DOWNTOWN OAKLAND ASSOCIATION INTERIM BOARD OF DIRECTORS APRIL 21ST, 2009, 1:00 P.M.

SHORENSTEIN CONFERENCE ROOM, 500 12TH STREET

Present: JC Wallace/SKS, Laurie Berberich/CAC , Paul Grafft/Shorenstein, Martin Ward/Old Oakland, Denise Trudeau/Clorox, Pamela Izzo/SKS, Carmen Santisteban/Shorenstein, Mike McGuire/Calif. Capital Group, Aliza Gallo/City of Oakland, John Bruno/CIM Group, Lisa Rhine/Press Building, Stacey McCarthy/Shorenstein, Chris Curtis/Metrovation Marco Li Mandri/Executive Director, Helen Wyman/District Manager, Steve Snider/Asst. District Manager Karen Engle/Chamber of Commerce, Joe Vega/Block by Block, Ted Tarver/Block by Block, Harold Dees/Peralta Maintenance, Maria Rocha, City of Oakland

Staff:

Guests:

MINUTES
DISCUSSIONS HELD AND DECISIONS MADE BY THE INTERIM BOARD OF DIRECTORS SUBJECT Introductions DISCUSSION JC called everyone together at 1:10 p.m at the Shorenstein Conference Room. Introductions were made The minutes of the March 17th meeting were reviewed by the Interim Board. ACTION?

Minutes of March 17, 2009 Interim Board meeting

Announcements, Public comments, new businesses, property owners, community events

Helen and Karen reported that the 3rd Annual Mayors Economic Summit is on Friday, May 1st at Oakland Convention Center (Marriott). Showcase of Oaklandbased businesses.
DOWNTOWN OAKLAND ASSOCIATION

Chris C. moved and Carmen seconded approval of the minutes. The motion was approved unanimously. No action taken

388 19th Street Oakland, California 94612 Phone 510.238.1122 Fax 510.452.4529 mail@downtownoakland.org www.downtownoakland.org

Committee Reports: Organization Committee report - JC Wallace Joint Organization No report was given Committee Update City Tree Watering The City of Oakland has approached staff about using its maintenance personnel to water 40 new trees that have been planted within and adjacent to the district. After requested by staff, Peralta has agreed to water the trees within, and just outside of the district for a supplemental fee to their contract. Staff is requesting approval to enter into agreement with City to water City tree in CBD and surrounding area. The total contract is for $15,000 which would be spilt between the districts. Requesting authorization to take the $7500 and set up new bank account for each CBD for non-assessment funds. Financial Report Discussion was held as to whether the annual budget is based on what is the contracted payments for the fiscal year or on a cash basis reflecting when the bills are paid. The report should reflect all expenses for 2009. Laurie will work on the budget format with Laura from New City America. The YTD column is confusing and should be removed.

Joint Board Meeting

The Joint Org Committee has recommended that the June Board meeting be a joint Board meeting with invited speakers. After discussion, the Board agreed by consensus to skip the May Board Meeting. The next board meeting will be held jointly with Lake Merritt-Uptown on June 23rd at 9:00 am at 2

Paul moved and Chris seconded entering into an agreement with City on a tree Watering agreement in the greater CBD area. This would entail opening two new bank accounts for receipt of the nonassessment district funds. The motion to enter into the contract and accept the funds was approved unanimously. Laurie will work on the budget format with Laura from New City America. Laurie moved and Paul seconded to approve the budget with changes: all expenses committed for 2009 will be reflected in the budget, YTD will be removed from the report. JC moved and Chris seconded to skip the May Board meeting and to attend a Joint Board of Directors meeting to be held on Tuesday, June 23rd at Kaiser Center. Marco will invite a

the Kaiser Center, 2nd floor conference room.

OMLF Meetings

Newsletter

Hardship Exemptions

The Oakland Merchant Leadership Forum (OMLF) meetings held on the 4th Wed. of the month at 8:30am at City Hall hearing room 4. Last months meeting topic was parking. Helen reported that most of the discussion centered on the neighborhood commercial districts rather than downtown. Issues related to downtown Oakland should be discussed at a separate meeting or reported to Aliza. The March newsletter was mailed to all property owners and distributed to the businesses via email and the Ambassadors who went block by block. 2nd Newsletter in production to distribute in June Discussion was held regarding the hardship policy. Paul recommended adding an application deadline or a fixed amount per year in order to avoid applications coming in throughout the year and potentially creating a hole in the budget. Hardship Exemption applications received thus far: Andrew Brog/Cathedral Building, request for $3,000 reimbursement of $ 3,000 assessment Fred Brown/Roscils, request for (no amount listed on application) The applications require justification of hardship and documentation to be considered. Marco recommended that the hardship applications be reviewed by the Org Committee in a separate meeting to respect the privacy of the applicants. Discussion followed on what constituted hardship in todays economy. 3

speaker or speakers to talk about the City budget crisis. The motion to skip the May Board meeting and reassemble in June with a Joint Board meeting was approved unanimously. No action taken

