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HomeMy WebLinkAboutJUNE 24,1992 1 1 QIIV _ ., v (/G ~llq;).. 34:0195 ce. CITY COUNCIL PROCEEDINGS ARE TAPE RECORDED AND ON FILE IN THE OFFICE OF THE CITY CLERK ROLL CALL STATE BUDGET CUTS 03<;:'0 -I ,,-' /1/.5 P MINUTES CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF ARCADIA and the ARCADIA REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY ADJOURNED REGULAR MEETING (STUDY SESSION) JUNE 24, 1992 The City Council and the Arcadia Redevelopment Agency met in an Adjourned Regular Meeting, Study Session, on Tuesday, June 24, 1992 at 5:40 p. m., in the conference room of the council chambers, The purpose of this meeting was to discuss the proposed library project; the upgrading of the business districts; redevelopment; appointments to boards and commissions and other matters of concern or interest. PRESENT: Council/Agency Members Ciraulo, Harbicht, Lojeski, Margett and Fasching ABSENT: None COMMENTS FROM THE AUDIENCE None The Finance Director gave an update on the current status of the effect of the State's proposed budget cuts, in particular, the reduction in property tax revenues to cities. In reference to Assembly Bill AB- 8, which was referred to as "bail-out money" meaning tax revenues given to cities after the passage of Prop. 13, he had applied a formula to calculate the potential loss of funds to Arcadia which ameunts to $1,700,000 over a three year period, The Finance Director noted that as assessed valuations of properties increase, the State will receive a larger share of property taxes also, He noted the property tax, is the one revenue source which has shown geod growth over the years; sales tax and other taxes have not perfermed well ... but the property tax revenue continues to do well, Also reported was the State's intention to change the Bradley-Burns law which sets the sales tax rates for cities. The current limit is 1%, His information indicates that over a three year period this would increase to supposedly cover the City's loss from AB-8. This would bring the sales tax to 9' 1/2% in three years from the current 8 1/4%. The Finance Director commented that the State probably would not raise the sales tax, they would just authorize the cities to raise their percentage. Further, the City will no longer receive revenue frem the cigarette tax after 1992; this loss will amount to $53,000. It was noted that the cities could also implement a utility tax or increase it if already in place. Further discussion ensued of the possibility of increasing the bed tax or race track entrance fees or track parking fees. The Mayor commented that this could net be done ... the City derives revenue from the race track from a formula based on one-third of one percent of the mutual handle, 1 6/24/92 1. o 7 .j () _. III /;: ye HI."ifll\ WAIVE FEES/ LIB.LECTURE RM. (PLAYS) 2. O~'-Iv ...2;(' CLOSED SESSION 01/0 _ '10 3.,'2~t/('- ..:: n 4. 01;;'0 - Ilf) r? I G..'J. d I) 34:0196 In the discussion of the CSTI disaster training program for City employees, the Acting City Manager reported that all management and mid-management staff have received the training at San Luis Obispo. No City Council members have been trained. The Mayor suggested that this year the Mayor and Mayor Pro tem could attend the five day training course, and in the succeeding years, each Mayer Pro tern be trained. The Mayor stated that it could be required for future Pro tern's to attend. He will check the training schedule with staff and place the matter on an agenda for approval. TRANSCRIPT PREPARED FOR THE FOLLOWING STUDY SESSION AGENDA ITEMS: Library addition/alteration concept plan proposed by Planning Commissioner Bob Daggett, Architect. The following action was taken at the close of the discussion on this item: 1 It was MOVED by Mayor Pro tem Ciraulo, seconded by Councilman Margett and CARRIED on roll call vote as follows that, based on the design concept for the Library expansion proposed by Planning Commissioner Daggett, the project would begin with Requests for Proposals to certain architects as determined by staff, setting a budget fer the total project, complete with satellite buildings, exterior and interior, and furnishings, at $3.5 million; with Commissioner Daggett to serve as volunteer consultant on the project. AYES: Councilmen Ciraulo, Harbicht, Lojeski, Margett and Fasching None None NOES: ABSENT: Request to waive Business License fees for use ef the Library Lecture Room to produce plays. No action. Discussion of Business Districts, The City Atterney announced that, "we're going to adjourn to a Closed Session per Government Code Section 54956. 9b1 to discuss a situation where, based on existing facts and circumstances, there is a threat of litigation to the City. For that reason, we will be adjourning to a Clesed Session with Attorney Richard Terzian". At 7:45 p. m., the City, Council/Redevelopment Agency members ADJOURNED to a CLOSED SESSION, ADJOURNED and RECONVENED the Regular Adjourned Meeting, Study Session at 8:10 p. m. Discussion of Redevelopm~nt items. Appointment to Boards and Commissions. 1 Arcadia Beautiful Commission It was MOVED by Councilman Harbicht, second by Councilman Margett and CARRIED to reappoint Roland Kelly and Homer Paulson to the Arcadia Beautiful Commission each for a full four-year term to June 30, 1996. Librarv Board It was MOVED by Councilman Margett, second by Councilman Harbicht and CARRIED to appoint Donald Swenson to the Library Board fer a full four-year term to June 30, 1996. 2 6/24/92 O/~O-0t1 1 OI.;).O.C/() On,') - -,n O/~O _ 'i'e> OIe10-7'() 5. (C) 3\? - '10 1 q_f" '/;1.. 6. (J1';Lt) - If) 34:0197 Parkin~ Place Commission It was MOVED by Councilman Lojeski, second by Mayor Pro tem Ciraulo and CARRIED to reappoint Jim Kuhn and William Wong to the Parking Place Commission each for a full four-year term to June 30, 1996, It was MOVED by Councilman Lojeski, second by Councilman Margett and CARRIED to appeint Harvey Hyde to the Parking Place Commission for a full four-year term to June 30, 1996. It was MOVED by Mayor Fasching, second by Councilman Margett and CARRIED to appoint Dave Freeman to the Parking Place Commissien for a full four-year term to June 30, 1996, Personnel Board It was MOVED by Councilman Lojeski, second by Mayor Pro tem Ciraulo and CARRIED to reappeint George Fuson to the Personnel Board fer a full four-year term to June 30, 1996. It was MOVED by Mayor Pro tem Ciraulo, second by Councilman Harbicht and CARRIED to. appoint Donald Bartrip to the Personnel Board for a full four-year term to June 30, 1996. Plannin~ Commission It was MOVED by Councilman Harbicht, second by Mayor Pro tem Ciraulo and CARRIED to reappoint Robert Daggett to the Planning Commissien for a full four-year t~rm to June 30, 1996. Sister Citv Commission It was MOVED by Mayor Pro tem Ciraulo, second by Councilman Margett and CARRIED to appoint Beth Wells and Richard Cordano to the Sister City Commission each for a full four-year term to June 30, 1996, Senior Citizens' Commissien MOTION by Councilman Harbicht, second by Mayor Pro tem Ciraulo and CARRIED to reappoint Pat Loechner and Janie Steckenrider to the Senior Citizens' Commission each for a full two-year term to June 30, 1994. MOTION by Councilman Loj eski, second by Councilman Margett and CARRIED to appoint Peggy Leatherman and Lois Patnou to the Senior Citizens' Commission each to a full two-year term to June 30, 1994. Finalization of Argument 'in Favor of Measure A - City Charter Revisions - September IS, 1992 Special Election, Fellewing the discussion, it was MOVED by Councilman Margett, second by Councilman Harbicht and CARRIED to APPROVE the finalization of the Argument in Favor of Measure A, the City Charter Amendments, September 15, 1992 Special Election, as REVISED by Councilman Harbicht. Matters from staff Actin~ City Mana~er Woolard - Request from Personnel Board to tour the Redevelopment Project Area. Request granted; one staff member to accompany them on the tour, Police Chief Johnson - Request from Arcadia Bey Scout troop J; , : I -.,,' for use of the City Seal over the entrance to their camp at the Bey Scout Indian National Jamboree. Request granted; City pins to be included. 3 6/24/92 34:0198 .) f.. f(().. <. I...f b Assistant Citv Mana"er for Economic Development Kinnahan - Item on the Northwest Corner Site of Huntington and Second Avenue as a possible light rail station. Redevelopment financing, State crisis impact on City and Schoel District. Tax increment funds to the Redevelopment Agency as contractually established, 7. Matters from elected officials None 8. ADJOURNMENT (July 7,1992 - 7:00 p.m.) At 9:25 p, m., the CounciljRedevelopment Agency ADJOURNED to. 7:00 p.m., July 7,1992 in the conference room of the council chambers to conduct the business of the Council and Arcadia Redevelopment Agency and Closed Sessien, if any. necessary to discuss personnel, litigation matters and evaluation of properties. ATTEST: 1 ~.<o~~~ Jun . Alferd, Cit Clerk ' I'; ; 4 6/24/92 :' -, , , E D I TED T RAN S C RIP T (Insofar as decipherable) I RELATING TO ARCADIA CITY COUNCIL STUDY SESSION JUNE 24, 1992 - - . - - . - - - - - - . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - '~ " CITY COUNCIL STUDY SESSION - JUNE 24, 1992 1. LIBRARY ADDITION! CONCEPT PLAN MAYOR FASCHING CITY LIBRARIAN KENT ROSS CIRAULO ROSS MARGETT ROSS MARGETT ROSS CIRAULO ROSS CIRAULO lIARlIICHT Ye'll now go to. the Library discussion. Yeu all received a memo from Bob Daggett, who really worked on this thing in outlining it. And you've all had time to study it over. And, Kent, why don't you give us any latest thoughts that you have on this, all right? O.K. We had, of course, one beard meeting after this and their feelings are still pretty much the same, that they would certainly support an improvement in the Library facility, but they just wanted to make the Council aware of what their feelings were on any of the shortcemings that would come with dealing with the existing building. And that's where it stands right now. But they certainly would support this particular plan if this is what Council wished. But they had some misgivings about it? They had some reservations... these have been expressed to you at t previous study session. ..those would remain the same. Could you refresh my memory what their concerns were. The ones .that I remember were the satellite.... O.K. The first one was the.. . the two rooms that, if you can see it, look up there on the wall, would be the ones en the far left there. They're separate rooms with access only at a small point there, which creates a security problem, There's no way of supervising those roems other than cameras. It's a potential problem...there is possibility. In actuality, it may never be a problem. But the potential for a problem is there. In fact, I even called the Police Department on this to ask them what their thoughts were on it, and I talked CJ Captain Hinig. And he felt the way I did that, yes, he said that's a ?etential problem, that you would have to. put some kind of surveillance cameras in there, That's prebably their principal reservation, Do you have any security preblems over there now, Kent? Well, yeah, just the general ones any public building would have. It's a public building, so anybody can come in there and just loiter, Aren't there enough people walking in and around there now, staff people, that they could, you knew, every half hour just take a walk through there, make sure it's O.K.? That's a possibility. As 1 say, 1 don't know how much that would prevent it or not, Right now, as you can see from".I have the two maps there that I handed out, and you can see on the old one how the aisles face into the public areas so that the public can see right down those aisles at the present time. Once you separate rooms, of course, chen there's no view from any public area at all, It would be a completely concealed area. As I say, it may be no problem and it might be, there's just a potential fer it. Right now, the kind of problems that we have are people who COI in the Library and, say, either behave in an antisocial way on occasio and patrons will report this to us and we'll have to check it out. It' not eften, but several times a year we will have to call the Poli Department to remove somebody or check on them or follow them, or whateve If you have these kinds of rooms, there's the possibility that this could increase. I don't know. It's just something that the Board is concerned about. But, as I say, it's not something that would preclude the implementation of this plan entirely...we certainly".. I think that's always a potential problem. 1 would hate to see it be the fly in the ointment for the whole project. Yell, I think the fact that you devoted the whole thing to shelves may tend to minimize that as opposed to having reading areas in there where a few kids in there acting up..,you know, there's no place to sit, at least on this drawing that 1 have, and I think that would help, I recognize the potential fer problems, but I think it's, frankly, a minor concern relative 1 , to the benefit we'd get from the additional space and everything. On this Friends Book Store.... ROSS Yeah, that was...I can see it right over there, Building A. HARBICHT I realize the plan was drawn and now you're fitting things into it. But we have no Friends Book Store now, right? ROSS No., All the libraries I know that operate a Friends Boek Store earn more money operating a regular book store and gift shop than they de in these once-a-year sales. We do all right in our once-a-year sale, but it's a tremendous effort and it's getting more difficult for the Friends to mount it. It's hard to find volunteers that will put in that much time and work, because it is a tremendous amount of work. But the libraries that have a space for a Friends Beak Store de quite well. I HARBICHT ROSS In other words, they're selling the same stuff that they sell at their once-a-year sale. Right, but it's all year long. And the prices, of course, are a little higher on them because they can sit there a little longer, On the ence- a-year book sale the prices are quite low, because you have to get rid of them in one to two days. But these, you can take a better quality of books and keep them for a longer period and sell them. HARBICHT What kind of money would you estimate that we would get from the Friends Book Store? ROSS I'm trying to guess from other libraries, but some libraries have claimed $15,000 to $20,000, On our book sale we get about $8,000 to $10,000. Which is good for a one- to two-day book sale. But they say that you can get 50 percent more, that's what I've been told, It certainly could vary from city to city, but I haven't heard anything to the contrary from people that have had them. In fact, I know,. . although Beverly Hills is never any city to compare anything to, but they do have a Friends Book Store that's not very large, it was built into their new facility, and they wish that they had one that were larger because it does so well. HARBICHT I guess I'm just thinking about it from an investment standpoint. You've got a l,500-square-foot building there.. . and I think that this is an underestimate, these estimates here, but using $125 a foot, you'd come up to, what, $170,000 just for the shell. And then by the time we de the tenant improvements and everything, we're probably up to a couple hundred thousand anyway. And then get $15,000 back on that, that's net really that great a return. What I'm saying is that we'd be better off to take the $200,000 and put it in the bank, and if we earn 7 percent on the money we net out the same as having a Friends Book Store plus we still have the once-a-year sale. If the question before us was should we build a free- standing building for the Friends to have a book store, I think that my answer would be yes. ROSS That was one of the uses for it, It was also going to be used.. .we had to take down a lot of our display area to use for expansion. At one time we had all the Sister City materials that I think are now in City Hall. And we had to take all that material out because there was no room fer displaying anything. A lot of our display space is gone. It was also considered to be used for that, too. So it would be a separate display. l= Do you think you'd get any repercussions from some of the local book stores? ROSS I asked other places about that, but I've never heard it. We don't have. . .at least I'm not aware of, around here, that there are that many used book stores, HARBICHT These are primarily used books. HARGETT Oh, used, O,K. Not new. Would you ever consider selling new books there? 2 ~ ROSS That's a different kind of business, because then you'd have to buy brand new books. See, we have a ready supply of inventory of used books. If you start selling new books, then you'd be going into direct competition and trying to undercut local vendors, FASCHING What I would like to. offer would be my idea on this, and just throw that out, I think that we're looking at something that could be a very feasible plan for the restoration and additien and enhancement of this library facility. I think that Commissioner Daggett has dene a great job and service to the City by furnishing uS the plans and the consultation that he has in this expansion project, Two things that I have is that it's unfortunate, but I knew that we're now approaching, at some time in the near future, of spending some money to get this thing moving and find out where we actually stand. I hate to think that just because Mr. Daggett is on the Cemmissien that he couldn't bid on this, Mr. Miller is thl cut and dry that he can't bid to do a job? Mr. Daggett actually called me to. express his knowledge of th prohibition, because he would not want to get himself in trouble with.. MILLER FASCHING But he, then, also expressed to me the opinion that, yes, he would be legally in a position to bid. MILLER Well, under Government Code Section 1090 he is prohibited. But if you want to get an opinion from the FPPC, I would strongly advise it. Recause if it's deemed to be in violation of the law, the entire contract is nullified and Mr. Daggett is guilty of a felony, and anybody else involved (inaudible). I've had experience with this Code section, FASCHING All right. Well, anyway, that's an unfortunate situation. However, I do feel that Daggett would be willing, and I think that if we agree that this is a concept and a plan we want to go ahead with, I think that he would be willing, without spending time drawing and that type of thing, he'd be willing as a Commissioner to certainly advise us and give us his thoughts on how we should proceed with some of this so that we don't jump in.... The way I see it is that if we agree that we like this, then we ask Daggett to say, well, we all like it, would you talk to the Library a little more and kind of finalize that this is what we should do. And I know he has expressed his opinion that we don't need to hire high-priced consultants in the library field to do an expansion to our Library that might have some (inaudible). But I just don't want to say, O.K., we like it, let's hire library consultants and bring them in and sign a contract for $50,000 or $100,000. I'd like to pursue it a little more with the volunteerism of Rob Daggett. And then we finally hone it down to, yes, it's ready to roll. And then maybe he can tell us what his thoughts are on how we should proceed or who we should preceed with, whether it be contractors that could bid or architects that then could come in. but all in the interest of saving us some money on the deal rather than paying over the top. CIRAULO I'd like to talk a little bit more about the financing if we can. I'm wondering if it wouldn't be more prudent at this time for us to temporarily postpone this idea, based upon what's happening with the State until we find out for sure what's going to happen there. FASCHING Good thought. I can only say that if we're still talking and looking the concept, and Mr. Daggett is still putting some finishing touches 0 his original work more than 90 days down the road, so we're not puttin anything.... At least we can have him come back and say, hey, this thing is finalized, now you gentlemen should go ahead and do this. At that time we would know that we're going to have to spend some meney and make a commitment to the project. Rut I don't think we're anywhere near ready to do that as of now. But I think what we wanted to decide on tonight was the concept, the design, and that it would work, and this is the way that we would proceed. But it's going to be a while before we get down to making a cemmitment for expenditures. MARGETT Mr. Mayor, I kind of like the concept. a budget crunch, which if we were going not going to be (inaudible) regardless I tell you, even if we get into to get into a budget crunch we're where it is, I'm sure. But as I 3 " , perceive that design, you know, you ceuld phase that. Those little satellite reoms that you've got--you've got one, two, three--you could build one of them, or the next year build another one, and pace