ready to fund them ourselves. So I very much encourage the City Council to put this issue before the property owners and to support the passage of this ballot. Thank you. Thank you. And Mr. Ashby was our last speaker. Okay. So are there any other people who would like to speak on this issue? Are there any written communications to be read into the record? Are there any other communications the public wishes to make? At this time, I am issuing the last call for written protests for the proposed 2019 water quality and flood protection fee. Please turn in any written protest that you wish to have counted. Protests received after the close of the public hearing will not be counted. So do we have any protests that have been turned in in the course of the meeting? No. Okay. The public hearing is now closed. City council members. Are there any final questions you'd ask of staff before the city clerk tells us whether there has been a majority protest? Madam Mayor. Councilmember Bella into the microphone, there. Were some questions raised. About the public speakers. And did you wish Mr. Galan, Mr. Bradshaw, to go back to the microphone? Yes. Did you delegate Mr. Galan okay? Yeah, I didn't. Just be surprised to. Hear it. Thank you. Mr. T brought up some interesting points and handed out some materials. He mentioned that 10% of the parcels, the nonresidential portion of the city would pay about 58% of the revenue. And that's true. But what he didn't have he didn't have how many acres were in the nonresidential, because this is more of a per acre type of fee than a number of parcels. Obviously, the nonresidential parcels are oftentimes much larger. 49% of the acreage in town is nonresidential and they pay that 58%. So they do pay a little more than their fair share per acre. But as you might guess, apartments, shopping centers, things like that are much more covered in impervious surface than our residential parcels. So that kind of fits and that makes sense. What was that percentage again? 49% of the acres in town are in that category of nonresidential, and that's what fuels that 58% of the revenues. I also did a quick calculation. I mentioned earlier that the the core element is a two and three quarter cents per square foot of impervious surface that that is universal across all classes. We don't apply that to individual parcels because it's just unworkable to have a system where you do all 20,000 parcels and drill down on each one year after year, keep track of changes to the add their driveway, all these things, it's just unworkable. That's why we do it. A statistical approach that is more durable. But if you were to take that two and three quarter, since we calculate the 55% impervious area on his particular parcel would come out to a fee of about $316. Now he's being levied 436 So yeah, he's at the lower end, but it's much closer to the 436 that he's been levied within the $85 a year he would want to be in as a single family residence on a large parcel. I did a quick one for the parcel next door, which is paved over 34 units and he would pay under that drill down number about 546. Instead of the 436, he'd be in charge. So you see, there's there's, you know, pluses and minuses within each group. But those are both much closer to the $436 that they're each being charged than to the residential rate of $85, which is what it is for a large residential parcel. All right, thank you. And city attorney Mr. Shen. I just want to ask Mr. Bradshaw a question and possibly to correct the record. Mr. Bradshaw, you mentioned, as you were explaining to the council, the fair share calculation you have. I heard you say something to the effect of they do pay more than their fair share. I'm assuming that's a misstatement. I think what you meant to say. So they do pay their fair share no more, no less. Consistent with your calculations? Yes. That is based on the statistical approach that we take for the entire rate structure. Thank you. Okay, Miss Vella, were your questions answered? Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? Vice Mayor Knox. What? I think this is a question for Director Garland. My memory is that when we talked about the climate action and resiliency plan, that the stormwater system and I don't remember, but I believe the stormwater system is kind of the first system in this. City that is going to be impacted and that we do not have the funding for this. That's right. So beyond just taking care of maintaining and running the existing system. This fee is going to be needed in order to address that issue and and others. That's right. And so there's two components to that. One is, with climate change, we're going to see more frequent and more intense storms. And that means our stormwater system in its capacity is just going to have to increase. And the second portion is that our perimeter is going to have to deal with sea level rise and those for those perimeter improvements. This proposed fee is a funding source. Okay. Thank you. And then my second question is more of a leading question. There's 20,500 spots. There is there is a talking point out there that somehow that we have used property the city has chosen to 18 method because the city gets to vote on its parcels and somehow that's going to have a huge impact on the outcome of this. But I believe the staff report says there are 138 parcels that the city controls that we will be discussing tonight, but that there's 20,590 or 20,600 total parcels. So it's that's less than a half percent. So I think that's correct. Looking for a yes. Okay. Question and Councilmember de SAC. So my understanding is that part of this will will help cover the costs of fixing the lagoons. Isn't that a cost that's borne by the homeowners on the south side of the lagoons right now? Let me explain. So the for both our South Shore lagoons and for the lagoons out on Bay Farm Island, there are maintenance agreements that involve both the affected homeowners associations and the city. And those maintenance agreements delineate difference maintenance responsibilities that get into a level of detail of, hey, if you're doing X maintenance, the city pays 30% . Homeowner's association plays 70%. And with different maintenance activities, there's different percentages that apply. And what not everybody knows is that those systems, those lagoons are a part of our stormwater system. That is where stormwater often goes, settles before it gets to the bay. And so the answer is yes that that this proposed fee could help fund some of that maintenance and capital work around the lagoons and that those adjacent homeowner's associations would still be responsible for their portion under those maintenance agreements. But the city is also kicking in as a whole, so it's lessening the south side of the lagoons. The residents who live on the south end of the lagoons, they're going to have to. They're going to. There's contribution will could potentially lessen because the city, if this passes, would be kicking in more. No, I'm not aware of that that the whether this fee is approved by Alameda INS or not will not change the portion which that the adjacent homeowners association is responsible under the current maintenance agreement. Okay. Okay. Okay. Any further questions by council? All right. Um. So, um. Okay. So we've asked our final questions. Can the clerk tell us the total number of protests and whether there is a majority protest? There are 20,578 parcels affected by the proposed stormwater fee. Therefore, to achieve a majority protest, we would need to have 10,290 protests after considering the protest submitted prior to a public hearing. And there were none submitted tonight. There are a total of 64 protests. Therefore, there is not a majority in the Council. May consider the resolution and fee ordinance. Thank you. Is there a motion to approve the resolution stating that a majority protest does not exist? Directing a property related ballot, proceeding for the city's 2019 water quality and flood protection fee, and directing the city manager to vote yes for city owned parcels and to introduce the ordinance establishing the water quality and flood protection fee. So moved. Back and. I have a motion and a second all in favor. I opposed abstained. The motion passes all of the motions passed unanimously. Thank you very much, everyone, for being here. And I would like to just call a quick ten minute break before we go into our next item. So it is almost 835. We will start again at 845. We're moving along really well. So everybody be back on time. I'll see you then. Thank you. Morning. I a. Call. There's brownies and cookies back. Okay. Si. Si, si. Okay. Okay. Okay. Now, are you driving? Like I said. We are ready to go. All right. If I could ask everyone to take your places, please. Um, could I ask everyone to be seated or to take your conversation out to the hall? Those in the aisle? Could I ask you to sit down? Thank you. Okay. We said we'd start at 845. It's 845. We are moving on to item six C.