Start the meeting on time, but here we are.

All right, it's 6.30, so I'd like to call the meeting to order.

Good evening, everyone.

Welcome to the special meeting of the Mountain View City Council of December 16, 2025.

Please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

All right, great.

We'll move on to roll call.

The City Clerk will take attendance by roll call.

Council Member Clark.

Here.

Council Member Hicks.

Here.

Council Member McAllister.

Ho, ho, ho.

Council Member Ramirez.

Here.

Council Member Showalter.

Here.

Vice Mayor Ramos.

Here.

Mayor Kamei.

Here.

Mayor McCormick.

Great, thank you.

So tonight we get to begin with a festive occasion.

We have our presentations.

Please note that the areas are presentations only.

The City Council will not take any action.

Public comment will occur after the presentation items.

If you'd like to speak on these items in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk now.

And we will begin this evening with our proclamation in recognition of Fire Chief Juan Diaz on his retirement.

So I will come down to the podium and ask the chief to join me.

I see a lot of people for you, so I want you to stand here so everyone can see you.

So before we start tonight, I just want to say it's an honor and pleasure to recognize our outgoing

Fire Chief Juan Diaz tonight. Chief Diaz has served our city for nearly 12 years. During that time,

he has provided our community with steadfast and innovative leadership of our top-notch fire

department. I'm going to read Chief Diaz's accomplishments shortly, which will be in his

proclamation, but before I do so, I just wanted to add my own personal thanks to Chief Diaz.

Chief Diaz is a proud immigrant and has shared his story as a refugee to the United States openly.

And I think this really ties into our Mountain View culture of being a community for all.

And I will say this has been his superpower.

Over the last four decades, through resilience, perseverance, and a deep commitment to service,

Chief Diaz has built a distinguished career, centering all of that on his lived experiences.

And yo quiero decir algo sobre el jefe, right?

Que fue una inspiración para mí y yo sé para la comunidad aquí en Mountain View.

Que cuando tiene un deseo, tú puedes hacerlo.

So, this isn't goodbye.

This is We Will See You Around.

And being that Cuba and Puerto Rico, we are cousins, right?

We're in the Caribbean Sea together.

We say, pa'lante, ever forward.

So I just want to say all that.

And now I will read the proclamation.

Whereas Chief Juan Diaz will retire on December 30, 2025,

concluding a distinguished 40-year fire service career,

including five years as a reserve firefighter in Santa Clara, 25 years with the San Jose Fire

Department rising to deputy chief, and nearly 12 years with the Mountain View Fire Department,

and the last 10 and a half years as fire chief. And whereas under his leadership,

Mountain View Fire earned three consecutive insurance services office class one ratings,

the only such distinction in Santa Clara County. Implemented full advanced life support services,

across all fire companies, built a type one urban search and rescue team, enhance the hazardous

materials emergency response team to type two certification under the California Office of

Emergency Services, and significantly expanded public education programs. And whereas Fire

Chief Diaz championed diversity, equity, and inclusion, advancing pathways for underrepresented

groups and promoting MVFD's first female battalion chief, first female fire marshal,

and first Chinese American battalion chief. A 2020 Santa Clara County grand jury report

recognized MVFD's notable progress in gender diversity. And whereas he established the MVFD

California Joint Apprenticeship Program and the department's first fully funded annual

Recruitment Committee, helping MVFD achieve the highest per capita number of women firefighters

in the county, as noted by the 2024-2025 Civil Grand Jury. And whereas Fire Chief Diaz strengthened

the department's culture by introducing the Mountain View Way, creating a formal career

development plan, launching annual awards and recognition programs, and expanding peer support

and cancer screening initiatives.

And whereas he built a robust community emergency response team,

also known as CERT, program,

expanded training to more than 1,000 residents,

enhanced neighborhood preparedness,

and established seven portable emergency operations center buildings

throughout Mountain View.

And whereas he advanced innovation by securing modern fire apparatus

and specialized equipment,

including an electric vehicle battery extinguishing team,

a Type 6 wildland engine, and MVFD's first advanced life support transit ambulance.

And whereas he founded MVFD's first honor guard, created the county's first tactical paramedic

program embedded with Mountain View Police Department SWAT, and developed the department's

swift water rescue capability. And whereas Fire Chief Diaz strengthened regional cooperation

through mutual aid and support of the Santa Clara County Type 3 incident management team.

And whereas during the COVID-19 pandemic, he partnered with Santa Clara County health officials to provide free testing and vaccination services for first responders, teachers, vulnerable residents, and communities in both Mountain View and Santa Jose.

And whereas in 2024, he led the MVFD's 150th annual celebration, drawing more than 10,000

attendees.

And whereas Fire Chief Diaz holds an associate and bachelor's degree in fire science, a master's

degree in leadership with an emphasis in homeland security and emergency management, and numerous

chief officer and specialty certifications.

And whereas he served as the president of the Santa Clara County Fire Chiefs Association,

liaison to the Santa Clara County Operations section,

representative to the state Homeland Security Program,

and contributor to regional radio interoperability and mutual aid planning.

And where as an avid collector and restorer of unique fire apparatus,

Fire Chief Diaz led the full restoration of MVFD's 1925 American La France engine,

returning it to serviceful display after more than 50 years of deterioration.

And whereas Fire Chief Diaz leaves a lasting impact on the Mountain View Fire Department

and will always be appreciated and missed by the membership, his executive team colleagues, and fire service.

Now, therefore, I, Ellen Kameh, Mayor of the City of Mountain View,

along with my colleagues on the City Council, do hereby express gratitude and appreciation to Juan Diaz

for his leadership, service, and dedication

to the residents of Mountain View.

Can I invite you to stand and give Chief Diaz

a round of applause.

Yes, the mic is yours or I can continue on

with more presentations for you? Okay, we'll continue with the presentations. All right.

Make it short. Okay. All right. Well, we have members of our distinguished California

legislative delegation here. So we'll now hear from Isabel Augustine on behalf of Senator Josh

Becker's office and Kevin Fong on behalf of Assemblymember Mark Berman's office.

I'll invite them up to the podium to present.

Hi, we just wanted to on behalf of the California State Legislature and Assemblymember Mark

Berman and Senator Josh Becker thank you for your dedication and your decades of commitment

to the people of Mountain View and the health and safety of our community.

We want to extend our appreciation for the many accomplishments listed by Mayor Comey.

And we wanted to wish you the very best on the next chapter,

and we hope we'll still see you around in Mountain View.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

You can get in the center.

Yeah, you're the star of the show.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much.

We will now hear from Nicholas Hargis on behalf of Congressman Sam Liccardo's office.

On behalf of Congressman Sam Liccardo and his entire office, it's my honor to present

this Congressional Resolution to Chief Juan Diaz.

And thank you Mayor Kameh for that beautiful proclamation

stating his accomplishments.

I will just read the final sentence from this resolution.

I am proud and honored to celebrate Chief Juan F. Diaz

for his extraordinary career

with the Mountain View Fire Department

and express deep gratitude for his many contributions

to the well-being, health, and safety of our community.

We'll now hear from Supervisor Margaret Abecocca

on behalf of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors.

And I believe last week you were honored at the County Board.

Thank you, Mayor.

Well, good evening, everyone.

It's really wonderful to be back.

I get nostalgic thinking a year ago I was sitting there in my last City Council meeting

and it's always wonderful to be home.

But it's really an honor today to be able to be here to honor a dear friend of mine,

Chief Juan.

And yes, we did do this presentation at the county last week, but it was a day that Chief

had to escort Santa to the tree lighting, and we had a big, long meeting, and so it was cut a bit

short. So I'm glad to be able to have a second opportunity to do this honor. But as the mayor

read in the proclamation, I won't go over all the amazing accomplishments and accolades that the

chief has accomplished in his 11 years here in Mountain View, almost 12, and his over 40 years

of service to our community in the fire industry.

But I guess I wanted to just share maybe a little bit more personal comments and insights.

When I was coming off my second term on the council when we brought our chief into our

organization here, and to be frank, our fire department over the years, my two terms, had

some tumultuous times, and we were really in need of steady leadership. And the chief, with,

you know, his 40 years of service, he lives and breathes the fire service. And I think it might

be attributed to his, you know, being an immigrant, fleeing his home country to come here, but he

exudes patriotism, his true and genuine love for the community. He cares about everyone.

And, you know, I have the deepest respect for all of our firefighters.

They put their lives on the line to protect us and to, you know, to protect our community.

And the chief really exemplifies that to his core.

I love it.

If you follow him on Facebook, you know, he's always posting about him going to calls, which most chiefs don't really do.

but it really comes from his love of the service.

And I'm just so grateful that we have had such an incredible leader for our fire department.

You know, he has helped to diversify the organization to better reflect our community.

He's led and really nurtured our firefighters.

I love seeing how they've promoted over the years, really due to his encouragement, his mentorship.

and he's really treated the department as a family.

We've had some tragic losses over the last two years,

and it's really deeply affected all of us,

and he's really helped to help us come out and heal from all of that.

But it's really because of his heart.

It's just bittersweet.

I'm grateful and congratulate you, Chief, for your retirement,

but we will certainly miss you here. I have the fortune, I've had the chance to work with him at

the county last year because we do EMS, emergency medical service response. I know that even though

he's retiring, he's going to be around and directing all of us from the background and

maybe we'll see him pop up in the forefront again too, but just personally, he's been like a big

brother to me, watching over me, showing me what the fire service is about, what public service,

what public service really means. And I'm just deeply grateful. So thank you so much for everything

you've done. And congratulations on your retirement. And on behalf of the County Board

of Supervisors for the second time, and I'm going to do this again on Thursday, but we present to

you a commendation. Thank you.

I think before Chief you leave, would you like to say a few words?

I'll be very brief.

Thank you, Honorable Mayor Kamei and distinguished members of the City Council and our City Manager, Kimber McCarthy.

The proudest day of my career was becoming a fire chief and serving this community.

I am immensely proud of the men and women of the Mountain View Fire Department.

Day in and day out, the Mountain View firefighters make sacrifices to protect our community.

I'm extremely thankful to our city council and to our city manager that during the past and current city council,

who have supported our firefighters so that we can have the tools and equipment to serve our residents.

It's been truly an honor and a privilege to serve each and every one of you through our firefighters.

Thank you very much.

So, I think since we have so many from our fire department, and I know your family traveled very far to come and be with us,

So we'll ask our council to stand.

Maybe if fire doesn't mind coming here and your family and all those who presented proclamations to chief,

we could take one large picture before we go on.

I think it's, it would be great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, and we have another presentation, item 3.2, is Mountain View plans for Super Bowl and

World Cup activation. So I'm going to go back to my seat, but we're happy to be joined this evening

by Ruth Shikata, Vice President of Government and External Affairs for the Bay Area Host Committee,

and Amanda Rotella, the city's Economic Vitality Manager, to share about local plans.

So I'll let them come up here.

Great. Thank you, Mayor.

We've got Ruth joining us over Zoom, and she will be presenting the first half of our presentation.

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

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Okay, very good.

So I have a very, very short presentation because I know you've got a full agenda tonight.

And so I just wanted to provide just some brief comments about the VAERS host committee

and the events that are coming to our region in 2026 to lay the foundation for the item that's coming forward to you tonight.

So next slide, please.

The Bay Area Host Committee is a...

Okay, Ruth, I'm so sorry.

It's okay.

I'm going to need to interrupt you.

Usually we take public comment after all the presentation items, but I believe we have our chief and his family.

We're going to give them the opportunity for Council and staff to be able to do their public comment now.

We're changing it up.

Great.

Thank you.

I apologize.

No problem.

Okay, great.

So why don't we ask, do members of the Council have comments on Item 3.1?

Council Member Hicks.

So I'll keep it brief because we do have a packed agenda tonight.

But I have to say I've long been impressed with Chief Diaz's work, but perhaps I was most impressed in addition to all the fancy things that the mayor said you did.

I was reminded in detail of the kind of the basic work that you do during the huge Palisade fires earlier this year in L.A. where my son was living.

And we were talking about it all the time.

But in addition, my neighbors would come up to me frequently during that period and ask, is Mountain View in the same kind of danger?

And so I asked the city manager, and she said to talk to you.

And you gave me a good probably 45 minutes of information on why we're not in as much danger, the tools we have here, and the work you've been doing, which I'll now recount.

No, I'll spare people that, but it was truly educational, and it was impressive enough that I asked that it be printed in summary in our city paper, The View.

Much, I have to say, to the relief of a lot of residents, I would refer residents to that information.

And it again reassured me that you and the fire department were doing a great job.

So thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

Council Member McAllister.

Chief, 11 years ago, I was mayor, and I had the privilege of swearing you in.

I didn't expect to come back and see you go.

So I wish we could continue this saga for a few more years, but it was a great honor

then to have met you, worked with you, get you sworn in, get you settled, and serve alongside

you for eight years, and now for a few more. Everything that everybody said was true. You're

a man of great character, and that's something that no one could ever take away from you.

So I am honored that one of my great events as mayor was to swear you in and bring you on board.

So my congratulations to your retirement.

And as Supervisor Margaret Abacoke said, you'll be around.

We'll need you to tweak a few things.

You still owe me a ride before time departs.

So congratulations on your retirement.

You well earned it.

Council Member Showalter.

I just wanted to kind of echo what everybody has said and a big thank you.

And also to mention just the incredible leadership during the COVID pandemic.

I mean, that was just a once-in-a-century event for all of us.

And the fire department, with you in leadership, stepped up to provide emergency medicine in a way that was just thoughtful and effective.

I mean, you went to people's houses when they needed you to bring a vaccine, and you helped set up vaccinations.

And I mean, that was just an incredible response.

So thank you so much.

Great.

City Manager McCarthy.

Thank you, Mayor.

So I just want to publicly give my sincere appreciation and thanks to Chief Diaz for his amazing years of leadership and service to our city and to our organization.

I've had the pleasure of working alongside Juan for the last six years.

It feels a lot longer than that going through the pandemic.

And I'll just recount a story of one of the first things that Juan and I had to do together as a team, being a new city manager and having Juan as the fire chief.

So I started in March of 2020.

So you can do the math there.

And in my second week on the job, we declared a state of emergency.

and at that time we didn't know what was going on really and we had been hearing reports that

there was going to be a run on the gas stations that there would not be any gas at all so I

remember calling you very very late at night maybe it was around 11 at night and he and I talking

about making sure that the fire engines and every single vehicle was fully filled up with with

gasoline at that point. We did not have, we do not have electric engines at this point.