yourself. FASCHING Well, I think that's right, but I've found in anything I've ever buil t that I was always sorry I didn't do it all at once, because it cost me a ton to come back and add on the next time and the next time and the next time. MARGETT Well, that might be. FASCHING But we are also talking here, when we ascertained that there would be some money that WP. could use for things of this nature with a price tag of whatever it was and the price tag on the auditorium, that we could have funds available that we could fund those with. We are faced with this thing on the part of Sacramento which could, in the first year as it stands as now, cost us half of a million dollars and next year $700,000. I think those are things that we'll wait and see what happens, but I don't think it sheuld stop our progress on hold until we determine if we can still plan. If we can't go ahead with our plans, then we'll stop, But let's go ahead, like we say, we're still in a position to do so, because these things need to be..., I CIRAULO Does any part of the plan involve renovating the main building, or. is it just the satellite parts? FASCHING The whole building. . ,everything. WOOLARD Inside, the lighting, the shelving arrangements, the offices, the roof of the whole building. CIRAULO And the roof, and the dome repaired. ROSS The dome, yeah. LOJESKI I've just got some general comments to make. First of all, I don't quite understand your comment about the consultant. I don't even know why a consultant would actually come into play in this thing,... FASCHING Well, this has been proposed by the Library. LOJESKI Well, but I mean, if the Council said, "We like this concept of the modular corners,' Then go out and just go out for a request for proposal from the architectural entities, let them come back, if it's a go we set a budget of a certain amount of money on what we feel should be spent on this. They come back conceptually with it, We look, we interview, we talk, we make a decision. That's basically the way it would go. in my opinion. I don't see where there'd be a consultant some place in between. . . , FASCHING Well, the only consultant I was referring to would be Daggett. He could kind of lead us in the directions he thought would be best for us to go. He is an architect and he knows builders. And I think Daggett's concern is that we don't hire somebody that specializes in libraries, because we don't need somebody in this construction that specializes in libraries. I ="n I think if you give him some,parameters to deal with--one, this is the concept we want and this is the budget we want to put it inte--you're pretty much.. .aren't you doing that anyway? Well, anyway, that's just an open comment about that. HARBICHT Well, let me comment on it. I agree with Dennis on this thing. It seems to me that's the step-by-step approach. I mean, if we go hire an architect, which I think we have to do. ..we can't just go with the builders, you've got to have.... FASCHING No, I meant an architect. HARBICHT Yeah. FASCHING We have to go. to bid on that. 4 ,,. ., 1 HARBICHT Yeah, I'm not sure what Daggett would do. is to conceptualize this thing, and if we do... . He's done with his work, which decide that's what we want to CIRAULO Do we need him to define it any more, architect's job? or does that have to be an LOJESKI (Inaudible) definition, because actually, and who puts the pencil on the paper and says. you know. I think it eught to have this roof line, or this type of material on the reof, or this type of siding, and it blends in this way, that way, whatever the case may be. I'm really grateful that Bob has thrown together a concept that I think becomes a workable cencept. And I think that's wonderful. I would persenally like to. see the man have the abilities of bidding en the architectural (inaudible). but I understand what the City attorney is saying, So. again. that was just a comment far as what I perceive as the following ~teps to go through on a situati like this. FASCHING Well, see, we're perceiving the following steps, but why not.. . Daggett h volunteered that if we approve this concept that he will give us som suggestions on the steps to proceed to save us as much money as possible. That's the way I interpret Bob's remarks, But I know we're going to have to go to bid on an architect. But if we're all sure here tonight that this is it, call in an architect, give him this drawing, and off we go. LOJESKI Yeah, but you just don't call an architect. You go out fer a, like, a request for a proposal, whatever the thing may be. It's just like when the City Council determined we wished to pursue the building of a Community Center. O.K., conceptually we had all kinds of numbers and ideas and room sizes and everything. But they were concepts, and this is what we did. We went out to the development world, or the architectural world and said, hey, let's go out for a request for proposals. There was maybe 15 responses. The staff looked at projects that they had done. Then staff came back...I think we interviewed five or six entities. We as a Council went and actually looked at facilities that each of these had designed and built and then made a decision from there, which, to me, that's the typical routine that you go through with a situation like this. Again, it's the Council giving direction as this is what we want in concept and this is the amount of money we wish to spend on that concept. Now, designing world, developing world, building world, get in it.... FASCHING The only thing I thought was that, architecturally, Daggett is on the Commission and volunteered his time. If he wanted to volunteer to help us put this out to architects for bid. . . and the requirements and requests were what we wanted".furnish that time, I was willing to take advantage of it. If we want to eliminate him, then we'll eliminate him, LOJESKI No, no. I'm not interested in eliminating somebody who wants to give of their time, I just don't want to see him get put in the ringer. you know, as Mike was explaining. LOJESKI Well, he's not going to have any financial interest, O.K. Let me go on to another point, because I think we're maybe talkinl on the same wavelength. Somebody just mentioned auditerium and somebod mentioned, you know, we're talking about the Library here, Well, I've go to tell you semething personally, as I'm sitting here and as I'm speaking if I had a choice between those two facilities, I've got to tell you, I' rather put my dollar at this time into the Library in light of what's going to happen, I think, in Sacramento, FASCHING IlARBICHT I agree with that, FASCHING Well, I don't think we have until the end of this year. with. any intention of discussing the auditorium We put that on hold, This we can go ahead LOJESKI Again, I just heard somebody mention auditorium. 5 " " , FASCHING Well, I brought up the auditorium because it's cenceivable, if things remain as is, and what's the future prospects are for us, that we would be in a position to fund a Library and an auditorium if they told us somewhere in the neighborhood of $6,000,000 or $7,000,000. LOJESKI Two key questions, I feel, in the whole thing, in the whole process of discussion. number one, how much extra space do we need at the Library to make the building functional for at least 25 years? I can't give that answer; I think we have to. lean on the Librarian, we have to lean on our Library Board to glve us those numbers. And if they tell me that going from a 30,OOO-square-foot building to a 45.800-square-foot building will accomplish that, then I've got to believe, 1 think, those numbers. The other thing is, can we add that extra space without incurring unreasonable costs or debts to the citizens of this community? I FASCHING LOJESKI What do you mean by debts? Let's assume all of a sudden true numbers come in and we don't have monies that we can beg, borrow, from some other funds, and we might have to go out and ask the taxpayers to assist in this. FASCHING I don't think we're in a position to do that. LOJESKI Well, I'm just throwing that out, O.K.. because you can go overboard on things like this, too. You know, you can create something that you want to have this as a functienal facility and you end up with a Taj Mahal. CIRAULO I don't think that 1 personally would be interested in going out to the citizens and ask for anything in the way of money. LOJESKI I would not either, O.K. And again, I think the answer, somewhat, to that question also revolves around what's going to happen in Sacramento. But I see those as the two big issues. Nothing was said to this point, I think, about any use of the basement, The building does have a cemplete basement, is that correct? ROSS Yes. It's use is limited just by the fact of its access. You can only allow so many people down there at a time. CIRAULO Are there things that are on the main floor that could be put down there to make room on the main floor then? ROSS Well, not a whole lot. It is excellent for storage. That's one nice thing about the current building is that we certainly don't lack for storage space. The Friends occupy a large part of it now for their book sale. CIRAULO What about all that air conditioning you had in that back room that was. .. . ROSS Oh, that's upstairs. CIRAULO Oh, that's on the second floor, LOJESKI Another comment I make is.. .Bob made the comment, I believe, that this thing hypothetically could be phased, too. And if we find that.. '. I~~ I'm not sure it can, You could phase the Friends part, because that's a separate use and a separate function. But if you look at the floor plan that Kent provided, it's really kind of all tied in together...it looks kind of an all or nothing.... LOJESKI All right, but I'll stick on my two comments, here. FASCHING Well, coming back to the one comment is that.., I agree with all your comments.,.but this is why, you know, you said you want to make sure of this and this and this is why, I said as long as Mr. Daggett is willing to confer with Ross over the next, say, 30 days and then come back to us, and they say, hey, this is the concept that will work.. .it's all right with him, it's all right with.. . then we can go and start to consider spending our money, 6 ~, LOJESKI Hasn't Kent looked at this. .,. FASCHING You're bringing up a lot of ether questions. You say you want to be guaranteed the extra square feet will be good for another 25 years, and all those things. LOJESKI I didn't use the word guarantee. I want to. be assured that what we're talking is going to be usable for the next period of time. ROSS It's 10 years that I said would be the absolute guarantee that would.. . the capacity would be guaranteed for that time. Beyond that it's difficult to tell, the changes that could occur. Certainly, when we do this it would be a 25-year building. But it could be at capacity in 10 years. CIRAULO And what might extend that. too, is. ..I understand it's just preliminar at this point, but I understand the School District is having so preliminary discussions about some way to. access the Library by way computer and keep most of the students at the school. ROSS They already do. They do access the Library by computer, but actually wh that does is tell them what we have so they know that we have it before they come over, And that's primarily the way it's used now. They originally wanted a retrieval system, and then they couldn't afford the people to come and retrieve the items at the time because of their budget. Rut they still have access to our collection by computer. CIRAULO They have that now? ROSS They have that new, HARBICHT Well, some comments that I have on this is, one, the question of where the money is going to come from. I think this is why we have to prioritize our capital improvements. We have the Capital Improvements Budget. we have money in it, we have receipts going into it from the Track and the other monies that we're putting into that. So if we decide that we're going to build this Library, or build this addition to the Library, the money is available in the Capital Improvements Fund. That's what the Capital Improvements Fund is for. And if that takes up most of the money there, then any other capital improvements that we want, such as an auditorium, whatever, are just going to have to be put off two or three years until we build it up to the point where we can do it. That's the way we've always done it in this City. And I guess I'll express the epinien that. in my mind, this is the number one priority. And so I would be in favor of using the Capital Improvements Funds for doing the Library. I guess the question of how long the Library is going.. .how long this would last, ' ,Kent, I'm going to argue with you a little bit on this, I don't know why it would only last for 10 years. I don't think we foresee any significant population growth here in Arcadia. As a matter of fact, the censu1tants' report that we had visualized almost no growth. ROSS Well, I didn't say it wouldn't last more than 10 years; I said I couldn't guarantee it. I could absolutely guarantee that it weuld certainly have sufficient space for growth up to 10 years. After that, there are a lot of things we don't know, as I explained, I think, the last time...partiCUll ar, say, reference volumes that were only two volumes at one time are no - 10, IS, and they've grown by 10 times. But we're still required to hav those. So the same thing, to serve the community in this much space 1 years ago now takes several shelves. ' HARBICHT I understand that. I guess I'm thinking in terms of, you know, one of the things that would have the greatest influence on the size of the Library needed is the number of people using it. I think the number of people using it is pretty closely tied to population growth. And so I don't visualize a huge increase in the number of people using it. In regard to the reference volumes, that's true and I know that the amount of information in the world is constantly expanding and we seem to be putting more of it on our shelves. But it could be, and I think it's very likely, that 10 or 15 years from now an awful lot of that is going to be on laser disk and you're not even going to have those volumes...you're just going to pop a laser disk in and read what you want, and print out the part you 7 " '~ 1 want. Which means that actually there would be a shrinking demand for space there. But I guess in my mind. . . Dennis asked the question, hew long would this be good for. I'm fairly convinced that this kind of an expansion is going to be goed for more than 10 years, and I don't think 20 years.. .my guess, and I'm not a library expert, but my guess just based on what I see in trends is I think we're pretty safe in saying that if we were to do this it's going to serve the needs of Arcadia for 20 years. CIRAULO Well, that's a good question to ask. Hew much extra space do we need to last us for 25 years? HARBICHT Because if it was only going to be 10 years. I'd be pretty reluctant to do this. If I thought 10 years from now we were going to have to tear everything down and build a new Library, I might say maybe we ought to just struggle along with what we've got for three more and save up the money and then build a brand new Library. So, that's my feeling, I ,~~'" I feel that it's going to last us for 20, 25 years. The one we have was conceivably out of space 20 years ago, and we've been using that for 20 years since then, [End of Tape 1 - Side 1, beginning of Tape 1 " side 2J HARBICHT ".in terms of making a decision as to whether or not we should do this is how much it's going to cost, Now, we have a cost estimate here that I think Bob Daggett gave us, but we also have the cost estimate for the new building, which the consultants gave us a year or so ago, two years ago maybe, and seme of their unit costs are particularly high. And so I don't know if they're high estimators or Bob's a low estimator, or if the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but we're talking significant difference in estimated costs. ROSS I spoke to Bob Daggett on that issue and we discussed it at length. And using the same criteria that he used for this plan, it was his feeling that that same building, even nearly 60,000 square feet, would be under $8,000,000. He gave a number of reasons why he felt that buildings were overbuilt or built way above cost. And I think he may have mentioned some of them in the last study session. But that was his feeling, and that's the way he's based this cost. So if you were comparing this to a new building, you'd have to use the same criteria, and based on that criteria, his criteria would be about $7,500,000 for the facility recommended originally by.,.. HARBICHT Well, the shell or the whole ball of wax? ROSS The whole thing, he said. That's what I kept asking him, 1 said does this include fees and everything? He said yes, HARlHCHT And interior? CIRAULO As opposed to this recommended idea, which is about $2.3 million, right? Well, this whole thing, though, this whole thing is $3.5 million. CIRAULO Three point five. I think what Kent was comparing was that the plan for a new Library was like, $16.000,000. The same numbers applied from Daggett's figures, the new Library would only cost $7,500,000 to $8,000,000. So there's quite a large difference. But a lot of it may have to do with materials and other details that Bob has a different image of than the other people who may have been, let's say, going with a Cadillac. I really don't think you're going to have a handle on it until you actually have an architect getting down to. the more. .., CIRAULO Well, it seems to me that that's what we need to do next, is to have an architect look at...we all seem to like this concept,..have an architect put pencil to paper and come back to us. 8 , FASCHING Well, we have to advertise for an architect. CIRAULO Well, go out to bid, I guess, WOOLARD Daggett can still help us a lot if he wants to volunteer, FASCHING Well, I think he'd be perfectly willing to volunteer to help out on this thing even though he can't bid on it. But I think he's involved himself on a volunteer basis with us, which I think is great, and I would certainly like to keep him involved, to. what extent the staff might want to, to advise us. I personally feel that we probably get ripped off every time we build something in this City. MARGETT Well, that's true. Mr. Mayor, and I think that's where Bob Daggett's ceming from, I'm sure that there are architects out there that will build y a library for $20,000,000, There's no problem doing it, Or ten or eig And I think that that's the key in the whole thing. I think what Daggett wants to be able to do is say, hey, we have $3,000,000, er whatev we're coming up with, five, or what your budget is, make that thing wo at $5,000,000 and make it look like we're going to spend $20,000,000. A I think that's what we should be doing. FASCHING Well, I think we should be taking advantage of this type of expertIse and help that can be furnished to us by one of our commissioners, that's what they're there for. They're residents that are interested in the City and the future of it, too. That's why I propose that we settle on this concept, we're happy with it. We have a budget, we know where the money is coming from. We tell Daggett and the Librarian this is what we want to do. and let Daggett put the finishing touches on it so we know, and let him kind of help us as we want him to in the precess of.... MARGETT I think you'll watch your nickels and dimes and have him. .,. FASCHING .. . soliciting architects and soliciting, when the time comes, to contractors and everything else. LOJESKI What's the current status, Jim, of our fund that we could take it away from. DALE I just happened to look at that, and I would think that what you're talking about is probably the Capital Outlay Fund, which has got about $2,032,000, and the Facility Construction Fund, which has another $3,327,000. So those two funds are really specifically for... LOJESKI A combination of those things, IlARBICHT A little over $5,000,000. D...LE A little over $5,000,000, right, FASCHING Well, I would like to do this as best we can so that we coulc ve so~e money left over for some other things that we might want to de "own the road. IlARBICHT What did the Community Center cost us, Bill, on a per-square-foot do you recall? WOOLARD A little over $200. But because of the materials and detail work a lot higher, IlARBICHT That included the interior, detail, the wood..,. WOOLARD Yeah. IlARBICHT And that was a little over $200, And the consultants that we had on the Library a year or two ago, they're,... ROSS They were over $250, I think...$270, I think, You divide it by the square footage, divide $16,000,000 by 59,000. 