Welcome to the regular meeting of the Half Moon Bay City Council for January 20th, 2026.

As a reminder, if you are joining this meeting via Zoom, you can still make public comment.

During any public comment portions, attendees may use the raise your hand feature and will be called upon and unmuted when it is your turn to speak.

If joining by phone, use star nine to raise your hand, and star six to mute and unmute.

We also have Spanish interpretation services available in person and via Zoom this evening.

They include one point on point language solutions, is in the back left corner.

If anyone needs assistance with interpretation services, on point will now provide information on how to receive interpretation services if you are in need of them.

Nicholas will come and make a little presentation.

Thank you, Nicholas.

Turn it on.

Tienen in la barra de abajo un symbolo de un globo terrachio, un mundo, you tienen que hacer clic ahí y buscar la opción de idiomas, languages and English, y escoger la parte de Espanyol.

For everyone, but can I keep it necessitan interpretación?

Then it's in la parte de atrás in audífonos para poder compartir con ustedes if we wouldn't escuchar directamente la session in espanhol.

Gracias.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Could I please have a roll call of the council?

Yes.

Commissioner Martin, sorry not, that's why.

Darn it.

Councilmember Nagingast?

Here.

Council Member Johnson.

Here.

Councilmember Brownstone.

Here.

Vice Mayor Penrose.

Here.

And Mayor Ruddick.

Here.

All council members are present this evening.

Thank you so much.

Item two is approval of the agenda.

I am recommending to the council that we move.

Item.

What is it?

Excuse me.

To the mayor, we should do prejudice allegiance.

We'll get there.

Yeah.

I would like to move item 10b up in front of 10A.

10B is updates on the residential rate rent stabilization program and residential rental registry program.

If the council agrees, could someone make a motion to approve the agenda is amended.

So moved.

Second.

Roll call, please.

Yes.

Councilmember Nagingast?

Yes.

Councilmember Johnson?

Yes.

Council Member Brownstone.

Vice Mayor Penrose.

Yes.

And Mayor Reddick.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

Please all rise for a pledge of allegiance.

Pledge of the C the five.

Thank you very much.

One nation.

Excuse me.

Chair is too tall.

All right.

So uh the next item of business is item three, proclamations and presentations.

Um there are no proclamations tonight, but at this time we'll get a brief presentation from Joshua Hugg with a Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District.

It's actually going to be from Zoe.

This evening.

Okay, I'll do my best to impersonate Josh.

Okay.

Who's with me this evening, our governmental affairs program manager.

My name is Zoe Kirstine Tucker.

I am president of the Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District Board of Directors.

The purpose of our presentation tonight is to give you a whirlwind tour of the district and what we're up to, and talk to you, give you a brief um set of updates on projects that we think will be most interesting to you and members of the Half Moon Bay community.

So I'm going to try to multitask here, see if I can do it.

Midpen's mission can be succinctly characterized by the five words on the right side of the screen: preserve, protect, restore, educate, and enjoy.

This is what we do with Midpen open space.

On the coast, our mission is a bit more expansive and includes protection and support for agriculture and preservation of the coastside's rural character.

Comprised of over 72,000 acres of acquired and protected open space on the San Francisco Peninsula, Midpen is one of the largest open space districts in the state of California.

The district boundary is a roughly the bay to the east, highway one to the west, the southern portion of Pacifica to the north, and Los Gatos to the south.

The green areas depict the district's open space preserves.

This map shows that the director wards.

Two of us serve from San Mateo County.

My ward is ward seven.

Whoops, wait.

Whoops, wait.

Sorry.

Here we go.

Okay, ward seven.

Here, this is me.

My colleague, my other colleague from San Mateo County, Margaret McNiven, represents the south portion of the coastside.

Both of our wards extend up and over to include areas on the Bayside.

The other five directors are from Santa Clara County.

Some quick facts about the district.

We celebrated our 50th anniversary in 2022, and in the last 53 years, we've created 27 preserves with over 250 miles of trails.

Our preserves are free and open every day of the year from sunrise to sunset.

Our seven-member board represents over 760,000 constituents in three counties.

We currently have 200 employees and over a thousand volunteers.

I want to say that again.

We have a thousand volunteers.

An estimate that our preserves receive about almost three million visitors a year, at least in 2022, which is the last time we did a count.

Rancho San Antonio, our preserve in Los Altos, gets about 45% of our visitorship.

We're headquartered in Los Altos, and I'm incredibly pleased to say that we have recently purchased the Alves Dairy property where we will be opening a coastal field office soon.

Good news for those of us that live here and don't know don't always want to drive to Los Altos.

Okay, well, no presentation on Midpen would be complete without some glamour shots of our preserves.

This one is our uh this is actually Parisima Creek, one of my favorites, and I'm gonna show you only my favorites tonight.

Um trails for hiking, biking, and horses in Parisima Creek.

It's wheelchair accessible, and it also has accessible restrooms.

The centerpiece of this 5,400-acre preserve is Perissima Creek Canyon with its towering redwoods, Russian creeks, ferns, berries, wildflowers, and at this time of year, an assortment of fungi.

I'd love to tell you more about Prissima Creek.

We'll touch on it a bit later, but there's lots of great history of the logging, the logging industry that started in the 1800s around here in this preserve.

The preserve, I will mention one more fact.

The preserve was created with a gift of two million dollars from the State of the Redwood League.

Okay, Cloverdale Ranch at 6300 acres, just south of Pesquadero is our newest acquisition.

Cloverdale is intertwined with the rich agricultural heritage of the San Mateo Coast that continues to this day.

It has the largest intact coastal prairie habitat in the county, the third largest in the state.

The prairie habitat is important for the federally and state-endangered San Francisco garter snake.

Other sensitive habitats found on Cloverdale Ranch include freshwater marshes, wetlands, perennial and seasonal ponds, riparian woodlands, and coastal scrub.

Another of my favorites right off of Skyline, has more than 36 miles of multi-use trails, which makes it very popular with bicyclists.

Also plenty of hardy hiking and horseback riding opportunities.

The preserve is located in the upper headwaters of the San Gregorio Creek watershed, which provides critical habitat for steelhead trout and coho salmon.

Let's see.

Finally, La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve, one of Midpen's largest and most diverse preserves.

La Honda Creek offers immersion into a historic ranch land with grazing cattle.

La Honda Creek is one of the several districts preserves where we engage in conservation grazing, which means that on occasion you may find yourself hiking along with the cows.

All right, we'll move now on to project updates, and I'm sorry I'm flying through a lot of this stuff.

There's so much to talk to you about, but I'm just going to pick a few things for this evening.

Anyone know what snake this is?

Anybody?

San Francisco Gardener Snake for sure.

Resides exclusively exclusively on the San Francisco Peninsula.

Midpen and its partners are working to protect and restore the habitat for this and other species, and really one of the largest and most thriving populations of the Gardener Snake is on Cloverdale Ranch.

Okay, let's dive into conservation grazing.

I mentioned that before.

In 2007, the Board of Directors approved a grazing management policy as part of our larger natural resource management policies, the purpose of which is threefold.

To enhance and maintain grassland habitat, to manage vegetation fuel for fire protection, and finally to sustain the local agricultural economy.

To date, Midpen has protected more than 19,000 acres of natural and agricultural lands on the coast.

15,500 of these acres are leased to our ranching tenants under the mid under our conservation grazing program.

Midpen has protected more than a third of the remaining ranch lands on the San Mateo coast.

A bit more about our investment in agriculture.

In December 2023, the board approved a series of updates to this policy with the following goals.

First, to keep prime ag land in production while ensuring protection of sensitive natural resources.

To sustain and promote environmental health and encourage environmentally sensitive and sustainable agriculture.

And finally, to support and implement practices that enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion on district ag lands and within the larger agricultural community.

And I want to drill down into this policy a bit because in this day and age it's really important.

One of our policies states that we will retain current district agricultural housing and expand agricultural housing opportunities when feasible to expand or to further district goals.

We will consider opportunities to partner with and support local organizations that support affordable regional agricultural workforce housing when such partnerships further the district's goals.

We are committed to establishing strong working relationships with the agricultural workforce community.

And finally, we will implement strategies and actions to further the district's diversity, equity, and inclusion goals that align with the mission.

This means we are building relationships with community-based organizations that are rooted in and serve the farm worker community.

We seek and provide opportunities to lease district agricultural properties to people who have not traditionally owned or operated ranches and farmlands.

The Midpen Board of Directors stands strong in support of these policies that directly benefit our critically important farm worker community.

A bit more about agriculture.

We do have made, we have made considerable investments in ag infrastructure here, $4 million dollars we've spent since 2009.

A variety of things, including brushing, new fencing, road and trail improvements, and water infrastructure, especially when that water infrastructure benefits other critters who share the land with the cattle.

All right.

Moving now to wildfire resiliency.

Fire is a critical concern in our area, and we keep seeing reminders of how important it is to steward the land to limit the intensity and spread of fires.

Midpen's wildland fire resiliency program is managed in partnership with Calfire, local fire districts, state and county parks, and other organizations to make sure that we're applying the right approaches at scale across municipal and district boundaries.

No silos for us when it comes to our wildland fire resiliency program.

The program includes mapping and monitoring, which is shared with our partners.

The primary work you'll see in open space is vegetation management.

For example, the creation of shaded fuel breaks and increasingly the use of prescribed fire.

This picture shows a prescribed burn last October in Sierra Azul, Open Space Preserve, which is southeast Las Gatos.

Here, these are Midpen staff collaborating with Calfire on the burn.

You'll be seeing more of that in the future.

It's a bit more about wildland fire resiliency.

I could speak all night about this.

It's a very important topic to us.

But something near near to home.

The end of last year we worked with Calfire and the San Mateo County RCD to create an expanded shaded fuel break, set of fuel breaks around the town of La Honda.

Okay, I want to talk a little bit about Perissima Creek Redwoods and our public access initiative.

Parissima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve is one of Midpen's most beloved.

It's the second most visited of our preserves on the coastside.

With a large network of trails and a beloved opportunity to explore redwood for us, parking demand often exceeds the space during uh parking spaces during peak visitation hours, holidays, and weekends.

In November of 2022, the district completed a study that assessed what transportation demand strategies could be appropriate for Parisima Creek at a preserve-wide level and made recommendations for implementation strategies.

Midpen further evaluated some of the recommended strategies for implementation at this particular preserve, including a shuttle program, real-time parking information, carpool and van pool parking, and reservation parking.

During the December 2024 board meeting, the board agreed to evaluate these projects or programs under CEQA, which is where we are at now.

Based on this study, Midpen is currently advancing three projects to significantly expand and improve public access across Parisima Creek.

The first is the Parisima to the Sea Parking and Trail.

Wait, did it again?

Oh no.

How did they get there?

Okay.

Here, right here is a parking, a new parking area at Bear Day Road, which we will be constructing as part of this trail network.

We have a shuttle program that will be moving people from this parking lot to the lower Persima Creek parking lot, which is always overcrowded.

And then we have another program or project at the top the Highway 35 multi-use trail crossing and parking project as well.

Construction is estimated to begin in 2028.

If you're interested in this project, if anyone in the audience is interested, I encourage you to sign up to stay informed of our project on this initiative.

We're always looking for public feedback.

You can go to our website and look at Perisma Creek Redwoods Multimodal Access Project and sign up for updates.

On this map, you see the larger Beta-the-C vision that we're working on with a variety of partners.

We're very proud to be, oh, dang it, sorry.

Very proud to be working with the city of Half Moon Bay on this north segment of the Parisima to the Sea Trail, which will run through Johnston Ranch out through Wave Crest to the Coastal Trail.

This is the other portion that I mentioned before with the parking area at Barday Road.

But on the east side, you see the larger vision of connecting all the way to the bay.

We're hoping to leverage a portion of the Dumbarton Rail Corridor right away to enable bicycle and pedestrian use.

Okay.

We last presented to you in 2023, so didn't get a chance to update you on our progress on measure AA in the last 11 years and to thank you for supporting our the future of the district.

Measure AA was a 300 million dollar bond that was passed by voters within the district in 2014 to help realize the 30-year vision plan that was created for the district after 18 months of public outreach.

To date, we've preserved over 9,600 acres of open space.

4200 acres have been open to the public at five preserves.

We've opened more than 30 miles of trails with another 30 in construction or in the planning stages.

We've also opened three new parking areas, creating a total of 126 new parking spaces.

All right, and finally, I just wanted to mention that every month, Midpen offers a wide variety of docent-guided activities and volunteer opportunities.

But just I just jotted down a couple of things that are happening just in the next couple of days to give you a flavor of what goes on with the district's docents.

Tomorrow we have a winter waterfowl hike at Stevens Creek Shoreline Nature Area.

Saturday, fungal fun in Parisima Creek Redwoods.

Also on Saturday, who's that?

The Owls of Redwood of the Redwoods and Bear Creek Redwoods Preserve.

And on Sunday, a family nature journaling event in Skyline Ridge.

So there's always lots going on.

If you're interested in having a fun adventure on a weekend, I highly recommend checking out our docent activities.

Lots of great things for kids.

Okay.

And in closing this evening, on behalf of the Midpen Board of Directors and staff, I offer you the City Council and your staff our deep thanks for your partnership.

We've accomplished a lot together in recent years, and there's lots more to do.

So we look forward to continuing our partnership on behalf of the land, the people and the critters that call the coast side their home.

So with that, I will take questions.

Thank you, Zoe.

Anyone have questions for Zoe on the report.

I just want to say thank you for everything because when I moved here in 89, I didn't even know about uh Higgins Perisma Canyon until we were in my wife and I were had a condo in Belmont and the condo over here.

And the park and rec guy goes, You haven't been to the jewel of Half Moon Bay.

And I've eventually just fell in love with it, and I've been mountain biking it for years.

And then when the pandemic hit the parking lot issues, which I'm hearing now, we have a resolution because that jewel has really become a major jewel here in this town.

And then a lot of people from out of town come here.

So I appreciate everything you guys are doing, especially with the parking.

Yeah, thank you for that.

It's been a challenge, and we are working hard to try to address the increasing visitorship.

People are discovering that Parisima Creek is a jewel and uh love to spend time in the Redwoods.

So we're doing our best, but we look forward to hearing from you and from members of the public to help guide our direction as we move forward with that.

So, thank you very much.

We really appreciate your time this evening.

We are blessed to have you in our midst.

We are blessed to live here on the coast side, and um the special place it is.

Uh Midpen contributed to that in a really big way.

So we're grateful.

Thanks for coming down tonight.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate that.

Our next presentation is from the Midcoast Community Council.

Good evening, Council members, and thanks for having me over as always.

Um, a quick update for you on what's been happening.

Um, on our December 17th meeting, we had um officer elections.

We also have two vacancies on the council that we'd like to fill.

So if if there's someone out there listening and they live between Miramar and Montero and they're interested in being on the Midcoast Community Council, let us know.

I'd also like to say that Matthew Burroughs is the new county planning commissioner for District 3, and he lives in Half Moon Bay.

