Two, one. We are live. Thank you.

Good evening, welcome to the December 18th, 2025 rental housing committee regular meeting.

This meeting will be called to order at 6.02 PM.

I see everyone is present except for the members that's his love.

So we will move on to the consent calendar.

Consent calendar.

These items will be approved by one motion unless any member of the committee wishes

to remove an item.

The purpose is for the committee to efficiently and quickly consider routine or administrative

business items with one motion.

Public comment will occur after discussion.

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

Seeing none, I now invite public comment on the consent calendar.

Any member of the public wishing to provide a virtual comment on this item, please click

the raise hand button in Zoom or press star nine on your phone.

Seeing none, I will bring this item back to the committee for discussion.

A motion has been made by Member Cox, seconded by alternate Bulch.

Member Cox, would you like to state the motion?

Yes, I am making a motion to accept.

Hang on.

Uh-oh.

What's wrong?

Oh, okay.

Thank you.

the

Thank you.

Thank you.

the

the

the

Hang on.

Echo.

All right, Robert, would you like to state the motion?

Yes.

Hang on, there's no audio going into Zoom.

I still would like to state it.

Okay, yes, I want to move the consent calendar,

including item 3.1,

minutes for the November 20, 2025 RHC meeting.

All right, that has been seconded by alternate member Bulch.

Move on to the vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Now we are moving to item four, oral communications.

We will now open a meeting for oral communications from the public.

This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the committee on any matter not on the agenda.

Speakers are allowed to speak on anything that is not on the agenda for three minutes.

Said law prohibits the committee from acting on anything said during non-agenda items.

Would any member of the public like to provide comments?

If so, online, please click raised hand or start on your phone.

And if you're in person, please provide a speaker card.

Seeing none, we will move to item five, appeal hearing.

5.1 is...

The appeal for hearing officer's decision regarding petition numbers 24, 25, 42, and 24, 25, 43.

The Rental Housing Committee, in hearing the appeal, is acting in a quasi-judicial fashion

and will conduct the hearing in accordance with those standards,

staff will detail the appeal hearing process in their presentation.

Before we get started, RHC members are required to disclose any communications

that they have had with any of the parties to the petition or the party's representatives

and the substance of those communications since the date that the petition was filed.

The decision of the RHC is to be based on the record presented to the hearing officer.

Information disclosed to an RHC member that is not part of the record is not to be considered in the hearing.

Do any members have ex parte communications

that need to be disclosed?

Seeing none, we will now proceed with public comment

for agenda item 5.1.

Are there members of the public who are not parties

to the petition who would like to speak?

Seeing none, we will move on to the hearing.

And please be aware that we do have translations

this evening, so please speak slowly.

Thank you.

all right are we ready to go with the translation yes thank you okay thanks all right um so

this item is to consider the tentative appeal decision and either accept the tentative appeal

decision or modify the tentative appeal decision with instructions to staff citing appropriate

evidence in the record to support any modifications.

Again.

Can anyone from city staff hear me?

Thank you.

He's kicking me out.

And I keep...

The meeting.

One moment, please.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, I apologize for the technical difficulties.

We are good to go.

Okay, thanks.

Okay, so we are going to move swiftly through the RHC role and the process.

You guys have heard this on a number of occasions now, but the options to hear and decide an

appeal include a closed record which is based only on the facts in the decision that was

provided by the hearing officer second would be an open record or de novo

where and you would follow a formal hearing process to potentially accept new facts before

deciding and finally if needed you could do a remand um where by you would follow the

closed record procedures but the rhc could identify specific issues that would be sent

back to the hearing officer for re-examination next slide

um so for questions of law the rental housing committee must exercise its independent judgment

whereas for questions of fact the rental housing committee should determine whether each appealed

element of the hearing officer's decision is supported by substantial evidence. This

does not mean that you should re-weigh evidence or re-litigate issues. Rather, you should

look at the record submitted to the hearing officer, but you do not need to come to the

same conclusions as the hearing officer. So at this time, we're not recommending a

de novo hearing, the existing evidence is sufficient, and the existing record demonstrates

adequate review and ample opportunities for the parties to present relevant evidence.

