[00:03] Speaker 1: Okay.
[00:04] Speaker 2: Good afternoon, everyone. Prior to calling this meeting to order, I would like to announce that the closed session convened earlier today has been continued and will res resume immediately following adjournment of this open session meeting. With that, I now call to order the regular meeting of the Board of Directors of the East Bay Regional Park District for April 21, 2026. The meeting is hereby called to order at 123 in the afternoon. Let's do roll call.
[00:31] Speaker 1: Thank you.
[00:32] Speaker 2: Director echel.
[00:33] Speaker 1: President. Director DeChambeau. President. Director Espana. Present. Director Mercurio.
[00:38] Speaker 3: Here.
[00:38] Speaker 2: Director Waspy?
[00:40] Speaker 3: Here.
[00:40] Speaker 1: Vice President. Coffee is absent. President San Juan?
[00:43] Speaker 2: Here.
[00:43] Speaker 1: Thank you.
[00:45] Speaker 2: Great. Okay. Pledge of allegiance. Director Espania, would you like to lead the Pledge of Allegiance?
[00:51] Speaker 1: Thank you. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.
[01:10] Speaker 2: All right, and then I'll go ahead and read the land acknowledgement today. As we gather today, we, the Board of Directors, want to acknowledge that all of the lands within the East Bay Regional Park District are the ancestral lands of East Bay Ohlone and Bay Miwok and the Northern Valley Yokut, who are politically organized and represented by a number of tribes. Today we make this recognition as a way to respect and honor the indigenous peoples who first cultivated and inhabited this land. The Park District is committed to identifying ways to work and consult with East Bay tribes as we recognize that these tribal citizens remain connected to their land and culture. All right, so now we'll move on to agenda item B, which is any modifications to the agenda itself. Do we have any amendments to the agenda? Any changes? I don't see any. Okay, so then we will move on to item C, which is special presentations. We have none. So with that we will now then move on to D. Public comment on items not on the agenda. Thank you.
[02:12] Speaker 1: Members of the public may provide public comment either in person or via zoom. Those attending in person shall submit a speaker card to the clerk staff or otherwise indicate their desire to speak on non agenda items. Those attending via zoom may use the raise your hand feature. Speakers will be called when it is their turn to speak, and each speaker will be provided up to three minutes
[02:31] Speaker 2: to address the board.
[02:32] Speaker 1: A countdown timer will be displayed for the speaker's convenience. We have five speaker cards and one hand up online. And we will start in person. Matt McDonnell,
[02:51] Speaker 3: On. Okay, thank you, Directors General Manager, Max Courten. My name is Matt McDonnell and I'm here in my capacity as second vice president of AskMe 2428. I'm also the Park Supervisor of Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park. There is a current recruitment for unit manager. Park Unit Manager to potentially fill two vacancies. In the last recruitment and now this one, a new requirement was added for a minimum qualifications of a bachelor's degree. Adding this requirement is an unfair barrier for the qualified existing internal candidates even though this requirement does not impact me
[03:26] Speaker 4: personally in this time we are living in.
[03:28] Speaker 3: The cost for education and the burden of debt are already barriers for this position. In fact, we have had two highly qualified senior managers in this organization who did not have a bachelor's degree when they attain their position, One of which was Kelly Barrington, the Mass Division lead and also general manager. Robert Doyle did not have his bachelor's degree until the board of directors required him to attain that while he was employed as general manager. I do have my bachelor's degree and I can attest that any of the information or programs that I've needed to use as a park supervisor I've learned
[04:00] Speaker 4: on the job or through training.
[04:02] Speaker 3: My degree in recreation has only added to my knowledge.
[04:05] Speaker 4: But but it was not necessary for
[04:06] Speaker 3: me to become an effective park supervisor, nor would it cause me to be inefficient.
[04:11] Speaker 5: Park unit manager.
[04:13] Speaker 3: By requiring the bachelor degree, this prevents qualified internal candidates from promoting and this is detrimental to the growth of the agency and the growth of employees.
[04:22] Speaker 5: Thank you.
[04:24] Speaker 2: Thank you.
[04:26] Speaker 1: April Storm Dancer. Hello members of the board. My name is April Storm Dancer and I have been a park ranger for 19 years and I currently work at Anthony Chabot.
[04:44] Speaker 2: I used to work as a park
[04:45] Speaker 1: ranger one at Lake Delval, largely in the kiosk.
[04:50] Speaker 2: Last year the park district had a pilot project to go cashless in certain
[04:54] Speaker 1: parks and now more parks are going
[04:56] Speaker 2: cashless While this may appear to be a good thing, this is in fact
[05:01] Speaker 1: detrimental to both park staff and the public we serve. Going cashless is bad for low income families, bad for people of color and other marginalized groups.
[05:12] Speaker 2: It requires people to have a bank
[05:13] Speaker 1: account which many low income folks cannot afford because of banking fees, unstable income
[05:20] Speaker 6: flow and other institutional barriers.
[05:22] Speaker 1: The burden of lack of access to banking services such as credit cards does not fall equally. While 84% of white people in 2017
[05:32] Speaker 2: were what the Federal Reserve calls fully
[05:34] Speaker 6: banked, only 52% of black and 63%
[05:39] Speaker 1: of Hispanic folks were.
[05:40] Speaker 6: So our guiding equity statement states equity
[05:44] Speaker 1: at the East Bay Regional Park District means actively identifying and removing barriers to ensure that all individuals have equal opportunities to thrive.
[05:56] Speaker 6: By going cashless, the park district is
[05:59] Speaker 1: actively creating a barrier for a community
[06:02] Speaker 2: of people who truly need the parks
[06:04] Speaker 1: as a Low cost option for recreation, exercise and relaxation. I have worked at Anthony Chapeau for 13 years, providing me with firsthand experience
[06:14] Speaker 6: that the campground is an active part
[06:15] Speaker 2: of the social safety net in the Bay Area.
[06:18] Speaker 1: We are often hosting campers who have lost their homes but still have a car and and are actively working to get back on their feet. These folks overwhelmingly pay with cash.
[06:28] Speaker 6: So what do we do when they come to camp with legal tender in
[06:31] Speaker 2: their pocket and the campground has gone cashless?
[06:33] Speaker 1: Say, sorry, your money isn't good here.
[06:35] Speaker 2: What happens to the kid who has
[06:37] Speaker 1: saved their money to go swimming at
[06:38] Speaker 2: Robert's park but shows up and is
[06:40] Speaker 1: told they can't swim because those $5 aren't plastic?
[06:43] Speaker 6: It's unfair and it's frankly cruel.
[06:46] Speaker 1: Ultimately, going cashless hurts our most vulnerable community members, is unfair to international visitors who are trying to avoid expensive credit card fees, and puts a burden on park staff who will have to repeatedly turn folks away. If you'll indulge me for a moment, if you look at this dollar bill and take a look at what it says on the left hand side, it says, this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private. We have a duty to the public.
[07:12] Speaker 6: Please stop going cashless.
[07:14] Speaker 1: Thank you for your time.
[07:15] Speaker 2: Thank you.
[07:20] Speaker 1: Nicholas Collins.
[07:33] Speaker 7: Oh, there we go. Okay, so last time I came here and I tried to wing it and it didn't work because I got passionate and I just started just rambling. So I wrote my request today to the board.
[07:48] Speaker 3: So thank you for listening.
[07:49] Speaker 7: My name is Nick Collins.
[07:51] Speaker 8: I'm the founder of a local nonprofit
[07:53] Speaker 7: called five' ten Hikers which works to bridge the gap between nature and neighborhoods in underserved communities. I want to begin by thanking the East Bay Regional Park District for having a staff member reach out, someone on Max's team to explore further partnership once, you know, in the past couple weeks. And I really appreciate that. But I also want to thank the maintenance, one of the maintenance superintendents, Patrick Demons, for attending our just most recent hike this past Saturday. The presence matters. You know, we've had over a decade of hikes and nature gatherings for especially people of color. So to have Patrick make an effort to come out and represent the district was. It meant a lot to the people who come to the events. So anyway, I also want to express my continued disappointment that 510 hikers was not selected for a recent pilot program. This past weekend, again, we brought close to 150 participants, many from underserved communities. The program is intended to reach out into nature for a hike and shared experience beyond formal programming or contract efforts. What we do consistently showing up and bringing people into these parks has not been matched in terms of direct community reach within the East Bay park systems. From our perspective. I plan to connect with someone from your team this week to better understand why our proposal was passed over, and I appreciate the time that your team will be making for that. I hope the decision was not based on factors like a lack of formal partnership, how our leadership is perceived, or how the proposal was written, because our results on the ground, which would matter most, speaks for themselves. With that in mind, I'm also trying to understand how engagement is determined. With over 500 hikes and nature gatherings serving thousands of residents over the past decade, including and especially in underserved communities, I'm curious how the district evaluates partnership, visibility and support for organizations doing this level of consistent community work. It also raises a broader question about the purpose of these parks and who they are for. My perspective, from my perspective, they exist for the people and leadership exists to serve the people. Yet, despite our long presence, I have yet to see elected officials engage in our events. This reflects a choice not to thank you.
[10:37] Speaker 3: Thank you.
[10:38] Speaker 7: Thank you. I'll be back in a couple weeks.
[10:40] Speaker 2: Ellen Thompson
[10:45] Speaker 1: hi, my name is Ellen Thompson.
[10:47] Speaker 6: I own Redwood Valley Railway Company the
[10:49] Speaker 1: steam train in Tilden West. We've been there for 74 years. We get no money from the district, no grants, no donations.
[10:56] Speaker 6: Everything there is built and maintained with private funds. In addition to providing the trains, the track and the buildings, we maintain the major drainage and erosion control, provide the landscaping, including the redwood trees. We do fire hazard abatement, invasive plant species removal and rare species protection, all at private expense. We're trying to ensure that the steam
[11:19] Speaker 1: train can operate for many more years
[11:21] Speaker 6: into the future and meet the huge increasing attendance by park patrons.
[11:25] Speaker 1: And to do that, we have to
[11:26] Speaker 6: make many capital improvements which require permitting from the county.
[11:30] Speaker 1: But we can't do that without our district lease.
[11:33] Speaker 6: But now we've been trying to renew
[11:35] Speaker 1: our lease with the district for seven and a half years with only limited success. In that time, the staff people we
[11:42] Speaker 6: try to work with have changed 12
[11:44] Speaker 1: times in seven and a half years. A good working draft was created seven and a half years ago, but now the staff want to ignore it. In recent weeks there has been a flurry of effort by staff, but it's now been revealed that their negotiations have been under false pretenses, working toward a lesser document than we have had for many decades. Now we're being asked to abandon the
[12:06] Speaker 6: lease document that's been polished and perfected
[12:09] Speaker 1: for 74 years in favor of an inferior one that's written with no experience of our situation. Negotiations are difficult when you know that you even existing written signed documents may not be respected. Every draft contains reversals of issues that were settled decades ago.
[12:27] Speaker 3: Facts are lost in translation because we
[12:30] Speaker 1: can't have face to face meetings with all the interested parties. The staff is however no longer demanding signatures on unfinished documents as a condition of moving forward. That is a step in the right direction. Luckily, Acting General Manager Corton has generously
[12:49] Speaker 6: offered to spend some time to try to re rail the issue and bring some kind of rationality to the process.
[12:55] Speaker 1: Recently the board has stated that it's a priority for them to preserve cultural and natural assets after 74 years. I hope that the trains are the cultural asset that the public seems to think they are.
[13:08] Speaker 6: We're not asking for money, but only the ability to keep serving the public.
[13:12] Speaker 1: With no legal protection. We we would have to pick up everything and leave.
[13:16] Speaker 6: I need to know if the present
[13:18] Speaker 1: situation has been some kind of long
[13:20] Speaker 6: term district policy to eliminate the remaining attractions in Tilden.
[13:24] Speaker 1: Is it personal agenda or just negligence? When you have something like this for
[13:28] Speaker 6: free, why would you throw it away? Thank you.
[13:34] Speaker 2: Thank you.
[13:35] Speaker 1: Jeffrey Berniford.
[13:44] Speaker 5: Good afternoon. Off the cup I'm not the best speaker processing my thoughts, but I come here and spend three minutes of your time every two weeks. But it also takes time out of my schedule that I could make busy and productive out in my own world. But anyway, two weeks ago I was here and I suggested that expletives were pending. There is a wide range of listings and the degrees of acceptability of such terms. Many folks can be highly insulted with
[14:18] Speaker 3: the use of expletives.
[14:20] Speaker 5: I have chosen a low to mid range example. Please forgive me if I have difficulty reading this without losing control. Bleep is a versatile vulgar English profanity used to express anger, frustration, surprise or contempt. Originating from the Germanic term for defecation, an expletive is often refers to items touch by bleep lies a load of bleep or to describe bad situations. The bleep hits the fan if something goes wrong. Oh bleep or just bleep. It can be used to emphasize quantity, quality or lack of integrity. A lot of bleep A bleep load
[15:02] Speaker 3: of work and bull bleep.
[15:04] Speaker 5: You might be thinking oh bleep this guy again. Anyway, that's probably enough for now. I'll be back in two weeks. Thank you very much.
[15:14] Speaker 2: Thank you.
[15:16] Speaker 1: There's no more public comment in person, so we will go online. Leslie Goldstein, you may unmute yourself. Thank you.
[15:28] Speaker 2: Am I supposed to click on something for video to come on?
[15:31] Speaker 1: There is no video for public commenters. Got it. All right, thank you.
[15:35] Speaker 2: Good afternoon. I'm Leslie Goldstein, resident of El Cerrito and a user of East Bay Regional Parks for the last 36 years.
[15:44] Speaker 1: I'm here to comment on the proposed
[15:46] Speaker 2: Flow Trail Trail in Wildcat. You are responsible for public safety in the park. The proposed bike trail design posted on
[15:55] Speaker 1: your website shows the trail within 5
[15:57] Speaker 2: to 10ft of barbed wire fencing and metal posts and many places on a steep grade where bikes will careen with speed.
[16:06] Speaker 1: The proposed site is two miles from
[16:08] Speaker 2: an access point for emergency vehicles and has poor cell phone reception and narrow eroding road access. Is the District prepared for the liability of a wrongful death or negligence claim in a remote natural area that, According to the 1985 Land Use Plan states it must be free from intensive recreation activ and devoid of any development except trails for hiking, equestrian and service use?
[16:37] Speaker 1: The engineered thrill trail with berms and jumps is by definition intensive recreation. By proceeding without a formal land use
[16:45] Speaker 2: plan amendment, the District is creating a litigation magnet that will damage EVRPD's record of stable leadership and stewardship and which
[16:55] Speaker 1: will harm support for any future bond measure campaign.
[16:59] Speaker 2: Since so many people in my community
[17:01] Speaker 1: have a crisis of confidence in the
[17:03] Speaker 2: District's leadership over this proposed development, Debbie
[17:08] Speaker 1: Maureen, daughter of the Maureen family of
[17:10] Speaker 2: ranchers who leased these parcels for cattle grazing the last 40 years, said, I've brought up the same concerns regarding getting medical responses due to close proximity to fences and impalement on posts.
[17:24] Speaker 1: One of the primary ancillary trails is
[17:26] Speaker 2: the Rifle Range Road entrance to the park. It is the entrance closest to Mesaway. It is the entrance anyone looking at a map or using Google Maps would
[17:34] Speaker 1: be directed to There is no plan
[17:36] Speaker 2: in the fiscal year 26 to fiscal year 30 budget plan for fixing the collapsed and remaining ribbon of eroding entrance other than an acknowledgment that at some time in the future it does need repair. Despite the fact the collapse happened 10 years ago, March 2016.
[17:55] Speaker 1: A potentially historic El Nino is predicted
[17:58] Speaker 2: to develop fall 2026. Our experience shows that El Nino's cause relentless strings of storms with flooding, erosion,
[18:07] Speaker 1: landslide the remaining thin band of rival
[18:10] Speaker 2: Range Road entrance could disappear completely, making the park inaccessible to all in El Cerrito. Kensington, Richmond Heights Apart from the multiple ecological, social, financial and and political issues
[18:24] Speaker 1: with the proposed flow thrill trail, there is the pragmatic matter of an entrance.
[18:30] Speaker 2: A long neglected primary foundational infrastructure failure
[18:35] Speaker 1: has been less important to the planners
[18:37] Speaker 2: of a five year budget than this trail of whimsy. Kelly A.
[18:45] Speaker 1: You may unmute yourself.
[18:48] Speaker 3: Thank you. I want to go touch on a
[18:53] Speaker 4: couple of issues that are the same everywhere.
[18:57] Speaker 3: One first issue is sedimentation and siltation.