9 i -, \ HARBICHT Of course, that included all the furniture and fixtures and everything. ROSS Furniture and fixtures, landscaping. HARBICHT So he's talking $125 just for the shell. FASCHING I don't think we'd have any plumbing in this, would we? CIRAULO No, it's hard to compare. WOOLARD We have some plumbing for.... FASCHING Overhead? WOOLARD I FASCHING WOOLARD HARBICHT Getting the handicapped.... But that wouldn't be in the additional portion, that would be in the existing. In the existing... That's part of the job. WOOLARD Yeah. FASCHING But I don't think it would be as much as building the Community Center, HARBICHT Well, I mean, based on those numbers, maybe the $125 isn't that far out of line, See. what I'm afraid of is that you've got two vastly different estimates here, and that's why I'm asking these questions, to try to get a sense of is this one reasonable or is the other one reasonable. WOOLARD Part of it...we may be able to save money here in doing the same thing we're doing with the fire station, when we go to the architect and agree upon the fees you're going to pay him, it's not dependent upon the cost of construction. So there's no intent for him to do it. FASCHING That's why I think a guy like Daggett on our Planning Commission could tell us if we're getting shafted or if we're not getting shafted. That's what I'd like to know, And I think he'd do that on a volunteer basis. HARGETT I think that he could probably also appraise the materials that are being used, Sometimes you may want to spend a little bit more to get some frills. And other times something more,modest in cost will do the job just aa well as the very expensive things, HARBICHT Well one of the things is that with this.. ,you know, at the Community Center we went with some nice materials partly because of the low maintenance having that brick on the outside and partly because it sits there in a very prominent place and we wanted a nice building. But the Library...I mean, I'm talking about, you've got a cement slab building here, and so I assume that's a relatively inexpensive kind of sides to have on a building and I wouldn't want to put used brick on the new parts. I mean, I think we want something that's--I hate to say it-.consistent with the old, or at least. you know, compatible with the old, which is going to be lower cost. FASCHING Can we finalize this by then saying that we are in agreement on this expansion, we are in agreement, basic agreement, on the type of facility. Go to Daggett, tell him that the Council has agreed on that. Ask him if he would please finalize with the Librarian and give us seme ideas on going out to bid on the thing. HARGETT Set the criteria for the.... FASCHING Set the criteria for us. HARGETT For the architect? 10 FASCHING CIRAULO HARBICHT LOJESKI FASCHING LOJESKI FASCHING MILLER FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING MARGETT CIRAULO MARGETT MILLER HARBICHT CIRAULO HARBICHT CIRAULO HARllICHT MARGETT HARllICHT CIRAULO , \ " .' ,. And then tell him we'd appreciate it, as commissioner, if he'd kind of give us some advice as we go along en this with some of these outside bids and everything. Sounds like a way to go. Well, I'd like to concept that we archi tec t. be more specific than that. I think if we agree on the should get going on advertising for proposals for I think where Bob can help out is working with the staff in formulating the RFP. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I don't want to see any other extra steps involved...I think just go right into it. I Well, that's exactly what I was talking about, using him as a consult and working with staff on the deal. You want him to be a voluntary censultant en our process? Sure. He's willing to do that. Yeah. So then we'll do that? 1 think that's what we're all saying in different ways. Yeah, right. O,K, Do we have agreement, then, on that? Yeah. What do you need, a motion, Mr. Mayor, or what do you want to do? 1 will so move, Mr. Mayor, Second the motion, Mr. Mayor. O.K., that is to go out for RFP's with Mr. Daggett as a volunteering consultant? (Several or all Councilmembers answered affirmative.) Can I just ask a couple of questions for clarification here if, in fact, this is included in the motion or should be, 1 think that what we're approving here is a concept for additions. It seems like we ought to also be including some cost level that we want to have put into that RFP, it would be a part of the thing. Well, we won't know until an architect comes back at us, right? I think that, I guess.... You want to give him a ceiling up front, and say not to exceed..,. I mean, I think we ought to make some estimate of how much are we willing to spend? I mean, what if he comes back and he does all these drawings and everything and we find out it's going to cost us $6,000,000 to add th' stuff, and we say why didn't we build a new building. Well, isn't that part of the process that architects would present to u what they think they can do the drawing for? Dennis was saying, and I agree with him, that we have to say, how much is this worth to us? At least some general statement of how much we're willing to spend to do these additions, I mean, I guess I'm saying I would like to have the architects work within a parameter of approximately three and a half million dollars, the whole thing.... Three and a half to four million, Give them a ballpark figure. 11 -, LOJESKI Because if you don't, Bob, what happens? An architect.. .if you give an architect carte blanche, O.K., an architect who., let's say, has never done any work in Arcadia with any public buildings, Doesn't know the City, starts going through the City and says, hey, look at this town, now this town's got a lot of dough, Look, they just built this Community Center. They could have saved and used a veneer on the outside of this build- ing.. . they used a solid block construction. HARBICHT Well, they'll start looking at some of the houses. LOJESKI Yeah. Go inside and you see this fancy paneling. So. an architect could say, well, I'll design it and I'll make it look really great and push my project. And, like Bob says, you're up to a six, seven, eight million dollar addition. IHARBICHT MARGETT I guess I would like to see us state that we would, what I'll suggest is, that we say we're looking at this kind of a concept with satellite buildings. We're looking to have this thing in the three to three and a half million dollar range, including tax and license, the whele thing. The furnishings also? HARBICHT Yeah. FASCHING Well, I think that one thing here is that from an architectural standpoint he's not going to bid the interior and all new fixtures. HARBICHT No, no, All of the stuff that he has--the electrical, the ceilings, doing the rotunda, a new roof, all of that stuff--we're looking at the whole package in the range of three to three and a half million, FASCHING Well, this is why I'd like to have Daggett redefine his figures. WOOLARD What we can do is, call for RFP's and include some cost parameters and bring this whole package back to Council. HARBICHT And I think we need to tell you what we're looking at. FASCHING Well, let's have Daggett develop the parameters or the figures first.... HARBICHT He already has. LOJESKI He already has, what more is he going to give us? FASCHING Well, I'd like to make sure that he agrees on this. HARBICHT I guess what I'm saying is that if... FASCHING Who's going to bid on the interiors and all the fixtures? HARBICHT ...he gets down to sharpening his pencil and says, gee, this really comes up to $4,000,000, maybe his recommendation would be to not include Building A or make some modifications, One of the things, there's a contingency factor in there, and when you're working with the interior of the existing building, there are some unpredictable costs in there, and he actually did go up to $4,000,000 in my discussions with him".anywhere from $3,500,000 to $4,000,000. CIRAULO My guess would be the range would be $3,500,000 to $4,000,000. ROSS That's what he said, FASCHING Well...because ef contingencies? ROSS Yes. See, we wouldn't know for sure until you have a structural engineer go in there and look since you have to decide what you're going to do with the building, upgrades and that sort of thing, because it will have to be seismically upgraded. 12 LOJESK1 FASCHING LOJ ESK1 FASCHING HARBICHT LOJESKI HARBICHT FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING LOJESKI HARBICHT LOJESKI ROSS HARGETT CIRAULO ROSS FASCHING LOJESKI FASCHING LOJESKI WOOLARD LOJESKI , Say three to four, it gives them a nice parameter. And if they could ceme in at four with fixtures, furnishings, and the whole bit.. .because I don't think some of the furnishings are. .,. Who's going to bid on the furnishings? That's a separate deal. A separate deal. I'm saying that the whole package came in between three and four. We're dealing with the architect is going to design the building, correct? And then we're going to deal with somebody to do the interior and interior layout. Who's going to do the layout on the interior? I'm talking the building right now. I'm talking about the things that' has outlined here- -the new roof, the' painting, the new ceilings, heating and air conditioning, all of these things--that's what I'm talki about here. And I think that we have to state some number. How about a range of three to four? That's fine with me. Well, wait a minute,. . three to four on the exterior building? How much do we have for interior? Well, his, "about three and a half. Interior? No. No interior. Well, what are you talking about, interior? It doesn't include carpets, doesn't include shelving, doesn't include.... For the new part, tenant improvements at $25 a square foot, $395,000. And then under the redo, which is the existing building, he has new (inaudible) movable equipment. And those are the estimates. It's not very much money...$60,OOO, $75,000. Seventy-five. But that's what he was considering movable equipment, is the furniture that you would install, shelves and all, Well, why don't we move to go ahead with the concept and get together on this with Daggett, redefine his figures, and ask him to come to our next Council pre-meeting and define them, and then at that time we could make a motion for how much money and everything else, We should have had him here tonight, I think they're here, George. I really think they're there. I think i you proceed ahead, go out to the RFP, have Bob Daggett communicate and giv input on that RFP, give a range to the architectural world of $3,000,0 to $4,000,000, I think you're in the ballpark. Well, I hate to give them a latitude of $1,000,000 if they could come in at three and say, well, we'll go to four and charge us another $1,000,000. Well, sure. Well, we're going to...in the RFP there would be an emphasis on trying to do this thing at the lower end of this range, And if construction is tough right now and people are hungry out there, you might get it in for three. If things start to boom, then you may have to pay more. 13 ~, ". CIRAULO Well, that's part of the bidding. So that's going to keep it down right there, WOOLARD That's a year off anyway. CIRAULO Well, I think we're all talking the same idea here. LOJESKI I just want to see the thing get going. HARBICHT I just feel that we have to put a dollar figure in there. We can't just give a blank check. HARGETT That's right. In other words, we're geing to build a library fer $3,500,000...can you do it for this, and what's your proposal to be able to. do it for that, right? HARBICHT That's fine with me, FASCHING I don't know how we ever get that until we go to bid and get bids on what the architect does and then what he wants to build. HARGETT Well, that's fine, but I mean at least."I think what they're saying--and maybe I'm misreading these guys--but I think what they're saying is when you go out to request proposal for architects, Bill Weolard can say, "Hey, listen, we've got a deal over here in town. We're going to have X number of square feet of library, X number of redo. We feel there's going to be $3,500,000 to $4,000,000. And an architect will soon tell you, well, you're in the ballpark or your not. CIRAULO Well, he'll gear everything around the numbers we give him. HARGETT And if it was $20,000,000, he'd do that. CIRAULO Yeah. So you have to give him some guidelines. LOJESKI Give him those guidelines. ..that pencil will go allover the place. FASCHING Then why don't we just stay at $3,500,0001 CIRAULO Around $3,500,000. HARGETT Approximately $3,500,000. FASCHING That's our budget, $3,500,000. HARGETT It's a conceptual stage in everything we're doing. HARBICHT You make that part of the motion. CIRAULO O.K., I'll make that part of the motion tonight. HARBICHT Great. You need a second I think. You have a second. You have a motion and a second on the floer. FASCHING What's the motion on the floor? ALFORD The motion is to go out to the RFP's with Hr. Daggett as a consultant. FASCHING Yeah. And with the $3,500,000 budget, is that what you're amending? CIRAULO Yes, that's what was added. FASCHING That includes interior and exterior? HARBICHT ,Well, it includes the things that Bob has included in his rough estimate here, which does include a lot of that, 14 FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING MARGETT FASCHING ROLL CALL MAYOR FASCHING REQUEST TO WAIVE BUS. LlC. PERMIT FEES (ARC. COMM. THEATER) ROSS FASCHING ROSS CIRAULO ROSS CIRAULO ROSS FASCHING ROSS LOJESKI ROSS FASCHING o~~ Is that interior/exterior? Yeah. O.K., that's all right. Who seconded it? I did. Roll call. AYES: Ciraulo, Harbicht, Lojeski, Margett, Fasching O.K. One thing while you're still here, Kent. We have a request for the Council's information. We have a Mr. Charles Neiman, I think yeu all received.. .well, no, the new Councilmembers didn't, he wants to put on some shows, plays, at the Library. All shows to be done in good taSI The Library would pay no money to the productions. The theater would called ACT, Arcadia Community Theater. You've seen this before with Charles Neiman, this fellow. Well, anyway, Kent, tell us about it s they all knew, O.K. He is wanting to put on a number of plays in the Community Room in the Library. He brought this up to the Board and asked if he coul~do it for the first couple productions without the fee, because he didn't have the money to start off and he wanted to...he's going to charge admissions, and he intended to, as soon as he had enough money, then he would pay fees after the first two performances, The Board felt at the time that they would like to see some kind of group insurance, Workers Compensation insurance, before they allowed him to proceed with this. And that's where it was left, so I contacted the City Attorney on that issue and he agreed that we should get some proof of Workers Compensation insurance from Mr. Neiman. That's where it stands right now. He has made a let of efforts to obt~in this insurance, and he's filled out a number of applications for things, which he sent me copies, but so far I've seen no evidence that any of these agencies have given any approval, Now, would you tell us your approval of this project, if it so exists? Oh, the Board certainly would approve the project. It was contingent upon his obtaining Workers Compensation insurance. What kind of plays? Oh, one of the examples he mentioned was "The Mouse Trap," They're kind of conventional plays. For children? No, for adults, There's a fee that he charges, $9 for adults and $6 for seniors attending, and 99 is the capacity audience. Well, it's not the capacity of the room, it's the capacity before you g into the Actors Equity. If you have over 100, you have to start payi the actors. Does he currently have a program like this that he's putting perfo~ances someplace? Not now, no. He has nothing right now. He had about 20 years ago, and I guess they had put on the Community Theater in the Library at that time and he was involved with it at that time. It disappeared since then, Mr, Neiman lives in Arcadia, on San Miguel Drive. He's an old (inaudible) actor, director, etcetera. He came in to see me about it. He has been able to secure...he has a very limited budget to start this thing on, and he's worked out the details with the Library Board. He will obtain insurance through State Fund, but it's going to cost him $1,250 up front, And he'll get that all back at the end of the production period except $250. What he would like us to do is not charge him for a permit from the 15 , City, a business permit, to do these productions. He said he just can't afford to. be putting that out also. MARGETT How much is that, George? FASCHING I think it's $200, as I recall. I1ARBICHT How much? FASCHING Two. hundred dollars, I think. So he'd like us to waive the City permit fee since these are sort of a community-oriented type of thing. Although he does charge $8. And, what, we're giving him two performances. What is our rent on the other performance? ROSS I FA""''' It normally is $25 an hour, but a two-hour minimum. So he'd be paying at least $50. It sounds like a worthwhile program, and it's a cultural thing for the children in the Library and adults, an activity at the Library. And I told him I would take this to the Council and see if we would waive the business license permit, MARGETT O.K., for one performance he's going to get approximately $900, is that right, if he sells it out? FASCHING Ninety-nine people, yeah. MARGETT Nine hundred dollars, a little bit less than $900, is that right? FASCHING Yeah. MARGETT O.K. What does he have to pay for the.. . does he have to pay something for the rights to be able to put on the show? FASCHING I don't know how he reimburses his actors or actresses. ROSS They're working for nothing. MARGETT They're working for nothing? ROSS He may have to pay for some scenery fees, have somebody build some scenery, that may be a cost. CIRAULO Didn't they do this over at Holly Avenue School one time years ago? ROSS I don't recall, I know Sierra Madre has. ..he said he was involved with that. FASCHING He started that, the Sierra Madre Little Theater. I1ARBICHT Let me ask you a question. Let's say that some piano teacher is going to have a recital for her 10 students and so she wants to use our room and ask the students' parents to come and hear the recital and.. ,has that happened, that kind of thing? Is it used for that kind of thing? ROSS For recitals? Yeah, we use it for piano recitals all the time. I1ARBICHT What do we charge? ROSS In that same range, $25 an hour, $50 minimum,..2 hours minimum, I1ARBICHT What's our justification for not charging this guy? admission. He's charging ROSS Well, any time you waive charges it's based on the decision of the Library Board, I mean, it's stated in the policy that this can be waived at their discretion. Has the Library Board ruled on this? MILLER 16 ROSS HARBICHT MILLER FASCHING MILLER WOOLARD ROSS I HARBICHT LOJESKI HARBICHT FASCHING HARGETT FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING HARGETT FASCHING 2. BUSINESS DISTRICTS - MAYOR FASCHING , Yes. They did say that it would be... they would give this approval contingent upon his obtaining Workers Compensation insurance. Well, what are we talking about it for, then? I was going to say, it's not on the agenda tonight so. you can't act on it. Well. we're not. ..I'm just throwing this eut to Council. Oh, O.K. From the Council he's looking at us to waive the City fee. You're talking about the work permit, which I have no knowledge of. You mean the business license fee, is tnat what he's talking about getting waived? He's running a business and collects the admission. Why.... Why would we do that? Well, I think the only reason we would think about it is, number one, it brings a little cultural theater to the Library for the benefit of the students and adults, I don't know what his expenses are, but I know he has rehearsals for these plays and things like that. He's going to put out $1,250 up front to State Fund, he tells me, to acquire the Workman's Compo So his attitude was".he's very nice about the whole thing. I mean he's a resident of the City and says that he just doesn't have a whole lot of money to be putting out on this type of thing, I don't think the guy's going to get rich on it, myself, but he'll make a few bucks probably, It's not a big deal. So, I don't know.,.whichever way you gentlemen want to go, But you have to look at it, is it bringing something of value to. the City even though he is going to get reimbursed on some level for it, but is it important to the City and the community, I always go back to precedent. In other words, we let this guy do it, then.,.you know, I can remember here at that last Council meeting somebody came in and wanted fees waived for putting in a generator fer taking pictures over at the Arboretum, and we said no. I don't know whether or not you can all of a sudden say, well, yes, we'll allow the show at the Library, but we're not going to be able to allow somebody to make a few nickels putting on a production over at the Arboretum. Nobody's cutting a fat hog, I don't think, But by the same token, I think we better establish a policy so that if something down the road comes, you're going to be consistent. We already have a policy. I think we have to decide each one. if we feel if it's a benefit to the community, and then make the decision. I don't happen to feel that the generator situation in the Arboretum, making a commercial film, is of