Okay.

Well, good morning, everybody.

I'm going to call our meeting to order here, our special city council meeting of August 17th, 2024.

I want to thank all of our council colleagues for the gift of your Saturday morning.

Um not used to coming to so much daylight here to City Hall for a council meeting.

Our public comment procedures for any items within the city's subject matter jurisdictions are as follows.

Public comment is taken in person during the meeting or in advance via email as outlined on the agenda.

This is kind of part of the day.

Comments that were received via email by eight o'clock AM this morning may be read aloud, time permitting, and in a case will be made part of the final meeting record.

In-person speakers must turn in a speaker card to our acting assistant city clerk at the DS to be recognized to speak.

Please be sure to indicate the agenda item number you wish to speak on.

If there is a high volume of public comment today, 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 guided communications and business.

Thank you, Mayor.

At this time we have two speakers.

And the first speaker is Olivia Austin, followed by Mary Jo Palumbo.

Please my name is Olivia Austin.

Olivia, could you pull the microphone down towards your there you go?

Perfect.

Thank you.

My name is Olivia Austin.

I reside at 1090 Main Street, Redwood City.

The subject is homeless issues.

The residents at 1090 Main Street had been affected in many ways due to the encampment at the library downtown area.

All endured noise throughout the night, either by boombox, yelling, shouting, and screaming obscenities, cars pulling up in the alley, way back and forth, odors of marijuana drifting upward towards the four levels of the 1090 building.

Several residents had observed cooking on a hibachi or some sort of gas unit with smoke drifting upward, could create fire hazards.

It got to the point where it was not safe to be anywhere near that area, not even to walk dogs, it has been done previously.

The sweep at the library lot this past week could not have come any sooner.

I am here to thank all agencies involved in the sweep, and hopefully the library area will be kept up free of encampments, and all residents will feel safe to go out in the area and not have to call the police to report suspicious persons or activities in the library lot.

Thank you very much.

Next speaker is Mary Joe Palumbo.

And good morning.

Also, and I wanted to thank the City of Redwood City for the cleanup of the encampment behind the Redwood City Library.

All morning, afternoon, and evening, and brought destruction to the lovely park.

And I just had a sugg suggestion if we could put large rocks all around the fence to discourage the entry.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Crystal, thank you very much, and thank you for sharing your thoughts and comments with council this morning.

We will now turn to our closed session item, uh, item number five.

The council will adjourn from public session and go into closed session regarding public employees' performance evaluations as identified on the agenda.

As this is the only item on today's agenda, there will be no reportable action, and we'll be adjourning immediately following the closed section.

Closed session.

The next city council meeting will be a special meeting on August 22nd.

So thank you all for joining us this morning.

Um is there any public comment, Crystal?

There is one email public comment, and I apologize for not mentioning it earlier.

That's okay.

Let's go ahead and take public comment.

Mr.

Greenway emailed us, and he writes, Dear Mayor, Vice Mayor and City Council members.

On behalf of City Port of Seaport Industrial Association, I want to thank you for your hard work on the city's business license tax proposal leading to your decision last month.

In response to community input, Council kept an employee-based model, lowered the annual tax cap, and supported regular public review of the tax rate.

But you listened to those concerned and took our recommendations seriously.

The increased rates you approve for retail industrial business in the port area are reasonable and equitable, and we appreciate your approach to phase implementation.