The Redwood City Council held a special meeting on May 19, 2025, starting at 6:00 PM. The meeting included community acknowledgments, consent calendar approvals, public hearings on city employment vacancies and cannabis business fees, approval of a successor MOU with the Chief Officers Association, and study sessions on fire and police department operations. All votes were unanimous.
Good evening, everybody. It is a little after six, so we're gonna go ahead and get started. Thank you for joining our special city council meeting of May nineteenth, twenty twenty five. We continue to offer in-person and remote options for our city council meetings. The city welcomes public comment on topics within the city's subject matter jurisdiction, and members of the public may provide comments in person during the meeting or by email to public comment at Redwood City dot org as outlined in the agenda. In person speakers must turn in a speaker card to the city clerk at the days to be recognized to speak. Please be sure to indicate the agenda item number which you wish to address. In person speakers will be called in the order in which speaker cards were turned in. And comments that were received via email after public excuse me, after agenda publication through five o'clock today may be read aloud, time permitting, and in any case will be made part of the final meeting record. 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. Present. So really not following that. That is another process, but following today's traditional Brown Act, and you can see on the agenda the locations as well as who is participating remotely and who is participating in person. Thank you. Thank you for getting us on the same page, City Attorney. I appreciate that. And with that, we'll move on to the Pledge of Allegiance. Council Member Swirkin. Please join us. Thank you, Councilmember Sirkin. We'll move on to item four presentations and acknowledgments, starting with a proclamation recognizing Jewish American Heritage Month. In the month of May, we celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month, a time to recognize the invaluable contributions Jewish Americans have made through their leadership and achievements and the indispensable role they hold in our nation's civic and community life. And I'd like to share a few whereas of the proclamation will be issuing tonight's. Whereas the Jewish American experience is a story of faith, fortitude, and progress. It is a quintessential American experience, one that is connected to the key tenets of American identity, including our nation's commitment to freedom of religion and conscience. Whereas the City of Redwood City recognizes both the continuity of the Jewish people and the intergenerational responsibility we have to heal our community for our children. Whereas during the Jewish American Heritage Month, we honor the Jewish Americans who, inspired by Jewish values and American ideals, have engaged in the ongoing work of forming a more perfect union. Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Elmer Martina Sabaios, Mayor of Redwood City, on behalf of the Redwood City Council and the people of the City of Redwood City do hereby proclaim May 2025 as Jewish American Heritage Month in Redwood City and encourage all people to observe this month in honor of the invaluable contributions Jewish Americans have made to our community and to our country. And now I'd like to invite David Ron, Astrid Riber, and Alan Fisher from Congregation Beth Jacob to share some remarks at the podium. Thank you all for being here. And we want to thank you for honoring the Jewish community and for the proclamation of Jewish American Heritage Month. And for recognizing Temple Beth Jacob to receive your proclamation. And we have over 500 uh families as members of our congregation. And we have been here in the in the community since 1930. So for 95 years we've been in the community. We're actually the first Jewish institution on the peninsula between San Francisco and San Jose. But we we've also had some hard times in the community. We think back to 1979, and the Redwood City Fire Department received a call that our building was on fire. And our building burned down, including our arc that held our sort of handwritten sacred Torahs, and one Torah survived, but the building burned down. But the community and particularly the churches came came to our aid. They came to our rescue. The first congregational church opened up their church so we could continue to operate the activities of our synagogue. They helped us to raise money. Other churches raised money and provided help to our community, and we are forever grateful. We call them Jewish values, but they're really human values. One of them we call them, it's in Hebrew, it's called Tiku no Lam, which means to repair the world. So many people in our congregation are active in organizations such as Faith in Action or Live Live MOOC Shelter. Uh we we we provide um um homes and and jobs and money for um for refugees. We resettle refugees. Um, and we're very active in in organizations such as Second Harvest.