I think so.

All right.

This is the City of Belmont City Council regular meeting.

Uh we are in the city council chambers.

And uh we are called to order now.

Can we please have roll call?

I'll begin with a council member McCune.

We have a closed session from six o'clock PM in room three sixty.

Uh this is a public employee performance evaluation.

So we'll go ahead and go to closed session now.

Also, All right.

We are back a little bit late from our closed session.

Again, this is the uh City of Belmont City Council regular meeting as well as the City of Belmont Fire Protection District regular meeting.

We were already in our agenda with the closed session.

That's item three.

And we are now moving uh to item three uh three.

We're moving to item four, Pledge of Allegiance.

Please rise if you're able.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under God, individual with liberty and justice for all.

Right, thank you.

Item five, report from closed session.

Mr.

City Attorney.

Good evening, Madam Mayor.

As you indicated, we did have a uh we are in the process of having a closed session tonight.

We've recessed from the closed session.

We'll continue uh later, so we have no action to report at this time.

Okay, thank you very much.

Uh that brings us to item six on our agenda, which is special presentations.

We do not have anything on that uh item this evening.

Item seven, public comments on items not on the agenda.

This portion of the meeting is deserved for persons wishing to address the body on any city matter not on the agenda.

Uh, the period for public comment is 15 minutes with a maximum of three minutes per speaker.

If you would like to make a public comment, please uh just remember that members of the public may participate in person by Zoom or by phone.

Uh in-person speakers should submit a speaker slip to the Kirk clerk, which is uh over there.

Virtual participants may use the raise hand feature, and phone participants may press star nine to request to speak.

And they are public comments are literally are generally limited to three minutes unless otherwise determined by the chair, and written comments may also be emailed to the city clerk before the item is heard.

As a reminder, uh all speakers are expected to conduct themselves with civility and courtesy.

Comments should be directed to the council and focused on individu issues, not individuals' personal attacks, profanity, disruptions, or audience outbursts will not be tolerated.

The mayor may rule speakers out of order if comments are unrelated to the item or disruptive to the meeting, and anyone who will fully interrupts the proceedings may be removed so we can maintain respectful and welcoming environment for all participants.

Those are their protocols that we uh need to follow for all public comment at our meeting today.

Madam Clerk, do we have any public speakers for item seven?

Yes, presently I have one speaker for this item, and that will be Giuliano Carlini.

Good to see you.

Lots been happening in the past few months with projects being started and completed.

But we continually seem to shoot ourselves in the foot by doing things that are not going to most effectively make it practical for all road users to take the modes that are the safest and most effective.

Cars are great.

I own two, I regularly use them.

In particular now that I've not been able to cycle while I'm recovering.

Nothing against them.

Except that we build almost exclusively for them.

And everything else is shoved to the margins.

We need to stop.

Climate change is real.

The expense that it incurs to build only car infrastructure is real.

The impact on folks who can't drive because they're too young, too old, disabled, is real.

Please.

I beg you.

As we proceed, as projects come up, really.

Make it practical to cycle.

As I've said before, that means separated or protected bike lanes.

The science is clear.

The studies are there.

85 to 95% of the population simply will not ride in the road on a class two bike lane that is just paint on the side, and will only ride on something that is provides physical protection.

So I sure hope we uh shift our perspective and start to do this in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That'll be our final speaker for this item.

Do we have any uh online?

No.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

Then we will move on to item eight.

Councilmember announcements.

Uh I'll go ahead and start with our vice mayor.

Any announcements this evening?

I have none.

Uh Councilmember Pang McNair.

Just to reminder that we continue to have concert in the park every Sunday for the next two Sundays from one to four o'clock.

I hope that you will come out and join.

Councilmember McEwen, anything?

Nothing.

Councilmember Lademarla.

Every once in a while.

Are you timing me?

Um every once in a while I'd like to remind the residents who are here to sign up for our city's weekly e-news.

It's the best way to stay involved and appraised of what's happening in our city.

It's delivered directly to your inbox each week, and it contains everything that's happening.

Um, particular um areas of interest that are always on there are infrastructure, building and development in each edition, um, as well as any info on upcoming events and any advisories on road closures.

So it's really a really good thing to sign up for.

Um, you can find it very easily on Belmont.gov.

All right, thank you.

Um I have a few.

First, uh our Imagine Together Festival in 2026.

Uh save the date for uh Saturday, August 29th, and join uh the Belmont uh community foundation, which is having uh an event called Imagine Together, which is an opportunity to learn about the vision for the proposed Barrett Community Center and shaping its future.

Uh and then again, that will be at the Barrett Community Center site.

Uh a reminder 100 things I love about Belmont.

As part of Belmont's centennial celebration, we're collecting 100 things Belmont people love about Belmont.

Take our quick survey and help us create a community mural of all responses that will be displayed in City Hall.

And you can find more information on how to do that at our city website with the uh under the centennial page.

There's also a centennial art program, so we're calling all artists to help celebrate Belmont's 100th birthday by celebrating participating on our utility box art and happy hydrant programs.

Applications are open throughout the year.

Visit the Centennial web page again for details.

And a couple of other things.

We do have summer concert series as um Councilmember Pan Maganaris pointed out.

Uh they're held every Sunday through July 26th from 1 to 4 p.m.

Bring your family, enjoy live music and support this but beloved Belmont tradition in its 50th year.

And also reminder, if you want to volunteer, it's lots of fun as well.

And then uh finally for tonight, please mark your calendars for Tuesday, August 4th, National Night Out, and Belmont always goes big for National Night Out.

We have so many block parties, um, especially as compared to cities around us.

Um the city's uh party will be from 5 30 to 8 at the Barrett Community Center, and as part of Belmont's centennial celebration, join us for an evening of barbecue birthday cake, family activities, community booths, and the chance to meet your neighbors at city and city staff.

And if neighborhoods are interested in participating, it's still time to register.

Uh you just email m Perez, P-E-R-E-Z at Belmont.gov, or just uh call the city and we'll we'll make sure that you get uh uh in contact with Mara.

Alright, item nine, consent business.

These items are routine in nature and will be enacted by one motion without separate discussion, unless a member or staff requests specific items to be removed to separate action, and the city attorney will read the title of ordinances to be adopted.

Um council members, can you let me know if it turns out does anyone have any questions, comments, or want any of the items removed for special action?

I don't want anything removed.

I I have to recuse myself from 9i because I live within 500 feet of the property.

And I just have a comment on M and M.

M and N.

Okay.

Any question any questions on anything?

I have a comment on E and a question on P.

E and E.

Okay.

And I too have a question on 9I.

Uh let's go ahead first.

Let's just do this in alphabetical order.

Um question on item E.

So just a comment.

Um just a congratulations to Edric and the public works team.

Um this year's road we have was enormous.

It was such a big year for road rehab.

So congratulations on getting it all done.

It was good to read the report.

All right, great.

And then moving to I.

Parcel map for SB9 urban lot split at Merrimar Terrace.

I just had a question.

Um the staff report didn't say is there a project that's associated with this, or right now is it the split?

Uh just a request to say, uh this one is just the lot split, but the property owner is planning to develop uh some housing there.

Okay.

Is this our first SB9?

Yes.

Well, no.

Is there another?

It's the first one that's gotten into the process.

Okay, thank you.

And then somebody either had a question or comment on M.

What's that?

M.

Well, M and M kind of go together.

I just wanted to uh congratulate Chief Armando and the police department for being awarded the grant that's coming in the next five years and then uh the process for the other grant on 9M.

So thank you for all your hard work in getting that money secured for us for five years.

So congratulations.

Great.

And then uh P.

Yes, that was my question.

Um, I just want to clarify and confirm my understanding of what's happening um with the additional with the $500,000 that's going to the CRP developers.

It's it's not anything additional, correct?

It's just this particular developer has two different projects with us and remote they're moving the money from one to the other.

It's not additional.

Correct.

Okay, that was just my question.

Great.

Thank you.

Uh let's go ahead and see if there is any public comment on the consent items.

Uh yes, I have two slips in front of me.

Um, and we can build uh begin with Leslie Wombach.

Good evening, city council.

My name is Leslie Wombach.

Um I am here on behalf of solutions for supportive homes, uh, which is a nonprofit in the area that promotes the creation of permanent supportive housing, which is super desperately needed, which I'm sure you are aware.

Um I just have a quick question on the two CRP projects.

Um I sent an email quite some time ago just requesting who would be the service provider for the supportive services at those sites, because it is so important to have a high quality service provider.

But um I did not hear back, and I'm just hoping that perhaps with your assistance we could find out.

Thank you.

We support the projects.

Thank you.

Um just to know you know we're not uh able to have necessarily a back and forth, but we can certainly have staff reach out to you and make sure you get your answer.

Yeah, thank you.

My other card is Juliano.

Hey all again.

Um first thanks to the city public working staff for making attempts.

I think honest attempts to provide better cycling infrastructure.

Um, in particular, I really love the um mobile filter that went in at Hiller on O'Neill.

Makes it so much easier for cyclists to get from the bike page bridge to HIA area and what will be the HIA area.

Also for the uh bike box, I was added at South and uh Ralston.

When we come to a stop now, we'll be able to get front and center and not have to merge as we're trying to come up to speed.

It'll be a big improvement.

That a whole lot of money that we're spending is less than effective.

It's being squandered on projects that either shouldn't be done or that have much more pride.

I'm sorry, I cannot hear you.

Thank you.

My apologies.

Um the hawk at uh on Ralston on I think it's Hill, I'm sorry I forgotten.

It's basically a good project, but it serves 200 families, 200 households rather.

There are 10,000 households in Belmont.

The goal is to shift modes so that people drive less and we'll take Caltrain.

No one is gonna shift mode for that short distance having to um transit and and make that particular walk.

That money would have been much better spent on uh projects that have would have been useful to more people.

Um particularly frustrated with the class two door zone bike lanes that were added to sixth.

Again, somebody was trying, right?

Bike lanes, you hear me, asking for bike lanes.

Okay, good.

This is a bike lane.

Only class two door zone bike lanes, a provide no protection, and b they are in the door zone, literally the second most frequent uh location where cyclists are in danger.

Second only the intersections.

12 to 27 percent of injuries and deaths occur in door zone bike lanes.

It would have been safer to provide a class three.

I don't like them calling them bike lanes because they're not, they're just your picture of the bike in the road.

It would have even been better if we would have provided mode modal filters or somehow made sixth street safer, but we gotta do something to fix this.

We made things more dangerous with these door zone bike lanes.

So thank you all, much appreciated.

Thank you.

Madam Mayor and Council, that was our last speaker on this side.

Okay, both in person and online, correct.

Thank you.

All right, uh, do we have any further comments or uh questions?

Council?

Okay, uh then we can entertain a motion.

Madam Mayor, just as a point of reference here, um, because the server replacement is on both the uh Belmont fire protection agenda as well as the council agenda.

We will make um you will be making one motion and it'll be reflected on both sets of minutes.

Okay, thank you for that.

And um, as a reminder that uh the vice mayor has to accuse herself for uh I mean uh nine or nine eye.

Thank you.

Move approval, second.

Roll call, please.

And this will be as both council members and directors.

McCune?

Aye.

Laudamarlo?

Yes.

Pang Maganares?

Aye.

Jordan?

Yes.

Mayor Mates?

Yes.

Motion passes on both.

Five.

