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Concord Pioneer • www.concordpioneer.com
July 22, 2016
Grant helps create a 21st Century library on Salvio Street PEGGY SPEAR Concord Pioneer
Kimberli Buckley never wanted to be an interior designer. But somehow that’s what the senior community library manager at the Concord Library on Salvio Street found herself doing after she came on board a little over a year ago. “I was told we were given a Refresh Grant, and to go at it,” she says. That county Refresh Grant was $25,000 aimed at transforming libraries into vibrant and inspiring community spaces, which meant re-envisioning the dark, outdated bookshelves and furniture with items that better reflect the
momentum of 21st century learning spaces. It’s a concept that has been going on for several years at university libraries across the nation, including at Saint Mary’s and UC Berkeley. It creates more inviting spaces for group discussions and modern learning, ideal for group projects that young people will see in the workforce. It’s even trickling down into high schools, says Rula Kassicieh, librarian at Northgate High School. This project is a first for Concord’s public library, and isn’t just centered on young people – although there will be major changes to the teen and children’s areas. “It’s about making the library a more comfortable,
Concord passes mid-cycle budget PEGGY SPEAR Concord Pioneer
The City of Concord’s fiscal budget for the next year looks like a civic dream in this day and age, as it is balanced and continues all programs and services at their current or enhanced levels, and provides additional investments in roads buildings and parks. The $95,197,500 budget reflects a 2.7 million increase in revenue and an increase in in total expenditures of approximately $1.1 million. Measure Q funds provide strong assistance to the city, adding $7.5 million in revenue. Sales taxes are the biggest piece of the budget pie, contributing $32.4 million to the budget, while property taxes add $22.93 million. Franchise fees add $6.02 million, while charges for services add $7.78 million. The rest of the revenues are made up of business license fees, transient occupancy taxes and miscellaneous other revenues. On the expense side, $52.4 million will be directed to the police force, mainly because of it has the largest staff of any city department. Economic and community development will receive $7.8 million, public works will receive $7.4 million, and parks and recreation will receive $5.3 million. Other expenses include expenses related to the city attorney’s office, human resources, the city manager’s department, the finance department and various non-departmental services. The main discussion points of the budget at the June 28 meeting, which were carried over from the June 14 public hearing, dealt with public safety issues. Council member Edi Birsan has proposed socking money away for the use of police body cameras. This was before the police shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota, and before the sniper attack in Dallas that left five officers dead. Concord has not experienced such tragedies, but Birsan did say that the city has paid out more than $600,000 in legal fees due to suspects suing the police department. “Cameras provide a source of support for the police,” he said. Still, his request fell on deaf ears to the rest of the council, all of who said they would prefer the request to come from the police itself. “Mayor Laura Hoffmeister said that Police Chief Guy Swanger was meeting with chiefs from other Contra Costa cities and would decide at a later date the course he would like to take in Concord. He told Concord staff preparing the budget report that he did not think it was necessary to incur the cost install body cameras at this point as state laws and local regulations are still in
transition, and he advises waiting on this particular issue. Another public safety issue that Birsan brought up was the reinstallation of a police substation in the Monument area, with the idea of opening another one in north Concord at a later date. This too met opposition from his fellow council members. “Again, I’d like to hear from the police directly if this is a need,” said vice mayor Ron Leone. Birsan pointed out that this was an opportunity to build community and show residents that police are allies. “A child can go into a substation and get a lollypop or a sticker from a police officer and grow up knowing police are there to support her,” he said. “Even if it isn’t an immediate need, it has a positive generational impact.” But his suggestion was met with opposition from Leone and the other three council member, as council member Tim Grayson pointed out that the police station was located close to the heart of the Monument Corridor, and a substation was not needed at this time. Hoffmeister pointed out that the idea for substations was popular in the later 1990s and early 2000s largely due to Megan’s Law, as they provided residents the opportunity to check the police database. But as more people owned computers and had access to the Internet, that wasn’t a factor anymore. “There used to be people lining up at the police station to see if there was a sex offender in their community,” she said. “Now they can access that from anywhere.” But the prevailing factor in the opposition to the substation was not its idea, but where it came from: Grayson, Leone, Hoffmeister and council member Dan Helix wanted any public safety requests to come from Swanger, and the chief is not recommending any additional changes at this time. Birsan struck out a third time with his colleagues on the issue of raising the minimum wage for seasonal employees, who make less than $11 an hour. But Parks and Recreation department said that it was not an issue attracting and retaining qualified season candidates, such as lifeguards, so his suggestion was not taken up. But the council did acknowledge that the minimum wage would be raised to $15 an hour by 2022. “Raising the minimum wage at this point will have an impact on an already strained budget,” Grayson said. To see the full budget, go www.ci.concord.ca.us and click on Government and Financial Information
