Welcome to the regular Half Moon Bay City Council for June 2nd, 2026.

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

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

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

Okay, so tonight we have for proclamations and presentations.

We have the future leaders Civics Academy graduation.

And is there a council staff report for that?

A staff staff report for that?

Okay, thank you.

All right.

Thank you all for being here tonight.

Um we are here to celebrate our future leader civics academy graduates.

Over the past month and a half, we had the pleasure of working with Half Moon Bay High School students, and we hosted them in four sessions where we learned about city government, we worked on public speaking skills, and we learned about council and how council works.

So we had this wonderful group of students, and they all worked on a project, which ended in a mock city council meeting where Mayor Reddick was able to join us.

And so today we are here to congratulate them and thank them for being here.

And if you want to say anything, Matthew, you're welcome to, but I welcome Marie Jose up to the microphone to award our participants with their certificates.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Okay, it's coming.

Hi, thank you.

Okay.

Hello.

It's working now, right?

Great.

Okay, thank you so much.

Um I would like to ask AB Barragan.

AB Bar again?

Abby Bear again.

Round of applause, please.

Warren Cheatister.

Anthony Fridani.

Henry Scarpaci.

Ben Humble.

Autumn Seaburn.

Aba Sariha.

Thank you so much.

Perfect.

For those of you who got your certificates, if you could come over here so we could get a picture of you with council.

Council, if you don't mind.

Yeah, I think it would be uh great to um read off the names of all of them too, even if they're not here tonight.

So I can read those off real quick.

Yeah.

So we have Gloria Carrill, Colton Conlin, Reina Gutierrez, Rebecca Huerta, Sierra Lopez, Dahlia Mendez, Talia Meyer, Wesley Perkins, Harper Satterley, Autumn Seaborn, and those are the ones that are not here tonight.

Okay.

Please together everyone.

Perfect.

Oh, Debras.

I would say that it was a very good group at the Mock City Council meeting.

Everybody relished their roles.

And I see a future and government.

You know, looking at all these wonderful teenagers, high school students.

Don't forget about government as an option for your career.

It's a it's much needed.

So thank you.

Uh we're moving on to the student leadership awards.

Good evening.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the council, and everyone that has joined us this evening.

Oh, yeah, the battery's almost dead.

Do we have an extra mic with a fresh battery?

Speak speak right into it too.

Get real close.

That's a little bit better.

I don't want to eat it.

We'll try that.

Is this better?

Yeah, there we go.

Great.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the council, uh, everyone that's joined us here this evening.

My name is Matt Nichols, and this is one of our favorite events to present.

Uh as summer comes closer and the school year comes to an end.

Each year we get to do the Halfman Bay student awards, where we recognize students for their excellence and leadership or being uh leaders in sustainability and their thoughtfulness when it comes to writing essays, expressing the great work that they're doing and that what we hope to see them do as they go off to college and things like that.

Um I'm joined here tonight with Julisa Acosta, and we are so so happy and excited to present this year's winners for the Hafman Bay Student Awards.

I'll go first with the winners of the sustainability awards.

Our first winner this evening is Jack McMillan for his wonderful essay on food waste and uh the issue of food waste and half moon bay and on the coast side.

Do you want to get a picture?

Congratulations.

And then we'll have everyone come up and we'll do group photos.

And then our second winner for the sustainability awards is Julian Covan.

Thanks.

Thanks, Matt.

Um, I will be presenting the leadership awards, and thank you to our council members who help us score their uh and review the essays from the students.

Um our first recipient is Danica Gonzalez Johnston.

Thank you.

Our next recipient is Sandra Garcia Palma.

Our next recipient is Abigail Barrigan.

And last but not least, Gustavo Garcia.

If I can invite all the recipients to come up front for a photo with council, uh family, friends, and parents, if you'd also like to take pictures, feel free to come on up to get pictures.

So we skipped an item.

We're going to uh entertain a motion and a second to approve the overall agenda for this evening.

So moved.

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries unanimously.

So we're moving on to item 3C, which is County Housing Stone Pine Cove presentation.

Thank you, Mayor Rudick, and good evening, honorable council members, city staff, and members of the public here tonight.

I'm Ray Hodges, I'm director at the County's Department of Housing.

Very happy to uh be here with you tonight to provide a brief uh summary and update on the Stone Pine Cove project.

And I'm joined by Helen Tong Ishikawa, our senior policy analyst, who will uh take us through an update on the application process and occupancy at the project.

Uh we're also joined by two incredibly helpful partners on this project, Judith Guerrero from Coast Hide Hope and uh Stephanie Cisneros from Bigfoot Property Management, who's now managing the property on the county's behalf.

But our our earliest and really our most important partner on this project was the city.

So I wanted to first uh thank this council.

Um you were instrumental in getting us to where we are today and city staff, Matthew and Ulyssa really uh played outsized roles in uh in making this all happen too.

So it's about a really great partnership, and we've really appreciated working with your team.

Uh let's see here.

So, as you know, uh Stone Pine Cove is a brand new and really one of a kind 46 unit affordable homeownership project for low income farm workers, and it's located at the end of Stone Pine Road next to the city courtyard.

Um I wanted to quickly revisit the project timeline, which of course um started immediately after the tragedy in early 2023 at the mushroom farms, and there was a call for safe affordable housing for farm workers, but really especially at that time, specifically for the uh households who were directly displaced by the shooting.

So uh shortly afterward we secured funding through a new piece of the state's Joe Cerna uh program, um funding for the project.

So the Joe Cerna um program funds uh affordable uh farm worker housing, but they came out with a new piece of it that's specifically funded homeownership, which we were able to take advantage of at the time.

Uh after that, a great deal of work went into first selecting the property, then planning and designing the project, and ultimately obtaining an emergency coastal development permit for the project.

But construction started in May of 2024, completion last summer, 2025, and the residents who were displaced by the shooting moved in July, or at least began with moving in July 2025.

We expect 100% occupancy shortly here this summer.

I'll just say um you'll hear more in a little bit, but reaching full occupancy took a little bit longer than expected.

Um, but the overall timeline for this project from going from nothing, no no idea at all, uh, at the beginning of 2023 to full occupancy uh three and a half years later really is unprecedented for you know affordable project, but really any housing development anywhere in the state.

And that was due to the strong partnerships on this project, working with your team, um, working with uh the state, working with um the coastal commission, even coastide hope, bigfoot, and many others was really unprecedented.

So the project uh you know it's a mix of 46 one, two, and three bedroom homes to allow for some density but also speed in construction.

We went with a manufactured home uh product here built by Bigfoot Homes.

We're offering uh homeownership specifically for low-income farm workers, uh, and the site also includes a city playground and a community garden.

And the site is now managed by Bigfoot, and Stephanie actually lives on the site in our manager's unit to help residents if if needs arise.

So, like other similar communities, the residents own their homes, but they lease the space underneath it.

Um so to support the acquisition of the homes.

The county's providing households with a 20-year zero interest loan that's forgiven, uh completely forgiven after 20 years.

They make no payments on it.

Uh we've built a limited equity share schedule into the program so that they can actually build equity over those 20 years, it increases each year that they stay at the property.

So there's no mortgage payment, but the homeowners do rent the space under their homes, and that rent payment is based on their income, and it follows a schedule similar to how rents are structured at a more typical affordable rental project.

To be eligible, a family must currently reside in San Mateo County, and at least one member has to be employed in agricultural work here in the county.

Applicants must be first time homeowners and income qualified.

And on the slide here, you can see the maximum eligible income for various household sizes.

Most of the folks living at the site are earning less than this, quite a bit less than this.

In fact, but that's the maximum income for eligibility.

But then on top of these requirements, we instituted three preferences that we thought were very important for the project as it was conceived.

The first, of course, was for the households that were displaced by the shooting.

The second priority was for eligible applicants living in a place that was found to be uninhabitable by the county's inspection task force.

And then the third priority was given to people at risk of displacement because of any number of reasons high rent burden, overcrowding, and other things.

So the preferences did qualify the eligibility and occupancy process for us, but they were important, and we we did want to include them, of course.

And finally, I just wanted to highlight the innovation that went into making this project a reality.

It really is a one-of-a-kind um thing.

And it of course it began as a response to a tragedy, but it produced something we think is pretty special, and hopefully we'll provide stable housing for uh families who need it for many years to come.

In terms of political will, in addition to the city and counties roles, project received state and federal funding, so um you know direct support from all levels of government, and we received broader community support from Philanthropy, CZI, and uh the Sprato Foundation, and involved heavily uh strongly connected partners like Co-Side Hope.

Who could um fortunately for us who could build uh trust with uh the uh future tenants and help them shepherd them through that application process?

I mentioned the streamlined uh emergency coastal development permit, and then the homes were built off-site in a factory and brought to the site, and that helped us get the construction timeline down from what's more typical 18 to 24 months down to just about a year, which is great.

And then finally, the homeownership model really went outside the box, giving farm workers the ability to generate equity with a loan that that is forgiven after 20 years, and really uh no one else had done this in the state.

We were the first award that the state made through this program, so as we were drafting the guidelines for the project, we were copy pasting them to the state, and then they used it to write the guidelines for the program that we had received the award for.

So we were really literally building the plane as as it was taking off on this, but um that was possible because of the partnerships on it.

So thank you again.

And and here I'll turn it over to Helen to take us-uh, give us an update on the application process.

Good evening.

My name is Helen Tongi Shikawa.

Uh I over I oversaw and am overseeing the lease up and home sale process at Stone Pine Cove, and I'm gonna give a more in-depth look at what the application process entails and where we're at with the current home sales.

All right, so a little over a year ago, we had several community meetings where we shared about this housing opportunity with the community.

Uh, we had meetings in both Half Moon Bay, Pescadero, where we walk through the details of how someone can apply for Stone Pine Cove.

Um, we used a regional uh housing portal called Doorway.

You all may have heard of it, it's an affordable housing portal uh that's used across the Bay Area.

And uh we were able to receive pre-applications through doorway, and uh as of the deadline of April 2025, we received about 315 unduplicated applications.

So we received a lot of applications for 46 homes.

Um each application received a lottery number.

And so this was a random lottery number, and we began processing applications in order of the lottery number with the priority groups reviewed first.

So we wanted to make it fair and equitable, so we went through doorway and there was a lottery process.

After the 315 applications were received, we began to invite applicants in groups, so kind of groups of 30 to 40 to begin requesting full application information, right?

So the pre-application process through doorway was kind of the basic information to get them in the queue, and then we started to invite groups of applicants in lottery order to ask them to submit their full application and additional documentation we needed to process their application.

This application process, and as you all may have heard, the application process for affordable housing can be complicated, and there's a lot of paperwork.

So one thing we did was partner with Coastside Hope.

We're here, Judith is here today, to help provide some housing application support to all the applicants, and that was probably one of the big wins for this project is working with a partner that knew the community and was really able to communicate the application requirements and also work with each of the applicants to collect all of the required documentation for the program.

And so for each group of applicants that we invited to submit an application, it took about four months from start to finish to get through the process.

I provided a sample timeline up on the slide here for an applicant who may have submitted a full application in August of 2025.

So I'll just kind of walk through what a typical process would look like.

So in August of 2025, if an applicant was invited to submit a full application, they would get support from Coast Side Hope to submit the application to the county, and then once everything was received, the county would review applications.

It would take us about four to six weeks to approve or deny applications.

And if an applicant was approved, they'd be invited to a home tour.

So they'd be able to come by the property, select the homes that they were interested in purchasing and living in, and then after that, they'd be invited to a pre-closing meeting, essentially a home buyer's education meeting where we would talk through the details of the loan program that Ray had talked about and also what it would mean to live at Stone Pine Cove.

So after this final meeting, then they would be invited to close on the home sale and move in a few weeks later.

So on this sample timeline that you can see from the full application submission in August of 2025, a household in this group of applicants will be able to move in before Thanksgiving, which was really exciting.

But it took about four months from start to finish to get through our application process.

So I provided here a little bit of a chart showing the different rounds of applicants that moved in over the past year.

And so you can see the different groups.

What I want to point to is the first priority applicants, the folks that were impacted by the shooting, that was our very first priority group.

They moved in in July of 2025.

So you can see, I don't know if I have a pointer here, but the first group is in that group of 12 that moved in.

And then subsequently from there, you can see we've had big jumps and move-ins, and as of today, June 2026, 40 of the 46 homes have been sold, and 90% so 90% of the homes have been sold, and we have six homes remaining as of this month.

Of those six homes, we actually already have three of those accounted for.

Those households have three of the households have selected homes and they're scheduled to move in this month.

And we're in the midst of reviewing the final applications so we can fill the remainder of the units this summer.

I do want to point out on the chart here, you can see that we made big leaps in the first six months to sell the homes, and then as you can see in the last few months, the the line has flattened out.

Um it's we're not selling as quickly as when we first opened the property.

And I want to share that we're now uh limited in what types of homes we have left, and so that's one of the reasons why we flattened out a little bit.

We only have two bedrooms remaining, and so as you know, we have we had ones, twos, and threes, but we no longer have the threes went fast, the ones went right after, and and now we have mostly two bedrooms, and there are some occupancy limitations to the two bedrooms.

So we have a max occupancy of five people.

So depending on the type of household you are, um, even if you are otherwise eligible, you may not you may not be eligible because of your household size.

Um, so there are some limitations now that we just have a few homes left.

Uh the other thing is that uh the homes that are remaining are uh restricted at 50 to 60 percent rents, and so uh there are some income uh minimum income requirements for these units.

So there has to be kind of a right match on household size and income, but but we're getting there.

But I I do think uh what this chart shows a little bit of flattening out because we have kind of a limited number of types of homes we have left.

So, as uh Ray mentioned earlier, this was truly an innovative housing model that uh we've learned a lot from, and we thought we'd share just a few of our successes and challenges that uh we've experienced through this process, and we're hoping to uh continue to apply in our future work uh in this type of program.

So I'll start with the successes.

I I mentioned earlier Doorway, uh the portal that we used to receive initial applications.

Uh we have gotten feedback that it was a very easy portal for folks to use, and so I think this initial uh submission of pre-applications through doorway, uh, seemed like a uh a good accessible way for folks to submit their application.

I think someone in our first community meeting even filled it out during the meeting, so apparently it was that easy.

Um, the second is one of I think the success of working with trusted community partners.

I think the county coming in and just building a project, it would not have been successful if we had not partnered with folks who were already in the community, working with the families, farm worker families here.

And so when we hired Co-Side Hope to be our trusted community partner, it was truly a success because Coastside Hope had prior relationships with a lot of applicants.

They were really successful in communicating the application process and the program details to all the applicants, and so uh it made our work on the county much easier being able to work with a community partner.

And then I also want to mention even after folks moved in, uh Coast Side Hope with the help of their philanthropic partners, continue to support some of the families after they moved in, including helping families purchase furniture and a lot of other initial upfront costs that folks have when they move into a new home.