Let me get this right.

Zero or five-o for um the Belmont Fire Protection District.

Five-one recused, Jordan for item nine-one on the city council um consent.

And motion passes.

Thank you.

Okay.

So uh Madam Cookie, that for the uh server replacement and the approval of minutes.

Did that get captured in this?

Well, that'll be captured on the um uh Belmont Fire Protection minutes when it comes to you at the next uh whenever the next meeting will be.

Okay, thank you very much.

Sorry, through the chair, and as for one.

Yeah.

Yes, 4-1.

Great.

Yep.

All right.

Moving on to item 10 public hearings.

We do not have any this evening.

Item 11 is general business, which are items considered separately in the order listed, and the chair will call for public comment on each item when the body considers the item.

11A is the citizens initiative community center tax measure.

And we have a brief presentation by our city clerk.

Thank you.

So this is just a procedural action required under California Elections Code after the um initiative um received certification.

Uh the proponents submitted the petition to the city clerk's office on June 3rd.

The petition was then transmitted to transmitted to the um San Mateo County elections um on the following day for signature verification.

On June 30th, the council um or the county certified the signatures at 1,799 valid signatures, which exceeded the 1750 that were required.

Council action tonight is to submit this to the elections office.

Slip submit a resolution calling for an election to the elections office to be put on the ballot with the statewide general election.

The city or the county will be conducting the election.

The district attorney will be preparing the impartial analysis.

On this item, the council may be asked to designate two members to prepare a ballot argument in favor of the measure if they are requested by the proponents.

And with that, I will turn it back to you for discussion.

All right.

I'll just make a correction.

It's not the district attorney, but the city attorney providing the impartial analysis.

It is not the district attorney, no.

Alright, thank you for that.

Alright, council members.

Let's just leave it at questions at this moment.

Any questions at this time?

Okay.

Great.

Let's go ahead and see if we have any public comment on this item.

I have a couple of slips here in front of me.

No raised hands, and this would be the opportunity for the individuals on Zoom to raise your hands.

So we can start in the House with Alan Sarver.

Good evening, Madam Mayor and City Council members.

Nearly a decade ago, the City of Belmont convened a residence committee representing a broad range of ages, demographics, and areas of Belmont to review the state of Barrett Community Center, evaluate its uses, shortcomings, needs, and potential future.

We met several times over nearly two years and solicited broader input from across the community as we proceeded.

The committee recognized that the Barrett Community Center, built as an almondary school more than half a century earlier, had long and long since adapted into a community center, was in serious disrepair and was not truly sustainable as an effective or safe community center for a city that had grown dramatically in size and diversity.

With the help of architects and city staff, the committee moved to on to consider and prioritize the needs and desires of the broadest possible representation of Belmont for a reimagined community center of the future.

Future uses were considered for preschool and school children, young adults, parents, and other adults and senior community members.

Public safety needs were considered along with sustainability, flexibility, attractive modernization, and the stated desires of the broader community.

Special attention was paid to the input of the Barrett neighbors in terms of services most relevant to them and disruptions from traffic and noise.

The committee considered various potential components of a new community center, potential layouts of the building grounds, fields, parking, etc.

The preferred design placed the new building close to Ralston Avenue to bring the community center fully into the city of Belmont and further from its immediate neighbors.

Parking and traffic flow were redesigned for greater ease of use and to minimize impact on the neighbors.

When the overall design was finalized, the question remained of how to pay for it.

And then COVID.

Action on the community center was put aside in 2020 as we dealt with the pandemic.

Well Affair and the Belmont Community Foundation did a great job of maintaining and building community awareness and support of the community center.

Over the past year or so, past, present, and future community leaders and community servants came together to educate the community further about the needs and plans for the new community center and to lay the groundwork for a funding measure to make it possible.

Thanks to the commitment, skill, and boundless energy of the Friends of the Belmont Community Center, and especially our leader, Dr.

Jim Howard, we were able to gather the requisite number of Belmont voter signatures to place the measure on the ballot.

Thank you for giving the community of Belmont the opportunity to vote on this important piece for our future.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Sarah DeSell, and followed by Jim Howard.

And I apologize in advance for mispronouncing names.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council members.

My name is Sarah Delile.

I live in the Cypriani neighborhood of Belmont.

And I'm also the secretary of the Friends of the Belmont Community Center.

I want to thank and recognize the council members, city staff, volunteers, and community members who have worked as Alan just shared for almost a decade in moving this initiative forward.

And also to our city clerk for her help and support with the process along the way as we navigated this effort.

More than 2500 residents signed the Citizens Initiative because the vast majority of folks that we met across this effort want a modern state-of-the-art, resilient community center that creates opportunities for recreation, education, wellness, and community building across our generations.

And occasionally we also heard valuable feedback about funding for this effort.

And while support for the project is very strong, some residents want a clearer understanding and are asking for how the operations, maintenance, and programs will be funded into the future, and are looking to have greater discussion around what those opportunities may be to look at grants or philanthropy, business partnerships, and other possible public support.

So thank you again to everyone who signed the initiative and volunteered their time and shared their perspective.

I look forward to continuing to work together in building a community center that reflects Belmont's values for our community and the generations to come.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hello, City Council.

The saying goes, Belmont is full of the nicest people you'll never meet.

Well, over the last few months, I actually met them because I went out and knocked on their doors, at least 750 of them, and uh I met uh several hundred people after that, and felt like thousands of people after that.

And I'm here to tell you they are.

They're great.

Uh Belmont citizens are awesome.

Um, we talked about a number of topics.

Uh, we had thoughtful conversations, they were uh mostly full of optimism for our space at Barrett might grow to be.

And there were some conversations about, you know, agreeing, disagreeing uh the basis of democracy, having a conversation and deciding how to move forward together.

This was a grassroots effort.

It was all volunteer.

Uh, it was led by volunteers.

Uh, it was uh resulted in broad support, as Sarah said.

Over 2,500 registered voters signed our petition and to fund a new community center.

And of those uh signers, uh, the validation rate was uh roughly 86%.

That's incredibly high for any petition gathering um effort.

And I'm here to tell you that our uh we were tracking how those conversations went.

And I will tell you that it's very consistent with the polling that we saw the summer of Jul of uh 2025.

Uh roughly 65% of the people that we interacted with uh were either strong supporters or supporters of our measure.

Uh roughly 25% said, not for me, but good luck because it's Belmont and people are nice.

And then a roughly 10% said, I need to think about it.

Come back later.

Let me let me know more details.

In fact, exactly how our polling was.

Roughly 65%.

Very strong support or really good support.

This process was fair.

It was democratic, and it's now up the uh in fact.

One one person said to me, this is the most democratic thing I've ever seen in Belmont.

Um, but now uh it's up to just a simple majority vote.

Not a supermajority vote, but a simple majority vote.

A yes vote has equal power as a no vote in a supermajority.

The no vote has twice the power as a yes vote, and now we're moving on to the simple majority vote to decide our future in Belmont.

I want to thank uh the city council.

I want to thank all our volunteers, and I want to especially thank the citizens of Belmont for being a great and B signing our petition.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And that is our final speaker.

All right.

Great.

Thank you very much for the uh public comments we received.

Bringing it back to uh council members for um any comments.

Uh again, why don't we go ahead and start with our vice mayor?

Um, I have comments, not questions.

Uh it's time for comments.

Okay.

All right, perfect.

Um I you know, I thank you, Alan, for the history uh lesson because I don't know if everyone knows how long we've been talking about Barrett.

I mean, I would say even prior to 10 years ago when we really put that effort forward, it's been easily 20 years where we've had discussions in the community about the need to uh modernize and revitalize Baird, which is pretty much in the center of our city.

So there's so many wonderful opportunities ahead of us.

I want to thank all the volunteers that worked really hard.

I'm one of the nice people that you knocked on their door.

Yeah, yeah, it's just yeah, um, but I it it was it is a huge effort to get that many signatures.

So really thank you to the volunteer team that put in countless hours and kind of stayed the course because it's easy, it's easy for us to get distracted with our daily lives.

Um, but once the community, once we m move past COVID, and you know, I I do want to thank uh our retired Parks and Rec Director Bridget Shearer, because she was really intimately involved in it, and uh just really applaud the efforts and look forward to uh what the rest of the summer brings us.

But thank you very much for getting this to this part of the next steps for revitalizing and reimagining our community center.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Pang Meganers, Councilmember McHugh, Councilmember Ladimeral.

Uh I'd also like to just um mention that this is a very exciting.

I'm happy to support it tonight, although I know it's um mostly a formality, but um it has been a top priority for the council for a number of years, um, decades even.

I was appointed to the um the working group early on in 2019 when we were um just talking about what uh revitalization of a community center uh would be, and then as um Alan mentioned, there was uh quite a bit of a pause.

So uh huge thanks and real gratitude to all the folks who are here tonight and some of whom many of whom are not who sound like you put in the work uh to gather 2,500 signatures, uh huge, huge feat, and it sounds like it's um a real grassroots effort.

Um and uh the description that you've provided tonight really shows um what can happen when the community gets together and wants to do something.

So I'm very grateful to all of you and giving for giving this uh community a chance, and I'm genuinely excited to see um uh this go before the voters in November.

So nice work.

Thank you all.

And I think we can have roll call.

Oh, a motion move approval, second, roll call, please, Councilmember McHugh.

Aye, Vladimirlo?

Yes.

Hi.

Vice Mayor Jordan, yes, mayormates.

Mayor Mates?

Yes.

Motion passes five zero.

Thank you.

Thank you.

If I may, there are two actions there.

So the second part of that was about whether you want to designate a couple of representatives just in case there's need for um engagement with the proponents.

Uh council, do we have any questions about the subcommittee and what the need is?

Um, okay.

Uh I'm happy to do that if be one of the people, if there's an as unless who else is there anyone else who would have want to be on that subcommittee?

I'm happy to do it as well.

Gene and I did the BLT.

So your two names were the ones I wrote down.

Oh Gina, no, no, no, Julia and Are you?

I know you did the BLT Robin.

That was our uh Council Member Pegna.

Are you okay doing it again?

Yeah.

Anyone else?

No.

Russell for it?

Okay.

All right.

So then the subcommittee, just for the record, I think is Councilmember Peng Maganares and myself.

And so I'll need a motion on that as well.

So moved.

Second.

And it was Jordan and No, not me.

I'm sorry.

Pang Meganares and Mayor Maids.

Roll call, please, Councilmember McCune.

Aye.

Councilmember Laudemerlow.

Yes.

Pang Meganarus.

Vice Mayor Jordan.

Yes.

Mayor Maids.

Yes.

Motion passes.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you also to our city clerk for your work on this.

All right.

Moving on to uh item 11B, which is the Belmont Harbor Industrial Area Specific Plan update.

Through the chair, I need to legally recuse myself because I live within 500 feet.

Okay.

Thank you.

Good evening, Council members and mayor.

It's a pleasure to be back before you to talk about this topic again.

We have a lot to share with you and looking forward to your feedback.

So I'm Laura Russell, I'm the deputy community development director, and I'm joined this evening by Rob Gill, our senior planner, and Aaron Acknan, who is our lead consultant from Good City Company.

So here's an overview of what we're going to be talking about tonight.

I'm briefly just going to review the specific plan foundation, guiding principles, land use plan, and the build-out, talk a little bit about the HIA process and the feedback that we've received so far.