any benefit to the City. But little kids going to a play at the Library might be a different situation. Well, we can't make a decision right.. ,though I guess I'm not in favor of waiving the fee. O.K. I wouldn't be either. O,K. I just wanted to get a feeling out of you gentlemen. O,K. We'll go on to the next item on the agenda. "the business districts. All right. Then the next item is Redevelopment on the business district. Prier to that, I'd like to make one little announcement here, which I think you're all aware of. There is'a conference in San Jose on August 6 and 7 concerning downtown revitalization, Main Street prototypes. And I intend to go to this. This might be of interest to us down the road concerning our own business district. So I wanted to remind you of that 17 ,. \1 conference. And we have Mr. Larew from our Chamber of Commerce in the audience. He is available to us for any item we may want to ask him, on behalf of the Chamber. And I think the main point of this discussion on business districts is a general feeling--and correct me if I'm wrong--that we feel that there needs to be something done with our business districts. The business district on Huntington Drive, the business district on First Avenue for what's there, but just revitaliza- tion. Baldwin Avenue falls into this perspective also, as does Live Oak Avenue down in South Arcadia. And I think that this has been talked back and ferth in years, but nothing really being accomplished in it when we leok at other cities and what they've done with their business districts. So, with that I'll open it up to general discussion. Mr. Harbicht. HARBICHT Well, we've get this memo dated 6/10 on things that have been done, can be done, and the one thing I see missing from here is this crogram that we've had for redoing the facades of businesses in the down, '." area., We've put together a book of before and afters. Some of these ,11 be do with a funding program that we had through the Block Grant Pregram. others were done individually. WOOLARD CIRAULO Do we still have that program available? It was, what, a 50-50 thing, is that how it worked? WOOLARD It's still possible, but it's questionable as to the value of it at this point. HARBICHT How many did we do, or were done, under that program? WOOLARD We did.. . about 16 or so places got some funds. Some were complete facade removals and others were just for signs and awnings. So some were major things and others were minor. The problem is that the amount of funding that you now have to devote to your person of low-moderate income, that percentage has increased. So the amount of money that would be available for this program is substantially reduced, The fact that you have to go through Mavis Bacon for the contractors and stuff makes it difficult to find somebody, and the administration costs of monitoring all of their employees and everything else makes it not a very cost-effective program, But there are other ways the same types of things can be funded. Loans through redevelopment agencies rather than just loans for other types of (inaudible) might be available rather than the Block Grants. They're not as constrained as the Block Grants were. Maybe it will have some"., KINNAHAN In your package that Bob referred to, number seven refers to information on a possible agency pilot commercial investor rebate loan program. That deals exactly with picking up where the CDBG program left off. Where the Redevelopment Agency could, in the downtown, finance a rehab cemmercial loan program, or a grant program, (inaudible) program, We've done some initial research into programs offered through other cities and other agencies. We've researched the downtown as to the possible need for such. The need is there. The program exists in other communities. We have funds available in Arcadia to create such a program if the Agency wants it, in this case the Agency. We can certainly come back to you with a clear program concept where we can attack the small problem like signs. We c probably create an architectural incentive program where there's two 0 three architects who can assist a business. We help to. pay for it, t encourage them to take advantage of our design criteria, and then we c also provide the rebate loan, the rebate to them to do the work. And it' being modeled very much on the CDBG program. CIRAULO Well, I like that whole idea. HARBICHT Yeah, but we've already done it, KINNAHAN We have, but there's quite a few more to do. We're not done yet. CIRAULO There's a lot more to do. HARBICHT The others didn't move when we offered it before. What's the probability that they would move if we offered it again? 18 WOOLARD CIRAULO WOOLARD KINNAHAN ASSISTANT PLANNING DIR. DONNA BUTLER WOOLARD CIRAULO WOOLARD FASCHING HARBICHT \JOOLARD FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING WOOlARD ~ \': Well, in this market it's slim. I guess you don't know. But it's not a bad idea to make them aware of it, I think, again. Can this be used outside of the redevelopment area? There's two issues. The first one, the program didn't work before because it was--Donna, correct me--it was not very much of an incentive program. As the program went along, they began to offer more and mere incentives and give more and more of a rebate, and towards the end of the program it got very successful. If I recollect. there was a waiting list when the program finally went out of business.. . there was about two or three that were in line, There were a few. Actually, we offered the same program all along, but what happened was I think everybody was'just very leery of it, they didn't really understand the project. When we had the earthquake, that was the greatest incentive that we probably had, the Whittier earthquake. Because that's when the first, which was the Steerburger, took advantage of the funding. And frem that point, we went down. ..everybody kind of started asking questions. We had our consultants go individually to each of the businesses, But that really was the first push. We had a few-people before that that did some minor painting, a couple of signs, but up until that time it was strictly two or three businesses. In that downtown area someone at that time did go store to store to inform the people of the program, gave handouts, and they tried to provide all the information they could on the thing. That was within the redevelopment area, though. It coincidentally was within that area. Outside the redevelopment area you couldn't use the CDBG funds, What's the possibility of...there must be a firm or people that specialize in modernizing and updated community business districts where they give you a concept and a plan and street, and buildings, and overall design, and this type of thing. I'd like to think that we could have somebody that would come in and look at our City and say this is what you should do here, and you should do here, and that, and give us an idea of a concept and a design to follow in all aspects..,. We've already done it, That's what we had in the downtown.... Well, where is it? What did they say? Everybody was going to follow a general plan? No. As a result of their plan, we established design criteria downtown, we've got a list of colors, we have a list of materials that you have to use if you're redesigning anything in the downtown area. \Je put in new street furniture, we put in new crosswalks, we put in all new street trees down there. All of that was ,a result of those recommendations, And so we have a design criteria for downtown. Where did we drop the ball? What do you mean? Well, why does it look like it does? These are privately owned businesses. You can't force them to. .,. Well, that's what I mean. This is why we're here, is to.. .how do we get those businesses and what steps can we take to get this job done? And what will it take? The next step we had Was offering free money to.... 19 " , CIRAULO Well, what I would like to see, is there any way we can expand it beyond the formal redevelopment area, say on First Avenue. for instance? KINNAHAN I reviewed that with the Agency attorney, and basically, when you go outside a project area boundary, you have to show a direct relationship and benefit to the project area. So if you were to go acress the street from the proj ect area, you can probably say, well, that's probably a benefit. You start getting a block away.... CIRAULO Are there any (inaudible) that we could use to help those people. ..any programs available? KINNAHAN Not through the Redevelopment Agency. As I understand, not the Block Grant because. . . . CIRAULO In any other way? KINNAHAN And the only other ones would be through private financing, throug bank...there is.. .that's about it, HARBICHT There is another one. We could take City funds and make them KINNAHAN Well. I'm not sure. It might get (inaudible). LOJESKI \Jhen you look in that book there are some outstanding examples of junk and something that really looks nicer. HARBICHT There's been tremendous improvements, LOJESKI Tremendeus improvements,. .but they're all downtown. HARBICHT O,K" well I was just responding to your suggestion that we hire a consultant. We've already done it. FASCHING But he didn't tell us, though, of maybe one concept to follow in the design, In other words, let's take those little stores en Huntington between Santa Anita and First. They all look different. Is there something we could do to make that whole front of those stores all kind of tie in to one design and still maintain their individuality, but we have something that really looks like something for the whole length of the block instead of somebody here with one thing and somebody ~ith something else. It gives a whole feeling to the block, is what I'm thinking of, and then continue it on down to Second Avenue. HARGETT You mean a continuity of a theme, George? FASCHING Continuity of a theme, HARBICHT Sort of a mini-mall look, FASCHING Jump in here, HARGETT Well, I'm listening here. You have the microphone. FASCHING But that's the thing I'm talking about. I think these individuals, wher this guy puts on his style awning and the other guy puts on his styl awning, and we don't have any continuity down that street. I think tha Monrovia accomplished that... HARBICHT They don't have continuity.... FASCHING No, wait a minute...through the use of trees and street design they gave it a concept. HARGETT Well, I think they did, Bob, down Myrtle Avenue, I think they did give it a concept, a turn-of-the-century type of look, FASCHING But they did it with trees and street, Bob. They didn't do it with storefronts. Well, storefronts are nice, but they don't all look alike. 20 HARBICHT WOOLARD FASCHING BUTLER FASCHING CIRAULO HOWARD LAREW (PRES., CH. OF COMMERCE) CIRAULO llARBICHT 1 \, But we did it with trees, too. And crosswalks, the monument signs, the center divider. If it wasn't for racetrack traffic you could do a lot mere down there, but we need two lanes in each direction to.... Well, there's got to be something we have to do, because it can't stay looking like that for the next 10 years, I t looks horrible. Baldwin Avenue, down there. that big old sign sticking out there in front of Hinshaw's with all those places on it, I don't think that has much attractiveness or warmth to that street. I think the best looking street we've got is Live Oak, with the way it's laid out with the center divider and the trees and the grass and everything, to a degree. But my feeling is we've got to come up with a feeling for our City that it all ties together. And we' have some trees down on there... I was up on Foothill today, we've got some big trees that need trimming, we've got some little trees that don't need trimming, and it just doesn't look very representa- tive of the way our City should loek. Maybe we need more tree trimmers. Donna, you wanted to say something? Well, the only thing I was going to point out was, in talking about.. .Wil1- dan was the company that was hired to take a look at the whole entire area. And as Bob mentiened, one of the things that they were trying to do ~o tie the area together...because one of the biggest problems down there is you don't have similarity of design in buildings. They talked about things...they felt that trying to create a theme in the downtown area just wasn't really a theme you could tie all the buildings into. So what they tried to do was, at that point in time, they tried to do it by the use of colors, tying it in with the different types of paving materials, street furniture, and so forth. Because that was the biggest problem that they had. And it was presented to the Council, and the Council at the time went along with the fact that it's very difficult to create a theme that doesn't exist. I mean, you've got buildings that are so different in design and style, so that was the use of the colors, the types of materials in the downtown area, and that's why we adopted the downtown design overlay, which set forth the specific colors, signing., .which we're still trying to encourage the replacement of older signs, but it still hasn't taken place everywhere. But that was a major discussion. We've got a plan, which is approximately yea big, that was done at the time they discussed all the different treatments, what could be done and what couldn't be done and so forth. We used ,Bleck Grant funds to finance that study, and it's just that I think it's important.. . you know, we did try to come up with something, but I think it was felt that this ....as the best way to tie everything together ....as through the use of landscaping.... Then I guess maybe what we're looking at here is how do ....e complete the program that we came up with. Well, I'd like to ask, if we can, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to ask Howard, do you have any feel for how the merchants might feel, Howard, about this idea, or have you heard anything? I've mainly heard, in South Arcadia, Joe, that people are not real excited with the storefronts down there. Downtown along Huntington Drive has certainly improved over the years, and I have no feel for individual businesses as to whether they would be willing to put up their own funds to do it. I think with the economy the way it is, they're all looking for help. And I think they'd probably be receptive to some kind of a program. I know I hear occasionally from the people on First Avenue south of Huntington. But the problem, Pete tells us, that's not even the original redevelopment area. So that's a whole different kind of an idea...a whole different ballgame. I think that, with regard to downtown.,.I'm talking about Huntington Drive when I say downtown,..a number of businesses took advantages of the Block Grant program that we have. A number of others have gone ahead and upgraded their storefronts. We still have some that are left to do. And I don't think that a theme is feasible. I don't think it's feasible to say anybody that redoes their storefront has to make it look like a western 21 " " . saloon, or whatever we decide is the theme. I just don't think that's feasible because we're having a hard enough time just getting the majority of them to redo their fronts. I mean, it's taken us years. But I think the best that we can realistically shoot for is to try to get seme ef those other ones that are in pretty bad shape to redo their storefronts within the color and materials guidelines that we have in force down there, which they weuld have to use if they do redo it. So the real question is, how can we get them to do it? And it sounds to me that maybe using some redevelopment funds and putting a priority on that in that we ask that some significant amount of staff time be invested in contacting people, saying the City is willing to put up this much money, er whatever, to help you do this. And I think the possibility of maybe having two or three architects who are tuned into the program, and we could say if you'll contact one of these people, or we'll have one of them contact you, is the only way we're geing to accomplish it. Because we've got all kinds absentee owners down there who don't see it..., FASCHING Well, I agree with what you're saying, I think.. . probably a concept w like to see, but I think maybe it might be well for us to concentrate what we can do, In other words, what we can do with our streets, what can do with our landscaping and our trees, to make it much more desirable. Then we go.... HARBICHT Like what? FASCHING Well, I don't knew, but we can certainly. ." HARBICHT We put in all new street trees three or four years ago... FASCHING Well, maybe there's some more we can do, I don't know. HARBICHT ,. .we redid the railroad bridge, we got the center divider, and we put in crosswalks. I don't know what's left. FASCHING Well, O.K. It's always geod.. .we can still take another look at it from that standpoint. That's what we can do. What we can't do is come up with a theme or this other thing, But to try to make available to these business owners what we can to rehabilitate their storefronts, and if they don't want to do it then what do we have, as a body, that we can do by resolution to make them,. . force them to get into a.... HARBICHT Force them to do it? FASCHING Well, I don't know, maybe condemn their property. ..they're in a redevelopment area. MARGETT Mr. Mayor, you know, I talked to a realtor, a prominent realtor in town, and we were talking much in the same vein that the Council is talking right now. She said that invariably the owners or the tenants that are in these small stores really don't want anything more to be done on the front of those stores, because invariably then the landlord wants to raise rents and they cannot afford rents".now this is what she said, She said that there's nothing that would really induce. . . and what you need on Huntington Drive, if we're still talking Huntington Drive, is something that wou induce foot traffic on Huntington Drive. There's nobody that wants to par over in back of Jimmy Chin's building or in front of the post office a walk across the street and walk up and down Huntington Drive to be ab to buy something. There's just not that inducement. I was thinking ju the other day...and I don't know whether staff has had any consideratie about this.. ,but we've got, apparently, a post office that's going to be torn down and refurbished. I think there's a ton of foot traffic in front of that post office. I don't know whether we should not consider putting. , . [End of Tape 1 . Side 2, beginning of Tape 2 . Side 1J .,.stuff money into it and let's get block grants, let's get. ..and so on and so forth.. . and we might be just trying to chase a dead horse. It might 22 MARGETT FASCHING CIRAULO FASCHING LOJESKI MARGETT LOJESKI MARGETT LOJESKI FASCHING LOJESKI FASCHING LOJESKI FASCHING MARGETT FASCHING LOJESKI MARGETT -, ~, very well be that that area has purely lost it's economic use for that area. It just may not be,... Why? .. .where it is. And that's a natural transition that's taken place. Well, what do you do with it then? With a lack of parking, that could very well be. What de we do with it? That's your whole key. The whole key to the situation, George. Look at the north side versus the south side, You say what do you do with it.. .excuse me, Dennis, I cut you off. didn't mean to. I No, I interrupted you. Rut I'm just saying, look at the north side versus the south side of the street between First Avenue and Santa Anita. I look at it every day. The north side has plenty of traffic. Why? Why do the storefronts look better? Why do yeu have businesses proliferating on that side? You've got parking for the customers. The minute you take parking away, such as you have done, or there's a lack of it.. ,we haven't dene.. .but that's the way the area developed. The businesses are in shambles on the south side of the street. Well, see, staff will tell you that there's sufficient parking in the area to be able to take care ef both the north and south sides. Gockley's is gone because Gockley's, first of all, had two parking spaces behind their store and people couldn't come in there. They couldn't function. Gockley's, I think, was a result of being gobbled up by people that...all the wholesale stationery stores, But that's the value of retail business today, You have to make yourself available to the customer. If the customer is going to ceme into a mama and poppa area, there's got to be incentive. And if you can't park right there...you know, a signal, a better situation for that intersection ef Huntington and First was put in.,.what did it do? It took parking spaces away on the street. There was no additional parking to the poor businesses on the west side ef the street, and that stationery store went under, In other words, it was just another thing that happen~d down there. Then I guess we can throw First Avenue into the same category. Maybe it's beyond it's commercial use. I don't know. It's all in the redevelopment area. I come back to the question, what do we do with it? Just let it sit? No. What? I think you've given incentives to the people in that area, much more than we've ever been able to