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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMAY 12,1992 UI'V -~ U' onJ-f.J., 34: 0139 CC CITY COUNCIL PROCEEDINGS ARE TAPE RECORDED AND ON FILE IN THE OFFICE OF THE CITY CLERK M I NUT E S CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF ARCADIA ADJOURNED REGULAR MEETING (STUDY SESSION) MAY 12, 1992 I The Arcadia City Council met in an Adjourned Regular Meeting, Study Session, at 5:30 p. m., Tuesday, May 12, 1992 in the Conference Room of the Council Chambers. The primary purpose of this meeting to explore various matters of interest, concern and clarification, and future plans and projects for the City. ROLL CALL PRESENT: Councilmen Ciraulo, Harbicht, Lojeski, Margett and Fasching None ABSENT: CLOSED SESSION At 5:35 p. m., the City Council ADJOURNED to a CLOSED SESSION and at 5:55 p. m., RECONVENED the Adjourned Regular Meeting Study Session. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS No one responded to this opportunity to address the City Council. l. NEW JOB CLASS.- MGE. CONSUL- TANT & EMPL. AGRMNT. Consideration of this Agenda Item follows Agenda Item No.2. 2. CITY CHARTER REVISIONS - SEPT. 15, 1992 ELECTION /030 - 10 Consideration of City Charter amendments for the proposed consolidated City Special Election and Arcadia School District Bond Election proposed for September 15, 1992. Staff submitted several non-controversial amendments to the City Charter which will be described by the City Attorney in his "Impartial Analysis" for the Sample Ballot as "house cleaning", and certain provisions in the current City Charter which are now unconstitutional. This to be submitted to voters at the proposed election in September. A brief discussion ensued on the following proposed City Charter amendments: I 1. Amend various sections of the City Charter to eliminate all reference to specific gender. 2. Amend City Charter Section 401 to eliminate the two (2) year residency standard for City Council eligibility. 3. Amend City Charter Section 1501 to reflect what is not authorized by law regarding criminal penalties for Municipal Code violations. 4. Amend Charter Section 707 to eliminate the preclusion of any administrative officer or employee of the City from holding elected public office in other communities. 5. Amend Section 804 of the City Charter to eliminate the final paragraph applicable to Boards and Commissions. This paragraph requires the affirmative vote of a majority of the entire membershiD of such commission to take any action. 1 5/12/92 CLOSED SESSION l. JOB CLASS.- MGE.CONSULTANT & EMPLOYMENT AGRMT. (Geo.Watts) (APPROVED) 0:;2 ';20-10 CH /'l r, ,..., " '<' I JbC.,-~1 -~ 3. :)330 -I{) 34:0140 6. Eliminate the last paragraph of Section 810 of the City Charter concerning the Parks and Recreation Commission which does not appear to have any meaning that is currently relevant. 7. Amend Section 407 to delete the requirement that "at any time a regular meeting falls on a holiday, such meeting shall be held on the next business day", and allow the Council the option as to when to reschedule a meeting which falls on a holiday. 8. Delete sub-section (c) of Section 901 yoncerning civil service. This section calls for a "Personnel representative", and does not appear to be in operation and its current operation is moot. It was MOVED by Mayor Pro tem Ciraulo, seconded by Mayor Fasching and CARRIED unanimously to DIRECT the City Attorney I to prepare a resolution incorporating the proposed City Charter Amendments on the September 15, 1992, ballot for the proposed Consolidated City Special Election and School District Bond Election, to be voted upon as one single item. The City Attorney also reported that he is negotiating an agreement with the School District that they shall pay for every legally reimbursable cost to the City for the conduct of the September election, available under the law. It was noted by Council that the proposed election wouid be called wholly for the benefit of the School Bond Issue. The City Charter amendments are the vehicle with which to do so. The appropriate resolution calling the election .will be on the agenda for the City Council meeting of May 19, 1992. At 6:10 p. m. the City Council ADJOURNED to a CLOSED SESSION, and at 6:14 p. m. RECONVENED the Adjourned Regular Meeting, Study Session. The City Attorney announced that, "First of all we re-entered a CLOSED SESSION under Government Code Section 54957 with regard to Item 1 on the Agenda. I have handed out the agenda packet material to the Council on that particular item. Pursuant to the Brown Act, specifically Government Code Section 54957, 54975.1, reflecting a 4-1 vote to change the status of George Watts as City Manager to Management Consultant, you have before you approval of the specific agenda items. Specifically, establishment of a new job classification for Management Consultant, and the appointment of George J. Watts. The agreement has been modified, and that modification has been agreed to by George Watts. So thE! agreement as it stands will be modified to reflect the following: That the title to the vehicle will pass to the former City Manager now, and he will also receive a $3,000 car allowance. So the agreement will be modified to reflect that. With that, Mr. Mayor and Members of the Council, I recommend that you approve the Agenda Items set forth in No. 1 with the modification on the vehicle". I It was then MOVED by Mayor Pro tem Ciraulo, seconded by Councilman Margett and CARRIED to APPROVE the new Job Classification for Management Consultant; APPOINT George J. Watts as Management Consultant; APPROVE the Employee Agreement with George Watts as modified to pass the title of the Manager's vehicle to the former City Manager and include a $3,000 car allowance. TRANSCRIPT PREPARED FOR THE FOLLOWING STUDY SESSION AGENDA ITEMS: Financial Report 2 5/12/92 I I 34:0141 4.0730 _qO Prioritize Major Capital Facilities (Police Station, Library, City Hall, Auditorium) 5. () <;"';0 - 60 Soundwa11s 6. () ~ ,.{(} Transportation System 7. 01.:) f) Expanding Commissions 8. ,,;"<;O-:':e;:> Relations with School District 9. 0 (1r:J~ 70 Council Member Expense Policy 10. C.1" 20 -'2.0 Architectural Review Boards for those areas of the City that do not currently have them 11. 0 ~VO c:20 Lighting Districts 12. Ot. 'IU - to Undergrounding Utilities 13. Possible ARA Issues 14. Other Items 15, Matters from Staff 16. Matters from Elected Officials ;.:J ....; 17. ADJOURNMENT At 9:45 p.m. the City Council ADJOURNED to a CLOSED SESSION, RECONVENED and ADJOURNED at 10:04 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday, May 18, 1992, for a CLOSED SESSION followed by a Budget Study Session. ATTEST: 3 5/12/92 I I EDITED T RAN S C RIP T (Insofar as decipherable) RElATING TO ARCADIA CITY COUNCIL STUDY SESSION MAY 12, 1992 I f (: I I 3. FINANCIAL REPORT MAYOR FASCHING WOOLARD ACTING CITY MGR. FASCHING WOOLARD FASCHING DALE FINANCE DIR. FASCHING DALE No. 3 is the financial report by Jim Dale. These are the executive revenue and expenditure summaries for the year to date at the end of April, which just came off the press today. You received a whole packet of handouts that Jim has prepared, and we'll go over some of these points with you. have some I Yeah, we've got this one. Obviously, there's a packet that relates to this item, which is No. 3 on the agenda. And we have a couple otherl handouts, one relating to a Code enforcement matter on Foothill, another one dealing with. Code amendments that we want some direction from the Council on, a couple of these under Matters from Staff. Excuse me, Bill. other loose items? Let me back up one minute. Excuse me, Jim. Bill, did you O.K. This is the revenue summary. Do you have the expense summary also? Oh, we don't have the expense summary. That will be out within the next couple of days. The purpose of this was to let Jim...since we have all these other things we're going to talk about, things we would like to figure out how we're going to do in the future and everything, and I thought it a good time now that Jim review the revenue and expense summaries and let us know exactly where we are as of the end of April in our fiscal year, and then review with us the other material that Jim has prepared with us. And any questions you'd like to ask of Jim concerning our revenue for the year, our projections, revenue he might have knowledge of for the next fiscal year, and giving us an idea of the entire overview of our financial situation. With that I'll turn the meeting over to you, Jim. I O.K., then I'll start off just talking about some of the revenues. The report that you've got was referred to as an executive summary. And what these are really are major categories. So when we talk about taxes, I'll just give you some ideas as we go through. We estimated, for this current fiscal year, revenue from taxes...which, incidentally, reflect 67% of the General Fund revenue, so you can get an idea of the importance of it. We estimated $15,100,770, and we recently, in preparation for the budget, went through and estimated, or projected, what we really felt we could get this year, at this point. And we believe now we will get approximately $14,890,000, which is off about $210,000. Let me just go through a few of these. Under taxes, I can tell you some of them would be property taxes, sales tax, franchise fees, cigarette tax, utility tax. So let me just talk about a few of them. Property tax. ..and if you read some of the material that the School District put together, that's our one big growth number, I guess. Assessed values in the City of Arcadia have performed very well. And this year, what we're projecting is we will receive around $4,400,000. We originally estimated we'd receive $4,310,000, so it's up somewhat from what our original projections were. I Some of the other important ones...sales tax is certainly an important one, it's our number one revenue source for the City. And the recession has hit everybody, and sales tax is a big number that has been impacted. But I think in the City of Arcadia we've been fortunate in that, I think, probably the fact that we don't rely a lot on auto sales is one reason'l We've got a sales tax base that probably doesn't get as hurt from recession as some areas might. However, we estimated $5,450,000. We think we'll get about $5,400,000. So it's $50,000 less than what we originally projected. And for your information, next year we're projecting $5,400,000 again, so we really think we're going to be flat. And one of the reasons for that is the situation with Foulger Ford.. .we think that's going to have an impact on us. And what we do when we project these revenues a lot of times is we take current economic conditions, and we're not trying to second-guess whether this economy is going to get better or not. There's 1 COUNCIU1AN LOJESKI DALE I I COUNCIU1AN MARGETT DALE COUNCIU1AN' HARBICRT DALE I MARGETT DALE HARBICRT DALE I I some indications that it will, there's some indications that on the West Coast it's going to be a little slower recovery. But, at any rate, we think our sales tax for next year is going to be rather flat. Are you able to extract out...let's assume Foulger Ford went away, was not here next year. Do you know exactly what they produce, sales-tax-dollar- wise, to us the previous year? We do. It's information that's confidential, and certainly we can give you those figures. I don't know if we can talk about it in the meeting, but, yes, we know what those figures are and we've taken that into account. Another area that you'd be interested in, transient taxes, or bed taxes...we estimated this year we'd get approximately $950,000; now it looks like $825,000. The big reason for that drop is because of the earthquake and the closure of the Motel 6. And next year's projections, we figure about $850,000; however, that could go up slightly if Motel 6 got renovated and up and going sometime within the year. Utility tax is a tax we can rely on for just regular increases, just by virtue of the fact that they have rate increases, and ours is based on the fees that are charged. We estimated this year $3,500,000. ..we figure that's what we're going to get. We've estimated $3,700,000 for next year. Is that just water, or is that all utility taxes? All utilities except cable...we do not charge a utility tax for cable. We don't have a utility tax on water. No. You're right. We don't have a utility tax on water. We Do it through our own books. We do what we call an "in lieu of" utility tax. So through our own internal financial manipulation, if you will. We do charge the fund a certain amount that's equivalent to utility tax. We do. Yes. I'll just mention one other, although as far as dollars it's not much, but we budgeted $115,000 this year in cigarette tax and we're going to get $60,000. The State last year, at the last minute, in the budget balancing process, eliminated 50 percent and kept it. There's some discussion that they might take the rest of it this year, but it's the latest word we have they won't. So that's just another area. Th~y didn't ask us. No, They do a lot of things without asking us anymore, I guess. Property transfer tax, we haven't done very well, either. We estimated $300,000, it's coming in at around $225,000, and the reason for that, essentially, it's just a slow real estate market. So that kind of gives you an idea. Some of the other areas here, we're talking about licenses and permits... we estimated $2,065,000, it looks like it's coming in at $1,980,000. The reason for that, really, is a slowdown in the construction business and that's impacted some of the fees that we charge for such things as plan ch~ck fees, building permit fees. Th~ next category, fines and penalties, $295,000 was estimated; $270,000 th~ proj ection right now. The State again did get into some of that money, and the courts are keeping some of that money as, really, a balancing mechanism for the County. Use of money and property, we did fairly well there, although interest rates are down. We estimated initially $950,000. We're figuring now we're going to come in at about $1,290,000. The primary reason for that is even though interest rates are down, from time to time when we feel it's appropriate we will sell certain investments and we will collect what we refer to as premiums, and we've generated around $440,000 this year just because of the way the market has been going. We figure neltt year our revenue from interest earnings is going to go down even further because of the interest rates, and the latest word we get, there's rumor that interest rates may go down even again in the near future, so we project it out that way. 2 MAYOR PRO TEM CIRAULO DALE KINNAHAN DIR. ECON. DEV. DALE FASCHING KINNAHAN LOJESKI KINNAHAN FASCHING KINNAHAN FASCHING KINNAHAN FASCHING DALE Revenue from other agencies...the main one there is motor vehicle in lieu fees. That's one of the five major revenue sources in the City. And in this current fiscal year we estimated initially $2,646,000; we think it's coming in at $2,500,000. And the major reason for that is motor vehicle in lieu fees are down. We get our estimates from the State, and with a slowdown in new car sales, that impacts this fee because it's based on the value of automobiles. The rest of them there, and this is all the General Fund, they're pretty much...charges for current services, we estimated $492,000, coming in at about $527,000. Library services, about what we estimated. Other revenues, $350,000. ..we figure we're going to get about $38,000. Included in this $350,000 was the sale of some property from the I City to the Redevelopment Agency, and that didn't happen this year but we expect it to happen next year, so it's in next year's budget. That's a big change. . I mean, that's a big drop. I It's really merely the fact that we didn't sell the land to the Redevelop- ment Agency, they didn't purchase it this year. But they will be purchasing it next year. I believe that's the property up on First Street. Yes. It may even occur this year if we can get the title problem cleared up. Naturally the General Fund...the rest of the report here goes through the other funds, and if you want I can go through them or I can just take some questions, or however you'd like to handle it. Let me just go back to the General Fund for one second. We initially estimated $22,912,000; we think it's coming in at $22,395,000. And, you know, this is early on. We might see some improvement in that. But that's a difference of about $500,000, and that $500,000, I think, you can look back to the fact that we didn't sell the land to the Redevelopment Agency...$300,000, you've got another $50,000 in sales tax. So it's just a combination of different revenues there that make up that $500,000. Do we have a price on that property for next year when we sell it? I Yes, sir. The Northwest Corner property is going to run around $185,000, and we were looking at the Southwest Corner property...our original budget estimates were around $60-80,000. But the appraisal has just come in at $46,000 and the change. So we don't propose to sell the Southwest Corner property yet, but we do propose to finish the Northwest Corner sale this year if we can do it, which will add about $185,000 to the General Fund. You're talking Second, not First. Second. Second and...I'm sorry.... What is appraised at $46,OOO? That's the island. That much money for the island? That's a lot of money You know the island we're talking about? O.K. And the Is the remnant of Second Avenue. It's where the street comes around the I small parcel that's owned by the City. Oh, the island. for the island. Northwest? O.K. As I indicated, there's a lot of funds in here... you know, Federall narcotics seizure funds.... I suppose one we might want to look at, if you go back to page 6, Fund 302, our Capital Outlay Fund, that's where all the money that we receive from the Track comes into this fund. We estimated $2,400,000. You know, we're not sure still...this is the first year that they started off-track betting between Hollywood Park and Santa Anita. What we've got left yet is the balance of the year for the Hollywood Park meet. Since this is the first year, we really don't have a good handle on just how we're going to do that. 3 CIRAULO It still looks significantly lower, though. DALE Our receipts from the regular meet, just to give you a perspective, they're down 30 percent...I looked at them today...they're down 30 percent over last year. So that's kind of the difference, so what we would hope that we would make up a certain amount. But included in this, I think you ought to consider, is the fact that this money, aside from providing money for Capital Outlay and what have you, does pay for traffic control. And traffic control, I think Neal could tell you, that it's down considerably, too. And in next year's budget I think we've budgeted 22 percent less than this year. So we're going to have a savings there that will also add into this figure. I FASCHING Well, this 70.1 on this tax from Santa Anita, since that meet that is currently going on was not into ITW last year, so we don't know what that's going to produce.... 'OAL' That's the problem with that this year. FASCHING That could produce a lot of money that could bring us up to.... DALE Well, we did have a short meet over there, and I don't know how many days it lasted. We generated.... FASCHING It's about 20 days. DALE How many days? FASCHING I think their short meet is about 20 days. DALE They generated $120,000. FASCHING This meet is 65 days. I DALE And what we're looking for is to June 30, so whatever we've got left. When we estimated $2,400,000 this was before that bill was even passed, so that's about what we were getting in past years. So the Track...and I've talked to a number of people who, they assure me, you're going to come out all right, but I'm not convinced that that's true. FASCHING The end of May will tell you pretty much. That would give you a full 30 days on that meet, ITW. DALE Right. And we haven't gotten any revenue from the Track as yet, because it was closed down because of the riots, so this is the first week...we'll get our first revenue this coming week. And we even think, because of the riots, we might see more betting right over here at Hollywood Park. HARBICHT Well, the other thing is that Inner Track Wagering didn't start until four or five months into our fiscal year"did it? DALE True, but I think it took all of the Oak Tree...I think it was open the enti~e period that we had Oak Tree. I AA<B"~ Yeah, but what I'm saying is we had the negative effects of Inner Track Wage~ing for both Oak Tree and the Santa Anita meets, but you didn't have the positive effects where we would have picked up revenue down at other tracks during that first four months of our fiscal year...we didn't pick up any revenue. So we're not going to have a full year now, so.... I FASCHING That's right. We don't get any revenue off of Inner Track when they send thei~ signal out, only when they take the signal in. HARBICHT What I'm saying is that there was not betting at Santa Anita for.... FASCHING That's true. Only that little short meet in December at Hollywood Park. HARBICHT Yeah, 4 FASCHING That's the only experience we had. Other than Del Mar, which we had always had that. So I think after we get a couple of weeks of Hollywood, we could get a feel for how much per week and then multiply it by the number of weeks, and it will tell us pretty much how we're going to come out. DALE Sure. Well, those are the main ones. And I can certainly try to answer any questions you might have on some of the other funds. And if there's not any questions there, then we will go to this other little.... What I put together here, and I thought it was important, and I guess we recognize that this is the first meeting in probably a series of meetings, and we know we'll get into a lot more of this during the budget season and during the balance of the year. But what I wanted to do is to kind of go I OVer with you just briefly, and open it up for questions. . But the first sheet I gave you is this sheet that actually is in next year's budget. And I only put it in there because it's...not that we're ,. talking about the budget, per se, but it was a way to start off and have a discussion about the various funds and what the funds are used for and certain restrictions. And if you'll look on the first column you'll see that we have estimated fund balance of...that bottom line...