We're going to talk about kind of the meat of the presentation, is really in the residential transition zones, the design guidelines that would go along with that, and a little special attention to parking garages.

I've got plenty of pictures to show you this evening.

And then it's a lot of material.

So we're going to have a little pause and see if you've got any questions so far.

And then we're going to go on to talk about a new idea, which is for a master plan concept in the HIA area, and then talk about community outreach and next steps.

And then we've got some areas of where we'd like to receive your feedback.

So as a reminder or for anybody new to the conversation, we have this foundational concept in the HIA that it's an employment center.

It has a long-standing industrial and commercial use there.

So we view it as a potential opportunity to bring investment and fiscal benefits with really an emphasis on high quality development that is at a higher intensity than what we've seen before, and hopefully sufficient to bring in increased property taxes, sales taxes, business license tax, and maybe even hotel tax in the future.

So we're thinking about ways to modernize the area and kind of bring it up to today's standards, but also to look ahead into the future.

One that it's hard for us to guess where employment uses are going.

So we're trying to build in flexibility in the places where it makes sense and where we can still reconcile that with our community values and our aspirations.

We're also looking to bring in the right amount of housing, and so that's an important part of the discussion this evening.

So this is a reminder of the guiding principles of the plan.

These were approved by the city council in January of 2024, and continue to be kind of a foundational view of this as we're working on all the different parts of the plan.

Important for discussion tonight is local serving complete neighborhood, green space, the history of entrepreneurship, affordable housing, context-sensitive standards are some of the themes that we're really going to be talking about.

This is also a reminder to help everybody engage with the conversation this evening.

This is the land use plan that was approved by the City Council in January of 2024.

And so the orange areas here to the farthest, what we call west on this plan towards El Camino Real and Old County Road are HIA 1, as in Harbor Industrial Area, Zoning District Number One.

And then the other, the rest of the area is HIA, supposed to be two.

I'm missing a two there.

HIA2 has been designated for industrial and commercial.

And then at the far end towards 101 is the mobile home park where no change is proposed and would have mobile home park zoning.

This is also a reminder of the build out that we've talked about a number of different times, and that we've been kind of using as the underlying assumptions in our analysis.

We have assumed up until now there's existing 250 multifamily residential units, and at build out we assume there'd be about 550, and that takes into account one project that has already been approved at 608 Harbor, and then an assumption that about 200 more units would probably be developed in the area.

And then the industrial and commercial square footage net new would be in the neighborhood of 2.5 million square feet.

This is an ambitious goal for industrial and commercial, and we really set this number when we were thinking about what's kind of a maximum build out that we may think about under our environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act.

So this was always quite an ambitious number to be able to capture that in our environmental review.

So talking a little bit about the HIA process to date, this has been going on for a long time, so this is obviously very high level.

Some key items that are part of the conversation tonight.

So community engagement has been going on in different forms really since the beginning, and I just mentioned a couple of things that were reviewed and approved in January of 2024.

And then in 2025, we did a series of different workshops and meetings.

Very importantly, we had a community workshop in May of 2025 where we really talked about the development standards and the residential transition districts for the first time in a lot of detail.

We got a lot of feedback at that time.

We also held a meeting specifically with the mobile home park residents where we reviewed similar ideas with them, and then we came back to a city council meeting in October of 2025 to talk again about the residential transitions, and we also presented at that time a proposal for townhouse development or townhouse zoning along O'Neill Avenue as a potential transition.

So we've called out here just a couple of the key important takeaways for the discussion this evening, and we heard in October of 2025 that the transition areas needed more revision.

That we were going in the right direction, but they needed more consideration.

There were some comments that we were, it wasn't quite there yet, is how we understood the feedback.

There was concern from the residents, particularly about light and privacy, in addition to kind of the discussion that we were having around setback and height.

And at that time, the townhouse zoning was not supported.

I would like to point out there was some potential confusion at that meeting that there were maybe some residents that thought that the dead end streets that ended O'Neill were proposed to be opened.

And so we just wanted to clarify that it's not a proposal.

We are not proposing to open the dead-end streets.

We will always continue to monitor traffic in general in our areas with development, but there was not a proposal to open those streets.

So we just somehow that got linked a little bit to the townhouse proposals.

We just wanted to make sure there was clarity in the community as we were going forward.

So we took all of that, and we went back to our technical team to think about more options, more ways to model it, more ways to solve for the problem of balancing the different priorities.

We had additional conversations with both existing property owners and potential applicants in the HIA moving forward.

We had another discussion with a really qualified architect that has local experience with these kinds of projects on the mid-peninsula.

So we kind of went back and tested all of our assumptions and made sure that we were, you know, on the right track trying to solve for this problem of what is the right transition area that still could potentially result in feasible development that could reach the intensity to be fiscally positive for the city.

So we're gonna spend some time talking about the residential transition areas, and I just wanted to note that our focus this evening on is what we've been calling the bonus height.

So as a reminder to everybody, there's a two-height structure, there's a base height of 65 feet in the area, and then if applicants wish to go above 65 feet, we call that the bonus height, and in this structure they would go through a process that would require city council approval and would include a community benefits package, and so that would be the case for larger projects.

So we're not talking about the base height so much because it kind of at 65 feet the problems are not as evident, and 65 feet is the existing height limit that's been in place from the county and brought over into the city prezoning.

So if anyone is new to the conversation, we have two proposed residential transition areas.

One is along O'Neill Avenue and the other is along Karen Road next to the mobile home park.

Both of these are designed in order to create more gradual height transitions between existing homes and new development that may occur.

So this diagram will look familiar to people who've been involved in the process.

So we had an original version of this from May of 2025, and then we revised it for October 2025.

So it had already been modified once.

And the concept here is to have a series of different massing levels and different heights.

So the farther you get back from O'Neill Avenue, the taller you could be, and a reminder to everyone: this is a scenario of like a maximum build-out.

So this is not anything that's actually proposed right now and not necessarily how an applicant may design a building, but just representing what the maximum building envelope could be under the development standards.

So some key things to note from the October 2025 proposal is the setback here is 25 feet to the closest building, and then it would step up to 65 feet at 60 feet back, and then step up again to a maximum of 155 feet, and that would be 125 feet back from O'Neill Avenue.

So creating that transition up to that maximum height.

This maximum height had already been reduced from a previously proposed maximum, so it had already come down somewhat.

So this is the current July 2026 proposal.

We suggest potentially to increase the setback from 25 feet to 35 feet.

This is in direct response to conversations that we had with design professionals that advised us that if we got into that range of 35 feet, we could have more depth to the landscaping.

So you can have more layers in the landscaping range and heights, more than just a row of trees.

You can start to create some amenity if that's what people would like to see.

And so that was directly in response to the design professional feedback.

We're proposing at this time to remove that front massing block that was 35 feet tall.

We understood that that, you know, we were trying to step down and to create more like a low presence on the street, but we did hear from some applicants and design professionals that they would be very unlikely to build that 35-foot portion anyway because they would not normally step down a building and they didn't really have that need for a building that was 35 feet tall.

They would be more likely to build the building at something more like 60 or 65 feet and have it be set back more, and so that was a practical consideration, and it also was a trade-off to make sure that there was still enough development potential on these sites while still trying to create an appropriate transition to the single family neighborhood.

And then the biggest change here is to take that largest building and set it back all the way 200 feet.

So we're increasing and from 125 feet to 200 feet to set back that largest building.

And I've got a couple of different graphic representations to help people kind of visualize what 200 feet is.

It's also the kind of the width of the blocks in the neighborhood, so there's also kind of a precedent in the neighborhood for that kind of distance.

So this is an overall summary of how the height changes have progressed over the whole HIA plan planning process.

So back in January of 2024, there was a very preliminary proposal, like the first things were starting to get developed.

And at that time, we didn't talk about it in detail, but we talked about potentially retaining the base height of 65 feet, so that stayed the same throughout.

But we actually talked about bonus heights being set by the airport limit.

And so the airport limit varies from 155 feet to 205 feet throughout the area.

So that was sort of the very first conversation.

So it wasn't very specific, it was very broad and preliminary back in 2024.

Then we started to refine that with the specific proposals in May of 2025.

And so the O'Neill Avenue setback started as 15 feet, and then in October increased to 25 feet, and in the current proposal increases to 35 feet.

And then the maximum building height, so this would be the tallest of any of the buildings.

Originally proposed at 185 feet and reduced to 155, which is still the case in this proposal.

And then thinking about that distance from the tallest building to O'Neill, we originally had the setback I mentioned of 160 feet to the 185 foot portion, but we no longer have 185 foot tall portion being proposed.

Instead, we have a 200 foot setback to the 155 portion foot portion of the building.

So this table's in the staff report as well, and I think it helps to kind of track the progression of the changes throughout time.

And then turning to the Cairn Road residential transition area, this is a proposal from October of 2025, and it also had been modified from the previous version.

Because there's some taller buildings that are already on the Cairn Road frontage, we had originally proposed a setback of 10 feet, but as we had continued to analyze it and receive feedback from the community and from mobile home park residents, we thought perhaps that needed to be enhanced.

And then it also had 125 feet back to the largest massing.

And after analyzing it, staff now proposes that we have the same residential transition area on the O'Neill side as we do on the Cairn Road side, just to have some consistency and have the standards kind of turn the corner.

And so this is a the rendering is done slightly differently because it represents those transition standards in both places.

So the setback increases from 25 feet to 35 feet to allow that same kind of layered landscaping area, and then the tallest portion of the building moves back from 125 to 200 feet.

So then I wanted to talk about the design guidelines, and the council's familiar with this, but in case any members of the community, if this concept is new, in planning and zoning, we have a couple of different ways that we can regulate buildings.

The first is the development standards, which are usually the hard and fast numbers, they're objective, you can calculate them, we all reach the same conclusion.

And we're very used to talking about objective standards when we're talking about housing projects because we talk about that a lot now under state law.

But when we're talking about commercial projects, we can still use more subjective standards in the form of design guidelines.

And that's the opportunity for the city to really show pictures and language to help applicants understand what the city is seeking, what we want to see in our projects.

And so it would often have you know things that are more descriptive and actual literal pictures to help people produce the kind of projects we want to see.

And the expectation normally is for applicants to comply with all of the design guidelines or provide a rationale or explanation for why they haven't complied.

And so that would normally be part of a planning commission or city council decision to approve a commercial project.

And so we thought a lot about the feedback that we received from the community about the residential transition area.

So we looked at the standards, but then we also thought we can do quite a bit here on the design guidelines as well.

And so what we're proposing now is in the O'Neill Avenue transition area.

If there's gonna be parking garages associated with new projects, we which we often would assume that they would be, those parking garages could be located close to O'Neill to actually act as a buffer to the existing homes.

We feel that this could reduce potential privacy impacts.

There was concern that people could be in the in the windows of offices, kind of looking down.

And so parking garages don't have an occupancy in the same way that people are sitting in their offices or in the buildings they work in and looking out of the windows.

Parking garages can also be designed to be appropriately lit inside for safety, but not have spill light spill that comes out.

And because of light pollution requirements these days, like light fixtures are really well designed for this to contain the light and to direct it into the area that people want to see it.

And so these are the kinds of things that we can integrate into the design guidelines and are very effective in other cities, both in standards and in guidelines.

We also propose that we would require really high quality materials.