So for that reason, the decision on appeal is based on the hearing record, and you all

should ensure that you neither hear nor find facts in addition to those presented to the

hearing officer. So as a reminder, the petition that is filed by the tenant in this case defines

the scope of the hearing officer's decision and then the issues that are raised on appeal,

in this case by the landlord, limit the scope of the rental housing committee's review on

appeal so the schedule for the appeal hearing we will provide 10 minutes to the appellant landlord

to make their argument and then up to 20 minutes for the respondent tenant in this case because

translations are required followed by a five minute rebuttal for the landlord and up to 10

minute rebuttal for the um i think that should say respondent tenant um and then you uh the rdc

will have opportunity to ask questions of staff of the appellants and of the respondents um

so um before i get to the appealed elements um this the petition here raised two issues um the

The first was an unlawful rent issue where the tenant alleged that the landlord had charged

them 175 fee for the petitioner's alleged refusal to allow pest control to enter the

affected unit to complete an inspection, as well as a habitability issue related to secondhand

smoke entering the affected unit from a neighboring unit on the property.

The hearing officer's decision concluded that the petitioner tenants had met their burden

of proof on both of these issues and ordered a 20% reduction for the one month period from

November 6, 2024 through December 6, 2044, and then a 100% rent reduction for the period

from December 7, 2024 through December 8, 2025.

And also during that same period that the landlord was out of substantial compliance

with the CSFRA because of the secondhand smoke issue.

There was a rent increase that went into effect.

So the hearing officer's decision ordered

that that rent increase that went into effect

was invalid because the landlord

was out of substantial compliance

and therefore rolled back the rent

to $2,195 per month,

which is the lawful rent

for the affected unit at this time.

So the hearing, so the landlord's appeal raises one issue, which is specifically summarized in their appeal as systemic favoritism and bias for the tenant and against the landlord.

specifically that the hearing officer accepted numerous statements from the tenant as fact

and used them as the basis for their decision while at the same time not accepting statements

made by the landlord and therefore the hearing officer erred in their decision on the two petitions

the tentative appeal decision recommends upholding or affirming the hearing officer's decision in its

entirety the appellant fails to satisfy the burden necessary to demonstrate actual bias

or partiality on the face on the part of the hearing officer the

the appellant puts forth no facts or specific statements that were made by the hearing officer

that would demonstrate bias or favoritism toward the tenant in addition in reviewing the recording

of the hearing the hearing officer did not make any sort of inappropriate bias or partial comments

or statements toward either of the parties, and she generally followed the requirements

of the CSFRA and the regulations in her conduct of the hearing.

Moreover, the hearing officer has discretion to admit or omit evidence, and in fact, it

is a central part of the hearing officer's responsibilities and duties to determine whether

evidence is credible or relevant and whether to admit it or omit it from the basis for

her decision.

And so there's nothing improper about her weighing of the evidence and determining which

parts of that evidence were or were not credible and are relevant to the petition issues.

And then finally, the hearing decision itself is reasoned and fair, and each of the hearing

officers' conclusions is supported by findings of facts and substantial evidence in the record.

So fiscal impact, any decision by the Rental Housing Committee on appeal

could potentially lead to litigation, which would have fiscal impacts for the program.

However, one purpose of having an appeal process to the rental housing committee is to ensure

that hearing decisions are legally defensible, and so the appeal process to the rental housing

committee in general reduces overall risk of legal liability and legal expenses.

The staff's recommendation is to consider the tentative appeal decision and either accept

the tentative appeal decision or modify the tentative appeal decision with instructions

citing to appropriate evidence in the record to support any modifications.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

We will now move on to the appellant landlord.

PENAL LANDLORD, PLEASE RAISE HAND ON ZOOM IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK AND STAFF WILL

PROMOTE YOU TO BE A PANELIST. STEVE, YOU WILL HAVE 10 MINUTES TO

SPEAK. YOUR TIMER WILL BE ON SCREEN.

All right. Thank you.

One moment while the timer resets.

I'm sorry.

I'm just resetting the timer.

Let me know.

I will. Thank you.

Control room. Are you able to change the view?

Is that better?

Whenever you're ready.

All right.

Thank you.

I'm not here to persuade, argue my case.

I'm here to point out what I believe is systemic bias and favoritism towards tenants,

not just in this case, but in all cases since 2016.

And I will use this case to point out just a few.

And I'm going to reference the original hearing decision, not the appeal decision.