$43,OOO,000. I And what I did, and for no particular reason, but on my charts that are attached to this I took the last column, which is the estimated fund balance at six thirty ninety three [6-30-931]. There's no reason why I took one or the other, but I just selected that one. And what I want to do.is just kind of go through...I gave you a chart here that's just kind of a pie chart and gives you some breakdown of those funds that we identify as restricted funds that can be only used for certain types of expenditures, either by law or by City ordinance; those that are designated for certain purposes; and those that are undesignated and virtually could be used for anything. And then attached to that I gave you just, like, one-paragraph descriptions of the various funds, and they're in the same order as the charts, so that if you had any questions you could look at them. And what I wanted to do is just take a few minutes and go through a few of them. when you look at the restricted funds...and I'll just touch on a couple I of them. .The first one is narcotics seizure funds, and these funds are restricted for equipment and manpower costs for narcotics enforcement related activities. So it's not funds that we can use for some other purpose. .. they have to be related to that. Going down there... and I think you probably are familiar with most of this... the gas tax fund, there's restrictions on that money and those are for street maintenance and construction costs, and those are closely audited by the State of California. We have our water fund, which are restricted for water fund operations and infrastructure of the water fund. We have a sewer system fund, which is essentially the same thing, restricted for major construc- tion of the sewer lines and operations. Proposition A and C are funds that are restricted for transit-related kinds of operations. So all those funds over there in that first column, nearly $15,000,000 worth, are restricted for a number of purposes, and they are explained here in this brief description of the funds. What I wanted to do, kind of, is talk more about the designated and the undesignated. So if we look at. .. the first one there is the medical-dental I insurance fund. And if you wanted to follow that on the description, that would be on page 3 and it's titled "Designated Funds." We are self insured for our medical insurance program.. .we actually have two programs--one is an HMO through Kaiser, and the other one is a self-insured program. And what they have recommended to us, and that's our consultants for our medical plan, is that we retain a reserve equal to about four months' worth I of claims. And so, looking at next year's, we estimate claims of $l,700,OOO...four months' claims would be equal to about $567,000. So that's why we retain that kind of a reserve there. The same thing goes for the Workers Compensation liability policy. We need to maintain certain reserves to cover our self-insured portion. The emergency reserve is a reserve that is simply that...it's just for emergencies. If the Council elected to utilize those monies. . . it's something that we set aside a number of years ago. I think the idea was it was for potential emergencies such as an earthquake or something like that. There is no reason to retain that 5 other than for those purposes. The equipment service fund, the $198,000, what we have is what we call an internal goverrunent fund, and they provide the maintenance for all of our vehicles. And that fund generates revenue by charging all the various departments and all the various funds, and they provide...that $198,000 provides them a reserve so that if we had a major problem with, say, a fire truck or something, we'd have some money to go to in the event we needed to. appropriate monies for some type of an accident. J The equipment replacement fund is the fund that I think is talked about a lot. We're estimating a fund balance of $9,547,000 at the end of the year. And I can just tell you just from information that I know of, I think at one time the goal was to try to establish a fund where interest earnings would pay...would generate enough interest earnings to pay for all acquisitions. And I think we realized over time that that probably wasn't a realizable goal. In fact, if you look at it right now, it's my estimate that we'd have to have nearly $14,000,000 in there. $14,000,000 would generate at today's interest rate about $910,000, and that's about what we average in purchases over a five-year period, when we did our five-year projection. There is a year, and I'll just tell you, I think the fourth year out we're buying a large fire truck for $550,000, so it jumps way up in that year. Generally, it averages about $900,000 a year. I CIRAULO But, Jim, in long term, those interest rates are bound to go up, so it would behoove us to maintain that so that we could get up to that goal. HARBICHT Right. I don't think that's unattainable...it may be unattainable with today's interest rates, but four or five years ago we would have drawn a real close bead on this. DALE Right now, just to give you an idea, interest earnings pays...when we look at what we acquire in a year, about 60 percent of the costs, and then what we do in addition to the interest earnings we have...and when you see the budget you'll see.. .we do a transfer in on a regular annual basis of so much money into the equipment replacement fund...$350,OOO for next year, and we projected $400,000 for the following year, $450,000. It's just another source of revenue into that fund, and between the two that pays for all of our equipment plus it builds a little more on that fund balance until out in the fifth year, I think, we're up around $lO,OOO,OOO-plus, something on that order. And again, when we do this five-year projection, we project on today's interest' rates...we're not trying to second-guess where interest rates are going down the line; but undoubtedly, they're going to change considerably. A couple other things that, it's my understanding from talking to people, this fund was thought of at one time to be a resource available to loan money to the Redevelopment Agency in the event that they needed additional money for certain proj ects. And the other thought was it was an additional reserve in the event of a catastrophic event in the City, that we would have money to just go in and write a check. I MARGETT You're talking about the equipment replacement fund? DALE That's correct. So at any rate, that figure of $9,000,000, that's the purpose and that's the use of it, and that's the way we kind of approached it. Going back up to the undesignated and what this really means is that these funds...there is no designation for these funds. They can be used for any purpose that the Council deems appropriate. The General Fund, almost $5,326,000. . . I have talked to other finance directors and what have you, and it's sort of an arbitrary figure. But what a lot of people estimate is that the General Fund, ideally, should have a minimum of 20 percent of its annual appropriations. Twenty percent of our next year's appropriation would be $4,661,000. So, we're not very far off from that. And what that is there for, in the event that a major thing should...in future years if the economy doesn't improve I think we're going to have to dip into the reserves...I think it's a potential. So it's things like that or other emergencies that come up. I I HARBICHT Doesn't it also provide working capital? 6 DALE CIRAULO DALE HARBICHT WOOLARD HARBICHT CIRAULO DALE CIRAULO 4. MAJOR CAPITAL FACILITIES (Priority List) FASCHING No, because actually our revenues provide the working capital during the course of the year. It might in certain cases...you're right...there are months where actually we run a deficit. To give you an example, our property taxes comes in the first time, I think, in April, and then we don't get any prop...tax for a long time. So we go up and down as far as revenue coming in. I also should remind you that if the City should finalize anything with the mall, that any financial assistance the City might give would more than likely come out of that fund, although it wouldn't have to, it could come out of either the Facility Construction or the Capital Outlay. But it would somehow come out of, probably, that $10,000,000 total. The next one is Capital Outlay Fund...that's really what it's for, it'sll for capital outlay. Those funds could be used to build buildings or...in the next fiscal year what it's essentially used for is to buy major pieces of brand new equipment. We talked about the equipment replacement fun, and that's what it's for, replacement of existing equipment. The Capita Outlay Fund is there for either capital improvements or major pieces 0 equipment that we purchase. And then, finally, the facility constructio fund was there just for that purpose, it was there to accumulate funds. . We talked about for fire stations, for police facility, or for any other infrastructure in the City. And, incidentally, this fund balance that we show here is at the end of next fiscal year, which would have already taken into account the fire station at around $2,700,000. That's already deducted from this balance as stated? That's correct. So this would be what's left over after that. And in the five-year plan, the only thing that we've gotten planned...and that would be for, I think, the following year, if I'm not mistaken, was demolition of the Armory site. And that was not a very large figure in the budget.. .$157,000, I think. So that kind of gives you an idea. And all those funds put together, then, equals $40,000,000. And that kind of gives you an idea of where you can look to find certain monies for infrastructure, and give you some options anyway. We've also added a sheet in here...and we can go through it if you want or maybe we can evenll have Pete...Pete Kinnahan generated this, and it's really on the Redevelopment Agency and possible assistance from the Agency. This might be a subject that we want to talk about down the line somewhere, but we felt we'd give you this information to at least get you thinking along those lines and consider such an option. I wonder if we want to hold off on the Agency discussion, we might want to do that (inaudible). The whole Agency thing can even be set for a separate meeting. It's pretty involved and complicated. We want to get something to you that indicated the potential for utilizing.... It's a good report, Jim. It is a good report. By the way, when we start into the budget process, I guess, next Monday, we will certainly start talking about revenues in a little more detail and I where we think they're going and what have you, and be able to answer any questions. Very good. Thank you. II O.K., thank you, Jim. It is a good report. I think that, before we get to our next item, here, No. 4...this study session as we all wanted to have here was to develop our priorities and projects, and things we want to do in the future. As I sit here and listen to some comments, and since 7 I some of the things that I read and hear, I think that I would like the Council to know my feelings on two things before we go into our discussion on these things. That is, that in presenting these, the financial figure of the City and the source of revenues that would be available to do some of the things we will discuss here' tonight in the future, and some of'the comments that were made last night at the meeting at the School District relative to their bond issue where they certainly don't want us talking any bond issues while they're talking a bond issue. And I assured those people that we're not going to do anything to jeopardize or complicate their election for bonds for the schools. Now, I fully felt that anything in the future on the part of the Councilor future Council actions relative to the infrastructure and development of some of the things that need attention in the City, that it would be probably several years before we would even be talking bonds or that type of thing, which was my own conjecture. But in a report such as this to us, outlining to a great extent what money is available to do capital improvement programs, I certainly don't want the impression given that this new Council is going to be mad-hat spenders or we're looking to raid the City coffers to do a lot of projects or we have that in mind. I think we are as concerned with finding sources of revenue to offset things that we would propose to do in the future before anything else. Maybe some big items would require, in the future, a consideration of other means. But we have many areas here in the City to look forward to additional revenue sources...being the redevelopment land that we have sitting idly by that hasn't moved or anything done to in years. And the prospect now in the future, if this recession is leveling off a little bit, and with maybe a little more aggressive approach and seeking out people to come in and develop this land to increase our tax increments, which would give us income. We look forward to the mall expansion and the projections that we've seen, and I think it's no secret to estimate that if, when completed, and if completed, that could be a million-dollar-a-year source to this City in additional sales tax revenue. Establishment of upgrading our existing business districts to get more businesses to come into the City, while not meaning to increase density or that, but t~e general improvement of the existing business districts, such as Huntington Drive and in some cases even Baldwin Avenue in lower Arcadia. Other things that we can develop for additional revenues...perhaps some day we can make a deal with the Forest Service to move out of there and that land could be available for some type of development that would mean revenue to the City. Foulger Ford is going to move, we're going to lose the sales tax on that, but that property can be developed to possibly create a larger sales tax for us. So the point I'm trying to make, my point, to my Council and to you guys is that while we have ambitious programs, perhaps, that we're going to try and get accomplished, at the same time I'm sure all of us are going to be looking to find increased sources of revenue that does not mean taxation nor raiding the City funds to do these projects, that we can pay our way as we go. However, I would say realistically, too, as pointed out by Jim Dale, there is some money that is available for projects right now that we could do without altering our financial soundness of the City. And we're looking at the definite possibility of improving the Library and also the possibility of an auditorium. So, I wanted, before we get into this wish list and all these big money-ticket items we're going to be talking about and involves spending money, revenue income sources and development of that is as much on my mind as I'm sure it is on yours when we talk about spending money. So with that, we'll go to the No.4 item here on the prioritized major capital facilities, the big bucks item, and we'll throw that out. Who'd like to go first on that? Bob? I HARBICHT Four things are listed there as possibilities. There's a couple of other things that are on this list which I see as big bucks items, or at least potentially big bucks items, and that's sound walls and under grounding utilities. So I guess some of it is going to depend on our discussions of those two items. But my own priorities would be that I separate these things into things that I believe that we can do and we can pay for on a pay-as-you-go basis, and things that I think we're going to have to borrow money to do. So, I think the Library and the auditorium are both things that we can pay as we' go, and so in my mind those have a very high priority, something I'd like to see us moving on immediately. MARGETT Bob, excuse me, but define pay-as-you-go. 8 HARBICHT We have the funds available. FASCHING Well, that's the immediate money, right, Bob? HARBICHT We have the funds available to write a check. MARGETT In other words, we don't have other funds sequentially coming in to be able to float the thing over a period of time. FASCHING Well, I'm just thinking this, we wouldn't have to float over a period of time. It's like this fire station that we're building. We're going to write a check for that. I believe we can refurbish the Library and WE could build that auditorium, we could write checks for those. So I place a very high priority on those. Might I add one little thought, there? And I don't know how we're gOit to follow the format on this, but I think...just if we have thoughts 0 what somebody's talking about...that's all right? Yeah, I'm assuming we're just exchanging ideas.... HARBICHT HARBICHT FASCHING Yeah, right. I agree with Bob. In talking to the Finance Director, that we could actually, without disrupting the financial condition of the City nor the soundness of its financial condition, we could conceivably write a check for up to $10,000,000 for projects that we would consider immediate or want to get on without other sources of revenue. CIRAULO Well, our initial thought of what the auditorium would cost is not necessarily the right figure, because the School District has not gotten back to us with what they would like to see in terms of an auditorium. As a matter of fact, from what I understand, they may want to put that on a temporary hold situation for a while. FASCHING They have. They've already done it. They don't want to talk about until after the bonds. LOJESKI They don't want to confuse anything for the prospective voters. CIRAULO And then when the vote is over, when the election is over, and it goes in their favor and we end up talking about it again, we'll have to see what they come back to us with. So, perhaps writing a check won't be quite as easy if they're asking for something larger than what we initially proposed. HARBICHT If it...I guess as I expressed to them and to you at the last meeting...if they decided that the only thing that was going to meet their needs was something that's up in the $6-10,000,000 range, then my support for this idea evaporates. Either we do it for something in the area of around $3,000,000 or so--and we don't do that unless it's going to meet their needs--or then it becomes a much, much lower priority for me. LOJESKI In other words, we don't really have a figure yet on what their exact needs are. CIRAULO That's right, we don't. I And the second thing we don't have is, if we knew what the need was we could get a better handle on the cost estimation. LOJESKI FASCHING True. But they're not going to tell us until September. HARBICHT Well, I don't know why the bond issue should preclude them from doing at least some preliminary estimates and getting them to us.... LOJESKI I think there will be some preliminary things. I think a big, firm push to "Let's really get this thing going, let's fast track this thing." FASCHING Well, I think it takes the Council to make it perfectly clear that the School District is not involved in the finances of an auditorium...it's strictly a City idea. But they've already told me they've had half a 9 dozen calls from people thinking that, nOh, you're going to buy an auditorium now out of your bonds." CIRAULO Yeah, so they really want to just put this on the back burner. HARBICHT I guess, to continue...I would not feel comfortable writing a check for $10,000,000. FASCHINC I didn't say that we could. 'lARBICHT O.K. We could, but I don't think it would be advisable. A police building, my estimate is we're probably talking somewhere in the $15- 18,000,000 range, based on figures that have been bandied about for the last couple of years; plus Monrovia, who is going for $12,000,000 for theirs. ..we're 50 percent larger than Monrovia, I assume we'd need a 50 percent larger facility. So, somewhere up there in the mid to high teens. That to me means we'd have to borrow money to build it. So that puts it at a lower priority, although it's not something that I want to wait on, and I would be willing to support borrowing money to build that. The very lowest priority to me is City Hall, which, again, I think we would have to borrow money to build, and it's so far below the police building in my assessment of our needs that it has no priority. , MARGETT Bob, when you say borrow, what do you mean by borrow? Does that mean a funded debt deal, or do you go out and.... HARBICHT A bond issue. MARGETT A bond issue, funded debt. O.K. Well, you're not going to go out to the community for a $3,000,000 funded debt, though. HARBICHT No, I'm talking about the $15,000,000. FASCHING Well, we can borrow against the revenue sources, can we not? Bob? Without going to a bond issue? I mean, to the voters. ..1 mean you're not talking about...you're talking revenue bonds. MARCETT FASCHING MARGETT CIRAULO DALE HARBICHT FASCHING I CIRAULO FASCHING No, there's no revenue coming in. Well, if you can offset it with projected revenue, you can borrow against revenue bonds, can you not? No, that's not...I think revenue bonds is bonds.... Jim, can we? I think that's (inaudible)...I think you have to go out for a vote on it. We're just talking concepts anyway, I mean, the ins and outs of how we'd finance this. Well, let me ask about bonds. would be paid for with revenue talking about. Can we go out for a vote on bonds that rather than assessments, that's what I'm Sure. Yeah. So it's a difference_to the voter. ..he's not being assessed. We're saying we're going to have revenue to pay the bonds, so we want your permission to borrow the money so we can spend it now and make the improvements. Do you have anything else, Bob? HARBICHT No, no. That's it. I mean, that's just my comments on these things, in terms of my priorities. LOJESKI My priority is, obviously, to see the completion of the two things that are on line right now...which I'm assuming are on line. One being Fire Station 2, and the other situation being the Library. I'm a little foggy and hazy as to what's currently going on at the Library and what our financial outlay is going to be-. Is it a total 100 percent contribution 10 on our part, or are we getting any dollars or moneys from other sources, you know, those sorts of things. But I think those are the key prioriti- es. FASCHING Can I answer that on the Library, or do you want me to? LOJESKI Please. FASCHING Currently on the Library we have an architect on the Planning Commission, Bob Daggett.. .you know Bob...who has volunteered his time and plans, and has submitted to the Librarian the tentative plans for additions and upgrading and modernization of this Library, which includes I think an additional 15,000 square feet. The Librarian has those plans, and he is...Bob has seen them.... HARBICHT Actually, I haven't. I keep intending to go down there, but I haven'] George and I met with him and asked him to do this. Well, see, where I get confused is Jim Dale tells me that we've alread got a certain amount of money.set aside because the one fund already showed " that money extracted. Are we using that as just a hypothetical assumption of a budget, or are we going to commit up to that much.... LOJESKI HARBICHT We've already committed for the Fire Station. FASCHING Yeah, that's done. The Library hasn't even come up yet. But in the Library, just tentatively, we're probably looking at an expenditure in the area of between $3 1/2-4,000,000. CIRAULO How extensive is that renovation? Do we get a report on that so we can see... . FASCHING Oh, yeah. Well, it hasn't been brought to us yet because they haven't finished with the Librarian.. .does everything flow, does this work out with you, and is it satisfactory in your estimation. When he and Daggett work that out, then it will come to the Council as a presentation up on the wall with all the plans and show you what's involved, and then we go from there. But that's.. .just to give you an idea of the cost in- volved.. .that's what we're looking at. LOJESKI Does the Library Board get involved at all with this situation? FASCHING They see the plans, they go over it with the Librarian, yeah. MARGETT George, are there going to be any additions to the Library...I mean, more square footage? FASCHING Four additions, yeah. On all four corners. MARGETT Additional four...15,OOO square feet. FASCHING It will make all new fixtures inside, new roof. ..it will be a complete library that should last for 25 years. CIRAULO O.K., assuming, for the sake of discussion, we're talking in terms of $3 1/2-4,000,000 for the Library at this point, that presents another financial problem for that at this time, is that right? I FASCHING Well, that's something we have to consider when we get to it. But we don't.. . assuming that we...let's just assume like we're back to where we Were. Let's assume that we might have $10,000,000 available, not meaning that we're going to spend it. But this is one of the items that would be considered in that expenditure as well as an auditorium, and those are the.. . considering those low-ticket items. Right, Bob? Isn't that right? HARBICHT Yeah. LOJESKI All right, let me continue on if I may. The Fire Station, it's my understanding, is still hinging somewhat on potential mall expansion. 