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Good evening, and welcome to the regular meeting of the Heftman Bay City Council for March 17th, 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 their turn to speak.

Luego selecciona idioma espanol, y por ultimo a click and dan o listo para poder acceder a la interpretación in español.

Thank you, Madame May.

Thank you, Nicholas.

Appreciate it.

Um, could I have a roll call, please?

Councilmember Brownstone.

Here.

Councilmember Johnson.

Here.

Councilmember Nagingast.

Here.

Vice Mayor Penrose.

Here.

Mayor Reddick.

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

I'll rise for a pledge of allegiance.

Could I get a motion to in a second to approve the agenda?

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries unanimously.

Okay, proclamations and presentations.

We have one this evening from SAM Trans and Jessica is going to make the presentation.

Thank you, Jessica.

Good evening, Mayor, Council members, thank you for giving us the time today to present.

Uh on my name is Jessica Epstein.

I am the director of government and community affairs for the San Mateo County Transit District.

So what I'm going to be giving information on is about a potential revenue measure, which could be on the November ballot.

If it makes it, we're sharing information on what that could mean for San Mateo County and how the community members can engage in our process.

Here's the agenda.

So we'll have information both on the measure as a whole and we'll both our primary focus is the San Mateo County component.

So we provide bus and paratransit service in San Mateo County.

It's an essential service for people to get to work, school, home, medical appointments, and other destinations.

You can see some bullet points about our service.

I'd also like to say, especially in Half Moon Bay, we have one of our two microtransit zones.

It's called Ride Plus, Curb to Curb Service.

And we have SAMCOS, which is a call ahead.

Ride Plus is on demand, but SAM Coast is a day call ahead, and that could take people for a much larger distance.

So transit agencies that carry millions of people throughout the Bay Area are facing major operational deficits.

And you can see up here a few of the reasons why they are in this situation.

And you will be hearing a little about if the measure is successful, what that means for them.

So 14-year measure, a little background.

It may reach the November ballot via a citizens initiative.

That happens through signature gathering.

It's not going to be placed on the ballot by a government entity.

But that means it would require 50% plus one vote to pass in all five counties.

This provides nearly a billion dollars to transit in the Bay Area.

And just over 60% of the funding would go to these major agencies, as well as so Caltrain, Bart Muni, as well as AC Transit, SF Bay Ferry, and a number of smaller operators.

And that's our focus today.

So what does it mean?

SAMTRANS would allocate approximately $50 million annually for 14 years.

There are limitations on the funds.

It has to be used for public transit in one way, shape, or form.

But we really need input from the community and from you to understand what the priorities are.

So the purpose of this is to help the SAMTrans board decide how that $50 million annually should be allocated.

The good news is that even though these funds are limited solely to projects related to public transportation, we have other ways of funding transportation projects as a whole in this county.

We have two half cents sales taxes that fund transportation improvements, measure A and Measure W.

They're very prescriptive.

They say what we can and cannot spend money on by the percentage categories.

But measure A expires in 2033.

Currently, the San Mateo County Transportation Authority, who is the administer of Measure A, is looking at renewing it in 2028.

One of the reasons to go early is to be able to modernize to change the categories.

Nothing on there when you're up for renewal is set in stone.

So there may be transportation projects you have in mind that are not fitting within the Connect Bay Area Act, but they could be a good project or the type of category of project for measure A, which will be coming up very soon.

Also want to provide some context on SAMTrans.

We are fortunate in that our bus system is stronger financially than many, many other transit agencies, some of them having deficits at 75 million annually, some over 300 million.

But starting in fiscal year 28, which is relatively soon, we start to hit an inflection point where costs outpace revenue.

We do project an operating deficit of about 30 million dollars annually.

That is the average over 10 years.

We've already undertaken some cost saving measures and we'll do more proactively as we get closer to this deficit.

So the way SAMTRAN is determining our board how to spend the money, it would be passed by the past the Connect Bay Area measure.

So we're putting together what we're calling a local investment plan.

This is for that $50 million annually.

We have pre-existing strategic planning documents to help us, and we have done a huge amount of outreach in the course of developing those plans.

And so we really understand our riders and the public's what they want to see.

And our board has provided us guidance already, and we have been working engaging with city staff and stakeholders, both digitally and in person.

And our stakeholder group includes business, nonprofit, labor, special districts, community groups, and a special call out to Crislin from the Chamber of Commerce, who has been active in our group.

And thanks for giving us the opportunity to present today to the city council and to those watching the presentation to help us with this survey that we are gathering information.

At the end, the board will decide what the plan is, what commitment they will make with the funding that could come into our county.

You will see we are in a very, very short time frame.

We are doing this all in about a total of 10 weeks, but the May board meeting, which I believe is May 6th, don't remember.

But the May SAM Trans board meeting, May 6th, yeah.

Uh there will be an information item on the board.

We absolutely invite you to engage with that to tune in, come make comments, and then at the June board meeting, they will adopt their plan.

And the reason that we're going through this is so that when voters do go to the ballot, if they gather enough signatures to put it on the ballot, they will know how the San Mateo County local investment plan works, what its structure is, and how funds will be allocated.

So we had all those inputs, our past strategic planning work, our past outreach, working with our stakeholder groups now, our board guidance, and with that we boiled up to 10 categories.

And these are the ones that we are surveying.

This is the heart of our survey.

So we need to hear from people how to prioritize them.

And you'll see the survey is a ranking survey.

We have an online survey in multiple languages, and then we have this lovely flyer.

I've left some out there.

It's uh oops.

Uh so it actually has a tear-off here, and then there is also a QR code that takes people to the website here.

No, I've turned myself off.

There we go.

Um, and what it is is really just a one through ten.

And we have information on the website that also helps explain what each of these categories are.

And with that, we will understand and be able to really kind of crystallize what kind of priorities for this funding the county wants to see.

So again, here's the survey.

Uh it is printable at the mail inversion.

We have multilingual fact sheets, multilingual survey.

It closes April 30th, and um we've also given your staff a toolkit for social media, press newsletters, uh, but we also ask anyone here, you to amplify this on your social media, your city and constituent newsletters, and also obviously please take the survey yourself.

So we know we're short on time.

This is not a long presentation, but we'd love for people to get in touch with us if you have any additional comments or thoughts that you'd like us to incorporate into the thinking process.

We'd really appreciate that.

I do too.

Thank you.

Yes.

Um, as you know, we are underserved here on the coast.

We do not have the population numbers to um allow SAMTRANs to expand their services here.

However, your ride plus program has become quite important here on the coast.

Um, unfortunately, it does not, it's not expanded enough to cover most of the coast.

It's only mainly centered in half Moon Bay.

And that means that most of the people that want to get to Half Boom Bay or leave Half Moon Bay by bus can't do so.

So I'm wondering if there is going to be some special attention paid to your Ride Plus program and expanding it.

Yeah, so um I actually do know that the where they are working on some cost neutral expansions that I don't think have been implemented yet, just to get it a little further north.

And I do want to remind everyone about SAMCOS, it is uh call a day ahead, but it takes people over much longer stretches all the way up and down the coast.

But RidePlus is a remarkable program, and it's certainly the type of thing that you'll see one of the categories uh it of this is the last one listed, is affordable ride share and on demand programs for more communities.

So if that really bubbles to the top as one of the top priorities, that is something that the board will, you know, we will take that very seriously as a uh major request from the community because we also we also have an East Palo Alto, and we're very proud of those programs.

The size of the zone itself, if it gets too big, then wait times get too long, so it's all a balance, but there is the ability to potentially add more cars or vans, which would allow for larger areas and look at overlapping zones.

We don't know that yet, but we certainly, if that is a program, if the ride share and on demand shows up as a priority, we will definitely take that very seriously.

Thank you.

I'm I'm I find it hard to believe it's gonna come to the top when your survey is the entire county, and we're such a small percentage of it.

However, we do have a large population that is bus dependent here on the coast.

So thanks for considering it.

And I will say I promise you I've heard from many other cities that they they're they're jealous they want ride plus two, so it is something that we may see uh a little bit more support of in the rest of the county.

Um the city's representative on CKG, I think it was like last August.

CKG's direction was to uh support the half cent, but also to direct SAMTANS SAMTRANs to create an expenditure plan for the funds that would the return funds to SAMTRANs, and part of that direction was that they look at fair geographical distribution of those funds.

So hopefully, you know that that will come to be.

Oh, I just wanted to clarify what you were talking about.

So uh council member Johnson.

I just want to say thank you for uh the 294.

Uh my shop is on 20th Avenue, and there's sometimes when I need to take the bus home or take the bus back to work because their car wasn't done.

I you know, I do a lot of car swapping.

I'm in the auto repair business.

And the 294 works great.

You get it on 92, it goes straight shot, it doesn't go to CSM anymore, it gets uh I get off on 20th, I take a nice leisurely walk, I'm on the end of 20th.

And if you take the time that it if you clock the amount of time that you would drive versus the bus, it's about equal.

And the ride is is a nice pleasant ride.

If you haven't done it, I would highly recommend it.

The app works really great.

You have the credit card on there, you just buy your tickets, it's 225 if I'm not mistaken.

And you got free Wi-Fi on the bus, and the access with the wheelchair is excellent, and the service and just chatting with the bus driver.

I'm I'm kind of one of those guys that likes to chat with anybody.

And they're super cool.

The bus drivers are cool.

And I did it on a Saturday.

It's totally cool.

I've done it on the during the week.

I've done it in six in the morning.

I've done it eight at night, you know.

And and also when you go online and you look at the times, you guys are right on the money.

I mean, the bus driver will not leave if he's there early.

He won't just zip right by.

It's like it's very calculated.

I mean, it's a really good service.

So I want to say thank you.

And then the other thing is on 92, where you if you if you haven't seen this, if you right where the body shop is and you wait for that bus to stop there, there really isn't a good place to sit.

And I know on in a bench would be great, but there's this hill, so it's kind of dangerous to sit there and you know, you got the traffic and you got a hill behind you.

So it's a little it's not safe, and a lot of people just stand around right there.

And I'm wondering if we can come up with because that's a hot spot right there.

92 is the is where everybody kind of waits.

If we can get think about a bench or something like that, it would be good.

And is there a cross street there?

Uh no, it's right on 92, it's right by the body shop curly and reds, it's right there.

I mean, I've been eyeballing that for a while.

I've used that stop, and then the all the the all other alternative is the one by City Hall here, which does have a bench, and then there's one further up, which is across the street from the coffee place, which is kind of nice and have little logs that you can sit on, which is kind of cool.

But the one on 92 needs something.

Now on 20th Avenue, when you when I jump on the bus there, they've got it where they have the pole and it tells you it's the bus, and they have these little blue chairs that you can sit in.

I'm sure you've seen that before.

I think all of them should have that if you can at minimum.

So um we have a bus stop improvement plan where we've essentially categorized all 1800 bus stops, and we're going through a process of upgrading.

Uh it is cost money.

Uh so we certainly we don't have enough, but especially given that you know there's clearly potentially a safety issue there.

I will take this back to our uh operations folk and see where that stop is in the queue and how to try to get past the hurdles because it is hard.

Not every location is good for a full bus treatment, but um uh definitely that is definitely something we can look at.

And I'll also note that one of our categories is increased safety, cleanliness, and accessibility at bus stops.

So on that note on the cleanliness, there was a trash container that was there.

Somebody had put it there with spray paint graffiti on it, and actually I had uh abundance grates removed it because it really isn't it's not the right trash can.

Yeah.

And you guys have trash cans at most of the bus stops.

That one does not have it because people tend to like sit there and do some work or whatever and and just have a soda while they're waiting, and they got no place to put their trash.

So that one, the 92 one is is is I every morning I go by there's at least four or five people jumping on that bus.

Okay, that's good.

Thank you so much.

As long as we're making pitches, I'd like to make a pitch for bus stop improvements at the corner of Miramani's Point Road.

Mira Point Road.

And uh State Route One.

Um that bus stop serves Kenyatta Cove and Moonridge, and also uh employees who work at the Ritz who drive to the Ritz parking lot, which is behind the bus stop.

Um, but some of them have to come to work to the Ritz and going home using that bus stop.

And right now it's you just have to stand in the grass and in the dirt.

Uh it's heavily used by seniors and children and families, and it's got to be a priority.

It's unacceptable.

Is that on one or is it off of it?

It's actually on one at the corner of Miramani's Point Road.

Okay.

Um obviously Caltrans uh is the owner of Highway One, but our transportation authority is going to be working with the city of Happen Bay on a study along Highway One, and um there's a lot of interest in our agency and seeing what we can do there and you know, working with Caltrans to make something happen.

Yeah, 92 is also a state route.

So yeah, that's one of the problems we have.

I have one last question.

So what happens if San Mateo County voters vote no on the tax measure?

