The Half Moon Bay City Council met on Tuesday, April 1, 2025, at 7:00 PM in a hybrid format at the Adcock Community Center. Key actions included approving an amendment to the Exclusive Negotiations Agreement (ENA) for the 555 Kelly Avenue senior affordable housing development, rejecting all bids for the Frenchman's Creek Park Improvements Project and directing staff to pursue a reduced scope using grant funding, and receiving updates on the Residential Rental Registration Program and Telecommute/Alternative Work Schedule policies.
Thank you. Everything's working. Okay. Thank you, everybody. Some like to make a motion. I move that we approve the agenda. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All those against. Great. Approved. We will start with um proclamations and presentations. And we will have a presentation from Co-Side Venture Studio Update. Great, thank you very much. And good evening, Mayor Brownstone, Council and Community. Karen Decker, Economic and Community Vitality Manager. It's my pleasure to introduce your next presenter, Eric Vettel. He's the founder and president of American Energy Society. American Energy Society is operating Coastside Venture Studio, which is an incubator to accelerator program located at the Opportunity Center of the Coastide. The idea to launch a business incubator came out of the Coastide Recovery Initiative. There were four working teams focused on different areas, and the team that really prioritized and talked about innovation had really great conversations. And incubators may not be unique, and you've heard me say before, many of them fail. But what makes Coast Side Venture Studio different is that it really tries to harness our local industries and our assets. So the fact that we have an airport, the fact that we have agriculture and fisheries and a beautiful Pacific Ocean and a harbor, these things make the coast unique. So a goal is for the last year has been trying to attract startups that have alignment, have value alignment. And really we it's very important when we're vetting these nonprofits that are invited to join Kosai Venture Studio that they value people and planet and profit, which we refer to as kind of this this triple P bottom line. Welcome, Eric. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to thank the city council for the chance to provide an update on the Coast Side Venture Studio. The thesis of my update is pretty simple. This venture studio is a rare example of something going according to plan in the first year. I will begin with a quick story. On a Wednesday, April 19th, we hosted a demo day for one of our startups, Flox Robotics, an AI-enabled drone technology that helps humans and wildlife coexist. Basically, it works like this. When their drone or a stationary device detects a threat, a wildlife threat, it will find in its library the right sound to herd it, herd it away. The old way of doing this was typically with guns, poison, or traps. The Flox method is more humane. We knew their what's that. Okay. We knew that their the flux technology worked because it's been we've been working with them for about one year, but I always worry. That's my nature. This demonstration had four customers in attendance along with local influencers like the vice mayor, the city manager, and the economic and community vitality manager, along with 30 other people. So I pulled into the Johnston House parking lot 30 minutes early, and I hopped out of my car. And right above my head, I heard a blood curdling screech that sounded like a hawk, and I was its breakfast. After the successful demonstration, the audience gathered at the Johnston House for QA. One of the customers, a facilities manager for SFO, who was clearly interested in the Flox product, said, How do we know if we buy it, you won't disappear, and the customer product service is gone. Without missing a beat, the Flox CEO, Sarah Noskova said, we are already here.