11 FASCHING WOOLARD MARGETT LOJESKI tom LOJESKI MARGETT HARBICHT LOJESKI FASCHING LOJESKI HARBICHT LOJESKI FASCHING I GARDNER FIRE CHIEF FASCHING No. It's underway. The architect is working on the working drawings for it and the Fire Station is going to go ahead, I think, whether or not the marl goes ahead. You know, I think, Dennis, where you're coming from is that there's.... Well, I'm saying that because at the meeting that you missed, Bob, last week, I asked that specific question. I mean, after...because we started to umbrella this whole thing in there. And there was a little glitch and I was told that's somewhat true. One thing does somewhat hinge...I mean, not totally...because there's a situation with the transference of land. I'm assuming that the expansion is going to go through and everything, so I don't want to embellish that. But that's where the situation is sitting. Yeah, well, I was exposed to the same facts that you were, I'm sure. My understanding is that the tenant who has the land lease is negotiating wi th the City, and part of the deal is to transfer a portion of that corner property to the City for the...on a no-charge basis as I recall, Bill, isn't that it...to build a station. And it's kind of a.... He's actually negotiating with Santa Anita, is he not, and not the City of Arcadia? But it's not a deal breaker...is it? I think that what we could say is that technically it's not an absolute done deal. But this is a detail that is very unlikely to cause problems. Even if the whole mall expansion fell apart, that fire station is 99 percent deal. All right. Assuming that, those become my two priorities. The problem in the past that I've seen was there was never a priority of what our facilities were.. . the condition that they really were. And so, hypotheti- cally, what may follow next, what may not follow next... what are the conditions of, for example, Fire Station 3, Fire Station l? We've heard about the Police Station and the need for maybe a new station, expanding the current station. We've talked about and heard the possibilities and eventuality of us taking over the Armory site. That's for police. Yell, is it or isn't it? We own the Armory site. O.K., but to me that's prioritizing something. Rather than all of a sudden standing back with a series of darts and having a dart board, throwing and saying, well, let's in the next three years I think we'll do this. Could I tell you about Fire. Station 1 and 2. According to...because this came up when we got with the previous Council on the approval of three... concerns that, what are we looking at with one and two? Three is going to be state-of-the-art, and one and two are not going to be the same state- of-the-art as far as facilities from a firefighters standpoint as one and two. So this was something that we discussed with Jerry, and Jerry...we came to the conclusion that with some future modifications only, interior wise, and that with one and two, that they would be right comparable with what you would want, right? There was no major expansion of those facilities. Stations 1 and 3. Station 3 is the oldest, it was built in 1948, so it's 44,45 years old and it does need some.... The site is large enough, the station is large enough, it needs some renovation and remodeling as any old house would. It needs a new kitchen, it needs maybe to expand the day room a little bit, and redo the office area, 'and that type of thing, to bring it up to today's standards. But there's no teardowns? 12 LOJESKI O.K., but, if you're going to prioritize something, in my mind I want to know what's the worst facility, because that's going to get first priority to me. FASCHING Oh, to me it's the City Hall. CIRAULO Police facility. LOJESKI See, I don't know. We talk about a needs assessment and cost estimates and things like that. I'll give you an example. The auditorium is the example, O.K. Now, I've heard banter around this table, $12-14,000,000 cost estimates to do an auditorium eight, ten years ago. That's really a fallacy, because there was never the availability of even squeezing that situation down to saying, well, what is workable, what really is realistic? That's all it was, was a wish list Taj Mahal. Well, I'm sure if I turned around to the Police Chief and I said, "O.K., Chief, give me an estimat of what you would like to see in a police station," I mean, he'll come u with all the bells, whistles, frills, and everything else. Now, is tha what we need, not realistically. And if I'm evaluating those types 0 things with all the bells and whistles and not truly what we are looking . at and what would be workable and what would be affordable, then that prioritized list can go haywire. FASCHING O.K., then, perhaps what we should do is. ..when you talk of the police station, then you're talking big bucks. ..that's a big-bucks item. You talk City Hall, that's big bucks. You talk Civic Center, that's big bucks. My feeling is when we do the police station--and the police station, yes, should be done--then we should really put our heads together and try and put it into a civic center redevelopment program where we would do the police station and the City Hall at the same time. The City Hall will not suffice for another 10 years, and neither will the police station, LOJESKI See, that is a situation I would rather not see us get into, is the way this building became a necessity. O.K., all of a sudden now, because of the age of this building, being the Council Chambers, anything you do with the rest of this site has to revolve around this. This may not be the best location. And, you know, I throw that into the conversation of the Armory site, if the Armory site is going to become a 'police station. I want to be assured that we're not tying ourselves into a position that it's going to preclude us from seeing down the road. It may take 15 to 20 to 25 years down the road. It's not going to preclude us from not doing other things with the site here.... CIRAULO Can't we develop an overall architectural plan including all of the City Hall and the police facility and everything in this location, not necessarily developing the whole thing at one time, but have an overall plan so that if we can only afford the police facility for a while, it still will be done in concert with the idea that down the road a City Hall will fit in very nicely with it, It won't be piecemeal allover the place; it will be all part of an overall strategy. But if you can only do part of it at one time, that's fine. But it still fits in with what eventually is going to be done. MARGETT That's the only way to do it as far as I'm concerned. I That's what, actually, Wendell Mounce did for the City several years back. At that time, though, the consideration was with and without an auditorium and with and without the Armory property. But that type of plan was prepared for.... WOOlARD CIRAULO Well, now we have the Armory property and I think we've all agreed that an auditorium is going to be.... LOJESKI But, Bill, (inaudible) of that plan was never completed, O.K. In other words, it got to a point and then it went sour, it went haywire, for whatever reason. WOOlARD I think a realization that the whole thing was unaffordable.... 13 LOJESKI Yeah, if you looked at it totally as one project, sure. But, again, if you look at it as maybe 30 years down the road conceptually this is what's going to happen, but you don't have to do it all at once.. . the worst first. We have the police station, you know, the worst case scenario, then start there. FASCHING Can we cut that down to maybe 15 years? HARBICHT You know, I think that we're getting bogged down in details. I mean, we're trying to figure out the color of the bricks. Shouldn't we be just talking conceptually. I mean, I was just talking in terms, these are my priori ties. I didn't try to put time frames on them or talk about how many people it was going to seat. It's just, these are the things I'd like to see. And I'm interested in what the rest of you would like to see, your priorities, because somebody else may say, "Everything else is behind the police building, that's the number one priority." And if that's the consensus of the Council, it pretty much changes all of our other discussions. I FASCHING Well, let's go back to this one item, here. Let's go back to big-ticket items, small-ticket items. We're talking Library, we're talking auditorium, the fire station is funded, anything that came up on the other two fire stations in the future we could probably handle as small-ticket items. O.K., now we come down to the big-ticket item, and we're sitting right in the middle of the big-ticket item. We're sitting in the Civic Center. O.K., now we're saying scheduling and itemizing and when. But on this I think the Civic Center is something that we should come up with a development plan and scheduling, and then know what we're looking at and how it will flow. The other things we can handle, kind of on the side, while that's being developed, I would think. Because we can handle those on an individual basis. But when we get into the development or redevelopment of the Civic Center, that's a big project. And maybe one entity will have to come before the other. That's true, we can't do them both. But first of all, we need a plan for the Civic Center, and we can handle these other ticket items on an individual basis I would fully hope. CIRAULO My feeling is that when we do come up with a plan for the Civic Center, that the first item on my important list would be the police facility, above everything else. HARBICHT Are you in agreement, though, that the small-ticket items are something that are handled separate? CIRAULO That's separate. Absolutely. small-ticket items. The Library being the first one of the FASCHING But we don't have to agree here tonight that the police station takes priority over the City Hall. What we want is a development plan.... CIRAULO Well, but we were talking about finding out where all of us stand on these things. I FASCHING CIRAULO MARGETT Well, yeah, I know. But what we need first of all is a ~evelopment plan for the Civic Center. Absolutely. Absolutely. Conceptual. FASCHING Yeah. And that's a big-ticket item. All right, then we find out where we prioritize what building.... CIRAULO What building of that whole plan is most important. LOJESKI I cannot prioritize at this time the auditorium because I don't have those two answers...I don't know size and I don't know cost. FASCHING I don't think we have to. 14 LOJESKI Well, I'm just sharing that with you, O.K. And personally, my priorities are going to be the Library and Fire Station 2. FASCHING Well, Fire Station 2 you can forget about, that's done. LOJESKI Seeing those to completion. FASCHING O. K., the Library, that will probably come up. The Library will 'be coming up because we're going to look at costs on the Library and what we can do with the Library before we get the information back from the School District on the auditorium. But, I think we come back to the same thing. Those cannot...I don't think we have to even put them all in a priority list at this point. The Civic Center, we can say let's get a conceptual plan and a development plan on the C~vic Center. And in the meantime, then, we'll go and we'll talk about these other individual items, even throwing in sound walls, as individual items that can be handled if WI approve handling them. The sound walls are a big-ticket item. ' HARBICHT MARCETT Depends on how you handle them. FASCHING Well, isn't that new block not that big a ticket? HARBICHT It's not approved yet. FASCHING Well, what's the prospects of it being approved? HARBICHT It seems to me it's about 80% of the cost of the way you're doing it now. So it's not quite as big, but it's still a big-ticket item. MARGETT Well, Mr. Mayor, could we stay with Item 4, rather than digress into 5 and 6 and the rest of them. You know, I think that it is important, before the political aspect of the community, the five of us, here, start calling out these things... and we will make that judgment. . . but I think that staff has got to have their input, I really do. FASCHING What input? MARGETT With regards to what the priorities are with respect to the buildings. We're saying, well, we absolutely...the City Hall is second to the police station. It may not be. Maybe it should be number one, I don't know. But I think that we're sitting back here making judgments, or considering judgments, on the thing from a political aspect, and we're not working in City Hall, we're not working in the Fire Station. FASCHING You're right, Bob. But what I'm saying is that we don't have to, maybe, get to that point. Why don't we talk about if we can agree on getting a conceptual plan for the development of our Civic Center, and ask Mr. Woolard how we would progress in doing that, so that we would say, here's the land we have, here's where things would fit in conjunction with the existing building that we're sitting in which will not move, and utilize somebody such as Daggett, who is not going to give us a bill. He'd love to tell us his thoughts on it, and maybe as he has on the Library, but Mr'l Woolard has to tell us.... Get some renderings or sketches. MARGETT FASCHING Yeah, right. Renderings and sketches. WOOLARD What we can do is go back to where Mounce left off. There was several alternative conceptual plans for the Civic Center area. It's a good place to start, kind of give you some idea of the proportions of the building.... CIRAULO Can we revitalize that idea and then go from there...use that as a jumping oU point? WOOLARD I think it's a jumping off point, at least to start with. FASCHING Y~ah, it is a jumping off point. 15 WOOLARD Obvio\lsly, the game has changed a little bit, because we do have the Armory propelOty, that's a given now. Some of the plans incorporated that and some didn't. But I think it wasn't bad in terms of the sizes of the facilities, I don't think that that has probably really changed. FASCHING Well, let's take the, as a suggestion, why don't we take the police station and the City Hall, and kind of turn that over to Bill and let him come back to us on some th9ughts and maybe recommendations on some rough drafts, rendelOings, or something, where we're not going to spend a whole lot of money at the offset. But he can come back and tell us at a later date how we cO\lld layout a new Civic Center with a City Hall and police facility and maintain this building here. ,MARGETT OOLARD MARGETT Well, earlier, George, you said Bob Daggett. Did you want Bill Woolard to do that? I think Bill has to be the one in charge of this project. Oh, yeah, sure. Obviously. Is Bill going to do the layout? FASCHING Well, Bill's got to tell us what he wants to do, I think. He's got all the plOevious knowledge of this thing before us and everything else, he's listened to what we've said here about 'this tonight, and probably maybe has enough knowledge right now...you know the track we're on, right? And you feel comfortable with it, to come back some time.... WOOLARD I think we need to start with the Mounts thing and.... LOJESKI I thought there was some problems as far as layout, because you had the flood control channel that goes underneath the street, or something like that, and that precludes certain problems that you can get into with placement and things like that, and Bill's got all of that, so it's a good idea. FASCHING But this shows that we know that there's a need to address this Civic Center. And we don't have to decide tonight on which has priority over the other, the City Hall...priority over the police station...I think we all feel that they both need replacement, but we can get into the time frame and that aspect later and let Bill go to work on a concept-type.... HARBICHT I'm not sure that we want to get into a debate. I'm not convinced that the City Hall needs replacement, and clearly in my mind.... FASCHING Well, let's you and I go over there and I'll walk you through it tomorrow when all those people are working in there like a bunch of sardines.... HARBICHT Can I finish? FASCHING Sure. HARBICHT Clearly in my mind the Police Department has a much, much higher priority than City Hall. I'm just expressing my opinion so that the rest of you know how I feel. I """"" I haven't walked that much through the Police Department, but I wouldn't argue the point with you. But I know what those people working in that City Hall.. .boxes piled from the floor to the ceiling. The Finance Director in an office that's the size of a postage stamp. The only large office in the whole place is the City Manager's. HARBICHT Are We going to debate this, or are we just exchanging ideas here? FASCHING No, we'll go over to the next item. I'm not debating what's first or anything. But you came back and said you're still going to claim that the Police Department is first. HARBICHT To me it is. l6 FASCHING MARGETT FASCHING MARGETT FASCHING MARGETT FASCHING MARGETT FASCHING CIRAULO 5. SOUND WALLS WOOLARD LOPEZ PUBLIC WKS. DIR. But I said we'll go back to that later and decide which one we think is first. Mr. Mayor, you know, it might very well be, if you're going to go to a bond issue on the thing, maybe you want to consider both of them at the same time. We can't do anything until we get some ideas. Well, if you're going to go after some money, and there are going to be revenue bonds, like Jim said, can they get it to fly? Maybe in the next two years, by the time we get around to voting on this thing, we can project $2,000,000 a year in additional revenue. That will help pay for this type of thing. But we don't know that yet. George, I have to say I like your idea, your concept, of the big-tiCkel items and the little-ticket items. I mean, if we can work in the others these up to $5,000,000 values or whatever that's going to be on a pay-as you-go or reach-in-your-wallet-and-pay-for-it, that kind of intrigues me. And then the concept of big-ticket items and plan for it.... Well, I was just going to kind of say we should close the subject on big- ticket Civic Center items now and get on to the other things. And I go along with Dennis, I think the first thing that's going to come up is this Library, and I think that's the thing that has first priority in my book, now at this other level we're talking about. Want to make a motion? Well, I'm not making any motion. I don't think we're here to make motions tonight. We're here to discuss these things. But I know Bob and I know Dennis feel that way about the Library, and I'm sure you do, too. So once we get some final layouts and final figures, then we can make the decision on whether or not to go ahead with the Library. And the same thing with the auditorium. We can't act on that either. But I think we all agree that there is certainly a need. And I've always felt the need for an auditorium. And Bob comes back with these low-ball figures out of Duarte and all of a sudden, boy, that opens the door...at $2.1 million and even up to $3 million. So, those things, all of these things, I consider an investment in the City. An investment, just like the School District, to keep property values. And these people that live here deserve these things. Who's next...you want to talk about what? Sound walls? Let's move on to the next item. The sound walls, Joe Lopez will give a brief report and also provide some cost estimates and utilize the drawing on the wall to explain the sound wall situation. It shows the J freeway from the westerly City limit to the easterly City limit on your right. The sound wall shown in orange is the areas that were approved b Caltrans or that are on the Caltrans priority list for the construction of sound walls. Those are the only two in the City that are on that particular list. The yellow on the left-hand side, there, on each side of the freeway represents the sound wall slash retaining wall. That would be walls that would be built in accordance with the widening of the freewa) for enforcement area and HOV lanes in that area. The southerly portion is the only portion that's authorized to be constructed by Caltrans at this point, which is under construction now. The northerly yellow line represents a sound wall in that area that is not authorized to be built at this present time but may be in the future when funds become available. I turn your attention to the drawing on the back wall. 17 HARBICHT O.K., let me just clarify. The south side yellow is going to be constructed as part of the HOV lane and everything. LOPEZ That's correct. The northerly portion, which is that yellow line, also incorporates the portion of the sound wall that's shown in orange. In other words, that will supersede that orange portion; the entire yellow northerly sound wall will be built, basically, from some 100 feet to the east of Michillinda Boulevard to practically Baldwin Avenue. What's shown in blue on the map represents sound walls that are not qualifying, according to the Caltrans formula. And that represents--I'll get a figure for you--the south blue line or sound wall represents about $2.6 million. The upper portion or the northerly sound wall shown in blue represents about $2.5 million. I. FASCHING PEZ AS CHING This is the cost of putting it in at today's.... At today's dollars, that's right. That's not the new block, there? LOPEZ If you looked at the polyurethane blocks that Caltrans is experimenting with and if they approve it, you're looking at about 75 percent of that cost rather than.... FASCHING So you just save 25 percent. LOPEZ Correct. FASCHING So what was the total of the two figures you just threw out? HARBICHT So it would be $4 million. LOPEZ And if you throw in the orange line that represents the sound wall that's on the priority list, but it's low on the priority list, that particular portion would be $760,000. Now the figure that I had given you before was about $562,000. That was the construction cost only. What I'm giving you today is the construction cost plus engineering, inspection, and contingency. So that would be the full amount. MARGETT Joe, what's the synopsis...when are we starting on that first phase. Is that... . LOPEZ The yellow portion on south part? That's under construction now. They're clearing, grubbing, and preparing to construct that now. MARGETT And the timetable for the north portion? LOPEZ There is no timetable because it's funding. But they plan to do it at some time. MARGETT But the south portion was selected because 'of the decibel readings...or how did they prioritize it? IW'U Well, both yellow portions...both walls that are shown in yellow there have to be constructed according to Federal guidelines if the freeway is widened. The freeway is only being widened on the southerly side to provide for an enforcement area for the HOV lanes. They are not widening on the northerly side. They may widen on the northerly side when the Federal requirements require them to put in a sound wall. MARGETT In other words, we kind of lucked out on the deal, is that it? LOPEZ Correct. FASCHING May I ask you a question. On sound walls, the further away you get from sound walls the less effective they are on the noise, or how does it work? What I'm trying to ask is, I live at the top of one street and I'm a long ways from the freeway but I can still hear the freeway. I'm probably, maybe.. .can you hear the freeway? 