Okay, so if you if you've been driving north from here on one, you'd notice the new barriers that are in place along Route One in the Midcoast.

That's the start of the Route 1 multi-asset reconstruction roadway.

I'm sorry, roadway rehabilitation project.

It's going to include just paving, drainage, guardrails, and some polls for traffic monitoring.

So that's that project has started.

So Heffewin Bay has a housing element, Burlingame has a housing element, but the county also has a housing element, and we're part of that in the unincorporated regions of Half Moon Bay, and it's a it's similar to your housing element, and I'm interested in finding out how that is managed in the future.

So that's gonna be one of our updates at an upcoming many meeting.

Um we're gonna have uh the report for SEAL Cove, the problems in SEAL Cove is out, and Supervisor Mueller is gonna have um a meeting um regarding this on February 19th.

Um the telemobile crisis response team, which was replaces CARES, is gonna give a presentation on on the 28th.

Um, and so if you're interested, please come to our meeting, and that's about it for me.

Thank you.

I have a question.

Sure.

Um, what is the status of the affordable housing project in Moss Beach?

Uh I'm gonna have to come back at next and give you that information because it's in it's it's changing.

Um I've I don't know the exact status of it right now, but it's in flux.

We I don't know ex how whether they're going to proceed or not.

It is proceeding.

Okay.

It is proceeding.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

Any other questions from council members?

No.

Thank you and good night.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh sure, I can do that.

Uh, is there anybody who would like to comment on either of the presentations this evening?

You can uh fill out a form, but you can come up to the podium and speak now.

If you'd like, it's super my uh car, right?

This this is separate.

This is just on the presentations.

Good evening.

Uh honorable mayor, vice mayor, uh council members, city staff.

My name is Serge Joaquin Jimenez.

And I would like to comment on uh on mid pain, you know, and about the work that they've done in some of the work that I've been doing for the last decades is related to that, to the work protecting the community, protecting the coast, uh, or farming heritage, you know, the ranching heritage or the coast site.

And I uh their mission, alliance with what I believe in uh and also the the housing opportunity and supporting uh different groups to provide housing for farm workers uh and supporting our farming community and supporting uh the change of policy that they had, giving opportunity to more local uh ranchers and more local farmers uh to use the land that they have been protecting.

Um, so I want to think, you know, uh so we and Josh uh for doing for the work that you do and uh supporting in our midpen, you know, uh looking forward to uh to see them continue to protect in our community and protecting our farming and our ranching.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Okay, we're gonna move along then.

Um, see where are we?

Mayor's announcements of community activities and community service.

Item four.

Um, I have nothing to report tonight, but I I think probably the next meeting in February of the year will have you know gotten into gear and people are gonna be doing stuff, and we'll have plenty to report.

Not tonight.

So, item uh five is report out from recent closed session meetings, and I'll defer to our city council uh Denise Pizzano.

Thank you, madam mayor.

This evening the council met in closed session on two items.

There is no reportable action from the meeting.

The council also met in closed session on January 8th and January 13th, and just for the public's information, there was no reportable action at those meetings as well.

Thank you, madam mayor.

Thank you so much.

Uh next we have uh city manager updates to council.

Uh there are no uh updates to council tonight.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

So we're moving on to public forum.

Which is item seven, and I'll start with uh Deborah Penrose speaking as a citizen.

Good evening.

I am speaking tonight as a citizen, private citizen, and not for um city council.

Um I've been struggling to come up with something to say about the state of our state and the state of our nation, and heard a speech by Gavin Newsom, which I was very impressed with, and although not everybody has the same politics as I do, I think he offers a good message for helping us to save our state.

Um, so I'm gonna record that.

I'm gonna play that.

Well, but bad people, but it's the appalling silence for so many people.

In Washington, the president believes that might makes right, but the courts are simply speed bumps, not stop signs.

That democracy is a nuisance to be circumvented, secret police, businesses being raided, windows smashed, citizens detained, citizens shot, mass men snatching people in broad daylight, people disappearing, using American cities as training grounds for the United States military.

Purposeful chaos emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Abbey, shifting a tax burden from the wealthy, from billionaires to small businesses, ranchers, farmers, and the middle class, lining the pockets of the rich, crony capitalism at unimaginable scale, state capitalism, self-dealing profit making, not policy making, rolling back rights, rights, marginalized communities, rewriting history, censoring historical facts, their politics, some politics of some twisted nostalgia about restoring the dynamics of a bygone era.

None of this is normal.

It's important to remember it.

Moments like this, the greatest tragedy is not as king said, the clamor of bad people, but it's the appalling silence of so many good.

In Washington, the president.

Thank you.

Thank you, Deborah.

The next speaker is Harvey Raba.

Good evening.

As Governor Newsom just said, and as I'm sure all of you are aware, our immigrant and Latino community is in terrible.

I don't know what the word is, uh, but there's a real, real effort to uh minimize the contributions and the work that our immigrant community and Latino community have done.

So it's very discouraging.

But I would like to be a little more optimistic and present three ideas that I think the council could implement, which would go a long way towards showing our support for our immigrant and Latino community.

Number one, if half Moon Bay were to be uh make passed a resolution to become a sanctuary city, that would send a message to the immigrant community that we care about them, that we have their backs, that we know that they're in jeopardy, and we need to do whatever we can to protect them.

Number two, uh, if we were to go ahead and implement 555 Kelly affordable housing for uh senior farm workers, that would be another indication that the city has the back of the people who've made this city much of what it is.

Our agricultural heritage is uh enormous, and we need to respect that.

And the uh affordable housing right over there would be a big step in that direction.

Lastly, the um uh rental protections that we're gonna be discussing later are another example of what we can do to show our immigrant and Latino community that we care about them and we support them.

So I urge you to think about these ideas that can be implemented to make sure that we have the back of the people who made our city as great as it is.

Thank you.

Thank you, Harvey.

The next speaker is Joaquin Jimenez.

Thank you, Harvey.

Uh good evening once again, Joaquin Jimenez.

Uh I want you to uh I want to pin up paint a picture for you.

Usually when we uh come to City Council meetings, we don't talk much about uh the uh agriculture and the food that we actually produce in half Moon Bay.

One of the things uh Midpen talked about protecting or uh or farmland or uh uh ranching land.

You have to envision half Moon Bay, the coast side of San Mateo County.

We are the largest farming community in the Bay Area.

We don't really talk about that.

Yeah, we need to protect that.

We don't talk about half on Bay or the coast side for Bantero to Pescadero.

If we were to farm the land that we have available, we can feed the whole peninsula, the whole Bay Area, and more.

You have to look into it.

The agricultural business in San Mateo County right now is producing about a hundred million dollars a year.

That's really nothing.

We should be producing 500 million dollars a year.

And it's possible.

We have the land, we have the people.

Is in the next 10 years we're gonna be doing that.

Or a cultural economy is gonna grow because we're gonna be giving opportunity to new farmers, to new ranchers.

Just think about it.

You were shut down 92 earthquakes, something happens.

Half on Bay, the coast, we will not go hungry at all.

And we don't think about that.

Half on Bay used to have a dairy farm, the coast that we have dairy farms.

What happened?

We're not interested in doing in protecting that.

More people are interested in developing half on Bay building beer resorts.

We don't need that.

Go somewhere else.

Build a resource somewhere else.

Not in half on Bay, not on the coast side.

We can produce the food.

But we have to believe in that.

We have to give opportunity to our community to use the resources that we have, the land.

We have it.

New businesses are gonna happen.

We can be a footer for the whole peninsula.

Let's focus on that.

Let's teach the people how to fish.

Let's not give them fish.

Let's teach them how to fish.

And we can do it.

But we here we have to be able to discuss that.

Do your own research.

Reach out to the Farm Bureau.

See what they think about farming.

See how it's dying.

Let's protect that.

Last comment, this is separate about.

I want to make sure that people understand that not every horse event that happens in Half Home Bay is organized by me.

Okay.

There's a lot of people, a lot of the people that organizes uh parades, uh trail rides.

The only one that I'm responsible for is Vaquero Days, and that's the one that's organized in August.

And the other other ones, everybody's welcome to organize our own events, and sometimes I participate, sometimes I don't, because I don't want anybody to think that I'm organizing that event as well and throw dirt on my name.

So be clear, the only event that I organize is Vaquero Days, and that's in August.

So if you see me writing with another group, that's not me organizing, I'm just uh participating.

Thank you.

Thank you, Joaquin.

The next speaker is Joanne Rikoski, followed by Anita Reese.

Good evening, Mayor Reddock and Council members, and thank you for the opportunity to uh speak.

As we start a new year, many of us reflect on the past year and how we might want this year to be different.

So one of the things I've been reflecting on and hoping for change is on what seems to be the stalled progress on 555 Kelly.

My hope is that 2026 is the year when we finally see this project come into reality.

You as a city council have a key role in making that happen, and I'm hoping that that's among your resolutions for 2026.

Thank you.

Thank you, Joanne.

Anita Reese.

Anita Reese.

Hello, my name is Anita Reese.

I'm um with uh Unhouse on the Coast Outreach, a program of the Pacifica Resource Center, which is primarily funded by the San Mateo County Center on Homelessness.

We provide outreach and engagement and case management services to unhoused folks on the San Mateo County coast from Pacifica to Pescadero with the goal of helping them return to housing.

Outreach staff is available seven days a week, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.

to 10 p.m.

And Saturday, Sunday, and holidays from 9 to 5.

And we'll respond to outreach requests within generally within three hours during those times.

If you see someone living outside in a vehicle or another place not meant for habitation, please call us at 650 452 6279 or email us at UC Outreach at PACResource Center.org.

As of today, there are 46 individuals who are unhoused in Half Moon Bay.

In five encampments of those five encampments, there are 22 folks living in those encampments.

We did see a decline in the number of people who are living in encampments in Half Moon Bay, but we saw an increase in the number of folks who are not living in encampments, they're on the streets, which was an additional 24 folks.

So this is a slight increase from the last time that I was here.

It was 39, now it's 46.

There is some general fluctuation that happens in with folks, they are uh they move around.

Um I also wanted to share an update about the folks who are in motor homes on Main Street a few months back.

Um they are both now sheltered or in housing as of the last two weeks.

So literally within the last two weeks, one went into shelter, the other one went into housing.

Um and I just wanted to share that it took a lot of coordination between city staff, the sheriff, and county resources over the last six months to a year to get them to that place, and it still may not work, right?

It may be a short-term solution, but we're working on making sure that they stay longer term, right?

So providing additional resources and support during the first three to six months to make sure that they have the resources that they need.

Excuse me.

Um, so just to let you know that it's not a simple solution, it does take time to get us to this place, and we provide that resource uh to folks, anybody who is unhoused that is willing to work with us.

I also just want to share that the biannual one-day homeless count is next Thursday, the 29th.

Excuse me.

I know that this is one of the sites uh for Half Moon Bay, and one of our several of our outreach folks will be here to help with that count.

So if you want to be a volunteer enumerator, the kit with the county, uh please go to the county's website and just do a search for one day homeless count 2026, and you can still sign up.

We are still looking for volunteers, so would love to have you join us.

And that information is generally used to help the county determine how they want to offer additional resources to locations, which is one of the ways that Half Moon Bay has gotten some additional resources over the past several years.

So again, I just want to thank you uh for continuing to be partners in our work to help unhoused folks return to housing.

Thanks.

Thank you, Anita.

Your organization provides very valuable services, and we're glad that you come down and connect with us at our city council meetings.

And yes, the city is committed to continued partnering with you.

So thank you for that.

Um is there anyone online who would like to comment during public forum?

You can raise your hand now.

I see none.

No one on public forum.

Okay, we will then move on to item eight, which is the consent calendar.

Sorry, I don't think I have to hit my gavel, but maybe next time.

Um the consent calendar is item eight.

Um, would someone like to uh pull anything this evening?

Just 8 a.m.

Just uh those are the old uh meetings.

I will be abstaining.

Oh okay.

So we're similar approach to what we've done in the last couple of meetings as we catch up on these old um records.

Um the two newer council members will not be part of that vote.

So that'll just be 8 M then.

Correct.

And it doesn't need to be pulled, it's just a separate consent vote.

Okay.

Would someone like to uh make a motion to approve the other items and read those off?

Sure.

Um, sorry.

What's right here, right?

Uh um I move that we waive the reading of resolutions and ordinances that we approve the minutes of December 16, 2025 regular meeting.

We approve the minutes of January 8, 2026 special meeting, that we approve the minutes of the January 13th, 2026 special meeting, that we approve minutes of the January 13, 2026 joint special city council planning commission meeting that we adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to dispose of assets acquired to provide services at the opportunity center of the coast side in accordance with the city's asset disposition policy, that we accept the warrant list for the month of December 2025, that we adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement with Zune Engineering in an amount not to exceed $69,084 for pre-construction services for the Highway 1 North project, that we approve professional services agreement with Black and Beach Corporation for stormwater national pollutant discharge elimination system and annual reporting services for 2026, that we adopt by resolution phase two of the Half Moon Bay Bay Climate Action and Adaptation Plan that we accept Mayor Reddock's list of city council representatives and designated assignments for 2026, that we adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a memorandum of understanding with the county of San Mateo for the implementation of a Senate Bill 1383 compliant procurement program in an amount not to exceed 25,000 annually.

Can I have a second?

Second.

Just before you go ahead and vote, I just want to make a note that on the January 13, 2026 special meeting that we do have the correct minutes written, and we'll make reflection on yours that um council member Nagingas was recused at the last item on the last item.

It wasn't written in there, so okay, council.

Madam Mayor, just confirming there's no public comment on the consent agenda.

That's correct.

I will check.

Is there anyone who would like to address the consent agenda?

Normally you can address items on the consent agenda during public forum, but I'll allow folks tonight if you'd like to comment now on any item on the consent agenda, you can come forward.

Is there anyone online who would like to comment?

I see none.

No hands raised.

No, okay.

So uh do we have a second?

Okay.

Um all in favor say aye.

Aye, aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

We'll move on to item 8M, which is approve certain past city council regular and special meeting minutes.

And um we can entertain a motion at a second now, but council members um Negengast and Johnson will go ahead and recuse.

So um can I have a motion?

I move that uh we approve certain past city council special and regular minute minutes from prior years as presented.

Second.

Uh roll call, please.

Councilmember Brownstone, yes, uh Vice Mayor Penrose?

Yes, and Mayor Reddick?

Yes.

Motion approved.

Okay, thank you.

Um, item nine, we have no ordinances in public hearings this evening.

So we're moving on to item 10.

And uh we already agreed to move up item 10B ahead of item 10A, and that is updates on the residential rent stabilization program and residential rental registry program.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, and Community.

Irma Costa, City Manager's Office.

Is this better?

Okay, perfect.

Good evening.

Tonight I am here to provide an update on the city's rent stabilization and rental registration programs.

These programs were launched in the summer of 2024 following council's direction from the November 2023 study session on tenant protections.

