Good evening, everybody.

It is six o'clock.

We are going to go ahead and get started.

Thank you for joining our regular city council meeting of August 25th, 2025.

We're holding meetings in the hybrid format with both in-person and virtual participation available.

I'm very pleased to announce that beginning with tonight's meeting.

Members of the public may be able to provide virtual public comment by Zoom as well as in-person.

The city welcomes public comment on topics within the city's subject matter jurisdiction, and members of the public may provide comments as follows.

In person speakers will be called first.

Speaker cards are located at the back table in the council chambers and must be turned in to the city clerk here at the Dais.

Please be sure to indicate the agenda item number which you'd like to speak on.

And attendees who have joined by Zoom will be called to speak after in-person comments have been given.

Detailed instructions for public comment will be provided on screen when the time for public comment begins.

And lastly, we have a very full meeting agenda tonight, so we ask that you please cue up for public comment as soon as possible after the relevant agenda item has begun.

For in-person attendees, you'll be called to the podium based on the order in which your speaker cards were submitted.

And for those participating by Zoom, please raise your hand after the agenda item begins.

Once the public comment period has begun, no additional speakers will be able to join the speakers list, either in person or on Zoom.

And if there's 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.

In the event this occurs, please feel free to send your full written comments to City Council at Council at redwoodcity.org.

Written comments will not be read aloud but will be made part of the final meeting record.

And I'll now turn it over to our city clerk to call the roll.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

Councilmember Chu.

Here.

Councilmember G.

Councilmember Howard.

Here.

Councilmember Padilla.

Here.

Councilmember Sturkin.

Here.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Here, Mayor Martina Sabayos.

Here.

Thank you.

All right, thank you everyone.

We'll move on to item three.

Please rise if you're able for our Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you, everyone.

We'll now move on to item four, AB 2449 requests and considerations for meeting participation by teleconference due to just cause or emergency circumstances.

This will be a new standard agenda item, but we don't have anyone using that flexibility today.

I just wanted to note that Councilmember Chu is participating under the traditional Brown Act.

So with that, we will move on to item five, which is presentations and acknowledgments.

And for our recognition item this evening, it's with great sadness that I share the passing of Stephen Carl Vritsky, son of former Mayor Brent Britzki and longtime Redwood City Senior Affairs Commissioner Barbara Britsky.

We'll be adjourning tonight's meeting in Steve's memory.

Born and raised in Redwood City, Steve attended our Lady of Mount Carmel School and graduated from Sequoia High School in 1977.

And after graduating from Chico State University in 1981, he built a distinguished career in business and finance.

In 1988, he created Sport West Management, operating the Foster City Athletic Club and the Club of Mountain View for over 25 years.

His entrepreneurial spirit flourished when he when he began advocates for athletes in 2010, placing over 750 student athletes at colleges nationwide.

In 1988, Steve married Kathleen Kerwin Britsky, the love of his life.

Together they raised their two sons, Spencer and Jake Britzke, instilling in them the values of hard work, integrity, and to always put family first.

At the center of his world were Kathleen and their boys, and they built, and together they built a full life filled with family trips to Hawaii, La Quinta, and Lake Tahoe.

Raised in the Catholic faith, Steve maintained a strong spiritual foundation throughout his life.

He loved coaching and watching his sons compete, hiking and going on walks, golf, rugby, boating, and had a passion for Lake Tahoe.

Steve is survived by his beloved wife of 36 years, Kathleen.

His sons, Spencer and Jake, his parents, Brenton and Barbara Britsky, and his siblings, Susan Casey and Mark Britsky, as well as eight nieces and nephews who adored their Uncle Steve.

He was predeceased by one beloved nephew.

Steve will always be remembered for his mischievous sense of humor, his unwavering love for his family, and his incredible passion for life.

He had the rare ability to light up any room he entered.

And beneath his strong outer shell was a gentle and kind heart, a true leader, a devoted family man, and someone who made a lasting impression on everyone around him.

Steve will be loved and missed forever.

Donations can be made in Steve's name to the Gene Upshaw Memorial Tahoe Forest Cancer Center in Truckee, California, or City of Hope in Dwart, California.

On behalf of the City Council, I share our deepest condolences to former mayor Brent Britsky and Commissioner Barbara Britsky and all of Steve's loved ones gathered here and tuning in remotely.

May he rest in peace.

Thank you all.

So now we will move on to item six public comment on the consent calendar, matters of council interest and items not on the agenda.

We welcome speakers to provide public comments, but please be advised.

This is a limited public forum.

As such, speakers must address matters within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city of Redwood City.

If speakers do not, they will be warned and they will continue, and if they continue to disregard city rules, their opportunity opportunity to speak will be limited.

If you're attending in person, please speak.

Excuse me, please fill out a speaker card and submit it to the city clerk here at the Dais.

And if you're attending virtually, feel free to raise your hand on Zoom at this time, or press star nine if you've joined by phone.

Once we've gathered all the speaker cards and raised hands and have begun public comment, no additional speakers will be allowed to queue up to speak.

And I will now hand it over to our city clerk to help facilitate public comment.

Thank you.

At this time, we have three in-person speakers.

So I'll do a last call to the audience for any other public comment in person this evening on general public comment item number six.

Okay, and if you've joined us by Zoom, you may now raise your hand for public comment on this item.

We'll start with our in-person speakers.

You'll have two minutes to speak.

The timer will begin when you start speaking.

Two minutes.

Thanks very much.

I want to thank uh the city of Redwood City and the City Council.

Um Steve Britchkee was really a terrific guy, and finding schools for 750 local kids was a great job that he did for the city.

Um it's very it's really interesting, you know, when you're when you have somebody in the family that dies and you want to take care of them, and you look have everybody to help you do it.

And here we have two rows of people and our family members who are here, and we really appreciate them.

Uh, if you went into my house right now, you would see a table right inside the front door, and there's 90 cards on that table that people have sent us in regard to Stephen's death.

And every day we get five or six cards and read about it, and it sort of tells you what kind of a guy he was.

The last thing that I want to tell you is that Saturday, we were at a neighborhood party out in the street around the corner from our house, and a woman comes up to me, and really a nice lady.

I did not know her, never never met her before, and she comes up to me and she's crying.

And that's like I said, Why?

What are you crying for?

She says, Steve was my favorite person.

And he, I want you to know that he helped me get my girl all through uh schools and eventually got her into school back east.

My daughter is now a doctor at Stanford.

And that's the kind of guy that Steve was in helping to get these people around.

So we've had a great life with uh Steve.

We're very sorry that he's no longer here, and I appreciate you people honoring him tonight.

So when you see us all walk out, you know why we're going.

Thank you very much.

Our next speaker is Rajesh Chittirala, who will be followed by Aaron Coleman.

Honorable Mayor Spalos and uh members of the City Council.

Um I think I came here a couple of months ago uh to express my concern over the parking situation right in front of my business on El Camino.

And uh it's gotten worse.

I am actually seeing consistent decline in sales, and every customer I get uh complaints about not having parking anywhere.

And the Irvine Company, the landlord that I um pay my rent to, uh, said they were working on a project to restrict a few parking spots for only uh customers who visit my store, but I have not seen any evidence of that work being uh conducted in any way.

Um so uh I am really struggling to pay my BGE bills and uh baskin robin's royalties and even my landlord because I am not able to make any payments at this rate.

Um I am struggling to make ends meet with my um uh crew who are working really hard versus all my suppliers who have to be paid.

And I also received a court hearing for you know for some of these bills that I need to settle.

So I just wanted to know if uh the city can assist me with uh convincing the urban company to move faster or come up with an alternative location where I could move my operations to.

Um, so I'm just open to any ideas that you may have, and I really appreciate uh this opportunity to express and let me know what your feedback is.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rajash.

Our final in-person speaker this evening is Aaron Coleman.

Good evening.

Um, Aaron Coleman.

Um, the last resident at Docktown Marina, um, here in Redwood City.

I've lived there for six years with my uh my son and previously with my daughter.

Uh my daughter uh Misha died there.

She was 11 years old, so this is very emotional for me.

Um as of last week, uh the city um evicted my son and I with just the clothes on our backs and put us out on the street.

Um they put up chain link fences and and confiscated our our floating home.

It's the last floating home of Redwood City.

And um, and now that we've been told by two different stories by the PD that they're gonna demolish it tomorrow with everything we own in it, including my daughter's cremated remains.

They won't let me have access to go on board to clearmates.

They only give my son five minutes to go and get his birth certificate so he could fly down and be with my sick uncle on Sunday.

I'm gonna see in the homeless shelter that I've had to battle.

So many homeless people at the at the closed marina, it's just been very difficult for us.

I'm disabled, I'm doing the best I could to move out of there.

I have two towboats that I brought to Redwood City to tow the floating home to our new location in Alameda, but the last 60 days, the wind has been 15 to 20 miles an hour, and I can't tow across the bay of the Coast Guard.

Will not approve a tow plan.

Um I've gone to the judge on the unlawful detainer, and I've got a 21-day stay.

It cost us a thousand and fifty dollars, all the money we had that has run out now, and I'm just bombarded by Redwood City.

Um Terrence Cost said I could buy the floating home back at the next auction.

So I really don't know where we stand.

I don't know if the council can give me any kind of relief or a stay of any kind.

If we can work out a tow plan, I've talked to West Point Marina and the Marina in town.

Other places where we can station it before we leave.

Because I know that Terrence Collin, the city wants to demolish the last 50-foot of dock that's a dock town, but I'm just begging for any kind of mercy that we can have.

Thank you.

Thank you, Erin.

Jessica, before we go to the next speaker, Mr.

Coleman.

You know, we can't talk about anything that isn't agendized, but I want to ask our city attorney if there's anything she can share on this.

Thank you.

So this is involving litigation.

Um, just as a reminder, the city is uh having to comply with state law, which does not allow residential uses on trust lands, and so this uh you know the dock town area or Redwood Creek.

This was the last remaining um home on the creek in order to come into compliance with state law.