18 HARBICHT When I'm in front yard, yes. FASCHING Yeah, right. LOPEZ I think a lot depends on your elevation, the higher you go.... CIRAULO? The higher you go the more you hear it. FASCHING O.K. But, with a sound wall on the north side of the freeway, would that have any effect at my house, which is at the top, say, of Oaklawn Road? LOPEZ It depends on the elevation. If the sound wall.... FASCHING Well, my elevation would be over the sound wall. So if you put in a sound wall, what distance on either side of that sound wall actually gets the real benefit of the sound walls? I Those homes adjoining the sound wall. For a distance of maybe 100 yards, 50 yards.... But it loses its effect the further away you go from the sound walls. FASCHING LOPEZ LOPEZ And as you go up in elevation. FASCHING As you go up in elevation. If you go down in elevation it has a more advantageous effect, naturally? LOPEZ Yeah, it would. HARBICHT As I understand it, the primary benefit of sound walls on the south side of the freeway here would come to these houses along here (Catalpa) and perhaps these along here (Altura), and then progressively less as you go down the street. But not much farther than down to about here, because at that point the sound really isn't very loud anyway. So you're talking about... . FASCHING In other words it's kind of just a roar you can hear if you're out in your yard like we do? HARBICHT I think so. FASCHING And then on the north side it would be...where the yellow line is it would probably be those houses.... CIRAULO As far as Foothill Boulevard. FASCHING ... . Foothill Boulevard. HARBICHT Maybe to Foothill, yeah. But then, you know, the elevation is going up pretty fast there. You cross Foothill.... CIRAULO It rises and you hear it more then. LOJESKI The people, unfortunately, that are in the worst predicament is not thl guy that's three houses away. It's, unfortunately, the guy that was there- -we've all heard the story--the house was there, the freeway came through, and he's still trying to live a life of peace.. .for whatever reason. Thos are the people you feel real sorry for. And not even the guy that's got the privilege of having a street.. . the guy that's got the freeway, a street, and then his house is even less, or more immune I should say, to the problem than the poor guy whose back yard abuts right up against the freeway. And so we can say that this is the primary benefit. Again, if you live there, I'm sure you have a good concept. MARGETT Well, I think if you're living there by choice...in other words, those cul-de-sacs came in.. .people knew.. .went in there with their eyes wide open and realized that that's what they were getting into. Those people who... . CIRAULO On the north side, you mean. 19 MARGETT Yeah, right. And those people.... CIRAULO On the south side, they were there before the freeway was in. MARGETT That's right. HARBICHT Well, some were and some weren't. I mean, those people who have moved in since the freeway, and. they paid less for the property as a result. The problem is that these two orange parts that are on the list, well the formula is constructed in such a way that there's a figure of the decibel reading minus 67. It's multiplied by the formula. So if the decibel reading is, say, 67, then the figure is 0, so it makes the entire formula 0, and if it's anything less, obviously, it becomes a negative number so you don't get on the list. If you have 68, now you've got one more than 67 and SO now you've got a reading and you can be on the list, but you're way down at the bottom of the list. And the difference between having a decibel reading of, say, 68 and a decibel reading of, say, 72 is the one with 68 multiplies the whole formula by 1, the one with 72 multiplies the whole formula by 5. It's 5 times the magnitude. Even though the sound difference is relatively small. So that 5 times the magnitude puts them pretty high up the list. And so our folks here...our little sections of freeway that have gotten on the list are so far down the list I don't think they're ever going to come up. Because, as new freeways are built, new areaS are moving in ahead of them because they have a bigger problem. The problem is that...I know these people feel frustrated and, you know, they come in and they say their piece and I play the same tune back to them every time. But the fact is that compared to lots and lots of other areas, they don't have much of a problem. I believe that the formula is fair, that it takes into account the cost, how much remediation will take effect, how many people will be affected, and the decibel level. Those to me are all things that should be considered. And when you consider all of those things, we don't qualify. And, so, the next step beyond that is.. .you know, I don't argue with Caltrans, I think their formula is correct and I think their way of allocating those dollars is correct. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, we don't have as severe a problem as other areas. So then it comes down to should the City do it. Well, if we're talking about $2 1/2 million or $5 million or $4 million if we put up styrofoam blocks to benefit 300 or 400 people out of 50,000, that's a hell of /l.n expenditure in my mind for a very small segment of the community that's being benefited. And in terms of prioritizing things, I would rather spend that $4,000,000 on something that's going to be of benefit to maybe thousands of people. I MARGETT Well, I think that we can sit here and intellectualize the needs of any of these things all evening, and I guess maybe we're doing too much of that. Mr. Mayor, what would be wrong...or asking the group...how do you feel about going ahead and establishing a Sound Wall District for the people who are going to be most benefited by a sound wall. That would be from the entire north portion of the freeway. Go ahead and establish the Sound District; if those people want to go ahead and kick in the $5 1/2 million to be able to get the sound walls, let's let them. At least they're going to be able to sit out and have a barbecue once in a while and not listen to the jake brakes of trucks that are coming down the freeway. And if they want those things, I think they should have them, and they can go ahead and vote for them and we can go ahead and go to Sacramento and get them for them. But I feel the same way that you do.. .it's a low~priority item if you're going to try and reach in our wallets for $5 1/2 million. But if they want them and they can pay for them, then let's let them have them. I CIRAULO I don't think...they don't want them that badly. FASCHING I don't know how many houses are involved. I think that's a great idea. LOJESKI You certainly have a committee that's already there. It's been in place. And that committee, I know, has had representation from the Council in the past. Charles Gilb was a member of that committee; Mary Young was a member of the committee. 20 HARBICHT You were. LOJESKI No, I never was. And I kind of agree with Joe. I'm not so sure that they just are saying, hey, City pay for the whole thing.... CIRAULO Yeah, I don't think they're saying they want the City to pay for it necessarily. They want us to do everything we can to push Caltrans to put it on as high a priority list as possible. And I think we've done that. I think we know where we stand now. The southern portion is being taken care of. The highest impact on the most homes is now under construc- tion...that orange line on the south side. So that takes care of a big, major part of the concern. And we're just going to have to go along with the others as they come up. I don't see.... LOJESKI But we'd be into eternity, though, Joe, waiting for those sound walls. And Caltrans has a great capacity to reprioritorize, like Bob said earliert and these people are going to sit here for...nobody would be able to kno the years. They could also change their formula if they wish. MARGETT MARGETT Well, yeah, but again we're intellectualizing. HARBICHT If they did, we would just move farther down.... LOJESKI That's what I'm saying. The glimmer of hope in the last 10 years is at least a couple of those areas have made it on the list. Doesn't make any difference where they are. Now, the comment also that was batted around was how do you get improved on the list without a higher decibel rating. And, Joe, is it true that if the City were to contribute something for them then they raise up on the list? LOPEZ That's correct. The City, if it contributes a portion, will raise the item up on the priority list. But the City doesn't get reimbursed for that portion that it contributes. LOJESKI Is there a formula that they go by, you know, percentage.... CIRAULO Yeah, how much and how far up the list do they go? LOPEZ It's actually the same formula. They use the cost in dollars that's shown on this formula that's on the handout. What happens is that if the City contributes it lowers their cost. Then they crank that cost into the formula. ..the new cost to them. CIRAULO Is it 'significant? LOPEZ Well, it depends on how much the City contributes. MARGETT Well, we're at least focusing in on it. I think that we should find out what that amount is. And it might very well be that we could go back to the idea that, if these people want to kick in that kind of money, maybe we can get their sound walls. The problem is that, let's say it's a $5 million deal, kicking in $2 1/21 million will double the value of the formula, and somebody else that's some one decibel higher gets exactly the same effect because theirs is multiplied by two and ours is only multiplied by one. So, the amount that we kick in would have to be so large...and I still think that even if we were to, say, put up $2 1/2 million, we would still be way down the list. HARBICHT MARGETT O.K., fine, I agree. I don't know how many parcels we've got up there, but these people. . . approaching the parcels and let them go ahead and accept the tax on their property for $25 for the 20 years or whatever that item might be, they might think that's the best thing in the world. That's my point. And it would be an enhancement for their properties and certainly an enhancement for the use of their properties. I think it should be looked into. LOJESKI It certainly could be conversed back to that committee. 21 HARBICHT You know, I think that what I would like to say to them is the City Council does not feel that it can allocate $5 million to this. If you would be interested in doing it yourselves, we will set up the apparatus for forming an assessment district, and maybe we could give them some idea of what the cost per parcel would be or something. MARGETT Do the politicking that's necessary. HARBICHT And then see what their reaction is...I think their reaction is going to be no. CIRAULO I think so, too. (GETT lRAULO Oh, I disagree, gentlemen. I think it's going to be yes. I think that that is such a problem for those people up there, they're willing to accept another $30 on their tax bill. Well, why don't we at least provide this service for them and let them find out how much it's going to be. Because we don't know...it could be $3,000. MARGETT When I'm thinking of an assessment district, I'm thinking much the same way that you're handling a lighting district, or some way that you could broadcast the $5 million over a period of time. FASCHING Well, what I think is that we give them the opportunity to do that, but I don't want to...I think that their sound wall committee should put together the numbers of houses and the people and all the work. I don't propose that we spend a lot of staff time involved in that aspect of it~ MARGETT I'll make a deal with you. How about me? Do you want me to go over there and chitchat with them and tell them what you want them to do? FASCHING It's not what I want them to do, it's what the Council wants them to do. MARGETT Well, when I'm saying you I mean the Council. FASCHING I don't think this Council is opposed to having a sound wall district if that's what they want. But they're going to have to say how many houses they have. They're going to have to solicit the people in the houses. Well, we could, maybe.. .if they told us who the people were and the addresses.... They should get some preliminary.... MARGETT Sure. They should have a hearing on it. CIRAULO Remember now, you're ruling out that southern portion where the yellow line is now, and that's been the most vocal, the most organized group. LOJESKI Talk to Mr. Caldwell and Mr. Zareh and you'll have all the bodies you want. CIRAULO ILOJESKI FASCHING They live where the yellow line is. Caldwell isn't on the yellow line. Zareh is on the yellow line. and if they want our help on help them. You know, we're here to help the citizens, this, then fine, bring it to us and we'll MARGETT All right, who's going to make the contact? LOJESKI Can't this be done at a staff level? We've thrown out a new idea for them, it's for Joe. FASCHING I think it's better at a staff level. LOJESKI Let Joe see if he can meet with both of those people. 22 FASCHING 6. TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM FASCHING WOOLARD FASCHING FEINBERG ADMINISTRATIVE ASS'T ./MGR.' S OFFICE FASCHING MARGETT HARBICHT MARGETT CIRAULO MARGETT HARBICHT MARGETT That's the first sound idea I've really heard about this since the sound wall district to be honest with you. O.K., let's go to transportation systems, next on here. I think that's something Bob Margett wanted to talk about. O.K., what we could do is get Dave Feinberg to give an update on where things are at as far as the (inaudible) is concerned. Bob Margett had mentioned this, and I'm not sure where he was coming from in his thinking. . . . Well, I think it would be good anyway. Go ahead, David. ,,,., ""v" ,'v. = = v,""" .v """t O.K. Are you just concerned with, primarily, LACTC, or with the operations of our Dial-A-Ride, or both? Well, I think Bob had in mind here.. .he talked about some kind of a trolley...I don't know what he's got in mind.. . transportation system. Well, why don't you give the update on LACTC anyway. O.K. Transportation system. I think in the overall concept of looking at numbers, increasing revenues for the City, doing something for the downtown area, and also with the mall coming on line, I think that we have to pay some attention to the balance of the community and be able to move people throughout the community. And a transportation system that...of course, I don't think there's any transportation system that is solely self funded, obviously. But I think that to be able to move some citizens and children around through our community on a mini-commuter-type bus much that you'd find in communities like EI Monte, San Gabriel, and some of the other neighboring communities, I think, is worthy of consideration. And I think it would fit in very well, especially if we do any refurbishment in the downtown area. And hopefully be a catalyst to be able to move potential customers into the new mall area, and certainly be able to get people into areas along Duarte Road...senior citizens. I think that the school system could probably benefit from that transportation system. So someplace along the line I think that it would be beneficial to at least look at a mini- type transportation system for the community. Well, we have one. Well, yeah, but...you're referring to Dial-A-Ride. I'm talking about some sort of a mini bus system. How would you get people from where they live to the bus station...I mean, create new parking lots? Are the people all going to gather in certain locations, park their car, and then wait for the bus? I I think it's probably just like any other community. I think the people who have parked at the Hinshaw parking area and want to go over to the mall, I think they could get on a shuttle bus system and go up to the mall. I think those people who are shopping in the mall and would like to get down to a new, refurbished downtown area on Huntington Drive could be able to do that. I think visitors to our community who are in the hotels out on the east side of our community could be able to use that transportation to go to the Race Track or to the Arboretum or to the mall area. And it provides an access for people to move through our community and certainly gets rid of some of the traffic we have. It's very successful in the EI Monte area. They love it to death down there. They don't have the Dial-A-Ride. Oh, I don't know whether they do or not, Bob. 23 HARBICHT Duarte has a fixed-route mini-bus system. MARGETT How does it work? HARBICHT I guess it works O.K., but I don't think it works 'anywhere near as good as our Dial-A-Ride. We have probably the most successful Dial-A-Ride in Southern California. We have 165,000 people a year riding it. It's very well received and seems to be fulfilling the need. MARGETT It's just that you have to call them, and they have to be on time. And I don't see people going...if they're in Hinshaw's and want to go to the post office, for instance, I don't see them getting a Dial-A-Ride and waiting for the Dial-A-Ride to show up to be able to access them. The concept of Dial-A-Ride.. . I 'm not throwing rocks at the Dial-A-Ride system, that's fine. Especially for those people who are infirm or who are not totally ambulatory or can't use an automobile. I'm talking about moving people from one economic area to another economic area throughout our community. Senior citizens along Duarte Road. I HARBICHT That's what we're doing, we're providing door-to-door service. MARGETT I realize that, but you have to call them. I'm talking about something that would be running every 20 to 30 minutes throughout the community. CIRAULO How would a person get from their home to the bus pickup point? That's the problem. They still have to get in a car or in some way move to where they're going to get picked up. Whereas Dial-A-Ride right now will take you directly to your home, for the people who can't drive or don't have a way around. My area of concern is, you would still have to get in an automobile and get to Hinshaw's or the mall to pick up the bus to take it to Hinshaw's or the post office, and go back and pick up your car and drive home. MARGETT In other words, you prefer that same person to use his car doing that. If you had errands to run and you had to go to Hinshaw's and then to the mall. . . . CIRAULO How would I get to Hinshaw's to pick up the bus? MARGETT Well, you drive your car. But you will be eliminating cars on the road by a mini-transportation system. That's what I'm getting at: FASCHING I think that if and when...the possibility exists of the Blue Line, which is the trolley, which is... we've been working and pressing to get an extension from East Pasadena out through our City on that. Or if the possible commuter line, which would be a train, would come through Arcadia with a stop in Arcadia and then on to connect with the Blue Line. But I would foresee that this type of thing would be beneficial to the City in conjunction with that type of a transportation system, because that could serve not only the malls, that could serve Santa Anita, the people coming to Santa Anita. I'm inclined to think that until that time or that transportation system would be installed that perhaps our Dial-A-Ride program is sufficient to serve our needs with the way we're going at this time within the City. But I think when the time comes on a stop here for some type of a through transportation system, that we would really have to consider something to move people. I ~'rn' Well, that's a whole different ball game, there, because you'd have people concentrated at a specific spot. FASCHING True. LOJESKI Let's assume you had a system which started at, quote, the station. Let's say the station was in downtown Arcadia. You've got these people now leaving their cars someplace else--could be another city, could be another location. . They're there, and then your system can start there in making its circuitous path. 24 MARGETT If we do anything, and hopefully this Council will look at that downtown area, which is deficient in parking I'm going to assume. ..1 can't believe that one of the reasons that we have a deficiency in the downtown area is because of a deficiency in parking. I feel that's what it is...I have no facts to back me up...I don't mean to be just reaching conclusions. But by the same token, that is an answer to your parking problems, if you have a transportation system, to be able to get people. . . if you are at Hinshaw's and you want to go over to Home Savings and Loan, for instance, who don't have an awful lot of parking, or into the post office, that is somewhat congested parking. I think that that type of a municipal mini- transportation system would be beneficial in those cases. Especially when you don't have parking. LOJESKI I think the parking deficiency problem has become mitigated, and to a great extent the problem that I see is just numbers of cars on the roadways. I Well, you would have less. You would under those circumstances. Downtown right now is really not a deficiency, because all new construction that the Council has approved... I know in the last 10 years...every development has had to come in with 100 percent for the parking requirements of the City, which was never done up to that point. MARGETT LOJESKI MARGETT Well, the existing sure isn't up to snuff. HARBICHT You're talking about downtown. MARGETT Yeah, right. HARBICHT Yeah, there's nothing new there. MARGETT No, there's nothing new there, but you've got vacant store fronts and you've got guys struggling.. . and I think we want.. .are interested in revitalizing that area. I would be hopeful that we would be. LOJESKI Feinberg, what is the speculation on the Blue Line and all this sort of thing, timewise, have you got any guesstimations on that? FEINBERG I'll give this to the entire Council, this will be exactly where we're at. City of Arcadia participating with nine cities, and they have preliminary plan studies along the Northern San Gabriel Valley corridor, which goes all the way up to Claremont, and Bernardino. We're doing that in conjunction with the LACTC. Here's a copy of it, this is a preliminary draft of it, and we've given the Council a copy of that in the last few months. This report describes six alternatives, and they're all in here. This report is also going to give us patronage estimates, give us a preliminary site plan and what our station will look like, and develop some type of cost, a real basic cost, of what things are going to cost us in terms of real estate and also actually build a station. This station will be completed, hopefully, by the end of June or early July, and at that time I'll have a better handle on just what things are going to cost. Because right now we have a kind of a pie-in-the-sky price of an extension to Azusal of about $400,000,000. But our consultants are going to come in a lot lower than that, make our project a lot more cost effective. And so that's where we're at, in terms of our light rail, that's where we're at. In terms of the big picture, our corridor has been selected as one of eight corridors competing for... to be funded in the next few years for an extension. Now, we're competing with a line in Glendale, a line in Santa Monica, a line at the 10-60 Freeway, a line down in South Bay, a little connection in Norwalk, and a couple of other ones. Primarily, the way it looks to me right now, is that our line is competing against the line in Santa Monica and the line in Glendale. CIRAULO Dave, excuse me for just a minute. Any idea when that decision will be made? FEINBERG O.K. And so what's happened is that they're going to set some criteria to judge these different corridors in the next few months. And I was at 25 a meeting yesterday and they told us they're going to try to get that decision down in what will be the first corridor by the end of the year. CIRAULO That's pretty fast. FEINBERG Yeah, I guess there's a little push because the RTD and the lACTC are consolidating...they want to get that decision out of the way before they start to merge. CIRAULO Aside from what we've already done, are there any things that we should be doing at this point to push them in our direction a little bit more? FEINBERG We're working real hard in terms of making sure that this report, it gives you, kind of, terms of patronage estimates and low costs. And politically, (inaudible) come down to the end, it's politically how strong we can push versus Glendale, versus Santa Monica. And all the councilpeople on this corridor have been pretty active. loo~ How did the guy from Norwalk get elected? FASCHING We don't know that. WOOLARD Which I think he was. FASCHING Yeah, he was. It's all going to come down, finally, to money. CIRAULO What about Antonovich? Is he very much pushing for it to come through here...our corridor? FEINBERG At the meetings I've been to, he really hasn't...obviously he must have some (inaudible) support because we're in his district, but he hasn't really come out to us or through his alternate and said that he really supports it. HARBICHT Is Glendale his district, too? FEINBERG I believe so, yes. CIRAULO So he's torn. FEINBERG Yeah. We actually got support from Gordon's office because they want to see something get out here in the San Gabriel Valley. So lACTC got a call from them actually wanting to help out. HARBICHT What's your best guess of our odds of getting it? FEINBERG The first one. . . it's going to come down to between us and, I would imagine, Santa Monica, Glendale and us. The strong point with Glendale is they have (inaudible). Santa Monica is showing real high patronage. And I think our strong point is we're not serving just one community, we're serving, I think it's, councilpeople from 10 different cities on this corridor and the whole San Gabriel Valley so we can really, really work it, I think that's our strong point. Because I don't think we can compete financially with Glendale, because they're talking about really contributing a lot of money. I ,,~= Yeah, but, see, our corridor, of course, would go out and carryall these foothill cities. FEINBERG Oh, yeah. And the San Gabriel Valley Transportation Coalition was formed to try to alleviate these past wrongs of all the money being spent up in the Valley and the west side. CIRAULO So are they having the proper amount of clout in pushing for all these cities? FEINBERG Well, initially, in the 30-year plan, the Coalition I think asked for 20 things to be added into its plan; they got 17 of them. And so, everybody (inaudible). The only 'thing they didn't get was the push-up of the (inaudible). 