All right, Julie, you're good to go, I think.

You hear me?

One, two, one, two, check, check, check.

Can you hear the one, two, one, two?

No.

She can hear you.

Oh, good now.

Hold on, hold on.

Hold on.

Check, check, check.

Julia, one, two, one, two.

Hold on.

Doug, hold on.

All right.

Yeah.

I can hear you.

Can you hear me?

Yeah.

All is good.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Five of the technical issues folks.

Stand by for fifteen seconds, please.

Let me get the records going again.

Thank you.

See you by.

Oh my gosh.

Sounds on the picture for him.

Okay.

Um, Josie.

Kevin says sounds now working, but there's no picture.

I'm sorry, who?

My husband.

Oh, still now.

Sounds working.

I told her to try rejoining and see if that helps.

Okay.

Hold on.

I see I see picture.

Oh, maybe because of my panelists.

Sorry, Julia, you are seeing the screens.

Yes.

Okay, then I think we're good.

Let's call the meeting in order then.

All right.

Thank you, everyone, for your patience.

Uh, this is the City Council, City of Belmont City Council regular meeting.

It is Tuesday, November twenty fifth, twenty twenty-five.

We are in the City Council chambers, City Hall in Belmont, as well as teleconferencing.

I am Southern California at Cathy Benet, and the locations are on our um published agenda.

So it is seven seventeen.

Um, on our published agenda.

And um, we have received public comment, uh, written public comment as well on some of the items.

All public comments are subject to a three minute time limit, and please follow the protocol as uh that's in our published agenda.

All right.

So our first uh order of business is uh roll call madam work can we please have that yes.

Good evening.

Council Member Jordan here meerlow here vice mayor pangmaneris present and mayor mates mayor mates present thank you thank you all right and uh with that actually with the um uh housekeeping I should have also uh mentioned that I I want to thank everyone for uh your flexibility with the uh chairing the meeting remotely tonight um and just since I'm not in the room wanted to quickly review uh how we'll manage participation uh so that it's run quickly smoothly with the the council as a reminder when council members would like to speak if you could please use the standard verbal cue through the chair and that will be especially helpful when I'm joining because I'm joining virtually and I won't be able to see um speakers who might raise their hand or otherwise uh give me a nonverbal cue that they would like to be recognized and then once I recognize you just take a moment to be sure you're talking directly into the microphone before you begin so that your comments can be heard all right thank you so much uh item number two we do not have any items before 7 p.m.

Item number three is a pledge of allegiance um please rise if you're able and see the flat I pledge allegiance to the flags on the individual thank you very much item four is report from the closed session uh we did not have closed session this evening so um no reporting out tonight for that special presentations item five is five a rethink waste poster contest recognition and I think we have a certificate and then uh some of accepting their a presentation their word today um hi everyone um I'd like to give a um warm round of applause for Harrison here Harrison is a winner of rethink waste's uh annual poster contest um so Harrison is in fourth grade at Belmont Oaks Academy and this is his winning poster which was a busy decomposing factory uh so every year we have a different theme and this year's theme was about the decomposing critters and their importance in our compost so round of applause for Harrison would that be would it be okay to get sorry hold on for a second yeah no before um I think you absolutely should get a picture I was wondering if Harrison wanted to share maybe anything about his um his artwork maybe some of the the unique features or things he wanted to share I like the mushrooms of the face the compost critters are working hard in the underground busy digo posing factory and they're having fun crawling through the wind tunnels and relaxing in their living rooms and they also have tiny toilets in the very bottom saving to earth is really cool.

Yeah awesome thank you so much Harrison I'm sorry I couldn't be in person this is great and definitely I think uh we need to have a picture with the council yeah everybody looking at the okay I can have some questions wonderful okay thank you so much.

Thank you, Harrison.

Um, and congratulations.

Moving on to item 5B, Project Sentinel Fair Housing.

I think we have our housing manager from and Project Dentinal here.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor Mays.

Madam Vice Mayor, Council members, uh, thank you for extending an invitation to us, Project Sentinel to address you this evening.

My name is Arthur Tappia.

I'm the Fair Housing Managing Attorney of Project Sentinel.

I'm accompanied by my colleague.

Hello, good evening.

My name is Laura Diaz, and I am the Fair Housing Outreach Community Coordinator.

Nice to be here.

Okay, give me just a moment so I can share your presentation.

Okay, thank you again for having us.

So we are Project Sentinel, and the focus of our agency is to help people resolve their housing problems.

Our mission at Project Sentinel is to develop and promote fairness and equality of housing opportunity for all persons, and to advocate for the peaceful resolution of disputes.

That's okay.

Okay.

Um, and we advocate for the peaceful resolution of disputes for community welfare and harmony.

Okay, so who are we?

Um we are a nonprofit organization with almost half a century of experience, experience striving to achieve equality and fairness in housing opportunities for the people of Northern California.

We are the largest housing agency in Northern California, consistently funded by local jurisdictions and by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, also known as HUD.

We proudly serve 34 communities, and we partner with local, state, and federal agencies, as well as community-based organizations, legal entities, and homeless prevention networks.

And we also believe that where you live also has an impact on the accumulation of wealth as well.

What do we do?

Project Sentinel provides education and counseling to community members, housing providers, and tenants regarding fair housing laws.

We have three principal departments under the Project Sentinel umbrella.

They are the Fair Housing Center, the Landlord Tenant Counseling and Dispute Resolution Department, and the Housing Counseling Services Program.

We conduct audits to test for discriminatory practices.

We provide substantive education to both tenants and housing providers on fair housing protections.

We represent clients in both conciliation and mediation matters, and we conduct enforcement with state agencies, including the California Civil Rights Department and Private counsel as partners to bring forth litigation.

Fair housing services provided by Project Sentinel include counseling on fair housing questions and issues, investigations of allegations of discrimination, writing reasonable accommodation requests on behalf of tenants with disabilities, negotiation and mediation to resolve discriminatory actions, possible legal representation in both administrative hearings and civil litigation, community presentations such as this one presented today, and community outreach and educational services.

In our landlord tenant counseling and dispute resolution department, we provide counseling.

For example, if you are a housing provider or property manager, we may be able to explain your legal obligations under fair housing laws, conduct a fair housing training for both you and your staff, and provide you with resources to help you with understanding and solving fair housing issues.

In our dispute resolution department, we explain the rights and responsibilities you have.

We contact the person with whom you are in conflict, and connect you with a mediator to help you arrive at a reasonable solution for all parties involved, some of the typical housing disputes resolved by Project Sentinel include eviction questions, habitability issues, privacy concerns, mobile home parks, rules and regulations, rent increases and compliance with the Tenant Protection Act, Security Deposit returns, and neighbor on neighbor issues.

Project Sentinel also provides housing housing counseling programs, including first-time home buyer education, home buyer education and assistance programs, reverse reverse mortgage counseling, and foreclosure prevention counseling services.

Okay, so what distinguishes Project Sentinel?

So we provide civil rights enforcement and we conduct neutral dispute resolution.

We serve tenants, landlords, and homeowners.

We focus on the underserved and the most marginalized and the hardest to reach people.

We educate the uninformed and help those in need, and we prosecute predators.

We partner with everyone, that means consumers, providers, advocates, government, and other nonprofit agencies, our quest is to serve.

Seldom do we say we cannot do something.

If there is something we can do, we will do it.

If someone asks for something really hard to do, something kind of impossible, we explain why we can't meet that need.

And if available, we offer alternative solutions to find, you know, the to find the to meet their need.

So every client is treated with respect, care, and support wherever possible.

Again, thank you very much for your time.

We appreciate being invited to address you.

We have listed our emails here on the slide, and we have our website at WW.housing.org.

We may be reached at 800 339 6043 if you have any questions regarding your housing needs.

Again, thank you.

Thank you.

Um, through the council, I just want to provide a little overall context for that presentation.

We really thank our partners at Project Sentinel for coming out.

So, one of the reasons why we are having this presentation tonight is it is one of our housing element programs to provide information to the public about the available resources that are available for landlord tenant disputes.

Some of the programs that they may take advantage of.

So, this presentation is fulfilling that housing element program.

Thank you.

Mayor Mates, can you hear us?

We cannot hear you.

Hello.

Okay, now we can hear you.

Can you hear us?

Yes.

Nope.

We are cutting in and out.

We can't hear you.

Action thinks it might be your Wi-Fi.

Okay, can you hear me now?

Yes.

You can meet?

Okay.

Let me know if it happens again.

I can always switch to the telephone.

Thank you so much for that presentation.

Anything else for item 5D?

If not, we'll go ahead and move on to item six, which is public comments on items not on the agenda.

This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the body on any city matter that's not on the agenda.

The period for public comment is limited at 15 minutes with a maximum of three minutes per speaker.

Um, Madam Fuck, do we have any public comments on items not on the agenda either in person in chambers or um?

Uh yes, I have a slip and uh at this moment I have one raised hand.

Okay, let's go ahead and take uh the in-person comment first, please.

And then we will begin with Chris Liu.

Good evening everyone, Madam Mayor, City Council.

I'm coming this evening to share some of the fun and upcoming events that we have going on in the month of December at the Belmont Library.

If you don't know me, my name is Chris Liu.

I'm the Belmont Library Manager, and I look forward to meeting you.

So, um, some fun upcoming events we have in December.

The first one will be a Teen Makerspace program for pine needle weaving.

This is going to be Tuesday, December the 9th, 3 30 to 5 p.m., led by Elisa Thompson of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma who grew up within the Bay Area.

She's going to be teaching teens traditional weaving techniques to create a medallion and a hands-on session.

Wanted to mention it's for the teens.

It's something that they asked specifically for, was a space and an opportunity for them to have a program for themselves.

This is by registration starting on November the 25th, and we do have limited spaces, so please reach out, stop by the library, or call 833 937 7625 to get you registered earlier sooner than later.

For the younger ones, we have a stuffed animal sleepover in the month of December.

Super cute.

Thursday, December the 18th at 6 30.

Young ones will bring their favorite stuffed animal for a pajama story time and an overnight sleepover at the library.

Participants will receive a photo book of the stuffed animal sleepover fund.

Um we're excited to announce our New Year's Eve celebration.

This is something we've done for the years that I've been involved with the library.

This will be Tuesday, December the 30th at 11 o'clock.

We'll have activities, crafts going on throughout the library.

We'll be doing a story time with a special guest appearance by the very hungry caterpillar, and then we'll all count down noon together.

It's an opportunity to create just kind of this joyful community, especially for the younger ones who can't quite make it to midnight.

And I'm one of those.

These are on Fridays, 11 a.m.

to 12 p.m.

We started in November and we'll be running through January the 23rd.

This is a friendly space where learners and speakers of all levels can practice Mandarin Chinese, share and culture, and connect with others in the community.

Last, when I was here last month, uh Councilmember Latimerlow had asked about U.S.

citizenship classes at the Belmont Library, and I directed to the website, but I'm super happy to announce that we're also bringing back a cohort at the Belmont Library.

This will be in January the 8th, and it will run through February the 26th on Thursdays.

The sessions will run from 6 to 7.30 p.m.

in the Toby room.

Community members will practice the US CIS civics questions, participate in mock interviews, and receive free study materials at the time that they're there with us.

The instruction is in English and is intended for people taking the English version of the Civics test.

However, the staff that we have are wonderful and talented, and they are both bilingual in Spanish and Mandarin.

So we'll be able to help out a lot of folks.

We're really excited to be able to offer that program.

So that's a snapshot of December.

Thank you all for having me this evening.

Well, thank you so much.

A great things happening at the library.

Uh next.

Yes, we'll be moving on to Zoom with our Shresta.

You've been unmuted.

Hi, can you please hear me?

Yeah.

Yes, we can.

Uh thank you.

Good evening.

Uh uh Madam Mayor and City Council.

Uh, thank you for this opportunity.

Uh I am Ottuth Swester.

Uh I uh own uh two uh small lots uh in Belmont, and I would like to request to review my request for uh like uh the certificate of compliance.

Uh I it's uh to zone uh uh property or the land.

So, and I also had email requesting like uh there is uh another SRO uh two property, zone property, which has the certificate of compliance uh receipt, as well as even has uh the project approved project as well as even previously I had attended like a building parliament approved approval meeting, and uh it like we uh I bought the land from the same owner of that uh previous one.

So my request is uh from what I understood uh from some knowledge I had with this SRO2 property, uh that if uh the land has a notice of Morger, then uh it should have uh approval for CG certificate of compliance or the exemption for certificate of compliance, uh and I submitted uh the uh other uh uh the property which is SRO2 and has a certificate of compliance.

Uh and both of these uh lots were previously won by the same person, and the uh notice of Moser was uh done around the same time.

So I would kind of like to request uh please uh review and hope uh we can get the certificate of compliance and at SRO2 uh be able to at least be able to construct 800 square feet uh a house and be able to be part of uh Belmont resident.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Are there any other uh public comments on items not on the agenda item six?

That was our final speaker, madam mayor.

All right, uh then we'll move on to item seven, which is council member announcements.

Uh, council members, any announcements?

Let's start with council member McHugh.

Uh yeah, thank you.

I've been kind of under the weather the last two weeks with this sinus problem that I've had for many years that flares up now and then.

So I might start coughing uncontrollably at any minute in time.

It's not contagious and I'm not gonna die, it just sounds that way.

Um, so uh bear with me if I start coughing and controllably, and I might need to get up and leave the room for a minute or two here and there.

If I do that, I'll I'll be back.

So, oh I've I've got cough drops.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Hope you feel better.

Uh Councilmember Ladder Merlin.

Sure.

Um, commission recruitment.

I love that there's a lot of folks here today.

Um, the city of Belmont is inviting residents to apply for positions on various city commissions, and we want you to join us.

Applications are due by 5 p.m.

on Friday, January 9th, but do it now.

Um, you can apply online uh or by calling 650 595 7414 or in person with our amazing city clerk Josie.

Um, but please apply the the time commitment is actually pretty minimal either once every two weeks or once a month, but we really could use your insight on planning commission or on park and rec and culture commission.

Thank you.

All right, Vice Mayor.

Oh, sorry, I was just going down the line here.

Um, Councilmember, Vice Mayor, anything?

None for me.

I see you're gonna cover them in your announcements.

What?

Uh okay, Councilmember Jordan.

Uh, yes, uh, in the spirit of um talking about new businesses that have been coming to town.

Uh we had a new business open uh in the actually the Harbor Industrial Area Brewing with Brothers on 11 Industrial Road number eight, and I stopped by last Friday night and it had uh a really nice atmosphere sitting outside.

Uh they had uh heaters and they have board games.

If families several families came with their children, and they had TVs for people who want to watch, you know, some of the basketball games that are on Prime.

If you don't get Prime, you can watch them at uh different events.

But anyway, I wanted to promote um some new small businesses that are in town, and I encourage you to stop by one one Thursday or Friday evening.

Oh, um, I just have a couple uh Belmont Creek Restoration Project ribbon cutting that um the City and X partners, we're excited to celebrate the completion of the Twin Python Park Belmont Creek Restoration Project, uh, which I know many of us are have been looking forward to seeing how it's going.

Uh the ribbon cutting will be on December 3rd at 11 15 a.m.

in Quinn Pites Park, and you don't need to RSVP.

Santa will be at the firehouse.

Uh and there's also a toy drive um at Fire Station 14, which is on 911 Granada Street on December 11th.

And there'll be two special opportunities to enjoy uh this event.

Uh 5 to 5 30 p.m.

Asanta will welcome youth with disabilities and those would benefit from a sensory-friendly environment.

Um, and uh that does require some registration, which is on our website, and then the traditional Santa at the firehouse and toy drive event will directly follow that from 5 30 to 7 30.

No advanced registration required.

Uh both events are free, but please bring at least one new unwrapped way to help make the season brighter for children in need.

Again, that'll be on December 11th, and that's always a super popular event.

And then we have it's the season for these um really fun community events, the Belmont Police Santa Parade.

Santa and the Belmont Police Department will have its annual Santa Parade, which I think we started uh in COVID, so it's been a good number of years now.

Um the parade is going to be on Thursday, December 18th from 5 to 8 p.m.

And you can track Santa's progress live on X, and also a turn-by-turn map and wherever where Santa will be stopping will be coming soon.

So look forward to that.

Uh item eight, consent business.

These items are considered to be routine in major and will be enacted by one motion uh without separate discussion unless staff or council members would like to um have specific items be removed for separate action or uh if you'd like to comment on them, and the city attorney will read the title of any ordinances that will be adopted.

Um, so council members, if you can give me a verbal through the chair kind of cue if you have any questions or comments and what uh sub item of eight it is.

I have a comment on 8C.

I just have a comment.

I don't need to pull it.

8C, okay.

Uh no one else.

I think I actually have one for uh eight E.

And I think it was also um, might have just been and uh and H C as well.

So um so questions or comments, uh Councilmember Jordan on HC for you.

Yes, uh I just wanted to, and I am glad we have a large public today.

I just wanted to highlight uh Belmont's strategic plan update.

It's a very, very comprehensive report, and uh it highlights the work that our teams do on a daily basis, and this is actually available on the city website for anyone to view.

I wanted to make sure that we acknowledge and give kudos to the city staff for maintaining focus on our strategic plan.

There are projects that need to be done, but we don't always necessarily have the funding to get things done, but our team is so scrappy and works really hard to find alternative grant funding to keep the city moving forward, and I really wanted to recognize our city staff because it's on consent, but it's an enormous amount of work that they do on a daily basis, so thank you.