And so that we that continued support of families was a huge success for Stone Pine.

And then lastly, these pre-closing meetings that we had with the families, they were very long and tedious and boring, but it we really think that the extra time was helpful for the families to get all their questions answered before they made the big step, right, to move into Stone Pine.

So some of the challenges, I think, as you all know, we did take time to talk about what this meant for everyone.

Home ownership is a very big step.

And we did have some families that ended up walking away after the pre-closing meeting.

And I think, you know, we were disappointed, but believe that that was the right decision for that family.

And it's not always the next best right step, right?

Uh for for every family.

So we we uh had some folks walk away after they learned about the program because they were not quite ready for for homeownership.

Second, uh, we do have space rents that are sized appropriate to the household's income.

So we want to make sure that households are not overly rent burdened.

However, even though the rents were affordable according to their income, the amount was sometimes still more than what some families were willing to pay.

And I think there may have been other financial obligations that they had as a family.

Um, but we did have some cases where some families opted out and they wanted because it, you know, unfortunately, even though they were living in less than ideal situations, maybe doubled up or tripled up with other families, the net rent amount was much lower, so they decided to stay instead of moving into Stone Pine.

So there were uh things beyond our control, but uh there are unique situations like that where folks felt the space rent was too high.

Uh we have community rules at the property around parking, guest policies.

Um we do require that this be everyone's primary home, so it cannot be an Airbnb, it cannot be someone's vacation home.

And so we made sure those rules were really clear for everyone, all our applicants, and for some it wasn't the right fit for their family.

So there were some folks who walked away because of the the community's rules.

And then lastly, as I mentioned, we had some limited types of units remaining at the end, and so matching the right family type with the unit sometimes became a challenge.

Um we're at the end, but it there was a little bit of lull uh and flattening out of home sales in the last few months because of the limited types of units remaining.

Okay, so I want to uh lastly I want to end with um a story because I I think we can talk about numbers, we can talk about the process and and the program details, but at the end of the day, um I've I've personally have had the pleasure of being able to hear everyone's stories as they have signed their closing documents, as they have received their keys, and um I wanted to invite up Judith, the fearless leader at Coastside Hope.

Um I've through her as well, just learned a lot about the stories of the families, you know, prior to moving in and what what their lives are like now after they've moved into Stone Pine.

And there are a lot of stories, but we did pick one, and so I'm gonna invite her up and share this one story wanted to highlight for the council.

Good evening, council members, and I think you can read the story on your presentation, but I'll read you the full story.

This is from a family that moved in into Stone Pine.

For many years, my family and I were doubled up with another family we weren't related to.

It was supposed to be sure housing situation, but honestly, we were just stuck in a room and never really felt settled or comfortable.

There was no privacy, and things often felt tense and unsafe.

My family and I dealt with harassment from people in the household, and I was constantly reminded that we could be kicked out at any moment.

I couldn't cook freely, and when I did cook, the food I made was taken, and it was not treated as it was ours.

Even though we were in a smaller, we were a smaller family, we still had to pay half of the bills, which just added more stress to an already tough situation.

It was an exhausting feeling like we had no control over our day-to-day lives.

Everything changed when I was selected for a home at Stone Pine Cove.

It was one of the happiest and most emotional moments I've ever had in years.

For the first time, my kids have their own room, their own space, and their own closet.

Seeing my family able to relax and feel at home means everything to me.

I have my own kitchen and now can cook whenever I want.

And we finally have the privacy we've been needing for so long.

The biggest relief is knowing that this is truly our home.

We're safe here, and no one can threaten and can threaten to take that away from us.

Becoming a homeowner at Stone Pine has given my family the stability, dignity, and peace of mind we've been looking for, and I'm truly grateful.

Thank you, Judith.

And so Ray and I are available for any questions, but that's the end of our presentation.

Thank you so much.

Wonderful presentation.

Any questions from council members or comments?

It's a great model.

It's uh it's wonderful.

Thank you for all the hard work and all the deep work you had to do in a very short period of time.

No, thank you.

Yep, and it's it is a special model.

We're interested to see if um others are going to try and replicate it.

It's generated quite a bit of interest in the state.

So, yeah, I have visited Stone Pine um many times, maybe five or six times over the past couple of months.

I am so tickled um to see people living there and enjoying it.

It's a beautiful space.

Just beautifully designed, beautifully put together.

The homes are lovely.

I was able to tour one or two of them, and I really enjoyed that being able to see how well made they are, how well constructed they are, how efficient they are in terms of use of space, even though there's some of them are somewhat small.

This space is is well well designed and um well deserved.

Thank you for for partnering and thank you, Judith, for being such a good help to them getting it right.

Yeah, I uh ventured in there uh riding my bike and I wanted to see because I remember that there wasn't, I was like wondering why aren't they?

You know, there's too many vacancies here.

So I went in there and I rode my bike, and I think I did it right in the beginning of the year, and there was a gentleman on the left side, and he had one of the first one-bedroom ones on the left side there, and spoke no English whatsoever, and I I had my broken Spanish that worked, and he knew I was curious to see how it was.

He got what I was trying to do is I'd like to see.

I see the outside.

He was so gracious, brought me inside, showed me his whole uh, you know, his unit and everything.

It was the one bedroom.

It was small, but it did everything, and he was kind of like complaining about one thing, and it was the clock on the microwave wasn't working right, and that was bothering him.

And I said, Well, yeah, I don't know where you go on that, but there's gonna be someone will fix it.

But he was tickle pink and he was happy, and and it was just like literally not even able to communicate as I mean it was the minimum, but it was like the smile on this guy's face was just unheard of.

It was just beautiful.

So you guys did a really good job.

I'm really pleased with it, and I'm glad to see now that they're, you know, most of them are or have been occupied.

So that was one of my things, like we need people in these homes.

So now I'm really pleased with this now at the very end.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And maybe a future debriefing, too.

A year after everybody's moved in, and you could look back and tell a story of how it succeeded.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Um, we're moving on to mayor's announcements of community activities and community service.

And uh first, I just want to say congratulations to the Halfman Bay High School baseball team.

Uh, last week on May 28th, they defeated San Mateo and won their first CCS title.

Uh tonight they hosted Sonoma Valley for the first round of NORCAL championships.

Uh, they won three to zero and will host their next game on Friday.

So, congratulations to the Half Moon Bay team.

Um I also want to note that uh, excuse me, I gotta get my notes together here.

So just want to remind everybody about the Half Moon Bay old-fashioned Fourth of July parade and festival that's coming up.

That'll be Friday, July 4th at 12 noon for the parade.

Will also be that Friday from 8 a.m.

to 1130 a.m.

And then the IDES is hosting the 4th of July Festival from 10 a.m.

to 4 p.m.

And that's at the IDES hall.

Um I apologize.

I think you said Friday.

It's all on Saturday, the fourth.

Okay.

Well, I pulled it off their website and it says Friday.

So the website says Friday.

Interesting.

We'll we'll get to the bottom of that.

Yeah.

Yeah, Friday, July 4th, that's what it says.

Okay.

Um, and then as you know, we've had a lot of Caltrans work on Highway One, you know, from Monterra down to Wave Crest Road as the entire project area.

And then starting tomorrow, um, Caltrans will be moving to do the major Half Moon Bay intersections.

I think it's North Main and Highway One, uh, Kellyan Highway One and uh Poplar Street.

And um, so they're gonna be you know working on the the roadway and the signals again.

Um as you may have noticed, things have gone pretty well uh since the Memorial Day weekend.

So they're they have somebody on site and they're they're trying to you know jiggle the signals while the work goes on.

So um continue having some patience, but we're we're feeling more and more confident like they they've heard us, heard our legislators, and they're gonna work with us to try to minimize the impact going forward.

So I will leave that at that.

And then item five is report out from recent closed session meetings.

Thank you, madam mayor.

This evening the council met in closed session.

The council did not convene on item four A, which was conference with real property negotiators.

Um, but uh items four, B, and C were convened, but there's no reportable action.

Thank you for that.

Um, so we're moving on to item six, which is commission and committee updates, and the first one is a report out from the Parks and Recreation Commission.

Great, thank you very much.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council and Community.

I'm Karen Decker, interim deputy city manager.

The new the Half Moon Bay Beach Volleyball League started last week at the new Poplar Beach volleyball courts with six two-person teams and ten four-person teams.

Um, and just a special thanks to Chair Stamper and our commissioners and volunteers who are really dedicated to this concept, but we're really instrumental in making it happen, volunteered a lot of time to make that happen.

So we expect to see a lot of use this summer.

Also, there was an update on the seasonal fire pit program also at Poplar Beach.

And actually, our community development director is reviewing an exemption for a CDP permit for five movable fire pits at Poplar that would exist um along the city land in Poplar Beach and would be located closer to the bluffs and away from the volleyball nets.

So more to come on that.

There was a brief discussion on the community pool, and the commission opted not to form a subcommittee.

And Commissioner Jennings raised his hand to volunteer to keep an eye out for updates and update the commission accordingly.

And then finally, we're gonna be saying thank you and goodbye to two youth representatives who are moving on, terming out and going to college.

And so we hope to bring them at a future meeting of council to acknowledge them, and we're gonna actively start recruiting for two new youth representatives.

And ideally, um, we hope to bring two new representatives to the August meeting.

Thank you.

That's it.

Maybe try for juniors so that they can be on for a couple of years.

Yes, and our bylaws and amendments allow for potentially two terms.

So we'll look into that.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you for that report.

The next one is the report out from the planning commission.

Good evening, Mayor and council members.

I'm Leslie Lako, Community Development Director.

I have two meetings to report out on, but I'll be quick, I promise.

We had a meeting on May 12th.

The planning commission approved the community banner sign program, which I believe was uh initiated here by council.

Um, having a hard time seeing, sorry.

Um, and also uh the planning commission heard a presentation on the Measure D ballot initiatives and had much discussion, and we'll talk more about that um later this evening.

On the 26th of May, uh I think you have a slide, Maggie.

If you can put that up, yeah.

Um Planning Commission approved a mural at 507 parisima.

This is on the ALAS building, and it's such a beautiful mural that I wanted to bring a picture of it.

Um they also approved a coastal development permit for a temporary fix for the coastal trail near Morada Road that pulls the trail back from the eroded coastal bluff and includes some fencing along there for safety, and that's split rail fencing, so it also looks nice.

Um Planning Commission received a presentation on the capital improvements program and made a determination that it conforms with the general plan and LCLUP, which is a requirement every year.

Uh, and that's it for planning commission reviews.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

Okay.

Uh moving on to City Manager updates to council.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

We have two updates tonight, and I believe they're both our um interim public works director, Todd Seely.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor, members of council, Todd Seeley, interim public works director.

Here to talk with you guys about a couple of things this evening.

The first being the local hazard mitigation plan update.

This is a planned update uh from the county.

Uh it's been a long process to get this current update going.

Um, it's a lot of it's a lot of front-end work for the city, and now it's kind of in the public hands.

So it's in the public comment and review period.

I believe it goes through June 14th.

Currently, um, as of today, they dropped off two complete printed copies of the LHMP, the draft at the at the library at the Half Moon Babe Library.

So there's actually two physical copies for folks to review and um they can take a look at it and see if they agree or disagree, if they have any comments, they want to add anything along those lines.

Um again, it closes on June 14th, so very important that members of the public take a look at that, and if they have any concerns or comments, that please uh please uh send them up to the county emergency management.

Um the second item tonight is the main street bridge.

I think this might be the fourth meeting.

I'm here to talk to you all about the main street bridge.

Um, unfortunately, with our Karmageddon event that we had the week leading up to Memorial Day.

Um, we were scheduled to start the Tuesday after Memorial Day, and we couldn't in good conscious start on that project and potentially put more traffic on the street if we didn't know what the traffic patterns were gonna look like.

Since Caltrans has a started addressing it, traffic obviously has calmed down quite a bit.

So we're hopeful and optimistic we are going to keep monitoring that um tentatively because of that delay, though, and working with the cons the with the contractor that's actually doing the work.

The new start date is tentatively scheduled for July 7th, so after the 4th of July weekend.

Um it's very unfortunate.

Uh we were super optimistic about getting started and actually being finished by the 4th of July, but I think because of that traffic, we didn't have any choice but to delay the project a little bit.

So a little bit of bad news, but a little good good news is that we do have a date confirmed with a consultant to start on the 7th of July.

Happy to take any questions about either of those items.

Any questions?

Todd, is there on under the bridge on the backside?

There's some severe cracks in in the actual archway on both sides.

Are we gonna address that at all or is that a different project?

That would be a def a different project.

So we would probably look at that as part of a larger scour project.

We would do a lot of the work underneath the bridge.

Um there's many layers of permitting that would be required just to get us into there.

This is purely a cosmetic facelift for lack of a better term.

But if we really wanted to get underneath the bridge and start working on the arches, that's that's gonna be part of a second project.

We didn't request any money for this fiscal this next upcoming fiscal year, but we'll probably look at considering requesting money for that next year.

On the rails to the rails.

I looked at them over the weekend.

Uh, the main on the ones that are in the ground, they're dry rod, that's for sure.

But the ones that are on the bridge seem pretty stable to me.

Like all you need to really do is tighten the bolts down.

I mean, have you guys looked at that, or are we just gonna go ahead and just replace it?

Because it would the integrity was there.

What it would seem like was in good shape.

Power wash and paint is what it looks like.

Some of the wood is in good shape, but because of ADA requirements, we actually have to raise the height of the railing itself.

And in conjunction with that, when we have all the woodwork off of the decking, we're gonna put some additional supports underneath it just to make this the entire structure more stable.

So we can look at tightening some of them down in the interim, but we have really no choice because of the necessity to raise those rails up to look at doing all of the woodwork at one time.

When you say we're raising it, then we're actually taking and changing the look and feel of the back rail.

Then has that been through the planning commission at all?

It has.

Okay.

Well, it's not significantly, I don't know.

Okay, maybe it hasn't been through the planning commission.

But but I don't look and feel uh it's gonna look the same, it's just gonna be a little bit higher up.

Well, so it's gonna be a little bit higher, but it's gonna have a different look to it, and it's gonna obstruct a little bit of visuals.

I'm not trying to delay anything.

I'm just yeah, I I don't think that was considered when we went through this process, but I don't think it was considered a change that warranted.

The city engineer actually did a good job of designing the plans to look almost similar.

I mean, we have a a bid ready set of plans to go for the woodwork, and just based off the plans, it looks almost identical to what we're gonna see there, just the variance in height, and that's that's the real difference.

Yeah, I think this is a topic for another meeting.

So thank you, Tom.

Thank you guys.

Have a good night.

Appreciate it.

Um, and I apologize, madam mayor.

There is one more city manager update.

And uh Costa from City Manager's Office will present that.

Good evening, council.

Um good evening, mayor, council, community.

Um Costa, city manager's office.

Um, and I am here this evening to provide a brief update on several community engagement efforts.

