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Planning Commission Meeting Minutes August 28, 2008 Agenda No. 08-16 Page 6 of 11 Mr. Kay explained that the Initial Study for the project identified several such areas for which standard mitigation measures will be proposed to ensure that the impacts remain less than significant. These areas include biological, mineral and cultural resources, with mitigation measures to, for example, protect habitats of migratory birds and provide for discovery of archeological resources if such situations arise. The Initial Study also determined areas that could result in impacts that may not be mitigated to a less than significant level. These include aesthetics, air quality, public services, utilities and services systems, hazards and hazardous materials, hydrology and water quality, noise, geology and soils, recreation, land use, population and housing, and traffic. He said that the Draft EIR will address and evaluate each of these areas fully, and that all public input provided prior to the September 10 deadline will be considered as the Draft EIR process proceeds. The Draft EIR document should be completed this ~ falllwinter and then circulated to the public for a review period of 45 days, during which time another public hearing will take place to solicit public input on the Draft EIR. The next step will lead to the Final EIR, which will address each of the comments received during the public hearing process. The Final EIR is expected to be completed by late winter or early spring 2009. With no questions at this time from Commissioners, Acting Chair Dlugosh invited members of the public to come forward to sign in and speak for up to three minutes. Barry Luboviski, Secretary-/Treasurer for the Building and Construction Trades Council for Alameda County, AFLlCIO, explained that the Council represents 28 local unions whose approximately 40,000 members work in Alameda County. Certainly union labor supports Kaiser Permanente in most of its endeavors, he said, and to that end the Council is pleased to see Kaiser's interest in building a hospital in San Leandro. However, he expressed serious concerns about the retail development project at this time, suggesting that scoping should adequately cover and identify economic impacts that may occur as a consequence of significant construction in the area. He cited a parallel, noting that over the last I S years there have been a number of studies on Wal-Mart stores to evaluate the potential impacts such stores would have on a local community. In this case of the ICI proposal, he added, we have a large retail development and housing project on 30 acres under consideration. Building trades unions are concerned about the area standard wages; the legal picketing Trades Council members do comes under the topic of area standard wages. In these instances, the union members notify the public of what they believe to be a disparity in the wage. He reiterated that the concern centers on ensuring that scoping cover the potential impact a project this size may have on the local workforce, both in terms of using local employment (this is ablue-collar community) and the impact on local wages resulting if out-of--town contractors come in to work. At this point, he concluded, the Trades Council is reserving its final opinions, but its attitude toward the retail portion of this project can be characterized as being "extremely concerned" with regard to those impacts. He added that the developer has made no contact with any of the Council's unions in an attempt to identify local contractors, the local workforce or availability of local workers. Right now, the union halls are full, so the level of concern is heightened. For these reasons, scoping should cover issues of economic impacts on local workforce and local contractors.