El Cerrito Democratic Club – Page 75 – Giving Voice to Progressive Democrats for Over 60 Years

March 15, 2017March 15, 2017

MARCH 28 MEETING PREVIEW

Hello, ECDC! We have an exciting meeting planned for our next general membership meeting (4th Tuesday of the month, March 28). Rebecca Barrett from Congressman Mark DeSaulnier’s office (D-Concord) will be speaking on the Indivisible Guide. Please see Hilary’s earlier post regarding the Indivisible Guide. Please note that we may have to change the speaker at the last minute.

After Rebecca’s talk and your questions, we will turn to our own VP of Records (Marlene Keller) and VP of Media (Mollie Hazen) to discuss the next action steps we can make as individual ECDC members. Also, both will speak about our July 4th booth (hint: volunteers needed!).

On a side note, please remember that we need to recruit new ECDC members and renew previous ECDC members. The more members we enroll into the club, the greater our collective progressive voice in El Cerrito. This will become even more relevant when we weigh in with endorsements of Democratic primary candidates in 2018 (every 20 ECDC members gives ECDC 1 vote to endorse a Democratic primary candidate). So, recruit your friends, life partners, neighbors, and anyone else registered as a Democrat.

Our March meeting agenda was developed by a quorum of our Executive Board, which met on March 6. The President, VP of Publications, VP of Membership, VP of Records, Treasurer, and VP of Media were present at the Executive Board meeting.

In addition to our March general membership meeting, the Executive Board discussed:

* various strategies to increase ECDC membership, including reaching out to previous members of ECDC who are not in good standing;

* the candidate forum for the California Democratic Party chair for ECDC’s April meeting;

*possibly rescheduling the May meeting because the fourth Tuesday of May is immediately after the CA Democratic Party’s convention

See you soon,

Peter

March 15, 2017March 15, 2017

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.