Mayor and Councilmembers:

This is the weekly report for the week ending March 30^th, 2007.

1.         Meeting Notes

The next City Council meeting will be on Tuesday, April 3^rd.  The meeting will convene at 8:30 AM with a Closed Session to interview several Interim City Attorney candidates, information concerning which you will receive with your agenda packets.  The evening meeting will begin with a photo session at 5:00 PM in the City Council Chambers, followed by the reception for Lynn Jacobs, the newly appointed Director of the California Department of Housing and Community Development, which was arranged by Councilmember Jim Rogers.  The Council will reconvene as the Redevelopment Agency at 6:15 PM, followed by the City Council meeting at 7:00 PM.

2.         Police Department Recruitment – “Community of Leaders”

The Police Department’s appealing recruitment message – “Community of Leaders” – seems to be catching on.  Of note, there has been a significant increase in visits to the City’s website due to this recruitment campaign.  During the week of March 11^th, shortly after the expanded recruitment message, the Police Employment web page shot up to number 2 on the “hit” list, behind only the City’s home page, with 1,868 visits. The Police Department’s home page was number 4 with 1,159 visits, the Department’s salary flyer was number 10 with 315 visits, and the Police Department Trainee flyer was number 12, with 300 visits.

The Richmond-based public relations firm Crossover Creative Group was instrumental in developing this recruitment campaign.

3.         Ford Assembly Building News

The San Francisco Business Times has awarded Orton Development Company the Rehabilitation Project of the Year Award for the Ford Assembly Building and the Lease Deal of the Year Award for the Powerlight (www.powerlight.com) deal for over 140,000 square feet at the Ford Assembly Building, also known as Ford Point.

The latest Ford Point success is Mountain Hardwear (yes – hard-wear – www.mountainhardwear.com ), which has executed a lease for approximately 77,000 square feet in the building for its corporate headquarters, and plans to move in by January 1, 2008.  Mountain Hardwear is a Richmond-based camping, climbing and outdoor gear company that is currently located on Central Avenue near Costco.

4.         Montgomery Ward Building is History!

As you may have noticed, the Target Corporation has completed demolition on the old Montgomery Ward site and has started the site work in preparation for the new Target store on Macdonald Avenue at Interstate 80.

5.         City Prosecutor Activity

City Prosecutor Tom Min has now attended at least one meeting of all 25 active Neighborhood Councils in Richmond.  At these meetings, Mr. Min has been making a presentation on code enforcement and nuisance abatement, followed by a question and answer session.

Recently, the City Prosecutor obtained a court order to demolish the dilapidated structure at 2801 Cutting Boulevard.  This is the first time that the City has obtained a demolition order using the expedited “summary abatement” procedures that were developed by the City after consultation with the court.  The actual demolition will be conducted under the supervision of the Redevelopment Agency.

6.         Richmond Parkway Upgrade Project

This past week, a second meeting was held between the staffs of the Richmond Engineering Department, the Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA), and the Contra Costa County Public Works Department to review a rough draft of a consultant’s report on the possible acceptance of the maintenance responsibilities along the Richmond Parkway by Caltrans.  The main topic of discussion dealt with the design differences between an urban arterial (standards followed during the design of the Parkway) and an expressway (Caltrans’ current design standard for acceptance).  Staff from the three agencies listed above will assert to Caltrans that, by accepting the urban arterial design, there will be no compromise to public safety.  If this assertion is accepted by Caltrans, the cost associated with the upgrades required by Caltrans in order for them to accept the Parkway for maintenance purposes will go down considerably.

The consultant was asked to do some additional traffic studies to help in developing the urban arterial case to Caltrans, and will also incorporate into their report some additional environmental information.  Once this is incorporated into their report, a draft will be ready to circulate by the end of April.