These programs were adopted through ordinances 2024, which created the residential rental registry, and ordinance 2024, which established the rent stabilization program.

Together, these programs created the city's local framework for tenant protections, rental market oversight, and housing data collection.

The rental registry requires all residential rental units in Hafoon Bay to be registered annually through the city's online registry portal.

The registry supports housing policy and planning while also monitoring the rental market.

As of the end of 2025, there are a thousand five hundred and eighty-six registered units.

At the beginning of the program.

And I want to clarify that we are not saying that we've identified and registered every rental unit in Hafoon Bay.

What the data is showing is that there are more rental units in the community than we initially anticipated before the program launched.

So this registry is helping the city develop a more accurate and complete understanding of what the local rental market looks like.

As the program has developed, staff has also identified a number of properties that were previously registered but are no longer operating as rentals.

And some of these include conversions to owner occupied homes, long-term vacancies, and properties that were sold and no longer being rented.

The rent stabilization ordinance applies to residential rent properties with two or more units built before February 1st, 1995, and this is consistent with Costa Hawkings.

Of the 1,586 registered units, 698 of those units are rent stabilized.

So for the year 2025 2026, the maximum allowable rate increase is kept at 1.2%, with no more than one increase permitted in a 12-month period.

That percentage is based on the lesser of 3% or 80% of the change in CPI, ensuring that the CAP remains responsive to inflation.

At program inception, council allocated funding from the Affordable Housing Fund to support the program setup and implementation.

These programs are funded through a free structure.

The annual registry fee is $75 per unit.

The rent stabilization fee is $286 per unit, and for a rent stabilized fee of $361 per unit.

The fee support the administration of the programs, compliance monitoring, enforcement, and tenant education.

To date, the city has expended approximately 257,000 dollars on implementation and administration of the rental programs.

Of the amount, approximately 220,000 was occurred during the first year of implementation.

Those initial costs, including system setup and development, program launch registration rollout, community outreach, development of enforcement procedures, establishment of the petition and hearing process, and initial staffing and customer service support for tenants and landlords.

As with most new programs, these startup costs were front loaded.

So the first year required a significant amount of administrative work to build the program infrastructure, educate the community, and establish all the necessary systems to maintain the programs.

So when you compare the total expenditures of 250,000, it reflects an overall cost recovery of approximately 68% to date.

This comparison is provided for scale, recognizing that the initial implementation costs were front loaded during the first year.

So in terms of program administration, is primarily carried out by an administrative analyst with enforcement and compliance activities supported by the community preservation specialist, and legal and policy support from the city's attorney's office and the city manager on a case-by-case basis.

But staff, some staff responsibilities include managing the registry, responding to landlord and tenant inquiries, processing registrations, verifying exemptions, reviewing rental increases, and just providing technical assistance for tenants and landlords.

I will note that during the initial rollout, staffing support was higher due to the volume of registrations and outreach that the program required.

This year, staff costs have stabilized as operations have become more streamlined.

So for the current year, staffing costs are approximately $10,000, reflecting a more efficient administrative structure compared to the first year.

Ptolemy, they are the registry platform that the city uses to collect the rental housing information, and it's the system used by landlords to register units, submit compliance documentation, and pay annual fees.

And this year's expenditures in terms of Ptolemy include the platform licensing, maintenance and technical support, and just the system administration.

And then lastly, legal aid.

So the city contracts with legal aid to provide free legal assistance to low income tenants related to evictions, rent disputes, and tenant rights education.

The service makes sure that tenants have access to professional legal guidance and helps prevent housing instability through early intervention.

And as outlined in my staff report, we do believe that if current staffing levels and contracting needs and just the workload hold, the programs are projected to be financially sustainable without additional support from the general fund or the affordable housing fund.

So early outcomes.

So for the first time, the city now has a comprehensive verified database of its rental housing stock through the rental registry.

And it also provides an ongoing data collection system that allows the city to monitor rent increases, vacancy trends, turnover and compliance patterns.

So we believe that over time, this data will support more informed policy decisions, better forecasting, and stronger long-term housing planning.

This brings me to the policy options for council to consider this evening.

So one potential policy option for council's consideration is the repeal of both programs.

Under this option, the city would discontinue all local residential rent regulation and rental unit registration requirements.

This would eliminate the ongoing administrative obligations for landlords, including annual unit registration, fees, payments, rent increased reporting and compliance monitoring.

From an administrative standpoint, the repeal would also eliminate the need for continuum program staffing.

However, it is important to note that the repeal would still require a period of program window, including responding to landlord and tenant inquiries and then managing data retention and transition activities.

However, the city's tenant protection ordinance would remain in effect and continue to provide just cause eviction protections for tenants.

And in addition, state law protections under the Tenant Protection Act of 2019, also referred to as AB 1482, would continue to apply for qualifying units, including caps on rent increases and just cause eviction protections.

Under option two, so the retention of the rental registry and the repeal of rent stabilization.

Under this option, the city would discontinue local rent regulation while retaining the rental registry as a housing data and policy tool.

So the registry would continue to provide the city with up-to-date information on the local rental housing stock.

The annual unit registration and payment of the registration fee would remain a requirement, and tenants would continue to receive baseline protections under state law AB 1482, as well as local just cause evictions under the city's tenant protection ordinance.

And lastly, option three would be the retention of both programs.

So under this option, the city would continue to operate both programs, and this would preserve the city's full local rental housing framework, including uh rate increase limitations, tenant protections, the petition process, and the rest the rental housing data system.

So the city would continue to monitor local rental housing conditions, administering compliance and enforcement activities, and providing education and legal assistant resources to tenants and landlords.

And that is it for me.

I'm happy to open it for questions or clarifying questions.

So I just want to remind everybody that this item is to receive an update, which we just had from staff, and provide guidance.

Okay.

Um I'm going to open it up to clarifying questions from council members first, and then we have nine speakers have filled out forms.

There's probably other people online.

Excuse me, 10 who would also like to speak, but I'm going to ask you to ask clarifying questions.

Now you'll probably think of other things that you can ask later, but we're gonna start with a list of questions.

Okay, all right.

Please start.

Thank you.

Um, is there anything in the uh rent stabilization ordinance about sub-leasing?

I don't think so.

Okay.

Well, the ordinance applies to sublease as well as primary direct leases.

Um so we've structured all of our rental protections to prevent you know, people sidestepping it through subleases.

So all the protections apply.

Um correct me if I'm missing something here, but I think that's is our tenant protection ordinance correct, yeah.

But but it would apply to rent stabilization as well.

Yeah, so how would you know if a sublease it just the tenant again would have to say something?

Yeah, I I in most cases um tenant education is really important with these programs because unless they say something, and if the landlord's not reporting things, um, we wouldn't have a way to verify it.

Although the annual process, as long as people are being honest during that process, we're gonna identify these things.

Okay, and um one other question.

Um the report mentioned the rent registry aids or supports, um, the housing element updates and the for the arena housing element that we have to do, the various cycles.

If if we didn't have rent stabilization, how would we still get those numbers?

Um I think that would fall maybe under option two if we do decide to keep the rent registry because it would allow us to continue to collect data in terms of like the rental housing.

Do you know how planning got it before got that information before the registry?

I I I don't if I can jump in.

The rent registry provides really important information.

I don't believe it's crucial or necessary for the housing element or or meeting RENA, um, but it certainly is providing us better information than we've had in the past.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

Anybody else right now?

Mr.

Brownstone.

And this ordinance doesn't apply to single family homes or ADUs or mobile homes, right?

Uh, the rent stabilization doesn't, but the registry does require those to register.

Yeah.

Got it.

Thanks.

Um, okay, I don't have a question at the moment.

So we have 15 persons who have submitted speaking slips, and there may be more who want to speak online, but since there's 15, I'm gonna restrict um time to two minutes per person.

And I'm going to begin with Cindy Carrosco.

Good evening, everybody.

Um, yes, my name is Cindy Croscoe, and I appreciate the opportunity to address you this evening.

I'm actually here speaking on behalf of my 87 years young father who owns a 1970s duplex that he has rented downtown for nearly 40 years.

It consists of a single-family home in a detached studio, a duplex, which is why uh even though it's single family, it does fall under this um program umbrella.

His current tenants are senior citizens and have been in the units for over 10 years.

His neighbors also have tenants who have resided for 10 or more years.

They are not greedy landlords, they don't raise the rents every year, and when they have, it has been nowhere near 10%.

They are mom and pop housing providers who take pride in their home.

They offer below market rents to good to maintain good tenants who help care for their property.

As you know, it's very expensive to own a property.

There's increases every year in property taxes, garbage rates, repairs, and as of this year, a $200 parcel tax.

Last year, my father paid $772 for the residential rent stabilization program for one house and one studio apartment, $772.

His allowable rent increase for that same year was 1.2%.

For his studio apartment, that equated to $11.

It's no wonder why small um housing providers are selling their homes.

My children and his grandchildren both rent, um, as do several of his other grandchildren.

We understand very, very well this absolute crisis that is persistent across the country, really.

However, as well intended as it may have been, the rent stabilization program is not the solution.

It does not provide a single new unit of affordable housing in Half Moon Bay.

It discourages homeowners from spending money to maintain their property, and it doesn't bring in additional property tax revenue.

It's also redundant with California AB 1482.

Uh with time running short, I will jump to the end, which is um strongly uh ask that you please follow uh proceed with option one to discontinue the program in its entirety and focus your efforts on items which will bring new affordable homes and housing to Half Moon Bay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Just a reminder to everyone, please keep your remarks to two minutes or less.

Thank you.

Uh the next and no applause, okay?

We're gonna be respectful of everybody who speaks this evening.

Uh the next speaker is Brian Jacobs, followed by Nancy Stern.

Good evening.

Uh I'm Brian Jacobs.

Thank you for having me.

I'll keep it brief.

The first speaker I think did a good job.

Um I also am encouraging option one.

I'm a real estate broker, and I'm helping a client with a property who owns a three-unit building built in the early 1900s near downtown.

Uh for $2,500 a month rent.

She can raise it $30.

Um, I don't know if any of you have any bills, but mine's last time in last year, your bill only went up $30 for gas, water, garbage, any maintenance.

It discourages maintenance, and so she decided I need to sell the property.

I can't keep up with this in trying to sell the property.

I've had five buyers come to the property and look at the rent stabilization and say, Well, this is this is not feasible.

This is a early 1900s built home.

How am I going to maintain this home?

So I think that this is an impressive amount of money that they can increase for someone who wants to maintain the home.

And everything the previous speaker said actually sums it up really well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Brian.

Next speaker is Nancy Stern.

Please withhold applause.

I'll remind you again.

Nancy Stern, followed by Harvey Raarbach.

Thanks for uh thanks for bringing this to our attention.

And a request for the future if the city could use the rental registry to let housing providers such as myself know that this is going to be a topic.

I just heard about this last minute, so I'm glad I'm here to address you.

Um I'm all for affordable housing, and it's no surprise to me that this no go go no-go decision has come back to the council from its inception.

The ordinance lacks clarity on overall objective of the ordinance, including what potential policy, which was referenced earlier.

I'm still not clear on the policy that we're trying to address here.

Decisions were being considered, and it lacks an overall sense of purpose as far as so what we collect this data.

What are we going to do with it?

I nice information, but a lot of this information is available on the web.

It lacks public um outreach prior to implementation and limited communication.

It lacks the education component so renters can learn more about their rights as noted in chapter 7 of the Half Moon Bay Municipal Code.

I've seen nothing to that.

It lacks transparency regarding output of public consumption of data collected and corresponding outcomes and actions being considered as a result of the data collection.

All I see here is information, but nothing, no actions from it.

And it lacks consideration of our Half Moon Bay demographics.

From the get go, this appears to have been a cookie cutter, big brother, big metro city approach for a small coastal town.

So on the upside, there's an opportunity to learn from the insights gained from this experiment with regard to how and why decisions such as this are made.

Thanks for reconsidering.

Uh both programs.

Thank you, Nancy.

Next speaker is Harvey Rarbach, followed by Robert Pedro.

When I look at the staff report, I am impressed with the success of this program.

Contrary to what uh a lot of speakers have talked about.

Uh the people who really benefit from this are not here, mostly because they're scared of showing up in public.

Uh, I've heard two objections to this uh rent stabilization program.

One was that it would drive all the landlords out of business, and our housing stock would decrease exponentially.

As you just heard, there are nine units that have been removed out of over 1,500.

So the housing stock is still there.

This is just fear mongering.

Uh, the other objection was we already have state laws that protect tenants and have uh a rent cap.

Uh, if you look at what actually happened prior to the uh rent stabilization ordinance, nobody was benefited.

Nobody would go forward with the complex procedures that were needed to uh get the tenant protections.

So, excuse me.

So the fact that we have local legal society uh intervention really helps the tenants in this community, and I urge you to keep both programs.

They're doing a wonderful job.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Robert Pedro, followed by Frank Bento.

Good evening, Robert Pedro.

I provide uh tenant placement services uh for tenants and then also property management services for housing providers.

I want to start by thanking you for your dedication, service, and leadership uh to the residents of Half Moon Bay.

It takes a lot of effort and time, so I really appreciate what you do.

Uh, I respectfully request that you support option one and uh repeal the the two policies that actually cause more damage to the people they're supposed to protect.

So please consider that.

And then also, if we're looking for other solutions, uh, there has been some nice reports and data out that about 70% of evictions are due to non-payment.

Redwood City and now currently Sam Mattel have adopted a rental assistance program for tenants.

Do you have a situation where your tenant loses their job?

It takes them two or three weeks to find another job, it may take four to six weeks to get that next paycheck, so they're gonna fall behind maybe a month or two.

This rental assistance program helps tenants in that situation.

So I would highly recommend looking to that type of a program as a possible solution.

Thank you for your time.

I uh would urge you to support option one.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Frank Vento, followed by um, looks like Sarah Brown.

Why not?

Thank you.

Frank Vento, thank you, City Council and Mayor for listening to the speakers tonight.

Um I'm representing a couple of landlords uh that live out of the area.

I informed them today and they couldn't make to this, so they asked me to speak on their behalf.

Um, three percent to cap on rents, um $3,500 a month, that's $43 increase.

Most of Half Moon Bay is now in a high fire zone, and people are seeing rent insurance increases that are way past $43.

Um, and again, maintenance costs on property labor rates aren't going down, material costs aren't going down, but and there's no other businesses in the city of Half Moon Bay that have restrictions on how much they earn.

And AB 1482 is a reasonable amount, um, as a restriction, but to ratchet it down this tight, you're just it's it's just there's there's no reason for it, and I understand it's an expensive place to live.

I get that, but to penalize property owners who are actually providing the housing to tenants is not a great approach.

More housing is the solution.

Supply and demand, more housing, more it's can become more affordable.

Yet, yet the city councils of the past have restricted growth in Half Moon Bay, hence we don't have the housing to provide for people to live.

Thank you.

Uh Sarah Boeno, followed by Mina Springer.

Hi, thank you for the opportunity, and thank you for all the efforts that go into collecting all this data.

