Okay, everyone, we're gonna get started.

All right.

Um, good evening, everyone.

Thank you for joining us for our study session.

The city clerk will take attendance by roll call.

Councilmember Hicks?

Here.

Councilmember McAllister.

Councilmember Maris.

Here.

Councilmember Shoulter.

Here.

Vice Mayor Clark.

Here.

Mayor Ramos?

Here.

All right, thank you.

So we'll now begin with item 3.1 biodiversity and urban forest plan draft review.

The purpose of this study session is to review and provide feedback on the draft biodiversity and urban forest plan.

Assistant community service director, Brenda Sylvia, and Lauren Stonberger Burner, uh environmental scientists with the San Francisco Estuary Institute will present the item.

If you would like to speak on this item in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk now.

Go right ahead.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council Members.

My name is Brenda Sylvia, Assistant Community Services Director, and project lead for the Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan.

I'm joined this evening by with Lauren Stoneburner, environmental scientist with the San Francisco Estuary Institute, who have supported the development of this plan.

Also with us this evening are John Marchant, Community Services Director, Russell Hanson, Urban Forest Manager, and Lindsay Wong, Senior Management Analyst.

We also have Selena Pang from the San Francisco Estuary Institute joining us virtually.

Tonight we're here to present the draft biodiversity and urban forest plan and receive your feedback.

As that work progressed and strong community interest emerged, it became clear there was support for a more comprehensive approach.

These two efforts were ultimately combined into what is now the Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan.

The city partnered with SFEI to develop a plan grounded in science that also reflects community values and priorities.

Last fall, the draft plan was presented to both the Parks and Recreation Commission and the Environmental Planning Commission for review and feedback.

In January, PRC reviewed an updated draft and recommended that it move forward to the City Council for review and adoption.

Again, my name is Lauren Stoneburner, and I'm an urban ecologist with the San Francisco Estuary Institute or SFEI.

And um so the biodiversity and urban forest plan is an uh is designed to outline a strategy to increase access to and benefits from nature.

And the commitments stem from three uh core inputs.

It integrates science-based guidance and assessments with community needs and priorities and city input on what's feasible to achieve.

And in this plan, we refer to biodiversity as the diversity of all living things in an ecosystem such as mammals, pollinators, plants, and birds.

And the urban forest is the entire population of trees in the urban area, including both in built-up areas and in vegetated areas.

We'll introduce the city project team's role developing the plan.

We'll summarize public input and feedback across the project.

We'll provide an overview of the feedback we received from the commissions and their recommendation of the plan and discuss your comments and questions.

So first on the project timeline.

This slide is an overview of the touch points that we've had with the Parks and Rec Commission and with the public to receive comments and input as we've developed the plan.

And briefly just to summarize the city brought the proposed scope of work in June of 2022.

SFEI was brought on shortly thereafter, and we presented our first update in February of 2023, and we've come back to the city repeatedly to seek input and feedback.

This slide is then an overview of the draft plan review timeline.

So it was a year ago that we first had a complete draft of the plan, and we received feedback from city staff as well as our technical advisors.

And then we took the plan to the Parks and Rec Commission in October of 2025, shortly thereafter to the Environmental Planning Commission of October 2025.

We received input, made revisions, presented a revised draft to the Parks and Recreation Commission in January of this year.

In that meeting, they recommended the plan to city council, and that's where we are today presenting a draft plan.

We'll receive your comments, make revisions, and the current timeline is to give you the revised draft in June of this year.

And so the city project team was critical to incorporating input from across city departments.

The city project team was led by the community services department, and it included representatives from the public works department, community development department, and the city manager's office, sustainability and resiliency division.

And so the city project team supported the plan development by providing data, technical input, they assisted with community engagement activities, they helped facilitate our stakeholder workshop.

We held an implementation-focused workshop with them where they helped us develop feasible actions and metrics, and then they reviewed the draft several times.

And then input from the public was another core pillar in developing the plan.

So the goals of engagement were to increase awareness of the plan first and then generate meaningful input from a diversity of participants to help us craft the vision and to prioritize goals and actions.

So we ended up with over 1,300 community interactions, over six workshops, three pop-up events, an online community survey, and postings on the project webpage.

And so I'll just go over a very briefly some of the themes that we heard.

We received a wide range of feedback, but we heard time and time again that there's a desire for more tree canopy cover, especially in heat vulnerable areas, a desire for more native plantings and pollinator habitat, and there was an emphasis for the critical role that local stewardship and public participation play in achieving biodiversity and urban forest health.

So this graphic here is just an example from chapter four, summarizing survey responses where we asked the community to imagine what Mountain View would look like in the future.

And so this community feedback directly informed our development of the vision and goals.

So we synthesized the input from the science, the community, and the city staff to develop the plan.

And there are five components which I'll walk through briefly from vision to action and evaluation.

So the vision statement is a single sentence that represents the city's North Star.

So it distills the community's shared values and ideals for the city's future landscape and community.

It reads Mountain View is a healthy, connected, and resilient community where people and nature thrive together.

So this reflects the core themes from community engagement.

We received the feedback that centered heavily on human and ecosystem health and resilience.

The community highlighted the importance of connections, both connections to community and connections to nature.

And the city, the community imagined Mountain View being a place where people and nature thrive together, where it this reflects the community's strong emphasis on balancing the strategies for nature and for people.

Next, the goals translate the vision into long-term tangible aspirations, and it acts like a compass that directs the city to that North Star vision.

The first goal is connect people and nature, and this represents connections in all directions.

It's connecting people to nature and to place, connecting nature to nature, and connecting people to each other and their community.

The second goal is foster places of refuge, which is balancing improvements of natural resources for both people and for nature.

Build resilience is building resilience of the urban forest, of natural resources and habitats, and resilience in a changing climate.

And lastly, activate and collaborate is about collaborating with community, with practitioners and projects, collaborating across city departments, and then with other external agencies.

Each goal has paired with two to four objectives.

And objectives translate the high-level vision and goals into specific, measurable, and practical commitments that guide the city's implementation.

So just as an example to work towards goal one, connect people and nature.

Objectives include supporting a network of connected green space and fostering a cultural shift that spotlights biodiversity to instill a sense of place.

So we won't go through each of these objectives individually, but we can always flip back to this slide and dig in more if it's helpful.

The implementation component is the actions.

They're the concrete steps that the city can take and implement to make strides towards the objectives.

In this plan, there are 25 objectives that are organized into short, medium, and long-term time frames and paired with relative cost estimates.

The targets and metrics are the evaluation tools.

So 25 metrics are the method, the methods of measuring progress, and targets are the milestones along the way.

And the city project team played a critical role in helping us develop these components specifically and identifying the steps that are feasible and tying the actions to city processes and operations.

Lastly, in chapter five, there's the final section 5.4 implementation framework.

And this section was developed specifically to address parks and recruit parks and recreation commission and environmental planning commission feedback to outline the procedural and the structural mechanisms that ensure feasibility and accountability.

So the framework covers the following topics: leadership and responsibility, plans for cross-departmental city implementation team, and it highlights the need for dedicated staffing capacity to drive implementation.

Priorities and initial steps.

I'm noticing that the slides maybe have a little bit of an issue, but the next section is priorities and initial steps.

It outlines the first actions to implement immediately upon plan adoption, and it introduces a phasing strategy for medium and long-term priority actions.

Cost and funding outlines the preliminary cost estimates and a process for securing funding for currently unfunded initiatives, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting tasks, the city implementation team with coordinating the collection and reporting of metrics, and adaptive management tasks, the city implementation team with periodic, periodically refining priorities and approaches as needed.

These guides are designed to provide detailed specific and applied guidance and resources to support the day-to-day operations and decision making.

Guide C urban forest policies and practices is about supporting urban forest operations, guidelines and pest management strategy, and guide D, monitoring and targets will help the city develop a monitoring protocol and track metrics and develop targets.

And guide D, monitoring and targets will help the city develop a monitoring protocol and track metrics and develop targets.

So now I'll just briefly summarize some of the headlines from the comments that we've received from the commission review in October and in January.

So first on the major updates we made after the first commission review from the PRC and the EPC in October.

There were comments around requesting more direct language and strengthening accountability and commitment.

So we just as an example, we replaced passive terms like could with more commitment-based language like will, and we added the section a word from the city at the beginning to clarify the city's voice and commitment.

We also simplified and strengthened the vision for greater impact.

And we received feedback to clearly balance aspirations with feasibility, with cost considerations, and with other city priorities.

So in response, we developed that 5.4 implementation framework section that I just provided an overview of, including providing more details on phasing, level of cost, and roles and cross-departmental coordination.

Then after the second Parks and RAC commission review in January of this year, we reprioritized Action 23 as a short-term priority.

And this is the action related to incorporating recommendations from this plan when developing and updating precise plans.

We added a metric to track privately managed trees through community submitted data.

We strengthened the coordination with the parks and recreation strategic plan, particularly around advancing equitable access to shade, cooling, and biodiversity benefits.

And we strengthened the implementation framework, namely by affirming the city's commitment to providing adequate staffing capacity to coordinate and advance plan implementation.

So as a result of these edits after the commission review, we achieve we're hoping that this implementation and action framework is more achievable, more transparent, and aligned with this the available city resources while still advancing an ambitious long-term long-term goals.

Okay, so upon plan adoption, we can immediately get started with an initial focus on coordination.

Staff have already been advancing some of this work within their existing responsibilities, and we plan to establish a formal cross-departmental city implementation team to guide the effort since many actions span multiple departments and programs.

I've been leading the development of this plan, and following adoption, I will transition into the lead role for the implementation team to help ensure continuity and momentum as we move forward.

That team will be responsible for prioritizing actions and aligning them with existing city efforts, including integrating actions into current work programs, capital projects, and ongoing initiatives where possible.

Funding will rely on a mix of existing and future sources, including the general fund, capital improvement projects, tree mitigation fund, grants, partnerships, and other opportunities.

We can begin implementation using existing resources, particularly for the near-term and smaller scale actions, and by leveraging current capital projects and programs.

At the same time, not all actions are fully funded today.

Implementation will be phased over time with additional priorities brought forward through the annual budget process and external funding opportunities.

So this slide highlights we're ready to move forward, starting with coordination and existing resources while continuing to build toward the plan's long-term vision.

In conclusion, the draft plan reflects extensive input from the community, stakeholders, technical professionals, and advisory bodies, along with strong collaboration across city departments, and we appreciate the time and effort that has shaped this work.

The plan represents a very bold step for Mountain View and positions the city as a regional leader in advancing biodiversity and urban forest planning.

It establishes a long-term framework to guide implementation and helps pave the way for agencies exploring similar efforts.

Within the staff report and on the next slide, we provided a question to help guide council's feedback and your input will help inform the final version of the plan as we move towards adoption.

Does council agree that the draft plan is generally consistent with the community priorities and city policies and plans and that it provides an appropriate long-term policy framework that balances ambition with flexibility to support phased implementation, or does council have any other feedback?

We look forward to hearing from you and are happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Um would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide comment on this item?

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

We will take in-person speakers first.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

So we will start with up top.

We have Robert Cox, followed by Shawnee, followed by Tracy, followed by April.

I'm sorry, Mayor, did you say two or three?

Two.

Is this on?

Okay.

It's on.

Okay, thank you, Mayor Ramos, uh, Vice Mayor Clark and members of the city council.

Uh this is a great biodiversity plan.

It has, I read through the whole thing, and uh, but I just have a couple thoughts.

One is on the subject of tree canopy.

You know, we've been losing a lot of tree canopy due to large developments in this city, and one of the things I'm asking is how much can we do in a short period of time to improve the situation?

The goal seems to be only to get an additional 1.2% over an eight-year period.

And I'm wondering if we take a deeper look at uh what we can do within our parks and our school open fields since no developer can touch them.

Uh, second thing is on creek beds, particularly the Stevens and Permanente Creeks.

Um, recently we saw the issue with uh 555 West Middlefield and also over at Avalana Creekside, where um where additional, I mean, changes to the development there, you know, had the potential of impacting on the creek sides.

And I there are some nice comments in the document that you know talk about the idea of the tension between development and preserving these areas.

But I mean, I would like to see something in a little bit more detail about what we could do.

In particular, could we do any kind of like special zoning for these areas?

Um, do we need to be concerned about how the state density law is written and how the ADU law is written, so that you know we can carve out maybe some exceptions for these, lobby the state for that.

There is lobbying on AB 131 right now, so sometimes laws that are passed need little tweaks to them to make them a little bit better.

And the third thing is can we offer incentives so they won't want to take these kinds of steps and develop and impact these areas near the creek sides?

So those are my thoughts.

Thanks for listening to me.

Thank you.

Next is Shawnee, followed by Tracy, followed by April, followed by Celia.

Thank you.

I'm Shani Kleinhouse with the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance.

This is a really wonderful plan to move forward with.

I have to say this is uh outstanding.

It will be a benchmark that will look at other cities and whether they achieve the same or not.

And we'll definitely advocate, we already have been for uh moving forward on similar plans, but it's important to get it right because of those reasons, and while it's really, really good, there's some improvements that we have proposed in the letter that we sent together with Green Spaces Mountain View.

Uh, the commitment to native, locally native species is important.

That's the basis of biodiversity and food webs.

Animals don't do well, or bugs that are the food for the birds when you bring species from other spaces.

Um we asked for more protection of trees and more incorporation with other city processes, whether it's public works, mobility, et cetera.

But the really important thing is on accountability and uh stuff has started working on that.

But I think at the basis of biodiversity plans, usually you see adaptive management, which means we do something, we do our best.

Every now and then we come and we re-evaluate and what is working, what is not working, what do we need to change, and you realign.

And I think it's really important to have in this plan or in the city both a person that is really responsible for looking at how this percolates through the different departments' projects, whether the city projects, private projects where it can happen, but also to continue monitoring so that every three, five years you can have a review of the plan of the program and see what needs to be changed and how.

And that is really really critical.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Next we have Tracy, followed by April, followed by Celia.

Hi, I'm Dr.

Tracy Faria.

I'm a biologist.

And I want to thank you for envisioning and bringing this plan forward and to all of your work.

I want to ensure that this plan leads to meaningful action.

And I want I want to ask you to prioritize native plantings and establishing clear metrics for success.

Without specific safeguards and expectations, there's a risk that this will lack the necessary urgency, similar to the Brewing Owl Preservation Plan.

Now we're losing another person from that's been helping our volunteers.

I just found out today.

Supports only two.

And given that a single nest of chickadees requires approximately 6,000 caterpillars to go from hatching to flying out of the nest.

The absence of native plants will directly contribute to the decline of our local birds and pollinators.

If we aren't planting natives, we are not supporting biodiversity.

It's that simple.

Currently, our city trees are only about 15% native.

I would even suggest a moratorium on non-natives.

So I hope you'll take these comments seriously and ensure the plan includes necessary metrics, financing, and local long-term commitment to be effective.

And I'm grateful, and this city will be grateful.

The population will be grateful in the future to be watching the butterflies and birds that we will have because of your work.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we have April, followed by Celia, and then we'll go to our virtual public comment.

I got your email, April, about were you gonna have people cede time to you or yes?

What's that?

Oh, please sign up.

If you're ceding time to the speaker, please raise your hand for the public comment.

Alex can do it.

Okay, got it.

Okay.

Okay, no problem.

All right, make sure you guys turn in your blue cards.

And I but I count five, so all right.

I think you need to go back a couple.

Ah, there we go.

Okay, are we good?

Hi, good evening.

Um tonight I want to focus on implementation.

A few folks already talked about that.

Mountain View has adopted strong goals around biodiversity, climate resilience, active transportation, and people first design.

Um, but there's still a gap between policy vision and the systems that shape what actually gets built on the ground.

And I think this plan presents an important opportunity to begin closing that gap.

Next slide, please.

Uh over the last several years, um, we've adopted, as I mentioned, uh, increasingly progressive goals.

Um, but we still have that gap, and that gap is often shaped by standards, implementation frameworks, engineering guidance, maintenance practices, accountability systems, and reporting mechanism.

It's like the last step in getting this over the line.

Um, and it's these systems that determine how consistently our policy and our plans are translated into the public realm over time.

We are not the only ones facing these challenges.

Other cities are, Caltrans are.

It's just how the how we're moving through our all these new policies and sort of progressive way of looking at things.

Next slide, please.

Um, one thing I noticed while reviewing the plan, and I think a few other speakers mentioned that, is that we rely heavily on language like where feasible, appropriate, encourage, consider.

If you look at policy and bills, these are usually um not as um strong types of language, and it's not really about the words themselves, but the implementation expectations that are attached to it and how clear they are and how consistently they shape long-term outcomes.

Aspirational language, like on the left, it will set direction, it's great at the policy level.

Um, but if you want to see things something follow through and actually um be implemented on the ground, you need to use more operational language that embeds a priorities into those actions, recommendations, etc.

Next slide, please.

Some cities are already starting to take this step.

What you see on the left are a few actions from urban forest plans from different cities, or on the left, actually, sorry, that's Mountain View.

And some of our I really appreciate staff taking feedback and starting to change some of that could in that language to stronger language.

We still have some of that hanging around and some of the actions, and I think we can take our council can take a few steps to strengthen that.

Other cities like Palo and Alto and Fremont have moved a bit farther in that direction.

You'll see a lot more in Sure, et cetera.

Next slide.

And this is where it takes us.

You really need that those that strong language to get what you want when you have implementation.

On the left, you know, we see a street, it's protected.

Um it gets us part of the way there, but it's not necessarily comfortable, it's not usable, it's not people first, it's not shaded.

And this is starting to become increasingly more important, even at the Caltrans level.

They're starting to introduce climate resiliency at the policy level, their design guidelines have integrated.

They have landscape architects on their complete streets teams, and I just saw the first project come through the shop, which is like our pavement plan that includes green infrastructure.

So we're getting there, but I just want you guys to keep this vision and how we need to take that next step.

Next slide, please.

This is one of the places where we can also make a change.

So often with policy and our our visions and goals, it starts off the policy level, gets into our plans.

We need to have it in our actions, but we also need it in the engineering diagrams that our people who do the implementation do.

And this is an example of one that could benefit from some a revisit, some research and rewording.

Uh next slide, please.

Um, just to compare, a few other cities have already taken this route.

Um you can see this is a site, the site triangle is um sort of a triangle that you have from the sidewalk going back where you need to maintain a line of vision for people in their cars so that they can see people walking and driving to them.

This is just the pedestrian triangle for Mountain View and those other two cities.

Um in these spaces, um, often you'll have trees removed.

You don't want to have anything too high.

You can have trees if they have high enough canopy that works for mature trees, but if you're planting new trees or shorter trees and it's blocking um site line of sight, they often won't go in or they'll get removed for redevelopment.

So you can see, given we I think we have about six times as much area square um footage as Sunnyvale for our line of um for our triangle.

So that means that we um if you go on to the next slide, um we have the potential to either have um many more trees removed during redevelopment or not even have the opportunity to add them in the first place.

And this number is coming from a some analysis that uh Stanford student did for us.

He was an intern in 2023.

He was working under Rick Coss, who is associated with the Maneta Institute at San Jose State University, and so he looked at what we had for our um our triangle and um did an analysis across all the driveways in in Mountain View, and he projected based on that removal or the just lack of planting in the first place, that we would could potentially impact 11,000 street trees, and that's our target.

So it's something to consider.

It has huge impact if we make if we um ask our staff to review this and um consider updating it.

Next slide, please.

Uh, one thing that stood out to me in the plan, um, this is probably just like a residual gap, but we establish measurable shade expectations for parking lots, but not similar expectations for sideways sidewalks, bikeways, transit stops, or other public gathering places.

Um, in a warming climate, shade for people should increasingly be treated as essential public infrastructure and um and should be prioritized.

Um, as I mentioned, all those things, sidewalks, et cetera, those should all be considered, and it really directly impacts if people are comfortable walking and biking, and whether they even choose to use infrastructure.

Um, I have I do this presentation a lot in different um places, and when it's not comfortable comfortable, it's too hot, people don't even use it.

And you know there's plenty of research on this, they will take different routes, um uh, or just avoid using it and get in their car.

So this is really important for us to start thinking about is the climate safety and comfort aspect.

Next slide.

Um just the next couple of slides.

I include this was included in the letter that was sent last night by um Greenspaces and Mountain View Coalition for Sustainable Planning.

It's just showing some of the types of reporting that we can aspire that we can work towards.

This is Fremont's urban forest plan.

They have an accompanying implementation and modern plan, monitoring plan.

Sorry, you can see that they attach a time frame.

Um monitoring metrics to it, and then also um they often I think have uh costs associated with it.

The next slide, please.

And it's just showing something else that they have in that plan.

Um, it's really nice, it's like almost like a report card.

Um, I've seen this in other um domains where um you have a summary and a nice neat card that has all your metrics in it or um relevant information for something that you're tracking, and um I just thought this was a really nice way of uh I do a lot of info uh data modeling and um visualization.

I thought this was a really nice way of presenting it that could be used for council on an annual basis or even for the public.

It's a lot easier for us to digest, it's all out there.

Um, and if you have something like this that you consistently show year over year, it's a lot easier for people to digest and really understand um what kind of progress we're making.

Next slide, please.

Um so just to call out some of the ones that um we in the community, um, there are eight that were shared in um uh the letter that got sent out.

Um I just what you what you received was a copy of those, so you have them handy.

There were three that we thought were um perhaps higher priority.

Um those are listed on the screen.

These are really related to uh creating people first infrastructure.

The the first one is just making sure that we have clear language that we're whenever we have opportunity to with paving projects, um any sort of transportation projects that we are considering like we're evaluating and integrating almost by default if we can green infrastructure into especially active transportation where people are going to be.

And I also want to point out in disadvantaged communities, um, shade and thermal comfort is very related to that.

Standard details is what we need to do at the engineering level.

And just for the last one, I'd like to say um also consider standard details for how we plant trees.

Emoryville has done a really good job of this.

Um, and I point you to that.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Our last uh in-person speaker is Jan Recker.

Um, and then we'll go into a virtual public comment.

Jan, you'll have two minutes.

Hello.

Uh my name is Nan Record, and I'm a longtime resident here in Mountain View.

And I want to just take a moment to say thank you to everybody for working so hard on this project.

I know that uh you've put a lot of effort into it, and I really appreciate it.

Um I agree with a lot of the comments that have been made here today.

Um, especially my friend Shiny.

She and I have talked greatly about this, and I love the idea of utilizing um native plants and and wildlife.

So thank you for your efforts.

Thank you right now.

Thank you, and I apologize for mispronouncing your name, Yann.

Um now we will go to virtual public comment to Maureen Blando.

Hello, um, this is Maureen, and I am a resident of Mountain View.

Um thank you for the effort that has been put into this study.

I appreciate Mayor Ramos, Vice Mayor Clark, City Council, and the city staff for all of this work.

Um, I want to echo a few points that Hala Al Shwani uh submitted in her letter dated for 28.

Um, one is that she recommended that the Questa Annex be designated as a city urban forest, which I think is a great idea and very common sense move.

Um moving on, we are losing way too many tree heritage trees to development, and of course uh global climate change is accelerating, and you know, we saw some of the results of that in Los Angeles about a year ago.

I think we'll look back with regret if we don't increase the tree canopy.

Uh and so as Robert had mentioned earlier, um I think we should look at requirements and incentives to um retain the heritage via uh work by developers.

Uh that's about all that I will say, except I also want to say that I really appreciate the other uh presentations made by the viewers today.

Some excellent points, and I do think that something like that urban forest report card would be very valuable.

Thank you again.

Thank you.

Next up we have Rashmi.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Great.

Um, thank you.

Uh, I've read this plan three times now, and it's a really great forward-looking plan.

Um, so I have a lot of praise for it, but since I have two minutes, I'll focus on the areas with that.

I think needs strengthening, um, three specifically.

The first one is protection of heritage trees.

The plan points out that large trees provide greater cooling, health, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity benefits than smaller trees.

City staff also states that trees are the only infrastructure asset that increase over in value over time and are not easily replaced.