[19:02] Speaker 4: That sedimentation never sleeps. And at Alameda Creek, which is near downtown Fremont, there is a fish ladder, very big fancy fish ladder. And there was, there is a lot of, due to flooding, there is a lot of sedimentation, mud silt that's deposited in the fish ladder and at the
[19:28] Speaker 3: resting pool at the bottom of the fish ladder.
[19:30] Speaker 4: So the Alameda County Flood Control District is going to be going out there and doing some work to clean out that sedimentation. This is what happens to everybody who, who operates this. Some kind of a, of a lake or a river. You're always dealing with the sedimentation or, or else you're dealing with natural process of delta formation and flooding where the, the evulsion of the river creates a new channel as flooding occurs. Same with Lake Elizabeth in downtown Fremont. Same thing.
[20:03] Speaker 3: It's now half the depth it used to be.
[20:06] Speaker 4: And the flood control district is also responsible for, for maintaining that.
[20:12] Speaker 3: And again a dredging and sedimentation issue.
[20:16] Speaker 4: Your district has quite a few lakes
[20:17] Speaker 3: and all of them, this is part
[20:20] Speaker 4: of the natural history, natural life cycle of lakes. All of them have the sedimentation issue. Now it's just a matter of what are you going to do about it. There's many, many different ways to address
[20:31] Speaker 3: it or let it proceed. Follow the natural course and create a
[20:37] Speaker 4: new meadow and also water movement. The Zone 7 agency and I'm going
[20:44] Speaker 3: to, it's going to, this is going to connect back to you in just a moment.
[20:48] Speaker 4: Zone 7 Water Agency has a $200 million project to build a seven mile pipeline to deliver water to the chain of lakes over by Cope Lake somewhere. And this pipeline is going to be running down Vineyard avenue and it's 42 inches.
[21:06] Speaker 3: It's huge.
[21:07] Speaker 4: And guess what's on the other side of Vineyard Avenue on the south side?
[21:11] Speaker 3: Something called Shadow Cliffs.
[21:14] Speaker 4: And Shadow Cliffs is what, another lake, another artificial former quarry mine which is now we call it lakes.
[21:22] Speaker 3: And one of the things that your district did was pay a lot of money and
[21:29] Speaker 4: pump water into the Shadow
[21:32] Speaker 3: Cliffs a year or two ago.
[21:34] Speaker 4: So the question is maybe somebody could go to Zone 7 and ask them about building a connection to the pipeline to refill your lake, the Shadow Cliffs, as well as the Culb Lake and the Lake.
[21:50] Speaker 3: I thank you.
[21:51] Speaker 2: Thank you.
[21:55] Speaker 1: Janet Flint.
[21:55] Speaker 2: You may unmute yourself. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you very much.
[22:06] Speaker 1: I'm Janet Flint.
[22:07] Speaker 2: I live in Richmond and I'm here
[22:09] Speaker 1: to talk about the planned Wildcat Bike
[22:11] Speaker 2: Trail and ask you to direct staff to conduct a thorough public engagement program about this proposed development. What could that public engagement look like? Well, it should start early and be widely publicized. There could be town hall style meetings where neighbors hear each other's ideas and it would be an inclusive process that reaches diverse communities. So far, public engagement around this project has been compartmentalized. Early on there were meetings with mountain bikers. Meetings in El Sobrani and East Richmond Heights had up to 75 people attending. But this is a tiny slice of
[22:50] Speaker 1: the district's trail user constituency.
[22:53] Speaker 2: Two public meetings before the scoping comment deadline were designed to keep the flow of information directly towards staff and didn't let the neighbors hear each other's ideas. I hope the Park District will conduct a broad public education program to let people know about the destination amusement bike park that is planned for what is
[23:16] Speaker 1: currently a quiet natural area in Wildcat Canyon.
[23:19] Speaker 2: This is not a simple trail as
[23:21] Speaker 1: the words flow trail imply.
[23:24] Speaker 2: The conceptual design illustration shows at least
[23:27] Speaker 1: 36 engineered wood framed horizontal banked turns
[23:31] Speaker 2: and the potential for 80 jumps and 100 or more rollers. These exciting features will attract a lot
[23:37] Speaker 1: of new bike users. While the project description claims that the
[23:41] Speaker 2: Bike Only trail could reduce conflicts with other users, it does the opposite. It greatly increases the number of bikes
[23:48] Speaker 1: in Wildcat Canyon, and those new users will increase traffic and conflicts on every
[23:54] Speaker 2: available path to the top of the desired downhill run.
[23:58] Speaker 1: Most of the Park District's boaters and
[24:00] Speaker 2: trail users have no idea about the scale and features of this planned development.
[24:05] Speaker 1: I've been leafleting at Alvarado Trailhead on many weekend mornings.
[24:10] Speaker 2: 95% of the people we meet there for the first time have heard nothing about the bike park. Most of the people we meet are
[24:18] Speaker 1: on foot, which reflects the current 82%
[24:21] Speaker 2: to 88% of district users who are hikers and walkers. If you build this bike trail in Wildcat Canyon park and you fail to educate the public, it will come as a surprise to your constituents, the voters and ratepayers. In order to reduce the surprise effect, I would suggest that the board direct staff to conduct a public education program
[24:43] Speaker 1: that reaches all trail users. This should Begin soon.
[24:46] Speaker 2: Please make it inclusive, transparent and build
[24:49] Speaker 1: trust by involving the community throughout the decision making process.
[24:54] Speaker 2: Thank you for listening. Thank you.
[24:56] Speaker 1: There is no more public comment.
[24:58] Speaker 2: Okay, great. Thank you everyone for your participation in public comment. We will now move on to item E, General Manager's comments.
[25:07] Speaker 3: Thank you, directors. Max Courten, acting General Manager and. And
[25:13] Speaker 4: I've got a brief slideshow for
[25:18] Speaker 3: my update here which should come up in just a minute. Great.
[25:26] Speaker 1: Let's see.
[25:27] Speaker 3: Well, while that's coming up. Oh, here it is. Okay, great. So I just wanted to share each week or each every other week as I'm preparing for this, I ask our team for updates.
[25:37] Speaker 4: And they had so many cool pictures that I just thought it would be
[25:40] Speaker 3: awesome to share with you. So one thing our CDG Creative Design group has been working on, who builds all of our signs and designs all of our signs in our parks, is we have so many aging signs that don't necessarily welcome visitors, are hard to
[26:00] Speaker 4: read, don't necessarily tell the stories or
[26:03] Speaker 3: give all the information we'd want to in a succinct way. And so they've been working on sort of an update to our sign program overall. And they are trying to implement this
[26:14] Speaker 4: in a sort of strategic way, park by park.
[26:16] Speaker 3: And so one of the first ones that they worked on was Delval.
[26:21] Speaker 4: And so I just wanted to share
[26:23] Speaker 3: some before and after photos of the outstanding work that they've been doing, you
[26:27] Speaker 4: know, in partnership with our operations team division.
[26:30] Speaker 3: And so on the right there you can see the new updated sign.
[26:35] Speaker 4: It's got a bigger map, it's got
[26:39] Speaker 3: additional sort of more focused information about wildlife. And then you can see on the left, it's just a little bit more disorganized and harder to make sense of.
[26:53] Speaker 4: And then here's another example.
[26:54] Speaker 3: This is the campground entrance. So it's also trying to be consistent across each of our parks. Here's at Coyote Corner at Eaglesview Camp, Sailor Camp Trail at Ohlone. Spence Gate. And again, part of it is that we want, well, we want to provide sort of warnings, potential dangers and hazards.
[27:23] Speaker 4: We also just want to say welcome and have it feel like people are
[27:27] Speaker 3: welcome in our parks. And then this is the Vallecitos Trail and the visitor center, the West Swim Beach. So anyway, I just wanted to highlight that work. It's really cool work and sometimes it's behind the scenes and we don't get to always see it. So wanted to share that with your board and look forward to that same approach coming to other parks. Yes, sir. That's really great. I think it's been a long term time coming. What I might also suggest is some sort of routine inspection like once a year of the condition of it. Because I've it's certainly not just ours. Ours are like among the better ones you see out there. But sometimes you look at a map and it's all the green is blue, it's just faded all out. And so we've had some ones that look like they hadn't been looked at in a few years. If we could calendar that somehow that exact. You're like reading I think our team's minds is like this isn't just a one and done thing. This is like a forever part of our work. And so the goal behind it. We initially sat down with the creative design team and Allison and Lisa from our operations team and and Chris and
[28:40] Speaker 4: Brian from our planning team and our
[28:42] Speaker 3: stewardship team members because really like we're all involved in like trying to share the messaging and it really takes a whole team effort to make sure we stay on top of it.
[28:52] Speaker 4: So.
[28:53] Speaker 3: Totally agree. Just to highlight a couple other cool projects that were recently completed. This is at. What did I say? Where is this? It's the wilderness Room in. So this was remodeling and then adding these really cool accordion doors for access there. And then this is a swim area that our mass team repaired. There's some dry rot repainting and so just like a refresh of this the swim area and oh and then I just wanted to highlight. This is really cool. I don't know if you all have been to the sheep shearing day at Ardenwood, but just a really neat day
[29:35] Speaker 4: and I think we had 2,664 visitors. Oh, it's up there.
[29:41] Speaker 3: Yeah, that came out for this really
[29:44] Speaker 4: neat event so just wanted to highlight
[29:48] Speaker 3: all of those things. A couple other super quick notes. Our final week of sand moving is underway at Crown Beach. The Anthony Chabot Campground fully opened on the 1st of April. Swim at your own risk started at Lake temescal also on April 1. We are preparing for regular mowing and trimming at a lot of our parks
[30:12] Speaker 4: so expect to see that work. Starting a super weird year in terms
[30:16] Speaker 3: of weather so I don't even know what the grass is doing. The Iris garden at Dry Creek Regional park
[30:26] Speaker 4: opens this weekend and then I
[30:28] Speaker 3: wanted to quickly highlight there's a bunch
[30:30] Speaker 4: of events for our district planning so
[30:34] Speaker 3: we are tabling at the Sunola Wildflower Festival at the Visitor center on April 26. On May 2 at the day on the Water event at Delval Visitor center, there's an all staff open house at big break on May 6. On May 7, there's a Ward 7 stakeholder and visitor user group Zoom meeting. On May 9, there's district plan, park and Community Resource fair hosted by CivicOrps in Oakland. There's a bunch more but so they're
[31:10] Speaker 4: all on the website for the district plan.
[31:11] Speaker 3: But just wanted to appreciate our teams for working on that and make sure folks are aware.
[31:16] Speaker 4: Thank you.
[31:17] Speaker 2: Great. Thank you so much. And then we now move on to announcements, which I believe you made some announcements. I was going to make one quick announcement too, that tomorrow is Earth Day and we do have a whole bunch of celebrations here at East Bay Parks for Earth Day this weekend on April 25th. And if you go to ebparks.org wecelebrate earthday, you'll find a list of volunteer opportunities and all of the other activities we're doing in recognition of Earth Day Day this week. And this year's theme is Planet versus Plastics. Okay, with that, we will now move on to agenda item G, Consent Calendar. And I do have one change that I would like to make to the Consent calendar agenda item G9 about out of state travel. My name, Olivia San Juan, was already added to the online agenda, but I'll mention that here in case board members are looking at the printed version. And then we are also going to add Colin Coffey's name to agenda item G9. So when we're voting on this, just make sure you know that both those names will be added. So with other board members are there. Let's start with this. Are there any items on the Consent Calendar that you wish to pull from the Consent Calendar?
[32:35] Speaker 3: I would like to pull number seven.
[32:37] Speaker 2: Okay. Number seven. Any other items from board members that you would like to pull from the Consent Calendar? I don't see any others. So what we'll do now is we will do questions and comments and public comment for consent calendar items 1 through 6 and then 8 through 10. So not for item 7. So let's go ahead and start with any questions in regards to every item except for seven from board members. I don't see any questions. We'll have another opportunity in case you do have additional comments. So let's go ahead and open up public comment for Consent Calendar for all the items except for number seven, there
[33:20] Speaker 1: is no public comment.
[33:21] Speaker 2: All right, so then we will close public comment, bring it back to the board for any final comments. If there aren't any I will be looking for a motion to accept the consent calendar for everything except item seven.
[33:32] Speaker 1: Okay.
[33:32] Speaker 2: Director Echols made the motion to approve the consent calendar direct, I think. All right. We're going to give it to director DeChambeau to second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. Anyone opposed? Any abstention? So that passes. Six. Zero. So now we will move back to that item G7, about state legislation.
[33:56] Speaker 3: Yeah, I've never. I've never pulled this item. We haven't so often. I've never done it. But this time I see something here that I'm a little concerned about. And everything's fine on this one, except for AB 1942, which is. I'll just read. It's from assembly member Power Cahan E Bike Accountability Act. And what it does, what it proposes to do just out of the gate, is to mandate that Class 2 and 3 electric bicycles must be registered with
[34:36] Speaker 5: the Department of Motor Vehicles and display
[34:38] Speaker 3: a special license plate. And actually went to kind of an unveiling event that the assembly member held
[34:51] Speaker 5: out in Walnut Creek on the Iron Horse Trail.
[34:53] Speaker 3: And, you know, it happened very quickly, and I didn't really have a chance to think about it. And then what happened was I started hearing a lot of opposition out in the community about this, that that particular requirement maybe being too onerous. And also, personally, you know, looking at the enforcement aspect of this, how do you enforce it? I'm not convinced that that's really the best thing that we could be doing. So without wasting a lot more words, I would suggest to you, to my fellow board members, that we change our position from support to watch, because it could be that we could change that bill and make it more acceptable. I know Bicycle Trails Council, the East Bay and Bike East Bay are opposed pretty strongly to this, and we've gotten some communications about this, too. So that's my proposal is I don't want to oppose it, but maybe we can be in on the discussion of how the bill comes together, because these things tend to change over time, and maybe we can make it into something that is helpful. What it's trying to do is get after this whole issue of. And it happens a lot in my wardrobe, anybody who's got a paved regional trail in their board in their ward
[36:21] Speaker 5: is probably hearing about this, is that
[36:23] Speaker 3: there's speeding going on and it's sort of endangering the other trail users, their safety. So that's what this is trying to address. But I'm not sure this is the right way to do it. The real issue are the Emotos, which aren't even considered in this. Those are small motorcycles that preteens and teens are using without adequate training.
[36:48] Speaker 5: And they're not even legal on the
[36:49] Speaker 3: street, on the sidewalk, they're not legal. And it's just a really difficult enforcement thing. But that's related to the sales that's going on and maybe we need to
[36:57] Speaker 5: be working on that.
[36:58] Speaker 3: So I just don't think that this
[37:01] Speaker 5: is the best way to handle the
[37:03] Speaker 3: fear that's out there. And trust me, I get emails from people who are scared to go out on the Iron Horse Trail with their kids because they fear for an accident of some kind. So that's my suggestion, is that we watch this and stay engaged in the process of maybe getting it refined into something that's more inclusive, less exclusionary.
[37:32] Speaker 2: That's fair. So a couple suggestions. I wonder if it's more straightforward if we maybe remove that from the vote and vote on the rest of the bills listed here and then we can come back and debate that particular one.
[37:47] Speaker 3: That's fine.
[37:48] Speaker 2: Let's see what others have to say then. I did have a question about the bill and that was just more about the fee structure and do we have more information on the impact to low income communities?
[38:05] Speaker 1: Because in outside of the park district,
[38:09] Speaker 2: these are being promoted as part of just as far as another way to, you know, get out of your cars, but also cheaper than having a car.
[38:24] Speaker 1: And there are different grant programs and
[38:28] Speaker 2: some of the same as far as
[38:30] Speaker 1: to provide access to lower income communities. So do we have, just as far
[38:36] Speaker 2: as I understand, kind of some different
[38:40] Speaker 1: pros and cons within the park in this legislation? But just as far as on that
[38:45] Speaker 2: piece, could you provide maybe more information?
[38:52] Speaker 5: Government and Legislative Affairs Division lead Eric Feeler, as far as the actual language of the bill, they do not address the fee structure specifically. It just essentially creates a fund for fees to go into. As Director Mercurio pointed out, these bills evolve. So we've actually, at the director's request, have reached out to East Bay and we'll be meeting with their advocacy director probably the week after next. And this will also is also proposed to be a topic of conversation during our advocacy days in Sacramento next week. I think the goal really is to work together holistically to try to address the real safety concerns that communities have. Just as a note, one of the sponsors of this bill is actually the John Muir Health Clinic Clinic, who are seeing a lot of kids coming in and having some real challenges with their health. So I appreciate Dr. Mercurio, raising the issues that have been brought up in terms of equity. And I think we'll look at that and we'll work with the author's office to have that conversation. And just know that there's about eight, I think, different bills trying to address this issue. We were just trying to highlight the two that are being sponsored by East Bay members of the Assembly.