What does that mean?

So the measure is now we are part of a five-county district, so it has to pass in total, meaning it could vote no in San Mateo, uh, and yes in San Francisco, Contra Costa, and San Mateo would be in the measure because it is that collective single district.

The one example we have of that is in um for Caltrain, uh San Mateo was in favorite.

I think Santa Clara was slightly below, and they got pulled up.

So I say based on polling, we're definitely in the middle of the pack in terms of support.

There are other counties that have today lower support and others that have higher support.

But it would be certainly possible that San Mateo County would stand out below, but that that is not where we are today based on our most recent polling.

I just want to make one last pitch, and that is for clean facilities.

As somebody who rode BART, you know, every week, almost every day for more than 20 years, you know, it's dirty.

They wonder why people hate BART.

It's because it's dirty.

The stations are dirty and the bathrooms are closed.

So we need clean buses, clean mass transit, clean bus stops, make people want to use the mass transit.

If it's dirty and unkempt and unmaintained, they won't use it and they won't pay more taxes for agencies that don't keep it clean.

So that's great feedback.

Thank you.

Anyone else like a question or comment?

Robert.

There's a stop uh at the Safeway and the Safe Safeway Shopping Center.

And as you know, we get a little more humidity out here and rain and wind.

And there's um last time I was over at the senior centers, seniors said, can you get us a shelter on that over that particular bench there to protect from the elements would be nice.

Is it in the safe way complex?

Is the stop in the safe way complex or on the safety in the parking lot?

Yeah, in the parking lot, yeah.

Um so it's I'm it's on the list, the list says 1800, but I will figure out where on the list they currently are, and we can you know get back to your city staff with any information we have on that.

I will say we don't have existing funds to do all the improvements in the plan.

I'm hearing a lot about that could be a priority for this area.

Uh so we do hope you take the survey and give us that feedback and we'll look into these specific spot uh stop questions.

Well, thank you for the presentation, and thank you for working on the expenditure plan in advance.

Yeah, it's it's a good move.

Thank you for that.

Yeah.

Yes.

Sure, good idea.

Is there anyone who would like to address the presentation we just heard on SAMTRANs and the uh sales tax measure that's going to be well that's they're gathering signatures for to put on the November ballot?

If you'd like to, you can just come to the podium.

Is there anyone online who would like to address the SAMTRANs presentation?

Uh I see a hand raised by Paul Grigoriev.

I'll call on Paul.

He has had his hand raised the whole time, so I'm not quite sure.

Go ahead, Paul.

If this is about SAMTRANs.

Paul, did you wish to address the SAMTRANs item?

Okay, I think we can just move on.

Yeah.

Move on to Mayor's announcements of communities activities and community service.

I don't have any this evening.

Um item five, we'll ask uh council if that we have any report out from recent closed session meetings.

Uh thank you, Madam Mayor.

We didn't have a closed session today, but the last closed session we did have was on March 3rd, 2026.

There were two items.

There were no reportable actions from that closed session.

And that's the end of my report.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for that.

Um the next item is item six, city manager updates to council.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

We have a couple of updates.

Uh we'll start.

Actually, while we're getting the oh, they're up.

We'll have Irma Costa from the city manager's office come and give a quick update on uh an event coming.

Uh good evening, Madam Mayor, Council members, and members of the public.

Um, Arma Costa City Manager's office.

Um, and I just wanted to briefly highlight an upcoming opportunity for our local restaurants.

Um Flavors of the Peninsula is a 10-day regional campaign that promotes restaurants across San Mateo County through special menus and increased visibility.

It'll take place from April 23rd till May 3rd, uh 2026.

Uh participation from restaurants is free and it's designed to help bring more attention to local dining, encourage residents to explore restaurants account across the peninsula and the coast, and attract visitors to the area.

Uh this is a great opportunity for Halfman Bay restaurants to showcase what they offer and to be a part of a large larger regional effort to support small businesses.

Thank you.

Thank you, Irma.

Um I also want to just point something out.

This probably isn't news to everybody if they've been paying attention, but I just thought it was worth a mention.

Um next door, that great app that all city employees and city council members love.

Um it's actually a great place to kind of see the pulse of the community.

Um they started a new program this year where they name the friendliest cities to live in for each state.

It's a new thing, it's based on both qualitative and quantitative data.

Half Moon Bay was ranked the friendliest place in California to live this year.

So I just, you know, you look at the world we live in right now.

Um, you know, we live in the most divisive time that I can think of.

Um anger is rampant, social media contributes to that a lot of things.

I think we should be pretty darn proud to live in the friendliest place in California to live.

Um it speaks a lot to our community and what we do here, and it's both for residents, but it's also for people to visit.

So I I think it's worth a pat on the back for everybody that lives here, and um it makes me really, really proud to to be here and to be from here.

So yeah, yeah, I think we need to plaster that on our website and plaster it everywhere we can.

So it's pretty cool.

It's pretty cool.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Um we're moving on to public forum.

And uh I just want to remind everybody that uh anyone present at the meeting who is looking to speak on a non-agendized item is welcome to fill out a speaker card and can do so now.

Each speaker will have three minutes to make their comment.

And if you would like to speak on an item that is on the agenda, either under consent or on the regular business agenda, please put that item number on your speaker card.

And if you are attending the meeting in person, we will call your name during that item.

So I have uh three speakers here.

We'll start with Joaquin Jimenez.

Joaquin, can you hear us?

Oh, there you are.

You're up.

Uh good evening, honorable mayor, uh, vice mayor, council members, uh cities, staff, members of the public.

My name is Joaquin Jiménez.

Yesterday.

How about this weather?

Uh you get to see the chance.

Any of you got a chance to see the uh daily journal from yesterday?

Front page.

Anybody?

No?

No.

Uh Millbrae, housing.

No.

You got to see it.

I'm gonna have to uh attend one of their meetings and yes, congratulate them.

They're 18% away from uh from completing you know their housing.

You know, that's 2031st.

You know, and we're not even halfway there.

We're not, you know, we uh we keep ignoring the you know the need for housing in Half Moon Bay.

I know you know what is going on in Pacifica about with a query in Pacifica.

But they want to build, you know, over 200 units in there.

That could happen in Half Moon Bay.

Build those remedy can come in and uh if you complain about uh this you know 555 Kelly being built a five-story.

If we don't comply, we can have uh seven-story buildings in Half Moon Bay.

Thus they can come in and uh domain properties and start building.

You know, so that's uh one of the things that we really have to think about.

You know, we in the meantime we still have a lot of families that are actually struggling, you know, uh you know, with housing.

You know, now that you're making a decision, you know, in uh you know, putting a stop to donors that we approve a couple years ago.

I know rent control, you know.

I'm not gonna talk about it because I know it's on the agenda, but it's something to think about.

You know, and I'd be happy, you know, because you know we don't comply, you know, it's gonna happen.

The community is struggling.

Thank you.

Thank you, Joaquin.

The next speaker is Jonathan Oliveira.

Hi, good evening, Mayor and City Council Member.

My name is Jonathan Oliveira, and I'd like to propose Half Moon Bay and Nazareth to be sister cities.

And um, if you don't know Nesarea is a huge surfing attraction in Portugal, and I think it goes hand in hand with Mavericks.

So I'd like to number one uh also include the fact that there's a huge Portuguese heritage community here, so I think it would go hand in hand with bringing the community together from Portugal and here and tourist attraction from all the Portuguese in California as well.

Um as you know, Hapoom Bay is a is a huge has a huge fishing community as well, and Nesadeth does as well.

So both uh communities actually transition from fishing communities into tourist destinations, excuse me, tourist destinations.

So I think that you know it would be great to have people come here and and see how Nazida transitioned from a fishing village to a tourist destination for surfing as well as Half Moon Bay.

Um, you know, I think another another thing that they have hand in hand is that Half Wombay has around 12,000 residents and Nesede has 10,000 residents, so both uh have global name recognition, but they're small towns that pack a big punch.

So you know, my my dad, Fernando Oliveira, he's been in touch with the uh Portuguese council in San Francisco.

We've already discussed it with him and his dignitaries.

We were involved in Sausalito uh with the sister city there that they did with Cascai, which is a city in Portugal, and we actually assisted building the compass rose in in front of uh the Bank of America building there as well.

So we've uh we've definitely been involved in the in the community, and we'd definitely like to uh propose to do the same thing here in Hapmo Bay, and I think it'd be a great attraction for the Portuguese community and for the international community to come see Half Moon Bay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'd like to hear more about that.

Um I have a speaker slip from Robert Pedro, but it says it has a an agenda item and public forum.

Did you want to talk about both?

Yes.

Public forum first.

Sure, correct.

But if if it if it's related to item seven, you can't talk about it then.

Well, I meant just public form, it has nothing to do with an agenda item.

Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I thought public forum was item seven.

Sorry about that.

Okay.

Well, that's right.

It is.

It is.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you for your time today.

Uh I stand before you not because I want to, but because I need to.

We are often told that if you see discrimination or experience discrimination, we must rise up and say something.

Today, I'm doing just that.

I'm here to share that I feel that I've been discriminated against by at least one member of this council.

The first time it happened, I stayed silent.

I was shocked by what I heard and unsure how to respond.

The second time, I realized the silence was no longer an option.

So I'm here, a proud realtor speaking out against the discrimination I heard and experienced in this very room on multiple occasions.

Some may see this as trivial, but discrimination rarely starts in obvious dramatic ways.

It often begins with small comments, subtle exclusions, or small groups being singled out.

Over time, that mindset grows.

More groups become those people.

And before long, the harm becomes much harder to undo.

Realtors are people.

We are no higher or lower than anyone else in this community.

Like every resident, every worker, and every stakeholder, we deserve respect and a voice in local government.

Yet realtors have been told not to show up.

Too many realtors at the meetings.

I have to ask why.

Why should any group be discouraged from participating in the democratic process?

Why should anyone feel unwelcomed in a space that is meant to serve the entire community?

This is not just about realtors, it's about fairness.

This is about ensuring that every voice can be heard without fear of dismissal or bias.

I urge this council to reflect on the message being sent, not just to realtors, but to anyone who may feel marginalized or unwelcome.

We all share this community.

We all care about its future, and we all deserve a part of the conversation.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Maggie, I would like to be able to see the timer as well.

I can't see it from here.

I think it's helpful if I can see that.

Yeah, I can.

I think that's that's good the way we're doing it.

I just need to see it as a reminder.

Now I see uh okay, those hands have gone down.

Well, there's one.

Um Shauna Pickett Gordon, did you want to address public forum or are you waiting for an agenda item?

Um I would like to address public forum.

Okay.

You may speak.

I've lived in Montara for 35 years.

Many coastsiders find it impossible to afford the average coastside rent, although they are employed locally, some of them more than full-time.

And that's just the everyday reality for essential workers.

In a high rent area like ours, their hourly wages cover only a small fraction of housing and other living costs.

We need to keep these workers in the area because they are the backbone of our farming and other essential businesses.

Their loss would impact everyone.

We definitely need to build more affordable housing, not just more housing at the average price of over 2,000 for a one-bedroom apartment per month, 3,800 for a two-bedroom, and nearly 6,000 for a three-bedroom.

And this is from Rentometer today.

The population has gone up, so more housing is needed in general, and then the affordability volume must correspond to the volume of need, and we are just very, very far from that.

Building housing does take years.

The permit process, the process of working through the community's input, uh, especially for affordable housing.

And for more than a decade, multiple working families have been sharing crowded apartments, and it's just not fair.

Additional solutions are also needed, such as the rent stabilization program, and I'm hoping that you continue that program as it is now or with necessary revisions.

And we need further housing solutions at the same time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else online who would like to address public forum?

Seeing no further hands raised, I will move to the consent calendar.

And I understand at least one councilmember has some questions about some items on the consent calendar, so I'll take those first.

Uh Councilmember Nagencast.

If you could just identify which item you are going to be able to do.

Madam Mayor, if I could, I I I wanted to just make some clarifications and hopefully that resolves those questions.

Okay.

If that's okay.

Um so the first item is uh I apologize.

Um 8B, which is our warrants.

And there was just a question on our warrants list, which um for the public's understanding is a list of all the payments we've made over a specific time period.

So in this case, it's during the month of February 2026.

And in the current warrants list, there are payments to shoot Maholly and Weinberger, our former city attorney law firm that we worked with.

And there was questions, you know, we are they're no longer our city attorneys.

Why are we still making payments to them?

And it's twofold.

One is there was a transition period as we brought on our new um law firm, and even though the payments were made in February 2026, some of the services provided were last fiscal or last calendar year.

Additionally, there are a couple of uh cases of litigation that the council determined it was best to keep shoot maholly and weinberger involved as we finalize those litigations.

So probably for a couple of more months, you will see payments to them as we wind down those cases and wind down the services and fully transition to a new firm.

