Public Hearing to Consider Endorsing: 1) an Annual Report on the Status of the General Plan and Housing Element, and 2) an Annual Report on the Status of the Transportation Choices Plan and Associated Work Program Priorities.  [Consideration of an Annual Report is exempt from review under California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), pursuant to CEQA Guidelines Section 15061(b)(3), the general rule that CEQA only applies to actions that have the potential to cause a significant impact on the environment.] (Planning Building & Transportation 481005)
Thing to consider. Endorsing an annual report on the status of the general power and housing element in the annual report on the status of the Transportation Choices Plan and Associated Work Program Priorities. Evening. Good evening, Madam Mayor. Members of the City Council. Andrew Thomas, Planning Director. I am going to present tonight our annual report on the general plan and housing element, as well as your transportation choices and these these annual reports which were reviewed by your Transportation Commission and your planning board in February and their recommendations on the on on these two separate annual reports are included in your packet. These are annual reports. They're an opportunity they're important for our planning efforts, both in land use and transportation. It's an opportunity for the community and the council to sort of check on our progress, look at what we've done over the past year, but probably even more importantly, to talk about what we need to focus on in the future for the benefit for the public. I know the council knows this, but it's all about setting priorities. Your last couple items, you discussed this, you know, limited resources, limited, whether it's staffing or financial. Lots of needs, lots of desires. So it's all about really making sure that on all of these issues that we, the council and the staff and the community as much as possible, we're all sort of on the same page pushing on this, on the right projects, the right priorities. So this is really an opportunity to have those that kind of discussion on an annual basis. We don't need any sort of formal approval tonight. Tonight is not about like, okay, we're done. We're finished. It's really about an opportunity for the council to to to review our recommended priorities and and give us adjustments. Give us your thoughts, your ideas. This will then influence other documents and other projects. In a few months, you'll be looking at your two year budget. This is this is an opportunity for you to sort of adjust some of the priorities, which would then you might see adjusted in your two year budget. So it's a chance for us to get some feedback from you on at a very sort of a 30,000 foot level. It you might tonight indicate to us, hey, these are some there's a lot of information in these reports you might tonight direct us to to schedule a future meeting with the council, a workshop on a particular initiative or a particular project that you feel really needs a lot more discussion because there's a lot of material on these reports that we don't there's not enough time tonight to talk about every single project in depth. So if that's something that's interest, it's important to you. Please let us know. You know, obviously your thoughts and your comments will influence how we talk to the boards and commissions about these various issues. So it's very helpful to know really and make sure that we're on the same page with you as to what your priorities are. And then, of course, on a daily basis, we're working with other agencies, our transportation partners in the region, other jurisdictions, our neighbors in Oakland. So it's just it will influence how we how we do our jobs as staff at all sorts of levels. Let's start with the general planning report, as you know. But for the benefit of the public, we have a general plan. It's required by state law. It needs to be up to date. It needs to be internally consistent. The last comprehensive update of the general plan was in 1990. You have been busy, though, in the last few the last 20 years you've dealt you've created a number of new elements which were required by the departure of the Navy. You did your northern waterfront element. You've updated your transportation element, your housing element a few times. We have a brand new safety and noise element that you just finished a couple of years ago. But there are four elements that have not gotten a comprehensive update essentially in 20, 29 years. And it's time it's so really the priorities are we need to tackle a comprehensive update of our land use element. It is just there are portions of it this are badly out of date. The other thing that we need to keep checking and making sure that all these elements are internally consistent as part of the land use element, one of the big priorities is the climate change update. This is, you know, in 1989 when the last general plan. Was comprehensively updated. You know, the concept of climate change and sea level rise just did not enter the conversation. It has entered into your general plan through your safety and noise element two years ago. But now it's time to start integrating this in a much more comprehensive way and making sure, because you've got your climate action plan coming to you in the upcoming months and will be really a big part of the community discussion over the next couple of months. And of course, your most recent resolution declaring an emergency on this. This is it's very important that we have your general plans sinking up with your climate action plan. Obviously, our parks and open space elements need to be updated. This is something else that we think we can get done in the next two year cycle. And then, of course, just making sure we have an internal update of the entire document. This is a this is a big workload. But we think with the with with the help of the community and the planning board, we can get these elements moving through in a series for your final review and approval during the next two year period with the with the priority being the climate change update and the land use element followed by open space and parks. Let's move to the housing element. This is also an annual report required by state law. We do this every year with the council. It's an opportunity to check in on where we're at as a community, on our housing element. Our housing element, as you will remember, is we updated every eight years. We updated every eight years in response to a state requirement to show the state how we're going to accommodate what's called our regional housing needs allocation or arena, which is the term often referred to. We are right smack in the middle of our eight year period right now. So we're in the 2014 through 2023 period. We have done eight years. Our arena, just to remind everybody, is 1723 new housing units. What's interesting about the arena is that it has it, and this is not surprising if you think about it. Yes, there's a need for 1723 more housing units in Alameda, but a large proportion, over 50%, if you just look at need, is in the you know, the affordable categories, the very low, the low, the moderate categories. So there's a within that larger regional need, there's a a really large percentage of it is at the lower level affordability. So halfway through, we have issued building permits for over 600 units. That's about 35%. So it looks like we're lagging if you want. If we were going to spread this out over the eight year period, we would, you know, we want to be further along more like eight, 900 units. But there is a couple projects, one in particular, the Del Monte project that we approved four years ago, if that project had been built on a was had been under construction and built, as we anticipated four or five years ago, we would actually be ahead of schedule. So what's interesting about Alameda, because we tend to have fewer projects, but they are larger projects. One or two get delayed and it starts to really sort of throw off our numbers. In terms of 2018. Last year it was a very good year for housing in Alameda with the two big projects of animal terminals and Alameda Marina . We entitled 1500 housing units. We won't see those units necessarily. In fact, we definitely will not see them all built during this cycle. But that's going to make a big difference on the next cycle. So, you know, as the council knows, but I think we people in the community sort of forget when we have these hearings, the planning board do, oh, 600 units, people sort of think like we're going to approve them at the planning board, and then two days later, they're all going to be there. I mean, the units that we're building, the 600, most of those are at Alameda Landing. We approved that project originally in 2006, but they're finally getting built and occupied now. So there's a real lag on this. In 2018, we issued 181 building permits, so we're slowly chugging away. I think with the entitlements that we have approved over the last four years, it looks like we will hit our 1723 building permits over the eight years. I you know, we'll see. There's a lot of things that are out of our control that obviously the regional and local economy is a big part of whether we'll make that going. Well, we've certainly entitled enough units to get there, but the state tracks building permits. So we really need to think about building permits in terms of whether we're going to meet our goal, what we're probably