[40:25] Speaker 2: I have a quick question about the legislative process. So with the, with the bills, you know, do we have a sense of the timeline of when our potential support or not support for a bill needs to be approved to be part of the process?
[40:44] Speaker 5: Yeah, there are, there are. I don't have them off the top of my head. There are specific deadlines when the bill has to move out of its committee and out of its house of origin. And I believe, I believe it's coming up in May.
[40:55] Speaker 4: And so in order to have impact
[40:58] Speaker 5: on the legislation, now is really the time to be having those conversations.
[41:07] Speaker 3: And another thing to keep in mind is that I follow this throughout the state. The news that comes out about this, and it's kind of amazing. San Diego County, Marin county, they're all Jossa cities. Other districts probably are all scrambling around trying to figure out how to get a handle on this safety issue, which is what it is. And so I really, really am very supportive of the state, State taking a role in this because I think that's really the only way that we're going to make any meaningful change. So I just want to reiterate that I'm not against this in any way. I'm just looking for a better product to get at this problem from a statewide standpoint.
[41:54] Speaker 2: And then I'll take a moment to mention that this was reviewed by our legislative committee, and it was mentioned in the first paragraph of this agenda item on page 33. I was at that legislative committee meeting as the alternate director. Waspi was there and so was Vice President Coffee. And I believe we were unanimous in the recommendation on this when we reviewed this at the legislative committee a few weeks ago.
[42:20] Speaker 3: That's correct. And while I understand nothing is perfect, this was, as Eric mentioned, this was one of our legislators that's friendly to the Park District, has helped us in many ways, and I think she probably did this based on a lot of reaction to what's going on on the Iron Horse Trail and trails throughout her area. So looking for an answer, she's. We're trying to address safety issues. I think there may be some flaws in this, but I think we should stick with it. We deliberated it over the legislative committee to pull this after we've kind of let our one of our legislative delegation know that we're supporting this at this point. I think it's a little late in the game and I think we can try to work it out and make it better. I don't know if they'll have any chances for amending the bill at this point along the way or just going forward with it, but I think it's a something's got to be done. In my opinion, that's one of my chief complaints is electric bikes flying by you and dangerously flying by you. So I personally would support any effort to solve that problem or help that problem longer.
[43:44] Speaker 2: Well, if we don't have any other questions, what I like to do is open up for public comment. But then we still can come back to the board for comments and let's do that. Let's open up for public comment, see if there's any members of the public.
[43:57] Speaker 1: We have two public commenters online.
[44:02] Speaker 2: Scott, you may unmute yourself.
[44:08] Speaker 3: President San Juan Directors Acting General Manager Courtney and staff thank you for the opportunity to comment. I'm commenting on behalf of Bicycle Trails Council. You Bay I did submit a written comment. I don't know if you received it there there wasn't acknowledgement that it was received, but I would echo the the comments made by Director Mercurio and add that this legislation is also opposed by cal Bike and CamTB.
[44:40] Speaker 4: While it's well intended, I don't think it will have a meaningful change on
[44:45] Speaker 3: the situation and it really doesn't go after kind of the root issues. Member Bauer Cahan is definitely an ally of the environment outdoor recreation in the Park District and has done many good things for the state and her constituents. As such, we're recommending a neutral position
[45:04] Speaker 4: rather than opposing her support.
[45:07] Speaker 3: I think as you go to Sacramento, I think discussions with her about actions that would be more effective would be a worthwhile use of that time. We do ask that you support SB 1167 from Senator Blakespeare.
[45:26] Speaker 4: It does go to try and put
[45:30] Speaker 3: some teeth in state law to prevent emotos being marketed as E bikes, and
[45:38] Speaker 4: I think that is a big piece
[45:40] Speaker 3: of the issue that's going on out there and I urge you to look at that and direct staff to look at SB 1167 and provide guidance to you upon that. Regarding I think part of the issue is that comments are made referring to E bikes when in some cases they are E bikes and they are more behavioral issues. Some of the issues come from emotos, but accidents and incidents will be described as e bike when it's really an emoto. So 1167 goes in that kind of direction to address that. Additionally, there is existing law that doesn't allow emotos and other out of class devices to be used on public streets or the trails in the park district. And those could be enforced as well as an existing means to go after it. So I hope you consider that in how you approach this and really would like to see the board move to a neutral position on AB 1942.
[46:57] Speaker 4: Thank you for your time.
[46:59] Speaker 2: Thank you.
[47:03] Speaker 1: Noam Elroy, you may unmute yourself.
[47:09] Speaker 9: Hi.
[47:10] Speaker 3: I'm just on the advocacy team for East Bay up in Sacramento, Environmental and Navy consulting. I just wanted to make myself available for comments. I mean, questions and what Eric said that yes, the first house deadline is
[47:26] Speaker 4: the end of May and then the
[47:28] Speaker 3: bill would move to the Senate. It has gone through its policy committees and is awaiting hearing a fiscal committee which is chaired by another member of your delegation, assembly member Woods.
[47:48] Speaker 2: Thank you.
[47:51] Speaker 1: Sorry, there is no more public comment.
[47:53] Speaker 2: Okay, great. So now we can bring it back to the board for comments and discussions as well as thinking about a motion. And maybe before that, what I'd like to do is maybe propose a motion to approve the recommendations to support state. State legislation AB 2051 and AB 2184. So then we would just be left with the Assembly Bill 1942 to as to make a separate vote on. So if other. If there's a second to that, we can vote on the other two assembly bills now.
[48:27] Speaker 1: Okay.
[48:27] Speaker 2: Director Mercurio has seconded. So all in favor of supporting The Assembly Bill 2051 and Assembly Bill 2184 recommendation to support, please say aye. Aye. Okay. Anyone opposed? Anyone abstain? No. So that passed unanimously. Six zero. So now we're just back with Assembly Bill 1942. Let's go ahead and let John go first and then.
[48:55] Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I just wanted to make it clear because in my head it's clear, but I don't know if I said it. I really support the work that member Bauer Cahan has done with us and the partnership that we have. And that's why I'm looking at watching this instead of just outright opposing it because she's been a great partner and we have, I think we have the opportunity to discuss this a little bit more with her. So I just want to make that clear that I look forward to working with her going forward on many, many things, including this issue.
[49:32] Speaker 2: Director DeChambeau
[49:36] Speaker 1: yeah, I really safety first. I think time is essential on this. I was just out there myself on the Iron Horse Trail. I'm glad to hear John Muir Clinic is on board. I support our staff position and our legislative team. And I have so much respect for RBK for doing this for us. And I think a fee structure would actually help fund a lot of the problems we have is compliance assistance and enforcement. So an opportunity for that. I don't think it's just about speeding. What I really love about this is is the identification portion. I have a used bike I bought and I'll be honest, I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's an E2, an E3. I asked for recently from staff to give me a handout so I could understand what I'm even driving. So I think anything along these lines and what she's trying to do to identify and help us know what we have and what we're using. I don't think it'd be that onerous to help a terrible situation situation that we're in. And I would personally I don't know if we don't have a motion on the table yet. John pulled it. I'll leave that to John. I do Also support the 1167 emotos is definitely a problem. That's kind of a different thing. I saw three of them up at my school the other day and I saw two when I was on the Iron Horse Trail. Especially in the wealthier communities. These bikes are are crazy. So forget whether I have an E1, 2 or 3. The emotos and more materials on this and more help. And I really appreciate what our assembly woman is trying to do and I'm a strong supporter of AB 1942. I'd like to as far as watch it right now and stay neutral because
[51:25] Speaker 2: as far as there's a conversation next
[51:28] Speaker 1: week with Bikey Spey
[51:32] Speaker 2: that you mentioned as far as that you'll have that
[51:34] Speaker 1: conversation because I would like to hear a little bit more about that because I understand we do need to do
[51:41] Speaker 2: something about these issues. So definitely support like moving forward on
[51:48] Speaker 1: these issues in general. But I do want to understand how it's going to impact the street bikes
[51:55] Speaker 2: and moving through our cities because this legislation impacts more than just as far as open spaces and bike use. So moving forward with something that as far as addresses the concerns but just as far as the different as far as communities that use E bikes. Any comments on from either of you?
[52:25] Speaker 1: Are you okay? Sure. I'll just say, oh, did you want to go?
[52:30] Speaker 2: You want to talk?
[52:31] Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah. So I also think safety is really important and I'm not clear why this is so onerous because, I mean, yeah, it's a hassle. I mean, I don't like dealing with the DMV either. But, but to, you know, to get actually, you can do it all online.
[52:48] Speaker 6: It's great.
[52:49] Speaker 1: I just fill out the form, send in a small payment and it comes in the mail. So I don't feel like this is that huge of a lift. Maybe I'd be interested in hearing the argument otherwise. I did see the letter that came, but again, I'm not really clear on why or how this is a bad thing. And I do think that for those who are not following our rules and who are speeding on on our trails, it is helpful to have a license plate. I think it does make people more accountable. And so for those reasons, I will, will be in support of this. I also agree about the the Emoto and SB 1167. I in fact saw three of them on the trail to through the nature
[53:36] Speaker 6: area the other day in Tilden park. And bikes aren't even allowed on that trail.
[53:40] Speaker 2: So they, that was pretty shocking.
[53:42] Speaker 1: But so I think, you know, we've got a lot of issues. It's hard to regulate the behavior of some in our parks. And you know, acknowledging that most people behave appropriately but those who don't, I think should be held accountable.
[54:02] Speaker 2: I have a question. So we, I want to thank both of our public commenters and it was great to hear from our advocate in Sacramento. So thank you for joining us us for this discussion. With the first House deadline at the end of May, we do have a board meeting on May 5. I know in theory we would like to, you know, if, if there's a vote of the board to support or oppose, we want to get in as soon as possible. But this is a really important topic and we are going to Sacramento next week and meeting with assembly member Bauer, Kayon and or her staff as well as with our advocates in Sacramento. And I wonder if it makes sense for us to have a conversation about this particular assembly bill when we're in Sacramento and maybe continue the decision until May 5th.
[54:49] Speaker 3: Yeah, we could table this. There is time actually, given the end of May deadline, we could gather more information before having a vote on it.
[55:03] Speaker 1: I don't know if there's a second or I would just make a motion that we support it for that very reason that we can go up there and let her know that we're behind her, so I would motion that we approve it.
[55:17] Speaker 3: Second.
[55:18] Speaker 2: Okay, we've got a second. All right, then we shall take a vote. Let's make it a roll call. Vot.
[55:28] Speaker 1: Thank you. Director coffee is absent. Director Echols.
[55:31] Speaker 2: Aye.
[55:32] Speaker 1: Director dechambeau. Aye. Director Espana. Nay. Director waspy.
[55:39] Speaker 3: Aye.
[55:41] Speaker 1: Sorry. Director Mercurio.
[55:43] Speaker 3: No.
[55:44] Speaker 1: President Sam Wong.
[55:45] Speaker 2: I support. Yes.
[55:47] Speaker 1: Motion passes. 4, 2, 1. With directors Espana and mercurio voting no.
[55:52] Speaker 6: And director coffee? Absent.
[55:54] Speaker 2: All right, thanks, everyone. Okay, so that is our consent calendar. So now we will move on to our next agenda item. We don't have any public hearings scheduled, which is agenda item H. Now we move on to I presentations. And our first one is from the fire department, the 2025 annual report.
[56:42] Speaker 9: Board president, San Juan board of directors, Acting general manager cortman. Thank you for having us to be here today. It's an honor and a privilege to be before you today to give you. My name is Ray Iverson. I'm your interim fire chief for east bay regional park district. We're excited and honored to be here today to give you a report on our annual activities for 20,000, 2025. And we're going to give you an overview summary of our annual report. We have hard copies there available for you after this meeting. This report will also be available online and also would like to thank staff and the department for providing information that put together information to provide this report with you today. I also have with me assistant chief Kyrie Hailey, Assistant chief Pete de Quincey. They'll be talking with you as well, giving updates on their divisional assignments, responsibilities. With that, it's important for you to know that the east regional park district fire department is one department, one team. We provide service to our visitors throughout the district through three divisions. The fire operations division, the fields management division run by headed up by chief Kylie Hailey, and the lifeguard services division, headed up by assistant chief Pete de Quincey. First off, the fire operations division. We operate on unique core values. We all throughout the fire department maintain our core values and we hold them highly. We have a mission and vision and we all share and we all participate in community engagement. Our fuels management division will be talking about their staffing numbers, their fuel crew and their fuels reduction coordinators who are really busy at work handling our fuels management program. Our lifeguard services division will be speaking to visitor safety, our first aid education, and our community partnerships. So our core values for the east bay regional park district fire department are professionalism, integrity, respect, service and grit. We hold these values dearly and we use these values to affect our decisions and our activities throughout our district. Interaction with our Visitors Our vision for the East Bay Regional Park District Fire Department is that we strive to be a national leader in aquatic safety, wildfire mitigation and fields management. Our mission the East Bay Regional Park District Fire Department is dedicated to safeguarding our patrons and preserving natural resources through excellence in aquatic safety, fields management, public education and wildland response. Your Fire Department has been dedicated in service and responding to numerous calls for service emergency calls throughout the district. Whether it be fires, rescue calls, medical calls, search and rescue calls. There's a gamut of information and activities that our fire Department is involved not only to respond to emergencies and assist our patrons and visitors and our allied agency numbering partners with those responses to emergency calls. We're also involved in community engagement. Our Fire Department is involved in many activities that affect our community. We are there with public information, fire prevention education as well as training opportunities, just to name a few. As you see in the picture here, the community engagement collage has been put together. We participate in warm coat activities, one month court activities to the county food bank service, volunteering, first aid stations at certain events and of course our fire awareness and public education. Through our community service events we have participated. Next I would like to turn it over to Assistant Chief Hydraulic Ty Lee who will be talking about our Fuels Management Division and provide an update for that.
[61:21] Speaker 4: Good afternoon Board of Directors President San Wong Kari Hale Assistant Fire Chief, East Bay Regional Park District Fire Department Before I speak about our staff, first I wanted to give appreciation and thank you to you, our board, for all the support that you've given us throughout the years. As you can see here, we're looking at a chart that depicts our increase of staffing and none of it would have been possible without the support that we received from the board. So we really appreciate that. If you look at the numbers here, I'm going to highlight a particular portion of that chart. As you can see here, our staffing has increased by 20 positions with 19 dedicated to fields management. But I want to highlight the bar that's in 2020 and then the bar that shows 2025. As you can see there, there's an increase of 10 personnel. That's roughly 50%. So someone might be asking why was there a big increase? What happened in 2020-2025 that required an increase of 50% in fuels management staffing? Well, I'll remind all of us the journey that we took, which was the tree die off and the effects of climate change that we all were challenged with. And back in 2020, we were dealing with the drought, the outcome and effects that that took place on our our land, and hundreds of dead standing trees throughout the park district. And the fire department came up with a plan, figured out treatment needed, figured out funding required. And funding does not spend or money doesn't spend itself. You need people to get that work done. And so we came to you, the board, requesting positions throughout those years and you've given us 100% support for that. So I want to say thank you for that. We have a pretty amazing model like to say that we use when it comes to fuels management. It's pretty efficient and nimble. We have our fuels crew, which is a total of 16 personnel, one fire captain, one fire lieutenant. The captain is doing more big picture support for those 15 personnel. The fire lieutenant is doing direct supervision of the fuels crew. Then we have two fuels leads and then we have 12 fuels members for a total balance of 16 members. That crew is unique because it can be dispersed or deployed within an hour notice anywhere that we need to send them within the district. Whereas our other methods we have the RFP or task orders, take a little bit longer to get work deployed. They're also highly specialized in what we care about here at the district, which is not just hazardous fuels, but the ecological resources that we protect here at the district. And so they are knowledgeable about plant ID and how to maintain habitat that we care to protect. We also have our fuels reduction coordinators. They're very, in my mind, powerful people because their superpower is their ability to manage multiple projects through just one person. On average, they're doing about $1.2 million of fuels work. Years like this year, we have an abundance of of grant funding. They're able to do as much as 1.9 million just through one person. And on years where the money is not as abundant, then they're able to scale down because of the lack of availability of funds. But because of that, it makes that team very nimble because we can adjust with depending on how much funding that we have. They are our main contact when it comes to our contractors and making sure that the work that we do is to the specifications and at the level that we expect while managing park district land. And I want to cover some of our goals here that we have achieved. So you can see here in Anthony Chabot land, $12.1.9 million has been invested in that park. And that was one of the parks in 2020, we had 1200 acres of dead standing trees brittle, just waiting to unfortunately ignite. We were able to seek funding and that funding was 12.9 million. So somebody might be asking, well, how much of that was grants and how much of it was district funding? 1.4 million. Of that $12.9 million was district funding. So that means we were able to leverage 1.6 million or $11.6 million in grant funding that came from the state agencies like the state Col Conservancy, which was our first grantor who believed in our projects there, and Cal Fire and the federal government, fema. So we want to say thank you to all of our grant tours who have supported us throughout the years because that allowed us to treat all the acres that we did at Anthony Chabot. And now that park is not in the same situation that it was in 2020. We also have completed work throughout our hills parks. Miller Knox was one of our first projects that we did that had dead standing trees affected by climate change, of course, Tilden, Sibley, Wildcat, Redwood, Leona and Clermont Canyon that all have work actively going on today. In 2025, we completed 1,477 acres. And those acres are very specific to highly critical acres. And so those are acres that we have identified that are most critical that need to be treated. And that was accomplished in 2025. Lastly, before I close and pass to Assistant Chief Pete De Quincey, the type of work that we're doing in these areas are initial treatment. Initial treatment are a project that has not been done before. So an area of the park that has been treated for the first time. Initial treatment, re entries is a term that we use internally. Sometimes a particular area grows back quicker than we expected and it almost turns into an initial treatment again. So we have to do a re entry. Annual maintenance is what we typically expect. We've done the initial treatment. We're able to get back to it and do a light treatment. That would be an annual maintenance. The goal for us is to keep everything within an annual maintenance because it's a lot cheaper and efficient for us and the taxpayer to maintain versus doing work for the first time through initial treatment. The goal is to maintain everything that we've treated. So as I close again, thank you for all the support that you've given the fire department and the fuel staff so that we can do this fuels management work that that we've done throughout the East Bay. Thank you.
