Guest speaker Mayor Janet Abelson’s talk on “El Cerrito Economic Development and Future Vision for the City” discussed the significant progress the city has made to develop housing and commercial space in the city. She discussed the city’s El Cerrito San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan that emphasizes transit-oriented and mixed-use (combining housing and commercial space) development along the BART Del Norte to BART El Cerrito Plaza corridor. Affordable housing projects include Hana Garden Apartments at 10848 – 10860 San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito (on the former site of Tradeway). Once constructed, there will be ~ 62 units available for seniors.
For more information on these development projects, you can visit www.el-cerrito.org/CommDev/MajorProjects. For a copy of the San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan/Complete Streets Plan, visit www.el-cerrito.org/SPASP. You can also view progress in providing affordable housing on the city’s Community Development Department website — and sign up for e-notices by the city’s Development Commission.
During the Q & A session, it was mentioned that the city has applied for a ~ $4M federal grant to add sanitation capacity to accommodate the added usage from the approved and proposed development projects.
President Chau encouraged everyone to participate in our membership drive — and ask friends, family and neighbors to join. For every 20 additional ECDC members, we get one more vote at the state level.
We also discussed the looming federal fiscal cliff: the expiration of our country’s debt limit suspension on March 15 (preventing our country from borrowing needed money to pay our bills) and the March 31 expiration of our federal government’s continuing resolution (a stop-gap measure that prevents a federal government shutdown).
VP -Records Keller recommended a by-law update to include a records retention policy and this was approved.