Uh, what we can do, this was a litigation item that Mr.

Coleman is speaking to, and uh our attorneys can definitely contact him about how he can uh collect all of his personal items and and kind of find a solution for that uh before anything happens.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Coleman, for your comment.

Thank you, Mayor.

We did actually have one additional speaker card that was submitted after the list closed.

Would you like to call on that speaker?

Would you like to move to virtual?

Yeah, that's okay.

Thank you.

So Teresa Perez.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

My name is Teresa Perez, and I'm the program manager at Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center.

Albert C in our services for Redwood City residents and businesses.

This is my third year in this role, and I want to start by thanking you for the opportunity to do this work.

I grew up watching my mother uh run a beauty salon, and it fills me with great joy to now support entrepreneurs as they pursue their dreams.

This year we supported 21 businesses, 20 assistants, and one newly launched together.

They sustained 31 jobs and created a new job.

Importantly, 90% are women-owned, and nearly three-quarters of those women's are heads of households.

We're also working with 41 free venture clients and who are still in the planning stage and will continue to support them as they move toward launching their business.

Of the 62 Redwood City residents we assisted this year, more than 80% were extremely low income, and nearly 80% were very low to low-income households.

To bring this to life, I'll like to share a story of Elizabeth Ortiz, owner Colibri Family Childcare.

She's been serving families in Redwood City since 2015 and has strengthened her business through renaissance support and training and one-on-one, including the developing a website and a logo that helped her grow her brand.

Elizabeth says it's an example of the resilience and creativity we we see every day in Breadwood City.

Thank you for your continued partnership and helping entrepreneurs.

Thank you.

That concludes our in-person speakers.

We'll move to virtual public comment at this time.

So I will give folks a few more seconds to raise their hand if they wish to.

Okay, we'll now close the speakers list on Zoom.

We have one public speaker who has dialed in, named Call in User Two.

Go ahead and dial star six to unmute, and the timer.

We will begin when you start speaking.

Call in user two.

We're unable to hear you, unfortunately.

I do see that.

All right.

Thank you.

Uh Council for allowing the Redwood Shores community to participate and discuss topics remotely.

It's extremely and very much appreciated.

I've been a resident of Redwood Shores for 43 years.

I love this place for its beauty, location, safety, proximity to the bay, tranquility, clean air, and amazing ecosystems.

Realtors say Redwood Shores is an international destination for home buyers.

That's powerful.

As a doctor of pharmacy, my top priority is health and well-being.

The Hippocratic vote mandates either help or do no harm.

You're aware that residents have voiced concerns about the potential dangers of building on a hibernating toxic waste dump.

The 85-acre Redwood Life campus sits on a subsiding unlined bay front landfill used from 1948 to 1970.

Developers plan to sink thousands of piles through the landfill and bay mud.

This alarms regulators and residents because drilling through the clay cap can create a pipeline for contaminated sludge to leak into the groundwater, causing a catastrophic event.

Remember the Hippocratic of help or do no harm.

The Redwood Life Project does not belong on the Redwood Shores toxic waste stock.

Thank you very much for listening.

Thank you.

And that concludes public comment mayor.

Thank you, City Clerk.

We will now move on to item seven, our consent calendar.

Items on the consent calendar are routine in nature and are approved in one motion.

Are there any items on consent from which council members are recused?

Mr.

Mayor, I will be recusing myself from item 7D as in David.

Um I live right next door to the general improvement district.

That is of the subject matter.

Great.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Not seeing any other recusals.

Could I get a motion for our consent calendar with the exception of item?

Excuse me, with 7D.

Item 7D.

So moved.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

Second.

Perfect.

That was a motion from Councilmember Sturkin.

Mayor.

If I may, I just wanted to make sure I understood what the request was for the motion.

Was it for the consent item except item 7D?

That's how I started it.

That's quickly.

That was clear.

Let's make it a motion with the exception of 7D, and then you can take 7D separately.

Okay.

Great.

And do we have to make a friendly amendment to the motion maker or we're all on the same page?

I agree.

Great.

Thank you.

Perfect.

Could we get a roll call vote, please?

Certainly.

We'll start with council member Chu.

Yes.

Council Member G.

Yes.

Council Member Howard.

Yes.

Councilmember Padilla.

Yes.

Council Member Sturkin.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Yes.

Mayor Martina Sabayos.

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you everybody.

Can I get a motion for approval of item 7D?

So move.

Second.

Great.

So that was a motion from Council Member Howard.

A second from Councilmember Chu.

Could we get a roll call vote, please?

We'll start with Council Member Howard.

Yes.

Councilmember Padilla.

Yes.

Councilmember Sturkin.

Yes.

Councilmember Chu.

Yes.

Ice Mayor Aiken.

Yes.

Mayor Martina Sabayas.

Yes.

The motion passes with six votes.

Councilmember G recused.

Great.

Thank you, everyone.

We'll move on to item eight public hearings.

We have none scheduled for tonight.

So I'll move on to item nine staff reports beginning with 9A.

Our first staff report item this evening will be to appoint.

Excuse me, we'll be appointing to fill one partial seats on the Rhodes City Housing and Human Concerns Committee.

I'll turn it over to our city clerk to take public comments and help facilitate the appointment.

Thank you, Mayor.

Tonight you're being asked to make an appointment to fill a partial term vacancy on the housing and human concerns committee that will expire May 31st, 2028.

A recruitment was conducted in the spring to fill seats on multiple city boards commissions and committees.

Qualified applicants were interviewed by the city council at a special meeting on April 21st and appointed on April 28th.

At that meeting, the city council also voted to keep the eligible applicant pool open to consider future vacancies through January 1st, January 31st, 2026 without conducting additional interviews.

Of the applicants that remained on the list, and those applicants for consideration this evening are Kiara Arae, Asteris Ling, Malik Navara Gilbert, Sarah Rocinos, and Victoria Valencia for a partial term seat on the housing and human concerns committee.

The process for tonight's appointments will be as follows.

We'll take a roll call vote.

A candidate who a candidate who receives a majority, four or more votes will be appointed.

In the event that no candidate receives a majority vote, or if there is a tie, we'll move to another round of voting.

Before taking the roll call vote, I'll repeat the names of all applicants who are available for consideration this evening.

And following each vote, I'll repeat and confirm each council's selections after the names are stated.

Before proceeding to the voting and appointment, unless the council has any clarifying questions, I'm happy to take public comment.

Could we state are any of the current applicants on?

Could we just confirm what board if they're presently on any boards?

None.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for asking.

Okay, with that we'll move to public comment.

I don't have any speaker cards at this moment, so excuse me.

Uh mayor.

I believe one of the candidates is on the police advisory committee.

Am I right?

Or did they hand in his res.

Did he hand in his resignation?

Is there a particular member that you're oh wait a minute?

I'm sorry, he applied for the police advisory committee and was not appointed.

Never mind.

Correct.

I just wanted to be clear.

Sorry to sorry to interrupt.

I just wanted to perhaps just clarify that um there's one member who's a member of the teen advisory board, which is not appointed by the city council.

So it's not one of your appointees, but is serving on a BCC.

I think that might have been the question.

Any other questions?

Not saying any of the days or online.

We'll go back to the city clerk.

Thank you.

And no public comment.

Give a couple more seconds for folks online to raise their hand if they wish to speak.

Seeing none, we'll move forward with the appointment.

Again, five candidates for consideration this evening.

Those candidates are Kiara Aray, Asteris Ling, Malik Navara Gilbert, Sarah Racinos, and Victoria Valencia.

When I call your name, please state one name.

We'll start with Council Member Chu.

Sorry, um.

Astra Sling.

Councilmember G.

Asterisk Ling.

Councilmember Howard.

Sarah Racinos.

Councilmember Padilla.

Astra Sling.

Councilmember Sturkin.

Asterisk Lane.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Sarah Padilla.

Sarah Racinos.

Mayor Martinez Sabayos.

Esther Sling.

Thank you.

I'll repeat the votes.

Councilmember Chu selected Asteris Ling.

Councilmember G selected Asterisling.

Councilmember Howard selected Sarah Racinos.

Councilmember Padilla selected Asterisling.

Councilmember Sturkin, select selected Asterisling.

Vice Mayor Aiken selected Sarah Racinos.

And Mayor Martinez Sabayos selected Asterisling.

With five votes, Asterisling has been appointed to the housing and human concerns committee for a partial term seat expiring May 31st, 2028.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, City Clerk, and congratulations, Commissioner Ling, and thank you again, everyone who applied.

We always have more vacancies coming up, so please keep your eye out.

We appreciate the service.

We will move on to item 9B.

Our assistant city manager, Patrick Heinzinger, will give the staff presentation.

Thank you, Mayor.

Good evening, members of the council.

Patrick Isinger, Assistant City Manager.

You may recall that on July 21st, we did introduce the anti-uh camping ordinance at the city council meeting on that night.

The city council did vote to approve the item, but since that time there's been a few updates, and I'll go through that as we go through.

So that's how we got here.

The presentation overview, I'll have a few questions for council, get into the background, kind of a little bit of what I just touched on, and then we'll get into the recommended action.

So the two questions for the council to consider.

Does the city council have any questions related to the proposed modifications to the ordinance?

And two, does the city council have any questions related to the homelessness subcommittee?

So as I noted on July 21st, anti-camping housing ordinance was introduced.

It was eventually approved by the city council on that night, although that approved approval is moved since we're reintroducing tonight.

What this table shows are what we would call the key elements of the ordinance.

Um the first uh row up up the top is it does require that housing be available.

Um the second row there uh is about the in the enforcement aspect of it.

Really, it's a 72 hour process, uh meaning the city or the county cannot enforce must wait at least 72 hours to enforce and provide the two officers of housing and the two um notices of the violation before it can be enforced.

Um the sensitive areas, uh what that does is it moves the seventy-two hours to a 48-hour threshold.

Um so any encampment 200 feet of a school um would be considered a sensitive area.