And also with, with our then police chief at the time, and you and I just talking about what this

means, you know, for the community and how we were going to serve the community and be there and make

sure that we could. So that was really my first start with this partnership with Chief Diaz. And

since then, I've really appreciated his ability to collaborate with his peers and his other

executive team members to give me great counsel and great advice when I needed it, when I asked

for it, sometimes when I didn't ask for it, which is a very good thing. And as you all heard,

Chief Diaz has many firsts. He has created many firsts as fire chief, which is something to be

very proud of. First ambulance, honor guard, so on and so on, water rescue, so, so many. So I just

want to thank you on behalf of the organization for your tremendous efforts and leadership over

the past 12 years and just wish you such wellness and success in your next chapter and also to say

that his wife Leah is here and sister who flew from Honduras to be here and so just you're

surrounded by people that love and care about you and wish you the best in your next chapter.

Thank you for everything.

City Attorney Logue. Thank you I'll keep it quick I just wanted to wish you all

the best and I wanted to thank you for being one of the people that I remember

as one of my first friends here in the city of Mountain View when I started I

appreciate the lunches and making me feel like I can handle a job that felt

very big when I started and always reassuring me that I could handle it so

I just wanted to wish you all the best and say thank you. Thank you, thank you

Thank you, Chief.

And thank you to the public and to Ruth for letting us pivot to do our comments now.

We'll thank our special guests for joining us.

And we'll move back to item 3.2, the Mountain View plans for Super Bowl and world activation.

And so we'll go back to you, Ruth and Amanda.

Thank you, Mayor Kameh and the City Council.

Of course, that was much more important than my little presentation here tonight.

And I'm so glad that Chief Diaz is retiring and off to a new chapter.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that off this side that we are a 501c6 nonprofit organization.

We reestablished ourselves in 2022.

Some of you might have known our previous iteration for Super Bowl 50 and then for the college football playoff national championship game in 2019.

but in 2022, our board of directors, which is made up primarily of the presidents of the professional sports teams here in the Bay Area,

decided that a sports commission was needed on an ongoing basis to serve regional needs and to bring mega sporting events into the area.

Our mission is really to drive, to bring mega sporting events into the area and drive lasting economic, cultural, and social impact for the Bay Area.

Next slide, please.

And so how we do that is that we respond to the needs of event owners or governing bodies of these mega-sporting events, whether it be FIFA, the NFL, NBA.

And so if we take the NFL, for example, Super Bowl is their marquee event, their 10-pole event.

They put out requirements of what a community needs to do in order to host a Super Bowl.

and local organizing committees like the Bay Area Host Committee then looks at those requirements,

responds to those requirements, and hopes that the NFL might select our community as the place to host Super Bowl.

When that selection is made, then we are able to use some of the intellectual property associated with the Super Bowl

and sell some sponsorships in order to gain revenue to enable the hosting of the event.

In general, all the tickets and all the broadcast revenues still belong to the NFL.

All the rights associated with their intellectual properties belong to the NFL,

and that we do what we can to bring in local sponsorships,

to bring in the flavor of the San Francisco Bay Area into the Super Bowl,

and to promote our region.

So next slide, please.

So for the Super Bowl, these are the major events.

We, the NFL, announced these events within the last couple weeks.

But just for tonight's purposes, the team arrivals will take place on Sunday, February 1st.

They'll fly into San Jose at SJC.

The Media Center, which runs 24-7 for the duration of Super Bowl week from Sunday the 1st through Monday the 9th, will be at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Opening night will be Monday, February 2nd.

That will be at the San Jose Convention Center.

That one will have some limited general admission tickets there.

It's an opportunity for the community to be introduced to the two teams, the community and the media.

Super Bowl Experience is the NFL's Fan Fest.

It'll be held at the Moscone Center from Tuesday, February 3rd to Saturday, February 7th.

At the end of the presentation, I do have a discount code.

So for anyone that's interested in going to the Fan Fest, you can use the discount code at any time.

There's no limitation on that.

And we encourage our local Bay Area residents to go in the earlier part of the week when it's less expensive, less crowded.

I know I went online a couple days ago, Ticketmaster, and then was able to get a Super Bowl experience ticket for like $20 a piece.

With paid admission, then kids under 12 are free.

And so it's a great way to celebrate football if you're interested in football and interested in Super Bowl.

The Pro Bowl will be held in flag football this year.

It'll be at the Moscone Center as well on Tuesday the 3rd.

And, of course, Super Bowl Sunday is on February 8th.

So next slide, please.

As far as the planning coordination is concerned on a regional basis, we've been planning with public safety.

It is a CR1 event.

That means it's the highest security level that there is for events in the United States.

There's been a lot of coordination between federal, state, and county partners.

There's been regular meetings and coordination on the transit and transportation side.

side. I've been talking regularly with VTA, Muni, Caltrain, BART, Ace Capital Corridor,

and Samtrends. And VTA has been pursuing partnerships for fair coordination with

Caltrain. They did that to Super Bowl 50, and we expect that they're doing that

again for Super Bowl 60. And then we're looking at what are the planning and transportation

management needs in the region. Of course, we talked a little bit earlier tonight about emergency

management, and emergency management is also a key part of the planning coordination that is

looking at it from a regional, in other words, Bay Area-wide basis. Next slide, please. So the

other sporting event that's going to happen in 2026 is the World Cup. On December 5th, our draw

was announced. These are the five group games that are happening, five matches that are happening at

the group stage. You'll notice that a lot of our times are later in the evening and that they're on,

a lot of them are weekdays. We do have one knockout round match which will be on July 1st.

Next slide please. So one of the things that we've done is to try and create

some engagement on a local basis to allow fans to interact with these major sporting events,

especially more so on the FIFA World Cup basis, is to publish this public screening playbook,

which helps local communities understand what the do's and don'ts are with regard to viewing

these matches, these games in public.

This playbook is really meant for as a guide.

And so on the next slide, please.

So we try to provide some helpful hints

on what you can do, trying, in other words,

avoiding the intellectual property.

So the use of the word Super Bowl

or the use of the logos, like this one's on the right

with Kansas City and the Eagles.

And then instead, what the NFL allows for is the use of the words like big game.

But there are ways to advertise and to bring people together in what we would call a more authentic manner.

So we are encouraging communities such as Mountain View to come together and to bring people into places where they already celebrate.

So in downtown Mountain View, people come to celebrate.

You have your art and wine festival.

You have your bars and restaurants.

people come out regularly and create those moments again for Super Bowl and for FIFA World Cup.

The Bay Area Host Committee wants to encourage that and figure out ways how we can support those efforts,

whether it be bringing some kind of element in on World Cup bases that would kind of add that extra fun

and bring it more celebratory.

So we really, really appreciate Mountain View

leaning forward on these events

and including your community

and engaging your community.

And that's what these things are all about.

And we wanna support that.

So next, last slide, please.

So as I mentioned to you

that there are discounts available

for a Super Bowl experience.

And this is the code here, so partner 15.

Like I said, it's not limited.

It's usable at any time.

We really want to encourage as many of the people in the Bay Area who are interested in football

and want to participate in the fan experience to get out there,

and we want to encourage that with this discount code.

So that's all.

That's it for my presentation.

And Amanda, did you have something?

I'm sure you had something more to say.

But I wanted to thank you for your time.

Thank you for your collaboration, cooperation, and partnership.

Thank you, Ruth.

And yes, I just have three super quick slides just talking about what we're going to be doing here in Mountain View and our plans.

We're obviously collaborating very closely with the Bay Area Host Committee.

They've been an amazing resource.

And we're working closely with the Mountain View Chamber, collaborating with them as well.

So really our goals is we're thinking about what we're hoping to achieve with these events coming to Mountain View.

We really want to boost the local economic activity, so really driving foot traffic, bringing people into Mountain View businesses to generate sales tax revenue, TOT, bring resources both to the city and to businesses so that we can benefit from the opportunity.

We want to provide opportunities for community engagement, so really bringing people together around sport.

And then lastly, to really elevate the city's visibility.

We see this as an opportunity to really market Mountain View, market our downtown, market our businesses, and really establish ourselves as a key destination for visitors and sport fans.

And so we're taking a three-pronged approach with our activation.

The first is around branding and placemaking, so bringing elements into the downtown and throughout the city, like sidewalk decals, banners, other fun elements, just creating a festive environment.

The next would be activation.

So the city-led opportunities to generate fun and encourage people to come to Mountain View, looking at events for that.

And then lastly, the third approach is really around business promotion.

So we're going to be working closely with the Mountain View Chamber, and I see Peter Katz is here, to really help businesses take advantage of the opportunity.

And as Ruth said, there's rules around you can't say Super Bowl, but you can say big game.

So we want to be that resource to help businesses understand what they can and can't do and to really help them think creatively about what might draw people into their businesses.

And then we, the City of Mountain View, are going to use our marketing experience and power to promote what businesses are doing.

And just as a little bit of a business engagement piece, we've already started reaching out to businesses.

We have a survey up where we're encouraging any business that wants to do some activations around Super Bowl to fill out our little survey that we have up on the economic development website.

And we'll be adding them to our FanFest map, which we'll be promoting out to the community.

And that's all.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Do any members of council have any questions on this presentation item?

All right.

Not seeing any.

Oh, sorry.

Council Member Callister.

Being a small businessman, this website of yours, other than someone looking for it,

well, how will it be broadcast so that I hadn't heard about it?

So how are other businesses going to hear it?

Yeah, it's a great question.

So we started off initially.

We put it into our newsletter.

The Chamber is putting it out through their newsletter.

And then we're going to start doing door-to-door engagement to the best of our capacity.

I started walking the downtown and had a conversation with a business owner who similarly

wasn't aware that there was an opportunity and had a conversation with him about how he might

be able to lean in and participate. Will you be reaching out to businesses outside of the downtown

to just collaborate? Absolutely. Yeah, the downtown is an easy place to start because

our offices are here, but we're hoping to really collaborate with the chamber to broaden our

capacity and ability to reach as many businesses as possible. Okay, thank you. Great, thank you.

We will now take public comment on the two presentation items.

Would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide comment on the presentation items listed on the agenda?

If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk.

I am not seeing any, so we'll close public comment on presentation and move on to item four, which is our consent calendar.

These items will be approved by one motion unless any member of the Council wishes to pull an item for individual consideration.

If an item is pulled from the consent calendar, it will be considered separately following approval of the balance of the consent calendar.

If you'd like to speak on these items or the next item, oral communications on non-agenda items in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk now.

Would any member of the Council like to pull an item?

Council Member Calcer, is that a carryover or do you have something?

No, I just want to make a comment on that.

Okay, great.

Okay, can you just tell me your item number?

I think it's 4.6.

Okay, 4.6.

Okay, I'll come back to you.

Council Member Showalter?

I'd like to make some comments as well.

Okay.

On which?

4.2, 4.3, 4.5, 4.6, and 4.9.

Okay.

Council Member Clark.

I'd like to poll 4.7 for discussion.

All right.

So 4.7 has been polled.

So we'll go over the balance of the consent calendar and we'll start with Councilmember

Callister and then we'll come back to you, Councilmember Scholdalter.

All right, Councilmember Callister.

Yeah.

On 4.6 is Council priorities and I want to, when I came on board I was always emphasizing

the pavements and the road conditions.

And I would like to thank my council for seeing that over the years,

like in 2022, our PCI pavement condition index was at 69.

The next year it was at 68.

The next year it was 67.

So for the last three years it had been going down,

where 70 is the minimal enough to say it was good.

And so I appreciate the council recognizing that this was the time to invest

back in Mountain View, and so I just want to say that we're in the right direction,

and hopefully you will see roads improve, but it's going to take a while,

but it's something that we've been looking for for a long time.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Council Member Showalter?

Well, as we get to the end of the session, you know,

this is sort of the end of our fall session tonight,

there's always a lot on the consent calendar, and there's a lot of work behind it.

So I just want to mention a few things.

Item 4.2 is an emergency water inner tie agreement with Cal Water.

We get water supply from Cal Water.

Most of it comes from SFPUC and from Valley Water, and we also have some wells.

And it's really just good practice to have inner ties between all of these systems

so that we can operate them as effectively as possible, and particularly in emergencies.

So this is just really a good practice.

I want to thank the Public Works Department for going forward with that.

Item 4.3, advisory boards.

I always want to thank everybody who applied.

We had a good group of applicants this time.

And if you applied and didn't make it, I hope you'll try again.

But congratulations are due to Sharon Sue, to the board of library.

We're reappointing Jonathan Davis and appointing Ida Rose Sylvester to the Parks and Recreation

Committee.

We're reappointing Marisol Malara, Mike Kasperczak, Peter Katz, and Jamil Shaikh, and appointing

Peter Reiter to the Downtown Committee.

And we're also appointing Irina Cohn to the Performing Arts.

So I want to thank all of you in advance for all the hours you're going to put in for

the city.

Item 4.5, this was an auditor's report.

And if you're interested in finding out about the way the city is spending your tax dollars,

this is the council report for you to read.

It's fairly short, but it gets very much to the point.

And I thought Item Attachment 1 was particularly informative.

Then 4.6, that's an update on our council priority projects.

The council report and Attachment 2 are particularly good for getting caught up on what is happening

with the projects that this particular council put in our work plan last year.

And attachment two has a description of each one.

I also just wanted to thank the staff who prepared this.

This was really well organized and easy to understand.

I know that takes a lot of effort.

And then the last one is 4.9.

This is really about improvements we are making to city.

Oh, this one, it's called a heritage tree removal, but really what it's about is the

solar improvements that we're putting in many of our city facilities.

And we have an extensive climate action plan, and part of that is making sure that our city

facilities are modernized and have solar and heat pumps and that sort of thing wherever

it's possible.

So this is a project about that.

And not only will these projects add solar to a number of our city facilities or jointly

operated school district facilities, but they're going to save a lot of money in energy costs

over the long term.

And I think that that's something that's really worth noting.

So thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

So seeing no other council members in the queue, we'll do public comment.

Would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide comment

on these items?

If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit a blue speaker card to the

City Clerk now.

I am not seeing any public comment on the balance of the consent calendar.

So I'll bring the item back for Council action and note that a motion to approve the consent

calendar should also include reading the title of the resolutions attached to consent calendar

items 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, and 4.8.

I see we have a motion by Council Member Showalter.

May I get a second?

Thank you, Council Member Hicks.

We'll turn it over to Council Member Showalter.

All right.

I move the balance of the consent calendar.

Item 4.1, adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View

authorizing the City Manager or designee to amend the City of Mountain View's

salary plan for hourly employees for all classifications to comply with Mountain View's minimum wage

to be read in title only, further reading waived.