Despite these benefits, the plan comes up short of meaningful actions to protect heritage trees.

For example, I'm looking at my time, and I don't think I've spoken.

Ah, okay, it's going backwards.

For example, objective 3C, which seeks to use greening opportunities to adapt to future climate conditions, only includes actions that involve planting new trees.

This seems like a missed opportunity since heritage trees already provide significant cooling benefits.

Moreover, they provide these for free, whereas each new tree planting costs the city an average of $3,000.

In 2023 and 2024, an average of 900 heritage trees were removed per year.

Even if the city meets the ambitious tree planting targets outlined in the plan, it will still have a hard time making up for these large canopy losses to really protect heritage trees.

The plan needs to establish metrics for tracking them and limits on the amount that can remove be removed each year.

The second area that needs strengthening is prioritizing native plant species.

This has been well described by others, so I'll just say that I strongly support that.

Lastly, and most importantly, the plan needs stronger accountability to implementation.

As written, the only way many of the actions can be implemented is if staff and city council continually prioritize nature over the next decade, which history has unfortunately not shown true.

An illustrative example is the adoption of the dark sky ordinance, which um currently says it's in progress, but um has been stalled indefinitely.

And even if this plan was adopted, that um there's no thank you.

Next, we have Ronnie remind uh reminder that it's two minutes.

Did we lose them?

Oh, there we go.

Okay, good evening, Mayor Ramos, City Council and City staff.

My name is Rodney Fisher, and I am the chair of the environmental advocacy committee for the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance.

I ask you to accept accept the recommendations in the letter written by Greenspaces Mountain View and the Bird Alliance from April 25.

In this letter, we have suggested ways not to just aspire to biodiversity, but how to word the plan so that biodiversity, especially native plants and trees, really happens.

Our recommendations ensure robust implementation with clear accountability, including regular reporting to the community and to city council on progress towards goals and adaptations of actions as conditions change.

Our recommendations focus on habitat enhancement and restoration, not just maintaining existing conditions.

And our recommendations move beyond business as usual and how the city designs and manages landscapes and protects trees and canopy.

Thank you for your leadership in the past on the environment.

I look forward to the day when Mountain View becomes part of the natural ecosystem and supports our local insects and birds with the native plants and canopy.

They need to survive.

Thank you.

Next we have Hala Ashawani.

I'm a longtime resident of Mountain View.

I wanted to thank the staff and the consultant for a great job on the plan.

They have listed all the benefits, highlighted the benefits and echoed the communities requests for all the native plants and increasing the shade and listing all the benefits as you know them.

Tonight I would like to focus on uh how we can make this happen for the community.

Um there are three things, three points I'd like to bring.

The first one is that um, in fact, we do not have an urban forest in Mountain View.

The plan clearly states that the patches of green spaces are clustered around shoreline and Stevens Creek areas, which are on the peripheral of our city.

But Mountain View has a wonderful space called Questa Annex, uh, the only contiguous 12 acres of um open space with native trees.

If we enhance it and take care of it, then this can be our mini urban forest um with uh all the benefits that the plan uh mentions in uh pages one and two.

Second is that the plan really does not address the development projects and how that impacted the um uh the sensitive areas, uh, for example, on Stevens and Permanente Creeks, the developments um have or will endanger uh the sensitivity of of some species in that area.

So we need to have more incentives and um uh things that will entice the developers uh to protect as many of those trees as possible.

And the last thing is please increase the number of trees that you're planning to plant from 20 some percent to 30 percent by 2030.

Let's do 30 percent by 2030.

Thank you.

Next up we have Jesse Cup.

Hello, uh Mayor Remus and City Council.

Thank you for having me.

So I just wanted to second uh what some people have been saying about planting native trees to help our local biodiversity, help the local insects and birds and things like that.

I think that should be uh bigger priority and have some numbers behind it.

And also uh we should be mandating shade for people walking, biking and taking public transit, and not just for people who drive cars.

So as climate change gets worse if uh cars and parking lots are nice and shady and cool.

That's that's what people are gonna do instead of reducing their car use.

So we need to make walking and biking and public transportation more attractive in order to convince people to make the switch.

So that means lots of shade, seeding, etc.

I'm just making it a nice pleasant.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And our last speaker is Sherry.

Yeah, hi.

Um I'm a resident of Palo Alto, although I did live in Monteloma for a long time.

Um I just want to put in a plug for big old native trees.

You know, we're losing them in Palo Alto as well.

People move into these beautiful tree neighborhoods, and then the first thing they do is they cut down the big trees in their yard.

Um, and these are hundred-year investments.

So I think we not only need to be planting them, but thinking about you know, incentivizing maintaining them and not removing them.

And I don't know what that looks like, but we could really use some help here between the development pressures and pressures from electric line work.

Our big trees are getting hammered, and I know people in Mountain View say it's very visible.

Raptors need them, cavity nesters need them, and they're important for sources for food.

So I just wanted to mention that.

And uh I have a random question, which is whether water features in parks could be used in some way to sustain more natural habitat.

I'm not sure.

Um, I really like the emphasis on chipping and downed wood, and I'm just looking at other resources that things may need, and water is a really important one.

But anyway, I think it's fabulous that you guys are working on this.

I hope Palta does this as well.

And I just wanted to put in a plea for big old native trees.

They're irreplaceable, 100-year investments, and they are disappearing really rapidly.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.

We will now bring this back to council.

The council will now have the opportunity to ask questions and then discuss and provide feedback on the study session questions.

Does any member of the council have questions?

And I see on my docket.

Uh Alison, uh, Councilmember Hicks.

Thank you, Mayor.

So I wanted to bring up a couple of questions.

I asked questions in writing, and thank you for the comprehensive answers, but I wanted to ask some questions that the public comments have brought up.

So first, um do you does staff several people mentioned um having a bigger target for our tree canopy and in particular highlighting um saving bigger trees or heritage trees?

Uh does staff or our SFEI, do you have any advice for how that might be incorporated into the plan?

Any suggestions for response to that?

One of the action items is to, and it's a short term upon plan adoption is to start working on updating our heritage tree ordinance.

Um we're planning to take that in phases uh because it's a it's a large ordinance and addressing um the protections uh immediately.

So that's one of the things we're gonna be taking a look at right away.

Yeah, and the um regarding the uh target for tree canopy cover.

Um, I think there are constraints for tree planting that it if Russell wanted to add anything, um, feel free.

But I think uh tree planting is um the the urban forestry program has been um increasing its capacity to plant trees, so I think that the um the target takes that into account.

Um and yeah, tree protection is also major, and um I think that the updates to the tree protection, the tree uh heritage tree ordinance will um be a big part of that.

And then my second question from the public comments is do you have any suggestions for additional ways to protect our creeks and the the um the vegetation around them?

Yeah, so this one is addressed in action two, and um I maybe if Brenda, there's anything you want to add to this that I'm missing, but the um there are also constraints related to the channel and creek restoration given the complex um management agreements.

Um I might not be calling that exactly what but yeah, so there needs to be cross-agency coordination, particularly with Valley Water, who owns a lot of that land.

The city has um easements, is it uh to yeah, um, to manage some of those parcels, and it will require sort of negotiation with them on um improved management and restoration along Creek Corridors.

And we started some of that work um on making improvements and uh shoring up some of those that are um that are falling away, if you will, and building those relationships with those agencies and those organizations that we partner with.

I think that's a big piece of it, so that we can make bigger and broader improvements to those areas.

I know that has been an issue on um several of our projects in the past.

Perhaps our council member who works with Valley Water can comment on that uh later in the meeting.

So those are my questions.

Thank you.

All right, any other questions from council?

Uh council member McAllister.

Yeah, um I just have one.

The uh the the thing about the minimum of 300 trees annually is that net new trees.

And how does one keep track of the the we're putting out 300 new trees?

I'm gonna call Russell Hanson, our urban forest manager to podium.

So thank you first and foremost, Russell Hanson, Urban Forest Manager within CSD.

Thank you for your question, Councilmember.

Um the 300 as it sits today is actually a combination.

It involves both mitigation planting for trees that were removed as well as new tree plantings on top of that.

The intent is that one of the things we're trying to do is build capacity to do so in a reasonable way that is sustainable more critically, because I have seen planting initiative after planting initiative fail when it pushes numbers.

The million tree initiative in LA, the million trees in New York.

What frequently ends up happening is they're so keen on putting trees into the ground, they're not doing the establishment maintenance, they're not maintaining those trees the way they need to, and you frequently get a higher failure rate where we strive for 90 to 100% success rate.

Some of those projects were as low as only about 50 or 60 percent success rate.

And so what we don't want to do is kind of ramp up so quickly that we end up having failures out there that it isn't really reaching what it is.

But ultimately, um, yes, we will have a new database.

Um we're kind of working currently with our RT IT team to start tracking our assets a little bit better than we have in the past, and we absolutely will have little identifiers or otherwise so that we can tag each of these trees as either mitigation or new tree plantings that ultimately um we can start counting towards that growth of canopy.

Okay, I missed one more question.

Uh I was intrigued to hear about Questa Annex and that there's a quite a bit of desire to make that a sanctuary, you might say.

So as uh we're how describe what was being proposed for quest to annex.

Uh that was the first time I'd heard that, so I'm not sure if that uh is in line with the Parks Mark Strategic Plan or competes with it.

I'll hand it over to John Marchant, community services director.

Good evening, John Marchant, Community Services Director.

Um this is a new item that is being brought up at the moment.

Um if council so desires, there can be um in action for um city staff to um come back to council uh in relation to that uh that interest, and we can start bringing back some additional information what that could look like and what options might be available to make that happen.

Okay, thank you.

All right, do we have any other questions from council members?

I have a quick one based on public comment.

Um there was a request to have as a possibility uh a moratorium of not planting non-natives.

I'm sorry, it's so many negatives, but basically only planting natives.

Now why wouldn't that already be in the plan if it's not?

Yeah, so um there is a call-out box kind of discussing the um trade-offs in planting native versus near native versus non-native, and um, it is a complex um matrix decision matrix.

Um, but essentially um it is important to plant native where it's feasible, where it's appropriate.

But for one, there are um a fewer array of native plants, locally native plants to choose from, and those plants tend to be riparian plants, so they have uh large water demands, and they often need a lot of space.

So, in an urban environment, um there are there are space constraints, and then also um there's uh more um urban stressors.

So um there are many cases when planting regionally and locally native trees is not appropriate.

We want these trees to survive for decades as well, and with a changing climate, that needs to be a consideration.

Um, and then so just one point I wanted to make is to think of nativity as a gradient as well.

So there's locally and regionally native, but there's also California native.

There are species that are native to the western um uh continent and of North America.

So um considering what is native and not native is um just something to be um thoughtful about and like what are the benefits and services you're getting out of planting a tree and what is appropriate to that site.

Um so it's not so black and white.

Okay, so like when I'm thinking about like non-nees, you're not like plucking a mango tree from the Philippines and sticking it here.

Right, right.

Okay.

Oh my god.

Um other questions from my colleagues.

Um we will now move to comments by council, which should include feedback on the questions staff pose in the staff report.

Don't all hop in at once.

Okay, council member Hicks.

So I'm gonna start well, start by saying thank you for this plan.

It was a pleasure to read it, and it really marks, I think, uh paradigm change uh for what the city does.

Um, and hopefully it will can be a model for other cities.

Um, and I know it's something that many members of the public have really looked forward to.

So with that, I have I generally like, I generally like it very much.

Um I do, I'm gonna say a little bit on why I think it's important, which you might wonder why I would do that, because much of the plan said why it was important, but there are a couple things that weren't even in the plan that I thought were would be good to bring up.

And then a couple things that I I think could be tweaked or highlighted.

So the first, why I think it's important, you know, sometimes people have asked me why biodiverse a biodiversity plan in a city, and we're a fairly dense city.

Why not like out in the countryside?

And from reading I've done uh the countryside, a large, large part of the countryside is agriculture, and um, and it's uh you know, um mass farming, so which with heavy pesticides, and the whole purpose of heavy pesticides is to kill small creatures.

So much of what we think of as the country is becoming less diverse, and I'm reading that basically what we're doing here is very important for biodiversity in the country as a whole, and for um, you know, food sustainability and so forth.

So that didn't come up in the plan, and I just thought why here was an important comment to make.

I don't care if you put it in the plan or not.

Um and the second reason is that this is really one of the things uh, you know, I've been on council for seven years, and it's one of the things, I mean, people really want this.

In particular, I I'd say there are three things people talk to me the most about affordable housing, um, parks, and trees.

Um, and so this urban forestry and the biodiversity connected to it, this is really important to people.

And also when they talk about parks, they talk about linear parks and walking and so forth.

So there's an interface with parks as well.

So it's it's important for cities, they important for biodiversity.

Um people want it.

And the third is I think that this is how did I take notes on this?

I think something the plan only talks about a little, but I think is important is the concept of green infrastructure and uh ecosystem services.

You know, we on council spend a lot of time looking over our capital improvement projects in shorthand um called CIPs.

Um, and I really think we need to lean into more looking less at brown infrastructure and looking more at green infrastructure.

I think for I think the mayor in her presentations has been talking about the city of tomorrow.

I really think for the the city of tomorrow, we need we need to think more about green infrastructure.

So those are the three reasons I think it needs to be a standard part of city practices, not this additional thing that we'll do if we get around to it.

Um so those are my whys.

Um, and I hope they're inspiring in addition to all the things you've already, the 200 pages you already wrote about why.

Um the things that I would like to tweak.

The first one, and some of our public speakers spoke about this a bit, is um the city is working on objective design standards for uh private development, and also on um design standards for for road objective standards for roadways and streetscapes, that would be our public things, um, which if you dig into it, they the engineering documents are standard details.

I'm really interested in a very strong relationship between the development of those, which we'll be doing over the next couple of years, couple of decades, I don't know.

Um, you know, I hope that the city will be leaning more into long-term planning rather than everything kind of last minute.

Um that I would like the um biodiversity and urban forestry plan to really um inform the objective standards and roadway standards as we develop them.

And it's mentioned a little in the plan, but I think that could really be strengthened, and that relates to some of the things that members of the public have brought up, which are um make sure that we have shade trees over uh sidewalks and bikeways and things that people brought up to me in the past about lane reallocation, that's when you turn some lanes into planning strips and some lanes into bikeways or wider sidewalks, you know, that we look at green infrastructure, uh whether it's bioswales, whatever, how we're planning street trees, when we do all of those things which we'll be doing.

So, and you know, in terms of private developments, you know, there's all the streetscape uh uh roadway standards, but I hope also like I find our townhome and row home developments to be very, there's a lot of hardscaping there, and I think that they standards for things like that could be greened as well.

So that's my first one that I'm hoping the rest of council will agree with that we lean into that a little more.

Um the second one is um I'd really like a paradigm shift in how we think about infrastructure and capital improvement projects or CIPs.

I said this a bit before, but um I you know the plan says that green infrastructure is important, um, talks about it in terms of stormwater treatment.

I think it's much more than that.

It's also cooling and carbon sequestration, um public health, et cetera.

But I'm hoping when we look at our CI, I'm hoping for funding when we look at our CIP funding, that um that greening not just brown CIPs, but green CIPs can be a part of our regular CIP funding.

Maybe another way to look at it is my um neighbor here, Councilmember McAllister has brought up that sometimes our CIPs look over engineered.

Maybe we could reduce some of those things and add trees or or other elements of greening.

So uh, you know, maybe a uh 21st century way of looking at infrastructure and CIPs.

And then the last thing is I think that oversight and metrics are very important.

So I would like to lean into that a little bit.

I would like to make maybe other council members have advice for that, but I don't just want to put a bunch of good stuff out there.

I want to make sure that it actually happens.

Uh I think, as you said, putting one person in charge.

I don't know whether the sustainability staff can become more involved.

That's something the city manager would decide, but that's one possible idea.

Um I want regular checkbacks with the council and especially with the Parks and Rec Commission to make sure that we're actually doing this.

I would also like us to take the comment letters.

The comment letters that we've received have, I think been very important.

They haven't been some of them are letters from individuals, but a lot of them are letters from a large number of members of our public.

So I would like to take them in for consideration.

Um I'm sure you won't adopt every word in them, but for consideration for uh, I guess the final draft of the uh plan.

And in particular, to look at the letter from oh gosh, which one is it?

Uh the one with that came with appendix A and had uh from I guess it's MVCSP, but had highlighted um highlighted actions.

Uh they highlighted what they called action one, action 17, and action 26, which had to do with green infrastructure integration into transportation projects, shade integration and thermal comfort, and standard details and specifications.

I think those are three of the more important things we can do.

Overall, I want to make sure that our city, the public places that we all spend time in, get greener, um, and I'm less concerned about things like green roofs, things that are pretty privatized, or uh education was mentioned in the plan.

A little bit of education is fine, but I really want an emphasis on actually greening the city, which I think these three that I that was were highlighted in that particular letter do.

So those are my comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh next we have Councilmember Scholter.

Yes, I'm so excited that this is before us.

Um we, you know, I know you've been working on it for many years, and we've been hearing about it for quite a while, and it has has been said.

This is something that our community cares a great deal about.

Um this is a great plan, and and all the staff and the consultants and the and the um community members that have contributed to it really should be justifiably very proud of this of this document.

Um I I again we've been talking about building the mountain view of tomorrow.

And um, from my perspective, a big part of the mountain view of tomorrow is the green infrastructure that our community members want to have.

And that's you know, that's really what you described here, and that's that's great.

Um we all want to enjoy the green space, we want to spend our time outside.

Um we want to make our um uh active transportation infrastructure more attractive, so people use it more.

Um so uh we uh we want to be healthier.

We if we do, you know, if we are active, we're healthier and um we want to uh enjoy the natural world around us.

Um and um we want to uh do our part to protect the planet and um from climate change and adapt to the climate change that that's that we have here.

So I think that that's you know, that's kind of the con one of the major concepts behind this.

And then the other one of the other concepts I want to bring up is that this is something that we control locally, and in the current climate, the government climate, there are many things that um are kind of weren't being taken out of our control, or um uh some of the policies we have enjoyed and profited from aren't aren't available to us.

But this is these are actions we can take.

So I think it's very important that we take them, you know, that we use this opportunity to do the things to improve our local community that you know that we can.

And certain certainly planting lots of trees is something we can do.

We can choose to do that.

So I'm you know, I'm all for it.

Let's do it.

Okay, um so uh I uh I want to I wanted to emphasize a couple of chain talk about a few things and about the change of emphasis emphasis.

Um you state in in the plan that it isn't regulatory, and um I uh I get that, but even though it's not regulatory, I think that we should consider this plan as one of the foundational documents moving forward.

So when we work on projects, people should look at the criteria and talk about how it aligns with this plan or how it doesn't.

And um I think that that'll be a real important part for implementing it going forward.

Um and I think it might be good to add a statement to that effect in the um in the uh word from the city.

I know you you change that, and I think it's I understand it's it's it's it's better, but I I would like to maybe add something like um while the biodiversity plan is not a regulatory document, it is the city's intention to have the plan's recommendations integrated into the city's plans and processes, or something along those lines.

You could come up with you know the proper language.

Um developing this plan is a huge first step, but as many, many people have said, um we need to implement it.

And so um I think that a couple of the things that are really important as have been said is is is the metrics.

Thank you so much for putting together that good list.

And um I uh having worked on monitoring uh environmental uh science for many many years, I know that you start out with a list and you work with that list, and you may find out um after a while that that's not the best list.

And I think that um what's been brought I I was delighted to see that adaptive management is in here, and that's because we're gonna learn a lot as we go through this, and we may find out that the list we're we've put together of metrics isn't appropriate anymore, or it's not the best one, or or it needs to be fine-tuned, and that's a that's good.

That's good.

We should be thinking about that.

And um I I um because there's so much uh that's gonna happen in the next year or so.

I hope we'll have to have we'll be able to have a community meeting um in about a year after we've adopted this to say, okay, what have we done now?

Where are we?

And then after that, I think it will be more like a three to five year evaluation or whatever staff finds is appropriate to to do that.

But I think that um making adaptive management routine is um is very important.

And um, if I I've been involved in a lot of plans that say they're gonna do a lot adaptive management, there aren't very many that actually do.

Um we have one locally, however, that is um was a really good job, and that's the South Bay Salt Pond Program.

So if you want to look at kind of how you do adaptive management, they would be good people to talk to.

But um it's um it's uh the other thing is I think that um as has been mentioned by several people, this is really um uh new.

This is is this kind of new science.

There are served there are some plans like this in some other um cities around the world, but they're not commonplace.

And so as we um implement this, I think that we we should um make sure that uh our community organizations are involved, and we should also make sure that local academia is involved.

Um we have uh Stanford has the door uh school of sustainability that was just founded about I think it was about five years ago, and um they have made outreach to um to that they want people involved in help and working with policy, SFBI as a uh a long-term um renowned uh agency to kill Stephen Vault.

So I think that keeping these um uh uh these policy groups involved is is valuable if we can afford to do it.

It it would it would be great thing to do.

Um I also uh would like to say that native plants are great, but other trees are great too.

For instance, all of the citrus trees and the apple trees and the fruit trees that we all dearly love and many of us have in our backyards, they're not native.

That's not to say that we shouldn't plant them, it's just that we need to have native plants too.

So I I really strongly support um uh increasing the percent of native plants, but I think we want to think about the other things that plants you know that trees bring us and on beauty and whether they're going to grow well.

And and you know, it's a it's it's a it's a complex uh it's a complex question.

So while I think we should up the percentage of native trees considerably, particularly with respect to oaks.

Yeah, I I understand that locally sourced oaks oaks do better, and oaks also evolve.

Um so that we should we should let them take advantage of that.

Um another thing I would I I concur too with um my my colleagues' comment about utilizing the comments from uh the the green spaces letter from the MVCSP letter from Daniel Shane wrote a letter.

There are a couple more taking a look at those and seeing um do they fit and um are they reasonable uh as you go forward.

I don't want that to be something that takes you um months and months and months.

I I I don't I I'm not hoping that this will be something that I don't want us to direct you to do anything tonight that is going to lengthen the um the uh your ability to get the report back to us in June, just that there you know there's a really thoughtful comments and if you could take them into account that's great.

Um and then another thing I I wanted to bring up is um uh um the idea of using volunteers.

You know, we've had great luck.

Um I guess it's not luck, it was it was hard work working with canopy and um and uh to to plant a lot of our trees, and I think that there we we put to we put in a couple of pollinator gardens um with um with uh volunteers, and those are both um examples of how we can move forward and and involve volunteers.

I think there also might be opportunities for our neighbor neighborhood organizations to um do some beautification.

Um we might want to found or encourage the founding of some friends of various parks groups.

I mean, we have a friends of Stevens Creek and they plant lots of plants and and have over the years, but I think it would be great to if we also had some um you know friends of the parks.

So I'm hoping we could we could put as a small amount of money into this year's budget to get a beautification um fund started that that local organizations could tap into if they wanted to and encourage that to happen.

And um so I'd just like to sum up and say this is a great plan.

Let's make sure um it is used as a foundational document as we build the Mountain View of Tomorrow in order to make sure it's implemented.

In order to make sure it's implemented, let's let's make let's make sure we have a robust monitoring program with specific staff assigned to see that it happens.

And um, and let's have a good adaptive management program so we can learn as we go.

And um thanks to all of you that have gotten us this far.

Thank you, Councilmember Scholter.

Councilmember Ramirez.

Thank you, Mayor.

I was uh commiserating with the community services department director a little bit earlier about uh the extraordinary workload that the policy arm of CSD has uh has been uh making progress on and the entire time many of us have been all of us have been on the council uh especially since uh the onset of the pandemic.

You've done you and your team have done extraordinary work uh bringing to the council uh you know nearly complete biodiversity and urban forest plan and the parks and recreation strategic plan, a lot of the other work that we talked about that doesn't have to be named right now, but um it's it's uh it's a remarkable, remarkable amount of work with um a great deal of uh very valuable and thoughtful participation from uh the parks and recreation commission uh from many members of our community from the the consultants and um and and other key stakeholders uh and I just want to marvel um at uh at the document that um I think this council will have the uh the good fortune to to approve um I think was it within the next couple of months.