So hopefully that answers that question.

Um the other item was um item 8F, which was letters of support and legislative position.

Um if you dig into the staff report, the information is there, but it's not apparent from the staff recommendation.

The last letter of support is regarding Senate Bill 968, a letter of support for that.

That Senate bill is legislation that takes the pilot program through the San Mateo Community College District and provides free tuition to most students under most circumstances and makes that a permanent program.

So we we've been working with the with the district and they requested that letter of support.

So we we think that's a worthwhile legislation to support.

So uh in the future, we'll provide some additional clarifications in these items, and hopefully that answers the questions that council member Nightingales had.

It does.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I appreciate hearing that information.

I'm sure the public does too.

So thank you for that.

Um are there any council members who want to pull any items for discussion?

Okay, well, I'm going to read the consent calendar and then ask the public if they wish to address any of those items before we move approval.

Um so the consent calendar consists of item 8A, which is waive reading of resolutions and ordinances.

8B, accept the warrants for the month of February 2026.

Item 8C, authorized community services financial assistance program additional funding for fiscal year 25-26.

8D, approved minutes of the March 3rd, 2026 special meeting.

8E, approved minutes of the March 3rd, 2026 regular meeting.

8F, receipt of letters of support and legislative position letters.

Item 8G, 2025 housing element and general plan annual progress report.

Item 8H, final acceptance of the fiscal year 2025-26 pavement management project, CIP project number 1038.

Item 8i, authorization to transfer remaining Stone Pine Cove grant funds to San Mateo County.

Is there anyone uh here in person who would like to address those items?

You can come to the podium now.

Or if you're online on Zoom, you can raise your hand.

Seeing none in the room and none online, I will ask for a motion for approval and a second.

So moved.

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries unanimously.

So we're moving on to by the way, we have no ordinances in public hearings tonight.

That's item nine.

Item 10 is Half Moon Bay Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee appointments.

Item 10A.

You need to show me how to do this.

This is kind of hard to get out of here.

All right.

Next time.

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

Uh I'm Daleita, Interim City Engineer.

Um, tonight, uh, this agenda item.

We're asking for you to make uh two appointments to our bicycle pedestrian advisory committee, also known as BPAC.

Um of these positions, we so we started um appointments last June, and we made we made five appointments, and one appointment came from Cabrillo Unified School District.

Um we kept one vacancy open for a student representative.

Um so that's one of the appointments we're asking for tonight.

Um another one is for our one of the appointments that was made last June.

Um that a member has not been, they've been absent from I think the last four BPAC meetings.

So we would ask you to um bring a new uh motion for a new appointment to fill that vacancy.

Um I'm gonna give a little bit of background about BPAC.

Um just quick summary.

Um so it was formed in 2017 originally.

We had 10 members and included um the entire co-site, and it was formed for um the development of Half Moon Bay's bicycle pedestrian master plan, which was adopted in 2019.

Um in 2021, we made an amendment to the BPAC bylaws, which reduced um the member count to seven and restricted it to Half Mo Bay residents only.

Those bylaws included uh targeted representation from different community interests.

So there was a specific member that was supposed to be a uh commuter bike enthusiast, a pedestrian enthusiast, there was a student representative, there was um a senior representative.

Um in 2025, uh last June and July, we made new member appointments, and we also made an amendment to the bylaws.

Um that amendment was designed to make future appointments a little bit more flexible and more efficient.

And so what we did with that amendment, we we eliminated the specific designation of individual representation for each member and and just said, look we the goal of BPAC is to provide a broad representative group, and we give um the the council that discretion and how they choose those members.

Um we also revised term limits for the Cabrera Unified School District representative and left that up to the school district to decide how long their representative member would be on BPAC, and then um we kept the existing terms for the other six members of BPAC at four years.

Um so one of the so the the bylaws state that a member's position may become vacant if they've if they've missed three meetings.

So I mentioned one of the appointments from last July or last June has been uh has been absent from all successive BPAC meetings.

Um we've tried a number of different uh attempts to reach out to her.

Um staff asked both via phone, email, trying to connect through other folks.

We we received one response from her, I think in the fall of last year, um noting that she was unable to attend one of the meetings due to personal matter, um, and that's the only communication we had received since that time from that BPAC from that member, and then they've been a no-show at at all meetings.

And we've continued to reach out and try to connect with them, but we have not um we have not heard anything from them.

Um so we'd like to fill that position and then um we've also been since last June.

We've also had ongoing um collaboration with the school district to try and find a student representative to submit an application.

And uh we did receive one back in December of last year, uh which was exciting.

We reached out to that person and we didn't get any response from them to confirm they were still interested.

Um and follow-ups in January and February.

We still didn't receive any feedback from them, so the we made the presumption that they were no longer interested in BPAC.

Uh we subsequently received another application in um late February, and that um that individual um identified themselves as a Half Moon Bay High School student, um expressed a strong interest in in joining BPAC.

Um they attended our March 5th BPAC meeting, which was our most recent meeting as a member of the public and introduced themselves.

Um and so they've shown really strong interest in in joining BPAC.

Um for the other vacancy um left by the the absentee member, um the staff did not go out and and open applications back up.

We used kind of the existing list of applicants from from last June and followed up with those folks that had applied to see if they were still interested, and we got confirmation from um three individuals who are who are on the list here.

Um and so we'd we'd ask for council to make a motion and appoint new BPAC members for those two positions.

Thank you.

Any questions from council members?

Um I'll see if any members of the public would like to weigh in on the uh applications.

If so, you can come to the podium or raise your hand online.

Seeing none, I'll bring it back to the council for um motions.

We can do the student first.

We can do the student first if you'd like.

Yes.

Yeah.

The names, yeah.

There we go.

Well, since we only have one student now viable for that position, I move that we appoint Angela Garnier to the Commission.

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Yeah.

For the other position, we have three folks.

Correct.

Um I'll just make one comment.

I only know one of those folks, and everyone looked good, but I uh do know Vic Freelaker pretty well.

He's a um retired cardiologist from Stanford Hospital.

Very knowledgeable guy, very patient.

Always does a lot of research on topics that he's still interested in.

So I like the guy, so I would give him my vote.

Let's ask if there's any other nominations from council members.

Are there any of the um applicants here?

Do we know?

Are any of the applicants for the BPAC here?

That would be Vic Frolicker, Richard McClooney, and Brian Baird Williamson.

No.

Okay.

Or online.

I don't see a name there.

Okay.

So we have a motion of the second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Just to clarify that this would be to replace the seat currently held by Katie Murdoch due to absenteeism with this the nominee to replace that seat.

Is that correct?

Yes.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries unanimously.

Welcome to the BPAC.

We're moving on to item 10B, which is continuation of update on residential rental programs and program alternatives.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the council and community, your Marcosta City Manager's Office.

Tonight's item is a continuation of the discussion regarding the city's residential is this better?

Okay.

Staff is seeking direction from council regarding the future of the residential rent stabilization and residential rent registry programs and how the city would like to approach housing stability efforts moving forward.

This presentation will briefly review the background of the programs, summarize feedback from community stakeholders, and then walk through several policy alternatives for council's consideration.

So just to briefly recap the timeline of this discussion.

And shortly after in May of 2025, Council received an additional additional information on program costs, staffing impacts, and early performance.

And during this discussion, council directed staff to continue to operate the programs for a period of uh six months and then come back to council and provide an additional update.

So in January of 2026, um staff returned with a broader uh update and policy considerations related to the long-term structure of the programs.

Um more recently in February 2026, uh council requested additional analysis and asked staff to explore potential alternatives, including alignment with state law and expansion of rental assistance and legal resources and clarification of how enforcement would function if the programs were to be modified or repealed.

Um tonight's report and presentation uh builds on that direction and provides additional analysis and options for council to consider.

Uh during previous discussion, several policy questions uh came up that help shape the alternatives presented tonight.

Um some of those included whether the city should consider aligning the rent stabilization formula for rental increases to align with state law, um also known as AB 1482.

Concerns regarding informal sub-leasing arrangements and overcrowding, and how enforcement and oversight would function if the city were to modify or eliminate the programs.

So the alternatives presented tonight respond directly to those policy questions.

Service providers continue to emphasize that housing instability is often driven by multiple overlapping factors, including raising rents, income volatility, and limited housing supply.

They also noted that rental assistant needs have increased as of recently, and that programs like this are generally most effective when used as short-term tools, particularly when paired with legal assistance, tenant education and mediation services.

For example, like some providers, such as Project Sentinel proposed a tenant landlord counseling and dispute resolution program that would provide conflict intervention counseling and educational workshops for both tenants and landlords.

Legal service providers such as Legal Aid Society of San Mateo and Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto also provide eviction defense, legal consultations, housing clinics, and tenant rights education.

In addition to service providers, staff also met with representatives from the local real estate community to better understand the perspective of property owners.

So real estate representative expressed concerns that rent regulation policies may affect long-term investment decisions and property maintenance, particularly in communities like Half Moon Bay, where much of the rental housing is owned by smaller property owners rather than large apartment operators.

They also noted that property owners are facing increasing operating cost, including insurance, property taxes, and maintenance inspeces, sorry.

Some representatives also indicated that these cost pressures may influence whether owners continue renting their properties or consider selling them in the future.

Data collected through the registry indicated that Half Moon Bay's rental housing stock is primarily composed of small properties rather than large apartment complexes.

The majority of the rental housing stock is consists of single-family homes, small multifamily properties with two or four units, and a relatively small number of large apartment complexes.

The ownership structure means that many rental properties in the city are owned by individual property owners rather than large institutional landlords.

Apologies for all the text and the size of the font, but I wanted to provide an overview of the types of data that's collected to the rental registry.

The registry primarily captures three types of information, which is property and unit details, rent and tenancy data, and ownership and management contacts.

So this allows the city to better understand housing trends and support program compliance.

In some ways, some of the information that we collect is similar through what we collect in the business license process.

As indicated by real estate representatives, there are some platforms that provide housing data.

A key distinction, however, is that locally locally data is reported at a unit level at a unit level directly from property owners.

Whereas public and primary data softwares typically provide aggregated or estimated information at a broader level.

They have made updates to their privacy policy to address some of council's concerns.

And Andrew Keefe, Ptolemy CEO, is actually available online this evening to answer any questions or concerns from council.

Based on council's direction and feedback received from community stakeholders, staff developed four policy alternatives for council's consideration.

So these alternatives represent different approaches to balancing the city's housing goals, administrative capacity, and the city's role in housing oversight.

The options range from modifying the current program structure to shifting toward a more service-based approach or eliminated the programs entirely.

So I will briefly walk you through each alternative.

Under alternative one, the city would retain the residential rent stabilization ordinance in Chapter 606 of the Hafen Bay Municipal Code, but amend specific provisions of the ordinance to align the rent increase formula with the state tenant protection act.

Staff prepared a redline version of the ordinance with the proposed amendments that can be found as an attachment to the staff report as attachment four.

Currently, the city limits the annual rent increases to 80% of the change in CPI or 3%, whichever one is lower.

So under this alternative, section 6.06.050, which governs standard annual rent adjustments, would be amended to follow the rent cap established under state law.

This would allow annual increases of 5% plus CPI not to exceed 10% within a 12-month period.

And this is consistent with California civil code.

So from a policy perspective, the primary change under this alternative is the allowable rental increase.

However, the overall structure of the program would largely remain the same.

So the rent stabilization would remain in place.

Some members from these organizations are actually also present here tonight in case council has any questions regarding any of the services that they provide.

Under this option, the city could also explore establishing an emergency rental assistance program designed to provide short-term financial support to households experiencing temporary hardships.

Are you talking about alternative three now?

Yeah, I'm switching to alternative three.

Yeah.

And alternative three would be to repeal both the residential rent stabilization ordinance and the rental registry.

So under this approach, the city would rely primarily on existing state law protections, which already establishes rent caps and just cause evictions requirements for rental units.

So the city's role would shift towards education outreach and connecting residents with existing housing resources and legal services.

Tenants could still have access to a wide range of support services through organizations such as legal aid CLESPA and mediation programs such as Project Sentinel.

However, without the registry and local reporting requirements, the city would have limited ability to collect data on the rental housing trends and proactively identify compliance issues.

So enforcement would rely primarily on tenant complaints and private legal action.

Alternative four would be to maintain the programs as is.

But I wanted to provide an overview of the key differences between the alternatives.

So in closing, the alternatives presented tonight reflect several potential approaches for how the city could move forward.

Staff is seeking council's direction on which approach you would like us to pursue.

Based on that direction, staff would return with any any necessary ordinance amendments, program adjustments, and implementation recommendations.

Thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Irma, for a very thorough presentation tonight.

But also thank you for the research and a lot of the work you did to provide a lot more depth in terms of understanding the alternatives and I really appreciated that.