So I'm just going to start by picking out things that I'd like you all to consider as, you know, is it biased towards a tenant or is the landlord getting a fair share, you know, equal opportunity for the same conversation, same evidence, if you will, because apparently speaking is evidence.

So on page nine of the original hearing, number three, Mr. Wang submitted a representative authorization form dated August 12, 2025, designating Mrs. Wang as his representative for the proposed purpose of this case.

So August 12, 2025 is when the representative document was presented.

it. The petition was filed March 25th, so five months earlier. Within a week or two of me receiving

this information, I contacted the city and said, hey, CSFRA allows a tenant to file a petition.

This petition was not filed by a tenant. I asked that you send it back and get it done properly.

That was ignored for five months. And then in the pre-herring meeting, it came up, and I either had

to jump through hoops and motions and another hearing and this and that and I said no it's a

waste of time I don't care and at that point I think it went back to the city and the city said

oh we really should get this documented correctly and that's when that got cleared off. I can't I

don't personally have any experience or examples of me filling out forms wrong and it being ignored

but I can pretty much say with a lot of certainty that I doubt that that would have flown from a landlord point of view.

Page 14, item B in the discussion.

Down at the bottom, it talks about Mrs. Wang as the petitioner, Mr. Wang as a roommate.

Let me start at the beginning of that sentence.

it's it's actually talking about this this issue and at the end of it the hearing officer says

that they are going to consider it harmless given mrs wayne's lack of expertise in legal matters

her use of english as a second language and the clarity of her intent well i've been in a few of

these and listened to a few, and I've never seen a landlord being offered any grace because

of their lack of expertise in legal matters.

And I'm quoting exactly what the hearing officer said.

And later on in the hearing officer's opinions and assumptions, she mentions that a letter

that we submitted to the tenant who was smoking was filled with typographical errors and grammar

errors, but never was it asked, hey, did a person who English was their second language write this?

No, they just ripped on the letter. Further down on that same page, the petitioner bears the burden

of proving claims raised in the case by the preponderance of evidence. There was very little,

if any evidence provided by the petitioner other than speaking, other than words.

And those words were considered evidence, and my words were discarded and discounted.

And an example of that is the date December 7th was used in calculating the refund here.

and Mr. Wang vacated the effective unit.

This is page 19.

December 7th through January 8th

due to nuisance of smoking, blah, blah, blah.

This was just words provided by Mrs. Wang

and there was no evidence provided that was not asked.

Mr. Wang never showed up, never presented any,

he never wrote I vacated the unit to present his evidence,

that would have been some evidence,

that the landlord was never told

that Mr. Wang was vacating the unit.

But the hearing officer decided that that apparently

is evidence and they were gonna believe it.

Page 20, there is the second or third paragraph down,

holds just a variety of opinions and assumptions.

The property management waited to do anything significant

until Mrs. Wang contacted Mr. Olson from the city.

I told during the hearing what we did,

and that was discounted.

My words discounted, tenants' words not discounted.

Page 21, the hearing officer says, the City Council's position on secondhand smoke is

detrimental to the public health and welfare.

It would have been reasonable for the respondent to commence taking effective steps to resolve

this issue within one week of that time, which would have been November 6th.

I don't know what gives if the city council she references the city council a few times

if the city council felt that there should be a number of days they would have mentioned it

where where it needed to be addressed

Yeah, on page 24 under the conclusion, the petitioner has met the burden of proof by a

Perponderance of evidence, again, I saw no evidence.

All I did was hear words, the same as I heard my own words,

but apparently the tenant's words are worth more than the landlord's words.

And this is my point, the systemic favoritism to tenants in this petition process

process that has taken place since the onset of the CSFRA. And this should not be news to you

guys. You guys got a staff report on September 25th on the annual update of rent stabilization

petition programs. So since the inception, 95% of the petitions have been

decided in favor of the tenants.

That is a statistical anomaly, and you should all understand that.

There should be a 50-50 opportunity at the beginning of every petition that party A or

party B should be believed or proven one way or the other.

But since the inception of these petitions, 95 percent have been determined in favor of the tenant.

It's systemic favoritism.

And in a previous petition, I had a quarter-inch screw missing from a stove, and this same hearing officer felt that that was grounds for lack of use and inhabitability.