Staff has been working around FIFA, the FIFA World Cup that is coming up.

Um, on March on April 2nd and May 11th, staff hosted business information sessions to educate local businesses on the Bay Area Host Committee playbook, which outlines uh FIFA trademark and branding guidelines.

Um, this session focused around helping businesses understand what types of promotions, um, activations at our advertising and marketing activities are permitted within the playbook.

Um staff also provided information on regional planning efforts and opportunities for businesses to benefit from the increased tourism expected due to the tournament.

Um, in addition, staff use these meetings as an opportunity to discuss local activation efforts, answer any questions from businesses, and encourage participation in city-led initiatives like the downtown soccer passport program, which currently includes participation from around 28 businesses.

Uh the program encourages residents and visitors to explore and support local businesses, uh collecting stamps from participating locations.

There should be a little black soccer ball in businesses that are participating in the program where participants can receive a stamp and fill out their passport, and that can be turned into a raffle that we're going to be drafting at a city-led initiative that we're calling the fund zone, which I provide I will provide a little bit more detail about that, where there will be prices from stuff that businesses have donated.

We are also hosting a um fund zone.

This will be held prior to the 4th of July parade, and it'll be hosted at Carter Park from 9 a.m.

to 10 30.

And again, there will be a raffle opportunities tied to the passport program.

And lastly, due to the anticipated increase in visitor volume due to the tournament, this city the city hosted a human trafficking awareness training that was led by representatives from the San Mateo District's attorney's office that focused on recognizing uh trends in human trafficking, understanding available resources, and how the community members can assist in prevention and reporting efforts.

So staff will continue working with businesses and supporting some of those activations around FIFA, and we'll provide updates as those events move forward.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Irma.

Any questions?

Okay, we're gonna move along then.

The next item is public forum.

Since we have a long meeting tonight, I'm going to allow two minutes per person.

And we will start with uh Lisa Kramer.

Good evening, Mayor Reddock and honorable council members.

Um I'm here to talk about traffic volume and speed on Wave Avenue.

I've been a resident of Wave Avenue for about 15 years, and there's been quite a change in the traffic patterns of the community that are negatively impacting our quality of life.

Years ago, WAI was designed and built as a residential street intended primarily to serve homes located on Wave Avenue.

Changing neighborhood demographics and increased commuting patterns have altered traffic patterns within Casa del Mar in ways that are diminishing our quality of life.

WAVE is increasingly the preferred route for many non wave residents to and from Highway One.

They'll actually drive farther than using their own street so that they get to wave and then drive much faster than they drive on their own streets.

Wave residents experience a disproportionate amount of traffic noise, speeding safety concerns, and loss of neighborhood character.

I've got a petition that currently has nearly 20 signatures, and WAVE has about 20 homes on it.

In the last two years, we've been conversing with the city about these issues.

We've told uh law enforcement uh would be improved, increased, that hasn't happened.

We were told the faded roadway markings could be painted, that has not happened.

We were told a traffic calming policy was needed, but no such policy was developed.

We were told a traffic study would be conducted.

Moss said that before he left, and no traffic study has been conducted.

Finally, we were told that permanent traffic calming options to just seed homeschool would be an option, and they have not yet been evaluated.

I'm gonna turn this over to our next speaker, Kevin Dixon.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council members.

We've had two phases of collection of traffic information here.

The first, the police put a radar speed camera in on a trailer.

It actually worked for the time period it was there.

It walked in one direction because it's only ever looking at traffic coming in a single direction.

We went back and we talked to public walks again about this, and public walks installed another pole-mounted radar speed detector.

Again, this one is a one direction, but it's facing in the other uh direction.

What we're getting from that is data this time.

After it had been walking for several weeks, we sat down with public works, and the be all and end all was that they said that the data that had been collected would not support us doing anything about traffic calming.

The problem that we have with this is when we went and researched this, there are different types of traffic calming.

If you look at what the federal highway administration and what cow trains say, radar speed detectors are not considered what they call uh neutral data collection devices.

There's a type of device called a traffic data classifier.

It's the little black box that's got the two lines that run across, and it records good quality data.

The problem with the radar speed detectors is they basically alert traffic and they try and influence behavior.

They only do it in one direction.

So our issue is we do not believe that we have good data to support a public works decision here, and we'd like to address that in some way.

Thank you.

I'm gonna pass it off to Tom now.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Tom Roman.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council members, good evening staff.

My name is Tom Roman.

I live at 417 Wave Avenue.

Um I've been on Wave Avenue since 2003, and I can confirm that I've seen we've seen increased traffic, volume of traffic, as well as speed.

Also the demographics.

When I moved in, most of the homes were occupied by older people like myself now, retired people.

Over time that's changed, and there's a lot of younger families.

There's a lot more kids in the neighborhood now.

So I feel like there's a lot more risk to uh that the faster cars uh bring to the neighborhood.

Um our preferred solution are asphalt speed bumps, the speed bumps that span the road at various intervals.

Um, we believe those are durable, they're effective.

Um the reason why we believe that is because they're on Keyho.

Kehoe Avenue is on the other side of Casa del Mar from our uh neighborhood.

And um actually you guys have a resource there on the dais.

Uh council member Johnson lives on Keyhouse.

He was part, I believe, of the effort to get those speed bumps installed, and uh he has witnessed the effectiveness of those speed bumps over um over more than two decades.

So uh he can help uh speak to that.

Uh I know they're expensive.

I know the city has budget issues.

Uh, there are also rubber speed bumps that can be purchased with and installed with much less labor.

Uh I saw some in San Mateo that looked pretty nice.

Um, there are also speed bumps like that in Frenchman's Creek.

Those look a little worn and um uh potentially wear out.

Um, so still we would prefer the asphalt.

Now I know you guys can't deliberate tonight because this is a public forum item and not noticed.

Um, what we're requesting is that you formally ask staff to um study this in a formal traffic study, and that you bring this up on in an agenda item at a future meeting.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Joaquin Jimenez.

Bless you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Councilmember, City Staff, and Mr.

Public, my name is Joaquin Jimenez.

It's an event that we do every uh every year in August.

And this is a uh Save the Day uh flyer.

Uh we are getting ready for a good event.

Uh last night I was at the Farm Bureau uh to invite them to participate in the uh in the event.

And uh we're expecting uh to have a two-day event, actually a three-day event.

We're having a lot of families coming in uh from the Central Valley.

Uh so the Half On Bay, uh, for Bay will receive a lot of benefits of our people staying overnight Friday night, Saturday night, and even maybe even Sunday night.

Uh as I understand there's another event happening this weekend in Hafoon Bay in uh we uh Vaquero Days, we have nothing to do with this uh event.

There's a horse event, actually.

There's uh two different horse events.

Uh so in case you see horses around town, uh, we have nothing to do with that one.

This is the one that we do.

Uh please follow us on our social media on Instagram, you know, Vaquero Days HMB, is becoming very uh very famous, you know, as uh across California.

We are expecting families to come all the way from uh San Fernando Valley and uh in Fresno, Modesto, Merced, uh and of course here in the in the Bay Area.

So Vaquero Days uh is happening August 15th and August 16th.

Uh please uh look at the flyer and uh expecting to have a uh excellent weekend on during that weekend.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Harvey Robach.

As you know, last month you and the majority of the council voted to uh move five five five Kelly project forward.

The overwhelming majority of speakers of the last couple meetings have all been in favor of this project, which is affordable housing for senior farm workers.

If you go to Safeway now, you'll see signature gatherers who claim that don't claim work for an organization called Let Half Moon Bay Voters Decide.

Their argument is that democracy demands that um the voters sign this petition, this referendum, which would nullify the ordinance that you passed last month.

I believe it's a very disingenuous effort.

If you ask them, are you for or against the project?

Almost all the signature gatherers say they're neutral.

That is not true.

They're the people who've behind them as well as the signature gatherers are clearly against the project.

If you sign their referendum, you are basically saying that you want the project to die or it'd be delayed so that it eventually will die.

Um this isn't a case of democracy.

This is a case of people claiming things that aren't true, because the referendum is definitely to kill 555 Kelly, which is a very righteous project.

So if you're against the project, by all means sign the referendum.

But if you think as I do, that this is a wonderful way for the city to express its admiration for the agricultural heritage we have, then please don't sign the petition.

Thank you.

That's all the speaker slips I have.

Is there anyone online who would like to comment under public forum?

I don't see any raised hands.

So we're going to move on.

Um we have uh several different items on the consent calendar.

Is there anyone interested in pulling any of these items?

Okay, seeing none, uh I'm going to um read the consent items and then ask the public if they would like to comment on any of them.

So the items are item 9a, wave reading of ordinances and resolutions.

Item 9b, treasurer's report for the quarter ending March 31st, 2026.

Item 9C, approved minutes of the May 19th, 2026 special meeting.

Item 9D, approved minutes of the May 19th, 2026 regular meeting.

Item 9E, display of the LB LGBTQ flag for the month of June 2026 at City Hall to commemorate Pride Month.

Item 9F, resolutions calling for the holding of November 3rd, 2026 General Municipal Election.

Item 9G, acceptance of auditors' reports from the fiscal year 2023 24 audit.

Item 9H acceptance of the auditors' reports from the fiscal year 2425 audit.

Item 9J, final acceptance of the John L.

Carter Park Improvements Project.

Item 9J, amendment to agreement with Mason Associates for Independent Auditing Services.

Is there anyone in the room who would like to address any of these items?

Or anyone online, you can raise your hand to speak now.

Seeing no one in the room and no one online wishing to address these items, I'll entertain a motion to approve and uh in a second.

So moved.

Second.

I'm gonna ask for a roll call since there's audit reports on here, just to be on the safe side.

Um could have a roll call, please.

Councilmember Brownstone.

Yes.

Councilmember Johnson?

Yes.

Councilmember Nagengast?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Penrose?

Yes.

Mayor Raddock.

Yes.

Motion carries.

Okay, moving on to item 10, which is ordinance and public hearings.

And the first item is item 10A, compliance with assembly bill 2561, government code section 3502.3 regarding vacancies, recruitment, and retention efforts.

All right.

Good evening.

Uh Madam Mayor, Councilmembers, members of the public, uh Kenneth South here, your interim administrative services director, and I'm going to be reporting out on our vacancies, recruitment, and retention efforts.

So AB 2561 is a bill passed by the state back in September of 2024.

And what's in it is that agencies must uh present the status of vacancies annually and before the budget adoption.

So this is what this meeting is.

There are also additional requirements if uh an agency has a vacancy rate that exceeds 20%.

Um so today's presentation is gonna be a little bit more um more robust than in prior year.

So here on the screen we have our vacancies uh as of April 30th, what it was on that date, and it's broken out by the bargaining unit.

So the first one, local thirty-nine, um, that unit has our maintenance workers, our technicians, our uh administrative staff.

Um we've budgeted about 17 FTEs, but only 11 have been filled, and our vacancies are six.

So our vacancy rate for that bargaining unit is 35%.

Representative management, this is our middle line managers and professional staff, so um managers, planners, engineers.

We have about five vacancies there, and that's at 26% confidential.

Um, we have a handful of kind of oddball classifications that are between management or a little bit higher.

This is where the finance manager is, this is where HR is, this is where the city clerk is.

So classifications that also deal with uh highly confidential items.

We have one vacancy there, and then the exec team we have uh one vacancy there as well.

Uh it should be noted, and it's not uh on the slide here, is that um because of our fiscal um, because of the last few years and us managing our fiscal situation.

Um we've made a concerted effort to when we do have a vacancy the to pause and and think about whether to immediately fill it or a hold off for whatever reason.

Um we also have interims, so what's not reflected here 100% is that um we have about 10 interim positions.

So a good example would be myself.

Um, yes, the admin services director on this table is shown as filled, but the position I came from, the finance manager is on this table as vacancy.

Um, so and we have 10 of those cases in this chart.

So we're in a state of flux um with our uh workforce.

Overall, the citywide vacancy rate is 20 percent.

As you can imagine, there's been it it comes with challenges being kind of in flux operationally and still holding on the other hand fiscal considerations, and uh we're going through an organization study um to kind of work through that.

Um another challenge though, is kind of the broader challenges that applies to a lot of Bay Area cities, is just the cost of living, uh, the commute.

Um, we not we're not particularly attractive to uh recruits that are on the east side of the bay, but um thankfully we've been um we've had some luck with some co-siders um in these recent uh recruitment efforts.

What does it mean on impacts?

Uh so service levels were maintained uh despite the vacancies.

Uh again, this interim assignments that's giving people opportunities to um do something uh stretched assignment or or working at a promotional role, but it is kind of hard because they they do have to sometimes they have to backfill um the position that they left.

Um we have temp we use a lot utilize temporary staff or uh mostly for administrative or um more entry-level positions, and but the really the big thing is this workload being redistributed across staff organizational wide.

Um it's been a tough year and with tasks moving and things not being set in stone, and staff is really um has really shouldered that and and done a great job.

Some of the opportunities as I mentioned before is the citywide organizational study.

We started this um early uh spring.

We hopefully that will conclude in uh fall, but that's taking a look at our organization as a whole, um, how we can best deploy our our human resources or our staff to deliver uh services and maintain them across for the community.

With that, uh the recommendation is to receive a presentation and conduct a public hearing at which the city will report on workforce workforce vacancies, recruitment, and retention efforts.

And with that, I will take any questions as well.

Thank you for that.

Any clarifying questions?

Okay, so this is a public hearing.

I will open the public hearing and ask persons in the room or online to um come forward if you'd like to comment on the item relating to uh city vacancies.

I see no one in the room.

Is there anyone online who would like to comment?

I see no hands raised, so I'm going to close the public hearing and bring it back to the city council for any additional questions or comments.

Anyone?

Okay, so we're just receiving a presentation and conducting a public hearing.

And so we're basically just receiving this report.

Yes.

If you prefer, we can you know make a motion and a second to receive the report, or we can just move on if there's no other further discussion.

So I think we're just gonna move on.

That's okay.

But thank you for the um the item, Kenneth.

We're moving on to item 10B, which is the fiscal year 2026-27 master fee schedule.

This is also a public hearing, and we will be asked to adopt a resolution adopting an updated master fee schedule for the coming year, coming fiscal year, and approving a 1.7% consumer price index adjustment to certain applicable fees.

Thank you.

Uh as mentioned, uh yes, this presentation is on the master fee schedule.

Um a little bit of the history.

So last year the city uh completed a comprehensive cost allocation and fee study.

What that means is the city took a look at all the services that it provides, figure out how much it costs to provide those services, and then from there determine what the best fee kind of uh reflects what council deems to be an appropriate cost recovery.

So last year our cost recovery averaged it out to about 90 percent.

So for every service that we provide, we recruit about 90% of that through a fee.

And the services are um building permits, uh, engineering fees, any administrative fees, things like that.

In that uh study, uh council approved also to have these fees, most fees increased automatically with CPI.