I've spoken on this in the past and stand here tonight again to firmly oppose the continuation of the rental registration ordinance.

I echo the other speakers' efforts in supporting option one.

The state already has rent control protections in place which offer assistance and protections to tenants.

I am in support of option one to repeal the program.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mina Springer, followed by Joanne Rikoski.

Hi, it's Mona Springer, and I'm here to support the option one removal of the current rent stabilization ordinance.

I own a three-unit building near downtown Half Moon Bay.

It's an older building built long before 1995.

I'm limited to an increase in rent to 1.23%, as the other most of the other speakers have said, that that a few dollars does not pay the bills.

It doesn't take care of the rise of insurance, it doesn't take care of the property tax situation, it doesn't allow me to do the maintenance that needs to be done on my rentals.

And you know, we just had this big storm.

So I'm selling my property.

Um that wasn't my goal.

My goal was to leave legacy a legacy situation for the my nieces and nephews, and that's just not a possibility anymore.

It feels like a violation of my private private property rights.

Who did the math?

Because it's it's clearly obvious that just in the rise of property taxes every year.

How does that how does that work?

And we're also talking about 15, 15 renters that have had issues that that the state um ordinance could be taken care of, uh, out of what 1700 uh homeowners that are renting, it just doesn't make any sense to me.

Um the support is there for renters, it's it's easy to print out information and have it at City Hall or to be mailed out.

Um, you know, I don't I don't have any problem informing my renters.

Please wrap up.

I do have a problem with the way that this is all being done.

So yes, let's get rid of let's do option one.

Thank you, Mona.

The next speaker is Joanne Murkowski, followed by Linda Cross Anderson.

Hi again, and thank you for the opportunity to make another comment.

So tonight you've got three alternatives presented to you, and I'm speaking in favor of continuation of both, both the rental registry and the rental stabilization.

One of the concerns raised loudly last year when there was discussion was the potential loss of rental properties.

So tonight's report is that there are 1,586 units currently registered, and that is nearly 300 more than were anticipated at the launch of the program.

Speakers emphasize the cost to them in terms of ongoing maintenance or special projects that are necessary.

But despite that, or aside from that, the fact that there is a very small increase allowable per year is discussed in terms of the income, but the part that's not discussed is the income that they are getting from the rental units themselves.

For example, if the rent is 2,500 a month, that's $30,000.

And if it's $3,500 a month, then that's $42,000 annually.

So I would think if you could get 42,000 per unit, you could probably get some improvements accomplished.

We don't have data, much data, and I know it takes time to get it, but legal aid prevented threatened evictions.

Kudos to them.

And I think that the benefit to those residents cannot be overstated.

Thank you.

Again, I'm in support.

Thank you, Joanne.

Next speaker is Linda Cross Anderson, followed by Judy Taylor.

Hi, I'm Linda Cross Anderson.

I am Sam Carr president, San Mateo County Association of Realtors president for 2026, but today I speak as a resident of Half Moon Bay.

And you know, we have an adorable little town here, and people are really proud to live here.

So don't destroy the legacies that people have tried to build for their families and have create a city of totally deferred maintenance.

I hear a lot about the financial issue.

We've heard a lot about that.

I think you can do the math.

You realize that it sounds like a lot of money when somebody's getting X amount per unit, but it's really not.

When you look at units and how much it costs for a roof or a fence or you know, anything like that, even just water.

So I am respectfully requesting that you repeal these two programs and vote yes on option one.

Thank you.

Thank you, Linda.

Next speaker is Judy Taylor, followed by Fernando Pena.

Good evening.

I haven't been here in a while.

Um, okay, so a couple of comments to make here.

First off, my primary party affiliation is a pragmatist.

If something works, you do more of it, and if it doesn't work, you stop.

And study after study after study has shown that tenant protections do not work over time.

They benefit the person that comes in at the beginning, and then everybody else suffers over time.

And please look at those studies.

Um it's ironic for me to sit here and and listen to the city council, and this is not casting aspersions, but three of you were on the council in 23 and in 24.

And at 23, you raised the sewer service charges 12 and a half percent, and in 24 they were raised 13 percent, and at 24 at the same time, you pass these provisions that said property owners, if you are renting your properties out, you can't pass that entire expense on to the to your tenants, and I'm a tenant, and it's not fun to get rental increases, but it's less fun to have the property sell to somebody else because the property owner can no longer manage it, and that is the reality that we're dealing with, and please don't be naive in thinking that this doesn't have an impact down the road because it very definitely does.

Um, my question about the rental of the legal aid cases, would those did either of the ordinances that we're discussing tonight?

Did either of the ordinances change the outcome of those cases?

Did they prevent cases from moving forward?

Did they resolve the cases differently than they would have been if these ordinances have not been in place?

Because I'm not hearing that that has happened, and and I would like to know if these ordinances have really made a difference in those cases.

Um the last comment, please go to Alaska, go to Coast Side Hope, go to Abundant Grace, put those people together who were working with the tenants and have them come up with a tenant protection program that can actually work, have them work with your staff to make that happen, please.

Thank you.

Thank you, Judy.

The next speaker is Fernando Pena, followed by Barbara LeBay.

Good evening, Mayor Ruddick and members of the city council.

My name is Fernando Pena.

I'm here on behalf of the San Mateo County Association of Realtors on behalf of small mom and pop housing providers.

I want to thank the council and the staff for bringing this review before us.

I am here in opposition to the rent stabilization and rental registry programs and respectfully request that you vote yes on option one.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Barbara LeVay, followed by Jan Gray.

Good evening.

Thank you for all your work that you're doing.

It's it's incredible and it's well formatted, it was easy to understand.

I appreciate it.

But I am echoing the others in encouraging you to go for option one.

We do have state protections for tenants.

It often is said when you're people come to me and talk about, oh, can I buy this house to rent it out?

And are there any tenant protections?

Yes, there are.

And they're like, never mind, I don't want a piece of it.

They don't want to get involved in and being governed with their own private property.

Again, it's private property rights.

And I do like the concept that San Mateo, the City of San Mateo adopted was by taking the that money and putting it towards tenant protection and helping those who were getting evicted on account of not being able to pay their rent.

So the money could be redirected towards those people that you're really trying to help.

So thank you.

I appreciate all your work.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Jan Gray, followed by Pamela Doer.

Good evening.

My name is Jan Gray.

I am a citizen of Half Moon Bay.

Very proud to be one.

I've been around in real estate for over five decades.

I have a lot of knowledge packed in this brain.

I have seen social engineering come, and I've seen a social engineering go.

It rarely works.

You've given it a good try.

A lot of faithfully strong people have put their effort into this and it shows.

I mean, when you're now in a fire zone, that means you need to get a new roof and all that sort of thing.

These people are not BSing you when they are telling you that in the future the housing market will suffer because of deferred maintenance.

There is no other way to go.

You have to pay your mortgage, have to pay your taxes and insurance, you have to pay for maintenance and gardening, garbage.

The only other thing left is if you can't increase the rent, you can't put on that roof.

So I strongly implore you to vote yes on option number one.

Thank you, Jan.

Next speaker is Pamela Dohr, followed by Nancy Fontana.

Hey, I'm Pam Doer, and I've been in affordable housing for about 20 years.

As of last month, I've retired.

And I would really encourage you to consider voting for policy option one.

And the main reason for that is that we really need to put our energy into the three Ps.

Production of new units, protection for tenants, and then the most important one preservation of homeowners that already exist in this community that won't be able to stay unless they get some supports.

And one way to do that is if you're asking them to take the burden of providing affordable housing and offer lower rents.

You give them something in return.

You don't ask them to pay more to do that.

You give them something that's going to allow them to stay in your community and offer this service like a tax exemption.

All of those are really crucial programs, and rental subsidy for tenants is essential.

I think I heard somebody say something that really stuck with me, which was you know, you're a landlord is getting really high rents, but nobody really talked about the mortgage cost, the high mortgage cost.

My mortgage is $5,600 a month.

And is and that sounds ridiculous, but the truth is I made a mistake and bought when it was high, and I was happy to buy in a town where I grew up.

And I'm fortunate to own, but I won't be able to stay unless we make some changes, and we've got to really think about that.

In the last meeting I came to about rent stabilization, I heard a council member say, if you can't afford to be here, get out.

And I just don't think that's the right attitude.

We're all a community.

We all offer a way to support each other.

And you know, I met a high school student when I first bought my house.

He came over to help me do some construction, and now he's a contractor in town.

He called the other day, he's like, I don't have a place to live.

Can you help me?

And he turned to me because he knows that I treat my tenants right, I reduce their rent every year that they stay, and I'm a good landlord, and I want to stay in this community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Pam.

The next speaker, uh final speaker on a slip is Nancy Fontana, and then we will go online.

Oh boy, here I go.

Uh the document I just gave you does mention some of the other sections.

Gosh.

Some of the other sections of the entire chapter housing.

So I'm gonna read, read this for you.

I'm here this evening to support the repeal of the city's body of law that includes rent stabilization, rent registration, tenant protection, and residential lease term ordinances under Chapter Six and titled Housing of the Municipal Code.

Here I'm going to be calling it program.

The program creates a cumbersome process that requires an exorbitant amount of staff time for a city this size as small as Half Moon Bay.

The program relies on excessive fees and penalties support to support its cost.

One ordinance states that the city is not precluding itself from exercising its power to add business licensing fees to residential units should it be deemed necessary.

The program is imbalanced in that it protects the projects the position that one party is a victim and the one party is a villain.

By having an entire chapter 6.08 tenant protections devoted to tenants when there is no chapter providing landlord protections.

The fee for a petition by a tenant is $50.

The fee for a petition by a landlord is over $5,000, thereby encouraging tenants to exercise their right to petition, while discouraging landlords from exercising their right to petition.

By projecting the position that landlords are the cause of the current rental housing crisis and should therefore fix it.

By criminalizing the landlord for code violation initially caused by a tenant, the tenant may be evicted, but not charged criminally.

The program provides no positive incentives for landlords to rent their units at below market rates.

There are many creative things that the city could do to incentivize landlords.

I see none of that.

I looked through these codes.

The program appears vindictive in nature.

Should the city council choose not to repeal the ordinances, I request that the council consider putting the entire program on hold, except perhaps the registration to provide data for extensive study, that major amendments with a different approach be considered.

This said, I hold the concern that even this will be too much for a city of this size.

I believe anything less than repeal or major amendments with a different approach will be a disaster to the future of Hapman-based rental market by reducing the number of rental properties, by landlords opting out of the rental market, potential landlords selling previously owner occupied homes that they may have otherwise turned into a rental, by discouraging the purchase or establishment of housing for rental units by potential landlords.

All of which will exasperate the rental housing crisis and ultimately have a negative impact on tenants.

And thank you for your consideration.

I just want to point out to you that all the tabs.

Everything in these tabs.

I have your fee schedule.

You really should look at the fee schedule and see what you passed in.

What was it, July?

Uh the city has contributed greatly to the cost of housing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Nancy.

Um, I don't see many folks online, but if you are online watching and you'd like to address this item, please raise your hand now, and you will have you'll be allowed to speak for two minutes.

We do have um one, Madam Mayor Evelyn de Souza.

Okay.

Go ahead, Evelyn.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Um, I'm here tonight to ask.

Sorry, there's an echo, I'm so sorry.

To report the rental rate as well as the rent stabilization, and so in favor of option one.

Um I'd like to see affordable housing and these and your rental program that sort of fits in with the rental, sorry, the housing element program.

Um, I had one of the speakers before speak to three P, that was Pamela and Door, and I very much support that, focusing on protection expanding rent subsidies and direct assistance for residents who are truly at risk of displacement, and to enable the accelerated production of affordable renting, rental and house homeownership opportunities, and then finally preservation to support the existing landlords to keep units on the market, including private tax exemption or relief so that we don't lose affordable housing.

Thank you for your time and considering a reset that delivers real outcomes for community.

Thank you, Evelyn.

Is there anyone else online who would like to comment on the rental registry program and um the rental stabilization ordinance?

You will have two minutes if you raise your hand.

I see no one raising their hand, so I'm going to bring it back to the council, and um I'm going to have us take a 10-minute break to use restrooms and do whatever else you want to do, but we'll come back at about five of nine and we'll continue this discussion.

Thank you.

Brought something forward.

Can you repeat that what you said, Matthew, please?

I think the question was is the rental registry program necessary for us to inform the housing element.

Uh my response is it is not.

I think it we we have better information because of this.

Um, but this is new information that we didn't even have when we were developing the housing element.

So it could inform the housing element in the future and it'd be helpful, but it is not necessary.

All right, thank you.

We're going around for comments as well.

Oh yeah.

Sorry.

I have some comments.

The first thing I note tonight is that there's not a tenant in the house, or there may be a tenant, but there aren't very many tenants in the house who isn't a realtor.

Um, the reason we don't have tenants in the house is that they're scared out of their wits.

They're going to be arrested, they're going to be shot, they're going to be put on a boat to uh Venezuela or some other country.

Um so they're in a state of fear, so they haven't spoken up.

So we've heard one side of the story.

I have great sympathy for that side of the story.

I'm a homeowner and I'm in the high fire hazard region.

My property taxes went up two thousand dollars last year.

Um I just paid sixteen thousand dollars to have my house painted.

It's incredibly expensive to own property here.

And a lot of people who own property here do it because they want to be able to rent out to help support the cost of the housing.

And I get that.

That makes total sense to me.

I don't have a problem with it.

I also don't have a problem with businesses making a profit.

But I want to make one point.

Whether it's a mom and pop or it's a multifamily landlord, multi-unit landlord, you're in business and you're in business to make money.

Now you may have other motives.

You may want to be in business because you want your children to be able to inherit your house and have someplace to live.

And so the only way you can do that is by renting out some units.

There are all sorts of stories like that that I've heard that are totally believable.

But it's still a business.

Is that one that uh one of the speakers at public forum made.

If somebody charges 25, $2,000 a unit per month, they get $24,000 of income.

In order to be a landlord, it's going to cost you $361 in this city to register in our registry program.

$361 out of $24,000, and that's with a rent of $2,000, which is, I believe, lower than the average rent that people are paying in this area.

It's a pittance.

This is a small amount.

Another point I'd like to make is somebody said well, don't have this, these rental rent stabilization and rent rental registry.

Build affordable housing.

Oh my God.

I mean, that that makes me want to scream.

We have tried so hard to build affordable housing.

And whenever we do, we get people saying, Oh, no, not in my backyard.

I don't want a five-story building.

I don't care if it's for retired farm workers.

We can't afford to build it.

And we can't our nonprofits can't afford to build it.

When we put out the RFP for 555 Kelly, we got one nonprofit coming to the front.

None of the others would touch it.

So what's the option then?

No affordable housing.

Well, that's where we're living right now.

We're still trying to get some some in this town, but it's gonna take maybe four years before we get 50 units.

If we're lucky, what we didn't hear from are the folks who are living whole families, four, five people in one room and sharing a kitchen and sharing a bathroom with four or five other families.