give, than we've ever done in West Arcadia, South Arcadia, Foothill Roulevard. We haven't gotten into any assistance programs up in those areas. We can't do everything. In other words, if it's true what you said, that we have provided all those incentives, City government, local government, has been able to provide those incentives and we've gone the extra mile and we've had the staff reports and we've had the consultants go ahead and look at those areas and still things haven't clicked, then I would say that it could very well be that we've lost our use for that land. When you find condominiums coming right back up to the developments that are all on the 23 ~ south side of Huntington Drive, you're not going to go in there and lay those waste and build more parking area, I don't think. And I would say that it may very well be, Mr, Mayor, to be able te.. . and I'm sure that a feasibility study as to what that area should be may be just what you want to do. LOJESKI The Willdan study did that. The Willdan study addressed the south side of Huntington Drive and said if it's going to remain in the long-range plan ef things a business commercial area, there has to be parking created. And their recommendation was to take the north side of Alta Street and devote that to parking. So you've got now developable sites, O.K,? You've got the availability, hypothetically, of AT&T to come in, let's say, and build a three-story building. .,. FASCHING Where? LOJESKI On Huntington Drive, let's say. FASCHING Between First and Santa Anita? LOJESKI Could be. Could be, You've got an anchor on one side which is a bank, George, O.K.? It's the only decent building, I think, in that whole block. FASCHING Home Savings? LOJESKI Sure. HARGEtT And they're short of parking. LOJESKI Not really. HARGETT Well, their parking is acress the street. ..is that what somebody's going to do to cash their.... LOJESKI No, but that's my point, O.K.? If you cannot go to a mama and poppa store, then what's the incentive to go there? You're going to go to a mall, you're going to go. to Monrovia, or wherever is convenient. HARGEtT But what I'm saying, the next step, if we're going to generate parking, where are you going to generate it? Go in there and lay waste some of those condominiums that are brand new? LOJESKI From between First and Second, you're stuck, Between Santa Anita and First Avenue you're not stuck, By that I'm saying just by the age of the structures, HARBICHT Yeah, but yeu're stuck frem a cost standpoint. LOJESKI Sure. No doubt about it. I'm just saying we have a study that was done. If I'm wrong Bill, that was one of three studies over the last 25 years, I think, that's been done. They have all addressed the south side of Huntington Drive in that very direct (inaudible). HARGETT In ether words, dees that study say that that is a viable economic entit on the south side of Huntington Drive, we can really make some money ther if we provide parking? WJESKI If you have parking, FASCHING Well, I doubt that very much, HARGETT So do I. LOJESKI George, it's undevelopable from a retail standpoint.... FASCHING We already have all this development land out there that we want'to develop anyway, What we want to do is clean up the looks of the business district. We don't have the parking, they're stuck there. And if we don't clean them up, we don't have the parking, what are we going to do with them? 24 ,. '1 , HARBICHT I think we've got two different things here we're talking about, One is parking, that's a whole separate issue. And if we want to take that up.. ,there's no question that parking would help the viability of that area. But the cost ef providing that parking is so astronomical that I don't think that.". FASCHING Plus the cost of relocating all those tenants and the (inaudible). It's not even in the ballpark. HARBICHT The second issue is to say, what can we do to clean up that area, to get the rest of it looking nice. And I guess I come back to what I said before, is I think that I would be willing to entertain the idea of using, maybe, some redevelopment meney and putting together a program much like we had before but maybe with a little less red tape. But basically, what you're going to be deing when you cut it all away is you're saying to the owner, "If yeu'll spend $30,000 fixing up the front of this building, we'll pay for $15,000 of it." That's what it comes down to.. But you know what? It wouldn't cost him $30,000. I just use that as an example, 1 don't know what it would cost. FASCHING They den't want to spend five grand. HARBICHT But I specifically reject the idea that we say, "Well, if you won't do it voluntarily, somehow we're going to make you do it." Because I won't vote to do that. I don't know if it's possible, but if it was, I wouldn't vote to do it. CIRAULO They're all deing so poorly, I just don't think they have the money to..., FASCHING Who's they? Not the property owners, the guys renting the buildings are doing poorly. CIRAULO Yeah, the businesses that are there. FASCHING The guys that own the property paid for it a long time ago. CIRAULO He doesn't care. FASCHING It's all lint in his pocket. CIRAULO I'm talking about the poor little business guy who's there, FASCHING That's right. So then our City slinks along with these businesses looking like heck on Huntington Drive. The property owner puts all that paid-off building money in his pocket, And we can end up with people doing pawn shops with gates on the front and all that type of stuff. HARGETT We're getting back to the thesis that I put out on the table, Mr. Mayor. Maybe you have lost that use of that property, FASCHING O.K., then I'll pose this question to you--what are we going to do with it? HARGETT O.K., well, we're going full circle here. If that is viable, if we know for sure that we can make things click down there by providing Block Grant funds or similar programs, I would be in favor of that. But there's no sense in going in there and giving a Block Grant-type program and still have people worried that their rental rates are going to go up. And we haven't really generated any of the income or the tax that we can get to substantiate spending the money. CIRAULO See, I think they're going to get even less traffic and do less business once Nordstrom's moveS in and the mall has got a whole new thing. FASCHING I think we should go on to the next subject,. ,we'll never come to a.... CIRAULO Well, I know, but what do we do with it? 25 ., , FASCHING Yeah, what do we do with it? That's what we're here for, to decide what to do with it, not to find out all the economical problems of those guys selling costumes and everything, HARGETT I think that a lot of it..,and we're sitting here trying to make that decision. Mr. Mayor. But, you know, we've got the Chamber of Commerce and we've got the owners of the building, and we've also get the tenants of the building. They sheuld be saying, hey, this is what would be beneficial for this downtown area. And I don't hear them saying anything. CIRAULO Well, let me ask, Pete, you attend meetings occasionally, What do they hear? the Dewntown Business Association say, what's the feel. what do you IGNNAHAN I don't recall that really ceming up. be posed to them :0 get their input, It's probably a question c~at WJESKI I'll give you an answer to that, Joe. Bob and I, as two candidates f the City Council, attended a meeting with the downtown Arcadia busine merchants. Their key question to all the candidates is what are you goi to do to protect... I'll give you an example... the guy that owns and operates Rod's Diner says, "What are you going to do to protect my business so I can stay in business at the expense of what's going to develop' at the Ford agency? What is your concept, Mr. Councilman? What are you going to do so my business doesn't suffer?" That's a tough question to. answer, That's where their concern was. The old, established guy, he'll continue to operate down there. FASCHING I don't know. That's an eld, established restaur~nt, Rod's, Well, the thing here is that we can go over all of these problems to the shop owner, the retailer, the property owner, but we're not getting to the solving of the problem. If it looks like hell, how do we make it look better for,..and you can't convince me that if everything looks better they're not going to enjoy more business, with one problem in mind is the parking on the south side of Huntington. But if you continue to allow these to exist and continue to deteriorate, and the lower class retailer is getting in there because the place looks like hell in a period of time, that doesn't help our City. HARGETT Mr. Mayor, would you suggest that we have a session with representatives of the downtown owners and the tenants and the Chamber of Commerce and see what they would think that would be beneficial for them down there? FASCHING No, I wouldn't, HARGETT Well, how can we sit here and tell them that this is going to be good for them? FASCHING O.K., all I'm leoking at is this. We're probably looking at maybe eight or nine property owners involved in this. Any businessman in his right mind would not tell us that improvements of the business district would not be beneficial to him. So if I wanted him to come in and tell me how to handle the property owners and get them to do what they should do to improve their buildings, that's one thing. But they can't tell us that They can only tell us what they consider is a good retailing situation And we know what a good retailing situation is. Not a deterioratin retailing situation. And I think I come back to Bob, we have to hav somebody that goes out and calls on these property owners and convince them that it's in the best interest of our City, and them, and their future to participate in an upgrade of their business front, and try and do that. HARGETT You know, George, I think that's fine. I just don't know that we're hitting nails on heads and getting to the root of the problem. Putting a neW storefront and then saying everybody is going to come in here and buy new watches or whatever this guy is trying to sell over there, I don't know whether they're going to be able to do that. FASCHING Well, then, let's blow it up. We'll get rid of it. 26 ., " , MARGETT So everybody can walk down or drive down Huntington Drive and say, "This is beautiful"? FASCHING You're saying just because.. .I'm not talking about.. .you're saying just because we say new storefronts, new awnings, and it looks nice, and paint and everything else, that they're going to sell more watches? I can't guarantee that, Bob. But I can guarantee it's going to sure make our City look a lot better. MARGETT No. question about it. FASCHING That's what I'm interested in. MARGETT O.K., but how is this guy going to substantiate the spending of $30,000 or $15,000 or whatever? FASCHING You don't know.. ,Bob, to fix up the storefront on one of those small buildings, I would estimate would be $3,000, $3,500. Buy a canopy and paint, Maybe some new facade on it with the split brick or something. Yeu're not talking $30,000. I do my carwash once a year. I make the whole thing look different, it deesn't cost me more than $8,000 or $9,000. CIRAULO You're saying split that cost with them? The City split the cost with.... FASCHING Do we have the money available in Community Block Grant funds? KINNAHAN Redevelopment funds. FASCHING Sure. We have to have a program that we're going to go eut there and sell these peeple. LOJESKI What about this Business Improvement District? What is that all about? WOOLARD That's like an ABA, who had formed their own group, And they can be taxed on their business licenses to put money into their association, They then sponsor events and do other promotional activities and stuff to encourage activities, hopefully, spending the money within their district. CIRAULO I have to agree with everybody else. There is very little that they can do that's going to encourage more business because there's no parking. So the business they have now, that's pretty much the business they're going to get, But what we could do is improve the appearance of the street, I guess that's what we're talking about, right? WOOLARD I think you've got a real problem down there...I don't want to say real problem. . ,you have a problem in that it's not going to be a retail area. You can fix up the storefronts to look fantastic, and you're still not going to get anybody selling anything because that's not where people go to buy. They go to the malls, they go to the mini malls. FASCHING Well, not necessarily. They're all open, doing business. LOJESKI Look what's on the north side, George. You've got.". FASCHING There's vacancies on the north side, too. There's vacancies. Gockley's has been vacant for a year. LOJESKI It's been sold. FASCHING Well, just recently, HARBICHT Are you saying, if it's moving away from retail, the retail office.... LOJESKI You're moving into offices.. .you've got attorneys on the north side, you've got a hair dressing salon, which is a destination that women.,.. FASCHING O.K., whether it be an attorney's office or hair..,I don't care if it's retail. I just want it to look good. I don't care what's in there. HARBICHT How many want it to look good? 27 MARGETT FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING HARBICHT CIRAULO FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING MARGETT FASCHING CIRAULO FASCHING KINNAHAN WOOLARD HARBICHT WOOLARD CIRAULO WOOLARD ECON. DEV. ASST, JOYCE FRIEDMANN :, Everybody wants it to look good. That's what I'm talking about. So this is where we have to find the answer. is we have to get out there and sell these people on the advantages of participating with us to make this street look like something. Not only this street, we have First Avenue to consider, we've got Live Oak to consider, and portions of Baldwin Avenue. I've got to. tell you, we're sitting here talking concepts. specific proposals. We need That's why we're talking, so we can come up with a proposal on what we want to do. Well. we have one possibility that Pete eutlined. Do you want to do that? Do you want to take $100.000 in redevelopment funds or $150,000 and sa "We're geing to put together a program that will have Redevelopment Age participation, we'll pay 1/3 or 1/2 che'cost for any retailer along th who. will redo his facade"? Well, I think we should make some attempt to do something. That certain would be a start. That's not a bad idea. First of all I think we should find out how many property owners are involved, they're the ones that are going to do the improvement. In some cases it will be the tenant. Well, first of all, the tenant can't do anything without the property owner's approval, And if the tenant bails out on a note or, you know, if they owe the City...I don't know how you'd set that thing up.. . and he still doesn't make it.. .. I think the ones that we have to convince that they are property owners and have to have an interest of this City at heart also as (inaudible) in this City are the preperty owners. I have a feeling that a lot ,of the property owners are absentee,.. they couldn't care less. If the tenant wants to fix up the building, "Be my guest, it's your expense, Fix up my building, that's great. Help yourself." They're not going to do anything. Well, can we get a list of the property owners on Huntington Drive. Yes, we could. I might mention, in the old programs we had, there were really three different programs. One was for signs, in which we paid 75 percent of new signs, We also paid 75 percent of any architectural services that they needed to redo their building, or whatever. And then when we got to actual redoing the storefronts, we had sort of a sliding scale which was based on the cost of the improvements and it went from, if you were deing small improvement, for example if you had a $2,000 improvement, we pai $1,576 of that. We paid 3/4, better than 3/4. And then if you got up to a $50,000 improvement, we paid half of that, $25,000. Why can't we try something like this again? We can. We just have to go to.... I just want to say, I personally called several other cities to see how their programs worked and what they did, and what worked and what didn't, And one thing that seemed to work was dividing the program up into segments. They had a segment of the program just for signs.". And 28 ~ believe it or not, I went down to the downtown to look at the buildings, and a lot of the signs are signs that could use updating or removal and put new signs, And they gave a certain dollar amount just for signs. Then they gave a separate dollar amount for those storefronts, for the awnings and the facade, And then they had a third amount, and maybe even a grant, required them to hire an architect, maybe an architect that the agency had on the list ef architects. They had to go. through this process, and it kind of split it out so even though all the money was lumped into one section, they ceuld still pick and choose what they wanted, HARBICHT Well, that sounds like a great approach. FASCHING Perhaps this is where we could make the Chamber and the Business Associatien, plural, Associations, of value to. us. We could maybe enlist a group from those two agencies to act as the advisery group and go out, sit down with us, we'll discuss with them what we want to. do, what programs we have to layout a plan with them and let them see if they will velunteer to represent this City in contacts with the property owners, and in some instances the operators of the building or the businesses, and work out a program where we're going to put some real emphasis on this thing. And we can start out with Huntington Drive as our pilot program to work on and then we can see how that goes and work into Baldwin Avenue later and Live Oak Avenue. HARGETT Well, you want Huntington and First, don't you? FASCHING Yeah, Huntington first I said. HARGETT Well, Huntington and First Avenue? FASCHING Yeah, right, I think the only thing I can foresee for First Avenue is maybe some kind of street improvement or design or something. LOJESKI That's all part of the redevelopment area. FASCHING Yeah. CIRAULO First Avenue isn't, though, KINNAHAN To Alta Street. FASCHING Ve could put a divider in First Avenue.,.. CIRAULO That's the problem. WOOLARD Once you get out of the redevelopment area, then you don't really have anything to do other than public improvements. LOJESKI See, that's the one small problem. What happens to the businessman who's down on Live Oak or West Arcadia and says, "You keep doing all these (inaudible) you make those programs available to Huntington Drive--what about me?" FASCHING Let's put it under the whole program, let's do the whole thing. LOJESKI But you can't use redevelopment money down there. FASCHING Well, then, we have to do it differently. that's the City, too. Rut we can't neglect that, CIRAULO Is there any way to redraw the redevelopment area and expand it, and make it encompass a bigger area? KINNAHAN You can, but the process is extremely cumbersome and lengthy, and what it does is when you file your amended project area boundaries with the Ceunty, the taxing agencies will look at your project area and say, "Oooh, isn't this wonderful. I think we'd like to take some of the tax money that's not just from the amended area but from the entire project area because we missed it before, we're going to get it now." I do believe the entire city of Santa Ana is a redevelopment area. FASCHING 29 , KINNAHAN They proposed to de it, sir, but they didn't do it. FASCHING They told us,..didn't they tell us they were an entire redevelopment area? CIRAULO Pretty close to it, yeah. FASCHING Well. why don't we do that then, and.... MARGETT Well, did I hear you right, Mr. Mayor, that we're going to. solicit property owners and the Chamber of Commerce, is that what you're saying? FASCHING No, no, no, no. We enlist the aid of the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Associatiens to work with us if they would like to... MARGETT That's what I'm saying. FASCHING You said property owners. MARGETT O.K., the Business Associations, FASCHING ".to work with us on formulation of a plan to get these things done, And we can't use all our staff time to go out and call on these peeple. We need business people to go out and, . . Chamber of Commerce, that's thei.r.,., CIRAULO See, the Chamber of Commerce has already identified individuals from each business district who are a part ef their committees and report to them, so there's a natural intro right here. LOJESKI Basically, what you're talking about is page 7 of this report, right? FASCHING That's it. KINNAHAN If I can, Mr. Mayor, what I would suggest is the staff writes up.. . takes the concept here, embellishes it a little bit, brings it back to you and makes sure you're comfortable, and then we would forward it out to the Chamber and the ABA and say this is a concept plan, that the Agency is considering the downtown, we'd really like your input, your comments. And perhaps staff would go to the ABA meeting and explain it to them, obtain their comments and input, bring it back to you. .,. FASCHING I think better than staff, along with staff, I think we ought to have a Councilmember go to the ABA and explain it to them and the Chamber of Commerce. CIRAULO And advertise with them in advance, so that a lot of people show up for the meeting, so you just don't have four or five people there, but as many representatives as they possibly can. FASCHING Layout a general plan of attack and get on with it. Let me ask you one more question before we get on, First Avenue, let's say primarily First Avenue south of Huntington Drive to Duarte, that's kind of a real no-man's hit-and-miss land. Is it worthy of considering and then doing anything, such as an improvement on our standpoint to First Avenue with a parkway in the middle of the street to make it more attractive, or what do yo think about that? HARGETT I don't think parkways in the middle would be attractive. CIRAULO Well, not only that, but I think you have to be concerned about it cuts off access from people crossing, getting back and forth across the street if you have a parkway there. I don't know if it would inhibit traffic. . . it would look pretty, but you have to redesign the whole thing, and you're probably talking about an awful lot of money. WOOLARD Well, I might be able to solve the whole thing. Under the laws of the State, which we will end up having to adopt here, their landscape water conservation regulations, they do not want to see any medians less than 10 feet in width, because they feel it's a waste of water because of overspraying, 30 "1 '."1 '\ '( FASCHING Well, then, the only thing that we can do with First Avenue to make it a more beautified section of street.... HARBICHT I think rather than putting a parkway down the middle, we'd be better off if we eliminated one lane on each side and widened the sidewalks way out, put in a lot of benches. ... MARGETT Street lighting. CIRAULO Make it attractive to. walk there. HARBICHT I'm not suggesting that we do that necessarily, but it's a pessibility. I don't know what the traffic volume on First Avenue.. .of course. it becomes two lane once you get to Duarte Road anyway. MARGETT I tell you, you're into heavy duty expenditure there, right, Joe? You're not going to get any of this. ..