Some of you were involved with that and questioned it, but at that point, it had taken almost a year to get to that point, and I was just done.

thinking I was done at the position that the original hearing decision was made was an error

because you guys took it upon yourself to correct the math errors. So that, of course, ended up

increasing the refund to the same tenant, by the way. So there's just consistent favoritism and

bias to the tenant to the point that that same staff report talked about that the number

of increased petitions.

Well, why wouldn't a tenant petition when they have essentially a 100% chance of winning?

To that end, I doubt that I'm ever even going to respond to a petition anymore because it's

a waste of my time.

It's statistically a waste of my time to spend time and effort and energy to present a response to a petition when there's 100% chance almost that the tenant will receive the decision and their benefit.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Respondent, tenant, please come to the podium if you would like to speak.

And staff would give the timer.

You will be given 20 minutes, 10 minutes being translation, 10 minutes for original response.

Is that enough?

Okay.

First of all, I saw the, he's saying the tenant, and then no sense the stove, okay, for the

previous case, until today, how many years, I don't have a stove to use because the oven

is, when I move in, I stay dirty, and even though I can't hurt the, I can't sort the

electronic line, so I'm afraid to use. So most of the time I use microwave and not

cooking at home, only use a top stove, some part of function. So that's the

stove. And the analysis about the current case, if anything I have

rented before. It's not only forced rent in this area, but we never have any problem because if

something's wrong and the people just handle the issue or and tenant pay the money, none of them

take the service. That's very simple. We don't need to go to the court. We don't need to like

go to the judgment for the government. I never have this experience, but I'm happy to have this

kind of a judgment because people can look at what's happening. Between me and

Nanoh and the tenant, they were like to kick me out. For the beginning, I have a few days,

no bathroom use. I just ask the temporary use. I didn't call the people rejected me.

for this is 2023, it's 20th century.

Then no bathroom use.

I go to the library to use the bathroom.

I shower and nothing available.

It's for the human being, for the, if they look at the standard,

they want to do something like this for me.

And this time I believe the hiring office,

she's really accurate people, the person, even though I provided the evidence is from

nano, even the years round, she found very accurate everything. And about the evidence,

I provided evidence from all of the procedure. It's not I made a problem. If he don't have

any evidence or less evidence I believe because they didn't do the job properly.

They don't care about. That's why we come into the city, we come into the house to protect

the tenant. I believe that's why he come to the government, to the community, says why

he got lost. If for the beginning he realized he's wrong and he keep updated his service,

I don't think we have a second time to argument here. But I really appreciate I have this kind

of service from the government. Another thing is because like a smoking issue, I have a

report from the beginning from the house. Because today I'm just flying coming to this place.

I don't have any document in front of me so I cannot, you know, time by time, day by day,

but definitely the situation is provided to the judge or to the city. It is for the housing

department is true. I believe that look at the situation very clearly. Then I think I

need to go to this step which is for the potential. Yeah. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Do you want to answer? Do you? Okay.

All right. Steve, you have five minutes to rebut any statements. Please limit your comments

to rebuttal. I have no comments. Okay. Moving back to the tenant, you have

five minutes to rebut anything that the landlord said. Please limit any comments to rebuttal.

Yeah. He says he is wasting time, but definitely wasting time. Like for the beginning year,

when I rented this apartment, I almost stayed one year to follow the procedure and wanted

to get our results, got a service from them. I spent one year and the following year,

they tried to kick me out a few times, all of the document. And even though I sent a lawyer's letter

to them, I explained the situation, definitely I provided any document from the landlord.

And they give them note, they definitely identify why I'm the resident or legal resident, whatever.

That's he pretends like a-

To clarify, again, limit your responses to a rebuttal.

Okay.

is

I

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know

I

don't

know

the

the

the

the

the

the

the

enough evidence. But I believe for the beginning, the mediation and call them, send a letter

to them, they just try to ignore. And also we have any position is to provide the information

to the housing, let them do that judgment. So I don't think the housing will be like

he's saying is my aging, I'm glad if I have aging, but I don't have. That's why really

where it's really reliable the city has this kind of service. I really push it. I don't

think I can make a story and I can make anything else is nothing happening. I don't think the

commitment and the city should be close. But situation don't like he's saying is oh yeah,

would be as a protector, discriminating him.