not going to. In fact, we will most likely definitely not meet. It is with even though we may get 1723 new building permits, we're not going to have 56% of those in the low income categories, as you know. But for the benefit of the public, we require that every project provide 15% affordable housing. So at that rate, we're obviously not going to get to to 56%. We do have the benefit of a very active local housing authority, and their projects are 100% affordable. So that's going to help. But the real message here is we've got to keep approving these projects and we have to keep working on looking at ways that we can incentivize encourage more units in the affordable categories. So looking at this, your planning board priorities, which are reflective, of course, of staff's priorities as well, and very similar to the priorities that we discussed a year ago. Keep expediting the review, especially of affordable housing. Move those projects through our process as fast as possible and encourage them. Number two and the planning board spend a lot of time talking about this. We need to keep looking at our zoning codes. It's not and our fee structures. What can we do to. What little things can we do? Or big things to really encourage affordable housing, workforce housing, affordable by design housing, really sort of broadness. And there was the staff report that was in the packet wasn't as clear about this as it should have been. And the planning board sort of reminded me at the last meeting, no, it wasn't just the deed restricted, affordable they were talking about. It was these the workforce housing, the types of things that this council has talked about in the past. For example, right now, our impact fee structure in a multifamily project, you know, our fee structure is, is if you have a very small unit, a studio, and then another unit that's four bedroom, three bath, you know, the the impact fee is the same. You know, that was an example of one of the things they started thinking about. Maybe we should be think rethinking that, you know, if we really want small, affordable by design units, maybe we should try to incentivize that by adjusting the fee structure or the zoning requirements. Obviously, number three is a big one. Transportation Committee Planning Board and Transportation Commission keep pushing this. We got to keep working on transportation to support this, you know, future housing as well as improving transportation throughout the city. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. Zoning amendments to really support and our need for additional supportive housing. Homeless shelters and services. Senior assisted living projects. And one of the the we don't have good definitions of these in our zoning code we are not clear where we would like these services located or as clear as we could be. And one of the sort of concepts that have been we've been talking about at the planning board and among staff is, you know, these are always these are tough issues to talk about. It's very, very tough when you start dealing with a project in a particular neighborhood for these kinds of things. And we need to start setting the standards in our codes that every neighborhood needs to do its part. It's we shouldn't be getting into a conversation of, Oh, my neighborhood's not right for this. You should make this thing go to a different neighborhood. It's every neighborhood in. Alameda needs to do its share. The resolution you did earlier with the wellness center, with the church, perfect example. Every neighborhood, any church, anywhere in Alameda who wants to do that should have no question that they can do that. And then, of course, objective design standards. This is something that's come up through recent changes in state law, but it's also important and supports all this. We need to make very, very clear what our expectations are for design. We need to be able to write them down, set them as measurable, objective standards. What this does is it it has the benefit for the community. Let's be clear what our expectations are. And then for when the projects come through, we don't spend a lot of time just discussing what our expectations are. You either meet them or you don't. If you meet them, we should be able get you through this entitlement process fast. All right. Moving right along. Let's move to Transportation Choices plan annual report. This is your you adopted this plan. It's a comprehensive plan. Council member de SOG was the first council member many years ago to say, hey, it's time for a plan like this. And then it took us several years to get it done. But we're glad to have you back for the first annual report. You wait long and. At. The. We are. I won't I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about what we accomplished in the first year. But I'm going to just jump right. To sort of. From our perspective, what are the priorities for for next year? And this is when we talk about transportation. It's resources are the issue. There is so much work, so many transportation projects. There's 39 projects and in this plan. So it's all about setting our priorities. And because there's no way we don't have the resources, we don't have, whether it's staff or financial, to do all things all at once. So it's very important that we as a community kind of focus on what we need to get done and then get it done and then move to the next one. So our priorities as outlined in the annual report, and I'm focusing now very much on the next two years, this is once again important. And the reason we really started talking about two years in this annual report is because we were very conscious that in a couple months you'll be looking at a new two year budget. Big priorities, ferry services. We've done a great job. Our ferry ferry ridership just continues to grow. We are going to break ground on a new third ferry terminal this year at the Seaplane Lagoon. Obviously a priority. We've got to keep doing that. It's still a lot of work to be done and we've got to get it. We got to get it opened in 2020 when the first housing opens at Alameda City. We are also working with WETA, our partner in this and with the three money to make to. Then when that opens, we will be expanding our services to San Francisco as well to Oakland in the South Bay. So that's a huge win for Alameda. It's where we're almost at the finish line in 2020. We can't sort of get distracted. Got to keep going on that. There's a new initiative that we're working on. And let me just preface, I said at the beginning, this is not something that just, you know, the there's two transportation planners helping Rochelle Wheeler myself. And then we've got our public works staff who also Scott's here and Liam's here and there and their staff. You don't have a huge Transportation Department to do all this. So these guys are doing all the work. I will just interject that we have quality, if not quantity. Yes, that's. Right. We're we're all worth three people. The we are just earlier this year, we started working public works and transportation planning on parking management. This is something we've talked a lot about. But, you know, charging for parking at ferry terminals, we've got of parking and we're we have our new residential moving in in Alameda Point. Our transportation strategy for only two point depends very strongly on parking management. We want to. So charging for parking at ferry terminals making sure that we don't just turn Alameda point into a giant parking lot. This is a major effort. We'll be back in July, late June, July with a comprehensive report on this, because when you start charging for parking, it means you start taking seriously enforcement of parking. And this is so you're not going to enforce your parking. The charging isn't going to work. So that's a big thing coming up. And a lot of work, bus services. We continue to work with our partnership with AC Transit and we think that that's been a very successful partnership. We need the big the big push. We've done a lot in the last couple of years with the opening of Site A at Alameda Point in early 2020. Not only do we well, we have if we do everything well, have the ferry services running. We will also, as required by the council in the development agreements for site, a 15 minute service connecting site to downtown Oakland. So this will be the beginning of the first time in a very, very, very long time, if ever, you know, really good transit. Services from the very western edge of the island into downtown Oakland. And then, of course, we are continuing to build slowly, but we're constantly trying to build our citywide E-Z Pass program. So where have all new developments are being entered into this easy pass program? The goal of that program, for the better, the benefit of the public is we would like to ultimately get to the point where most, if not all, of the city of Alameda is a member of our program, meaning you have a pass to get on transit. Right now, that pass program is just eligible for AC transit services. The ultimate goal, if we could, you know, and this is not something we're going to accomplish in two years, but to build tours is to be able to have everybody be able to have a pass. It gets them on ferry services, water shuttles and or busses so that, you know, we basically turn all of our residents and and employees into transit users. And then, of course, Transbay Services is something we are constantly working with AC Transit on. Alameda Residents use transit