And then on the night of the 21st, the uh county navigation center was also added as a sensitive area.

Um there is an exigent circum circumstances clause, and really what that means is in the event of severe health and safety issues that may be brought on by an encampment, the city would have the right to immediately remove the encampment without the availability of housing.

Uh moving along here, um the city would be required to store any personal property uh collected for at least 90 days.

The penalties, there are penalties, um, up to a misdemeanor and a financial penalty of one hundred dollars and or up to six months in jail, and there is access uh to a diversion program through the county of San Mateo.

So, sorry, I think it skipped ahead a little bit.

Uh so uh some of the items that were discussed on July uh 21st, 2025, a lot of discussion around the city's relationship with the county to administer slash enforce the ordinance, uh, ways to better protect the city's waterways.

Um, that is one of the proposed modifications you'll see here in a minute, and then the city council's desire to establish a subcommittee on homelessness.

So moving into uh the county's role in enforcement.

As we were working in more depth with the county on the MOU, uh became apparent that uh the ordinance needed a slight modification or say surgical modification to give the county explicit authority to administer uh the ordinance on the city's behalf.

The language before you also still allows the city to enforce it.

Really, what it does is it adds the county um as an enforcement entity as well, and that's really to provide the notices and whatnot.

Um the reason why the city's still in there is in the event other cities join on or adopt the ordinance.

Um, there might be the county might not be able to just respond solely to only Redwood City, and so the city may need to uh do other enforcement activities allowed under the ordinance.

Next slide here.

Sorry, the buttons are um the other proposed uh modification was um the adding back as I noticed a lot of discussion around adding waterways uh to the ordinance, and as you can see, I will not read it, but a very um long definition of what constitutes a waterway, um, the locations of them, where they're at.

Really, what this would do is it would include waterways as a sensitive area.

As a reminder, a sensitive area still has to have housing before it can be cleared.

It requires a 48-hour notice, not a 72- uh hour notice.

I will say that just like anywhere else in the city is there could be an exigent circumstance in a waterway, which would require the city to clean it more or clear it more quickly.

Um, but we did we are now recommending that waterways be included as a sensitive area.

So there would be three sensitive areas.

There would be 200 feet from a school, 200 feet from the navigation center, and then all and in all waterways.

Uh finally, um, there's a resolution attached to the the item tonight uh asking the city council to establish the subcommittee on homelessness.

The duties of that subcommittee would be to uh periodically review the city's policies on homelessness, receive progress reports on the city's efforts to uh related to homelessness and submit policy recommendations to the city council as appropriate.

All these meetings would be available to the public, um, meeting frequency three to four years, uh three to four times per year, and then the mayor would uh appoint three city council members, likely later this winter.

So with that, let me just make sure.

Sorry, the buttons are a little off.

With that, um, we will turn it over to the recommendation.

So there are two recommended actions tonight.

So the first bullet there is to approve the proposed uh modifications to the ordinance, which are the waterways and then authorizing the county to assist with enforcement.

And then the second bullet there is establishing the city council subcommittee on homelessness.

And then we'll revisit the questions.

Does the council have any questions on the proposed modifications?

And two, does the council have any questions related to the homelessness subcommittee?

That's it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Patrick.

Any clarifying questions from council?

Not seeing any.

We'll move it over to public comment.

Okay.

We have three speaker cards at the moment.

Last call to the audience, any in-person speakers on this item.

And if you've joined us on Zoom, feel free to raise your hand at this time.

We'll call speakers two at a time, starting with Justin Lee, followed by Katie Getz.

You'll have two minutes to speak.

The timer will begin when you start speaking.

Orange light on the podium is your 30-second warning.

Red light with the beat means your time.

Is that welcome, Justin?

Thank you.

Um I'd like to voice my support for this ordinance, uh, especially in adding the waterways as a sensitive area.

Um I live by a waterway, I actually live across from an encampment.

Um, and I'm gonna ignore for a second that actually I have a bullet lodged in my wall.

Um that came from the encampment, but um me almost dying was not enough to actually get the encampment uh uh the proper resources they need to be able to move away from there.

Um so let's put that aside for a second um and just kind of focus on what I see on a regular basis, which is uh a lot of dumping into uh the riverbed.

Uh I've seen trash bags, I've seen broken bicycles, I've seen uh rusted shopping carts and the it's unsightly, yes, for sure, uh, but it's also polluting all of our waterways.

It just sits there, there's no filtration system, there's no um, there's no uh management of it, it just goes straight into the water that we all drink.

Uh and I know I'm I'm not doing it, I'm not running off to a safe way to say, hey, like let me steal one of your carts and then like drive it into the river and just leave it there.

Uh, I doubt any of you guys are doing this as well.

Uh you can kind of imagine how it gets there.

Um, I'm not sure it why we would allow that.

It's illegal for me, it's illegal for all of you to litter.

Um, but I just I don't believe in enabling that kind of behavior by allowing people to just throw things into the river.

Um, and now I know this has been a hot topic and there's been a lot of uh uh debate around it, it's a hard decision.

We're all on this uh road trip uh called life, and life is hard.

Uh it's really hard.

We want people to have the support that they need.

Uh, but if we're in a car, I guarantee you I'm not gonna turn to you into your cup of coffee and pee into it.

So um please, if you if you don't want that, and I bet you don't want that, uh, please protect our waterways.

Please uh focus on on getting the right help to our people.

Thank you.

Thank you, Justin.

Our next speaker is Katie Getz, who will be followed by Bill Newell.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council.

My name is Katie Getz, and I do want to share that I serve as the chair of the housing and human concerns committee, but I am not here representing that body.

I'm here representing myself.

Um I want to speak against including criminal penalties for those who are um living in encampments.

I understand that the encampments can create dangers, they can create pollution, both for neighbors as well as for the people who are living in those encampments.

It is it is not a safe place to be, and it is not something that I wish for myself or for anybody in this room.

It should break all of our hearts that we have people living in abject poverty in a place as wealthy as Redwood City and San Mateo County.

But bringing about criminal penalties is not the way to solve the problem.

We know that when people come into contact with the criminal justice system, it decreases their chances of being able to find housing later on.

It also leads to adverse health outcomes, and just makes life harder than it needs to be.

And so, friends, I implore you, please do not make being poor a crime in Redwood City.

We have a moral imperative to care for our neighbors, and one of the ways we do that is by supporting them and lifting them up, not turning them into criminals as they are trying to survive.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Katie.

Our next speaker is Bill Newell.

Good evening, members of the council.

Um thank you for this opportunity to speak.

I'm asking you tonight to remove the criminal punishments in the anti-camp anti-camping ordinance.

The city can still well address encampment safety rapidly and humanely without these punishments which cause undue harm to unhoused residents.

I'm asking you to remove them because one, incarcerate studies have shown, and you've been provided data from other sources tonight that I know of, incarceration increases mortality for both the incarcerated individuals and the non-incarcerated individuals in our community.

Arrests and convictions, two correct arrests and convictions create barriers to stable housing, with four out of five landlords reporting using background checks, data back setup, three, fines and fees further increase court involvement for low-income people, and four, the model ordinance from the state does not include criminal punishments.

Could we ask that simply that the uh that aspect of criminal penalties be removed from the ordinance?

There's a belief that the threat of criminal penalties is necessary.

But what if the expectation that encampments will be cleared quickly is effective on its own?

That would certainly address everything that's been brought up, costs, complaints, et cetera, without being so damaging to our unhoused folks in our community.

And finally, I want to just add to the um uh subcommittee on the unhoused.

Um I would strongly urge that to meet at least four times a year, not three.

And I think it the initial meeting should occur um at the um at the latest, not the earliest, but the latest of the first quarter.

Uh ideally you should probably convene a meeting within the first 90 days after the ordinance is in effect to really assess the impact that it's making and the differences it's making and maybe uh modifications that can be made um to make it more beneficial to everyone in our community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bill.

We'll move now to our Zoom speakers.

We just have one, Clara Jekyll.

Welcome, Clara.

Hi, yeah.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

My name is Clara Jekyll.

As a precaution, I'll make the disclaimer that I'm a member of the police advisory committee, but I'm making this comment solely as an individual resident.

I second what previous speakers said about the adverse effects of criminal penalties and trying to get people into housing.

It's disappointing to see that the changes being suggested in the anti-camping ordinance are geared towards increased restrictions and increased enforcement rather than helping unhoused people in our city.

If all county staff are authorized to enforce the ordinance, that means people will have even less incentive to speak with outreach workers and build up the relationship of trust and understanding needed to find the services that match the person's real needs.

Instead, this would motivate them even more strongly to evade contact, making it even harder to get to a positive outcome.

I urge you to continue working to connect people with shelter and permanent housing and solve the root issues of the high cost of living and lack of affordable housing without adopting this harsh and counter-productive approach.

Thank you.

Thank you, Clara.

And that concludes public comment mayor.

Thank you to our city clerk and to everyone who provided public comments.

We will bring this discussion back to council.

Who has any questions they'd like to start us with?

Perfect Council MG.

Thank you, Ms.

Mayor.

Patrick, thank you for the updated presentation.

Um just so I'm clear and everybody else that may be leaning in.

This is a reintroduction.

So what we did at the previous meeting is moot.

It doesn't count.

So I mean, there were emails that said, no, since the council voted, how come we're not moving forward?

So if we were to affirm this tonight, it would still have to come back to council for a second reading, and then it would become effective 30 days after that.

So we're looking at sometime in September, and then the policy, if council were to approve, would become effective in October.

I'm loosely, I don't need to pick council meeting days, but I think you might am I getting that about right?

Late September officially.

And I do want to set expectations.

Then we still got to build the the program.

So but yes, I think legally the city would have the authority 30 days after.

Sorry, 30 days after September 8th, which is early October.

Sorry.

Thank you.

So the earliest this would in theory be effect is October, but then we don't have the infrastructure to really implement the policy if the council were to approve it, we would have to build it in partnership with the county and others before it became effective.