I believe he discriminating us because for the beginning, the

manager want to kick me out.

They told me, oh yeah, we don't like you're leaving here.

We like somebody else.

We like to leave even this apartment, which is 507 Central

Avenue apartment.

That's a lot of happening for my life.

And they're coming to my door, never have noticed.

They just walk in and open my door.

I call the policeman 911.

Until now, I'm still scared.

For people, they wanted to open my door because they didn't follow the law.

They don't follow any business procedure or standard.

That's the whole situation.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right.

we'll bring it back to the committee. Does any committee member want to question staff?

Vice Chair Cox. Yeah, I want to go back to what the landlord had said about when Mr. Wang had

vacated the unit. I mean, it seems like, so I want to make sure that I've got the facts right about

about the case.

So it sounds like he was saying that

that Mrs. Wang, okay, had said that he vacated the unit

on December 7th, but that he contested the fact

that Mr. Wang actually vacated the unit on December 7th.

What's your understanding about what is in the hearing

officer's record on that and what was actually said?

So I can answer this question. At the hearing, there was no contesting by the landlord of the statement that Mr. Wang had vacated the unit during that time period.

And after the hearing, I believe, I believe it was after the hearing, it might have been before the hearing, evidence was provided to substantiate that Mr. Wang was not in the unit during that one month period, specifically a copy of his confirmation for his, the time period that he was gone, airline ticket.

So that was corroborating evidence that the hearing officer took into consideration to determine whether what weight to give to the statement that was made, the testimony that was made by Ms. Wang that Mr. Wang had vacated during that time.

Okay, thank you.

Anyone else have any questions for staff?

Seeing none, does any member of the committee have any questions for landlord or tenant side?

Seeing none, we will now move on to deliberation.

A motion has been made by Vice Chair Cox.

Would you like to say what your motion is?

Sure.

My motion is to accept the tentative decision to the appeal in its entirety.

Second.

I wanted to comment on the landlord's concerns.

At each hearing, we discuss what the provisions of the CSFRA are.

We review the fact that the voters of the city heavily constrained this committee as

well as the city council without any discretion to change the operating model of the CSFRA.

And in terms of how facts are determined and how we are to agree or disagree of whether

the hearing officer made a plausible, reasonable conclusion based on the facts that they determined.

Whether anyone in the community or anyone on this board agrees or disagrees with that setup,

that is in fact the setup.

And if a party believes that they've been systemically or systematically neglected

or there is bias, there is a judicial recourse.

And we talk about that as well at each of these hearings.

So that is the situation in the city of Mountain View

at this time.

And everyone has to basically figure out

what is going to be the right response for them

and for their situation.

And I also do support the motion in this case.

Vice Chair Cox.

Yeah, I just wanted to go through a few of the considerations I had in making this motion.

And to respond also to what the landlord had to say about, you know, the process that we have been going through in doing these appeal hearings.

I mean, first thing I want to say is we're here tonight to decide the instant case, not to talk about, you know, some systemic thing that has happened on all cases since 2016 up to this time.

And so that's really in my mind.

And I think by our proceedings,

the only thing that's directly relevant here.

So, I mean, we're just here to talk about this case.

And I mean, you know, anybody can raise issues

about what happened in this case,

but the appropriate thing for us to be commenting on

is just about this case.

The second thing is something that I've repeated

and, you know, Mr. Balch and others here have repeated,

I've repeated is that the hearing officers have wide

discretion in terms of how they weigh their evidence

and make their decisions.

I mean, that's a part of the process.

They have to weigh the evidence on each side

and then come up with what they think is reasonable.

I mean, that's their job.

And so, you know, I mean, and in particular,

so with regards to whether or not he actually had vacated

the unit or not, staff has provided the background

for everybody here about how the hearing officer

came to that decision.

And it was based on the fact that, I mean,

they had not only verbal testimony,

which if there were only that,

she still has the right to decide who's more credible.

That's her job.

And the second thing is,

but there was actually additional evidence

that was brought up about the airline tickets.

So, I mean, the key thing is, again, that's her job.

You know, about the idea of what's a reasonable time.

Again, that's her discretion.

You know, we can weigh whether we agree with her

on whether it's reasonable or not,

but it doesn't have to be written in the law

exactly what is the amount of time.