Um, so this is what this um presentation is an update.

Uh, for as new fees in here, we have the car uh Carter Park facility rental fee that was brought to council last week.

Uh no change in the fee, but just incorporating into the fee schedule.

The fees that were removed were the fees associated with renters' protections.

So the uh registry, the stabilization fee, and the petitions, the uh CPI adjustment for this year is 1.7 percent and then it affects most fees except for impact fees, which is has to have their own separate study, impact fees, um, maybe like sewer connections or something tied to development, and then of course then also facility rental fees.

Um, there's no changes and no CPI change with that, and of course, there's no change in the cost recovery philosophy.

Um the idea is just to keep up with CPI uh until we need to do another cost and fee study again, which will probably be three years from now.

If council water approved this, uh the any changes to any fees will go up will be effective uh August 2nd.

And that was that was essentially it.

Uh, my recommendation is to conduct a public hearing and adopt the resolution adopting an updated massive fee schedule for fiscal year 2026-27 and approve a 1.7 percent consumer price index adjustment to certain applicable fees.

Thank you for that report.

Any clarifying questions first?

Then I'm gonna open the public hearing.

Um members of the public who are in the room, you can come to the podium now to comment.

Um, or if you're participating online, you may raise your hand and the city clerk will unmute you.

I see no one in the room, no one online.

I'm going to close the public hearing and bring it back to the council for any additional questions or comments.

The motion would be to adopt a resolution adopting an updated master fee schedule for fiscal year 2627 and approving a 1.7% consumer price index adjustment to the certain applicable fees.

Could I have a motion then?

So moved.

Second.

Roll call, please.

Councilmember Brownstone.

Yes.

Council Member Johnson.

Yes.

Councilmember Nagengast.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Penrose?

Yes.

Mayor Raddock.

Yes.

Motion carries.

Okay.

I'm going to suggest that we hear item 11A, which is the Measure D item, and then we'll take a break.

Okay.

So the next item is 11A, ballot measure amending measure D, the city's voter approved residential growth limitations program.

I'm going to recuse myself.

And could you tell us why, please?

Um partner, wife Hazel was on the planning commission in 2024 when this item came before the Planning Commission.

Mapping, it was another there was another component of it, but the mapping was a part of it.

We had some pretty good discussions in our household about it.

And I just want to recuse myself.

Does Council Member Nagengast need to leave the room?

So if Council Member Nagas is recruiting himself in abundance of caution is what I understand that he's doing, then I would recommend that he leave the room for the duration of the item.

So after this, there will be a break anyway.

So we'll we'll let you know when we're ready to break.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Uh good evening, Mayor Ruddick and uh City Council members.

I'm Ruby Zalduando, the assistant planner with the city, and I'm here with Leslie Lake.

Welcome, Ruby.

Welcome.

Thank you.

We haven't seen you here before.

Thank you.

Um today we are bringing to you a proposed ballot measure to amend the Measure D downtown area map to be the town center map in our local coastal land use plan.

So I know that you all are already familiar with Measure D, but for the public's understanding, I'll start with a bit of background on this item.

Um so Measure D is the city's growth uh management system which accommodates up to 1.5 percent population growth annually, which is split between the downtown area and the outside of downtown area.

So the downtown area boundary was defined as the 1998 Half Moon Bay Redevelopment Survey area, which you can see on the slide, and the full measure D text can be found as an attachment to the staff report.

Um so in March of 2024, the city council directed staff to prepare a ballot measure to add exemptions to Measure D and to modify the downtown area map.

Um in July of 2024, following planning commission recommendation for city council to only consider the map change.

City council decided to not place any measure D amendment on the ballot after all.

Um and then in January of this year, City Council again directed staff to prepare a ballot measure amending measure D, this time only updating the existing downtown map to be the town center map from our 2020 local coastal land use plan.

Um, planning commission reviewed this proposed measure on May 12th, and they did not approve the recommendation to place the measure on the ballot.

Instead, they approved a motion to send a summary of their discussion to city council, which is also uh included as an attachment to the staff report.

Um so looking closer at the proposed map amendment, again on the left is the existing downtown area map, and on the right is the town center map from our local coastal land use plan, which serves as the city's um land use element of the general plan.

Um, though, for better legibility and comparison, we reproduced the maps on this slide.

Again, the existing downtown map is on the left, and then the proposed town center map is on the right.

And I'll pause here for a moment so that everyone can kind of digest the differences between the two.

So this town center map was created through an extensive public engagement process approved by the planning commission and was adopted in 2020 with the comprehensive land use plan update.

This town center map is acknowledged as being more reflective of the community's real perception of the downtown area and has become relevant in other city policies since 2020.

In the land use plan, the city strives to make the town center the core walkable area of Half Moon Bay and to promote compact infill development in the downtown rather than outward sprawl into the city's remaining open spaces, which is also aligned with Measure D's original intent.

In that way, adopting this map would create consistency between Measure D and our land use plan.

This next map shows the areas that would be added and subtracted from the downtown area if the amendment is adopted.

The areas outlined in green would be added to the downtown area, and then the areas in pink would be subtracted.

And again, to be uh clear, this map amendment would only change which properties are eligible to compete for the downtown and then the outside of downtown measure de allocation pools, leaving the total amount of allocations unchanged.

To offer a little bit of data, so nine four 491 total parcels would be affected by the map change, and of those, 326 are residential.

And then of those residential parcels, 88% would be added to the map, and only 12% would be subtracted from the downtown area.

Additionally, a total of 55 acres of non-residential, mostly agricultural land, would be removed from this downtown area.

So from 2022 to 2026, if the downtown boundary had been changed, 20 allocations applied for outside of the downtown area would have fallen within the boundaries of the town center.

And then conversely, three allocations within the existing downtown would have fallen outside of the town center.

And so because the number of measure D applications for outside of downtown consistently exceeds the amount of allocations available, amending this map would have freed up allocation availability outside of the downtown and increase the amount of infill competition within the downtown.

I'm saying a lot of downtown.

Alright, so getting into some details, this proposed ballot measure would include specific changes to the local coastal land use plan and municipal code.

The first would be to the local coastal land use plan policy 2-16, updating the language to define the downtown area of Measure D as the town center map in figure 2-2 of the LCLUP.

And then in the municipal code, there would be changes to subsections 17.06.020, 17.06.065, and 18.04.010 to similarly update the language to define the downtown area as the town center map.

Looking at next steps, if city council adopts a resolution, this measure would be placed on the November 3rd, 2026 general election ballot.

And then at that point, if it is approved by voters, it would then be sent to the California Coastal Commission for certification, and staff would continue to coordinate with the Coastal Commission throughout the process.

This is how the measure would be presented on the ballot to voters in the form of a question, which reads, shall the measure amending the City of Half Moon Bay Local coastal Land Use Plan, Title 17 Subdivisions, and Title 18 zoning of the Half Moon Bay Municipal Code and other conforming edits so that the Measure D downtown Area is redefined as the area designated as the town center, figure two 2-2 of the local coastal land use plan be adopted.

So staff's recommendation tonight would be for city council to adopt a resolution placing a measure on the November 3rd, 2026 general election ballot proposing this amendment of Measure D.

We're also recommending finding the amendments exempt from uh CEQA and to determine if the council would like to submit an argument in favor of the proposed ballot, and if so, who would write it?

Um thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you for that thorough report.

Appreciate it.

Any clarifying questions from council members?

Um I would say that it's going to be really important in the analysis that accompanies the the ballot question to you know be very careful how this is explained.

You know, it's gonna have to be close to perfect because it's sort of complex, and it's you know, when you change a map, you know, that could raise a lot of red flags for people.

You know, what does that do to my property or my insurance or what have you?

So it's gonna have to be very carefully you know worded, and um I'm I'm guessing that it would behoove the ballot to have arguments and support.

But I'm open to hearing from other council members before asking the public to weigh in.

Uh council, well, I was just gonna say that that could be something that the council takes up during deliberations if they want to discuss having the council write the arguments or particular council members to write the argument support of uh the measure, or if you want to leave that to somebody else to draft.

Let's hear from the public.

I don't have any speaker slips here.

Is there anyone here in the room who would like to address the item of putting a measure D amendment on the ballot?

Seeing none here, is there anyone online who would like to address this item?

I see no raised hands, so I'll bring it back for discussion.

Um, could staff give us some examples of folks other than council members who you would think would be interested in writing.

Statement in favor.

Yeah, I can't think of any off the top of my head, but um any group could come together to decide to write an argument in support of or against a measure.

So um, I yeah, I would think, you know, and I think we would actually reach out and solicit that.

Is that correct?

Uh no, the city doesn't technically have to solicit anybody, it could be somebody that comes forward and wants to write something in favor of again.

I'm thinking, you know, the realtors or uh builders might be interested in this, people that are involved in constructing housing in the community would be interested in this.

Probably that's the most likely groups that would want to write the or somebody somebody like Chad Hooker.

Yeah, it can certainly be an individual.

Yes.

Yeah.

And whoever writes arguments for, then it'll be open to people writing arguments against goes back and forth a little on a ballot, typically.

And there could be multiple arguments submitted, and then the clerk would have to decide which ones actually can.

And if I heard you correctly, we don't have to solicit, but we can ask.

We can ask if some folks might be interested.

Individual council members can certainly ask.

Okay.

Yes.

Got it.

Okay.

Council member Johnson.

Tim Pond.

Would he be interested in something like this?

Well, I think it's worth, you know, talking to him.

Since we have, since we can entertain multiple arguments, it doesn't hurt to talk to multiple people.

You know, I thought I would talk to Chad Hooker, somebody who has lived through the whole thing.

Yeah, so how how do we approve or disapprove disapprove, reject arguments?

So the clerk would be reviewing them as submitted, and then if there's over, I think it's over um there's a number, particular number, and then she would determine the priority and which ones actually um get in included in the voter information pamphlet.

And the clerk can speak more to this.

Yeah, so say an individual submitted one, but then maybe the realtor association submitted one, then the priority would go to the association or nonprofit or over an individual.

And there's a set order in the government code.

Yeah, I think it would be helpful if council members want to reach out to people to actually have a cheat sheet that says tells them this is the word count, this is the process, yeah, so that people can evaluate whether they want to participate based on what's required.

That some of that information is in the resolution itself.

So um, but if you certainly if you the council members want more information, staff can provide that to council members.

But I think for purposes of tonight, the question before the council is whether the council wants to identify uh to draft an argument in support of the measure, or if the council wants to identify certain council members to write to draft um an argument in support of the measure.

Well, considering that three districts are up for election in November, that makes it a little dicey, I think, for individual council members, not knowing who's going one way or the other, but um, it might be more appropriate at this juncture to solicit um arguments from the public, and that's fine too.

Yeah, does that make sense?

That's interesting.

Okay.

Um, so there's action that has to take place.

So do you want me to read the resolution and someone could then say mayor?

I've got one quick question.

Leslie, do you know?

Um, I mean, if this is going to coastal commission, do you think they're gonna do you think it's gonna get held up at all?

I mean, it goes to the vote first, then coastal commission final approval.

Do you have you any sense with that?

Because the way things are going with coastal commission, it seems kind of wacky.

I would be surprised if the coastal commission had an issue with this particular amendment.

Um they approved the LCLUP with the town center uh as it is.

I can see them wanting alignment there.

Um, it makes their job easier to it does, it does.

Okay, could you put the recommendation on the screen, please?

I think that's it.

We're good.

Okay, is it on there?

Would somebody like to read that?

And and just a reminder, we're only uh asking the council to uh include in the motion bullet points one and two to include the sequel language, we don't need any motion on the third.

All right.

Okay.

Um I move that we adopt a resolution approving a proposed ordinance to amend the city's local coastal land use plan policy 2.2-16, and half moon bay municipal code title 17 subdivisions, sections 17, period 06, period 020, and 17, period 06, period 065, and title 18 zoning, section 18, period 0401, 0E, and other conforming edits to amend the measure D downtown area to be the area designated as the town center in figure two-two of the local coastal land use plan and placing a measure on the November 3rd, 2026 General election ballot seeking voter approval of the proposed ordinance to amend the measure D downtown area.

And fourteen California code registration sections fifteen thousand at sequence guidelines under sequel guidelines section fifteen two six five adoption of coastal plans and programs.

Motion carries.

Yes.

So the next item.

Is eleven B, fiscal year twenty six twenty seven recommended budget.

All right, good evening.

So yes.

But there's more detail in the agenda packet.

And one thing to note that's not in the presentation, but it is in the packet, is that uh the status of this current fiscal year.

So, as I mentioned with the vacancies uh in the earlier presentation, um, with those, it's expected that we're gonna have um quite a bit of salary savings.

And you're gonna see it in Monday slides um the salary savings is gonna be able to uh balance out next next fiscal year.

With that, the revenues.

So here is our revenues table for next fiscal year with the top three taken out for TOT hotel tax.

We're estimating about 9.9 million, which is relatively flat, um, only an increase of about 50 K.

Transit occupancy tax uh is estimated out by using prior year actuals by the month.

So this is essentially saying if we do just as we did exactly the same as we did this year, this is what the number would be.

Uh we tend to take a pretty conservative approach with TOT, it's pretty volatile.

Um, so this is this is what came to be for going into next year.

Property taxes.

Uh, we have 4 million, which is a decrease of about 250 K.

And this is all vehicle and loo fees, a that which is a piece of property taxes.

Um, this revenue stream is a bit contested between the cities of San Mateo and the states, so that's what that decreases there for.

Uh base property taxes that we are more common, like um for homeowners, which you receive receive in the mail.

That goes up fairly regularly year over year.

It was about three percent um this year.

Sales and use tax, another category that's relatively flat.

Um, about five million, which is about a 20k decrease, so essentially the same number.

Um, is kind of pointing to potentially a contraction in the economy or just a flattening of of uh of revenues in and those economically sensitive ones.

Other revenues uh about 4.7 million decreased by about 400k.

That's all from the expiration of a major revenue leasing deal, golf facility fees that is expiring in September.

So that is what makes up that amount.

Overall, our total revenues is 24.2, which is about a million dollar decrease again from uh vehicle alone fees, losing out on the golf facility fees, which is about a decrease of about four percent.

Moving to expenditures, total payroll about 7.9 million, about 200k increase.

Uh the changes in this include one additional FTE.

This was actually approved back in December, and this is our chief building official.

So this is gonna be the first full year of that FTE in our budget.

What's also in that number is contractual obligations, and um all of our vacant positions being fully funded.

Um, we're still working through operationally um what positions to fill and how uh overall structure is, but we have everything fully funded to give us that that space and flexibility.

Supplies and services totals about 13 million, about 88,000 decrease or less than one percent.

Uh we have increases in more non-discretionary obligations, public safety up by about 600k.

Um, this is share of contract, 911 dispatch, animal control.

We have decrease in the resolution of some major litigation costs, so the city attorney is down by about 500k.