[69:18] Speaker 3: All right,
[69:21] Speaker 5: President San Juan Directors Assistant Chief P.T. quincy and Lifeguard Services or Aquatic Service Manager. I'm going to Go ahead and give
[69:28] Speaker 3: a quick summary in regards to what
[69:30] Speaker 5: we've been doing with lifeguard services. So in regards to lifeguard services, again, we see an annual visitation of roughly 400,000 visitors going to our facilities. That's our 14 sites. And that also includes some of our partnerships that we have with other communities, specifically Antioch Unified School District and Ambrose Recreation and Park District. We partner with them specifically to provide aquatic opportunities for those communities. At the high schools, both Deer Valley
[70:00] Speaker 4: and Antioch High, and the Ambrose Aquatic
[70:04] Speaker 5: center in Bay Point, we worked with those departments and other agencies as well, which includes the city of El Cerrito, city of Emeryville, along with additional high schools, which we're talking in Foothill High School, Amador Valley High School and Hayward Unified School District, all three of those high schools. So again, our partnerships on how we expand our services just beyond our facilities are kind of intermingled and bundled together. So for me to just talk about the safety of aquatic services that we have at our 14 sites, it goes beyond that. It goes into the communities that we're closely working with. In one aspect of that, specifically, when we talk about our partners, some of our partners have pools and some of our partners have aquatic sites, and some of them don't. And so what we try to do is work with that community and serve them specifically in how they need. And I'll go into a little bit more details of that further on. One of the things that we've also continued to do is develop this idea of unmanned aerial systems, or drones, and how they would respond. Developing this idea that we would have a drone first responder. The idea being that if we get a call, our 911 system would be activated. We'd utilize our drones specifically for surveillance and rescue. We have that going on. And so consider those things and you can ask some questions.
[71:35] Speaker 4: We have a picture of it, but
[71:36] Speaker 5: we also have some great partnership pictures there that we have on the slide as well.
[71:40] Speaker 3: Let me keep going.
[71:42] Speaker 5: In regards to lifeguard services, one of the biggest things that we have for 2025 that we're very proud of is our partnerships with school districts. Specifically, we're talking Hayward Unified, Castro Valley Unified, Antioch Unified, Oakland, Clayton Valley and Pleasanton. Again, some of our partnerships expand into this idea of train the trainer. And sometimes people have asked what train the trainer is. Instead of us physically going there and train, training the students and the population, we train the students to become those trainers. So they become the instrument that extends out past us. And they train the community members and the students in CPR first aid hands only, cpr, any of the additional classes that fall under the menu of the American Red Cross. We're very happy that this last year in 2025, our student instructors, both at the high school and the middle school level, trained over 13,000 students and community members over the two counties. And again, we provide the expertise to develop, to develop them. Excuse me. And then we provide the support and the loaning of long term equipment so that they can teach and then we support them on the logistics. And the first thing I should say, and I forgot to say this, my apologies, we could not have done this without the partnership with the American Red Cross, the Regional Parks foundation and the Park District itself. This has really allowed us to extend beyond just the physical sites of our parks and go into the community. What we're so proud about those 13,000 is over half of them really struggled with the idea of understanding what regional parks were. There was this idea of the city park, a county park or a state park. But we were the ambassadors to really educate those young individuals on what a regional park is, specifically in their locations. And so we're extremely happy that they took to that and they start to carry that idea. So it's a big first step.
[73:47] Speaker 4: What we're hoping to do is to
[73:49] Speaker 5: continue that in program and expand it into the other school districts and other cities that we can. And again, it's one city at a time, one teacher at a time, one student at a time. And that's what we continue to look forward. Lastly, or I should say last, we do have our collaboration internally here about just providing extensions in water safety and safety in general. And we work closely with our HR department and the risk department on just getting more training out there to our employees and our members. And so we've done that with our severe bleeding training, our CPR training, tourniquet training, all sorts of aspects that we just continue to provide. Again, what we try to do is do what we can both internally and externally. And that's what I have. So thank you. Is there any. Oh, concludes our presentations and do you have any questions for any of us?
[74:44] Speaker 2: Great. Thanks so much. Great overview. Really some amazing accomplishments for from the fire department and fuels management and lifeguard services. So thank you so much for joining us today. I'd like to invite my colleagues here on the board if you have any questions in regards to the presentation we just heard. Now is a good time to ask those questions. I believe we'll also open public comment for the presentation in a moment. So if there aren't any questions? We'll come back to the. Okay, go ahead, please.
[75:12] Speaker 3: Thank you all for your presentation. You guys are lucky as heck. I wish I had your jobs. One question for Pete. How many. How many lifeguards do we have coming on this year, and how many of them are returning?
[75:25] Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you for that question. For last year, we went in for 2025. We had 200 lifeguards that we utilized and initially hired, and it kind of whittled down to 181 this year. Of those 200 that we had, we had 183 returners from last year. So some of them that didn't work as much decided to come back because they liked what we did. And at this point, we have 183 that have come back. We're starting to process them, and we have roughly 33 lifeguard candidates that are in our academy that started this last Saturday. So again, we're bringing our numbers back up. And again, super happy that we have such a high return rate, which is uncalled of nationally in that regard.
[76:12] Speaker 3: And so who's going to do the Arroyo pool? Do we. Do we guard the Arroyo del Valle pool?
[76:18] Speaker 5: Great question, Director Waspi. We made the decision at this time that we have stopped supporting them. In that regards of Camp Arroyo. We're talking Camp Arroyo. We will not be providing any East Bay Regional parks lifeguard service, but the contractor slash, vendor will be providing any kind of water safety there at Camp Arroyo. They are allowed to hire us for any kind of special events, just like any other member of the public to utilize us to provide any kind of support.
[76:49] Speaker 3: All right, thank you.
[76:52] Speaker 2: Go ahead.
[76:53] Speaker 1: Dr. DeChambeau, I have a couple of questions. First of all, the amount of effort that has gone into this is. This is really amazing. It's great to see it all together and see how well we're doing. I'm curious, how are we doing in regards. There was a lot of press front headlines A million trees are dead. You know, before we started this work, what type of inventory? Or is there a way to see if we're actually keeping up on that? I mean, we're clearly keeping up as much as humanly possible with the money. The glass grants everything. But on the ground, I don't know how that inventory was done or what tools do we have to assess? How many millions of dead trees do we have now? And are we staying up on top of it? Does that make sense?
[77:42] Speaker 4: It does, yeah. And I remember the initial. The initial estimate was an estimate, and then since then, because the initial estimate Came from a helicopter and the. And then eventually we were able to ground truth it by actually having staff members go in and figure out exactly what was going on. And then once we were able to do that, that gave us the ability to figure out how many millions of dollars we would need to seek to do the work that we did. Now, I don't have the technical answer of how many trees or stems that have been removed, but I know our team members do have that answer and they're very detailed. The difference of a stem and a tree. So I can actually get you that count of if that's what you would desire, how many stems and trees compared to the remaining. Or we can even do it more high level and do it as a percentage or something.
[78:37] Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of tools out there. Maybe max. There's a lot of ways to determine tree density, tree forestry, tree coverage, millions of trees. Just like, how are we doing? Because all this work, do we still have a million more like, are we getting dead trees every day? Is there a way to get.
[78:56] Speaker 3: I think that's a great question. So one of the things that we did is vegetation map for the whole district and in fact the whole two counties Bay area. So not just our lands, but the lands of our partners so that are part of the East Bay stewardship network.
[79:12] Speaker 4: And you know, one of the things that chief Haley and like our whole team, operations team and our stewardship team have been working together on is the vegetation management strategy.
[79:23] Speaker 3: Right.
[79:23] Speaker 4: How do we look at all of our lands and have a consistent approach to vegetation management?
[79:29] Speaker 3: How do we make sure it's informed by science and mapping and all of those things? And right now we're sort of daylighting the that and getting input from the parks advisory committee. So that's sort of part of this process. One item that I think is actually going to your board at your next meeting is a contract. Is that right, Matt?
[79:49] Speaker 1: We had one. We had something on consent today.
[79:51] Speaker 3: Oh, it's on consent today.
[79:53] Speaker 1: Thank you.
[79:53] Speaker 3: So it's on consent today actually is like, I feel like almost the exact
[79:58] Speaker 4: same thing that you're asking about, which
[80:00] Speaker 3: is working with a partner who's really like a lead on this exact field
[80:09] Speaker 4: to help us take that information that
[80:11] Speaker 3: we already have from our fine scale vegetation map and look at the areas that we already mapped out with the defensible space requirements from our partner fire agencies and the goals from our vegetation management strategy, which are both fuels reduction, sustainability, sustainability and ecological enhancement and help us understand what are the most Important areas we should be focusing our time. Where is there the greatest risk in terms of fire? Where is there the greatest opportunity and challenges in terms of natural resource protection and where should we focus our time and efforts? And they're looking at the whole district. They're going to help us identify those areas areas and then also create a
[80:54] Speaker 4: process and a tool so that we
[80:56] Speaker 3: can continue that work across the entire district.
[81:00] Speaker 1: I appreciate that a lot of from both sides the trees and stems removed, the inventory of what we have. How are we comparing? And I did see it on the consent agenda and I saw that that was that the other question? Or maybe it'll come later. It also be part of that would be really interesting for me to understand how many RE entries are we doing now? And if you look over the past three years, have those gone down? I've had some long conversations with the Moraga Rinda Fire department and they've changed some things unfortunately. Sometimes it's using more garlon or whatever, sometimes it's minimizing. But be interesting to see how we're doing on that because too much denuded land. The only thing that's going to come back is Cody brush and poison oak. And then next thing you know, I've talked to the Moraga fire chief. They're back there in months. And just months later it's like they didn't even start anyway. I'm not. I don't expect you to answer it. I guess it's in part of this assessment. How are we doing? Hopefully our RE entries for you guys are going down because that's a Starting all over is not a good use of park money either.
[82:06] Speaker 3: Right.
[82:06] Speaker 4: I just say.
[82:07] Speaker 3: I mean I think that sort of. That's exactly what that strategy is about is how do we guide ourselves so
[82:12] Speaker 4: that the goal is not just reduced fuel loading but the goal is also
[82:18] Speaker 3: better habitat outcomes and a more diverse ecosystem that's easier to maintain.
[82:24] Speaker 4: I think we don't especially for our
[82:26] Speaker 3: operations team or for the fuels team that's going to go in there.
[82:29] Speaker 4: We don't want to set them up
[82:31] Speaker 3: for not being able to take care of that initial investment. That's what Chief Haley was just speaking to. Right. Is wanting to make sure that it's not super expensive for the future.
[82:42] Speaker 4: And to clarify reentries because of 2020 and the effects of climate change, it shocked not just our land but, you know, other people's land. And so there was literally a die off. So even though there was areas that were previously initially treated because of those effects all of a sudden now we have areas that were treated but now have dead standing trees in it because of the effects of climate change. So those turned into reentries. And to answer your question about where we were from 2020 to today, we ran that whole situation of the tree die off like an incident. So like an emergency incident. So I would say that the incident now is stable. We've stabilized the situation where trees are not dying off in large amounts that we were concerned or we lose all of our forested areas. We've stabilized that because of the work that you've approved throughout the years, because of the work that we're going to bring to you soon. I have a presentation today of new work that's coming. And so because of that and hopefully future support with staffing, we've been able to stabilize that situation.
[83:59] Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Appreciate all your hard work.
[84:02] Speaker 3: Can I add one more appreciation here just for Pete and his team. They were awarded from the national association of county park and Recreation Officials. I think NACPRO is the organization an
[84:17] Speaker 4: award for lifeguard services for Aquatic Adventure Camp. It was selected to receive a 2026
[84:25] Speaker 3: award from that group, which is, you
[84:27] Speaker 4: know, a nationwide group.
[84:28] Speaker 3: So I just want to appreciate Pete and his leadership and the whole team,
[84:33] Speaker 4: you know, as nationally recognized for their.
[84:45] Speaker 2: Do we have any other board questions?
[84:49] Speaker 1: Go ahead.
[84:51] Speaker 2: Well,
[84:53] Speaker 1: sometimes we separate the comments and sometimes we don't. But I would like to, first of all, thank you for your report and I really, really appreciate the work that you do across the board in the fire department and.
[85:07] Speaker 2: Oops.
[85:08] Speaker 6: Oh, I'm sorry.
[85:10] Speaker 1: So I was just saying I really appreciate the work that you do across the board in the fire department on the fuels management side, your use of the innovative technology and just how focused and tactical you are in terms of really making our parks and our neighbors so much safer. We don't have, we don't have a crazy amount of funds. We have a lot of funds, but it's not limitless. And I just appreciate how strategic and, and careful you are in the work that you do. And I was so excited to hear on the lifeguard services, just your continued work with the community and the work that you're doing on the train, the trainer program too, because I think I like that you see your role and you've been doing this for years, but it keeps getting better and better and more. But how you see your work and how you see, see your role as promoting safety not just in the parks but much more broadly in the community. And so yeah, thank you for that. And I'm not surprised you got the award, but congratulations.
[86:14] Speaker 5: Thank you.
[86:19] Speaker 2: Yes. So I do have a question. So I did see for fuels management some of the parks that we had listed. And I know I had asked the previous general manager about Pleasanton Ridge. I know that we have a number of property owners that are right there on the urban wildland interface. And I have received comments about concerns about some likely dead trees from some of the neighbors to our park, Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park. And when I brought this up, I was told that we didn't have as high of a concentration of dead trees at Pleasanton River. So that's why it's not on our list for seeking funding or for being part of our fuels management program. And I know that as property insurance rates have increased significantly there, there is a lot of concern from those neighbors. And I'm just curious how we might address, you know, the parks that aren't included in our fields management. I know we're probably going to get some of that with the vegetation management program. And I also know that. I know director or Vice President Coffey is not here today, but I know I've also heard him say some similar things about Brionis as well.
[87:24] Speaker 3: I just share that vegetation management strategy. That is our, I mean, our, the
[87:29] Speaker 4: idea is that that's the district strategy. So that there aren't, there shouldn't be any areas that are not included in our fuels program.
[87:37] Speaker 3: Right.
[87:38] Speaker 4: It's really looking at district wide, where do we have fuels issues and also restoration opportunities.
[87:46] Speaker 3: Thank you. Sorry.
[87:49] Speaker 4: And how do we, how do we align those with our work everywhere across the district, in Brioni's, in Pleasanton Ridge.
[87:58] Speaker 3: And so I think one of the
[88:00] Speaker 4: grant proposals that is, I don't think
[88:02] Speaker 3: it's on your agenda today, but I think it's Maybe coming on May 5th is a grant proposal to fund that
[88:10] Speaker 4: work across the whole district and in those places. So yes, that was something we missed before and now we're trying to do
[88:18] Speaker 3: it, do it right.
[88:19] Speaker 1: Great.
[88:20] Speaker 2: I look forward to that. And then maybe as we're going through that process, will we have a plan to help communicate the vegetation management strategy and maybe also try to meet people where they live and work? So maybe try to have some community meetings in other parts of the East Bay area that might be easier for someone who might live closer to Brioni's or Pleasanton Ridge to be able to attend to learn about. Because I know there's a lot of concern for those who have seen significant Property insurance rate increases.