Through the chair, it's Gina.

Um I just wanted to add um that there is a lot of really interesting things in the strategic plan update, and one of the ones that I think people are most interested in is the pavement pavement plan update.

So online you can find a website um that has all of the new road, the roads that we're gonna be touching and updating and fixing all the way through 2029.

So check it out and you can see if your favorite broken up road is there to be fixed.

Thank you so much for that.

Yes, um, that was gonna be basically my comments on 8C as well, which is directing folks' attention to the strategic plan dashboard and um the dashboard's very helpful, but I think the staff report um is also gives you a little bit more in-depth if if folks want to uh learn a little bit more about what we've been working on this strategy plan.

So um thank you also to my colleagues for bringing that up.

And then for item 12A, I just wanted to um uh uh I'm sorry, 128.

On item 12, uh item E.

E.

I just wanted to ask um staff if maybe you could talk a little bit about that one.

I know that that was something that was uh got folks interested.

We first talked about it, and so if you think we could just talk about the proposed change and what's going to be done now and what we're potentially approving tonight.

Okay, good evening, honorable mayor and members of the council.

My name is Edward Kwan, and I am your public works director.

So this contract amendment for design is really trying to maximize the work that's being done at this crosswalk as well as development at that corner, and so what we're trying to do is incorporate some of the design as part of the developer to do some of the work in advance.

Therefore, we don't have to rip it out and redo it again later on.

So uh adding this additional design element to it will help us save some money and not have to redo some of the work.

Uh so the staff has been very mindful in trying to coordinate this as well because when we go out to bid and do a project, we start the time.

Uh the developer's gonna start their work, put in in a certain place where it's ready to pick up when our contract comes in and builds the rest of that hawk uh crosswalk improvement.

Okay, great.

Thank you so much.

I I um I appreciate that and I appreciate the fact that we are uh coordinating with all parties.

It definitely doesn't make sense to start something and then have to rip it up.

So thank you for that.

Um okay.

If there are no other comments or uh anything here that uh staff or the council would like to pull, uh we can ask if there is public comment on the consent business items in uh item eight.

I do not have any requests to speak.

Okay.

Um then we can go ahead and entertain a motion.

I can move approval.

Second roll call, please, council member Jordan.

Yes, McCune.

Aye, Vladimir Low, yes, Vice Mayor Pang Meganaris.

Hi, Mayor Mates.

Aye.

This motion passes five zero.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Now we're moving on to public hearings, item nine.

9A is local amendments to 2025 California Building Standards Code.

And um I think I have this right.

This one's a little different.

I think um, Madam Clark, we just go ahead and get the presentation, and then we'll speak.

Um Gino.

And then we'll open up the public hearing.

Oh, thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Maids and members of council.

The staff report for the adoption of the 2025 California Building Code with local amendments was introduced at the October 28th meeting of the city council.

We're here this evening for the public hearing and recommendation by staff for the city council to adopt the 2025 California Building Code with local amendments in accordance with state law.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

All right.

Thank you.

Um okay, so as uh building inspector mentioned, we did uh see this once before.

Uh let's go ahead and open the public hearing.

Um, Madam Clark, do we have any public comments on this item?

I do not have any requests to speak.

Okay.

Uh council, any questions or comments on this item?

Uh through the chair.

Yes.

I'm just wondering, how are we letting the public know of all of these changes?

We have how do we have this?

We have to have a uh no missing.

Scott, can you help me more the way this is it's well?

I think we're I think the question has to do with once the once these are adopted, how do we let how do folks know that there's some local amendments that they need to be aware of?

Okay, so we don't really have anywhere where we state that um it's basically when they come up, those those issues come up, they're applied, and there's only a few.

I have very little uh variation from the code.

There's only for the um, just trying to think for the sunrooms.

There's a a form they fill out that prevents them that they agree to to keep prevent a sunroom from becoming say a habitable space, or we have in the residential code, they don't adopt the swimming pool safety act.

So I've adopted that for so that we can have safety as swimming pools for single-family residences instead of only multifamily residences and public pools.

Um there's very little, so um, they come as as permits are applied for.

We present those changes in plan reviews and have people adjust their plans and adopt.

Yeah.

If I may uh these are typically more tied into the professionals, architects, engineers that do this kind of s not the general public, but it's actually the people that uh perform the technical type of work.

And and those folks gonna are keeping up.

These are kind of statewide changes, and so it's an industry-wide change, and we have some local amendments that are in line with what we've typically done.

So typically those technical folks come in, they do consultation and prepare plans according to local uh codes that are required.

Okay, thank you.

Uh, uh, did we already ask for a public comment still?

Correct, and there are no uh requests to speak.

Okay.

Uh then we can entertain a motion and just to note that we uh council members will be voting on this as city council members as well as Belmont Fire Protection District directors.

Okay, move approval.

Is that good?

And I just uh like to say we have two ordinances that we need to read titles for.

Um and I would uh add that this is this is also these changes are also in the city code, and most design professionals will look to the local agencies building regulations in their code online to see what they need to adjust to for local conditions.

So the first one an ordinance of the city of Belmont adopting the 2025 California Building Plumbing Mechanical Electrical Residential and Wildland Urban Interface Codes by reference with local amendments designating fire hazard severity zones, amending Belmont City Code administrative and enforcement provisions and ratifying San Mateo Consolidated Fire Department ordinance 2025 003 adopting and amending the 2025 California fire code.

And I believe I heard a motion from Pang Meganaris seconded by um Councilmember McCune.

And we have a second ordinance.

Oh I'm sorry, I thought you'd have to.

And so we're we're taking both the city action uh city council action than also the fire protection action, which is uh a uh companion action to this an ordinance of the Belmont Fire Protection District ratifying San Mateo Consolidated Fire Department Ordinance 2025 003 adopting and amending the 2025 California Fire Code and the 2025 California wildland urban interface code with local amendments and designating fire hazard severity zones.

So I will be taking roll call as council members and directors of the Belmont Fire Protection District, starting with um council member director Jordan.

Yes, McCune.

Vladimir Low.

Yes.

Excuse me.

Vice Mayor, Vice Chair, Bangling and Eris.

Hi.

And Mayor Maids, Chairmates.

Hi.

That motion passes 5-0.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think.

Next is 9B.

Thank you very much.

Revised maximum rates for solid waste collection services for calendar 2026.

This is a resolution before us revising the maximum rates that may be charged by College of C.

Recyclable Materials and Organic Materials Collection for Services effective January 1st.

And I think we have public director Fuan and maybe do we have an arm with us as well?

We do.

Great, welcome.

Thank you.

My name is Edric Kwan, and I'm your public works director.

Tonight we're here presenting the proposed solid waste rates for calendar year 2026.

I want to briefly summarize the process that brought us to this public hearing before turning it over to our consultant.

Under the city's amended and restated franchise agreement with Recology, the maximum rates for residential and commercial customers are recalculated each year using a formula-driven method specified in the contract.

Recology submitted its 26-2026 rate application in July, which included the base contractor increase and the pass-through costs tied to the disposal and agency fees.

These calculations follow the methodology outlined in section 11 of the agreement.

Once the application was submitted, the city completed three layers of review.

Recology's data was independently audited.

City staff conducted its own verification, and our rate consultant HDR completed its independent audit and analysis.

All three reviews confirmed that the proposed adjustments multiplier of 1.45% for regular services and 1.27% adjustment for Schedule Q additional services were calculated consistent with the franchise agreement.

After the verification steps, the city mailed the required Prop 218 notice to all property owners and solid waste customers.

The notice outlined the proposed rates, the basis of calculation, and instructions for submitting written protest.

As stated in the notice, a majority protest would prevent adoption of the rates.

This brings us to tonight.

If there's no majority protest, the council may consider adopting the 2026 solid waste rates.

With that, I'd like to introduce Sean Korn, Associate Vice President, and Senior Professional Associate with HDR.

Sean has been performing Belmont's independent solid waste rate reviews annually since 2016, and he will present the findings and walk through the detailed rate adjustments.

Thank you, Mayor Mates, Vice Mayor, Council.

Appreciate the opportunity to be here with you this evening.

Uh I'll briefly touch on the approach and methodology used to establish the rates, review the application and proposed rates as part of this, and walk you through the overall analysis and take any questions you may have.

This is almost identical to what you saw about two months ago, so I'll move fairly quickly through that for you all.

So as y'all remember and was just mentioned, we have the amended and restated uh agreement.

This was negotiated back in 2018-19, implemented in 2020, and really recology goes through and establishes the maximum rates based on the scheduled and additional services or schedule L and Schedule Q.

We go through and evaluate and review the approach to establishing those maximum rates, and as was mentioned, this is really formula-driven, and it's outlined in the amended agreement and extended agreement and talks about each of the specific components that we use.

So here's a summary of that calculation.

Uh, just as a bit of information, we split this into two components.

We have the base contractors increase, those are recology's costs reflecting the cost of collecting the overall solid waste.

And then we have the pass through, which is primarily the disposal of the waste at uh the SPWMA sites.

Uh as part of that, we also have agency payments, and so on the right hand side above the double barred line, you see the overall change in each of those categories, direct labor, direct fuel, each year, those are simply increased by the identified CPI index, so labor, CPIW for wages, CPIW for fuel, et cetera, as part of that.

Now, one thing to note next year for rates in 2027, the depreciation category is going to be adjusted and refined based on the agreement.

So at that point, that number will be changed that will have some level of impact on the rates next year as well.

Overall, less than a percent increase overall on the base contractors.

The pass through cost is a little bit of a different calculation.

It's based on the actual disposal cost, the projected disposal costs, and the prior year costs.

And so it does an average of those.

So in a minute here on the next or a moment here on the next slide, you'll see how that impacts the analysis.

Right at the bottom above the total pass-through cost, you see agency payments, those are the franchise fees.

So that is built into the agreement that it is used as part of that.

So overall, as was mentioned, a 1.45% increase in solid waste rates.

The box on the bottom left outlines what those are on a weighted average based on the cost and the total change.

So here's a little bit of history.

Going back to 2012, the overall change in rates on the far right-hand side you see this year or 2026 year at 1.45, last year at 2.04.

So essentially those inflationary index pass-through costs as we go through.

24 was an increase in the TIP fee, the landfill disposal cost.

We had a minor increase this year built into the analysis as well, as well as changes in the overall disposal, the total tonnage in there.

So overall the approach and contract has been met based on the index indices and analysis.

So what does that mean for your typical customer?

This is the residential rates by cart size.

There's four different cart size, 20, 32, 64, and 96 gallon.

Just as a point of reference, there's I'm gonna round to big numbers here, 7,000 accounts.

6,000 of those are 20 gallon or 32 gallon, and of those 6,000, 4,000 are 32 gallons.

So the primary customer is that 32 gallon cart size, and you can see that goes up 71 cents per month based on that overall 1.45%.

I do have the schedules in the back here.

If there's any questions or information needed on the commercial side, they also have carts, 32 to 96 gallon.

They also have the bins, which are one yard, two yard, and so on with the larger bins that you see behind a commercial business.

But overall, the 1.45% increase has been applied to all residential and commercial rate components.

The second part of this is scheduled Q.

These are additional services.

Again, these are extra pickups, community drop-off events.

There's a couple pages of the different categories that can apply here.

They're all the excuse me, pardon me.

There are all the additional services outside of normal typical garbage collection or solid waste collection.

It is based on a different index than Schedule L as outlined in the agreement, and it's based on the CPIU general, and we take the 2024 value from April and compare it to the 2025 value in April, and that is the 1.27% increase for the 2026 rates.

So overall, the summary and recommendation here is that HDR and the city has reviewed the study and concluded that the maximum rates for 2026 were calculated consistent with the agreement.

Results in a schedule L rates of 1.45, your typical residential and commercial solid waste rates, and then schedule Q at 1.27.

So given that, we would recommend that the council adopt the proposed rates as part of the public hearing and overall process, assuming no majority protests.

With that, I'll turn it back over to council for any questions or next steps.

Thank you very much, Sean.

If you've seen the presentation council members, any questions or comments?

All right.

Um let's go ahead and open the public hearing uh and see uh if uh we have any public comments either in chambers or virtually.

I do not have any requests to speak on this item.

Okay, and I don't believe we received any emails regarding side particularly.

We received two protest letters.

Okay, great.

Thank you for letting us know.

All right.

So if there are no public comments, we do have a resolution.

I can move approval.

Second.

Roll call, please.

Councilmember McCune.

Excuse me.

I.

Jordan?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Pang Meganares.

Hi.

Mayor Mates.

Aye.

This motion passes five zero.

Thank you very much.

We'll go ahead and move to our next public hearing.

9C text amendments to the Belmont zoning ordinance.

And we've got a number of, I think, relatively minor text amendments here.

And I think we have community development director, the deputy director Russell with us.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Let me just get everything set here.

Okay, good evening, Mayor and Council members.

I'm Laura Russell, Deputy Community Development Director.

I'm joined tonight by Rob Gill, our senior planner, and Stephanie Davis, our consultant planner that's been working on our team for this.

So the request of the council this evening is to conduct a public hearing and consider a series of proposed zoning text amendments to various sections of the zoning ordinance.

And we are asking you to introduce an ordinance implementing those amendments.

So a reminder of the background.

Back in January of 2024, both the planning commission and city council considered a set of amendments to implement the housing element.

Also at that time, you'll likely recall that there was a request to consider increasing the height in the CMU district at the same time.

There was concerns about that from the public, the planning commission, and the council.

So we separated those topics out, move forward with the code amendments to implement the housing element, and then decided to do some additional study on this topic of changing the CMU district.

So we retained a consultant that both writes zoning codes and does architectural modeling to explore those topics.

Then in July of 2024, the City Council held a public meeting.

Considered consolidated parking standards, and at that time talked about the review process for by right or ministerial project processing.

Then after we got that feedback from the city council, we held a community meeting in October of 2024 over Zoom.

We invited everyone within 300 feet of that CMU district.

We presented those proposed standards.

We had approximately five attendees.

They asked me a couple of questions, but we didn't receive any specific feedback.

And then in September of this year, 2025, we had the planning commission public hearing on these topics.

So there's a lot of material here.

So I wanted to focus it on the things that were related to where we received comments along the way and where the planning commission had particular recommendations for the council's consideration.

And so these are all of the different areas that are proposed to be amended.

And the ones that are in bold are the ones I'm going to talk more detail.

So I'm going to go through them overall, and then you can expect detail on the ones that are in bold.

So, first, um, looking at section two definitions.

This is required to implement the housing element, which is certified, as you know, as well as state housing law.

And basically the thing to note here is that there's a series of different kinds of special housing types, um, such as residential care facilities, farm worker housing, supportive housing that we're required to implement in a certain way.

So, this is where we're doing that.

We're changing our definitions, and then also in section four, we're changing some of the permitted uses so that those uses are permitted consistent with state law.

Also in section four, um, we're doing some minor staff initiated cleanup on some things that we just found while we were in there while we had that section open.

Then section five A, that's the CMU, um, corridor mixed use district.

This is the bulk of what we're really going to talk about this evening.

We are proposing to adjust the development standards to support ground floor commercial and also to support the city's economic development goals.

Section eight parking is the one that the planning staff is most excited about.

Um, we are proposing to consolidate all the parking requirements in one place and modernize and simplify many of them.

Section 9.5.4 accessory buildings.

This is a very minor staff initiated cleanup item.

You'd be amazed how often our planners talk to the public about accessory building versus accessory structure, and we had confusion in our code.

So this is small language, doesn't change policies, just makes it easier for people to understand the regulations, save people a lot of time on a daily basis.

In section 10 related to procedures, this is also to implement a housing element program, and this is related to reasonable accommodations.

Reasonable accommodations are related to persons with disabilities and any special needs that they may have for their housing.

The classic example here is if someone needed a wheelchair ramp that encroached into a setback, and then there could be a range of things that could also be accommodated there, and so this is bringing our code up to standard kind of best practices.

Section 13 is our design review section.

This started with the planning commission and council request for us to look at our design standards while we were considering an increase in height, and then while we were looking at it, we found opportunity for improvement and clarification.

So I'll talk a little bit more about that as we go through.

And then section 31 village districts.

What we're doing here is just taking all of those parking standards and moving them into the new section eight.

So I'm not going to go into detail on that.

If you have questions on any of the ones that are not bolded, I'll be happy to answer them later.

So this is an area where the planning commission um had some questions and comments, recommendations.

So as I mentioned, we have to have updated language on these certain residential specialty uses.

The planning commission was asking about residential care facilities and wanting to make sure that they fit in to the single family neighborhood and asked whether the city could regulate them to help them to fit in.

Like what is the scope of our ability to regulate?

Um, so they wanted us to consider additional restrictions if allowed by state law, so ask staff to take a look at that.

Um, we came back and considered and reviewed our regulations, and residential care facilities have to be allowed under state law, so the use has to be allowed, and our development standards already address them by saying residential care facilities have to meet the same standards as single family homes.

So, given that um consideration, um, staff is not recommending any additional regulations to this section at this time.

Through the chair, can I just since we're on it?

Can I ask just I think you answered I think you answered it?

Um so we're saying that the listed things like resent residential care um facilities are allowed, but they need to stay within the parameters of what's allowed within single family single family district, so not four or five stories or whatever.

The same development standards would apply.

I was looking.

Did the city attorney want to add on to that?

Yes.

Okay.

Oh, just by saying yes.