Um so uh thank you.

Thank you for for putting together um what I agree with Councilmember Show Walter, what uh I think will become one of the the foundational plans uh for uh the city's work uh in the next several years.

Um I agree with the remarks shared by council members Hicks and Show Walter Um, and don't have a whole heck of a lot to add.

Uh I do support the recommendations um that were shared in the letters that were referenced.

There was one from April Webster on behalf of uh the Mountain View Coalition for Sustainable Planning and Greenspaces Mountain View that I thought was thoughtful and um the way I think about that letter and several others is we can't tie the hands of future councils, we can't compel them to adopt a certain set of standards.

Um that's your job, hold the people and the audience accountable who are running for city council.

Um but what we can do is use these uh plans to guide the development of um the of the the deliverables, right?

The desired outcomes, right?

So when the next council uh reviews the standard details or the objective design standards, they will be shaped by the direction provided in the plan that we're adopting.

And so I think it makes sense to have language in these plans that gets us close to the deliverable that we want to see.

And I think uh April's letter does a good job of helping define what those desired outcomes should be.

Uh the letter from Celia Paymer and Shawnee Kleinhouse on behalf of uh Green Spaces Mountain View and the Silicon Valley Bird Alliance.

Similarly, I think a good uh set of uh thoughtful recommendations and um I I really I I praised him in an earlier council meeting, but I do commend uh Daniel Shane for his um extraordinary persistence and uh continued uh engagement um in the types of work that the city has been doing around uh regulations for private development.

So um I I do agree.

I think uh if uh staff can take a look at those letters and um pull out those recommendations that can be uh incorporated into the final product without substantially delaying um the work.

Um I I would support uh uh that effort.

Um so I think I'll conclude there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Ramirez.

Councilmember Kamei.

Great, thanks, Mayor.

Um well, I want to um first echo the thanks that my colleagues have shared to all the different hands and individuals who have touched what we are seeing tonight.

I think it's five years of hard work well spent when we can say that literally thousands of people have um given input on the biodiversity and urban forest plan.

Um and I'm really excited, as some of my other colleagues mentioned, that we're here now.

Um, and I was I am excited too that this is this plan will not stand alone.

Um the staff report noted that the biodiversity and urban forestry plan complements and supports a bunch of other existing plans that we're working on are in progress.

So kind of like how um Councilmember Show Alter was mentioning how it's not regulatory, at least it's building into like the city processes, and hopefully people will understand our our point of view when they come to Mountain View and want to develop here.

Um I think uh one of the things that I'd like to share that I hadn't heard touched on yet by colleagues was um recently when we've been looking at different plans, uh so through our city budgeting process, we use an equity lens.

When we were most recently talking about our economic vitality strategy, one of the rubrics was kind of equity, and equity was not necessarily mentioned often in the plan.

Um, and I'd really like to uplift that and um when this comes back to council for final action, um build that in.

And I know it exists and it's there, but one of the things that um the staff report mentioned is that you know, this uh one of the objectives and goals was to advance equity by prioritizing investments in areas with lower canopy cover and higher heat vulnerability.

But I would like to think that in the city of Mountain View, we're prioritizing equity throughout our city.

Um right now we're all elected at large, and our city um I don't want to think of our of this plan as just increasing tree canopy and lessening heat islands, and I want to think about how a lot of the feedback we've been receiving as we've been looking at various development projects as we were looking at our housing element was talking about how we are uh advancing all of the neighborhoods in our in our city to feel like one community, and this plan um could highlight that more.

And I I think that would be great to see, you know, the in the actual biodiversity and urban forestry plan.

Equity was only mentioned twice.

One of them was related to action 17, and the other was related to a Senate bill.

So I I'd love to just find ways to think about things more broadly, especially given um all the time that we've spent on the topic of this plan.

Um and then uh another thing that I um wanted to think about was um one of the tensions council has been working through, and one of the council questions talked about how we will be using the plan that we adopt as a kind of blueprint to integrate biodiversity into development, and I I think it's not just development but biodiversity into the culture of Mountain View.

Um, and I think uh my various colleagues were bringing up topics on how we can um think about that.

It's it's in development in our in our CIP on how we approach things, um, and I think that would just um strengthen um all the hard work that has been put into this.

Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilmember Kamei.

Councilmember McAllister.

Um I concur with everything my fellow council members have said, so I won't add anything to them, but I do always have a little bit of a different perspective.

Um I've lived here a little a little longer than most of you, and Pat was talking about fruit trees.

I moved in when this was all apricot orchards, so we did have other trees coming in.

Growing up, uh, we had butterflies all around where I lived.

We have variety of different birds that were flying through.

I remember watching uh Robins eat the pathhecary berries and get drunk, and we could catch them with our hands.

So you may never experience it, but it's quite a scene.

Uh we had a lot more wildlife, we had snakes in the area.

I was fortunate to grow up next to Stevens Creek.

So I had that Tom Sawyer adventure.

We had the creek and we had all the nature around us.

And so when I see this report, I go, God, this would be great.

And I always say, you know, somebody says, Well, how's the quality of life?

And I said, Well, honestly, it was a little better when I was growing up.

But this report is is fantastic.

It hopefully will bring back nature to us to where we see the butterflies, the cattle pitlers, the small insects, the bees for you know, if we're gonna pollinate things, we gotta have bees and so forth.

And that's what I hope this will this will do.

But it's it's something that for the council to start considering.

Many times in this report, it was aspirational plan, and it was based on staffing and money.

Now, this council is a very aspirational council.

They have a lot of great projects they want to do.

They want to do this urban one, they want the park plan, they want the homeless plan, they want the low-income plan, they want the vitality plan, they want the downtown plan.

And you guys are bringing up a lot of great things, but somewhere along the line, we have to focus on what we really want to get done.

And this plan says, well, we will get some things in here when we get some planning, and we just gotta get focused on what's really important to us.

Yes, everything that you say is great, everything what the city wants is great, but I come in, I don't have a lot of time here, and uh some of you know I like to use the expression GSD.

That means get stuff done.

And this plan sounds it's gonna be a long-reach plan.

It's gonna take time to get the staff, it's time to get the money.

And I hope we if this comes back, we can say, okay, let's focus on this, let's pick our priorities that this is important.

Yes, everything that we do is prioritize.

We need to prioritize, but you know, we're gonna be looking out for some going out for a bond to get some money.

Well, where's that money?

That money seems to be already spent.

So I'm just asking the the council when you start looking at these projects and go, oh, it's great.

Is it gonna get great when Lucas comes back in two or four years?

So I would like to, but it's interesting because I came back and Chris and I came back, and we're seeing projects that are still being worked on or haven't even been touched.

And so that's why it's important that we have our we have limited times, we have limited funds, and I like to see everything that was talked about this taken care of.

It would be a great project.

Um I also like to, which when somebody brought up Quest Annex, that has been going on for 50 years, or whenever it started.

That would be great to be able to put that to rest and know that we will take this garden.

It is really the only open space that we can we can put in what we want.

It's a clean uh slate, clean palette that we can print and paint, whatever we want.

So we do that.

But that's what I like to think this to do with the get this this done.

So and potentially that you said this come back in June.

You know, four or five years in the process of getting this, a lot of people touched it.

I think I've talked to the community service director sometimes about how we can still get a public input in, but make it a little more efficient and get things going so it doesn't I hate to use the word bog us down in trying to get the good things done because we had a lot of touch points on there, and that was great, but there at some point we can do it.

So um those are my comments.

It's just let's folks, let's see what we can do to get this thing done and get it done implemented quickly, and uh the sooner the better.

Uh, just for some clarification, Councilmember McAllister.

I'm I'm setting up uh thank you, Councilmember Show Walter for getting me started on getting a bunch of uh straw polling questions ready to go.

Um, and I've been trying to list it out.

But um, you mentioned Questa Questa Park Annex.

Um what do you want to I would like to see it incorporated into this green open space with trees?

I mean, if you look at it, there's a lot of space to put some trees, and I know there's trees coming from some corporations that are working on.

I know uh since I live over by Stevens Creek, I've seen trees come in from uh into it.

I've seen trees from Google come into it, so we have partners are putting in various uh items.

But what I would like to see is that somehow that open space is great, but if we want to do some experimentation or put the garden, there's uh what's the garden, the pollination garden right there at the corner there?

Mare money there on Cuesta.

You know, those type of deals to enhance it that we could put this as here's our our zoo or park that's you know, with the plants and all that stuff.

Like, you know, you go out to Arizona and they got the big uh cockus, so we could do our little thing, but I'm getting off, of course.

But that's what I would like to see with Quest Annex.

Oh okay.

I okay.

Okay, one word enhance it.

Okay.

Okay.

Or bring it to its full potential.

How's that?

I like to bring it to the full potential.

And to if there's a question, I'm voting yes for whatever it comes apart.

I guess one of the the things to ask about.

Oh, uh, I guess we could go with council member Clark.

No.

Uh did you want to go?

I guess okay, I'll ask this question first.

I know that there were plans for Quest of Park Annex a long time ago.

What happened to them?

So if I recall, I did look this up recently, and now I need to jog my own memory.

There was a agreement or a project that was being worked on between the city of Mountain View, Valley Water to put in a retention basin.

And so a design was created.

And eventually Valley Water determined that they did not need to build that retention basin at that location.

And so they basically walked away from the project.

And at the time the city did not continue with its own design because the um the relationship was no longer necessary.

And so basically that initial plan at that time never moved forward.

So are there currently because my understanding is that there were several iterations of a plan for Questa Park Annex.

And so the retention basin was the most recent one.

So when the retention basin ended, do we revert back to an old plan or then just everything just die?

There is currently not an active plan that the city is working on for Questing Annex.

Okay.

Okay.

Councilmember Vice Mayor Clark.

Yeah, just to briefly say I think the plan is great.

I don't have anything to say that I can uh that would add value compared to what my colleagues have said.

Um I think I'd only be uh trying to I'd only be allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

So um but uh but one thing that will animate me is uh the annex, as I think it will animate a lot of the community.

Um I I do not disagree uh with kind of the intent, but I think that adding the annex to this or doing anything with the annex as part of this will require a significant community conversation and probably a standalone work plan item that um I think kind of defeats the the goal of moving this forward as quickly as possible and not creating additional distractions.

Um I think if anything it will actually um result in this taking uh maybe an additional year or two just on that item alone, um which I I don't want to I don't want to risk.

So that's my that's my only feeling on that.

Um and then I guess we'll see if we need straw polls on anything uh anything else or or if you um but anyway I just wanted to chime in on that.

Otherwise I'm I'm fine with the direction of everything else.

Okay, so I I do have a list of straw polls um to do.

Most of them I actually feel like they're gonna be seven, seven, seven except for for the last one.

Um I will list all the items uh that uh that will uh okay that will uh uh we'll attempt to straw poll on.

We might be able to like consent calendar it.

Um, but I will start with um I'm just gonna read it.

Thanks, Councilmember Show Walter.

Um although this plan isn't regulatory, council supports the implementation of the plan.

This plan should be considered as one of the foundational plans of the city, like the general plan plans or precise plans.

Concepts and criteria in plan should be considered in city projects going forward in budget development.

Then two, a specific staff member should be assigned to oversee the plans monitoring program so it doesn't get lost in the laundry list of responsibilities most staff have.

This will also be crucial for making sure that collaborative collaboration across departments happen.

Of course, there will need to be staff from many departments involved.

I I had added a plus one because I believe, or uh Councilmember Hicks also mentioned it in their uh comments.

Uh three, the plan concepts will be used to develop objective standards as appropriate, but especially with respect to roadways and development.

I also added a plus AAH on that one.

Um, an adaptive management plan is needed to make sure that we learn as we go.

It should include a community meeting in about one year after that evaluation should be done every three to five years.

Um I think that was what um councilmember Hicks also said regular checkbacks.

Um next is emphasize planting native trees and understory locally sourced where possible.

This is particularly important with oaks.

Um I guess that was also like increase the percentage of native.

Okay.

Um six staff should carefully consider comments from MB Green Spaces, MBCSP, Daniel Shane, uh incorporating suggestions as reasonable.

I'll also add the Bird Alliance one with that.

I heard that from Councilmember Hicks as well.

Um, Councilmember Hicks actually pointed out uh emphasize on the actions one, 17 and 26 that was mentioned in Green Spaces and MBCSP's list.

Um also from Councilmember Show Walter's list, use volunteers and partners in implementation, um essentially funding for beautification, and then um from council member Hicks uh include greening in CIP funding.

Um and I think that covered also what council member Hicks showed up.

Um I have Councilmember Kameh with an equity lens review and ensure that this uh that this plan is distributed throughout the city.

I kind of viewed it as like um when we think about like say the housing element, like there was talk about affirmative furthering fair housing and like trying to get housing in places where like you don't usually have so it like it's kind of like the reverse.

We there are areas in our city that aren't as greenified um in in and that's kind of like how we invest in neighborhoods without gentrifying them essentially.

Um I'm happy to keep it as a comment for when it comes back.

Mine was just comments to the question, not a straw poll.

If it was a straw poll, I would have asked and said it was a straw poll.

But I think it's a comment, and if others feel, you know, I don't know how staff feels, but it was just a comment because I know that that it's it's out there.

So thanks, Mayor.

Thank you.

Okay, I'll just I'll just cut it as a thing.

No worries.

Although I do like the idea of running the equity lens through it.

Um and then uh finally we have uh council member calister throwing in Quest of Park Annex.

All right, does anyone want to pull something from that or a straw poll?

Council Vice Mayor Clark.

So I'm I'm just just a suggestion for moving forward.

I I'm fine with all of that, but the only thing that I would say is some of the some of the items that are more prescriptive, like um I'm fine with having an initial check-in in a year or whatever.

I just don't want to be prescriptive tonight around like it shall be on in June of 2027 or what yeah.

I think I think staff can take all this back and understand what's important to us and and suggest make suggestions in the just incorporate all that, and then just I I just as much as I would love to see a more usable quest to annex.

I just don't want to I've I've learned over my years here that that is one of the third rails of Mountain View Politics, and I don't want them out of the waters at the at the finish line here.

So um that's one thing I can't support.

Everything else is fine with me.

All right.

Uh Councilmember Hicks.

So how do you want us to handle this?

You want us to say what we will vote for and what we won't on it, and then you're gonna run it through the oh, we have a city manager comment.

Oh, go ahead, city manager Canbrah.

Thank you, Mayor.

So what I would suggest, uh, it seems like most of these things are generally supported by all.

So I would take uh everything in a batch except for the quest to annex.

I think that should be straw polled separately, and then I would take the rest of them uh together as a batch because I think uh it's things that all of you have essentially uh given a nod to, or you've made a comment saying I agree with prior comments from my colleagues.

Um I did want to make one clarification about the funding for beautification.

So council had uh its budget workshop uh in a couple meetings ago.

So is this uh direction that council is giving to carve out some funding when the budget comes back in June?

Is it CIP?

I guess I would just want a little more clarification on what you're seeking regarding the budget.

I I think that if we could carve out a little bit now, that would be great.

Um I I would but I'm not thinking of a lot of money.

I mean, like then maybe 20,000, 50,000, something along those lines.

So but it would be as I mean I would yeah, that would be great if we could do that.

And and what what staff thinks would be appropriate.

Okay, and then the funding would go towards uh volunteer efforts.

Is that what you're thinking?

Like volunteer efforts for beautification around the city.

Okay, so maybe staff can take uh look at what we would excuse me, what we would recommend and then bring that back.

That sounds part of the budget.

Yeah, okay, great.

So just to summarize, I think take take the batch of things, see if council is supportive of the batch, take Quest to Annex separately.

Oh, look at that, everything led it up.

Um Councilmember Hicks.

So most of my questions were answered with that.

But um, can you repeat the one one of among the things I said the objective standards one was the most important to me?

So can you I guess you can either read it or can it say something along the lines of um integrate objective standards for roadways and private developments with the uh biodiversity and urban forestry plan?

Just say that sentence, which is pretty similar to what you said.

Yeah, so like I wrote down objective design standards for private development and roadways, long-term planning, green infrastructure.

That's what I wrote down.

I assume that was similar to what Councilmember Show Walter wrote down is like the plans concepts will be used to develop objective standards as appropriate, but especially river specs to roadways and development.

Yeah, that sounds good.

Okay.

All right.

Good, good.

Um yes, so I'm thank you very much.

I'm done now.

All right.

Uh Councilmember Ramirez.

Um thank you, Mayor.

Uh, really quickly uh on the budget item.

I know we're uh fairly constrained this year.

Um I'm I'm curious if staff the measure G resolution uh which allocated 30 to 35 percent of measure G revenues to uh open space and parks, also allowed for biodiversity.

Would it be possible to use some of the funding that we had set aside for measure G to achieve some of the uh I don't know, was it beautification or but the biodiversity implementation?

Yes, that's actually what I was thinking we would likely come back and do.

I think there was around a million dollars carved out for that.

I'm getting the thumbs up.

So one 1.2.

And I think that could certainly come from that uh pot of funding.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember McAllister.

Uh talking about funding, I thought there was about 200,000 already allocated to this.

So when you look at it, I'm just saying we do have money, so I don't know.

You say open to how we're gonna use it, so just bringing that to your attention.

Councilmember McCallister, you are correct.

Uh we do have some funding in an existing CIP for biodiversity.

The the area that we were looking to utilize those funds is um specifically along El Camino Real.

Right now that area um is in need of um we were looking to include biodiversity, new trees, is and that will include the need for uh new irrigation system.

So that's where we were looking to utilize those funds.

Um and I was thinking about those as well as this discussion was going on.

Um but if this is uh a carve out for specifically for volunteer projects, then um we can certainly look at that as well.

Sounds good.

Okay.

Uh Vice Mayor Clark.

I was just gonna offer a suggestion.

One thing instead of create instead of creating a an entirely new grant program.

One thing that I'd be open to, although I'm open to that if you think it's okay.

Um we could piggyback on some of the neighborhood grant programs and create specific buckets that way.

We're not reinventing everything, but but but adding uh an allowed use in a in a bucket.

So and I will highlight the fact that uh community service staff, another one of our work plan items is looking at a volunteer um platform and coming back to the the city council with uh proposed policy related to utilization of volunteers and what different ways we can do that.

And so uh staff is currently working on that.

We hope to come back in late fall with some of the um things that we're thinking about, enabled in a way to enable um volunteers to be more involved, different ways to get involved, um, and changing some of the ways that we look at uh integrating those.

So um I think there's a nexus between that and then also the way that we look at the timing of this funding as well.

Does that sound good to everyone?

All right.

Uh Councilmember Hicks.

Yeah, I was gonna say something very similar to Councilmember Clark, but I'm I'm also thinking we would you know highlight it at the council neighborhood committee meetings and I mean actually diversify those meetings.

I uh as a resident, I stopped coming to them because people just talked about traffic.

But if people were talking about this as well, I would start.

So yeah, I think highlighting it and and uh doing outreach through those meetings and also in terms I will not be voting for the Questa Annex item because I agree essentially with it, what council member Clark said.

But I think it's super important.

I like the enhance it, and I like enhancing it through, you know, maybe a grant like this and neighborhood work is something we could do proactively before some the next council can take on some very long-term planning there.

All right, thank you.

So um, most of what I thought was gonna be a shruffle is looks like staff is understood that leaves the Cuesta Park Annex item, but from what I've been hearing, it's not likely that we're going to get something that's a full program.

And just to inform council, uh, we work with Greenspaces MV, they uh have that Cuesta Pollinator Habitat, and they're expanding into the Annex.

So we've been supporting that uh for about eight months now.

So there will be more plantings going on in that kind of that front corner of Cuesta Annex.

All right.

So I think I think we are good.

I think we have the staff have what they need.

We have everything we need.

We have all the themes that we heard tonight, and we really appreciate all the fantastic feedback and uh all the support.

So thank you very much.

All right, thank you.

And that completes this item.

Um it's not a meeting adjourned, but uh we will now go to our 6 30.

We're going straight to our regular session.

Um calling to order now.

Uming everyone.

Welcome to the joint meeting of the Mountain View City Council and Shoreline Regional Park Community and the City of Mountain View Capital Improvements Financing Authority of April 24th, 2026.

Our meeting is still happening.

Um please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Oh, 28.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

April 28th.

So uh city clerk will take attendance by row call.

Councilmember Hicks here.

Councilmember Kamei here.

Councilmember McAllister, it's in the back.

Councilmember Ramirez here.

Councilmember Show Wilcher.

Vice Mayor Clark.

Here Mayor Ramos?

Here.

Thank you.

In recent weeks, the city, along with a few of our neighboring elected decision-making bodies, has been subjected to disruptive racist verbal attacks by anonymous callers during virtual public comments.

The city of Mountain View is fully committed to racial, religious, and culturally equity and cultural equity and justice as we strive to create a welcoming, safe and inclusive community for all.

The council welcomes respectful, non-threatening public comments on matters within our jurisdiction.

Comments deemed otherwise, pursuant to the council code of conduct and the government code, may be grounds for terminating a speaker's comment period.

Additionally, this is a challenging time for many of our neighbors in the Cuesta Park area.

Approximately 67 households have been without drinking water since Friday.

We know the situation has been more than an inconvenience.

We are now at day five of this localized emergency, which happened last Friday when a contractor hired by the city was performing water main replacement activities.

The city's emergency operations center has been activated since Friday night.

We are dedicating resources needed to address your immediate household needs.

We are also working in tandem with state regulators to restore safe drinking water to your homes as soon as possible.

I want to thank our city manager Kimber McCarthy for leading us through this emergency response.

Thank you to Fire Chief Brian Jones, who's overseeing the EOC and Lisa Ow and Mike Vasquez, who are diligently working with the state to get the drinking water restored.

And a huge thank you to our city employees who are dedicating round the clock hours to this incident.

They include our water utility crews, firefighters, police officers, and public works, community services, finance library, legal and public information employees.

To the residents impacted by the Cuesta Park area main area water main incident.

We are sorry this happened, and we will continue to do all that we can to get your water restored as soon as possible.

So now we will move on to item three.

These are presentations.

Please note that these are presentations only.

The city council will not take any action.

Public comment will occur after the presentation items.

If you would like to speak on these items in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk now.

So we have item 3.1, California Parks and Recreation Society Award of Excellence for the Rangstorf Park Aquatic Center.

Yay.

We are happy to be joined this evening by Trisha Mullen, California Parks and Recreation Society Region II representative to present the award of excellence and facility design for the Rangstorp Park Aquatic Center.

Good evening.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council.

As mentioned, I'm Trisha Mullen, the Region 2 representative of the California Parks and Recreation Society, or CPRS.

The CPRS annual awards program celebrates outstanding examples of quality quality facility and park design, programming accomplishments, effective communications, community leadership, and professional successes that take place daily in our profession.

There are five award categories.

We highlight the people, places, spaces, programs, and stories that make communities like the City of Mountain View so very special.

This year, CPRS refreshed their awards of excellence programs with subcategories to provide better access to the awards.

There were 186 applicants and 52 awardees.

As one of five awardees in the Facility Design Award of Excellence in Aquatic Facilities, the City of Mountain View's Rangsdorf Park Aquatic Center is a true testament to what aquatic facilities can provide the community.

The Rangstorf Park Aquatic Center brings year-round swimming, wellness, and connection to the heart of Mountain View.

The collaborative process utilized to create the facilities design ensured the final design reflected what the community truly needed, reliability, inclusion, and spaces for all ages.

Users of the Rangstorf Park Aquatic Center frequently share how much they love its welcoming design, dependable access, and expanded opportunities to learn, play, and stay active.

The Rangstorp Park Aquatic Center is also one of California's first fully electric municipal aquatic centers.

It also leads the way in climate forward design.

Congratulations to your City of Mountain View's community services team for winning the 2025 facility design of award of excellence in the subcategory of aquatic facility.

With that, this one of a kind award plaque was handmade by an artist through an LA-based nonprofit called Peace by Peace.