26 CIRAULO Because in terms of population, they far outweigh the Glendale or the Santa Monica consideration. FASCHING Glendales's got fifteen, eighteen million dollars they're just dying to kick into that system. And, storage facility that's a possibility for the cars? in their pocket and did you mention the La Pistro told me. FEINBERG No, I hadn't. FASCHING That's a plus on our side. FEINBERG O.K., I guess initially there is supposed to be a rail yard site located in Los Angeles. They've had real problems locating Los Angeles politically. All of a sudden now they're looking at Burbank, because I guess Burbank's offered some land that they're...and if that happens, then obviously they've got to build that line first, because they've got to getl' the trains to Pasadena and also to Glendale. But now LACTC has asked our cities out here in Irwindale and Azusa to see if they can locate a site out there. CIRAULO Sitings to store cars? FEINBERG Yeah, it's like an actual rail yard...that's the perfect place out there. And of course if that happens... FASCHING If that happens, that loses weight. FEINBERG Yeah, because obviously they have to have the cars from out in Azusa down at least to Pasadena, which means we're going to go right along with it, regardless of how much money we put in or not. That's something that just sort of happened in the last two weeks or so. FASCHING But you mentioned the word "clout"...go to one of those meetings and see all the clout. It's coming out the doors down there and the windows and everything else...at the LACTC meeting. LOJESKI David Dreier...is he involved in this very much? FEINBERG I think that he's involved in the San Gabriel Valley Transportation Coalition. LOJESKI David Dreier...he and I happened to talk and he mentioned this. He said, "Man, we've got to get this thing out, we've got to get this thing down out into the Arcadia area. FEINBERG That's what it's come down to. ..it's come down to the local politicians. But I also think that (inaudible) if Congress people and State Assembly people go over and really start pushing it as well, I think. MARGETT Can we go back to the $400,000,000. Is that to.... FEINBERG Yeah, that's all the way out to Azusa. FEINBERG O.K., now, is that for rights to the rail, or is that for construe-I tion.. .what is that? Or is that just the price to get in and play the game, or what? No. That $400,000,000 price is...it doesn't include the...the cost of the right-of-way is currently being negotiated with Santa Fe. It will be separate. This is the cost of... I guess, in basic terms, it costs $40,000,000 a mile to go light rail. And so, it's about 10 miles.... MARGETT MARGETT Construction costs, huh? FEINBERG Yes, that's including stations, that's putting the line in and that also includes land costs. And that's just general. And so we think our consultants are going to tell uS...we feel pretty confident that...that's based on the Long Beach model and we think that our land costs and our costs--because our corridor is already here--will be substantially less than $40,000,000. 27 HARBICHT Yeah, we already have the rights-of-way. FEINBERG Yeah, it's already there. Before, they had to take out tons of houses to get the Long Beach, and we don't have to do that at all. 7. EXPANDING COMSN. ' S FASCHING O.K., thank you, David. Next item, if we're going to stay in order...we don't have to, but...expanding commissions...I think Mr. Lojeski put that on the agenda. Iwm" ,There is an interest...you know, we are a community of people who like to get involved in this City and City government, and I think we're missing an opportunity by reducing numbers on commissions which occurred in the past. And I think we have an opportunity, particularly with the commissions that are the real workings, the nuts and bolts of the community, one being our Planning Commission. I'd like to see that commission expanded back to seven members, and I'd like to see the Recreation Commission expanded back to seven members, which they initially were and originally functioned at. I think the more involvement we can get from the citizens of the community in the government process, the better off we are. We should take advantage of it. FASCHING Do you think we should get the input from the existing commissions as to how they feel about expansion or additional members to the commissions as they stand now, from the members that are serving on those commissions? CIRAULO Why did we reduce the number on those commissions from seven to five, and when was that done? HARBICHT Well, basically, when we reduced the numbers on the Planning Commission was...the reasons that we did it was for efficiency purposes, and, one, the feeling that if the City Council could run the entire City with five members, five should be enough to handle the Planning Commission's function. And my own feeling, and I was one of the ones who was a strong advocate of reducing the size of the commission, was that as you increase the size of the commission-you may get more people involved but you moot the involvement of each person who's on it. And if you're one-fifth of a commission as opposed to one-seventh of a commission, or in the case of Arcadia Beautiful one-fifteenth of a commission, there's a difference. When I was on the Planning Commission, when I was first appointed to the Planning Commission and I walked into my first meeting, I was frankly surprised that there were seven members up there. I had been on a Planning Commission in another city that had five members, and I guess I just assumed that's the way it was everywhere. So, I understand what Dennis is saying and what he's trying to accomplish; my feeling is, though, that you're diluting the authority and the involvement of the people who are on the commissions by making the commissions bigger. So you have to weigh the value of having more people involved versus the value of making each person's involvement lesser. And I still feel that a commission of five is an adequate number to get the job done, and that it works efficiently that way. I think our Planning Commission, since we've reduced it, has worked very efficiently. They've done a really good job. I'm not saying that they've necessarily done a better job than before, but I haven't seen any deterioration in the job that they are doing. And, well, as you know, Joe, in the last two years they faced a lot of tough issues in the couple of years prior to that, because you've been going through this whole thing where we keep revising the R-l zoning codes. In fact, we took our Planning Commission to dinner, the Council did, a while back just as a thank-you for kind of taking all the flak before it got to us. I just don't see, from the standpoint of efficiency and from the standpoint of doing a group job how that would be improved by adding more members to the commission. And Dennis feels differently, so there's kind of the two sides of it. I CIRAULO How long ago was that done...do you remember when they changed' that? HARBICHT That probably happened about three years ago. 28 LOJESKI It was a political decision. We had a commissioner on the Planning Commission that one of our Council people took off after. It was the infamous Gary Kovacic routine...we had seven members and the decision was made, well, it's real simple, if we get to five that we don't make the reappointment of the one. So there was a little political decision and political maneuvering that went on at that point. Remember that the commissions also are only advisory to the Council. They really are not policy-making bodies. We set the policy. HARBICHT The other thing is the Arcadia Beautiful Commission, in my recent memory, had 15 members, and it's now down to, I believe, nine. And that's the commission that keeps asking to be increased. I haven't heard from any other commission that wants more members. But they're asking to be increased is. . . they only really have one function a year that they perform. And so they have kind of a high manpower need for about a two-month period, there. The rest of the time their manpower need is relatively Slightl' And my suggestion to them, when I was liaison to them, is to recruit people to help them...and basically, they're going around the City looking fo houses to nominate and judging the houses that have been nominated for the Arcadia Beautiful Awards. So the people who help to be judges in this don't have to be commissioners. And to have 15 people who are real busy for two months and are kind of doing pretty much nothing for the next 10 months doesn't really seem to me that that makes those 15 people real involved in our City government process. That's the one commission that periodically puts in a request for additional members. I think that maybe polling some of these commissions, like the Planning Commission and the Recreation Commission, two who have been reduced.. . and Arcadia Beautiful...and saying, "What do you think? Do you think you'd do better with more members, or do you think you're doing fine with what you have. . . do you need fewer, or whatever?" Maybe getting an idea of what they think. FASCHING I was the liaison last year to the Planning Commission and the year before to the Arcadia Beautiful Commission, and last year to the Library Board, and everything else, and I appreciate the involvement of our citizens as much as possible in the City and commissions. I think there are some commissions that perhaps would like more members. I must say this, the Planning Commission functioned very efficiently with five members. I have to go to one of the questions that's been asked of me: would I want seven City Councilmembers. And I don't think I'd want seven City Councilmembers. LOJESKI We functioned with seven Planning Commissioners for 40, 50 years. functioned with five, you know.... We FASCHING Well, see, I wasn't privy to when it worked with seven. It seemed to work all right with five, but maybe it worked fine with seven. LOJESKI It might work fine with three. Would that be the next stage? FASCHING Well, I don't think it would work fine with three, no. But...Mr. Margett? MARGETT I hear both of them. I think that the idea that the people in the community want to contribute to the community vis-a-vis a commission, that's a good way to do it. And I think that the idea, the concept that I they're interested in the community, and that took hold of their interest, and they're making a contribution... they feel that they're making a contribution.. . I feel provides some good stability for the community- -good political stability for the community. I like that aspect of it. And then you hit my on-button when you said, well, do you want seven Council people debating an issue. You know, we spend a lot of time...we spent two hours, here, going through nine agenda items and we're not even through yet. But, conversely, I don't know whether the Planning Commission, for instance...let's focus in on them...whether they have many, many hours of Planning Commission time. And if we can just digress for one moment, if we go to Item No. 10, architectural review boards for those areas of Arca- dia that don't have any, I don't know whether you're thinking in terms of establishing an architectural review board or is that going to be an ancillary duty of the Planning Commission. Now, if you have that, well maybe we should be looking at more commissioners. So maybe that's a hand- in-glove, I don't know. Joe? 29 CIRAULO Well, I guess I share the feeling of everything I've heard. And that is a lot of people have expressed an interest to get more involved in the City, and I think that's healthy...I think it's good. I think you do have to temper that with something getting too unwieldy. But Bob just brought up a good point...what about this architectural review board for areas of the City that don't have any. Who would be on that...who would do it? And if that would be a function of the Planning Commission, certainly five is not enough. FASCHING Well, if we have questions about that, then why don't we just incorporate that right into this discussion. CIRAULO But, you know, I think there's a broader way to look at it, too. If people in our community want to continue to stay involved and volunteer and be a part of it, what's wrong with that?, So we have a committee that's a little bit too big. I think that's much better than people who don't give a darn, and you can't find them, and nobody wants to serve on a commission, and they couldn't care less, and the commissions are controlled by the same group of people, the same small number. So there's a lot to be said for the fact that we have a lot of citizens who want to be very involved, and that's kind of nice. I HARBICHT Well, Joe, at the same time, we have an awful lot of people that want to be involved on the City Council, if you witness every City Council election we have.... CIRAULO Hallelujah for that. I think it would be terrible if we didn.t.... HARBICHT So we don't expand the City Council just so we can accommodate more people. I think that the fact that...achieving an appointment to that commission or achieving election to the City Council is a meaningful thing, and I think it becomes less meaningful if we say, well, since there's a lot of people let's just have more people on the commissions. When I was on the Planning Commission, I have to tell you, my reaction was, seven people! That's a lot of people! I mean, it just made for much less efficient meetings because, you know, there's just that many more people talking. But the reason I thought was, why? If five is enough to consider the affairs of the City as the City Council, why do we need seven for this rather narrow area. I didn't see what the reason for it was. And I did feel it was less efficient and it diluted my contribution. That my time was less...I would have been much happier putting out the time and effort I did if I had been one-fifth of a decision rather than one-seventh. CIRAULO How do you feel about the other commission that was reduced, the Recreation. HARBICHT Same thing. I think that it's a fairly narrow area. I've been liaison to the Recreation Commission, and I think that they have some good ideas and operate pretty efficiently, and I don't really see how it would be improved by just adding a couple of more people. FASCHING Well, I think it comes down to the involvement of the citizens on our commissions and allowing them to involve themselves. I was told today by Cindy that we ran an article in our quarterly newsletter inviting commission people to qualify, and we've had quite a few calls concerning that. So that does show an interest. However, I have to say I also am torn here, because I like citizen involvement; and perhaps when we get on this architectural thing and other things, and citizen committees that can help us out on many things, and we might have a citizen committee to help us out down the road with this Civic Center development and some people that can give us input on that. The only thing I don't want to do is, I think there's a danger on increasing--and bearing in mind I wasn't here when we had seven--increasing commissions to a size where they don't act efficiently and expeditiously on matters, whereby you would then discourage some people from staying as a member of that committee other than just for the fact that they're a commissioner and lose their effectiveness on that committee because it takes too much time to get things done and too many differences to go around the table on opinions. I MARGETT Has that been a criticism, George? Has that been an actuality? 30 FASCHING LOJESKI WOOLARD LOJESKI WOOLARD HARBICHT WOOLARD HARBICHT MARGETT HARBICHT FASCHING LOJESKI FASCHING 8. RELATIONS WITH SCHOOL DIST. FASCHING LOJESKI LOPEZ LOJESKI No, but I could see that happening. I think I have to go along, if there were seven members.... You could ask Bill. Bill worked with a commission of seven and he worked with a commission of five. If I had my druthers, I'd have five, only because the meetings go faster. The amount of work in preparing for the meetings is nice because you're not distributing seven packets of material. I think the attendance has actually been better with five than it was with seven. Of course, that's a reflection of who you put on the commission. Yeah, some people... obviously, if you get somebody who has a lot of commitments that goes out of town, it kind of distorts it. Didn't we do an attendance study about two years after we reduced thl' commission and it ~id show that, and we kind of theorized it was because when there was seven somebody thought, well, if I miss there's still si left, and if maybe he didn't feel.... Obviously, you can go either way on it...it's not life or death. But I think it has functioned quite well with just five. It's not one of those things where you can plug in a formula and come out with the answer, yes or no. I mean, I recognize that what Dennis is saying...I see some merit to his arguments. I think he sees there's some merit to mine. Well, why don't you poll the commissions, Mr. Mayor. I think that was a suggestion that Harbicht made. We're all liaisons in different commissions, we could bring the subject up and report back to the Council. Would you prefer to do it that way? That would be fine. O.K., let's do it. And this time next month then we can discuss it in open session as to what the individual Councilmembers found out from the commissions that they are with every month. What the general feeling is. Relations with School District. I'll start out and make a statement. I think it was terrific...one week, two weeks on the job or whatever...there was the study session we had with the School Board. And I think that was a real first...the Board members even said that, you know, we're sitting at the table and all of a sudden somebody's handing us something and basically saying, "We would like tOI do this for you." It showed some real, genuine sincerity. I understand last evening, Bob, you went over and spoke to the bond people and that sort of thing, and they were interested to see our involvement, which I think is healthy... I think that's good. I'm wondering, in this type of . thing with relations with the School District, we all know what the problems are facility-wise and that sort of thing over there, and I'm just going to throw out an example and a for-instance and maybe somebody can answer whether it's possible or not. When we are slurry sealing streets and things like that, we often do that with our own people.. .is that right, Joe? Not with our own people. O.K., we contract out for that. Could we ever include with a project-- let's assume they were going through and they were going to do Campus Drive, or they were going to do the connector street between Campus and 31 Duarte Road or something like that--to combine an effort in slurry seal, for example, their small administrative lot parking lot? LOPEZ We could, with their contribution. Or, if the contribution were made out of the General Fund. It can't be taken out of Gas Tax monies. LOJESKI I'll tell you why I brought it up. I happened to drive over there...I went last evening and I parked back there. I think that parking lot, for example, is in worse shape than Orange Grove. And I happened to make a comment. I said, "Good Lord, Terry, do you ever do anything with this parking lot, this is awful back here. Don't you have some sort of an ongoing. . . ." He says, "Where are we going to get the money to do something like that?" 