relaxed space, with mobile bookshelves that are more browse-able,” Buckley says. “The space will just be more engaging.” The library will close from Aug. 22 to the day after Labor Day, Sept. 6, so they can put down new carpet – courtesy of the city – and repaint walls, as well as setting up the new furniture that Buckley so painstakingly selected. “We will have much more comfortable furniture, with tablet attachments so that people can use their laptops or read easier,” she said. Most of the new furniture Buckley picked came from specialty catalogs geared toward learning environments. As she has always focused on teen readers, she was especially excited to update the library’s teen area. “It had a funky old desk full of computers,” she said. “We’re clearing everything out, and we will now have a laptop lending machine anyone can use.” She solicited the help of the library’s Teen Advisory Board to help pick out furni-
Tamara Steiner/Concord Pioneer
LIBRARY STAFFERS, LOUISA CARNATHAN AND CHRISTINA BENSON, check out the new plantings in the fledgling learning garden at the library. The garden is in the “trial and error” stage but with the help of a master gardener will soon be producing veggies and flowers for workshops.
available to check out, it will offer 3-D printing – not available in many civic libraries. Not all of the changes are reserved for indoors, either. Buckley instituted a learning garden earlier this year. “At first we didn’t really know what we were doing,” she says with a laugh. “But then we got the help of a master gardener and we saw our flowers and vegetables take off.” Not only will the learning garden be available for school projects, but Buckley hopes to institute monthly master gardener workshops for the public – another first for the library. In addition, a back room that housed periodicals and was, in Buckley’s opinion, underserved, will be cleared out and made into a community meeting room. This will allow groups and organizations to meet there, something Buckley says is needed. “All in all, we want the library to be an inviting and vibrant community center,” she says.
ture. “It will be done in shades of red, black and yellow and feature a combination of furniture: high tables, bean bags and comfy chairs. It will be a fun and creative space for teens to hang out with friends or spend time reading.” In the children’s area, Buckley is painting the walls bright colors and adding modular
tables that can be arranged in different sizes and shapes for various groups of children. There will be play tables for exploration, emphasizing STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Technology), a major buzzword in education circles these days. The library also will undergo a bit of a technical makeover. Besides the laptops
and three alternates — who will be allowed to vote only if a committee member permanently leaves the committee. The committee, which will be a two-year commitment, will meet monthly on the third Tuesday of the month at a location that is still being determined. The council chambers — which is usually dark that week as the council does not meet — is perhaps the favorite location of council members, because of the ease of which the committee meetings could be televised and the fact that the original location proposed by staff — a classroom in the Senior Center — was deemed too small for such important and potentially crowded meetings. “If you don’t think you’ll get a big crowd, think again,” said council member Dan Helix. Community Reuse Planning Director Guy Bjerke said that his staff will begin taking applications July 26, with interviews with council members scheduled for September. He hopes to bring his committee’s recommendation of the full committee membership to the council by early October.
When council member Ron Leone asked how the council would be advised of the committee’s activities, Bjerke said he would give updates at his regular appearances in front of the council, which he has said he hopes to do monthly. During the public comment period for the issue, Sun terrace resident Hope Johnson, a vocal opponent of Lennar during the selection process, said she hopes to see that some of the committee positions be reserved for residents from neighborhoods directly affected by Phase 1 of the project, including Sun terrace, Holbrook Heights, Dana Estates and Bishop Estates. Mayor Laura Hoffmeister agreed with her when voting on the committee’s establishment, a sentiment seeming shared by all the other council members, who voted yes. Matt Leiber, who represents several community housing coalitions, said he would like the makeup of the committee to reflect underserved population, specifically residents of the Monument Corridor and the Latino community.