But just yes, yeah, we always the issue is uh is the the use whether the use is allowed in the use is allowed with other with other residential uses under state law.

Okay, so we're but we're staying within the parameters that are necessary within a single family district.

And there's not a really a state waiver that they could apply that they could use in that situation in that district.

Is that right?

That's correct.

The same development standards that apply to any other single family home apply.

So setback height, those kinds of standards.

Yes.

Um, we are not aware of any state law that preempts those standards at this time.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, turning now to Section 5A, which is the corridor mixed-use zoning district.

Um, you've seen this before in previous conversations, a reminder the CMU is kind of in the northern and southern parts of El Camino Real on either side of the BVSP area.

And this is a reminder of the process that we went through to get to this point in our analysis.

The summary of this is included as a memo and attachment D from our consultant.

But you'll recall we did the series of different models looking at the different types of land uses and knowing the different land uses have different floor to ceiling heights, and we may come out with different results.

You'll recall there was a discussion about wanting to be clear about how many stories would likely fit within those heights.

So this is a reminder of that process that we went through.

So after all of that, we got city council feedback in 2024, and the proposed revisions have stayed consistent with that feedback.

So, in summary, we propose to increase the base height from 45 feet to 50 feet to encourage those ground floor commercial uses, um, create more flexibility for architectural style, make four-story office development feasible.

Should the market support that in the future.

We propose to increase the community benefits height from 55 feet to 60 feet.

Reminder to everyone that would require city council approval specifically, and that would be kind of a balancing if any benefits outweigh potential impacts.

We propose to establish unique development standards for hotels, and that would be a floor area ratio FAR of 2.5 and a 65-foot height as kind of an incentive or an encouragement for this fiscally positive land use.

We've talked about the benefits of hotels many times before, and hotels right now require a CUP conditional use permit, and this these amendments make a hotel a permitted use, but still require design review and any other entitlements like tree removal or grading or anything before the planning commission.

I know this map is hard to read on the screen in here, but this is attachment F if anyone wants to look at that.

So, as we were talking with the planning commission about these code amendments, they did have some concerns related to sites adjacent to single family areas.

So we went back and mapped that, and there are currently 11 lots that are zoned in our R1 districts that are immediately adjacent to the CMU district, and when we say immediately adjacent, we mean sharing a property line, and it doesn't have a street or an alley in between.

Okay, so that you can kind of picture there are a few cases, there's a small street or an alley, so not those.

There's 11 total.

Um they're at the northernmost part of El Camino Real and the southernmost part, and those areas are also the areas where we start to have more slope.

So we kind of have different conditions at those ends than we have in the middle of El Camino Real.

So we went back and looked at these models and thought about what the planning commission's recommendation was, and so through discussions at the planning commission hearing, we looked at different areas of our code and found that there was some confusing language related to transitional yards setbacks and stepbacks.

But in the end of the conversation, the planning commission's recommendation was to increase the setback up to 15 feet, and then to have two stepbacks, which are shown in this diagram here.

So the um first two stories of the building are set back 15 feet, and then the next two have a five-foot additional step back, and then the next two another additional five-foot step back.

So this is the Planning commission's recommendation.

Um you can see here, as our team has prepared, it reduces the FAR pretty meaningfully.

Um, this is just a model, this is not a project, right?

So we have to have assumptions, but we were trying to kind of get an order of magnitude is a meaningful reduction in the number of hotel rooms in this model and a meaningful reduction in the floor area.

So when we were analyzing this, staff's view is this is a potential constraint on development.

So we wanted the council to have another alternative to consider.

So based on our experience working with our consultant team, we're trying to think through is this feasible?

And so it may in fact be feasible, but we do have some concerns about like how practical it is or if it's creating a disincentive for development.

So we've been thinking about that for a couple reasons.

The reduction in the floor area overall.

The fact that on El Comino Real these parcels are not very deep, generally speaking, and so these kinds of restrictions can start to become hard to work around, given that limited depth.

And then also when you start to have construction methods to build multiple stepbacks, it becomes very complex, very expensive to design for and to construct in terms of how people build their walls, put in their plumbing, mechanical, all those types of things.

So when you have these types of codes with multiple stepbacks, we'll often hear concerns from the development community.

So we prepared an alternative recommendation that we think of as kind of a middle ground.

This is still a bigger transition than what we have in place today, but less than what the planning commission recommended.

So this diagram shows a 10-foot setback and one five-foot step back.

And then the building would be able to go straight up from that point.

In real life, from a practical point of view, what people might do is just build the whole building 15 feet from the property line.

So that they didn't have to have the step back at all.

It achieves the same goal, but just wanted you to be aware of that practical thing that ends up happening, oftentimes.

So in this case, we think that it's closer to the floor area, you know, less of a reduction in the amount of development potential.

So this we think is a middle ground for the council to consider.

We also wanted to get into these issues a little bit more deeply because these are single family homes, and we wanted to try to understand this context.

And we had quite a good discussion, the planning commission meeting and a resident that brought a lot of questions to the table.

And so we asked our consultant to do some modeling on this so that we could think it through and share this with you in your decision making.

Again, this is just an example, not a proposed project.

So this is up at that northern part of the city at El Camino Real and Anita Avenue.

And you'll know this, but it's pretty sloped when we get to that point.

So this is kind of taking now this same map, imagine the property lines, and that big red line is shows where we're gonna draw a section, we're gonna draw that picture from so everybody can see it.

So then here's the model, that same red line in the same place, two existing homes on Anita Avenue.

And the angle makes it a little bit hard, do you know what I mean?

To picture it, it's not all perfectly flat.

But this helps to show the relationship between the houses and the proposed height setback and step back, and you can really see we would expect a new building to really go into that hillside and grade into the hillside because they're gonna want it to be flat with the El Comino Real side, just for practical purposes, right?

And so staff does think that this helps to mitigate the impact of the height in those sloped areas because it's not as big compared to the single family home when you take into consideration that slope.

This diagram shows the staff alternative.

So this is the 10-foot setback and the five foot step back, and then this was not the diagram we saw was in your packet, but what I just did here was take the same thing and sort of my red lines show what the Planning commission recommendation would be for the same thing.

So it does kind of increase that sort of distance and airspace between the single family and a new development, but it also kind of shows the constraint on the development there of the area that would not be able to be used.

Director Russell, can you just go back really quickly to that?

Alternative.

Back to the line one.

I'm sorry.

That's the staff.

That's the staff alternative one that we're looking at now.

This is the staff.

Yeah, this is the staff alternative.

And then the next one is the same purple box, but I've just added the red lines on the upper diagram to show what part of the building would be removed if it was the planning commission recommendation.

Got it.

And just to be clear, the planning commission did not analyze the staff alternative.

That's correct.

They came up with this.

Okay, okay.

Thanks.

Yeah, since the planning commission staff has developed this alternative, so the planning commission did not consider it.

They considered a range of different things to implement.

Do you know what I mean?

In their discussion, but we didn't present it in this way to them.

Okay, so I'm gonna shift now to section eight, which is related to parking.

Um, as you're aware, we've talked about it before.

We're bringing those three different sections together into one, changing narrative standards into tables, we're modernizing, simplifying, we're addressing state law that preempts us from requiring parking within a half mile.

The Caltrain station, and we're clarifying kind of the different types of exceptions and reductions that can be allowed.

And then the last two bullets are just they're in blue because I just wanted to draw them out.

These are the areas where we have like I would categorize them as minor policy changes.

Okay, the other things are just carrying forward the policies that we have, but we are proposing minor policy changes related to the criteria for the approval of applications that have less than the minimum or more than the maximum amount of parking, and this is to modernize it a little bit and clarify um what those standards are.

Um, and then we've also added some language that any time someone is seeking any kind of exception to any of the parking standards that they're required to submit materials by a qualified traffic engineer to support their positions.

So that wasn't always clear in the old versions, and so that we have more technical analysis to rely on when we do these kinds of evaluations, and then we're also proposing to change the review authority.

It's currently the zoning administrator, we would change that to the community development director for these parking exceptions and reductions, but only if there's no other entitlement that requires planning commission.

So, you know, we have this rule that everything rolls up.

So you might imagine we just had a small business that wanted to do off-site parking and had a lease for parking spaces across the street, like we don't want to have to go to the zoning administrator or the planning commission for such a small routine thing that could be done by the community development director.

If there's a larger entitlement, then that exception would be heard by whatever body is hearing that exception.

So it's trying to be kind of uh streamlined and more small business friendly was really the intent of this change.

Shifting now to section 13 related to design review.

Uh we had previous versions of these ordinance amendments where we talked about the review authority for certain housing projects, and we've all been responding to the state law changes related to this the timelines that we have to meet now.

And so we proposed some changes to the planning commission, and they talked about it a lot and they had some concerns about it and really wanted to talk about it some more.

They felt comfortable with some of the changes, but not other ones.

So when staff came back and looked at that, we really thought the best thing to do right now is to wait and think a little bit more about it.

So we've removed those amendments from the set.

So there's nothing related to the purview of housing projects right now in front of you.

And what we want to do consistent with the planning commission's recommendation is to do a little bit more research about how other cities are responding to the timelines and figure out our options for public noticing for these projects.

Bring that back to the planning commission for more fulsome discussion of those topics and then bring them back for your consideration.

So nothing included on that tonight.

Also in section 13 design review, I mentioned you all had asked us to take a look at our design standards.

Do we need anything different?

Our conclusion was we did not need anything different, but we did need to organize it better.

And so what we've done is we've changed the order, kind of imagine the outline form was broken, and so it wasn't always clear what fell what underneath what, and so we're not changing any policies compared to how we've been implementing it.

We're just making it more clear what's a standalone requirement versus what's intended to be a menu that someone may be able to choose from.

So we think this will make it easier for applicants, the public, and for the staff.

And then just a summary of community outreach.

Um I mentioned the October 24 meeting via Zoom.

Um we've had a website for this effort since fall of 2024 that we've been updating with the meeting invited information and all the latest graphics and everything.

For the planning commission public hearing, we mailed the notice to all the property owners within 300 feet.

We received seven public comments, those were focused mostly on two topics concerns related to the height increase, and then also concerns about changing the purview to the community development director.

So height is still under discussion, those purview um items are no longer in discussion tonight.

We also had a meeting with the property owner that was adjacent to the CMU that ended up engaging with the planning commission and led to their discussion about the setbacks and the setbacks, and then the notice of this public hearing was mailed again to all property owners within 300 feet of the CMU district.

We did not receive any comments directly to staff in anticipation of this meeting.

Okay, so we're to summary um stage of this.

So just kind of bringing it all together.

Um, the planning commission recommended additional restrictions on residential care facilities.

Um staff does not recommend we do um implement any additional restrictions.

They asked for additional analysis of the review authority, and so we are gonna move forward per their recommendation and schedule that for commission discussion in the future.

The planning commission had specific recommendations in their resolution and about the increased setback and step back in the CMU district.

So the council could go with the planning commission's recommendation, or could go with the staff's alternative recommendation.

Um, that's for your um decision this evening or at the second reading, should you wish.

Um, I do want to note though that the ordinance is prepared with the staff recommendation, but obviously not a problem to change that um if you wish to.

And then the other thing the planning commission mentioned to us didn't include it in their resolution, but it's just a discussion point.

They were talking about the fact that our design standards don't address the back of buildings and what happens if there's a parking structure adjacent to other kind of sensitive uses.

So they just flag that as something that the city council may want to consider um providing us direction to look into in the future.

So at the end of the public hearing, the planning commission adopted a resolution by a vote of five to zero with one planning commissioner absent recommending approval with those items.

So staff recommends that you introduce an ordinance, amending our zoning ordinance related to these things we've been talking about, implementation of the housing element, the development standards in the CMU district, consolidation of parking, and those other minor clarifying zoning regulations to improve implementation.

So that concludes my presentation, and our team would be happy to try to answer any questions.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

Um, so just to focus council's uh discussion a little bit, or first last questions about when it comes time to.

I'm talking about this.

It sounds like other than uh, obviously, council members comment on the entire ordinance, but um the the focus of the direction that is still sort of outstanding is um right now what we'd like to do with the uh CMU areas that backstage matter.

Is that correct?

Just in terms of meeting determination on that.

Yes, um, that's really the most important thing to um to hear the council's direction on implementing the planning commission recommendation, the staff recommendation, or some other option.

I don't think that's all right.

Okay, great, thank you.

Um council members, any questions right now for staff at this time?

Yes, member Jordan, yes.

Yeah, I just had uh just a clarifying question on the CMU district with the setbacks.

You I think you said that um any of the projects would have to come to the planning commission and our council as well, right?

Or did I miss that?

Um it depends on what kind of project it is.

Um, setting aside housing projects for a minute because we know about some of the complexity around those.

Any kind of commercial project, office, hotel, anything like that requires design review before the planning commission, and that can still be a subjective design review.

So the planning commission still has authority to make findings and to make recommendations different from housing projects which you are aware have to be all objective review.

Great, thank you.

You're welcome.

The other questions?

Councilmember McKin?

Yeah, thank you.

So the diagram there of the setback and the step back.

Does that purely apply where a CMU property abuts a residential property?

That doesn't apply to other um neighboring properties.

It's only it is only single family residential, or is it it does that only apply to like R1 single-family residential and R2, maybe, or does it apply to the multifamily?

Um we are proposing that it only apply to the R1 districts.

Okay.

Okay, thanks.

I think that's a other questions for staff.

Um, Madam Clark, do we have any public comments on this item?

Uh yes, I do have a slip in front of me.

Yeah, you have okay, great, thank you.

And will Neil Patel come to the podium, you guys hear me okay?

Honorable Mayor Bates, Vice Mayor, uh Pang Maganares, Council Members McCune, Latimerlo, and Bates.

Or sorry, Jordan.

My name is Neil Patel.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak in support of the proposed updates to the corridor mixed use district.

My family arrived in Belmont and joined the Belmont business community on the corridor mixed-use district 48 years ago.

Since then, we've watched Belmont evolve over the decades, and we understand firsthand the importance of thoughtful planning for our city's future.

Belmont stretch of El Camino Real is one of our most significant regional corridors.

It presents the greatest opportunity to welcome new neighborhood serving retail, high quality housing, lodging, and commercial uses that can sustain and strengthen our local economy.

The proposed CMU revisions are careful, data driven, and forward-looking.

What is clear that the old approaches of yesterday will not serve us well going forward.

First, modern construction methods and current market conditions make it challenging to deliver functional residential and commercial buildings, especially retail spaces requiring optimal ceiling heights.

Under today's standards, the proposed CMU amendments allow for inviting functional ground floor commercial uses and improved architectural expression, aligning Belmont zoning with how successful mixed-use buildings are being built across the peninsula on El Camino.

Second, these zoning changes establish a clear, more predictable pathway for high quality projects that will strengthen Belmont.

They signal that the city is committed to encouraging thoughtful development that benefits all residents.

The amendments retain council discretion while unlocking improved design, higher quality buildings, and enhanced public amenities.

Third, we strongly naturally support the improved hotel standards.

Our family has operated a hotel in the CMU for nearly 50 years.

We are not outside developers, but long-standing community members.

Hotels provide unique value, they generate transient occupancy tax as well as property retail and potential restaurant sales tax.

These revenues over the long term will help fund essential public services and provide important community meeting spaces.

The proposed standards appropriately reflect the design and brand requirements necessary to attract high quality hotels.

I will summarize.

Which seems reasonable.

And the other request about every two floors to uh have an additional five-foot uh setback was to keep that daylight um what is it uh uh daylight plane so that you know if it's a taller building, it just wouldn't just overshadow uh a single family resident uh next door.

Um, and from my calculations, uh when I did the calculations, it seemed like these requirements would not prevent a 2.5 far um limit.

It would still allow uh hotels or buildings to reach their 2.5 limit, but it would push the building closer to El Camino and maybe have parking like more uh underneath.

And so I didn't think it would restrict um development, but allow uh uh you know breathing space between the 11 homes.

So this is not every in all locations, just the 11 homes that are lit are going to be literally right next to us, but actually a 65-foot building.

And so uh I obviously would recommend uh agree with the planning commission what we had already agreed upon was to have this set 15-foot setback between any residential building, which is again what is expected of any other residential building.

Uh um, and also the um uh five feet setback every additional two uh two floors.

So thank you for your time.

Um and I see the uh I'm done.

And that'll be our final speaker on this item.

I am Richard, no, that'll be our final speaker on this item.

All right, uh, bringing it back to council then, uh council members, any comments um to deliberate.

Sure, through the chair, yes.

Um, so I uh appreciate the presentation, it was really clear.

Um, I appreciate Planning commission's recommendations, uh, particularly the recommendation to do an analysis of what other cities are doing in order to address timelines and public noticing.

Um, I think this is a newish kind of ministerial vibrate world, and I think discovering and implementing best practices is a good idea.

So um Laura, I do want to say out loud that I I would like to see it on a future agenda for us too.

I think looking at that.

Yes to the adjustments, incentivizing hotels, like allowing higher lobby ceiling heights.

We keep hearing again and again that vibrancy and interesting things are very something that the residents in all of Belmont, particular but particularly those in district one are want.

And so having a beautiful lobby uh of a hotel, having some vibrancy is is desirable, I think, for everyone.

Um the draft revision staff is suggesting for the CMU makes sense to encourage retail and that vibrant mixed use.

Um I feel good that this is a positive response.