Thank you, of course.

I had a lot of help from Matthew and Denise and Karen.

So it was a team effort.

Well done.

Thank you.

Clarifying questions for staff.

I have one clarifying question just to be clear.

I saw it on the comparison chart, but on alternative one where you had separate slides for one, two, three, and four.

It would be great as a final bullet to include.

Yeah, right here.

The final there should be another bullet that includes that this alternative includes our current uh availability of San Mateo County legal services.

Do you know what I mean?

That would help because another page so people are clear on that.

And um and we you know pay legal services to help with that.

So that makes it just a very comprehensive.

Thank you.

I should mention that.

But yeah, under alternative one, we could um either um renew our contract with legal aid or explore different um contract basis with other organizations.

And thanks again for great report, really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Councilmember Negan guest.

Thank you.

On any of the alternatives, we could add, you know, there I saw some of the alternatives have specific um items to add or enhancements, but we could mix and match anything we're on on it.

Just because I didn't see on a certain alternative uh emergency rental assistance or rental assistance, we could have that.

Right?

I mean, that's not a good idea.

Yeah.

I mean, I might be assuming, but I think it's up to council's discretion as to what you'd like to see us.

And they um we still have our uh tenant protection.

Yeah, that's a separate ordinance.

So, like I mentioned earlier, we were not recommending making any changes to that ordinance.

All right, thank you.

Yeah.

Other council members?

Okay.

Let's move on to public comment.

Um I've got quite a few speaker slips here and people online.

So I'd like you to restrict your comments to two minutes, please.

And we will start with Yoon Mikim.

Good evening, Councilmember.

Thanks for uh giving me the opportunity to speak with you today.

My name is Henmi Kim.

I am a housing rights attorney from community legal services in East Palo Arto.

I practice a full spectrum of eviction defense in San Mateo County.

Prior to joining CLASPA, I worked as a director of community engagement and public policy appointed de la Costa Surf, advocating for farm workers' tenants' rights and affordable housing for low-income communities in South Coast communities.

And I'm also a resident of San Mateo, I mean, I'm uh I'm also a resident of South Coast communities as well.

So I have a pretty good understanding of the struggles the tenants in our coastal communities experience, especially now that I have several open cases assisting tenants from Half Moon Bay as well, trying to hold the small property owner landlords accountable for their failure to address habitability issues and attempting to unlawfully increase the tenants' rents as well as wrongfully evict tenants.

This past Saturday on March 13th, there was a convening of housing rights lawyers conference in San Francisco, which was attended by housing advocates, lawyers, and community members from California.

One big consistent themes that was uplifted at this conference was this.

The stronger local renter stabilization promotes the level playing field between tenants and landlords, reducing the great imbalance in bargaining power experienced by low-income tenants who are rarely given any flexibility when they struggle to keep up with the rent due to socioeconomic barriers.

Strong local renter stabilization ordinance reduces the risk of tenants being priced out of their homes due to excessive market-driven renter increases, and it promotes long-term housing stability.

I can share with you that the tenants whose renter units are covered by the City of East Palo Arto and Mountain View's renter stabilization ordinances have greater and stronger tools to fight against wrong for eviction.

And I really want to touch on this argument that you know why do we need our own local rent stabilization or rent cap when there's already the rent cap provided by the California TPA?

I'll explain to you exactly why.

Sometimes it takes more than a year.

Sometimes it takes eight months, sometimes it could take even longer than that.

But when you have a rope local renter stabilization stabilization ordinance, tenants can utilize the local governance structures, the local programs that they are familiar with through the petition process.

It moves quick, it moves quicker.

They don't necessarily need to have a lawyer.

Lawyers can definitely get involved, but it just provides greater uh access for the tenants to exercise their legal rights.

I cannot emphasize this enough.

Unless there are free lawyers available for every tenant, the state law, the enforcing it is virtually extremely challenging.

That's why the legal service providers, such as the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County and Claspa, we struggle because there are greater number of tenants who are unrepresented.

And almost every plaintiff landlords are represented by the lawyers at the eviction court.

We go every Tuesday.

So I really want council member to really remember that.

The imbalance, even legal representation, having to enforce the state law.

It's really important.

So I really uh asked that the HAFOM-based renter stabilization ordinance as it is to be preserved and to be retained.

So I would encourage you to uh pick alternative four.

But if not, I would ask you to pick alternative number one.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Keith Nirhan.

Looks like Keith's not in the room.

We'll come back to him.

Gene Knight.

Madam Mayor, Council members, happy St.

Patrick's Day.

Happy St.

Patrick's Day.

The main argument against rent control is that in normal times it can discourage new investment.

But these are not normal times.

We are in a housing supply crisis, which is driving rents to exorbitant heights.

The city's low-income tenants are the most vulnerable in this crisis.

The economic situations of landlords and low-income tenants are not remotely comparable.

Alternative one poses minimal burden on landlords while providing substantial benefits to tenants.

Follows the state standard for annual rent increases, and critically maintains the current local enforcement of the rent stabilization program.

Local enforcement is critical if you are to help low-income tenants.

If tenants must instead mount their own private cases, even with legal aid and CLESPA help, it may be beyond their ability to proceed.

I viewed the registration form, and it is simple to use.

You use online registration for businesses and permitting.

So why is the rental registration a problem for you?

As a society, we have always felt a special duty to protect our most vulnerable residents.

It's why we provide food assistance to low-income residents.

Housing is as critical.

Please continue the current program or choose alternative one.

Thank you.

Has Keith Nirhan returned?

No, no, he had to leave, and he apparently is not going to return.

Okay.

David Carducci.

Followed by Robert Pedro.

Good evening, members of the council.

My name is David Carducci.

I am the directing attorney for the housing team at the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County.

We appreciate your support with the contract last year and would look forward to future support, of course.

Our mission of our housing team is to prevent homelessness.

And we do that by trying to keep people in their homes, keep them in their affordable and sustainable tenancies when we can.

We do this with the eviction defense services, and we do this with uh helping people with when they're served at the court case for eviction.

We do this for advocacy, do this through advocacy for tenants.

Uh if they can come to us before they get to the court process, um that's much better.

In those situations, one of the first things I'll do is reach out to the landlord and try to uh see if we can resolve a matter without going to court.

Um we only ask that landlords and property owners follow the law.

Uh if they're following the law, they probably won't hear from me.

Um unless it's an eviction case based on non-payment, then it's often very helpful for us to get involved to help facilitate a settlement that helps the landlord get paid.

Um rental assistance combined with legal assistance can result in the landlord um getting paid and the tenant saving their tenancy.

A win-win situation uh for everybody.

Um laws need enforcement, they don't enforce themselves.

And we again we appreciate uh past support and uh welcome any questions if you have them.

Thank you.

Robert Pedro, followed by Carolina Carball.

That's why you know as realtors, uh we bring solutions to the table.

And uh one of the solutions is that emergency rental assistance for someone, maybe they lost a job, now they have a new job, they're between paychecks, they just need that one month's rent to stay in the home.

Uh having uh all kinds of other services that are available that the county already offers.

Now I I do want to discuss uh I would urge you to vote for alternative three to remove the rent control and rent registry ordinance.

If some of you are thinking about pushing it to a ballot measure, I would just remind you of the history of this particular ordinance.

It was not put before the voters when it was passed.

It was a city council.

Two of the city council members that voted for it were not re-elected.

Thereby I would suggest the people did vote because they did not re-elect those people that passed this ordinance to begin with.

So there's no reason to go through an expensive process of putting it on a on a ballot.

The city council should take action tonight.

This is the third meeting.

There's no reason to continue this process.

Housing providers are hurting and they're and they're running out of time to save their property.

So I would urge you to vote for alternative three.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Carolina Carvajal, followed by Rosio Avala.

Good evening to all.

And you saw that this was the right way to provide a solution for all of us that we were living congested in in in houses.

In that moment there was no way to produce more houses.

I don't think that you are going to deny that because that was a real help for us.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

But if the people if now people are deciding to vote against that now.

And I don't want that the people that are maybe rejecting supporting us.

With solution, of course.

And not that slogan, the famous slogan that says we are here for you.

And another thing that I want to say is that I appreciate that many prowners are here.

But ellos no son lose but they are not the only ones.

And if you do it on behalf of these people that are responsible here, it's the better.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Rocio Avala followed by Joanne Markowski.

It's very emotional.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the council.

My name is Rocío Avila.

I want I want you to think for a moment on the children of our city.

Children that are going to our schools, they play in our parks, and they are growing here, and they are calling this community their home.

Fear to receive a letter that tells them that they cannot stay there anymore.

Fear to have to take their kids out of school and separate them from their friends and their community.

Families that work, working families, people that cook in our restaurants, people that work in the hotels of this place, that attend the tourists when they come to visit, people that work in the fields and in the flower shops, people that do their gardens for their houses, for that their houses they see beautiful they can be seen beautiful, people that take care of our kids that keep our our city functioning, they deserve an opportunity to continue living here.

You're losing the essence of Hapmoon Bay.

The rent control and stabilization is a way to protect families, to protect the kids, the children, and protect the future of our city.

Thank you, Rosio.

Joanne Murkowski, followed by Harvey Robach.

Good evening.

Tonight I stand before you as a member of the coastside community, privileged enough to own a home.

It's not fancy, but it's plenty for myself and my husband, the only two occupants.

When we die, the equity will pass to our heirs.

And there are many others like me, some of whom are homeowners and some who are also landlords.

But we are only representative of part of the coastside community.

Many others struggle to pay rent, live in crowded conditions, sometimes with an entire family in one sharing one room, and still must cobble together the rent from more than one worker in the family.

And with the rising gas and food prices, it's getting worse.

A rent increase of $50 a month means they must cut expenses someplace else.

Yesterday I communicated with the director of a local nonprofit who emphasized that Half Moon Bay represents the entire community across the economic spectrum.

She further emphasized the need to protect subtenants and stated that the rent registry is a vital first step towards finding permanent solutions for these renters.

The stabilization program helps keep rent reasonable and provides protection after day 30 versus a full year under state law AB 1482.

My values teach me that every person has worth, not just those who have resources or can speak out.

Please serve the entire Half Moon Bay community by continuing the rent registry and stabilization programs in their original or amended form.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Harvey Rabbach, followed by Fernando Pena.

Good evening.

Recently, the mayor expressed a worry that we're heading for a recession.

And unfortunately, I concur that there's a very good likelihood.

Now is not the time to burden our most vulnerable tenants with this out of control possibility of rents that are not really constrained.

We need the rental registry, the rent stabilization ordinance, as they are.

That's alternative four.

The infrastructure for enforcing that exists already.

We should continue that.

So I urge you be compassionate.

Think about the most vulnerable among us and uh vote for alternative four to keep the rental registry and stabilization in place.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Fernando Pena, followed by Nancy Fontana.

Good evening, Mayor Rodick, Council members, happy St.

Patrick's Day.

My name is Fernando Pena.

I'm here on behalf of the San Mateo County Association of Realtors to respectfully ask that you vote yes on option number three, and that an emergency rental assistance program be added to option number three to be run by Project Sentinel.

As you may know, Project Sentinel currently runs the City of San Mateo emergency rental assistance program, which does not include either a rent stabilization or a rental registry programs.

While I understand and share the concern about housing affordability and renter protections, the current rent stabilization program may have created unintended consequences.

Many of the uh of the issues that you've probably been hearing from the speakers this evening.

The rental registry has also raised concerns.

It creates an additional layer of bureaucracy, increases administrative costs, and creates cybersecurity risks, especially for small local property owners.

I urge the council to direct the staff to educate the public about the over 20 nonprofit organizations in San Mateo County already providing tenant houser housing, providing provider assistance, and utilize existing data sources rather than a costly registry and establish a much needed emergency rental assistance program.

I believe this approach will finally give you the metrics and the outcomes you are seeking.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Nancy Fontana, followed by Pam Door.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council and members of the public.

I'm here in support of option three.

I do want to clarify one thing.

At a previous meeting, I did mention being against the tenant protections as well, but I'm not anymore.

I think that's important because if you choose option three, you still have that in place.

And I'm it is hopeful that you would then go after the bad players in this scenario.

The rent stabilization and registry encompass all landlords.

And uh I'm sorry, but when you have to do work on a house, I don't know any contractor that I can say, oh I'm offering my place is 20 percent below market.

Will you give me a deal?

No, that doesn't happen.

So there's you know, the people are landlords are experiencing increases as well.

Um I really would like Half Moon Bay to look at this and and regard if you were to vote again and choose option three.

I understand that there will be a lot of disappointment for some people, but I also think it's an opportunity.

Half Moon Bay has an opportunity here.

You've gotten the attention of the industry, you've gotten the attention of landlords that are decent landlords, and I think you have a chance to do a really good program that could actually become a model for other small cities.