'I.FASCHING LOJESKI Well, I agree with you on the principal of the thing. In this particular instance, slurry wouldn't do that lot a bit of good at all. Do we ever communicate with the District on things like that, or, for example, if we have tree maintenance or something like that do we communicate with them on maybe joining efforts...they need a tree trimmer to do some work and we need a tree trimmer. LOPEZ Not to my knowledge we haven't. HARGETT I think it's an economical thing there. I mean, you quickly reach the point of diminishing returns. In other words, they probably have enough parking lots over there to be slurry sealed that we wouldn't assist them one iota from the standpoint of a lower unit cost, nor would we effect any real less charge for a tree being trimmed...I don't think. If it's a question of us picking up the tab for it...I don't know where you're coming from.. .but if it's that, well, then, I have some mixed feelings about that. Cooperation, absolutely.. .no question about that. But I don't know whether...if'you're trying to effect savings, I don't know whether you're going to do it. FASCHING At least savings for them. If they can't afford to get something done, can we throw it in to something...we're going to kind of help them out a little bit. In relation to a new involvement with our schools, and this type of thing. LOJESKI Well, I think that's swell, but I don't know what the costs would be, I don't know what the problems are, and I don't know if it's something we want to even consider. WOOLARD We have some assistance, really, already through the Recreation programs and the portions we contribute towards pool facilities and some of these other. . . . HARBICHT We maintain the fields and we resod them. already. I think we do an awful lot WOOLARD It's easy to do it that way when you have some City benefit that you can share. ,- HARBICHT HARGETT Yeah, that's kind of a quid pro quo, though. Now if we could go back to the transportation system, number six, that might be also an assist, too. FASCHING You mean on the buses...their buses? HARGETT Yeah. No, no. I mean if we were to go to some sort of a community transportation system, you could take some of the load, I would think, off the School District in transporting those kids. ..if you routed it right. An~ that would be a savings. HARBICHT Yeah, in terms of the relations with the School District, I've had a long relationship with the School District as president of the Educational Foundation, active in the Booster Club, and on and on, and a strong supporter of the School District. I get a little nervous when we start 32 MARGETT . HARBICHT MARGETT FASCHING MARGETT 9. COUNCIL. MEMBER.! EXl'ENSi' POLICY' r FASCHING LOJESKI HARBICHT mixing the City with the School District. I recognize that they've got some problems. And I, as an individual, would like to see some of those problems solved, and I as a City Councilman, from the standpoint of what's good for the City, would like to see some of those problems solved. At the same time, I've been in a community where the Council was perceived as meddling with the School District and ttying to run the School District, and there was a very strong sentiment there that the Council ought to get their nose out of School District affairs and let the elected officials of the School District run the District. And I know that that's not the situation here, at least it's not perceived as the situation here at the present time, but I think it's kind of a narrow path you have to walk. If you cross over from being helpful and accommodating to...you can get a little too far over and then you get a reaction to that. Yell, you're absolutely right...I think ,you have to preserve the autonomYI there's no question about that. Right. And I think that we're probably very generous in our maintenanc of fields and things like that, relative to what we get from it, but I think to just step in to some area and say "Your parking lot needs saving and we'll do it," I don't mean to pick on that example...but, you know, "Your buildings need painting, we'll paint the buildings," I think that's getting into an area we, shouldn't be in. The schools have funding apparatus; and inadequate as it is, that's really theirs to do and their to take care of. And I'd like to see us be as cooperative as possible in other ways; and I think, for example, this election thing is a perfect example of we're working hand-in-glove with them. I think the meeting that we had with them last week to talk about an auditorium which is something of benefit both to the City and the schools are good examples, and I'd like to continue that kind of relationship. Yell, and the other aspect, too, is that, don't forget, we're of course serving the same tax payer. The same guy that's picking up the tab on municipal government or the Board of Education is that same guy, so...you know what I mean? So you've got that aspect to consider, too. I think that in the past month, two months, whatever it is, we've gone a long ways in establishing a new relationship with the School Board, both in the area supporting their bond issue to being involved in offering them some thoughts on their bond issue, calling the election, and the auditorium, and showing what we want to do. And I\think our relationship is at that level. I do feel that it's a very fine line, like Bob says. They could get all of a sudden to think that we want to run their show, and that's the furthest thing from our mind. But when you get five personalities.over there and five personalities over here, you get into a real area there where, "Yell, I think they're 'going a little too far," and blah, blah, blah, and everything goes to hell pretty quick. I think we're doing the right thing at this present time in our relationship with them. Yell, you made that clear at our last meeting, though. prefaced the meeting...that you're not trying to interfere. that we're coming from the right spirit and aspect of it. I think you And I think I O.K. Yell, anybody else on that? O.K. Councilmember expense policy. Who put that on? I think it was generated...Cindy regenerated Bob's situation, and that seems to be workable, as far as I'm concerned. The only problem is, I wrote that memo and we all kind of agreed that would be it, but I've never turned in an expense account in the last three years, other than if I was going off on a conference or something. 33 LOJESKI FASCHING MARGETT FASCHING a:GETT ARCH. REVIEW BOARDS FASCHING MARGETT FASCHING MARGETT FASCHING CIRAULO I HARBICHT MARGETT Moving right along, then. Architectural review boards for those areas of the City that don.t.... Well, wait a minute. Bob brought that question up. Does that suffice. Bob? Does the memo...that satisfied that. Well. yeah. the memo satisfied that. I didn't realize there was anything in place, and I thought that we should be in concert if we're going to have expenses. ...' Are you comfortable with that policy? Sure. Architectural review boards for those areas of the City that don't currently have them. Absolutely essential. O.K.. why don't you lead off then. Of course, I'm coming from the southern part of Arcadia where those people do not have control of their destiny with regards to their neighbors' homes. . . they have no input, particularly to the design. When I say design, I think it's the entire design, Mr. Mayor. I'm talking about the colors. the planning, the garishness of homes, the type of architecture. They can only input after the thing is up, and then there's a lot of complaints. And I think that for those areas that do not have the architectural review board, I would like to see something in conjunction, really, with the Planning Commission to be able to give those people an opportunity--those people meaning the board itself--an opportunity to appraise those projects much like the homeowner associations do. function much like the homeowner associations do. Now, the south is a different breed of cat. You're not going to be able to, I don't think, go out there and set four or five homeowner associations up. I think that may be more bulky than what we want. But the concept of having an architectural review board for that portion of the City that doesn't have it appeals to me. And I think it would do an awful lot to solve the concerns of so many of the citizens in the south part of town. Joe? Well, you're not going to ever get people in the south part of town to have a homeowners association. There have been several attempts made, they've tried very hard. and they just can't get enough consensus to get one going. They've tried several times. So, we have to be the architec- tural review board for the south part of the City. Now, whether the "we" is us on the Councilor a combination of people on the Planning Commis- sion, or some other people...but someone has to watch out for the south half of the City, too. I agree completely. How we go about doing that, I'm not quite sure how we approach it. Bob, as strongly as you feel in favor of it, I feel at least as strongly in opposition. I cannot believe that you're thinking that government can do a better job of designing people's houses than people do themselves. That to me is the Willie Brown and Ted Kennedy approach that says, "Folks, you don't know how to do these things well enough, but those of us in government have all the wisdom that it takes to decide what color your house should be and how your planting should be and what the design of your house should be. And I think we're taking away a basic freedom from people. and that the cure is much worse than the illness. I couldn't disagree with you any more. I'm sorry. 34 CIRAULO How do you feel about the current architectural review boards? HARBICHT The cu,rent architectural review boards were something that people entered into voluntarily. And the fact is that I kind of have mixed feelings about them...they've done some good, they've done some things that I think were wrong. But, basically, what we're doing is if we put an architec- tural review board over the entire City that is run by the City, it just basically is government deciding how the houses should be designed. And I just don't see that as the kind of thing that I think that we should be doing. It does not fit at all with my concept of the proper role of government and the proper role of the individual in the United States of America. CIRAULO Should we try to encourage the people in their own neighborhoods to form their own associations? If they want to. The fact is, when they've tried it they haven't beet successful. And the reason they haven't been successful is because th~ people are saying, "Wait a minute. You're telling me that my neighbor are now going to decide what I do with my house? I want to control them, but I don't want them controlling me." And that's been the problem. And when they did that the last time, which was two or three years ago, they worked very hard on it, and as time went by and people began to understand more and more of what exactly was going to be involved, all of a sudden people were backing off saying, "No, this isn't what I want. I don't want my neighbors telling me what I can do." HARBICHT MARGETT Well, Bob, why do we have, or maybe, is there anybody else here have, the complaints on the Disneyland houses that we have. Those that are blocking the views of mountains, the intense use of land, the rest of the stuff that only government can take care of. I mean, this laissez-faire just go ahead and do what you want to do out there... what may be nice and beautiful to you may be a pile of to everybody else. And I don't think that it's right for you to pass, maybe, your thoughts upon the balance of the community because you think, for instance, that what you have is beautiful. FASCHING Before we get into debate on this issue, why don't we go around and hear from everybody first, then we'll come back and question and answer of each person. Dennis? HARBICHT Well, I share concerns for both sides. I have yet to hear somebody tell me who's functioning in the realm of a homeowners association that they're really against it...if they have it's been for very subtle reasons. On the other side of the story, during the campaign, a couple of months particularly, I heard nothing but complaints by those people that are affected, that don't have any architectural review. And it all seems to be a function of size...size and massiveness and all that. I think the City Council did a commendable job of attacking some of those points.. . the setbacks, height limitations, and that sort of thing. But there is still the problem out there yet. On the other side of the coin, go up to the Upper Rancho Area where there is the 11,OOO-square-foot house with the nine-car garage or whatever in the world it is. That passed the architectural review board, and yet all of the people that live in thel area say how did that happen. I think you have to keep in mind...and to my knowledge, I think there's been something like seven houses built under the new ordinance. Everything else that has been built was under the old ordinance. So, the ordinance that we passed which significantly increased the side yard setback, particularly for second floors, did a lot of other things, there have only been seven houses in the entire City that have been built under that ordinance. LOJESKI FASCHING Yeah, but I think that's because of the fact that the building slowed down. You can still build the style of architecture and house that we're discussing here.... HARBICHT You misunderstand. I'm not saying it's because of that ordinance that there haven't been many houses built. What I'm saying is that the 35 complaints primarily are about houses that were built under the old ordinance, that there hasn't been enough time for the new ordinance to have manifested itself. LOJESKI Let me just continue with a couple of points. I live in an area where there is a homeowners association. I haven't had any problems with the homeowners association, but isolated circumstances have come up. But I'm looking at Resolution 5426. Bob wasn't there at the time and he obviously (inaudible). Maybe the requirements of formulating the homeowners associations, if I'm looking at that and interpreting it correctly, were so tough to comply, maybe that was one of the reasons they could not form a homeowners association. And I'll give you an example: It says the proposed homeowners association area should consist of not less than 150 gross acres. The proposed homeowners association area should consist of not less than 200 properties. Is that making it too difficult? Let's assume that there is an area of 50 homes that wanted to formulate a homeowners association. According to that resolution they can't, am I right, Bill? I WOOLARD Essentially, yes, although the Council still would have it's discretion to (inaudible). But these were guidelines that it was intended that they sort of follow. LOJESKI Yeah. So, I throw that out, I guess, as a piece of conversation on the whole thing. . Have we created something that's an unworkable document as far as getting that many people involved, I don't know. And yet, I hear what Bill just said which is there's only been a very few, small number of homes that have been built with the new ordinances, and what is that going to do (inaudible). I don't know. WOOLARD Well, I think based on what we've found in dealing with the people that were trying to form the one in the Baldwin Stocker area, I'm not sure that it makes too much difference in the size...you're still going to have a problem in that people want the regulations on the other houses but not on their own. I think no matter where you go and no matter how many people you try to incorporate, you're going to have problems forming an association, because people don't want the restrictions. It means that it's going to be harder when they go to sell their property to somebody who wants to put a so-called Monster Home on or something. They start thinking about these things in terms of dollars and cents to their pocketbook, and all of sudden it's, "Maybe we really don't want it. Maybe we can live with a big house next door because someone might put a big house on our property some day." FASCHING I personally don't feel that there's anything wrong with a large house. What we've done in the last few years and what we've talked about on setbacks and height and everything has gone a long way. However, in the area of...there are quite a few large houses of design that fit in with the neighborhood, and they are large houses. I don't think this City is going to go on with...it's future is small houses. The future is a larger style house. But we're talking here, to my way of thinking, strictly the design of the house and what appearance it makes in the neighborhood and the street it's in. We have homeowners associations, primarily north of Huntington or Foothill, as the case may be, where they deal with these problems of architectural design and in areas where they already have some larger houses, so that it's not the house that doesn't fit in so much as the design of the house. But those people on those homeowners associa- tions have to act within the guidelines and the rules that we set down. But they do serve a purpose, is that they can consult with the person going to build that house and try and get him to bend a little bit to make the house a little more compatible with his neighbors' and things that they think that they will be comfortable with. But if we have a review board, and we're talking here is to the long-range development of the City, the development in the area of what we call Monster Houses and I call Designed Houses...they're not designed the way their neighbors want them or the people want them, and there are other cities that control the design of a house to fit in with the neighborhood. And I think that large houses can be designed that they fit in with a neighborhood, rather than stand out like a sore thumb. We've had that kind of construction or development in our City for quite a few years. And I for one think it's kind of messed I 36 up our City to have these type of houses scattered throughout, and drive down a street and all of a sudden they hit you in the face. I don't think it's because they built a large house on a lot, but that they built a grotesque house in the estimation of a lot of people. And done because developers have built those houses and know what they can sell and know what market they're catering to. Other cities don't allow this. I don't think the City of South Pasadena...I know the City of San Marino doesn't. You have to have a conditional use permit in San Marino to build a house, and if it doesn't conform to their neighborhood, you don't build that house. I think what we have to consider here are two things, to my way of thinking: If we want to plan for the future of this City so that it's not developed architecturally hither and yon, and we have some continuity of the type of architecture that we're going to allow in the City, then we have to do something about that. We're not trying to restrict large houses or that development, but you can end up 20 years down the road with a city that looks 'like Disneyland. Secondly, if you have arChitectural restrictions of the type where we have a plan for this City, the way it's going to look architecturally, then you have to have an architectural review board that represents the entire City, because they are going t have authority throughout the City, not to represent just south Arcadia. Because you can't represent south Arcadia and not represent the entire City. The creation of homeowners associations in the south I think would be very difficult and a long process, and I don't know if it would serve any real purpose down the road because it's the City Council that's going to have to say which way you want this City to develop and which way we want it to go. I think that's the issue that we have to address. Do we want to permit any type of architecture to continue throughout the City regardless of the style it is, Mediterranean, European, oriental, or what. Or are we going to set some architectural standards for the City and have those in place and an architectural review board that has the same as the Planning Commission that represents the City Council. So I think we have to decide the one thing. Just anybody build what they want, any style they want, as long as they're to code, and they can look like anything, or do we finally come out and say we want this City to develop for the long range with some guidelines. That's the way I read it. HARBICHT Well, you're right. You're absolutely right. There's a difference between architectural guidelines and government. control of your design, FASCHING Well, Bob, I know what you mean about government control and telling somebody what they can and cannot do. But we represent 50,000 people living here, and do those 50,000 people want a mishmash of architectural design in the City, such as has been done, and the type of architecture in the last five years? Or do those people in this City say, "Hey, we've got a City here that should have some controls." Because we can go out and see some beautiful, large, two-story houses. But we can go out and see some grotesque, large, two-story houses. Now, do we want the grotesque and the other kind, and don't we give a damn about how houses are designed to make this City one City? That's what I'm saying. HARBICHT Fifty thousand people speak with one voice as to the type of architecture they want? FASCHING No, but I've heard an awful lot of complaints from the people that say" "Look at these houses...they're ugly." Virtually all of those complaints.. . and I hear them all the time, too... _ have to do with the size of the houses, not with the design._ HARBICHT FASCHING Well, Bob, I can take you out and show you a very large two-story house that fits right in with the block. HARBICHT I know. I think a lot of them do. FASCHING Well, what about the ones that don't? HARBICHT I guess it's one of those things where you believe in freedom of speech or you don't. You believe in freedom of expression or you don't. You believe in the people of this country being able to act on their own property and to build the kind of house they want to build, or you believe 37 "', ~ .,.;..' that government should control that. should control that. I don't believe that government FASCHING Well, it's a good argument. HARBICHT That's what it all comes down to. FASCHING I think about the responsibility to the development in the future of an entire city, and if you screw it up because you said, "Hey, build anything you want and make it look like anything you want," then you're just throwing it down the drain. HARBICHT Well, that's what's been going on in this entire country ever since it was founded. And I think we've got a pretty nice City here, and I think we've got an awful lot of nice development everywhere in this country without the government stepping in and saying, "Hold it, folks, from now on you're going to do it the way we tell you." l"TI Well, I can show you some lovely areas where government has shown the way with design. I can take you down to Irvine and show you areas there that, to be honest with you, compared to some of the areas in Arcadia, Irvine would win hands down. I can take you to Rancho Bernardo and give you the same thing. And I think that the argument that you give, that you ought to be able to do any darn thing that you want to and too much government meddling, doesn't hold weight there. I think that's what we have been elected to do. I can point out the savings and loan debacle that we have right now as a. . . really, we got rid of a lot of restrictions and guidelines and we have the problems that we have there...just as for one instance. And I think ,to be able to have the citizens put in what they want for their community as far as architectural guidelines is not an awful lot for them to ask of us to do. And they have asked us to do it. FASCHING I think you're right. Let's drop the word "guidelines." "restrictions." Architectural restrictions. Let's use MARGETT Yeah, I would buy that. FASCHING But I mean, no use beating around the bush...that's what we're talking about. HARBICHT If we were to...I can't visualize exactly how to do this...but if we were to draw up some guidelines that...well, I won't give an example because I can't think of one...but if we were to draw up some guidelines that said certain styles of architecture are permissible and certain styles are not...in other words, you cannot build dome houses; you cannot build... well, I just use that as an example without trying to.... That's something that, depending on the specific design of the ordinance, I would be able to live with. But the idea that every person who wants to add a room on to his house has to come before some government bureaucrats... FASCHING We're not talking about adding on a room. HARBICHT l~"", ...and get their permission, and every person who wants to build a house on their own piece of property has to come before some government bureaucrats and get their permission, I find that abhorrent. Wait a minute, Bob. How can you all of a sudden make the statement, when we're talking about the architecture of new, large houses in the City, and now you're coming back saying if we set architectural guidelines and restrictions that you can't build this and this, isn't that the same thing you're opposed to? HARBICHT No, it's not. FASCHING Well, what was it you were opposed to? HARBICHT Then it becomes a government of laws, not a government of men, a government of individuals sitting down and imposing their particular taste on each and everyone of us. There's a big difference there. I believe in a government of laws. And I believe that we set a, for