Like we're giving a carrot to encourage folks to do the thing that the the neighborhood and the city has been at the city residents have been asking us to do.

Um I would even say yes to staff's middle ground option of increasing the setback and the step back.

So I um I think it's a good compromise that holds the spirit of what the planning commission recommended while dealing with the reality of some of the land constraints with the hill, um, and the idiosyncrasies, idiosyncras uh help idiosyncrasy I can't say it's okay.

The weirdest is of um of the northern and southernmost portions of the CMU.

I that they do have some weirdnesses, and I think what you guys came up with is a good middle ground solution.

Um I think it's a creative solution that um still retains some setbacks and makes building there feasible and desirable for developers.

And if I'm gonna be honest, that's solid work to me, right?

I feel like you've listened, you've invited the community in, you've heard the concerns, and then figured out the peculiarities of our city and our zoning code language to find something that works.

So I give you kudos for that.

I think it's a good compromise.

Um, so for me, I can vote to adopt these changes.

Um, and again, I think you heard us on council, I think you heard us in the commission, and I think you heard the resident that spoke and overall created an easier to understand and quicker to work through set of guidelines, which is gonna be crucial when we only get 60 days to look at something.

Any other thoughts from council?

Uh through the chair?

Yeah, through the chair.

Okay, go.

So I'm trying to understand the 10 feet setback versus the 15, no, the 10, no, 15 feet setback and two five setbacks, two stories, versus the 10.

Can you kind of describe to me what the real impact to what you believe the real impact to the homes to be?

Because to me, I go five feet.

But doesn't seem that doesn't seem very much, but we just heard from this um person who says to him it's a big deal.

So what do you what do you think what do you think the impact really will be?

If we implemented the planning commission's recommendation, yours.

Um, so we do think that this is a middle ground, and when we did this model that's on the screen that just has the setback and the step back, um, we really realized we needed to closely consider the relationship to the single family homes.

Um, and that's why we did okay.

Hold on, we're gonna get it going.

That's why we did this drawing, because and and this is um based on our data, so this is the slope information that comes out of our GIS because that hotel sits down at the level of El Camino Real and the house is quite a bit higher.

Um, as a planner, my reaction to this was yes, there is still some impact on that single family home, of course.

They are adjacent to a mixed-use commercial zoning district, and so there is going to be some impact inherent in that.

So it's not like the uses are changing as part of this conversation, right?

So we're trying to evaluate the impact of that increased intensity, specifically for hotels, because that's where we're seeing kind of the larger increase, and so that's why we modeled this with the hotel.

And so what we were looking at here was the way that that sits down in the house is sitting above it, and so the house is kind of in the middle of that building.

It's not sitting down at the same ground level, and so to us, that helps mitigate the height and the mass of the um hotel building in the model.

So that's how we were thinking about it.

And we wanted to kind of test our recommendation for the 10-foot setback and the five foot stepback to see if that kind of created, do you know what I mean?

A little bit of light and air and distance.

And to the to the point about the windows, we share that concern always.

Um, but again, it's adjacent to a commercial mixed use district, and the hotels would likely be designed, you know, if proposed to think about the windows which direction they're turning.

Um, so that's also gonna be a common practice, and we would always do our best in our review process to mitigate those impacts if individual projects come in.

Again, we can do discretionary review, staff can give a lot of feedback on these kinds of projects, and we would.

Um, so we're taking all of that into consideration.

The standards still need to work for residential, but we know in real life people are gonna use density bonus um to change the standards related to residential.

So that's why our focus has been primarily related to the most intense use um of a hotel.

Super helpful description.

Thank you very much.

I have one other question.

Did I hear you say that while these are setbacks of 10 and then an additional five, that in reality you think that builders would just go straight to the 15 as opposed to dealing with the two?

Yeah, we do see that because sometimes it's easier for them to just build the wall that goes straight up.

So they might do the 15 foot setback, which if you're not familiar with this, like you take the 10 foot setback, then the five foot step back and just build the whole building back 15 feet.

So for those that can see my cursor, it's sort of like then the building line would just come straight down right here, and the whole setback would be bigger, yeah.

So it and it depends on how they design it.

If that's like a parking structure that fits in, then they might want that steps and with the building above it, but it kind of depends on the architectural style and construction methods.

Okay, thank you.

Through the chair.

Through the chair, yeah.

Yep, please.

Okay, sorry.

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, yeah.

No, no, go ahead.

I want to just go back to uh this drawing.

So I know you measured it with Anita.

Is that is that the only street you looked at?

Cause I I know that there's about 11 houses impacted, and I don't know if the heights are the same at all those different streets.

Does that make sense?

The heights are slightly different on the other streets.

We did not analyze all of them, we were using this as an example.

Okay.

So the context will be different on every site.

Um, this site is unique.

Um, Brian that spoke is the one that came to the planning commission and Rob and I met with um in advance of the planning commission meeting, and um he does have a unique consideration, and that he's got CMU across the back, the side, and across the street from his property.

So in our mind, this is kind of the most impactful situation, and that's why we chose to model this one.

Okay, and again, if if it is a commercial hotel type building, it still will be subject to design review by the planning commission and by council.

I I do I do have sympathy for these houses, because I used to live in one of those, so I I understand probably some of the trepidation of, but what it sounds like the question isn't the height, it's the depth.

Is that correct?

Because um, well, we consider that yeah.

I mean, I think that that has been the the largest topic.

The topic is if we're going to increase the height, do we have the right setback?

That's kind of the way the planning commission, that's how I understood that they were talking about it.

Has our setback kept up with our height?

Um, because part of that conversation was we had to go back into an old section of the code called transitional yards, and I do want to just because I'm sure Brian is listening, um, the transitional yards vary according to what the uses are and what the different setbacks are.

So it's extremely complex code, but right now these setbacks are gonna vary from zero to 10 feet.

Um, they could be oftentimes be six or nine because of some weird math I won't bore you with, but imagine right now the code says zero to ten feet, and so it is not currently 15 feet.

That was a proposal that Brian had and the proposal of the planning commission.

So I just wanted to clarify that if that is helpful.

And Councilmember Jordan, to your earlier point too, I want to make sure people know that these projects would typically be approved by the planning commission, not by the city council.

Got it.

So do you really think though I'm just I'm looking at um like the hotel uh with the planning commission's 15 feet setback and two five-foot step back, a difference of approximately four hotel rooms.

You think that makes a significant enough difference that it would impact business or people wanting to develop there.

Um trying to think about it comprehensively, right?

So these are illustrative numbers based on a model and assumptions, right?

So we it's like a reduction in the floor area, it's a reduction in the number of rooms.

Um we do think that this the combination of the setback and two stepbacks is a meaningful difference in terms of how deep those lots are and the additional cost and complexity of designing buildings that have two stepbacks.

Um so we do think it's meaningful.

Um, in consultation with our consultant and in our analysis, it is probably still feasible.

There's probably ways, do you know what I mean, architecturally that are feasible?

We're trying to balance kind of the economic realities that you know it's hard to be sure, but our view is this is a it's a meaningful constraint.

Okay, yeah, I'm still not sure how I feel about that.

So everything else I'm good with.

I'm still pondering if I if I'm good with the staff recommendation.

Well, if we do that we have a lot of council member McKune.

Your architect.

And we can also consider a third option if you have one.

Well, just one observation.

When we're talking about that either 10 foot or 15 foot setback, I think some people may be envisioning that as the distance from the wall of the hotel to the wall of the house.

And that's not what it is.

That's it's the distance from the wall of the hotel to the property line, and then there's another distance that varies, but it could be you know 15 or 20 feet, 10, 15, 20 feet to the wall of the house.

So the total separation between the buildings is quite a bit more than the numbers we're talking about here because of the both buildings have a distance where they're set back from the property line.

That's my only comment on it.

And the side setbacks are gonna vary um, I'm sorry, through the chair, pretty widely in some of these neighborhoods.

And so this diagram captures to the best of our ability accurate.

Do you know what I mean?

One side of the house is closer than the other house, and then moving up the hill.

Do you know what I mean?

The side setback is bigger on one side than the other.

So there's not a uniform pattern across these lots.

And to the point about the construction realities of building those setbacks.

That varies a lot depending on the type of construction you're dealing with.

If you're dealing with steel type of construction, it's just an office building.

Those kind of setbacks are relatively easy to build.

Most hotels and smaller buildings like this are wood frame, where the walls tend to support the structure of the building, and trying to do repeated stepbacks like that in wood frame construction is trickier, it's more involved.

It's doable, it's not impossible, but it's it's a more convoluted type of construction.

So I would agree with the notion that at least a certain number of developers would say no, it I don't want to invest the time and money and effort to make that setback.

Let's just do it so we can build a straight up wall for simplicity in the economy.

So I I can support the basic uh proposal here, and I could I could support the staff recommendation on the setback and step back question.

Madam Mayor and Mr.

Attorney, um Brian has his hand raised again, and I know that we've already taken the public uh public comment on this item, so for the record, we're not gonna go forward.

Thank you.

He has since lowered his hand.

All right, thank you.

Yes, unfortunately, um, we need a public comment.

Um, so you know, I think uh in general these these changes I think they make sense um definitely some of them are you know kind of the um casually called cleanup, some others are the ones that we as a council have helped staff, you know, directed staff to uh modify, and I appreciate the community engagement.

Um I appreciate the discussion on uh specifically what to do about the CFU uh, you know, these these 11 houses.

Um I actually am not against uh going forth and supporting what the planning commission uh suggested.

Um and actually I see why they why they decided to put that forward, um, but I do take into consideration what student was saying, which is that there is the potential uh for it to actually look more like a straight wall, which is what I think the public commentary that we're about.

I didn't have this Brian is concerned about um and that actually could happen visually uh with the planning commission's suggestion um also taking into consideration that the planning suggest the planning commission didn't uh look at this alternative.

Um, just as a side note, I appreciate staff bringing up uh it is sort of happy medium alternative as well for us to consider.

I'm leaning that way um because and leaving the ordinance with the uh staff's uh recommendation only because I I trust that staff has seen in the past uh, you know, developers of things like which house potentially, you know, trying to use that option, and I do think that would almost be worse.

Uh or or that would almost be the sort of that that straight um wall that the owner was worried about.

Um so that's kind of how I lean as well.

Um the rest of the bullet points I think are fine um to either bring back to council appreciate the uh planning commission flagging for council uh that the development standards that's not design review uh standards don't have anything regarding the back of the buildings and um before we take a peek at that or even you know suggest a talk about it, but we probably have to look research at how much that's actually about this issue um that we haven't interested in.

Um but I I think I can go ahead and support the the recommendations as for the it's again appreciate all the comment and uh staff's mark work on this, which is well, uh of course my council colleagues are there uh thoughtful on the consideration of this.

So I think uh unless there's other questions, but go ahead and uh uh is there uh is this yeah, we are does it housebound ordinance now, or do we have to wait a second meeting?

We should take a motion to introduce the ordinance.

Yes.

I was just gonna add too that you know, in the in the multi-family housing context, a multifamily housing project is gonna uh trip the trip the density bonus law, which would allow them to seek um waivers of the step back requirements.

And so with the multi-housing project, you're gonna get a straight wall.

So we're really only uh what we're doing here is imposing a more restrictive standard on our commercial development.

We're in as between the two, we're putting a greater burden on commercial on the development of commercial.

Something to consider when thinking about academic development.

But that's I think what staff was trying to alleviate in their uh option.

So then I would that's what you guys sorry, go ahead.

Um I was just agreeing that that's what we were trying to alleviate.

Um so process-wise, should I make a motion to approve as the as submitted by staff?

So where we are I mean uh the the substance of your motion is of course up to the maker of the motion, but process-wise, where we are tonight is we're at the introduction of the ordinance.

Um, and uh we would need a motion to either um uh introduce the ordinance as proposed by staff or introduce the ordinance with amendments.

And I think it's okay if if this if we're leaning to this, if the motion maker says just as proposed by staff because I think staff that they put and it's in there already.

Into the ordinance already.

Laura is nodding vigorously.

Um yeah, the staff recommendation is included in the ordinance.

Okay, so then I would um make a motion to approve it as submitted by staff by staff, approve the ordinance, introduce the ordinance, and approve it as submitted by staff.

Second.

Roll call, please.

Councilmember Jordan.

Yes.

McHume?

Yes.

Vladimir Lowe?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Pang Mayonaris.

Yes.

Mayor Maits.

I believe that was the yes.

Yeah, fine.

Yes.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Um, okay, moving on.

Um, I have 45 minutes left of my Wi-Fi before this establishment closes.

Uh so we'll just keep plugging along.

Item 10 is uh general business.

Um, and I for some reason can no longer see the chambers.

Um I can see the what the chamber is presenting, but not not my uh not my colleagues anymore.

Uh just for an FYI.

Um I see two images of myself, which is disturbing, but I can no longer see.

Um we are uh moving to 10 A, which is uh, here we go.

I see you guys again.

Thanks.

Uh Charles Armstrong School Project Introduction.

We're going to receive a presentation regarding the Charles Armstrong School Development Review Project.

Uh, and we're just taking this information tonight, no action required.

I think we have our community development director, Armstoner.

Yes, good evening, Mayor Mates and members of council.

Thank you for your time on this item tonight.

Um again that this is a project introduction.

No decisions are to be made tonight.

Uh public hearings are scheduled for this item in uh January.

You'll hear presentations from staff and the applicant team, and you'll have the opportunity to take public comments.

Uh Jeremy Ruiz, our assistant planner, is gonna run you through a presentation.

He is a uh fixture of our planning commission meetings, uh, but tonight is his first presentation before the council.

He's a rising star in our department.

We're excited that he's here tonight before you, and um I'm gonna turn it over to Jeremy to run through your presentation.

So thank you.

Hello, council members, and thank you for the warm introduction, Carlos.

This is for the 1405 Salon Drive for the Charles Armstrong School Project Introduction.

Uh, to be mindful of our mayor's time, I'll do my best to speed up the process.

For the presentation goals, uh, we are here to facilitate the project introduction and introduce its scope.

We're going to identify the applicable entitlements that are requested in conjunction with our proposed project and accept comments and answer questions about the project from the city council as well as the public, as noted it should be appropriate given the current stage for the review of the project.

Um to reiterate what Carlos has stated, there is no action to be requested at the stage of the project review process, and that a planning commission will be facilitated in a similar project introduction item at their November 4th meeting, which already had previously occurred.

Um in the staff report I provide a historical background as shown here.

It's the synopsis from 1950s to 2005.

I won't reiterate what's on the presentation uh slide.

Um so it's already noted the staff report, and I shall continue on forward.

That said, for the project description, the school has filed for a development review application to construct several new buildings in two phases for their campus.

Uh in phase one, that would be focusing on the eleven thousand nine hundred square foot academic wing, and phase two um will then focus on the eleven thousand one hundred square foot athletics/slash community building.

Um they're also proposing in conjunction additional site improvements, these being the landscape plaza, stormwater management systems, implementation, slope stabilization, as well as new utility infrastructure.

In phase three, which will not be reviewed by you all, they are also proposing interior renovations to their existing spaces in buildings.

As noted in the graphic, the two new proposed buildings are in the silver uh locations at the side and rear.

Continuing on, there are further proposed operational changes.

Noted it will be the increased enrollment cap from the current 260 permitted to 290 students.

Currently, Charles Armstrong School has an average daily attendance of about 230 to 240 students, and they are also seeking a change of hours of operation by an extension by one hour, that being from 7 a.m.

to 10 p.m.

on weekdays.

They're also seeking to have access on certain portions of the weekends.

Furthermore, there will be an increased faculty staff by approximately 11 new members, and it's noted that admin and support staff levels are expected to remain.

For the entitlements, I will summarize what's on the uh slide.

Um they are seeking for a planned development amendment due to their zoning of PD, uh plan development.

Uh in conjunction, they're doing a conditional use permit, which is connected to their detailed development plan, uh, a design review in order to review their new proposed buildings, tree permits in regards to the construction uh and removal of the protected trees, as well as a grading permit due to the combined volume of material that is proposed to be excavated.

Uh there are the two or three phases I should say, showcased on this image in blue, highlighted over on this site plan.

Um, phase one will be focusing on the music room of 6,364 square feet, a multi-purpose room of 4,237 square feet.

Should be noted there's two classrooms as uh built for this uh building, and the art and maker space area of 1,292 square feet, which would also include the science lab and four additional classrooms.

The third building.

In phase two to the south, uh, there will be the gymnasium being proposed at 7,973 square feet and a kitchen area of 3,153.

Phase three, once again to be reiterated, will be for interior renovations at a later date.

Um, it will also uh phase one is proposed to be occurring around the 2026 to 2027 era if approved, and phase two is approximately around the 2031 to 2032 timeline.

Showcase um on this slide is the conceptual landscape plan um that was proposed initially from the comments that was received by planning commission, they're also proposing to change this to better uh accommodate their comments in regards to trying to do better screening.

Uh there is also the tentative future public hearing schedule as introducted by or introduced by Carlos on January 6.

We are planning to hold the planning commission hearing to review and provide recommendation to you all.

Uh January 27th will be yours uh City Council public hearing with a second hearing on February 10th of 2026.

And thank you for my staff presentation.

And now we'll be for Charles Armstrong.

Thank you.

Hi, welcome.

Show all your hard work, Jeremy.

Uh good evening, honorable mayor and council members and members of the community.

My name is Neil Tuck.

I am in my fifth year as head of school at Charles Armstrong School.