So this is not, you know, just a plain concrete parking structure, would not meet the standard and presumably would not be approved because it didn't meet the standard.

So we're talking about high quality materials and design features that could include things like vertical landscaping, screening, public art, and I've got some examples to show you.

We also propose that in the residential transition areas, those buildings that have a side the building facade that faces onto O'Neill or onto Caron would have automatic light shades if they were in that transition area.

So we have to, you know, we have to figure out the wording, but the concept is that when you're sitting in your home and you're looking up at the building, it would have automatic shades that could close at a certain time in the evening, so you're not looking at the building lighting.

And we've heard that this is becoming more common to kind of stop some of that light pollution that's coming from taller office buildings on the peninsula.

As I mentioned, exterior lighting just from the parking structure and from the buildings themselves would be downlit and shielded to reduce light pollution.

There's a lot of things we can do.

Right now, light standards might be very tall, we can bring them down.

We could do waste, you know what I mean?

Level bollards, we could light walkways without lighting the sky.

So there's a lot of things that we can do now, there's a lot of best practices that we can bring into the HIA in the transition area.

And then we also propose that there be no architectural or decorative lighting, like you know, up lighting, fancy lighting, the things that we might like in a vibrant district, but we don't want that on the residential side, right?

Those kinds of special treatments could be focused more on the harbor side, for example.

So I just wanted to walk you through kind of our thinking about, you know, how do we think about good design for parking garages?

And what might be effective and what do we mean by quality materials?

And I'm really thinking about this in kind of the three categories.

The first column is like the architecture, like what is the actual design of the building and what's the quality of the materials.

So, kind of in the first column, these are two local examples on the peninsula of how they're using architecture to create something that's not just a concrete parking garage in Burlingame above and mountain view down below.

And then in the middle column are examples of people using artwork to screen parking garages.

The first one is in the middle on the top is one that I found.

So it kind of you can kind of see that it's a parking garage on one side, but there's a big mural with the tree that screens it.

Beneath that is the famous one at San Jose Airport that we've all driven past a million times, and then on the right are some examples of how people have used landscaping and vertical planting to screen parking structures.

There's also we think a good example in San Carlos at the Alexandria development, which is right on the freeway.

So as you're getting on the freeway, you're kind of in that lane getting on.

So if you're in that area, take a look at it because it kind of shows different heights and different landscaping and different trees, but I had no way to photograph that and be safe.

So next time you're driving by, take a look.

So we wanted to find some practical examples to share with you of local projects.

So we've got two.

This one is in Sunnyvale, and this is a garage that was built with an office building, and we think this is a combination of architecture, landscaping, and art that kind of brings it together.

So the panel that goes kind of two-thirds of the way up is actually a piece of artwork designed by an artist.

It's a transparent screen that's designed to kind of mimic the redwood trees.

Some of them were existing on site and some of them were planted.

So they're trying to, you know, gain inspiration from the local environment.

But we think this is a good example of how you can combine those different things together and have it be something that's not objectionable, you know, as objectionable to look at all the time.

This is another example in South San Francisco, right on the border with San Bruno.

So this one's pretty easy to see if people want to go see it.

It's on it's on Tanferan.

And this is in an area that's directly across from single-family homes.

And so, just for context, those this is like a drone picture from far out.

So the office building on the left-hand side is 112 feet, and the parking garage, which is the kind of lower building on the right, is about 58 feet and six levels.

So very much kind of a similar scale to what we're talking about here, which would be kind of less than that 65 feet.

So I wanted to share some pictures here because we think this interface, I think, is really important.

And so again, this is where an actual artist was commissioned to create these panels and work with the architecture team.

And so this is a picture just standing on the street.

And so this is kind of the view from people's single-family neighborhoods.

So you can see, yes, the building is taller, but it has visual variety, it has features to it, and then on the right hand side is kind of looking down the length of it on the pedestrian pathway in front.

So that landscape strip in front of it has a similar kind of dimension to what we're talking about.

And then here's some more pictures actually standing in that landscape strip.

And in the first picture, you can see the houses that are across the street.

So you can kind of see the relationship between the project and the houses, and you can kind of see the type of landscaping you may be able to achieve in that 35 feet.

There's landscaping, there's a path, there's benches, there's trash cans, there's a ping pong table, and so you can start to visualize how might that interface work.

So we're trying to bring all of this together and help people picture what it would look like because we know our models are hard sometimes for people to imagine what it would be like.

So in this, this is a computer model with like the maximum build out using the standards that I just walked you through.

And in this case, O'Neill is going at the angle on the right-hand corner, and so we're viewing this model, you know, from above, of course, but the parking garages are closest to O'Neill, and then the taller buildings are closer to harbor.

So on the harbor side, the height limit is 155 feet.

On the O'Neill side, the height limit is 65 feet, and the tallest buildings are set back 200 feet from O'Neill Avenue.

And then we've got the design guidelines we just talked about to kind of make that transition more smooth.

But then I was thinking how do we visualize that, right?

Like in real life, how do we visualize it?

So to me, what's helpful is to think about a lot of us know that public storage, that's little picture.

There's like a little building that's up front, and then the taller building is set back.

Okay, so I've highlighted that in orange on the screen.

And so you can kind of tell like the new buildings would be set back more than the public storage building.

So if you want to kind of picture it, you can stand out there, visualize how far the tall building is at public storage, and know it's gonna be a little further back than that, so a kind of like a block away.

Do you know what I mean?

Compared to the blocks in the neighborhood, and that can help you to imagine, you know, when we're getting to the taller height limits, how far away would that be?

And then the closer buildings are all within that 65-foot height limit that we talked about.

And this is taking that same model, but now standing like flying on the other side.

So in this case, the creek is going across the bottom and then harbors right in the middle, and we're kind of seeing the model of the HIA from the air.

Um, and so this one hypothetical site that we're looking at, you can kind of see the taller building mass is focused on to harbor.

And we, as we've gone through this process, there's really been an indication to us that everyone has been comfortable with those taller building masses getting onto harbor and really activating kind of some vibrancy on the harbor side of the developments.

Okay, so covered a lot so far.

Thought we'd just take a little pause and see if there's any immediate questions, and then I can go on to the next part.

All right, thank you very much, and thank you for the presentation this far.

Any questions from council?

This time?

Okay, still good?

Click or okay to move on.

Okay, next, I'd like to talk you through a new approach that we're thinking of as a master plan approach.

And as a little bit of background, just going back, the orange areas are HIA 1, which allows new housing, and part of this is already a housing project, as you're well aware.

And we've been receiving inquiries from property owners, two property owners and a potential applicant for significant amount of investment in the area, and they're requesting a possibility of doing housing in the HIA 2 due to market conditions and what it takes as the they're describing to us what it takes to make projects market feasible.

And what we're hearing from applicants is really that if we want to have a successful vibrant district in this area, it really is harder to do that when we have single uses.

That the way that the market is working these days and they think it's going to be into the future, different uses kind of reinforce each other, and there need to be enough residents in the area to support commercial uses and to support community serving uses that we would like to see in the plan area.

And so they're telling us that it does make their projects more economically feasible, and it's easier to attract employment tenants, office tenants, RD, AI, you know, robotics, whatever those tenants may be, if they also have an opportunity to build residential so that they can build off of each other.

And so we thought about this a lot because the idea of the area being an employment center has been so central to all of our conversation since we started this, and really in all of our planning documents.

But we really took this to heart.

We really thought about are there other examples that we can look to.

There are not a lot of examples in the area.

Do you know what I mean?

Where people have kind of created this new kind of district.

We did have one applicant that we talked to kind of point us to downtown Sunnyvale as a place where they really have built, you know, quite successful office residential ground floor commercial and really created some vibrancy where there was historically just one kind of historic downtown street.

And so we've been trying to figure out: is there a way that we can do that and still meet the city's goals?

And think about what is the balance between what developers are looking for from us and what we are trying to achieve in terms of fiscal stability and looking ahead to the future.

As the council is aware, if housing is an allowed use, if it's just permitted, then all of the state laws kick in and it really limits the city's ability to shape a project or really have a big influence on what the outcome is going to be.

And we've certainly experienced that with a number of housing projects recently.

Even though the council has expressed a strong support for housing and we've been very successful in this area, we've also seen some consequences of not being able to shape those projects.

So what we're proposing is a master plan process as a potential path to allow some residential development while keeping as much city discretion as we think is possible.

So I think it's worthwhile to talk through kind of different types of projects that may come forward in the HIA because it kind of lays a foundation and makes sure we're all understanding it the same way.

And so what we have proposed based on all the feedback we've got so far is a type one, would be like a standard project where they're complying with the base height.

There's not anything special about it.

That would be a normal commercial project, subject to planning commission authority for design review or any other minor entitlements.

A type two project would be a bonus project.

So that would be something that exceeds the 65-foot basic height limit.

And so those would be like the scenarios I was just talking you through.

So the things that are using the residential transition zones, going up above 65 to as high as 155 feet, those would be type two projects that would be subject to city council approval with development agreement with community benefits, and so there would already be more oversight over those type two bonus projects.

We wanted to mention type three projects.

We don't expect a lot of these, but we have heard from the council and from the community that it's important to protect our local businesses and to not discourage people from reinvesting in their property and into their businesses.

Some cities and some specific plans really make it a goal to kind of encourage people along, right?

And so this type three would be used not often, but if there was a local business that wanted to reinvest or expand, but they had some legal non-conforming aspect of their project, we would still would let them expand.

And so this would be reviewed by the zoning administrator or by the planning commission, depending on the scope.

So those first three types we had long envisioned in the HIA area.

And then the type four would be this new master plan.

So this would be a new category that would be talked about in the specific plan.

So it wouldn't be like we did all this work and wrote a specific plan and then we're gonna come right back out and change it, right?

This is us thinking ahead.

How do we want our specific plan to be firm where it needs to be and flexible where it needs to be?

And so the master plan is the place that could provide some flexibility, and so it would be a new project type that could potentially include residential uses along with employment uses.

So what would that be?

Like what form would that take?

Our proposal is that a master plan would require a set of different entitlements, and the first one kind of the highest level entitlement would be a general plan amendment.

And it's worth noting that a general plan amendment is a legislative act, which the council is familiar with, but in case members of the public, that's new language to them.

That's how the council sets a policy.

It's completely up to the discretion of the council.

Um, it really is the council's choice whether they want to do it.

So it kind of elevates this kind of decision into that legislative realm where you have a lot more discretion.

So in this kind of master plan, we could potentially redesignate those parcels, move it from HIA 2, which doesn't allow residential into HIA 1, for example.

We would also need to do a specific plan amendment of the HIA specific plan itself to do the same thing.

We think we could use our existing plan development process that you're familiar with, where we do a conceptual development plan and a detailed development plan.

Our system works well for other projects.

We think we could replicate that.

And then we would also have a development agreement, and so this is our kind of strongest tool under state law, we think, to be able to come to agreements, create assurance for the applicant and for the city about what we would expect to see.

So this is where we would memorialize things like community benefits for commercial components of projects.

We could control the phasing, we could set the timeline and what would be vested.

We could work all of this out with applicants.

So we've been thinking about what would be the limitations.

What would kind of be the guardrails to make sure that we kept the balance with employment uses with the city's goals overall?

And so we're thinking there would need to be certain limitations.

We imagined this really only for larger sites with the potential for a true master plan.