transbay services. As the council notices, those lines are often packed, people are left behind. So that argument that nobody rides busses does not hold true for Alameda. Let's just talk about the priority. So that was that was ferry service and bus services. Let's talk about estuary crossings. There we are. We continue to work on these. These are not efforts that get done in two years or one year. But they they are efforts that if we don't work on them every year, they will not happen. So it's something we try to keep our eye on the ball on this. A couple of things. This has been a priority in the transportation plan for four years. None of our crossings meet what's called the Lifeline Standard. So in the event of a major earthquake, we're not guaranteed that any of our busses and bridges and tubes would still be standing. We would like, as a city to get to the point where we would know with with a fair amount of certainty that at least one would be standing and usable for whether it's evacuation off the island or bringing of emergency services and facilities and personnel onto the island. We've been focusing on the Miller Sweeney Bridge, and that is a a listed project in the regional transportation plan. But we don't have the money yet and we don't have the plans yet, but that's the one we've been targeting. We have also been looking at how do we improve access from Alameda, specifically West Alameda, to a across the estuary to Oakland. There are several pieces to this project. One of the big piece that we've been frankly working on for too long, like 17 to 18 years, is what's called the Oakland Alameda Access Project. And it deals with the connections between the tubes and the I-80 freeway that lower that lower left slide. This is an effort that we are working on fairly with the county. This is not a city project. This is a county project with Oakland and Alameda to improve the freeway access. But what that and improve that basically automobile commute connection. But what that conversation is also really brought to the surface and is the lack of an adequate connection for bicycles and pedestrians from West Alameda to Oakland because that that that path in the tube is just completely inadequate. And that is generally the conversation about a future bridge, a pedestrian bicycle bridge. We this year we came up with a conceptual design for a lift bridge. It's shown on the top, right? This would be a bicycle and pedestrian bridge crossing the estuary lift bridge from Alameda Landing to Jack London Square. We are working with the county and the region to to to get the money to do the next phase of that study, which would be a more detailed feasibility study. This is a concept plan. What we don't really understand is what it would cost to build. Obviously, this is not something the city of Alameda could ever afford on its own. This is something that we would have to convince the region and the state is a necessary regional facility connecting Alameda to Oakland. We other thing that's interesting about this is if we're going to build something like this, which is a major structure, we should probably build it to a lifeline standard because it may not be adequate for everybody to drive back and forth every day on their with their cars. But in the event of a major earthquake, we would sure want that thing standing up so that emergency vehicle could get across. You know, this thing is going to be about 18 feet wide. Bikes and pedestrians in an emergency, we could get an emergency vehicle across or an ambulance. This conversation is also discussed. You know, these are long that's a long term vision. That's something that takes another 15, 20 years to fund and build. So we got to keep thinking about shorter term solutions. The water shuttle connection is something that we as a city continue to work on. We have been requiring every project in Alameda to build a water shuttle landing. We require every project now, I mean, to provide money for transit. The vision here is once we get enough people living on the waterfront, both on the Alameda side as well as the Oakland side, we then start have the critical mass to start funding a water shuttle operation back and forth between oakland and alameda. We've also been talking to the oakland a's about this and the region. If they are if the region is going to start working on the freeway, which is going to affect the bike, pedestrian connections through the tubes, obviously, then maybe they need to help us fund this water shuttle. Likewise, we've been talking to the a's and the city about and the c of almeida's letter on the a's e.r. Indicated that this is something that they should also be thinking about funding as a connection between oakland and. At least during game days when the congestion from the new 35,000 person stadium would further impact that interchange right at the I-80 freeway, which is already in deficiency, it's been in deficiency for 17 years. Lastly, the conversation with the A's has generated a renewed effort to look at the possibility for a gondola connection between Oakland and Alameda . We met a week or two ago. The mayor was there with the president from the A's and they came over to talk to us a little bit more about this. And I thought it was interesting the way they describe it. They they are designing a gondola to go from BART to the new stadium at Jacqueline Square. And the way they described it is, you know, that they want to make it easy for their fans to get from BART to their new stadium. And they said told us, look, every time we show this to anybody in Oakland, whether it's the mayor of Oakland or the head of transportation in Oakland or the just folks on the street in Oakland, the very first question they ask is, well, can you extend that over to Alameda? And I thought that was interesting because if there is an opportunity to extend a gondola over to Alameda, if there's one already being built in Oakland to get to BART, that's a really intriguing opportunity for us. We have done some initial look at this and we are working with them on the next phase of this study of this gondola. What would it really take to extend it across the estuary in the same basic location? Connecting to Jack London. And one of the interesting things that really struck me is if we could extend it all the way to the intersection of Atlantic and Webster, which is our main sort of right to College of Alameda and all of our busses, sort of central west Alameda. The thing that's exciting about the gondola is if you get on there, you are at the entrance to BART in 6 minutes. I mean, it's the thing about these is they're just incredibly quick and you don't wait for a gondola. You just walk up and the next one shows up. There's no wait time. So we don't know if it's feasible, but we're studying it and we're going to be looking at it this year with the Oakland A's. Let me just quickly move to the last few. Last but not least, in fact, in fact, many in many ways, probably most important, the transportation choices plan talks a lot about if we really need we're really interested in trying to reduce traffic, reduce greenhouse gases in Alameda. We've got to make the walking experience, the bicycling experience more pleasant and safer. People need to feel like it's easy to walk, that it's easy to bike, that it's safe for their children to walk and bike. And that's how we're going to we can make a big difference in terms of on island congestion. So we're got a number of projects underway. I'm just going to name four of them. We've been the city of Alameda has been making great progress on the cross alameda trail. That's a dedicated bike pedestrian path across the entire length of the island from Alameda Point all the way to the Fruitvale Bridge and into Oakland. The section in Alameda Point is under construction right now. Um, your public works department started construction this year on the next phase, which is Main Street all the way to Constitution. Your Parks Department finished the Jean Sweeney segment last year. We've got plans in place and funding for the next segments behind Del Monte, although there are some holdups there that we're working on, and then we've got the construction money to do the next phase, which is grand to Broadway. Last year, the city acquired the necessary right of way from Union Pacific to get to the Tilden Bridge. We will be coming back later this year with final design concepts for the segment between Grand and Broadway. That's on Clement. So that project is making great progress. We still have a ways to go. Central Avenue that the design process on that is still underway. We will be back in June with a update report on that and the request for authorization for the next phase of that. We're also working to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety and car safety, frankly, on central, which is is an issue. And then Otis Drive as well as the main street section going up to the Main Street Ferry terminal. I won't talk about all these. We've got a lot going on, but all with the same goal, making these streets safer. And so the people feel more. Comfortable using alternative modes of mobility. Okay, that's it. Thank you, Mr. Thomas. Does the Council have any clarifying questions before we go to our public comments? Okay, hearing then. Do we have public comment? We have four speakers. Okay. We have Denise Trapani, Ruth Abi's, Heather Little and Pat Potter. So Denise is up first. Thank you. Honorable Mayor Ashcraft and. Council members, thanks for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. 