It just needs to be something that's reasonable,

and we can look at it, and we can judge,

and I think a week is a reasonable amount of time.

The third and last comment I'll make on this

is that, you know, this idea that somehow, you know,

Statistical evidence shows that the work of this committee

or the hearing officers is biased

because it isn't close to a 50-50 win rate.

No, I mean, these decisions are based on the facts

and the weighing of the facts for each individual case.

It is not a statistical probability experiment, okay?

It's weighing the facts and deciding each case on its merits.

And so, you know, I just really don't see,

yeah, I don't see that as a reasonable way

of determining whether or not what we do here is biased.

But again, we're here only to talk about the instant case.

So anyway, those are my comments and that's my rationale.

Member Brown.

Having reviewed the hearing officer's decision

and also the hearing itself,

I did not see evidence of bias or partiality.

And so I support upholding the hearing officer decision.

Member Keating.

Thank you.

I just wanted to speak to the 95% mentioned that were successful petitions.

and I think it just to be more precise or clear about this than some of my colleagues have already alluded to

is that many tenants do not file petitions because they don't think they have any issue that would win.

The petitions, the tenants who file a petition have a situation where they feel they have had a reduction

in their standard of living or their habitability

or something that they would prevail in a hearing.

And hence, you know, it's a natural selection

of the tenants who believe they will win

who do go on to file petitions.

And I second my comments from other colleagues.

Thank you.

Any other discussion on the motion?

I echo the thoughts of my colleagues.

I believe that the hearing officer has made reasonable choices, that people are generally

unwilling to go through a year-long process for adjudication if it was for something really

frivolous.

I feel like there is a reason why perhaps a lot of cases may end up one way.

But then again, let's say they're not in favor of what the tenant originally presented their

original petition. There's always going to be edits, there's limitations given what we've seen,

right? A lot of things are thrown up because there is not enough evidence or proof of service.

So I will be voting yes on the motion. With that said, let's go to the vote.

Motion passes unanimously. Thank you, everybody.

Now we move on to item 6.1, hearing officer and settlement conference facilitator remuneration.

Public common worker after the presentation item and committee questions.

Thank you, Chair and Rental Housing Committee members.

The purpose of tonight's issue is to adopt a fixed hourly rate of $300 for hearing officers,

175 for paralegals and 125 for settlement conference facilitators to be effective

per January 1st, 2026 and establish an annual cost of living adjustment to be

applied at the start of a fiscal year thereafter unless otherwise adjusted by

the Rental Housing Committee. As for background, at the beginning of this

program in 2017 the rental housing committee adopted a structure for

appointing and compensating hearing officers and settlement conference

facilitators for petition hearings or settlement conferences and in 2023 the

rental housing committee adopted a revised remuneration scale which

increased the rates and added an annual cost of living adjustment which schedule

can be seen in attachment one of the memo.

Due to the growth in the number and complexity

of the petitions and some retirement of hearing officers,

we need to recruit more hearing officers.

And we did receive feedback that attracting

qualified hearing officers needs consistent

and competitive hourly rates.

regardless of the type of services performed.

In the current schedule, we have different rates for different types of work.

For instance, time spent at a hearing is rated at 287 per hour,

whereas the rate for preparation and writing is set at 230 per hour.

So in general, these contracted hearing officers are typically paid a flat hourly fee,

just like other attorneys, irrespective of the services that they provide.

So based on that research, staff recommends maintaining a standard hourly rate,

regardless of the type of services provided,

with the $300 per hour for hearing officers, $175 for paralegals.

And so this is a new category requested by some hearing officers

to help with the preparation of the hearings.

and 125 for conference settlement facilitators

and keeping the current maximum hour cap,

which you can see in this overview.

This table compares the current hourly rate increased with the CPI over the last year,

the hour caps for each type of service,

and the recommended rate proposed.

This is also in attachment to of your memo.

The fiscal impact of this proposal, the budget allocated for

petition hearings is a hundred and seventy thousand dollars and

based on the petition volume and types from 2004-2005 and

assuming similar level of

petitions in 25-26

the projected total costs will not surpass that budget

using the recommended rate for the second half of this fiscal year.

And we will continue to track expenditures throughout the year

and update the rental housing committee

if any additional appropriations become necessary.