$100,000; $200,000 isn't geing to cut it. CIRAULO And you know, as much as I want to help the businesses on First Avenue, you're talking about an enormous amount of money to help a very few businesses, a relatively few businesses. And there again, they're going to come back and tell you, "Gee, that's pretty and it's nice, but my major problem is parking. I don't have any parking." So what good dees, it do that you made everything nice and",people are not geing to park over by the post office and walk all the way down First Avenue to go in the sporting geods store. They're just not going to do it. FASCHING I agree with you, I agree with you, I agree with you. I come back to the same problem. What do we do with the street? Just leave it with the vacancies and everything else that exists on First Avenue? Just leave it? Forget it--it's not worthy of anything? LOJESKI Why not somehow expand some type of a program,. .Ilill and staff maybe come up with some creative thinking about a program similar, Obviously, it's not on the redevelopment area and you can't use redevelopment funds. Is there any other,. . . WOOLARD We can leok. I'm not aware of any. KINNAHAN Staff has already done a preliminary...we'll continue looking, but from the preliminary work we've done there is nothing that suggests itself as available right now, MARGETT You know, Mr. Mayor, I think that Office Genie ought to move onto First Avenue. CIRAULO Let me tell you something, Office Genie was on Huntington Drive and we moved out for this very same reason. We were on Huntington Drive for 12 years, FASCHING I think we have a plan that we're going to formulate here on the business districts through staff coming back. We'll be working with the Chamber of Commerce primarily and then to the business associations to work out a program, hopefully, with them. I come back.. ,no, we tossed First Avenue into here a little bit. But to me, First Avenue is First Avenue. But we have situations there that.. .we have vacancies and it's not a pretty street, and I agree with everybody here.. ,what do you do with it? HARBICHT I tell you, if you wanted to undertake an ambitious project of revitalized dewntown, the way to do it would be to take all those stores en the north side of Huntington Drive and turn them around. Take the post office out of there, the Sawmill out of there, and try to bring in something like a Mervyn's or some sort of an anchor store like they've done over at Huntington Oaks, and basically you've got a parking lot in the center and stores around the side, just like Huntington Oaks in Monrovia, and you change the whole orientation away from Huntington Drive to the parking lot, which could be done very attractively.. .you know, it's got sort of a see- saw effect, the backs of those stores, but they have to all..,. WOOLARD We just have to figure eut how to condemn the Federal Government. 31 FASCHING MARGETT FASCHING MARGETT HOWARD LAREW MARGETT FASCHING CLOSED SESSION MILLER 3. REDEVELOPMENT MAYOR FASCHING KINNAHAN FASCHING ALFORD KINNAHAN FASCHING KINNAHAN CIRAULO KINNAHAN FASCHING I don't think that's going to be feasible. Hey, you can talk to them. No, we want to develop the redevelopment property we have. We've got the Foulger Ford property coming up fer redevelopment and a whele lot of other things. Well, anyway, we're going to pass on it for now because we're not geing to get anywhere on First Avenue. I'll meet you all there tomorrow. Mr. Mayor, I think that maybe you want to express to Larew just how important we feel that the Chamber of Commerce and the businesses' sections within our community are. And I think that you probably get a feel here from Council that we are ready to help and assist there. But we really.. .you know, it's a two-way street, we're going to have to have some input and some direction from you people, too. Well, we have people in place right now, the representatives from t various business districts. I'm just envisioning putting them into a tas force-type operation and away we go. Because I know they'd be ve interested to hear of your interest and to work together, But we have to have that marriage. O.K., our next agenda item is discussion of redevelopment items. What I'm going to do. gentlemen, I'm going to adjourn to a closed session for a short period of time and come back to Item No, 3. So we'll adjourn to a closed session. Let me make the appropriate announcement for the minutes. We're going to adjourn to a closed session per Government Code Section 54956.9Bl to discuss a situation where, based on existing facts and circumstances, there is a threat of litigation to the City. For that reason we will be adjeurning to a closed session with Attorney Richard (inaudible). [Closed session] Next item on the agenda, Item No. 3. the discussion of redevelopment items, Who wants to kick that off? If we can. Mr. Chairman, what I would ask is this also be considered to be an Agency meeting as well as a Council meeting. So ordered. Go into an Agency.... If you want to do that, we can just list the roll at the beginning of the meeting as Council/Agency and just let it go at that, Staff has provided you with a lengthy report on the various elements of our existing work program and the Agency's projects and priorities that were adopted some time ago, and other ideas. Mest of it is public, a couple of things in there are confidential. My recommendation to you is that you may want to jus t s tart with number one and work your way through it. That's ene idea. The other is simply to let the Agency members just tak it whichever way you'd like to. Well, what letter are we referring to here? It's the June 18th letter, and it's entitled .Proposed Economic Development IT .92..... The real thick work program. I might point out that it's labeled confidential. Only selected items on there are probably cenfidential, Much of it is public. Well, in the interest of time, does everybody want to go all through that report, or is the main purpose of our meeting on redevelopment items the thought of how we're going to market these properties. a strategy towards marketing. or what? What's the main interest? Dennis, you had some thoughts on that. 32 -1 LOJ ESKI Well, I'm just going to kind of jump around a little bit if I can. I was at the Parking Commission meeting a couple of weeks ago and the question came up regarding the post office and the site of the post office, what it looks like and that sort of thing.. .by the Commission, the Commission brought this up and talked about the parking in the area, the parking district. And I was a little surprised to hear from staff, Pete indicated that a concept had been brought to the Council, and I subsequently talked to a couple of you in regards to if that concept had ever been brought to the Council, which was one to relocate the post office temporarily on an Agency parking lot which we have right now, a bare spet of dirt. And to your knowledge that was never done. yet a decision was made that that was net an appropriate situation for the City to get into_ I also question, with the situation in regards to the post office, Bob mentioned it a little bit, about possibly seeing the post office become relocated, if that was a possibility. And you can take the Chandler property, for example, and what are the possibilities of taking the,Kiewit,..it would be Kiewit West, that's a very difficult site to develop because ef its shallow depth. Could the post office be encouraged to actually, if they're geing to rebuild on their current site, what about rebuilding the post office on the Agency parcel? I don't think Chandler is going to develop it. I don't think they've got the financial ability to do this, Would it be in our financial best interest to maintain the property and do exactly what the post office was doing on the Wheeler site, which is a long-term' lease? I don't know. HARBICHT Well, it's my understanding that all they're doing is some facade work on the post office.. . they're not tearing it dewn. KINNAHAN Substantial rehab. We've never seen the building plan, A substantial rehab, I don't know what that means, whether they're really going to. gut the building...I know they're worried about asbestos inside. But they're going to. end up with what they tell us is going to be a very attractive building. HARBICHT Yeah, but my understanding is that the building itself isn't going to. be altered, they're just going to do some stuff on the facade and perhaps rehab the inside. The second question I have is does the Federal Gevernment own that or is it privately owned and leased to the Federal Government? KINNAHAN The Federal Government bought it about two years ago. HARBICHT If they were to move to Agency property, would they stop paying property tax? KINNAHAN Yes. I'm sure. HARBICHT So we have a negative tax increment. LOJESKI What happens if we kept ownership of the property and they simply paid us the equivalent of a land lease or something like that to build this structure on Agency..,. HARBICHT We still wouldn't have any tax paid on it. The Agency lives and dies on tax increment, and we would be taking a whole piece of property off the tax rolls, FASCHING Is this still a possibility? LOJESKI I don't know. I was just simply looking conceptually at what was there. Somebody said, well, where would you park the trucks? Well, could you put a structure or something like that over the water towers? Park the vehicles and that sort of thing. Again, it's a conceptual thought because it takes congestion, obviously, out of the downtown area, which is tough. It takes the potentiation of a problem. , ,people walking across Wheeler Street...puts it at an intersection, puts it at a wider street. FASCHING I think the horse is out of the barn? LOJESKI Pardon? 33 l' \ , , FASCHING I think the herse has already gotten out ef the barn. I think the trucks are gone and they're gone, they're located and relocated, and if we would have wanted to do this we should have got hot on this a few months ago. Correct? LOJESKI I don't know. CIRAULO Well, it's only a temporary relocation, isn't it? Until they rehab the.... FASCHING I think they probably leased for a year wherever they went. LOJESKI You see, we've got some vacated property there that no matter, if a project came in today, it's going to be a minimum of two years for anything to be built on those sites. And I say that fairly realistically, because.. .with Keith Brown's project. ..great looking project. The way Jim Kuhn desig and fit that little new building into, that tough, tough site. Did marvelous job. But that's been a two-year project on that little it bitty tiny site. And. again, with, I think, the Chandler ching is ba on the line. I'm not so. sure Rick Smith and Emkay are ever going to anything with Kiewit East. We've got Second and Huntington, South Side, obviously back on the market. You've got the 4 1/2, 5-acre site on the other side of the street that's there. We've got Agency-owned property which is part of the old Acapulco site, ' FASCHING Well, Mr. John Nobrega, who's a councilman in Monrovia who does business on the south side of Huntington Drive in the golf shop, as you probably know, and runs a very nice operation, he was talking to me the other day. And I happen to know that, among the other things in the City of Monrovia who enjoys chat Home Depot with beaucoup bucks in sales tax revenue, thac they also now are talking and have a plot plan on the wall in their conference room of Costco, with about 180,OOO-square-foot development, Costco being sort of another.... MARGETT Drug store. FASCHING Well, no. But they've got a deal going with a drug store. They've goc a deal going with Wal-mart on a drug store, on another location in Monrovia for a Wa1-mart. Then they've got this deal for Costco going. And I think.., the mayor saw me, Bartlett saw me when I saW that, and I asked him about it. He seemed a little embarrassed that I had seen this thing on Costco. Two strong retailers. Only indicating to you that here we have all this activity going on in a city on our easterly boundaries with all this sales tax revenue and development taking place, and we're sitting here on all this vacant property that we don't have anything going on except a building that almost went up and fell through after we screwed around with it for two years and made concessions every time we sat down at this table. ' !lARBICHT Have you ever looked at the concessions they made to get Home Depot. FASCHING No, no. I mean concessions to keep that medical building alive. !lARBICHT Well, I'm talking about the concessions that Monrovia made to get Home Depot. They almost gave that away. They've got a long, long payout befor that thing is going to make a turn in the black for them. FASCHING Well, no more different than the mall's going to give the whole buildin for Nordstrom's, above Nordstrom's, just to get them to move in. Sam process. But all I'm saying is there's action going on there. And we don't have any action. LOJESKI Maybe the bottom line question is how does.. . and I don't want to compare us to Monrovia, Pete, you're over here; Bill, you're over there. I don't want to compare us to Monrovia. How does Monrovia seem to get those kinds of things? How do they seem to. ... Now the former Ole's store, which is now Builder's Emporium, is closing down, and immediately out of the field, supposedly, is now coming in a big Toys 'R Us store. That's got to be a big sales tax generator. Do we ever have those kind of inquiries? How do they do it? 34 " \1 KINNAHAN We had one once from Target. HARBICHT Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. What happened to that? KINNAHAN You have to have the right size property in the right location, And we don't have that kind of acreage on Huntington Drive, that's the bottom line. Both Wal-mart and Costco require, probably minimally. six to ten acres. We don't have anything near that size, Toys 'R Us simply filled in for an existing tenant. We don't have any existing tenant now except for Hinshaw's who has that size store. By the way, on the Hinshaw's, I mentioned to the Mayor today, we have had some indication that two major tenants are talking to the owners of the land for a possible succession to Hinshaw's, They will not tell us who they are, but they're interested in the Hinshaw's property, and we should know more in a week or so. WOOLARD FASCHING I don't think Hinshaw's will be too hard to market, myself. KINNAHAN But going back to your question again, Bill's point is it. We get calls from people all the time wanting ten acres of land. We get calls from the Costcos and the Price Savers and the Pace,. .all these stores want ten acres and I say, "I don't have ten acres." I don't have it in Chicago Park anymore, We used to refer them to Chicago Park, Our largest site in town is the four-acre site, the Northwest Corner. And they'll say, "I have to. have at least. ..1 can make it eight." I say, "I don't even have eight, I only have four. Can you branch it across the street and park across the street. . .." MARGETT Yeu're talking about the Northwest Corner site Yeah, but that's a bastard piece of property. to develop that? of Second and Huntington. I mean, how are you going KINNAHAN And I'm just trying to get the hook in, you know, And most of them know it, They say, "It's by the railroad track, and it's odd shaped," and so on, I say, "Well, there's the Foulger site, That's a little bigger, that's 4.04 acres. Call Coldwell Banker,. Well, they need ten acres, they need eight acres, Costco and Wal-mart, that's what they're looking for, We just don't have that size properties. Monrovia also looks like they're doing well, and I admit they are, but if you look at Monrovia they have an awful lot of car dealerships that are vacant now. If you drive down Huntington, you see an awful lot of vacant properties on Huntington. They have much the same problem we do. What are they going to do with that? And they're looking at office, they're looking at retail, LOJESKI Of course, they had a lot of vacated car dealerships that were on Huntington that became the Home Depot, too. KINNAHAN That's the Home Depot that Bob mentioned and they gave them some significant concessions just to get them there, But there's a lot more car dealerships that are still there that have been there for a year and a half to two years just waiting. And they don't know what they're going to do with them. They don't have the user for them, they're just buildings that have been there and they're going to be there for some time. I think the other thing that you have to keep in mind is that Arcadia property is very expensive property. But from a retail standpoint, from the standpoint of a Home Depot or Toys 'R Us, being across the line in Monrovia doesn't really hurt them, yet they get the property so much cheaper. When Duarte was attracting all the car dealers and took Arcadia Datsun from us, they sold them the land for $5 a foot. At the same time we were acquiring land for close to $25 a foot. Well, that's a heck of a writedown. Duarte didn't have that much of a writedown because they were buying the land for significantly less than we were. It was a tremendous writedown that they did to get them in there, and I don't know if it's ever going to payoff for them because of the problems they've had with it. But that's another part of problem, is that you buy a square foot in Arcadia compared to a square foot in Monrovia, compared to a square foot in Duarte, you're talking about a significant difference of price. I'm not sure why. I know why the housing is more expensive, but I'm not sure 35 , , why the retail is what it is. And it's just an economic fact of life that we have to deal with. LOJESKI Of course, then, you had a city and a county that was extremely sensitive to sales tax base. Because they had none, O.K.? We were never in that position. We had our shopping mall, we had Santa Anita Fashion Park, and so we sat back and said no, we're not going to get involved with the typical procedures of a typical agency as the Monrovia or Duarte was going to. get into, which was buying high, selling low, and waiting. HARBICHT When I was on the council in Duarte we used to cry in our beer about the fact that everybedy in Duarte is coming to Arcadia to shop and we weren't getting any of that sales tax revenue, and we kept trying to figure out ways to get the law changed or something. So, sort of out ef desperation they took tremendous writedowns on their property to get those car dealers in. There's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but it's a long, 10 rainbow, I'll tell you. LOJESKI Of course, Monrovia cried when Stan Gribble first went in and put h project in there, and they were extrapolating that out to be a 10, 12, don't know, plus-year payout, and what was it, paid off in 3 years 0 something, and they started clipping coupons or something like that. KINNAHAN