The only other small city that had a similar program was Fairfax, and it was voted out by the the voters there.

The closest city in size that I know of that has one like ours is East Palo Alto, and I've read a lot about East Palo Alto, and I've talked to a friend that knows quite a bit about the makeup of the rental market there.

It's way different.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Pam Door.

Uh and after Pam, we're going to go to speakers online.

Um Good evening.

Um I appreciate the thoughtful work of the staff that went into this report.

I thought it was really helpful.

I was really moved by attachment six and how many resources are out there that we don't have to pay extra for but are available.

And I love using what's available first.

I'm always really sensitive to budget for myself and spending public dollars.

I would want to be careful as well.

I was a little saddened by attachment four, which didn't really give me anything new on data after collecting and processing and paying so much money to collect.

Where's that information that I hope to see an attachment four?

And it didn't help illuminate anything for me.

So just mentioning that I expected to see that, but I didn't.

And after reviewing the report, I really want to urge you to accept alternative three.

The report itself really highlighted some things for me.

Housing is complex.

It's driven by income volatility, rising costs, limited housing supply, not just rent increases alone, it's complex.

It also makes clear that rental assistance, legal assistance, mediation, all of those are needed as well.

At the same time, the concerns for the local real estate community and rent stabilization policies may impact investment decisions.

We need more supply, and not having more supply makes me fearful.

We've got people that need rent.

So I just think since California's AB 1482 is already in place and provides that strong uniform tenant protection statewide.

Putting our time and energy and money into things that really help give strong tenant protections makes a lot more sense for me.

And the report notes.

Thanks.

And our half moon bay approach makes more sense.

I want to encourage the council to consider voting for alternative three.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Online speakers.

The first speaker would be Paul Grigoriev.

Good afternoon.

Tonight you have Mariah, not Paul.

I'm a retired labor market economist.

I've lived in Half Moon Bay for 14 years.

Our community is known for its beautiful beaches, its quaint shops, and delicious restaurants.

We, now that I know that we're also the friendliest city in California, or a tourist destination.

And as a result, many of our jobs are in hotels, restaurants, and lawn care.

Our homes are expensive.

But our community relies upon an army of people who work in our in low wage who work in our low-wage jobs.

In fact, our school system has had so much trouble attracting and keeping it qualified teachers that they themselves have examined the issue of perhaps they should build housing for their own teachers and support staff.

Our town cannot solve the issues around income inequalities.

But one problem we can solve is collecting information about our local rental market and stock of rental housing and establish guidelines for reasonable increases in rental rates.

In addition, I think we must do our share to increase the number of units that hardworking people and retired people can live and can afford to live in.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, good evening.

I wanted to can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay.

I wanted to speak in opposition of both programs and respectfully request that council vote yes on option three to remove.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Amanda Chang.

Good evening, Council members.

My name is Amanda Chang, and I'm a staff member at Urban Habitat here in support of Policy Alternative Four to maintain the existing rental programs as they are.

Um, our organization Urban Habitat, we convened the San Mateo Anti-Displacement Coalition, and last year I presented to the council a report on the conditions of farm worker housing on the coast and the importance of tenant protections in ensuring all tenants, but especially farm workers are stable in their homes.

And this is even more vital that people have shelter as ICE kidnaps people out of their cars on the street or even at court.

And I want to also remind you that tenant protections are essentially consumer protections.

They make sure that people are purchasing a product, this case housing, that is of good quality at a fair price.

And we create laws to regulate the worst actors and not hope that the best actors will just continue to stay good actors and that work good bad actors won't join the market.

These protections have been in place for less than two years, which is not enough time to assess their success.

And repealing or watering down the rent stabilization ordinance will only push people further into overcrowded housing or homelessness.

And maintaining the rental registry will help the city collect more data on rental housing in the city to create more solutions.

And again, state flaw is a floor, not a ceiling, and which we should be using all the tools in our toolbox to protect our most vulnerable residents from displacement.

Rent stabilization actually helps our emergency rental assistance funds go further and protect more people because the rents are at a more affordable price.

So I urge you to maintain the ordinances as they are, both the rent stabilization and the rental registry and choose policy alternative four.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Belinda Hernandez Ariaga.

Thank you, Council.

I am coming to you tonight to just really reiterate the importance of caring for our community at a critical time in this country when so many are suffering.

And I know we've come to you in so many ways to ask you to do the right thing and think about the most vulnerable in our community.

I'm really sad that rent control, you know, has gone away because I can remember so just so many times going to you all during difficult times in our in our um town's history, like COVID and the flooding, the shooting, and the economic crisis that our community is facing, especially our immigrant community, and we've asked you to stand with them.

We've asked you to hear their concerns, we've asked you to hold their hand, we've asked you to think about their children, their families.

We've had so many children come to you and and speak to you about their situations.

I mean, this is nothing new to come here tonight and share that you know, so many are suffering.

This is something that we've been working with you on so closely, and it really breaks my heart to know that they're always um kind of an afterthought of like, yeah, we care about them, but we can't do that in 2026 when we're looking at the atrocities happening across our country to our immigrant communities.

And as the speaker just said, we're voted the friendliest community, but yet how do we show up as political leaders to do the right thing for them?

How do we show up with compassion and care?

We all have homes, but they don't.

And then living with the minimal the wages that are paid here, the cost of living for California, and then having to struggle to pay rent.

We see it every day in the work that we do at Alice to try to please wrap up, Alinda.

So I'm I'm asking for you to please um do what you can and vote the right way to at least continue to support them tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is PS Internal Account.

Hi, this is Carol Kahn.

I'm the executive director of Project Sentinel, which is the PS in the internal account.

Sorry that it isn't um there with my name.

I just wanted to take a moment, introduce myself, introduce the housing services at Project Sentinel.

Primarily, we're a comprehensive housing services organization, um, 50 plus years old, and operating in communities in the uh sort of prevention space, upstream, keeping people out of court and stably housed.

And we do that through neutral tenant landlord education counseling and dispute resolution services.

We also have a robust fair housing program that is watching and investigating the landscape around housing discrimination issues that may be presenting.

So comprehensively, we just uh we want to express that um, you know, in all communities, small and large, very many different kinds of conflicts can arise through misunderstandings and um improper uh or noncompliance, and we seek to we have about an 80% success rate in bringing people to resolution, both landlords and tenants, and keeping uh tenancies stable.

Thank you so much, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for coming on down tonight.

Appreciate it.

Uh the next speaker is Susie Dershowitz.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Suzanne Dershowitz.

I'm a senior staff attorney at Public Advocates.

Public Advocates is a nonprofit law firm, an advocacy organization with deep expertise in rental protections and other local anti-displacement policies.

We're also a member of the San Mateo Anti-Displacement Coalition.

I want to echo the words of Hun Me Kim from CLESPA and David Carducci from Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County.

I'm here tonight to urge you to choose alternative four, maintain the rent stabilization and rental registry programs in their current form without modification.

The rent cap under state law is insufficient.

5% plus the consumer price index with a cap of 10% is too high for our neighbors who are rent-burdened.

Half Moon Bay's ordinance, which limits rents to 80% of the percentage change in the consumer price index with a cap of 3% is reasonable.

It is not the strongest rent cap in the Bay Area, but it does give working people a chance to be able to stay in this community.

Rent regulations have been found to be effective at achieving the goal of moderating escalating rents, and there is widespread agreement in the empirical literature that rent regulation increases housing stability for tenants who live in regulated units.

Research also indicates that the increased stability and housing affordability brought about by rent stabilization improves health outcomes and promotes public health.

Thank you.

Yes, hi.

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

I'm with Ptolemy, the organization that works alongside Irma and the Fantastic Team to uh implement and oversee the rental programs.

We're a mission-driven organization that came out of the Harvard Kennedy School with an explicit mission to help local governments ensure safe and stable housing.

We've partnered with over a hundred and fifty state and local governments, and we've seen firsthand the positive impact that effective rental oversight can have on communities than enact sensible legislation like this.

But speaking specifically of the rental registry component of this, I do firmly believe that requiring the operators of rental properties to register their business with the municipality, just like the requirements for almost any business operating within city limits, is just common sense.

Providing baseline information such as a local point of contact in case of emergency is a no-brainer from a public safety standpoint.

What do you call if a pipe bursts or worse?

The increase in climate change induced in debt disasters and severe weather events have underscored the need for rental registries to coordinate emergency rescue services, assess property damage, and deliver post-disaster relief.

We're proud to have worked hand in hand with our partners in St.

Louis last year in the wake of the devastating tornadoes that ripped through the city.

Could you ramp up, please?

Sure thing.

So I I would uh strongly urge the council to uh consider option four.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Uh so we have no other speakers, and so we're going to take a five-minute break, but a few more minutes, and that's fine too.

So we'll see you about five after nine.

Thank you.

Okay, welcome back to liberation time.

Um Irma, could you please put the alternatives up on the screen?

Is this screen?

Um let's start out with just the the basic is that alternative.

Yes.

So I'm gonna ask uh council members first if they have any um additional questions.

For staff.

Um, some of the resource providers that they would make themselves available to answer questions to I'll start with just the question part before we get into the back and forth.

So who has questions?

Councilmember Johnson.

So project uh sent to know as who talked earlier.

Is that correct?

On okay.

It's gotta be at least habitable functioning appliances, heating and cooling, um windows that open and close that um are not broken or cracked, that sort of thing.

Can you tell me more about that?

Did you explore that at all in more depth?

Um yeah, I did a little bit of research.

So there are there are other cities such as Berkeley that have like a rental inspection program.

Um and it's kind of up to the city of how they want to um implement it.

So um some of it it includes like their cell certification where a landlord um receives a form and they're able to provert provide that certification um and submit it to the city.

Um and then they also have like a lottery system where brandom properties are selected, um, say like every year or every three years, um, depending on how the city wants to implement that um then the city will actually go in and provide those inspections of those specific properties.

Um but it's really up to council's discretion as to how they would want to see that program um if it they would want to implement something like that.

Thank you very much.

Any other questions?

Yeah.

On that same um question, what would the cost of a home inspection be?

Are we talking about a couple hundred dollars a year or are we talking thousands?

What are we talking about?

You're talking cost to the city to administer the program.

Yeah.

Um, you know, again, it it really depends on how we structure it, but um there would be some additional administrative cost.

Um, one of the things would be how would we track it through a registry or some other you know, database.

You know, there's there's that question.

And then the inspections will probably require additional code enforcement type staff.

Um and then part of it is not knowing how many complaints we might get or other issues that might come up.

So similar to the implementation of the implementation of these programs, we would have to err on the side of you know, really ramping things up and then see how they go and and potentially scale back.

I would estimate it's it's at least 150,000 a year.

And and it would also include follow-up, wouldn't it be just the inspection?

Exactly.

Code enforcement.

Yeah, once code enforcement gets involved, that that can drag out as a process as we work with them because we currently have done some of these types of inspections based on you know, code enforcement calls we've gotten for rental properties.

So it's happened before, and i i it's it can become an extensive process depending on how much the landlord is willing to work with us and make those changes proactively once they're notified of the problems.

Any other questions?

Okay.

Um who would like to start okay?

I will ask Councilmember Johnson to start.

Lacking volunteers.

Um I had a lot of people calling me, a lot of people emailing me, and all and I've had interviews with people across the board with everyone, meaning everybody.

Um the what the review of the mom and pop and how many smaller homes we have and the people that are living or owning these units was always been the back of my mind of somebody having a home, they're renting the home, and then you have all these other expenditures that are happening to that home.

Uh insurance has always been, we pro talked about that last time.

Um taxes.

We don't know what their mortgage rate is.

We don't know if it's, you know, what's adjustable and uh or fixed.

And I have, you know, I have my own home that I have that I inherited.

And I have a house up in Tahoe that I inherited.

I'm not renting it.

And that thing's just costing me an arm and a leg.

I want to get rid of it.

And because of the cost, but I'm not renting it, so that's not what I'm trying to say.

What I'm just saying is that things just start costing left and right.

Now, if I was renting it, I would have to raise the rent because it's just it's I can't afford it.

And things are going up.

So I get it.

So to be burdened with this rent control is somebody that has a house that you're trying to rent and you can't predict, and we also we don't know what then the future is going to be, and I don't really get the pulse that people are the these landlords the way that we got classified last couple meetings.

I'm not getting that pulse that they're going for gold and they're just raising the rates and stuff like that.

So what Pam has brought forward on that letter um I thought was pretty right spot on.

And I I had a meeting with her and Nancy also at that time.

Too uh at the coffee place, and this is goes back a month ago.

Um I'm leaning towards number three is what I'm leaning towards.

And I'm also looking at all these things that we could do, like the project sent to know, uh, which I'm reading here.

I did read this rental safety inspection, and I underlined it because I thought it was a good idea.