So we would create some kind of minimum parcel size, so it wouldn't just be haphazard, it would be people who had either assembled property or already owned property that was big enough to really thoughtfully master plan it.

We're thinking based on how the HIA is laid out that could include multiple sites.

So maybe one property owner owns different sites not immediately adjacent to each other, but could still master plan those uses in order to meet their goals in the cities.

We would expect a comprehensive approach with a focus still on employment uses, and we would specify that they couldn't use density bonus or other state law mechanisms to avoid our residential transition area standards.

So those standards we were just talking about on O'Neill and on Karen.

And so we think in order to do this successfully, we would need to have new required findings that would be required to approve these master plans.

Some initial ideas that we have for those findings would be to respect the residential transition area.

So you're gonna meet the height and the setback that's set out in the specific plan.

The land uses should benefit the community overall, and there should be a thoughtful approach to that.

That's strange, huh?

Okay.

So that could include ground floor commercial, it could include small-scale commercial recreation.

That's something we've heard.

We still need to, you know, practice our sports and go to the gym and have dance classes for kids.

Um, include include larger components or park and or public open space than would otherwise be required.

Especially some of these sites are quite large.

Some of them, if they're put together consolidated, could also be large, so it would give us a chance to look at them more comprehensively.

And then an expectation, of course, would be that the project is fiscally positive for the city, so we would need to have the right mechanisms in place both for infrastructure and ongoing services so that projects were paying their own way, and we achieve that fiscal goal that we have overall for the specific plan.

So that kind of wraps up our discussion of the master plan concept, and we'll look forward to hearing your reaction to that.

Just wanted to briefly go over what we've been doing for community outreach, so so the council is aware.

Tonight's meeting is on our HIA specific website, which is Belmont HIAPlan.com, as well as a smaller page on the city website.

We sent postal mail to property owners in the HIA area in 300 foot radius for this meeting.

We delivered flyers to the mobile home park.

We emailed our interest list, which is about 150 people, it's been in the weekly newsletter.

We emailed the Homeview and Sterling Downs HOA leadership, and we also emailed our contacts at the mobile home park.

And then moving forward, what we think the next steps would be with the city council feedback, our project team would finish drafting the specific plan itself.

We have a lot of the parts and pieces, and we would just be bringing them together into one comprehensive plan and also have a draft of the environmental impact report coming out.

For future community outreach, we'll continue to update the email interest list and post to the website.

We also would do some translation into Spanish to make sure that we're reaching any residents that primarily speak Spanish.

We also would make staff would make ourselves available for kind of ask me anything sessions because we recognize that it's hard for residents to get all their questions answered in this format where they're limited to three minutes.

And then we'll have upcoming a public review of the draft specific plan and draft environmental impact report.

That would come out with some guidance documents, a kind of like how to read an EIR document and some FAQs to help people focus their attention because it can be kind of overwhelming to have a specific plan in an EIR to review.

So we'll put some documents out to help people through that process, and then we'll have public meetings on the actual draft plan itself and the draft EIR.

So what we're looking for this evening is to receive your questions and to receive your feedback, and we're categorizing it kind of into two big picture buckets.

This is just to help us think it through.

We, of course, welcome your feedback on anything that you'd like to provide us, but specific to the residential transition areas, what is your reaction to the height and setback and the design guidelines taken together?

Are we at a point now that we can move forward with the draft specific plan?

Do you have any additional refinements or suggestions that you'd like us to make as we proceed with the next step of the work?

And then on the master plan approach, are you in agreement with the concept itself?

Does our appropriate guard rails, are there other things that you would like us to either analyze or include as we continue to work on that?

So that concludes my presentation.

I'm very happy to receive your questions and your feedback.

So thank you very much.

Alright, thank you very much for the presentation, and thank you for all the visuals as well.

It's very helpful talking about this to actually see things.

So, council, just to uh noodle over the feedback that staff is requesting, and as we do that, are there any questions?

Just um keep it to questions now if possible for staff at this time.

No questions?

Uh sure.

Go ahead, Councilmore Peggy Meganares.

Does it?

So I have a question about the master plan approach.

Is that okay to do right now, or did you want to start with just what any questions you have is perfect?

Okay, so I think I understood what you said.

Is that with the master plan approach, whatever business wants to come in, whatever developers want to do, it must include commercial use as well as residential.

Yes.

Because one of the concerns, the worries is how do we prevent this the HIA becoming all residential?

We need the tax revenue.

That will be generated from commercial.

So it's a guarantee that if they go for the residential, they have to put in substantial commercial or a little bit of commercial, or well, I think we would have to define that as we start to kind of build out the concept.

We wanted to get your feedback before we built it out all the way.

What we are picturing is that projects or master plans would still be primarily commercial or employment uses of different types.

Industrial, advanced manufacturing, office, RD, you know, there's lots of different emerging areas, but really that focus on employment use or commercial use, and then the other uses would be kind of to supplement to support those employment uses.

So we would imagine there would need to be like maybe not a numerical limit on the number of units, but some sort of proportionality, right?

Where the applicant would need to provide an explanation of the number of units or like provide a rationale, right?

So there's a number of different ways that we could structure the application requirements to help the community and the council understand why they proposing it and how does it meet the vision overall?

And we would ask them to respond to the guiding principles as well, like how does the project meet the guiding principles, and we can write application materials so that we get that information from the applicants that the community and council could consider.

Thank you.

I want to just clarify because Councilmember Peng Mengenar said asked the question that it must include commercial and residential, but it does that's not the case.

It must include commercial, okay, not residential.

May include residential.

Correct.

Okay.

So I wanted to double click on that just to make sure that we understood we understood that.

So thank you very much for your presentation.

I always appreciate how thorough you are, and the visuals are extremely helpful for everyone to see.

It's very different when you're just looking at big blocks versus what an actual structure would look like.

So thank you for that.

Um I do also have a question on the master plan, and because we're in this uh big gray area with a lot of state law.

What I heard you say, and I just want to clarify is that if we do a master plan, then it gives us more control over the housing-specific portions of the buildings, because the way I understand it is some of the HIA may fall into, you know, some categories if we just allow residential, correct?

Yes.

So the idea is to have more control, more influence, right, on the housing of how it's designed, where it's located, the height, the setback, those types of things.

Um, and so the master plan approach is designed to keep as much discretion as possible in the landscape as we understand it today, right?

As the council's very aware, the legal landscape continues to evolve.

Um, but we are using the best tools that we have today, which is a legislative action, like a general plan amendment and development agreements are really our strongest tool.

Um, and we can talk a little bit about if you wish kind of how the other state laws interact with it, you know, in your discussion.

If you'd like me to hear hear me talk about that.

Um, but I think you have the concept absolutely correct in trying to preserve that discretion over residential components.

Perfect.

And sorry, one more question.

Please go ahead.

And for the master plan, the way I was looking at the approvals, it would come eventually with planning commission council, but we have the ability to still say no.

That's correct.

Okay.

I just want to make sure our hands don't get tied.

Right.

So we have the ability to still say no if if we don't feel that pro that project is going to be beneficial to the city.

That's correct.

That's how we've tried to design it.

If I can maybe um augment that just a little bit.

I mean, the general concept, as was explained, there's there's two basic land uses in the in the HIA.

One is the HAI one where there currently is allowed residential in the prezoning.

We're talking about pre-zoning because we don't, it's not actually Belmont yet until it's annexed.

Um, and then HIA2 where um uh residential is not allowed.

And really, the master plan concept is this idea of if somebody were to propose changing the land use designations and changing it from the two to the one, as Laura was describing.

This is really about how would we go about analyzing a proposal like that?

But the plan would begin with resident with the with the land use designations of HIA1 as shown on the on the land use diagram and HIA2 is shown.

That would be the plan, and this master plan process would be essentially like if we're gonna entertain a change to the land use plan, how would we go about doing it?

Great.

Thank you.

That was very helpful.

Those are my questions.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Carly.

Good questions.

Um, I had a few.

I think one of them was answered.

I was wondering about the minimum parcel size, um, if if this for master plan eligibility, but it sounds like from your presentation that's something that you'll that staff would create and make a recommendation.

Yeah, we would analyze it and make a recommendation.

Okay, great.

And then the master plan in the um staff report, the it talks about the master plan project as being fiscally positive.

In the last slide, you mentioned something about meeting the fiscal goals.

So is there a standard uh fiscal impact like model or criteria that that staff would apply consistently?

Like what is what is fiscally positive?

What is the criteria for that?

So there are different ways to do a fiscal impact analysis of different projects, but there are definitely best practices, and we have past practice that we can draw on.

So we would probably set some internal expectations about how those reports would be generated, and there would be for any master plan a fiscal impact analysis that talks about the different components that would talk about property tax increase, potential sales tax, um, you know, the business that might be generated, um, other uses that may come along with it and the benefits to the community.

So that would be one of the things that would be analyzed.

So we have a base policy right now in our general plan that projects need to be fiscally neutral, um, but this kind of sets an expectation that goes beyond that and being fiscally positive and demonstrating that through those kind of reports.

Okay, and so anything if the recommendation from council tonight is to go forward, we would see something like that at some point.

That we wouldn't we would know what that is.

Yeah, the specific plan would would probably only touch lightly on kind of what those types of expectations are, but then in implementation, right?

We could have implementation measures that say we would standardize the policies, the application procedures, the criteria for fiscal impact analysis.

So a specific plan sometimes will just lay out the steps you're gonna do the next step for implementation.

I see.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Um and then I was wondering if staff had thought about um is there gonna be a citywide or HIA to cap on the cumulative residential development or would it just be analyzed each week project approved uh in isolation just over time you know as they come in.

So our thinking right now as we've been working um with all of our technical folks is that we probably would not set an actual numeric cap in the plan itself but we would probably come up with a number that we would use to analyze in the EIR.

And then when future projects came forward we would be using the EIR to streamline the environmental review of future projects then when you start to get close to that number if we ever did then it would need additional environmental review and so it would then naturally bring more attention or maybe scrutiny onto the project depending on how you want to think about it.

So we're not we're right now we're not thinking of a hard cap in terms of a number um as long as the project still had the employment uses and the fiscal positive aspect to it certainly um uh open than interested in feedback on that topic.

Yeah well I'm interested in how you came to deciding not to do that was it more just let's leave it as flexible as possible and then see you know see what happens or see if council it feels more comfortable with a cap.

Yeah that was our thinking um we see benefits of both ways and certainly there are specific plans in our area that have gone both directions um some specific plans have a hard cap and then it requires do you know what I mean work to revise that and go through that process I think most generally don't have a hard cap they have more of a vision and if the projects are achieving the vision um then you know if that's up to the council anyway then that can evolve over time especially since it's a long term plan that will go through a couple market cycles you know we would expect and if we wanted to consider that would we have to do that tonight or would we have the discussion tonight or is that a flag for consideration type of thing?

If you wanted us to consider a hard cap we would just want to receive that feedback and kind of understand your goals and what you would want us to achieve then we would go back and analyze that and make recommendations.

Okay so we'd need to tell you that tonight at least that would be really helpful.

All right and then my last question uh talking about EIR is what is do you have this sense of when we would start the draft EIR or what the timeline is.

We've been working on the draft DIR in the background for a long time significant portions of it are very far along and so it's just a matter of plugging in the last pieces and bringing it forward um we're talking about you know in the next few months in the next four to six months if we can oh so the draft at least before 2027 probably uh oh wow okay great uh I think that's all I have for now uh if there's no other questions we can go to public comment I do have a few slips in front of me and we can both begin with Jill is it Elkin followed by um Sean Williams.