So we're just kind of moving down the calendar with this reintroduction.

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for getting us started, Councilmember who would like to go next.

Go to Councilmember Howard.

Mayor, could we put the questions up for the everyone to see the slide?

Thank you.

Um we had a meeting and uh the county came.

Our county manager Mike Calaghee came and made a very good presentation and offered the services of the county to help us uh with this very difficult problem.

I thought he did a very, very good job.

Can you tell me there is a difference though, what we're proposing versus what the county is proposing?

And has that been resolved that we can still work together despite that we don't we're not in total agreement on how it's handled.

I think there's there's something that they do that we decided not to do.

I'm trying to remember what it was.

I'm trying to think it's if it's a sensitive the change that the city that we had proposed on the 21st, which was introduced uh here as well, was the sensitive areas around schools.

So the county does not have that within their their ordinance, and so that was I believe the only deviation in this.

I'll find a.

Oh, actually, council member vice Mayor, please.

Their fee is 200 dollars.

The penalties you're what?

500.

Their fees are a maximum of 500.

And uh it was the council ad hoc that actually uh recommended that we bring those down to 100.

So that that was the big substantive difference was the penalty structure.

I thought we had discussion about the penalty structure, should we or shouldn't we?

And I know the speakers tonight are mentioning that too.

But um as far as enforcement opportunity, I was pleased to see that the county is willing to help us because we we have been trying desperately with the hot team and there are other groups and organizations that are working with the encampments, trying to give oh, the one I was thinking of is housing available.

That's the one I was thinking of.

I don't think the county, or is it one of the cities doesn't require that?

Is it Milton?

The county does.

Yeah, and that was one of the things that really caught our attention is other cities that adopted it without requiring that.

Other cities do require or do require, but the county, and keep in mind they adopted theirs a year, a year and a half ago, but they do require the availability of shelter.

Which I think is very important.

I mean, you you can't just say leave.

If you don't have something to offer, it it's um you won't be credible, you won't win trust.

But uh I and I do believe that working with the county, we do have the beds available.

We just I we just keep trying very desperately to work with people who are really struggling mentally, physically, there's they just have obstacles that you and I are not dealing with, and it must make it very hard for them to accept this kind of help.

But recognizing that, one of the speakers said, and it really resonated with me, is how inhumane it would be for us to do nothing.

Keep trying, keep trying, but you can't make a dent, and it just keeps going on and on until someone finally dies with in the encampment they're in, which is not to me a very good solution at all.

So um it it really resonated with me how important it is that we take a step further.

I still am not sure penalties, I just don't feel most of these individuals don't have the money to be able to pay penalties, but I do believe if we have the um legislation in place so that we can enforce that if you will not accept, you have these steps to go through, and if you don't accept that we can actually next step, make you move into uh housing.

Am I right?

That's the state is allowing us to take extra steps to ensure that we get people into the services they need.

What I would say is if if folks continue to refuse, then the city would have the discretion to either issue a misdemeanor citation or arrest on that.

Um I think you're thinking of another law that it's more on the institutionalizing of folks, and that's not really what I mean.

There could be that element.

I cannot remember the state, the the state proposition that that allowed that.

But um really what we're talking about is they refuse services.

What typically what has happened through what the county has told us is um the officers on on the scene have discretion.

Even the county still has not ticketed one person to date.

Um what what usually ends up happening is the the encampment is cleaned up and folks either accept housing or they just or they move on.

Um so I I didn't want anybody to hear, maybe I didn't explain it correctly that nobody will be forced to go into the housing on that.

You know what I mean?

Now if somebody is willing to re accept housing, the county will actually take them to the property and and start that process, essentially case manage that for them to get in.

Um the county, I believe, mentioned that to date they haven't had to use the penalties.

Correct.

Okay.

Um, I just wonder if really it's it's just not a viable thing to do.

It's it's punitive, and that's not what we're about.

But I do notice that people who are in this situation, and I've talked to actually one person, uh, they don't want people knowing, they don't want to be around a lot of people who are watching what they do, questioning how they're doing it.

They usually move on.

And we don't force them to, they just don't want to be in the spotlight.

And if they feel that's what's going to happen again and again and again, the experience of this person is most will leave and go somewhere else where they can quietly start over, unfortunately, and not accept the help.

And that's where I'm leaning.

I really want to be able to help as many as we can.

And if the pattern is those who really do not want to be helped would leave Redwood City, I'm sad for that, but I'd rather do that than charge the money they don't have, or put them in jail for what purpose is that really.

They'd have a clean place to sleep and a good meal, but again, punitive.

So I I'm kind of inclined to think penalties aren't the answer, but I am very much in favor of trying to do what we can to encourage them to get the services that we feel they need, and I hope the state continues to work with us and support us in these efforts, and I hope the county continues to support us in these efforts, because we really are trying to make a difference.

But thank you.

And I the subcommittee I think is a very good idea, and that we keep other committees in the city apprised of what we're doing and the success or not of the results of what we're doing, such as the housing and human concerns committee.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard.

We'll go to Councilmember Chu.

Thank you.

Um thank you so much for the presentation, Patrick.

And um I I really appreciate you further engaging the county.

I think it is going to help this this program be much stronger.

Um as I understand it, um, even if there are slight differences between our ordinance and the county's ordinance, um, that doesn't impact in any way the county's ability to help us enforce the ordinance.

Is that a correct understanding?

Correct.

Great.

Um, and so just you know, I'll combine my comments.

Um the I I think, you know, the the revision is a great idea.

Um I think the homelessness subcommittee is a great idea because this is an issue that's not gonna be quickly or easily resolved.

And um I'd just like to reiterate um that that the goal of this ordinance is not to end homelessness, it's a tool, to help people who have consistently refused housing.

Um, and while it is true that being incarcerated has health effects, being unsheltered has much, much, much larger health effects.

And being unsheltered is just not a safe situation for anyone.

Um, and so it's my belief that that such a program is really going to help people who, for a variety of reasons, have been very resistant to help.

Uh, and I do want to emphasize that we do have a lot of in you know data showing that that the way that this was implemented helps people become sheltered, um, and has not resulted in criminal penalties yet.

And so um I I believe it will be a very helpful tool in helping people accept help.

Um so I'm I'm very supportive of the of the revision.

Thank you, Councilmember Chu.

Bring it back to the dais who'd like to go next.

Vice Mayor.

Over to the Vice Mayor and then Councilmember Sergeant.

Um, so thank you for this presentation, and thank you also for back in July the very thorough vetting.

I think we spent three hours in July, and and um, it was our recommendation to to add these things.

So I'll just uh piggyback on to what council member Chu said.

You you have two countervailing as one way to look at it is you have two countervailing things.

You have to look at um on the one hand public safety.

Um some that spoke tonight spoke about um some some dangers of of um bystanders and so forth, and we've had fires started with homeless encampments and the like and we you know public safety is a very high priority for any government agency so we we can't ignore public safety and then of course on the other hand we need to be compassionate about those who are in a difficult situation for whatever reason and uh they they're a part of our community just as we all are and they're an important part of our community and we must show compassion to them so you have these two things that you're weighing public safety and compassion and um I feel that we've hit the bullseye with this ordinance this proposed ordinance we've studied it for a long time we've partnered with the county and um the the as council member Chu said the uh criminal penalty and the fee are tools they're tools in a toolkit and just like with any situation any situation is different, and any situation may require different tools.

I think it was maybe in July there was discussion of carrots and sticks, that to motivate behavior, you have incentives, positive incentives, and then um, but you also need sticks, you need uh the ability to incentivize through.

Well, if you don't do this, here's some negative consequences.

Not administered in a sadistic way, administered in a compassionate way, and the county has has never, at least in the year or more that its uh statute has been on the books, they have not levied a fee on anyone, um and they've not arrested anyone, is what Mr.

Kahalogee said last month.

So I think we can have trust.

I have trust that the county staff, the community organizations, the city staff will administer the tools in this new toolkit that we're giving them assiduously uh and responsibly, and um certainly the ad hoc committee will be there to ensure and to report back and to ask the tough questions, and in that way, ensure when we embark on this new project, that um it's it's it's going well down the track, and if it's not that we can do recourse, and um finally I just like so so I'm completely in favor with this ordinance and with the tweaks that we're reintroducing, and then finally I'd like to reiterate what council member G stated, which is that this if even if we vote for this tonight, that it it wouldn't actually have full force until at the very very earliest mid-October, early October, mid-October, and then it will you know likely take until the early part of next year before we we can really um start implementing it.

Um, and so members of the community that think like tomorrow morning that um everything is going to be implemented.

I would like to temper their expectations.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

We'll go over to Councilmember Sturkman.

Thank you, Mayor.

And thank you so much, Patrick, for all of your leadership in this area, and you know, leading the ad hoc committee and um and thank you to members of the public who spoke as well, and um those who spoke at the last meeting where we initially considered this ordinance.

I do have a couple quick follow-up questions, and thank you, Patrick.

You already answered one of them by updating us on the status of the county's implementation.

So thank you.

Something I'd asked at our last consideration of this ordinance was do we know what the implications are for someone's eligibility for applying for and securing affordable housing if they have a misdemeanor on their record as a result of this ordinance?

Yeah, what I would say is any misdemeanor on somebody's criminal history can definitely impact their ability to secure affordable housing.

I think folks are well aware that dozens, if not hundreds apply per unit.

And so if you're a property manager, you have a lot of latitude to screen folks out.

So yes, a misdemeanor could could affect housing.

Thank you.

And you know, as I mentioned at our last consideration of this ordinance, you know, when I was a home sharing coordinator with hip housing and I screened candidates for uh rooms to rent, I had to share that information that was publicly available of you know people's records with potential home providers, and it definitely had mixed results, I'll say.

So that is very concerning to me.

And my other question was, you know, there seems to have been a report of a death in the county jail in the Daily Journal every several months or so.

Do we just happen to know how many deaths there have been in the past year?

I do not.

No problem.