So the recommendation is to adopt these fixed hourly rates

of $300 for hearing officers, $175 for paralegals,

and 125 for settlement conference facilitators

and continue the annual cost of living adjustment

at the start of each fiscal year,

unless otherwise adjusted by the rental housing committee.

This concludes the presentation.

Happy to answer any questions.

All right, does any member of the committee

have any questions?

Alternate Paltz?

Yeah, just out of curiosity,

Are the qualifications and duties of the hearing officers,

are they comparable to arbitrators that the city works

with for alternative dispute resolution?

Yes, so we have regulations that require to be an attorney,

they're required to have experience and training

in mediation and adjudication of disputes.

Yeah, and so are the rates that we're talking about for the rental housing committee, well,

not housing committee, the hearings, are they comparable to the arbitration program?

I'm just curious, do we know higher or lower how we stack up?

Do you have data here?

Oh, that's happening.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, they are comparable to other jurisdictions that we have seen using arbitrators and hearing

officers.

Yes.

And the compensation is of the same order of magnitude.

Thank you.

Vacher Cox.

Yeah, I just, looking over the sheet that you just had up a while ago, it looked like

I feel like the biggest change would be in cases

where a decision comes back on remand.

And can you confirm to me,

at least on my sitting in this chair here,

that's been a pretty rare thing for us.

That's correct.

Okay, so it's likely that that kind of change

isn't gonna have a big impact on the whole.

And I guess the second thing I wanna confirm

is that, as you said, that we have money

already allocated for this.

We don't believe that we're gonna run over it

by this change, and therefore we're not going to have

to go back to the landlords and ask for an increase

based on this, right?

That's correct.

Also, I think we first would discuss whether,

if there's any over budget, we can use the reserves first

before we go back to the landlord.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions from committee members?

Seeing none, we move on to public comments.

I can see we have no public, but...

So I would just bring it back to the committee

at this point.

Does anyone want to make a motion?

Member Brown, what is your motion?

I move to adopt fixed hourly rates of $300 for hearing officers, $175 for paralegals,

and $125 for settlement conference facilitators effective January 1, 2026, and establish an

annual cost of living adjustment to be applied at the start of each fiscal year thereafter

unless otherwise adjusted by the rental housing committee.

That has been seconded by Vaisar Cox.

Does anyone have any discussion on the motion?

Seeing none, we'll go on to the vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

We will now move on to item 6.2, amendments to CSFRA regulations, Chapter 13, utility charges,

public comment will occur after presentation item, community questions.

We'll start with the presentation.

Thank you again.

The purpose of this agenda item is to adopt an amendment to the CSFRA, Chapter 13, Utility Charges.

As you can see, we're in the middle of the process, and the further we come in the process,

the more clarifications we need on each step of the process.

And as a result of extending the deadline in June of 2025 for the submittal of these OTUA one-time utility adjustment petitions,

we now need to make an amendment to the calculation of the one-time utility adjustment.

So a particular step eight of the process must be modified to incorporate the latest changes in the CPI.

And as you can see on this slide, we're adding one line that says from June 23 to June 25, the CPI increase is 4.7%.

and that will be added to step eight of the process.

So the recommendation is to adopt the amendment to modify step eight of the eight-step process

to incorporate the change in the CPI from 2023 to 2025 at 4.7%.

That concludes the presentation.

All right, any member have any questions?

Alternate Bulch.

Yeah, thank you.

The CPI being added, does that relate to the, how do I say this, to the cost of the utilities

that are being calculated to add into the base rent?

Okay, yes.

And so I'm just curious, CPI is an option,

would there be a more applicable rate,

which is the actual rate of increase

of the utilities themselves?

Because often gas, electric, and water

increasing at rates that are not the same as the CPI.

The CPI is a blended basket of many different types of

commodities and costs.

So I'm wondering if it would be more fair and more just

for all parties involved to look at the actual

underlying utility costs.

That is an option, but in 2003,

the rental housing committee decided to give the landlord

a one-time transition period because the utilities are supposed to be part of rent. So at that

period of time, you decided to say utilities can no longer be separate from rent anymore.