I'm in my ninth year as part of the leadership team, and I'm actually in my 14th year as a member of the community.

My youngest daughter went to school at Armstrong before I was involved at all with the school.

So it is an honor to introduce this project to you today, and we look forward to discussing it with you in a future time.

Go ahead, Jeremy.

So we start out every important meeting uh that we hold by reciting our mission because it's so central to what we do, and this definitely qualifies as an important meeting for us.

So why don't I do so?

Charles Armstrong School unlocks the unique potential of students with dyslexia and related learning differences changing the trajectory of their lives.

So, want to start out with just a couple of key facts about Armstrong, just to put us all in a level playing field.

We were founded in 1968 to serve students with dyslexia and related learning differences, as I just said.

Some of our speakers may throw out some terms, so I figured the educator and me would just take 30 seconds just to tell you a little bit about what we're talking about.

So our school, every student in our school has a primary diagnosis of dyslexia.

Dyslexia is not seeing letters backwards, is just any processing challenge with language and particularly reading language reading words and also processing words and reading comprehension.

You'll also probably hear some people mention dyscalcula, which is challenges with math, or dysgraphia, which are challenges with handwriting.

We have students that kind of span across all three of those.

So a little more detail about our school.

We moved to our Belmont campus in 1984.

As I said, we were founded in 1968.

So we're not a new neighbor to this to this community.

We've been here 41 years and we love being here.

We typically serve between 230 and 250 students in second through eighth grade.

We're actually going to open up first grade next year.

We have 78 faculty and staff.

Of those, 12 live in either Belmont or San Carlos, so a lot of people with ties to the community.

About 30% of our students receive some type of tuition assistance, and our average student on tuition assistance receives more than half of our tuition.

In addition, 40% of our students identify themselves as students of color, so we're lucky to have a very diverse student population.

I won't go into the details because I know we are tight on time, but the key thing to know about our school is that literally everything we do, our whole academic program, from how we speak to the kids to how we train our teachers to who we hire, everything about it is geared towards our students.

It's a very specialized, unique program.

We're the largest program of its kind in Northern California, and we're very proud of the impact we have on not only our students, but frankly their families and their whole community as well.

So why this project?

I'll just figure we cut right to the heart of it.

So five reasons I'll give you today.

First of all, we've made a lot of program changes in recent years, and in particular, a lot of changes around our middle school program.

As you might imagine, a lot of those changes have to do with making classes even smaller.

We take a lot of pride in having really small groups, especially for reading and for math.

And so as we've made more and more changes and tried to be even more specialized in our program, we've we've just run out of room.

We've figured out all these great research-based ways to teach our students, but we've run out of room to do so effectively.

So that's number one.

Number two, there's been a really important Senate bill that was passed last year, Senate Bill 114, that now has testing of all kindergartners, first graders, and second graders for reading difficulties that is just being implemented in the public schools this year.

We are expecting that will create a lot more awareness amongst families throughout California who understand that their students actually have a learning challenge and look for a solution.

And we're certainly hopeful that public schools can solve a lot of those challenges or other types of independent schools, but we know some students will need a really focused approach, and that's what we offer at Charles Armstrong.

So that's also going to increase demand, particularly obviously for lower school students.

Secondly, we care a lot about our specialty programs.

A lot of our a lot of what we preach is a strength-based program where students may struggle with reading, but they're really good at math or they're really good at art or they're really good at music, and that strength gives them confidence that allows them to be successful in life and successful, frankly, even in tackling their reading challenges.

So all of our specialty programs are great, but many of the spaces for our specialty program, particularly music and design thinking, are really undersized compared to a lot of comparable schools.

And so we're looking to really improve those spaces for those students and for a program we know is really important for those students.

Fourth, there's just some things a lot of elementary schools and middle schools have that we just do not have.

We do not have a kitchen in which to serve where we can provide lunch to our students and frankly to our faculty as well.

That becomes a very big equity issue in the world today.

You really want to offer all your students lunch so that the ones that struggle with bringing lunch to school actually don't feel signaled out.

We don't have a gym.

If you tour sort of most middle schools in Belmont and San Carlos, many, many of them have gyms.

And the most embarrassing one of all is we do not actually have a faculty workspace.

Our faculty members, when they need to just do work and prepare for a class, either do it outside.

Thankfully, we have some nice space outside.

Some will do it in their car, which is completely embarrassing, or they'll maybe do it in a classroom where there's another class going on and it's far from ideal.

We literally use every inch of this campus we can to help our students, and unfortunately, that's meant we haven't had space for our faculty.

And then last but not least, uh there's just an opportunity to serve more students with learning differences.

There's much more awareness about learning differences today.

Many families are much more aware.

There's a lot of sort of uh tangential areas where we don't accept students because we don't have space and we know we could help them, and so we are asking for a modest increase of 30 students uh on our CUP cap so we can not only serve students better but also can serve more students.

So that's the heart of what we're here for today.

So I want to take a second and just talk about how much we love the Belmont community.

We love being here.

We've been here 41 years.

Uh, Belmont, in that time, has turned into this thriving educational center, and we feel like we play a really important piece in that incredible center.

Um, neighbors and vendors greet us warmly.

We go down to Lenardis and Sharon and Caddy let us cut the line and and uh make our favorite sandwich because they know exactly what we want.

Uh we've got a mutual easement with um with the city of Belmont that's been in place from the beginning that allows us access to McDougall Park Park and also allows residents and anybody who wants to use the park to go through our property to get to that park, and it's worked out well.

Um, we've also benefited from having outstanding school resource officers who have definitely helped me a lot in in my roles at a school.

Uh, and just in general, Belmont has treated us with a lot of respect as we've gone through this process.

So we're very appreciative of that.

That being said, we also think we deliver a lot of benefits to our to our neighbors and to our community.

Um we provide parking, and this, if you do a site visit, you'll see we have this giant lower parking lot that is not part of the easement, but we leave it open all the time, and neighbors use it all the time for weeknight and weekday parking.

I'm sorry, weeknight and weekend parking.

And I'll just point out like if that if we just didn't do that, which would be very easy not to do, we could just lock our gate, those cars would be all over the neighborhood and people be walking up and down hills.

And we don't do it because we have to, we do it because we want to.

We want to be a part of this community and we want to serve our neighbors.

We also have lots of recreation opportunities.

McDougall Park is there, but we have two playgrounds that there's no playgrounds in McDougall Park.

We've got three full court basketball courts outside that people use all the time.

We're also happy to be like the only like level uh blacktop area anywhere nearby.

So I think probably a great number of kids in the neighborhood have learned to ride their bikes by being on the Armstrong campus.

We also get our skateboarders and other things like that, but we'll we'll ignore that for this conversation.

Uh we also uh talked with parks and rec and came up with this great plan to leave the bathrooms open in the evenings during the week and also on the weekends so that sports teams who are using McDougall Park who used to use these um porta bodies that I will not I won't use any adjectives to describe the portabilities, but now instead they can use our bathrooms and the coaches have keys and they can literally lock up at the end of that, and we then work with the city on on how those uh parks will um how those bathrooms will be cleaned.

Uh, we've got ADA ramps that provide the easiest access for anybody who has a disability to get down to McDougall Park and to get down to our campus.

We recently installed AED on our building because that was requested by the city, and we were thrilled to help.

So we can go through all these different things.

Our San Carlos neighbors, some of whom you're gonna hear from tonight.

Uh, they have they created gates in our fences, so they can literally have they have special access to our campus and can easily get to the park if they want to bring their dog there or otherwise use the park.

So we do a lot of things, we we appreciate being part of this uh community, but we also recognize we do a lot of things to contribute to the community over the last 40 plus years.

I will also say, and these are future opportunities, we have committed as part of this project to fund up to 100,000 dollars in improvements to McDougall Park.

We working close with parks and rec on what that can mean and what they could do, and we also think that if we introduce another gym to the Belmont community, especially one that we will probably use relatively rarely at nights and on weekends, because we are a middle school that has people commuting from all different places, that certainly could be a very important asset to the Belmont community where I understand gym space is very rare and very hard to find.

Last but not least, in terms of our benefits, is we've definitely provided a lot of academic support to our students.

You sometimes hear about independent schools, and people say, Well, there's only so many kids from Belmont there, or so many kids from San Carlos there.

The reality is we've had over 175 students from either Belmont or San Carlos who have attended Armstrong.

Currently, we have 22 students who are from Belmont and San Carlos.

And I'd say that's about 10% of our student population.

I'd say that's great.

You wouldn't want that to be 50%.

If that was 50%, that would mean that the Belmont and San Carlos schools weren't doing their job with students with learning differences.

You want us to be there for the handful of kids that need something extra, and where they're not getting it from the public school system, and therefore it's great that something literally can be walking distance or really nearby in their community.

And then it's not like we're serving people from all over Northern California.

61% of our students come from San Mateo County.

So I know we all feel an allegiance to Belmont and San Carlos.

The reality is we're also part of a county and we serve a lot of students within our county.

Finally, I'll mention we've done free training for Belmont, the Belmont Regures School District, with teachers, in terms of their understanding or dyslexia, but not just their understanding.

We literally have sponsored for several teachers a year-long uh study where they will become certified in the reading system we use that they can then bring back to their public school and serve their students.

So we are very committed, frankly, to keeping students in the Belmont schools if the Belmont schools can do their best to serve them.

So we want to train teachers and we want to work with those schools.

So that's a little bit about us and about uh about our place in the community.

Uh Jeremy's already hit this, so I won't go into great detail.

Three phases.

Phase one is really the one that's in front of us that we're trying to start in May, three new specialty classrooms, one science lab, and six standard rooms, uh classrooms.

Uh, and then we're gonna take care of other issues like the faculty workspace and conference room and things like that.

Phase two, which we anticipate five years later, we have an athletics and community center, uh, that'll be on our upper black top where we currently have our blue basketball court if you ever do a site visit.

And phase three is actually relatively modest renovations to existing spaces just to move around and create a new library and create a new opening to our school, but that is kind of we're looking potentially 10 years out.

So that's what we're proposing.

Never realize how much I talk with my hands, but then as part of that, um, some of some there's some CUP amends that sort of have to happen, and there's some that we're requesting, and there's some where this is just a good opportunity to bring everything to you at once because we have some operational challenges that we're hoping you can also help us solve.

So, one, we just need the approval of a CUP amendment that gives us the space to actually do this work.

Secondly, as I said, we've gone with what we think is a very modest uh ask of an additional 30 students and a lot of our students' carpool, so that probably means like an additional 18 cars, so uh not a huge uh not a huge ask in that regard.

It's only an 11.5% increase in our enrollment.

Uh, and then we have uh a number of requests about accessing our own campus.

We are not allowed to be on our campus at this point at all on the weekends.

Uh, literally, if a teacher wants to prep, if they leave their phone on campus, if they leave prescription medicine on campus, once we hit nine o'clock on Friday night, we can't be on campus again till 7 a.m.

All the while, like our campus is getting used by a lot of neighbors, but we literally can't step foot on campus.

Uh, secondly, we would like to reach agreement with Belmont on just a handful of weekend days where we can do a bigger event on campus, a community picnic.

We'd love to move a couple of events to the weekends so that families that work uh and have two working parents don't have to have every event on our campus be during the week.

We think it would be very equitable and fair for them to have some access to campus for us to have access on the campus so they can be part of those.

Uh, and then finally, and this is a little nuanced, I won't go into detail.

There's a handful of special events we do where we actually think our current sort of traffic requirements actually are worse for the neighbors, like our Halloween fest, where uh literally families come on campus, they watch the parade, then they all have to go to their cars, not with their kids, then all at the same time come back on campus, it creates a huge challenge because everybody's coming all at once to pick up all the kids.

And so we think I guess part of what I want to say about this is we don't want we don't want traffic either.

So we would love a little bit of trust that we have a sense for some act, some steps we can take where there's common sense things we can do where we know there will be less traffic, and if we could just get away from sort of all the rules that people want to place on us and let us use our judgment a handful of times during the school year, it'll be better for everybody.

So those are some CTMNs.

Last but not least, sorry, I'm gonna take a quick sip.

Last but not least, we want to make sure you know we've done uh neighborhood outreach.

We did a full packet that went out, uh, and then we've done did a broad neighborhood meeting on October 16th.

Um we've also done approximately 10 to 12 uh additional smaller meetings either at neighbors' requests uh or at our request.

Uh and so we are trying to not only to say, okay, we've done our one meeting, but if people want to meet with us, we are always happy to meet with them.

Uh, and we've also sent a couple invitations to people who we thought might have an interest, but but didn't respond.

Uh, in general, we've received very positive and kind feedback.

Uh, there's certainly we know concerns you'll hear about them tonight, and I'll address them in a second.

Uh, but we've heard a good number of really positive notes and posts that have made us really feel good.

We know the school had some challenges with the neighbors 20 years ago, and I think just the general feel of our relationship with the neighborhood is extremely different now.

And it doesn't mean there's not gonna be people opposed to this, but it does mean we think there's a lot of momentum and a lot of people who see the good work we do, but not only that see that we're good neighbors and and are excited for us to take the next step.

The two primary concerns we've heard, uh, one you're always gonna hear in Belmont, we all know is traffic, uh, which is fair, and we do everything we do can to mitigate that.

We have a very deliberate drop-off and pickup uh process that all goes on behind our school, uh, and it's been in place for years, it works really well.

I'll compare it to any other school in terms of our efficiency of getting that number of cars in and out, in and out of the school.

Uh, and our proposed increase here is so modest, we just think it will have no impact on the on the traffic.

Literally, some of the people who have concerns about traffic have to drive by schools that have 3,000 or 4,000 students uh to get to our school.

Like there are a lot of schools in our neighborhood, it's part of being in Belmont, and we're doing everything we can to mitigate it.

And the second is the location of the gym and kitchen.

Um, look, those are both very important facilities to a school.

I think there's a lot of schools in Belmont and San Carlos who had their original campus and added gyms somewhere along the way because they knew it was important to their to their community.

Um literally, there are multiple gyms.

There again, people have concerns about our gym.

They have to drive past two other gyms to get to our campus and see our proposed gym.

So there are plenty of gyms in the area already, including one basically right behind our school.

Uh, and finally, we are willing to do basically as much as we can in terms of reasonable landscape work.

We have neighbors who right now look out at our blacktop, look at our sheds.

We actually think we can offer them a better solution by doing really good landscape work and giving them a better view than they even have now, instead of there being concerned about what the view might look like.

So thank you for your time.

Appreciate uh your hearing us out, and we look forward to uh working closely with you to hopefully get this to be a reality.

I'd now like to pass the baton to a member of our architecture team.

Thank you, Neil.

Good evening.

Uh good evening, Madam Mayor, good evening, council.

Um, my name is For here Burbano.

I work with Ratcliffe Architects in Emeryville.

We're one of the oldest architectural firms in the country.

Um we have a focus on K through 12 uh schools as part of our practice.

So we've been doing this for quite some time.

The project that um we're bringing forward is not something extravagant or exotic as um Neil described.

These are needs that the school has.

Looking at, and I'm gonna uh lose use my laser tonight to point to the screen up here to the left.

Uh, how do we touch this campus or how do we come on to the with the architecture?

We are fortunate that uh we have a plan that it's kind of a traditional use uh or uh design for schools in California that we have these finger part uh uh buildings that link up to a support space.

The the main concourse is on this center bar from here.

We're gonna be adding on to the uh east side of the of the campus and a little bit towards the north.

Some of the strengths that we heard tonight and relationships with the with the community is the parking uh pick up and drop-off that occurs on campus to the to the south side here, and this is something that we're gonna respect.

So let's go to the next uh slide.

Um as we described the and and Carlos did uh in uh Jeremy did a great job telling us about where we um expanding the the academic wind to the east side.

We're keeping about 17 feet away since we were talking about setbacks earlier tonight.

So we're pulling away on this side uh about 17 feet and stepping down, and you'll see that in a moment in a moment with the architecture and the 3D component or the 3D massing of the project.

Uh down towards the south, we have the gym component.

One thing about those back area, the kitchen cooking area is a small component of this backup house is about 1400 square feet.

So it's kind of typical for a school school about this size.

So we're pushing about 18 feet away, a little more than 18 feet from the this perimeter where we step up with uh with the design.

Um, as I said, we're definitely keeping this uh strategy of pick up and drop off that's working for the school and providing that parking to the community after hours as uh Neil described.

Let's go to the next slide.

Uh looking um right now, and I know this is on your package.

The the key with the design was to nestle the the architecture.

So from Solana, you're barely gonna see the the building peaking towards the east side of the campus.

This is starting with the music pavilion down very low.

We have a two-story building as nestled in, similar to what you were seeing earlier, where we have a component part of this building is uh nestled into the grade.

We go to the next slide.

Now you're seeing the building coming around.

This is towards the east side where we have the Belmont uh neighbors.

Um we have the music building starting at the left here, stepping down to some of the classrooms and the specialty rooms that we're talking about on the ground level of the center building.

We have a learning court area that's covered for the kids to really expand and really come out and take some of the uh classes outside.

We have the support spaces down at the bottom with the science arts and the thing uh makerspace on the ground level and some more classrooms and some support spaces for the staff.

Uh we are looking into an architecture that did not copy the uh vernacular of the sloped roof, so we're having a slight curved uh uh roof area.

We do uh incorporate some uh teaching moments into the facades here.

This is incorporating the Fibonacci series.

So the kids will get to discover that.

So we don't want to re reveal it all at once, but this is something that they'll get to discover as they move along uh further.