2nd Newsletter in production to distribute in June

Paul moved and Chris seconded to authorize the Organization Committee to review the hardship requests and allocate up to $10,000 in reimbursements. The motion was approved unanimously. The hardship funds will be expensed to the Contingency line item in the budget.

District Expansion

Letter to Walter Cohen from CEDA

PROW Meeting with City Attorney and Aliza Gallo

Marco is seeking authorization to expand the district to include Bay Area Legal Aid the only property not included on the 17th block of Telegraph. One property owner has requested that they be included in the Downtown district. Marco has been working with CEDA and the City Attorneys office to figure out how to accomplish this under the Citys policies. A copy of the letter to Walter Cohen was distributed in the agenda packet. Key issues: 1. Use of Redevelopment Funds for trash cans, bike racks, etc. (Aliza reported that there is no money available for this). 2. Expansion of the Ambassador Program thru City matching grant. (Council voted to allocate the available funding to districts that do not currently have an ambassador program in place) 3. 17th Street BART station beautification 4. Request for District Management Consortium and new ordinance 5. Removal of Parking Poles synchronize removal of parking poles with installation of bike racks. The CBD Staff has submitted a map of all trash cans located in the district. CBD Public Rights of Way map is in production. Will include news racks, trash cans, benches, etc.

No action taken

No action taken

No action taken

Aliza asked what the response has been to the newsletter. She said more information pieces are needed, marketing materials plan for the districts needed. E-newsletter format should be emailed as a pdf link. SOBO Committee (Sidewalk Operations, Beatification and Order) Report: Martin and Laurie No action taken Maintenance The staff is working on multiple levels to Ambassador Update deal with issues. Example: Graffiti Peralta Services Corp. 1. Seek out permission from property owners to remove from building. Authorization form to be distributed 4

Block by Block Report Ted Tarver, Operations Manager

through database 2. Report incidents to the Citys graffiti abatement program as needed 3. Outreach to the local schools 4. Dialog with newspaper vendors to determine protocol for responding to graffiti removal Discussion followed on Peralta services The people hanging out at 13th & Broadway continue to be a problem area. Joe Vega gave an update on the issues at 13th and Broadway. Joe is the second in command for Block by Block. He works from 12:30pm to 9pm daily. Joe can be reached at 510.898.8592 Weekly updates are emailed on Fridays. Latest report included in agenda packet. Discussion followed Ambassadors are attending daily police line-up. Police Radio has been tied up do to legal issues around use of radios by civilians. Ted is researching how this has been dealt with in other cities. Staff will forward OPD flyer on pan handling to property managers to distribute to tenants. CBD staff and OPD are still sorting out their working relationship. Helen, Ted and Joe met with Willie Cook, the Franchise owner of Burger King, on April 1st to follow-up on the outstanding issues that had not been resolved. Mr. Cook had told CBD Staff and Ted that he was going to start using a different daytime security guard by April 1st but he has not followed thru with this commitment. The Ambassadors have reported seeing daytime security guard acting in a manner not conducive toward professional conduct and has a problematic relationship with people hanging out on the corner. The Ambassadors have made significant progress but additional solutions and support are needed for a significant 5

No action taken

Coordination between the CBD ambassadors and the Oakland Police Department

No action taken

13th & Broadway Security Mitigation proposal

JC moved and Paul seconded that the CBD allocate the funds to trigger the funding. The CBDs funds for this project will not be allocated until all other parties have written their check to cover the balance of the one year program. The motion to allocate the $2,000 was approved unanimously.