And if I'm not mistaken, it's on page 22 in the middle there.

That's what you guys are talking about, right?

It's called um safety inspection programs, what we just talked about.

Yeah, and that's what you guys are calling here.

Just to make sure that the units are, you know, everything's functioning, and if there's any issues.

So that's kind of where I'm standing on this right now.

I've listened to all everybody on perspectives from one end to the other.

Um that's where I'm at right now.

Thank you.

Um Councilmember Brownstone.

Um I was just curious, Patrick.

Did you hear from folks who are really struggling with rent or seniors on fixed income or other people?

Because you said every end of the spectrum, so I was kind of wondering what you meant by that spectrum.

Am I being called out on the mic now again?

I'm asking you.

Are you asking me?

Yeah.

No, I'm answering.

Yes, I have.

I would like to recommend that council members not interrogate each other.

Thank you.

Okay.

Well, it seems in terms of um that we have we've only recently really heard from a lot of the tenants and folks who are hurting.

And I think relying only on 1482, as was explained to us by um a member in our audience from legal services.

Um that's really not said, you know, it's really more of a private cause of action.

Um that the best kind of protections are really a local ordinance like we have in terms of it uh being taken care of locally.

One thing that I wasn't so that's where I want to go with alternative one, which is actually a huge consent concession on rent.

I mean, it's got a base of five percent based on the city's current formula, if I recall, the increase would have been 0.06 percent, right?

If I can remember that from our last meeting or something.

Um it's currently 1.23 percent.

1.23?

Okay.

Um I don't know.

1.23 seems low.

It doesn't seem reasonable to me.

And um I'd rather see something like uh three percent ceiling up to maybe uh five or six percent.

But if what it takes to change anyone's mind here is go with the state five up to ten percent.

Um I'd go along with that and keep everything else intact.

I think um I think we have a good program.

It pays for itself.

It's not super expensive.

It now pays for itself.

And we have a good relationship with San Mateo Legal Services, which has a um very competent umlord tenancy practice.

So I think it's good.

It's good as it stands what it is.

I don't think it's a huge burden on landlords to um register.

It's about a 10 to 15 minute form.

So um that's where I stand on it.

I don't think I would go with uh alternative four at this point, but I like alternative one.

Councilmember Nagenkast.

According to the agenda report tonight.

This is the fifth time since 2025 City Council is discussing this rent stabilization and rental registry ordinance at a City Council meeting.

Each agenda report reflecting staff research and public comment has provided additional information regarding tenant experiences and property owner landlord challenges for the City Council to consider.

I believe these type of discussions should always occur before the adoption of an ordinance, especially these ordinance 2024 and 2024, which is the rent stabilization and rent registry.

But again, better late than never.

So I'm glad we are having these conversations.

I am a supporter of alternative number three in the city aligning with State Tenant Protection Act of 2019, which is Assembly Bill 1482, and the City adopted local protection provisions that govern termination of Tennessee notice requirements, relocation, assistance, and protections against retaliation.

Further desire to create a specific rent control ordinance for half Moonbege should be through a working group of tenants, property owner, landlords, and realtors.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Penrose.

I'll start out by repeating myself.

When we passed the rent stabilization ordinance, it made me really feel good that the people on council really cared about others, especially the unfortunate in our town.

We live in one of the richest counties in the country.

Much of our population is estimated to be rent-burdened.

That is paying rent above 30 percent of their income.

According to the San Mateo County 2025 Affordable Housing Needs Report, 81 percent of extremely low-income households in San Mateo County are paying more than half of their income on housing costs compared to 2 percent of moderate income households.

It's a big difference.

Yet the annual income for many in our community who provide services we all depend on falls between acutely low and very low income levels.

The annual salary for a farm worker is between 20 and 30,000 dollars.

Try living on that.

Try living on 20 and 30,000.

Oh give me a break.

For a retail worker paid minimum minimum wage, it's $37,000.

$37,000.

Think about that.

And for a teacher at step one in the Cabrillo Unified School District, it's $65,000.

None of these people can afford to live here.

None of them.

They're all suffering.

And what do we do?

As a council, what do we do?

We say, well, gee, we don't want to hurt the landlords.

We really don't want to hurt the landlords.

Rental assistance programs are intentionally designed as short-term tools.

And that's how we designed ours.

When we passed our ordinance, we said, okay, nobody wants long-term rent control.

But we're our community is suffering right now.

It's suffering, it's desperate.

We need to do something until we can build some low income affordable housing.

We have low income affordable housing in the works right now.

But it's going to be two to four years before anybody actually sees an apartment that they can move into, maybe longer.

So in the short term, we need to be helping folks.

Typical assistance is capped at approximately five thousand dollars per household, and is almost always provided on a one-time basis only to prevent immediate displacement.

Providers also note that the landlord participation is a limiting factor, as some property owners are unwilling to accept rental assistant payments, and providers are obligated to manage public and philanthropic funds responsibly.

We talked about Coastside Hope and St.

Vincent dePaul.

Thank God they're here.

Thank God they're here.

They are overwhelmed.

They are overwhelmed.

There are long waiting lists for people to get help at either of those organizations.

There is no way they can help.

To date, nine properties.

Nine properties have exited the rental registry due to changes in use, such as conversion to owner occupied status or other non-rental use.

This amounts to less than one percent.

Landlords aren't leaving town.

Landlords are in business, and landlords in Half Moon Bay are doing pretty damn well.

The programs could be sustained without additional cost to the city's general or affordable housing funds.

So what are we talking about?

Are we talking about a cost to the city?

No.

We're talking about a cost to landlords at the expense.

At the expense of the underserved in our community.

Mr.

Carducci from Legal Aid, who said they are overwhelmed.

Tenant protections are a laugh if you're talking about really helping people.

They're a great concept.

They just don't work because they don't, they aren't funded, they don't have enough staff, and there's too much abuse in the system for them to handle.

So don't tell me tenant protections are helping.

Talking about security, the registration being an insecure thing.

We heard from Ptolemy tonight.

We know that business owners have to give information to the city, their name, what their business is, where it's located.

How is that any different from rental registry?

I don't get it.

We don't create laws because there are good landlords out there.

That's not why we create laws.

We don't create laws because they're fair bosses.

We don't create laws because there are honest politicians.

We create laws to protect the most vulnerable.

And that's all that this is trying to do.

Have a heart.

Stop thinking about your pocketbook and your friends' pocketbooks.

Have a heart.

Vote the right way.

My view has evolved a little bit, but basically I'm still coming down with well, actually, not quite three.

I've sort of changed my mind about the rental registry, looking at it more closely and talking to more people.

I think there's useful information there.

I just don't think we've used it to any benefit.

Like what is it produced for us, except you know the data that I asked for for this week.

But it's it is information.

I would almost recommend that we keep it but make it free.

In other words, not charge people to register.

And um just use it to collect data.

I think whatever the price per year for the contract was, I don't know, 20 or 30,000.

It seems to me we just encourage people to register.

We have the information now that we we can keep.

We can fill it in or test it against all these other public resources.

But um I'm starting to think that information is useful.

Um so I would recommend keeping it and making it free to to register.

Um I didn't like how we made that whole system of the rent stabilization and the rental registry sort of a criminal act if you didn't participate.

That's what it sounded like.

All the language used, it sounded like we were villainizing uh landlords, and I'm sure there are some bad landlords.

And we heard Ms.

Kim talk about uh a bad landlord in Half Moon Bay.

And we're not gonna get rid of bad landlords.

There's always going to be some bad landlords.

And here in Half Moon Bay, we can't solve that problem, and we're not gonna solve the county's problem or the state's problem.

Um but I agree.

We want to help people.

I agree that there's need, and I'm in favor of retaining tenant protections.

I think they're they're useful to have, and I want us to enforce them.

I'm still interested in the safety inspection program like councilmember Johnson.

Um I'd like to learn more about Project Sentinel and have a relationship, consider a relationship with them.

I mean the resources are great, but I and I know you guys don't want to be in the process of civil lawsuits, and we don't want to be in the process of civil lawsuits either.

We're a small town of 12,000 people with a limited budget.

So I'm sort of sticking to my original position in the sense that I want us to have robust tenant protections, and now I'd like to add the registry and keep that going.

So it's uh was that actually alternative one, sort of similar.

Two.

So it's it's it's two, I guess.

Retain the registry, make it a non, you know, punitive process and make it free and expand, keep uh tenant protections, expand assistance and legal resources.

Um there may come a time where we need to revisit this.

Uh I don't know if you've been reading about all the layoffs that are coming because of AI and Silicon Valley.

You know, there may come a time where we revisit this, but the one and a half percent that we have now is not enough.

Uh inflation is increasing again.

Um, we talked recently about the uh the homeless encampment ordinance, and there seemed to be a preference on some just to continue to work with people as opposed to having rules.

Well, I think we should continue to work with landlords, do more outreach to this community.

Um Councilmember Nagengast talked about, you know, convening a group to just continue to discuss these issues.

I think that makes sense.

Um that's where I'm coming down right now.

And I'd like to poll people.

What do they think about?

I guess you two are good with keeping the rental register, right?

I'd like to say something else.

I'd like to finish what I'm saying first.

Okay.

No, you were going to poll people, but I before the polls.

I'd like to say something else.

But no, I want to ask this question.

It's part of what I'm talking about.

So Councilmembers Nagangaston Johnson, uh how would you feel about retaining the registry?

I don't, but it sounds like there's three.

So I mean it's, you know, if there's Well, we're talking about alternatives, though.

We're not talking about pieces.

Right.

Yeah.

But I'm not.

Non-registry, okay.

Councilmember Johnson.

That was one of the questions I had for Matthew on the one-on-one, and he said that they were going to be here and they spoke, and I did get the data and listen to it.

So I would be okay with the registry.

Um because it fulfilled my notes that I took.

Um Madam Mayor, well, the answer you I am.

Yeah.

Vice Mayor Penrose.

Yeah.

Um you talk about not just you, but other members of the council have talked about tenant protections.

What exactly do you mean by that?

And how would you pay for them?

Who would pay for them?

Where would the money come from to protect the tenants?

We have a tenant protection ordinance now.

Oh, but it's not working.

So you say you would like to increase that.

You said you'd like to who said tenant protections were not working?

I say it.

I don't think we have any evidence that they're that they're not working.

Oh, I do.

I do.

We've got people living in dire poverty.

Yes, but the tenant protection is not a lot of people.

And they're not protected.

Well, the tenant.

And we've got legal aid societies that people can't attain legal aid from.

You don't have to.

Yes.

I'm talking about it.

I said it I we have legal aid society where people can't get help because they're overwhelmed.

Coastside hope can only give people one month at the most, and that's it, and they're strapped and they have a long waiting list.

What I'm asking you is how do you protect tenants if you can't give them any help?

How do you do that?

Um well, for one thing, we're going to right size a program for the city our size and budget.

That's how we do it.

And it might not solve the problem, but unless everybody's taking a piece of this problem and solving it, like the County of San Mateo for starts, then you know we're we're we're stitching together a response, the best response that we can.

So but what I want to do now, I don't want to continue arguing alternatives.

I think people have come out where they are.

So there's some disagreement on how to do this.

We don't have a majority because Councilmember Nagangast is not interested in alternative one.

But there is a majority for the rental register.

So I guess we could uh legal counsel.

How might we structure this?

Well, I would just ask that we clarify whether there's a majority that supports keeping the registry requirements as is, or if there's support for modifying the registry.

So you would, Madam Mayor, you had suggested that it be more voluntary, which I assume means that the the requirement that's in the rent registry ordinance now be removed.

So it would be something like a voluntary registry that landlords could provide information, but they wouldn't be held to a misdemeanor if they don't provide that information.

That's what I interpreted that to be.

So maybe we could clarify whether there's a majority that supports that modified rental registry or the rental registry ordinance that's in place now.

Yes, I don't want there to be a misdemeanor attached to not participating in the registry.

We want the data.

We can get it multiple places, we can test the information we collect against other sources, and we can build information that way.

The point of it is not to implement um a rent stabilization program, it's to be a database of information about our rental landscape to let us know if things are changing and moving toward institutional investors, um, or if if people are buying up a lot of properties and trying to, you know, corner the market on rentals.

I'm interested in the information.

I'm not interested in punishing people for not participating.

So that's the kind of rental registry, you know, that I could support.

And so then I would ask the council members if there's two others that might support that type of rental registry, that modified rental registry.

I have some clarifying questions based on that.

So if you're suggesting we keep the registry in place, I heard remove the fee to participate.

And now I'm hearing remove the penalties for not participating.

So it truly is a voluntary thing if people want to participate.

And and the alternative is we just you know try to piece that information together from other public sources.

Now somebody pointed out that the information in the registry is a little more detailed and helpful.