Item 4.2, adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View approving an emergency

water intertie agreement with California Water Service Company at 3645 Grant Road to be read in title only,

further reading waived, and authorize the City Manager or designee to execute the emergency water intertie agreement

with California Water Service and to execute all necessary documents to effectuate its purposes.

Item 4.3, adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View

reappointing Sharon Sue to the Library Board of Trustees,

reappointing Jonathan Davis and appointing Ida Rose Sylvester to the Parks and Recreation Commission,

reappointing Marisol Malara, Mike Kasperzak, Peter Katz, and Jamil Shaikh,

and appointing Peter Ryder to the Downtown Committee,

appointing Irina Krohn to the Performing Arts Committee and appointing David Kim and Michelle McGuire to the Senior Advisory Committee.

To be read in title only, further reading waived.

Item 4.4, adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View authorizing temperature,

temperature sorry temporary closure of parking lots four and eight from 7 30 a.m. through 2 30

p.m. on select Sundays occurring between January 5th 2026 and February 8th 2026 not to exceed

four Sundays for use by the California Farmers Market Association to be read in title only

further reading waived. Item 4.8 adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View

amending the fiscal year 25-26 budget to appropriate the following funds for the general non-operating fund

to the Community Development Department of Activations and Promotions related to the 2026 Super Bowl and World Cup

and the amounts of 1, $295,000 for city activations and promotions

and 2, $30,000 for a grant to the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce to support

Chamber and Mountain View Business

Associates activations and promotions

to be read in title only for the reading

waived.

Great. Thank you. Let's vote.

All right. And that passes

unanimously. So we'll go back

to consent calendar item 4.7

and I'll turn it over to Council Member Clark.

Thank you. I just wanted

to, I'm the

I'm the chair of the Investments Review Committee,

and I just wanted to,

first of all, our investments are all doing quite well,

and we moved forward with the staff recommendation

and some of the recommendations

of the IRC committee members.

Taking off my chair hat,

I did wanna just raise another recommendation in here

that was made by the committee,

but I wanted to make sure that the full council

was aware of it and had a chance to chime in.

One of the recommendations that was raised

was in response to some community members

who attended the meeting,

and that was to essentially conduct additional research

and consider adopting additional

social responsibility concerns.

Essentially, we already have

some social responsibility language in there,

and the proposal was to broaden that

a little bit further and the proposed language

was quite broad and I had some reservations about it

and I just wanted to make sure that my colleagues

were aware of that discussion.

And I've actually thought more about it

and I've heard some additional concerns

from community members, particularly our Jewish

community members about the additional restrictions

that are being proposed.

And so I had a chance to do a little bit more research

and I think staff did as well.

and they can answer questions.

But I think the additional restrictions

that we were looking at studying are so broad

that one, there's a concern about the breadth

of those restrictions.

But two, we also, despite the breadth,

confirmed that none of our current investments

would be covered by that.

So there wouldn't be any immediate changes,

even if we were to adopt that language.

And then second, because of our requirements

on bond ratings that we would invest in.

It's highly unlikely that any of the companies

or investment opportunities on those lists

that were proposed by the community members

would ever be something that we would invest in.

So that's a very long way of saying in a year

where we're potentially looking at revenue measures

and staff is gonna be tied up with a lot of that,

plus everything that's gone on recently with world events.

I just don't think this is the best use of staff's time

because it won't really impact either our current investments

or any of I think our near term investments.

So I think my preference would be

just to adopt the staff recommendation,

but without the study of the additional restrictions

because I just don't think they're gonna move the needle

for us in the near term.

And I think staff's time would be better spent

on the revenue measure and other things.

So just to get us started, I'll go ahead and move item 4.7

just without the additional review by staff

of the investment restrictions that were identified.

Great, thank you.

Vice Mayor Ramos.

So largely this was an item,

we did have some public comment

in our investment review committee.

We usually don't get public comment

in our investment review committee one

because it's like in the morning and the subject matter

is generally very dry for a lack of a better term.

But we did have a number of residents reach out

and they want our way of how we do our investments

to be reflective of our values.

I know that Council Member Clark is concerned

about staff time, but we weren't asking,

well, they were kind of asking it for it immediately.

I don't think the people in the committee

were asking for it immediately.

We just wanted to open that conversation

to see what it would look like to make sure

that we don't invest in weapons companies

or private prisons or mass surveillance technologies.

This is something essentially the community

was starting to ask for.

I don't believe it's, as long as we don't pressure staff

to be very quick on it, to do something

in their own kind of time, I don't see why we wouldn't

be responsive to a community ask like this.

So I'm not entirely sure.

I think a good number of us,

not necessarily directed staff,

but asked what would it look like,

what would,

how much,

we don't even know the scope.

We just want staff to just start looking at it.

And I totally understand that this may be a long process.

When we first made our statement

that we wouldn't do invest in companies,

fossil fuel companies, it was a long process as well.

We just wanted to get started on it.

So I'm not entirely sure basically

if Council Member Clark's motion is just

to kind of shut the door on it.

I don't want us to shut the door on it.

I don't mind if it takes a long time.

I just want us to actually just be responsive

to our community.

Council Member Ramirez.

Thank you, Mayor.

So for the council's benefit,

the recommendation from the IRC was unanimous, all five of us.

It feels weird to use this as an opportunity to shut down that dialogue,

but it's also not a personal priority for me,

so I don't have a strong investment in the outcome of this vote.

But because we do have the benefit of having the director

of the Finance and Administrative Services Department here,

it might be helpful to ask,

how much staff time do you anticipate moving forward?

There's been, it sounds like, a little bit of staff time invested in this investigation.

Do you feel like there's a significant amount of work or a trivial amount of work?

How would you characterize the recent work?

Thank you for the question.

Good evening, Mayor Comey, Vice Mayor Ramos, and Councilmembers.

Derek Rampone, your Finance and Administrative Services Director.

We have taken a preliminary look.

We've worked with our investment management firm, Chandler, to take a preliminary look.

It will take some additional time.

I don't have an estimate per se.

I don't think it's a ton of time, but it will take a little time to work with them and

come up with possible scenarios and recommendations.

I will say that currently, based on the parameters that were spoken about at the IRC meeting,

we hold zero investments in what was discussed currently.

WE ALREADY HAVE, AS WAS STATED EARLIER, GOOD GOVERNANCE, SOCIAL GOVERNANCE THAT WAS

PUT INTO THE INVESTMENT POLICY YEARS AGO.

AND WE ARE GOVERNED NOT ONLY BY THE CITY'S INVESTMENT POLICY, BUT ALSO THE CALIFORNIA

GOVERNMENT CODE.

SO WE HAVE, WE'RE PRETTY RESTRICTED ON THE INVESTMENTS THAT WE CAN EVEN TAKE A LOOK

AT.

AND SO, BUT WE'RE HAPPY FOR, TO TAKE DIRECTION FROM THE IRC.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

I APPRECIATE THAT.

I'm not going to make a motion, but maybe what I'll suggest as an attempt at a compromise would be,

rather than just take it off the table entirely, that that work be suspended until after the conclusion of the work necessary for the revenue measure.

So it's on the back burner. It's not, we're killing it today, but rather once staff has completed the work needed for the revenue measure,

then they can pick up the work, whatever remains, to complete that investigation. Thank you.

Council member Hicks.

Council member Hicks.

Yeah, that actually sounds good to me.

I am not on the committee, so I haven't done a deep dive into this subject, but I have

to say people, when I've gone to sustainability conferences, people have approached me and

been very impressed with the fact that we don't invest in fossil fuels.

I think these kind of measures are important to people.

And also, just kind of randomly, I know people going to University of Colorado Boulder, who

these are nieces of mine, who phoned me and asked, because I'm on the city council here,

how they would interact with their finance committee in Boulder to get a very similar

set of parameters for their investments.

And I told them how to look it up, and when they looked it up, their city had already

made that, already made that pledge.

So I know it's possible, and it seems like since we now hold zero investments in this

arena, it sounds possible here too.

And it like, it sounds like it would not ruffle too many feathers.

But I would be behind suspending it until after the revenue measure.

Thank you.

Council Member Clark, we'll go back to you.

Just to provide a little bit more context and to be just a little bit more blunt than

I was earlier.

One of the suggest, so we've already, we already have language adopted around fossil fuels and

pretty standard, I think, progressive social, socially responsible investing.

What was proposed, the community members who wrote to us

and came to the meeting are, I think,

from a particular activist community.

And I think if some of the other community members

of our community had known that they were going

to propose that, they would have shown up in force.

And so I think that if this moves forward,

for example, adopting language that says,

investments are prohibited in subsidiaries

that facilitate the violation of human rights,

things that are that broad,

you can probably guess the concerns that would be raised

around some of those things.

And I think there will be a lot of community discussion

if we move forward with studying this particular

breadth of socially responsible investing.

So that's why I wanted to flag it.

I did vote to move it forward in the committee.

Council Member Ramirez is correct,

but I've heard from folks in the community since then

that this is something that they feel quite strongly about

and it's just something that I wanted to make sure

my colleagues were aware of.

It's because I don't think it's going to affect

any of our current or any near-term investments,

I don't think it is worth the time

and the potential breadth of the community discussion

that will occur to move this forward.

And I think I would prefer not to just push it off,

I would prefer to just not do this right now.

And we can always look at this in the future

if for some reason there's a proposal for us

to invest in companies that might trigger any of this.

But I just don't foresee that happening.

So just a little bit more context.

Great, thank you.

I just had a question for, yes, thank you.

So it sounded like that staff had already

done a preliminary search and that none of the businesses

that we associate ourselves with in Mountain View

fall under this category.

Do we need to take specific language like we did with fossil fuels since it's already not a practice?

Is there something that council can do if we're already, it sounds like we're already doing it.

So I'm trying to understand why staff would be investigating and putting staff time into something that the city's already practicing,

which is not engaging with these types of companies.

So I seconded Council Member Clark's motion because I did research into this as well, and it sounds like we do not do those practices.

So perhaps staff can help illuminate for council in the audience a little bit more.

Thank you.

So the community had provided input that was rather broad,

And we feel like that some of the, there's no list, official list that our investment firm can compare to and go off of.

So some of the recommendations or proposals that they were putting together is not feasible, while maybe a small section could be.

But it's relatively new to this area, I would say, as having some restricted specific wording.

So there is no index officially that we can follow.

So the research was basically to come back with that information.

City Manager McCarthy, thank you.

Thank you, Mayor, and to our Finance Director.

So to be clear, the city does not have investments in the broad categories that were outlined by some of the folks that showed up at the committee meeting.

And I think staff has struggled a little bit in trying to figure out what the broad categories would mean because we have a highly restrictive way that we can invest.

And it's not just Mountain View.

It's any local government agency governed by certain California rules and legal restrictions.

And then we place our own restrictions that are even more conservative, I would say, on how we can invest.

So I think the struggle that we have or that we've talked about, even with the firm that works with us, is we would essentially be searching for what corporations might even fall under these categories, which we do not believe we have any investments of that nature or from any of those categories.

So it's highly likely that staff would be coming back with kind of nothing to report, that there's nothing that we would find or have investing in now or in the future, especially because we have the social responsibility policy already in place with some broad caveats in the policy already.

Right. And every item is governed by our budget equity lens, which I know the council adopted.

And so is this something that maybe staff would be able to tackle as part of, you know, next year we'll be starting to talk about mid-year budget and the budgeting process.

And maybe this is something we can add to our budgeting brief or just, you know, letting people know that, you know, confirming what it sounds like we already know.

So I think that the best path forward might be to just have staff come back with a recommendation

on the best time to discuss this.

We don't normally incorporate our investments into the process, but we can certainly look

at the best avenue for doing that and then bring that back to council.

Okay, great.

To the motion maker, would that be amenable to you?

That would be fine, whether it comes back to the full council or the investment review

community, whatever is easiest.

Okay, great.

Okay, well, I can second that if it comes back.

Perhaps since it became a discussion at full council, it can come back to the full council.

Council Member McAllister.

Yeah, could they come back in a written memo instead of bringing it to a full presentation?

Would that be helpful?

City manager?

Absolutely, we can do that, should that be the desire of council.

I mean, that would be a better use maybe to Council Member Clarks.

It would just give us an idea before we start spending time on city staff.

And I agree with Council Member Clark that staff time is valuable.

And so, I mean, unless we see a real outcome out of something, I'd rather see them spend

their time on other issues.

Council Member Hicks.

So I just want to recap of what we will be voting on because it was to take that, to

accept the report, take out the part, not do what Council Member Ramirez said, visit it later.

But now people are adding back in things to do later, so I've become confused.

Sure, I believe it's a revised motion.

So the revised motion, I can turn to Council Member Clark, which I think is just to have staff return.

It sounded to me, and the City Manager can correct me if I'm wrong,

it sounded to me like we're basically, we're approving the, we're accepting the committee report,

which was the staff recommendation,

except what we're doing is just,

we're not doing the additional study

of investment restrictions today,

but it sounds like staff, if and when,

if and when there's any possibility that we might,

you know, be looking at investing in a company

that might fit some of these criteria that,

it sounds like the full council would get an update

or a memo on that.

So what would trigger it would be the point

that a potential investment was made?

No, I think if we were ever in a world where some of these

companies, which we don't even have a list,

but that might meet some of these criteria,

might begin to be in the realm of things

that we might end up investing in

because of our overall policy.

I'm struggling to find a way to share.

Yeah, sure.

Thank you, Council Member Clark and Mayor.

So I think it would be if something were to ever surface

or if our consultant, our firm that we work with

were to raise something for us to say,

hey, this investment might be getting into

whatever line of business

that we would not want to align ourselves with,

then at that point, that would be something

that we could bring to the Investment Review Committee

or let Council know in an off-agenda memo.

But proactively, right now,

there's nothing to proactively remove at this point.

So it would be more if something were to come up.

Council Member Schell-Walter.

Just as a reminder, could you send us out

sometime in the next few weeks, I know you're busy,

but what the social responsibility policy is,

not serving on the finance committee,

I just know sort of generally about it,

I'd love to actually read the text.

Sure.

Great, thank you.

Council Member Hicks.

Yeah, so I think I'm going to abstain or vote no,

just because I'm not clear on what our current statement is.

It sounds like possibly we could just use our current statement

because members of the public are concerned if we're not.

So I would prefer to look in it a little more the way

Council Member Ramirez said, but maybe this will get the votes.

Okay.

No one else is in the queue, so we can call a question

and then we can have more discussion.

Okay.

Sure.

So my understanding of the motion

is approving the staff recommendation.

Let me read.

So the recommendation for the staff report says

accept the annual report of the investment review committee

for fiscal year 2024-2025

as well as attachment one to the council report.