Of course, that's county data, not city data, but that's just another concern that comes up for me.

Is if this ordinance were enforced, um, to that extent of jail time, putting people in a system that's broken could potentially put their lives at risk.

So those were my two questions there.

And I guess my question is if we have found that the county has not needed to issue citations, make arrests, or uh require jail time in the implementation of their ordinance.

Is it truly necessary for our ordinance to have criminal penalties as well?

I definitely believe in evidence-based policy, and so far the evidence collected as a result of the county's implementation has told us that criminal penalties are not necessary.

So that's where I'm leaning.

Uh similar to Councilmember Howard, I just think that's not who we are as a city.

Um, but I understand the intent behind it.

And like you said, Vice Mayor, about the need for carrots or sticks, depending on the situation.

Um, but again, based on the evidence, it doesn't seem necessary to have criminal penalties and require jail time, and that a 72 hour limit essentially on the uh duration of that encampment following the first engagement versus 90 days would be sufficient to encourage someone in an encampment to accept shelter or at least engage in uh case management going forward.

Um I also say that too because um it's this ordinance I know is targeted at folks who are declining shelter, and that's only 25% of the on-house comedian Rebecca City is declining shelter, right?

You know, what about the other 75% who are ready and willing, but maybe at the time uh there is no shelter available, and even beyond uh staying in the any one of the county shelters, there may not be an affordable unit to move an affordable home to move into afterwards after their stay up to a year, or was it on average 232 days in the county shelters?

So that is um also my concern that we, as was mentioned by a few of the public commenters, maintain that relationship and trust with people who are in encampments to ultimately get them to that gets in the yes, accepting shelter and ultimately moving into permanently affordable housing when that is available.

So yes, that would be I again I would agree with Councilmember Howard that I do not think that penalties are necessary.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Circle and anybody.

Councilmember G.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um Patrick, again, thank you for the updated and the updates.

Um I think what you've done is captured the flavor of what we discussed in our June meeting and brought back or reintroduced the ordinance to adjust for the sensitive areas, the waterways, and things like that.

Just for the record, as as the ad hoc met over the spring many times, we did meet with a lot of different stakeholders and parties involved, including the county, um, the county um carriage providers as well as county council, the lead council for behavior health.

And what we heard clearly, while there were no misdemeanors issued and no incarceration, it was a vehicle in which, if anyone got close to that point, it allowed the court to firmly direct individuals into diversion programs, where otherwise they were continuously declining them.

Based on that sort of, I wouldn't call it testament, but in conserv conversation with county council, that led me to suggest lowering the $500 to $100, but to give the court some firmness in which to direct individuals that continuously decline services and shelter into diversion because absent that they can just say no thank you.

And that's what why we are here facing the situation we can't we have right now is the persistent no thanks refuse.

And right now, we do have beds available in the county.

Councilmember Sturkin is correct, there may be insufficient for families and for permanent supportive housing, but we've done well beyond Redwood City's fair share in terms of the navigation center.

I believe it's three, if not four home key projects, and just those home key projects alone, because of who they are and and the type of properties we have collectively, along with our nonprofit affordable housing projects foregone approximately half a million dollars a year in property taxes.

So we are committed to trying to be compassionate to create permanent affordable housing to support our partners in transitional housing, and those that continuously say no to services and to housing that's available right now.

We wind up just moving people from neighborhood to neighborhood, and we hear those complaints and emails on a consistent basis.

Our goal, at least it was my goal as a subcommittee and on this council, is to help people find ways to services to help them with their challenges, and then get them into permanent housing.

But the continuous saying no thank you, no thank you, when we've committed so much as a city and as a county to get to um zero homelessness, we have to have some other tools available to us.

And what was important to me is not the $500, not even the 100 dollars, but to get people that need the help into diversion programs where they can have the help and be more successful than just maintaining the status quo.

So I think that's where we are.

Um I'm kind of sad to see that we won't get the infrastructure put in place to be able to do something until maybe late this year, early next year, if the council so passes it, but it cannot continue as is status quo, no change.

We keep seeing the issues over and over throughout our community, neighborhood to neighborhood.

And as the speaker said tonight, when I'm on a bike ride past the waterways, there are stuff in the waterways that don't belong in the waterways.

And we need to find ways to remedy that more quickly, and especially any encampments that show up near our schools.

So I will be supporting the reintroduction that you made this evening.

Thank you, Councilmember.

We'll go to Councilmember Paddy.

Thank you, Patrick.

I appreciate the revisions.

I was pretty uh the last meeting, it was a very important to me to see our waterways protected.

So I I like having that explicit language.

Uh I will also be supporting the ordinance as is, and you know, we've talked a lot about people and not whether or not they want to accept help.

And I think it's like some of our other members have mentioned, it's it's not okay to kick the can or say that in the name of respecting someone's autonomy that we're not we're gonna allow certain things to go on.

Certain things that are not safe for the individual or our community at large.

And I go when I think of our families, working class families and children that are subjected to these encampments on a daily basis, and where is our empathy for them?

People don't speak out on it because they don't want to be labeled that they're unkind or upset with the homeless.

But there are so many members in our community that are also struggling to make rent and are having to clean up and live in unsanitary conditions, and I I want to make sure that they're not forgotten in that this as well.

I also think that the I also agree, I don't think that the monetary aspect is punitive.

I think it's an incentive to get people into the system.

These are a small group, I think someone mentioned 25%.

But as I recall in our last meeting, a small group can still be very costly to the community when we look at calls to PD, calls to fire, and damage that these uh, you know, and encampment fires can create to our entire community.

So I don't think we should put the rights over one group when it can have such a dental mental effect to our community.

If that's not being able to get in touch with law enforcement when there is a problem, if if our utilities are burning, I think we need to protect all of our community, and I think some help is hard, and it's not always you can't put a great spin on it.

And I know that I have have known several people in my life who have struggled, and sometimes help is very hard.

And though I understand Mr.

Sirkin's uh comments on the jail and the prison system, but unfortunately, I think that it is necessary when the I've had individuals say that, oh it gets cleaned up by the city, and then I can start and redecorate what I want.

So that's not okay.

There are tax dollars are being spent, it's very costly, it's bad for our environment, and I think that unfortunately the stick is needed not to put people in the criminal justice system, but to get them the help and the resources that they need.

A lot of the people that we are looking at are not able to make the best decision for themselves if they are not in a situation where they can get support for things as simple as diabetes, things that for people who are housed can take a pill on a daily basis, but our unhoused people are suffering tremendously.

And to the point of the long stays in our shelter, a lot of these people when I went to visit are are constantly getting treatment for things that they haven't been able to.

So, I think when you might force one in such a situation, but now they're able to get dental care that they haven't had for years, medical treatment.

Uh, I just want to make sure we're looking at all aspects, and I'll fully support the ordinance as proposed.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Any thoughts?

Councilmember Howard?

Thank you.

Um, first of all, Patrick, thank you very much for working so hard on this, and my thanks to the ad hoc committee.

Who's been, I guess, is it been a year that you've been working?

Most of this year.

Most of this year.

So thank you.

No, I mean, all the information is most helpful, and I want to thank my colleagues for their comments and suggestions.

And as people at home can see and people in the audience can understand that everyone up here really cares and wants to do what's right.

And it's been a struggle to figure what that is.

But after listening to everyone, what I'm encouraged about is that incarceration and penalties are not happening at this time.

The county hasn't had the need to use them at this time.

So what it's telling me is that it's the last resort, and they're finding other ways before then to get the job done.

But I I also understand that they may need the tools as a last resort in some cases.

So I will support it because I I want to be sure that we had the greatest success possible in getting people into the services they need and checking on this periodically is certainly a good idea to see if it's working.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Not seeing anyone else's hand, so I'll contribute my comments.

Thank you to Patrick staff who's worked on this, our ad hoc members, members of the public who commented today.

You know, I this is one of the most difficult problems of our time, right?

And it's um it has no easy answers, no cost effective answers.

Um, but we've heard it from our colleagues, we've seen it in the neighborhoods.

You know what, despite all of our best efforts, all of the investments that we're making, it's still not enough to bring everybody indoors when we have those shelters available.

Um, you know, that popul that part of the population is still saying no, and it's is not enough to just allow that to continue, right?

I think we're hearing strong opinions about wanting to try something else.

Um, you know, so I appreciate this work.

I appreciate the edits to come back with, you know, um sensitivity areas now extended to our waterways, the nav center.

I've had a chance to work in the NAP Center when I was back at Monterra Credit Union, and the level of needs for those folks who finally do get to the point where they say yes, I mean very so much, right?

You have seniors who were on a fixed income who just ran out of luck and become unhoused, right, versus folks who who have compounded health issues, mental health issues, right, in some cases.

Um so it's it's terrible.

But for those folks who finally do get to say yes, I mean we need to do our best to protect them and to preserve that opportunity, right?

It is time to get them to get to that point.

So I thought that was an important change.

But um, you know, I something else that I thought was really compelling about this was just the fact that we're separating outreach and enforcement.

It's not gonna be the same folks who are going to these sites to do both jobs.

You'll have your outreach staff, um, and then you know, on the off chance that you haven't gone to the yes, you know, enforcement to kind of give you that framing of what you know our structure looks like.

So I thought that was really compelling, and you know, I I'm glad there's so much support for continuing the work of the committee.

Um, you know, it's it's been mentioned already today that it's not gonna just happen overnight.

We're not going to clear encampments.

That's not at all the intention.

It's gonna be thoughtful and methodical, and the committee's gonna continue keeping a close eye on this work on this conversation.

Um, and I think most importantly, we'll help escalate and amplify any policy questions that come from this brand new program because it will happen.

This is a brand new infrastructure that we're setting up.

So, you know, for all those reasons, I think you know, moving ahead with this process is gonna make a real big impact in our community and and for the folks who have been unhoused for for far too long.

So um, I'll wrap up my comments there.

Is there a motion?

Motion to approve the staff recommendation as stated.

So that's a motion from the vice mayor.