But um we have two potential cases that uh exist, and so this number may change uh greatly depending on if they come to fruition.

For departments, uh, you can see this is for our operating departments.

Uh, a bit of a handful of changes in all the departments, admin services, about 40k, additional um additional support for labor relations, city clerk communications, um, website design services, more advertisement.

Uh city manager's office, um, uh that increase of about 30k.

That's to fully fund the CSFA program.

That item is coming before council tonight um to to figure out the actual funding level, but for the budget purposes, uh, it's just the full amount um that we've done in previous years as a placeholder.

Community development, so you can see this is a decrease of operational expenses of about 300k.

That is because we're shifting.

We used to have a contracted building official, but now that we're switching to in-house staff, that contract is greatly decreased.

And then public works, we have an increase of about 35K, mostly for street related repairs, but also GIS uh parcel software.

Other operating expenditures, debt service, we have two outstanding debts, uh, the library and Stone Pine, known change there, about 900K.

Pension going up a nominal amount by about 90K, going up to 1.5 million.

Internal service transfers.

So last year we decided to not uh contribute to the risk management fund, um, both as a budget balancing act, but also because that fund is relatively well funded.

But for this budget, we're recommending to contribute to the risk management fund.

Uh so that that drives that increase of about 300k.

We have other transfers, about 150K.

This is for uh some software work order software for maintenance and then time tracking softener for uh community development, so we can better this track our staff time and bill appropriately to development.

Overall, our total expenditures is about 25 million or about 700k more or about 3%.

On the CIP side, uh the general fund contribution for CIP is uh 600K, which is a decrease.

Um, but uh we found ways to continue funding towards capital projects utilizing some of our special funds.

We have measure A, we have gas tax, we get grants, so overall the CIP budget is about 25 million, but the ask of the general fund is about 600.

This is what the budget all is laid out.

Um you can see our revenues 24, our expenditures um about 25.

It does mean we do have a deficit going into next year of about one and a half million.

Um there are some one-time things that kind of that are within this budget that makes it uh that makes our structural piece of it down.

But if you were to account for those items, our structural deficit kind of our ongoing number that we're working chipping away at is about two million reserves and fund balances.

So this slide is just uh showing what our ending assigned fund balances at first column, what we think we're gonna end the year at.

Um we think because we have some salary savings and um some operational savings, we think we're gonna end it this current fiscal year with an unassigned fund balance of about 4.2 million, which is quite a bit.

But going into next year with our deficit of about one and a half, the recommendation would be to use that unassigned fund balances to meet that deficit.

Uh, the good news though is that the reserves would be about 12.5 million and will be fully funded.

Um fully funded means 50% of our operating expenditures.

What that looks like going forward, uh so this uh highlights what our our outlook looks like for the next three years afterwards.

Our deficits were are floated around $2.5 million.

Um, but we have reserves uh this 26-27 and potentially fully funded reserves 27-28.

So it's a little uh this good news, bad news we're still chipping away at the deficit, but uh we're in a pretty good reserve position to so that we're in a position to make more thoughtful adjustments as we keep chipping away at it.

So as I mentioned, uh 27, 28, two years from now, deficit is around two and a half, maybe, but uh there's some large pending items that exist that can change the outlook in either direction.

So, one is if we're able to potentially renew the golf fees, um this revenue stream used to give us about 600 650 uh K a year.

If we can renew that and kind of recoup that that's a sizable chunk.

Um vehicle and loo fees, this is the property tax item that uh the cities of San Mateo and the state are fighting over and arguing about.

Um the piece that's owed to Half Moon Bay is up to 700k, so that's also a sizable chunk.

Um, those are the kind of the pending revenue items.

The pending expenditure items are is of course negotiations and any new litigation that may come that may come uh afoot.

Overall, the recommendation is just to wait and see to see what shakes through.

Uh despite that, throughout this process, uh council direct the staff to look towards expanding our five-year forecasts and actually develop a fiscal sustainability plan, which is also included in the agenda.

The sustainability plan was uh uh developed in partnership of a of a consultant, and uh which uh we presented this to the finance committee last week, and we've received a really good feedback, so we wanted to bring it to council for council consideration and hopefully adoption.

Uh in it, it would is attachment three in the agenda in it.

Is our five-year forecasts as we traditionally do, um, and what gets built into that.

But the second half of that report is talking about our vulnerabilities and a plan, a sustainability plan.

Uh half Moon Bay through this process, we've learned that Half Moon Bay is a bit is uh we have some big vulnerabilities.

One of them is our revenue sources are very very volatile.

Um we rely on TOT and Sales, and that makes up about 60% of our revenues, which is quite a bit, the second highest in the county.

So when times are good, they're great, but when times are not that great, they can be pretty bad for us.

Um the second uh vulnerability is the vehicle license fee shortfall, that's 700k.

It might it might keep growing, that's a sizable chunk of money, and then of course, with all agencies, expenditure expenditures, uh, validity um uh things that we can't really get away from, but just keep increasing.

Because we're so volatile, um, council was prudent enough back in 2019 to um develop a reserve policy.

So best practices for agencies is to have a reserve policy of about 16 percent.

Ours is 55.0.

Um that's because of how uncertain our revenue base is.

Uh the first one is general fund reserve, 30% of annual operating expenditures.

This is really much uh reserved for significant financial stress, uh catastrophe, earthquake, something that's really um really big.

But the second one, economic economic uncertainty reserve, which is about 20% of operating expenditures, um, this is for mitigating deficits on a short term short-term basis to bridges from uh one outlook to the other.

And again, both reserves are fully funded next year, which puts us in a good position.

So the plan.

The plan was kind of structured in three phases.

Uh there's a 10 total strategies, um, broken out by phases.

The first phase is like kind of the best practices, things that we're constantly doing.

The first one is sharing budget efficiency.

Um, are we looking at our budget?

Is it too conservative?

Is it too aggressive?

Does it make sense?

Really always fine-tuning that that pencil with that.

Second one is maximizing revenue collections.

Are we receiving the monies that's owed to the city?

Uh cost savings, operational efficiency.

That's looking at our expenditures.

Can we scale back in some items?

Can we defer some items?

Can we can we just be better about how we spend taxpayer money?

Cost recovery services and the and number five, the cost allocation plan.

Spoke a little about this earlier tonight with the fee study, looking at how much does it cost for the city to provide the services that it does, and what kind of fees and cost recovery should the city uh strive for.

These are things that we should always be doing that should always be implemented in the near term.

Um we've organically done this uh with our deficit years back, um, but it's good to get it on paper and to be like a guide of work uh a framework um for the future.

Phase two, and this is kind of the phase where we're current where we're currently in, we're not exactly in phase three.

We're in some blend between phase one and phase two, just kind of waiting to see what happens.

And in phase two, this is where we utilize um some short-term things to either buy time or to solve short-term issues.

So utilizing our reserves these past few years we we budgeted to use our reserves, but we never actually ended up having to use our reserves because we were doing these operational savings things.

Uh seven, uh reducing or eliminating the capital transfer, um, eight other one-time solutions, um, withdrawing utilizing one-time funds or foregoing one-time expenditures.

Um, these are all things that we've done or done some flavor of in the past few years.

But phase two is really about stopping and seeing is the imbalance short term or is it long term?

If we're short term, then these are just things to get us by.

But if it's long term, you have to start thinking about okay, what going into phase three, what does that look like for the city?

Phase three is the tough phase.

That is when you're looking at uh trying to get more revenue, which may might mean asking the voters, or reducing service levels, which is always tough to see.

Um, with phase three, it was important um to kind of build in a kind of trigger uh to not just get to here because these things are so impactful that we don't want to get into this prematurely.

And the trigger that we came up with was that until after the audit is done, after we have our actual numbers, if our fund balance is below 50 percent, which is we've truly used our reserves to get by through this year, then we should begin the discussions of one or two or both of these items.

Again, I don't think we're I don't we're not in this phase.

I don't think we're being this phase this year or even the year after that, but again, this is an exercise and getting all the steps on paper.

With that, I will love to take any questions, but the recommendation is as follows receive a presentation of the 26-27 recommended budget, and after accepting public comments and providing any additional recommended changes, direct staff to return with the final proposed budget for adoption on June 16, 2026.

Then the next one is to adopt the fiscal sustainability plan to provide a long-term framework for addressing the city's ongoing structural fiscal challenges and guiding future financial decision making.

Thank you, Ken.

Questions from council members?

Yeah, thanks, Mayor.

Could you explain what reducing capital transfers means?

Yeah, so uh every year, um, the budget, our general fund budget, we uh fund some capital projects this year.

We're funding about 600K, but in years prior, so we funded two million one year we funded, we sent over four million to capital projects.

So that line item could be just looking at the capital or capital needs and saying, well, maybe we can defer this, or maybe not send so much here, or maybe we can use grant funds or or um special revenue funds.

So it's about it's not necessarily a hard thing like we're going to do this, but stopping and and taking a look at what we what's there.

So from operating to capital.

Got it.

Councilmember Johnson.

So Ken, one of the things we did do last year is phase one.

We did the review of cost recovery for services.

We did that like restructuring and permitting costs and all that stuff.

So we that have you done all of phase one already, or have you or just that one?

I will say yes, we've done pretty much everything here.

Uh we definitely did four, we did five, we did three.

Uh two, we can uh we're starting to get into that a little bit more just to just to double check to see if there's anything we can shake out from if there's something that um uh if there's revenue to be collected.

But yes, this is something that we do on a fairly consistent basis.

Yeah, yeah.

If I through the through the mayor, um phase one is stuff we should just be doing all the time.

Um that this is normal, ongoing work that staff should be doing to ensure that we're operating and doing things the right way financially.

So these are things we've been doing, and we're gonna continue to do.

Um, obviously, your point about the cost recovery piece.

We did the big study, and we need to do that on a regular, we're not gonna do that every year, but if if staff sees something out of whack when it comes to cost recovery, it feels like hey, you know, we're we're really subsidizing X or Y.

We will bring it forward to you all for discussion and uh action before we get to the big cost recovery study as well.

So, what we're actually proposing tonight is to formalize all these items.

We've been doing some or most of them, but now it's becoming a program so that each year we start looking at the budget, we're gonna go through these lists.

Where are we?

You know, and it's trend more transparent, and we can communicate it, you know, between each other and and the public better too.

Councilmember Nagencast.

Thank you.

As uh were we a committee or ad hoc committee?

What we were in ad hoc committee.

So ad hoc committee myself, the mayor and uh myself are on for the to look at this report last week.

We did.

Actually, we were a standing community.

And I get all the committees that uh second year on council, I thought uh it's important to have this uh fiscal sustainability plan for us to see what is happening and communicate to the community.

These are the steps we have or are taking.

This is what's next, and this is what's next.

Because we're gonna get ourselves back at 50 percent, which I think is fantastic.

That shows you something, and acknowledge a lot of this is happening because we don't we have empty position good news, bad news.

We have empty positions that are funded but haven't been filled.

So we have uh we've talked about some one-time funds that might be available this year, maybe to get thrown into a capital project somewhere for to have uh out there, whether it's a street project or a park, but we have that ability to do something this year, but we have this plan to show the community.

Because I I hear a lot, oh I can't understand public budgeting.

You know, be you know, I run a business, but it it's weird.

You we don't necessarily have a make a profit, and that may sound weird to people, but because we're just balancing the funds because we want to provide service.

That's what we do.

Why would we save money if we can provide the service somewhere?

And I don't mean that in a negative way, not wanting to save money, but be efficient and provide maybe a service we hadn't before.

So I think I'm happy to see in this budget this plan to show this is what we do, and boy, just gets if something happens because it's important to have a plan because we're dependent so much on TOT.

That is a big part of how we survive and can provide service.

So I'm happy to see this budget this year and uh to be able to explain that not only reserves back at 50, but we actually have a plan on how to try and keep our monies in check.

Yeah, what's meant by uh uh finding other sources of revenue?

I mean, that sounds like pie in the sky to me.

Unless you're talking about some some sort of a bond that we get past.

Or to be taxed, it's a tax measure, it's bond revenues, it's economic development, which again is ongoing, but you know, generally that means a tax.

Okay.

The T-word.

Because it's structural, because we're a visitor-serving community, that's our economy, right?

So that's the structure imposed on us.

And so therefore, we're pretty limited in any steps we can take to keep ourselves afloat.

I think it might uh be more transparent to say consider bonds or taxes, as opposed to just putting out this thing that says explore other revenue options.

That's unless you're talking about taxing and bonding.

It's a pie in the sky as far as I'm concerned.

So let's name it what it is.

I mean, there always are potential other options, but certainly we could put, you know, like for example, taxes, bonds, you know.

So at least it's clear, but it doesn't confine us to only those options.

No, I mean, I don't want to confine us, but I definitely think we need to be transparent.

It this is a public document, and this is a document trying to reassure the public that we are spending their money wisely, and um if they don't understand the deficit, they might understand it better if we talk about taxing and bonding, which they won't like to hear, but it's it's honesty.

Yes, it's better than like revenue enhancements.

Yeah, right.

Right.

But there are other things, one-time things you can do too.

You can sell land, you know.

You can eliminate debt.

We can have a cupcake sale.

Gotta I think we can we can easily make that modification.

I think that's a good clarification.

Um, well, since we're here to help also, you know, keep the public educated and make keep it simple for now.

Um I know I've long long time advocated making sure we keep some strong reserves, which we have.

We actually compare it to a lot of other cities percentage-wise, we do have good reserves.

So, like everything else, we have continuing increasing expenses.

And yeah, that affects our ability to fix the potholes and keep putting off all those critical, you know, um uh structural repairs that we need.

But when we talk about structural improvements to our budget, which can you mentioned a few years ago, and I remember saying what the heck do we mean by a structural improvement?

That means non-one time ideas, and the only structural things we have in place right now is exploring additional tax revenues.

Yeah, you can sell bonds, but then you have to that creates an expense that you have to pay off.

So the question is, how do you use the money that you're raising the bonds for?

Oh, will that increase tourism?

Will it, you know, you have to be very smart on how you make those bets, right?

Um, and then there's reducing service levels.

Well, most people don't elect us to reduce service levels.

They want to have robust service levels.

But those are the only structural right now, those are the only structural changes we have.

So I'm glad we're thinking trying to think five years ahead.

But you know, we need to be, you know, talking about the word innovation.

Well, what do innovate what do innovative changes look like and what kind of um help can we get thinking about that?

Who do we consult with around innovation changes that are more than just one time?

Like, yeah, it would be great if we can have an amazing series of um concerts at Carter Park that bring in half a million or million dollars a year.

But what are the other things that um the chamber can be doing to improve uh more folks coming here?

You know, what are the partnerships we need, because um there's really huge budget deficits everywhere.

We can't depend on the state, we can't depend on the county necessarily, right?

We might be able to have um invest in a grant writer, perhaps uh a little more, put some money and get a return on investment on that.