But I think there was...

specific call out in the recommendation about looking into trying to find the

language to staff have the language that work I think it's just what we're

voting on tonight is to is to accept the report and then there was a separate

direction to staff that if if there's ever there's ever a change in the

environment to where you know some of these barter criteria might end up

applying to some of our future investments, which I think is unlikely, but if they were

that we would proactively be either the both the investment review committee and maybe the

full council would be made aware of that just so we can look into it at that time.

Yes, that's part of the motion.

I think if anything would be flagged, it sounds like the our finance and administrative service

department worked with our outside entity Chandler and did a cursory view looking at if we

in uh you know invest in any of these companies which it sounds like would include um you know

uh weapons and private prisons and so they already did the cursory view of of what was looked nothing

was triggered and so I think this would it was brought in to include I think

looking at staff do you have the language from the IFC meeting yeah the

recommendation was that the irc the IRC recommended that staff conduct further

research regarding the social responsibility concerns raised by the

public and explore potential updates to section 8.0 of the investment policy

I think perhaps as part of the motion, too, what we could include is what Council Member

Showalter said, which is once again sharing our social responsibility guidelines, and

perhaps that's something that we can make sure is available online and available for

our public to also see, because I know that we've been committed to that as we looked

at divesting from fossil fuel companies.

So I know that that's a practice where we have used that as an umbrella for how we operate

in Mountain View.

And so perhaps that can come back to the full council.

Is that okay to include that in your motion, Council Member McAllister?

Yes, sending it out, of course.

Great, thank you.

Council Member McAllister.

Yeah, I just, I like to have either they do it or they don't.

I'm trying to get clarity on if when it's appropriate they'll do it, but they won't

do it until that time.

there's nothing that they will,

the only thing that they would do is flag it to us

and then ask us if we want to basically go through the,

you know, changing our policy at that time.

Right now, we already have a socially responsible

investment policy.

It's actually pretty broad.

The concern with what was raised at the meeting

is that the criteria they were proposing

was so broad that I don't want to sit down

and decide who is or isn't violating human rights.

That's a very broad statement.

I don't think any of us do,

and I certainly don't think staff does.

And so I think having staff go study

how we broaden things right now

is just because it's not going to impact

any of our current or near-term future investments

is just not a good use of folks' time.

It would be a good use of time

if there were companies

that we were either invested in today

or that we might potentially invest in in the near future.

then I'm totally on board with that.

I just don't think this is the right time

and the right moment to be studying

broader investment restrictions

around really, really broad concepts.

And the motion would be to study it now.

No, no, my motion is to not study it now.

The motion is to accept the report

and not study it now.

And if we ever end up in a world

where some of these companies might qualify,

then staff will just tell us.

I got it.

Thank you.

Okay.

Yes, that was when the item was pulled

to change the motion.

And I think what's also included in that

is sharing internally and externally

our social responsibility guiding principles.

All right, so let's see if we can vote.

All right, and that passes 5-2.

So we will move on to oral communications.

Oral communications, this portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the council on any matter, not on the agenda.

Speakers are allowed to speak on any topic within the City Council subject matter jurisdiction for up to three minutes during this section.

State law prohibits the council from acting on non-agenda items.

If you'd like to speak on this item or the next item, please submit a blue speaker card

to the City Clerk now.

Would any member of the public joining us virtually in person like to provide comment

on this item?

If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit the blue speaker card to the

City Clerk now.

We'll take in-person speakers first and each speaker will have three minutes.

Steven Goldstein.

Sorry about that.

Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. I went through two years of homelessness due to the fact that a city employee made a comment in court saying that he could not find anything that would render my apartment unsafe.

However, it turns out that the building I was living in had no building diagrams in the city record, no initial building code permit for building it.

It was nonconforming at 184 Center Street as an R31 zone when the building was a R4-type building.

And at the same time, I could easily document severe cracking in the foundation, severe cracking in the elevated walkway, and even sinking in my floor.

And what happened?

A city employee went to the court and testified.

upon visual observation, he could find no observable, uninhabitable problems.

However, that is not what the law allows.

A letter also said that the city was assuming that it was in compliance regarding the building code at the time it was built.

Turns out the building drawings were burned in a fire in 1958.

And yet the building was built in 1960.

And yet there has never been any action taken to rectify the fact that the building records were incomplete in the city, thus violating the state health and safety code 19850, which says that the city must have those records in the records in order to have some kind of proper operation of the rental property.

Finally, at the same time, the state clearly states that no government agency can assume

safety without evidence.

And what I understand is that the city has done everything it took to prevent any inspection

of the property.

Again, I wound up being homeless because of these actions.

And I'm not giving up.

I'm saying that the city should have had this corrected.

The state law says that the city should be demanding that property owners be providing these records to the city

before anything can be approved, including, importantly, a certificate of occupancy.

Without these records being in place, a certificate of occupancy under those circumstances would be not valid.

and I think at this point in time what's going to happen is I'm now in contact with the state

housing department to arrange a audit of the city's practices and if the city is found to

have a significant amount of records missing in the housing department that could render a lot

of problems for the city I suggest the city does something to correct it thank you all right any

other public comment in person on item five okay not seeing any we'll go virtual bruce england

thanks mayor good evening everybody council members members of the public attending um i'll be

i'll be short i just want to i figure we're getting close to the end of the year and i want

to bring up the community for all policies of the city and praise the city and members of the community

and all stakeholders who are upholding those goals and those positions regarding community for all.

Now, it's very focused on our own city, but, you know, our country and our world is built of a collection of communities,

and we're one of them.

And if other communities also have their equivalent of community for all policies, then we're in a good position.

So I think that altogether what this means is that we're not divisive in what we do,

that we care about all people and that we don't try to put wedges in between one group of people

versus another. Mountain View represents diversity and care. We're all members of the community,

obviously, including people who don't even have homes to live in. We try to take care of everybody.

And so once again, I want to praise the city and I want to praise everybody who works on this and

holds these values to be as important as I think they are. And I hope that they will continue

forward as they are. Thank you. Thank you. Hala Alshawani.

Yes, good evening. Thank you, Mayor,

good evening council members and city staff. My name is Hala Alshawani. I'm an old resident, old

residing member of the community in Mountain View. I just wanted to comment on last week's

Council meeting. Last Tuesday, December 9th, there was an outpouring of public concerns and

grave fears regarding having their properties designated as historic buildings. And I believe

this is justified. In all the city's outreach community meetings on downtown historic

preservations that I have attended, there was very little information, if any, regarding the

benefits and the responsibilities of owning historical buildings. There was no mention of

tax benefits, subsidies for repairs or replacements, the ability to modify, to update historic buildings.

None of this was covered generally or thoroughly. This information is vital for the public as well

as the policymakers to know and understand so that everyone can make informed decisions.

The city should also state the benefits of retaining our historic downtown to the economic

vitality programs and the significant tax revenue that it generates.

Fiscal impacts and otherwise are important to mention.

Moving forward, I hope that the city staff and or the hired consultants can provide a

full disclosure of what is entitled in owning a historic residential or commercial buildings

in Mountain View.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Sophie Yit?

Hi there. Hello. My name is Sophie and I'm speaking to the council. Thanks so much for

hearing me. I'd just like to voice support for what was discussed earlier around the

investment report. I think I concur with what Bruce was saying earlier. I think as a community,

Mountain View really thrives based on diversity and, you know, moving towards treating everyone

as a human and ensuring the rights that people have. And I feel like as a city, we have the

ability to make a powerful stand. And the fact that we already do not support investments such

as those in weapons, private prisons, and mass surveillance should be seen as a good sign, and we

can continue to move forward with that going in the future. Thank you. All right, that concludes

public comment, and we'll move on to item six, which is our public hearing. Item 6.1 is our

housing element program 1.1G, zoning precise plan and general plan amendments. Principal planner

Diana Pancholi and Community Development Director Christian Murdoch will present the

item.

If you'd like to speak on this item, please submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk

now.

Okay.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members.

My name is Diana Pansholy, Principal Planner with the City's Planning Division, and I'm

joined here tonight by Community Development Director Christian Murdoch.

At tonight's meeting, staff is presenting the proposed amendments to implement Program

1.1G of the housing element.

Program 1.1G aims to ensure consistency with zoning and general plan for all sites in the

housing element site inventory and identified housing opportunity sites.

The housing element rezoning sites and densities are shown here.

As a reminder, the Moffett-Bulloward zoning changes will be completed separately

through the Moffett-Bulloward Precise Plan process.

And just as a reminder, the program has a housing element deadline of December 31st of this year.

A little bit of the background on the housing element itself.

The sixth cycle of housing element developed between 2021 and 2023 included several outreach activities to create programs to meet the city's RENA requirements and further the housing production.

Two key policy considerations from community input were equitable distribution of housing sites across the entire city and the viability of sites based upon quality, age, size, and use of the buildings as well as the property owner interest.

Other housing element programs such as Program 1.4 and 2.6 also address other sites with viable development in the city's highest opportunity neighborhoods.

At previous meetings, the Environmental Planning Commission and the City Council reviewed the proposed amendments and approaches presented here tonight.

City Council expressed support for a general plan mixed use for lit center land use approach for the sites as shown in blue on the map here.

to help preserve locally serving businesses.

The City Council also supported a flexible precise plan approach

for the remainder of the sites as shown in orange,

which would allow site-specific code requirements

to allow the densities and the character appropriate for the area.

On November 6th, earlier this year, the EPC held a public hearing

to discuss the proposed amendments.

At the meeting, the EPC recommended Council approve

the General Plan and zoning amendments at the Miramonte and Cuesta sites with a 6-0

vote and one recusal, and the remainder amendments were unanimously recommended for approval

with a 7-0 vote.

As described in the staff report, some of the proposed amendments introduced the General

Plan mixed-use village-centered land use in existing regulations to achieve the housing

element program.

The Journal Plan Mixed-Use Village Center land use is a set of existing mixed-use development

policies that preserve the existing commercial zoning but allow opportunities for multifamily

housing.

The locations for these developments are determined by the Journal Plan through mixed-use designations.

However, the zoning district remains commercial and the Journal Plan Mixed-Use Village Center

developments are the only residential use allowed in these commercial zones.

The development standards for this approach utilizes existing mechanisms to preserve existing

commercial businesses without the need to create a new mixed-use district.

This does not change the underlying zoning, avoids non-conformances for existing developments,

and creates a pathway for residential development consistent with the general plan's village

center policies.

So in summary, the table here presents the proposed general plan map and text amendments

to allow the residential uses as described at densities prescribed by the housing element.

The cells shown in blue are amendments intended to facilitate the general plan mixed use village

center land use and the orange cells reflect the remainder sites.

Details of the amendments are further discussed in the staff report.

One key difference is the 1949 grant road amendments, which proposes densities to allow

35 dwelling units per acre, which is slightly greater than the 30 dwelling unit per acre

allowances of the housing element.

And similar to the general plan amendments, listed here are the proposed zoning and precise

plan amendments to make the sites consistent with the housing element and to allow residential

uses and development standards to allow existing office businesses to return to these sites

if redeveloped.

Other minor code amendments are proposed to update outdated code references in the precise

plans for consistency with the city code and the state law, and zoning amendments to clarify

navigation easement requirements which relates to restrictions on the use of property and

incidental effects such as noise and the height restrictions on any new structures.

Based on the previous council directions, staff reviewed existing resources to help

small businesses return to sites if redeveloped as listed here on the slide.

Additionally, the economic vitality strategy also includes an action item for tools such

as rent caps and commercial rent subsidies to help bridge market gaps.

However, further work is needed to identify a stable funding source to ensure success

of this program.

Specifically, around Evendale Precise Plan Area A, staff studied several zoning options

to retain small businesses.

There are limited land use zoning tools as restrictions on the residential development,

conflicts with the housing element goals to create more housing opportunities, or may

be difficult to implement under the current state law.

As part of the environmental assessment for the project, staff reviewed the proposed amendments

to understand if there were new significant environmental effects or a substantial increase

and the severity of the impacts and found that the project was already analyzed as part

of the city's housing element update program environmental impact report adopted in 2023.

Therefore, no additional environmental analysis is needed under California Environmental Quality

Act.

Staff would like to note that we received several written public comments prior to this

meeting.

A few supported the proposed amendments and several voice concerns related to the proposed

amendments for the 1702 Miramonte site and the impact of high density

residential developments on single-family residential character of the

neighborhood. Now I will pass it on to my Public Works colleague for the next

slides. Good evening Mayor, Council members, Ed Arango, Assistant Public Works

Director. As Principal Planner Pancholi noted, the city received public feedback

regarding the intersection at Miramani and Cuesta.

Continuing on this topic,

I'll briefly be going over the existing conditions

and concerns we heard.

Near-term solutions staff is reviewing

and long-term strategies that could look at this

in more detail.

In this view, Miramani is running north-south

and Cuesta is running east-west.

Along Cuesta through this intersection,

there's an offset and Sladkey, a T intersection,

is in very close proximity to the Cuesta intersection.

And please advance the presentation.

Some concerns that we heard include the movement

along the northbound Miramani turning left

onto Sladky movement.

As vehicles are waiting to turn,

I'm sorry, can you go back?

As vehicles are waiting to turn, this can cause a queue backup.

This can be further exacerbated for those vehicles

turning onto northbound Miramani from Cuesta.

In advance.

Additionally, exiting Sladky,

vehicles turning left onto northbound Miramani

have to negotiate southbound vehicles coming down Miramani

and the previously mentioned movements

from northbound Miramani vehicles.

In advance.

Lastly, there are some parking concerns

about businesses parking spilling into the neighborhood.

Next slide.

So staff is currently looking at some near-term solutions

from the comments that we received.

Some preliminary options we've discussed

is the possibility of restricting the left turns

into and or out of Slatke at Miramonte.

This would help address the concerns previously mentioned,

and if pursued, would require to conduct

public engagement with the neighborhood.

The Miramonte paving project,

which is limits are from Cuesta Castro,

will be starting construction in March.

If the turning restrictions at Slatki are pursued,

going through the public engagement process,

the modifications could be incorporated into the project,

but could also be incorporated independently.

For the traffic signal at Cuesta and Miramani,

staff will be observing the signal timing

and seeing if there's adjustments needed

during specific times of day that may help with operations.

And then lastly, staff is always available

for public requests and the public can request,

reach out to staff, Public Works specifically,

via Asmountain View, calling Public Works directly,

or sending us a message,

requesting evaluation of any specific locations

or requests for red curbs,

including concerns about site visibility.

Next slide, please.

So moving on to the long-term strategy.

In January, 2026, Council will be reviewing

considering the Miramonte Corridor Study.

The study presents potential multimodal improvements

along the entire corridor.