Let's go to the next slide.

Uh, this is looking at the gym from the parking lot area.

We definitely want to keep as much glass and transparency linking to the outdoors.

Uh, and it's very important for the pedagogy of how kids really connect to the uh to the outdoors.

Let's go to the next slide.

Uh, this is looking from the other side.

I said this is where the kids are going to be playing the uh area for them to dine in and uh come out and work from um the uh area that's protected from where the vehicles are.

So this is a very brief uh description.

I know you have the full package with some of the other uh technical uh uh information, so thank you.

Right, great, thank you.

Is that is that all for the presentation either from staff or the applicant?

Yes, sounds like it okay, great.

Thank you so much, um, both staff and the Charles Rapstrong team for that.

Uh great presentation.

I really appreciate renderings uh whenever we can see those, those help a lot for those of us visual learners.

Um, all right.

Let's go ahead and ask right now, just uh council if you have questions.

Um for staff or uh anything on the presentation.

I'm calling up questions, Vice Mayor, you're nodding?

Yep, I have a several of them.

Um let's see.

I think I want to ask we are um head of schools.

So I'm wondering about your cap at 290.

And what makes me ask this question is if you're adding six classrooms and say your class size is 10 to 1, it's just to make it easy at 60 additional children.

So your current cap is at 260.

Take it up to 320.

Now, I know you may or may not have intentions to grow that large, but I'm just wondering why not build for the future so that you don't have to come back here again.

So this is a question where I either look sensitive or foolish, depending on your point of view.

I insisted that we go with a number of student increase that that was so modest that we would show sensitivity to the neighbors, and we tried to get it to be a number that would be meaningful to us, but small enough that we thought the neighbors couldn't possibly really have a concern about it.

And so we thought 10 10-ish percent, 30 students was just a very modest, reasonable request.

It allows us to help more students, help more families, but unfortunately it sort of hasn't quite played out that way.

Does that answer your question?

Yes, I would still advocate for 320.

I hear the under the desire to be sensitive to neighbors, but I've been a principal for a school for many, many years.

And a school at max of 320 is a school this big, your traffic must be done.

My current school is 565, and my traffic is done in 15 minutes.

So your traffic must be very minuscule.

The peak is really a eight to ten minutes phase, but I so I I very much respect what you're saying.

And again, uh, you know, we're we're open-minded, but I'm at least have shared with you why I took this approach in terms of the number of students.

We were just trying to get something that we thought everybody would say, okay.

That's that's Armstrong's being reasonable.

I think about the service that you're providing to children, children that I, as a principal, have been unable to serve well in our classroom sizes of 25 to 1.

And I think that that is a gift that you are offering, and I'd like to see that grow even larger.

So again, I advocate for that.

Um the kitchen.

Describe what kind of cooking you're gonna be doing in the kitchen.

Yeah, so this will be very much a standard school kitchen.

So we're not running an out burger here.

You know, this is gonna be something where they're cooking between, you know, 8 a.m.

and noon, hopefully healthy meals.

Uh there are, you know, we've worked with our team, there are definitely some real advances in terms of how you control smells and aromas.

One thing that our architect did not mention is you know, we've looked in this at this because it's been brought up by neighbors since the planning commission, and I can't remember what the word was, but there was some word like it's like an indistinguishable smell.

It's you know, anything that comes from the kitchen, it'll be let up into the air, and it should not be perceptible where any of the neighbors are, and we can certainly look into any other things we can do to reasonably mitigate that.

So the plan is to again cook meals between let's say I'm gonna estimate here eight and noon uh for our students and for our faculty, have that served between again, don't hold me to this 11:30 and one, uh, and then clean up and be out of there, and to then use the kitchen only for a handful of potential evening events or things that we might do on campus.

Again, we're a school where students do come from a wide radius, so we tend not to do a lot of those events.

Uh, and so I do think that would be so limited in nature that it would be frankly not an issue for any anybody in the neighborhood.

Our plan is not to rent out you know the facility.

I mean, it's really something we probably should think about if there's other not-for-profits or something that could use a facility for event, but that's not our plan.

We're not planning on this being this or the gym being any type of revenue uh generator of any uh any significance in this process.

I'm just trying to imagine the impact of a kitchen having been a principal at I don't know, six or seven schools, and I cannot say that I have had that experience of my kitchen, my current kitchen going into the smells going into the community.

I just I have not experienced that in the 16 years that I have been a principal.

So I was trying to envision where you planning on cooking for a thousand a day.

No, we're we're we are just trying to feed our students and our teachers doing what will ultimately be very limited hours during the day, and again, whatever you experience technologies have only gotten better since then.

Yes.

Uh in terms of controlling things like that.

So again, uh I respect our neighbors and I respect like it's a it's a reasonable concern, but I do think it's a concern that we can easily mitigate as part of our plans.

Okay, I'm gonna keep going.

Sorry.

Um, the gates that have been that are on your campus that feed into your, were those created with permission?

And the reason I asked this is I was Nesbit's principal for nine years, and there were a multitude of gates coming into NES, but all created without permission from the school district.

So I wonder if you're having that same experience.

Um I don't know the whole history.

I'm guessing some of those have been there before m even my time there.

Um certainly nobody in the time I've been there, nobody has come to me and said, Hey, can we cut a hole in your fence so that we can have access to your campus and to this uh and to the park.

Yeah, but I also will respect the fact I don't know, maybe they've been there longer.

I can I'm in touch with every head of school that's still living.

So I could always go back and find out if there's somebody who gave permission along the way.

Yeah, I can imagine and at least it was true for me.

I can imagine it poses um safety risks for you because it means that you're not able to control access to your campus because anyone could come in through these gates.

That's true, but we do trust our neighbors, like so we we have a good relationship with our neighbor like again.

Before we proposed any of this, we had great relationships with frankly all of our neighbors.

And now, you know, now reality sets in, right?

But we do trust our neighbors, we trust them to have those gates.

Um we are an open campus, so certainly there's other ways people can access our campus.

So I wouldn't wanna pretend that we're scared of our neighbors.

We we like our neighbors and they've they've approached us as part of this, and we've had multiple conversations.

Even if we look at things differently, we've had very reasonable conversations, uh, and they give invite us into their homes to kind of look at their views, which is where I kind of realize like, oh, your view isn't that great right now.

Well, you know, I'd rather why don't we plant some trees sooner, frankly, than five years from now when we do a gym, because I'd rather you look at trees than look at our sheds, for example.

Okay.

And can you help me understand why you do not have access to school on weekends and after nine o'clock?

I could not imagine being a principal of a school or having teachers who were unable to access the school on a weekend.

How did that come about?

Um, again, it's before my time.

My understanding is I do think the school, uh and this is where I'm happy to own things, especially when they occurred before I was there.

I do think if you look back 20 to 25 years ago, there were things the school was doing that weren't pr that weren't totally in compliance with the CUP.

So I do think Belmont, uh, and I'm using these are my words, not anybody else's, you know, came down hard on the school and said, Look, you're not in compliance with your C UP.

We don't like that, and so we're gonna put some pretty stringent rules in place.

Uh I don't know whether those actually predated even that.

I'm not sure.

But the reality is we are very good neighbors.

We are very compliant with our C UP now, uh, and have been as long as I've been there.

And so I do think it's a different time that deserves a different amount of respect in terms of our ability to access our campus.

And it's also frankly unworkable.

I mean, I would love to know how many businesses or institutions of any kind in the city of Belmont aren't allowed to actually go into their go into their workspace on the weekend.

I I can't imagine there's anything.

I can imagine your teachers' productivity is impacted.

Yours.

I'm out my campus every Sunday.

So ha how?

How?

Anyway, those are my questions for now.

Alright, appreciate your time.

Oh, wait, oh, anybody else?

I guess the chair, I the only question I had is I went on on campus and did a site visit.

Um I appreciate the the aerials.

Um just as I'm looking in my head at what I was seeing.

The gym in the kitchen would be where the blue basketball courts are.

Is that where we're putting those?

No.

Is it easy to pull back out?

It's on the same level.

It's on that same level, but this is another thing where you know, we tried to do our best here.

Like when this something similar was proposed 20 years ago, and it was it was in a direction where that's its whole long side was against the neighbors.

So we turned it so that there'd be fewer homes impacted by it.

Oh, so you can see there, like we've we've turned it.

So the blue basketball court goes actually the other go goes the lengthwise.

We thought this would have less of an impact.

Uh, we definitely know.

Like we know it impacts a handful of neighbors.

We're not we're not trying to pretend otherwise, but we really try to minimize that by turning it kind of on its axis and having be perpendicular to us to our school.

Okay, thanks.

That helps me visualize it.

All right.

Any other questions?

From council to staff or the app.

Oops.

If you do just stay through the chat.

Oh, I see you guys again.

No, okay.

Uh let's go ahead and move to public comment.

Um, Madam.

Yes.

So I have a number of slips and a couple of raised hands on Zoom.

So this is your opportunity.

And we can begin with uh Barbara Saban.

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Um thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council members.

I'm Barbara Sabian, uh 30-year resident of Belmont.

I've lived in uh the same home since in June, it was 30 years this year.

I love Belmont.

I've raised four sons in Belmont.

I consider the school very, I love my community, my neighborhood, which is the McDougall uh Solano area.

I consider the school very much a part of the neighborhood.

We did use those basketball courts with four sons, and maybe a skateboard or two maybe have been on campus at some point.

Um the school have been great neighbors for the 30 years I've been there, they communicate well, they send letters.

Um I probably have lived through multiple different rounds of staff and principals and teachers, and never had an issue with all of them, any of them.

Um I think it was very apropos tonight that the very first thing that happened in these proceedings was that a child received a school award for a poster, which was amazing.

Um, and to your point, uh Vice Mayor, what Armstrong provides to these children is a gift, you know, especially kids with special and and you know, having four children, they were had all different um educational experiences, and I too had a child with learning needs, and so what they provide is a gift, and I think all children deserve that opportunity.

Um there was some fear mongering going on and some false things being said in the neighborhood.

You know, I was told that there were you know pickleball courts going in and all these crazy things, and I didn't appreciate the misinformation, so uh it was really important for me to come here tonight to hear accurate truthful information.

Um, as far as traffic, I've often thought where my house is.

If you go um clockwise, um in a rotation, you've got Armstrong, Carmont, Immaculate Hodge of Mary, Notre Dame Elementary, Notre Dame High School, and whatever's going on at the College of Notre Dame, I don't know.

Um, so to say that this one school is going to impact traffic is incredibly inaccurate.

In 30 years, I've never had an issue with waiting to get home or get out of my home.

Um, what else did I want to say?

Oh, and lastly, um, as in most of our neighborhoods, there is a lot of remodeling going on.

Um, the last the house to my left and the house to my right in the last two years have been completely remodeled, most of them are additions, and I think it only enhances the neighborhood, it updates them.

Um, it adds beauty, landscaping, um, and I and why doesn't the school deserve that as well?

And all the things that they're asking for, um, I I'm very grateful that my kids got to enjoy in the schools that they went to, special events, Halloween parades, you know, picnics, um, and the like, and I think that Armstrong deserves that as well.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Warren Gibson, followed by Daniel Zwizin.

Well, good evening, everybody.

I'm Warren Gibson, 47 years in Belmont.

And I was the chair of the planning commission back in 2005, when this project came before us, and it was denied.

I was the sole vote in favor of it, and it's kind of stuck in my craw ever since.

So I'm back, and I've studied the plans and I've made a site vision, and I'm really quite optimistic about what I see.

The proposal is a distinct improvement over what we saw 20 years ago, and their method of presenting it is, I think, also a distinct improvement.

So I'm like the Dalmatian in the firehouse who heard the bell, roused himself, and started barking.

So here I am.

Without getting into the weed, I'll just leave it at that and I'll say I have no affiliation with the school.

I don't live near the uh school.

I just want to see a good project.

So I'll be back with my opinion and my two cents worth for what it's worth.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Daniel's wishing, followed by Jeff Griswell.

Good evening.

My name is Daniels Wison, and I'm the facilities manager at Charles Armstrong School.

As someone who could work at many places, I choose to be at Armstrong because I love the environment, the people I work with, and the students and families I get to support every day.

Many of you have seen me before.

I'm the person standing on the top of the driveway each morning and afternoon, managing the flow of traffic.

Traffic and safety are one of my top priorities, and I take that responsibility seriously.

I know many of our neighbors personally, and so many of them speak positively about Armstrong and our mission.

I've built real relationships in this community, and I value them.

I genuinely feel like part of the McDougall community.

Our neighbors love using our campus and they use it frequently.

Kids running around riding bikes, one of the only flat services in the neighborhood.

Families and friends walking through the halls, people using our playgrounds, covered picnics, basketball courts.

After hours and on weekends, our entire campus is open, not just the park, and it's well used by the community.

We also maintain a great relationship with Belmont Parks and Recreation to help maintain the park and provide any access to anything they need.

I work hard every single day to minimize our traffic impact, and I welcome anyone to come stand with me morning or afternoon to see our system in action.

Traffic and safety are huge priorities for Armstrong's leadership.

We've created a finely tuned system, and I play an important role in protecting Solana Drive by ensuring all of our drop-offs and pickups happen behind the school in compliance with our CEP.

One improvement we're seeking with our C UP is to adjust dismissal procedures for a few special event days, which will actually improve traffic flow rather than create a line of cars waiting to access the school.

I know there are some people who disagree with the proposed location of our gym.

However, because of our COP requirements, we've worked extremely hard to place it in uh place it behind the school in a way that minimizes impact to our neighbors.

Having our proposed athletics and community center on the upper blacktop behind the school is crucial.

It allows us to continue using our proving pickup and drop-off system on the lower parking lot adjacent to the field, keeping traffic off of neighborhood streets.

As the facilities manager, I am part of the team working on this expansion project, and I would oversee construction.

My team knows that I hold people to high standards, and I'm very protective of our students and our neighborhood.

I'm proud to say we're always trying our best and looking for ways to improve how we operate and minimize our impact on our neighbors.

I hope you join me in strongly supporting this project.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jeff Criswell, followed by TK Lakshman.

Good evening, Madam Mayor and City Council members.

I'm Jeff Criswell.

My family has lived on Dartmouth Avenue adjacent to Charles Armstrong since 1998.

We hope that the honorable and absolutely needed purpose of this school can be distinguished from the negative impact of their expansion plans on the neighborhood.

Please imagine yourselves living right next to a gym in a professional kitchen that is used seven days a week and in the evenings.

The current plan is essentially a repeat of the plan that was rejected by Belmont in 2005.

Same thing as shoehorning a similar-sized three-story industrial building into a residential area that butts up against our backyards.

It will not be compatible with the neighborhood.

Since the site was originally intended for a K through six school, it was never intended for a gymnasium.

We'd have the same noise concerns with gym buzzers, slamming metal doors, HVAC units, and loud music and cheering on a routine basis.

A kitchen has been added this time, as you just heard.

And as we talk about there would be exhaust odors and smells into our neighborhood on a regular basis, like a restaurant.

Noise and disruption from food and our college trucks servicing the kitchen.

There would also be adjacent to our fences.

There'd be the same and even increased traffic and parking concerns for local Belmont residents.

These impacts will be made worse if the parks and rec department is allowed to use the gym uh seven days a week in evenings, including the significantly increased traffic and congestion from cars from not just the school students, but from all over Belmont as well as the broader Bay Area.

Now it's easy for those not living nearby to support this, not realizing the impact on the nearby residents.

Those supporters should think about how they would feel if this was happening in their backyard.

We would strongly request that a traffic study be done as well as a mock-up of the buildings or at least a rendering from the neighbors' perspective, so the neighbors, council, and planners could see the impact prior to the council voting on the project.

We would also suggest that the gym and kitchen building be relocated to the lower blacktop adjacent to the school, which would uh mitigate some of these problems for the neighbors, although this would not alleviate the traffic issues.

Uh lastly, we would invite you to come by our homes and take a look for yourself at any time to see the impact of what this gym project would be on our neighborhood.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.

TK, followed by the uh Celcina, Pignoli.

Good evening.

Hope you can hear me.

West Mayor Pang Maganaris, I hope you said it right, and uh council members, it's a pleasure to be here.

I especially appreciate what Charles Armstrong is doing.

It's a school that has been fantastic for the students.

I've lived as a neighbor right behind Charles Armstrong for almost 27 years, so starting 1999.

And it was a big surprise, frankly, an unpleasant surprise to me to see that plan just recently with the gym and the specific kitchen butting right up against our backyard.

We love the rest of what Charles Armstrong is trying to do.

We appreciate them.

We especially like what they're doing with respect to educating kids in different ways.

It is the specific placement of this gym right against our backyard, which I know some of you have been in school environments, my parents have been too, teachers.

We've noticed how certain things that are done at schools can have an impact on the neighborhood.

We don't have a back fence that has a hole in the fence that lets us use the school.

We actually go around to get to the school.

That's important to notice here.

But what's most important is that there are so many options that the school has with respect to the placement of the gym and the kitchen.

So if that is the important part, and there is no traffic, then as Jeff suggested earlier, there is a beautiful solution that Jeff suggested.

But if traffic is a concern, then there are other solutions.

But at the end of the day, if you talk about blacktop, and then you do all this construction and the blacktop disappears, then you don't have a blacktop anymore.

The thing to remember is this area has so much for the school to offer.

For it to grow, perhaps there is only so much it can grow.