Not only are you being recognized with a unique piece of artwork, the California Park and Recreation Society is also helping people who were formerly unhoused and low income develop marketable skills, self-confidence, and improved quality of life.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's not a question.

Shouldn't we get the staff that worked on this up here too?

Just a quick impromptu thank yous.

And the Rangsdorf Park Aquatic Center certainly was a long process, not only to get started, but to get finished.

And there's lots of reasons for that.

And one of which is we are one of the few all electric facilities in the country.

And so we certainly were taking undertaking some new technology, making certain piece components work together that have never never worked together before, and between city staff and our contractors, we were able to bring it to fruition.

So a huge thank you to the community that was part of the design process, and um just as important is the uh the staff that was involved to really number one communicate with the community, number two, learn what the community was looking for, number three, making this a really a green um efficient facility um for the environment, and then also for their enthusiasm once it was time to open and bring new new programming back to the facility.

So I want to thank everyone that was involved and thank CPRS for being recognized.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

Congratulations to our Parks and Rec staff.

All right.

Now we will move on to uh item 3.2, which is the Fair Housing Month Proclamation.

We are happy to be joined this evening by Danisa Ronkal, uh Fair Housing Community Outreach Coordinator with Project Sentinels Fair Housing to accept this proclamation.

Ah, there you are.

Um, I will read the proclamation now.

Come right here.

Um, the proclamation reads, whereas adequate housing is a basic need and right of all people, and whereas this year we celebrate the 58th anniversary of the enactment of the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968, uh also known as Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act, um, which states that discrimination in the sale of uh in the sale and rental of housing is illegal when based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, and whereas the Fair Housing Amendment Act of 1988 extends fair housing rights on the basis of familiar status to families with children and on the basis of handicapped to disabled persons, and whereas California statutes additionally protect citizens based on the basis of age, marital status, uh sexual orientation, gender identity, and source of income, and California celebrates 66 the 66th anniversary of the Fair Employment and Housing Act, and whereas the City of Mountain View supports fair housing efforts to eliminate discrimination in housing and recognizes the benefits of Project Sentinel to educate home seekers, apartment managers, and apartment owners on federal and state housing laws and to investigate complaints of illegal housing discrimination in Mountain View.

And whereas, in order to heighten public awareness, the City of Mountain View wishes to focus public attention on April as Fair Housing Month.

Now, therefore, I, Emily Ann Ramos, Mayor of the City of Mountain View, along with my colleagues on the city council, do hereby proclaim April as Fair Housing Month and encourage all residents and community organizations to celebrate the value of harmonious and diverse communities of neighbors and to support the goal of equal housing opportunity for all people.

Would you like to say a few words?

Oh, and here's your thank you.

Thank you to the city of Montembu and the Mayor for your continued partnership and support for of Project Sentinel and Fair Housing in the community.

Fair housing is deeply rooted in the civil rights movement, and the protections we rely on today exist because of that history.

While we made progress, housing discrimination is not a thing of the past.

It continues to impact residents, especially during a time when housing challenges are front and center for so many families.

Now more than ever, support for free housing is essential to creating real solutions that promote access, stability, and opportunity.

Project Sentinel is committed to this work every day addressing housing discrimination one case at a time.

To learn more about our services, please visit our website, WWW Housing.org.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And for the final proclamation of the night, we have Earth Month.

Yay.

To accept this proclamation.

John Paul, will you join me at the lecture?

So the proclamation reads, whereas the first Earth Day was proclaimed in 1970 in order to foster public awareness of the need to protect the environment and conserve resources.

And whereas the City of Mountain View and our residents, organizations, and businesses have shown committed leadership to sustainable environment.

And it's demonstrated by the goals of the general plan, sustainability action plans, climate protection roadmap, zero waste plan, and various ordinance and policies, whereas celebrating Earth Month continues to raise awareness for both achievements and sustainability and ongoing needs for environmental stewardship and resiliency.

Now, therefore, I, Emily Ann Ramos, Mayor of the City of Mountain View, along with my colleagues on the City Council, do hereby proclaim the month of April as Earth Month in the City of Mountain View.

And I urge all residents to celebrate Earth Month to support efforts to further protect our trees and environment and make Mountain View a healthier and more sustainable place for all.

Now, before you could say more words, I'll just use this opportunity for our opportunity for our call to action, call to service, call to community.

So as you include in your remarks, can you let people know, especially our residents, how they can volunteer with canopy?

You set me up so perfectly.

Thank you.

Um thank you so much.

And I don't want to take too much time because we've been talking about trees a lot.

Um but yes, uh, as Mayor Ramos said, we are planting up to 250 trees just this year, just this season in Mountain View.

We're not doing it alone.

We're doing it with you.

And that is the importance.

That is something that I want you to remember and take away.

Uh oh, take away from urban forestry is the science of adding trees to a city.

It's a science of making sure that a tree in the city in the city can survive what species and how to take care of it.

Community forestry, which is what canopy practices, believes in all that, but believes that we should all be part of the solution.

We should all be part of the planning, execution, and care of those trees.

So when we plant 250 trees, we have been engaging hundreds of you, hundreds of you in this planting.

That means that hundreds of you are creating community.

You're be you're creating bonds of of neighbor of neighborhoods of of friendship, bonds of belonging with each other.

That is that is hopefully what not only are these benefits, the benefits of trees going to be ecological, but as uh council member Show Walter said, when volunteers, when people come together in a common cause to do something good, to do something good for a morning, you will not only help grow the urban forest, but that urban forest will strengthen our community and will strengthen the bonds of democracy that we need so much more, especially nowadays.

So thank you for your support.

Thank you for your leadership.

Thank you for believing in the model of community forestry.

Okie dokie.

Let's see.

Would any members of the council like to say a few words?

Councilmember Show Walter.

Yeah, I would really like to um thank all three of uh the people, the organizations that got presentations tonight.

Um I think that they're very much in line with the uh study session that we just had on the biodiversity plan.

Um the uh even the uh the pool, which you might not think a pool is, but we that has been such a vital sustainability project.

We are taking, I mean, we are not using um so much natural gas that would have been used otherwise, and that means we are saving so many GHGs, so it's in line too.

Also, um uh getting housing, affordable housing for people is is um so vital for creating a um a healthy environment for everybody and a community for all.

And then, of course, you know, you just can't beat canopies um uh vital contributions to our community in um helping us plant more trees.

Thank you, Councilmember Show Walter.

Uh, we will now take public comment for the presentation items, presentation items.

Uh, will 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.

We will take in-person speakers first.

Each person will have three minutes.

I see none.

Um we will now go to virtual speakers.

I also see none.

So we will bring it back to council, and now we will move on to item four, our consent calendar.

Um, before we take up the consent calendar, we have one procedure.

Procedural item.

Um, as you are aware, a water main contamination incident in the Questa Park neighborhood on April 24th, 2026, disrupted water service to approximately 67 homes.

On April 25th, the city manager acting as director of emergency services issued a proclamation of local emergency under the Mount of View City Code 11.6 as council was not in session and immediate action was necessary to preserve the city's ability to access any available financial or other assistance from the county, state, and federal agencies in response to the incident.

The council must ratify that proclamation within seven days or it will expire.

Under state law, we may add the item to tonight's agenda with a two-thirds vote if immediate action is required, and the need for action came to the city's attention after the agenda was posted.

With that, do I have a motion and a second to add a resolution ratifying the proclamation of a local local emergency to the consent out calendar item as item 4.8.

I see I have a motion from Councilmember Kameh and Councilmember Hicks.

Um I don't know if you have a script for that, or it's just okay.

We have a motion by Councilmember Kamei and a second by council member Hicks uh to uh put it on to the do we need a vote to put it onto the consent calendar?

All right, so we'll uh uh take it to the vote.

Motion passes unanimously, so that will be added to the consent calendar.

So items on the consent calendar 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 the approval of the balance of the consent calendar.

If you would 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?

I see council member McAllister.

I'd just like to make a comment on 4.4.

4.4.

But not poll.

All right.

All right, feel free uh to make actually let's go to the public comment then, and then um we'll go from there.

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.

We will take in-person speakers first.

Each speaker will have three minutes.

I see no speakers in the queue.

We will now take virtual speakers.

I also see no speakers in the queue.

Um we will now bring back this uh for council action and a note to a motion and a note that a motion to approve the consent calendar should include reading the title and the ordinances and resolutions attached to the consent calendar items 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, and the newly added 4.8.

Um, I believe council member McAllister had something to say, and also council member Hicks is after.

Go ahead, Councilmember McAllister.

Oh, the ladies first.

So I will be recusing myself from 4.2, uh, which is on the entertainment zone, I believe.

All right.

Uh so I'll be voting for the rest, but I will not vote for that.

And just as a point of clarification, in that case, can I make the motion or do you recommend that I not if I'm recused?

Because I would have to read it.

I think you can still make the motion if you want to.

Okay, even if I'm okay.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Councilmember McAllister.

Yeah, on 4.4, it's talking about the uh Senate bill, the road repair and accountability act.

And it's talking about making sure our roads are in a good condition.

And I'm making a comment because uh this is great that we're doing it.

And I'm making a comment because uh this is great that we're doing it, but when we were talking to budget earlier in the year, I asked to if we could uh reallocate some money from one project to uh road repair, and you thought that was an appropriate use of money.

But I want you to start thinking about something down the line when we're talking about our roads that for the last four years our road conditions have deteriorated.

We have what's called PCI, and it started at like a 69 and went down to 67, down to 68, 66, and it was going down, and now we're bringing it back up.

But what happens when we don't spend money to maintain our roads, it's gonna cost us more in the long run.

And I know you this council likes to get a lot of things done, and I he'd seen us spending more money on something that if we had done preventative maintenance, it would have saved us money so that we could use elsewhere.

So please consider that when we look at the road repair.

Yes, it's it's not glamorous, but it does provide a lot of things, and it does will cost us more money unless we address it sooner.

So that's the comment I'm on, and I support this.

Thank you, Councilmember McAllister.

I believe now I'll uh throw it to Councilmember Hicks to read the motions.

So I am uh making motion to adopt to item 4.2, adopt an ordinance of the city council of City Mountain View establishing an entertainment zone on portions of Castro Street consistent with Senate Bill 969 is codified in Business and Professional Code, Section 25692 to be read in title only further reading waived, and I will be recused from that item.

Uh also item 4.3 adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View approving a plan of finance of the California municipal finance authority to issue and reissue revenue bonds with an aggregate principal amount not to exceed $35 million to finance a residential rental project located at 1020 Terabella Avenue and certain other matters relating thereto to be read in title only further reading waived and adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View declaring the real property located at 1020 Terabella Avenue, which is intended to be acquired and immediately leased back to the developer to be exempt surplus land pursuant to the surplus land act to be read in title only further reading waived.

Also item 4.4 adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View adopting a list of projects for funding to be allocated during fiscal year 2627 from Senate Bill 1, the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 to be read in title only further reading waived.

Also a diet item 4.5 adopt a resolution of the city council of the City of Mountain View amending uh City of Mountain View resolution number 18584, which conditionally approved a residential development project at 400 Logue Avenue to replace exhibit A to resolution number 18584 with a corrected exhibit A to remove condition of approval number 163 163 regarding the parkland dedication in Luffy to be read in title only further reading waived, and uh also 4.6 introduce an ordinance of the City of Mountain View amending Article 5 of Chapter 29 of the Mountain View City Code to align it with state law, clarify real property conveyance tax exemptions, and to make other clarifying amendments to be read in title only further reading waived and set a second reading for May 12th of 2026, and also uh newly added item 4.8, adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View, ratifying proclamation of local emergency to be read in title only further reading waived.

Yay, all right, let's get to a vote.

The consent calendar passes unanimously.

Um now we will move on to item five 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's 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 would like to speak on this item or the next item in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk now.

Would any member of the public for joining us virtually or in person like to provide public comment on this item?

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

We will take in-person speakers first.

Each speaker will have 90 seconds.

Oh, okay.

The first speaker is uh Ramesh Babu.

And then this followed by Hormaz Romer, and then followed by Henry So.

So Ramesh Babu.

If uh if those who are after him can line up so we don't have to wait for you guys to come up.

That would be great.

I have been Mountain View residents for the past 32 years, and I was a member in Shoreline Golf Club Twilight Member.

Last meeting, I brought up the issue saying Shoreline is canceling without communication with us.

Just yesterday, I received an email from the Shoreline saying that as of June 30th, your membership will be canceled.

I have been member for 12, 13 years.

So it's a nice way to walk and play golf.

So I request the city to interview, intervene in this matter and communicate with Shoreline.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Hormaz Romer, followed by Henry Seo, followed by Audrey Kim.

If you guys can line up.

We can move him down, so we'll move on to Henry Seo.

Henry so next, Audrey Kim.

Followed by Chris Lee, followed by Clarence Wong.

So Audrey Kim, if you can take the mic.

Andre Kim.

Audrey Kim.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

Campus Bus Cancer, the uh 29 to annual golf members.

Uh in my opinion, as a public resource owned by CD, uh Shoreline Golf Rings should not be operate with the primary object of uh maximizing profit.

As part as I know, uh Rastios Shoreline Golf Rings made the 350 dollars in profit.

So I don't understand why Campus Both and CD Park and Red want to cancel uh annual membership and why PAC and REC privatized uh higher propitable public access to city on the recreation possibility.

Please uh uh city council maker agenda.

Uh I tend to study this issue and the save shoreline corporate and your membership program.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Chris Lee.

Good morning.

Good evening, member of the city council.

My name is Chris Lee.

And I've been a golf member at the Shoreline League since the last year.

I'm here tonight to ask you to put a specific on a future agenda.

The recent decision by Pag and Rek and the Campus Books to end the annual golf membership program.

A public golf course should stay affordable and open to everyone.

But this change happens suddenly without real public discussion or clear input from the community.

It feels like the department is closing the door on communication rather than being transparent with the people on what they are planning to.

For many of us, Shoreline is more than just course.

It's where we stay active, connect with our fans, and feel part of this community.

I respectfully ask you to take a closer look at this decision.

Please help us keep Shoreline's resource for many, not for just a few.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Next we have Clarence Wong, followed by Amy Yu, followed by Eric Chung.

Good evening.

I'm Clarence Wong.

I'm here to add my voice to those concerned that the Shoreline Twilight Golf membership has been eliminated.

I'm a longtime golf Shoreline Golf member and been playing there for 20 years.

If you haven't yet uh gone out to Shoreline, if you go there in the early afternoon, you'll see member many Twilight members are very active.

You will see a wonderful blend of all ages and abilities.

You will see members older than me, some in their 70s, walking and playing.

You see seniors, couples, singles ladies, ladies' groups.

You'll see young people too.

I have made many friends there, uh younger than me and older than me too, and we all play together because we're friends at Shoreline.

Uh it's really wonderful.

Um it's possible because Shoreline's membership structure was affordable for seniors like me and those older, but also for younger folks who can't afford higher golf expenses.

It enables folks like me to play and exercise multiple days a week.

It also enables play during the weekend.

Uh the Twilight program is a big part of that and is very popular.

I am certain that eliminating that program will severely impact the community and the dynamic I've described.

Uh, please continue managing Shoreline as a vital public park and not make dramatic fee and membership changes to the program and all memberships.

We understand incremental fee increases are necessary to keep pace with costs, but not tectonic changes, please.

I asked you to keep the Shoreline Golf focus on thank you.

Amy Yu, followed by Eric Chung, followed by Jesse Roger.

Amy you Amy, it's late.

Uh I'm Henry.

Can I talk first?

Oh, okay.

Uh Henry So?

Yes.

Okay, go ahead, Henry.

Oh, hello.

Uh my name is uh Henry Chote.

I'm a shoreline golfer, try line member since uh 2018.

So during that time, I make a lot of friends, and I really enjoy golfing there.

So I would like to continue golfing at Shoreline in the near future.

So the purpose of the city-owned municipal golf course is to provide a recreation resources and an affordable price.

So campus sport and city park uh recreation, uh prioritizing higher profits over golf inclusivity, and undermines the public purpose of a city resources.

It would be better if campus sport can modify the current program.

For example, they can increase the rate or adjust the tea time instead of just canceling the membership.

So City Council, peace make an agenda item to study this issue and save the shoreline uh golf annual membership programs.

So I would greatly a PGA City Council would take uh public opinions into account.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we have Eric Chung, followed by Jesse Roger, followed by Teresa Cho.

Eric Chung.

Uh Amy and Eric are late.

They're on their way.

I'm sorry.

All right, we'll move Eric down.

Um Jesse Roger.

Followed by Teresa Cho, followed by Melinda Cho.

Go ahead.

Um, my name is Jesse Roger.

Uh I moved here two years ago to become a full-time caregiver for my aged grandmother.

And when I moved here with the change in my life circumstances, I didn't think golf was going to be a part of my life anymore.

Um, but fortunately I found this program, and something that I thought was going to be cost prohibitive was no longer cost prohibitive, and I was able to continue doing something I loved and build a sense of community.

Um every person who's spoken so far, I know them and I know them because of this program.

Um I think it's a really great outlet that is provided by the city, and changing it, particularly without any real discussion or you know, opportunity for compromise is a big blow to a lot of the people that are here.

Um I'm really hoping that there is an opportunity to discuss this more and put it on a future agenda so that myself and all the people here and all the people that enjoy this program are able to continue doing something they love and being a part of this community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we have Teresa Cho, followed by Melinda Cho, followed by John Satcher.

All right, Teresa.

Good evening.

My name is Teresa Cho.

I'm also Special Olympic volunteer coach for golf.

I'm here to ask you to protect a fair and affordable access to Shaw Line Golf.

Counseling Twilight membership is taking away one of the most affordable and reliable ways for us and the residents.

Why it is that matter?

First, it's affordable.

Those working class and those people who is and the family, they can play golf because it is affordable.

And also the Special Olympic athlete, my like my daughter, she could practice at Shaolan.

It is built with a strong community.

Comparison, the change, it is contradict to the city parks and recreation goals.

Access, remove one of the most affordable options.

And then also it reduces participation.

For inclusion, it impacts people with disabilities.

For substability, it replaces thank you.

Your time is up.

So you're so we need a lot of so you're all cool.

Everyone gets 90 seconds, so your time is up.

All right, thank you.

Melinda Cho.

Hello.

My name is Melinda Cho.

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

You have to speak louder.

My name is Melinda Cho.

I live with Olympics.

I late.

I practice.

I practice golf.

And you are Twilight member for your years.

Um you're busy.

I'm busy on weekdays, and you can only play on weekend.

But they cancel.

The membership is, and what do you do?

You will not be able to play.

So you ask them.

To continue to let you practice golf golf.

That's the one you I love.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

John Satter, followed by Mike Pelham, and then followed by Hormaz Romer.

Madam Mayor and City Council.

Last week I had a phone call with John Marchant to discuss how to collaborate and negotiate to save Shoreline Twilight Annual Golf memberships.

Mr.

Michaant responded via email, and I quote, I support the decision to discontinue the Twilight membership program.

I do not agree to discuss negotiating pricing, modifying playing times, or collaborate on continuing the program.

City Council, why is John Marchant, the City Parks and Rec Director aligning himself with a private equity company that refuses to collaborate with the public?

Municipal golf courses are public utilities designed to make golf accessible and affordable to everyone.

Please, City Council, put us on the agenda in May so we can present how the 15-year shoreline annual golf membership program achieves the purpose of a municipal golf course by providing accessible, affordable, and inclusive access to the public.

Thank you.

Again, please consider adding us to the agenda item.

We would love for the Parks and Rec and Campers Sports to meet with us so that we can come to an agreement on how to continue this program.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mike Pelham, followed by Hormaz Romer, followed by Amy Yu.

Hi, I'm Mike Pelham.

Um, his support, the Twilight members.

I've been a member for five years or so, and I really enjoyed it.

And I've met a lot of friends, especially the um Special Olympics group.

We play with them, and it's a fantastic wildlife park.

So I was really just disappointed when I just discontinued the membership without any discussion.

And uh I really believe that this membership brings a lot to the community.

It's just a great time to be out there with friends.

So, lacking any communication, I still find it difficult to understand the reason for this.

I don't believe it's purely financial, but maybe it is, in which case the the rules that they've sent, some of the statistics they give me just don't make sense.

So the public can now book before the Twilight members, which was not when I joined.

We could get a tea time.

Now public can book ahead of us.

So we're we're really just a bonus.

I mean, they can they can sell it to the public and we just get a bonus, and we take up whatever tea times are left.

So that's that's how it sits.

Um anyway, you know, I really think we should discuss this more and uh appreciate your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hormaz Romer, followed by Amy Yu, followed by Eric Chung.

So we're getting to the people who uh getting back to the people.

Go ahead.

Oh, thank you.

Good evening, uh Mayor and Council members.

My name is Hormes Roomer, and I've been a proud member of the Shoreline Golf Links for over five years.

I'm here tonight to actually congratulate the city on two things, and then ask an important question.

First, in 2012, the city made a visionary decision to introduce a membership program at Shoreline Golf.

Before that, the golf operations were losing money.

Since then, they've become self-supporting and even profitable.

This is rare.

For comparison, City of Sunnywell's golf and tennis operations currently lose $800,000 a year.

Second, the community services department's mission statement is building community, enriching lives.

That is a beautiful mission statement.

Congratulations on that.

And exactly the right one for the city.

Which is why I'm troubled.

The city is proposing to eliminate the membership program, and every justification we've heard has been primarily financial.

So our ask is simple.

Why fix what isn't broken?

The financials are sound.

Eliminating the membership program is in direct contrast to that mission statement.

We ask that you ask the staff to reevaluate their decision.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Amy Yu, followed by Eric Chung, followed by Cortis Box.

Hello, my name is Amy Yu.

I've been a member, Twilight Member at Shoreline about seven years, and we really enjoy going there every weekend, playing with all these friends and create all this community bonding.

But it's very disappointing now.

So can you please not let Campus Sports cancel the Twilight Annual Golf membership?

It's a public resource owned by the city.

Shoreline Golf Links should not be operated with the primary objective of maximizing profit.

Last year, Shoreline Link made 350,000 in profit.

Why does Camper Sports City Park want to cancel the annual uh Twilight membership?

Why is park prioritizing higher profits over affordable public access to a city-owned create uh create recreation facility?

Can you please make the item to study this issue and save Shoreline Twilight Annual Membership program?

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Follow now we have Eric Chung, followed by Cortis Box.

Good evening, City Council members.

Thank you for giving us the time to express our opinion.

I think uh as already known, right?

Uh Kemper Sports came in here to manage the golf course.

They manage over 200 courses throughout the country.

Their primary mission, of course, is making some money because they're not a charitable organization based on what I checked.

So what is a private company tend to do?

They want to increase their profit year after year after year.

Now, I'm working the private sector, I understand how to make money.

Do you want to make more and more?

But as a city, which is not a full profit organization.

I think there is a little bit of a you know philosophical differences there, right?

Now, I'm okay with them making some money because they hire people, they gotta make some money.

But are they pouring in the profit back into the community back into the course?

Probably not.

They probably wire you back to the headquarters.

So as a member, I think you see the numbers of uh players being eliminated because of the cancellation of the program, but that's just purely a number.

Behind those numbers, you have people like seniors that maybe golf is their only course of recreation.

You have special Olympic people, they play golf because they love golf.

So those are not just numbers, those are people who actually enjoy and use it, and they may not be able to afford it, right?

If you keep increasing or cancel the program.

Okay, so thank you for time.

Thank you.

Now we have our last speaker of the night, Cortis Box.

Well, not for the night, but for oral communications.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the council.

My name is Curtis Banks.

I have bad handwriting, sorry about that.

I've lived in Mountain View and played Shoreline for 35 years for three uh decades, weekend twilight times were never an issue.

I wasn't a Twilight member at that point.

This changed in the last couple of years with a surge in the program's popularity, and I'm here to support staff's decision to eliminate unlimited weekend Twilight Play.

Shoreline has become a design uh a subsidized designation for many golfers throughout the peninsula.

