On March 18, 2024, the Redwood City Council convened a special meeting to deliver the State of the City Address. The meeting was conducted in a newsroom format, with the Mayor and councilmembers presenting pre-recorded segments highlighting key city initiatives and accomplishments. The event was celebratory and informational, focusing on housing, homelessness, transportation, youth, seniors, economic vitality, and climate resilience. No formal votes or decisions were taken.
Wow, I didn't even have to do the gavel. It got really quiet really fast. So thank you. We all set to get ready. All right, I'd like to call our special meeting of the City Council to order here on March eighteenth for our State of the City twenty twenty-four. TV, but we don't have cable in our house, so I don't know what that is. So thank you. And it's really a great pleasure to bring the state of the city to all of you. We've got a few things to take care of before we get to our main presentation. We are continuing to offer in-person and remote options for our city council meetings. However, due to continued disruptions during public comment at open meetings throughout our region and state, we've modified our public comment procedures until further notice. Lastly, as tonight's event or meeting is a celebratory event to share updates on the work happening in our city. We ask for your cooperation and maintaining a meeting environment where everyone feels comfortable participating in the public process and expressing their views and opinions in an atmosphere of respect for all. And I just need to add the other part. If you have one of those smart things in your pockets or purse, can you turn it to silent so that we can be uninterrupted during our presentation? I'd like to now turn it over to our city clerk for the roll call, please. Good evening. Thank you. We'll start with Councilmember Aguirre. Here, Councilmember Aiken. Here, Councilmember Howard. Here. Councilmember Martina Savallos. Here. Councilmember Sturkin. Here. Vice Mayor Espinosa Garnica. Here. And Mayor G. Present. Thank you. Thank you, Jessica. Councilmember Sturkin, would you lead us in the pledge, please? Thank you, Councilmember Sturkin. On to item number four. This is the part where we will take public comment. We'll take public comment on topics within the city's subject matter jurisdiction on or off the agenda. But before I turn it over to our city clerk, I'd like to ask her how many speaker cards we have this evening or emails. Mayor, we have zero speaker cards at the moment. We'll do a last call to the audience for anyone who wants to give public comment this evening. Seeing none, I have one emailed comment if you'd like me to read that. Please proceed. Okay. Our emailed comment this evening is from Todd Freeman and Todd Wrights. I suspect what I will hear in tonight's meeting is a restatement of the obvious that ongoing pension funding obligations require the city to seek out additional sources of dedicated revenue to fund these huge and growing obligations in the form of a very controversial increase in business license fees and an additional document transfer fee upon the sale of property. The council's engagement of consultants to help package this bitter pill of a ballot proposition is dishonest at best. May I simply suggest that CalPurz represents a sizable, growing, and unpredictable hole in the city's budget bucket, and that more income will merely defer the time before it will be necessary to exercise serious personnel and service cuts in order to afford the retirement benefits of those who have already left the city's employee. If you are going to hire consultants, you should start now to figure out how to reduce the city's exposure and to move towards a fixed and manageable outlay for retirement benefits, as virtually every other business in the country and the city does now. When I read that the city has 590 employees, I was a bit surprised, considering you have multiple people in the DEI department, and yet quite obviously are short police officers and have issues handling mundane issues such as tree trimming and sewer maintenance. Perhaps your priority should be revisited before the next election.