To the cloud.

All right, everyone, we are here for a public safety committee meeting in the EOC and City Hall on Monday, October 20th, 2025 at 2 30 EM.

Roll call with uh members.

Yeah.

Pang Meganers.

Present.

All present.

Beautiful.

That is item one.

We note our order two.

Now we're moving on to item three special presentations.

We have none, and so we are moving to item four public comment.

This is just a reminder to everyone that we are while an intimate group right now.

We are still filing by Brown Act.

So are there any public comments at this time?

City clerk.

I don't have any raised hands.

And I don't have anyone in the room requesting the speaker.

Okay.

And we shall move on to item five.

Consent business.

Consent calendar items.

We will be enacted by one motion.

There will be no separate discussion on these items unless a member of the committee or staff request specific items to be removed for separate actions.

Nope, got nothing.

I think we move for both.

Second.

Motion approved.

Thank minutes approved.

Beautiful.

Then we move to item six, general business.

Minutes and the meeting schedule.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yes, and the meeting schedule are both.

Yeah.

And we move to general business.

A traffic update.

What say you?

What are they?

Thank you.

So this is the traffic safety update.

Uh for this month, we're gonna be talking about uh e-bikes.

So then the next slide.

There we go.

So this is the definition of what an e-bike is, which is also a very kind of problematic thing, judging by how there's so many different variations and models and what they can do, and companies are obviously constantly changing uh what they're done, so legislation has to cut catch up with it.

But this is the definition, and it's anything that is assisting with operable pedals less than 750 blocks.

Um what's interesting to know about all this, and I think a lot of people don't understand this is that the same rules apply to an e-bike that they do bicycles.

So it's very important that I think both people that use e-bikes as well as bicycles understand that the rules of the road are the same as if you're a motor vehicle, and they're governed, the definition is governed under 312.5 for the classifications of any bike and then California Vehicle Code section 21 200 addresses the rules that bicyclists have to adhere to.

Next slide.

So these are the class certification of different e-bikes.

Um, and they're mostly related to speed and licensing and stuff like that, which we'll go into the next slide.

But as you can see, um, there's thresholds of 20 miles an hour assisted and unassisted with the final class three um being able to reach a total speed of 20 miles per hour.

Obviously, if it exceeds that, then it's no longer uh in that classification, it will be considered um a e-motorcycle or something similar to that.

So this is the pedal bike.

These are kind of the basic rules, I think, which everyone kind of should understand.

Max speed is obviously posted.

I'll be very requested.

People are able to go 35-40 miles an hour, but uh good luck if they're able to do that.

Um minimum age, there isn't one.

Um you don't need a driver's license.

Um helmets are only required under 18, but obviously, our policy is to hope that everyone wears uh helmets at all times.

And this is one that is a problem everywhere in the state of California.

Are they allowed on sidewalks?

No, but I think we've all seen quite a few of them driving on the sidewalks as well as e-bikes.

Uh and allowed on trails.

Uh yes, as a general rule, unless otherwise noted uh both by ordinance or uh city or county uh response.

Thank you.

Class one e-bike.

So that is a maximum of 20 miles an hour.

You still do not need a driver's license.

Uh helmet required and recommended is still the same.

Um, and again, they're not allowed on the sidewalks, and for the most part, they are allowed on trails and let them have a next one.

Here we're getting into another uh 20 mile an hour.

Uh minimum mage is the same, driver's license, no helmet is exactly the same.

Um they're not allowed on sidewalks again.

Not a lot uh yes on trails.

Otherwise, so what's the difference between a two and a one?

It's pedal assisted, and so the the class one is more kind of just assisting the pedal motion, and so it's um the class two is can be more you can stop pedaling and it'll take you up to 20 miles an hour, but then stops the motor stops at that ability to exceed that speed.

And class three e-bike uh reaches 28 miles per hour.

This is where you start needing to be 16 years old, which I think is is a misunderstanding in the community a little bit.

Um you do not need a driver's license, but you do need a helmet, and they're not allowed on sidewalks or on trails.

That's that's no for each one of those.

So the e-bikes at that class three are starting to get a little faster, more dangerous, and you know, you need to be over 16 years old.

So this is some new recent legislation uh through California.

It's assembly bill 875, and it addresses uh this first section here is the vehicle code allowing a peace officer to uh tow uh subject to arrest um the uh vehicle or the e-bike of a subject that is arrested for a ongoing crime.

So that just outlines the authority to do it, and then it it talks about the requirements of what they have to be on for it to be a towable authority, and those are listed in one A and two.

Next slide.

So some of the resources I I know the public always and the community really like to have the ability to to uh to kind of learn more and see it visually.

So this is a great resource through our grant.

Um it's the state of California website, go safely.