example, zoning 38 ordinance which says these are the setback restrictions, these are the envelope within which you can build. But then we have individual freedom of expression within that for people to design what they want to design, to build the kind of house that they want to build. FASCHING But you're saying that if we decide that we don't want certain designs within the City and make that our law, then that's O.K. with you, is that what you're saying? HARBICHT Yes. FASCHING Well, that's the track we're on. FASCHING That's not the track we're on if we're talking about an archi tectural review board, which is an entirely different.... Well, then, I think we set up an architectural review board to set some~ standards for the City and make it law. ~ We could have a study committee to come up with some recommendations, ' perhaps. HARBICHT HARBICHT FASCHING I was under the impression that you were saying let them build what they've been building, they don't bother you. You didn't say that? HARBICHT I said that it would be far preferable to me than having an architectural review board of four to five individuals, or seven, or whatever it is, to sit down with every room addition, every house...Bob talked about landscaping. .. and approve those things. I think that's unwarranted government. . . . FASCHING Well, I didn't hear landscaping or adding on a room mentioned. We were talking earlier.... MARGETT I mentioned landscaping, and I would also include painting.... FASCHING Well, I think we're on to something that we can all live with, and that is to finally determine some architectural standards for this City that. we will enforce. And if you want to call them guidelines, I think they're just going to be.... CIRAULO I think that's a good idea. As long as they remain pretty broad and general in nature. Somebody just tossed out painting for a second, and I'm remin4ed of the story I read in the paper about in Laguna Beach they have a law, the houses have to be white, something like that, and this guy painted it eggshell. Well, to what degree.. .you can go a little bit crazy. Maybe I don't like a blue house, but maybe you like a blue house, and I think you've got to allow that sort of thing to go on. FASCHING Oh, I don't think we tell everybody everything to do, but what I'm thinking of, we determine what this City is going to look like...I don't mean, like, the guy wants to plant a tree here or something, or paint his house...but architecturally what is it. going to look like, and have some restrictions on some of the things they've been building so that this City will haVI some semblance of looking somewhat as a uniform type of City. I don't mean to stifle creativity or anything like that, but I don't want to kee driving down Fifth Avenue and Second Avenue and see these places they'v been building and have them spotted all through this town. This town is going to look crazy. It's already got a reputation of all these mansion- type houses they've built here, as to why we've allowed this to go on the way we have. Fortunately, in the last year it hasn't gone on that much. Seven building permits, right? WOOLARD Well, I think it's about twenty.... FASCHING But believe me, it will all come up again and they'll be building as fast as hell, and we'll all look like Disneyland. So I think we have to find some way of establishing and creating these architectural restrictions so that we can have some continuity to the long-range development of the City 39 HARBICHT FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING ~WIT FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING LOJESKI FASCHING CIRAULO LOJESKI ,. FASCHING HARBICHT MILLER CITY ATTORNEY so we don't have turret houses here and Medi terrane an there, and everything else. Well, see, I don't agree with...if those are examples of what you want to do, then I don't agree with that. I think some of the nicest areas in this City are areas that all have architecture-designed homes and there's a lot of contrast in the styles. Are there any houses that have been built you don't like? You look at Dennis's street. There's a variety of different styles of houses. They all kind of fit, though, don't they? But they're very different. There's ranch-style homes, there's...I don't know what you call yours, sort of a Mediterranean. . . I don't know what they all are called. So I don't want to say, this street is ranch-style homes only. No, no, no, no, no. If you want to say that our guidelines are we're not going to allow pagodas, we're not going to allow dome houses, we're not going to allow subterranean houses, O.K. Now we're on to something, Bob. O.K., but these are examples of...you don't want a hodgepodge of turret houses here and Mediterranean houses there. That to me is individual expression. Well, that was the wrong example. Let's go back and be specific with the things that you mentioned. Yes, those are the things we're talking about. . . domes and.... I can go along with that. But then when we take the next step and say let's set up an architectural review board to review every single one of these, and for one thing it's very cumbersome, extremely expensive, very staff intensive. But the second part of that is that now I think we're meddling in places we have no business meddling. No, no. If we set up architectural restrictions and, if we use the word, "guidelines," then our Planning Department can be the review board, or they'd be in design to what we've set up as our architectural standards. That becomes part of the permitting process. That's right. City wide. I didn't hear Bill say yes or no. But there are cities that do it on an individual basis. It would depend on what the guidelines are. One of the things you might want to consider in view of all that's been said is that Planning Department and City Attorney office put together alternative ways of approaching this problem, some of which you've alluded to, in terms of what's happening in the country and what's been legally sustained. A lot has been sustained in the last five years on architec- tural reviews, so there's a lot more leeway for you to do different things than there was five years ago, and there are also some limits, too. And I wondered if, preliminary to any further action by the Council, some input from us as to what to say to the ARB's, how far you can go, and the different ways of accomplishing these different things were on the table, then you would be able to.... 40 CIRAULO I think that's a perfect way to go. MARGETT That's great. FASCHING Well, that's good. But then I think the second thing is we need to create a citizens committee to help us determine all of these things we're talking about. MARGETT What they want, in the community. FASCHING I think we need representatives from throughout the City and to give us their guidelines and recommendations. This isn't something we're going to do in 30 days, but I think the sooner the better. But here's a perfect spot to have a citizens committee to help advise us on.... FASCHING What hearings? ,., "'~ 1 MARGETT Mr. Mayor, you may have that in the Planning Commission, and ahead and have their hearings with regards to that, too. MARGETT With regards to architectural review. WOOLARD I think you'd be better off with a separate committee that could just focus on this thing, and draw the average citizen, and also draw from the architectural professions and.... LOJESKI Also draw from real estate people, because they're going to come back and say I "Hey, you never consulted us." HARBICHT Two years ago we did exactly that. We had representatives of the architectural review boards that now exist, we had a number of representa- tives from south Arcadia, and we had some realtors, we had some architects, we had a couple of builders, and we had two or three meetings. I chaired those meetings...it was in this room. The room was full, and we discussed detail after detail of these things. And what the result of that was, was the ordinance that we passed not quite two years ago...the new R-l zoning ordinance. And I'm not saying we can't do it again, but.. .. FASCHING But we didn't really concentrate on architecture, architectural restric- tions. HARBICHT No, it was zoning, wasn't it? FASCHING Yeah, right. We're talking here architecture. We're pretty well done with our zoning ordinances. HARBICHT What I'm saying is we've got a blueprint for establishing a committee, because I think what we did at that time was the way to go. You've got to have some architects in there, you've got to have the realtors in there, we don't want to destroy the economic health of the City. FASCHING City some, I know, but what I'm saying is we want them to be considered standards.... But I think they're the people that are going to tell us also. I think we're doing more to destroy the future economic health of the if we don't get on it than we are by getting on it and getting standards as far as architecture is concerned. HARBICHT FASCHING HARBICHT I'm not arguing against the committee, I'm saying we've got a blueprint for how that committee should be, because I thought it worked very well last time. FASCHING Well, why don't we have Bill Woolard come back with us for some recommen- dation with Mike on the formation of a citizens committee. HARBICHT I think it's important that Mike's part of it, too, so we know what the restrictions are (inaudible). 41 FASCHING Well, you guys work out the procedure. At least we can get the ball rolling. Well, I think we accomplished a lot on that. 11. LIGHTING DISTRICTS LOPEZ With your permission, I'd like to pass these out. This is on the lighting districts. What this indicates is, the red indicates the streets that are lighted that are not within any zone or district. In other words, the General Fund picks up the cost for the lighting. Those streets that are blank, or white, on this sheet indicate no lighting at all. The other portions that are shaded respond respectively to Zone A, B, C, D, and E. (AS CHING , . LOPEZ HARBICHT Bottom line being we have a third of the City without street lights in the residential Zones. Approximately 25 to 30 percent. Joe, I have a question. On your report, you say in here that the cost runs from $50 to $250 per year to a property owner to be a member of the lighting district. And so, I guess I'm questioning the cost. I pulled out a tax bill from a piece of rental property that I own and the rate was .022887 percent on land value only. And it was $18.40. I bought this a few years ago, so maybe if somebody bought it today it would go up to maybe $50. Is $50 to $250...it seems to me that the typical would be much closer to the $50 than the $250. LOPEZ That's correct. But it can range up to $250, but $50 is the more typical. HARBICHT I mean, let's say that we had one of these streets with no lights on it and then they got their 60 percent to sign the petition and came down.. . one of these down here between El Monte and Santa Anita. Isn't it pretty likely that they'd be in the $50-$60-$70-a-year range? Because in our article that was in the City Newsletter, the $50 and $250 was quoted, and I know I would look at that if I was thi~king about putting lights in and say, oh, maybe $50 but not $250 for a street light that's going to serve my house and five others...it seems like an expensive deal. I was just wondering if we could tighten that down and say the average property pays this much, yours may vary, specific numbers are available, or something. It might make it a little more attractive, a little more palatable. LOPEZ Sure we could. HARBICHT Incidentally, Monrovia has a direct assessment. Are they operating under these 1972... LOPEZ I believe so, that's correct. HARBICHT That's basically a parcel tax? 'LOPEZ HARBICHT LOPEZ Well, it's not a tax, it's an assessment for benefit. And it's usually on the lot or per front footage or per area. As opposed to.... As opposed to (inaudible). HARBICHT Assessed value. LOPEZ Correct. LOPEZ Most cities are on the 1972 Act. As far as I know there are only two cities, at least in Southern California, that are on the 1919 Lighting Assessment District Act, and that is Oceanside and Arcadia. HARBICHT We're a very conservative City, you know. In either case, I mean, Monrovia's worked...I worked it out as if it was assessed valuation and 42 it was very close. It would be very close to the same rate that we have...I happen to own a piece of property over there, too. Those are the questions I had. FASCHING We have... unless somebody else has jumped in here... on these lighting districts and lighting in general, is that going back to the original statement, one-third of the residential areas in the City have no street lights. And I for one have felt for the last two years that the time has come that we should encourage street lights on all the streets within our City. Now, there's going to be some people, undoubtedly, that don't want street lights, but I think the majority of them that, if approached and know the story, would want street lights. I think that in that approach you have to use a selling job and you have to tell them. We had one recent incident on Pamela a few months ago where they created a lighting district on that street, we showed them what we were going to give them, and all of a sudden that was the end of that. Those that were i) opposition in the first place used that, I feel, as a tool to convince, some of the other people on the petition for the street lights to not go for it. And they were only. offered one type of street light, which is the high, bent-over sodiums...what was it that they were offered? LOPEZ It was a high-pressure sodiums. FASCHING But I don't think anybody in the City is going to want street lights unless we have a choice of street lights for them that's going to be compatible with their neighborhood and going to look nice on their streets. They don't want lights like Baldwin Avenue on Pamela Road, nor would we want them on our street. So, I think it's a matter of we say and we try and sell these people on the desirability of having street lights, the low cost involved on their part, hopefully,. to have street lights, where we pick up the largest tab, but we make a package available to them and we have a street light package developed, that they would have a choice of maybe three or four different styles of street lights for their neighborhood that would make their street look nice and not like just a thoroughfare, in other words. It's got to look like a neighborhood. And I think then we could sell a lot of people on having street lights. So, I think we have to kind of agree that we're going to go on a campaign to light up the rest of the City, come up with a package for people that would make it very palatable as to what we want to do with their street, how pretty it's going to look.. .because that's what they're basically interested in, too, as well as light...and be flexible in our approach to them. And I don't think we've had that flexibility in the past in our approach with these people. LOPEZ Mr. Mayor? FASCHING Yes. LOPEZ If I could bring up something that I think is pertinent to this discus- sion. Even if the City doesn't adopt or use what they call IES standards, that's the Illuminating Engineers Standards that's generally accepted by most cities and by most lighting engineers. Edison, in fact, endorses and recommends those standards. But if the City does not use those, it has to come up with some standards that are supportable and reasonably consistent with sound engineering and design and safety standards. So il we vary from that, at least from the recommended point of view, it puts out somewhat of a risk, you might say. I think the attorney has indicate so' in the past. But with those recommended standards, say, on the books or that are adopted, the Council at anyone particular meeting, if there is a certain amount of overwhelming dissatisfaction with the type of standards that are recommended, the Council in its discretion can make that decision at that point in time. But to make a certain standard, say, available that isn't according to safety standards would be taking a very large risk. HARBICHT What kind of deviation from standards are we talking about? FASCHING I don't know. What I'm talking about is the design. I think we've got risk driving up and down any street in the City if you want to know the 43 truth, I mean as far as lighting is concerned. And that's been evidenced by some of the lawsuits that we have. And I think that if somebody [End of 'rape 2 Side 4, and beginning of Tape 3 - Side 5] FASCHING ...create a nice atmosphere on those streets, and that we have that have beautiful street lights. standards are.... I've seen other streets I don't know what the HARBICHT Are you talking about the design of the poles or the level of the light? FASCHING Design of the poles, the whole thing. CIRAULO The level of the light, the lumens would have to conform to the standards or we're in trouble, I would think. ~ICHT _IRAULO Yeah, we just paid out $300,000 to somebody. Yeah. So you're talking in terms of design, I would guess. FASCHING I'm talking design, right. But we have to give them a choice of design, we can't have one type of light, and we've got to come up with many. They have. to have a choice on what looks good on their street. MARGETT Not too many choices. FASCHING Well, not too many, no. But all you need are three or four. In the case of Pamela Road, they didn't have any choice. MARGETT And then it went down.. .couldn't fly, is ,that what you're saying? CIRAULO They chose not to have any then. They said no. FASCHING But I think that if Joe could come up with some designs in that regard as to what can be offered to the people, and they would say, "Hey, that's beautiful. It's going to make our street much nicer. We're going to have some light." Then they're going to get enthusiastic. But we have to sell it to them, we have to have a sales package to present to them and they can come down to City Hall and inspect, and then go after it. But the main intent of this is that we go on a program to get street lights on the rest of the City for the long range. HARBICHT Well, what's the program? FASCHING Well, to develop a package that would be palatable to people, that they could look and choose and have selections on what could be put on their street. MARGETT Do we have the lighting districts already established, is this what we have here, or do you have to go through and 'establish other lighting districts? LOPEZ '~mrn' No. That's shown in the shaded areas, the existing district with various zones. If somebody puts street lights in, we put them into one of those districts. LOPEZ Into one of those zones, right. MARGETT In other words, the districts are already established. LOPEZ That's correct. MARGETT Totally, throughout the community. LOPEZ Not totally throughout the community. There are only certain areas that are zoned. Those shown in red are the streets that are lighted that are not covered by a district or zone, so the General Fund actually picks up those costs. 44 HARBICHT And the ones that are white are the ones that don't have lights, and if they opted for lights then they would be folded into one of the districts. O.K. That's just a taxing mechanism. FASCHING I think it's the fact that the City gets behind a movement to try and light up those areas without street lights, support it, has a package available to those people that don't have street lights, then we'll put it in their water bill and mail it to them. LOPEZ May I make a suggestion, Mr. Mayor. FASCHING Sure. LOPEZ What we can do is research what we can and report back to the Council with regard to what is available. FASCHING Good. , .n. "'" ,. ...,.., n"ok<n, " ,~ HARBICHT George, you won't believe this, but their water bill. FASCHING You already wanted to put a peacock in there or something...I forget what it was. MARGETT Also, the procedure (that we. used in the past in getting lights, or the citizens have used, has been, I think, a real obstacle course in finally trying to get the lighting for their streets or to streets, whatever it is. And is it going to be our posture to commit to having street lights for the community, and go ahead and go through the hearing process for these little districts and then vote yea or nay on it like we have the sidewalks before, Bill, or.... WOOLARD Well, you'd have to in order to have this taxing mechanism (inaudible). MARGETT But we're not going to have to worry any more about people trying to get a petition to City Hall to try and get their street lights. We're going to take the initiative on this, is that what we're saying? FASCHING No, I think we're going to try the other approach first. MARGETT The petition? FASCHING Well, I think this is where we try and sell the people on how attractive it would be to have lights on their street, and then I think...well, my thought was we'd still stick with the petition.... MARGETT I think we're right back in the same thing, George. FASCHING Well, not necessarily, because we've never been on a real campaign to get this done. MARGETT Well, that means that everybody has to go running around, signing up, .saying this is what they want, and then they bring it in to us? Don't we feel that it's necessary for this community from the standpoint of traffil safety, from the standpoint of...I'm sure Chief Johnson can substantiat some of the problems that we have on unlighted streets, and it's for th safety and protection of the people within the community. I would sa that we go.ahead and handle it like we used to handle sidewalks. And i the people want them, fine...they're willing to pay $200 or $50 a month or whatever the situation, fine. They want to choose this particular light, that's fine. But at least then you'd be able to do it. FASCHING Yeah, but you can't put that street light on that street for five houses unless all five of those people, or at least the majority, wanted that street light. MARGETT Well, that's what the hearing process is for, right? HARBICHT You think we should initiate it? 45 MARGETT Yes. HARBICHT Recause a lot of these people don't want street lights. MARGETT Well, then, we'll find out. HARBICHT You mean you just want to impose it on them. MARGETT No, if they don't want it. I don't believe in sticking it down their throat, but I think it's too difficult at this point to have people running around signing petitions up and down and trying to get everybody to handle it that way. I think that it should be offered by the City in the form of a hearing, and if these people want it, fine, then I think we should go ahead and do it. Right now I think it's far too difficult for citizens to be able to get street lights in their particular neighborhood. t. ICHT GETT Well, let me present an opposite viewpoint. Absolutely. HARBICHT If we do what you suggest, I could argue that it's far too difficult for those people to have to schlepp down here to stop it. MARGETT Well, let me give you a real, actual instance. This is on Wistaria where I live. The little lady across the street decides let's get street lights. Fine and dandy. She says, "I'll take a third of the street." And I said, "Well, I'll take a third of the street." And she got three people to take a third of the street. Ry the time the third guy got'it, his house was sold, the house was torn down, and guess what happened to the petition. ..gone. Now, she's crippled at this point, she can't go out, she doesn't want to do it again, she's done it once. I think it's a tremendous imposition to let people run out there and do it, and I think the mood of the community is to have street lights. HARRICHT Well, I can give you for instances of just the opposite thing. When we have, in the past year or two, we've had several cases where they've gone through the process, we've approved them, we