The City Council convened at 6:30 PM for a study session on the Centennial Celebration planning, followed by the regular meeting at 7:00 PM. Councilmembers Jordan, McCune, Vice Mayor Pang-Maganaris, and Mayor Mates were present; Councilmember Latimerlo was absent. The meeting included special presentations, public comments, consent calendar approval, and two major discussion items: the annual transportation and mobility update and proposed amendments to the Regional Commercial (RC) Zoning District.
All seven items were approved unanimously by roll call (4-0).
Good evening. This is the City of Belmont City Council meeting. It is April 22nd. We are in the City Council chambers at City Hall One Twin Pines Lane. It is 6:30, and we have no closed session, but we do have a study session. And we're going to also have public comment on the item, which is Belmont's centennial celebration discussion. So when we call for public comment, please feel free to raise your hand. Great. We have our public parks and recreation director, Bridge Shearer with us. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm here to talk about Belmont's 100th birthday coming at us in 2026. So it's never too soon to start planning these things. So I want to let you uh and the community know where we are in our planning process. So without further ado, here we go. So a failure to plan is a plan to fail. So we are uh doing our planning now. We've got a steering committee of um uh myself, Josie and Elizabeth Um Sacris, our communications director, and um another um city event staff that uh that is supporting that, and uh, we are meeting on a regular basis to talk about the planning. Uh we have also um finalized our branding for to celebrate the hundredth. Um you can see that in the uh in the graphic over here on the right that celebrates the hundred and does sort of a play on the Belmont logo and the Belmont color. So you'll be seeing that theme all over town in 2026. Um, as far as reaching out to the community, that's also going to be an ongoing effort. Uh, we have a public survey um that we've done. We've had some uh one-on-one meetings with um uh with some folks that have uh been longtime Belmont residents and are invested in um helping us make this celebration a success. We've also uh put together a website, Belmont.gov slash 100 years, and that's where we've put some historical information, and that's where we're that's going to be our um channel to continue to update the community on what events are forthcoming and how they can get involved. So just to talk a little further about the logo, these are the um, these are some of the images that you're gonna see. You'll see them on um uh maybe on our letterhead, we'll have pins, um, we'll have banners on Ralston Avenue, um, all sorts of things. So get used to this look. So it's a nice play on on our natural beauty and some of our historical buildings in town. Um we are we have a list of proposed events and um and signage. Oh, I already talked about the branding a little bit. So um, some proposed events. Um we're talking about one signature event in fall of 2026. So the 100th birthday is actually on uh October 26th of 2026. So that's the date we're looking at. We want to make sure that we're not going to be conflicting with Halloween and and that sort of thing. So exactly what that event is gonna look like is still to be determined. Um it might be an outdoor picnic or it might be an indoor venue. Some of that's gonna depend on what's happening here in City Hall campus with the detention basin project. So we've got a couple of variables still up in the air before we can pin that down. We're also gonna be um sharing the branding, like the images that I've uh that I just showed you at all of our existing city events that we have that we hold annually, whether that's Earth Day, the egg hunt, Belmont Trunk or Treat Bash, that might be something that gets combined with the birthday. We still don't quite know what that's gonna look like in October. Movie night, Santa Parade, and cultural celebrations. Again, we'll kind of put the centennial stamp on our outreach to a lot of those events. Uh we're also gonna be tabling at co-sponsored or community events throughout the city. Um is gonna be national night out. Uh, one idea that we had was to at each location where a neighborhood is hosting an event, we bring a birthday cake with this uh with this um image on it and um let everybody celebrate uh Belmont's birthday. Obviously, also um doing the kind of outreach that we always do at celebrate the music, the water dog run, um the Belmont Park Booster Summer Concert Series and that sort of thing. So we expect to be present at a lot of uh events that people are already coming to. And again, as I mentioned, we'll have citywide branding on the light pole banners, something across Ralston when we figure out what our signature events are gonna be, that sort of thing. Um and then we also want to obviously celebrate the history of Belmont as we're doing this and um and the um diverse cultural um uh uh fabric that makes up our wonderful city.