Madam Clerk can you tell me how many in house speakers we have eight eight in-house and any raised hands?

I had a raised hand it is no longer up but again um if you are joining us on Zoom this would be your opportunity to raise your hands.

And then we should also mention we did receive uh some email comments about it and that would be public also part of the the record great so if you've heard your name is the next uh speaker if you just uh maybe sit in the aisle so we can um that was one of the Sean Williams and then uh Carolyn Pierce.

Great thank you.

Are you still in our microphone on?

Oh may oh our clerk will do it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Don't touch the all right I think we're all set.

Sorry about that.

Okay.

Um my name is Jill I live on O'Neill Avenue directly across from the proposed development.

I appreciate this that the city has made some changes to the project, including increasing the setbacks, additional landscaping, and placing the parking garages closer to O'Neal.

I think some of the visuals that you had made it, you know, kind of come to life and seem a lot more uh lifelike and visually appealing.

I think the biggest concern that we have overall is still the maximum building height is still a hundred and fifty five feet.

I want to be clear, like I'm not opposed to development or modernization.

I support the growth, the growth and the benefits for the community, but I think that we've attended a lot of meetings, and the core issue remains the same.

The overall height is too high.

We are putting this next to buildings, you know, neighborhoods of one and two-story homes.

Um, and that's like essentially from Google's calculations, like a 13-story commercial building, which is massive.

Um I appreciated the new plan involving residential and commercial mixed together.

Um, I think given California's evolving housing laws, I'm still, I guess, hesitant to commit to something that would possibly limit the control and standards as these laws continue to evolve as the project continues.

Um I think one of the things that's amazing about our Belmont neighborhood is that it really makes our community so special.

And you know, when we move to Belmont and move to this community, one of the things we loved is that the overall community feel.

And so by putting one of these massive buildings across the street, um, I think it's really something that is limiting uh our families and limiting the community here in Belmont.

And thank you for your time.

Thank you.

John Williams, followed by Carolyn Pierce.

Thank you.

Uh good evening, Madam Mayor, City Council.

Um, first I want to say thank you for that presentation.

I thought that was very professional.

Um, so I'm with uh GW Williams Company.

We have four buildings uh south of Harbor Boulevard.

So I'm talking to the south of Harbor Boulevard, not near or near O'Neill.

Um, we're in favor of the specific plan and are encouraged the city is progressive and forward looking.

Uh Oracle is 224 feet tall, it's 15 stories.

Uh the HIA, specifically south of Harbor Boulevard, should be allowed to go at least that tall, especially up on the south side of Harbor Boulevard.

This location has incredible freeway access, is where taller should be encouraged, and we're in favor of the highest and best use.

We believe the free market should be allowed to decide that as well.

We should be forward thinking.

As mentioned in the presentation at uh 8, 10 p.m.

The feedback is that everyone is comfortable with taller along Harbor Boulevard.

Further taller will allow for more tax revenue for the city.

Whatever redevelopment goes in will be there for the next 50 to 100 years.

We should build with the future in mind.

Let's achieve the vision of the best city for the future.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Carolyn Pierce, followed by G.

Giuliano Carlini, sorry, and Carolyn Shepard.

Good evening, Caroline Hurst from Home View.

Um, one, I wanted to thank the city staff.

I appreciate that some of our concerns were heard regarding the increasing of the setback and additional 10 feet in the placement of the taller buildings closer to harbor, so thank you for that.

I also appreciate the design guidelines that were mentioned in the staff report to address privacy and lighting.

That's a major concern for home view.

Um I think it's a good start, but there's more progress to be made.

As Jill mentioned, I think that those buildings can come down.

We're still looking at 155 feet, which is significant when you're looking at the slide, and there's that little house.

That's my neighbor's house, and I'm right next door, and I'll be looking at a building that is you know 10 or 12 stories, which is just immense.

So I think that there's still progress to be made.

I have some concerns about the master plan approach, which um Miss Kang Megan Harris is still calling that as principal at Nesbitt uh addressed.

I think one of the concerns is of course that you're opening a Pandora's box with allowing uh residential uses, and we will land up with a situation uh where we have a very tall uh apartment building right next to our neighborhood without any controls.

And so I think that's a major concern, and I understand that the property owners and developers want to increase the marketability of their land, but um, but of course, I think the city should stay true to the original purpose of this area, which is an employment center, keeping it commercial and a business use.

I know we've mentioned it before, but I want to reiterate uh that the home View residents want to ensure that their streets remain closed through traffic.

Um we want to keep those gates and bollards up, and we want to minimize the impacts to home View and preserve the character of our neighborhood.

And finally, I just want to mention that um while I do believe this meeting is well attended by Home View residents.

Uh, I do know that it's in the summer and many people are traveling.

So I just want you to keep that in mind that if we don't have 20 public comments, it's not because we assent and agree to the plan, it's simply that this is a problematic time of year.

Um, so thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Giuliano Carlini, followed by Caroline Caroline Shepherd.

Yeah, what an exciting project.

This is has the potential to be amazing.

Um can do so much good.

Tonight's presentation shows real care and concern to everyone's uh issues.

Uh it's much appreciated.

Um, but it is also a project that is fraught.

Great possibilities, real risks.

The number one request on the post-it notes of the meetings that I was at was for a livable place with you know shopping and restaurants and retail.

Everyone wants the offices, well, not everyone, but you know, lots of people do.

But they want it to be a place where you know we can congregate and live.

There's no discussion about that.

There's no discussion about transit, there was no discussion about uh what it is going to look like on the street, and those are at least as important as many of the items that we're discussed.

In particular, we need to talk about transit and parking.

Climate change is real.

Too many cars is real.

Two and a half million additional square feet means 10,000, 15,000, probably more cars.

That means 30 or 40,000 more car trips per day.

We can't do that.

Every bit of this project is within three-quarters of a mile of Caltrain, most of it within half a mile.

We need to drive that to be the primary mode for commuters to get into work.

The parking garages sound great, but every parking garage that I've been around is ugly, and the nearby residents don't deserve that.

More importantly, they will encourage people to drive rather than discourage them.

We need to make the HIV a people-oriented area where people can congregate and uh and gather.

Um, if we don't, this is going to be a project that inflicts tremendous harms rather than provides benefits to our community.

I encourage you.

I've talked to some of you about this.

We can use zoning, we can require restrictive covenants, so that we have in perpetuity shuttles, and transit passes, and other means that we actually make it easier for folks to get there by transit instead of by cars.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Carolyn Shepherd, followed by Leslie Wombach and Joseph Lecoco.

I'm not touched the mic.

Okay, you can hear me.

So yes, my name is Carolyn Shepherd.

I'm actually a a I'm gonna say a very long-time resident of Homeview since uh 1979.

So um, and I'm living on the same street as Jill.

And I am a um unfortunately uh a widow and a single parent of a 36-year-old young man who has um cognitive and emotional disabilities, and I am supporting him for as long as I'm gonna be able to until I die.

My concern is where is he gonna live and who's gonna take care of him?

I'm also the president of what Leslie mentioned, the solutions for supportive homes, and I've been before this council before.

Uh we are a group, a volunteer group of parents who are supporting their children with mental health disabilities in the same boat.

They're aging and very worried where their children are gonna live and who's going to take care of them, and there simply is not enough housing for this population in our county.

I am pleased actually looking at the HIA plan in general.

It looks much better as I look down the street at what I might envision.

And I know that there's a housing site on the corner of Harbor and Old County, and that perhaps this might be another site where we could begin to incorporate some of our special needs adults that would require supportive services on site.

Very quickly, I happen to attend a United Bay, a United Way Bay Area webinar today on housing elements 101.

And it gave me a website.

If you're not familiar with it, it's the housing readiness report, and you can look up Belmont, and for that ELI population, which our special needs children belong to, Belmont is actually at 16.4% permits, which is much better than the single digits of other cities.

But we have to realize that in your ELI housing element, you only have 241 people in that population.

So that's 39 permits, you know, and so you've got about 200 people left.

And in your report, you have 80 88 special needs with the IDD population provided to you by the regional centers.

For those families that are supporting children with mental health, there is no data.

We've looked, and I'm really hoping that the BHSA is going to use the tool that we provide.

It is called a Z code to begin to document this population.

It's invisible and it's at high risk for homelessness if we do not recognize that this population needs housing of various levels, but departments included.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Leslie, followed by Joseph Lecoco.

Just a reminder, folks, as you're speaking, the first BPU here is a 30 second warning.

Hello again.

I would just echo many of the comments that Carolyn tried to cover.

There's an awful lot to cover on this topic, so I'm not going to repeat what she said.

But what I would like to suggest, something that you could absolutely concretely do as a part of this rezoning process, given the immense need for permanent supportive housing for the wide variety of disabled individuals with special needs in the county and in this exact community, would be to include on the list of possible community benefits for any developers coming in that you know them providing a small development of permanent supportive housing would confer some building benefits to them.

So that's it is a real benefit to the community to have this type of housing because then the local residents who have grown up here want to stay here near family, have the opportunity to do that all while living independently in an appropriately designed supportive project.

That's all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Joseph Lecoco, followed by Annie Chung, and then we'll be moving on to Zoom.

Good evening, just Joseph Lococo.

I'm a resident in the Homeview area for Long Street since 1987.

I do appreciate a lot of the changes that have been made.

It feels like there's some thoughtful consideration to some of the things that have been mentioned before.

But I do want to mention that uh we do still have a lot of concerns, and the building height certainly is one of them.

Uh it feels to me like the south side of Harbor, not adjacent to residential units, is a much better place for the taller buildings.

There's no mention tonight at all about the traffic impacts.

And so I wanna go back to what's going to happen for all that traffic in that community or or in uh in those buildings that needs to go northbound at the end of the work day.

Harbor Boulevard only accesses one on one southbound.

All that traffic is gonna spill over onto Elmer, onto we're on furlong.

We have a hard time getting out sometimes because of all the traffic that's spilling off of Elmer onto Ralston, and stack that up all the way down the end of the block, so it's already halfway down the block as it is, and it's gonna be a nightmare.

So I think there really needs to be some consideration as to well, how are you gonna come up with a solution to deal with the traffic because that has a huge impact on the local community?

Um another concern with the parking garage.

Recently in the last several months, we've seen graffiti on the pedestrian bridge, we've seen gr graffiti in Home View and in Sterling Downs.

Looks like gang markings to me.

Well, a parking garage is a target for that.

Um so I'd be very concerned about that.

Parking garages are loud at times.

We we know that they they echo.

I feel like um there needs to be an effort to take a look at that and to see how that could possibly be addressed as well.

I do feel like the buildings are too tall.

Taller buildings, um, if they're out in along that corridor would better fit on the south side of Harbor Boulevard.

Um I I also just wondered about the trees, and I know they were talking about a couple rows of trees, but um I think they there ought to be s somewhat mature trees, and I know them at the if you get really mature trees, they're more likely to die.

But if you if you put trees that um are six feet tall, it's almost like there's no trees at all.

So if if the trees are gonna be part of the shield, both visually and audio, then I think it's important that you bring in something that's uh a little bit more mature and has the effect that's desired.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Annie Chung.

Good evening.