[88:49] Speaker 3: That's a great idea. I mean, I think, you know, we've been. Right now we're utilizing the, the Parks
[88:54] Speaker 4: Advisory Committee to help that, like, ask
[88:56] Speaker 3: them to reach out to their communities
[88:58] Speaker 4: to give us input. But I think that's something that we can look at as we go into the future in terms of, like, what
[89:04] Speaker 3: are our next steps. We want to bring the strategy to,
[89:07] Speaker 4: I think the Natural Resource Committee and then to your full board this year later, after we get the input and sort of are able to digest that from the pac. And then like, I think we're definitely.
[89:20] Speaker 3: I'm interested to hear the direction and ideas from your board that we can then bring into the community.
[89:26] Speaker 4: So thank you.
[89:28] Speaker 2: Great. Thank you. And thank you again for joining today. What I'd like to do is see if we have any members of the public who would like to make public comment and we'll still bring it back to the board if there's any other additional comments from board members.
[89:37] Speaker 1: There is no public comment.
[89:38] Speaker 2: Okay, so we'll close public comment. And then now we're not making a decision today, so we don't have to do a motion or vote, but this is our opportunity to make any final comments on the topic. Go ahead.
[89:49] Speaker 3: I just want to thank you guys for the great work you do, having been involved with it for so long. The way you guys pivoted in the fire department from, you know, what we were doing mostly suppression when I was around to pivot into fuels management, was brilliant, as proven out by all the grants we're getting and all the awards we're winning. Pete, your group, who, you know, faced a number of issues when we were closing Contraloma, having blue green algae, closing some of our lakes to go out into the community and teach what you teach in the community and teaching teachers to life saving skills and water safety skills and just basic cpr, our basic life saving stuff to kids is brilliant. The only thing I would wish you would do, not better, but more, get some more awards. The stuff you guys do is so innovative, nobody else is doing it. You could easily knock it out of the park in any of these guys. And we like plaques on our walls. So thank you.
[90:49] Speaker 2: Go ahead.
[90:49] Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to thank you as well. The more I learn about, you know, all of our public safety. But since we're talking about fire today, we'll look at that and just the breadth of work that's going on here. And you know, when I, when I go and speak to the community, I start off with you know, you know, we have a fire department, and most
[91:14] Speaker 5: people don't know that.
[91:16] Speaker 3: And then when I describe it a little bit more, I love to focus on, you know, we don't just put out fires, we stop them from happening in the first place by having, you know, the thinning and treatment areas that we do. And that gets a pretty positive reaction as well. You know, to be prevention is much better than, you know, fighting. So. And then the whole thing, I don't know, it always seems so obvious, I think, all of us, that this is an award. You know, Pete, your program is an obvious candidate for some kind of an award, and it's being borne out. So, yeah, I agree with Director wospi. Let's keep looking at that because, you know, you deserve the recognition for the work that's going on.
[92:06] Speaker 1: Great.
[92:07] Speaker 2: Okay, thank you. So with that, we will move on to our next presentation, the Hayward Marshall Item I2. And then after that, we'll take a short break.
[92:44] Speaker 4: Good afternoon, President San Wong. Board members Chris Barton, Restoration Projects Manager, staff will be providing an informational update this afternoon on the Hayward Marsh project. And Carla Myers, our project manager, will
[92:57] Speaker 3: be giving the presentation.
[92:59] Speaker 4: But I'd like to just highlight a few things about the project that make this project very unique. The last time the board was out on site, I believe, was for the board tour about a year and a half ago. And one of the main things that stands out with this project is the endangered California lease Tern, where Dave Rensci has coined the term turn town out there with the Tern Islands. And the other key thing that stands out from that site visit is just
[93:30] Speaker 3: the shoreline erosion, the amount that the
[93:33] Speaker 4: bay trail and the levees have been eroded.
[93:36] Speaker 3: And that's very typical throughout the bay.
[93:38] Speaker 4: And I think Hayward is kind of a small picture of that. And I think that that's what makes this project unique, is that we're addressing these two things, loss of public access, and then also addressing critically endangered species.
[93:55] Speaker 5: One of the main things about the
[93:56] Speaker 4: critically endangered species that makes this project stand out is is it really is a comprehensive contingency action to be proactive in how we're addressing the loss of habitat. And it's based on science, because this project implements, and it's the plan that's
[94:15] Speaker 3: been approved by the board is informed
[94:17] Speaker 4: by years, I'm talking decades of stewardship, wildlife management on the ground with published scientific journals, submissions from Dave Rienshi and other collaborators. And that's what this plan is informed
[94:34] Speaker 3: by, that we'll be implementing and I'll
[94:38] Speaker 4: also note that that will make this project more competitive because I don't know of any other project that has as much data as we do over multiple decades and has been designed to address sea level rise so that these lease turn, number one, will expand the success that these lease turn have had breeding there. And then number two, there's a backup plan so that in the longer term as we have higher water levels, they have a place to go. With that, I'll turn it over to Carla Myers. I'd like to recognize all of her work over the years she's worked on this. This is a complicated project as you'll see from her presentation, but she's been involved as a project coordinator early on and she was recently promoted to Project Manager this past year. So with that I will turn it over to Carla.
[95:30] Speaker 6: Good afternoon, President San Wong and Board of Directors. I'm Carla Myers. I am a Project Manager in Design and construction and today I'm going to be giving an update on the Restore Hayward Marsh project. So just some quick background. The project area is located toward the southern end of the shoreline. It's within Hayward Regional Shoreline Park. It's near Highway 92 and it's also adjacent to the Hayward or the Hard Visitor Center. The site was historically used for salt production and in more recent history was used by Union Sanitary District for wastewater treatment. In the last few years, USD has stopped using the marsh for this purpose and in addition, there's been silting in of the ponds and increased erosion of the levees and it's become more of a regular maintenance issue for park staff. So these factors, along with impacts from future sea level rise have presented an opportunity for us to implement this project. So this project will be implementing some key elements from the HAASPA or Hayward Area Shoreline Planning Agency Master Plan. These are to keep the bay trail along the bay, to incorporate an adaptive retreat approach for the San Francisco Bay Trail and the Least Tern Islands, and also to connect to Cogswell Marsh to the north and Hard Marsh to the south for improved tidal connectivity. And really quick our project goals. These are to enhance wildlife habitat, plan for sea level rise, improve public access opportunities and improve management capabilities. And here's a few photos to share. This is Dave Rensci or Doc Quack here in our sewership department. And like Chris mentioned, he's been working out in the marsh for many, many years. The photo on the bottom left is a California Lee's Tern. The one in the middle is a Western Snowy Plover. And then we have our salt marsh harvest mouse. I also wanted to share just a few photos of existing conditions out in the project area. The photo on the left, it's. I think this is from a couple years ago, but it's pretty typical representative of the type of erosion that has been taking place in the marsh. And, you know, that's just created more of a maintenance issue for our operations staff. This photo on the right is tidal marsh habitat that comes right up to the shoreline edge. This photo on the left, I'll talk about. I'll talk about the first phase of the project a little bit more. But this is on one of the levees. Hard marsh is to the left of this, of this levee. And then to the right, a little bit out of the picture is the salt marsh harvest mouse. So this is running between those two areas. Phase 1A of the project will be building up and improving this levee. So that will be set up to import soil in future phases. And I'll get into that a little bit more. And then again, this photo on the right, this is the same island, I think it's in pond 3A that Dave Renci was standing on in one of the previous slides. This is Elise Tern Island. And then this is one of the photos I really like to share. It was taken a couple years ago during a king tide. And I think you can really get a sense of how high the water levels get during these big storm events. Okay, so with this slide, we'll look at current conditions or baseline conditions that we'll improve upon with implementation of the project. To orient us this hard visitor center or the interpretive center is toward the bottom where it says visitor center. It's right adjacent to Highway 92 and Breakwater Avenue and the Bay Trail. San Francisco Bay Trail. You can see it's this kind of gold line that starts near the visitor center and goes toward the bay on the left. As far as current habitat types, all the hatched line you can see makes up the majority of the site. This is currently managed ponds. And we also have submuted title marsh in that light green where it says mouse preserve. So I'll use this slide for an overview of some of the project elements and how they'll help achieve our project goals for habitat enhancements. The project will improve the existing lease turn island. So that's in pond 3A. And it will also be building new islands in pond 2A. Chris mentioned also that what that'll do is it'll allow the terns to have a place to migrate to Inland with future sea level rise. We'll also improve habitat diversity throughout the site by adding tidal marsh habitat out in pond 3B, so out here closer to the bay and transition zone and upland habitat further inland in the project area, public access improvements. These will include improving a portion of the San Francisco Bay Trail, so the darker orange line on the bay side will be making improvements to that portion of the Bay Trail. And the red dashed line through the middle of the site will be building that up so that in the future it'll be the location for the Bay Trail to move to with sea level rise for improving management capabilities. We're going to improve water control structures and the condition of the levees out here. So that'll help operations staff. And our other goal was to incorporate planning for sea level rise into the design. And a lot of the elements are, you know, hitting that goal, but some of those are adding living shoreline features to the bayside that'll help better protect the shoreline from erosion. And we'll be adding transition zone areas throughout the site, and that'll make space for habitats to move inland as sea level increases. And again, also like adding a place for the Bay Trail to move further east and creating new lease turn islands in Pond 2A. Those are other ways that the project is considering sea level rise in the design. The area in blue, this is the area that the first phase of the project, Phase 1A, will focus on. And I will get into that here. So the area highlighted in blue is generally the area that we will focus on for this first phase of the project this year. And what the focus of this phase will be to build up the levy, build the construction access road into the site so that we are set up to receive imported soil in future phases of the project. And this a few slides ago I showed you, like, a levee that was between hard marsh and the mouse preserve. And this red dashed line, this, like, first section of it, that's where that photo was taken from, pretty much. I also wanted to talk about visitor use as it relates to this construction of this phase of the project. This is a pretty busy area. There's a lot of park visitors, school, you know, school field trips, hikers and bikers and building. Phase 1A will make sure that we keep separation of the construction access road separate from the Bay Trail so that that's not impacting the park users. And we'll also work really closely with our selected contractor to make sure we have a solid traffic control plan to make the project safe. So really quick for project cost. So Far, we've spent just over $2 million on feasibility, design and permitting. And for Phase 1A construction, we have received an updated engineer's estimate since we completed this presentation. So It's. It's about 25 to 30% higher than this. And what this 1.8 million includes is construction cost estimate contingency for construction, and consultant fees. And so we'll be working really closely with our grants department on our updating our funding strategy. Now that we have an updated engineer's estimate for future phases, you can see that we're showing ranges of costs for all the other phases. And once we get closer to implementing those phases, we'll be able to refine those costs and bring something back that's more specific. But the cost will really depend on the availability of soil or fill material in the future, as well as the suitability of that material when we're ready to. To receive it on site. So just continuing with project funding, I mentioned that we spent about $2 million to date. There's now approximately 1.6 million available in the project. And that's because we. Since we prepared this presentation, we've amended our consultant contract so now there's about 1.6. And we're planning to request, when we come back to the board in August to award the construction contract, to request a transfer to appropriate additional funds into the project. It'll likely be more than just 300,000 because of our updated estimates, but that's part of what we will be bringing back to the board and also for grants. Just to give you guys an idea of what has been applied for, we recently were awarded $2 million for construction from the Restoration Authority. It's not budgeted to the project yet, but we're tentatively planning to use that for phase 1B. And our grants department has applied for all these other grants that are currently in the hopper, so we're hopeful that we'll hear good news about those. So this slide is just to give a snapshot of the project timeline. During the early stages of the project, we. That's the time that we did a lot of our community engagement and outreach. We brought our consultant on board during that feasibility and pre design phase and completed our feasibility studies around the same time. And going into design and permitting, the preferred concept was approved by the board and that's what we base our project design on. We also got our CEQA exemption during that time and secured our regulatory permits for the project. And now looking at construction for this year, we are currently working on our grading permit and we're working to get that from the City of Hayward. We're finalizing our bid documents and we are looking to award our construction contract in August and starting work around September 1st. This is showing July, but now we're looking to start construction in September this year and from there we'll implement the future phases of the project Then I just wanted to share a few photos of public outreach I mentioned that was a big effort we took on for the project. This. These photos are from a site visit maybe a year or two ago. We got really good turnout. I think a lot of our board members were there. So it was great to see, you know, so many people engage with the project. And then with this slide, this is just a summary of the different times we've come to the board, including committee meetings, full board meetings and site visits. We first brought this to the board in 2022 to award our consultant contract to Upright Engineering. And jumping all the way to later this year, we're looking to come back in August, not June as this is showing, but looking to come back in the first meeting in August to award the construction contract and request additional funding for the project. And then almost wrapping up here. This slide is a summary of all the different permits and coordination and right of way efforts that we've worked on within our department, but other district departments, a couple of main ones, our BCDC permit, our Army Corps permit. We've had regular coordination with all the agency members of H.A.S.P.A. and over here you can see the many landowners and easement holders in the project area. And our land department has been really instrumental in helping us work through a lot of these issues. So for next steps we are planning to do outreach for construction implementation. There is tentatively a meeting, a public workshop in June that we're planning to have a table at for this project to just inform the community, let them know construction's coming and answer any questions. And we'll definitely be working with external affairs as we get closer to construction implementation to put messaging out our bid period. We're planning tentatively around mid May now to put the project out to bid. And like I mentioned, coming back in August, the first meeting in August to award the construction contract with a notice to proceed in September. So I'm happy to answer any questions. And this is a QR code for and it takes you to our project website if you want to check it out.
[110:48] Speaker 2: Great, thanks so much. That's a great overview of the project and thanks for the update. Do we have any questions from members of the board? Go ahead.
[110:55] Speaker 3: Director Mercurial Yeah, this is a tremendous. This is one of the biggest projects we've done. It's pretty impressive. It's also impressive. I think I counted 28 agencies there, you know, and so that kind of illustrates when there's frustration about why it takes the time it takes to do these things. That 28 agency number is not known to the people that are questioning that. So I think we understand, you know, why we've come to understand why these things are like that. My question, though, is so there's a certain amount of material that needs to be brought in to raise the levy and improve the road and all that. Do we have any idea that whether we'll be able to get where we'll get that from? You know, like, I'm thinking all the waste soil that comes out of trenching and streets by various local utilities, that's one thing. But what's the idea about where that material might come from?
[111:55] Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a good question. We are planning to work with a dirt broker, essentially similar. I think we could say it's similar to what. What was implemented for Oyster Bay to receive, you know, basically to be ready to receive material that's excavated from their other project sites. If it's suitable for our site, that'll be a great win for the project to be able to have that material, you know, hopefully at low to no cost.
[112:24] Speaker 3: Right. So there's an entity that acts like a. Like a clearinghouse, so to speak, for all that. That makes sense. Okay.
[112:30] Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[112:31] Speaker 1: I have some sediment for you at Lake Temis.
[112:33] Speaker 6: I'll take.
[112:34] Speaker 1: I'll take it.
[112:34] Speaker 6: We'll test it and take it.
[112:39] Speaker 2: It's okay. Any. Any other comments? Director DeChambeau, please, please. No questions. Comments? Go ahead.
[112:47] Speaker 3: Director Wy. Yeah, just thanks, Carla, and all your team. Great project. It's been a long, long time. It's going to be a long, long time. But you're turning water into wine down there. It's amazing. I. I mean, it was an outfall for a sewer district, and now it's going to be a beautiful. Dave Rimche's grandkids are going to be raised there for in perpetuity, and I'm really happy about it. Also, there's a number of things that, you know, there's also these extraneous benefits. One was that the collaboration with hard to give us 77 acres, I think, was a really, really good thing. Those collaborations we keep talking about worked really well in that case. Also, the HAASPA Hayward Area Shoreline Planning Agency, you know, we've got this master plan. I'm a member. We're the poster child for great work and, you know, we're getting all the grants. We're the crown jewel of haas, in my opinion. So we're doing great work and I appreciate it.
[113:40] Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you.
[113:46] Speaker 1: Well, just a huge thank you. Really excellent report and it's really exciting to see. See the work that's going on down there. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.
[113:55] Speaker 2: All right, let's take a moment to open up for public comment.
[113:58] Speaker 1: There is no public comment on this item.
[114:00] Speaker 2: All right, so we'll close public comment. And now any final comments from members of the board. Again, this is another presentation, so we're not making a motion or taking a vote on this item. Well, I look forward to seeing you again. It sounds like you're going to be back here probably in August, and so this is great just to get ready for that next presentation. So thank you.
[114:21] Speaker 1: Thank you.
[114:22] Speaker 2: All right, and then let's go ahead and take a short break. Let's try to make it maybe eight minutes. So to three. 25. Let's go ahead and get started again because I think our other two board members will be here shortly. So. So welcome back, everyone. We're now moving on to agenda item J1. And this is our authorization to execute a contract for engineering and specialty services.