11 years. That's how long the scientific experts at the United Nations say we have to completely redesign our carbon emitting systems. 11 years to make the changes that we need to avoid catastrophic effects of climate change. In California, the majority of our carbon emissions are from transportation. Specifically, 40% come from light personal transportation. That's how we all get around. To put that into. Perspective, it took us over three years to get one stop sign installed at our most dangerous intersection at Santa Clara in Sherman. And yet we're not seeing a single policy proposal in any of our plans that would change either what we're doing or, more importantly, how we're doing it. I'm really frustrated that we're not seeing any policy change recommendations in either the team or in the scope of work for the active transportation plan that was recently approved. There's nothing in there that says we're actually going to do anything any differently. They have big lists of projects in there and they're great projects, but they'll be design funded and approved in exactly the same way that these projects have always been. Meaning it'll take another three years to get another stop sign installed. By contrast, as an example, Cambridge, Massachusetts recently passed a city ordinance stating that any road improvement project would have to include a physically protected cycle track. They made this bold policy change in order to get people out of cars and to give them a safe alternative to driving. And that's the. Type of leadership I would expect to see if we really think we're in a climate emergency, which we just declared. We cannot be spending years in the design and community outreach phases anymore. We have 11 years to make these massive changes and we've spent the last five years discussing whether the lives of people who are trying to make a difference on their own by not driving, we've been debating whether their lives are worth a few parking spaces on Central. Where is the leadership. In holding public works accountable for the fact that we have zero consistency in how pedestrian signals work in Alameda and that we almost universally time lights and signal phases to favor cars over pedestrians? Where is the leadership and telling leader that we're not going to allow free unlimited parking at our ferry terminals anymore? Or forget wieder. Why do we still have free unlimited parking everywhere here on Sundays? Where's the leadership in telling the planning department that we're not going to approve sidewalk encroachment permits anymore? When a parklet could fill an outdoor seating need, it would show that you value public space for pedestrians over personal car. Storage in our business districts. Where's the leadership in changing the. Policy so a private business owner can't dictate whether or not a bike rack gets installed on a public sidewalk near their business? Where's the leadership in telling the building department that we're not going to pass building inspections of retail? Thank you, Mr. Panay. Our next speaker. Abby. This is Abby, followed by Heather Little. Thank you. Good evening. I have you. I'm on the sustain of. Sustainable Development Planning Committee of CASA. So I wanted to clarify that. And we've had Mr. Thomas come to speak to our committee and we are very thrilled to see the movement forward on the general plan and the land use plan. You will have the draft climate action plan and resiliency plan before you in the next couple of months. That planning process has been a good process. It's been a public process, but it's been done without the direction and leadership of the entire council. And it is the land use plan and the general plan that actually provide the policies for the city. The Climate Action Plan will identify projects and they will be great. We consider it kind of a down payment on the future, but we need a really visionary general plan. Alameda is the most vulnerable city in the Bay Area to the impacts of sea level rise. And we need a visionary land use plan that takes us into consideration to the end of this century and beyond. So we very much encourage the next steps, whatever you need to do in terms of your budget process into getting those updates and and having a robust public process over and above the Climate Action Plan, which was great, but that was begun with the prior council. We need your direction and your leadership in this next phase of having a general plan that will reflect the vision of the city. Thanks. Thank you. Next is heavy metal products. Hi. Good evening. Mayor Ashcraft, City Council, thank you so much for having me speak tonight. I was talking about, you know, my time coming for council and I'll talk in just a second about how it's in my mind. It's been three years, three years, three years since I've been back in city and involved in all these conversations. But my God, I mean, losing to Andrew. Talk about how long it's taking to get some of these conversations and how long it will be taking to get some of these ideas to come through. It really humbles me in terms of what we are faced with and also makes me want to challenge all of you to kind of really think about the bureaucracy that's involved with some of the decision making that we're having to go through in order to get some of these actions to pass through. So with that, my comments tonight are three years ago, nearly three years ago, I came before city council. Many of you were sitting on city council when I first brought to you forward the accident that incurred with my husband, Mark, when he was run off the road on Main Street. That was absolutely horrifying to me. And that meeting was a real wake up call for me to the importance about ensuring that we have safe and reliable opportunities to move around this city. And from that day forward, it really became a priority of mine to engage with all of you and with other city leadership around ensuring that not only pedestrians, not only cyclists, and not only drivers in the city of which I am all three have safe and consistent and accessible modalities of transportation that I can choose from that also allow me to access are varied opportunities around the city. But three years later we have recognized the importance of ensuring that we have those safer streets and we did adapt and believe in Vision Zero as well as the slowdown in town campaign. Three years later, we declared a climate emergency for our city in recognition of the geographic constrictions that we do have and will be facing in the very near future and three years later. And I hear that the primary complaint throughout our city right now is issues with traffic, you know, traffic congestion. How are we going to get in and off this island? How are we going to deal with deal with it? And we know that we're building more housing and I am totally in support of that. But we've got to do something and we have to be able to provide people with predictable and accessible methods of transportation and result of that. So I'm here tonight to add my voice to those who have and continue to urge you to move forward with the Transportation Commission or the transportation plan, transportation aspects that were added to the general plan 11 years ago, 11 years ago. And yet we're still stagnant. In following through on many of those priorities, we have had enough, at least as far as I'm concerned. I've had enough with the planning, with the input, with the discussion. And to me, it's time to set forth those priorities and move forward with the goals that have been identified. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Little Pop Hunter. And then we have one more speaker, Lucy Julie. Good evening. Good evening. Thanks very much. I would like to reiterate what everyone has been saying. We are now in a crisis. You've acknowledged it. You've done the work as far as passing unanimously the climate emergency. So that does mean that you have to change the way you do business. It doesn't make sense that these plans come up and they go through all of these. They go through the Transportation Commission and then they that meets every other month and then they get reviewed and then they come back and then they go through all of these iterations. When we're in an emergency, you really do need to step it up. And hats off to Cambridge. The city council said we need to get more people on bikes. The way you do it is you provide a safe way to get around town. That's something you could do. You could just say, we need to get people on bikes. Therefore, this is what we're going to do. And you don't let it end up being a discussion with a few business owners, whether or not they like the idea or not. It's your job to make it happen. Thanks. Thank you. And our last speaker, this daly. Hi. I'm Lucy Lee with the bike walk Alameda. I'm here to implore you to keep us moving forward with meaningful, transformative changes to our transportation system. We have plans. We've been working on plans. I've personally been working on plans for 20 years. Right. And some of them are great. They really have good things in them. They're already there. We could implement great things with them. Dennis mentioned some of the bits and pieces of the unwritten policies that end up keeping us from making our streets safer and better. But let's just start from now implementing the policies and the plans that we already have to make our streets better. Please