Is there a second?

Um clarifying, Vice Mayor, both items, both the ordinance and the um establishment of the city council subcommittee.

Yes, um, council member G, thank you for that clarification motion for both recommendations.

Okay, I'll second.

Great.

Thank you that's a motion from Vice Mayor Aiken.

A second from Councilmember G.

Could we get a roll call vote, please?

We'll start with Councilmember G.

Yes.

Councilmember Howard.

Yes.

Councilmember Padilla.

Yes.

Councilmember Sturkin.

No.

Councilmember Chu.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Yes.

Mayor Martinez Sabayos.

Yes.

The motion passes with six votes.

Councilmember Sturkin opposed.

Okay.

Thank you, everyone, for that really sensitive and impactful discussion.

I think that always brings a lot of value for us.

We'll now move on to item 9C, Housing and Human Concerns fiscal year 2025 to 2026 funding recommendations for Redwood City Human Services Financial Assistance or HSFA program and direct staff to work with HHCC on assessing the HSFA program criteria and process.

Library Director Derek Wolfgram will give us the staff presentation.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Martinez Sabayos, Vice Mayor Aiken, members of the council.

I'm Derek Wolfgram.

I am the library director for Redwood City, but until recently was the interim parks recreation community services director.

So I'm uh wearing my hat from two weeks ago as I give this presentation tonight.

Um and I've got a few folks here to provide support if there are questions I don't know the answers to.

Housing leadership manager Alin Lancaster and Interim Human Services Manager Adela Hoxmith are both on Zoom, and we have the chair of our housing and human concerns committee, uh Katie Getz here tonight as well.

So next slide, please.

To give you a quick overview of what I plan to present tonight, a history of our human services financial assistance program, which I'll refer to repeatedly as HSFA to try to save some time.

Uh the current HSFA program focus, goals and philosophy, eligibility criteria and the scoring criteria used by the housing and human concerns committee, which I will refer to as HHCC, our 25-26 funding recommendations, discussion of potential changes to the HSFA program, and then time for any questions or answers the council may have.

Next slide, please.

Questions for you to think about during the presentation.

One with the specific recommendations for this fiscal year.

Do you have any questions about those?

And then as I talk about the overall HSFA program, do you have any changes to recommend to the HHCC as they work on uh updating that program uh in their upcoming work plan?

Next slide, please.

So the HSFA program was actually established by the City Council in the 1974-75 fiscal year.

It's been a program that's been around for over 50 years.

Uh the funding levels have varied quite a bit from year to year.

Uh the next slide will show you a chart of that when we get to it.

There were two years that we did not offer the HSFA grants coming out of the Great Recession, fiscal year 2013-14 and 1415.

The program was eliminated due to lack of funding, but then it was re-established in 2015-16 with a million dollars set aside that would allow for funding for 100,000 a year for 10 years.

And then just back in June, you uh authorized increasing the annual funding to 150,000 dollars and establishing it as an annual item that was built into the operating budget.

So it's uh it's in the budget until you decide it is not if that ever happens again.

Uh so next slide, please.

Uh showing the history of the HSFA funding is a little tour through the state of the economy over the years.

You can see the dot com bust very clearly on this chart.

You can see the great Recession on this chart, as there have been uh various funding downturns.

This has been a program that has been kind of subject to the vagaries of that.

Uh, it did peak in the early 2000s, just over $300,000 a year uh before working its way down to zero during those two years, the program was uh wiped out, and then um you can see it's back on the upswing right now.

Next slide, please.

So while we know that the program was established in 1974-75, and we have funding data going back to that time, we don't have super detailed records of the notices of funding availability from that time.

The program criteria, the first year that we have a really solid, like complete set of data about the program is fiscal year 2003-4.

So I'm using that as a baseline for a lot of the comparisons that I'll share tonight of how we've done things in the past versus how we've done things today.

We have 20 years worth of information rather than the full 50 that the program has exist, existed.

So in fiscal year 2003-4, there was actually very specific types of programs that were in the notice of funding availability, that these were the programs that the city would fund, which was homeless and housing, emergency assistance, supportive services, services to the disabled, seniors, and youth.

Over time that's become broader and more specific, and just talking about direct services that address basic human needs.

Supportive services is kind of a very broad general category that's probably encompasses most of what fits into basic human needs.

When the Housing and Human Concerns Committee talks about basic human needs, they're talking about kind of things that are essential for life at the base of Maslow's hierarchy, food, shelter, and such.

They don't fund programs that are what are considered quality of life programs, even though that you know addressing those base level concerns also does improve the quality of life for our residents.

The HSFA program has always really been about the basic needs that people have to survive in our community.

Next slide, please.

So this is a goal and philosophy statement that is in the annual notice of funding availability.

And this is essentially unchanged from what it was in fiscal year 2003-4.

That the city believes that life in Redwood City is improved by having basic human service programs, that the most effective way to administer those is through existing nonprofit agencies, that by working with contracts that the city has with those agencies, we can influence the human services programs that are offered to residents, and then the financial assistance demonstrates how the city is able to support those nonprofits and also make it possible for them to leverage other funds that can help support our residents.

Next slide, please.

There are a list of eligibility criteria that have also essentially stayed the same for the last 20 plus years.

I mentioned formally incorporated nonprofit entities, lack of duplication of existing programs in the public sector, unless there is a need for duplicative programs, possibly because one is not meeting all of the needs that the community has.

Something that was added in 2015-16 when the program was restored after the Great Recession was the minimum award amount of $10,000 prior to that uh um kind of pause in the program.

There was no minimum amount, but the HHCC at that point in time decided that really in the human services world that you weren't going to accomplish much with less than $10,000.

And so they really wanted to focus on substantive grants rather than doing very small grants that weren't be as likely to make an impact.

Agencies have to agree to actively participate in the city's efforts to coordinate and improve human services we've talked about the basic human needs and then also we do put out our funding availability notice for community development block grant or CDBG funds at the same time and the same agency can receive both uh HSFA funds and CDBG funds in the same year but they cannot support the same program so it has to be for two distinct programs of the agencies if they're going to receive funding from both sources.

Next slide please uh over the years the HHCC has used a variety of scoring criteria to rate the applications and the presentations by the agencies that are applying for funds.

They sort of roll up into these buckets you'll see in the staff report there's a more detailed breakdown that shows various point schemes that have been used over time different weights have been placed on each of these elements but every scoring mechanism that I found that the HHCC has used has had something related to the basic eligibility for the program and addressing basic human needs the cost effectiveness the impact the program has the fact that the program is made available to as many people as possible collaboration and outreach and then the leveraging of HSFA funds to secure additional funds.

Next slide please so there's an annual process by which the HSFA funding is announced and applied for and evaluated and granted I've got the dates from this year's process here.

This year was an unusual year because we went out with the notice of funding availability in December assuming that things would be kind of status quo and that the funding level would be $100,000 rather than 150 and so when it was determined in May that the city manager's recommended budget that was going to you for consideration in June was going to include $150,000 we'd actually been through the whole application process the applicants had presented their programs they had been the HHCC had done its evaluation of what to do with $100,000 and then all of those applicants were given an opportunity to submit a revised deadline or a revised excuse me a revised funding request by the June 20th deadline so that the additional $50,000 could be given out.

So each of those items on the list with an asterisk was something unique that just happened this year.

And then once all of the the budget was approved the HHCC at their next meeting in July did the deliberations on that additional funding and made the recommendations that are before you tonight.

Next slide please so these are the organizations and the funding amounts that are recommended out of that 1500 the details are also in attachment A of your packet next slide please and then just for reference we're not particularly you know tonight is about HSFA more than it is about CDBG but so you're aware these are the agencies that did receive CDBG funding this year.

Samaritan House is one example of an entity that is on both lists because they received funding for two different programs one from CDBG and one from HSFA.

So we did hear feedback at the June 23rd city council meeting during the budget deliberations about looking at ways that we could consider changing the HSFA program, whether it has to do with the scoring, the eligibility criteria, funding amounts, uh any of that.

It was sort of uh opened up for discussion, and we did receive some feedback from council members that night.

Um the HHCC is planning to incorporate um proposed working on proposed changes to the plan as part of their work plan that they will be bringing back to you in a couple of months.

And so we wanted to give you the opportunity tonight to uh put forward any ideas that you might have now that you have sort of the full picture and the history of how the program has evolved over the years and what the underlying tenets of it have been, that if there are changes you would like to see those can be recommended uh for the HHCC to consider and uh bring back with the program next year.

Next slide, please.

So just as a reminder, the um questions that uh were before you, uh any questions about the proposed funding allocations for this year, and then any feedback you have to share with the HHCC in preparation for their work plan and uh revising the HSFA program for next year and uh next slide.

After we've addressed all the questions, these are the two recommended actions for a year tonight, uh approving the funding recommendations for the current fiscal year, and then directing staff to work with HHCC on the assessment of the HSFA program criteria.

So with that, that's the end of my presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you, Derek.

I'm sure it feels good to be home with the library.

Do we have any clarifying questions from council?

Not seeing any quote of public comment.

Thank you.

We don't have any speaker cards at this time, so last call to the audience for anyone wanting to give public comment on this item, and that includes our online folks.

Feel free to raise your hand if you'd like to give public comment on this item.

All right, seeing none, I'll turn it back to you, Mayor.

Great, thank you, Jessica.

Who would like to get us started?

Councilmember Surkin.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Derek.

And thank you to the Housing Human Concerns Committee for their thorough uh vetting of these applications and their um recommendations.

I think these recommendations are excellent.

They reflect the uh priorities of the council and the community, and so I'm very um you know happy to support um their recommendations tonight.

Any other comments?

Council Murray.

Uh Derek, I'll just call you.

You have too many hats on these days.

So could you remind us?

How many cities in the Bay Area actually have a human service financial assistance program and or participate in the community block grant funding?

That is a great question that I do not know the answer to.

I don't know if Katie does or if Alyn might uh who is online with us.

I would refer to the Alyn, yeah.