My research shows that neighboring courses like Sunnyville and Poplar Creek restrict their programs to weekends only.

Our programs allow uh folks outside the area, and most of the Twilight members are not Mountain View residents to play at a fraction of the going rates.

Because our rates are already among the lowest in the area.

We're essentially subsidizing golf for non-residents.

I've used the Twilight membership for tea time priority, and although this is changed, I've seen members continue to dominate the T sheet, making it difficult for residents to book times.

The community is great, and it can still exist, but it shouldn't be built on subsidies that displace locals.

I'm thank you.

Your time is up.

All right, thank you.

Uh just as a reminder to everyone, state law prohibits the council from acting on non-agenda items.

In order to put something on the agenda, it would be something at the end of our meeting.

Um, but we have several items before that.

So just giving people a heads up on that.

Um, so uh we will now take virtual public comments.

Um, but I see none.

So that ends oral communications on public comment.

So we will move on to item six public hearings.

6.1 is uh mixed use development at 843-903 Castro Street, 700 West El Camino Real, and 750 Fairmont Avenue.

Councilmember Hicks, do you have an announcement to make?

I do have an announcement to make.

Let's see if I can locate it here.

Uh, yes, I am recusing myself from agenda item 6.1, mixed use development at 843 through 903 Castro Street, 700 West El Camino Real, and 750 Fairmont Avenue, due to the proximity of my personal residence to the project site.

So I will be seeing you all later tonight.

Have fun.

All right.

Um as council member Hicks uh leaves.

Uh, we have deputy zoning administrator Rebecca Shapiro and Senior Planner Edgar Marvilla that will present the item.

If you would like to speak on this item in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk now, and we will have our staff presentation.

Good evening, Mayor Remos and City Council members.

As noted, I'm Rebecca Shapiro, Deputy Zoning Administrator, and I'm joined on the dais tonight by senior planner Edgar Meravia, who is the project manager for this item.

The project before you tonight is a mixed use development located near the northeast corner of Castro Street and El Camino Real.

The 1.43 acre project site, which is outlined in orange, is at a gateway location in the downtown precise plan.

The site's general plan designations are downtown mixed use and medium density residential, the latter of which applies to the shaded area shown on the screen.

The site is immediately surrounded by a one-story commercial building along Castro Street to the north, and three two-story homes that are to the north along Hope Street.

Gateway Plaza is located immediately southwest of the proposed project, and the lower density Old Mountain View neighborhood is to the northeast.

The applicant is requesting multiple development permits listed here to construct an eight-story mixed use development, which is utilizing state density bonus law to achieve the proposed 140 residential unit count.

Along with the necessary development permits and proposed subdivision map, the project includes a request for the city to vacate and sell a portion of the existing Fairmont Avenue Public Right of World For Incorporation into the project site, which is a decision that the city council has full discretion over.

The proposed project site is bisected by a primary east-west paseo, which we refer to as the Fairmont Paseo, that provides publicly accessible bicycle and pedestrian circulation, roughly where the existing street is today.

Approximately two-thirds of the Fairmont Paseo is open to the sky, with the proposed building covering the rest of that paseo as well as a north-south connection to Gateway Plaza.

Other on-site pedestrian paths surround the building and provide access to the different building functions and include a partial arcade along the Castro frontage.

Vehicular access to the underground garage is provided from Hope Street, which is on the right hand side of the screen.

And the ground floor plan is primarily comprised of commercial storefronts, which are shown in blue along Castro Street portions of the Paseos and Gateway Plaza with residential uses in the balance of the project area.

The proposed building employs a contemporary architectural style with two primary materials, stucco and a fiber board siding, plus additional accent materials.

The image on the left shows the proposed building from the Castro and El Camino Real intersection, where you can see stone-like cladding on the ground floor commercial facades and existing city street and gateway plaza trees, providing some scale against the eight-story building.

The image on the right shows the project from Hope Street looking south towards El Camino Real.

Here you see eight-story building areas visible with some height step downs and upper floor setbacks.

Would like woodlook siding and landscaping is also used to soften the transition to the lower density residential neighborhood.

First state density bonus law, the project is eligible for and proposes a 100% density bonus.

The applicant's state density bonus request also includes two waivers of development standards and a concession.

Staff's analysis found that the waivers of standards are necessary to construct the project, and the city and applicant have also resolved the concession request through a negotiated settlement agreement as discussed in the council report and density bonus findings.

As noted earlier, the site has two general plan land use designations, and staff found that the mixed-use project advances general plan goals and policies and is consistent with permitted uses under those designations.

Except for the requested waivers that were highlighted on the prior slide.

The project complies with all of the applicable objective development standards of the precise plan.

Now, pursuant to state density bonus law, the proposed density bonus and qualifying waiver requests are not a basis for deeming the project inconsistent with the general plan or precise plan standards or for disapproving the project.

For state density bonus law, the project is eligible for the proposed 100% density bonus because the project provides 15% of the base project units as affordable for lower income households and 15% of the base units is affordable to moderate income households.

The provision of the 22 affordable units meets overlapping city BMR ordinance and state density bonus law requirements, which are summarized on screen.

And the project will also address tenant relocation requirements of both the city and state codes.

The BMR proposal was also found by staff to be consistent with city requirements for affordable units to be reasonably proportionate and dispersed amongst the overall unit mix with the affordable units distributed across floors one through six.

The project provides common usable open space in roof decks on floors two through seven, as well as uh private open space and balconies for each unit.

The site plan also includes outdoor amenity spaces for the commercial tenants and uh landscaping and seating in the on-site passeos, as well as compliant buffer landscaping in required setback areas.

For the landscape plan, the on-site canopy will increase from 10% as it exists today to 16% of the site area after 10 years, with additional canopy possible from the roof deck plantings.

Overall, the landscape plans comply with the city's water conservation and landscaping regulations and applicable precise plan standards.

The project will remove seven on-site heritage trees, which are shown in orange on the screen.

Uh, those trees are in a mix of good and poor condition.

The on-site heritage and non-heritage trees will also be removed due to direct conflicts with the project.

The applicant is proposing to preserve one on-site heritage tree, which is circled in level in yellow near the inner the existing intersection of Hope and Fairmont.

The project will replace two existing street trees along Castro Street to facilitate solid waste service consistent with city requirements and remove existing Fairmont Avenue street improvements.

The proposed on-site planting plan includes 54 new trees, which exceeds the city's typical practice for heritage tree replacements.

As noted earlier, the project includes a proposal to acquire one block of Fairmont Avenue between Castro Street and Hope Street for incorporation into the project site.

The project uh would close the existing vehicular access but maintain publicly accessible non-vehicle connections through the on-site Paseos.

The Fairmont right-of-way related actions are part of the project recommendation before council tonight, and they must be approved for the project as proposed to be proceed.

If they are approved and the transaction is completed, the city would receive approximately 4.2 million dollars for the land.

The project also includes off-site streetscape improvements on all project frontages, and the city's multimodal transportation analysis generally found the project to conform with the downtown precise plan and result in acceptable circulation and intersection operations.

The project qualifies for a categorical exemption pursuant to SQL Guidelines Section 15332, which applies to infill developments.

Analysis supporting this exemption is summarized in the project resolution and addressed in more detail within the CECO exemption report, which is an attachment to the council report.

This analysis included review of the project against the city's adopted VMT policy, which found that the project is anticipated to have a less than significant VMT impact.

The applicant voluntarily attended two DRC meetings and held one community meeting that was attended by staff during this application phase.

Public comments from these meetings and written correspondence as well were summarized in and attached to the council report.

Key topics that were raised in public comment included a focus on tree preservation, which included avoidance of off-site tree impacts and concerns about the scale of the proposed development.

The zoning administrator and subdivision committee recommended conditional approval of the project at a public hearing in October of last year, and the notice of intention to vacate the public street and easement was made by council last month.

In conclusion, the project has been found to be consistent with the general plan, zoning, subdivision, and environmental review regulations that are applicable to the project pursuant to the provisions of state density bonus law.

The staff zoning administrator and subdivision committee recommendations are shown on screen and in the council report for adoption of the street and easement vacations, the related real estate actions, and conditional approval of the project permits pursuant to the findings and conditions of approval attached to the council report.

This concludes staff's presentation tonight.

City staff from pertinent departments are available for questions, and the applicant team also has a presentation for the city council tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We will now have a presentation for the applicant, Ken Rodriguez, Project Architect.

Ken Rodriguez and partners.

You will see seven minutes on the clock.

Thank you.

My name is Ken Rodriguez, a local Mountain View Architectural and Planning Firm.

I'm proud to present the gateway to the to Mountain View for GPR ventures.

During the last three years, our team received community and staff design input for this exciting new mixed-use project in downtown Mountain View.

Next slide.

Next slide.

One more, sorry.

Thank you, Edgar.

The entire Castro Street frontage will be retail shops and restaurants, as staff mentioned.

Above uh the street level will be the 140 units of housing, 22 of which are affordable housing.

And this uh Castro frontage with its stone arcade will allow the public to shop, sit, and dine both inside and outside while at the same time bringing pedestrian vitality to the gateway and to downtown.

Uh the new buildings, next slide, please.

The new buildings uh will not only serve as a gateway to downtown, but also as a backdrop for the existing uh city park located at Castro and El Camino.

Um this project will also be a strong catalyst to activating this park for members of the community and new residents of the gateway.

Um of GPR's next slide, please.

One of GPR's main goals for this project was to use the highest quality of materials and design detailing.

Materials include cut stone, exterior plaster, large glass windows, metal balconies, aluminum awnings, and wood siding.

These materials and the massing of the lower floor consistent with the city design guidelines, precise plan, while the upper floors step back multiple times to help break down the scale of the project.

Next slide, please.

Fairmont Drive will be turned into a no-autos, pedestrian and bicycle paseo, as staff mentioned.

That include both outdoor dining, raised planters for seating, public art, and a real connection uh for the um downtown and the neighborhood to the west.

Next slide, please.

Um as the new Paseo meets the neighborhood to the east, it becomes more passive.

Quiet, pedestrian friendly with outdoor seating, landscaping versus the more urban design located along Castro.

Next slide.

A second Paseo running north-south connects the Fairmont Paseo with the existing city park at Castro and El Camino.

This Paseo includes outdoor seating, overlooking the park, landscaping, public art, and unique lighting to help promote pedestrian activity.

The gateway to Mountain View will enhance and engage Castro Street, El Camino, and Hope Street with this new very pedestrian-oriented uh visually important mixed-use project and add much needed housing to our beautiful city of Mountain View.

The entire project team, uh, including the ownership, GPR Ventures, is here.

We are happy to answer any questions that you have.

Thank you so much for your time tonight.

Thank you.

Uh, does any member of the council have questions?

Seeing none.

Oh, wait, we do.

Okay.

Councilmember Show Walter.

Yeah.

Um, in the staff report, it it talked about uh this was described initially as condos, and then there was some discussion about um uh they would be rented as apartments uh at the beginning.

So uh is there what's the plan here?

Uh I can start to answer that question.

I I appreciate that there may be some confusion there.

Uh the project before city council tonight includes a subdivision map, which um uh will create condominium units within the development.

Uh so that's part of the action before the city council tonight.

Uh it's staff's understanding that the applicant is sort of leaving options open in terms of whether they immediately implement the condominium component of the project and sell the units or rent the units for some period of time.

Uh and the applicant team may be better equipped to provide more more detail on their intention in terms of the condominium component of the project.

Uh hi, Mayor and City Council.

My name is Glenn Yonakura, and I'm representing GPR ventures here.

Uh, the reason that we need some flexibility with respect to condos or apartments is largely due to the liability issues related to building condominiums, the 10-year liability and various things like that uh currently in the market.

Um there's very few developments in the state of California that are condominiums, and the reason is because of the liability, the 10-year liability issue.

And currently in the economic environment, banks won't underwrite these assets to give you a construction loan.

And so that's what banks do.

That's how you'll get this constructed.

They'll lend money based on the value of the apartments and how much they would rent for.

Okay.

Thank you.

I I guess my other I have do have another question.

Um, and that's uh about all the uh commercial space.

And um, you know, we've had quite a bit of trouble um renting commercial space, particularly in the San Antonio area.

Um that it's it's finally happening, but but those buildings were built, you know, five or six years ago, and they they stood vacant for a long time.

So I wondered what is the plan for um uh getting that commercial space failed.

Um I I do believe this is another question uh that the applicant might be best equipped to answer.

I I will say just anecdotally that um my experience with developers proposing projects uh especially recently is that they they will not generally propose um the inclusion of commercial space that they don't ultimately believe that they'll have the ability to rent um and often have kind of a diverse uh uh palette of land uses that they potentially envision to get those spaces leased.

But with that overarching answer, I I would look to the applicant to speak further about their plans for the space.

Uh sure.

Uh we've uh historically met with various restaurants over the last three or four years, but there is a couple of tenants that are existing in these uh parcels that uh will potentially move out and move back in that we have to preserve and protect because that's part of the agreement.

So there's current tenants that we have to take care of, but outside of that there'll be other restaurants, but it's too early for us to have any uh detailed discussions with those restaurants at this point.

Well, um uh there's been thought in the down we've had some owners that are very good to work with um and have allowed their vacant spaces to be used for um like holiday pop-ups or um galleries um or or short-term uses um when they couldn't get a long-term owner uh I mean a long-term leaser.

Would you be interested in working with the city on that sort of thing if you sure sure we'd be happy to because that is we we find that um uh you know having vacancies is is really sort of de-livens the area, and it's much better for everyone if if something is is going on.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Is that all your questions, Councilmember Shaw Walter?

Okay.

Now we have questions from Councilmember McAllister.

Thanks.

Where's the parking for the tenants for the commercial or how many parking spaces are designed for the uh commercial spaces?

Currently they have 33 advocating for about 9,700 square feet of commercial space.

No, where's the parking for the the parking for the commercial spaces is in the underground uh garage uh so those spaces would be accessible from that garage entry location?

Okay, and how accessible would they be?

Is there a walkway down?

I didn't get to take a look at that.

So how will they get to the parking space?

The parking levels are underground, and so folks would need to drive into the underground garage, uh exit their cars and take uh an elevator to the surface level.

And I noticed that the setback for uh Castro is 12 feet on some and then goes from there.

The Castro Street setback is is actually uh effectively zero.

Uh the precise plan calls for development along Castro Street to be built to the back of the walk.

Um at the ground floor of the building, there is a partial arcade, so the storefronts are stepped back from the property line.

But generally speaking, the building and the structure of the arcade um are placed at the back of the sidewalk.

So I was reading that the uh at the once it gets to the third floor, there's a 25-foot setback.

So the first floor is basically the same as the commercial space that goes pretty much straight up, and so that's the 12-foot- uh the uh there are upper floors that have greater step back.

What about the first?

The second and third floors um do uh extend even with the arcades, so those will be proud of closer to the sidewalk than the commercial storefronts, which are stepped back from the sidewalk to provide additional outdoor space in that arcade.

Okay.

And how much space?

So I was at a VTA meeting, and one of the big things that VTAs haven't an issue with is that new developments are providing uh spaces for buses to park, etc.

So I notice could I don't fully understand the one thing about the street right-of-way that says five foot street and utility easement between Castro and Hope Street?

Is Hope Street gonna be uh reduced in any width?

Sorry about that.

Uh to my knowledge, no, Hope Street will remain um the same width, and there is a planned loading zone uh along the west side of Hope Street in front of the project for that be on their pro on the development property or in the street.

It's a a street side loading zone to my understanding.

So it's public right-of-way that they're using.

Uh it will be usable for all sorts of loading, including deliveries um uh which occur through the downtown on public alleys and streets, uh, and uh person loading, so passenger loading um for residents and and visitors to the site.

I remember we used to have uh a sun uh calculations that if a building goes up, how it would block the sun.

So when the sun is in the west, how does that project over the homes that are on Hope Street on the east side of Hope Street?

The blocking of sunlight.

Um I I don't have a mental map of their solar shading plan, but generally speaking, afternoon sun, which would be as you noted to the west of the site, um would cause shadow to be cast um you know onto Hope Street and some of the properties on the east side of Hope Street as well.

Well, is there that was designed to try to give those so how much of light will be blocked from this eight-story building onto the Hope Street?

And wasn't there supposed to be some kind of an angle on it?

Or is there any requirement that the light cannot be blocked so much?

So I I think the standards that you're thinking of are standards that exist in our R3 multiple family zoning district where uh the setback is uh required to effectively match the height at each floor of the building.

Um there are different uh setback standards that exist in the downtown precise plan that are different than the R3 standards.

Um the project complies with the applicable development standards for the downtown precise plan, but for the the items that are uh requested waivers that are identified in the staff report.

Okay, so there's no consideration for this sunlight then because it's not part of the precise plan in that area.

Uh the project complies with the standards that are in the precise plan, um, and where they could not comply with those standards, they have requested waivers.

Okay.

Uh to follow up on council member showwalters about the rental of the units.

That that was interesting because it was always projected as a condo project, but in your conditions of approval that there was something connected concerning that 11 of the units are put in pu perpetuity to be affordable.

So do they start out as rental units in perpetuity and stay that way if they start running?

Um I guess the the short answer to that question is um that they have the ability to sell the the condominium units with the the map that's being proposed if approved by council.

Um but they also have the ability to to rent the units.

Um the BMR agreements for the project will reflect the rental or uh for sale nature of the project at the time it's developed, and if that changes, um there are mechanisms within the um the agreements to address that.

So is that uh uh in-house development agreement, or is that I thought that was state?

Is that the perpetuity?

Is that a city?

That's a a city um a city standard um and the project includes conditions of approval that address um scenarios for either sale or rental of the units.

Is there a uh I saw director uh of their standard for those projects?

Did you have anything that you wanted to add?

You're just stretching your legs, okay.

Thanks.

Um, if these units were is there anything in the conditions of approval that would allow them that would require them to put it into condominiums?

Uh there is not uh an applicable mechanism for the the city to to require uh sale of the units.

So are when they do a tenants map, they're paying extra to have this subdivided, all these is there an extra cost.

If you build apartments, there's one cost, but if you put in condos, you have to put in the tenant map or something to individually recognize each unit.

Uh the project already includes a request for a vesting tenative map to create condominium units.

And does that cost extra?

Uh this project was reviewed on a cost recovery basis, and so there were not individual flat fees charged to the project based on the different permits that are being requested.

So if somebody has an existing apartments and they wanted to convert those to condos, they would have to pay that fee.

The tenant fee.

I mean, uh there might be a variety of permits that would be required for a conversion of an existing building from rental to uh condominium for sale units.

Um the city has a section of the code about condominium conversions.

Um, and included in that would be the need for a subdivision map to create the condominium.

That's the word I was looking for subdivision map.

Um this project already includes a proposal for uh a subdivision map, and so that's part of the action before city council tonight.

So the condom uni condominium units would be created through the subdivision map that's already been proposed by the applicant.

So if they start out as rentals and then uh convert them, whatever.

Is there any additional fees that they would be required to pay?

Um there would not be new permit fees, to my knowledge.

Um I believe the draft conditions of approval do include an HOA reserve, um uh, which is part of the existing regulations that apply to the project.

Um I don't recall just off the top of my head what the timing for the creation of that fund is, but I think it's connected to implementation of the map uh and creation of an HOA.

Um, but that's just from recollection.

And the comparison, what was what was the height of the Chase Bank?

Uh do you recall the site of that project?

Um I I don't recall the height.

I believe it topped out at about six stories.

Um, but um I don't recall the specifications.

I think it was six, and then across the street, there I think they're four stories.

It's more like four or the the highest level, maybe five along El Camino.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

Any other questions from our colleagues?

All right.

We will now move on to public comment.

Would any member of the public on the line um or in person like to provide comment on this item?

Uh if so, please click the raise hand button and zoom or turn in a blue speaker card.

Um a timer will be displayed on the screen.

Each speaker will have.

I'm not seeing any public comment.

Okay.

Each speaker will have three minutes, and seeing none, um we will go back to council.

I have um oh well, I was gonna say we also take virtual speakers, but we don't have that either.

Um so we'll bring the item back to for council questions and deliberation.

Please note that a motion to approve the recommendation should also include reading the title of resolutions attached to the report.

Councilmember Ramirez.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'll move to approve the staff recommendation, including one, adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View ordering the conditional vacation of the existing public street known as Fairmont Avenue between Castro Street and Hope Street and a five-foot street and utility easement thereon to be read in title only for the reading waived.

Adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View declaring the city-owned portion of Fairmont Avenue between Castro Street and Hope Street to be exempt surplus land pursuant to government code section 5421 F1E upon the vacation of Fairmont Avenue as a public street and public easement to be read and title only.

Further reading waived.

Council of the City of Mountain View conditionally approving a planned community permit and a development review permit to construct an eight-story mixed-use development with 140 residential condominium units, 9,743 square feet of ground floor commercial space, and two levels of below grade parking utilizing state density bonus law, replacing existing commercial properties and four residential units, a provisional use permit to allow residential uses on upper floors only along the Castor Street frontage and heritage tree removal permit to remove seven heritage trees on a 1.43 acre site located at 843 to 903 Castro Street, 700 West El Commun West El Camino Real and 750 Fairmont Avenue, APN 1580608, 15806010, 15806036, 15806037, 15806038, and 15806039, and finding the project to be categorically exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act CEQA pursuant to Section 15332 in-filled development projects of the CEQA guidelines to be read in title only further reading waived.

And adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View conditionally approving a vesting tentative map to create one parcel with 140 residential condominium units and six commercial units at 843 to 903 Castro Street, 700 West El Camino Real and 750 Fairmont Avenue, APN 158 to 06-008, 158-06-010, 158-06-036, 158-06-037, $158-06-038 and 158-06-039 to be read in title only further reading waived.

I'm looking forward to our charter modernization, which will mean we will never have to read all of these resolutions into the record ever again.

So it's nice to finally be at the approval stage.

And also I appreciate the work of the applicant to put together a project that I think achieves many of the community priorities that we've heard over the years, and I'll just name a few.

One is providing nearly 10,000 square feet of commercial space.

And I appreciate the uh concerns that Councilmember Show Walter shared, none of us like vacant commercial space.

Um but if you don't provide it at all, then there's no possibility of any store storefront activation or neighborhood serving retail.

So thank you for uh voluntarily providing that commercial space.

One of the things I've I've been concerned about is with uh uh the erosion of local control.

Um there may be a time when many uh developers just don't provide commercial square footage at all.

Um and we've heard um from staff in other contexts that um state density bonus law is pretty powerful, and you can you know waive uh development standards or seek a uh concession that uh may um allow a developer to get around a mandatory uh commercial square footage requirement.

So thank you for for providing, I think, a pretty significant amount of commercial square footage.

Um I also appreciate uh the affordable ownership uh units uh for low and moderate income families.

We have a uh homeownership strategy that uh we've been working on uh state density bonus law already generally requires some amount of uh low income set aside, which is great, um, but uh moderate income families often get left behind.

So it's great to see the inclusion of affordable units geared towards that uh moderate income uh uh household uh that uh we have not been able to meaningfully serve in many of the developments that we've reviewed.

Um I also am I think there are probably some different perspectives about this, and that's that's okay.

Uh I I think the the 4.2 million dollars in unrestricted funds in exchange for the the sale of uh that public right-of-way is very worthwhile.

That's uh money that is otherwise pretty hard to come by these days when we have diminishing support from the federal government and state government that has its own budgetary constraints, so that's 4.2 million dollars that uh the next council uh will be able to spend uh in uh support of our community.

Uh and generally speaking, I think other I I believe this has been the sentiment of the council generally, but uh when there is um uh funding uh provided unrestricted funds providing provided by private development, we've often used thunds to benefit the the neighborhood uh that is impacted with the the development.

So nothing that you know we can state today but uh or or uh invest today, but uh I I would hope that future councils do uh find opportunities uh for that 4.2 million dollars to serve uh residents in this area.

And then uh you are voluntarily providing parking.

And a white a very wise man once said parking is good business.

That may be a very wise man who serves on the city council, but I won't name John McAllister.