And we are adopting this eight-step process to allow the landlords to transition to that

point so with that as you can see we already added one CPI because we're no

longer allowed to fully implement any changes in the utilities at any time so

that is the reasoning behind it and maybe you can give some more yeah I mean

I understand your question the issue here is we're in the midst of this one

time utility adjustment process and in 23 we elected to use CPI so to change it

now would have an impact on petitions that have already been. Thank you.

Makes sense. Any other questions from the committee?

Mayor Redekop, Member Keating.

Member Keating.

So, there are, you know, we have the phased by size of the, how many units at the property

of some, the largest landlords have already completed their petition process.

And I presume that all of them have, you know, informed their tenants of this either is or

will be your one-time utility adjustment rent increase.

Some of those have not been implemented yet because if they had already taken their rent

increase, their annual rent increase, and then they finalize their the utility increase,

And so, you know, it's a future time when they'll implement, use the one-time utility

increase into the rent.

And there's still, I presume, billing rubs.

And so we've noticed those tenants months back about this is your utility rent increase.

Are those going to get an additional increase?

Are those eligible to get the CPI additional increase on the utility?

No, this is just for pending petitions.

So for petitions that have not been concluded yet and that are still pending.

So although all the large properties have submitted their petitions, they have not all been processed.

It's a long process for us and it's a lot of back and forth between staff and landlord

to get all the numbers correct.

And so not all the properties have been completed yet in that first category.

Okay.

Yeah.

I was not aware.

Thank you.

And so for ones that have not been completed yet, this additional CPI will be incorporated

into the-

Final calculations.

Because they all gave their water and utility bills from 2003-24.

But for petitions for properties where it's fully processed and the tenants have received notice,

that notice remains the final amount.

Correct.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Seeing none, we move on to public comment.

Would any member of the public like to give a comment on this item?

Seeing none, we'll bring it back to the committee for deliberations and feedback.

Does anyone else have anything they would like to say or does anyone like to make a

motion?

Member Brown, would you like to say your motion?

I would move that we adopt amendments to the community stabilization and fair rent

Act Regulations Chapter 13, Utility Charges as described.

Mayor Redekop, Vice Chair Cox.

Is there any discussion on the motion?

Member Brown?

I would like to say I am excited for the day when all of this is concluded.

I'll give my minor comment, which is that one of the reasons we chose CPI for this is

because it's back to the original reason we were doing any of this.

We're treating utilities as lawful rent.

And if lawful rent, as we do under the AGA, is done by CPIU, then so does the utility

as our regulation state.

With that said, seeing no more discussion on the motion on the floor, we will go to a

vote.

Vote passes unanimously.

Thank you everyone.

Now we will move on to item seven, committee staff announcements and updates.

We'll give it back to staff.

Thank you.

All right, so we'll go over our upcoming workshops.

We do continue to have our virtual office hours weekly.

For anybody who is listening, the next Tuesday we will have office hours, but the Tuesday

after that our office is closed for the holidays, so we will not be having Tuesday office hours

on that day.

However, our workshop schedule picks up again in January.

so we have a workshop January 13th at 2 p.m. for our property owners and we will be

going over registration and our annual fee and then on the 27th we will have a tenant focus

virtual workshop at 6 30 about evictions and eviction notices and what to expect

also it's not listed here but on the 27th as well there will be another property registration

an annual fee workshop

to get anybody who needs to get in before the due date.

And we continue to have our housing help centers.

We are still doing these every Thursday.

And we imagine that we will be doing that

as long as the utility petition is still with us.

And that is virtual and in person from 1 to 3 p.m.

and we do have our tenant housing help center every first and third thursdays that is happening

now it's virtual and in person and we have our partners from csa and cluspa and the mountain

view mediation program and as well as our city staff available and that concludes the outreach

and workshops. Any questions?

Seeing no questions from the committee?

Yes, that comes back to me. Item 7.2, expected future agenda items for

RAC meetings. Future agenda item for our next meeting in January is an update

on legislation and case law.

Is it legislation or litigation? Or both?

We'll say both.

We'll call it just in case, all done.

Any other comments or announcements

any member of the committee would like to make?

Happy holidays.

That was not in order.

Member Brown.

Thank you, Chair.

Happy holidays.

And with that, this meeting is adjourned at 7.09 p.m.

The next rental housing committee meeting

is scheduled to be heard on Thursday, January 22, 2020.

at 6 p.m.