The Redwood City Council met on January 9, 2023, to address the ongoing winter storm emergency, appoint a planning commissioner, and receive a progress update on the 2021 City Equity Plan. The meeting included public testimony, council discussion, and several unanimous votes.
So like to call the meeting to order. Good evening. Thank you for joining us. As a reminder, we are holding our meetings in hybrid format with both in-person and virtual participation for council members and the public. Items will be taken into order. They're listed on the agenda. Before I get too far in the agenda, I would like to also welcome our newly elected council members, Councilmember Stirkin and Councilmember Eakin. Welcome to your first meeting of the year and first meeting of your terms as council members. With our hybrid meeting format, the public comment procedures are as follows. Speaker cards are located at the back of the table in the council chambers and must be turned into the city clerk at the dais. Please be sure to indicate the agenda item number in which you do sp you wish to speak on. Um we will first take uh in-person speakers. Um I do not have any speaker cards for in-person speakers, and I'm looking at the audience just to make sure that's correct and so I will turn to Zoom to see if we have any speakers who have joined us virtually. Yes, we can. Hi. Thank you for your time. I'm here today to bring your attention to an urgent matter that affects everyone that lives along corridors creek. As you may know, the flooding from this creek has caused significant damage to homes and businesses in the past week. I believe that you might be speaking on an item that's actually agendized later in the meeting uh in the city clerk. Could you please confirm? Yes, if you are speaking on um the storm uh update, planning commission uh appointment or the equity plan, you'll have an opportunity to make your comment on those items later on on in the agenda when they are called. Well, this actually is not really I don't believe it's tied to a storm update, although I'm I wasn't aware of that on your agenda and I'm not sure what that would encompass. Um if I could speak, I I think um it's very short what I have to say, but you know that what you might talk about with a storm uh if it involves solutions, uh then maybe I'll hold off until that item on the agenda. Um so it's your call. And so maybe I can help uh this is the city attorney Veronica Ramirez. Um right now what we have is public comment on the closed session, which is um about to convene, and that's on labor negotiations. If you would like to put your uh make your comments during the gener general public comment, that can happen as soon as closed session session has uh re has convened, and you can come back and we'll speak then about that. Oh, my apologies. No problem. And you or you can speak during the storm update about this as well. Okay, okay, thank you. Uh very sorry about that confusion on my part. Thank you, our city attorney, for the assist there. There are no other public comments for the closed session item, Mayor G. Thank you. So thank you for those that are watching or sitting here and in attendance. The council's now gonna adjourn to closed session. We'll be going upstairs. We'll be leaving the dais, and then we'll be back here once we are complete with our closed session, and we'll continue our regular meeting. We expect to be here approximately 645, hopefully, and um thank you for your patience. But council is adjourning to close session. Thank you. All right. Thank you, everyone, for your patience. We're a little bit behind schedule, but we're back in session. We just completed our closed session. And there were no reportable actions taken in closed session for agenda item number four A. So moving on, our next items at number five, presentations and acknowledgments. The first one, number five A, is Poverty in America Awareness Month Proclamation. And whereas poverty is about not having enough money to meet basic needs, including food, clothing, and shelter, and be can link and can be linked to the lack of education, physical disabilities, lack of access to health care, unemployment, and the absence of social services.