Um but I I think that's another thing that we we often hear concerns about.

Um whether because of state law or because of our own uh precise plan or or uh zoning standards.

Um there are areas in the city where no parking has to be provided at all.

Um but uh I think there is a recognition that uh parking uh makes a residential development attractive.

Um so uh I think uh you know that notwithstanding concerns, I'm you know I I've that's not a concern I've historically had, but I know that there are many in the community uh who want to ensure that there is uh private parking provided.

So the neighborhood um uh uh off what is it?

I guess on street parking, um, off-site parking uh is not impacted by uh the future residents of of this development.

Uh so those are uh some of the reasons I'll be supporting uh the project and the staff recommendations, um, and I'll conclude my remarks there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Ramirez.

Um, Councilmember McAllister.

Thank you for those kind words.

Thanks.

I you know, you did bring up an interesting point.

This is a financial question.

I don't know if anybody we've never had this before.

So if you start out renting the units, the appraised value is based on that.

But what happens when you convert those to condos?

Does that then become individual property maps, and then each property would be charged more for a different assessed value.

Anybody could take it.

Uh are you referring to uh property tax?

Yeah, property tax.

Um yes, the the property would be assessed differently by the county um uh depending on the composition of the units.

There's a lot of right now initial taxation with development of the project where if rental would it would largely be based, it would be probably reassessed on the basis of um the improvements to the land and the the change in the property condition with the inclusion of the public right of way.

Um property tax would be applied to individual units if if for when they are sold.

So it would be in the the city may generate more property taxes with the condos than the rentals.

Uh I I don't have a specific beyond planning.

Councilmember McAllister, each unit would generate individual property taxes paid if they were condos.

Yes, that's so potentially we would bring in more money to the city.

Okay, thank you.

Um so I didn't I came in uh this project going along, so uh I love condos.

I want to see the property of people being able to afford my daughter just well, she bought a condo, knock on wood, she just bought it a month ago, so she's entered the the realm of the American dream.

Um so but then I saw that you were interested in renting these out for 10 years, and I go, Oh, that's concerning to me.

So uh I've seen enough projects of my 10 years on the council to see where projects start one way, and the developer decides that he has to go another way, and that's their right, but I um it's not what I initially thought it would be, and so I always was uh wise to pay attention to what they're trying to do.

And this is one that you know after 10 years, they may just say, hey, we're just gonna keep it this way.

The other concern I have is the sunlight.

These are small concerns.

I mean, well, there are big concerns for a lot of people, and then I was looking at the the imaging of it.

But my uh to be consistent what I've been talking about.

I do not believe in selling the city property, and um long with other concerns, but that's one that uh I will not be supporting this project for a variety of reasons.

But one I think the city should maintain owning its property um and that we should be able to generate funds that way, and maybe we can get a better use project that would uh match the needs of the city at the time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember McAllister.

Do we have any other comments from the dais?

Seeing none, we're ready for a vote.

And that motion passes 4-2.

We are going to take a break.

It is currently 8 31.

It's gonna be a 10 minute break.

It's going to be a 10-minute break, so get back here in 10 minutes, and we will be back at 841.

All right, let's take our seats.

Let's get ready.

So once we all settle, I'm calling the meeting back to order at 848.

I really like my thing.

Item six point two, federal fiscal year twenty twenty-six-2027, annual action plan.

Housing Officer Alec.

How do you pronounce your name?

Vibral.

Vibral.

And affordable housing manager Julie Barnard will present the item.

If you would like to speak on this item in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk now.

Staff take it away.

Thank you.

Hello, Mayor and Council.

I'm Alec Fiberl, Housing Officer with the Housing Department, and I am joined by Julie Bernard, Affordable Housing Manager.

Also available for questions is Wayne Chen Housing Director.

This item is for Council to hold a public hearing, receive and provide input, and adopt the fiscal year 2026 through 2027 annual action plan.

The city is developing its fiscal year 2026 through 27 annual action plan, which is the second year of the city's 2025 through 30 consolidated plan that council adopted at last year's meeting in May.

The 2026 through 27 annual action plan covers the period of July first, 2026 through June 30th, 2027.

The annual action plan is required by the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, in order to receive federal grant funding and identifies the specific projects and activities that will be administered over the fiscal year.

As a part of the public participation process, staff funding recommendations were presented to the Human Relations Committee at a public hearing on March 5th, where they were unanimously approved.

Additionally, a 30-day public comment period began on March 28th for members of the public to provide feedback on the draft plan.

The remaining 65% can be used for other eligible activities, such as capital projects, including the rehabilitation of affordable housing and minor home repairs for low and moderate income homeowners, or economic development activities, including assistance for small businesses.

The home program provides funding to help fund the development of affordable housing and related programs.

Home funding allows a maximum of ten percent to be used for program administration, with the remaining ninety percent used for eligible activities such as site acquisition, construction and rehabilitation of affordable housing, and home buyer assistance.

Before we get into the fiscal year 2026 through 27 annual action plan, we wanted to provide an update on current year funding, which will help set the stage as we talk about next year's funding.

In spring of last year, council approved the fiscal year 2025 through 26 annual action plan.

And when HUD sent the city its grant agreements, they included a new addendum that would impose new conditions requiring compliance with certain federal policy directives.

Examples of the new policy conditions include prohibitions and restrictions on using funds to promote gender ideology, elective abortions, or illegal immigration.

The absence of clarity regarding federal agencies' interpretation and implementation of the conditions has created a high degree of uncertainty for funding recipients, including the city.

Staff conducted an analysis of the new policy conditions and based on this analysis undertook the following actions.

Join litigation to challenge the legality of the new policy conditions, submitted modified grant agreements to HUD that are intended to prevent the enforcement of the new policy conditions, and will only use prior year grant funds and program income, which were deemed not subject to the new policy conditions.

The analysis that staff conducted was also used to inform the approach for the fiscal year 2026 through 27 annual action plan.

Staff are using scenario A as the primary planning assumption for the next fiscal year, which includes the submittal submittal of modified grant agreements and prioritizing the use of prior year funds and program income deemed not subject to the addendum's policy conditions.

Now that we've discussed the strategy, we will move on to the fiscal year 2026 through 27 annual action plan.

The budget for the action plan consists of annual entitlement funding allocation, anticipated program income, and prior year unexpended resources.

The proposed CDBG allocations consist of funding for capital projects such as the Rebuilding Together Peninsula Minor Home Repair Program, economic development activities such as the Upwards Boost Microenterprise Assistance Program, and Program Administration.

CDBG Public Services will be discussed in more detail in the following slides.

The city's home funds will be used for affordable housing projects and will be directly allocated when the projects are identified rather than through a NOVA process.

Public service funding is administered on a two-year cycle, and fiscal year 2026 through 27 is the second year in the cycle.

For this reason, the CDBG public service funding recommendations are the same as they were for fiscal year 2025 through 26, which was year one in the cycle.

Due to anticipated funding limitations, there will not be enough CDBG funding to fully fund each organization at the same levels as year one.

Staff are recommending that general housing funds be used to supplement each CDBG award to maintain full funding levels for year two of the cycle.

Due to continued uncertainty about the federal grant requirements as a result of the new addendum and executive orders previously mentioned, for fiscal year 2026 through 27, staff are recommending one-time contingency funding in this amount from the General Housing Fund to support CDBG funded nonprofit partners.

The contingency funding will only be necessary if the new addendum requirements impact the use of program income and prior years funding.

This approach will allow us to continue to fully fund our nonprofit partners and therefore mitigate service disruptions to our community.

Note that this contingency funding is recommended only for this upcoming fiscal year due to the limited amount of general housing funds.

If continued uncertainty persists next year, the city will need to evaluate how to proceed.

As mentioned, fiscal year 2026 through 27 is the second year of the two-year funding cycle, and therefore the general fund public service funding recommendations are remaining the same as year one.

After council's consideration and the public hearing at tonight's meeting, the final annual action plan will be submitted to HUD by May 15th.

This concludes staff's presentation.

Thank you for your time, and we are happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you.

Does any member of the council have questions?

Seeing none, uh, we will move on to public comment.

Would any member of the public on the line like to provide comment or in person?

I would like to provide comment on this item.

If so, please click click the raise hand button in Zoom and press star nine on your phone or submit a blue speaker card now.

A timer will be displayed on the screen.

Each speaker will have each speaker will have three minutes.

Um we will take in-person comment first.

Um, Melanie Farr.

Good evening, Mayor Ramos, Vice Mayor Clark and Council members.

My name is Melanie Four from Upwards.

Thank you for your continued support of Mountain View's child care providers and for staff's recommendation to renew funding for the Boost program.

Our Boost team works one-on-one with low to moderate income family child care providers in Mountain View to strengthen their business and create teaching assistant positions to expand access to quality care for working families.

We pair providers with experienced coaches to build personalized plans covering marketing, enrollment, finances, and staffing.

We also give them continuous free access to a platform that streamlines their day-to-day operations, which frees them up to focus on caring for the children.

The result is stronger small businesses, more local jobs, and more working families with access to affordable quality care right here in Mountain View.

Thanks to council support, we've partnered with 10 local providers, created one new teaching assistant job on track to create the three, and expanded care for hundreds of local families.

We've made solid progress, but there's still more work to do given the need we're seeing in Mountain View.

As you may know, nearly 60% of children under six in Mountain View lack access to licensed child care slot, which leaves thousands of families, especially moms, single parents, shift workers struggling to fully participate in the workforce.

Meanwhile, child care workers here earn on average $18 an hour, which drives high turnover and deepens the shortage.

The providers love caring for children, but they need support with the business side to make it sustainable.

That's exactly what Boost is designed to do.

So we've coached over 500 family child care providers, the majority here in the Bay Area, specifically Santa Clara County, created 180 new jobs and help providers grow revenue by an average of 25% and expand child care slots by 30 to 50% all within the first year.

With council's approval, Boost can support 10 more providers this year, create three new teaching assistant jobs and expand care for more families in the community.

I also want to emphasize that sustainability is really at the core of the program.

So our goal is by the end of the year, participating providers will have the skills and tools to continue growing independently, serving families in Mountain View for years to come.

I am available to answer any questions, both as a representative of Upwards, but also a former client who really appreciates that reassurance that the most affordable quality or affordable care option can also be the best quality care option.

And that's what inspired me to join the team and not just available tonight but throughout the year for progress updates as well.

Thank you so much.

And thank you, staff, for the thoughtful process, especially in the very um tricky year.

So thank you.

Thank you so much.

Seeing no other in-person public comment, we will move on to virtual public comment.

Uh Georgia Bassel.

Good evening.

Uh can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Thank you so much.

Georgia Basil, directing attorney of senior adults, legal assistance.

You know us as Salah.

We provide free legal services to Mountain View residents 62 or older, targeting clients that are low income or at risk of abuse or loss of independence.

77% of the Mountain View seniors we served last year were very low income.

And 66% were 75 or older.

We provide our services locally at appointments at Mountain View Senior Center and by phone for clients that cannot leave their homes or with emergencies.

We are a current public services CDBG grantee, and we thank you sincerely.

Your funding supports expanded availability of our services to your residents.

We are recommended for funding in the 2026-27 action plan before you.

We thank the staff for their recommendations.

We at Sala address a range of critical matters impacting our clients' lives.

For example, we address income insecurity by assisting clients with legal problems related to the public benefits they rely on to meet their basic needs.

Social Security, SSI, Medicare, and MediCal.

We address housing instability by assisting clients worried about eviction, clients needing reasonable accommodations in their housing, or clients whose housing is otherwise in jeopardy.

We address elder abuse and domestic violence by assisting clients that are victims of abuse, usually by someone living in their homes or someone they know, such as adult children, grandchildren, caregivers, even tenants renting rooms in their homes.

Often this involves our attorneys obtaining restraining orders for our clients.

Solid cannot charge fees or accept fee-generating cases under our older Americans Act restrictions.

The primary way that we support our services is through grants like CDBG.

In this current climate, your funding is more critical than ever to provide us with the highest level of support that we can provide to your residents.

So we hope the city council will approve the 2026-27 annual planned funding recommendation by the staff for Salah.

And we thank you so much for your previous support and uh good evening.

Thank you.

Seeing no other virtual public comment, I will bring the item back to council for deliberation and action.

I see a motion by Councilmember Hicks and a second by Councilmember Schoobalter.

Councilmember Hicks, would you like to speak to your motion?

Yes, my motion is to uh accept the staff recommendation and also to thank staff for all their work on this is not a part of my motion, but I will be thanking staff for all their work on um pulling this together.

Uh particularly addressing the uh new addendum and federal executive orders, which is a tricky thing to work through.

So thank you for doing that and explaining it to us clearly so we had no questions on it.

Um and also I wanted to thank the representatives of the various organizations who here were here.

Uh Melanie for an upward boost in Georgia from the senior adult legal assistant.

Thank you for explaining your important programs and any other representatives who might be online listening to us.

Thank you also for your or in the public listening to us.

Thank you for you know all that you do for our community as well.

Thank you, Councilmember Hicks.

Uh, Councilmember Showalter.

Yeah, I'd just like to add that I always enjoy reading this report because it it gives us an opportunity to learn about um really valuable nonprofits that are active in our community and are providing services.

And it really um is uh just a part of what we do to be a community for all.

And this time, I want to echo the thanks of you know of uh some of the people who spoke and and council member Hicks about coming up with the um reasonable way to um both uh preserve our values of a community for all and also um find a way to uh you know to support these organizations.

So thank you for your creativity and your hard work.

And um it's clear that uh these organizations will put that money to good use.

Thank you, Councilmember Schoalter.

Uh Councilmember Kamei.

Thanks, Mayor.

Um, so just want to echo the thanks to the um providers and staff.

I would just say um thinking ahead if there's going to be like further creativity needed, please let council know so we can support you and allow for that flexibility.

All these organizations and staff are doing so much important work, and we want you to feel supported and uh and I think that can be very difficult to feel in this climate.

Um, so please let us know.

Thanks.

Thank you, Councilmember Kamei.

I will echo those sentiments.

Um, thank you, staff for your work on this.

Thank you to these community partners that are really providing such great services to our to our city and to those who who rely on us and support our city.

Um, I know that the federal landscape is difficult.

Um, and we will continue to fight for our residents and fight to get the funding we can.

Um with that, um let's move on.

Let's uh go to the vote.

The motion passes unanimously.

We will now move on to thank you so much.

Um we will now move on to item 6.3 approval of lease revenue bonds for public safety building project and related actions by city council and capital improvement financing authority board.

First, we will hear from Chris Lynch with Jones Hall, the city's bond council.

Go right ahead, sir.

Thank you.

I think I'm waiting for the presentation to appear on the screen.

Good evening, uh, Mayor Ramos, members of the council.

I'm Chris Lynch.

I work at a law firm called Jones Hall, and we regularly represent the city when they undertake bond financings.

Um, as required by the city's disclosure policies and procedures, I'll provide some information and training about the city council's responsibilities under federal securities laws when the city issues bonds.

Um you've previously been exposed to this information in the staff report for tonight's lease revenue bonds and also in uh previous communications by the city attorney.

Um my message in a nutshell is first the city is subject to federal securities laws when it issues bonds, uh, both when it does initial disclosure at the time of issuance of bonds and then continued disclosure on an annual basis thereafter.

Uh secondly, staff and elected officials should take reasonable steps to ensure that the city's disclosure is accurate and meets the standard required by federal securities law, and I'll explain what that is.

Um, third, for context, I'll provide some uh uh circumstances in which the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is the federal agency that regulates and enforces federal securities laws, has brought enforcement actions against local agencies.

And then finally, the city has adopted written policies and procedures, and I believe that if followed, those policies and procedures will keep the city in compliance with federal securities law.

Next slide.

The Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 were adopted after the Great Depression, which saw widespread securities fraud.

Those two laws, along with two securities and exchange commission rules 10 B5 and 15 C to 12, regulate the sale of municipal bonds.

Most importantly, they prohibit the the uh they prohibit fraud in the offer of securities.

In this context, that means that the issuers of uh securities must not uh omit material facts or misstate material facts when they disclose information to potential investors.

A material fact is any fact that given the circumstances, a reasonable investor would be likely to rely upon in making the decision to buy or sell your bonds.

Next slide.

So SEC Rule 15 C212 requires an issuer of bonds to prepare an initial disclosure document.

Here on the slide is a picture of the uh Shoreline Communities 2018 uh official statement.

And the official statement is prepared by staff with assistance from outside consultants such as our firm.

Um it is approved by the legislative body of the issuer, which is what what you'll be doing tonight with respect to the lease revenue bonds, and it has to include all material facts, and material facts include in this context uh the terms of the bonds and then financial information and operating data about the city related to the payments to be used to pay debt service on the bonds.

The city has a disclosure policy, and it requires the director of finance and administrative services to collaborate with outside consultants like our firm in the preparation of the official statement.

It requires the the official statement to be presented to city council for approval, and it requires the agenda report for that uh official statement to describe your responsibilities under federal securities laws, and we have complied with those requirements tonight.

Next slide.

First, on an annual basis, the issuer has to provide an update of the financial information and operating data of the type that was included in the initial disclosure document.

And then uh there's an obligation to provide when it occurs notice of certain events such as failure to pay debt service on time, bankruptcies, rating changes, draws on uh debt service reserve funds.

The city's disclosure policies uh place the responsibility for continued disclosure on the finance and administrative services director as well.

Uh next slide.

Tonight you'll be asked to approve the issuance of lease revenue bonds and the related official statement, which is pictured here on the slide.

The draft official statement uh discloses first the city's financial information in its general fund because the lease revenue bonds are payable from lease payments made by the city from any available sources of funds, including unrestricted monies in the general fund.

There are two California enforcement actions that the SEC has brought against local agencies that provide clear guidance as to your responsibilities and the responsibilities of staff when uh you issue municipal bonds, and I'd like to briefly talk about those.

And I'd like to briefly talk about those.

In 1994, Orange County declared bankruptcy.

It had pursued a aggressive investment strategy strategy of issuing short-term notes and investing the proceeds of those notes to achieve above market returns.

The County Board of Supervisors approved the official statements for those notes, usually on the consent calendar, and but they failed to disclose the risky investment strategy that the notes were part of.

In the wake of the bankruptcy filing, which did not result in any uh def uh defaults in the payment of debt service on the notes, the Securities Exchange Commission pursued an enforcement action against the Board of Supervisors and members of staff, but it also most importantly issued a report to emphasize the responsibilities of local officials under the federal securities laws.

The SEC wrote that officials are expected to take steps appropriate under the circumstances to assure that any material facts that they're aware of that could adversely affect the the issuer's ability to pay debt service on the bonds are disclosed.

That doesn't mean mean necessarily reading the 100-page official statement for the lease revenue bonds which you've received tonight.

But it does mean that if you're aware of any facts that could impact the city's ability to pay these lease payments over the 30-year term of these bonds, that you make sure they've those facts have been disclosed in the disclosure document, either by contacting staff or speaking with your disclosure counsel.

Next next slide.

Later in 2007, after the Securities and Exchange Commission brought an enforcement action against the City of San Diego, the SEC Director of Enforcement listed five lessons that they thought issuers should learn from about issuing bonds and complying with federal securities laws.

The first was to adopt written disclosure policies and procedures.

And again, the city has complied with that requirement.

Second, issuers should provide appropriate training to their officials and employees involved in the issuance of bonds.

So consistent with best practices and with your policies and procedures, you've received that training really in three different formats.

First, this training tonight.

Second, the agenda report for the lease revenue bonds talks about the Orange County report.

And then third, the you received communication from the city attorney that attached the Orange County report.

Third, local agencies should focus in their disclosure on the big picture issues facing the local agency.

For example, in San Diego, where the SEC brought an enforcement action because of uh fraudulent statements in the city's audited financial statements, rating agency presentations, and official statements.

They noted that the city's disclosure included a lot of facts, but they did not provide sufficient information about the key financial issue for the city of San Diego, which was their unfunded pension, which required significant uh uh attention during the city's budget process.

So, typical of other California cities, the lease revenue bond, the official statement before you tonight does describe Mountain View's pension and OPEB plans and the status of their funding.

However, for other local agencies, the key big picture issues could be litigation, it could be a big business or rate payer leaving town, it could be deferred public infrastructure work, it could be an a structural imbalance in the budget.

Fourth, local agencies should make sure that their disclosure discloses the good with the bad.

It's very tempting to turn your disclosure document for an officials for an initial offering of bonds into a marketing piece, but the SEC expects you to present the whole picture of the city warts and all.

Finally, the SEC thinks that local agencies should hire competent professionals to help them with financial reporting and bond disclosure.

Um those are the five things that the SEC thought you should be aware of.

Next slide.

Finally, you should know that the SEC has pursued uh enforcement actions against individuals when they acted with an intent to defraud or with a reckless disregard for whether they were the issuer was misleading investors.

Um I have a couple of examples here.

In Orange County, the SEC brought uh found that two individuals responsible for the investment and debt issuance scheme, which were the treasurer and the assistant treasurer, had knowingly committed fraud and they were uh received a jail sentence and a fine.

In San Diego, the SEC brought security charges against a number of local agency officials for reviewing misleading financial statements and not and allowing their publication.

Um, another uh issuer, the wetlands water district, they uh reclassified certain reserves as revenues in order to show uh satisfaction of rate covenant when they went out for $70 million of bonds.

And in the New York and New Jersey Port Authority, the general counsel of the issuer expressed the concern that they were issuing bonds for things they weren't allowed to finance, and they did not disclose that to investors.

Hopefully, I've made it clear that uh city staff and elected officials should take reasonable steps to ensure that the disclosure document associated with the issuance of bonds includes all material facts, um, those facts that a reasonable investor would want to know about and make the decision to buy or sell your bonds.

Um, those facts that a reasonable investor would want to know about and make the decision to buy or sell your bonds.

I believe the city's disclosure policies with its emphasis on training and its emphasis on collaboration between staff and outside consultants should prevent intentional fraud and should prevent reckless disregard of facts because of the care given to this issue.

I'm happy to answer questions.

Thanks for listening.

And otherwise, I'll turn it over to Derek.

Thank you so much.

Um we will now uh go to assistant city manager Arn Andrews and Financial and Ministrative Service Director Derek Raponi, uh, who will present the item.

If you would like to speak on this item in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk now.

Go right ahead.

All right.

Good evening, Mayor and Vice Mayor and Council members, as stated earlier, Derek Rampone, your finance and administrative services director, and joining me this evening is Arne Andrews, one of the assistant city managers.

We also have Grace Sang, the assistant finance and administrative services director here with us tonight, and Winxie Fox from Urban Futures, our municipal advisor, is also in the audience.

Eileen Gallagher from Stefol, our underwriting firm is also available online.

Tonight's item is to approve the issuance and related documents associated with the lease revenue bonds that will be issued in connection with the public safety building construction.

Um tonight there is the city council is holding a public hearing and staff is recommending adoption of the items of a resolution that includes the items you see on this slide, which are finding that issuance of lease revenue bonds will result in significant public benefits, approving the issuance of the bonds in a not-to-exceed amount of 140 million and authorizing related actions, declaring intention to reimburse expenditures on the public safety building project that were made prior to the issuance of bonds, appointing the financing team, and approving the form of financing documents and distribution of the official statement.

As the board of directors of the Mountain View Capital Improvements Financing Authority, staff is recommending adoption of a resolution that authorizes the issuance and sale of the 2026 lease revenue bonds not to exceed 140 million and related actions, and approving the form of financing documents and authorizing distribution of the official statement.

Here's an overview of the project that's I think we've seen a numerous times.

Um, as previously discussed in prior meetings, this new building will replace the current public safety administration building, which includes the city's emergency operations center that was built over 40 years ago.

The current cost estimate of 189 million dollars with 138 million that's anticipated to be funded through these bond proceeds that are pending approval tonight.

All other funding required for this project includes the balance of 51 million dollars has already been secured and will be described later.

A quick background on what lease revenue bonds really are.

We have a kind of a description here.

Um as you can see that there's a diagram of how lease revenue bonds work.