That's why I was thinking we combine the information we get on a voluntary basis and test it with these other public resources, available resources.

The first year the reason the costs were so high the first year and there was so much staff time and work that went into it was compliance related.

And yeah, part of that was education and all those things, but I'm sure that there are probably some landlords that would participate on a voluntary basis, but probably not enough to justify maintaining a database.

So I think what I'm hearing is take the information we already have and see if we can combine that with some of the other sources of information we've heard about and see if we can continue to maintain more local market data and sure.

Don't even call it a registry.

But I think it's important if we're gonna have a housing function and C D D like we've had, that a part of that job is to monitor the market, housing market, the rental market, and provide that data at least an annual basis so that we can understand the trends because there's some negative trends out there in terms of you know big private equity companies buying up single family homes, um, that sort of thing.

Right.

So I I think it's important to have that information handy and for staff to be aware of what it what it means from policy perspective.

Yeah.

I again I I don't think a voluntary registry is is gonna get us anything that we we want.

So what I'm hearing is a big shift to more data collection through other sources and maintaining housing information within the city, but through a different approach.

Yeah, I think we want to be you know in touch with the demographics and we want to be in touch with the the rental and housing market.

So I'll I'll just change my position then to um alternative three, but with a robust tenant protection um backstop.

And and likely then staff would bring forward some recommendations about how to get more data and there's probably costs that come with it.

Um the the programs that we we observed.

There's a cost to obtain the data.

But so and in relationship with Project Sentinel, you know, that sort of thing.

That's what I'm interested.

Yeah.

A question?

Sure.

Yeah.

Um so how are you going to get that information, Matthew?

Where are you going to get it from and what's it going to cost?

Again, we we've been given information from local realtors and housing experts that there are sources of information out there.

Without paying a fee, it's hard for us to know what information is available.

So we'll have to really dig into that and determine how much information we can get at what cost.

Yeah, and what would the cost of that digging into it be?

Staff time.

How much staff time are you talking?

Irma, do you want to even guess based on the research you've already done?

I think it's hard to put a really number to it.

Um, but I will say um some um service providers shared some screenshots of what some softwares uh the type of data that they provide.

Um and the data that we collect is a little bit more specific.

Um just give me a ballpark figure how many hours you think it would take to get the.

I'm gonna call well what I can say is we could dedicate 40 hours of staff time to do some research and come back with what that results in.

Okay.

So 40 hours of staff time at what cost.

Let me do some math.

Yeah.

Maybe $5,000 of staff time?

Okay.

So a program that's costing us nothing right now is going to cost an additional $5,000 to get rid of the program.

That would be my take on it.

I'm going to move that council adopt alternative three.

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

I'm not through with my comments yet.

I'm going to put a motion on the table.

I'm going to put a motion on the table.

Can I have a second?

I'm going to make a motion that Robert Brownstone be allowed to speak.

I made a motion.

Is there a second?

I'll second uh Ruddick's motion so we can discuss it.

Sure.

Our motion goes first.

Yeah.

So first of all, if you want any reliable tenant information, I've been a landlord in two different cities.

You could go to public sources, you might get some information, but frankly, as a former landlord, I would rather provide the most accurate information about my rental units.

And I don't necessarily feel you'd get as much reliable information.

That's just what I think.

As a landlord, I don't want to I would want to say what my properties are and what the most current situation is relied just on that.

So, you know, I'm just so really disturbed.

I mean Ms.

Kim, I believe that's your name, if I got that right.

Thanks.

A B 418.

Basically now we're just saying anything goes in terms of rent increases because AB 1482 is realistically unenforceable in terms of who has the resources to counter someone who's bringing their own private attorney, namely the landlord, not folks who are in dire financial straits and have the kind of incomes that uh Vice Mayor uh Penrose has been talking about.

And you know, it's always a standard you shouldn't be spending more than 30 percent of your income on rent.

But wow, you know that numbers pretty tough for a lot of folks, you know, even dual-income families or teachers and you know, workforce folks.

And if you went over to Coastide Hope and looked, you might be surprised at the kind of people who are having to show up at the food pantry regularly, including homeowners, especially, you know, they say the largest growing group of homeless folks are seniors caught in these situations of high rent.

So I'm just saying, you know, if you if you're relying on AB 1482, I think you're really um deceiving yourselves.

It's not just a matter of being compassionate or not.

It's like is there gonna be any kind of controls on rent during these trying times?

And do you really feel okay that um most people do not have the resources or the knowledge to file these claims, and even if they did, you know, it could take over a year to really get anywhere.

So I think that's what's really at the heart of this is whether or not 1482 is sufficient versus local ordinances, which um gear towards understanding local conditions with the community, and who is it really at risk.

And emergency rental assistance is really just a band-aid.

I mean, that's just temporary, and you know, these organizations don't have the money to continue each month to compensate folks for, let's say, a 10% increase in rent, that they don't have the resources to bring a lawsuit themselves.

So just realize that that's the consequences of what you're suggesting here, based on everything I've heard.

Um experts, from our uh litigation experts in this area.

So we're leaving people really without any options whatsoever.

Well, you know, people have tried to um get new more effective rent stabilization laws in the State of California.

And the voters in California vote it down.

Right?

I mean, we can talk to Senator Becker.

What can you do to make 1482 more affordable?

Listen to what he has to say about that.

The the state has to tackle this.

I agree, but voters are not playing ball with that.

And in fact, halfman Bay voters voted against Prop 33, 63 to 37, something like that.

You know.

I don't know what the answer is.

It should be a better system.

We what do we do in the meantime until we can get improvements from the state?

What about those people who are on the edge having to make decisions about putting food on the table versus paying rent?

That's kind of really the bottom line question.

It's where the rubber hits the road, right?

I agree with you.

Yeah, it would be great if the state can get their act together and provide money, you know, for uh localities to work with this and expand legal services, you know.

Um, but right now they're not.

And um there's probably going to be a lot more people at risk as we move forward.

Um could be a lot of inflation coming up.

So with all those unknowns, doesn't it make more sense just to have this local protection till we do know more?

Um I don't think having a 5% minimum cap is that terrible for landlords and um so otherwise we're just leaving people with literally no alternatives to either leave, and by the way, if someone leaves a rental, then there really is no limit, right, on a rental increase when a tenant leaves.

This just these numbers, 5%, 10 percent, only apply to um existing ongoing tenants.

Yes, it only helps the people who are in the housing now.

It doesn't help anybody else.

Right.

So rents can just uh so yeah.

But for people who are in housing now, I don't see what their recourses will really be since it's unreasonable to expect them to bring an action under 1482.

So I think that's our dilemma here.

Yeah, well, I don't want to push small local land holdings into institutional investors and private equity.

I I don't want to push people out of the rental market into big investor-owned, you know, housing situations.

I don't want to go there.

We have a small coastal community here with a lot of small landlords, and that's what we should try and maintain.

And this idea of leveling the playing field, um we can have some measure of success with tenant protections.

And that is more consistent with the scale of our community and our budget.

I hear what you're saying.

I'm not opposed to you talking about wanting to help people.

What I what I am trying to say is I want a right solution for our community without causing a lot of other problems around it.

When you say tenant protection, I just want to make sure I understand.

You mean like eviction type protections, correct?

The tenant protection ordinance we have right now on the books?

Right, that covers evictions, but it doesn't, but now we're talking about rent.

So you're saying you don't want something that might burden small um mom and pop landlords, but you're weighing that against people losing the roofs over their heads, right?

So we are a small town and we have people who are losing roofs over their heads or losing the ability to pay for a roof over their head and to put food on the table and maybe fix their car, you know, to get to work.

That's what we're really talking about.

So to me it does seem like a legitimate small town solution versus just kind of nothing.

So the mayor.

Thank you.

Just uh I just gonna add some context to the um 1482 we're talking about.

Remember 1482 happened in 2019, and then what happened in 2020?

COVID.

And and rents stop.

I still believe, and I've heard from various uh legislatures on this too, is that 1482 is still catching up.

It hasn't had a chance to really work.

So what's happening because of COVID and just a lot of rents stopped.

That 1482 hasn't had a chance to actually work yet.

I'm just adding that as in context, a lot of discussions that have been saying whether it's it works or not.

I'm just throwing that out that I've heard some possibilities, what what's what's happening with 1482.

Also something, you know, that's why I suggested having our local tenant, landlord, property owner, realtor get together.

And what works in Hapmoon Bay?

No, that to me.

If there's an what what is the problem?

We're just throwing out, and I get it, but let's find out what exactly it is and then address it.

That's it.

One more I I'll continue talking until I'm done doing that.

No, I'm gonna call the question soon.

You've had a chance, everybody's had a chance to say, Attorney.

So, Madam Mayor, if I may, that the rules of decorum, rules of procedure, and decorum do allow the mayor to ensure that each member of the council is provided an opportunity to completely express their views on items of business.

The mayor should see that council members asked to be recognized by the mayor and ensure that each council member is given the opportunity opportunity to fully express their views.

Um that's what the duties of the mayor are, and um I think council members are being provided an opportunity to speak right now.

Um I'd like to fully express my views.

You mentioned you just said that um you don't want to drive landlords out of business and cause large multi corporations to come in and buy up property here and get rid of our local landlords.

Is it true, Mr.

Chittister, that we've had one percent of our landlords give up being landlords in the past three years?

Well, it would be the staff report on just two years two years.

Since we implemented the registry and the program and that's based on the information that's been reported through the registry.

And we don't know why they left.

We don't know that they're being driven out, and that's less than one percent.

It's not even one percent.

So that argument is fallacious.

I don't need you to opinion on my opinion.

Thank you.

Um, I I heard from the landlords several of them who pulled out, and uh it was because of the rent stabilization.

And and I don't think we can lose any landlords.

We can't lose landlords.

We need rental properties, and we need to incentivize them.

So I think everybody has had a chance to speak, unless there's an alternative motion.

I'm gonna call the question.

There's a motion in the second.

Could I have a roll call, please?

Councilmember Brownstone.

Can you repeat the motion again?

Alternative three.

No.

Councilmember Johnson.

Yes.

Councilmember Nagengast?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Penrose.

No.

Mayor Reddick.

Yes.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

All right.

Madam Mayor, if I would.

Um I I think so that decision is made and it's clear, so staff will work on the process for repealing those ordinances.

There still will be additional steps to do that.

Um I've also I think it's pretty clear from what we've heard from council that there is interest in continuing to explore other rent supports programs, data.

So we'll also put together a plan for how we're going to approach that as part of the priorities.

Yeah, and I would still look at you know Project Sentinel, and I'd also like more information about a property safety inspection program.

Thanks.

Final item is item 10 C approval of a professional services agreement with CSW Stuber Stro Engineering Group for preliminary engineering, environmental review, and final design services for the Eastside Parallel Trail.

And something segment two project SCIP number 0595.

I think there's a typo in the heading.

That's yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, it seems so.

Good evening again, Madam Mayor, members of the council, and members of the public, D'Alita, interim city engineer.

I'm here to present this agenda item.

And what we're looking for is a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a professional service agreement with our chosen as most qualified consultant for the East Side Parallel Trail design scope of work, CSW Stuber Stro.

Quick recap on the project we're talking about.

We have a lot of different east side parallel trail projects.

We're looking at segment two.

That's the area highlighted in red between Rousseau Franca and Spin Drift.

This section of trail includes what would be a 200 foot bridge over Frenchman's Creek, and it would connect up with the existing Naomi Patridge Trail to the north, and a future trail being planned as part of the Highway 1 North project just to the south.

I also just want to note that the last remaining section of that trail is segment four, which we're trying to get to construction this summer.

So this segment two project would conclude, I guess this would be the final gap of the East Side Trail on the north side of Half Moon Bay.

We have three different intersections that we're that we're gonna look at improvements around.

Uh Russo Francais, uh Frenchman's Creek Road, and uh connection across spin drift.

Uh there's also um an existing, the existing intersection at Russo Francay.

There's some additional improvements we want to look at within that area.

There's an existing retaining wall on the west side of the highway there that has failed and is causing uh the the existing trail to kind of settle and slump off, so that's also included within the scope of work.

Um I just want to point out that you know this this trail section and the entire East Side Trail, it's it's based on a lot of past planning and supporting documents both at the city and regional levels.

Um so our bike pad master plan, which we adopted in 2019 covers this kind of most thoroughly.

Um it's also address it's also identified in the county's comprehensive bike pedus Francais, the intersection is also identified within our chapter of the county's local road safety plan, um which looks at intersections and corridors uh with safety concerns and provides a toolbox of kind of recommended or options for improvements to improve bike and pedestrian safety.

Um some of the issues we're gonna have to deal with on this project.

Um obviously the crossing over Frenchman's Creek, um I think it's our second most sensitive habitat area.