I can help answer part of that question.

Thanks, Alyn.

Um yeah, you're welcome.

So good evening, City Council members, Alyn Lancaster Housing Leadership Manager.

Um in San Mateo County, we are one of five jurisdictions that get um community development block grant funding.

So it's um mostly the larger cities in San Mateo County, so Broadwood City, San Mateo, South San Francisco, and Daly City, along with the county.

Um, similarly, I think in other surrounding counties, it's you know, cities of about our size or larger usually get their own entitlement um grant.

In terms of the HSFA program, I do know there are other cities in the community that use some general fund money to support similar types of programs, but I don't have the exact numbers.

Um it is it is uh it is done in other communities, but I don't think every community does it.

Well, I'm pleased, thank you, Lynn.

I I'm pleased to hear that more are doing it.

Uh I do remember there was a time when Redwood City was the only city doing, I mean, we started in the 70s, and uh we were the only city doing it for many, many, many years.

And I always felt that this was something that if we could find the money in your general fund, is the best use of the money working with our nonprofits to provide the services that we just can't do.

So I I'm so glad that we're able to do it.

I'm really pleased we raised the amount of money to give to the housing and human concerns committee, 150.

And I asked uh the city manager um if there was a plan to continue that, and I think that will come up with budget in when we discuss it in the new year, uh, if we can continue the 150 or even offer more.

I'm such a firm believer in the good that is done with this small amount of money, it just leverages so much more.

We get so much bang for our book.

And I have to also thank the um housing and human concerns committee because I love the scoring sheet.

I think the scoring sheet is marvelous because it really does help you separate different agencies to see how successful some are or should be uh and maybe encourage them to do more if they don't score quite as high.

It's a simple scoring that they can see.

Oh, this is where we can improve and possibly get more funding in the future.

So I I just think that uh over time it's really improved.

I I joined housing and concerns 1984.

We didn't have computers, we didn't have anything where you could just look up an agency.

Back in those days, we all took assignments and divided up the agencies and went to visit almost all of them.

That was just our job throughout the year to go visit the agencies and check and see how successful they were with the monies that they were being given.

So we had great relationships with these nonprofit organizations nowadays, it's so much easier with the technology that you have, but those personal relationships are really important too.

But I certainly would hope that maybe we can find a way to keep continuing to fund the housing and human concerns committee, hopefully at 150, if not more, but that remains to be seen.

I know we have a lot on our plate for the new year, but we can always lobby and see what we can do.

Um I was wondering if um Katie could let us know what what are your thoughts on.

Do you have any thoughts on how it could be improved as a process?

Uh I'm reading this and I'm seeing success in taking money and just generating so much service for the money that you're being given by all the things you have added, like the scoring sheet and the interviews and the outlines that you asked them to fill out, the fact that uh you tell them you can't spend it all on staff.

It must demonstrate that you're only using a certain percentage, and then you follow up with them.

But do you have any suggestions you'd like to see to improve the work of the housing and human concerns committee?

Um, so I I I'll start by saying by the time I joined the committee three-ish years ago now, um all of those different metrics, that scoring sheet and the interviews and all of that were were already in place.

Um, and so thank you to all of my predecessors on the committee as well as housing staff who who have built that infrastructure.

I think the big piece going forward is really coming down to that second question that's on the screen right now.

We we know at HHCC and we've had presentations from the economic mobility plan.

It's there's an A in there too, because it comes out to EMAP, as well as the greater downtown plan.

Again, there's a there's some vowels in there.

Um but especially along that economic mobility plan, giving HHCC guidelines about how we can help the council do its work in making these funding recommendations would really be the huge.

And might have to correct me on this, but I think that we would be looking for that for a cycle beyond where we are given where the council is with that work.

So December and the request for proposals is gonna come up and be on our be on our shoulders, basically tomorrow, right?

Um my daughter announced it it's Christmas today because it's August 25th, and I'm like, no, it's not, and I'm like, oh, but it's coming.

Um but looking forward to the funding cycle that would begin in 2026, of making sure that the HHCC is in line with the council, and I think especially around economic mobility and we've talked a lot about helping people.

Um we heard at the beginning from somebody who was helping entrepreneurs right during public comment.

And so, how do we how do we keep lifting people up?

Um, that would be my big piece and place where we would want guidance to make sure that the work we're doing lines up with council's priorities, otherwise you guys will see our list in two years and you'll be like, I don't know, what are these people doing?

Um that doesn't fit with what we're trying to do, but we really want to match what the council's trying to do.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Um, do we have a council committee that could give that some research and thought and come back to council at some point?

Melissa, I'm sorry, the city manager, you wanted to say something.

Through through the mayor.

Um, so you might remember during the budget discussion there was uh a concept broached about having a uh joint session with the HHCC.

And we did look at that, and our challenge was um just as as Katie just mentioned, the time frame for when they need to kick off the next session is coming too quickly for us to have scheduled a separate study session.

Similarly, I don't know that there's a way to have an existing committee, council committee weigh in in a timely way, which is really why we were trying to get some feedback tonight.

Um, and appreciated her mentioning the economic mobility action plan.

Um, that is actually coming to you in November.

So there are real timing challenges here with with the alignment.

So, you know, perhaps this is not the final conversation about how to best get that alignment, but maybe if there are thoughts you have this evening, it helps them with the shaping of this next round, and maybe the next round after that, you know, refines even further.

Are we meeting with the housing and human concerns committee for their work plan presentation?

Is it September 20th September?

And yes, it is the 29th.

Yeah.

I'm wondering if in the meantime uh would you mind giving us some information, uh, sharing some information about the economic mobility plan and uh so that we can kind of digest it and think about that.

So when they come to us with their work plan, if there's something we see that's missing, maybe we could make some recommendations, not necessarily for the immediate next cycle, but for the future to work it into their work plan for the future.

Uh I'd I'd love to give that some thought, because right now I'm just I was so impressed with the agencies that you are funding right now.

There's so much work being done, so much good work being done, and we have fabulous agencies.

I didn't realize that legal aid was taking on the counseling and working with people from domestic violence.

I knew other agencies were, but now I see there are more than just one working with this topic, and the fact that we can help them do more with the funding we can give them is just amazing.

So maybe we could get some information before our September meeting just to go over and think about that.

Is there something that maybe we can further explore for that?

We could definitely give you some um early indication of where we're headed.

Um we will still be working on recommendations up to November, likely, so but we can give you some some heads up for sure before the September 29th meeting.

Thank you very much.

Other than that, I just um I I did want to know is the scoring sheet used for CDBG also.

Oh, is it a different scoring sheet?

We use a slightly different scoring sheet.

Um sorry, this is a line, by the way.

Which better aligns with uh the CDBG federal regulations, and there's certain criteria um that we have to meet with CDBG.

Well, that that's true, that's true, but um I I think it's great.

Like I said, I was very impressed with the way that you enable agencies to see where maybe they're missing the mark and where they can be better if they want to go for funding each year.

I I also know that you say avoid duplication, and in the past we had two agencies that were doing um hotlines.

One was interestingly enough doing it just in English, the other one was doing it in Spanish, and they both wanted money to do what they were doing, and we brought them both together, and we said, Listen, we'll give you each the money to do it on one condition that you collaborate and you form an alliance together, and they did.

They came back and told us that they had eliminated two board of directors, two you know, eliminated a lot of excess, and they were doing uh both English and Spanish for the hotline, and it was around domestic violence primarily.

So I'm glad that you're continuing that um no duplication of services because you really can't afford to be doing you know spending money twice when an agency can do it once with maybe a little more money, or two agencies can even be better doing it together.

So thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Those are my questions.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard.

Any other thoughts?

Councilmember G, and then we'll go to the vice mayor.

Thank you, Derek.

Uh thank you for now going back to wearing one hat for the short term, maybe.

I don't know what's in the in the future, but thank you for wearing multiple hats for so long and service through our community here and to Chair Gutz and the Housing Heeming Concerns Committee.

Thank you for the hard work.

Um I think this is a great list of um awardees proposed for council action.

When I saw the timeline of the calendar though, timing's challenging with the calendar with the hard work uh the process and everything.

And what struck me going forward, and that's why I'm sort of reluctant to answer question two right now, is there's a constant changing landscape for our nonprofits in the community, not in terms of the services and the needs, the need is there and it's growing, and the services that these groups are providing are vital to our community.

But you know, I just took a moment to look up.

There's two almost 200 executive orders issued so far, and more to come.

And we are going to be challenged to keep up with whatever those executive orders say that we're supposed to do, even though this funding is from the city.

We're gonna be challenged collectively to keep up, and so my only comment here is we're gonna have to work closely with our city attorney and her staff to really stay on top of the changing landscape of federal regulations, executive orders, and all that stuff, so that we don't bring unnecessary attention to what the city's trying to do, and that we can continue to serve our community, and so I don't know what the right answer is other than regular and constant communication with our city attorney and her team because this is the pace of of these executive orders and changes and grants and compliance and regulations.

I mean, even the departments at the federal level don't know what the right hand and left hand are doing well together, and so that's that's what I saw when I saw the calendar that we're getting ready to launch.

There's probably gonna be another 50 executive orders between when we launch the NOFA and the short list of awardees will come out next year.

So we need just to work hard to keep up with with those changes that may be coming our way.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Vice Mayor.

Well, thank you, Derek.

I all my colleagues, I agree with them.

Nice to see you.

Hope hope you get some downtime soon.

I really want to thank Chair Getz, Alyn, amazing work.

I learned so much by reading these reports and the attachments.

And I really am so proud to learn what the compassion that we've been exhibiting since the 1970s.

And additionally, I want to thank you, Diane, for serving in 1984 and onward.

We're just so lucky to have so many amazing people in our town.

Um I want to say one thing to you, Councilmember Howard.

When you said that back in 1984, you know, there was no internet, there was no tech.

You you actually went to each organization, knocked on the door and said, Can I see what you guys are doing?

And then you said now it's easier with tech.