think. Thank you. And that was our last public speaker. Okay. We will close public comment now and let's hear council comment. And so so we structure this in the well, I mean, I'm open to suggestions. Mr. Thomas presented the general plan and the transportation annual report. Do we want to jump in? Talk about housing first. Talk about transportation first. Jump all over the map. What would you like to do? Councilmember by councilmember. And would you like to start? All right. In terms of the general plan. And housing. You know, one of the things that I think we we need to have more of a discussion on is when we talk about workforce housing and things like that, how much of the housing that we are entitling is really going to be to buy versus rental property? Because I think what's the missing middle is? Where is that first unit that that people can actually enter into property ownership with? And I you know, it's not lost on me that we're having a public hearing after this on our fees and our master fee schedule. But I really do think that part of how we incentivize and streamline the process is by by stop acting. We need to, as a city, I think, stop acting as this bigger way where we engage in kind of rigorous design review. We really need to give people kind of much like we have with our different business districts, kind of here, pick from this, choose from this. And then, you know, here's your menu. As long as it's within this menu, you're good to go. And I think that if we can do that, we can kind of streamline things so that it's a more affordable process to actually allow construction to occur with still giving feedback and everything else. I just think we need to spend time on the menu and then go from there. But I would like to have a conversation about how many of these units are going to be available for purchase by individuals and condo sized as opposed to, you know, this is all going to be rental property and we're basically just going to be a city that essentially, no, you can't buy here if you're in the middle class. I think that that's a problem in terms of the transportation choices plan, you know where to start. Okay. So we did declare Vision Zero. That was something that I was very passionate about. But I think we need to also focus on. We need to continue to focus on that. And part of that is the daylighting. We have, I think, just a major problem, especially on connectors, major thoroughfares and the connectors to those major thoroughfares and cut through. Sherman is one of those. There are a lot of feed in streets that go into Sherman and that and especially as we lead into Jane Sweeney and we're trying to get people to use the cross Alameda Trail, we're trying to get people to bike through. We need to daylight a lot of those corners. And I think that that's something that we should spend some time on and it will help. It makes driving safer. It makes our cyclists safer, and it makes our pedestrian safer. And I just there have been so many intersections where I've almost been run over. I've witnessed just up and down Sherman as somebody who used to live on on off of Sherman. The number of cars running through there and on to other, whether it's getting onto Buena Vista or getting on to Santa Clara or Central, it is a major kind of access point that connects all of that. And we we really need to focus on daylighting, I think, between those streets. Sherman's one example, there are others. I just think that it would be a good use of our resources to actually focus on the daylighting. You know, in terms of our roads. You know, our replacement costs are quite high in terms of what we have to do and our capital costs. But again, there's a lot of things that go on our roads. And, you know, it's not just single occupancy vehicles. It's our busses. It's our city fleet and the wear and tear, it's bikes. And I think that, you know, saying that we're going to focus on ten miles. That's nice. It's a nice start from the state. I really do think that as we think about transit and how busses and and bikes are using all of these, I really do again think that we need to think a little bigger on that and really, you know, not just do the patchwork. We really need to think about how we're going to make sure that all of our roads and our major connectors are where we need them to be so that it's just about maintenance. And that will, in the long term, cut our costs down significantly. So just like we've done with our budget, I think we really need to think about what's the cost savings long term, if we can actually kind of think a little bigger, implement a little faster on some of that stuff. Bike share line bike left. What next? And how do we how do we fill that need? It was a tremendously popular program and it really did help with that. First and last mile also helped it with engaging our youth and getting folks to use non single occupancy vehicles. And so how do we how do we fill that void? The gondola. You know, I'm always going to support as many crossings as we can get. And I think the future with Oakland is going to involve any crossing that doesn't involve single occupancy vehicles. But I would love to see the A's and Oakland really also embrace the bike ped crossing because that has to happen. And that's to me like the non-negotiable. We need that on on the West End. And it can't just be that that biking is for everybody that's, you know, on the east side of town. But if you're on the West End, sorry, you get subpar conditions. And I don't think that just having a gondolas actually is going to solve that need. It's going to be cumbersome to get your. But I mean, I don't even know how that works. I don't know if it's ADA compliant. There's a lot of questions that I have. I just think that we we need that lifeline on the West End. And so I'm glad that they're looking at Alameda for another crossing. I'm going to be supportive of that. But I would also like in exchange to get their buy in on. The bike ped crossing, which we've been working on for some time. And we really do need to get serious about figuring out what the cost is going to be and then start working towards that. On the shuttle bus expansion, I hope that will look at things like the new proposed proposed. At this point, measure has passed, but connecting those areas, if we if we do have the free shuttle bus expanding, I want it to connect with places like the McKay site and some of these others, because if we're going to have that free shuttle, it really does need to serve our community and go to sites like that. So as we look at that, I would like there to be a consideration of who are we, who are we moving, where are we moving them to, and who are the community members that are most in need where this is really going to make a difference for them? And I think that that's one of those sites that that we really should be looking at, as well as the new Alameda Point collaborative site. So those are those are my comments on this. I think we've come a long way. There's certainly a lot to celebrate in our plan. And, you know, I think we've made tremendous gains. But I also think we kind of need to continue to think about how we're going to, you know, and the reason I mentioned the road replacement plus the crossing plus the daylighting is to me that that hits at all the different elements of transit we're really trying to accomplish where we can get multiple that benefits. And we do have more housing coming online and we need to prepare for that. So thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Vela, let's just go to line, if you don't mind, Vice Mayor, next way simpler for me. So thank you. And the housing element. You know, I would like to look at some policies. We're clearly we're clearly not reaching our affordable goals. And the reason we're not reaching an affordable goal is because we're not building enough actual market rate housing. And so the market rate housing that could be affordable is going to people who then fix it up and make it more expensive than it is. You know, we are going to have to and that's probably a bigger conversation for another day, have a discussion about whether we want to be in a city where we are paying , paying for people to be able to live in homes that are affordable, or if we're going to actually start building the community in the region, that that is affordable. But one way that we can use slightly more market rate ways of doing this is to increase the availability of accessory dwelling units. I remember when it was passed, there was this large fear that holy cow, thousands of people were going to come in and apply to put it in accessory dwelling units and now the number is 38 with 20 actually moving forward. Yeah, I know. There goes the neighborhood. I'd like to look at a way that we can use the accessory dwelling unit law to actually increase the number of accessory dwelling units, maybe by limiting the square footage so that, you know, you can currently build one unit up to 1200 square feet on certain lots. How about if you could build two units of 600 square feet? It may actually make it so that the rent that you collect from those units could actually better cost cover the cost. So I would be really interested in looking at that. You know, we heard at least three, if not four speakers earlier talk about climate in our climate emergency declaration. We know that one of the number one things we can do to impact climate, which has impacts on transportation and whatever else, is our land use