■ Council to review 2-year plan for expected $3.7M in new revenue
If voters this fall approve a 1-cent increase in Benicia’s sales tax, City Council must plan how to allocate the expected $3.7 million the tax generates, Economic Development Manager Mario Giuliani has advised.
Giuliani will present just such a plan to the Council at tonight’s meeting.
The Council approved a resolution July 28 to put the sales tax increase, Measure C, on the Nov. 4 ballot, after a citywide poll said residents would agree to the tax and preferred it to any cut in city services.
It would be a general purpose tax, so the Council would allocate the proceeds during the biannual budget adoption process, Giuliani wrote in an Aug. 13 report.
He said the purpose of approving an expenditure plan for Measure C is to show that the Council is committed to addressing priorities identified by residents in the community survey.
The poll, taken early in July, indicated residents have “high satisfaction” with the city and “a strong willingness” to support the 1-cent sales tax increase, Giuliani wrote. Besides maintaining existing services, residents said they want the city to invest in public safety, parks and roads.
But the city’s recent financial studies have indicated that despite budget trims — a 10-percent reduction in employee compensation among them — and increased income from city-owned property, future revenues won’t keep up with expenditures, Giuliani wrote.
After the Council adopted the 2013-15 budget, it asked city employees to develop a budget stabilization plan, which has begun with the city’s Sustainable Community Services Strategy (SCSS).
That first step is expected to prepare the city to take the needed steps to make Benicia more fiscally sustainable, Giuliani wrote.
Besides high “customer satisfaction” with the city, the 400 poll respondents said they wanted to protect Benicia’s status as a full-service city with a small-town quality of life as well as have improved public safety and city streets, maintenance for Benicia’s 31 parks, trimmed trees, a supported historic downtown district, community events and recruitment of new businesses that would create jobs.
They pointed out that many sidewalks are cracked and buckled, and some places have no sidewalks at all. Streets have potholes and conditions that challenge motorists, and more money is needed to maintain the city’s 94 miles of streets and roads, Giuliani wrote.
He advised establishing an initial two-year plan for the extra sales tax money, should Measure C pass. Of the $3.7 million it is expected to generate, $1.7 million is needed to keep services at the current level, he wrote; the remaining $2 million would be invested in unmet capital projects and infrastructure needs.
He has provided the Council with a 2015-16 chart that lists specific expenditures and estimated costs, of which $400,000 would be earmarked for replacing outdated police and fire computer aided dispatch and record management for the Benicia Police and Fire departments’ emergency dispatch center.
Another $292,000 would go to adding a wildland fire engine; $150,000 to replacing a damaged First Street promenade safety railing; and $200,000 to replacing obsolete playground equipment at Benicia Community Park.
Half a million dollars would be earmarked for repair and asphalt overlay on Southampton Road from Panorama along the frontage of Benicia Middle School to Hastings Drive, including the construction of better safety crossings to the school.
The plan would set aside $100,000 to repair sidewalks in the downtown commercial district, and $200,000 would be earmarked to repair 250 damaged sections of road, including potholes.
In addition, $100,000 would be earmarked for development of a stormwater management and flood mitigation plan.
In Fiscal Year 2016-17, the sales tax increase would be broken into four projects. The bulk, $1 million, would be used to patch and apply an asphalt overlay on Industrial Way from Teal Drive to Lake Herman Road in the Benicia Industrial Park.
Another $448,491 would be earmarked to replace a fire engine; $400,000 would be used to repair the pool deck and restrooms at the James Lemos Swim Center; and $80,000 would be earmarked for replacing outdated police radios.
The resolution that accompanies Giuliani’s recommendation announces the Council’s intent and commitment, he wrote. The actual commitment of the revenues would come when the Council adopts its next two-year budget, in June 2015.
However, he has recommended the plan be described in informational material sent to the public prior to the Nov. 4 election.
“It is also important to acknowledge that if the sales tax measure is not successful, the recommended projects would be delayed, possibly indefinitely,” Giuliani wrote. “Additionally, the City Council would need to address the pending $1.5 million to $1.7 million deficit likely resulting in service cuts.”
On tonight’s consent calendar, a listing of items that could be decided without comment by single vote — unless someone wants an item to be considered separately — the panel will consider approving an agreement with Environmental Risk Services Corporation (ERS) for the Benicia Arsenal cleanup project.