As part of the capital improvement program process,

staff can review establishing a project

to do a deeper dive

and study these two intersections more closely.

We do recommend this be done

in the context of the CIP process

to provide the information regarding other projects

that may be proposed in workload.

But a new study could be a future project

that would review the configuration

and identify if there's anything feasible

to improve the operations.

I'm gonna be handing it back to Principal Pancholi

to conclude the presentation.

So in conclusion, staff recommends the City Council

to approve the proposed amendments

to implement the Housing Element Program 1.1 goals

and increase the housing opportunity in the sites.

Please note that Assistant Community Development Director

Blasinski and project manager Crescia

Pinolar are also present here tonight if

council has any questions along

with our remodeled consultant as well.

Thank you. Great. Thank you. And just

for the public, apologies we didn't say from the front.

So staff's going to do their presentation.

Council will ask questions and then it will

be everyone's turn to provide public comment

to council. So we'll go to

council questions.

Council Member Ramirez.

Thank you, Mayor.

And thank you, staff, for

responding to the numerous questions that were submitted in advance of the meeting.

The first question under this item, question 29, reveals that 1702 Miramonte and 777 Cuesta Drive

are subject to Senate Bill 6 and Assembly Bill 2011, which allow housing at 30 units per acre.

ministerially, right?

So it wouldn't even have to go to a city council

public hearing for a vote and approval.

Is that correct?

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council.

Christian Murdoch, Community Development Director.

In part, the answer is yes.

AB 2011 creates a ministerial approval process

for qualifying commercial sites based on adjacent roadway width.

this site would qualify both under AB 2011 and SB 6.

SB 6, just to distinguish, does not create a ministerial approval process,

but does create a pathway to submit an application to approve commercial development

through the normal discretionary review process.

And apologies, for those that may be attending our meeting that don't know what AB and SB means,

maybe we can just say that those are some state laws, Senate bill and Assembly bill,

and just add some color and some background.

I think that was just signed.

So I just want to make sure that we're allowing the public to understand that state law has been enacted and signed by our governor.

And I'll turn it back to you, Dr. Murdoch. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Yes, for those that don't work in this space every day,

these are state laws that are part of a series of laws that the legislature has enacted in recent years to expand housing development opportunities.

These two laws, Senate Bill 6 and Assembly Bill 2011, passed by the legislature and signed by the governor,

maybe two or three years ago at this point,

expand housing development opportunities

in commercially zoned areas

by overriding local zoning in areas

that may be commercial only

to allow residential development

if certain physical characteristics

and other use components are present on a site,

notably the width of the roadway

adjacent to the site in question.

And so these two sites

that are identified for action tonight

have exceed the minimum roadway widths

to be subject to these laws.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Council Member Ramirez.

Thank you, Mayor.

And thank you, Director, for walking us through.

So two separate pathways under state law today

that override local control,

allowing for housing at a minimum of 30 units per acre

on each of these sites.

And the 30 units per acre is also the density

that is proposed in the staff recommendation, right?

So it's the same.

That's correct.

And then on top of that, projects that use the two state pathways, Assembly Bill 2011

and Senate Bill 6, whichever way you choose to go, also can use the state density bonus

law on top of that.

Is that accurate?

That's correct.

Including the use of waivers from development standards and concessions as well?

Correct.

Okay.

Okay, that's helpful for us to understand.

So even if the Council decided to take no action or we were to deny the staff recommendation,

housing would still be allowed under state law pursuant to Assembly Bill 2011 and Senate

Bill 6.

Correct.

Okay.

That was something that was for the benefit of the public new to the Council.

I think all of us just in seeing the responses to the questions today learned about that.

So that's something I think the council may want to sort of talk through and understand.

Are there certain advantages to having, so we have a commitment under the housing element program to conduct the rezonings.

The responses to other council questions disclose some amount of risk and not following through.

And I won't delve too deeply into that, but maybe another way of looking at that could

be are there certain advantages, even if we already have to allow housing at these sites,

are there certain advantages to having local development standards governing those properties?

so i think in general yes there's a benefit to having local standards it can communicate to a

developer the types of development that the city wants to see as opposed to development that the

state mandates to occur and some developers are sensitive to that and try their best to design

projects to be locally acceptable and to integrate better into the community.

And so to the extent that the city could adopt local regulations that achieve those outcomes,

it is advantageous to have local standards in most cases.

Thank you.

And my last question will be, can staff sort of walk through, from your perspective, maybe

a couple of examples in the staff recommendations for proposed development standards where you

might work with a developer to communicate certain expectations.

Sure, we'll need a moment to pull up those standards that are proposed for this site.

Yeah, thank you very.

Thank you.

So, without taking too much time, I think the proposed amendments that we have presented

in here have looked at certain specifics, such as the setback requirements or where

the setbacks are measured from or the allowed height or the amount of FAR that is allowed

on a site which can then result into the desired densities to align with the housing element.

That would be some of the examples of the standards that are being proposed in order

to bring the sites in compliance to allow a development that can come in and produce

the amount of densities that are prescribed in the housing element.

Thank you.

Council Member Schell-Walter.

Thank you.

Okay, I'd like to hear from Mr. Arango.

I'm, hi, nice to see you again.

I'm interested in this Miramonte traffic study.

You mentioned it and discussed it starting in 2026.

and so I'm kind of interested in hearing a little more about what the components of it are

and also the duration because as you know we're doing a big project on Miramonte,

a big repaving project and of course we want to include any improvements in it.

So can you just describe the traffic study and what it's made up of and how long it takes?

Sure, absolutely.

Again, Ed Arango, Assistant Public Works Director.

So we had sort of the two-pronged approach

that we were looking to do here.

The first is sort of this near-term elements

that the staff can do at staff level

with the resources we have,

evaluate what the implications would be

and what it would look like.

Again, this is, we just recently started these discussions,

so we need an opportunity to evaluate the feasibility of this.

is closing the access from, it's left turn movements,

coming out of Sladky, going onto northbound Miramani,

and then coming into Sladky from northbound Miramani.

And so we see this as an opportunity to address

some of the concerns with the congestion

in that specific area.

These two intersections are very close together

and traffic can back up into the intersection

as soon as other movements starts being introduced.

So this is something that we can introduce

with our staff in early 2026 to start evaluating

what that looks like, see if it's feasible.

And then we, again, we would have to do

public engagement with this.

It would impact circulation through the neighborhood.

So we wanna be sure that we're giving the opportunity

for the neighbors to be able to weigh in

and give us feedback.

But if supported, we could move forward with that

with the Mayor Monty project and do modifications of that.

But the implementation isn't all that difficult.

and we can do this independently.

So the modifications for Miramani Drive,

they really are kind of matching up

the existing conditions at the Cuesta intersection

because that's sort of the beginning of the project

or end of the project.

So we need to match those existing improvements

that are coming into that intersection.

So effectively, it's gonna look pretty much the same

at that location as it does today.

It's because it really does have two lanes

that are going in each direction coming from the south.

So that's sort of the first approach.

Again, we're gonna look at the traffic signal timing as well

to see if that can be adjusted

at the Cuesta-Miromona intersection.

But the actual traffic study,

we would need consultant support help for this part.

And that's what we're proposing to,

if council directed us,

we could include that as a proposed project

in the next capital improvement program review cycle.

Come back to council to evaluate

what that would look like for workload

and whether that would be a 26, 27 project.

or a future project depending on the other priorities

that we have on the projects

in the capital improvement program.

Okay, so essentially there's sort of a short-term version

and a long-term version, and the short-term version

could definitely be incorporated into the repaving project.

That's correct.

And the long-term version,

we don't know what it would say we needed to do,

so you can't answer that.

That's correct.

Did I get that?

That's correct, yes.

Okay, got it.

All right, so then in addition to that,

I used to take these turns very, very frequently when I had children, but that was a while ago, young children driving around.

And there used to be a sign there that limited the times you could turn left out of Sladkey.

Is that still there?

I see nodding heads.

Okay.

That was a very odd sign.

It was sort of small.

You had to take some time to read it.

I'm sure the people who live in the neighborhood go by it, you know, hundreds of times.

They know it by heart, but for people who were just driving there occasionally, you kind of see it and go, what?

Anyway, we've been putting in a lot of pedestrian sort of temporary signals.

You know, they don't function when nobody's walking there, but when they do function, you know, there's all these lights and stuff.

Is there any, do we ever put in a stoplight

that only works for like three hours a day?

Or something along those lines?

So I'm gonna try to start off this response.

And then I actually, I have Lorenzo Lopez,

the city's traffic engineer.

He's on Zoom and is available

for to answer responses questions.

But let me start off and see if he has anything

to add to this response.

We do implement traffic signal equipment,

as you mentioned, that really is,

it's not necessarily times a day,

as much as it is sort of pedestrian actuated,

so on demand.

So recently, Caltrans installed the pedestrian hybrid beacons

on El Camino Real.

This is an example of an on demand traffic signal

where it's really free flowing traffic on El Camino

until somebody decides that they want to cross the street.

So they push the button and then that notify traffic

that there's somebody here wanting to cross.

And then it turns red.

And that is a true traffic signal stop.

So the traffic has to abide by that red light

and that allows the pedestrian to cross.

So it's already on demand.

And then it turns off once we have the timing

to allow enough travel time

for the pedestrian to get across the street.

So that's one element that we're introducing.

We're doing this at the Grant Sleeper intersection as well.

It's currently under construction,

but a current example is the El Camino site.

We also implement pedestrian,

we call them rapid flashing beacons.

So this is also on demand.

These are smaller poles that flash at the vehicles

when a pedestrian pushes the button,

indicating that there's a pedestrian wanting to cross.

Creates more visibility and attention to the crosswalk

and the intersection that we've identified

so that vehicles are aware that somebody wants to cross here.

I better slow down and stop to allow them to cross

rather than not having it.

So we're selective on where we put these,

usually in the high volume areas really.

And they're all pedestrian oriented.

They're all pedestrian, on demand by pedestrians.

So pedestrian pushes a button or if a bicyclist,

and then they cross.

But again, it's not necessarily times a day as it is

by the user.

And then I wanna offer an opportunity for the traffic

engineer Lorenzo Lopez to provide any additional input unless if it can be promoted. Hi Lorenzo.

Hello. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi everyone. Lorenzo Lopez city traffic engineer. Ed summed it up pretty

well. Those signals that you are mentioning that are not on all the time is a pedestrian hybrid

beacon and those have the actual red lights that serve like a traditional traffic signal.

Those are along El Camino right now.

We don't have any on city streets yet, but as he mentioned, Grat Sleeper is the first

one.

We do have others that are proposed in the future at other locations on city streets.

and again, as he stated,

those are all pedestrian or bicycle activated,

so not vehicle activated.

Thank you.

That's very informative.

All right.

So I have a couple more questions.

Oh, yes.

Yes, not for it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

This one is more about

what can we do to preserve small businesses

or the dental offices?

Clearly everybody needs a dentist, right?

It's one of the land uses we need in our community.

And these are, you know,

these buildings have been there a long time,

so there might be differences of opinion

about whether they should be redeveloped or not,

but we do need that land use for sure.

And you mentioned that there wasn't much in land use law that we could do to protect those small businesses.

But what else could we do?

I mean, we've had some situations where, for instance, at the corner of El Camino and Castro Street,

where we, you know, where we preserved the Rose Market and the coffee shop.

So I just wondered if there are things that can be included

or are they included in our zoning

to support businesses or other programs?

Thank you for the question.

I'll start first with talking about sort of

what the tools are at the legislative action level

that we're talking about and maybe how that's distinguished

from a project level action, right,

of the examples you noted.

And then ask Principal Pinter Pincholi

to just talk about the care and the thought

that went into selecting the zoning tools

to ensure there are ongoing commercial operation

opportunities with these rezonings.

So sites don't end up as non-conforming commercial uses

that could restrict ongoing operation.

So to start, it's challenging from a legislative zoning

and general plan policy level in light of state law

to achieve the kinds of small business preservation outcomes

that you're describing.

Typically that would require discouraging other uses,

such as residential that might have different economics

that lead to development of those uses

in a way to protect the desired use,

in this case the small business commercial opportunities.

Because of state law and the responsibilities

the city has in the housing element,

we're not able to discourage residential uses in this case

to preserve commercial uses.

And so I think the sort of balance of the tools

that are available is challenging in that regard.

Where the city may have additional opportunity

to work with an applicant is on a specific project,

which is not the stage we're at tonight,

which tonight is a zoning and general plan action.

In the future, there would be a project action

where there's an actual developer with a project,

impacts that are known in a timeline

where the city has the opportunity to encourage the applicant

to work with those businesses to minimize the impacts

in that specific project level situation.

And so, you know, the lack of additional tools tonight doesn't mean that further opportunities are foreclosed in the future to continue to work towards that business preservation.

Okay. And then my final question is just to ask you to remind us how long the Blossom Valley Center across the street from there, where the Safeway is, has been zoned Village Center.

Can we get back to you on that during this meeting?

Yeah, but I guess the point I want to, yes, I would like you to get back to me.

Thanks.

And just adding to the other part of the question is, you know, the specific rezonings

where we have been, where we have selected general plan mixed use village center land

land use is we looked at a lot of different ways

to rezone this, but this one would allow residential

while also keep allowing commercial.

That was one of the zoning tools that we used.

And then there are some minor modifications

that we are proposing to our existing code

where you cannot convert the existing ground flow commercial

into an ADU and lose that commercial space.

That is another example of the specific things we considered.

Thank you.

That's all my questions for now.

Great, thanks.

Staff will let us know when they've found that as we go through the questions.

Councilmember Hicks.

Councilmember Hicks.

Thank you.

Many of my questions have already been asked on the importance of small businesses and

then the one Councilmember Ramirez asked on the state bills that kind of conflict with

things we may try to do here.

So I think my remaining questions are regarding the site at 1702 Miramonte that there's been

some concern about.

I guess my question is going to be around some of the kind of conflicting or overlapping

legislation that could affect that site.

So one is my understanding, and please confirm or not, that if we were to remove it from

our housing element, there is a buffer, so it would be possible to remove it.

Is that true?

Buffer for the public in terms of meeting our required number of units in that particular

area for our housing element requirements.

Right.

I'd say that there are a number of considerations that Council should keep in mind when thinking

about removing this as it relates to the buffer consideration specifically.

I think we would be okay in terms of our housing element capacity and buffer in the event that

the Miramati site was removed.

Okay.

But, so we would be okay, but there is already, as Council Member Ramirez went over, there

is state legislation that says even if we removed it, this would be what he, Assembly

Bill 2011 and State Bill 6, the housing development would still be allowed without Council review.