They are a very common way for cities to finance major public facilities.

Um they allow the city to build needed infrastructure now and pay for it over time.

Investors or bondholders will provide upfront financing by purchasing the bonds and the market.

The financing authority will issue the bonds and use the proceeds to build the facility.

Once completed, the city's uses the facility and makes annual lease payments from the general fund, which in turn get repaid to the bond investors over time, including principal and interest.

And as a reminder, the bottom right corner, this is a long-term general fund commitment.

Now, diving into kind of the debt, the funding strategy in more detail.

Like I just said on the previous slide, the bonds are issued through the capital improvement financing authority, which is a joint powers authority used as a financing conduit.

The purpose is to generate about 138 million dollars in proceeds, which will fund the construction or part of the construction of the new public safety building, demolishing the existing building and paying some debt issuance costs.

The secure the city will commit to annually budgeting and appropriating these lease payments with the lease payments coming from legally available sources, including uh earmarked revenues such as Ameswell property uh revenues, major G revenues, and then also general fund revenues.

Although they are not formally pledged, uh the general fund is the primary pledge.

Uh the leased property initially uh is going to be secured by this this property here, the city hall and the library, including the existing police department site or the public safety building site.

Once the new public safety building uh is complete, it now be then becomes the leased asset, and the properties that are currently uh documented become released.

Here's an overview of the estimated uh the kind of the debt funding details.

Estimated principal is going to be around 128.5 million, uh generating roughly 138 million in total proceeds.

The majority of that will be used to put in the go to directly to the project fund to pay for construction costs.

There also are some cost of issuance and and discount uh costs that will be paid out of the proceeds.

A portion of the proceeds will be used to potentially reimburse costs that have already been incurred on the project.

This results in a debt structure that will be level amounts every year, an amount of around $8.3 million every year with final maturity in 2056.

Payments will occur twice a year, um May and November with principal paid every November.

The current true interest cost is approximately 4.3 per 36% at this time.

Um that will vary depending on when we go to market, but that's what we're uh looking at now.

Um, and overall, this really provides predictable long-term financing with stable annual payments to support the project.

Here's another slide on the breakdown of the funding for the project.

As you can see, the bond financing is the top part there, the 135 million that makes up a majority of the funding.

We've already over the years, the city has accumulated funds in a reserve, including recently a contribution from the shoreline uh community at the April 14th meeting.

Also, there's 16.3 million that has been put into the capital project fund itself over the years, and 2 million that was recently allocated from the general operating fund at the April 14th meeting.

As the market has its ups and downs, staff is recommending some safeguards and parameters to allow for the financing team the opportunity to execute when the market returns positive in collaboration with the advisors.

A not to exceed limit of 5% for the true interest cost is what's been proposed, and up to $140 million of maximum principal with a maximum of 0.5% for a principal uh underwriters fee.

Locked-in pricing really shifts to the underwriter on the bond sale date.

Um, there has been a full legal and financial review of the documents as spoken earlier, and the use of funds are really controlled by the uh indenture of trust.

There are a lot of documents associated with issuing a lease revenue bonds, as you can see on this slide.

The city and the financing authority have numerous documents, they're all listed here, and some are attached to the uh staff report for this item tonight.

Getting down to the fiscal impact, as I spoke with earlier, the the city is annual commitment is about will be around $8.3 million annually.

Uh the city has dedicated funding for this, some earmarked funding from the Ameswell uh property as well as Measure G.

In addition, the difference will be made up out of the general fund.

This is a predictable uh level debt structure with uh fixed payments.

A reminder that this is a long-term liability for the general fund and obligation through 2056, and the city's strong credit rating of triple A has kept uh financing costs low.

And I'd like to expand on that last bullet point.

That just today we were notified by Standard and Poor's that they have reaffirmed our AAA credit rating.

So that's a great news.

Here's a preliminary financing schedule just to get and give you an idea of the timeline and next steps tonight.

Obviously, the council and financing authority board is hearing and possibly approving the issuance and of the bonds and the documents tomorrow.

We will be posting the preliminary official statement in early May.

We are anticipating going to market selling the bonds and with receipt of the proceeds in mid-May, which sets us up for the first phase of the project to begin this summer.

In conclusion, uh just like to reiterate why this action matters this evening.

This really delivers a long planned priority and moves a 10 plus year project forward with the funding.

Um it enhances uh provides modern public facility, um, including a very important emergency operations center.

This supports core services of the city, public safety.

It's a prudent approach that involves a standard proven financing, and it also has uh protect some flexibility by maintaining some general fund capacity in the future.

And with that, we're happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Does any member of the council have questions?

Councilmember Ramirez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, and thank you, staff, for um the remarkable amount of work that you put into uh preparing all of these documents that uh the I forgot what it's called.

I think it's the uh the preliminary official statement, which includes all of the disclosures is interesting.

Uh it's very dense, but it has a lot of uh very valuable information.

Um I'm not concerned about the ability of the city to meet our debt payment obligations, but um I guess what makes me nervous is in the event there is some type of catastrophic impact like the passage of the Howard Jarvis measure, which is disclosed as a risk, um, and we have to use general fund revenue.

What we don't know is what gets cut as a consequence.

Um so can staff share how you might think about a contingency plan in the event one of the risks that is identified, like approval of that ballot measure you know comes to pass.

Thank you for the question.

And as we were developing the financing plan, which we spoke of two weeks ago, we do think of contingencies.

You know, at the end of the day, it is a general fund pledge, and we're very cognizant of that, and we're very cognizant that we don't necessarily have the ability to eliminate services because one of our revenue sources.

So a couple things have come to mind that we've discussed.

One is if you look currently at the structure, Amswell is the majority of the funding for the debt service and is a growing component every year.

The AMSWO revenues just four years ago were about 4.1 or 4.2 million dollars.

They're currently programmed at 5.3.

So why we have a level debt service, which will not change, the AMS will continue to grow, which will mean Measure G will become less reliant as part of the funding if that's what we want to do.

Another thing that comes to mind is we've recently approved uh new business terms and a new DDA for a hotel here in town.

While that is a very good thing, it does mean that it's a revenue source that is yet to even be considered in the city.

Now, granted, that construct has revenues really coming to the city more in like a 10-year time frame, but there will be additional revenues coming to the city in 10 years that have yet to be programmed.

So that's kind of a longer term solution if something were to happen.

A shorter term solution is in 2028.

I will probably sit here and advocate for a revenue measure, likely a TOT.

We are an outlier in the TOT space at 10%.

And eventually that's something we should probably look at.

San Jose is currently looking at that as our other communities, and we'll continue to become more and more of an outlier.

And so if Howard Jarvis were to go through and pass, I would advocate for that as staff as a recommendation to this council to consider that as a way to backfill the revenue.

So without knowing the outcome, I think there are steps we can take.

I don't think it would necessarily need to equate to a service reduction right off the bat.

You know, if AMS will continues to grow and the measure G component is somewhere around 2%, you know, we're talking about 1% of the current budget.

I I think we'll be able to find solutions.

Thank you.

Councilmember McAllister.

What kind of return would the buyers of the bond expect to get?

So they're getting the yield purchase premium when they purchase the bonds, and so they're looking at somewhere in the vicinity of what was quoted somewhere between four and a quarter and four and a half percent.

What's our interest rate?

Oh, we don't we don't have one, do we?

Uh so uh our urban futures has provided runs to us and runs or theoretical based on current market conditions, and Wing C can speak to it more.

But the last run we did showed an all-in tick of about 4.36%.

But WingC, would you like to add anything?

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council.

My name is Wingsee Fox uh with Urban Futures, and we serve as the city and the authorities municipal advisor.

Um and as uh director Vramponi's mentioned the structure of the bonds that are being sold, uh 30 year bonds, but the actually one year, two year, three years, all the way through 30 year bonds are being sold at different coupons and yields.

And so depending on what bond an investor is buying will be a different yield.

Right now it's a normal yield curve.

So shorter the bond, the lower the risk, a lower the yield that they get, the longer term bonds they get a bit of a higher yield, and that true interest cost is a blended yield across all the bonds.

Thank you, Councilmember McAllister.

Councilmember Scho Walter.

I'm just wondering what happens with if the interest rates change dramatically.

Um it seems like in the past I've heard about reissuance of bonds and what would trigger those, and is that part of our history?

So there's two components to that, and WingC, please add anything.

The first component is the day of pricing.

And so the day of pricing, we will get uh the best recommendations that we get from urban futures from our underwriters to decide if we think it's a good entry point into the market, and so that locks in our initial rates.

I believe what you're referencing is if there's ever an opportunity to refinance, and there is.

If in the future we think rates have dropped low enough that we think it's uh advantageous, you know, from a time value of money to refinance.

I'm sure urban futures would come to us and make that recommendation.

Yes, typically right now in the market there's a tenure call redemption protection, and so no uh refunding within that 10 years, but in 10 years or getting close to that, uh, we're about 10 years could start looking at refinancing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Show Walter, Councilmember Hicks.

And if construction costs should escalate tremendously, do we have a plan B for that, such as cutting back on the construction in some way or some other plan B?

Uh thank you for the question.

And I'll start by quoting uh our public works director two weeks ago.

One of the off ramps is the third phase of the project, which is the building of the garage, which totals around 29 million.

That would be an option if we're really thinking that we need to complete the building, those monies don't have to be programmed for a garage.

And at the meeting two weeks ago, the council also decided to use a more proportionate allocation from shoreline.

So instead of the 10 million, council uh allocated 25.5.

So we currently have a fairly good contingency.

The project itself has a nine percent uh inflation factor built in.

So right now, I think we're in pretty good shape.

They'll issue the first bid package in July.

It's the smaller package, but then probably about eight months after that, they'll do the second big package, which will be the larger actual construction of the building package.

And so we'll get a lot of good information uh then as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Hicks.

Any other questions from the council?

Seeing none, we will move on to public comment.

Would any member in person or on the line uh like to provide comment on this item?

If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or press star nine on your phone or submit a blue speaker card.

A timer will be displayed on the screen.

Um it looks like we have three speakers, so each speaker will have three minutes.

We'll start off with Al Brooks.

Good evening.

I'm here to speak against the proposal to encumber the people of Mountain View with approximately 250 million dollars in debt over the next 30 years.

250 million dollars is a number that's hard to even wrap the mind around.

A quarter of a billion dollars uh over the 30 years at 8.3 million dollars is something that just seems absurd to commit Mountain View to, especially considering all the uncertainty and the very little return that the community gets, considering this is a proposal to use the people's money to police and incarcerate the people.

Uh there's been a number of people who have been speaking out against this proposal, as as I'm sure you know for the many years of its um since its conception.

And we've been one of the things we've been requesting is some consideration of the many ways to decrease the size of this project.

Some of them were just discussed in terms of uh canceling the garage, or I would really recommend you to consider not funding this uh firing range.

It seems entirely unnecessary.

Um considering again that the city of Vallejo across the bay just uh realized that their similar financing plan was too unwieldy, too irresponsible, given the marketing uncertainties, given how much debt that they're incurring.

Uh and so they decided to put the brakes on their financing plan.

And I would really encourage you to make a responsible decision there and slow down that process until you can really consider how uh cost effective this plan is and how much it can be reduced.

Um 250 million dollars is enough to put thousands of people through college.

It's enough to house thousands of people at a time when uh there's a housing crisis in the Bay Area, when education is underfunded, when the transport transportation issues we continue to face are mounting, and we face a variety of different existential crises with our environment.

It seems just mind boggling that this seems like the time to put 250 million dollars into a project like this when uh social science and a variety of different political factors are coming to the conclusion that the policing models that we've been using are not serving our communities, that the what the way our communities need to be served.

There are much better returns that communities can get when we invest in housing and education and transportation and mental health counseling.

And instead, uh this proposal seems so antiquated and will seem even more antiquated 30 years from now when people are trying to figure out why so much money has been uh invested in this for generations uh and taken away from the people of Mountain View.

So I'm asking you please to pause this project and shrink it as much as possible and divest from these types of cultural infrastructure and invest into people through housing, through education, through transportation, and through the types of things that build a community that people uh really need that can be commensurate with the brighter future that people deserve.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Sarah Elzani.

I'm so sorry if I pronounced that wrong.

Um good evening.

Um I wanted to thank Councilmember Ramirez for their question, worrying about uh social services.

I'm also worried about the next 10 years for Mountain View's revenue and this bond.

So I'm also here to oppose um the bond.

Um so my name is Sarah.

I live in Santa Clara County.

Um I'm a professional software engineer and I work in tech.

Um the Mountain View Police Department was recently sued for violating the constitutional rights of a Campbell resident.

Um how do you know that dedicating more money towards police won't cause the city to get sued again for constitutional violations?

Teachers don't have honest benefits, pay and classroom facilities.

And from item 6.2, um approving less than a million dollars for home and CDBG Mountain View.

Um Mountain View has one of the worst homeless crises and the most RVs in the Bay Area, and I don't understand why this bond money isn't being used to fund schools or infrastructure for the homeless.

Um, when you choose to fund prisons rather than teachers' pensions, you make a choice for kids.

When young talented people see teaching like a gig job instead of a career, you have a crisis in public education.

We have a lot of problems that we need to solve together.

Um, and especially this generation, and especially with the administration.

So do not put the city in more debt for another generation for the next 10 years.

Um, I urge you to seriously rethink what investments will make a brighter future and not fund a bloated um project for cops.

Please fund housing for all.

Support mental health response.

I call you to limit spending to the size of retrofit.

And also, we just passed measure A in Santa Clara County.

I voted for it because people wanted to see more of our tax money going towards healthcare and people at a time when we are getting federal budget cuts.

Um, yeah.

Um studies show that police funding does not keep us safe, even for those of us who achieve the American dream or whom the police claim to protect.

Um appreciation for public workers, public school teachers, social workers, bus drivers.

It takes all of our community members to make us feel safe.

Um, and I'm really just worried for the future of this country.

And I think that committing ourselves to this amount of um bond debt um is not a good idea for again the next generation.

So I would also encourage you to to limit the scale of this project.

Um, the way that you've been able to limit and budget for other projects.

Um increase funding for um for homelessness and affordable housing and schools.

So thank you.

Thank you.

That ends our in-person public comment.

We will now take virtual speakers.

Uh Lena.

Hello.

I also wanted to hear to uh speak against the motion proposed.

I agree with the previous public comments that a quarter of a billion dollars is irresponsible, and there are better returns if uh by actually investing inside of the community in a real way.

I haven't heard any arguments or really understood why a public building that's only a couple decades old needs to be torn down and be replaced.

It honestly feels like uh frivolous use of money, and um the the bond saddles like uh decades uh and will burden us for decades as the members of uh Mountain View.

And to be honest, we do need affordability inside of the city, and if we were going to be using a quarter of a billion dollars, that's what I want to want it to see it move towards not uh not cops, not uh over policing, not uh to if we were to to advocate for like public sector money, perhaps put it to our school system, to our social workers, to our housing.

This is not the answer.

Thank you.

Next, we have uh Ronald Noby no BT.

Uh yes, I say good job pronunciation.

Um I would also like to speak against this measure.

Um and I know the motivation behind this from the city council and the mayor's office might be public safety.

But I would like to reiterate, like everyone, every speaker here has said public safety is not an increasing policing.

Public safety is investing in the community, investing in third spaces, investing in education, investing in affordable housing, and taking care of the people, not the police.

And for the city to try to spend, not to try to want to spend a quarter of a billion dollars in this hard financial times, and not only that, and putting that burden on set community that's already suffering and that needs that money to go elsewhere and to fund police under the put under the pretenses of public safety.

I believe that's utterly dis that's disgraceful, and that shouldn't that shouldn't be acceptable by the city council.

This I I would like to urge the city council and the mayor's office to reject this proposal and not approve this bond.

Because the city does not need 250 million dollars of debt added to it.

And instead of that, I will urge the city council and the mayor's office to be more creative with the city's funds, invest in the community, invest in its people.

Public safety is to by investing in the people, taking care of it one another and not funding the police.

And I would really really urge the city council to please, please do not approve this.

Find more creative ways.

And and I would also like to highlight this.

We have you know the city's claiming this building needs size retrofitting.

I've tried to look at the report that claims that this building needs to be broken down, and almost double in size, by the way, double in size, and the personnel is not doubling, and almost double in size.

The city wants to have, I believe it's an eight to ten lane shooting range.

Cities smaller, bigger than Mountain View do not have complexes this big.

So once again, it doesn't even make sense from the perspective of the city of the size of Mountain View to have a complex that costs this much.

So I'm not even sure how this expense is justifiable.

Um, and if the building truly has seismic issues, I don't think breaking it down, doubling its size with unnecessary amenities.

I mean, we just talked about a 29 million dollar parking lot.

Oh, is it a garage?

I mean, how does that I'm not sure how that makes any sense financially, but I would truly do urge the city council to think about what public safety truly means and direct this funds appropriately.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we have Delmo.

Could you hear me?

We can hear you.

Um, so I was also to oppose this bomb and this uh the creation of this uh new building.

Uh main reason why is because it's just money that the city can't afford.

I am also a Santa Clara resident or Seneca County resident, my bad.

Um yeah, instead of creating the building for non-creating building, but uh the like the takes to create this new building, it would just be way more beneficial for the community to start creating more affordable housing and investing in programs that create more affordable housing, like home and C D BJ, as well as it's also more crown crime prevention programs and resources instead of having like uh a new home for the police.

We just create more resources to help the community and really benefit the community, and I just think oh how to um I guess keep the community in line.

Right.

We mean to create more uh more resources to show up coming students in my view, sorry that's not of course in my view that you know there are better features than just like oh I mean you invest in them so we can really start creating um better communities, like invest more in communities.

And then also I know you all have mentioned also the deficit in the budget as well.

Just doesn't really make any sense we're having a deficit in the budget to keep investing in long-term projects like this that don't really need any reason why they why it's being both uh because Mount You also has one of the largest RV communities in Santa Clack County, and as well as like well maybe even the largest, and so that also tells you how much and the need of more affordable housing needs to be invested in.

So, like uh we will also say to invest more in the resources, schools, and just things that community actually needs.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is Eva Tang.

Are you there, Eva?

Wait, can you hear me?

Oh, then we can hear you now.

Yes.

Good evening.

All right, I don't exactly know where the 250 million comes from because I'm looking at the staff report report.

Either way, like I'm just trying to avoid John McAllister pushing his glasses up and saying, well, actually, but either way, it's a lot of money.

It's a lot of money, y'all.

And this economy, are you sure we need all of the bells and all of the whistles?

This first this plan first came out years ago.

We were in better times.

The Dow might be over 50,000 or whatever.

But I'm pretty sure this cost is going to inflate, especially in this economy, and I'm not happy about that.

I also have been doing a lot of reading on educational policy because we're out in the trenches out there.

The school to prison pipeline is just too convenient to push our kids into, and I am just going to oppose anything that is going to strengthen the school or prison pipeline.

Once again, did you double check everything?

Are you sure we need this?

Are you sure this entire package is really necessary for our community?

That's all.

Thanks, bye.

Thank you, Eva.

Next we have Malcolm.

Um, can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Okay.

Uh, I I was just gonna say, uh, in addition to everything that's been uh you know mentioned before me, uh, so that I'm not repeating this same points.

Uh I also like want to real quick bring us back into the context of the present uh where we live uh under uh an increasingly like fascist state.

Uh we're seeing uh the ways that uh police surveillance have been used um around the country and around the Bay Area to uh target uh journalists, to target activists, to target organizers, uh, and really to target uh you know the ability to even dissenter have a difference of opinion.

Um this is this is a uh a trend that is um not just growing but is uh enforced very much by the police that you are then uh funding and throwing all this money to um and the police are not the solution to poverty.

The police are not the solution uh to you know uh like uh uh to a lot of the issues that we're dealing with in in society to the mental health issues to all of that.

Um and those matters require their own investments uh and require us to actually uh reimagine uh like how to resolve them by taking money from the police.

Right.

Uh this is uh this is like we have seen this uh time and again where every single social issue uh seemingly, I don't know if we're if it's because we're entirely uncreative, uh or you know, because of the uh, you know, funds from uh funds from the police unions, which is essentially uh almost operates as like this sort of bribery of uh trying to develop these relationships with the politicians and uh push them to invest more and more and more and more money into police.

Uh, but that's really uh not what we need.

Um, and the expansion of this fascist police state uh is also the question ahead of you, right?

How much uh money are you giving them?

How much further power are you giving them?

How much further are you enabling them such that they're not being able to be held to account?

Um, and that uh on the other end, you're having uh people of color are suffering, uh, you're having poor people are suffering, you're having organizers and activists being targeted left and right.

Um, and then we go back home and we're like, wow, the you know, the state of America is so bad, and you know, we we never wear this bad, and there's so much fasc fascism everywhere.

And it's because of these decisions.

So I would really urge you to uh go ahead and and use your conscience and logic um and vote no.

Thank you.

Next we have Sebastian Brisbois.

Hello.

Uh my name is Sebastian Brisbois, and I'm a resident of Old Mountain View.

I oppose the funding of the new public safety building because it is not necessary infrastructure.

Our city is lacking other infrastructure that is vital for our public safety, such as affordable housing and transportation that promotes and enables active transportation.

So our core needs include things like housing and transit that we are already very behind on.

So we don't need a new building that we already have covered.

The new public safety building is also covering land near transit and downtown that should be used for things that more people can benefit from, you know, like housing, like I just mentioned.

So I think the real question is are we going to invest more in preventing things like homelessness and the other challenges our city and larger area, country, et cetera, face, or are we just gonna invest in things like policing the problems we create?

So why don't we put more resources into fixing the root of our problems and the challenges our residents face instead of just a fancy new building?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we have our final speaker virtually, Emma.

Hello, uh, can you hear me?

We can hear you, Emma.

Hello.

Um, I'm also here.

I'm gonna keep this pretty short and sweet because I think everybody's mentioned all of my points already.

Um, but I'm also here to oppose uh this motion.

I don't think it's necessary to um spend all this money to saddle the residents of Mountain View with all this debt, um, especially as the previous speaker said, in order to police the problems that we ourselves create.

Um I think it would be very beneficial for us to start from the bottom and move up in terms of fixing the problems that Mountain View has.

Um one of the largest that comes to mind is um it's unhoused community, which has um, you know, at least to my reckoning when I go out to um provide food and supplies, is um at least 40 uh folks who are currently on house, certainly more that I don't know about, um, all living in RVs, um, and all working, contributing members of Mountain the City of Mountain View.

All living in RVs and all working, contributing members of Mountain the City of Mountain View.

And also, you know, I think it would be great if we could invest this money elsewhere.

It's interesting to me that this money can be found for solutions like policing.

But I digress.

If we were able to find solutions for these people to find uh ways to support nonprofits from the previous speakers in the previous motion 6.2.

Um, but yeah, thank you so much for your time.

I appreciate it.

That's it.

Thank you, Emma.

And that ends our public comment.

So uh thank you.

I will now open the public hearing and bring the item back for council questions and deliberation.

Council member Clark.

Uh I don't have a question.

I'm prepared to proceed if we when you're ready.

Yeah.

All right.

So since there are no questions or deliberations, we will now close this notice public hearing.

Please note that two distinct motions will be required to approve the recommendation.

And the motion should also include reading the titles of each resolution attached to the report.

Now you can go, Vice Mayor Clark.

Thank you.

Um, and before I make the motion, I just want to again um thank staff for all the work that's gone into this over the years.

Um, and uh you know, finding ways to bring the cost down here and also to prior councils um, you know, council members who who aren't here who helped us um get uh and maintain our triple A bond rating, which allows us to finance this at the lowest cost possible to our to our residents.

Um and um and um you know the that work pays dividends uh when it comes to um being able to make investments in in infrastructure long term.

And before I want to make the motion, I do um, because this is a formal um uh you know what we're doing here tonight is very important.

I just want to correct the record.

And um, you know, this is a uh uh democratic forum.

We do tolerate dissent, and I I do appreciate those who spoke.

Um there were um you know very salient points in terms of the the trade-offs that we make and and what we spend money on.