In 2011, the Council awarded a contract to ERS for legal and technical assistance for the Arsenal project, but the city didn’t receive any orders from the state Department of Toxic Substances Control for remediation of certain locations until June 24 of this year.
The sites would be in the lower Benicia Arsenal.
City Attorney Heather McLaughlin wrote the Council Aug. 4 that this would renew the city’s contract with ERS that would let the company continue its work and would allow them to be paid from two of the city’s accounts, one of which has $40,000 and the other, $90,000.
The city sought qualified legal and technical support starting Oct. 25, 2010, after the state agency suggested it would issue orders requiring a cleanup of the Arsenal. The Council approved the agreement three months later.
Based in Walnut Creek, ERS is made up of attorneys Briscoe, Ivester & Brazel of San Francisco and Garrett & Knisely, Dongell Lawrence Finney of Sacramento, and Engineering/Remediation Resources Group, which would offer the city a full range of services, McLaughlin wrote. The team has focused on military sites and their cleanup.
“Under an earlier phase of this work, the city, with the help of ERS, collected many of the necessary documents and made our initial contacts and claim submissions to these insurance companies,” she wrote. “In addition to looking into insurance, indemnity agreements and other potential funding sources, ERS has been representing the city at meetings as well as providing public information and participation services.”
She wrote that the city’s main goal is to protect public health and safety and to ensure the efficient and effective cleanup of the Arsenal without causing economic hardship, particularly to businesses.
McLaughlin wrote that Benicia needs to collaborate with any identified “potentially responsible parties” as well as such regulators at DTSC “to achieve the best result possible.”
To help members of the public who are interested in the project, the city’s website has added a page, www.ci.benicia.ca.us/arsenal, where those interested may read reports and other related documents, but also may request notification when new information is added.
ERS primarily would work with the city, but would be able to assist property and business owners in the Benicia Industrial Park and lower Arsenal when that would wouldn’t conflict with what the company is doing for the city.
“The property owners would be responsible for paying the consultant for this work unless the work is minimal,” McLaughlin wrote, adding that the property and business owners would not be required to use ERS.
In his letter to McLaughlin, Mark O’Brien, chief executive officer of ERS, presented an estimated budget that would range from $95,000 to $140,000 that would cover advising the city, researching documents to determine the liability of the Army Corps of Engineers, negotiating with the Corps, developing cooperative and cost-sharing arrangements with potentially responsible parties, dealing with insurance policies, developing technical and legal strategies and preparing documents required by the DTSC.
O’Brien said a time frame would be difficult to determine, “because it depends largely on the responses of other people.”
Also listed on the consent calendar:
• The Council will vote on first reading whether to amend a zoning ordinance to add mobile food vending as a new use classification.
The amendment would allow mobile food vending within many zones of the Benicia Industrial Park. According to the Council’s agenda, the panel also would conduct a public hearing on the proposed change.
• The Council will decide whether it needs to take a stand on a resolution that will be decided at the League of California Cities annual conference Sept. 3-5 in Los Angeles.
This resolution would ask Gov. Jerry Brown and the state Legislature to convene a summit to address “the devastating environmental impacts of illegal marijuana grows on both private and public lands,” which it said are “increasing problems to public safety.”
The Redwood Empire Division of the state is contending that when voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996, “little thought was given to a wide range of problems, which have emerged in association with the increased availability and demand for marijuana.”
Those problems range from environmental damage to an increase in violent crimes, which the Redwood Empire Division said has reached “a tipping point” that has led it to call “for action to reverse these trends.”
• The Council will consider accepting an award of $15,000 from the California Library Literacy Services for its Benicia Public Library adult literacy services.
• The Council will review the city’s July water report; consider approving a $57,540 consultant agreement with Cardno Entrix, Sacramento, to design a flood protection relief project in the St. Augustine Drive neighborhood that was damaged during a 2012 rainstorm; and vote on a memorandum of understanding with the Public Employees Union Local One for a two-year term from July 1 of this year to June 30, 2016.
• The Council will review two claims against the city, one by Steve Andretich, who said Benicia police damaged his grill when they went to his back yard on an alarm call May 18; and another by Ventura Albor, who said he was operating a sump pump to drain water at the Benicia Water Plant July 3 when his personal cell phone dropped into the water and was damaged.
The Council will meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday in a closed session to discuss legal, real estate and personnel matters. The regular meeting will start at 7 p.m. in the Council Chamber of City Hall, 250 East L St.