It's through the Office of Traffic Safety, and it has a ton of different um kind of go bys and stuff.

This is just an example of pedestrian and bicycle safety.

It's a really great tool.

It has about 15 or 16 different um resource uh tools for the public to look through and kind of learn the law and so on and so forth.

Next slide, and then what's great is we've uh kind of put our own schedule up, and it's at www.belmont.gov uh e-bikes.

So it kind of gives you the rules, the definitions, and everything else there.

So it's a great resource for the community to actually look at um exactly what they can and can't have, what age.

It has the charts for um what I've showed you previously in terms of the classes and what requirements are needed.

So it's a really great resource for anyone that wants to know the law.

Uh to do a quick transition where these are the things that are coming up in the future.

We're gonna uh tentatively have another coffee with the cop event um on November 19th.

We're likely gonna have it at the Carlmont Shopping Center, and again, this is our third uh time we've done it.

It's a great time.

We we have a ton of community engagement and um get a lot of questions asked and answered, and so it's a it's a great ability for us to have a face-to-face and kind of answer some questions both personally and and professionally through that.

Next slide, please.

So here's my traffic safety quiz, and anyone feel free since there's only two people in our uh in our thing.

So if uh the first question is can a bicyclist wear headphones or earbuds in both ears while driving on a roadway?

Yeah, very good.

So that the that is correct uh point, and uh you can also have one ear off.

You can wear headphones if it has one ear off, and you're able to um hear through that one ear.

So that that's one example of a reason why you can do that.

Can you ride an e-bike or a bicycle in a crosswalk?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Uh the nice gentleman in the thing is shaking his head.

No, you have to dismount and push through act as a pedestrian because you're actually uh causing danger to the pedestrians in the crosswalk.

The whole point of the crosswalk is the protection of the pedestrians.

So bicyclists driving through there is is illegal and it's also unsafe to the pedestrians who have to be yielded to that.

So this is one where I think the vast majority of um the community doesn't know the right answer for that.

But again, it's it's it's not something you could do is ride your bike or e-bike through that crosswalk.

Do e-bikes or bicycles have to stop at a stop sign?

Yes, we say yes.

I'm glad everyone knows that.

Yes, our history of South Francis.

Oh, really?

Oh wow, that's okay, but we've been voted for the teacher.

In Belmont, you must stop at a stop.

Um so we uh definitely that's an important thing, and and oftentimes that's kind of one of the problems we get for motorists in terms of bicycles complaints.

Um this is just that I don't think people know that you have to be 16 to be on one of the class 3s.

I mean, we do we walk the bike bridge all the time, and there are tons of 14-year-olds on those when it's everybody looks young.

Yes, and we have noticed um a number of of those type of e-bikes driving on the sidewalk and stuff like that.

So it's it's definitely a concern.

We're putting a lot more of attention to it because it's a safety factor.

Pedestrians coming out of areas in a business district or you know could be impacted negatively, and so it's it's a definite safety concern that we need to address.

Uh so state grant.

We have two grants right now.

Um, we're doing really well in that in that category.

Um, we're now in our third year with our state traffic grant for the Office of Traffic Safety for this coming 2026.

We're gonna have 47,000 to uh do traffic education and uh DY enforcement related to uh overtime costs.

So it's a it's a great thing, that 47,000 will do a ton to help reduce um the problems of having to pay for it as a city, so the state's helping us with that, and that's a really uh great grant that we've had in the third year, so it's it's very helpful.

And the second one, uh, we're in our first year of this grant.

Um, and this is kind of similar, but it's it's much more focused on driving under the influence of both alcohol, cannabis, um, narcotics, or um prescription drugs.

It's its focus is really that.

This one has a a much larger component of uh kind of equipment.

So one of the great abilities that we got from this grant was to be able to buy uh traffic enforcement motorcycle uh for the city, which is obviously a very large amount of money, and thus not having the city you have to pay for that.

So uh we're really happy about that, and that's something that saves the city money, and the state was uh willing to provide us that so that we can enforce and keep people safe through DUI enforcement.

This uh I like to show every time.

Again, this is the Go Safely California, and uh this is the OTS website, which has a ton of educational informational resources, so it's a great tool.

It gives everything from bicycle information uh drivers and pedestrians, so it's a it's a great resource for anyone to learn more about public safety.

And with that, thank you very much for your time.

And if there's any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

I have a question.

Yes, you said that more researchers are being put into addressing problems caused by e-bikes.

But are what kinds of things are you doing?

So, first and foremost, the resource on the website, uh education.

Um also when the officers are making stops, they try to educate.

And you know, as a first step, or if it's necessary to cite contact the parents, I mean that discussion with or educational component of it actually pays massive dividends because word of mouth is very popular.