[115:08] Speaker 4: Good afternoon. Good afternoon. President San Wong, board members, Chris Barton, Restoration Projects manager. I'll do a brief intro for this action item. This is an action item to hire a consultant professional services agreement for the Chabot Gun Club. And this action essentially advances steps that the park district has taken over the years to address lead contamination at the former gun club.
[115:37] Speaker 3: There are steps that are necessary to
[115:39] Speaker 4: protect human and ecological health, and it will allow flexibility for future uses at the site. The stewardship department has been in the lead over the years in developing this
[115:52] Speaker 3: plan, and the implementation is now with
[115:55] Speaker 4: the Restoration Projects unit. I'd like to introduce Mac Olsen.
[115:59] Speaker 3: He's new to the park district, at
[116:01] Speaker 4: least new new ish within the last year or so. Mac is a civil engineer and he's
[116:07] Speaker 3: assigned to this project.
[116:08] Speaker 4: He'll give the presentation for background. Mac is also working on Point Isabel and the Nunn Knightson Restoration Project. And he's also assisting with FEMA work as well for some of the FEMA emergency repair projects. So I'll turn it over to Mac.
[116:27] Speaker 3: Thank you, Chris. And good afternoon, everyone. Like Chris said, this presentation provides a project background and supporting information for our recommendation to execute an engineering service contract for the environmental Remediation of Anthony Chabot marksmanship Range, also known as the gun Club. So it's referred to many different things. But in this presentation I'll abbreviate the marksmanship range to just form a range or just range or project site. So this used to be a former shooting range facility. It started operations in 1963. The site was developed to have a rifle, pistol and shotgun range. The historical use led to lead contamination and also some clay pigeon pollution from over 50 years of operation. This led to some challenging maintenance issues. And it was found that significant funding was needed to continue operating. So the gun range was closed in March 2016. Okay, there we go. And so the project site. Let me go back here. The project site is located in Anthony Chapeau Regional Park. It's near the crest of Redwood Road. I just wanted to mention that before moving on. After the range closure, the district set aside funding and completed the following actions that were approved by the district district board that started out with stormwater management. It was managed under a industrial stormwater permit and the district contracted stormwater management services with the consultants and then also made stormwater improvements so that stormwater was contained within the ranges. This eliminated off site discharges. There was also some building demolition that happened in 2017 which included some of the buildings on site. And then in 2019, the board authorized a site investigation. And then there was a risk assessment that occurred in 2022 and 2023. And then most recently in 2024 and 25, there was a feasibility study and remedies remedial action plan. That's what you'll see as like the FSRAP abbreviation. So this established the project goals, this previous work and previous authorization. And these goals were to advance the park district's mission of environmental stewardship and compliance with water quality and cleanup laws, restore the parkland natural resource values, protect human and ecological health, allow flexible future use opportunities for the site, and advance the park district's commitment with the water board's voluntary site cleanup agreement. The most recent work that was completed was done with a stewardship lead and with the support of consultants. And this included the project feasibility study and remedial action plan which summarized the conceptual site model for the site, which found that pollution was mostly within the shallow soil. And then it summarized the applicable relevant and appropriate requirements for the remediation. It also developed the remedial action objectives and goals based on the human health and ecological risk assessments that were completed. Completed. And this FSRAP also included the remedial option that was recommended by staff and was later approved by the Water Board. So in the FS RAP it was three options were analyzed. These included institutional controls and engineering controls, which are primarily signage information and then fencing, you know, like isolating the site from park users and park staff from using it. And then the second one is, second option was excavation and off site disposal. And the third option was on site consolidation and isolation. And this was the third option includes techniques to make contaminants less mobile available and reduces the risk to potential receptors. So staff recommended option three and like I said previously, the Water Board approved this option. We selected this option over option one because it does not restrict future use and removes exposure pathways. And it's also it was selected over option two because it achieves similar exposure pathway reduction for eight times less cost. So next steps were taken by DECO staff following the Water Board's applied approval of the fsrap. And this included preparing a request for proposal for additional design services and actions required before constructions. This included the remedial or the regional board's regional Water Board's required remedial design implementation plan before remediation and construction. And then additional studies for permitting and CEQA and then the preparation of construction design drawings for our construction bidding process. So we completed this RFP process which was initiated in December of 19th, 2025. We had site walks with potential proposers and then we received four proposals. We evaluated those and we selected Geosyntech as the most qualified and responsive to those criteria. And then we're just looking at the future outlook here starting and this is based on the project goals and the Water Board's approved remedial option and our current RFP scope of work. So design, you know, starting this year and going into next year, remedial construction starting next year and into the in the following year and then maintenance and monitoring, including restoration of the site and then eventual site closure. So design which is proposed to start this year includes the RFP scope and then also wanted to mention that it also includes. We're also planning in that, in that process to bring an update to the board so that there'll be an update on the design and what the proposed design will entail so that the board can have those updates as well. And then yeah, based on the project goals and the remedial option that we have approved from the Water Board, we recommend district staff and the General manager recommends the board authorize the execution of the contract with Geosyntec for the stated amount here to prepare design and implementation plan and construction documentation necessary for the site's medial construction and eventual closure using the funds from the mediation of former gun Club project. And with that. Thank you.
[124:51] Speaker 1: Great.
[124:51] Speaker 2: Thanks so much. This is. It's good to see, you know, the planning process and, you know, when you anticipate coming back, you know, to share the designs and when construction might start. I'll just start with one quick question. So I see that our balance remaining should this be approved today will be around 5.9 million. Do we have any sort of, like, anticipated or estimated cost of construction for this project? Do we think that the 5.9 million allocated should cover that, or do we possibly anticipate it might go a little bit higher?
[125:26] Speaker 3: Yeah, within the fsrap, there is a cost estimate which was within our current budget. And right now we don't have anything to suspect that it would go over. But with this design process, we will have those updates and that will be something that we'll definitely provide the board with as an update. And I'd just add that's sort of part of how we've been formulating our recommended approach to this project is trying
[125:57] Speaker 4: to figure out what's the, you know, most beneficial design that also is. Doesn't cost too much.
[126:06] Speaker 2: Best cost is a phrase that I sometimes use. So we could use that here for this project. Best cost. And then when this comes to the board executive committee update. So that will be when the design, the preliminary design is available on the flowchart. So will we maybe also have a better sense of the construction estimate? Maybe when we have the design? So that would be something that could be reviewed at that executive committee meeting potentially?
[126:32] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[126:32] Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. Great. Thank you. That's. That's all that I have. Any other questions? Go ahead.
[126:37] Speaker 3: Director Mercurio, just so I have a complete under. Well, as complete as I could understand it, but what the exact implementation of this is going to be, Is it sort of gathering the contaminated soil into one relatively limited area and then what, capping it with something? Yeah, essentially that's. What, is it a porous cap or. I'm not a porous. But is it like a hard surface or like a clay surface, or what would it be? Yeah, that's. So the wrap right now has potential options for the cap, but they weren't fully developed. Hence, like the RFP design or the rfp, you know, the proposals that we got from these engineering firms, we need to develop this design further with them and do additional studies to make sure that this cap is appropriate. And then that area where the cap is. Is contained would be fenced and to exclude access or not. I haven't, we haven't developed the plan yet for that, but hopefully it wouldn't involve additional engineering controls such as that. But yeah, I think in general it's
[128:05] Speaker 4: the approaches that we're not adding features
[128:07] Speaker 3: that invite the public to that space. Like it wouldn't be an activated space,
[128:11] Speaker 4: but also like, I don't, I don't think we have to have like a fence to keep people out. So it's, it's just, you know. Yeah, it's the balance of those two things.
[128:21] Speaker 3: Right.
[128:22] Speaker 4: Okay.
[128:26] Speaker 2: Any other questions for members of the board? Go ahead, Director.
[128:31] Speaker 3: As I understand it, there are levels of remediation you can do. So we can either say we're going to put a bunch of cap on it, plant a bunch of eucalyptus over it and make it look as your photo showed, everything around it is surrounded by eucalyptus forest. It's a very small area in comparison to the big thousands of acres of Anthony Chabot. Or we can make it into a daycare center and there's different levels of remediation that need to occur. So is that what part, part of this 700 grand is going to be in the study? Are they going to study all of the issues? My point is, can we give up on this and just say let's cap it, contain it and forget about it ever again and make like it was never there? Yeah, we're not, we're not studying how
[129:16] Speaker 4: to turn this into a daycare center.
[129:17] Speaker 3: I think we're only looking at the cost, the proposal where this, this is
[129:23] Speaker 4: not a public use site, essentially.
[129:30] Speaker 2: Go ahead, Director DeChambeau.
[129:32] Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess following up on that, I imagine the human health risk assessment and the eco risk assessment drove the pathways and that determination must be made of its future use. I mean we must have that somewhere. Like we aren't going to do residential or a daycare. We aren't going to. So anyway, that must be out there in the record somewhere. I have two questions about that. I didn't. Following up on Director Makiro's question, I actually am not familiar with the term consolidate and isolate and it does sound like would be somehow making sure the material is all piled in one place. The type of cap that goes on the top is kind of important. For the next question I have, like what is the ongoing cost in monitoring? It's actually not just lead. I looked up the site. There's solvents out there as well. So I imagine we're going to have to do some type of monitoring. And there's always a five year plan to relook at five years and make sure the cap is working. Sort of like out at Point Isabel. Five years later we found out, well, it's pooling and puddling and we do have lead exposure. So that kind of thing is going to happen here too. I imagine it's required. But what's the cost for, for that and this 5.9 million that was raised, does it include this ongoing monitoring and making sure? To me it just sounds like we might be setting ourselves up to similar what we're doing at Point Isabel right now. For another, I don't remember what the millions were that we transferred for that to get that fixed. But are we considering all the costs, all the long term costs, the O and M costs, the monitoring and the potential potential that the type of cap you chose, it might be cheap up front to put in a dirt cap. And oh by the way, I have some soil from Lake Temescale and then putting a fence around it. But where's the, is the dollar amount all considered in those decisions? I mean it could be ongoing. 5.9 million doesn't sound like a lot to me.
[131:29] Speaker 3: There is some O and M costs, but I'd have to look into the, the full extent of what was considered. But there is a pretty detailed cost breakdown in the FS rap we have.
[131:45] Speaker 1: Usually there's some type of monitoring. Both lead and solvents are going to have to be tested and all of that. But anyway, I hope we don't hear back that this is going to be another 5.9 million because the cap is, was chosen to be a dirt cap and it's not sufficient.
[132:02] Speaker 3: Me too. I think our, what's guiding. I think our team is really trying
[132:06] Speaker 4: to both like deal with this issue
[132:09] Speaker 3: and make it as Olivia.
[132:14] Speaker 4: What your term was the best cost
[132:16] Speaker 3: as possible and at the same time like as sustainable for the long term as it can be.
[132:21] Speaker 4: So agreed that that's, that's what's trying
[132:24] Speaker 3: to guide our recommendations. I mean at this point this is hiring the person to, or the organization
[132:30] Speaker 4: to do the additional analysis and engineering. Right. To make it possible. But I think we can follow up to provide any additional information on monitoring and
[132:44] Speaker 3: maintenance too.
[132:45] Speaker 1: And if there's a policy decision to spend more now on a cap that's going to last longer later. I don't know if we're past that. It's very impressive. I've done EPA cleanup work for a long time. This is way out of the gate. I can tell that the remedial investigation, the feasibility studies, the human health risk, everything's been done already out there. So thank you for all of that and just look forward to how we can help with policy to make sure it doesn't keep coming back to us as a problem.
[133:13] Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's still time to
[133:15] Speaker 4: like talk to, you know, dive into this more deeply.
[133:19] Speaker 3: I mean my understanding, Chris, correct me
[133:21] Speaker 4: if I'm wrong, we haven't done CEQA yet. Right. And that's, that's kind of like the project approval step.
[133:28] Speaker 3: Right, with your board.
[133:29] Speaker 4: So, you know, I think while like Director Waspi said we're not building a daycare center here, I think we kind
[133:39] Speaker 3: of know that this, we're considering this just kind of like park, undeveloped parkland for the future and that's sort of
[133:45] Speaker 4: how we're looking at it.
[133:49] Speaker 3: Within that sort of framing, we can dive in deeper if that's helpful.
[133:52] Speaker 1: In the meantime, the only other question I had, is there some fencing or signage out there like don't enter?
[133:58] Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, sorry, I forgot to mention that this site is isolated from the public. It is on a private road which is gated and locked and then there is fencing around it which is shut. And there is no access into like the range floors. And yeah, it's only available for park employees.
[134:21] Speaker 1: So is there a sign like hazards?
[134:24] Speaker 3: There is signage too. That explains why it's closed.
[134:28] Speaker 1: And I'm a big public right to no person too. Thank you. Looks like this is really far along and a good plan.
[134:36] Speaker 4: If I can add.
[134:37] Speaker 3: Chris Barton, Restoration Projects Manager, if I
[134:39] Speaker 4: could just respond to Director DeChambeau's question. I think it's a great question about O and M. And to be clear, the budget that we currently have now that we're using is for construction and the future O and M costs will be a part of this scope of work. Because as Director Mercurio, and to your question too about the cap, there's going to be a lot of discussion and analysis about what the O and M is going to entail and staff will endeavor to make sure that we have the lowest long term maintenance that's going to be needed. And from a process standpoint, we will definitely highlight that when we get to the preliminary design because then at that point we will have identified what the cap is going to be, if there's going to be any fenced off areas, and the board executive committee will have an opportunity to take a look at that and provide feedback on that. And then again, before we proceed with any kind of construction. The full board will have an opportunity to look that over. And I.
[135:44] Speaker 3: And I also wanted to note before
[135:47] Speaker 4: it's just to highlight again the lead contamination that's there now. It needs to be managed because the first action was stormwater management. So we are already spending money for, you know, to make sure that we're not polluting the creek and that is
[136:02] Speaker 3: already O and M that we are incurring.
[136:06] Speaker 2: You know, this is a good conversation. Maybe when this comes back to the executive committee with the preliminary design, it might be good to. You know, I always think in terms of matrix. Matrix matrices, but maybe, you know, there could be like option A, option B, if there's an option C, and then, you know, show the construction costs and then the anticipated O and M cost. So that if maybe option A is a lower construction cost but higher O and M cost, but then option B might be higher construction but lower O and M, that might be helpful for us to, you know, get a sense of what the decision options are. And is that something that we can direct Geosyntech to help provide us as part of this?
[136:46] Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah. That's very common to have that type of matrix. And yeah, this is a good procedure to go through while doing the design. Yeah.
[136:55] Speaker 2: And then with that, I think it also would be helpful to understand, you know, with the stormwater management aspect, you know, what we are spending right now as well, what our current, you know, O and M costs and current stormwater management costs are at the site as well. When we bring this back to executive committee. Go ahead.
[137:15] Speaker 3: I was just wondering, so. And we've committed $9 million, a little more than 9 million towards this remediation. But boy, it sure feels terrible to use park funds to clean up a mess like that. Have we ever identified any grant sources? I remember when this all started. I think it was the California Department of Toxic Substances committee was chaired by Bill Quirk, our assembly member around here. And there was some hope that he would give us some relief in some form. And he's no longer there. But is there any. Well, I think the challenge with this
[137:47] Speaker 4: site compared to some others that we have or have required, our board authorized this action. You know, our board in 1962 set up a lease and created the situation. So since we as an agency caused this, it isn't something we purchased with a previous condition where there aren't really grants that are associated with this cleanup, this type of a cleanup action. And so maybe if we were going to do some grand reuse or something, and then a Portion of that reuse could eventually. But it's very complicated for something where we are the responsible party per se, back to the stormwater.
[138:22] Speaker 3: One thing I can say is that,
[138:23] Speaker 7: I mean, this started with a storm.
[138:25] Speaker 4: This is this issue. And the challenge with managing this site was identified because the Alameda County Environmental health and the water board started doing inspections in the early 2000s and required us to develop a stormwater pollution prevention plan, management plan, when it was being
[138:39] Speaker 3: operated as a club.
[138:40] Speaker 4: And so we started monitoring it. And those costs during the club operation were much higher than they are now because what we were able to do once the range was closed, we were able to collect. We raised all the storm drains much higher. So now all the stored drains are 2 or 3ft tall. And the. There's no runoff. There's some small amount of runoff, but most of the runoff is contained within the active ranges, so we don't have an issue. So the costs ongoing right now are managing those risers, making sure they stay open, and then pumping some of the water from one of the ranges back up into the rainforest so it doesn't go down into Grass Valley Creek. So that's the ongoing management. Once the site is finished from this design implemented, we won't no longer need that to manage stormwater there because all theoretically, the contaminated soils will be under that cap. And so we will no longer have the management cost for storm water. But that's what we're doing now, ongoing. But the costs are much less than they were when the club was in operation. And so that's just some of the historical context.