We'd remove it, but in some ways it would still be there.

Not in the housing element, but available for the same type of development.

That's correct.

In one instance, potentially a ministerial approval.

It does not even come to the City Council.

It would just go through a staff level review, perhaps under Senate Bill 6, some sort of

city review process that might go to a public hearing, but in both cases requiring the city

to allow residential development.

And do those allow you to retain or preserve the existing businesses?

Or they don't, it's something that you would have to work on, but they...

Yeah, we would need to double check both laws to see if there's a required commercial

component in either case.

I think our initial sense is that there's not.

So the city may have fewer options to impose those other sensitive, qualitative components about commercial use ongoing.

And then also, would there be, if we were to remove it, would there be additional work for city staff, such as additional CEQO review?

So the simple answer is yes, there would be additional work for staff.

if council opted not to complete the actions

recommended by staff tonight.

We think that ultimately the city would need

to amend its housing element,

which is a pretty substantial effort

that's not currently planned for in our work planning

and staff resourcing.

You know, the council may remember

the initial housing element process

and how involved it is.

Much of that's required to amend the housing element as well,

engaging with the state, preparing public review drafts,

responding to public comments, conducting environmental review, and obtaining state certification.

We estimate it would take the better part of a year or more to conclude that process.

An option short of that is to not complete the action tonight if the council is interested in doing that

so that additional study could be done related to the traffic concerns

and the scope of improvements that could be made are better understood.

But in either case, there are risks to the city from not completing the action tonight,

giving the housing element deadline that's

the deadline that's in the housing element

for this program.

So let me see if I understand. We could

potentially remove those properties

not be in

a better place legally because the other

laws would allow the same type of

development but give staff a lot of

extra work.

Correct.

Is there any advantage to doing that?

To removing them? It seems

like when the

series of questions I've asked we come up with a lot of disadvantages are there any do we get in

any better place in any way I can't think of any advantage to the city relative to trying to shape

the outcomes of future resident residential development at the site by removing these from

the housing element okay there's there's an answer um okay we're gonna get to public comment pretty

shortly I I apologize I know it's been two hours since our meeting started thank you very much this

This is our public meeting process and Council will have an opportunity to finish their questions

and then I promise we will get to public comment.

Thank you.

I'm finished with my questions.

Okay.

Vice Mayor Ramos.

Thank you, Mayor.

Can I see the slide about the traffic improvements again?

I have some clarifying questions relating to that.

more of the action so I think it's a slide after this

there we go so out of all these items do any of these require any council action

today to move it forward?

No, none of them require any council action.

This is all elements that staff can do at staff level.

And we will begin, as I mentioned,

the evaluation of that first point

on the restriction of the turning movements

is something that we're gonna start in early 2026.

And again, the traffic signal observation

is something the staff will be doing.

And then again, the last point, I can't,

I don't wanna beat a dead horse,

but the public always can reach out to us,

contact Public Works for any site-specific requests,

and staff will evaluate that on a site-specific level

to see if there's a red curve request

or there's some site visibility that needs to be evaluated.

So as you evaluate the Slatki turning movements,

say that somehow you determined that the no left turns

is what is the best thing to do?

What is the timeframe on this?

I don't have a good answer for you right now

on the timeframe.

The element that we would need to include

is this public engagement process.

If we were to restrict those left turn movements

in and out of Saladke,

it would affect neighborhood circulation

and just how people get in and out of their residences.

So we want an opportunity to have the neighborhood

this if we decide to pursue it, get their feedback

before we would recommend doing kind of any further

implementation.

That piece is sort of, that's the question mark that

I don't have a good answer on timing.

But again, early 26 is when we'd start evaluating that.

We may have some kind of survey that goes out maybe

by spring to identify what that looks like,

assuming we would want to pursue this.

Again, at staff level, we would not feel that this is

something that's feasible before we'd reach out to

to the residents, because we feel that after evaluation,

if it's not feasible, we would stop there.

Okay, so if it's determined not feasible,

what are some of the other options

to improve that intersection?

I see the traffic signal, and I'm not entirely sure

what would be included in the paving project to.

We only included the element of the paving project

that if we decided to move forward

with those left turn restrictions,

we have a contractor already working in the vicinity,

and on that exact location that we can request

to do modifications to close those restrictions.

But this is what we came up with on the near term.

It's a tricky intersection to be able to do anything more

at the staff level.

And so that's the second part of what I mentioned on

if there's a study that council want us to look at,

we'd suggest that that be evaluated

as part of the capital improvement program process

because that is an actual project

that we need to get funded.

We need to bring a consultant on board.

time and effort, again, at council's direction,

we would absolutely do that,

but kind of weigh the other projects

that are being proposed for the next fiscal year

and future fiscal years as well.

All right, and this might be for the city manager.

When would our public get the first crack

of an opportunity to advocate for something in our CIP?

So I can answer that question.

Oh, great, thank you, sorry about that.

So our capital improvement program process

is sort of a, it's an annual evaluation,

but it's a full blown evaluation

of the entire program every other year.

This last spring was that.

We did a full blown evaluation.

We mapped out the next five years.

We're already in year one, so the next four years after.

But then in the spring, on the off years,

we evaluate the next fiscal year.

So the 26, 27 projects that we've identified

in the capital improvement program right now

will be evaluated at that time.

That's the work program that we would look to come to council,

identify if we wanted still to do all those projects

or if there's any new projects that we wanted to include.

And then it really is a workload balance,

which projects would need to be removed

in order to insert new projects.

And we would do that with a conversation with council.

Sorry, did you give me an actual time?

Sorry, I did not.

I think we're looking at April of 2026 to come to you

as a study session for the Cap 1 Program.

All right, thank you.

That's all my questions.

Council Member Calster.

Ed, while you're sitting there or standing there,

couple quick questions.

How many accidents have been recorded in that intersection?

I don't have that data in front of me.

We'd have to return it a later date with that information.

If you did the recirculation of that area,

Normally we send it out to 750 people.

So that would impact a neighborhood

from Maramonte all the way to Springer.

So would you expand that public notice

to a much greater population?

So you hit the nail on the head.

On this one, the 750 radius would be insufficient.

We recognize that completely.

We would have to expand the notification

right to a much wider neighborhood.

You know, likely I'm kind of thinking through

the neighbors know the streets.

Fordham Road also parallels Miramani.

So at least that far, if not further.

And then up to Barbara, again,

at least that far, if not further,

because that's the neighborhood

that really would be affected.

And here's another one.

How about, I love roundabouts,

and I've seen them in Europe.

Now this is one heck of a,

it sort of fits that criteria

because there's roads coming all around.

What a roundabout.

Whoa, okay.

Let's just keep an open mind on that.

I'm just going to, thanks everyone.

I'm just going to ask for a point of order where let's just, Council Member McAllister,

ask your question and we'll have Assistant Public Works Director Arango answer the question.

Because the longer that this continues, the longer it takes for us to get to public comment.

So I'd just like to proceed.

Thank you, everyone.

So the specific implementation of anything more significant

at that intersection would require an evaluation and a study.

And so that's where I mentioned

that we'd have to get consultant support

to kind of really look at it, implement a study,

evaluate that, and again, with that study,

there's a public engagement component as part of that too.

Identify alternatives and then bring it to the public

and the council to identify if this is the path forward.

But right now I don't have an implementation tool that could be done at that intersection.

So you do have traffic counts on this road, right?

We have traffic counts at this intersection.

I don't have them in front of me, but we do do counts.

Would you know offhand the traffic counts increasing?

I wouldn't know that offhand.

Okay.

Thank you, Ed.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Clark.

Oh, no.

Oh, you have more.

That was for Ed.

Oh, sorry, apologies.

I thought you were, thank you, done.

Okay.

Okay, so I was not here in 23,

so a lot of these decisions were made,

and so I'm taking a longer time to get up to speed

than I initially thought.

But to follow up on Council Member Hicks' thing,

the advantage of taking it out

would sort of help determine housing throughout the city

or throughout south of El Camino.

So one of the objectives for identification of this site

was to advance objectives in the housing element

related to equity and distribution

of housing development sites.

The city has a lot of identified housing opportunities

in areas north of El Camino Real, precise plan.

And in the past has seen a lot of development

along the El Camino Real corridor,

but not significant development of this type

south of El Camino Real.

And so the objective of this package of rezonings

includes in part expanding those opportunities

to areas south of El Camino Real precise plan.

So to remove this, I think the natural alternative

would likely be to find some other suitable site

or sites that meet or exceed what the rezoning objective

was for these sites at Cuesta and Miramonte.

I have to applaud the council.

They asked some great questions.

And one of the great questions was,

if it was based on buffers,

that we could remove this, the building site at 1702

and still have enough units based on our buffer,

the no net loss, is that correct?

That's correct, but the buffers generally intended

to be for instances when the council approves a project

that has fewer units than were anticipated

in the housing element to prevent the city

from tilting into a net loss scenario

that triggers a rapid rezoning process

for the city and the city council to consider.

It's not typically associated with other legislative actions

of this sort that are prescribed in the housing element.

Well, back to the question,

since it's not intended, but it could resolve the issue

of if we decide to remove it,

because we have the no net loss,

there's plenty of units in the south of El Camino.

Could the city staff says,

well, you have to reevaluate the housing element,

et cetera, et cetera,

but you're still in compliance based on the buffer,

there's enough space in there.

Cause I was reading the following your answer saying,

something about the buffer.

So if there's remove it, it doesn't affect the buffer.

Why would it affect the housing element?

Right, the buffer is just one of several considerations

related to the city's housing element compliance.

The other relates to that equity and distribution

on more qualitative dimensions,

as opposed to the quantitative buffer dimension.

And so while we may not run afoul of the buffer requirements

and no net loss considerations,

we would not have fully implemented our commitment

to the other obligations in the housing element.

Okay, so just a one follow up on that,

but if we have a buffer,

we've met the goal of the affordability.

And so if we remove it,

we still met the requirements of the housing element, correct?

Because we have those housing,

low income housing in there and et cetera.

Thank you, so I'm gonna try to answer this

from a different angle.

Oh, I like mine, go ahead.

So what Director Murdoch was trying to tell you is,

There is the numbers game.

And then there is, where are you gonna put those numbers?

These are the two things that we are constantly trying

to bring a balance to when we are trying

to get a housing element adopted and approved.

And when we tried to do it,

and right around January and February of 2023,

when we were really struggling

to have that conversation with HCD,

we were given pretty direct input from HCD

to find these back pocket sites.

And HCD being the California Department of Housing

and Community Development,

they're the state agency responsible for reviewing

and certifying city housing elements.

So these, Miramonte being one of the sites

and the Blossom Shopping Center,

were some of the sites which are identified

through that direct coordination with HCD.

So although we might have the buffer number still there

in terms of the capacity, but in terms of where we are distributing those or getting

those numbers from, that might not meet HCD's qualification criteria.

Okay.

Was the city staff initially looking at these properties or were there influences to say

do it this way?

Yeah.

All right.

So these sites were not initially identified by staff and work on the housing element.

They came up in later stages of the housing element development process in response to the review comments,

if we'll call it that, from the state and others during the process.

Okay.

Another confusion part that I had was I asked about medical,

and since we have a major hospital there, that is a,

I think anything around that area is considered a major medical center because it's a hub, I should say.

You look at Stanford and all these other ones.

And so with this medical, where's that question I asked about?

37?

No, why are medical buildings considered different than commercial ones?

And you said because they need special use, their special requirements, regulations impact the different types of commercial retail.

and then on another one you say they are part number 40 dental offices are

considered medical offices used and permitted in the CN neighborhood but

sort of says that they are a special animal type of business so does that

give us any consideration of saying okay well they're medical we want to keep

them and therefore there could be deferred exempt from including in other

parts of this housing element?

So I think you bring up an important consideration

for local zoning and including housing element

site identification.

I think the challenge here is that the city

has gone through that process to vet sites

and identified this site at 1702, 1704 Miramonte

for housing element purposes.

And so, you know, as discussed earlier,

there is a process to amend the housing element

if the council's reconsidered that site selection

criteria and process.

It's a very involved process that we haven't yet

budgeted staff time and resources for

and would take likely the better part

of the year to complete.

It would be a very involved process to revisit

the site selection to

discourage development as it were

in the housing element for a site

that has uses that the council wishes to preserve.

I was

sorry. Okay. That's a comment.

I'll save that later.

So the other one.

Let's go on this.

well let's go about saving business a small business as a small business owner I've very

concerned about redevelopment and how many small businesses were losing and when with this came up

in earlier in the year I was very concerned about losing small businesses and there's not much we

can is there more than what you put in there under the small business preservation that it actually

says we can do something because according to I mean to follow up on

Council Member Showalters over at Castro and El Camino they did when they built

we required them to put business in there we didn't give them enough parking

but we said you had to put them in there can we do that with the all these new

state laws that say can you say we require that you maintain or re-save

space or build space for these medical units to go back in?

Right.

So I think the example you noted was a project level sequence of events.

There is an opportunity to have a dialogue with applicants at the project phase that's

different than this sort of generic rezoning phase that's a legislative action.

The city would have limited opportunity in the case of development at this site to require

those kinds of actions, but the city can ask.

sometimes there are other allowances or exceptions or deviations developers seek as part of the development review process

that we would have an opportunity then to talk about small business preservation activities.

So it's hard to say specifically because the circumstances are always different and unique at the project phase,

and those are factors we can't know now at this legislative phase.

Okay. So we're going to go into a hypothetical scenario.

So if a project was allowed and it's 30 units to the acre and it's a little under an acre, I understand.

How many units are you saying proposed there?

How many units are proposed that could be built here under the scenario that you have right now?

30?

So I think the figure that's estimated in the housing element is 15 units.

and that includes some discounting for site development factors

to have a realistic capacity in the housing element.

The actual project that could come in would be evaluated

on a 30 dwelling unit per acre times the project area basis.

So with a density bonus, so you're saying 15

if you went without any allocations,

but if you went with a density bonus, you could get up to?

So I think we estimate the base density at approximately 20 units.

And so whatever density bonus that a project would qualify for would be applied to that.

And they can range from, you know, 13, 17, 22, 25.

It really depends on the amount of affordable housing that they include in the project.

And how many stories would you need to get up to 20 units?

I think that depends in part on whether there would be ground floor commercial associated with the project, you know, two or three stories potentially.

Okay. So we were talking about traffic earlier and there is a lot of young people going in there and so forth. So would they be, would the setbacks be, I like why the sidewalks. So with the setbacks, they would be closer to the sidewalk.

and one question.

Yes.

Okay.

The next question is,

would they be allowed to have limited parking?