But those are some of the things that the council I think you know, we're collectively can really hopefully work on and come up with some more ideas and bring them back to council and see how they might fly.

You know, in two years the library will be paid off.

Right.

Certain debts, thank God will be paid well, but then we have a few.

And that's more than $500,000 a year.

That's and then we still had some ongoing debts that we still had, but yeah, yeah.

So um, and and I think you're right about like um having you know the chamber work on things.

For instance, there are things you can do, there are opportunities that come up, so with the gas prices increasing and they're gonna continue to increase, it looks like for a while.

You know, maybe that's more advertising in the East Bay, you know, or in the Monterey Bay area, you know, to come to Half Moon Bay, have you know promotions, more advertising.

You know, we have to be sort of fleet on our on our you know feet, but the chamber it's they can do that faster than we can, for instance.

You know, but working together with them, why are why aren't we taking advantage of this opportunity?

You know, it's gonna be really hot in the southwest this summer, you know, advertise in Arizona, advertise in Las Vegas.

So we have to take advantage of those opportunities.

It's not really innovation in the sense we're transforming our economy, but we're we're observing, we're watching, we're tuned in, and we're taking advantage of opportunities as they come up too.

I yeah, I I think Robert's idea of innovations is where we ought to be looking, not so much at increasing TOT.

Um, because TOT could be increased in one sector and decreased in another sector because you know it's it's just too volatile to to really count on.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't be working on it, but uh and and when I think of innovation, I think, well, we've got a city full of bright people, uh active groups like the Rotary Club, for instance.

Um maybe we should be engaging these folks and asking them what they want to do, what do they see they could do to help?

Or what ideas do they have to help?

Yeah, let's not forget Daniel Theobald and the Bay Cities property, right?

Well, yeah, there's innovation right there.

You know, he intends to make it work, you know, and he's an innovator.

Right.

That's a blessing that we have that opportunity right now, right?

That's good points.

All right, so um, is there any member of the public would who would like to address the item of the budget?

We don't have any speaker flips.

Is there anyone online who would like to address the matter of the budget?

I see no hands raised.

So we'll bring it back to the council.

So um so we're just basically receiving the presentation, and uh but adopting the fiscal sustainability plan and the final budget will come back.

If you have any items you want added to the budget, now's the time to do it.

Um, take things out, change it, because the next meeting would be adoption of the budget.

I think the second meeting in June, correct?

That's like the final possibility, so part of the recommendation includes directing staff to return with the final proposed budget for adoption on June 16th.

I move that we adopt the fiscal sustainability plan to provide a long-term framework for addressing the city's ongoing structural fiscal challenges and guiding future financial decision making, decision making.

Um that staff return with a financial proposed budget for adoption on June 16th.

2026.

I forgot that first farce first.

Did them in reverse.

Got a second.

I think we're going to adopt the fiscal sustainability.

Did you mention that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just didn't reverse.

I'll second.

Could I have a roll call, please?

Councilmember Brownstone.

Yes.

Councilmember Johnson.

Yes.

Councilmember Nagengast.

Yes.

Mayor Penrose.

Yes.

Mayor Reddick.

Yes.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ken.

And moving on to item 11C, the Community Services Financial Assistance Program.

There you go.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council, members of the community, Julisa Acosta, interim economic and community vitality manager.

I am here to present to you the community services financial assistance program.

I will be brief with my background given that council has received several updates over the last few months.

So I don't think we need to go into a lot of detail over the background of the program.

But just a brief overview, the program started back in 2018 with no formal structure and smaller grants that amounted up to $15,000.

Over time, we've increased with council's guidance of funding allocations to up to $300,000 and implemented a cohort model to allow the funding organizations to receive additional support and collaborate on shared uh challenges and experiences.

And last um during the last two fiscal year fiscal years, we implemented a two-year finding funding cycle again to allow and promote for more collaboration among the organizations.

Briefly, the the cohort model uh just works in a very simple way for staff.

Um we convene the uh nine grantees quarterly.

We um identify shared challenges and try to focus um our technical assistance that the city provides collectively.

We work on shared goals and learn from best practices from each other.

Um just a few highlights over the last couple years.

Uh we um we weren't successful, but um we worked together to present a joint master care application to provide lab services on the coast.

Uh there was a successful ALC of support um for the for Coast Pride to uh bring the youth services to the coast.

Um, and over time we just streamlined uh services and and referrals throughout uh the the participating nonprofits, as well as um, especially over the last couple years when we've been hit with different challenges and emergencies that um certainly out of SAT's capacity to handle organizations that work closely with us have been able to provide rapid response services to emergent needs.

Um, this are just some of the basic um safety net services that we fund through this program, um, basic needs, housing, um uh access to food, uh, rental assistance program, um, youth services, homeless services, mental and dental um care, as well as senior services, and you see that more in detail um in the staff report and the table that provides uh specific um names and services for each of the programs that are funded through this organization uh through this uh program.

Sorry, um staff met with the subcommittee um in early April to talk about um the next steps for this program.

This is the time where we typically um would come to subcommittee to look at uh the next funding size goal and recommendations from uh the subcommittee.

Uh when staff met with the subcommittee, they indicated that they wanted to continue funding the same nine organizations.

Um it seemed that it was an understanding that there's still a high need for um the safety net services to be provided to the community.

It is not a nice to have, especially when there have been several budget cuts to nonprofits that come from state and federal funding sources.

Um I also want to point out that um this services that we fund through this small uh but mighty of the final funding allocations for fiscal year 25-26.

Because during the current fiscal year, we funded organizations partially, only to organizations were awarded full amounts, which was uh because I hope an abundant graze due to the um priority on the services they provide and um council authorized staff um to fund fully fund the organizations at the at the previous year amounts.

So this is what you're seeing uh for the current fiscal year uh for the next two for the next fiscal year.

Um again staff is uh bringing uh council two options.

Uh one is to fund organizations fully at the $300,000 mark, uh, and then uh this is what we've been doing for the last couple years.

Um, and the other option, just being mindful of our um budget situation uh to fund uh at a $250,000 level.

I will say um we continue to hear from the interim reports, from the final reports, from our regular convenings with um nonprofits that this uh funding mechanism of partially funding organizations uh doesn't allow for full plant long-term planning, especially because some programs have to be cut if they don't uh you know they're not aware that they will be receiving uh full funding allocation.

So I just wanted to bring that up to council and uh make sure that it was clear uh that some organizations have to adjust in the past, and when we come back a couple months uh before the fiscal year ends, it's a little bit challenging uh for organizations to figure out you know that how to put the pieces of the puzzle together again.

Um, so this is just what we're proposing to staff.

Obviously, option B includes this uh the same option that we did the current fiscal year, which we would come back to council during uh mid-year reports to provide an update on the program and how things are going, and then see if um there's an additional funding that can be provided to organizations.

I will say um over time we are seeing that the services and the collaboration with the nonprofits is getting stronger.

Um they have been trusted partners from years before, even before the city uh came on board, but we are seeing great successes and stronger partnerships coming together.

There's uh a lot of shared resources, and uh we're exploring you know what new creative ways we can um do and bring over to support our executive leaders um that serve the community.

Um at this point, I will I'll bring it, I'll um open it up for discussion, taking questions.

Thank you for that report.

Uh any clarifying questions from council members, okay.

What did we hear from the folks who are present this evening?

I'll start with um Spandan Chakrabarty.

Uh good evening, everybody.

Um Mayor Ruddick, Council.

Um I want to start with two things.

I want to start with the humor, and then a pretty serious uh stat.

Uh and the my humor for the night is you know, I often hear I represent my name is Span in Chocolate and I represent uh Cinderisa's dental health.

And in the fundraising world, we often hear, well, dental is not sexy.

And my response to that is, well, try being sexy without your teeth.

So, and uh, but to balance that off, here is a pretty serious statistics.

In San Mateo County, which is a third or fourth large uh most wealthy county in the entire country, uh, a hundred thousand people live in households making $50,000 or less.

Households, not individual incomes.

Um Half Moon Bay, that's about 1,800 folks, or 16% of the city's population.

And that is predominantly elderly folks living on um fixed income, uh, people who are um new immigrants or English language learners, uh, people who are living with a disability, um, and and so forth.

So, um, so what the CSFO program has meant um for all of us is yes, it's been a lifeline to many of our patients and program participants, but more than that, um, your support gives us the legitimacy and the leverage to partner with other folks, and um because if the city is on board with you, there is a uh there is an instant uh credibility that we get.

Um, that's important.

Um, and the cohort model is really invaluable in my experience.

Um, the city's role as a convener, and thank you, Julissa and Karen and Irma for uh keeping us um all together on our board.

Um it allows us to share expertise, resources, because we all serve many of the same folks.

Um, and so you know, I want to end by thanking you all for supporting this program um over the past years and hoping that uh you will renew it with option A.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Judith Guerrero.

Good evening, my mayor and steamed council members.

My name's Judith Guerrero.

I'm the executive director of Cosai Hope.

Um, and thank you for uh sticking it out with us.

Uh, this is the first time that I stay this late at a meeting.

I don't have a joke like Spandon, but that was pretty funny.

Um the funds from CSFA help us serve the many residents of Halfham Bay and to provide safety net services for them.

Uh year today, we have served a total of 3,650 Halfum Bay residents.

This represents approximately one out of every three of our neighbors who walk through the doors of CoSai Hope.

Our services include a range of support, and I believe some of you guys have had the opportunity to visit our office.

Um our services include a daily pantry that's open to everyone in our community, emergency financial assistance, case management, immigration support, and holiday programs, just to name a few.

At this critical time when safety net services are being dismantled by the current federal administration, we as an organization find hope and strength in building strategic collaborations with local nonprofits, philanthropy, and government agencies such as yourself.

These partnerships enhance our community's overall well-being ecosystem and help prevent the duplication of services.

We pride ourselves and at Coast I Hope at being a collaborator, not a duplicator.

Um it also helps us maximize the resources that we have.

Um we thank you for creating this program, and we hope that you will continue to support this program with option A.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Sandy Winter.

Good evening, Mayor Reddick and Council members, staff, and my peers and colleagues who have spoken so eloquently about why this program works and should be continued to be funded.

My name is Sandy Winton.

I'm the executive director at Senior Co-Siders, and I urge you to fund the Community Services Financial Assistance Program at its full $300,000 level.

Through the many challenges our co-side community has faced in the past several years, the organizations in the CSFA program have been the safety net that kept our most vulnerable neighbours from falling through the cracks.

The need for the safety net services that we each provide is not shrinking, it's growing.

Speaking specifically about the community of older coastside adults that senior co-siders serves, Half Moon Bay has one of the highest concentrations of seniors of any city in San Mateo County, with nearly one in four residents being age 65 and older.

That population is increasing, and so is the cost of serving them.

Senior co-siders is on the front line every day.

Our staff and volunteers prepare meals from scratch in our commercial kitchen that are delivered directly to homebound seniors and served in our dining room.

We provide transportation so that older adults can get to our center, share a meal, and participate in classes and activities that support their physical, mental, social, and financial well-being.

We make minor home repairs that keep seniors safe in their own homes, and in fact, our annual home repair day is taking place this Saturday.

Our Pet Buddy program provides volunteer food and financial support for the animal companions who give so many seniors a sense of purpose and joy.

We loan out wheelchairs and other assistive devices so that mobility is never a barrier to independence.

Most of our services are completely free, and no one ever is ever turned away from a meal, a ride or care management because they cannot pay.

Demand for every one of these services is rising, and the cost of delivering them is rising just as fast.

Our monthly gross rebill is well over $10,000.

Please choose option A, $300,000 and invest in the people who built this co-side community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Is there anyone online who would like to address the item of our community financial assistance grants program?

I see no hands raised.

I'll bring it back to the council for discussion.

Oh, okay.

Rosia Avala Garcia.

Just member del Concilio.

Good evening, Council members.

My name is Rocío Avila Garcia.

So my name is Rosio Avila Garcia, and I just want to ask you to please support this program.

I ask you to please support.

Oh my gosh, I forgot what it was supposed to be.

Because people that really need this service or this help?

See cortan algunos programmas.

Thank you very much.

I didn't come prepared and I'm terrible at public speaking.

No, but you are excellent.

You are excellent.

Okay.

That's our last speaker.

Um, questions, comments from council members?

Yeah, um I'm curious.

Uh prices are rising, costs are rising.

Are people actually suffering because of it?

Are there people that you're not able to see in a timely manner?

Help in a timely manner.

Can you give us some examples of of the the way the programs are not operating as well as they could be operating?

So, Madam Mayor, do you want somebody from the public to come up and speak?

I mean, how do you want this question answered?

Would you like to hear from Span Den?

Yes.

So rising costs is a reality for all of us, and the further down you go in the income letter, um, it's a harsher reality for you.

Um, so some of the ways that uh that tends to affect our patients or uh participants of of these programs, um, is there is people now have to choose more carefully, right?

Can I go get my uh abscess looked at, or do I go buy groceries?

Um, and uh there is another side of this, which is the federal cuts.

Um, Medicaid, particularly for our patients.

Um we expect our per visit um revenue to drop about 10 to 15 percent.

Um that that comes from Medicaid reimbursement, which is already not nearly enough for what it costs to actually provide services.

And I'm sure that this um this type of thing is a reality for for all of your program participants as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We're in discussion mode now, or if you have questions too, but that's time to discuss, yeah.

Well, I think uh some of the opening uh remarks about the quality of the safety net that we had before the current federal administration has been drastic.

It has been drastic.

I've never seen so many cuts to Medicaid, certain cuts in Medicare, food programs for children, for seniors, the element of proof of having or having to force people to come back and reapply for benefits, you know, is um it's pretty serious.

And you know, I'm really proud of this committee.

A lot of these services, you know.

We talked about the increasing number of um seniors who have needs and the one out of four half Moon Bay residents who are seniors, seniors are the largest group of um homeless folks here and everywhere, but I think we see a lot of evidence of the impact of these programs when you look at them collectively of taking care of community members, um, from their mental health to providing food to helping people avoid or not avoid, but lessen the pressure around making decisions between putting food on the table and paying rent.

Um personally I'm a fan of good dental health, you know.

From the time I was 12 years old, my parents used to say to me, you know what, you're only as healthy as your teeth.

That's kind of an odd thing for parents to be telling a 12-year-old.

But I gotta say, I've carried that with me the rest of my life.

You know, I put saving used to put savings aside every year to make sure I could take care of um teeth that weren't looking so great.

Um so you know, I recommend that if the city can afford it rather than wait till February.

Um I think the needs are greater than we can imagine on the ground, and um I would say that we go for the 300,000 now and not uh put all these terrific groups in a situation where you know, four or eight months later they ought to think about seven or eight months later, figure out will they get the money or not.

I think that um, you know, I wish we can give more, but I think every $10 spent on uh these groups are um it's helping a lot of folks that we might not even see day to day.

Um, but it's remarkable that a town this small could provide these services, and I'm really proud of us for doing so.