Um, I do want to just um note that uh I don't know where the 250 million dollar numbers coming from.

The total estimated project cost is 189 million dollars.

The um the maximum not to exceed uh principal is 140 million dollars.

And what we are doing with this money is not funding policing.

We are building infrastructure.

We are replacing a building that is older than I am.

And if you've been to that building or been in that building, it is very obvious that it was not built uh to um stand the test of uh the test of many decades to come.

Um and it certainly wasn't built to support a community of what we're approaching 90 to 100,000 people, and what we're building is something that will need to uh span several decades.

It doesn't just support our police department, it also supports our fire department.

It will house our emergency operations center, which is also I think as old, if not older than I am, and that is the base of operations if we have a major incident like a uh heaven forbid an earthquake or anything um that we uh we need to be able to protect and um protect our community.

Um of the number one um um things that uh a local government in California does is um is public safety, and that's not just policing, that is everything that supports public safety in the community.

And um this building is is the building that yes, it houses our police department, but it also houses all of our uh the other public safety apparatus.

Um not all of it.

We still have um local fire stations or around our neighborhoods, but um, I just wanted to to correct the record um that we are uh the total estimated project cost is 189 million dollars and the not to exceed uh maximum principal is 140 million dollars.

to to correct the record um that we are uh the total estimated project cost is 189 million dollars and the not to exceeds uh maximum principal is 140 million dollars and i will move that we adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of mountain view finding that the issuance of the lease revenue bonds um will result in significant public benefits declaring the intention to res um to reimburse expenditures on the public safety building project made prior to issuance of the lease revenue bonds approving the issuance and sale of the lease revenue bonds in an aggregate aggregate principal amount not to exceed 140 million dollars approving related documents including a site lease lease agreement and uh bond purchase agreement and continuing disclosure certificate approving a preliminary official statement and authorizing a distribution of the preliminary official statement and a final official statement appointing bond counsel disclosure counsel and municipal advisor in connection with the lease revenue bonds and authorizing official actions to be read in title further reading waived and then I'll make motion number two when we're ready all right we have a motion by Vice Mayor Clark and it's seconded by council member McAllister and we can bring that to a vote that motion passes unanimously and I will bring it to Vice Mayor Clark for the second motion.

I further move that we adopt a resolution of the city count of the excuse me adopt a resolution of the City of Mountain View Capital Improvements Financing Authority Board of Directors authorizing the issuance and sale of lease revenue bonds to provide financing for a public safety building project to be owned and operated by the City of Mountain View approving related documents and directing related actions to be read in title only for the reading waived we have a motion by council vice mayor clerk and is second by council member show Walter we will now move to the vote.

That motion also passes unanimously that concludes uh this item we will now move on to item seven council staff and committee reports uh do we have any council staff or committee reports council member showalters um not too many this time but I did uh um attend a BCDC meeting on um April 16th where we talked about sand mining and beneficial reuse and we also went through the criteria for a bike um lane pilot that is being um uh carried out over the Richmond San Rafael Bridge that actually functions as part of the Bay Trail um there are now three about 375 miles of the Bay Trail you know someday it's going to encircle the whole bay but we're not quite there yet but anyway um uh it's it it's kind of an um an odd component component of it but um for the foreseeable future if you want to ride your bike over the uh Richmond San Rafael Bridge you need to do it um uh Friday Saturday or Sunday um also uh I had fun at the Earth Day celebration probably everybody else was there I I just want to thank all the organizations and the staff that were involved in setting that up those things are a lot of work but there were lots and lots of residents there asking questions and and having a good time and then on April 21st I spoke at um climate week on a panel about uh financing sea level rise protections and I was able to brag about um the good work that we're doing here in Mountain View and let's see oh on April 24th I went uh to um a Silicon Valley Clean Energy Executive Committee meeting and basically we um we prepare for the the board meetings that that are held every month thank you thank you councilmember show Walter Councilmember Hicks on April 15th I went to an urban land forum in San Francisco it's uh was a housing forum and it covered a lot of interesting issues such as uh why isn't a lot of house multifamily housing being built now and when will it be the answer main answer being uh rents were going down so uh developers were not interested but rents are now going up so they are becoming interested um and uh also there was the uh sort of keen featured debate was on is home ownership a uh still a a relevant uh or should is it an investment that should be encouraged for people hoping to build intergeneral intergenerational wealth or should we move on from that was your boss mayor who uh was in that debate oh really yes which one we'll it's fine uh vice mayor clerk thank you um I wanted to uh uh ask my colleagues if um it's occurring it's I've been thinking uh more lately about um um some of the briefings we've had on um on the we have the we have the the RVs and the settlement that will expire in February and um in talking to some um members of the community I think it would be helpful um

Um I wanted to uh uh ask my colleagues if um it's occurring, it's I've been thinking uh more lately about um um some of the briefings we've had on um on the we have the we have the the RVs and the settlement that will expire in February.

And um in talking to some um members of the community, I think it would be helpful um just to have a discussion at some point.

I I'm not sure whether it's a study session or something else, but I think ahead of February it would be good for our community to have some level of certainty around what will or won't happen then.

Um and uh and and also if there are any actions that we need to take ahead of February to ensure that certainty, or if there are any actions that we need to take um before then to um address some of the concerns that have been raised from members of the of the public, um whether it's those who are concerned about the RVs or those uh or are unhoused residents who are living in in vehicles generally, not just RVs, or whether um or whether there are um actions that we we should take to either address the needs of of those who are living in vehicles or unhoused, or whether there are actions that we uh should consider taking to address some of the safety and other concerns, especially given what's going on in some of the um in some of our neighboring communities, and I attended a forum with the mayor um that was hosted by our county supervisor, Margaret Ipikoga about this.

Um and so I just it feels very strange to me to not have at least some sort of discussion between now and February, um, because I think the community will be very curious to know what what exactly is going to happen if we do or don't take any action between now and then.

Um so what I was thinking was that we basically if there are four of us to authorize staff to undertake some of this just to come back to us with some recommendations for things that we um we might consider.

I mean, it could be a in my mind, it can be a menu of options ranging from things uh basically what happens if we do if we do nothing between now and February, um, if there are things that we uh might consider doing to address some of the concerns that have been raised um around um unhist trailers, van lords, those types of things.

Um and and I don't know where the where my colleagues stand on all this, but I think I think we owe it to the community to at least have a discussion or at least have staff bring us some sort of um materials or or menu of options or things like that, and I'm open to others' feedback, but I don't think just sitting by and kicking the can down the road to let the next council deal with that is the right approach because once the new council is seated, they start to have discussions, they start asking for things like I'm asking for tonight, and that's gonna take six or nine months, right?

And and then we're kind of a year from now uh is kind of the time where we can take um make it a not being very articulate after 10 p.m.

sorry, but uh basically I think we should probably talk about this before February.

Uh and if there are three other people who would like to do that, I would I would appreciate that.

And if there aren't, there aren't.

Um, but I just wanted to raise it.

Um and this would be something that would probably be uh post-summer break.

Um I don't expect magic to occur between now and the end of June.

But um I just wanted to raise that and see um, I don't know what the best approach is, mayor or staff to get a show of hands, or if staff wants to kind of better uh better articulate what we what we might do, that would be that would be helpful too.

I was really hoping that the next mayor would be able to but um uh I'm assuming that these hands up are actually for addressing the item.

So uh council member Ramirez.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

This is a very bad idea for many reasons.

But here are some of the reasons that it's a very bad idea.

One reason is that this is an extraordinary amount of work, and uh I am reluctant to deprioritize things I actually care about to instead do work on something I could not care less about.

Uh the next council is going to be different from this council and may have a very different set of opinions about what to do about this problem.

And I'm uh I don't want to necessarily initiate a set of work plan items that the next council may not be interested in, right?

So we've expend we've deprioritized some amount of things that we're our staff are working on now.

So we've expend we've deprioritized some amount of things that we're our staff are working on now, as councilmember McAllister said earlier, we're an extremely ambitious council.

There's a lot of work being done, and some of us are going away potentially forever.

And I would be very sad if things that I cared about that I've been waiting literally eight years to achieve get deprioritized so we can push homeless people around the city, right?

So they don't they're no longer on terabella, but instead they're on Ernestine, right?

Where those folks reached out to me when I was mayor saying, we're on this map where you say we, you know, RVs can park.

And I spent like two hours talking with them, explaining no, they're not going to come to the street.

So at any rate, um, I don't it unless you know you can tell me what we're gonna deprioritize for this new set of significant workload items, what we're gonna deprioritize, um, and also give me the assurance that the next council, and there are two members sitting at the audience listening to us right now, uh, will actually agree with what a majority of this council is likely to pursue.

So that way that work that we've expended uh is not a waste since the next council may have a very different perspective.

Um I'll throw in the nuke nuclear option too, because I hate this idea so much.

If a majority of the council approves this, then find a different campaign manager for the bond measure.

That's how bad this idea is.

Thank you.

Oh my God.

Okay, uh Councilmember Hicks.

Okay, well, I can't top that.

So I I disagree with the first thing you said, but I'm a different person than you.

You said you don't care about this.

I actually care about this deeply and have a tremendous amount of stuff to say about it.

But I agree with everything else you said, except for the campaign manager thing, which I'm not doing in any case.

But um that because I care about it so deeply, and I could say a tremendous amount about it, and I could write half the staff report on what I think we should do next.

But I have no people are very opinionated on this, and I have no idea the next council will have to carry it out.

So I feel like we would spend a lot of time on it, go down some road, hopefully my road, and uh the next council won't won't agree with me at all.

So I just I don't think it's worth our expenditure of time on this, given that we're half of us won't be here anymore.

So that the second half of what you said, or the middle of what you said, I agree with deeply councilmember McAllister.

Well, going back to a uh agenda item number seven, I did what and I'll get back to your question, Chris.

I did attend a VTA meeting that uh because that should have been an eight, but that's okay.

Oh I attended a VTA meeting and we were talking about transportation and uh how to uh help uh disabled or all folks, and there was a presentation put on by Jacksonville, Florida, which I happened to attend five, six years ago.

And they have these autonomous vehicles that are ADA uh um not approved, but uh, they work for it while they're approved that the people with ADA issues can get on these autonomous vehicles.

And uh there was something that was rather interesting that we might want to consider for the city's uh our own shuttle service to do uh short runs like that.

So uh that was very interesting uh meeting that we had, and so they're continuing to go that path.

So that wasn't gonna bring.

Uh so to Chris's uh thing, uh I heard some passion.

I'm glad you let your feelings out.

Uh Councilmember Mermarez.

I never thought you could um there is something that needs to be considered though.

The residents of Mountain you did do a vote, they wanted to restrict where people are gonna park.

We see other cities that are putting up restrictions and people continue to come to Mountain View, and our numbers keep growing.

And was somebody made a reference to oh, you we have the highest homeless populations because other cities are putting restrictions on their city, and so they're coming to Mountain View.

And so when you say on a staff, and I agree, putting projects on staff, uh, but it's also putting a burden on our community or business community and those people's that area.

So there is a balancing act of one, do we try to honor the the uh the passage of the restrictions that citizens did?

And when you say, Oh, you want the next council to do it, there's a possibility.

All we are is looking at options that because when it comes up to the end of February, I know you don't want to put these are something to consider.

That's all I'm saying.

Um but you are right, we got a lot of projects, and everybody wants to do something, so it's it's a tough one.

But the only reason that I could sort of justify, well, because we are getting affected by businesses, and the community expects us to follow up on their vote.

So uh it's something to consider.

Thank you, Councilmember McAllister.

I'm gonna uh swing it back to uh Vice Mayor Clark.

I just wanted to clarify.

I'm not I'm not looking to throw our work plan to the wind and have three study sessions about this and talk and and ban overnight parking and and all that stuff.

I think I I'm trying to think I will still be four of us will still be here.

Um I think it would be I would feel like a very bad policy maker if I had an ordinance that was um if I had something as significant as this settlement expiring in February.

Um four to six weeks after a new council is seeded, and the prior council didn't even at least put together a basic overview of of options for us to consider, and not that they can't go in different directions.

That's perfectly fine.

They can say that work was all for naught.

My guess is that our staff is professional enough that they aren't going to, they've already done quite a bit of work probably on this.

They've been following this very carefully.

Um I I guess what I'm asking for is not a whole bunch of uh is like a shoe the issue of the work plan through the end of the year.

I'm just trying to see if there's support to it.

We start to think about what the end of this settlement does or doesn't mean and what provisions and things we need to be thinking about now so that the next council is set up to make whatever decisions they're going to make in a timely manner, because if they aren't able to start that until February, then you have this kind of mess of a settlement expiring, and what does that mean?

I'd at least at minimum like a memo to know what that means.

Maybe that helps inform what decision we we do or don't make.

That's my goal is just not to be in a position where a new council is seated in January and are like surprise everyone, you have to deal with this you know, ticking clock that expires in six weeks.

Sorry, the other the last council, you know, decided it just wanted to punt this one and let you deal with it because it's politically dicey and they thought they had other things to do.

Anyway, that's that's the the goal behind it.

It's not um it's it's not anything beyond that.

But council member Ramirez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh my rec maybe staff could help, but my recollection is that staff provided a memo on this topic to the council in December, that it included exploration of some policy options that the council could consider.

So maybe what I would support is for staff not to do additional work, but to reshare that memo with the council.

Memo is not is what I'm asking for is well beyond that memo because it explores what actually happens when the settlement expires and and strategies for how we how we do different things.

The memo was very helpful in explaining the state of the world.

It it didn't really, at least if I recall correctly, it didn't really go into strategies for a post-settlement world.

I I disagree with the idea.

Um I'm going to vote no, but if a majority votes yes, then I would hope that we be very clear about what items do not happen, because we're now directing staff to do something else.

And I'm also eager to see who steps up to run the campaign for the bond measure.

Councilmember Kamei.

Okay, boys.

Can I can I uh offer can I offer a compromise, or would that not be prudent?

Is there an is there open hearts at 1020?

I'm I I need some sort of acknowledgement.

Yes.

Okay.

So I I think we're close to maybe a compromise between the two of you.

I think that um at this juncture, perhaps looking to our city manager, that memo that we received, the off agenda memo item that council received in December of last year.

Could that be updated to include new information?

I saw the council connection, which discussed this regional safe parking convening that the county supervisor put forward.

It would be great to have that those materials to see those presentations.

And if my colleagues would be open to that, perhaps we can receive that as an off agenda memo item with all those materials and have a better understanding of the current state of affairs.

And then colleagues are welcome to bring things as you know, item seven or item eight in the future.

But I would appreciate April.

So much has happened in four months.

And I believe it would also be helpful to understand where the other 15 cities are.

So often staff brings forward kind of a rubric of what all the other jurisdictions are doing, our neighboring jurisdictions.

I think that would be incredibly helpful because I do think there have been a lot of policy changes.

And I do know, for example, in the city of Palo Alto, they had a whole subcommittee related to safe parking and their program implementation.

Um so might there be an openness to that?

And I look to the two of you.

All right, Mayor, I I got head nods and they agree.

So shall do we need to take a vote on that, or is that all right?

So um I I don't know if Councilmember Showwalder still wants to stalk on this item.

I was basically going to um suggest uh a similar thing to what uh council member Kamei did.

I think that we do um the situation is changing and we do need to be kept um informed about how it's changing, and also um I'd really like a much better update than I've had um about what transpired at that the meeting.

There was a nice write-up in in the um council connections.

I appreciated that, but um uh specifically what other communities are doing because it is clear that the impact of our neighbors' actions have have affected Mountain View.

And so um, and there and some of those impacts, I mean, some of those policy changes are are very recent.

So I I'd really like to learn about um kind of where we are right now or where we are in three months when you write the memo, whatever, however it works out.

All right.

Um so Vice Mayor Clark, I I totally actually I I do actually get where you're coming from because I was really just hoping that would just drop this in your mayorship.

Um because um I I I also personally have strong feelings about um this and and as when you're mayor, you you have to be a little bit more controlled.

Um, and I'm not I I I worry about that at times for myself.

Um and but I get like wanting to have some kind of runway, like suddenly just like you become mayor, and then suddenly you have to deal with this, and I get that that's probably you don't want to deal with that, but I do like the compromise that uh council member Kameh has proposed.

Um so I am happy to bring that to a straw vote.

Um are people okay with that compromise uh straw motion?

Uh uh.

Well, I can't.

City manager McCarthy.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, so I'll just state uh for council and for the public that's listening.

So this forum was essentially Mountain View presenting about our program.

It was not uh really learning about what other cities are doing.

So Palo Alto modeled a new program that they have after our program in Mountain View.

So they did talk about their program, which has 22 spaces.

Um and as you all know, we have well over a hundred spaces and spaces for commuter vehicles as well.

Um so it was really a forum to learn about how the county has supported the program, and then myself and the deputy city manager presented uh this to the other agencies that were there to listen and learn.

And it was uh information sharing forum, um, uh kind of a discussion that that people had about what they were seeing, but it was certainly not a forum to learn about uh what a variety of cities are doing in the county.

It was more them learning from us.

Um so I am happy to uh put the presentations in this memo and let you all know uh more about what happened, but I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of uh what happened at the forum, and our mayor and vice mayor were also in attendance at this forum.

Um and I think we uh can certainly gather information about what other cities are doing, but again, um I don't want to set expectations high because there really are uh the leaders in this space are our mountain view, and I would say you know, San Jose is um doing their share.

Um, but uh I just don't want uh you all to be disappointed uh by the lack of information that we may be able to share with you on what uh is happening regionally.

Um so I just wanted to put that out there.

Uh we do have the pathways to housing that you passed about homelessness, and so there's a number of efforts that council has identified in that plan.

Yes, and part of that is regional collaboration.

So that was something that you very clearly gave direction to staff on, and we have you know taken it very seriously, and we are working.

We've talked to many staff and other cities, done presentations, trainings.

Um, so we are definitely trying that regional collaboration approach.

But um, I I do think there is still a lot to be done regionally within our county and our neighboring county.

Um, but if that is where council lands, we're happy to update um and provide you new information since December.

Um, but I did at least want to let you know just to set expectations about it.

Thank you, City Manager McCarthy, Councilmember Hicks.

Yeah, thank you for thank you for that additional information.

I guess what I was I like, I like where this is going.

I I like um the off agenda memo and and I was when uh giving us information on what the other cities were doing was mentioned.

I didn't think it meant um just what sort of safe parking and other kinds of transitional housing other cities were doing because I really I agree with you.

It's we probably would not learn much, although I would hope maybe I'd be surprised.

Um but I was thinking more we're really affected by the legal changes and the sweeps.

So and I know that other I would like to know what other cities are doing uh with regards to that.

And and I also have heard that Sunnyvale is preparing for and also what people are preparing to do.

I've heard that Sunnyvale's preparing some uh transitional housing changes, and I'm not totally up on what that is.

And I wouldn't even mind it may not be appropriate, but you know, during our item what is it three or whatever where people come in and give presentations.

If there was anyone appropriate just to give us a presentation that we don't make any um remarks on, um, that you know, I'd be interested in that too, but an off agenda memo is fine as well.

We can make remarks, we just don't vote on anything.

Um are you still up um city manager McCarthy?

No, I think in that that's uh fair point.

I think we can also include information on what other cities have done for restrictions, uh, just so you all are aware of kind of the landscape now, how it's changed between December and now.

So we can include all that information in there.

Councilmember McAllister.

How often do you do counts?

We did just do an updated count recently.

I'm looking at our police chief um informal count.

We typically do it every summer in July, uh, but we did a recent count because uh we know that uh we have had an uptick um in Mountain View as other cities have made changes to their policies and uh uh ordinances.

So I would ask our uh police chief.

I also have our assistant city manager.

Actually, I'm gonna promote um Miss Seymour because she is going to give you specifically this information.

Assistant city manager Seymour.

Um hello, council members.

Uh Audrey Seymour, Assistant City Manager.

Um I uh concur with the city manager's statements that we normally do this the count in July.

Um we did it early this year in March because what we were hearing from um people in the community and observing ourselves during enforcement about an increase in the number of oversized vehicles parked in the various areas with um kind of extensive concentrated parking and kind of expanding into areas where there hadn't previously been um concentrated parking by oversized vehicles, and what we saw was a um 42% increase between the numbers from uh last July and this March.

That still didn't answer the question.

When will you do the next count?

Um my apologies, Councilmember McAllister, it'll be in July.

Okay.

I think that would coordinate well.

Thank you.

I do recall be taking part in the county point in time count, but that's only once every two years, and that was uh a while back.

I think it was before I was mayor, so and it was really cold.

Um so we will uh so I guess we'll take it to a vote, uh council member Kamei's um suggestion.

So all in favor, please raise your hand.

That is unanimous.

Thank you for that compromise.

Yes, thank you, Councilmember Kameh, if I may.

Just thank you for rescuing I did not mean to kick the hornet's nest.

I really didn't.

I'm just glad we retained our campaign manager.

And in January, I expect you all to uh give me a little lifeguard sesh for tonight.

Thank you.

That the okay.

Um so with that done, um some of my uh reports out is um yeah, we'll we'll continue on with the report outs.

Um uh I also attended the Arbor Day uh festivities and I got my own mayor tree.

It is a coastal live oak.

It's super cute and it's gonna be super huge in like a hundred years.

So I look forward to seeing you all there.

Um I also uh met with a group of Cub Scouts on April 15th and more students on International Day at Vargas Elementary School.

It was it was really adorable.

Um I also attended the uh regional safe parking uh event with uh Supervisor Abe Koga and I attended the City Leaders Summit uh where we had a number of meetings with the offices of uh Assembly Member Berman and State Senator Becker.

I also attended a child care panel there and the gubernatorial forum, which was very fascinating.

And then yesterday we had our uh CARC meeting, council appointment review committee, where we are doing recommendations for the vacancy for the HRC and the downtown committee.

Um Councilmember Kamei.

Great.

Okay, I was also at CARC.

Um and the other week I attended the Los Altos High School uh Latino Student Union Um award ceremony, um, and then attended the Cal City Summit as well as the Cal Cities Board meeting.

So um the mayor and I will be working on uh with the city manager on an update.

There's many things working through the legislature right now.

Um, and one of the uh the things that may affect us is the obviously Howard Jarvis, because we are one of 27 cities of the 483 cities in this uh state that could be affected for our RPT, the uh what is it, the region real estate transfer tax.

Um and so um we are advocating hard to make sure that we retain our 15.3 million annually that we could lose.

Um so those were the meetings that we had in addition to the peninsula division meetings that we had with our coalition.

Um the mayor and I attended meetings with Senator uh Becker and Senator Berman.

Um yes, well, but about this issue.

Yeah, those are the pencil division meetings.

Um and uh just an update as well as the Cal City's board of directors voted to oppose um Howard Jarvis, and so that might help us as well as we're advocating um to retain our our revenue.

So just wanted to update everyone on that.

Thanks.

Which way uh when you say oppose harvest, what what's what's the bill?

Are they saying we want it not to pass?

Do we want it to pass?

I so what's position are we taking?

We don't want it to pass.

So would that hurt us if it did pass?

Correct.

We would lose 15 up to 15.3 million dollars annually that we get.

So we just passed our measure G bond in 2024, and it would come and take it.

Does it adjust uh property taxes all across the border?

Does it adjust property taxes all across the board or does it we keep the status quo?

They have three different oh so this affects uh cities that have uh property conveyance taxes over a certain amount, which we do.

And so this would essentially roll back the ability for cities to collect on when a when a whether it's commercial or residential, when it's when it's sold to collect on uh the sale of the property.

So we would we would lose as uh council member Kamei said around 15 million dollars a year.

So this is a very big deal for the city.

We would absolutely oppose this.

It has gathered enough signatures to make the ballot.

So uh there is a compromise um that is trying to be worked out right now.

I don't know how successful it will be.

Um, but we are actively advocating with our legislators and with others to uh forcefully oppose this measure.

All right, anything else, y'all?

All right, with that, our next city council meeting will be held on May 12th.

This meeting is adjourned at 10 37 p.m.

Okay.