and where we site housing. Our general plan and our housing element that comes out of this plan need to address that. And I will be looking for for, you know, explicitly how are we using our land use to to impact our climate, our climate impacts? On the transportation side, I want to say first, I appreciated that you pointed out we have two transportation planners and like three public works folks who, you know, I work in a transportation division that has more staff than the entire city staff of Alameda. And sometimes I have to remind myself, there's only a couple of people here working on this stuff. And they do they do huge amount of work. And I'm really very appreciative for the really good work and the mayor's comment about quality over quantity. It definitely holds. So so thank you for that. In terms of the transportation choices plan in the next two years, I want to I would like us to really look at the fact that our transit goals are very well made, a point oriented for the most part. They're not connecting to Fruitvale, they are not connecting to BART, and they are not connecting to downtown Oakland yet. We know that is where our transportation problem is. I fear that we are allowing our development. We need to work on the Army to point stuff, but we have a development plan for Alameda Point and it has all sorts of measures and whatever else we need our city planning to really be transportation planning to be focusing on how to get people so they're not driving over the bridges to BART and into downtown Oakland. That's our low hanging fruit because unfortunately, when you look at the transit use in Alameda, you capture all the people who take BART to work for their commute. But a lot of those people are driving to BART, so we're getting counted as yay, we're great at transit, but at the same time we're having the impact of, oh, those people are all driving and and impacting our traffic. So. On the active transportation plan. It was said a couple of different ways by speakers we had tonight, but I had written down that plan needs to have a robust protected bike lane network. It cannot just be here are two more streets we are going to work on. That will be unacceptable as far as I'm concerned. We need to start moving the needle on climate and in transportation mode and we are not going to do that until people who have eight year olds are comfortable saying, Hey, go right to Jimmie's house. It's two neighbors hoods over and there are there is a safe way for you to do that without me. Maybe it's 11. It's probably a little young. I did it when I was ten. 11? Sure. I would like to see a start effect. And Daylighting is a great example. I'd like to see how we can start doing some quick and effective things. We are doing a great job of moving very expensive, very long term projects forward. That is not a complaint. We need to keep doing that. I'd like to see more get in the in the queue so that we have a continuous program of that. But between daylighting using cones to test ideas, etc., kind of tactical urbanism, whatever, we need to start making changes now. I sent a tweet I saw online to city staff last night that was complaining about all the parents in town who have to lock their cargo bikes up outside the martial arts studio on I believe it was Park Street. But I know this happens on Webster's where there is no place for people to park their bikes when they get to the place they are going. That is a low, quick and effective thing. So when when I see something that our one of our two year goals is to put in 50 bike lane bike bike racks citywide . I'm like, we are not trying very hard. I know. I know where that comes from. I'm not complaining about the effort that people have put into that. We we need a goal. How do we put in a thousand bike racks in two years? Whatever. But it's got to be meaningful. We could put ten in front of the Alameda Theater and have them packed every single night of the summer. That would be 20% of our two year goal policy that came up as well. I would like to see that's something we can get done. We don't have to wait for an active transportation plan for some of that. Let's get these policies done. We need to, you know, whether it's the pedestrian push button policy where we have a consistent way to prioritize the active transportation modes that our general plan says are our priority or whether it's the vision zero goals of actually looking at Nadeau in our lane widths and having a safe streets design as opposed to a traffic throughput design, we need to do that. The Broadway Jackson Project, I would like to ask that that come back for discussion. I think that that project is not well understood. The voters were sold, that it was a multimodal project and we are spending a 75 to $90 million on what is eventually essentially a freeway rebuild with no true bike impacts there. So I would like to see that come back so that we can actually have a conversation about, you know, kind of where does our council even stand on that project? What are the benefits and what do we really think we're getting out of that? At the end of the day, that project has to become multi-modal or it's not something we should be pushing. In my mind. The Lifeline Bridge. I think that's really important. I don't think it has to be a six lane Fruitvale Bridge rebuild like is in the county plan. I think we could look at the $90 million for that bridge and whether or not we could use that on the bike bridge or something else. And I'd like to kind of keep that in mind. The ferries I'm all for looking at right sizing the parking and using. Pricing to to make it work better for people who need parking. But the Harbor Bay Ferry we've been were six months in since we cut like 120 parking spaces out of the availability for that ferry. And in that time, six months, we have had four months where ridership month over month was less than the month before it was. The ridership is continuing to grow. It is we do not have a parking problem. We have a people not not walking and biking to the ferry problem. So let's use let's not spend a lot of staff time trying to figure out how to build more parking at ferries that are having growing growth without with with the parking that we have. Lastly, in my last minute, I know we do have an existential climate problem. We need to prioritize that we are the city in the Bay Area that has this problem unlike any other. The budget is where our values live. I will be looking for how we have adjusted our budget in the for the coming two years to show that these new priorities that we have said the climate declaration, the transportation that we adopted two years ago, etc., are the places that we're putting our efforts, whether that is looking for how we can increase our staff from 2 to 3 to get the projects we are saying are our priorities done or whether that is how are we using our road, road paving program to highlight places that bike lanes and additional benefits there? You know, I really want to see this budget document as a as a as a statement of values for our city. But it's a great plan. Hopefully. That was helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember de SAG. Right. Thank you very much. Let me begin by restating something that resident Ruth Abby said, because I think it's it's important. Is she to summarize what she said, she said, we need a visionary general plan that takes us to the end of the century and even beyond, and one that involves a robust public process. I definitely want to second that. I do think that we need a visionary general plan update that is done comprehensively along to two axes axis. The first axis would be one where we are, in addition to updating the 1990 elements that we are also taking a look at the transportation even though was done in 2008. I think we also have to take a look at especially the circulation aspect to the transportation element. And I think we have to update our general plan in a comprehensive manner connecting the different chapters. And this would also apply to the housing element in terms of the type of housing that that we really want to begin to create policies around. So I think that's why we need to look at updating not just the 1990 chapters, but also current and up to date ones like the 2008 transportation. And also we're looking at the housing element. For me, what's driving a desire to update the general plan in a comprehensive manner are a variety of things. One, we take a look at what's happened at the Harbor Bay Business Park, where recently the development agreement is. If I read that letter right, the development agreement is now expired. And what that tells me then is, you know, do we really want 100 feet buildings as a right? And given the concern expressed by Harbor Bay residents about, you know, you know, a five story building, certainly that wasn't 100 feet but is still five stories. I think this is a rare opportunity for us to begin to take a look at not just land use is at the Harbor Bay Business Park but throughout Alameda. When we look at, for example, Sacramento, which is issuing a lot of rules that are almost superseding local control when it comes to building residential in neighborhoods, I think as a charter city, we can begin to work within the context that that that Sacramento says, you know, how much building that you should create, how many accessory dwellings you should do you know how much buildings should be done along transit corridors? Because we might one day have a part line. We