Yeah, I agree with everything that council member brownstone has said um our most vulnerable are becoming more and more vulnerable, and they will continue to become more vulnerable unless something happens in our national economy locally.

If we can give three hundred thousand dollars to help out, I think it's money well spent, and I I wish we could give more.

I wish I would like us to be giving three million dollars of but we can't.

Um our city's got its own financial difficulties, and we represent a large population here, not just the most vulnerable.

Um so we have to be responsive to that, but at the same time.

Um cutting it by 30,000 and waiting another six months, it will cause real issues for all of these agencies.

Um the good work that they do, I think is something that we need to support.

I'm so proud of the fact that we started this program four or five years ago.

Uh and um I can personally attest to son resus because I'm a patient there.

Um they do a good job.

They keep my my teeth in good shape, and my sister is now going to them, and I'm trying to get more of my neighbors to go because I think that the more of the folks that can afford to pay a little bit more that support son Rhesus, uh, the better.

Um I personally have used mobility devices from senior co-siders for my sister that lived with me.

We had wheelchairs from them, we had commodes, all sorts of things that we could borrow at no cost.

Um, so it's helping me.

It's not just helping the most vulnerable and um the more support we can give them, the better.

So I'm in favor of um staying with the program um shown as uh, I'm I'm in favor of the A program myself.

Um, I would like to offer up one change, and that would be to cut back on the cohort cohort budget a bit.

Um I think that the Coastside Adult Day Health Center could benefit from a little more money.

Um, you know, a lot of the senior programs are being cut, you know, at the federal level.

Um and um I see they're they're at about 20,000.

I think they could benefit from a little extra funding.

So I'd like to recommend that we boost their funding by about five thousand dollars at least.

Um but I am in favor of the full amount and I am in favor of the full amount now, because with the organizations feeling stressed with everything that's going on, I I think that they would appreciate not having to do the extra bureaucratic administrative type of work needed to.

I know they still have to do a mid-year report, but you know, they don't have to worry about getting their money, they can plan.

It's less work for them, and right now I'm in favor of less work for them.

So that would be my recommendation.

How much did you want to cut it?

Cut it back to 25 or 20 from 30, the cohort work.

We did 20 last year, I think it was, and that was you found that effective for quarterly meetings and things like that.

So cut it to 25.

Cut it to 20 or 25.

Yeah, 25.

I'm recording 25.

You could give it a good yeah.

Just clarify 25 for the for co-side adult day health center and 25 for the cohort, 20 for the cohort.

25 and 25.

Yes.

I still believe in the cohort model, especially now, you know, having everybody coordinate together and you know, learning about best management practices and learning about opportunities for funding.

So I I think that's that was one of the best pieces that we that we did, one of the best projects.

So, mayor.

Um, that was one of my questions I actually circled.

I didn't understand that, so I appreciate it.

So it's basically just technical assistance to like education and in workshops.

Is that what that is?

It's convening, you know, people to get together, you know.

Probably in the 90s, you know, people were getting together.

There was Judy Messias, you know, was convening people and coordinating and things, and that was great, but then it sort of fell by the wayside and people moved on to different things.

Um but it was great for people to you know share stories and funding opportunities and best practices for fundraising or you know what have you.

So um I think that's been I've heard from the community.

That's a valuable resource, and yeah.

If if I may add, we try to meet quarterly, and part of the funding that is allocated for technical assistance is uh reserve in case we need to bring a consultant or an expert.

The first year we brought uh someone uh that worked with the group to develop shared messaging, and that was part of the messaging we use for the Alcove um application, and they also work with each of the organizations to develop their own identity to how to talk to funders, how to talk to volunteers.

So sometimes we do that level of expertise, other times we're bring speakers.

Um it's obviously part of the um work we do together.

The very first session of the fiscal year, we try to figure out what is the next challenge that we're gonna attack try to tackle over the next year, and then staff tries to identify who can best um help support that need, and that's what we do with the technical assistance.

And I'll just share the funding is there to provide resources.

It doesn't always get used.

So it's it's not like it's there and then it gets spent.

It just gives that flexibility for the cohort and the staff working on it to bring in resources as necessary.

Uh, you know, I'll just share something really cool that happened just last week that didn't cost us any money is um several philanthropic organizations came and spoke to the cohort about what it how do you how do you make yourself more competitive in applications for grants and um it was a really great session, very well received, and there's more opportunities to do those types of things.

Sometimes you have to spend money for that, sometimes you don't.

So this money really is there to help with that if needed, but it doesn't always get spent.

That's correct.

And could you please maybe just talk about your proposal?

So what we're talking about here is I was proposing if we cut the cohort support back 5,000, then we then split that 5,000 among the other nine uh recipients rather than necessarily favor one group or another just to keep it equitable there.

Except I thought, you know, serving seniors, one of the more vulnerable populations in town, especially this is a subset of the senior population that needs a lot more support, right?

Not possibly more people who are not ambulatory that need you know ongoing care throughout the day and monitoring and things like that.

It seemed to be 20,000 for that purpose was a little short.

You know, I think you know, we have others, you know, son resa's at 25, boys and girls club at 25.

Well, that's everyone.

So I was thinking that it made sense to me to um up that that give a little bit more consistently with the others.

What do other council members think either way on that?

I'm fine with that.

I think I think the adult health care center does a fabulous job.

And you know, so much of what they do is above and beyond uh when my sister was in need of going to the adult day health care center twice.

The nurses there came and picked her up and then dropped her off because it our schedules were not working so that I could do that.

And uh, you know, eventually they couldn't do it because it they they realized it was illegal to do that, but they did it because they're good people and they and they just give above and beyond.

Yeah.

Then I take back my idea.

I want to hear from others too, and we'll go put it in.

You could say give the cohort just $20,000, $5,000 to adult day health center, and then divide up the other five thousand for.

Yeah, we could, but I'd rather kind of keep the twenty, keep it cut it just by five for now.

Cause I think um that support does come in really handy and gets all the other groups to cooperate with each other and sometimes figure out ways they can get grants together and I think they're doing a great job.

So um that's how I feel.

I think eventually the cohort uh the model will not need the support that it has right now.

When they when they get the kind of assistance that they need, when they begin to understand shared shared responsibility and shared resources, when they begin to stop duplicating efforts.

When all of those things come to fruition, the cohort you know, role won't be as critical.

Yes, the goal is for the cohort to wither away.

Nag and gast?

You're fine.

Okay, so uh let's take a look at what the action is.

We received a committee update.

Um we've given guidance on the grants awards and amounts.

And so the next move would be to uh adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute grant agreements with the recipients of the community services financial assistance grant based on the guidance provided.

Madam Mayor, the motion should include which of the uh proposed funding is desired by the council.

It sounded like A, option A.

Yes, and then with any potential amendments to the actual funds amounts identified.

So the direction to staff was to uh implement program A with uh with one amendment, which is to reduce the cohort support to $25,000 and increase the Coast Adult Day Health Center by $5,000.

I think that was the only amendment.

Let's take a roll call, please.

Councilmember Brownstone?

Yes.

Councilmember Johnson?

Yes.

Councilmember Nagangas.

Vice Mayor Penrose?

Yes.

Mayor Reddick.

Yes.

Motion carries.

Okay.

So we're moving on to item 11D, which is development of a rental assistance program.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council members, members of the community.

Arma Acosta, City Manager's Office.

Tonight I will be presenting a proposed rental assistance program developed in response to council's direction to explore service-based tenant support strategies following the repeal of the residential rent stabilization and rent registry programs.

In evaluating potential strategies, staff focused on identifying approaches that could provide meaningful support to residents and tenants experiencing housing instability while remaining practical and sustainable for the city to implement.

The proposal before you tonight reflects discussions with Coastide Hope, review of neighboring jurisdictions, and an evaluation of current housing related needs within the community.

The program is intended to provide short-term assistance to residents experiencing temporary financial hardship while also connecting households to supportive services and resources intended to improve long-term housing stability.

So just to uh provide a little background and I'll be brief.

Um, as council may recall on April 21st, council discussed uh potential tenant support strategies uh following the repeal of the rental programs.

And during that discussion, council expressed interest in exploring alternative approaches that could continue to support tenants.

Following that direction, staff met with Coast Side Hope, that is a core service agency serving Half Moon Bay and the Coast Side to better understand the housing-related challenges uh residents are currently experiencing, existing rental assistance resources within the community, and see if there is an opportunity for partnership with the city.

Staff also reviewed existing rental assistance models implemented by neighboring jurisdictions such as the cities of San Mateo's emergency rental assistance program that is administered through Samaritan House.

And one key consideration staff evaluated was whether there was an opportunity to leverage an existing community partner with established experience infrastructure rather than creating a new city operated program.

And based on those discussions, staff identified a non-profit administered model as the most efficient and effective approach.

One of the most important things staff learned through conversations with Coast Side Hope is that housing instability is frequently driven by temporary financial hardships rather than long-term inability to maintain housing.

Examples of this can include sudden job loss, medical emergencies, unexpected household expenses, family disruptions, or other financial challenges that can quickly put households at risk for displacement.

And in many cases, households may have otherwise maintained stable housing for years, but a single unexpected event can create a financial gap that they might not be able to fully absorb.

Coast Hope emphasized that relatively even a modest amount of assistance provided at the right time can often prevent a much larger crisis from developing.

So the intent of this program is to provide that short term assistance during those periods of instability and help residents remain housed while they regain that financial footing.

And equally as important, the program, bless you, is intended to connect households with supportive services and case management resources that may help prevent future housing crises.

When developing the program structured, staff wanted to make sure assistance could be responsive to the realities that residents are facing right now.

Housing instability is not always caused by unpaid rent alone.

As you guys previously heard, there are other factors that contribute to that.

For some households, assistance with rent may be the most appropriate intervention, but for some households, a utility bill, security deposits, or another housing related expense expenses, maybe the factor placing households at risk for displacement.

So as a result of that, staff is recommending a flexible structure that allows assistance to be able to use, be able to be used for rent, utility assistance, security deposits, and other housing stabilization expenses, used expenses, and that would be approved on a case-by-case basis by Coastide Hope.

And the goal here is that by providing that flexibility, we make sure that assistance remains focus on housing stability outcomes.

So there are going to be limitations where applicants can receive up to three months of assistance per fiscal year.

Staff also spent some time evaluating how eligibility should be structured.

And before I continue, I do want to note that the program guidelines that were attached to my staff report are draft guidelines.

And staff is presenting them tonight for council to provide feedback on what those eligibility requirements should be.

And following tonight's discussion, staff will continue refining those guidelines and incorporate any feedback received from council and work with Coastide Hope as part of the agreement once we execute that.

They will have to demonstrate financial hardship or housing instability, and they will also have to participate in Coastide Hope's intake and eligibility review process.

Household income would generally be limited to households at or below 60% of area median income.

And staff selected this threshold because it prioritizes households with significant financial need while still allowing the program to serve a meaningful portion of our community.

And applicants will would also be asked to provide documentation related to income, housing status, and financial assistance as part of the review process.

And again, Co-Side Hope, the organization that we're suggesting manage the program will also require certain documents depending on the case.

A significant theme that emerged when having conversations with Co-Side Hope was the importance of balancing accountability and accessibility.

Many traditional assistance programs rely on strict eligibility requirements and documentation standards.

And while those requirements serve an important accountability function, they can also unintentionally exclude households experiencing legitimate hardship.

For example, like there's some households that might have informal housing arrangements and may not have traditional lease agreements or may encounter challenges obtaining certain documentation within that time frame that may prevent them from being eligible to receive some sort of assistance.

Coside Hope shared that they frequently encounter residents who have legitimate need but aren't able to qualify for certain funding resources because they don't necessarily fit neatly into another program's requirements.

So as a result of that, staff is recommending that the structure of this program maintains accountability, but also providing a level of flexibility up to Co-Side Hope's discretion when approving candidates and applicants.

So staff is proposing Co-Side Hope to serve as the program administrator.

One of the reasons staff is recommending this approach is because Co-Side Hope already possesses the infrastructure, the expertise and the community relationships necessary to administer a program of this nature.

Rather than building a new city operated system, the proposed structure leverages an organization that already conducts intake reviews, verifies eligibility, administers housing related programs, and provide supportive services to Coastside and Half and Bay residents.

So under the proposed agreement, Co-Side Hope would be responsible for that intake and eligibility review for documentation verification, the distribution of assistance, referral to support services, and reporting to the city.

And to maintain that level of accountability, assistance payments would be issued to landlords, property managers, managers, or utility providers, rather than directly to applicants.

Staff is proposing a budget of up to a hundred and twenty thousand dollars for fiscal year 2026-27.

Of that amount, 100,000 would be allocated for direct assistance, and up to 20,000 of that would be for program administration.

And based on Coside Hope's experience and previous pilot programs that we've had with Co-Side Hope, where we up we've allocated a similar funding amount.

They were able to serve seventy-six households in the past, but based on the rising cost of living, we anticipate now that we'll be able to serve between 50 and 76 households with this funding.

And the funding source for this program would come out of the Affordable Housing Fund.

And that is my presentation.

I'm happy to answer any questions or clarification.

Thank you for that, Irma.

Yeah.

Council member, we have any questions?

I don't uh have any speakers on uh this speaker slip.

Um do you have any there?

Okay.

All right, I'll just bring it back to council then.

I don't see any hands raised online either.

Um what say you?

Um I like what Irma wrote.

It's a very detailed, and I like the details of how you have to apply and all the things, you know, and how you wrote, you know, you're not gonna they're not gonna just cut a check to the people that own the house or the renters, they're gonna have to cut it to the um to the you know, to the landlords if you would.

To the landlords.

So the details in this report was really good, as I mentioned to you.

I think I'm in favor of it.

I like it.

Like every little every little cover, everything's covered.

That's what I'm gonna.

It's very thorough.

That's very good.

Thank you.

I'll I'll concur, I assume then because you worked with Coastide Hope.

I did because they're the ones that are gonna administer this.

Makes sense.

I know um it was referenced, uh, who's that over the hill?

Sentinel.

Sam Mateo.

But uh I like if they were able to keep it here on the coast.

Yeah.

And obviously, we'll see how it after the first year, I don't know if we get an update six months or something, or is it an annual report?

Um, I think that what we have set up right now is that it'll be an annual report.

Um, but we can work it out if you would like to see a mid-year report, we can do that as well.

Just update what's happening, you know, the number.

I mean, I don't know.

Yeah, I think in the agreement it was, I mean, referenced that we would like to see number of household serves, maybe some demographics.

Of course, we weren't sure any like personal identifiable like information.

Um, but yeah, that's part of what we want in the reporting process.

Report, sorry.

All right, thanks.

Yeah, I think as outlined, um, looks like a solid program, and it seems to have, you know, useful guardrails around it, and we have a trusted service provider who's already sort of doing that work.

So I'm on I'm in favor of the program as written up tonight.

Anyone else?

Go ahead.