So I'll take the parking question

while Principal Planner Pancoli

is looking up the setbacks that would apply.

This is a project site that is not located

in a high transit service area

that would have exemptions

from parking requirements under state law.

A density bonus project could utilize reduced parking standards as provided in state density bonus law.

They still would be required to include parking.

And so that's a difference from those higher transit service areas that the council has encountered previously.

So those parking standards are prescribed in state density bonus law.

And they, in some cases, would be less than the city's base code requirements for parking.

But parking would still be required.

Would parking be required for every unit or could they, some units I've seen that they're only putting in 50% or less?

Yeah, I'm not aware at this moment of any allowance to not provide parking for units of any size under state density bonus law parking standards.

Okay. And regarding the setbacks, it's 15 feet street side setback and then 25 feet from the residential adjacent sites.

So would there be an exemption where they could go closer to the street?

If a future developer wants to come and utilize the state density bonus law and waivers allowed under that, they can.

Okay, how many projects have we seen in the last two years where somebody did not use the state density bonus law?

My team is telling me one project.

That was a housing development project.

Okay.

If we wanted to bifurcate this motion and take out those properties, how would we do that, city attorney?

So I do not recommend making a motion to take out the properties tonight because I don't believe that council has the authority in of itself to just amend its housing element without going through the process that is set forth in housing element law.

what I think you could do is you could direct staff to take the steps necessary to work with

HCD to consult with HCD to see what would be required in order to amend the housing element

to take those sites out so rather than actually just removing them yourselves I think the direction

is for staff to work with us and we would just reach out to HCD and explain the situation and

figure out if we need to go through a full public process and then comment period. The law talks

about substantial amendments. I don't know if this would be considered a substantial amendment,

would require extensive process, or if HCD would advise that it was something less.

But I think really the direction should be to explore that with HCD rather than to remove it

tonight. Under that scenario, how would that work if you were able to justify it?

So I think as noted earlier, right, there would be a process staff would have to undertake

with staff work, technical analysis, environmental review, public engagement, public review and

comment and coordination with the state agency in order to effectuate that.

Also in such a scenario, we would need to come back to Council with a list of options

for Council to deprioritize to allow that work to occur.

And council may be aware that on January 27th, we're also intending to present implications

of Senate Bill 79 and Assembly Bill 130, and potentially to undertake a local alternative

planning process that would also require similar deprioritization of other work to accomplish

that.

So there are potentially more than one upcoming planning effort that the council would want

to undertake and require deprioritization of other identified work that's currently prioritized.

Okay, and I have one more like an environmental question. We have medical services, sometimes they

use chemicals, sometimes they leak into the ground. We have a gas station, sometimes they

have tanks that leak and leak into the ground. We have a creek over there. So how, is there any way

to sort of be proactive in saying to,

I guess it costs for the city,

just do chemical sampling to say,

hey, this site is already deemed a federal hazard site

or whatever you want to call it.

And this is not practical to build on it.

Has that been done in Mountain View?

I'll just start by saying,

I don't think we have any information

that suggests this site's contaminated

and I want to be clear about that on the record.

Principal Piner-Pancholi, maybe you can talk about what our typical development review process is,

areas that we know are typically contaminated from historic industrial operation

and what our process is in the project review process.

Before you start, there also was a dry cleaner in that area.

So you've got a dry cleaner, medical offices, and a gas station.

Triple play.

Yeah, so thank you for the question.

And typically during the development review process,

we do ask the applicant to provide us with the phase one study.

Depending upon the result of the phase one,

they have to provide us the phase two studies.

I am not aware of a situation where city has done

the environmental assessment of a site.

We did do a programmatic EIR for the housing element

at the time of adoption.

and we assess the conditions at that point of time.

When a specific, suppose we move forward with the rezoning,

when specific development proposals will come up

for a site-specific development,

at that point of time, more site-specific issues

are reviewed.

We are aware of areas, you know,

we know about the contamination

around the Leong properties under our MEW Superfund sites.

These are the areas which we know, you know,

to stay away from or ask them like,

hey, these are the concerns, please assess it

before you come forward with the development proposal.

So that's our typical process at this time.

Okay, thank you.

Those are my questions.

Great, thank you.

Council Member Clark.

Thanks, just briefly, a follow on earlier,

because it's, the web of state laws is ever evolving

in a very quick manner,

and I'm feeling extra dumb wearing this sweater,

So maybe I'm just not fully grasping.

Maybe something didn't click before tonight

or maybe I just didn't fully grasp it.

So it sounds like based on your earlier answer

to Council Member Ramirez's question,

something that I didn't fully recognize until tonight

is that existing or recent state laws,

what's proposed tonight is to rezone this to mixed use.

One, not full residential

because we wanted to make sure that we were able

to preserve the medical offices

and they wouldn't be under mixed use.

They're allowed, they're not non-conforming.

But the rezoning that we had previously agreed

to the state through the housing element on

was 30 units per acre.

It sounds like since then, state law has evolved

to already allow 30 units per acre residential

on this site regardless of what we do tonight.

Is that correct?

Just looking at the statutes, I mean, it was roughly the same time.

So Assembly Bill 2011 was enacted in 2022.

So it's all converging in roughly the same span of time.

But essentially, if we were to rezone the property tonight, we're not increasing the density that is already allowed under state law.

That's something I didn't fully grasp.

Correct.

Okay, so someone can do a ministerial application today for 30 units per acre residential on that site, and they can wipe out the dentist's office today if they wanted to, if they wanted to do a full residential application at 30 units per acre.

I think that's likely correct.

So then I think I'm guessing there's a benefit to us of applying the general mixed use zoning to that site because presumably we have objective standards and other things that would apply if someone were to come forward with a, there's no development proposal today.

But if someone came forward with a development proposal under general mixed use, they can't just go through the ministerial process with no objective standards.

They would have to go through our process with a general mixed use zoning and all of our objective standards would apply.

Correct.

Okay, so it sounds to me like, unlike what I thought before tonight, there's really no, if I lived 500 feet from this, there's really no advantage to me, there's an advantage to me of having this zoned as mixed use because now objective standards apply.

Whereas if we just do nothing tonight and let state law apply, someone can just go through a ministerial process without a public hearing, presumably, and wipe out everything and build a 30-unit-to-the-acre residential complex with no parking.

Because I think right now the way state law stands for residential project, you don't have to apply parking.

It might depend on the transportation aspect of it.

I'd say generally yes.

I would need to follow up more specifically on the point of parking under AB 2011 and SB 6.

And then just clarifying in both cases, projects would be eligible for state density bonus law,

which could cause deviation from objective standards that the city has adopted.

I see.

And then the final question is, so let's say we, if we wanted to defer this to do additional study of traffic and other things,

At the end of the day, that's not going to matter because 30 units per acre is already allowed without any traffic improvements or anything.

So that's not to say we shouldn't or maybe we'll direct staff to study additional things here.

But delaying this really, really doesn't materially change anything other than putting us in a really bad position with the state.

because previously our housing omit was denied

and the reason why some folks may have seen

15 story building proposals come to us

was because the state denied our housing omit

and one of the key aspects that they noted

was that we didn't zone for enough housing

south of El Camino.

And that's what we ended up having to fix

by finding some additional sites

working with the state like this.

Yes, I think I generally agree

with that characterization.

Okay.

Okay. And then just to refresh my knowledge, the reason we were able to require Rose Market and other businesses to stay at Castro and El Camino was because that was a gatekeeper project, I think, which basically allows us to require anything and everything we want.

And in this case, there's not going to be a gatekeeper process for this.

Yeah, I think that likely was a gatekeeper project.

I just didn't want to confirm that earlier.

I would need to double check, but I think it likely was,

and that does give the city significant additional discretion.

Okay, thanks.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks to colleagues for all their great questions.

I'm sorry, I have a couple.

So just a quick question.

So looking at the recommendation,

but also hearing from our Assistant Public Works Director.

So in your presentation, you said there were the near-term solutions

and the long-term strategy.

So those are just staff FYIs.

We don't need to add anything

into the recommendation tonight.

It sounds like colleagues may be interested

and I'm just wondering procedurally

how that might need to go forward.

Thank you for the question.

That is correct.

On the near-term elements that we had identified,

there's no council direction needed.

We're gonna be starting that effort.

Okay, great.

On the long-term strategies we've identified,

we're suggesting that we come back to council

in the spring.

Again, in April of 2026,

we're going to start doing our first study session,

or I think we're just going to have one study session

with council to evaluate the capital improvement program.

At the time, the public can weigh in on projects as council,

and we have an opportunity to evaluate projects

and balance what the priorities are.

And can you refresh our memories, please,

on how we share with the public

that these projects are going on?

So, like, for example, the Miramonte paving project,

that's on our Public Works website, I believe,

and do we keep a status there?

I just want to highlight for the community that may be interested in what's going on,

if there's ways that they can kind of keep track on what the council will be doing.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you for identifying that.

We recently updated the Public Works Project Status webpage.

Okay, Project Status website.

Okay, Public Works Project Status website.

Yes, we call it the Featured Capital Projects or Featured Projects list.

We've identified approximately 25 projects that are,

we think are interest to the community,

to council on kind of ongoing status.

The Miramonte paving project is on that webpage,

as identified one of the projects with the information

of what it is, the current status,

when it will be completed, and then a contact,

which is most important if there's a contact.

We actually put the project manager's contact information

right on there so the public can reach right directly out and get a hold of who's actually

working on the project. Great. Thank you so much. That's my questions for you. Okay. Turning to

staff. So I just had a quick follow-up. I think Council Member Callister asked an outreach question

and I know there was one in the council questions. Can staff refresh our memory? So we do the

750 foot radius of potential project sites. But this was also part of the housing element. So

maybe you can share what the outreach was like. Are we reaching out directly to our neighborhood

associations? I'd really like to understand better. Thank you. Yeah, so during the housing

element process, we sent out the mailers to the property owners and the tenants. In addition to

that, we also reached out to all the neighborhood associations leaders so that we can get more

outreach to those folks and also reached out to all the interested parties who had signed up

as we went through a very long housing element update process. Whoever signed up, we sent out

email notifications to those parties as well. Right. However, some of these areas were added

later and so did we still do that process?

Yes, we did.

Right before the, you know, when we were coming back to the decision makers for adoption,

we did send out notices to all these parties that I just listed.

Okay.

And if staff, if council has feedback on expanding the radius, is that something that we can

discuss tonight or we can give direction on or anything?

I would defer to the city attorney.

I mean, that's not an agendized action item.

I think we could hear some general feedback on that

that might shape further action in the future.

Okay.

Agreed.

You could give general feedback on that.

Okay.

We've got,

council's received quite a bit of public comment

about increasing the radius area

or letting people know in a greater region,

especially those that may not,

may be affected,

but not necessarily within that.

So just trying to understand how to address that.

So we would have to, can you just clarify, we'd need to do that as a future agenda item

or just as general feedback, sorry.

I think we can answer questions about the process and hear if there are individual thoughts

on modifying it.

I don't think the council could give direction on that item tonight.

Okay.

So I think for staff too, so I have questions on the small business preservation.

This one is actually related to the, an area we haven't been talking about yet, which is

the Evandale precise plan.

So I'm trying to understand the recommendation from staff.

On page 10, we talk about, so the small business preservation, the three steps that we're trying

to do.

Kind of in summary, you know, we're looking at site selection, business development, small

own program, and just how difficulty small business preservation is.

I think colleagues ask questions related to that.

However, when we look down underneath the alternative zoning, it talks about how, you know, we looked at preventing small business displacement, that there are these businesses on Leong that serve the community that we could not include, but you still want them included.

So I don't really understand why we talk about how difficult small business preservation is, but we have an opportunity to preserve them.

And I understand it's a citywide issue, but I just was because there's also a statement about how, you know, we would still be able to meet our obligation and just trying to understand, you know, people are going to need dentists, dry cleaners, just trying to understand.

Thank you.

Of course, I think you've hit on a really difficult policy question and trade-off that the council has to make.

All factors considered in balancing the significant importance and obligations the city has for housing development,

the staff recommendation was to shift the balance in favor of housing production,

but flag this as an opportunity for council in light of that specific interest on this item related to small business preservation,

that there is an option if council finds the balance to be someplace different than staff,

to withhold the rezoning on those parcels that are identified.

Well, my understanding of all the parcels we're talking about for this item,

we can rezone them and we can try to create opportunities

for the small businesses to come back.

But unlike the gatekeeper process,

there's kind of no measure other than perhaps applicant goodwill

to try to bring them back.

Am I understanding that issue correctly?

Yes, I think that's fair.

Okay.

All right.

Great, thank you.

All right, well, thank you for letting me ask my questions.

It looks like we have another question from Council Member Ramirez.

Is that right?

Thank you, Mayor.

A quick follow-up.

I think the mayor asked an important question about Liang,

and I wanted to see if staff had a chance to evaluate

whether AB 2011 or SB 6 also applies to that corridor and those properties.

Yeah, so we lived into that question,

and the Leong sites would probably not qualify under the AB 2011,

but they may qualify under SB 6.

Okay, thank you.

That's helpful.

All right.

Thank you for everyone's patience.

We're going to move on to, that concludes the questions from Council,

and we will move on to public comment.

So if you're a member of the public joining us in person, we'll start with in-person public comment first, and then we'll move on to virtual.

If we have anyone virtual or in person that still has not submitted their blue speaker card or raised their hand, please do so now.

Given the volume of speakers we have, we're going to do two minutes, but we have someone who's made special arrangement to speak on behalf of, I believe, quite a few community members.

And that's Kristen Lenart, who will have 10 minutes.

So please come to the podium.

You'll start our public comment.

You'll see a 10-minute timer here, and then it will chime.

And then I'll just ask folks if they don't mind starting to queue up for after Kristen,

which is Wendy Sarathy.

Apologies if I'm mispronouncing.

Ella Lenart, Lana Schuchman, Eric Knopf.

Pull up your presentation now.

Okay, great.

All right.

And you can just say next slide if you'd like and staff can work with you to do that.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Thanks so much.

There was some new news tonight that we were just talking about.

I do, it does feel partial builders remedy-esque if there's no controls and there's no choice.

And but anyway, I I wanted to basically say thank you for everyone here today, because

the questions are amazing.

The attention you're giving this to this topic is really important.

I do think that in this presentation, we do have a proposal that seems to meet a bunch

of the needs of the people protecting the city from noncompliance and negative consequences,

although in light, I'm not sure.

number of affordable units that we're trying to maintain I think that's an important concept

and protect the safety of our children at this location and protect local establishments that

that our community anchors for us. Next slide.