Um, I'm a home view resident, um, for 13 years.

Just want to thank the city for um getting our feedback and for making some concessions.

Um, but I don't think that they go far enough.

Um I know we're talking in feet, 65 feet, 155 feet, and that's hard sometimes for people to visualize.

I just want to say again, we're still think talking about a five to six story um building in the in along O'Neill and anywhere from a 10 to 15-story building in the back, and that's just massive.

You don't see any of those buildings in Belmont, um, not adjacent to any residential neighborhood.

And the Bay Area, you're hard pressed to find that.

And I just want to um speak up today because I think there are still some concerns that haven't been like um addressed, and that's two seconds Joe, um, the traffic um and how that's going to be mitigated.

We all know that Ralston is a nightmare, and I think not only is this gonna affect the home view neighborhood, but it's gonna affect people trying to get out of Sterling Downs as well when you have just more people from this potential development trying to get on and off the freeway.

Um the other thing is that I have concerns about also security.

If you're gonna build a parking garage, it's not just uh could be a hot spot for um that graffiti, it could also be a hot spot for crime, and so there hasn't been much talk about the security that would um accompany the parking garage.

So I would like the city to to think about that.

Um privacy is also still an issue.

The neighbors at in Homeview do not want people looking down on their yards, and I know that you the city has considered things like automatic shades um for privacy that will be closed in the evenings, but what about during the day?

And just because you have automatic shades doesn't mean that people are necessarily going to um to close them all the time.

So privacy is a big concern.

Uh pollution is also another concern.

If you're going to require a garage because you're expecting that many cars, it's not really fair for the district one residents to have to bear the cost of increased um not just light and noise pollution, but also just pollution in general.

Um what I would support is like right now, currently there's a public storage building that's about four stories, and it's like set back enough, like from O'Neal.

Like I would want the setback to be um to be larger, um, and I would want that first um set of buildings to be maybe at most um four four stories.

Um and I definitely second the proposal to have taller trees.

We used to have great trees along that street, and then one day when uh they were just cut down, and it really um ch compromised our uh view of natural light and this the skylight.

I also uh I wanted to bring up quickly uh you said that we're you're not planning on opening up those dead the dead end streets now, but what I want to ask the council is what about later.

When you have all those people coming in with this proposed development, they're probably going to petition that those streets be open because you're not going to be satisfied with just one way in and one way out.

So are you going to be able to guarantee that those that those streets are going to remain closed?

Unfortunately, your time is okay.

I really appreciate it.

We'll be moving on to our virtual participants.

Um beginning with Taylor.

Taylor.

Taylor, you've been Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Um I want to thank you for all your time.

Um I'll try to be brief, but um one of my major concerns is parking restrictions um associated with this development.

Uh O'Neill already has significant um overwhelmed with RVEs, vans, and broken down cars that are kind of lining O'Neill.

I think commercial development is gonna potentially make that problem worse.

Uh I do also have some concerns that the district that the councilwoman who has been elected to represent district one is not being allowed to comment on this.

I think that that is a somebody who's voted for her to represent our our district is I'm a little frustrated that she's not um being allowed or is not commenting, whether it's she's being allowed or or not, is um an issue to me.

I have a problem with the setback.

Um the setback is the length of a driveway.

Um that is not meaningful distance to create a significant buffer.

Um the current landlord of the harbor industrial area adjacent to Homeview has downed um massive pine trees protecting home view from the current San Mateo County office buildings.

Um the light pollution has gotten significantly worse during this period, and um I think that's something that if we allow when we now when we allow new development, I think that needs to be uh taken into account.

Um in regards to heights and uh the allowances of the heights on the buildings, 155 feet is massive.

Um there's been other commercial uh developments that have proven economically viable in South San Francisco for biotech, such as the cove in South San Francisco at 80 to 110 feet.

Alexandria cross Alexandria and San Carlos, the biotech development there, approximately 115 feet.

So I don't understand why we're trying to add an anchor point of 150 feet as the limit in Belmont.

That just doesn't seem realistic and uh I think it should be significantly smaller.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay everyone, uh, thank you so much for the time.

Are you able to hear me?

Yes.

Hi, this is Amei Schroff.

I'm one of the residents on Hiller Street.

Um I wanna express my concerns with both the uh building height as well as traffic.

Um I agree with the previous speaker that uh building height of 155 is much larger than what we've seen successful in many other areas.

I've worked at large biotechs within the Bay Area, and none of the buildings I've ever worked at are actually larger than one fifty and we've been very, very successful companies.

So um definitely agree that there's a possibility to have a business that doesn't need to be um that large, especially when it's right up front to our neighborhoods.

The second concern I have is about traffic.

Um I think Joe earlier pointed out a really great point.

Harbor Boulevard only gets you to 101 south.

Um I think people are really crafty, um, you know, and so they're gonna figure out that if you just park on Hiller Street, you can uh you know, just go to one-on-one north uh right up there.

And so I'm concerned about the traffic that that's gonna bring into all of our streets, not just Hiller.

Um and then finally, um, you know, I wanna, you know, point out that, you know, this is the hundredth year of Belmont, and so as we think about the next hundred years, um, you know, I want to thank that um developer guy number two commenter um for bringing that up.

Um I think we we have to really think about like what is the Belmont community really getting out of this?

Um and I think we are really a community of people and we want a place to congregate to um live, um, and and we understand that we need to bring in opportunity, uh, but we need to maintain our focus on the amazing people that are here um and make sure that we're keeping them in mind for the next 100 years.

Um, capitalism and development will always move forward.

Um so let's make sure that we're taking into account our uh our resonance as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Carissa Marie.

Marissa.

You've been unmuted.

The speaker whose uh name is Carissa Marie.

You can go ahead and speak.

Um we'll go to the next um speaker and give her an opportunity later.

Next person, I'm sorry.

Um, Carissa Gomez.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Oh, okay.

Hi, I I just wanted to speak um in favor of the taller building and development, um, while also taking into consideration um you know everyone else's opinions as well, but uh really thinking if it was a possibility to build beyond um 200 feet just along that freeway side, which can offer benefits, you know, like blocking freeway noise, but um keeping in that maybe strictly in that area, and also taking into consideration housing, um, you know, making it mixed use as well, so uh really adding to the progression of the city, and um I think uh I guess the previous speaker had mentioned keeping it on the south side of Harbor, but uh really in favor of building potentially beyond 200 feet, um, depending on the news.

So, thank you.

That is our last speaker or last raised hand.

Is the uh Carissa, the last speaker is the same, Carissa, you think.

I believe they might have been the same.

All right.

Any other uh folks in the chambers who were wish to speak on this item?

Uh okay, come on up.

Hi, my name is Annika.

I live in Home View.

Um I know it's been a long evening, so I'll keep it short.

Um the south side, the other side of Harbor, I really am baffled that we are not considering that side for the taller building.

I'm sure there is some reasoning that's just not clear to me.

So it would really help.

Um I appreciate all the plans that have been shared.

They've been really helpful.

What would help someone like me who doesn't work in planning is more annotation.

So there is, I think something that looks like a field right now on the other side of Harbor.

Um, but I'm I couldn't quite deduce.

Is that a field or is that something else?

Um, so better annotation on these plans would really help me, and real consideration of can't we put that tall building on the other side of Harbor?

So that's it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, about to close public comment if there's uh no other comment on this item.

Council deliberation.

Um before we do, uh, I I do know that Councilmember Laudemarlow uh explained that she was recusing herself because she lives within 500 feet.

I was wondering if our city attorney could um just remind the public what the city's policies and rules are around around that.

It's actually so much not a city policy or rule as it is the state's uh political reform act that doesn't allow council members to participate in uh decisions uh for which they have a financial interest, and under the state rules, anybody who lives within 500 feet of a project is presumed to have a uh a materially uh conflicting financial uh conflict of interest and can't participate in the discussion under state law, under state law.

Thank you very much for that reminder.

Um, all right, council members, uh any deliberation remarks, comments you'd like to share this evening.

Yes, Councilmember McHugh.

Sure, I can go.

Um I think you know, allowing a certain amount of residential to facilitate the development of the area seems reasonable to me.

It makes sense to me if it were at basically along Old County Road.

The further you go into the commercial industrial area, the less sense it makes to me to have residential kind of in the middle of that area.

But on the periphery, uh, particularly along Old County Road, I think that can kind of kind of make sense.

Um but even there, I think it would it make a lot of sense to have ground floor commercial and light industrial, maybe a couple floors of that and you know several floors of residential above.

It's you'd wind up with a mixed-use building commercial on the lower floors and residential above.

That I think could work fine and not be a problem.

In terms of the basic approach, the the master plan approach, as I understand it, is basically a planned development approach, plan development with a development agreement.

Um that makes a lot of sense to me.

A lot of people haven't been through that kind of process, but it it requires the developer to commit to a very specific plan for exactly what they're gonna do.

And we as a city have a lot of say in negotiating the details of that agreement.

So the master plan approach is not the only way a project could be done, as staff laid out the multiple uh approaches there, but I think that would be a good project that would let us um get a look at a very specific plan and have a lot of influence in the negotiation of it, and have very good odds of that it will be carried through to implementation exactly the way the plan requires.

So I think to me, all of that sounds pretty good.

That's it.

Okay, thank you.

Um Councilmember Payne McDermott.

I feel that you all have done a very thoughtful job in listening to the community and making revisions to the residential transition area based upon their feedback while at the same time balancing the needs of the city.

People who live along O'Neill, they matter, and it also matters that our developers are able to build projects that will be fiscally fiscally prudent for them.

So there's a balance that has to happen, and I love that you are really showing over and over again that you are making those adjustments accordingly.

Um I'm supportive of this, and I'm also interested in thinking more about a hard cap for residential in that area.

I'm really afraid of some kind of loophole being found that now goes now turns developers' ability to create all residential in that area, and we lose control over what we want to see happen in our city.

So I'd love to see some kind of proposal along that lines.

Okay?

George?

Yes.

Thank you again for um you know the thoughtful presentation and I do think and I concur with uh my colleague that the city has done a tremendous amount of outreach to the neighborhoods and the surrounding community because you know we it it does impact them directly and I feel like you really listened and came back and then also kind of met with the developer community to figure out you know how do we balance the needs of the immediate community that will be effective but also balance the needs of the city so that we can we can create the vibrant you know engaging area that we all want and so uh thank you for doing all the work I I didn't I didn't count up all the meetings but I know you've been conducting meetings since May of 2023.

So that's a long time and I appreciate how you've listened to the community you've listened to us when we you came to us and we thought the building heights were too high and you stepped them down and stepped them back.

So I am supportive of the specific plan and on the master plan I want to actually I want to just step back.

Everyone uh the a lot of the people talking we're talking about the 155 feet that's that's not necessarily the height it's going to be that's the maximum height is that correct correct okay so I just want I just want to point that out that it's not necessarily going to be that it's just the maximum height which the city does need that flexibility to work with our developer community in order to build the appropriate projects in that space.

And then onto the master plan I'd love for you when you come back to talk to us about a cap and reasons maybe reasons why we should have a cap reasons why maybe we need more flexibility I'd like a little bit more detail on that because I I know you've done a lot of homework and a lot of legwork but I do want to make sure that we maintain as much control as possible and it sounds like with this master plan approach because it's zoned HIA two that they would have to come and make the request for us to rezone it.