No, she's not ready.

Would you like to speak?

Um, uh I'm fine with the structure of the program.

I think it's better than nothing.

I think that it seems ironic to me that we repealed a rent stabilization rental registry program that was a structural solution to landlords not simply being able to rent raise rents.

Um as much as they want.

With the only remedy being if you didn't like that, you can somehow go, you know, file a a case under a state statute that was relatively unenforceable.

So, you know, yeah, based on this amount, you might be able to give a hundred people a thousand dollars towards rent, two hundred people five hundred dollars in a year.

Um, but we were talking about some pretty high rents that can now be increased.

You know, five hundred dollars every year.

Or more, so um, so now we're willing to put a hundred twenty thousand dollars into this program for a term of one year.

So what happens after one year?

The rents aren't gonna go down.

Are we saying that we're going to commit to this every year or as a council, what are we saying?

We committed, well, some of us committed to getting rid of the rent stabilization rent registry programs, but I think it still will, and we've talked about how expenses are just going to keep going up.

I don't think rents are gonna go down, and there's really no regulating what landlords can charge now.

So, what's what's on the table tonight is a um development of a rental assistance program.

Please stick to the agenda item.

You know, one thing that's good about this program is that it achieves the goal of equity and the delivery of the service, because this service will help renters who don't live in pre-1995 housing.

It'll serve you know any renter who meets the eligibility requirements.

You don't have to live in a pre-1995 dwelling unit to benefit from, unlike the rent stabilization program, which only was directed at people who were renting from properties constructed before 1995.

So this is a in some regards a more equitable program, but that's what's on the table tonight.

Rent stabilization is not on the table.

We're just talking about development of a rental assistance program.

It is related directly to the shameful action that this council took when they got rid of rental registry and rent stabilization.

It is directly related to it.

This is a direct agenda.

It's a direct result of what happened.

You're out of order.

So what I'm hearing is a deliberation on the item that's before us, which is adopt a resolution establishing a rental assistance program and authorizing the city manager to execute the agreement with Coesite Hope.

Council members during deliberation can explain why they support this item, and maybe that they don't believe it is a replacement replacement for the rent stabilization or doesn't address the rent stabilization uh repeal.

But what I think the mayor is saying is that the item is really whether we want to proceed with this program or not.

But the discussion can include.

Well, council members during deliberation can certainly identify the reasons why they support it or don't support it.

Thank you.

Could we let council member Brownstone please continue and not be interrupted?

I would recommend by the mayority.

I would recommend civility in your remarks and don't use this as a place to grandstand for your own ideologies and personal agenda.

Oh my.

But I still have the right to say, yeah, this is a substitution for what I felt was a really good program, and that we wouldn't have had to be spending 120,000 a year if we had um kept rent stabilization and rental registry programs intact.

So um, yeah, and I feel like making that public statement.

I don't feel like we can just make those decisions that we made in the past and not connect them.

So yeah, I feel it's a necessity to do this program to make up for um what we didn't put in as a structural program.

So um that's right, Stan.

And I would agree with Councilmember Brownstone.

I think it's a very bad replacement.

I will vote for it because it's the only thing we've got.

It's the only thing this council's been able to come up with.

It is, however, gonna cost us an additional a hundred thousand dollars that we didn't have to spend had we kept rental registration and rental stabilization in place, so with a city that is undergoing a budget deficit, it's another hunk of money that this council has decided they want to spend.

And for the record, I did not vote no on rent stabilization because of the cost to the city.

I had many other reasons for for not wanting, you know, that program, but it wasn't the cost.

I do believe that with the tenant protection ordinance that we have, so we do have a tenant protection ordinance, by the way, a very rigorous one that's more rigorous than the state's tenant protection ordinance.

We have not eliminated that program.

So we have the tenant protection ordinance.

If we vote on this tonight, we will also have a rental assistance program, which is rather robust support for a community of 11,000 people, as far as I'm concerned.

So I would entertain a motion because we have one more item on the agenda this evening.

I'll make a motion to adopt a resolution establishing a rental assistance program and authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement with Coastide Hope for program administration services at a cost not to exceed $120,000 for a term of one year.

Second.

Could I have a roll call, please?

Councilmember Brownstone.

Yes.

Councilmember Johnson.

Yes.

Councilmember Nagangas.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Penrose.

Yes.

Mayor Radick.

Yes.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

We're moving on to item 11e, tenant legal services agreement with community legal services in East Palo Alto, also known as CLESPA.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council members, members of the community, or Marcosta City Manager's Office again.

Um tonight I will be presenting a proposed agreement with community legal services in East Palo Alto or CLESPA for the provision of tenant legal services, tenant rights education, and housing-related legal support services to Half Mumbai residents.

As council might recall, and as I mentioned in my previous presentation, earlier this year, council directed staff to explore service-based approaches to support tenants experiencing housing instability following the appeal of the rental programs.

And while housing stability discussion often focus on financial assistance, staff also identified legal access, legal education, and tenant education workshops as an important component of housing stability.

So the proposal before you tonight is intended to address some of those needs through a partnership with CLESPA, which is an organization that is already providing legal services within the community, and has demonstrated both the demand and effectiveness of those services.

Staff met with CLESPA and Coastide Hope to better understand the housing related challenges that residents are currently facing, and to again evaluate what a partnership could look like.

Earlier this year, CLESPA established a consistent presence on the coast through a partnership with Coast Side Hope.

Through that partnership, Coast Side Hope assists with outreach, interpretation and translation services, referrals, and case coordination.

While CLESPA provides legal consultations, legal advocacy, and tenant education services.

These services were initially supported through grant funding.

However, those grant funds have since been exhausted.

And while CLESPA has continued to provide these services through a different funding source, maintaining that same level of services long term may not have been not be sustainable without additional support.

So as a result, staff began evaluating whether a formal partnership with CLESPA would provide an opportunity to sustain and expand on the services that residents are already utilizing.

One of the most important things staff learned through conversations with CLESPA is that many residents seeking assistance are not necessarily looking for legal litigation or formal legal representation.

In many cases, they are simply trying to understand whether a notice is a notice they received is lawful, whether a rent increase is permissible, what rights they might have under state or local law, or what options are available to them when they receive notices.

Many tenants don't know whether an action taken by a landlord is legally enforceable, and many lack access to reliable legal information or guidance.

And what we heard consistently from CLESPA is that even relatively small interventions early on in the process can often prevent situations from escalating into formal eviction proceedings, displacement, or even homelessness.

So from a policy perspective, staff use legal access and education as a preventative tool, rather than simply legal services.

One of the reasons staff is recommending this partnership is because the service is already being utilized by residents.

CLESPA currently operates in a monthly clinic that at Coastide Hope on the third Wednesday of each month.

The clinic provides confidential legal consultations for residents experiencing housing-related legal issues.

And according to CLESPA, every appointment slot since this partnership started has been filled.

And in addition to that, COSIDE HOPE has referred approximately 18 separate households to CLESPA since February, related to housing related issues.

And some of those issues have included unlawful rent increases, habitability concerns, eviction related matters, retaliation claims, um, fee utility fee disputes and other housing-related legal issues.

So from a staff point, these numbers really demonstrate that there's already demand for these services within the community, and that residents are actively seeking this kind of assistance.

CLESPA provided several examples that can also be that was also part of an attachment to my staff report, illustrating some of the type of cases that are currently affecting Hafoombe residents and the role that legal assistance has played in resolving some of those situations.

CLESPA has already also reported helping several families facing eviction proceedings and successfully has negotiated settlements that allowed those families to remain housed and avoid displacement.

In addition to legal services, staff believes education is a critical component in this proposal.

One of the reoccurring themes identified by CLESPA is that many residents simply don't understand what rights and responsibilities exist under local and state law.

And as a result, residents may comply with unlawful requests, fail to exercise available protections, or delay seeking assistance until a situation has significantly escalated.

So educational workshops, legal clinics, and outreach efforts are intended to address some of those challenges before they become crisis.

Earlier this year, CLESPA in partnership with Coastide Hope conducted a tenant education workshop titled Understanding Your Lease in Eviction 101, where approximately 40 persistent 40 participants attended, and they are continue to plan additional workshops, one for later this month actually.

So that is also an important component of this partnership.

So under this agreement, CLESPA would continue providing the monthly clinics, legal consultations, that legal advocacy, tenant education workshops, and outreach activities.

During these discussions with CLESPA and Coastide Hope, we wondered if the services could be incorporated into the broader agreement with Coastide Hope, but ultimately we kind of agreed to have separate agreements with both organizations.

And the reason for that was to create greater clarity regarding the scope of work, the funding allocation, reporting requirements, and the overall accountability for both programs.

And although the organizations will continue to work collaboratively, maintaining separate programs allows the city to more clearly evaluate the outcomes of each program.

The proposed agreement would provide a funding in an amount not to exceed 40,000 annually.

Those funds would again support the services that I mentioned earlier in terms of legal consultations, the monthly clinics, tenant education, community outreach, and the program administration.

And the proposed funding source for this program would also be the Affordable Housing Fund.

Quick question.

So is this $40,000 agreement just for this coming fiscal year?

Yes.

Just a single year.

Just for a single year.

Okay.

Thank you.

And that is my presentation.

Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for the context and the thorough analysis of the programs.

Really appreciate that, Irma.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Questions for staff?

I will say this.

I like the approach.

I like that the dual approach of CLESPA and Coast Side Hope.

I think it's really important that we empower renters because we're moving toward a renter society.

Fewer and fewer people can buy a single family home and you know join the American dream.

And nowadays, people, you know, developers building new subdivisions and projects are doing what they call build to rent projects.

So there won't be ownership opportunities.

It'll be solely, you know, apartments, condos, and homes to rent.

So it's really important that our rental community learn to empower themselves.

These they enter into a contract.

A contract has two sides.

They're one side, the landlords, the other side.

They need to be able to activate their power on their side of the contract.

That takes education and knowledge.

And if we can give that to our renter community, that is great news.

So empowerment of renters is a really good goal as far as I'm concerned.

And we have two great experienced service providers.

So I'm personally in favor of this program.

Very detailed again.

And uh I was looking at the receipts, like they were talking about having the receipts in those workshops to make sure that the you know the landlords are providing the receipts and stuff like that because that's the stuff that you need to track.

Um, you know, are you have you paid and not paid or whatever?

And that keeps coming back and forth, and I like how the how there's case studies of like okay, there's three landlords that did this and tried to do this, and then there's the outcome here on the side.

I like that if we can continue on that, that'd be great.

Yeah.

And then the other one would be like I'd like to attend one of those workshops too, just to see and learn also.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Madam Mayor, I'll just also point out we didn't take public comment yet.

No.

I was just wondering if anybody else wanted to comment.

But I'm not seeing anything.

So uh anybody in the audience like to comment.

I see that uh someone from CLESPA is online.

Perhaps they would like to uh address the council on this item.

You and me, Kim.

Good evening, uh, council members.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to uh speak to you this evening.

Uh I will keep my remark very short.

I'm just really appreciative of the city of uh Hef M Bay uh entire staff leadership and the council's leadership on providing us and considering these proposals to uh support the class work.

Um at the end of the day, this is really to uh provide um much needed assistance, legal services to vulnerable tenants of Half Wim Bay community and beyond.

And uh as um Arma just very eloquently uh articulated uh we have been seeing a surge uh in demand for classified legal services of um so far.

I am pretty much the one person team uh in uh of course in partnership with uh Judiths from Coast Side Hope.

But with this funding, we're hoping that you know more of my colleagues, other attorneys in our office as well, will be able to join in these efforts to not only educate tenants about their uh rights but their responsibilities and making sure that you know when there are uh unlawful uh acts that are being um perpetrated against uh uh tenants by landlords that we are we want to make sure the tenants' rights are protected, that they know that they're rights, and if they choose to do so, they are able to exercise their legal rights under the state of California law and any applicable federal law.

And uh it's very encouraging that uh it's very encouraging when we see positive outcomes.

Uh for example, uh, we were able to successfully prevent um uh two households from being evicted in Halfland Bay, and uh um as again the Arma shared with you, we were successfully uh able to pressure the landlord uh to withdraw unlawful invalid rent increase notice.

And uh when tenants call our office and really think they really thank us, and some of them in tears, and just letting me know that you cannot imagine what a huge difference you made in my life that I can sleep better at night or I was able to spend a weekend without having to worry about where I might have to go uh with my kids.

So these clients' real life stories, uh, their struggles and their um just it's it's really incredible to see when my clients try so hard, when they try so hard to make it work, not for themselves but for their families, especially for their elderly parents and for the children.

So I promise you that this funding, if you uh generously provide it to us, it will be used.

Every cent of the funding will be used to protect the tenants and for the greater Hafan Bay community.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Is there anyone else online who would like to comment on this item?

Seeing none, I will bring it back to the council.

I'll make a motion.

Uh I uh recomm I um recommend we adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement with community legal services in East Palo Alto for the provision of tenant legal services, tenant rights education, and housing related legal support services for half moon bay residents in an amount not to exceed 40,000 for a term of one year.

I'll second that motion.

Could I have a roll call, please?

Councilmember Brownstone?

Yes.

Councilmember Johnson.

Yes.

Councilmember Nagangas?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Penrose.

Yes.

Mayor Radick.

Yes.

Motion carries.

Okay, item uh 22 for future discussion, possible agenda items.

I'd like to bring up uh if we can talk about way of speed bumps and traffic controlling and all that stuff that uh Tom Roman and uh Kramer, Lisa Kramer brought up today because I've seen a big difference between our street with the new generation, there's kids playing on our street now.

They don't have that luxury, we have the bumps, they don't have the bumps.

So I'd like to bring that up for at least a discussion about safety.

Yes, you will want to I'll second that, but you'll want to discuss with the city attorney a potential financial conflict of interest that may come up, not necessarily in discussion, but discussion may lead to action, so you need to be fully informed.

I I'd like to add to the two other streets to the same type of thing, because Kelly Avenue between Highway One and St.

Francis Beach and Mermonies Point Road between uh Highway One and the Ritz.

We have similar concerns that I get about speeding and uh running the stop signs and safety concerns.

So I think similar things happening there.

I'm not saying the same improvements be done, but if we're gonna do a safety analysis of that road, I would request with a discussion, yeah.

So that would be all those streets, three streets at a future meeting.

Anybody else with potential agenda items?

Yeah, I just wanted to follow up.

Ohio.

I think we had already talked about an agenda item around getting that pathfinding kiosk at MacDutra Park, right?

But um, but I wasn't sure but I know there's a lot of other things going on.

I was just trying to get a sense when we might be able to um staff might be ready.

I know there's a lot of things going on in the next few months.

At our next meeting, we'll be having a discussion about council priorities, and that's part of that discussion initially, and then we would figure out from there where to go.

Okay, it's moving on to item 23 city council reports.

Any none?

Okay, this meeting's adjourned.

Thank you.

No, no, considering the agenda.