7.         Cinco de Mayo Planning Meeting

This past Thursday, I joined Councilmembers Viramontes and Lopez in attending, once again, a multi-city (Richmond and San Pablo) planning meeting for Cinco de Mayo.  My observation is that the planning group is doing an excellent job planning the event – both the parade and the 23^rd Street fair – and is working effectively with the Police Departments of both cities regarding street closures, security, set-up, and take-down, etc.  The Cinco de Mayo planning group will continue to meet on a regular basis up through the first week in May to finalize the details of what should be a festive, and safe, family event.

8.         General Plan Update

A Community workshop was held last Monday, March 26^th, at the Council Chambers in City Hall.  During the meeting, nearly 75 residents and business owners shared their thoughts about alternative land uses in districts of the City that may experience a higher rate of change during the next decade.  The next Community meeting will be held on Wednesday, April 4^th at the Hilltop mall Community room.

9.         Joint Planning effort with the City of El Cerrito

As you will recall, the Cities of Richmond and El Cerrito have jointly retained MIG, the General Plan consultants, to prepare a joint specific plan for San Pablo Avenue.  The City of Richmond has been asked to appoint eight persons, consisting of two City Council members, one Planning Commissioner, one Design Review Board member, one member of the Economic Development Commission and three residents to a 17-person advisory committee to help oversee this joint El Cerrito/Richmond project.  Lisa Hammon, Executive Director of the West Contra Costa Transportation Advisory Committee (WCCTAC) will serve as the seventeenth member of the advisory committee.

10.       Fire Department Swearing In and Badge Pinning Ceremony

On Wednesday, March 28^th, the Richmond Fire Department held a Swearing In and Badge Pinning Ceremony for its recently promoted Fire Captains and Fire Engineers at the Chevron Research Amphitheater.  The Oath of Office was administered by City Clerk Diane Holmes, and the ceremony was attended by Councilperson John Marquez, the City Manager, several members of various other local fire departments, and many Richmond Fire Department retirees.  The newly appointed Fire Captains are Victor Bontempo, Elizabeth de Dios, Manly Moulton, Jr., Luis Padilla, Dane Poteet, Paul Schmidt and Edward Valdivia.  The new Fire Engineers are Jason Flaum, Robert Giaramita, Germain Gomez, Duane Jurado, Shawn McCombe, Aaron Osorio, Marc Palechek, Erin Perez and Casey Shott.

11.       Refinancing of Westridge Apartments at Hilltop

Last week, Finance Director Jim Goins and Housing Authority Executive Director Tim Jones, along with the rest of the Financing Team, completed a conference call with Moody’s Investor Services to provide updates on the performance of the Westridge at Hilltop Apartments in conjunction with the current refinancing.  As a result of the information provided during this call, as well as other information sent earlier, Moody’s has assigned a credit rating of Baa3 to the Subordinate Multifamily Housing Revenue Bonds (Westridge at Hilltop Apartments), Series 2007.   

This refunding will provide approximate net present value savings of 9%, or $1 million, and will lower the annual debt service payments by $300,000 for the thirst three years. The Preliminary Official Statement for this financing will be released for investor review on April 2^nd; the bonds will close on April 26^th.

12.       The Single Audit Report

The Single Audit Report for the City of Richmond was recently completed, with copies distributed to the Federal Audit Clearinghouse and the State Controller to meet the deadline of March 31.  A “single audit” includes both financial and compliance audits for the purposes of federal grant requirements.  The City continues to reduce the number of reportable conditions, and none rose to the level of a material weakness.  The Single Audit is available for review on the City’s web site under Finance Department/Financial Reports/2005-2006.  The City’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report can also be accessed from this web site.

13.       Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System Selection

As you will recall, the City is in the process of selecting a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System to replace the current SAP system.  In this effort, the City’s ERP Evaluation Team was busy this week!  From Monday through Thursday, staff from MUNIS, one of the candidate systems, presented their scripted demonstrations to the ERP Evaluation Team with 26 separate meetings over four days.  Then on Friday, the firm CRW presented their proposed solution for the City’s permitting/ business license/ inspections requirements. 