can head that off the past by having a general plan that begins to address those issues. So and then the other thing that's kind of driving my desire to look at a general plan update in a comprehensive manner, looking at the linking up the different chapters is, frankly speaking, when I look at the major bike pedestrian projects that are coming down Otis Drive or it's in Central Avenue, I get where people are coming from with regard to that. But to me there seems to be an inconsistency between the circulation and the designations of some of these uses. And I think to the extent that we hammer out, you know, what it is that we really want on these routes or even on any other routes, then I think the specific projects like an Incidental Avenue, uh, or, or the Otis Drive projects, I think that they become more coherent. Now, the second axes by which I believe the general plan update process should be done comprehensively is one. Again, going back to Ruth Abbey's statement, one involving many residents in the process. Like a blue ribbon commission, we might reach out to the League of Women Voters. We might reach out to Alameda Citizens Task Force. We might reach out to to the realtor groups. We might reach out to the renter organizations in town to help us in putting together some kind of blue ribbon. Because for many counties and cities, when they update their general plan, it is done in a comprehensive manner. And frankly, it does cost a lot of money. I have no doubt about that. So I will argue that that we ought to have another workshop on this just on this matter. Now, finally, in terms of the Transportation Choices plan, I'm very excited about what was before us. I want to I want to second the priorities that that were were reviewed this evening as well as in the staff report. And I want to say, in terms of the transportation choices plan, the point of the transportation choices plan was actually implementation. So that's why we have projects in there. So the point is that as as we're as a city, as city officials were beginning work, beginning to tell staff where we want you to place your limited number of staff persons in terms of which projects should move forward. So for those residents here or on the air, on television, when they hear the transportation choices plan, it's not just another plan. It is actually an inflammation implementation document. So I really appreciate that moving along. I really appreciate the fact that we're doing this check in. I am excited about the the Oakland A's gondola idea. I would just, you know, make sure to I would caution us to be careful as we move along because it might not just be about a gondola, could be about something else. And we need to be very careful as as we move that. But I think if we if we do everything right, I think a lot of people could come out winners. But but but there are some issues that we definitely need to look at when it comes to the gondola. So I'm very hopeful about tonight. And I just want to add one more thing about going back to the general plan update process, why it should be done comprehensively. For example, one of the chapters that is out of date is the Parks and Open Space chapter. You know, as we do, as we link up the Parks and Open Space chapter and do that in connection with, say, our land use, one of the policies that could come out of, you know, the public process for the Parks and Open Space chapter could be that, you know, because every park basically has a side, a road right next to it. We could put potentially one of the policies that could potentially come out could be in encouraging, you know, electric for electric cars and prioritizing cars that make a commitment to multi, you know, multi occupancy ridership. So that's, you know, something to think about, especially in terms of dealing with the climate action issues. So so that's my $0.02 is comprehensively update the general plan along two axes involving most if not all the chapters and also involving a robust public engagement process. And to have further discussions on that obviously, and also to encourage us in moving forward in the transportation choices, priorities that were discussed tonight and also keeping an eye on the gondola. Thank you. Councilmember Desai, Councilmember Brody. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you for your presentation. I mean, I do think in you we do have a visionary person. So I put a lot of faith in you and your ability to to get things done. I'm not going to use my whole 9 minutes because I think my colleagues have said a lot of things that are important to me. I do share the frustration of some of the public comments. You know, I think and you're not you and I met a couple of weeks ago when we plotted out, like I still have the piece of paper, you know, the 3000 or so units that we've entitled in the four and a half years I've been here and we have, what, 50, 60 built? So it's it's completely frustrating to me. You know, I don't mind taking the political hit for proving housing, but I'd like to see the benefit of it at the same time. Right. And, you know, just for me personally, I'm sure I mean, I'm sure everyone a lot of people are in the same boat. I'm starting to look in the market and there's just not a lot there. And then you look at a condo that's two bedrooms and a laundry, 550,000. And then you see that it it sells for 610 or six, 20, you know, ten, 12% over over list price. And, you know, there's just not enough supply. And if we're going to look at our general plan, which I'm perfectly fine, you know, looking at, I don't think it should be bogged down in a process that takes forever, because it's just frustrating to me that things just get bogged down and they take forever. I do think we have to start thinking we're running out of horizontal space. We need to think vertically. And I think that's where we're going to be going in the future. And, you know, I worked in Sacramento for a while, so I understand a little bit of what's going on there. But, you know, cities have abdicated their responsibility to provide housing. You know, we've had a chance. And instead of providing it, most cities try to find ways to stop it. So I understand why Sacramento is doing what they're doing, because nobody else wants to do that. So they have to step in and say, okay, we're giving you a chance to self regulate and you're failing. So now we have to tell you what to do. So, I mean, I think the way we can avoid that is to build more housing and we have to do that. You know, just seeing 15, 16, you know, housing units on the market, you know, it's incredibly frustrating if you're, you know, trying to buy a place to live. And as the vice mayor said, you know, a lot of these units, you know, we should be giving or we should have market rate. So our lower cost housing is not inflated in price. So I think that's something we have to do a better job of. And if we can find ways to streamline improvement or approval, streamline the issuance of permits, get get shovels in the ground and get things built and get our people housed. I'm more I'm in favor of all of those on transit. You know, I appreciate all the comments there, too, as well. You know, just a personal anecdote. I had this this whole issue with, you know, being able to see people intersections. I just got hit the other day at Franklin. I slowed down because I remember when I was walking precincts, I almost got hit in that crosswalk. So I slowed down in case somebody was in the crosswalk. But the guy coming out on through didn't see me and he almost barrel into me. So if I didn't slow down because I was afraid of hitting somebody, he would have hit me. So those are things I think that media, a customer constant, L.A. brought those up. I think that's something super critical. And again, the frustration. Of the public comments. This Central Avenue bike lanes should have been done months ago. I mean, we gave direction. It kept coming back. It kept coming back. We gave direction to staff to go do the safest way possible and get it implemented. And now it's still going round and round with people. I mean, we need to do a better job as a council. I totally agree with with the public comments. We need a better job as council setting policy and not letting things drag. And, you know, with all due respect to the vice mayor and Broadway. Jackson, 19 years and I'm not interested in bringing something back that's been debated for 19 years. Things just need to get done. And I share everyone's frustration with that. You know, I don't really talk too much about specific projects. I mean, the good news is the lawsuit on our M three got thrown out and they're not going to appeal it and challenge it so we can access that money for ferries. And I think it was a $300 million over the course of erm three, four ferries. I think that's exciting. That's the to me the way of the future, the cross Alameda shuttle that the business groups have been pushing. I was glad to see that on there. You know, we have to do we have to do this cross this, this extra crossing faster. You know, it's already languished. You know, I just frustrated that I share the frustration with people that, you know, these things just languish. And with all due respect to a robust community process, I mean, that's part of the reason why some of these things languish, is we try to make everyone happy and we're never going to do it. And we were elected, I think, to make these decisions. We have super competent staff. Again, I