They refinanced his note in a short time. I don't know that it's paid off, but they did get.. .it was quite a successful project. FASCHING What's the price per square foot on Foulger's property? KINNAHAN They're asking thirty-four. FASCHING Thirty- four dollars, I think what we're probably looking at here and everything in comparing Monrovia and ours and our size and their size, what's available, is what can we do for a better aggressively marketing program to market our redevelopment properties, HARBICHT Well, one of the things that we did, maybe it was since you were on the Council, was we gave courtesy to brokers and were willing to. pay a brokerage fee, figuring that that would get some aggressive marketing. And I still think that that's a good way to go. The problem is just there isn't much happening now. You know, property development as we saw on the one we were working on on the south side. The lenders aren't lending on those kinds of buildings, everybody's kind of holding their HARBICHT [End of Tape 2 - Side 1, beginning of Tape 2 - Side 2] It's kind of frustrating to be sitting there with that land, although we generally see appreciation in land value as time goes by so we may get it back just through appreciation once things start picking up again. FASCHING Mr. Margett, do you have any".. MARGETT Well, you know, you're talking in terms of that $28, exerbitant or a lot of money. Really it's not. I mean, guy in there that can make money at fifty, he thinks he's $25 as being if you get the got a steal. HARBICHT No, no, I'm just saying it's a lot compared to what Monrovia or Duarte... MARGETT Was paying, yeah, right. Rut I don't think we should get locked in to th idea or the concept that we've got expensive land. I don't think that w do. I mean, you take a lot, a residential lot in Arcadia is going to be $20 to $25 a square foot. So I don't know that a commercial square feotage at $25 or $35 is really that big a deal. And these guys, when they put it together, all they want to do is be able to make money at it someplace along the line, But my thought was".and I don't know whether we use the Wall Street Journal or not, but I think that people who are interested, in Chicago or someplace else, in coming to California for a new office, and if you could set the criteria that you have available,..40,OOO square feet that would take care of a 20,OOO-square-foot building and whatever.., that you've got a Council that's willing to work with you, that would be another way to do it. I have a friend of mine who just came back from 36 -, FASCHING Springfield, Illinois, that, I tell you.. .he went in there and was checking with che Chamber of Commerce and the Redevelopment Agency Chat chey have there. And I tell you, they would do anything to get this fellow to move from Irwindale back there to be able to manufacture furniture com- ponents".labor market, less labor market, less OSHA, less everything, to. be able to do that. And I think that you're going to be competing, we're going to be competing with that type of marketing. Plus, his family could buy a 3,OOO-square-foot house for $135,000. MARGETT Right, the housing. ..right, George, that's another aspect of it. LOJESKI Is our current attitude, I would hope, is an extremely positive one, to actually sell the attributes of Arcadia...not sell the City down the road or the river, or give things away, give the ranch away.. .but I mean to sell the attributes to the development world and the possibilities of those particular sites. They may be bastardized sites as far as looking like arrowheads and things like that, but talk about the quality of the community, freeway accessibility, even from a signage standpoint, O.K.? And from that standpoint maybe we should be in mode to somewhat relax our standards and that sort of thing, So if it was a viable business that was backing up to the freeway that they could have some exposure so people would know where they were. HARBICHT Well, we have a fantastic brochure that does just thac. LOJESKI Has it ever been published or put out to anybody? KINNAHAN Mm-hm. It was mailed out,. ,we've used this extensively. As a matter of fact, we're coming to the end of the number.,.. MARGETT But, you know, the other thing that concerns me, gentlemen, about Arcadia is the demographics that we have to offer a person coming in. You know, we don't have a lot of people per square mile in Arcadia. We're fertunate enough to have a lot of open space. We don't have that number, that sheer number that people like from the standpoint of retail. And I thank the Good Lord that Nordstrem's went by that and are coming in. And I think that one of the problems that we have on Huntington Drive, Mr. Mayor, that we talked about earlier is the sheer demographics. We don't have demographics that make things economically viable to some of our areas, HARBICHT Not for retail, but most of our interest has been in the area of office, and we've put in the hotels, which have been a godsend, and that's probably the way that's going to go. And I think the fact that they've got this freeze on in Pasadena is going to help us, When things pick up and people get back into the development game, they can't go into Pasadena, where's the next logical place? They're going to look at Arcadia, because we're close to Pasadena, which is one of the reasons that our hotels are successful, I mean, I think we're positioned, when things turn around. to market this property successfully, FASCHING Well, new we come right back to marketing strategy. That's what I think we're mainly concerned with, is how to market our property in the most strategic ways and aggressive ways, and what markets can we go to to make known the availability of this property to corporate headquarters that may want to relocate from West L.A. or downtown Los Angeles.,.. LOJESKI Or from elsewhere in the United States, maybe they want to come to Southern California. I think we've got some prime locations. FASCHING Well, we do, We have some nice properties. And if we get one going, they all could possibly, LOJESKI There's still a little, I think, of the stigma, too, in the development world. And I heard this directly from an individual by the name of Blaine Fadder. Blaine has had an interest in developing Huntington Drive at the intersection of Huntington and Myrtle and has done a phenomenal job over there, with corporate headquarters and things like that. And the stigma being, "I won't bring a project to Arcadia because it's just too tough to work with the people over there." Now, whatever that means. I certainly hope that's not the situation and that we are more of in the "Hey, let's 37 --, -, work together on this thing, let's try to see this thing happen and come together." Again, not to give the farm away. HARBICHT Well, I tell you. there's two ways to' look at that. One is to say we're too tough, we're hard to work with and so we're putting some people off. The other side of the coin is we have high standards, we adhere to them, we don't give up on parking, we have design review for all commercial areas, and that is why Arcadia is what Arcadia is. So, you know, it depends on what s ide of the fence you're on., I don't know if I want to relax our standards. I certainly would hope that we would have a cooperative attitude and try to work with people as much as possible, but at the same time I think that,... I guess I keep going back to, you know, 60 or 70 years ago you had El Monte and Arcadia, not much difference between the two, same climate, same soil and everything, and there were some governmental decisions that were made in the two places. And tod Arcadia is what Arcadia is, and El Monte, is what El Monte is. And it c about because of standards that were set in the two communities. And think that it's important that we maintain certain standards. There always the tendency to say, "Gee, we really would like to market this pie of property or get somebody in so maybe we ought to back off a little bit. I think we ought to be real careful about that, FASCHING I don't think.. .you weren't referring to standards. I don't think we'd want to relax our standards. LOJESKI Absolutely not. HARBICHT But a lot of people that say we're hard to work with are saying we're hard to work with for just that reason, Because there's a lot of communities that will say, "Well, yeah, we require five parking spaces per thousand but we could probably work it out for four." FASCHING Well, we can see evidence of relaxing standards on parking, particularly. You can't do that. WOOLARD We did that with Gribble, actually, by joint uses and stuff there the parking was modified. And on the Johnson property north of the water tanks. They got modifications for signs so they were visible from the freeway. FASCHING Higher, yeah. I think those are reasonable.. ,working with people, I think there were some valid reasons for..., I don't think we want to reduce our standards. Did you have something to say? HARBICHT FRIEDMANN We have signs on the properties right now".the signs have been there for a while and I still get some calls sometimes. And the first question, of course, everybody asks is, "How much is it?" And staff doesn't have the answer to that question. And then they ask, "Well, what do you want to see on this property?" And so then we kind of go back to the direction we had from the Council before, and that was, well, we most likely would like to see 70 percent of office projects. And then they say, "Well, than you very much." You can't get loans for office buildings. CIRAULO What kind of projects are they offering? FRIEDMANN Well, they're not offering really anything that,. . they're offering a church, there are churches that call, and batting cages,... HARGETT No, we don't want that. FRIEDMANN Housing, a lot of people want to put housing on that site, on the four acres. CIRAULO Residents? FRIEDMANN Right. Apartments, condos, low-mod housing. biggest things that we had interest in, Housing was one of the 38 '~ '\ , CIRAULO Boy, that weuld turn into a projects...Arcadia Downtown Projects. FRIEDMANN Then they say, "How much do you want." We say, "Well, the Agency had an offer for light industrial in such-and-such a year for this amount of money." and they turn that down. And then a few years later there was a guy who was interested who wanted to pay $25 a square foot, and the developer had no developing experience, but it seemed like the Agency was more receptive to $25 a square foot. So it's hard to. ..they try to get this informatien from us, so it would be helpful to have some direction in the marketing. HARBICHT Well. what was the per-square-foot selling price of the South Side Project going to be? KINNAHAN It was going to average around nineteen and a half. HARBICHT The Agency had gone ahead with that and were willing to do the deal, so at least that gives you some sort of a ballpark thing, On the north side we're probably talking about a little less, because it doesn't have the Huntington frontage. I mean, assuming we get the kind of development that we want. LOJESKI One thing, of course, if we could all put a crystal ball on it and say, you know, we're going to have a light rail, something or other, coming through the City. Yeu're going to talk about a dramatic change, I think, particularly (inaudible) sales tax revenue, You put a station down in the downtown area, you know. you're going to see an indus trial- zoned area perhaps changed to a commercial area. FASCHING I'd like to comment on that. At the present time there... as of, say, menths ago, this whole corridor situation is under study trying to get the extension of Pasadena to Azusa rather than terminating in East Pasadena, And so there's been a lot of work done on that. At the present time there is developing a real possibility of extending the Pasadena line to as far as Arcadia, which would mean a terminus at the First and Santa Clara property, The ridership falls off tremendously once you get past Arcadia, in terms ef ridership. The Transportation Coalition, as well as the Transportation Commission of the San Gabriel Valley Association of Cities, along with Duarte and Monrovia, not including Irwindale and Azusa because they're really not players. But, the theory being that if we can get it to Irwindale there's a lot of property there that could be the end of the line. My concept in the past of a terminus of the light rail would encompass. ..1 had visions of storage yards for light rail cars and a roundhouse or something of that nature. I theught this would be the deal. But actually a terminus, I find, is only no more than probably a station with the exception of it needs much more parking, So you don't have a large facility,. .you have a station but that's the end of the line. Now they go the other way. But because it is the end of the line you have to.. ,and in this instance it's almost l,OOO-car parking area for the terminus, Pasadena does not want the terminus in East Pasadena, They have to build a parking structure that they don't want to build, and they would like to see it out of East Pasadena. There was a press conference last Thursday where they made an announcement by LACTC, and there were other officials there in front of the station in Pasadena, and David and I were ther. As to the acquisition of the right-of-way from Santa Fe, it's completec now, so it's a go situation with the Pasadena line. In discussion with some of those people there from Pasadena, they're anxious to get that thing beyond Pasadena because they don't want it to stop there, they have a lot of problems in acquiring this land and building this parking structure. And so, it's being supported also to take it further than Pasadena by Tri-cities, which is Burbank and Glendale, because it would be beneficial to them if we get it extended out here also, isn't that correct? So, anyway, there is a strong possibility, and also Santa Anita is fighting very hard for this, to get it as far as Arcadia. At this point, whereas a year ago I would say to get it here would be in the year 2004, I think we have a 50-50 chance of getting it here at the same time they do the Pasadena line. Whi~h means it could be here in 1997. HARBICHT Well, what are we going to do about parking? 39 ~ FASCHING Uh-huh, now we come to that. O.K., I've had discussions with Santa Anita, and Santa Anita is offering a park-and-ride lot in their infield parking lot. Which would mean that, if it got here and they furnished their lot for a park-and-ride, someone would have to furnish a bus shuttle back and forth between the terminus behind the lumber yard and Santa Anita. The most ideal situation from an ease standpoint would be to. acquire the lumber yard and form eur own parking area there to handle, say, 900 or 1,000 cars on both sides of the railroad tracks. It would involve acquiring the lumber yard. I told Cliff Goodrich he can buy the lumber yard and lease it to us for $1 a year, and keep his parking lot, and he didn't really scoff at that idea. but I don't say they would do it, But the reason I bring it up is that this could be, with the advent of this coming. ..of course, it's years away.. .it would certainly be a boost to eur property values in that area plus our redevelopment. And if somebody knew that that was going to take place. and the possibility exists we could know that in six months, peep Ie would then perhaps scramble for some of 0 redevelepment property. And knowing that it would take them two years build, they would look down the road to having this light rail line comi to Arcadia and terminating here. Eventually it would go beyond, but th would prebably be 10 or 12 years, in my opinion. But we have a real sho at it now of getting it there if we can come up with the parking, Do you want to fill them in some more? So, it's a possibility, and that would be great for the City. But I wanted to... from a standpoint of the desirability and making Arcadia an important place for people to come and build. But I think you'd find some restaurants. "it would be nice to own the post office property if that happened. LOJESKI You've got a couple of restaurant sites right now that are vacated. Cask and Cleaver is gene, and I think you're about to have another one where the old Sawmill Restaurant was...they're now closed for lunch. FASCHING I think most of their business is at night anyway. LOJESKI Yeah, but isn't that the initial sign of, you know, things aren't going real well, and could the next action be that they close their doers permanently, too? J-lARBICHT I understand they're pretty busy at night. I know nothing abeut their finances. Actually I hear from my kids that they're pretty busy. LOJESKI I think the 'property that we have, particularly on the east side of Huntington, I can't see that much going to retail. I think it's earmarked because of its location to primarily office types of usages. There's a possibility of a destination-type retail thing there. I think we talked about the possibility of,.. someplace over here, the paint place.. .not Dunn Edwards but something like that, where it draws its own crowd, it doesn't need walk-by or drive-by traffic. There is that possibility, but I agree it's probably going to be office or something, but maybe".. J-lARBICHT LOJESKI The other side of Second Avenue, even though it's a funny triangular shape, that might go retail, certain types of retail. I'm talking. ..Kiewit East, Kiewit West, I would think more of office-type situations. I'm talking the westerly side of Second Avenue, from the triangle point of the railroa tracks...I think very definitely could be. It could lend itself possibl to a Bristol Farms-type of situation. FASCHING Well, I'd like to move on because it's getting late and we have othe things to do here. I don't think we'll go any further with this tonight other than ideas and suggestions on the part of the Council and staff as to marketing the properties that we have, continuing on in the efforts that we are, but I don't think we can go any further with it tonight. Is that all right with everybody? KINNAHAN Mr. Chairman? Just for clarity, would it be appropriate for staff to bring back to you an outline of what we would like to advertise for each of the two sites, the Northwest and Southwest corner? FASCHING I think that would be great. 40 .