So it sounds like we do have as much control as possible but I would like to explore the the cap and why or why not in the next conversation but thank you for that.

Okay thank you very much hopefully you're getting some good feedback from our um council I I actually I wanted to step back just a little bit um and I and and first um say that uh this this area was and is an area that our city has identified for economic growth and development um Belmont has been amazing heads and shoulders above above others in terms of building housing um even before the state required us to do so um and that also means and some of the housing means it um because it's affordable housing we don't actually get property tax from that we need to generate revenue and we've identified this place and I think what staff has has done is um so so right now as it stands today the HIE2 area does not allow housing at all and we are saying it sounds like the council is saying we do not want to rezone this to residential but staff has said well let's have this discretionary path that means that site by site any development will come back to the council for approval so nothing will happen automatically okay so that's important too even though people are saying the project and this is too tall there's no project right now and anything that will come if this master plan is in effect anything any project that comes will have to go through the council.

Yeah, to clarify a base project that's less than 65 feet would be approved by Planning commission.

Yes, thank you.

Taller projects in the bonus height, so up to the maximum of 155 feet would still come before the council with a presumably development agreement and community benefits.

Master plan would also come before the council and even more discretion with that.

Okay.

And with regard to I know last few comments we had uh when it when the public was here, we talked about uh some density bonus concerns that the public had.

This is now this this lesson we learned is in this proposal that there's no density bonus or any other tool that can be used to get around residential transition standards.

Do you think that's is that correct?

I think that's correct.

Okay, okay.

So we are this is this is what we were talking about when we were trying to say we are trying to take as much control as possible, given the atmosphere we live in, where the state is you know definitely um pressuring the cities to build more housing and or to allow for more housing and then also our economic needs.

Um and then also this is I would c characterize this as not a blank check for developers that if a project wants to come in as a master plan project, it has to bring something back, either ground floor commercial or small scale recreation open space, it it has to also be beneficial for the city.

Correct.

Okay, so we are asking we are they can bring back what whatever it pencils out for them, so to speak, but that's also something we would look at in terms of what it brings to the city.

Correct.

Okay.

So all of that said, I think that what we have before us allows the council to signal to developers to bring us projects and let us decide whether or not we want to go forward with those projects.

And I do think that that is you know, the idea of the master plan I think is something we need to do because we are hearing from developers, they are interested in these sites, but the way the market is going and all these other things, they need to also at least consider some housing.

And by allowing this process, we're saying, well, let's see what you got.

We're not saying anything definitively, we're saying the reason I brought up the cap, and I'm happy to hear a couple of my council members agree that the reason I brought up the question of the cap is because I do think that is something we should look into, so that it also makes sure that we don't sort of open the flood gates for housing.

Not that we don't wouldn't love to have meet our arena goals and all the rest of it, but because this is really our only opportunity to capture some um some revenue tax revenue.

So I think three of us saying that we'd want to hear that is is good, and again, I'm I'm I'm glad that that I we brought that up so that we can kind of look into that.

That's how I feel about the master plan, and it sounds like I think we're kind of in sync on some of that.

I think the comments about to putting the buildings on the south side of Harbor, the tallest buildings on the south side of Harbor.

Did we decide at a previous um meeting that that was not something that was feasible to or that we I help me put the pieces together thread the needle as to what is the reason we wouldn't just restrict them to the south side of Harbor?

Uh two-part answer.

Um, the first part is that south of Harbor, the building height would be all 155 feet, but the limiting factor on the south side of Harbor is the airport land use compatibility plan.

That's right.

So we can't, from a practical point of view, we can't really go higher than that.

Yes.

And some sites would be a little bit further limited than the 155.

Got it.

I I okay, thank you for that.

That's important to a reminder and also important for the public.

Um, and I'm I I think in you know, in general, um, I'm really impressed with the fact that we really are working, we are listening, we're working with the community, and we're trying to make this something that is going to be a win uh for us all.

Should this come to fruition, should there be projects?

Again, all of what you've shown us is conceptual to help us along the way.

I think that some of the public comment we heard, I would echo.

I think that's a great idea.

Sometimes we forget that not everyone's been looking at these maps.

We're right on the border of San Carlos, it wouldn't hurt to say on the map, you know, in the visuals where San Carlos is, what that field is, is it even in Belmont.

I think all of that is great, just to dump more on there for especially for the public to understand where they are in time and space.

And um, other than that, I think you know, we're on the right the right path and um would be interested in just seeing, you know, what uh what were the next steps and um what you'll bring back to us.

Do you need anything else from us?

Any other this is very helpful feedback.

So what we'll do now is we'll proceed with drafting the full specific plan, but with extra time and attention to the areas that you point out with some analysis of including the CAP.

So we'll make a proposal, but presumably provide you an option as well, so we can we'll think through how to structure that.

Um and then we will also think through how to further address any issues that come up in the transition area as we're fine-tuning the design guidelines and the standards.

If there's anything additional we can do to improve the transitional area, we'll put additional thought into that as well.

Thank you very much.

I also saw some folks taking photos of the slides.

Just a reminder to everyone that the packet on the agenda uh on the website has these presentations, which also have the map.

So taking photos is fine, but if you actually want to see it on your uh device, we do have those attachments.

And would there be a way to get some of the um images a little more detailed and then re-post them to the website or to the just so that we can answer that question?

Yeah, I think that that's great feedback.

We really appreciate it.

So we'll annotate some of those.

Um, so the main web page for this is the Belmont HIA plan.

Um, so that one that we had up earlier, but I can always share it with people.

Um, and so that's where most everything's gonna be.

But the city website, you can also find it there, and it'll just direct you over to it.

Um, and we can also help people via email.

But I appreciate that suggestion.

We'll absolutely do that.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you to all our public speakers as well.

Thank you.

All right, we are now moving on to um I'm I'm assuming council's okay to just move on without a uh bio break.

Yes.

If so, we'll go ahead and move on to the uh oh if you don't want to get Gina Councilmember Latin.

Josie's getting her.

Alright, thank you, Madam Clerk.

We are back uh for 11.

11c.

We'll just get it started by introducing this item.

We are waiting for council member Lademoro to join us, rejoin us.

Item 11C is the designation of voting delegate and alternate for League of California Cities annual conference September 23rd to 25th, 2026.

And again, we'll go ahead and introduce this item momentarily.

Did you want me to wait?

I think so.

Let's just go ahead and wait for Council Member Latamurlo.

She should be here shortly.

Where did we sequester her?

Not not too far, right?

No, not just next door.

Okay.

She might have gotten stopped in the hallway.

She probably did.

Okay, well, uh we still have a majority in a quorum, and we are still live, so let's just go ahead and introduce the item.

So this will be a very quick item.

Um we are requesting the city council to designate a voting delegate to represent Belmont at the League of California City's annual conference, which is September 23rd through the 25th.

Um the voting delegate represents Belmont at the General Assembly and voting on resolutions at which um time of the writing of the report, and as of today, there are no resolutions yet.

Um also as of uh today, um, Mayor Mates and um City Manager Oskui are both registered to attend the conference.

So uh bringing it back to you for discussion on who you would want to delegate to represent, and then also have a um a second um a backup question.

Okay, thank you very much.

So the presentation is that it sounds like uh we have two folks already signed up, um, and we just need to uh figure out by motion designated voting delegate up to two alternate uh alternate voting delegates for this upcoming meeting on uh upcoming uh conference on the 23rd of September.

I'm happy to be the alternate.

Okay.

I'll I'll should I I'll uh I'll I'll nominate myself to be uh the one of the voting members and I'm more than happy to take it a few.

I mean I'll be there, so I'm fine to do that if if you're okay to be the alternate.

And if we get caught up in a meeting or something like that in real time, we can swap.

We can swap, right?

Okay.

Perfect.

If it helps, the happiest place on earth is across the street.

Uh that does help, yes.

So I will not be there then.

I'll be over across the street.

Uh, just need to know.

I'll move to, yeah, I'll we'll we'll oh just I would say for now if you need to know, I'm I am I moved to have uh mayor as the uh delegate and uh city manager Oskui as the alternate.

Is there a second for a second?

Okay.

Uh and a roll call, please.

With council member McCune?

Yes.

Laudamerlo?

Yes.

Pang Maganaris.

I Vice Mayor Jordan?

Yes.

Mayor Mates.

Yes.

So we have the designee being the mayor, um, with the uh second being uh city manager Oscui and that will be sent over by September 1st as um the motion.

Okay, thank you very much.

Uh moving on then to item 12, brief verbal reports from members and staff.

Uh verbal report from council members on our IGRs.

Uh let's start, I guess, with uh Councilmember Vladimirlow, any ideas?

Uh well we had our subcommittee meeting, um, the long range planning and housing subcommittee meeting and uh it would be bad around some new ideas.

Okay.

Only the peninsula clean energy is now officially West Light Energy.

So if people start seeing West Light energy on their power bill, it's just a change in name, they still get the same clean and renewable energy that they have for a long time.

That's it.

All right.

Councilmember Pen Magneris?

Vice Mayor?

Oh, yes, so uh Councilmember McCune and I actually attended the uh intern lunch last week, and we got to spend uh lunch time with the interns from uh the high school interns, and it was I'm always fascinated at how you can I made time to do this because you know our future's bright when you meet some of our young people and the commitment that they have to themselves to the community, and I think I'm just gonna say that like the the running joke was that the people the the city clerk's interns are like, well, we just were scanning all day, every day, and you know, we explained to them how important it was and how people years from now are going to be able to see all of these documents, but they all wanted to come back because they didn't finish what they were doing, so they're still working.

So I think that that just speaks volumes about um the time the fun time that all the students have, but also the commitment.

So thank you.

That was uh it was fun.

Great.

All right, uh, 11, 12b.

We all have eloquently covered number of events and activities that's coming up.

So I have no more uh kind of information to add.

But I do want to kind of acknowledge again, I think uh Weiss Mayor, you kind of mentioned uh kudos to our interim chief.

He did a tremendous job of securing over a million dollars in grant that really helps uh with the city's finances, with what the department does in a in the way of providing public safety, even though it was on consent, it took a lot of time and effort and and creativity to put that package together that helps the community in a way that we provide services and so a lot of kudos to him for working on that.

Yep, definitely thank you for that.

Um before we uh oh sorry, move moving uh on to item 13, matters of interest and clarification.

We do not have anything under that item.

Uh and before we move back to our closed session, uh I'd like to take a moment to remember Judy King, a lifelong member of our community, who passed away recently.

Judy's civic contributions to Belmont were extraordinary.

She helped found the Belmont Park Boosters Summer Concert series and served as its president for 45 years.

She served over 20 years on the Parks and Recreation Commission and gave her time to countless committees and causes across the city, from the Library Task force to the Historical Society to the Veterans Memorial Committee.

In 2000, she received the William Chapman Ralson Award, and in 2002, she was inducted into the San Mateo County Women's Hall of Fame.

Judy's legacy is woven into much of what makes Belmont special.

And she was a friend and supporter to our city councils for decades.

Her love for Belmont showed up in everything she did from the concert series she helped build to her years of service on our commissions and committees.

And on behalf of this council, we extend our deepest consolences to her family, her friends, and everyone in this community who will miss her.

I'd now like to ask everyone to join me in a brief moment of silence in her memory.

Thank you.

This meeting is adjourned in memory of Judy King, and we will now return to our closed session.

Thanks.