That's not the typical mom and pop landlord that's here talking about what's going on, but it's what actually exists in this city.

And those are the people that we're fighting for, we're talking about what was the figure that I had.

We're talking about protecting probably three thousand tenants when you talk about 15,800 or 681 units, whatever it is that we have in the city.

That means we've got living in those units, we've got a population of at least three thousand.

Maybe it's more, maybe it's a little less, but that's an approximate amount.

And what did it cost the city to do that?

Less than forty thousand dollars a year for two years.

That's what it's cost us.

So don't talk about what the city is spending on this program.

That's crazy.

A few years ago, we decided as a council that our city had not paid any attention to the working community here in town.

And I specifically am talking about the majority of the workers, the Hispanic community, who compromise 30% of our population.

So we decided to do something about it.

And one of the things we did about it was start this program of rental registry and rent stabilization to help one-third of our population.

Now that doesn't help the mom and pop landlord, but it helps one third of our population.

How much help have they been?

They've been no help.

We didn't have any tenants going before the state board and saying, gee whiz.

State law, whatever it is, is not protecting me.

I think that one of the things I wanted to do this year was I want to concentrate on trying to find a way to help the folks that are not at the poverty level, but that are saying they can't afford to live in town here, and I think we need programs to help them.

They want to live here.

But it has nothing to do with this program.

And this program takes nothing away from them.

It's difficult for everybody.

Anyway, I'll stop there for right now.

Thank you.

Councilmember Negencast.

Thank you, Mayor.

Community, I, you know, listening to what was spoken to tonight, some emails that were sent to me talking to land owners who rent property in my district, also renters themselves.

I think subleasing is a bigger problem that I don't know how you address that, but I think that's something that is that does go on in that can that has you know, again, I don't know how you exactly catch that, but I think the subleasing is more of an issue.

I've always felt this type of uh program, the current registry and stabilization was too much for our size town.

If we wanted to have a rent stabilization, have something that to me would be more manageable, and I don't know what that is yet.

I I've some folks have told me there's some communities out there that have something that works, but it's not as intensive, takes the time or what the program that was adopted here in uh currently in Half Moon Bay.

I liked also I heard about rental assistance.

I think that's something if there's something we could do if somebody does lose their job and they can't pay they're being evicted because they can't pay their rent I don't know if we can do you know same type of program was mentioned Redwood City and San Mateo because those are obviously much larger cities than we are but maybe we can come up with our own you know program here in Half Moon Bay.

So I'm not uh I I'd I want us to to reboot so I'd rather have something that would be more manageable here so I'm not uh looking I'm looking to do option one is where I'm looking at thank you.

Councilmember Brownstone um I agree with uh with a lot of what um council member penrose has said because I'm not seeing what the options are here in terms of 1482 which was passed in 2019 which means it was been in effect for six years I need more data I mean how many people from Half Moon Bay have utilized that what does it cost to utilize that?

Does legal services kick in on that we have I have zero data because almost every person well I wouldn't say everybody but at least half the folks who spoke for option one said hey we have 1482 so we don't need any of this I have no idea what the effectiveness of 1482 is in reality it's kind of like a baseline and actually it provides a five percent minimum increase each year.

So up to 10 percent.

Now you know five percent of two thousand dollars a month is a hundred dollars that might not seem like a lot to many of the people in this room but to a lot of other folks who this program addresses are people where a hundred dollars a month could mean the difference between paying rent or putting enough food on the table for a family and if it's a 10 percent increase that's 200 a month so a lot of you might not think that's a lot of money but for many it is who these ordinances are are designed to protect and that's always the question you know as a community do we want to be able to protect all our neighbors and workers in the community and at what cost is it to others and where's the balance um this idea of rental assistance that I heard well that's interesting because it keeps the it keeps the example I keep saying was well for example if you lose your job well what if your landlord's raising the rent 10 or 15% a year is that a reason to get rental assistance also without these ordinances that's what can happen each year there would be no control.

So these are the questions I don't have all the answers to but um and how much is a rental assistance program cost?

How much do we have in our housing budget now?

A million about a million okay so I don't know would this council be willing to um first put in a rental assistance program with that million dollars and see how many people we can help with that before we get rid of this program would that make a difference.

What I do know is without some kind of rental control.

We'll simply increase, we will for many be increasing overcrowding.

Um maybe more evictions because people can't pay their rent, more homelessness.

With these programs, I think evictions are being reduced, and there's less homelessness and less overcrowding.

So these are the things that I think we need to balance as a community, and you know, I hear a lot of examples that support individual arguments that I've heard this evening, but we really have not heard from tenants, and this is exactly what happened the last time we discussed this.

We had landlords speaking, realtors speaking, but no tenants.

We didn't hear the voices of the tenants speaking.

There were some people here are tenants, but not the kind of tenants who are being very adversely affected by it.

So a point of order, please hold your emotional expressions back, and you know, no breaking into the conversation, please.

Let's be respectful of uh you all and uh of us as well.

Thank you.

Yes, I do realize there are a few folks here who are tenants.

Um, but I really wasn't, I don't think I was hearing from folks who are very low income here, and that's what a lot of these programs were addressing.

So people who maybe earn $30,000 a year max, people who are near poverty level.

So, how do we help those folks out?

Um, and I haven't really heard any answers to that, other than, well, if you can't afford the rent, then you know you shouldn't live here.

So if that's the kind of community we want to be, okay.

But that's the question we have to ask ourselves.

Is there a middle ground to help people out?

Without landlords feeling put upon.

But when I look at some of those examples that we quoted here, you know, you have three units, two thousand dollars a unit, you know, that's a fair amount of income for three units, and it is a business.

You know, being a landlord's a business.

I've been a landlord, and um, yeah, it can be if you can't afford it, then maybe you shouldn't be a landlord.

But it's a business, and if people are buying a building for the first time and there's a really high mortgage, that's a decision.

Other people have owned a building for years and their mortgage is paid off, and there's a different kind of income flow.

So, until I think I have more answers to some of these questions, and what some of the alternatives could be around fees, etc.

I would rather either keep in place what we have till we have more answers, till we understand if 1482 really is a solution or not, and whether or not we want to have rental assistance using a lot of our housing fund instead of other purposes, and also to the other point that was made about hey, the solution is we should build more housing.

Well, this is not a city that has typically been in favor of growing our housing, if anything, it's the other direction, right?

Very, very, very slow growth.

And it's taken years just to even see if we could get 555 Kelly 40 units, um, which is at very little cost to the city because a nonprofit would be paying for it all, but even that has a ton of opposition.

So, I guess I'm a little confused as you know, to where uh how we can provide more housing if no one wants to build it.

So are there renters who need help here in Half Moon Bay?

No question about it.

Are rents too high?

Absolutely.

Are the current programs at an appropriate scale for a city of, you know, approximately 12,000 people?

I don't think so.

I don't think it's the right fit in terms of scale for our community.

And I have voted against both portions of the program, you know, on a couple of different occasions.

And I think there are things that we can do instead.

Like I like the idea of the rental assistance.

In fact, right now for the last few years, we've given uh grants to Coast Side Hope, a portion of which have been used for rental assistance.

Correct me if I'm wrong about that.

I think you're probably referring to our uh CSFA program.

Yes, um that funding isn't, I don't believe it is used for rental assistance, but separately.

Um during the pandemic, we gave funding to both Coastside Hope and St.

Vincent de Paul for rental assistance that came out of our affordable housing fund.

That's correct.

I think I recall that the the applications were to cover a portion of rental assistance.

I don't know if it was the entire program, but um so we've already done some of that, and I think we should look at that um again, and um one of the problems we have here, well, nationally and in California, is that the CPI does not cover uh landlords' homeowners insurance, they calculate it for renters, they don't calculate it or include it for landlords, and those costs have been going up.

Um we've got new fire maps uh that are gonna require people to do retrofitting of their properties.

That's gonna be you know, quite a bit of money that will all happen at a minimum under the state cap, which is you know, the between five and ten percent, and you know, I think we need to account for that for those rising costs.

Um I don't know that we could incentivize landlords to reduce their rents.

I know I've spoken to a lot of landlords in this town who've said, believe me, I do not willy-nilly raise my rents.

I like my tenants, I help out families, you know, I'm not gouging you, and uh I believe them because we're a small town, I know them, they know me.

Um, these are you know small landlords, mom and pop landlords.

If if we drive them out, we're gonna end up with private equity, you know, in New York or Los Angeles or wherever, buying up these units, and um lobbying the state to be allowed to have waivers for one or more years, if not throw it out all together, um, and that has an impact on the character of our community.

Um, I think we want to do everything we can to keep private equity out of Half Moon Bay and the Coastide from owning rental units uh or buying up single-family homes and turning them into rental units.

Um, it's hard to be a landlord.

People want to be landlords.

We don't want to stop them from wanting to be landlords.

It's a source of housing, so um, I'd like to find a way to help the renters.

I don't want to gouge tenants.

We have a tenant protection program that I'd like us to keep.

Um we give money to the Legal aid Society of uh County of San Mateo.

I think that's a really good investment.

Um, you know, maybe we have a tip line that where people can contact us first and we can put them in touch with the legal aid society, but I think there are pieces in place that we could um perhaps enhance our contribution to them.

But I think those sorts of things will help, and it's more in scale of our community.

We have one person, you know, managing our rent control program.

That just doesn't make sense to me.

We have a community preservation specialist who has to enforce on a number of different programs, not just rent control, it's regular nuisances, it's Airbnbs, it's all kind of stuff.

You know, we just don't have the wherewithal.

And you know, rent control sounds good, you know, they do it in a lot of big cities.

Um I know council members have come from some of those big cities, so I understand where they're coming from.

They've lived in them themselves, but uh I don't believe in one size-fits all solutions.

And I want something that works in my town, that helps renters, that encourages people to be landlords and encourages landlords to be good neighbors and um helpful to those in need, and I'm not sure how we do that except more conversation, more interactions.

Um to the vice mayor's credit a few years ago.

She said we should be out there talking to the landlords, we should be having meetings, we should be networking with them to talk about how we can help our rental community.

And that is before we did the rental control program, and that was a good idea, and I think we should do that.

So uh I continue to be um in favor of supporting renters, um, within the context of the state system, but with the extra protections that we can implement through tenant protections, legal aid contributions, and a rental assistance program.

I think we have the funds to do that, and if we're not having to fight appeals, and we're gonna get appeals, you know, is the the fire insurance and the um the need to renovate your properties, you know, comes forward.

So um I think you know where I'm coming down tonight, madam mayor.

If I could uh I did confirm the staff, and you were correct, the funding that goes to Coast Side Hope through the CSFA program, rental assistance is included in what they offer.

Yeah, so um vice mayor, you seem eager to speak here.

Yeah, um we talk about getting rid of two programs that are aiming to help the impoverished, the people living below the poverty line in our city, and because we don't like to hear from landlords complaining about how they're hurting, instead of looking at that as a separate issue and saying we need to do something about that, we eliminate these programs, and then when a family of two adults working a minimum of two jobs, often as many as four jobs with two children who aren't being watched, who aren't being supervised, who aren't being educated in the way our children are being educated, the way we can afford to take care of our children.

We're gonna give them rental assistance once they get evicted, when they're really gonna be homeless, we'll give them some rental assistance.

That's laughable, that is not a solution to the problem.

It's very nice that we've got a program like that, that.

That Coastside hope is helping with a program like that, that.

That legal aid is out there.

None of those things replace what we're trying to do here, which is trying to continue to house our very, very poor.

So I don't want to hear about rental assistance programs being an option to replace this.

That's silly.

Well, thank you.

That's apples and oranges.

Thank you for sharing your opinion on that.

I'm not I'm not finished.

Mom is finished.

Please.

Please what?

Finish.

I'll finish when I'm done.

What I have to say.

Just remember that there are other people who would like to speak to.

And don't necessarily denigrate something that somebody else says.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'm not talking to you, Debbie.

I'm talking to the audience about what the audience said.

I'm part of the audience.

Oh my God.

The other point I want to make is that this program has not cost the city an arm and a leg.

That we haven't taken resources out of other programs in order to help the poor.

We've taken very little out.

It's cost us.

What is it?

283,000 minus 157,008,000 dollars to date.

So I'll stop for now.

I think what we'll do at this point is we'll start uh talking about specific options.

And we're gonna start with the status quo, which is the current programs, and uh could you please put the uh the slide back up showing the options?

Okay.

Sorry.

Okay.

So the status quo is we have two programs.

Option three is retain both programs.

So let's start by addressing that.

We've sort of touched on it uh in our comments, but let's um discuss it head on, madam mayor.

Yes, can I make a quick comment before we do that?

Please do um uh for options two and three.

I think it's important to note that um if one of those were the options chosen, uh staff would go back and develop some recommendations for how we would continue one or both programs, including looking at the fees.

I think there's a question about how those fees were set, they were set before we knew actual costs.

I think there's some adjustments that would need to be made there.

Um, other things, you know, other things we've gotten feedback on.

So I don't envision if we were to keep one or both programs that they would look exactly like they do today.

I think we'd make some recommendations on how to modify them based on what we've learned in the last year and a half.

I'm glad you brought that up because I think if there's a uh council majority that wants to retain both programs, I think there's fixes needed on both of those.

So we would want to come back and continue the discussion, but focused on that particular option.

That's right.

Thank you for putting that out.

Yes.

Okay.

So um, Councilmember Johnson, I'm gonna start with you.

What my thoughts are?

We're talking right now about option three, retaining both programs.

Is that something that we want to pursue or not?

So we're gonna move through the options.

Oh, uh no, that's not something I would even consider right now.

Or not considering retaining both programs, no, say that again.

I was not looking at option three, retaining both programs, no.

Yes.

Uh Councilmember Nagencast.

I already said um option one.

Councilmember Brownstone.

Councilmember Johnson, I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying.

Do you want to retain either one or two?

We're talking just three now.

You were just in three.

It retained both programs, and that wasn't the what I'm feeling right now.

Got it.

Okay, yeah, I want to retain both programs.

Vice Mayor Penrose.

Yes, option three.

So I am against option three.

So I'll be on the record for that.

Uh let's move on to option two, which is repeal rent stabilization only.

This time I'll start with Council Member Nagingast.

Again, um option one.

Councilmember Johnson.

Um this is option two, rent stabilization only.

The only thing I was thinking about on option two would be if we are actually gonna be taking in funds to keep this program going to do the rental registry, but not doing uh we're just doing it for rental stock and including housing elements and all that stuff, but we're also gonna be generating if we were to go into an elaborate like rental assistance program with those fees is what I was thinking.

But I don't know if that's something we could talk about.

That's what I was just saying.

If we start putting some money away for that, then we could use that for our rental assistance and option two okay.

I think I hear what you're saying.

Uh Vice Mayor.

Um I'm not sure what you were saying.

Patrick, could you repeat that?

It's the way I'm reading it in the way I'm it they're still gonna be doing the registry, they're gonna be doing all the things they normally do, but then we could we're gonna be collecting fees, and there's gonna be protection in A B, uh, what is it 1482?