Our school resource officer in the future is going to be also pushing this information out because obviously the kids are the ones driving these e-bikes.

Um, but you know, events like this also is helpful to you know tell the community that that this is something that we're concerned about and and they should be as well.

So I think those are kind of enforcement education and that constant uh reaffirming when dealing with the community, even in you know, we've had a number a couple of accidents here or there where someone was driving on a sidewalk and it's there's an education component.

Hey, you know, you're too young to be on this, you know, talk to the parents and stuff.

And while we're very glad that there weren't injuries, you know, you have that component of education for the future.

We do have a someone who rights at council, pretty regularly very concerned about e-bikes, especially at once and just being very hazardous to all pedestrians.

Yeah, so that that is where I think that resource on the website and then our continued uh addressing of this uh through enforcement and education is going to be uh our best model to you know help alleviate that in the city.

Can I add something?

One of the other things we're doing, um, it's probably about two weeks out where we're putting out another video, like a CP video of pretty much what the captain just explained regarding the three types, um, so that way we can share it with schools and then post it on our social media platforms, not just within the DD, but throughout the city as well.

Uh, because as you guys know, that it is a uh continuing uh challenge for us, um, e-bikes, and you know, as you can see that it's not um remiss with the uh legislative like legislators, and they're looking at different ways to try to, you know, while still promoting bicycles but still understanding that you know the rules of the road and uh enforcement and educators um opportunities to help uh curb some of the pollution stuff for getting focused.

Are we talking uh are we talking about um the difference between pedal bikes and um non-pedaled bikes, the different classes in parking parking backsuming because I think that's a misunderstanding on the trails that like looking e-bikes with pedals, that's cool that helps the older guys get a pills, right?

But but I wonder if that would help the discussion around having e-bikes on the trail of people.

That's been a long uh standing discussion as it relates to the open space and trailing rules.

So that is the continued education conversation there.

I think PD every once in a while does get called up and they do kind of take a look at that, whether they're in compliance or not.

I just think it's a good thing, it's an easy delineation.

If it has pedals, it's okay.

If it doesn't, then well, all the e-bikes have the pedals of question about the troll fact, and then just trying to educate the the trick is finding, you know, there's a little distinguishing mark.

I mean, class one on two, you can pedal that, but it's kind of hard to distinguish because it's really about the speed of having the trial to be at that speed and size of the motor.

So it's it's about really their uh interaction with the individual if they're breaking the law, uh they're observing those bikes that might be questionable, that we kind of stop and educate or start putting more information again.

This is part of this educational object's gonna be our program to push more information out and get a little bit more ahead of the care as the use of them are becoming more popular in time as well.

So it's uh it's an ongoing process, but something that we will expand as the lead kind of drives the as we see more and more use and more uh utilization as a way of kind of popular.

Yeah, it's not limited to just uh student population, it's the parents, right?

Trying to get to the parents so that they understand that it's not like yeah, or buying right here, the the the guardrails of different classes and types and things like that.

So we're trying to try to sort of multifaceted approach on how we get that.

It's just good to know that.

It's not just that.

I mean, that that's the population we're most concerned about, you know, just for the the kids understanding the rules of the road and and our parents and the users and all our folks here can partner to educate, right?

There's elemental education for the younger ebooks are being used broadly by adults and uh and children and kids, and so there's that distinction between what they use is appropriate, and the parents are buying these vehicles these bikes for their children.

So it's good for us to have that kind of continuous education and messaging about the responsibilities about the danger, especially if they let them kind of write up the traffic and all that.

Those are issues that we're concerned about to ensure public safety is actually to uh to the maximum extent possible.

Okay, all right.

I do have a I have a hand raised.

Um Tamara Patton.

You should Trina Patton.

Um, and my question is: in light of the fact that um there are age requirements and helmet requirements between the class two and three bikes.

Is there a way for the community to easily tell the difference between a class two and a class three bike?

And also, thank you very much for this information.

It's been very helpful.

Uh yes, thank you very much.

We we appreciate that.

Um, no, it's very difficult, and I think as the e-bikes have become more and more popular, the variations of them are becoming much more profound, and that's why the legislators are having to catch up and um pick specific enforcement sections for each, but looking at one go by.

Uh it's probably pretty difficult unless you were somebody that has an enormous amount of knowledge of uh e-bikes.

So I don't think the general community could could make that determination.

Okay, I appreciate that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right.

Moving on to item six feet.

Chiefs update.

Thank you.

Um just go ahead and jump in there, Chris.

Sorry.

I think we're just gonna go ahead and uh get started.

But we're the first slide is uh regards to some of the new officers and new police recruits.

So we have two new officers that uh graduated a couple weeks ago that are now in the FTO program.