As far as what we are concerned, we would love to have you guys come and take a look at the school or the proposed playground, which is beautiful.

However, that gym and that kitchen butting right up against our backyard is the point that we are most concerned about.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Madam Park, how many uh comments do we have?

I have two more slips and five raised.

I'm sorry, three raised hands, five total.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Good evening, Maya, and Charlotte.

Is it okay?

Can you hear me?

Okay.

All right.

Good evening, everybody.

My name is Jessina Bignoli, and I am a neighbor of the school, and I live with my family on Darma Avenue.

I have only a few uh comments that I would like to make regarding specifically the uh phase two of the school project, which is related to the construction of the gym and the kitchen.

Two structure will be built literally along the defense of our uh property, and leaving a very, very narrow setback that I hear a lot of discussion about, you know, putting trees and trying to minimize the impact, but there is no such thing in that small setback.

There is no space to put any tree, there is no space to create any um sort of screen between our property and the proposed construction.

Um the structure will basically uh tower over there.

Uh, it will introduce noise, odors, light pollution, uh, right on top of the backyard.

And I understand that the school is offering community benefits, such as refurbish the park and allow the city to access the building, but those do not offset the direct and permanent arm that this design is would cause to our properties, and it will additionally reduce uh the value of our properties because of all these introduced um you know nuisances.

Community benefits should not be used to justify a project that is simply too large and too close to the neighboring property.

I strongly urge the commission to require a redesign with real setbacks, reduced eye, and robust mitigation measure.

I want to stress that obviously the school can and should modernize, and that we are absolutely appreciate what the school is doing for the kids, but this cannot happen at the expense of the neighbors' live ability.

Thank you.

Jeffrey Salman.

Madam Mayor, honorable members of the city council.

Um, I stand before you, somebody who's known you for a very long time, has worked with many of you in prior roles that we've all had with respective things on schools, where I served as counsel to the local education foundations, chair of the parcel tax committee here in Belmont, community representative to the build out in 2015-2016 of the Carlemont campus, running bond campaigns that have built and added between 2010 and 2018 close to a hundred classrooms in the city of Belmont, school gyms, science buildings and the like.

What you may not know is my first foray into advocacy on behalf of the schools in this community was as a Charles Armstrong parent and neighborhood resident in the McDougal neighborhood.

My god, I can't believe it's been a generation, 20 years ago.

And I'm back here again to do this one more time.

I take the mission statement personally.

Eight years ago, my daughter Sarah, who I think most of you know, stood at this podium testifying as the president of an organization of a school organization at Carl Matt as a senior in high school on behalf of a civil rights ordinance that had been introduced by then council member, mate, and former council member Hurt.

Three weeks from now, she will graduate with a master's and HR, a master's degree in law, HR in employment law from the Sandra Day O'Connor School at Arizona State.

Sixteen years ago as a third-year student at Charles Armstrong.

She could not read.

When Cheryl and I bought our house on Chula Vista in 2002, and the girls were two years old.

We had no idea how fortuitous we were to be down the street, a block and a half, our neighborhood school where I was able to start walking my daughter as a third grader to her neighborhood school instead of her being driven as her siblings were to Cipriani to a nationally recognized school that treats students who have dyslexia and teaches them how to read and changes their direction.

The changes that are being sought here are long overdue, they're commensurate with what every other school, public and private in this city has done for the last 20 years.

It's time to do this.

Thank you.

Moving on to Zoom.

We'll begin with Mark Moore.

Mark, you've been unmuted.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Honorable Mayor and members of the uh city council.

My name is Mark Moore.

I'm the very proud chairman of the board of the Charles Armstrong School.

I am also the father of Patrick, who spent seven years at Armstrong graduating in 2021.

We are so grateful for your consideration of our application.

Because as you've heard, the Charles Armstrong School is an extraordinary place.

It is truly unique in its mission and without peer in its effectiveness in educating children with dyslexia.

Smart, capable, hard-working children come to us frustrated and broken by their experience in their mainstream school.

We pick them up, employ distinct education techniques along with lots and lots of love and turn them into confident, accomplished learners.

That's what happened to Patrick and to thousands of others across our 58 years.

How do we do it?

I think there are two hallmarks to our school.

The first is more philosophy than pedagogy.

At Armstrong, we flip the switch on dyslexia.

Dyslexia is not a limit to overcome, but a strength to nourish and celebrate.

That's a powerful insight for young people.

Think of a group of fifth graders on a field trip to a museum.

The docent asks where they're from, and the kids yell out, Armstrong.

Oh, where is that?

Well, I'm dyslexic, says one.

So am I, says another.

Me too.

Me too, they all chime in.

I'm dyslexic and have dysgraphia, too, shout shouts another.

Pride and even joy in who they are.

That those are our Armstrong students.

The second hallmark, and I think this is where our plan comes in, is that we look and feel like every other elementary and middle school.

We have competitive sports teams, school dances, parent events, a blowout musical production in the spring.

Kids aren't going somewhere different.

They're just going to school and one that fits their learning style.

We have been on Solano Drive for 41 years.

We love our campus.

It's breezy and open with a distinctly California vibe.

We have improved it, adding playgrounds and parking and amphitheater and garden and refurbishing classrooms, but we have never added any square feet of buildings to our wonderful campus.

We now need to modernize and expand our campus as we prepare for the next 60 years and beyond.

We need more classrooms, flexible and design to accommodate our teaching approach.

We need state-of-the-art specialty programs, art or classrooms, art, music, movement, a maker lab to nurture those interests where dyslexic kids often excel.

We need an athletic facility that can also serve as a community center.

We need dedicated teacher space and yes, we need a hot lunch program and proper kitchen.

This is what kids have at schools that they go to, and this is what our kids deserve.

So I hope you know that we've been really careful and deliberate and deliberate in creating these plans.

They've taken us honestly six years and are based not only on our best ideas for our students, but also more your time for consideration.

Of how this will look and feel to our neighbors.

We are so very grateful to you for your consideration, and we are committed to being good citizens of the city of Belmont.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Your time is up.

Is Mayor Maid still on?

I am.

And I realize now there is no timer, or we actually can't hear it.

Um we can't hear the buzzer.

That's that's the issue.

So uh yeah, if if Madam Clark or the Vice Mayor just want to chime in and let folks know when they have a 30-second warning, I think that would be helpful.

Our next uh speaker is Hayward Fellows.

Hayward, you've been unmuted.

Hi, can you hear me now?

Yes.

Hi, my name is Hayward Fellows, and I'm a resident of San Carlos and a current parent at Charles Armstrong.

Um I wanted to come tonight to express my support for the building project being proposed.

Uh I understand the concerns around traffic.

Um, in addition to my son at Armstrong, my daughter attended Mariposa and Terra Linda in San Carlos and currently attends Notre Dame.

So I feel very well versed in the school traffic, living through it every day and have been for years.

Um I will say I've rarely, if ever, experienced any backups or delays near Armstrong.

I think the school does an excellent job of regulating the incoming and outgoing traffic to avoid backups on Chula Vista and Solana.

The majority of the backups, which there are definitely backups, are on Alameda and San Carlos Avenue near the entrances to Carlmont and the San Carlos schools.

And I think anyone who drove by on Friday when all of those schools were closed because of the water main break will see that the um the impact of those schools is far greater than Charles Armstrong on the traffic issues.

I also wanted to talk about the gymnasium because I think it will, um, as some of the other adults or people here have suggested, greatly enhance the experience for the students at Armstrong.

Um, as the parent of a neurodivergent learner, my goal is for my child to have a well-rounded education that is as similar to a mainstream experience as possible.

Um, these kids already feel different.

Um, they come to Armstrong feeling different, and we want to give them an experience that they can share with their friends who are outside of school, and so a middle school with a gym where they can host basketball and volleyball games, have school dances, all of that goes to creating that shared experience that they have with their peers outside of Armstrong and helps them not only in middle school but also when they transition to high school.

Um, I also think the gym is a bonus for the community as a whole.

I mean, we all know how limited space is here, and so another place where we can host um as a community rec league sports or holiday and summer camps for kids, I think is a win for everybody.

Um, finally, these expanded facilities will allow Armstrong to host conferences and teaching events for educators in the community.

I know these events will bring more people to the area.

However, I would say that there are so many kids who struggle to learn and there are so few resources out there to help them, that being able to offer support to educators and parents on how to help these kids is just a huge blessing to the whole community, and I would hope it's a mark of pride for Belmont to be seen as a center of excellence in moving literacy education forward.

I personally feel so grateful that we live close enough that our son has been able to attend Armstrong.

Um it's made such a difference to our family, and I'll tell anyone who asks that we probably could have gotten him to read eventually with tutors and help inside of school and outside, but I know he wouldn't be the happy and confident student he is today without Armstrong and would wish that opportunity for any child who needs it.

So thank you all very much for the consideration.

Our next speaker is Colleen Carter.

Okay.

Um you can hear me.

Yes.

Yes.

Uh good evening.

Uh my name is Colleen Carter, and I am a Belmont resident since uh 2001, and I have been at Armstrong as a staff member for the last three years.

Um, I'm here tonight to speak of the Charles Armstrong School Project.

Uh, like many of you, uh, I have uh grown roots in this community.

I was a softball coach for our daughter and spent countless hours at McDougal Park watching her and her teammates play.

Um, I've seen the benefit of the existing agreement uh where the black top and fields are a valuable resource uh shared by Charles Armstrong and the broader community, um used by neighbors, biking play, and it really seems to be uh a model for maximizing a shared community resource.

I think it's it's it's amazing.

Uh when I joined Armstrong's team three years ago, I had heard many good things from my uh colleagues in the Bay Area, but being on the inside has shown me the incredible life-changing work that's happening there.

Armstrong serves kids with dyslexia and other learning differences.

Um kids who before they came to our school were often told they weren't smart enough or were shamed for their differences.

I am lucky I get to watch our teachers patiently help these students find their confidence.

And the best part is that while they're at our school, they're just kids, they play sports, they make friends, they realize that the fact that they learn differently is a good thing, and it's not just tolerated, it's it's valued.

Um during our recent community picnic, I asked some fifth grade girls what they like best about the school, and one of them said, um, because it helps me and it's just fun, and I thought that was a great thing for a kid to say about school.

Uh the request before you is to add instructional space, and it's central to um us being able to improve on our mission.

We need smaller classes and facilities uh tailored to the specialized needs of our kids.

Um investing in Armstrong's facilities is an investment in educational innovation that benefits children in our community and beyond.

Um Charles Armstrong is exactly the kind of community-minded, high quality neighbor I want in my town.

You have 30 seconds.

Thank you.

Uh, amongst educators for kids with dyslexia, Charles Armstrong is already considered one of the best, and I would just urge the council to support this project and ensure that a school of this caliber can continue to innovate, improve, and thrive right here in Belmont.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Google Pixel 8.

You've been unmuted.

Do you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, sorry, that's Karen Shane.

Sorry, that's me.

Um, 60 year resident of uh Belmont and attendee of McDougall before it was Charles Armstrong.

I'm here in support of this project.

It's well overdue as Jeffrey Selman said, and um I understand the concerns from the San Carlos uh neighbors in Dartmouth.

Um, but the alternative is Charles Armstrong leaves, and what do we get there instead?

It's not necessarily going to be a school because they own the property, but it could be homes, it could be high density.

So we have to think about that.

And in terms of the smells coming from the kitchen, I know from my own experience, um, when we put in a fireplace when it was still allowed, we had to put a catalytic converter on our fireplace.

So I'm sure there is technology that can help with those things.

It doesn't sound like it's gonna be 24-7.

Sounds like it's during when the school is there.

Also, I absolutely support access to the school on the weekends.

You know, who knows why that happened?

It great questions from Kathy.

Um, but uh yeah, I totally support that, so I'm here.

And that's all.

Thank you.

Madam Mayor, that is our final speaker.

All right, thank you so much uh to all of the commenters and to the staff and Charles Armstrong team for your uh presentation.

Unfortunately, the um cafe I was in is closed now, so I am going to ask my council colleagues if they'll just um allow me to um give some of my uh comments.

I know this is just an informational item.

We don't have anything before us at the time, but I would like to provide my comments, and normally uh I allow uh my colleagues to speak first, but given that I need to um uh shut down things over here.

It I's going to go ahead and give my comments first if that's okay.

Uh just gonna head at.

Just gonna do that, and assume you guys are are nodding.

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Um, so uh before I started on this council, two of my children attended Charles Armstrong School, and the reason I share that with you is uh because I saw the school make substantial adjustments to traffic flow drop-off and pickup procedures and their daily schedule in order to fully meet the city's requirements, and um the city had put forth uh some reminders to the school about their CEP, and they took it very seriously, and we as parents uh it was sort of beaten into our heads that our our uh we had to follow some of the procedures that they were requiring and some of the changes that they were going to make.

Uh, the school, as you've heard, is absolutely an incredible asset to our community, um, certainly to my family members as others who have spoken.

Um, but in some ways, more importantly, for what we're looking at tonight, they've proven to be um very intentional and uh considerate in not negatively impacting their neighbors, as Mr.

Tech listed in his presentation tonight, and also I think uh, you know, they've made a lot of significant strides in the past better part of 20 years.

Um I have stayed in touch with their leadership over time.

They are a big part of our community, and so uh we do see them at community gatherings and things like that, and I know that they had hoped to raise the resources needed to reasonably expand their campus to meet their programmatic needs and get the school up to the level that our other two um middle schools, both Nesbitt and Ralston are that that uh and certainly Nesbit going through K-8.

Um, and if you notice Relston has had some changes to it as well and alterations over time.

So these are things that schools ultimately um need, and I don't think that uh what they're asking for in phase two and uh one and two um granted phase two.

We're looking at another, you know, um five years out.

So um these will be gradual changes, but um uh the academic wing and the standalone building um and the gymnasium, they are reasonably scaled and well-cited.

I want to thank you again for the um renderings because that really helps us see it on the site, and I think that because of where these facilities are placed on the campus, any impacts on surrounding neighbors should be limited.

Um, a school has operated in this neighborhood for decades, and the level of activity activity and school noise is something that's already part of the area's character, so I I really don't think this is going to um to be uh a huge negative impact, and I appreciate everyone who reached out with comments, um, but based on what is presented uh tonight, I don't see anything of concern as as far as uh as I'm concerned, and I'm uh very glad we're getting an early look at this project.

So uh thank you for um for this discussion.

Um and with that, I will uh log off and hand the meeting over to our vice mayor.

Thank you.

Okay.

Other com thank you, Mayor Maid.

Straight safely.

Thank you.

Um, sure.

Um, just a quick comment here.

I mean, um I've visited the school a couple of times.

I've heard very excellent things about them.

I don't have personal experience working with them.

Uh but I I think in some ways, as a city, we have kind of a case study here, which was Crystal Springs Upland School.

And several of us were on council and planning commission some years ago when that happened.

And when that was proposed, no, that was a new building, two new buildings.

Um there were a lot of concerns from neighbors about noise and traffic and disruption and some you know things that people are frequently concerned about when a new project is proposed.

But we worked through the process with them, they put together a good plan, and they've stuck with the plan.

They uh are required to give us reports every year of traffic counts.

They've consistently been under their permitted traffic counts every year that we've received that report.

And since that project has been done, I've not received one single complaint from a neighbor about Crystal Springs Upland School traffic or noise or disruption.

And it's in my district of the city, so if somebody had a beef about it, they'd, you know, they'd be calling me.

So, you know, the devil is in the details.

It goes in the details, but the devil is in the details too.

So we need to see the fully completed plan here before we you know make a judgment about where this goes, and we're not trying to make a judgment tonight.

So there's a long ways to go.

There's a lot of work to do here yet.

Um, but I I would point out that uh a properly prepared and properly executed plan.

Um we we, you know, we have several we have more than one case study that says that can be done uh without some of the impacts to the neighborhood that people fear.

That's it.

Sure.

Um, thank you for the presentations.

Um I think the good work that the school is doing is really very clear.

Um, I think the effort and the lengths that the school goes to to be a good neighbor and the to the entire neighborhood and to the city of Belmont is also very clear.

Um I think they've been particularly good neighbors to their neighbors next door who've enjoyed special direct access to the campus through the gates.

Um the school has been on this site for 41 years.

Um, and it sounds like from the one neighbor that called in, if I understood her correctly, it was a school campus site even before Armstrong moved in.

Uh I know some neighbors have been here for some time, 20 or 30 years, and I think it is reasonable that if you buy near a school to anticipate that a school is going to do school things and grow in a way that all schools throughout our city and our county have been allowed to grow.

So a place to prep meals, hold extracurriculars like music and sports, have a faculty workroom so teachers don't have to prep in their cars.

These are very reasonable asks for a school.

Um so I think they're doing good work, and if the plan continues to be reasonable, I think we can be good to them.

Great.

Uh yeah, thank you to all the speakers who came out and spoke, and we did receive several emails as well, and I did read all of them.

Uh, thank you to uh Charles Armstrong School for your thoughtfulness in your presentation, uh, in considering your expansion.

Um I think we can all agree that the education and experience that the school provides for the students and families is something to celebrate and be proud of.

I think what um some residents are concerned about are not the educational aspect of it.

And I realize we're not making any decisions this evening, but listening to the requests and the expansion requests and how I view uh teachers and having to prep in their cars and not having a space for them to just prepare their lessons seems silly.

And I think it's also critical knowing how hard educators work.

It's not my friends who are educators, are doing report cards after hours, they're on campus after hours there, they're on the weekends prepping their classrooms.