[139:35] Speaker 2: So that would also maybe when we. When this comes back to executive committee, it might be helpful to get some of that historical information just to. Just to know, you know, what were the costs of the stormwater management when this club was in operation? I think that would be interesting to include as part of the report when it comes back to.
[139:50] Speaker 4: Yeah, we can talk about that and include that. I didn't introduce myself, but Matt Grohl, acting assistant General manager, Acquisition, Stewardship and Planning. Yeah, we can. We could. I can help them put that together. I think that the challenge.
[140:03] Speaker 7: A lot of this was done leading
[140:05] Speaker 4: up to the closure and a lot of those costs because we were negotiating with the club at the time, what would it take to continue operating? Because there was a large constituency that wanted this to continue. A lot of people used it. Our police department used it. Other neighboring departments used this range for practice and training. But the time, the cost. We looked at the cost of continued operation. And what that would take and that was going to take a stormwater remediation and treatment system to keep capturing all that stormwater and treating it. And we estimated those costs to be between 15 to 20 million dollars of ongoing operational costs. And then we looked at the club to raise fees or do things to do that. And they were not interested in doing that or would provide us lower estimates and say oh no, we can do this for $2 million. And our response to that was well, you can say that now, but if we enter this lease with you and you and you're wrong, who's paying that? Our taxpayers are paying that. And so our board and our staff thought that cost was around $15 million. And if there wasn't that ongoing oversight and cost and containment, that it wasn't prudent to continue that operation. So we made that like that we had to stop then because the problem was only going to keep getting bigger unless we tried to stop it and then move forward with this remediation. So we've kept it in a somewhat stable site as best we can until we get it to this and taking our time to develop the remedial plan.
[141:16] Speaker 1: Those are all really interesting comments. I just wonder too. I mean there must might be an opportunity. I don't know the cleanup levels and things, but maybe there's something like a BMX bike where there's not exposure. It's not a nursery school. We didn't have to contain the groundwater. We don't have drinking fountains. There's institutional but. But maybe, you know, someone could use is like a brownfields. I mean reuse is something we want to do and we're good at it. Other parks, I mean we have Frisbee golf on top of one of our other landfills. I mean, I don't know if there is a use for this besides piling it all up, putting a cover on it and putting a fence around it. There may be some use for it.
[141:54] Speaker 3: I just share this is something that's had a lot of discussion in the past.
[141:58] Speaker 4: And the challenge is that if we seek to reuse it, both the cost
[142:04] Speaker 3: of what the way we need to clean it up and do that work
[142:10] Speaker 4: would be significantly more. And then the maintenance and monitoring to
[142:14] Speaker 3: make sure that we didn't end up with a negative situation in the future
[142:19] Speaker 4: would be more as well passive like a dog park.
[142:22] Speaker 3: Even a dog park at this site
[142:26] Speaker 4: would potentially compared to an area that has no, again, I haven't saved the life.
[142:32] Speaker 1: They're that yeah, like it's.
[142:35] Speaker 4: Yeah But I.
[142:36] Speaker 3: But agreed.
[142:37] Speaker 4: I think initially that was sort of our interest as well, as it already is a site that has a road
[142:43] Speaker 3: going to it and has been developed in the past.
[142:45] Speaker 4: And so we thought that might be great. But when we looked at the overall potential cost of doing something like that,
[142:52] Speaker 3: it would have taken a significant investment, as was mentioned. This isn't something.
[142:55] Speaker 4: Something that we can seek outside funding for.
[142:58] Speaker 3: Right.
[142:58] Speaker 4: It's something that.
[142:59] Speaker 3: Right. We have to fund it ourselves.
[143:03] Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay.
[143:05] Speaker 2: What I like to do is open up public comment and see if we have any members of the public.
[143:09] Speaker 1: There is no public comment on this item.
[143:11] Speaker 2: All right, so we will close public comment. We come back to the board for any additional comments. But we are also looking for a motion. This is an action item. And so I'll point you to page 86, 687 in our packet. That is the resolution that's been drafted for us for this item today. Go ahead.
[143:31] Speaker 3: So there was a time when you wouldn't believe that it was possible that this item could have no comments based on. Because I was on the Park Advisory Committee when this whole. From the time it was first announced till the time that the board took its action to get that thing closed was years. And I remember the board made the decision, and Matt reminded us, you know, there was kind of like, you know, a discussion of how to deal with this. Does it keep going? Do they help pay? They don't have the ability to pay. Okay, what's. What happens? And I remember thinking, boy, I'm glad I'm not a board member for. To have to make that decision, because it just sounded like. Because there was a huge constituency to keep it open. You know, we got people speaking to the Park Advisory Committee, you know, saying, now we have to drive all the way to Solano. All these places, they were saying. And. And the board was. Was courageous enough, I believe I would characterize it that way, but to bite the bullet, close it, and then pay for the cleanup. And that's what we're doing right now. So I'm really, really happy that it's come to where it is and that we have the wherewithal and the knowledge and to, you know, get this buttoned up and have to just, you know, let it go.
[144:54] Speaker 2: Yeah. If I recall correctly, this is either my first or second Park Advisory Committee meeting. So I also do remember this, and we definitely received a large number of comments at that time. Any other board members with comments and. Or wanting to make a motion?
[145:11] Speaker 3: Well, just a historical. Historical perspective. I was There I was a young board member and it was amazing. We, this place was way too small. We had to rent out Redwood Canyon golf Courses facility. And it was packed and the, the parking lot was packed. And these are folks who were very serious about their second amendment rights. And in my opinion, you know, and I, John Maunder, the range master was a friend of mine and I had many talks with him and just said John, change your paradigm here. Shoot with steel jacketed bullets. Do anything, do something. And he wouldn't do it, just was not going to change. And decided to go with a highfalutin LA lawyer that was all about second amendment. And it was, that's all they fought for was the second amendment. And it just fell flat with our board. Board. And it was an interesting meeting. I'm glad they don't film those things or didn't film them in those days. But anyway, I, I, if there's no further comments, I would make the motion.
[146:08] Speaker 2: Motion to approve.
[146:09] Speaker 3: Yes. The resolution contract with Syntech Geo. Syntech.
[146:13] Speaker 2: Okay, do we have a second on that motion? And second. Okay, we have a second from Director Espana. All in favor say aye. Any opposed? Any abstention? So it passes. 60. Thank you. All right, so now we're moving on to our next item. I believe it's what J2. J 2. Authorization to execute two specialty contracts.
[146:45] Speaker 3: On these next times we're going to try doing this sort of speed version but if we miss something and you
[146:51] Speaker 4: board has questions, just let us know.
[146:57] Speaker 3: All right.
[146:57] Speaker 4: Good afternoon Board of Directors President San Wong, Kari Hale, Assistant Fire Chief. We are seeking authorization to execute two specialty contracts for fuels reduction services in Tilton Regional park with expert tree services in the amount not to exceed $947,100 and Bay Area tree specialists in the amount not to exceed $663,018. Why does this work matter? Which to me is the most important question to answer. We are challenged with some of the most complex high critical fuels work in the entire East Bay area, which is the Oakland Berkeley Hills where we have an extremely dense population, one of the most dense populations next to a wildland urban interface in the Northern California. And also an area that has fire history that's devastating and fire weather that can bring winds that exceed 90 miles per hour. So for those reasons we are targeting this area and doing fuels management work in the Berkeley Hills. This project is 56.3 acres in one of the most critical areas of our land that we're managing. It also is going to safeguard our adjacent communities which are the residents that live adjacent to Tilden Park. And our infrastructure, for example, our Merrill Go Round, our historic Merrill Go Round that was built in 1911 and brought to the park district from San Bernardino in 1948. So this work is going to safeguard that particular historic marigold. It also promotes healthy forest. So our work, not just, not only does it do fuels mitigation, our work makes our forest healthier by targeting dead standing trees, creating tree spacing so that infestations like the bark beetle and other pathogens do not spread as quickly through our forests, and also gives the opportunity for the ecological resources that we do want to thrive to grow and be healthier. And this project is funded by fema, the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. That is a proactive grant that targets areas that are potential for disaster, but provides funding so that that work can be done before a disaster occur. So I want to go over our contract evaluation process. It's the same process you've seen before. We evaluate the project, understanding their feasibility, their ability to do it on a timely basis, and do what they say they're going to do. The team's qualifications. So the experience of their team, of the team and their qualifications, the proposals, capabilities, their equipment, their environmental sensitivity or knowledge, which is very important to us. And their equipment. What equipment do they have to be able to do the work that we want? References of past performance, you know, how have you performed in the past? And cost proposal. These contractors will propose various different options and we will pick the one that's the most efficient and safest, and the one that benefits the Park District in our projects. And lastly, the safety, equity and cultural competency, inclusive strategies, multilingual outreach and safety. So let's talk about unit one, which is the Merrill Round Project. This project is scheduled to start in 2020, well, August and end in December. It's north of the Merrill Go Round parking lot. Central Park Drive. Contractor Expert Tree and acres 28.7 acres for $947,100. Objective to treat eucalyptus stands with specialized techniques. Remove all eucalyptus stems under 24 inch diameter in paved areas and remove all eucalyptus stems under 12 inch diameter in an entire project area. Also, to mitigate heavy fuel accumulation, such as downed trees, slash will be removed. What you did not. What is not being removed are large trees higher than 24 inch diameter. And the answer to that question, just in case you might have that is because those trees provide shade and habitat, but most importantly, shade. And shade's important because when you remove these large trees, you basically daylight an area and when area is daylight, it was sun, something else will grow there. And a lot of times it's invasive, invasive plants or brush. And so now we just created another fire problem and expected outcome which is to retain a healthy forest canopy, thin forested area and keep mature eucalyptus trees and native vegetation and enhanced thinning near paved surface for fire safety and accessibility. So I want to give you a visual of what this project area looks like. As you can see here, towards would be your left point portion of the screen where you see the structures. That whole strip of trees is a project area. But really what I want you to see from this picture is that you have acres of park district land adjacent to the wildland urban interface which is the Berkeley hills. So that's unit one. Unit two is the golf course project. Start date is May projected to end in December. Location south of golf course north of Grizzly Peak. Contractors can be barrier tree experts. 27.6 acres for amount of $663,018. And the objective on this particular project then Eucalyptus, small diameter bay trees, brush stands, prioritize the Sutton oak def and expected out outcome is to retain a healthy forest canopy, healthier forest stands and pathogen management. Let me give you a visual of what this particular area looks like. You can see the highlighted yellow area and there's a ridge line where you have dense trees and brush. And on the other side of that is miles and miles of the most urban area which is the city of Berkeley and the Berkeley hills. So this project is targeting that area. So before I close, we are working on potentially a change which is making it to the next board meeting that has a lot of items. So I was told by the acting general manager that we might be able to make it as long as we keep our presentation very concise. So I'm going to do that. But a lot of information that you receive today would be similar to the next project, except it might just be one slide instead of four or five slides. So in closing, we are seeking authorization to execute two specialty contracts for fuels reduction services in Tilton Regional park with expert trees service, the amount not to exceed $947,100. And Bay Area tree specialist, the amount not to exceed exceed $663,018. Thank you.
[155:16] Speaker 2: Great. Thank you. And if I heard that correctly, you're coming back again at our next board meeting. Feel free to remind and refresh us that you know the presentation we heard here today is very connected to when you'll be back with us at the next meeting.
[155:31] Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely. And part of that would be like the contractor selection process. We use the same format, but it literally will be the very similar, just different project.
[155:42] Speaker 2: Great. Any, any reminders and refreshers are always welcome. I just have one quick question and then I'll open up to the board for questions. So I just have a question about the, the FEMA hazard mitigation grant program. Did it require the matching, the. The 1.2 million match, or is that something that we just chose to do on our own?
[156:01] Speaker 4: It's a, it's a requirement to do matching. And I wouldn't say all grants, but most grants do that. But it, obviously it gives our ability to expand our dollar. And fortunately the district does provide funds for the fire department to do fuels mitigation work. And so that matching, you know, we can be creative with where that money comes from. So it, so it's efficient for the district.
[156:26] Speaker 2: Great. Thank you. Any other board questions on this item?
[156:31] Speaker 1: Well, just a comment. Thank you so much for this. This is critically important work. I'm in and around that area all the time and it's, I think, really important to thin and reduce those eucalyptus stands. So I really appreciate the presentation and the contracts that are before us today. I'd be happy to make a motion. Unless someone else has comments, we'll do
[156:54] Speaker 2: a little public comment. But yeah. Any other questions? Otherwise we'll have another opportunity. Go ahead.
[157:00] Speaker 3: Correct. Thanks. Great project. I look forward to seeing this done. My one question is how did we get tree experts or tree services without a low bid contract? Are these considered professional contracts nowadays?
[157:16] Speaker 4: Was it lowest bidder?
[157:17] Speaker 3: Were these guys the lowest bidders or did you use the criteria like we used for low lawyers and professional contractors?
[157:23] Speaker 4: We use the criteria that you saw in the previous slide. So it's not always the lowest bid. It has everything to do with their equipment, their proposal, their experience with our projects. The whole criteria of 100 point scoring for expert tree. I can get back to you, but I don't believe. Excuse me, I don't believe they were the lowest. I would have to follow up on that.
[157:51] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not a question for you. It would be a question for us. Is that considered a professional contract? Is that what the rules are?
[157:56] Speaker 4: It's not professional services, but the contract. Though
[158:02] Speaker 3: Katie or somebody could probably provide
[158:04] Speaker 4: more detail about the specific process.
[158:09] Speaker 3: I don't. I think it's like goods and trades or maybe.
[158:15] Speaker 4: Okay, you're asking about the contract. We'll call it model. Is that what you're asking about?
[158:21] Speaker 3: No, I'm asking. We have contracts come before us anything over $50,000? If it's something like we're going to
[158:26] Speaker 4: build something somewhere, there are at least three or four. Oh, yes, yes, absolutely.
[158:33] Speaker 3: We had four bidders. Here's what the lowest bidder was. This. And they list what the prices were in professional contracts. We just say we pick what's the best.
[158:41] Speaker 4: So. So, yes. So there's, like, different. There's, like, goods and trades like this. There's professional services, like legal or, you
[158:49] Speaker 3: know, something like that. And then. And then there's construction contracts.
[158:52] Speaker 4: Right.
[158:53] Speaker 3: Which is a different thing as well.
[158:56] Speaker 4: Right. So the. And in this case, the contractor was selected not just on the lowest price, but in meeting a whole criteria that
[159:03] Speaker 3: was outlined in the rfp, if that makes sense. And I assume we've used both of these contractors before.
[159:09] Speaker 4: Repeat your question.
[159:11] Speaker 3: Have we used these contractors before?
[159:12] Speaker 4: We have. And what I was going to say, I believe this particular one because we've had multiple RFPs, but I wanted to say, on average, about 20. We get about 20 contractors that are bidding on these projects.
[159:26] Speaker 3: All right, good. And then one final question. My goodness. We're going to haul almost all of the eucalyptus up to woodland, which is 86 miles one way out of here for biomass. There's no other. We can't biochar it or put it in the. What you call it, burn it.
[159:46] Speaker 4: The carbonizer.
[159:47] Speaker 3: The carbonizer. Thank you.
[159:48] Speaker 4: Yeah. With this particular project, there was a side grant available for the contractors that was through the state that allowed the contractors to get a grant to pay for the hauling of the material to the COIN facilities.
[160:07] Speaker 3: Okay, well. And that's the COIN facility that literally,
[160:10] Speaker 4: like, even when I was in Marin,
[160:11] Speaker 3: they took everything to. Oh, right. Yeah. I was just thinking, at 86 miles one way, that would almost be $699,000 just for transportation. But that's the closest one. It's not environmentally efficient, but if it's the only way we can go, it's the only way we can go. And if it's not included in the deal, that's good.
[160:30] Speaker 2: All right. Any other questions? Otherwise, we can come back to the board if there's any comments or questions. And let's go ahead and take a moment to see if we have public comment.
[160:38] Speaker 1: We do have public comments.
[160:39] Speaker 2: Okay, let's hear from them.
[160:41] Speaker 1: Judy Smith, you may unmute yourself.
[160:50] Speaker 4: Hello, everybody.
[160:51] Speaker 3: I always love to sit in and
[160:53] Speaker 1: listen to these board meetings. I learned so much, and the presentations today were really great. And the work that's being done is remarkable.
[161:01] Speaker 10: So thank you all.