Outreach to the public was another big issue, and community activist George Fulmore suggested a newsletter about the base development be established. Others spoke about the need to improve the web presence of the reuse plan. Bjerke agreed. “Our website is dreadful. We are working on bringing it up to date,” he said. Since it is a Brown Act-covered committee, any CAC members living within 500 feet of a part of the project must recuse themselves from commenting on or voting on the issue at hand. Helix was concerned that this would eliminate many residents directly impacted by the base development from having input. But the council was reminded that there are many acres of grassland separating the Phase 1 development from housing tracts, so not that many people would be affected.
and the couple was able to slip into the Concord rental market before it became so hot that renters and homebuyers are in a frenzy to scoop up available housing. The city is now considering rent control ordinances. The Concord City Council will hold a public forum on rent control and some of the issues facing renters at its July 26 meeting. It is the next step following a June 27 meeting of the city’s Housing and Economic Development Committee, which met for an education session on rent stabilization in Concord. By the standing-room only crowd, it was clear that rent stabilization is an issue of major concern to residents. John Montagh, the city’s economic development and housing manager, told the committee that about 10,000 apartments in the city were built before 1995 and would be eligible to be controlled by a rental ordinance. He said that a household income of about $73,000 is
needed to afford a two-bedroom apartment today in Concord, but that the median household income in the city is only about $67,000. The city has 15 apartment complexes with restricted rents, and the city works with these complexes to help them maintain affordable rentals. Montagh then moderated a panel of housing representatives, including rent control expert Kenneth Baar, who has consulted with more than 40 California cities and other jurisdictions on issues related to rent stabilization; Joshua Howard, senior vice president for local government affairs for the California Apartment Association; and Aimee Inglis, acting director for Tenants Together, a tenants advocacy group that has been working with renters in Concord, mostly in the Monument area. Baar gave a history of rent control and stabilization ordinances and recommended setting annual limits at the full Consumer Price Index. He urged making the ordinance
simple and called for more density in newly constructed multiple-family housing. Howard blamed the local rent hike problem on the fact that not enough housing has been built of late. He said his organization has educational materials and training for landlords but noted that such materials were optional to property owners. Inglis also went over the history of rent ordinances, then talked about some of the myths about such ordinances. She cited studies that showed, for example, that cities with rent ordinances did not have reductions in new construction. The HEDC meeting came on the heels of a Raise the Roof workshop two days earlier at St. Bonaventure Church. That workshop was organized by local clergy and activists who have been fighting against unfair rent increases in Concord, such as the exorbitant ones seen earlier this year in some apartments on Virginia Lane.
Citizens group to advise on CNWS PEGGY SPEAR Concord Pioneer
The idea of a citizens’ advisory committee for the development of the Concord Naval Weapons Station is not new to the city of Concord. After all, it used one in the early and mid2000s to help craft the current vision of the vast piece of Navy-owned land. Indeed, with hundreds of public speakers already on record just in the past year with the selection of the master developer, it is clear that the community wants to have their voices heard now that project is within a few years of breaking ground. The city is again going to its residents for help with the development of the Specific Plan of the first phase of development, guiding the reuse staff and master developer Lennar Concord LLC. The city council on July 12 unanimously adopted the establishment of a Community Advisory Committee to encourage and provide public input into the Specific Plan. The CAC will comprise of 11 members
Applications for the CAC will be available on the city’s website, www.cityofconcord.org, or from the city clerk, (925) 671-3390, beginning July 27. Deadline to apply is Aug. 26 at 5 p.m.
Public forum on rent stabilization on Council agenda for July 26 meeting PEGGY SPEAR Concord Pioneer
When Tommy Wolf and Vanessa Rodriguez decided to open a chiropractic business, they wanted somewhere in central Contra Costa County. So they decided Concord was an ideal location – and it made sense to live in the city as well. The young, engaged couple was able to rent a condominium in Concord without much trouble. And like many millennials and young families, they are enjoying what the city offers. “Concord is growing with new restaurants and activities, so more families are interested in the area,” Rodriguez said. In the past three years, they have seen their rent increase $350, from $1,400 a month to $1,750 for a two-bedroom, onebath condo. “I guess it’s fair, because it’s similar to the surrounding options,” Wolf said. Because of timing, Rodriguez and Wolf are lucky. About 45 percent of Concord residents live in rental housing,