impact . Discussion then occurred on a recommendation by the SOBO Committee to attempt to jump start the cleanup of 13th and Broadway by the installation of muzak on the corners. The estimate for a one year subscription to round the clock music, which would be installed at 13th and Broadway, (both sides) would be around $10,000. The SOBO Committee is recommending that a joint effort be put forward to fund this music, which has been demonstrated to immediately drive undesirable people from the area. It is proposed that the Downtown CBD allocate $2,000 from its SOBO budget, matched by $2,000 from each of the following parties: -Burger King -Fred Karren, the building owner -T-Mobile -Mo Mashoon, the other corner building owner The Oakland City Council voted to move two of the four parking stalls reserved for taxis from 13th Street to 14th Street next month. This was initiated thanks to the efforts of Pat Kernighans office. This move is in response to business and property owners complaining that taxi cab drivers hang out at the corner of 13th and Broadway which already has a loitering issue. Marco discussed the issues of the mounting workload for Helen and Steve in the implementation and oversight of all of the CBD programs. He stated that he thought that it would streamline things if he were to work with someone whose sole responsibility was to be outdoor reviewing the contractors work as well as dealing with the obstacles in the public rights of way including: topped parking meters, damaged trees, abandoned news racks, graffiti, etc. He discussed this at the SOBO meeting and had suggested that each 6

Taxi Stand at 13th & Broadway

No action taken

SOBO Meeting April 8th

Chris moved and JC seconded the allocation of $7,000 to hire Services Coordinator. The motion passed with Laurie Berberich voting no.

CBD allocate $1,000 per month for the balance of the calendar year, commencing May 1st, 2009, to hire Andrew Jones to act as an independent contractor to serve in this capacity. The LMUDA had allocated the equal amount of funds this morning so the total amount allocated would be $14,000 or $2,000 per month for the months of May December 2009. Andrew would report directly to Marco. Marco reiterated that this would be funded by the costs savings realized by the delay in the Peralta contract which started the third week in March. The cost savings were substantial enough, over that three week period, to pay Andrew for this oversight position. Discussion followed. Paul stated that he understood the function of this position but stated that Marco had stated in his interview that he would provide adequate staff to provide all of these services, and therefore had an issue with this addition to staff. Marco agreed that he had believed that his office staff would be adequate before the actual services started, however since these funds were already budgeted, the hiring of Andrew would allow us to expedite a lot of issues in the public rights of way. That he was more concerned about getting things done sooner, within the budgeted amount. To reiterate, the Board was being asked to authorize the allocation of $7,000 from the existing SOBO budget to allow Andrew to work directly with property owners on the street issues including: a) Working with City to remove abandoned news racks; b) Placement of BART landscaping boxes; c) Coordination of 17th Street BART improvements; d) Coordination of new tree, trash can and bike rack placements e) Other tasks as assigned by Marco 7

Next SOBO Committee Meeting

The next joint SOBO Committee meeting will be held on May 12th. The meeting will take place at the CBD Office located at 388 19th Street.

All are welcome to attend the next joint SOBO Meeting.

DISI Committee (District Identity and Streetscape Improvement) Report: Carmen Carmen moved and PR Task Force CBD launch Event - The PR Task Force is recommending that the CBD launch event Chris seconded the allocation of $5,000 be held in coordination with the Uptown to become the coevent that the City of Oakland is planning sponsor of Uptown in June. Samee Roberts, the Director of Unveiled! as well as Marketing for the City attended the DISI Meeting to ask the CBDs to co-sponsor the allocate an event Uptown Unveiled and use the event additional $5,000 for a similar major event to do the media launch event. The DISI in Downtown in the Committee is recommending that each district allocate $5,000 for Uptown Unveiled fall. The motion to allocate the funds for and $5,000 from each for an event in the two events (a Downtown Oakland to be held in the fall. These funds would come from the line item total of $10,000 from the DISI budget) was allocated in the DISI budget. approved Samee has also requested that the CBD unanimously. be the fiscal agent for the event. Checks coming from other sponsors would be payable to the Lake Merritt/Uptown District Association, since it has received its public benefit corporation status already. The Downtown Oakland CBD has not received its letter from the IRS yet. The CBD staff will work with the Citys Marketing Team to plan the event operating under one budget and production schedule. Strategic Plan The PR Task Force has generated a rough PR Strategic Plan for the CBDs. A copy of the plan was distributed to the board. CBD staff will work on implementing the plan District Website The DISI Committee, as authorized by the Board at its last meeting, reviewed the five proposals that were submitted to design the CBD websites. Eddy Smith was selected because of his flexibility and pricing. His bid included as many pages as 8 No action taken

Next Board meeting

Adjournment

necessary as well as ongoing maintenance. Eddy will integrate the design with Association Voice. The website will be live before the CBD launch event. The next meeting of the interim Board will be held jointly with Lake Merritt-Uptown and will take place on June 23rd at 9:00 am at the Kaiser Center, 2nd Floor Conference Room. The meeting adjourned at 2:30 p.m.

The next meeting date, time and location were approved by consensus

Minutes taken by: Helen Wyman, District Manager Downtown Oakland Association Marco Li Mandri Executive Director Downtown Oakland Association