[161:03] Speaker 3: It's interesting that today's agenda really dovetails
[161:06] Speaker 1: nicely with the PAC workshop on outreach to our communities about vegetation management. We had that workshop last Monday and
[161:18] Speaker 4: at that meeting I commented that the
[161:20] Speaker 1: question of tree removal and replacement was really paramount with my community group, especially as it related to retaining and supporting biodiversity. And while we all understand the need for tree removal for wildfire management, it
[161:37] Speaker 2: was felt strong, strongly that the number
[161:39] Speaker 1: of trees and the canopy size that
[161:42] Speaker 3: is removed in land management plans need
[161:45] Speaker 2: to be replaced somewhere, hopefully with an
[161:48] Speaker 4: even greater canopy size.
[161:50] Speaker 1: This is really critical to support and maintain biodiversity and habitat.
[161:56] Speaker 4: I think we all know that we
[161:57] Speaker 1: need more trees, especially native trees, not less. So I guess along with the comment,
[162:05] Speaker 4: I just have some questions.
[162:07] Speaker 3: Is there a protocol for replacing the
[162:10] Speaker 1: size of the canopy that is removed and is it part of the vegetation management plan? And are native trees planted as a replacement for trees that are removed? And I'll give you an example. Up at Rinehart, they took out five
[162:27] Speaker 4: or six huge elm trees.
[162:30] Speaker 1: That used to be a beautiful place to picnic. There's probably five or six picnic tables
[162:36] Speaker 3: and
[162:38] Speaker 1: now it's right in direct sun, it's too hot. And as far as bird watching, the
[162:45] Speaker 2: number of species that can be observed
[162:47] Speaker 1: there has just radically, drastically dropped. So, you know, there are some trees
[162:55] Speaker 2: planted, but it's going to be decades
[162:58] Speaker 1: before those trees are big enough to provide shade. So I just am also wondering in
[163:04] Speaker 3: the management of trees, is there a
[163:08] Speaker 1: plan to look forward 10 or 20 or 30 years, especially with trees like
[163:15] Speaker 2: elms that do get diseased and start planting replacement trees sooner?
[163:21] Speaker 1: So those are my questions and thank you so much. I really enjoyed today. Okay, thank you.
[163:26] Speaker 2: Thank you.
[163:27] Speaker 1: There's no more public comment.
[163:29] Speaker 2: Okay, great. Let's bring it back to the board for any final comments. And then this is an action item. So we are looking for a motion for the resolution that you'll find on pages 102 and 103 in the board packet. Any. Go ahead. Director Dechambo.
[163:46] Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, thank you for getting and applying for the feature FEMA money and catching the use or lose before December 26th. So bring on whatever else we need to approve to get this wrapped up this year. And you know, I also appreciated, I noticed in the capacities, I think it was item three, when you're picking your contractors that you're considering the environmental sensitivity capability. But I am. I liked the comment from Judy Smith on our pac and I'm wondering if this could be part of a project for the pilot for the PAC right now, we've directed them to spend the first six months to help us as a district wide and ongoing plan, try to figure out how are we going to do biodiversity with fuels management. So it's just a question or a comment I don't really need to answer, but maybe this could be a pilot for that. And I can't help but comment. You're taking out under 24 inches. But we've just all got back from the trails and greenways and trees larger size are being reused for some really great picnic tables. I think we all saw the demos out there and that is also kind of an interesting pilot because for me, I mean eucalyptus trees, trees need to go. I mean I know that provides shade in the meantime, but even like out in redwood, it got to a point where those trees had to go. There's just no choice in the matter. So trying to figure out how to plan that, maybe reuse those trees for some picnic tables out there, maybe incorporate or give an update to the PAC on this and I don't know, just good work on that. I don't think we got the answer. I have one question. Why can't we use the carbonizer out there and not truck it? I heard there was a mobile unit carbonizer or maybe ours is mobile. Is that an option?
[165:44] Speaker 3: Well, it sounds like for this project
[165:45] Speaker 4: specifically there's some grant funds that are paying for it to be used for co generation. So basically to be used for power generation where they're trucked to a power plant.
[165:54] Speaker 3: But I think like what I'd say is I know for Kari and our team this is like the most environmentally minded group of fire leadership that I've
[166:05] Speaker 4: ever met and they're always looking for how can we reutilize materials, how can
[166:11] Speaker 3: we keep things on site, how can
[166:13] Speaker 4: we help the carbon stay at the source and bring the nutrients back into the soil with the work we do? So we're always looking for those opportunities.
[166:24] Speaker 3: I think this one kind of lined
[166:25] Speaker 4: up with kind of an unusual grant
[166:27] Speaker 3: program to support cogeneration.
[166:31] Speaker 4: But I think your point's well taken
[166:34] Speaker 3: and heard and I think we'll keep
[166:35] Speaker 4: looking for those opportunities.
[166:38] Speaker 3: And the point from the Judy commenter as well, I think we look forward to engaging with the PAC and continuing to.
[166:44] Speaker 1: That would be a great sort of pilot opportunity for them and for us. We directed them to do that for this first six months and we're still in that time period. Anyway, thank you for the presentation.
[166:55] Speaker 4: Thank you.
[166:58] Speaker 2: Any other comments or motion Go ahead.
[167:01] Speaker 1: I'm ready to make the motion if their comments.
[167:04] Speaker 2: All right, so your motion is to
[167:07] Speaker 1: authorize to authorization to execute two specialty contracts for fuels reduction services in Tilden Regional park with expert tree in an amount not to exceed $947,100 and Bay Area tree specialists in an amount not to exceed $663,019.
[167:26] Speaker 2: Okay, thank you. Director Echols has made the motion. Do we have a second?
[167:30] Speaker 3: Second?
[167:31] Speaker 2: Director WOSPI has made the second. All in favor, please say aye.
[167:34] Speaker 1: Aye.
[167:35] Speaker 2: Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? No. So that's unanimous. Six. Zero. Thank you so much. All right, we'll move on to our final action. Item J3. And this is our authorization to enter into agreements with California state Parks and Union Pacific Railroad. All right. Good afternoon, board of directors.
[168:10] Speaker 6: I'm Rachel Lem. I'm real estate manager on the land acquisition team. And today on the land disposition of a tiny area. Nope,
[168:18] Speaker 1: little closer.
[168:19] Speaker 6: Thank you. All right, Rachel Lem, real estate manager, land acquisition team. Today a tiny bit of land disposition team. We are seeking authorization for a couple of related actions that will involve quit claiming a just shy of a quarter acre of land and amend an operating agreement in order to remove environmental liability from the park district's responsibility. I'm going to keep this brief and I'm going to first give you a quick overview in history to give you some context and then I will show you maps. So the maps are coming. The area in question is on the inland side of Point Isabel. It's separated by marshland from the bay trail and the rest of the park. So it is not accessible to the public. The area that we own we acquired as part of the Kitellis acquisitions in 1995. 1990. I bring that up because this. There's some kind of unusual ownership pattern here. The property is 89% state parks, 11% East Bay Regional Park District undivided interest. We operate the area under an operating and management agreement with state parks. And this is now part of McLaughlin East Shore State Park. So that's our piece. Directly adjacent to our property is a parcel that was previously previously owned by Southern Pacific. Now it's owned by Union Pacific Railroad. They leased an area to the Liquid Gold Oil Company in about the 1950s to 1980s to store, refine, recycle oil products. This resulted in some soil contamination which has since been remediated and capped kind of to the discussion earlier. This remediation has already been done by up. It's on their property and they are in the Monitoring and management phase. Most recently, as part of kind of those five year check ins of Department of Toxic substances control and USEPA, their regular review of UP's ongoing monitoring management, it was discovered that the toe of the clean vegetated soil cap on UP's property, not the contaminated area, just the soil cap, mistakenly extends onto the property that's owned by State Parks and East Bay Regional Park District. The property line here does a little weird jog. Not sure how it came about. Surveying was not done properly or something. But anyway, it's been discovered that a tiny bit of that soil cap extends onto our property. In discussions with all parties, we collectively determined that the best and most elegant solution is to transfer approximately 0.24 acres to Union Pacific to allow them to continue to manage and monitor the soil cap. This also gives them enough room to maintain a fence around the area, a permanent fence. Right now they have a temporary fence under a temporary permit with us in state parks and we'll give them room to put in a fence and maintain that fence into the into the future. Doing so will unambiguously remove this area from park district and state park responsibility. Essentially, once this is done, we don't have to talk about it or think about it ever again. Whereas right now we talk about it a lot and have a lot of staff time on it. So this will just kind of be an administrative fix to kind of clean this up. I also want to be clear that it's not that there was a new source of contamination, a larger plume. There was no issue with the soil cap. This was purely that the soil cap as it was constructed, towed right across the line. So the kind of brighter green area is the property that we jointly own with State parks. Kind of down at the bottom of the map you can see where the post office and Costco are. Up at the top, a bunch of the color and marks on Union Pacific's property is just to give you context that they're doing a whole bunch of stuff in their monitoring management, updating their land use controls and kind of including a bigger area. But the area in question for us is that tiny little white rectangle
[172:10] Speaker 2: here.
[172:10] Speaker 6: The yellow property is Union Pacific's property. Our property is in green and the area that we're proposing to transfer is in red. So mechanically this is slightly complicated because of the ownership. First, the state will quit claim their 89% interest to the park district. Then immediately thereafter, we will claim the 100% unified fee interest to Union Pacific. And we will also at the same time amend Our operating agreement with state parks to take this quarter acre out of that agreement. Once all of that is complete, it reduces our environmental risk and liability for both US and state parks. This has been a really long process. As you can imagine, US State parks, a railroad, DTSC and US epa. This has been a long time coming. And I think we've arrived at a really elegant spot solution that will just reduce our risk and our staff investment of time into the future. And again, there's nothing new here. There's no new contamination. This is just to clean up an issue that's. That's arisen. Thank you.
[173:18] Speaker 2: Thank you so much for that. Just a quick question in terms of math. So, math. So in terms of our 11% interest, that's 11% of the 0.24. So that's.0264 acres that we're talking about for East Bay Regional Park District.
[173:36] Speaker 6: Well, we have an undivided interest. Okay. So if you were to put an equivalent, perhaps. But we jointly own that 11% of the quarter acre.
[173:46] Speaker 2: Got it. Okay, perfect. Okay. I see we have a question over here on the left, Director Eccles.
[173:50] Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you for the presentation and congratulations. Congratulations on the elegant solution. I can only imagine what those talks have been like over however long. I just. Can you bring the slide back up with where it has the little rectangle? This one or the previous? The one. Yeah. So I was just wondering, so where is there fencing now? You said there's a temporary fence there and they're going to replace it with a more permanent fence.
[174:22] Speaker 6: Yes. So right now they have a fence mostly along their property boundary, and then it jogs into just within the outer boundary of the red rectangle here. The idea is that the fence is slightly offset from the actual property boundary, so that if they need to maintain the fence from either side, inside or outside, they don't have to bother us. Essentially, they can just go out there and do it.
[174:47] Speaker 1: So the fence is going to move or it's going to stay the same.
[174:50] Speaker 6: My understanding the fence location will remain the same. They will replace it with a permanent fence. Right now they have temporary fencing.
[174:57] Speaker 1: Okay. And in the other areas, is it already a permanent fence or is it temporary? I'm just wondering what it's going to look like. That's what I'm trying to get at with my questions.
[175:07] Speaker 6: Yeah, I think they already have relatively permanent fence. And right here it's a temporary bulb out, which will be. It will look consistent with what else is out there.
[175:16] Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. Okay. Thank you. While we're on that map, I have a question. Where is our cap? That's Point Isabelle, right below it. Right. Where's the cap we're redoing. Does it. We got so much contamination in our shoreline parks. Where does Battery Hill run into this piece?
[175:33] Speaker 3: Or does it separate so you can
[175:36] Speaker 4: see it on this map? So it's like.
[175:39] Speaker 3: But it's very faint.
[175:40] Speaker 4: So in that bright green area, which is like our.
[175:45] Speaker 3: Our parkland, the bay trail is kind
[175:49] Speaker 4: of curves along on the eastern side
[175:51] Speaker 3: of it, and there our cap is on. So if you're going on Point Isabel,
[175:56] Speaker 4: you start walking on the trail with
[175:58] Speaker 3: your dog, and then you cross a
[175:59] Speaker 4: little bridge, a wooden bridge, and on the other side, there's another. A peninsula that sticks out out westward.
[176:06] Speaker 3: That peninsula sticks out is where the
[176:10] Speaker 4: cap is that we have to replace.
[176:13] Speaker 3: It's on this map. It's just. It's hard to see.
[176:21] Speaker 1: Oh, it's a ways away.
[176:22] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[176:23] Speaker 1: Okay. I wasn't. I was wondering if the toes of the caps are running into each other out there.
[176:29] Speaker 3: No. Yeah, they're. They're.
[176:31] Speaker 1: Thank you.
[176:31] Speaker 3: There's some distance.
[176:35] Speaker 2: Any other questions? Maybe what we can do is let's open up public comment and see if we have any members of the public.
[176:42] Speaker 6: There is no public comment.
[176:43] Speaker 2: All right, so we'll close public comment. Coming back to the board, any other additional comments? We are also looking for a motion on this item. That would be pages. I had it right in front of me. 112 and 1. No, sorry. 114 and 115 is the resolution. We're looking for a motion.
[177:02] Speaker 1: Happy to make the motion.
[177:03] Speaker 2: Okay. Director Echols has made the motion. Do we have a second?
[177:07] Speaker 1: I'll second.
[177:08] Speaker 2: Director DeChambeau has seconded. All in favor, please say aye.
[177:13] Speaker 1: Aye.
[177:13] Speaker 2: Any opposed? Any abstentions? That's six.
[177:16] Speaker 1: Zero.
[177:16] Speaker 2: Thank you, everyone. Thank you. I have a agenda amendment proposal. Because we will be going back into closed session, I recommend that my. My proposal is to move up item N public comments to now, and then we will go into closed session. And then. Because we do have to come back out and report out on closed session, and we just need at least a minimum of a quorum of four to do that. And that way, then if someone needs to leave, you are welcome to. To propose future agenda items and reports on meetings attended using the report feature. And so then that way we can.
[177:55] Speaker 3: I think Kelly has some feedback on
[177:57] Speaker 1: what you can adjourn this meeting, and then the report out at closed session can happen.
[178:02] Speaker 6: At your next regular meeting.
[178:04] Speaker 2: Okay.
[178:06] Speaker 1: So.
[178:07] Speaker 2: Because I was just trying to save some time. So we could do the board reports after the closed session for those who are still here, but then those who need to go can go
[178:17] Speaker 1: however you would like to do it. But the closed session can be reported
[178:20] Speaker 6: out at the next meeting.
[178:21] Speaker 2: Okay.
[178:21] Speaker 1: As well as the board reports. Unless something is timely and has to go tonight.
[178:26] Speaker 2: Yep. So are people okay with that if we move up item N?
[178:31] Speaker 3: Sure.
[178:31] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[178:32] Speaker 2: So I'll make a motion to move item N to now, the public comment. And it sounds like Director Echols has seconded.
[178:38] Speaker 1: I have a question. Why not L, M and N? So. So then when we're done the close, we leave. And she's saying we can report out next time if we move all of them now.
[178:49] Speaker 2: So I was going to move N to now just so that we.
[178:51] Speaker 1: But I'm saying, why not L, M and N. Why not?
[178:54] Speaker 2: You want to go through all those right now? Okay.
[178:56] Speaker 1: Just a question, or it seems to make sense is what you're saying. Or the next session either do them all now or the next session make that decision now. So once we leave closed session, we're done. We don't have to come back to the dais first.
[179:10] Speaker 6: Okay.
[179:10] Speaker 3: So.
[179:11] Speaker 2: So an amendment, a friendly amendment to the motion to move items L and M to our next board meeting on May 5 and move item N to now. The public comment. Can I just interject?
[179:24] Speaker 1: L and M don't actually have to
[179:26] Speaker 2: be moved because they're standing items on
[179:28] Speaker 1: the agenda, so they're always there. So all you have to do is just skip those for right now and then move item, take item N, which there is no public comment, and then you can adjourn the meeting. And then at the next meeting, we'll report out on closed session, and then everybody can report out on items. Klm. Klmn.
[179:47] Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah.
[179:48] Speaker 1: Then we don't need to come back. And then you don't need to come back tonight. And then we can end the meeting.
[179:52] Speaker 2: If that works for me. If that works for you. Okay. So then let's keep Director Echel's motion to move item N. Do I have a second on that? Second second from Director Dhambo. All in favor, please say II. Anyone opposed? Okay, that's unanimous. Okay, so real quick, let's open public comment.
[180:09] Speaker 1: There is no public comment.
[180:10] Speaker 2: And then we will close the public comment. So we will now adjourn the open meeting, and we will be moving into close session. Thank you, everyone.
[180:17] Speaker 3: Pardon me.