But if we were collecting the fees, why couldn't we have some of those fees for some type of rental assistance?

So can I can I sum up what I think you're you're saying?

Are you saying that um keep the rental registry and use the fees to provide rental assistance?

Is that what you're saying?

Okay, yeah.

Um the program is not generating income right now for rental resistance.

The fees do not provide income for rental assistance.

So that idea is lovely, but there's no money that I don't know where you're talking about getting the money from.

If the fees right now are just running the program and barely running the program, there's not enough to add to a rental assistance program.

He's talking about the rental registry, yeah.

No, I understand what he's saying.

All right.

Stone, did you want to?

Madam Mayor, I think, based on the recommendation.

I think it's important we make a legal clarification on these fees.

I just wanted to cover that the or explain that the fees are supposed to cover the costs of the regulatory program.

So the fees are intended to just cover the cost of service.

They're not intended to be income generating uh beyond the cost of service.

Yes, and that would be a nexus problem, probably.

So so for option two, um, it would just be the rental registration fee, which is $75 per unit right now.

We would then need to evaluate what our actual costs and set the fees appropriately, which would probably be lower than the $75 right now.

Thank you.

Make sure I understand.

So if you repeal option two only, you would still have a registration program, which would be covered by the fees.

Fees also would cover currently um legal services.

Isn't that what some of our fees do cover?

Yeah, for the program.

So the the services that we contract for with legal aid society are actually a requirement under the rent stabilization ordinance, not the rent registry, and so those fees wouldn't be used for that program, if if we were to repeal rent stabilization.

So the rent registry fees are intended to cover the cost of the registry itself and staff time administering it.

Got it.

Right.

So yeah, go ahead.

I was just going to say that you know, if the direction is to come back with uh to repeal the rent stabilization only as the city manager mentioned, we would come back with an item to talk about the rent stabiliz the um the red rent registry program and providing recommendations on improvements and as part of that recommendation we can look at are there pieces of the rent stabilization prop program that could remain in place?

You know, there's been interest in um the legal aid society.

How could that be incorporated into the rent registry program to allow that to continue to remain as part of the program?

So that's something that staff could look at as require an update to the ordinance.

Right.

That would need to that would require an update to the ordinance.

But likely all of this will be required to be through an ordinance.

Any repeal would need to be done through an ordinance, any update to the rent registry program would likely need to be done through the ordinance.

So let's take a focused poll here.

Um the issue of keeping the rental registry and eliminating rent stabilization, and have a discussion about that.

We've heard from uh Patrick, but we'll go back to you in a minute.

Uh council member Nagingast.

I I I want to eliminate both programs and come back with new.

Okay.

Uh Councilmember Brownstone.

If we kept registration, I would need to know what we would put in place because then we keep it keeps coming back to this 1482, which is what's bugging me.

1482 basically has let's just say it's saying you get you can increase rents by five percent a year, right?

That's kind of the baseline.

So, how do we help people have that enforced if their landlord is raising above five percent?

Because everyone in most people in this room said yeah, 1482 provides enough protection.

So let's say we agree with that.

How do we make sure then that does that then get enforced and how?

Um do we provide help with that through the fees that are provided through uh registration?

I need a little more, you know, meet around that to see are people getting help, um, both around eviction protections and rent protection.

So I I think what you're asking is um how is 1482 enforced now?

Do we enforce it?

Does the county enforce it?

How is 1482 enforced now?

And does staff have an answer to that question?

The state enforces 1482, it's a state law.

The city and county do not enforce 1482.

But somebody has to enforce it.

How do they do that on a local level, or do they not do it on a local level?

It it's not done at a local level.

Do you have no it's just can you agree?

So when there's a local law, it supersedes that state.

Think of our minimum, a local minimum wage.

We enforce our local minimum wage.

If there's a violation of the state minimum wage, you have to work through the state to have that resolved.

So basically it's complaint driven to the state.

I would I would suspect I don't I'm not aware of any proactive programs to enforce 1482.

Now, nonprofits locally obviously are interested in ensuring that all state laws are adhered to when it comes to vulnerable populations, but um they're there to advocate and educate and support people in that process, not to actually do the enforcement.

Thanks.

So it seems like that's the question we would have to further investigate with current legal service and then for someone from the state who theoretically enforces this law, but I have no idea what the process is.

Otherwise, it's like an illusory protection, which I keep hearing here a lot of people in this room bringing up.

Is it a realistic protection or not?

I don't understand.

Okay, well, I will look it up, or we'll have staff look it up.

But I need to know if that's a realistic protection or not.

And I'm sorry, this isn't a dialogue now, but um so I need to hear more about that.

So someone in Half Moon Bay has an issue.

Is it um very difficult to enforce that?

Is that or is it easy and you could get a hearing, or do you have to pay for it out of pocket?

How is that really enforced?

You know, so um that's still a mystery to me.

I'm assuming legal aid of San Mateo County probably picks up on some of those, but yeah, and and I mean that's some of the work that the legal aid society does countywide, so there's lots of again nonprofits that are interested in this, but I'm not aware of, you know, just an easy way for a renter to pursue a claim against that.

Sorry, some people are holding up their phones.

You have my email, just send it to me.

I'd be uh I will read it, I will go on AI and look at it, research it as well.

So that's great.

Okay, great.

Vice Mayor.

Yeah, um, again, I come back to a picture that is all too commonly painted in this town, not by anybody in this room, but by the folks that are suffering, the people that are living, whole families in one room, sharing a bathroom with other families.

And I'm not saying that any of the landlords that are here tonight are responsible for that.

I wouldn't imply that.

That would be saying that you are a bad people, and I don't believe that.

I believe that you are having problems economically like everybody else is in this country, not just in this city.

But to refer to a state law and say that the state law is gonna help somebody when you and your husband each work two jobs, and you've got two kids, or maybe it's just you and your husband working one job, gee whiz.

And you work as a dishwasher, and you say to your boss, I'm sorry, boss, I I gotta go to the state because I gotta make a complaint today, it's crazy.

It's crazy as assuming that people have the the wherewithal to do it, the time to go to coastide hope and ask them for help, um and it's not just that issue, the the state law issue.

I think we're talking about trying to build affordable housing.

We talk about it, we talk about it and we talk about it, and we really work at it, but we haven't been able to do it.

My idea for rent stabilization and for the rental registry was that it's a program that will be terminated when there's enough housing here.

When people aren't suffering the way they're suffering currently.

I have no no interest in keeping this program going forever, but we've put one and a half to two years into it, it.

It's shown to be quite successful and not costly, and I'd like to see us give it another couple of years.

So you don't support option two.

Yeah.

I support option three.

Yeah.

Um, I will say something about the rental registry.

Uh I'm not a fan of that either.

Especially now, given what's going on nationally.

I don't like the idea of having a registry of people's names and addresses and personal information and potentially you know, opening ourselves up to somebody saying, give me this information from the federal government, tell me who your tenants are, who are you renting to?

That's a serious problem as far as I'm concerned.

Um so a rental registry is to me right now is not protective of landlords or tenants.

I think it's a problem.

And the the software the data people to LEME.

Um, I found their uh privacy policy very you know, I was not impressed, especially if they sell out to somebody else and transfer the data.

I think it's problematic.

So um right now I'm I'm option one too, but um willing to hear you know more in another quick round of of comments.

Councilmember Nagengast.

If we did uh option one or two, could we?

Yeah, I I think we should come back with something that fits our town.

That's the way I believe in this.

That we could have a group with uh landowners who rent properties and tenants work together with staff and or a council member liaison suggestion, so right now it sounds like um that Deborah is definitely option three.

Robert is kind of on the fence and wants more information.

Is that correct?

I'm for option three until we either come up with a plan.

In other words, I don't want to get rid of these until we get that plan that you suggest.

That's great.

But I want to keep that in place until that time.

It's if we want to put together, you know, working group to come up with an alternative, great.

But I would not want to eliminate the options.

I feel like we have two folks on option one, two of folks for option three, and I think if I understand you, Patrick, you're for keeping the registration for now.

No, you didn't want to say that.

I wasn't sure.

The registration does bother me because on page 404, when you go through the whole thing and you read everything, what's the name of this company, Toolamy or something?

Talemey.

We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content privacy policies or practices of third party sites or services.

So I mean, that's like you said, breach of you know private information and what Evelyn's talked to us about.

That does bother me, that does bother me because you're filling in all this stuff, and then you don't know where it's going.

Okay, I'm gonna take a stab at um a draft recommendation to staff, and that is so there's basically four of us.

There's three of us who want to eliminate the rental registry, not rental registry, excuse me, the rental stabilization ordinance, um, but we are willing to hold on for the time being to get more information developed about what we might substitute in terms of assistance, whether it's rental assistance or a combination of rental assistance, looking at the menu of legal aid options, and um going over again our tenant protections, because we're we're not saying we're throwing out the tenant protections ordinance that will still exist.

So what I'd like to do is recommend to staff that you bring back that that information, so people want to find out what would we replace it with?

And let's have another discussion about that.

Am I capturing that well?

Council Member Nagengast.

No.

I guess I didn't understand.

I'm trying to understand.

So that's fine.

You would bring back have staff bring back.

Okay, we don't we don't make a decision tonight.

Well, I think we are.

I mean, we there's a majority here that doesn't want rent stabilization.

The question is still more discussion about registry, although I don't like it.

But what would it look like to do rental assistance in combination with our existing commitments with legal aid and tenant protections?

Does that satisfy the group?

I think primarily looking at rental assistance, which is what some cities are moving toward.

There's several on the peninsula who do this.

So I think it's clear that there's a majority that does not want rent stabilization.

Right.

Would we look at trying to come up with uh you know rent stabilization or you know, common name, rent control, but uh a different ordinance that might fit our town?

We're not looking at what you suggested the like rental assistance and the it's basically how do we help renters?

If we're not going to do rent stabilization, what does the assistance look like?

What are the protections look like?

What is the regime that we're using to support tenants?

And do we want to augment that?

Change that.

Okay, all right.

I could go with that.

I agree with that.

Rental assistance is that's the core that I'm trying to get here that we have some vehicle in place for that.

Um so yes, I'm in favor of that.

And then also a clear path on who do you talk to, where do you go, so that we have those answers so that we can have a a pathway for people to go.

Yes, so are you talking about a subsidy to anybody who's poor because they're a renter?

Are you talking about rental assistance when somebody gets evicted only?

I don't know what you mean.

And do you want the city to be putting out money to help?

Do you think our city can afford to support the 30% of the population?

I wasn't getting down to the I was asking for more information, is what I was asking.

Yeah, well, what I'm wondering is what you when you talk about rental assistance, Paul, Debbie, Robert, Patrick, what do you mean?

Well, I think it might take the shape of a block grant to Coastside Hope, who already has such a program, or maybe there's additional providers, whether it's Vincent DePaul or somebody else.

It's it's it's it's a question of what would the program look like?

What are other cities who do it?

What are they doing?

You know, how much do we have that we can set aside for rental assistance?

That sort of thing.

We're gonna be looking at we're asking staff to bring back information.

Okay.

If we are looking at something beyond rental assistance for evicted renters, I'd be interested in looking at such a program.

But if all you're talking about is putting more money into something that helps people once they've really hit bottom, I'm not.

And I don't think that I want the city to be taking on a huge financial obligation to be doing it.

Well, I think that's to be discussed, you know, but we're gonna do that.

But yeah, I'm just giving you my opinion about what I I would like to hear.

Sure.

I'm sure staff has heard that, yes.

Um the staff feel like they have direction.

Certainly on the rent stabilization piece.

I'm I'm a little foggy on what how you'd like to us to approach the rent registry.

Um certainly heard you know comments uh against it and for it, but not clear on the direction at this point.

Well, we could we could have further discussion about it.

To me, I wouldn't want to spend any more time on that, but if other people do.

I mean, I think a simple thing we could do that we could bring back with some of this other is evaluate what a standalone rent registry would look like, what it could accomplish and what the fees would look like.

And I think you would want to look at if we decide against that.

What is unwinding that look like what happens to the data?

How do we unwind the program?

I think we need to understand that because that has to be done with grace and um efficiency and transparency is gonna be really important.

Um and you know, having dialogue with people about it, people are gonna have questions.

Um, so yeah, there's gonna be staff time devoted to this as well.

And that's pointed out in the staff report.

Um I think staff is is clear on the direction, and um I think there's some urgency behind all this, because under the normal program we start our ramp up in the next couple of months.

So um you'll you'll see this back on an agenda in the next couple of months.

Um thank you to Irma for a good staff report and a good presentation.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Okay, we're moving on to um, excuse me, uh item 10A, which is Frenchman's Creek Park phase two project update.

Wait a minute, you know.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, uh, members of the council and members of the public.

I'm Dale Eda, interim city engineer.

I'm joined tonight by Todd Sealy, our inum public works director.

Well, good evening, everyone.

Thank you for your time this evening and our apologies in advance because we are going to be asking for some more recommendations from you guys.

Um so we're switching gears a little bit.

Uh we're gonna talk about Frenchman's Creek Park um phase two improvements.

Uh staff's been working on kind of retooling, rescoping this project since it last came to council back in April of 2025.

Um, so I'm gonna give a little bit of background context, um, talk about kind of re-well recap on input from council that we received, um, kind of present the current site plan as we have it and and get feedback.

Um, see if we're heading the right direction.

Um Dale, I apologize.

Is there a way to switch the slides?

So we're just seeing the oh actually, okay.

Um, so uh mention of Frenchman's Creek Park goes back to the 2019 parks master plan.

Um, actually, I mean the park predates that, but that was kind of the last iteration of the city looking at kind of improvements to this park.

Um, the master plan is actually pretty scant on details about kind of improvements.

There's there's really three recommendations that were made in 2019.

Um they included upgrading the existing amenities, increasing seating areas, and also replacing the um the play structure.

Um the first of those improvements was the replacement of the play structure, which occurred as phase one of I guess our Frenchman's Creek Park Improvements that was completed in 2021.

Moving on to kind of development of phase two of the of the park improvement plan.

The city hired a landscape consultant, it was Gates and Associates to start developing a plan, and there was a big public outreach effort in 2022 to get input from the neighborhood and the general public.

So there was a meeting at the park to discuss improvements, review concept plans.

Some of the input that came out of that meeting included a desire from folks to separate the play area from where people traditionally take their dogs and play out in the lawn area, better fencing or security around the play structure.

There was also a request for a barbecue area and for a drought tolerant landscaping.

So that feedback was taken into the design development, which was presented at a parks and rec commission at later meetings, and also went out to bid in February of last year.

So this was presented at council in April, and council provided a motion with direction of staff to reduce the scope back down to align better with our with our Prop 68 grant that we had received and allocated for this project, which was 185,000.

So we've been working since then on, not continuously, but we've been working on rescoping this project to better align.

These are just some pictures of the park today, actually from earlier this week.