That's Officer Fernando and Maris and Officer Xavier the Childs, which are their significant others pinning other badges on during graduation.

So we're really excited.

They're hitting the streets um as we speak uh to go through the field training program, and then we have three new officers uh recruit officers heading to the academy on Monday.

Uh uh Christopher Harty, Josh Gonzalez, and Victor Albert.

So we're excited to have those three.

They've been with us for some have been with us for a month or so, some have been with us two weeks, and we're just getting uh currently getting ready for the academy that starts on Monday.

So we're excited to have uh the officers hit the road and the ones in the academy successfully uh get through them.

It's nine or how long?

Uh, seven, six and a seven years.

Um I ran out of cool photos, so I just spec to uh generic uh app texting.

Um, we're training is uh continuing, those are just some of the big the highlights we've done a lot of training in the last couple of months um since our last meeting in June.

Uh those are some of the more uh some of the stuff we've been doing.

All uh officers went to update on available pursuit policies, and communications, obviously, legal issues facing law enforcement, but the total hour training hours on top of their normal um uh shifts was roughly about 2200 uh training hours that was done since the last.

So that's pretty much our sweet spot in uh in training.

We do a lot of training uh throughout the LPRs and uh drones.

Just give an update on both of those.

Our ALPRs and bullets of data earlier a couple weeks ago.

In 30 days.

Our uh license plate readers uh read approximately 2.5 million license plates within just the city of Belmont.

I think it's I don't realize the uh the amount of cars and then obviously that license plate could be able to order once, which is kind of the totality of you know how much uh vehicular traffic load we do have in the city.

Uh, we continue to look at our ALPR policy in the best interest of uh current standards and best uh legislative guidelines, obviously, but also best practices throughout the state, right?

I think that's something that we always continue to look at and see what's what you know what where our sweet spot is, our policy is sound uh when we've started, and we're always looking at make sure to hold uh the most competent uh for our officers and the transparency part with the uh community.

So we're always looking at new uh ways to make that policy stronger.

Uh and then obviously we have our transparency portal, our UAS system, uh, our drones for less or better term.

We've continued, we've used those multiple times since over the last couple of months from you know measuring uh you know creeks to roadways to calls for service.

We had uh one uh incident the other day where we're able to utilize our drones and um apprehend two subjects regarding uh regarding some stolen property.

We had another incident at Water Dog where a bicyclist uh they found a bicyclist down the hill, uh unsure if the bicyclist was down the steep part of Waterdog.

So we uh were able to utilize the drone to determine if there was if we wanted to send uh people down there burned out.

The individual lost his bike and we were able to uh you know, uh navigate that without sending bodies down there.

And our biggest one is probably just an update on our mental health clinician.

It was kind of stagnant for a while, uh, regarding the um regarding Star Vista, but a new um third party has stepped in called the Felton Institute.

They're run out of the East Bay.

They have a significant footprint regarding this uh mental health and a couple other things.

It worked primarily out of Alameda, but it's a uh very vast company that's been doing this type of thing for quite some time.

Uh we I don't all knock on wood a little bit, but we did our last interview last week with uh an individual that I hopefully will take the job this week and should be starting sometime in mid-November.

So we're excited about our future with that, and that is a fully funded grant position through the county, so um all the way through June of next year.

No, I'm excited that not in the medical conditions I have.

We're excited.

It's definitely something uh we're excited to have it's been uh unfortunate that it's taken this long based on some uh outline factor game.

Here's where we're at.

Our outreach and engagement over the last uh few months, we're pretty busy as much as we can uh from copy with the cop to disaster preparedness day.

We had our school leadership luncheon and pizza with the police is always a good one with the seniors.

Uh but on the horizon, I think that's where we're gonna look uh because we have some big big issues or big items up there.

One of them, in my opinion, not only the Veterans Day, but we have the Belmont Civics Day.

That is November 22nd.

That is where we pretty much have taken the each department within the city to have a uh community members come in and learn about each department within the city from finance to public works to the city clerk's office.

Um, so we're definitely jazzed about that, and that's kind of uh on the the vision of the city manager to kind of take what we've done with the community academy and bring it down to the civic uh and open and doors for the civics.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and then obviously shout out to Lubach on October 29th.

Uh, Santa Pray, we haven't set a date yet, and everybody knows about the centennial.

And because I'll end up to take any questions.

Okay.

No questions.

Okay, item seven.

Committee updates.

Staff items.

None.

That leads us to item eight.

Adjournment.

Maybe done.

257 PM.

Peace out.

So, yeah, it's can we still hear us online?

Is it Trina and Michelle?

Yes.

Thank you, ladies, for uh attending.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye.

Thank you.

Trina's in LA.

Even better.

Bye.