Recap: Antioch City Manager Weekly Report

Antioch City Manager Steve Duran continued his weekly report which shed some light on what transpired in Antioch last week from Code Enforcement, Police activity, to the Delta. Here are the highlights from his 15-page report.

Code Enforcement:

• 21 new cases
• 14 closed cases
• 63 inspections
• 6 citations issued
• 30 Demand to property owner for cost recovery
• 7 special assessment liens for cost recovery
• 29 phone messages on complaint line (779-7042)

Some highlights:

• Code enforcement responded with police to a marijuana grow house on Feather Way and posted the structure sub-standard (red tagged)
• Code enforcement was called by PD officers on scene to a report of solid waste spill in the public right of way on Putnam Street. The homeowner was served a Notice of Violation for the intentional discharge and other related violations. The property owner will be billed for all fees associated with the cleanup.

Sales Tax Oversight Committee
A total of 20 people were interviewed for a committee that will oversee the Measure C sales tax which will help fund the Antioch Police Department.  Mayor Wade Harper and Councilman Gary Agopian will continue interviews and narrow down the field.

Humphreys Restaurant:
Since Dec. 31, 2012, Humphreys Restaurant has been closed. At this time, the City owns the land, but not the building. The City has an interest in obtaining control of the building to initiate an RFP/RFQ process to place a new restaurateur.   Duran calls the building vital to Antioch’s economic development efforts in the downtown/Rivertown area.

 Fiscal and Economic Oversight Hearing on the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP)
The City of Antioch submitted a letter to Assemblyman Jim Frazier which was read into the record. Some of the highlights of the letter include:

• The technical modeling work used to identify the benefits of the Plan and the impacts of the Plan are flawed. The results of these flaws overstate the benefits and understate the impact—specifically the degradation of water quality. The plan needs to be withdrawn and the models fixed.
• It took over six years to produce the Plan comprised of over 30,000 pages of reports and studies. The 120-day comment period needs to be extended so the public can fully understand the benefits, impacts, and the cost to taxpayer/water users for this $25 billion effort.
• The plan does not deal with water supply reliability caused by drought and climate change. It proposes to spend $25 billion dealing with reliability impacted by water transportation issues—how to move water through the Delta—but ignores the greater reliability issue of water shortages caused by a lack of precipitation.

The letter also states:

The Plan would add these costs plus another $10 billion in fees to restore the Delta’s ecosystem. All of these costs will not produce more water—in fact the Plan as proposed will transport less water than has historically been pumped form the Delta. The bottom line is the Plan will result in higher costs, less water to spread the cost over, and no solution for water shortages caused by drought or climate change. This does not even take into account the higher costs Delta community ratepayers will incur to treat saltier drinking water caused by the proposed tunnels. Preliminary estimates indicate Antioch’s cost could increase by $4 million per year.

For the City Manager Full Report, click here.

If you have comments, questions or suggestions regarding the City Manager report, please contact the City Manager, Steve Duran, at [email protected] or 925-779-7011.