put them into lighting districts, and put street lights up. MARGETT Well, you can do it that way, but that's a difficult...why are we making it difficult for people to get street lights? FASCHING Will somebody explain to me the hearing process, because I'm not fully knowledgeable on that. LOPEZ Well, I think I can explain the first question Mi. Margett brought up. The reason we ask them to take the petition around is because if they didn't, then staff would have to do that. And if staff goes through the entire process and it turns out that the majority of people don't want the lights, we've expended a lot of time and effort and City money just for an effortless.... I. ::: OPEZ Then those people have to come in and say, "We don't want the lights." O.K., well how do we handle sidewalks? Well, that's through a different process. MARGETT Well, can't we use the same process that we handle the sidewalks? LOPEZ It's a completely different act of the Streets and Highways Code. This 1911 Act and the 1919 Act go hand in hand in producing the street lighting maintenance. MARGETT What about the petition process to get it done? I mean, the mechanics of being able to pay for it and so on and so forth, that's fine, but what about allowing the people to be able to do it without a petition? LOPEZ Well, that's what I was answering, is that if they didn't petition, staff would have to take that petition around to get the information, or how 46 would we get the information to City Hall in order to know if they want the lights? MARGETT Well, my thought on the thing, Joe, was to go ahead and, if there was a group of streets that had not been assigned to a lighting district, or whatever, that you would have a hearing and ask those people, "Are you willing to...it's going to cost $50 a year on your tax bill to be able to get street lights in your particular community, on your three streets or four streets, whatever it amounts to." And if they say, "Yeah, I think it's a great idea," fine, let's do it. LOPEZ I think the problem with that is at the hearing you can't get all those people involved at that hearing. MARGETT Can't you notice them? I LOPEZ You can, but you won't get all the people involved. CIRAULO How many are going to show up? HARBICHT But you're forcing them to come down here. CIRAULO It's almost easier to go to their house and ask them. HARBICHT Basically, what we'd be saying is that we're going to put a $500 liability on your tax bill, plus $50 to $100 a year unless you come down here and stop us. FASCHING We'd need the Rose Bowl, I think. My approach, what I thought, was...now we come back to forcing something down their throat on that process. But if we developed a package and determined...you talk about staff time for a hearing process and the expense involved in that...maybe, what I would like to propose, is that we determine what streets do not have street lights, which you've already done, and we develop a mailing list of those streets; we prepare a package with comments from the Police Department as to the advisability of having street lights, the time has passed not to have street lights, and we incorporate in there the mechanics to put together a petition on your street, and we show them some examples of the lights that we can furnish them to make them attractive on their streets; and we put together a whole little package and we mail it to all these people. And then we see what kind of results we get out of that at the offset. Our cost in doing that is the development of the package and the mailing to those people. But I think it is maybe a better approach than telling them we're going to do it, and if they don't come down to a public hearing and that.... And, hopefully, we get a large enough response to that. And I feel that if it's sold correctly, people are going to buy it. LOPEZ Mr. Mayor, I'd like to bring up something. Since we're talking about 30 percent or pretty close to that figure, putting that package together and mailing to each individual on that 30 percent... FASCHING That's what I'm talking about. LOPEZ ...is going to be pretty expensive...I don't have the figure before mel But what if we rewrote this article that was in the Newsletter, and mak figures as an average rather than a range, $50 to $250; make it a mor attractive, sellable package, and develop something that we can bring bac to your Council with regard to the alternates involved and indicate that in the Newsletter. FASCHING Well, you're trying to save the cost on the mailing? How much money are we going to involve? LOPEZ The mailing is incidental. It's the time in looking up the names and addresses of everybody who is not there, which would be.... FASCHING Well, can't we just use "Occupant" on the street that doesn't lights? I mean, mailing lists are not too hard to come by. pull streets out of any zip code that you want. have street And you can 47 LOPEZ FASCHING 12. UNDERGRD'G. UTILITIES HARBICHT t""'"' HARBICHT FASCHING MARGETT FASCHING MARGETT LOPEZ . MARGETT LOPEZ l~mIT . LOPEZ CIRAULO FASCHING LOPEZ Well, we could do either one. I'm just bringing up the points that.... If we could, we'd like to come back to Council with.... Well, let's see what kind of a package you're going to come up with, and then we'll decide which way to go with the package, how's that? Is that all right with everybody? O.K. Basically, at one time the Council established a list of priorities and we're just kind of following that. It's a real slow process because it takes forever to get up enough money to do. It's an expensive process, and Edison does furnish us some money for that, but.... Yeah. That's basically the citizens are furnishing the money; Edison's just collecting it.... Who put it on the agenda? I did. Do you have some specific things in mind, Bob? Other than Second Avenue that looks deplorable? Yeah, right. Or El Monte Avenue, which is even more deplorable. This thing is titled Potential Underground Utility District Projects, and I don't know whether "District" is in the context of a...is that a district, again...a taxable district? No, it's not an assessment district. The only time that a property owner pays a portion for undergrounding is that which he needs to do on his own property to connect to the underground. And that's not an assessment or a tax, that's his own cost through his own contracting. Well, I'll tell you, the way that Edison is stringing poles in Arcadia is turn-of-the-century techniques. They've been doing that since 1900. You know, and if we're trying to move into the next century, I would say that some technique, Mr. Mayor, to be able to facilitate that more rapidly than waiting for Edison Company to do it...I don't know what that is, particularly, but it's certainly a priority I think that we should be giving the communities to try to get rid of some of this obtrusiveness that we have with these telephone lines and power lines. I don't know, I guess what I'm looking for is to speed up the process. And that takes money. There is one vehicle...lf I can interrupt just for a moment. The Edison Company does have a system where you can borrow three years in advance. So, in other words, if we're getting $260,000 a year average, Edison will allow you to borrow three years in advance to cover a particular project that the City Council wishes to go forward on. But it's only three years. Plus that delays the second project. That's right. And that probably doesn't cover all that much either. about just one strip. You're talking While we're talking about that process and the cost involved, and I mentioned Second Avenue because it's Edison Pole City, but then it brings back to mind another thing you said, that there was some talk in the past about widening Second Avenue also. Yeah. It's in the Circulation Plan Element of the General Plan. to be an 84-foot right-of-way with four lanes, and it's planned because of the traffic volume that's anticipated. And it's that way 48 FASCHING Where do we stand on that street as far as volume and everything.... LOPEZ It's approaching. It's got a few years...we only have about.... FASCHING We haven't acquired any right-of-way? LOPEZ We only have about 30 percent. FASCHING Of the right-of-way. What kind of money are we talking about if we widen that street, and acquiring the rest of the right-of-way and...that would involve undergrounding those lines then, at the time you would.... Except they're on both sides of the streets and you're only going to widen one side, right? FASCHING Yell, at the time of widening, that's when we recommend doing Second Avenue. What we've got on your package here, No. 14, Second Avenue, that's $1,100,000 just for the distribution lines. If we were considerin the transmission lines and the distribution lines, that amount would b about $5,500,000. Anybody else have any questions on the utilities? LOPEZ HARBICHT Well, basically, are incredible. we have an unsolvable problem here. The economics of it We could spend a whole year's budget just on this page. 13. ARA ISSUES FASCHING So moving right on, possibly, ARA issues. HARBICHT Well, I'd like to make ARA a separate study session. FASCHING O.K. LOJESKI Well, could we kind of talk about maybe a time or day or something? FASCHING On ARA? I think that's a good idea. How about two weeks from tonight? Do you want to do it then? MARGETT Don't you have budget that night? FASCHING May 18, that's on Monday. How about we have an afternoon study session on ARA at, say, about 3 o'clock. Is that convenient for everybody on a given day? HARBICHT I'm gone for the next three weeks. I'm going to be in Europe. FASCHING When are you leaving? HARBICHT I'm leaving a week from today or a week from tomorrow, and I'll be back on June 10. FASCHING O.K., then we'll do it after June 10 or we do it before.... I" I'd rather do it after for two reasons. One, I don't have much time available to me now. But, second, I think we've got a lot of reports tha are going to be coming back to us in the next two to four weeks on things that we've discussed tonight. HARBICHT CIRAULO We're going to have to adopt a budget, too. HARBICHT Oh, yeah, we've got a little item of a budget. So it might be better to...you know, Rome wasn't built in a day. FASCHING O.K. Is it all right with everybody else on ARA? O.K., good. Why don't we wait until you come back and then we'll set the date. HARBICHT O.K., great. 49 14. OTHER ITEMS FASCHING CIRAULO FASCHING MARGETT FASCHING r"" FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING MARGETT FASCHING LOJESKI (Citizen Service Resume's) I(NeW Council- member) Other items. Mr. Ciraulo? I have nothing. Mr. Margett? Nothing, Mr. beneficial. Mayor, other than I think I think we've done a lot.... the meeting has been very We're not through yet. We've got a long way to go...Matters from Staff, Elected Officials. Any other items you want to talk about right now? Me? Yes. I would like to see the City Clerk attending our meetings that are closed session meetings...the change in policy that the City Council's got into. And I think you have a situation where the City Clerk is an elected official in the community and I think it would be beneficial to have an official person to take notes and keep records and that sort of thing. Mr. Harbicht, do you want to comment on that? Well, out of the blue...I don't know enough about the background of how other cities do it and what the appropriate thing is. Mr. Margett? Well, I can only go on the past. We always had the City Clerk in prior meetings when I was on Council before, for the reasons that Dennis gave. It was a question of keeping records, keeping us posted. I would lean that way, to be honest with you, because I think that there's a lot of...like tonight, if we were in a skull session and we were relying, maybe, on Bill Woolard to take information down or Mike, or whoever, it may not be all inclusive. And I think that service is important when we're doing business with the City and we have to know where everything is coming from. The City Attorney has just informed me that this particular item we can discuss in closed session, and I suggest that perhaps we do that, in closed session. But I think we should all have some time to. ..we have to go back to closed session after we conclude this meeting tonight, so I don't think tonight would be appropriate. Perhaps we can do it in closed session next Tuesday night. Is that agreeable with everybody? Two other items, please. Another one is I'd like to see a policy...and it's just a very simple policy.. .to communicate back with our .citizens that do send in applications, particularly for commission appointments. Many times the commission is filled, there's not an opening at the time, and I've heard this from a number of people who have sent their resume back and said did the City receive it. And I think just a standard little form letter, "We've received your application. Thank you very much. The Council at the appropriate time will respond." A little PRo The last idea is, being a former Councilmember, it's not that important. But I remember when I first went on the Council 10 years ago. There were a number of things that you learned what to do, how to do it, and what was available to you just simply by sitting in the meetings. And sometimes it took six months to a year and you finally said, "Gee, I didn't know that was available to us." And what I would like to propose is an actual formulation of a, call it a New Councilmember Manual. So when a new Councilman comes on board, or even in a case, for example, like Bob, who's been away from the Council for a good period of time, he doesn't have to all of a sudden again find out by osmosis a lot of this stuff. He's sworn into office and the election happens, he's given this manual, it can be added to, subtracted from, as time goes on, and it would just save I think a whole lot of questions. Maybe I'm thinking of something that other people haven't found a need for. I certainly did when I first got on the Council. 50 FASCHING Yeah, I did, too. And the first place I' went was the League of California Cities meeting, which starts tomorrow down in Irvine, for new councilmem- bers and mayors. But I agree with you wholeheartedly about an introduc- tion and briefing and everything on the City. I wonder how much work it's going to be to put together a manual if that manual would be subject to change as opposed to a process of maybe indoctrination or a system whereby. . . . CIRAULO It could be a checklist, LOJESKI I don't think it has to be real involved. I'll give you an example. Tonight we talked about Councilmember expense policy, In other words, that little memo, an example, or whatever, gets put in there and it's there, and that's policy. FASCHING I think that, Dennis, what I would think about that, what really WOUll have been beneficial to me, was that when a new Councilmember, whethe past Councilmember if he chooses or new Councilmembers, had a sort of routing thing to where each department could spend some time and brie that person on their department and have his own little checklist that he could furnish to the Councilmember that he could then make up his own little booklet, so to speak, giving him an insight into every department within the City--Police, Fire, and all departments. Sort of an in- doctrination for a six-hour period or something might be a lot more beneficial and informative than reading something out of a book, and save us the staff time of making up a manual and keeping it up to date. What do you think about that? LOJESKI I think communication is important. When I came on the Council ten years ago, unless I had one Councilman who kind of walked me through the ropes, it was like, everybody kind of sat there and said, "Let's watch the guy fall on his nose and skin his. . . . " And not purposely, but that was kind of the situation. I went off the Council eight years later and the day I went to check out and turn my key in and everything with the Finance Department, the question was posed to me, "Well, why didn't you join PERS?" And I said, "I didn't know I could." Now, maybe I'm the stupid one that I didn't ask at first, but I guarantee you eight years prior to that I didn't even know what PERS was. So whatever the system, I think it would be beneficial to a new Councilmember to have some sort of a program like that. FASCHING O.K. Well, let's not just drop it there. I think a personal involvement on a one-on-one basis with all members of the City for a new Councilmem- ber, and where they could furnish him maybe something individually relating to their department. And I think that one-on-one basis, maybe that should be in addition to a manual, I don't know, but I think that.... WOOLARD The two go together, though. If you get the information, you compile it from the Manager's office, you get this basic material on PERS or Finance tells you about (inaudible) and stuff like that. FASCHING I got information on those from Personnel at one time, but I think a routing system for a new Councilmember through the City, and not one that he..:. \ I'm not looking at something that's big and costly and that sort of thingl Just something that can slowly be added to, and that type of item whic has general information. LOJESKI FASCHING How about when we have our new City Manager he can develop something along those lines. O.K., something else? LOJESKI That's all I have. FASCHING Did I go around the room, I lost.... HARBICHT Are we under Additional Item to Discuss or Matters from Elected Officials? FASCHING No, we're on Other Items. 51 HARBICHT I don't have any other items. 15. MATTERS FROM STAFF FASCHING MILLER (Closed Session) WOOLARD , (Prop. Maint. & ,A/Pk,ng. Veh. on Vacant Prop.) IRAULO WOOLARD CIRAULO MARGETT LOJESKI WOOLARD HARBICHT WOOLARD CIRAULO WOOLARD FASCHING LOPEZ FASCHING I' ALFORD CITY CLERK FASCHING 16. MATTERS FROM ELECTED OFFICIALS ROWE ADMIN. ASS'T. O.K. Matters from staff. One announcement for the record, under Government Code 54957, we.are going to adjourn to a closed session with Alex McIntyre and the Manager Pro tern to discuss the appointment and recruitment process for a City Manager. In the handout materials I had (inaudible) was that update on the property maintenance on Foothill Boulevard, and the other was one where we're looking for direction from the Council to proceed with a couple of text amendments dealing with parking vehicles on vacant property. What do you want us to do, act on it tonight? Just give us direction that you want us to proceed with it. My feeling is yes. Mine, too. I have a question on property maintenance, Bill. I noticed the patch of weeds out here adjacent to City Hall, which is actually on the Armory site. Do we put them on the weed abatement list? No, we've already sent them a notice...as well as...well, we sent George a notice, too, George Watts...because we're property owners. But we're already taking steps to try to get that abated. I don't think George is going to take care of it. I'm not sure the National Guard is either, but we are trying to get them to do that. I don't know what's happened there, because it was going along pretty good and then all of a sudden they just.... Well, the way it is right now they're going to tramp them all down... they're allover the place, lying on the ground.... The National Guard, I guess they're out here resting and relaxing during the days and they move back downtown for duty at night. That's all I have. Mr. Lopez? No, sir. Mrs. Alford? I just want to mention that, you were discussing the orientation, I would call it, for Councilmembers and a Councilmembers handbook. Those can be.. . examples can be found in other cities. ..the handbook. I can make some inquiries if you like. O.K., would you please? O.K., Matters from Staff. from staff that would like to bring,up anything. there patiently through all this tonight. Is there anybody here You listened and sat I just have one comment, Mr. Mayor, regarding the next Council meeting is the Arcadia Beautiful Awards which will begin at 6:30. Traditionally 52 FASCHING ROWE FASCHING HARBICH! FASCHING (Arc. Picnic on the Green 6-20-92) HARBICHT FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING FASCHING ALFORD FASCHING there is no pre-meeting. So if you need a closed session, we'll need to adjourn to either the Manager's conference room or perhaps Personnel. They'll be in here. Because they'll be having a reception in here. O.K. Anybody else want to say anything over there? O.K. Matters from Elected officials. Mr. Harbicht? I had a question. I had a couple of people mention to me a City concert and I don't know anything about it. Where have you been? I guess I'm the one that's going to have to fill you in on it. There is a City concert going to take place. It's on June 20. It's at the L. A. County Arboretum. It's a picnic concert as the one'I~' you've been used to before. The title of this is the Arcadia Picni Concert on the Green. This was my idea. I'm producing it. It's to brin some spirit into the City and get people in the City to participate an come out as part of Arcadia. We have basically avoided the sponsorship of the City or it would get into other areas. So it's called Arcadia Picnic Concert on the Green. The benefits of this concert, all the net proceeds go half to the Arcadia schools and half to the County Arboretum. The tickets are $9 pre-sale and $11 at the gate. The picnic starts at 4: 30, the show starts at 6: 30. The show will run until approximately 8:15. The show is Jack Lanz and his Big Band with a female vocalist. The special guest star is Terry Gibbs--do you remember Terry Gibbs---on vibes. . . very well known in music circles. The heavy emphasis on this picnic is the picnic aspect. Children are free with their parents and it's just geared to everybody in the community to come out and have a good time. The schools are participating in the sale of the tickets through their students. They'll all take home' a little flyer and sell a couple of tickets, or if they can sell more, children will be given prizes for selling tickets. Prizes will be given for the picnic spreads at the Arboretum. All of the advertising on this will probably hit about ten days from now. We'll be using the Chamber of Commerce sign locations with inserts there, and there'll be window signs for different businesses. And there'll be spots on cable television a la the last election where they'll flash on and that type of thing. And part of the concert is being underwritten, and we're trying to keep a very low budget so that we have the highest amount of profit to the schools and the Arboretum. Past concerts have had very high budgets and haven't made any money. Hopefully, this budget is being kept low and we'll make a lot of money for the schools. Sounds like fun and I'll in all likelihood be there. was because the last couple that I'm aware of were What happens in that case? I guess my concern huge money losers. O.K. .This concert is underwritten by a couple of business people in town to guarantee no losses. The last concert that was put on at the Arboretum had a budget of about $32,000, which was Louise Mandrell. Suffered a huge loss. But this concert, the tentative budget we're working with right now is about $12,000. ~, Well, I'm assuming the City isn't on the book. J No, the City has no involvement, none whatsoever. Matters from Electea Officials. Joe? Nothing from me. O.K., I'd like to adjourn this meeting then, and thank everybody from staff for sitting through this long session, and I really appreciate your being here. I know it was long, and we promise there won't be more than one a month of these. And so I'd like to adjourn this meeting of the Arcadia City Council to 6 p.m. Monday, May 18, for a budget study session. Aren't you going into a closed session right now? Oh, excuse me. Call for a closed session. 53