So what you see here is kind of the existing accessible parking immediately adjacent, the playground area, the existing accessible stalls, non-compliant, the pavements in really poor condition.

There's not it's not really the right size or shape to meet accessibility requirements today.

Some additional feedback that came out of the 2022 workshop with the public, which actually was not incorporated into the prior plan.

So there was a desire for folks to try and preserve more of the existing uh level lawn here closer to the park, the existing park improvements.

Some of the other amenities out there, there are two existing concrete picnic tables out there.

Um neither of those meet accessibility requirements today.

Uh there's not there's no opening in either table where you'd roll up a wheelchair to enjoy lunch or picnic.

Um there's also a kiosk with a wooden bench, which was constructed as part of, I believe it was an Eagle Scout project several years ago.

Um I mean, that student's probably graduating college now or something else.

Um, this is what the existing play structure looks like today.

Um, so those improvements, the the new structure and the rubberized surface were completed in uh early 2021.

Um, there was a question about how this type of material would work if if the park if the state fire marshal adopted the new um very high fire hazard zone map for this area and whether that whether that surface is still or if it's considered non-combustible or fire resistant.

Um so these rubberized services do have uh an ignition resistance um test that they're required to pass to be utilized as a play surface.

Um I did have a discussion earlier today with Coastside Fire about this specific material, and every material is a little bit different.

That their opinion without getting really deep into the review of it is that this would qualify as non-combustible under under the new fire marshal's regulations.

Whereas something like a shredded mulch product, which we you would typically use as an alternative, would would likely not meet that requirement.

And I should note that those maps are still under state review.

They haven't been adopted yet, but I thought that maps had been adopted, but the regulations had not been implemented.

Oh, my mistake.

Thank you.

And so that kind of leads us to our site plan today.

Um with what we think the park needs are and what we have budgeted for.

So the big distinction between this current plan and the prior plan.

So this plan doesn't add anything new to the to the scope that wasn't included in the 2025 plan.

It takes things, it takes things out from that scope.

So specifically, the 2025 plan had had called for replacement of all the existing concrete walkways, replacement of the existing concrete benches, and a significant amount of uh clearing and re-landscaping new turf and a lot of new landscape areas in addition to diagonal parking spaces, a swing set similar to the one you see here, as well as um uh a low uh spring rider, ladybug spring rider, it's called that request at this point.

Sure.

Um when you talk about the synthetic play area, how big an area is that?

Where would that be on the map?

You know, I understand people's resistance to synthetic turf under like sports fields and things like that.

That's kind of a big deal.

Um, I'm just trying to understand the scope of what you're talking about here and whether the so the synthetic here is synthetic play area is is in fact a rubber, it's it's a rubberized um play surface similar to the existing play surface around the playground.

And the area that's um kind of hatched with the it's really the area around kind of the swing the swing set itself.

And um there's specific code requirements for for um fall protection in the landing zone within the within the uh swing the active use area, um, and then there's a little bit on top of that just to help you know provide an additional space and transition for kids, you know, running around in that area.

Um so this would be a rubberized surface to match kind of the the existing it's uh it's a port and place material, it's kind of a two-part um material, but not turf, it's just the rubberized, yes.

Not turf.

Okay, no.

Um so with this um plan, we we we did a rough order of magnitude cost estimate, which was included.

Um, and we looked at two alternatives kind of based on the April 2025 discussion at at council, which included kind of looking at what we could do to divvy up the work if there was any scope we could pull out for maybe a future project or or just to look at separately.

So we did look at um providing kind of a drinking fountain as a separate scope item, and we looked at providing an additional um accessible seating area or picnic bench as a separate scope item.

Um and those were those prices were kind of included here with with kind of some baseline um options for materials.

So specifically within our estimate, we had kind of the picnic area we were calling for a like a bark or mulch ground cover, which would be the most low-cost um pavement material that we would propose that would that would kind of get us through and meet accessibility requirements.

Um though I should note that that material also is probably more costly long-term from a maintenance standpoint and just having to having to replace it on a on a regular basis.

Plus it's combustible.

Plus it's combustible.

And there are a lot of eucalyptus trees to the yeah.

Correct.

Um the other thing I want to note here is although there was that specific request for a barbecue and it was incorporated into the prior um scope, we we've taken that out just for the same um concern about fire hazard.

Um let's see.

Um so where we're at today, and I have to apologize.

There is a there is a slight I guess clarification of the staff report.

There's a there's a number a figure that calls to total consultant cost to date, um, which was it doesn't capture all the total cost to date because there's additional costs on top of consultants, um, but to to date we have about three hundred thousand dollars left in our budget that's been allocated that includes our hundred and eighty-five thousand dollar grant, plus um around two hundred thousand dollars that's been allocated by the city previously for the project.

Um with the kind of base site plan that we've put together and the water fountain and the picnic area, we're looking at a estimated construction cost around 200,000.

Um that being said, I've also added kind of a menu of other additional things to consider, additional items to which all add cost, but they're additional enhancements that could be incorporated into the site plan.

And the thought was that well, if if you want to it's really a question of how close you want to be held to that uh 185,000 grant number, or how much more on top of that we want to allocate.

Those are um currently we have budget that will capture all of these improvements.

There's about another fifty thousand dollars in additional um I guess bells and whistles that we would like to add if if there is if there are support for any of those, and I'm happy to kind of dive into the weeds on those specific items as just because it's late in my mind, my RAM is diminishing.

Just to simplify something.

If we go with the 2001,000 here, which includes both the picnic table and the water fountain, what and all the stuff, you know, it includes the ADA part, all that.

At that cost, what is not included anymore?

At the 200,000 mark.

So what is not included from the prior plan, um, and I could I can pull the old plan if that's helpful to see also.

Um, just generally, but it's um so things that are missing from the old plan include um additional fencing, which which replaced some of the existing fencing adjacently accessible parking.

Um, the barbecue I mentioned.

The most significant thing that's pulled out is the broad area of landscaping that was um so a lot of the existing turf out there would have come out and been replaced, new irrigation system, and a lot of uh decorative planting and boulders kind of closer to um Rousseau Francis.

Um the project as it was estimated previously was around 400,000 was an estimated construction cost.

Um I think we've taken out about a hundred thousand dollars in in landscaping improvements and roughly fifty thousand dollars in kind of removal of site amenities and also um tearing out existing concrete that's not really in that bag of bad of condition with and putting in new concrete.

So um, and then there's about another fifty thousand dollars in these additional items that we've kind of also pulled out, but if there's support we can incorporate those back in.

Got it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yep.

So um the new picnic table, the ADA compliant, you know, tan bark there.

What if you change that to a different material?

I see you have the tan bark to concrete paving.

Is that what that means?

Concrete paving?

Would you put some could you do something else besides concrete there?

Um yeah, we could.

Yeah, concrete would be my choice just because of the durability and how long it'll last.

We could also look at decomposed granite, which also meets accessibility standards.

It's a little bit more expensive and and is uh more of a long-term um, it's got more of a long-term cost.

I think the the decision on the material should also consider kind of the location.

As as the site plan is currently kind of laid out here, you could see it doesn't really make sense to have a picnic table on one side and then have the existing tables on the other side.

What would make more sense would be to flip-flop and consolidate your picnic area.

Um, but that would put the picnic the new area kind of right in this.

This is actually a low spot in the park right here, which gets a lot of runoff from both sides today, and so like I would want something there that is gonna be, you know, more resistant to that.

I think um decomposed granite could work there, but then we're looking at additional drainage improvements, other things to consider.

Yeah, I from a maintenance standpoint.

That's good that you're actually having maintenance look at projects because that's something now they're gonna have to maintain.

I think you know, if the concrete is uh I always look at as more practical just because lack of maintenance is a higher uh initial cost, of course, but uh and you can do neat things with concrete.

It doesn't just have to be a big slab out there, you could you know do different things with it, put a design, even color if you could stamp it, whatever you want to do with it right.

Yeah, there's some easy stamps that aren't really that much more of a cost that we could do.

I would look in to me, if you're asking me, I would look at that just because we also it was brought up about a fire area there, and I just feel uncomfortable putting tan bark just from that stuff.

I'm not saying I think we would definitely want to advocate for some sort of hard surface at that location that's shown there.

I mean, just a little tiny snapshot.

So Ocean View Park is the most used park in the city.

It costs us about a little over $9,000 every 18 months to replace the chips that we have in there, or we have to get them.

They're engineered, they meet certain specifications.

We have to get a vendor to come in and blow them in with a big truck, right?

It's uh it's in a very expensive proposition that we have to go through about every 18 months.

So eliminating that out of it and having just to deal with that part of it by putting a hard skip in up front is probably is definitely our recommendation.

All right.

The other thing I would note is that although on this kind of plan you see a different style picnic table, if um, we could certainly get an accessible concrete picnic table that to better match with the other existing tables if we're gonna consolidate them, and um, we were just borrowing a graphic from from the old plan.

Um I do want to kind of point out a uh another at least one of the additional items um to council, which is um staff has received input from neighbors and that um across the street from the park, um, both recently and um last year as this was coming to bid regarding traffic calming and folks speeding on this part of Russo Francais.

Um there's actually two speed humps or speed bumps currently with humps, I call them humps, I got all kinds of speed cushions.

There's two out there today, and you could see the well it's kind of hard to see.

This is this is from Google, so uh highway one is to the to the left or the west there, but there's um there's one as you come in and then there's one past the park.

Um they're roughly 700 feet apart.

Um, and if I'm following kind of practice standards, there would be room to put another one in and still meet typically 350 feet is the minimum you would want to see um those.

The two existing ones there, they're not very aggressive speed tables, they only come up about an inch and a half, maybe two inches max.

I think um I think I would look at something that comes up a little bit higher.

Um, it's you know, we typically try and come up three inches.

Um, and we provide curb cuts for fire trucks to get through.

So we would need to run if we were gonna propose something like that, we would need to run it by coastside fire again but um I think there is an you know it's we don't want people speeding around parks um and I think if we're gonna be out there peeving it it would be an opportunity to do that.

That was feedback you got from the neighborhood?

Correct.

Yeah that may I I think that's something probably should look at you know we saw about the speed tables they put out there are there benches in here for people.

So currently there are the the existing you're talking about in the proposed plan.

In the existing plan there are three places for people to sit there are the two existing concrete picnic tables and there's the existing uh wooden kiosk which is currently located about kind of right here off the edge of the concrete so in the proposed plan we would intend to keep the existing concrete tables if we want to incorporate an additional table either to the east or or move that and reconsolidate it over here we would add that we also have a seat wall proposed here there were uh there were two seat walls proposed in the prior plan um and we would move that existing kiosk the the Eagle Scout project we'd we'd relocate it probably kind of down in this area here so we'd maintain that as well you know my question because I'm wondering who was for Deborah sorry your mic is is not I'm sorry I'm wondering who the who the park is for right if if I wanted to go to a park at 83 years of age and not all that physically strong I want a bench that I can sit on that's comfortable I don't want to sit at a picnic table because it's too hard for me to get around the benches on a picnic table.

That's one question.

The next question is who are the bike racks for and are you talking about trying to encourage people who have bikes to come to the park and congregate and who are those people and what are they going to do when they get there it it somehow I don't get the picture altogether of of what the whole function in the park is going to be how how it's going to be a place where people from the community or want to go gather and enjoy themselves.

So the um there was an additional picnic bench proposed previously which is not currently in this plan um that is or I'm sorry I a bench just a comfortable wooden bench I think with a back um they were actually they were not proposed with they weren't they did not include a back they were more seat wall ish uh kind of just a flat sitting so but that's certainly something we could incorporate and there's there's an opportunity to do that and I um I've heard they the although it's a beautiful kiosk the Eagle Scout project I've heard the bench is not the most comfortable bench so um it would be an opportunity to incorporate something like that and I think that's easily and cost effectively done.

As far as the bike racks there have been existing bike racks here as far back as I can find I mean even predating the parks master plan there was an existing bike rack out here as early as like 2008.

And so we're kind of maintaining that I think the parks plan also um one of the key elements was to encourage like the multi trying to get away from the uh the island parks that we have that you can only drive to and creating other um you know opportunities for other modes to get there so I think that kind of not that we have an a separate bike path here to get here but it's it's an amenity serving someone other than uh you know people driving their cars.

Yeah I I get that but um I I still don't know if you if you're gonna be using the bike racks I mean I don't know were the bike racks always used a lot in the past and what who used them we have a ton of I'm sorry who used the bike racks so um in in the initial outreach meetings that I participated in several years ago the feedback was that the neighborhood really uses this park and it is a place where families and kids can go and there are many families including kids that ride their bikes to this park.

Okay I get it then that that makes sense to me.

Okay yeah I think you know trying to consider elderly people is maybe a good idea and then the other other thought that I had was if you're going to have benches or picnic tables you want them to be close enough to the kids play equipment so that the parents can be watching the young kids on the play equipment you don't want it separated the two things separate they need to be close enough together.

I was gonna ask where do parents currently sit who are watching kids on the play structure because I know they do I'm just trying to remember yeah so currently you really can there's only three spots to sit it's either these two concrete tables or the existing uh kiosk bench the existing Eagle Scout project which is right here and and oriented oriented towards the play structure the council member brownstone was asking is there a ledge or a curb around the existing play structure or is that just a flat curb or is that what do you have that picture yeah here it is yeah so it's just a flush curb that kind of routines the edge of the of the the poor in place rubberized material it's not there's there's no um enclosure or barrier to it you just walk right across it yeah that could definitely be improved because it helps build community parents around sitting on benches whatever and they're watching kids at the same time it's would be terrific but I'd like I think yeah I'd want to hear more from the community members if that's something that would sound like a good priority at some point.

Council member Johnson do you have any clarifying questions before we go to the public?

Yeah I was just on the the tan bark for the fire reasons I was thinking about that and then number two if I were to bring my daughter to that with tan bark it wouldn't work the wheelchair is just stuffed away so that wouldn't work in my idea at all.

Definitely would like to see not just one bench but some kind of like more seating where you know you have a group on the bench and maybe have two over like if you had lawn chairs kind of an idea but you can bring your own lawn chairs but with Vice Mayor saying I agree something more in that area but my and then the other thing is on the synthetic play service what color is that I mean there's a variety of colors we can get we would choose something that compliment I don't think we're gonna get a perfect match to the existing surface but we'd choose something to complement like a brown dark brown or whatever yeah okay so do we have a plan are we going to do tan bark are we going to go cement or is that to be determined we're still I think we're gonna get rid of the tan bark right if we decide we'd like to hear your solid guidance on that but that is the thought that we would like to get rid of that for sure.

Something that's wheelchair accessible for sure I do like the stamp concrete I do like this you know you can go with the brown slate you ever seen that looks really nice.

DG does work if you do it right.

Just not tan barking yeah, so what we're looking for is like I guess number one is a sense of like how much more in addition to um kind of the 185,000 dollar grant.

Um council's comfortable spending on this and what and which amenities we want to include.

So it sounds like um tan bark's out.

Um I'm hoping we can get some input on some of the other items kind of on there.