It's got steelhead, red-legged frog habitat, San Francisco garter snake.

Um as part of this project, we're anticipating we're gonna need permitting from every regulatory agency that um that includes uh CDFW, Army Corps of Engineers, the water board, it's also gonna require a coastal development permit either from the city or if it gets appealed to uh coastal commission, it's within the appeal zone.

Um hydrology and hydraulics are another kind of major component for bridge design, particularly within Caltrans Rideaway.

Um Frenchman's Creek, uh it's currently based on the mapping that we have from FEMA, which is not it's not perfect, uh, but it it shows that under a hundred year storm you have water right up to the top of bank or maybe just a little bit above top of bank for the creek.

So when we build a new structure across that um watershed or that waterway, it needs to be high enough that it's not going to restrict flow for what would be a hundred year storm.

And so in order to accommodate a new bridge, we're actually not going just from top of bank.

We need at least two feet of clearance above that level.

So what you'll see is on either side of the approach for this bridge, we're going to need to ramp up the elevation roughly three to four feet in order to maintain that clearance.

Um in addition to that, you know, the project includes looking at the underlying soils within the creek and surrounding area.

We're going to be designing for things like scour concern and and kind of liquefaction is a big concern around these creek areas as well.

So that'll all be incorporated in the design that CSW is providing.

There are some utilities within this area that we're gonna have to contend with.

Um the existing SAM force made from El Granada crosses the highway immediately at this location.

If you go out there today, you can kind of see a manhole on the north side of the creek where that forcement kind of jogs across.

So we'll need to, you know, we'll need to work with with that location as we site abutments and do grading work within this area.

Um it's pretty deep, but it's still a concern for us.

Um I would say there's some other utilities also, but um that one really presents the largest concern.

On the west side of the intersection, um this is just a couple of pictures of what the existing condition looks like today.

Um it's kind of hard to tell in these photos, but you can see clearly that there's some soil movement.

Um there's a six-foot wood retaining wall kind of um hidden by the foliage that has overturned and is is kind of settled or slopped down the hill.

Um, there's a lot of soil creep out there, uh which is very evident in all of the cracks and bumps you see along the roadway.

Um so this is gonna require kind of removal, construction of a new wall.

You could see there's existing utility poles here, which we're gonna have to work around as well.

Um, and this entire area west of the existing walkway sensitive habitat and red legged frog habitat.

So um and I should note that adjacent parcel is uh state parks, so we'll have to work with state parks as well in order to get access over there to install that.

Um this project, this design phase for this project is funded from a congressional earmark grant we received from Congresswoman Anna Essue uh just before retirement in 2023.

Um went into the 2023 omnibus.

Um with federal funding, we generally have three years from the time it got into the federal budget to obligate funds.

That means that we've shown um the federal government, we've shown Caltrans who provides oversight and distribution of those funds.

We show them that we're ready to start the project, and we submit an application of Caltrans.

We show them we've kind of got our ducks in a row and they they give us the authorization to move forward with whatever phase of project we're we're we're executing.

Once uh those funds are obligated, we're the that means they're locked in, they're allocated to the project.

We can't we can't lose those funds, presumably.

Um and once that occurs, we have five years to to complete the project.

So this project's a little interesting.

So we had this two million dollar grant um or two million dollar earmark, and um in late 2024, we submitted an application to obligate 1.5 million of those funds.

Um I think the rationale was that we would keep the other 0.5 in retainer for a future phase of the project.

Um but Caltrans, and we we got clarification from Caltrans um last year or later last year that we would not be able to obligate the additional half a million dollars in funds until we completed these other initial stages of work.

And so those funds are at risk and subject to um we're subject to losing those funds if we can't obligate them by September of 2026.

Uh so we've discussed this.

I've had discussions with our local assistance office at Caltrans and MTC, helping facilitate, and we're working on a process to um to amend our obligation and get those funds allocated under the um under our current design phase of the project.

And that's been ongoing the last I don't know, the last three months or so.

Um I mentioned Caltrans.

So federal funds, once once they're into the budget, uh the federal government bestows Caltrans with authority to manage and distribute those funds.

Um, and this is along the entire highway corridor under Caltrans jurisdiction.

So Caltrans oversight, it's a very long and drawn out process, as you're all very familiar with and aware.

So it's it's about responsible design and spending of federal funds.

That's why it's such a long drawn-out process.

And everything included.

This was strictly a qualifications-based uh selection RFP, meaning that we're looking entirely for we asked consultants to withhold submitting a fee schedule for us at that time and put complete emphasis on the qualifications of the firms.

Umce we selected the most qualified firm, we then asked for a fee and then negotiate.

If we're unable to negotiate, we would move to the next qualified firm.

Um so and this is consistent with federal um federal guidelines for for hiring consultants.

Uh we received four proposals back.

We determined that uh one of them was disqualified because they didn't follow the rules of our RFP, and that left us with three consultant teams led by BKF engineers, CSW Stuber Strove, and Mark Thomas, all three of which are very qualified and capable firms.

They've all worked with the city of Half Moon Bay and have a strong background on the coast side with with a list of successful projects.

Um and some you could argue maybe not as successful, but um we conducted interviews in February of this year.

Um I should also note that we've been working really hard with Caltrans to try and build rapport and strengthen our relationship, find out what we can do differently to help get projects through the through the process more quickly.

And um one of those is uh they were they actually offered one of their project managers to come and join our interview panel.

Um so we had um the who's likely gonna be the project manager for this project.

Um she came and she she reviewed proposals and came and joined us and interviewed uh consultants, which which was really helpful to have her perspective from the Caltrans side.

Um so all three of the teams we interviewed, they were all we I we'd be lucky to have any one of those three teams, I would say.

They're all excellent teams.

And I told them as much.

I wish I could hire all three of them.

Um they all have excellent backgrounds, um, a portfolio of great projects, and just excellent presentations.

The CSW Stubrus Stro team, um, they stood out for a few reasons, and I put those in bold here at the bottom.

Um they really emphasize kind of early and ongoing agency and public collaboration, which we we recognize is very important in Half Moon Bay.

Um in particular, um one of the things that they've learned on on past projects, including this image here is the Maraudha uh the coastal trail bridge at Murata Road, which which this team uh implemented for the county.

So early working with coastal, so people don't think about this up front of these projects, but these bridge structures are highly visible structures.

Um the bridge over Frenchman's Creek.

I mean, when this is installed, it's gonna be the most prominent and visible bridge probably on the entire coast side because of the way it's oriented.

I mean it'll be a 200-foot bridge.

And so like they strongly emphasize like getting initial input from Coastal Commission.

This is this is very much gonna be something that we're gonna have to contend with our L C L U P with the aesthetical issues.

Uh people are gonna care a lot about how this bridge looks.

And they're gonna have to balance that with things that are important for the city, such as how are we going to maintain this thing, right?

And how can we design this bridge to minimize the cost of maintenance for the city?

Um and and they just brought in a really strong uh structural component in their and their design approach, um something that we've struggled with on other projects with other design consultants.

So they you know they just put together a great package and we had a the you we had a unanimous kind of decision among the interview panel that they were the most qualified uh team for this project.

Um might be a little hard to read, but I've put a few of the projects that CSW has recently worked on or are working on today.

Um these include this is just within kind of the you call it the 10 mile radius around Half Moon Bay.

So they're working with um the Harbor District and Caltrans on the overflow parking for the shop project.

I mentioned the Marauder Bridge.

Um they completed our popular popular safety complete streets project, the first phase through downtown area.

They're working with Midpan on the Paris Ma what is it, the Perissima to the sea trail, and um and they're working with the county on the Tonitas Creek uh beach access project, which is a really challenging project right on Highway One, just uh south of south of the town.

So this is a wonderful presentation.

But we have another really gnarly meeting tomorrow night.

And I'm wondering if we can move on to questions from council members.

Absolutely.

I was just gonna let me just one more item.

I will just mention project schedule.

So this is a really compressed and aggressive project schedule.

There's some risk associated with this because they're gonna be working on multiple phases of the project at the same time.

This is keeping in mind our our time frame for getting the project complete and um but yeah, we're we're shooting to be ready to bid a project in around mid-2027.

Thank you.

Questions for staff?

Councilmember Nagencast.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dale.

You you're very generous with Caltrans review period there.

We're gonna be right, but it's great you brought them in early, and I think that that is fantastic if that can work.

But I also realized this there were going to be a lot of comments on this during the CDP process.

You're it's very visible, right?

That's look at me, that's what it's gonna say, and everybody will be looking at that there.

So I think it's great.

Um are you looking at perhaps trail widths, maybe a little wide, you know, we're having a lot more conversation on e-bikes.

I only say this.

The possibility, I get it, if you want to ride a bike fast, you ride it on the road, but again, on these trails, is there perhaps a way we can start thinking about separation bike and pads.

You don't have to answer that question right now, but I'm just thinking out loud if there's you know the ability to to do that, you know, try to start separating our pets and bikes.

I know it's a multi-use trail, but on that.

So there's there's some with with this specific project, we have some ability to kind of modify the trail width.

Obviously, like with our Highway One North project, we're very constrained by by gray changes and retaining wells.

We have a little bit more space here to work, so if we wanted to look at expand, so currently what we're proposing is a 12-foot paved width with two foot shoulders on either side.

Now, Caltrans has some class one trail standards that they they say 10-foot minimum paved.

Um, but if if you have a heavily used trail, they'd recommend at least 12 foot paved width and even as as wide as 14 feet.

And that they would love it if you could get a 40 foot.

Now you have to balance that with the fact that you know if this is a if this is a straight section of trail and it's farther from any hubs where you know you you're expecting pedestrian bikes to be more spread out.

Maybe it's not as as critical because you have good sight lines, but I but I imagine like closer to Rousseau Francais, um that would be a good opportunity where you might look at expanding the trail width to say 14-foot paved width with shoulders.

Great.

Is that sewer a force main?

That sewer is the force main.

So you could always relocate the force main if it's in the way.

I just throw it at right that that's one good thing about force main.

So you can move them around.

I mean, it's a big deep.

Is that the 24-inch, yeah.

And then the CQA versus NEPA, but SQLA is stronger than NEPA, right?

Because I always worry about NEPA, that's the federal environmental review, but SEQA and CDP are usually trump NEPA.

That's correct.

Yeah, SQL will be more uh more intensive than NEPA.

Great.

I I saw that July 27, ready to bid.

Love it.

Okay.

Any other questions or motion?

I just think it's cool that Caltrans is working with you guys in-house with you guys.

That's that is pretty cool.

That doesn't happen often, is that you're saying, or is that something new?

It's it's it's something that we're trying to do more of on on our end to help smooth things out and try and find a path of least resistance through their process.

I mean, even Kristen says that the some meeting.

Sorry, Crystal, I'm gonna you said something like they suck.

And that's what I'm hearing.

They're just hard to deal with, and even the city managers told me that they're hard to deal with.

They don't listen.

So the better communicating and better that they're working with us, I think is a good thing.

So I'm I'm glad I'm hearing that.

There are individuals within Caltrans who are they they are legitimately good people, they want to see projects move forward successfully, but they also have to operate within the confines of their of their program and and the statutes that they have.

So it's it's challenging, but the the better relationship we could build with them, the better we'd be able to navigate that.

Madam Mayor, we we should at least call for public comment.

No hands are raised online.

Yeah, that was gonna be my next move.

So if there's anybody in the audience or online who would like to address this item of segment two project on Highway One, please come to the podium now.

Is there anyone online?

Okay.

Thank you for the reminder.

All right.

Uh I'd entertain a motion in a second at this point.

Oh, do you have another question?

No, as far as anyone else have a question, I'll make a motion if go for it.

Um I move that we adopt the resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a professional service agreement with CSW Stuber Strowe Engineering Group in an amount not to exceed $758,231 for preliminary engineering, environmental review, and final design services for the East Side Parallel Trail segment two project.

Second uh could I have a roll call, please?

Councilmember Brownstone?

Yes.

Councilmember Johnson?

Yes.

Councilmember Nagengast?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Penrose?

Yes.

Mayor Reddick.

Yes.

Motion carries.

Um moving on to commission committee updates.

We do, but I don't know if staff would be opposed to just saving those for let's save those.

Next next meeting.

Would that be okay?

All right.

So um the next item is item 12.

Uh future discussion, possible agenda items.

Anybody have anything they want to add there.

Okay.

Any city council reports.

Um I should have mentioned this earlier.

I apologize.

So there's going to be a grand opening of the new Coastide Chamber of Commerce Office, California Welcome Center, uh, on um April 2nd, 4 to 6 p.m.

at 508 Main Street, which is the corner of uh Main Street and Kelly.

Um there will be a ribbon cutting and um light bites and wine.

So come on down.

And I don't think we have another meeting where I could announce this, so April 2nd.

Be there, be square.