So I think as we evaluate the CUP, let's let's give you guys some flexibility to do your jobs in a more efficient manner for yourselves.

My children didn't go to Charles Armstrong.

They're now grown adults, but what I what I want to say is that they were given many opportunities to participate in all sorts of different activities, sports being one of them.

And so what I'm hearing tonight is the concern is around the gymnasium.

So I'm gonna speak specifically to that.

So, with respect to the gymnasium and noise, I live almost two miles from Carlmont, and on some Friday nights, we can hear them.

And you know what?

I think it's fantastic that I hear the cheers of Friday night lights in Belmont with the foot I my kids didn't have Friday night lights, it was towards the end of their tenure there, but you know, we sit outside and like, wow, that's kind of cool.

We also get to hear the Greek festival every year, and you know, it's part of living in a vibrant community.

And providing the ability for the children at Armstrong to have additional activities, I think is an additional gift that the school would like to give their children.

And most students, if they do try sports of some kind, it ends after middle school.

They don't there's not a lot of kids who get to play high school sports or even more or even beyond.

So I really, as someone who really, I will stop if I hear squeaky squeaky shoes on a gym floor because I would love I love watching sports and I love watching basketball.

So I think the gymnasium is a really big gift for the school, and you know, it's just kind of, you know, I sing on the cake that you're gonna allow the city of Belmont to use it because I've long been an advocate for the schools not having enough gym space for the students in the public school system that we have.

There's not enough.

So the fact that you're offering that, and this is several years down the road, I think is just another testament to the tremendous partnership and the tremendous neighbors that you've been to the city of Belmont and the community for years, and so I'm I as as council member McCune said, best laid plan.

So, you know, I I foresee, you know, continued partnership working alongside our great planning department and uh working to get your proposal through and making sure you get the flexibility to get your teachers some more time, but thank you for that.

All right, um I believe that in the same way that residents can grow their homes, that every school in Belmont, I think it's Ralston, Cypriani, Nesbitt have been allowed to grow, that businesses have been allowed to expand.

So true.

So do I also believe that Charles Armstrong should be allowed to grow.

It is a reasonable thing to think that a school should expand, should be able to expand.

I really want to encourage school to go for 320 so that you don't have to come back to this again.

60 more children will make no will have very minimal impact, very minimal.

So go for 320.

Um, the to staff this lack of access on the weekends, that has to change right now.

I don't want to wait a year or however long.

That's seems incredibly wrong to me that that's happening here in Belmont, and that should change um right away.

The I'm hearing lots of concerns about the gym and the kitchen.

I cannot, I again I say I cannot see that they will actually turn out to be true based upon my 16 years of being a principal, 15, 16 years of being a principal.

I wonder though, if landscaping can be added to act as a better buffer, and if you were able to do that, beautiful, but if you aren't okay.

So I would um because again, based upon my years of being principal, these are these will not come into fruit fruition.

So um I think those are all of my comments.

Uh any final before we go?

Do you have any comments since you're standing there?

I was just gonna say thank you for your time on this side of tonight.

It was served as a project introduction.

I think we accomplished that goal.

Um we had presentations from staff and the applicant, lots of public comments, and we'll be back before the council and commission in the January time frame.

So thank you for your time.

What about the changing of the hours?

All of that will be considered as part of the entitlements that we prepare for for the public hearings for the project.

Okay, in February.

Is that right?

January.

That's not and it's not on tonight's agenda to have a discussion about altering the CP report.

Correct.

So again, we are targeting planning commission review of the project entitlements, and then uh should that advance, then it would go to the city council for your January 27th meeting.

Okay.

Again, thank you for your time tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you, thank you, and thank you to Charles Armstrong.

Uh all right, we move to item 10 B report from the audit committee and measure I committee by our finance director.

Don't take it personally, Grace.

No, she clears her room.

All right, uh good evening, Mayor Pay Mayonares, members of the city council.

Uh item before you is the reports from measure I committee, advisory uh committee, and the audit committee regarding our annual comprehensive uh financial report or acver for the year fiscal year ended June 30, 2025.

So just very briefly, both committees met on November 13th.

Uh the City of Belmont's financial statements, including the Belmont Fire Protection District, received a clean audit opinion, and that's the highest level of assurance from my external auditors.

Uh we also received clean audit opinions and assertions for our measure I, measure W, and measure A reports.

So with that, the recommendation tonight is for the council to receive the financial reports uh for fiscal year ended June 30, 2025.

With that, I'm happy to take any questions.

Questions?

Comments comments.

Um sure.

Uh okay.

Um, I'm looking forward to looking through this.

I think the way that you have um that we always give us information is really really clear, and I know you guys do just such complicated work and um and with very little budget.

And I just want to say that I really appreciate like as a city we have very little budget, but I do appreciate how well aligned the way we spend money is to the thing the priorities that we set as a council.

I think you do guys do an extraordinary job of of lining those things up.

Thank you.

What is the saying?

Your money where your mouth is.

Your our money is where our mouth is.

Is that right?

That's that's my statement.

I'm good.

I mean, I'm on the committee with you, so we've seen it a few times.

Yes, and I just you know, it's tremendously heartwarming that every time I go through an audit presentation and I hear from our auditors that our city is doing such an exceptional job managing money that I feel grateful to you and your team for keeping our city moving forward.

We pass every year that I've been on this committee, which is now what three years with flying colors.

So thank you very much.

Yeah, thank you to the fine each member of the finance team for their hard work.

Yeah.

Okay.

Uh do we need a motion?

No.

No motion.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, moving on to item 10c.

Revise master employee pay schedule.

Good evening, vice mayor and council members.

Um, I'm before you tonight uh with our new master fee schedule.

We're required by the state of California and CalPERS any time we make a change to our schedule for salaries to bring it before the council.

Tonight we're bringing it before the council because you approved two new contract amendments for our city manager and our city attorney.

We also have an MOU that will bring raises to our police department on January in the beginning of January, and we will also be increasing our minimum wage salaries to um comply with state law and the city.

Um normally this would come to you on a consent calendar item, but we are before you in general business because we're required to do that for your two appointed employees, the city attorney and the city manager.

So if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

But these are contractual obligations.

Questions?

No, no questions, approvals.

Oh, we need to.

Oh, public comment.

You know what?

We'll do the public comment for this, and then we'll go back to the other one because I didn't do public comment for the audit committee.

Um, so any public comments?

There are no public comments for either item.

Okay, then we're done.

And we need a motion.

Move approval.

Second.

Roll call, please.

Councilmember Jordan.

Yes, Councilmember McCune.

Aye.

Lauder Merlow.

Yep.

Vice Mayor Peng Manganares.

Aye.

Thank you.

Mayor Mates.

I think she signed up.

I think she's gone.

Yeah, she signed off.

So the motion passes uh four-one mayor mates.

Absent.

Okay, moving on to item 11 brief verbal reports from members and staff.

Nothing for me.

Nothing for me.

I have something.

Oh.

We had our commute.org meeting here.

Thank you, Josie, for handling that for setup for us into IT.

We got this incredibly informative informative report on the county's transportation plans.

And they're going to all the like transportation agencies, and then they'll come to city council after that.

So probably next year.

But there's some really cool stats and metrics in it.

Like there's a cool stat about how people currently commute, but also how they would like to commute if they had a nearly perfect world.

Isn't that cool?

I know.

So I thought it could kind of like help inform our trans our own transportation master plan.

So I sent it to Edric and to Ashin, and maybe I could forward it to Josie if any anybody wants to read the report.

It's got a lot of graphs.

Oh, and we have the subcommittee.

The BRSSD.

Oh, go ahead, do it.

Measure P funds have redone some roofs.

They're in 2026, they're gonna do the multi-use room at Fox and Nesbitt and some field work.

They talked about a middle school survey that's going out.

Umrollment.

What is it?

Because of declining enrollment and figuring out what uh middle school needs are in BRSSD.

Huh?

Yes, that's all.

All right.

Verbal report from the city manager.

Thank you.

You've done such a great job.

I'm just gonna wish everybody a happy uh Thanksgiving.

Enjoy the time with family and friends, and uh we look forward to seeing you on the other side.

There we go.

So no matters of interest.

We can now wait to do and what?

We never have matters of interest.

All right, and perhaps uh before we begin with that, we're at 1029.

We'll need a meeting extension motion.

No moved.

Extend to uh for 30 minutes to 11, yes.

And just to also be clear, we still have the JPFA meeting to get through, which shouldn't take long.

So the motion was from Councilmember McCune.

Sure.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Uh roll call, please, Councilmember Jordan.

Yes.

Councilmember Lauder Merlo?

Yes.

Councilmember McCune.

Yes, Vice Mayor Peng Manganeris.

Aye.

And this motion passes four uh one mates absent.

Alright.

So we do have matters of interest and clarification.

12a, formation of a city council ad hoc housing and long range planning subcommittee.

Yes.

Um, should I start?

Do you um so council member Jordan and I are proposing the formation of a city council ad hoc housing and long range planning subcommittee?

Um the thought on this is that there is over 400 state housing laws, right, that have been passed since 2017, which is when we did our BVSP, and they obviously changed the way that development happens in our city, and um I really think we need council eyes on the issue, and I think the presentation at the October 28th meeting underscored that.

So the goal of the committee would be to track and understand state housing laws in a deeper way, as well as to understand how they do and can interface with Belmont's own plans and our vision and any individual projects that come forward.

I think it can also serve as a communication bridge to both the main council and to the public at a time when we're not gonna be getting appraised of developments through the public hearings that we've come to rely on.

So um, since we won't have public hearings, this is a way to keep updated on what's happening.

Um and I think there was a great example in today's agenda, even like something that the planning commission uh, one of the directions they gave when we were talking about zoning was like asking staff to research the best practices that other cities have in addressing like the new new timelines and stuff.

Um, and I think that would be something that would be perfect to be seen and fleshed out in this subcommittee first.

So I love that something that could be immediately addressed.

Actually, came onto our agenda today.

Um, and I think it may, you know, we both I don't want to speak for you, but uh the BVSP is in our district, so I think we're feeling strongly about it.

What do you think?

I concur.

Yeah.

Questions?

I have a question.

What's the impact gonna be on staff?

Um a number of hours.

Um, but it is within um, you Ashin.

Well, like anything else, this is not planned, but uh it's something depending on the frequency and the number of changes.

The meetings will have some demand on us, and we'll we'll if it's council's desire, we'll try to manage it.

And no financial implications.

Okay.

So what do we need?

A vote, a motion, or comments first.

Comments.

Um I mean, I'm a comment.

I think this is a good thing.

I mean, the state has you know passed all of this stuff, and to the point where I don't think they've coordinated it among themselves, and um but it's on the burden is on us to comply with it.

And so I think you know, anything we can do to figure out how we can most effectively and efficiently comply with this stuff is good.

And if there's any wiggle room to you know, you know, appropriate manner go back to Sacramento and say, uh, do you guys realize you passed three things here that are kind of incompatible, and you know, what do you want us to do?

Um so we we're not in a power position to just change the things that come from Sacramento, but I think we should be in a better position to adapt to them.

I guess my comment would be I worry about the impact on staff.

Um I th this is something that I'm sure that they keep abreast of already, but I don't want us having a committee to increase their workload tremendously because now they're serving an additional need for the council when they already do so much.

So, like if it's less than an hour a month, then I would be fine with it.

But if it's much more than that, I we'd have to I I feel uncomfortable with that.

I think it's important, but uh impact on staff.

I I think the way that I was thinking about this um when speaking with council member Latimarlow is that we do we get updates um from various like what like tonight, you know, with the planning commission, there are things that come to us that if that project wasn't happening, we might not otherwise have known about so I don't know that it's my desire to add a lot of staff time to it, but I I mean I was more envisioning that maybe and it it would be a good thing anyway, and it's an ad hoc committee, so it's not super structured in terms of having to agendize things, but that you know, we can start off by meeting, you know, bi weekly to see like what the just to kind of get updates on what they're working on so we have a better understanding of all of the moving parts that are continuing to happen in you know, I just want to make sure we're not meeting bi weekly.

I don't think they have bad colours.

Okay, monthly, is that okay?

As needed as laws change, we can bring things in front of you.

As needed, I mean, and even just you know, being uh a couple of council members who get regular email updates on oh, this just came through or whatever.

And then what would happen?

So it it sort of like okay, if something comes up that we feel like okay, the council should be hearing about this, or as one of the uh you know, as a report out, okay.

Well, the three development projects that were happening, this is where they are at that, you know, five minute report out.

I uh if I may, I I think there are obviously certain, as as we kind of presented to you at the last meeting, there are a number of legislative changes and fixes and process related issues we have to implement and at the initial phase.

I think again, Sacramento only meets certain period of time, laws change in certain period of time.

So it's not an ongoing, you know, as legislation goes, those things will come in front of you during kind of uh late spring and summer.

That's typically when the state gets busy on coming up with new laws or thinking about new things to do which we track and and manage, but there are as it stands right now, there are number of changes we have to do to our processes to our intake to the codes that we have to develop.

So uh we can probably use councils.

Um the committee's uh kind of feedback as we implement those changes.

So you're kind of well aware of some of these things before it comes either to council for uh resolution ordinances, but also it's a way for us to kind of bounce off what we have to work through, at least in the short term, and as state you know, laws change and other things come up, that that might be venue for us to be able to at least share our our position and get feedback.

But yeah, I just want to kind of frame it around the time commitments as you kind of indicate it's not something that we see it's gonna be that frequent, but it's gonna be something that we can manage on a on a kind of um as needed basis as we implement these changes and as new things are passed or implemented that we have to bring to your attention in a timely fashion.

Yeah, uh thank you, aftion.

That was um thank you.

Yeah, I guess philosophically I just want council eyes, a couple of council members committed to tracking tracking this in a way that like a couple of us that have some not expertise or whatever, but like that we're committed to tracking it.

Okay.

So, a motion.

Well, so okay, as it's written right now, it says 40 plus hours.

I'm not comfortable with that number, that seems a lot to me.

That's like four hours a month.

Well, if if I may, I mean if let's not so much worried about the hours allocated because that that will get dictated by our workflow.

If council so desires, you can kind of say yes, kind of to the subcommittee formation.

Okay, and as such, you don't have to take action, you basically kind of indicate that you want to proceed with that.

Actually, at the next meeting we have the IGR assignments as part of our reorg, and we're I think you're proposing to have two members to be a member of of the subcommittee.

At that meeting, then you can decide who are the two members and and uh whether we proceed with that uh subcommittee.

So this is something to give you some thought about the process, what you heard here today.

Uh the time allocation is uh would I would kind of trust the subcommittee and council to give us the bandwidth to make sure we manage this effectively so there's a way for community and council to have transparency on things that we have to manage, but in a way that we can manage it through our work plan.

Okay.

So now what do we do?

If you're so inclined, you give your head nod that we bring this back as an IGR assignment for the next meeting, and you can consider the appointment of two members.

Nod?

Yep.

Not okay.

Okay, thank you.

All right, so now we can adjourn this meeting at 10 39 p.m.

And we'll call to order at 10 39 and 30 seconds, the JPFA meeting.

Call to order.

Director Jordan here, director Laudemarlo.

Here.

Director McCune.

Present.

Vice Chair Pang Meganaris.

I.

Oh, present.

For present um mates absent.

Right, item two, items of business.

What do we do with that?

Hey, action.

So you're out.

Oh, here we go.

Your first item of business is the consent calendar, which is the minutes of last year.

Yeah.

So if I could get a motion on that, where I am.

Oh, okay.

Uh, wait a minute.

Well, there's some comments.

I'm looking at the wrong.

Oh, I see.

My thing's cut off.

Okay, go back to that page there.

All right, so public okay.

So are there any public comments on items not on the agenda?

There are none.

Are there any director announcements?

No.

All right.

So consent business.

Consent business or items.

Are there any questions or anybody wants to?

Move approval.

Second.

Roll call, council.

Director Jordan?

Yes.

Director Laudamarlo?

Yes.

Director McCune.

Aye.

Chair Pang Manganeris.

Aye.

Motion passes for one mates absent.

Beautiful.

Moving on to item five public hearing, local amendments to 2025 California building standards codes.

Nope.

No.

No?

What are we looking at?

That's what I'm saying.

It's the annual report on joint powers financing authority.

Tuesday, November twenty fifth.

Yeah.

On the script, it's on the last page.

Okay.

Well, can you just tell us what to do next, please?

Because my script is scripting.

And what we are pulling up here.

Finance director.

Finance director will kind of make a report on the item.

There's only one item.

Go to it.

All right.

I'll make it very fast.

It's a annual report uh from the joint powers financing authority, which is uh what we use to issue uh debt and uh so acceptance of the annual report uh uh is the recommendation for the um uh directors tonight and the report that's included in the agenda shows uh our um that service payments on the various funds that we have outstanding.

And with that, I'm happy to take any questions.

Any questions?

Any questions?

Okay, well, do we need an option?

What do we do now?

I move to accept that kind of report.

Oh, any public comment?

There was no public comment on this item, so we would just need a motion to accept the report.

I I move that.

Okay.

And roll call.

Director Jordan.

Yes, Lauder Merlow.

Yes, McCune.

Aye.

Vice Chair Pang Manganeris.

Aye.

And this motion passes for one mates absent.

Great.

So we so we can now adjourn this meeting at ten forty-two p.m.

Thank you everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you, staff.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you for your question.