The Redwood City City Council held a special meeting on April 15, 2024, starting at 6:00 PM. The meeting included recognition of community organizations and individuals, a public hearing on a proposed pedestrian mall, and staff reports on economic development, pension funding strategies, and police equipment. The council approved several items, including a two-year economic development plan, a pause on accelerated pension payments, and the purchase of new police equipment, with one dissenting vote on the latter.
Okay, good evening, everybody. Welcome to our April 15th City Council meeting here in Redwood City. Thank you for joining us. I would say happy X day, but it's tax day, so it's nothing happy about it, other than you have six hours left to file. So if you haven't filed, you still have six hours. So Jessica, okay. We'll let our technology kick in. Almost. Testing. Is there still an echo? All right, we're good. All right, thank you. Again, good evening and welcome to our April 15th, Redwood City City Council meeting. We're 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. Also, as a reminder, all remarks should be addressed to the City Council as a body and not to any individual member, nor to staff or any other member of the public. Further, the City Council discourages profane remarks, personal attacks, or insults to any member of the council, staff, other attendees or speakers, or the general public. Our public comment procedures tonight for items on the agenda or within the city's subject matter jurisdiction are as follows. Public comment is taken in person during the meeting or in advance via email as outlined on the agenda. Comments that were received via email by 5 o'clock today will be made part of the final meeting record. In-person speakers must turn in a speaker card to the city clerk at the dais to be recognized to speak. Please be sure to indicate the agenda item number you wish to speak on. In-person speakers will be called in the order in which speaker cards were turned in. If there is a high volume of public comment this evening, we may decrease the time allotted for each comment or limit the total time for public comment. This is to ensure that the City Council can address agenda items in a timely manner and is allowed under the City Council's Guide to Communications and Business. In the event this occurs, please feel free to submit your full comments to the City Council at public comment at Redwood City.org so that we can see your comments and they will be part of the meeting record. I'll turn the meeting over to our city clerk who will now call the roll. Thank you, Mayor, and good evening, everyone. We'll start with Councilmember Aguirre. Here. Councilmember Aiken. Here. Councilmember Howard. Here. Councilmember Martinez Savayos. Here. Councilmember Sturkin. Here. Vice Mayor Espinosa Carnica, I believe, is on her way. And Mayor G. Present. Thank you. Thank you, Jessica. Now we'll turn to our Pledge of Allegiance. Councilmember Aiken, will you do the honors, please? Please join me in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you, Councilmember Aiken. Our next section of our agenda is our presentations and acknowledgments. This is the fun part, the celebrator celebratory part of our agenda. Before we begin tonight in person, I want to take a moment to mention that April is Fair Housing Month, which highlights the anniversary of the enactment of the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale and rental of housing based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.