Mountain View is changing and I think that if we well if we all work together we can grow together

I think more housing does mean that the costs will get go down and we need this and changing zoning

laws is an effective way to do this and I want to say that change can be good but inclusion is key

and thanks to the council for including us in the decision making because you guys all have a hard

job. Next slide please. So I think we want to focus this is the conversation in this presentation

on the intersection of Slad Key, Maramonte, and Coesta. The data that we have in this proposal

shows that approving the housing element as is actually increases the risk of non-compliance

and triggering the no net loss law and potentially SB 35 and it adds more risk of not getting

houses built.

So I'd like to share that data with you.

Our specific ask is to not rezone at Coesta Slatky Maramonte intersection as it is not

a viable spot and shift the units to what is a viable spot.

Next slide.

The four main issues that we have are the dangerous traffic and safety of our children.

It's very dangerous already to walk and bike.

And there are certain physical characteristics that cannot be changed.

And a lot of them were spoken about tonight, so I don't need to mention that.

But more housing here will create more cars and more conflict points and greater risk

to the safe and health of our kids and community.

The businesses, they're not just local businesses.

I mean, they are local businesses, but they're women-owned, minority-owned.

They have like 300-plus clients in the neighborhood.

And the owner has no intent to sell, and they're discussing 10-year leases.

And so in addition to the fact that under construction, they would be permanently displaced,

and that can be discussed more.

The outreach did not match the significance of the scale of this change.

Notices were went out.

We mentioned 750 feet.

I live exactly nine feet away, and I never received one.

And half of our working group lives within a five-house radius, and half of them did not get it.

We have not been included in this conversation.

We have a petition.

We have almost, we have 1,134 people who have signed it in the last four weeks, strongly opposing this,

having lots of concerns because we've lived with the safety issues,

and we've lived with the accidents and the almost accidents.

We know people who died.

We know people who have gotten hurt.

Like it is a very, very systemic serious issue that we need to take seriously and hear us

representing 1100 people who are trying to speak up and say, please, please hear us.

Next slide, please.

Of the 27 comments written, 23 were on traffic, parking, safety, the two lane streets, worried

about overflow parking, slower emergency response, not wanting to let their kids walk alone, walk

and cross streets, not bike. My own children have expressed fears of biking when there's lots of

parked cars where they're pulling out and crossing the road and crossing Cuesta and it's extremely

dangerous. Next slide, please. I think I want to explain a few reasons why this is a huge

impact. And they are physical, inherent issues or situations of where we are located. Here you can

see Maramonte and Grant, and you can see that it's a major thoroughfare between 280 and all the way

up to the 101 and 85. So they're huge thoroughfares. And having change on Maramonte has more impact

than on Grant. Grant is a four-lane road. When we go north of Coesta, there is going to be the road

diet which will push cars even more into a more narrow corridor that is already struggling with

congestion and safety. Next slide please. This is where the children are traveling. The circles

represent schools. There's five major schools. On the west side of Miramonte is where we go down to

the schools down in red. On the other side of the street they go north. There's almost 2,000

children that travel down here and back and forth, either biking, walking, or in cars.

And this shows that this is a very particular intersection with very, very high traffic,

coupled with the issues on the traffic patterns.

It took 17 minutes to drive from Coesta to Covington, 32-car backup, during school time.

And so there are some very serious patterns that make biking along all of those cars also

very unsafe.

and when you have St. Francis, I don't know if you've been, but if you go to Safeway at around

3 p.m., you'll see about one or 200 cars picking up their kids and about two or 300 kids crossing

the street, not in a crosswalk. This is a over, it's over trafficked and there's people and lots

of people walking in traffic and you know what I'm saying. Next slide, please.

We've talked about this before. Sladky is the main ingress and egress. The stars represent huge

amounts of traffic flow for children, so the traffic flow is also on top of the cars. And

we've talked a lot about this, so I'm going to say next slide. Okay, this is where I think it

also gets especially interesting. So essentially at the 1702 site there are physical constraints.

The site is small and oddly shaped and about point it's exactly 0.56 acres. It's not 0.75 acres.

The housing element is incorrect and it has missed represented the number of units by nine units.

If you look at this chart if you look at blue that represents the number of units for the density

bonus. And at this site, there's 15 moderate income. That is a ratio of 15 of 26. That's a

point, that's a 58% ratio of affordable housing to the total number of units. If you don't have the

dynasty bonus, it's 15 of 17. You can see the red lines there, which is the error in the housing

element, suggesting that you could have more units than you can. The yellow is 100% affordable,

so you can likely ignore that because that may not be a possibility. Next slide, please.

I went and I looked at all of the sites.

I went, looked at everything in the housing element and all of the sites from the other proposals,

which is Grant Road, Grant Shopping Center, Knob Hill.

I looked at all of the dwelling units per acre and allowed,

and I looked at the assessment site and looked at the exact sizes.

So we know now, how are they going to meet the 104able units?

If you look at the small blue box, you could add up all those numbers, you get to about 105.

What happens?

When you, the first and the fourth column of data, I have moderate income units assigned to that.

And what happens is you are changing the ratio of the number of units at that site to the total number of units possible.

And why that's a problem is because it doesn't net out or pencil out economically.

It's not as feasible to build on something when you have such a high percentage of that.

where you have more units possible, you can distribute these units to sites and have almost

no impact into that ROI that a developer would look at when they're looking at if this is even

financial. So because we care about the 105 units, we care about the 100 units, we understand that

that is something that we have to meet, although maybe there's some buffer. Moving the units gives

you a higher level of assurity that these units will actually get built and you are preventing

the net, the no net loss law and SB 75. Next slide, please. Our ask is to move these units

to the other sites without, and when we do it this way, it doesn't require rezoning.

You're not destroying the financial model for the developers. And it gives us the best

chance of being built. Next slide please. We're asking the City Council to see these issues from

a more holistic view. Every decision has an impact. Nairian Maramonte may help us with bikers. That's

great but it's going to shrink these roads that cannot handle it. It's squeezing the balloon. You

can cut off not let us turn left onto Slotkey but you're going to funnel traffic to Fordham. So

800 or 900 people are the people who are saying that we have a terrible problem here. Please hear

us. Please don't zone here. Take this intersection off the list and find alternatives. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Next speaker is Wendy Charthe. Wendy, if you could come up, it's your

turn to speak. All right. Thank you. We have a long list of other people who are going to speak.

Wendy, Ella, Lana, Eric, Joshua, Kim.

You'll have two minutes.

It's going to go really fast, so if you don't mind queuing.

Thank you.

City Council members, my name is Wendy Sarathy.

I've lived in Varsity Park for 22 years, and my children attended the local schools.

You have the opportunity here to help avoid a potentially tragic traffic accident.

The rezoning and potential housing complex will exacerbate existing well-known safety concerns for children going to school at the 1702 Miramonte.

We are a walking and a biking neighborhood packed with students and families.

All the students in Varsity Park travel the same direction to school south.

They all have to cross both Sladky and Cuesta, a major commuting thoroughfare.

This parcel enters and exits into those very streets, Sladkia and Cuesta,

directly into the pathways of these children traveling to schools.

The other sites on our list do not have that quality.

They don't have so many children passing these major thoroughfares.

At our recent neighborhood meeting, almost every person there had a story of someone in their family being hit.

Traffic accidents, close calls.

These close calls aren't recorded anywhere.

We are sharing them with you so you can understand the scope of this problem.

These problems cannot be solved by public works.

It's the layout of the streets.

It's the fact that we have so many people living so close together.

We have so many commuters.

There are cars everywhere.

Our neighborhoods were not built for this kind of density.

To add more density is going to exacerbate these problems.

The location of the schools,

the fact that this property is steps from a major intersection, the strange layout of the parcel, which was incorrectly, the size was incorrectly calculated.

We'd like you to consider, on the one hand, moving these units in South El Camino so that you're meeting the state's needs.

move these units somewhere else on the South El Camero area and or reduce the

height reduce the height where you can thank you thank you yes and everyone if

you can just please speak thanks everyone if you could speak directly

into the mic because there's many people watching virtually and they can't hear

you if you don't speak directly into the mic also the more the clapping then we

pause. So if you maybe want to just like put your hands up and then we can, that way people can keep

going and I can say the names, then I will know that you are in support. Thank you. Go ahead, Ella.

Hello, City Council. My name is Ella Lennert and I'm a freshman in college. My family and I moved

into our house, the house directly next to the small businesses five years ago. Throughout this

time, I've experienced these streets from my middle school years during COVID to my last days

in high school at Mountain View High.

I have been biking to school for the majority of those years

up until two years ago when I started driving.

These streets have become more and more busy

and more and more dangerous.

Implementing a multi-story building

would make biking more dangerous for children

on an already packed street.

The proposed solution of closing off the turns

onto Slad Key and Miramonte does not solve the issue

of having too many cars parked on the road

in overpopulation that we already have.

Finally, this decision single-handedly

decides whether my family and I get any natural sunlight in our home during large parts of the

day. All in all, adding this high-rise will exacerbate the issue. It would make it even

more hazardous for kids biking on our street. I'm asking you, on a personal level, if you would

consider all the other spaces to put the high-rise that would not endanger kids and students on their

way to and from school. Thank you. Thank you. Eric. Oh, I love it. See, yes, great. Thank you.

Eric, then Eric Knopf, Joshua Dillon, Kim Layden, Andreas, Lucas, Camila.

Are you Eric?

I'm Eric.

Okay.

So, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, thanks for hearing us out.

Quick about me, my name's Eric Knopf.

I've lived on Sladky Avenue for over 20 years.

I live six houses down from the site in question.

I'm an engineer at Erickson 3D CAD on a daily basis,

and so I'm experiencing creating concrete visual representations from abstract specifications.

I find visualizations helpful in distilling and communication written proposals in a more understandable way.

I created the following images to satisfy my own interest of what a six-story building would look like on the site,

which is allowed by the current zoning requirements,

and found the result fully out of scale

with the neighborhood and surrounding area.

Oh man, look at that.

In addition to all the concerns highlighted yet this evening,

this parcel seems like an exceptionally challenging site

for such a large building,

given as essentially on a peninsula of land

and jetting out into a four-lane intersection.

In the unique way, Questet jogs over to meet Sladkey,

pigeons off the front edge of the building,

which even today creates a difficult traffic situation

by second up cars at the light to block the Sladkey exit.

This leaves the neighborhood streets as a main entry and exit point into this parcel.

Furthermore, current commercial parking on the site

resulted in an overflow of visitor car parking stretching down the length of Sladkey.

Adding additional residences and their respective vehicles in this area

would only make this problem worse.

Bottom line, if this image were built,

it would seem to embody an oversight in zoning,

which is ideally intended to prevent.

We asked just that there be a comprehensive study

to address the concerns that are being brought out

this evening, thank you.

Thank you, Lana.

Good evening, my name is Dr. Lana Schuckman

and I've operated my general dentistry practice

at this location for over 13 years.

We provide care to thousands of children, adults, seniors,

and patients with medical and mobility challenges,

many of whom live within walking distance.

Our practice also supports nearby schools

and community programs.

My team includes four longstanding full-time female employees,

nearly all of whom grew up or attended school

in this neighborhood,

and rely on these jobs to support their families.

Like the other six dental practices, I've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in specialized improvements that cannot be relocated or recovered.

This site has housed dental and medical practices for more than 40 years, including throughout the pandemic, when we remained open to provide essential care.

These offices are not interchangeable commercial spaces.

They're long-standing healthcare providers that are deeply embedded in this neighborhood.

I only heard about the rezoning a few weeks ago from a neighbor.

Rezoning would incentivize redevelopment, likely triggering the sale and demolition of the property.

Construction timelines would force all six dental practices to permanently relocate once our leases expire.

Given the high cost of the building, building out the dental space and the already elevated

rents in Mountain View, these practices would not return, even if allowed.

Many would be pushed to more affordable cities, reducing local access to care.

Many long-time patients, especially seniors, have already expressed that they will be unable

to continue care if we are forced to move further away.

healthcare practices like mine operate on thin margins and we can't absorb the dramatic rent

increases that's thank you okay joshua dylan kim layton andres lucas hi i'm josh uh thank you for

your time council members um i just wanted to kind of respond to some of the dialogue that we've had

tonight um so ab11 is actually stuck in senate housing committee still uh it is a troubled bill

and we don't know the outcome of it.

SB 79 is a transit-oriented housing bill

that doesn't apply to this area.

SB 6 does not create a ministerial process

as was indicated here.

What's the point I'm trying to make?

The point is clearly this decision is being made in haste.

You don't have all the information.

We don't have all the information.

Let's work together to find a way

where we can actually have a sustainable solution here.

But let's not make choices under duress or threat.

That's how bad choices are made, and those bad choices will affect the fabric of this community for decades, maybe a hundred years.

In fact, I moved to Mountain View with my family, who, by the way, have probably the youngest members in the audience here, Ari and Zoe, give a wave,

who would obviously be affected by walking to Block, Springer, and the schools nearby.

Look, this community is charming, and it's charming because of its downtown, which was thoughtfully planned.

It's charming because of the community within which we live, because it was thoughtfully planned.

That's what your job is to do.

Your job is to provide for the community, to keep us safe, to represent us.

You have 1,000 people who, within four weeks, have been surprised, blindsided, and are coming and telling you that this is a decision being made in haste.

You know it's being made in haste.

You know as well as I know.

let's find a way to actually do this thoughtfully and do this right so we can accommodate the needs of the state,

the needs that you have, and the needs we have.

We don't have to just make a rash decision.

Thank you.

Thank you. Remember, jazz hands.

So next up we have Kim.

And then following Kim we have Andres and Lucas.

Hi, my name is Kim Layden.

I have been a resident of Varsity Park for over 10 years, and I raised my son there.

I'm worried that my neighbors are going to be mad at me, but I want to speak in favor of the

rezoning. I don't know as much detail as a lot of my neighbors do, and maybe it's not the right

time to do it, and the laws and that sort of thing. But what I do want to say is that

I have a kid who tells me he's never going to be able to afford to live around here if I don't

give him my house. And we are in a housing crisis in California. And I think, I want you to know

that some of the neighbors in my area are cognizant of that, and we don't want to stop

housing development in our neighborhood. California, as I think everyone knows, needs three and a half

million more housing units built. The Bay Area needs another 700,000 housing units built.

And we all say we're pro-housing, but then when someone wants to build housing in our neighborhood,

there's always reasons that ours isn't the right neighborhood. And that happens in every

neighborhood every time we try to build housing. And that's part of the reason that housing is so

incredibly unaffordable and so hard for people to get. So it breaks my heart that our children

aren't going to be able to afford to live here. Nurses, teachers, firefighters, the people who