Some public comment and then I'll let you summarize the other items you were just perfect.

So the first speaker is Irma Morowitz.

Well that's okay.

Okay, Randy.

Thank you, staff for the opportunity to uh comment on this.

Um as uh Irma mentioned, we live right across the street from maybe just west of the place structure.

So uh what I was uh took a uh call or Dale took my call um a few days ago and said this would be an ample opportunity to speak because of the this project slightly closer to the mic or lift it up to your head.

Sorry about that.

That's great.

Just you can lift it.

And uh so my main concern when I was speaking with Dale is as he mentioned earlier uh in the discussion is speeding uh past the park.

Uh we live uh at 608 Rousseau France, so it's pretty much directly across the street from the park.

And we've lived in a neighborhood uh almost eight years now, and we've noticed they increase, and I don't know if it's uh from food delivery or the younger demographic as the neighborhood has evolved, but uh speeds have been increasing, and you know, we have I think everyone that lives in Rousseau France, uh, the neighborhood likes that that small town feel of the neighborhood.

Uh we don't have sidewalks, which is unusual.

Uh, but my wife and I we walk the neighborhood every evening, and that's just a nice thing uh to do in our neighborhood, but we are increasingly concerned about the speed.

Our neighbors to the west.

They have two young kids and they they tell their kids, you know, be careful when crossing the racetrack as they refer to Rousseau Francais because the cars are going increasingly faster there.

And I've made requests, the the speed cart's been brought out a couple times, and that works as long as someone's watching that speed card, and then when the speed card goes away, you know, the the reluctance to obey the speed uh speed limit goes away as well.

So what I've done personally is I bought some uh traffic delineators, purchase some signs from Amazon said slow down speed limit 15 miles an hour.

I put them out in front when I'm working in my front yard because I don't like to be buzzed by a speeding car.

And just the other day my wife and I were out, and uh this has happened a couple times now.

People with young families that are playing at the park, they pull the delineator with the speed limit sign off my front yard and put it out in the middle of the street like I do when I'm there working in the front yard, and they know that that's a deterrent to the people that are going up and down uh Rousseau France, as Dale mentioned, that's one way in and one way out of our neighborhood.

So just the neighbors taking that uh my uh traffic delineator, because they know it works, you know, God forbid that you know, some kid runs out in the street and the car is speeding by.

I would like the city to consider the fairly low cost of a speed table speed bump, whatever we're gonna call it, as an addition to this project, to protect the users of the park, which we all want people to be safe, and I think a physical deterrent like a speed bump or a speed table, whatever we're gonna call it, would be a fairly low cost considering what uh the cost of you know the price of of someone getting injured hurt, uh, is much higher than the cost of a speed hump.

So I'd like the the staff to consider that adding that to the project.

Thank you.

Thank you, Irma Morowitz.

Get going soon.

Anyway, um so I live on terrain, I've lived here about 30 years in the neighborhood, and I have seen changes where kids, you know, they're small, they grow up and they drive, and uh also I think since COVID, there's been increase in people driving through, taking minutes to get somewhere really quickly.

I've been almost hit coming out of my driveway.

I was backing out, and someone came around the corner.

I was trying to get out of reverse, and this lady almost drove into me, and I announced it on next door, didn't mention the name, just asked her to slow down and she'd identified herself, saying she was a grandma with kids in her car, but yet people go fast, and I don't know how where we could address the rest of the neighborhood because there are no sidewalks, and the problem is people do zoom by.

I mean, the other day it was nighttime, somebody must have been gone 40 50 miles to you know, some sports car really quickly, and uh then does a neighbor up on Russo, he was changing his mailbox, got hit, was hospitalized.

So, I mean, I don't want someone to be hurt, and we have a lot of kids on bikes, and um, I don't know if I have to address that to the council or you know, somewhere in the city or get a petition.

And I know we have to get a certain amount of people maybe to agree about speed bumps, but I'd like to see more of them in the neighborhood, and you know, we yell at people, you know, please slow down, and then you know, they start swearing at us.

So, what we've done, you know, put up extra signs.

I mean, it's not really working, you know, and so we're like we're kind of like the bad guys, so I don't know.

Any help would be helpful to alleviate that situation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, I don't see any hand raised uh online, but if you're online and would like to address this item, please raise your hand now and you will be unmuted.

Raise your hand if you would like to address the Frenchman's Creek phase two park improvements, okay.

Seeing none, I'll bring it back to the uh council for deliberation, um.

So I I would ask a question is there anything that could be done as part of this project to slow the traffic down that's maybe next to the park or before and after the park or whatever.

Um it seems like we really benefit from just having one speed limit throughout the entire Frenchman's Creek, right?

Is there any area where people should be driving more than 15 miles an hour?

Actually, you know, this is a 15 mile per hour zone, and you know, we set it up like that.

I can't tell if you've shaking your heads yes or no if that's only 1500.

Right?

Because I don't know where these folks are coming from who are doing 40 or 50 miles an hour.

So that's more unusual.

Yeah.

Um because I know I'd be one of those people yelling.

So I'm uh yeah, someone was here.

But a question about an easy fix.

I think there is a fair amount of speed bumps, especially like on the back side of the neighborhood, they're kind of like the bolt-down type, if you will, for lack of a better term.

They're just plastic that we would just adhere to the street either through lag bolts or adhesive or a combination of both.

Maybe just adding one of those could be a possibility for this project.

Well, I think there's agreement here that we do need something to reduce the speed in Frenchman's Creek, whether it's speed bumps, making a particular speed limit zone.

I don't know how hard that is to do.

So it's both physical and legible, um, you know.

You know, so in terms of moving things along, um we can have this conversation here around, you know, where we are here.

Um, because we have a few options.

Um I think we've heard that we benches.

How much does a bench cost approximately?

A one bench, let alone three.

Well, that is a very loaded question.

It depends on how nice you want this bench to be.

Um typically, so if you've been out on the coastal trail, so benches that we have along the coastal trail, those are in the 1700 to 2,000 dollar range, somewhere around there.

1700 to 2,000.

That's correct.

Feels like a bargain these days.

So that's to be fair, we haven't bought some in a while, and inflation may have caused that price to go up a little bit, but we we buy in bulk typically when we buy those.

And those are uh those wood or they're artificial, right?

No, they're plastic.

Right, so they're weather resistant.

Exactly.

They last for a long time.

Okay.

So um, that's great.

Um, speed bumps would be nice.

I think uh having the fountain and a the picnic table.

So my question now is do we as a council approve a certain amount of budget for a number of these items now?

Do we say, because I know we this issue of parks has come up a lot, and there's this real consensus over the years that you know when it comes to people's mental health parks are critical, and we've supported a lot of our parks throughout the city.

Um and you know, this is a very family focused neighborhood.

Um people are very involved in their community there, have a fantastic cert program, by the way.

Um, so you know, our budgets, you know, do we approve a hundred thousand now?

Do we approve going up to the two hundred or one thousand and then come back incrementally in four or five months and see how how how our budget's doing with the finance committee?

I think things are looking positive, but put this on like a priority list.

That one, budgets better, we add more of the items, so that's generally what I'm thinking here.

Um, but I'm such a proponent of parks, you know, I'm ready like to just go for it now because it's a beautiful park as it is.

But um so what's what what are others thinking?

Yeah.

I like the idea of increasing the budget.

Uh I think that's fine.

Um I'm a fan of parks, but as I mentioned before, I'd like it to be user friendly.

And the current configuration is not to me.

So I'm thinking in terms of benches with backs on them.

Bike racks, I don't know how why we need to upgrade the bike racks right now with a limited budget.

That would seem to be low on the priority list, but maybe I'm wrong.

Is there um the bike racks actually?

Um, since this was originally scoped, we we we did get another grant from San Mateo County uh Transportation Authority for I think 12 or 13 bike racks at all of our different um parks and community facilities.

So we actually have grant funding separately to pay for a bike.

Okay, so we don't have to worry about that part.

It's a draw, it's a it's a small cost item either way, but um we don't have to pay for a bike rack, out of this budget.

Um how many benches do we have?

Well, I I don't know, I don't know four benches.

So two additional two additional benches on top of the two that are already there.

The picnic benches are not benches, they are a table where you can sit at the table, but they're not a bench, and so they serve a totally different um function.

They're not places where people will sit and gather to have conversations.

They'll sit down and eat or play a game or something, but that you know.

Let's say five for now, and it wouldn't cost more than 10,000.

Frankly, I was worried you're gonna say three or four thousand of bench, because who knows what they cost these days.

But um, yeah, five benches, you know, in a nice uh would be nice even number.

Yeah, the other thing um that I'm thinking is we talked about um this the um replacing the um current uh mulch bark, tan bark, whatever it's called, with something more permanent.

It sounds like concrete is a really easy thing to maintain.

How easy would it be to use rubber that that you have, like the rubber that you have under the kids' um playground, uh play equipment?

So the the rubberized surface is fairly um low maintenance.

I should note it's about twice the cost of concrete, though it's the most expensive line item, and that's part of the reason why we had um pulled out the the ladybug spring rider from kind of the base scope and speak not from the structure itself, but the play surface around it is extremely expensive.

Or maybe as part of the landscaping plan, there could be a community garden.

We have um some really cool gardening groups actually here in the city who could come and actually show people how to do a garden.

Some of it could be some just beautiful landscaping of flowers, there could be a couple of vegetables, but something that the community could decide.

Something like that, we get more input, teach kids how to grow a couple of things.

I mean, there are potential, could be some potential around that.

Like some raised beds or something.

These beds, yeah, would be another option.

I was gonna say if there was an interest in like a community garden, we'd probably look at finding space for some raised beds.

Um we would need a we would need a yes, incorporate additional hose bibs.

Um there might even you might even want to look at some kind of little shed for folks to store tools or equipment in to help there.

I mean, sounds like a phase three.

That's what I'm saying.

That sounds like a phase three, yeah.

I mean, I it's it's simple to put the beds in, but all the stuff they council remember Nanny Gas is mentioning, like the infrastructure that we would have to improve, the storage that we would have to do, and then let's be honest, there's probably gonna be some public work maintenance involved on this too, like making sure that everything's done.

It's a it's a it's a much bigger lift and definitely worthy of looking at it for like another phase of the great idea, and I think that's something I know a lot of there's another park in uh Magnolia that you know that's been talked about there too, but uh yeah, I it maybe that is another phase that happens.

But I I look at the tan bark area.

I brother concrete it in there, but whatever works best.

I would defer to others on this location for a community garden as well, just because of the trees.

I don't know if it gets enough sun because the trees primarily reside along the creek, and if the sun is not following the right trajectory, it just might not get enough sun to properly grow plants in that area.

That's something that I'm not a subject matter expert on by any means, but we would want someone to weigh in on that for sure as well, too.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Like the way this um plan is oriented south is actually page up towards towards Frenchman's Creek, which, as you know, is a very dense canopy of trees following that whole area.

So I think solar exposure here is it would take some more study to see if there's enough sun.

How about a bocce ball court?

And the other thing that I had was why why are you talking about more fencing?

So um, where and why?

Yeah, I can I can I can walk through that a little bit.

So on this plan, um, the existing park, go back.

Um you could see in this picture on the on the right, there's this existing um this existing split rail fence that kind of runs along the current uh current um accessible parking stall there.

Um in the proposed improvements, this this would come out, this all gets redone.

But the proposed plan doesn't have any replacement fence here currently shown.

Um and I think um, you know, it there's an extra cost there, but to run a new fence kind of along let's call it this edge like this, just to help discourage kind of kids from running out into that parking area from the swing set.

Uh we have about a little over 15 minutes until we'd have to take a motion to extend the meeting.

So I'd like to focus our attention on specific directions at this point and wrap this up because we have just uh you know a couple more agenda items, even though they probably won't go anywhere.

And I'm getting coarse, so Robert, could could you like distill your thoughts into a motion?

Or direction?

Not a motion, but direction.

Well, I certainly don't want to halt any of the current constructions plans that we have, so um.

Make a budget motion that we increase the budget.

Um at this point, because I do think we have a potentially healthy revenue stream coming in.

Um, increase the budget back up to was it 280,000.

Um, so currently the the the project, but the project budget was not reduced um under the April motion from council.

The the motion was to align the scope to better follow the um the 185,000 dollar grant.

So that the there's still funds within the capital project.

There's still about 300,000 in capital funds allocated to this CIP number.

So what are the limitations then?

Um up to that 301,000.

That's it's it's up to it's up to council.

Okay.

So I think we could incorporate then some of the direction we've heard.

We like to see around five benches.

Um something to deal effectively with the speed issues, and you might have a few thoughts, but it could be some signage speed limits, speed bumps, all the above.

Um we love the idea of the water fountain.

Keep that in there.

Um picnic table, what else?

Make sure we have get rid of the chips, wood chips, yeah.

Make sure we get rid of the wood chips.

Have a doggy do-do bag container thing.

Yes, that's it.

That is included already.

Okay, and then um explore what may or may not be feasible in terms of some landscaping based on climate, based on community preferences.

We can survey the community that they might be interested in supporting what that might look like.

Um that would be great.

Works for me.

Can I throw one in there?

Colored concrete, colored concrete.

It doesn't cost that much.

It looks really nice.

Yeah, understood.

Brown, like light browns or something.

You guys can look at it, but I've done it all through my house, it looks way better than concrete.

Absolutely.

Yeah, polka dots, polka dots.

Okay, I like it.

I like it we're taking outside the box now.

Okay.

Um any particular better way to word all that.

No, I think this is a direction.

This isn't a motion, so I think we've got what we need.

I one area I just want to be clear, is um typically we would just go out for RFP and pursue this.

Do you want us to bring this item back one more time before we do that, or do you think I think we've got enough direction to just run, but I just don't want to get ahead of the council.

Okay, um, come back, yeah, but do come back with an update of what the images would look like with the benches and this and that, that.

That would be great to see.

Just so we can get everybody.

Maybe we'll just do a CM update.

Yeah, um, yeah.

Um down the road.

Yeah, that that sounds great.

And um, so as we're working towards a bid package, we could provide a CM update with a revised site plan and some updated and estimated costs as we're working towards putting together an advertisement for construction.

Our hope would be to get this out to bid and complete improvements this summer.

So, thank you both for working with us.

Thanks for some community input and support tonight.

That's really helpful.

And you know, talk talk to neighbors, see what else.

I'm happy to come over and we can have a meeting to all together and talk about it and let everyone know how it's going.

So that's great.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Okay, um, so we're moving on to item 11 commission or committee updates.

No updates.

We have a rec commission meeting next Wednesday evening.

They'll be talking about um their priorities for the year, and uh we'll have the superintendent joining us to talk about some of the work that they're doing at the school district.

Sweet.

Um item 12 for future discussion, possible agenda items.

Item 13, City Council reports.

Um I'll just have one about Sam.

Uh, looks like we're gonna be moving to just one meeting meeting a month at Sam instead of two.

That is good news.

That's good news, yes.

Um this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you, everybody.