The City’s twelve ERP Evaluation team members, representing the City’s many different departments, actively engaged in all the presentations.  In addition, twenty to thirty City staff, as “subject matter experts,” participated in those meetings touching on their area(s) of expertise.  City staff also met individually with MUNIS and CRW staff to work with the software, answer questions and to learn more about each proposed solution. 

The City’s two consultants from the Government Finance Officers Association also sat through all the scripted demonstrations. A consultant from Zucker Systems, the Planning Department’s workflow analysis consultant, participated in the scripted demonstrations of both of the proposed permitting/ business license/ inspections systems.

14.       Human Resources Department Training Program

The City of Richmond Human Resources Department continues to actively provide in-house training opportunities to staff.  Last week, there were two such training opportunities. On Thursday, March 22^nd, 40 employees attended a training entitled “Strengthening Your People Skills in the Workplace,” that was conducted by National Seminars.  Additional sessions of this training, for which we received positive feedback from staff, will be scheduled over the summer.  Additionally, on Friday March 23^rd, 16 employees attended a CPR/First Aid class training conducted by the American Red Cross.  Another 16-person session of the CPR/First Aid training was conducted yesterday.

15.       Information Technology Department Assists with PAL

IT staff recently helped move the City closer to providing youth from the community with a one stop facility that offers the combined services of PAL and Employment & Training’s YouthWorks program.   In particular, IT staff assisted in the relocation project of YouthWorks to the PAL building by installing new data and phone cabling, modifying existing computer furniture, and relocating networking equipment and PC’s.

16.       Employment & Training Department Recognition

Richmond’s Employment & Training (E & T) Department has been recognized by the State for meeting all 15 of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) mandated performance standards for serving Adults, Dislocated Workers, and Youth for the program year 2005-2006.  The Youth performance outcomes, which include employment rate, job retention, diploma rate, and skill attainment, are most noteworthy in that E & T Youth staff achieved the highest performance levels in the Bay Area and ranked as one of the highest in the state.

17.       Booker T. Anderson Center “Grand Opening”

To showcase its full utilization, the Booker T. Anderson Center has scheduled a “Grand Opening” on June 30, 2007.  A variety of sports events will take place including tennis, three on three basketball tournaments, soccer matches and life skills workshops. The competitions and workshops will begin at 10:00 AM and conclude at 5:00 PM with a ceremony and award presentation. This event is in collaboration with the Recreation Division, the Richmond Improvement Association and Athletes United for Peace.

This program has as its model the “Athletes United for Peace” sports organization, which was formed by Olympic Athletes after the USA boycott of the Moscow Olympics.  The goal of this organization is to build friendship, respect, and trust through athletic activities.

The goal of the Jamboree is to help remove violence from Richmond’s neighborhoods by providing social, recreational and healthy activities for youth and adults.

18.      Information Technology (IT) Department Fun Facts

The City’s IT Department puts forth great effort to keeping spam and viruses out of the City in order to improve productivity by not requiring City staff to waste time sorting through junk email (“Spam”).  What I believe is remarkable is simply the amount of Spam that the City receives, especially by comparison to legitimate e-mail.

As an example, the graph below provides some interesting statistics for the month of March.  As shown on the chart, the average daily e-mail volume is approximately 20,000 incoming messages, with the highest daily total of approximately 29,000 on March 20^th.  Also shown in the chart is the number of legitimate e-mails (in green) as opposed to Spam e-mails (in red) or otherwise blocked e-mails (other colors).  Could you imagine the lost work time if staff had to individually sort through such an incredible volume of Spam?   

19.      This Week’s City of Richmond Website Fun Facts

Have you ever wondered what people are searching for when they come to the City of Richmond website? Here are the top search requests entered into the “Search” box for the month of February.  It seems from the search statistics that the public would like a map to find us:

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments about these or any other items of interest to you.

Have a great week!

Bill Lindsay

City Manager

City of Richmond

1401 Marina Way South

Richmond, CA 94804

Phone:  510-620-6512

Fax:      510-620-6542

e-mail:   bill_lindsay@ci.richmond.ca.us