think you're very visionary, Andrew. If any more people to get these things done, ask us for more people. I think that's something we would be I just I would be open to I want to speak for my colleagues, but we need to start getting things done. And I share the frustration. And, you know, I hope that and I ask the public, tell us what you think we could do better. I mean, if we're not setting the right policy, if we needed to do something like they're doing in Cambridge, we need to do more of the things like we did with the climate action emergency. You know, tell us what what we could do better to help you, you know, accomplish what you what you, what you're frustrated with. So I'm excited. But I also share your frustration. And I just want to see things, you know, get moving. Del Monte first vote on council was to try to overturn that. Five years ago it didn't pass, but it's still stuck. Nothing's happened. So I wish we can get off the dime and get things done. Thank you, Councilmember Otis. So these are exciting topics and I think we have a, um, energetic new council that's going to get some things done along with our outstanding staff. So it is my privilege to be one of two mayors who represents Alameda County on the Legislative Policy Committee of the CASA Compact. And we have a very aggressive meeting schedule of once a week in San Francisco. And yes, I get there by public transit. And the kinds of compact is 15 very robust mandates policies to achieve three goals to protect produce and preserve protect is to protect residents mainly tenants to produce more housing because we're seriously under housed as a state and preserve is to preserve the existing housing we have because much of our housing and certainly in Alameda our rental housing stock especially is very old. So what we're doing because there are more than 200 pieces of legislation involving housing that are going through the legislature, although that is being that number is being winnowed down . But each week we have a particular theme that we cover. I don't even know it, this week's theme as we usually get it the night before. And then I have to read through all these bill summaries. But last week we did protections. So tenant protections and there is some exciting legislation even looking at bringing back a form of Costa Hawkins or getting rid of Costa Hawkins, I'm not sure what that is, but we spent a large part of the session last time on Adus accessory dwelling units, so I know all of the ADU bills have moved out of their committees and on to Appropriations and I'm not sure what, you know, this week's, you know, horse trading yielded, but some of the things that are being proposed in these various pieces of legislation is not to require that the resident of the main House, if you will, because they need an accessory dwelling unit as a usually unit behind or in the basement or, you know, converted garage, not to require ownership. That did raise some concerns because people talked about it changing the character of neighborhoods you always have to be careful about. So what if people buy these? Yeah. Or rent them but then turn them into Airbnbs and so and I think we have a um. Well now I'm getting ahead of myself. Um, but I will a little spoiler alert. Our new city attorney who starts next month comes to us from the city of Santa monica, where they have implemented some, some ordinances to protect from just that sort of thing. Um, but as something that I think is exciting is, and I actually brought this up in the committee is that we're looking at, we're seeing more prefabricated housing being used for aid use and prefab housing has come a long way. It used to have sort of a a stigma attached to it. But you should see some of these units if you haven't already, they are easy to put up. There is much less impactful on a neighborhood where an aid was going in and the building trades have. They've pivoted and they understand that, yeah, there's a new way of building residential units and they have training facilities and they're learning how to do this. So this is a way that we and in Alameda, we were a little ahead of the curve because we did our ADU ordinance, but they're mostly the complies with all the new state law coming. And one of the things was brought up by some of my colleagues that there's so much bureaucracy and that adds to the cost of a project and therefore stifles housing production. There is pending legislation or proposed legislation that would limit how many hearings a project could go through. A city could have, you know, maybe three. And then that's it. It's either it moves forward or, you know, you're done with your housing, with your hearings. After that, the and I will just say that the county of San Mateo, um, one of their, their representative mentioned take a look at the county's website. They have a housing department and it is a very user friendly website. Take a look, Alameda, folks, and see if there's some things we could we could emulate. The and so what we're looking at when we look at this proposed legislation is the you know, how does it meet the three goals of protection, production and preservation? Also, how does the legislation impact the jobs housing balance? Because that's something communities are struggling with. We tend to be, um, I think we're a more housing rich community than we are jobs rich and we are trying to achieve that balance and certainly the financial impact. We don't need more unfunded mandates. We've also told our the representatives, the committee chairs and MTC in a bag that we want to see more carrots and fewer sticks. For those of us who are doing quite a bit, we want the to have best practices rewarded. There was a piece of legislation proposed, but it's been pulled that would have taken away transportation funding, SB one funding, if you didn't meet your production numbers. And, you know, we don't have a lot of control over what gets produced. But anyway, this is an ongoing process. We're working along with the budget process, to get our recommendations in and hopefully impact some of the legislation. Okay. Quickly, in my 3 minutes, I'm just going to go through. Okay, the housing element. Okay. I think that what can help Alameda and other cities is we are looking at some infusion of state funds and that's even beyond I think it was perhaps one and two that we passed last year. The governor has added 500 million and it doesn't sound like a lot, but he's added that toward affordable housing and I think more is on the way. Okay. I'm jumping over to transportation because I talked a lot about housing with the cost of compact. Yeah. Line bikes pulled out. I know. Dockless bike share seems to be a challenge. I would love for a staff to look for another replacement. I agree with Councilmember Vella. It is a great way to get people out of cars. And to close that first last mile gap. Bus passes we talked about or the report talks about the city wide easy pass program at a meeting. And I can't remember whether it's cost compact or maybe East Bay Economic Development Alliance. They talked about how there are no I think it was cost cutting back some county I can't tell you which one in the nine Bay Area counties is making sure that bus passes are made available to people like the homeless population, people who are, you know, very vulnerable populations. And so I know I'm sitting with two colleagues who are on the AC Transit Liaison Committee. If I don't know if that's something that AC Transit is doing or if you could bring it up. But I think that that's important just to give people that access to get to the services that they need. And the we do need to make our streets as pedestrian and bicycle friendly as possible. And I also agree we need to move forward on Central Avenue. I mean, there's there's a finite range of possibilities. Let's choose the best one and let's get going. We can't please everybody. All the merchants safety should always be our first priority. Safety of drivers and drivers last probably after pedestrians and bicyclists the Alameda shuttle exploration I'm I'm okay with that but are we duplicating AC transit. I feel like Alameda residents don't realize quite how extensive AC transit is. Maybe we need to do a little more public outreach on the apps that you can use to plan your route. I find them to be great. We do need more EV charging stations across the city. Let's do that. And the gondola to BART and the a's terminal, it's worth exploring. I mean, anything that gets people out of their cars, it's not mutually exclusive with the the bike bridge. But I don't think we take anything off the table at this point. And really quickly, because I have public works and city engineer in the room, the pedestrian signals that flashing cross light on Otis Drive by Lane School have been on constantly for weeks. They don't go off and it's going to just make people, you know, less aware of those things. Oh, it's flashy, but no one's in that and that could be dangerous in another situation. So if you could get that fixed on anyway, let's move forward. Let's get these things done. My time's up. You are. Thanks, everybody. So, staff, you've got your your direction. We're all set. Thank you. Very much. Thanks for spending this much time talking about this. It was very helpful. You'll be hearing back from us shortly and often. Okay. Thank you. And thanks for all the good work, all of you out there and staff and also the public for all your great input. Okay. We are moving on to six C.