-' , KlNNAHAN Tell you where we would like to market it to... FASCHING Mr, Margett suggested the Wall Street Journal. KINNAHAN The Wall Street Journal and the various,... FASCHING And the news that we have not been using, KINNAHAN We would go to those, it is proposed to do that. MARGETT The L. A. Times isn't too bad either. KINNAHAN We've gone to the L. A. Times. We've got our own vending list. We can go to the L. A. Business Journal, we can go to California Center magazines that feature retail uses, office uses, we mentioned that. We can bring a package to you that shows where we want to go, when we can phase it, vary the ad size.. .you know, one week it's this big, wait a couple of weeks and it's this big. And it's on this page this week, and this page.. .it's on Sundays one day, it's on Fridays one day, to phase it out over time. We'd also, riding along with Mr. Harbicht's suggestion, we'd maybe offer a. . . make it an epen listing, broker open listing, which means courtesy to all brekers and pay, I would suggest, 4 percent. Normally it's a 3 percent open listing; make it 4 to really invite people in. ' MARGETT Well, you know. Pete, I tell you, I think that, if you don't mind me disagreeing with that, I think that if you find a broker that you think can market and will spend the money marketing--I mean, like a Coldwell Banker or like a, whoever, out there--I think that you ought to enter into. a marriage with them and say, "Hey, listen,..." and go ahead and get the presentations from them, what they're going to do, and go ahead and let them do it. Because if you've got an open listing out there and anybody can sell it and you're going to pay the commission, I don't know whether brokers are going to be enamored with that type of an approach to things. That's my opinion. I think that to find a good Grubb Ellis or a Coldwell Banker, whoever can present a good program, I think they're in touch with the developers, I think they know the field for feasibility with regards to properties. I think if they've done it before they know the big developers, and get in bed with them and go ahead and cut a deal with them. It would be my opinion, as opposed to just saying you're' going to pay a commission to anybody that wants to sell it. They're protected. And they're willing to go ahead and spend the money, and they have to spend the money if they come up with that type of a deal for Councilor fer the Agency. KINNAHAN If YOU'd like that, we can go to an exclusive listing and we can do that. We can advertise with the majors, have them submit proposals to the Agency indicating what they would do. The Agency can select one, we can give them an exclusive, and they can proceed with the marketing effort, MARGETT That is their forte. That is what they do best, That is their expertise, And that would be the way that, ..have you done it before? KINNAHAN No, we have not, We've done,... MARGETT We've done everything else. FASCHING It's an exclusive listing, then that's a shared commission with anybody else that sells it. And who would be the one that we would consider as to be the best... how do we feel about exclusive listing? You want to bring it back and we're going to consider it? KINNAHAN Well, it's up to the Agency, but my thought would be that we would prepare an RFP, go out to the Grubb and Ellises, the Cush and Wake fields , the Coldwell Bankers, and all the others that do it in this area, indicate we're willing to do this for these two properties, FASCHING What do you mean by this area? KINNAHAN That deal, that market in the San Gabriel Valley and in Arcadia, I don't want to pick up somebody that markets, you know, in San Diego or.... 41 FASCHING KINNAHAN FASCHING KINNAHAN FASCHING KINNAHAN IlARBICHT KINNAHAN MRGETT IlARBICHT WOOLARD IlARBICHT KINNAHAN IlARBICHT WJESKI KINNAHAN 4. BDS, AND COMSN. APPTS. MAYOR FASCHING IlARBICHT FASCHING HARBICHT -, What about Coldwell Banker that markets everywhere? Oh yes, ef course. Wouldn't they be the logical choice? Aren't they the biggest in commercial real estate? Well, Grubb and Ellis is very active in this area, Cush and Wakefield is very. . .Hayes and Company is very active in this 'rea. You mean bringing people into this area? Yes. They're very actively marketing and brokering properties in this area. We go to maybe four or five of those larger firms with a proposal. They submit it to the Agency, we review it, bring it to you. You wou listen and pick one. Hopefully, we'd negotiate a better commissien rat Are they going to be willing to do it on 4 percent? No., say If you're going exclusive it would be higher, no, it's going to be six or seven, I suspect they wou1 I don't know whether that commission makes that much difference. I ''Ve got to tell yeu, if you get somebody in there, the 2 percent more on a couple of million dollars, I'd rather see the ground up, the building up and the taxes coming in as opposed to waiting there because you choked some real estate commission, I think anether step that may be a step before we actually de this is I think maybe we should request from Pete a little report that shows his understanding of what the Council is willing to accept there and what the Council is not willing to accept there. Because that understanding came from a previous City Council, and I think that this City Council should review it because maybe we collectively have a different idea of what we're willing to accept. Because we've specifically rejected a lot of :hings. and we've let people know that we're net taking fast food and some things like that, I think it would be worthwhile to have just a simple little thing. ..your understanding of it so then the Council can look at it and we can each of us express our opinion as to whether we want to move anything to a different column. (Inaudible) of that marketing package, I think, because they're going to describe the.... O.K. So you're going to bring that to us before you go. out for proposals? Absolutely, We will bring it to you next meeting and we'll give you what the uses and densities and sizes would be. I'm not suggesting we're necessarily going to change it, It's not a bad idea to review it from time to time. Pete, do you think you can talk to your colleagues, your (inaudible) colleagues (inaudible) where possibly (inaudible) maybe going there or the can accommodate them. You know, they send customers to us and..., We have a very good relationship with Monrovia. I send stuff to them. If it's a little too big, or I'll refer them to Wayne Cox, They send stuff to us doesn't fit our desire, O.K., we're going to move on. Next item is the appointments to Boards and Commissions. The first will be the Arcadia Beautiful Commission. Roland Kelly and Homer Paulson are eligible to be reappointed. I think we should reappoint both of them, Do you want to make a motion? So moved. 42 , ~ MARGETT Second. FASCHING Anyobjections? O.K.. Mr. Kelly and Mr. Paulson will be reappointed. We have one opening on the Library Board. MARGETT Mr. Mayor, I would like to have the Council consider Mr. Don Swenson. Mr. Don Swenson is an avid reader, he is very interested in the community, knows books backwards and forwards, and I think would be very instrumental in probably working with a new architect with regards to the expansion of the Library. And I think that that would be a goed choice. LOJESKI Do you know him, Bob? MARGETT Yeah, HARBICHT I had his name written down, too. I don't know the man.... FASCHING Do I have a motion? LOJESKI I had his name, and I had Bill Rider. I don't know Bill Rider at all, MARGETT He's fine, too, I'll move for Don Swenson. HARBICHT Second. FASCHING Any objections? So ordered. Don Swenson will be appointed to the Library Board. Parking Place Commission. We have Jim Kuhn eligible to be reappointed, and also Bill Wong. Do I have a motion on those two? LOJESKI So moved. CIRAULO Second. FASCHING Motion by Dennis Lojeski, seconded by Councilman Ciraulo to appoint Jim Kuhn and Bill wong to an additional term on the Parking Place Commission. LOJESKI I would like consideration for one of the vacancies to Harvey Hyde, who's an owner of the 25-75 North Santa Anita property, the medical buildings, who pay into the District. And, obviously, he's eligible. I think we've got some other names that have been submitted where they don't realize they actually have to have a conflict of other big property owner or tenants or anything like that. MARGETT He's good. fASCHING Do I have a motion on Harvey Hyde then? MARGETT I want to second the motion. Is that a motion, Dennis? WJESKI Yes. FASCHING Motion by Councilman Lojeski, seconded by Councilman Harbicht to appoint Harvey Hyde to the Parking Place District Commission, Any objections? So meved, We have one additional Parking Place Commission vacancy. I would like to nominate Dave Freeman, MARGETT Second the motion. FASCHING Mayor Fasching nominates Dave Freeman, seconded by Councilman Margett for Dave Freeman to the Parking Place Commission, Personnel Board. We have George Fuson who is eligible for reappointment. LQJESKI So moved. CIRAULO Second. FASCHING Moved by Councilman Lojeski, seconded by Councilman Ciraulo to reappoint George Fuson to the Personnel Board. We have one vacancy. 43 , CIRAULO You know, we're lesing Dick Erhardt, and Dick had a real streng background in EEO stuff. And I think it's important that the Personnel Board has another person with a similar background. And I like what I see in Don Bastria. MARGETT Who's he with? LOJESKI I didn't even see that name. HARBICHT I've got Bartrip down here. CIRAULO Is it Bartrip? I thought it was Bastria, MARGETT No, I have Bartrip, too. MARGETT I don't know him. CIRAULO Donald Bartria, it looks like to me, on Arcadia Avenue. CIRAULO Retired V,P., Human Resources, Aerojet Electronics in Azusa, 21 years, (inaudible) with the EEOC. MARGETT I think we should have somebody with EEOC..., CIRAULO Yeah, I think not all the positions on that. HARBICHT Is he one of the later ones, Joe? CIRAULO Either he or Robert Fine. Either one of these have. a background in EEOC, and I think we should have somebody replacing Erhardt with that background. It's not necessary for everybody en the Personnel Board to have a background in that, but at least one expertise should be there. MARGETT Who would you recommend then? CIRAULO Does anybody know.. .between Robert Fine and Bartria? MARGETT I know neither. Bartrip? FASCHING Do we have any ether recommendations? HARBICHT I had Art Hershey written down. I have this Bartrip written down. In fact, I have about five of them, I thought we had a wealth of..., CIRAULO Donald Bartrip or Robert Fine. Both have extensive backgrounds in human resources and EEO. Do you want to make a motion? FASCHING HARBICHT I'd go for Bartrip, Joe. CIRAULO O.K. I move Bartrip. HARBICHT Second, FASCHING Motion by Councilman Ciraulo, seconded by Councilman Harbicht to neminat Donald Bartrip to the Personnel Board. Any objections? So ordered. HARllICHT Move approval of Daggett for reappointment, CIRAULO Second. LOJESKI Second, third. FASCHING Move approval of Bob Daggett to be reappointed to the Planning Commission by unanimous vote. Sister City Commission. John Tarazi is eligible to be reappointed. LOJESKI He says he does not wish to be reappointed. So you've got two vacancies. 44 ~ , HARBICHT Too bad. CIRAULO Yeah, it is too bad. MARGETT Yeah, that is too bad. LOJESKI What about Dick Cordano? He went with the band a couple of times to Australia. MARGETT I have Beth Wells. And I tell you, she's knocking herself out for the community. LOJESKI What about Lois Patnou? MARGETT She's very good. I would go Lois Patnou also. HARBICHT I'd like to see Patnou and Cordano myself, FASCHING Who do you want? LOJESKI Those are the two names I had down for the commission. FASCHING Who. do you want, Bob? MARGETT I thought Beth Wells and Patneu. FASCHING Wait a minute, here, let's see. Who did you have? HARllICHT I had Patnou,... CIRAULO Patnou is good. fASCHING And who was the other? MARGETT Beth Wells. HARllICHT Cordano. FASCHING I would like to see Lois Patnou and Beth Wells. MARGETT Have we got a consensus? CIRAULO Yeah, I would go with that. FASCHING With what? CIRAULO Beth Wells and Patnou. FASCHING O.K., make the motion. CIRAULO I will move that we have Beth Wells and Lois Patnou on the Sister City Commission. MARGETT Second the motion. FASCHING Do you want a roll call on this? Any objections? So ordered, HARllICHT Move to reappoint Pat Loechner and Janie Steckenrider. CIRAULO Second. FASCHING Move to appoint by Councilman Harbicht, seconded by, was it you, Bob? MARGETT Well, I will. I didn't, but I will. HARBICHT It was Joe, wasn't it? CIRAULO Yeah. 45 WJESKI MRGETT FASCHING !-IARBICHT MRGETT !-IARBICHT WJESKI MRGETT FASCHING WJESKI FASCHING CIRAULO FASCHING CIRAULO FASCHING LOJESKI FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING CIRAULO FASCHING HARGETT CIRAULO FASCHING 5. MEASURE A ARGUMENT - CITY CHARTER AMD. (9-15-92 SPEC, ELEC.) !-IARBICHT FASCHING ~ I'm making a motion to appoint Peggy Leatherman for the Assistance League slot. She's a great lady. Second the motion. So ordered. Any objections? I had Miller written down here, I have to review.,. Owen Miller? I guess. I just made notes on here of who..., Did Lois Patnou want to be appointed to the Sister City Commission or was it the Senior Citizen Commission? Or did it make a difference? I don't think it made any difference. It might to her. Oh, it didn't make any difference? O,K. Well, what I'm suggesting is, if you had that desire, you could put Lois on the Senior Citizen Commission and you could put Richard Cordano. since there was a couple of us that liked Dick's abilities. on the Sister City Commission. O.K" want to switch it? He's put in an application for all the commissions, so it doesn't make any difference to. him apparently. Cordano? Yeah. You don't want to put him on Senior Citizens? No, I was just looking at his experience with the band. He has been so instrumental and he knows so many of those people with the band coming back this winter. All right. Make a motion. then, to remove Lois Patnou from the Sister City Commission, put Dick Cordano on that commission, and to appoint Lois Patnou to the Senior Citizens Commission. How about Louise Gelber? We can't overleok her. She's running for office. (Laughter) We've got one more for Senior Citizens. No, we already put Lois Patnou on there. Patnou and Leatherman. On Senior Citizens? Yeah Leatherman and Patnou, O.K, And we put Dick Cordano and Beth Wells on Sister City. Do you have a motion on that? O.K., it was so moved. Mr. Mayor, on the Finalization of Arguments".. Oh, excuse me, I skipped that. I see it, 46 -, HARBICHT . , ,I've given my suggestions, which is basically taking out about 20 percent of the words and moving a ceuple of sentences. Other than that, I mean, the sense of the thing to me is the same. FASCHING Has everybody seen that? MILLER Bob just handed this to me a little while ago, I reviewed it. It doesn't change the substance, but frankly it makes it read better and easier, his version. Mine was a draft, I'm taking advantage of your being here tonight to get it finalized, because it has to be turned in to the City Clerk on the 29th. HARGETT Where's a copy of it? HARBICHT I just marked it up. MILLER Here's a copy that went out a few days ago. It doesn't have Bob's changes en it, HARGETT Oh, I saw this, but what about Bob's changes? MILLER Here's a copy with the changes on it. HARBICHT As a matter of fact, everybody look at your cepy and I'll tell you what I changed. Mostly, I'm just taking out words I consider superfluous. I took out the word "current." So it says, "The Arcadia City Charter was enacted in 1968, It's an excellent charter." And then I moved the line that says, "As the underlying constitution of the City, it is important to keep the Charter current," up there after the .second sentence. And then I say, "In the 24 years that have elapsed since its enactment, it has been periodically reviewed by City staff and the City Council." I teok eut that first phrase that says, "Several noncontroversial provisions have been determined to be outdated or inconsistent with current law and practice." Took out the words "in order," so it says, "To. provide a mere workable updated City Charter, the proposed revisions are brought befere the voters to implement this important housekeeping function to amend the Ci ty Charter." I took out "that as required by law, the changes....,.. it's just, again, superfluous. The rest of that, "This assures that the City Council has authority," I took out the word "ample." I wanted to make this thing as innocuous as possible. Down in the next one, I say "Eight revisions are recommended for adoption," period. The rest of it's in there. And then I took that second sentence and moved it to the end of that paragraph, which is kind of a summing up. Basically, say, "Sections that have become illegal or unconstitutional by changing law are no longer enforceable and should be taken out of the Charter." I took out the words, "will be deleted, these are no longer," just made it all one sentence, And on the next page it says, "Review of the proposed changes set forth in the Voters Pamphlet will demonstrate the cleanup nature of the revisions. They will result in a better City Charter." HARGETT That's fine with me. HARBICHT I think the sense of what Mike had in there is that we're just doing some housekeeping stuff and bringing everything up to date. FASCHING Could I have a motion to approve the finalization of argument in favor of Measure A, City Charter revision, September 15th election, with revision as per Councilman Harbicht. HARGETT So moved. HARBICHT Second. FASCHING All right, so ordered. MILLER Let me ask the City Clerk a question. signatures on,... June, I believe we need their ALFORD Well, they had agreed that all five would sign it, so we do. When you file it, everyone.." 47 MILLER MARGETT MILLER 6. MATTERS FROM STAFF PERSONNEL BD. (TOUR REDEV. PROJ. AREA) WOOLARD FASCHING HARBICHT FASCHING MARGETT HARBICHT MARGETT LOJESKI MARGETT LOJESKI HARBICHT FASCHING WOOLARD FASCHING HARBICHT KINNAHAN FASCHING MARGETT FASCHING HARBICHT -, ! All right, will you all be around the next couple of days so we can just get it out to you and have you sign it? Sure. Or do you want us to drop in? I'll figure it out tomorrow, whatever is easiest for you. I have.a couple of items that came up sort of at the last minute. One, regarding the desire by the Personnel Board to tour the redevelopment project area. They have no direct connection with this particular function, but it's something we can do if the Council would like us to undertake that activity. I'd like to comment on that. They made this request a couple of times It's no big deal for us to do that, so I would recommend we just go ahea and let staff handle that for them. Why do they want to do this? I don't know, but it's been a controversy for a year, as you well' know. And if they want to drive around.... It's kind of an academic exercise, isn't it? What does it have to do with their function as a personnel board? Nothing whatsoever. Who's the liaison to Personnel? Me. What did they say when they made the request? I read it when it was given to us. They said nothing at their meeting. Well, they periodically would go through and get a tour of the Police Station, the Finance Department. They've done it in the City Clerk's office at one time, the Fire Department. I think those things are relevant because they're touring someone's workplace and it may have some influence on some later decision they might make. Touring the redevelopment area, I don't know how that's at all relevant to the Personnel Board's responsibility. Well, let me ask Bill. How long would it take you to tour them, about 20 minutes? Ten? Well, we'd recommend about an hour. Well, how could you take an hour to tour the redevelopment area? Well, if they want to just look at it, they could get in their cars look at it. We'd stop, we'd talk, we'd go on. We'd stop, we'd talk, we'd go on There would be a little briefing before we left about the history 0 redevelopment and.... Well, let me ask you this. If we had a group of citizens that came in and wanted us to do this for them, what would you say? Fine. I would say, yeah, do it. Well, then, let's do it and get it over with and get it out of our hair. It's been a bugaboo for a year. Can't you get a Dial-a-Ride van and put some staff members in it and go out with them? 48 . FASCHING WOOLARD (BOY SCOUT NATIONAL JAMBOREE - CITY SEAL) HARBICHT CIRAULO FASCHING LOJESKI HARBICHT LOJESKI WOOLARD HARBICHT WOOLARD LOJESKI CIRAULO LOJESKI MARGETT CIRAULO LOJESKI WOOLARD HARBICHT FASCHING KINNAHAN NIl COR. SITE - RAIL STATION REDEVELOPMENT FINANCING - (STATE CRISIS) ~ One staff member, Pete Kinnahan. That's all. It won't take long, and they're satisfied, they're happy and they're concerned, and a little bit more about redevelopment. I don't think it's relevant. But I think we treat them like we treat any group that would come in and ask for a tour of our redevelopment area. I don't think we'd turn them down. Next item. We had a memo from Neal Johnson about the Boy Scout troop from Arcadia that's going to Indian National Jamboree and is requesting to use the City seal over the entrance to their camp. No problem at all with that. Sounds good. So ordered. Bill, do we have any extra City pins? We've given out in the past those little pins. If we don't have any around here, I've got some at home. I mean, 20 scouts...I think this would be a real appropriate situation to make sure each one has one. If we do, we can always make them available to them. Yeah, we ought to give them to them. I know that when we've had Sister City trips that we've given them a whole bunch of pins and they'd pass them out and everything. It's a great PR gimmick. If we've got them, we'll include that. We would like to get your blue binders back, those of you who haven't returned them for the budget, so we can fill them up for next year. The easiest thing to do is to bring it to the next Council meeting and we can get it at that time. Pete has an item regarding the housing request from another city who is exploring the idea of developing low, moderate.... I'm absolutely against it. I am, too. I can't believe, Pete, that you're asking me to give money to El Segundo. Oh, no. Forget it. I don't even want to discuss it. Legally, you can't do it right now, but that concept. Pretty good idea. Hidden Hills will give them theirs. Any other matters from staff? Kinnahan. Just a real quickie, because it's late. One, I handed out tonight an item on the Northwest Corner site for a possible rail station. You may want to read the comments of the Corby Engineering staff guy on that. Lastly, on redevelopment financing, Jim talked earlier about the impact on City financing and the State crisis. The State has now come up with a coupled new wrinkles. It appears one of the big ones may have gone away--that is where the state would say to the school districts, .We're not going to back you up for what goes to the Redevelopment Agency any more, so you'll be on your own.. Which would mean that the School District would then come to the Redevelopment Agency for its share of the tax increment. In Arcadia it's about 25 percent of our T.I. That appears to be...it's not on the current list, it's somehow gone away, which is good. They've added 49 ------...-'1 ' , . :1 , to it, however, another one which is potentially unknown as far as its impact. They just simply say that they might want to require that agencies would receive in tax increment only what they've legally contracted for. In our case, we have bonded indebtedness, that's $330,000 a year. Well, the rest of it is often pay as you go. We pay as we go. They would sort of take that away. They would simply give us in tax increment $330,000 because that's contractually established. 50