I disagree with you.

I don't think it's easier with tech.

I still think the most important thing to do is knock on the door and say, hey, what are you guys doing and how can we help?

So I just wanted to.

So thank you for all this good work.

Um I don't really have any questions.

I'm just in awe regarding changes or recommendations.

Um let me just say this in terms of policy or big picture.

I I hear that you're looking to us for policy or big picture, and I would just say keep doing what you're doing.

Um, leading with compassion, leading with logic.

Um, and uh I you know so much, you Alyn and Ms.

Getz and and all the good folks, you have your finger on the pulse.

I wouldn't want to micromanage, and so what I read and all these reports and attachments was amazing.

Just keep doing it, with of course the caveat that Mr.

G mentioned, which is that we do have an uncertain federal landscape.

Um, and we do have I agree with Mr.

G.

We have no choice other than to be mindful of the the federal um changing landscape.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Any other excuse me.

Any other comments?

Councilmember Chu, just circling back.

Oh, great timing.

Um so thank you for a terrific presentation, and um I'm really excited about the organizations you've selected.

I you know, I just want to echo what everyone has said.

Um I also really appreciate the the focus on basic needs, and I think especially during times like COVID or unfortunately, I'm concerned we may be headed into such a time.

Um, these kinds of things can be just a life raft that keep people, you know, going until they can find uh help um that sort of stabilizes them permanently.

Um so yeah, I'm I don't have any questions.

Um I did really appreciate the sort of rigorous standardized approach to ranking the grants.

Um would always be interested in hearing sort of the outcome of the grants, you know, when they report out, what do they produce, or is there any change dip and diff on how those communities that they serve do, but overall just a fantastic program, and and I'm glad that we can give more to it.

Uh, and I hope that we can continue to support the important work you do.

Thank you.

And I'll I'll just mention I believe that the uh uh those outcomes from previous years that is part of the application process that is part of the review to check in on what's been uh what's been done with the previous year grants.

Terrific.

Thank you.

Great, thank you, Councilmember.

Any other council members of the day is not seeing any.

I'll add my thanks.

Derek, thank you, Chair Gutz.

Thank you so much to all of our housing and human concerns members.

Um, two really quick questions.

I'm curious, because the funding changed so often, um, what was behind the peak, the three hundred thousand dollar peak.

I think it was in two thousand three, yeah.

Um I mean, the I don't know if there was a period of time where there was a CPI or something like that that was applied on an annual basis because you can see in the like 20 years running up to 2004 or 2003, that that chart is very steadily climbing.

So I don't know if there was um I didn't come across in my research whether there was a particular, you know, event or circumstance that led to that jump that then almost immediately got knocked back down again.

Um but it's it's almost like the chart follows the general like path of you know the US economy.

So I guess that was maybe that was the dot com boom was the year that uh we had uh 300,000 in funding.

Thank you, Derek.

And then you know, I was curious for some history or maybe context around the criteria.

Um, you know, number two, three, and four, really prescriptive around how the money could be used, and um, I think administrative costs kind of popped out to me.

Um, you know, is there was that kind of built in after we had divvied out money to other partners, or is that just sort of standard for donations of this kind, grants of this kind?

I mean, I think there are variations in um indirect depending on different funders.

Um, you know, this that was that was in the eligibility criteria in 2003, so we've been doing it for a long time.

I imagine we were doing it significantly before that.

So I think it's just really a focus on you know, these grants are for direct service to the community and making sure that the bulk of money that is given gets into direct services rather than paying for overhead costs or administration.

Yeah, thank you, Derek.

And you know that's I can see how the intent is definitely for overhead costs, right?

Um, I had been thinking, you know, I work for a nonprofit, and we are going through sort of that shuffle everyone is right now.

Contracts are being canceled, and we're trying to figure out how we keep staff.

Um, you know, I it occurs to me maybe revisiting those criteria and seeing if there's flexibility we can offer our nonprofit partners, right?

Um, in case they have to keep a staff member to continue a program that's existing already, right?

Um, those sorts of situations where we can give them flexibility.

And then, you know, Chair Getz mentioned our economic um mobility action plan, and you know, I loved the list of basic needs in 2003 included, you know, emergency assistance, supportive services, which are definitely big buckets that can catch a lot of things.

Um, so with our EMAP kind of work coming into works um and coming into play, I just wonder, you know, how we can include some of the other things that would be beneficial for economic mobility for families, right?

So something like I thought child care is an incredible cost that rivals rents.

You know, I and if a family lost their child care accommodations, all of a sudden a parent might not work because they have to stay home to take care of that kid.

So I'm thinking of those kind of related costs that are definitely gonna impact somebody's cost of living, right?

Um, and it definitely rivals housing.

So, you know, I am grateful for the list of recommendations.

I think HHCC is doing an incredible job, and the list of nonprofits reflect that.

Um, but as we navigate the next year, I just wonder how we can um try to give the public a little more flexibility in how they can use these dollars to stay afloat, but also the nonprofits, right?

But um, those are my comments.

And is there a motion?

So, or council member or well, I'll make the motion to accept the uh the report and the recommendation.

Great.

And I'll second that.

And a second from Councilmember Sturkin.

Could we please get a roll call over?

Sure.

I'll start with council member Pettia.

Yes, Councilmember Sturkin.

Yes, Councilmember Chu.

Yes.

Councilmember G.

Yes, Councilmember Howard.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Yes.

Mayor Martinez Sabayos.

Yes.

The motion passes unanimously.

Wonderful.

Thank you everyone for that discussion.

We'll now move on to item 9D, an update on the Silicon Valley Clean Water Capital Improvement Program and proposed funding strategy for city funded costs.

We'll now hear a presentation from our public works director, Terrence Carr, public work superintendent Robert, excuse me, Robin Kim and Silicon Valley Clean Waters authority manager Matt Suka.

You will have about 10 minutes for your presentations.

But welcome everyone.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor Martinez Aballo and Memoir City Council.

I'm Terrence Yo, your Public Service Director.

With this short model of presentation time, I will pass it on to the Racewater Superintendent Robin Kim for introduction of the presentation.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide this joint update on Silicon Valley Clean Waters Capital Improvement Program as well as the proposed funding strategy for Redwood City's portion of the costs.

So for tonight's presentation, we have prepared a few questions for council consideration.

And I will also introduce the background and context around Redwood City's relationship with Silicon Valley Clean Water or SVCW before I hand off the presentation to our SVCW colleagues for a more in-depth look at their capital improvement program as well as their financial needs.

And we will circle back at the end to cover the anticipated approach to funding Redwood City's contribution and next steps.

So before I dive into the prepared council questions, I would like to take a moment just to orient this topic.

So SVCW is the wastewater treatment provider for Redwood City, meaning the city handles collection and conveyance of all of our customers' wastewater flows to the wastewater treatment plant, which is managed by Silicon Valley Clean Water and they handle the treatment and disposal of this wastewater.

SVCW was formed as a joint powers authority, of which Redwood City is one of the member agencies.

What that means is that Redwood City does share a portion of SVCW's costs for maintenance and capital improvements.

Currently, approximately two-thirds of Redwood City's cost for our sewer system is due to funding SVCW's portion of costs.

Does the council have any feedback on SVCW's uh CIP program?

Does the council have any questions about SVCW cost impacts to sewer districts?

For example, the Fair Oak Sewer Maintenance District.

And third, does the council have any questions on the anticipated funding strategy for SVCW CIP costs?

So as mentioned, the city operates our collection system and SVCW manages the treatment plant.

In addition to our direct sewer customers, Redwood City also offers collection and conveyance through our uh collection system to the treatment plant for some neighboring agencies.

We have six of these outside agency sewer districts that utilize our collection system in this manner.

One is the town of Woodside, and then we also have five from the county of San Mateo.

The largest of these is the Fair Oaks Sewer Maintenance District, and that does include the Friendly Acres neighborhood of Redwood City.

So rates must cover the city's own costs for operating and improving our system in addition to our share of SVCW's operations and improvement costs.

In addition, the city also has agreements in place with those previously mentioned six outside sewer agency districts in order to receive compensation for their fair share of conveyance and treatment.

And based on our three year budget averages, SVCW's costs currently amount to about two-thirds of our total sewer system costs, and so translated into dollars and cents.

You can kind of think of it as for every dollar in rates, about 68 cents of that is going towards covering SCCW's costs, and 32 cents is going towards covering city costs.

Taking a closer look at the previously mentioned cost allocation.

ONM stands for operations and maintenance, which is the day-to-day running of these systems, and CIP refers to the capital improvements.

Funding for both systems does come from the rates paid by our ratepayers.

And I would like to note that many communities, not just Redwood City, are facing challenges from aging infrastructure.

And although the city does have a proactive capital replacement program, there's still a long road ahead.

Primarily, I think it's just important to note that the city's collection system was developed over a period of decades, in phases as the city has grown and developed over the years.

And we have over a hundred and eighty miles of pipeline just in our system alone.

And the majority of these pipelines date to before the 1990s, with some pipelines even dating back to 1940s or 1950s.

So just a lot of infrastructure that we're having to maintain and replace as we go along.

And lastly, the city council did approve a um sewer rates for a period of three years last April.

And the current fiscal year 25-26 is the second year of this three-year period.

So we do have sewer rates in place through next fiscal year.

However, rates for future years beginning with fiscal year 27-28.

We'll continue to consider any necessary funding requirements for both the city and SVCW systems.

And we anticipate returning to council in the latter half of 2026 with the proposal for future rates.

And so with that, I'd like to turn over the presentation to SVCW's authority manager, Matthew Zuka.

Thank you.

I like that.

Okay, thank you.

Good evening, Council.

My name is Matt Zuka, Authority Manager for Silicon Valley Clean Water.

I appreciate your time tonight.

I'm going to be giving the first half of the presentation, and I'm going to turn over to our Chief Financial Officer Matt Anderson to go through some of the financials.

I just started on July 1st, so this is week seven.

Uh and he's much more qualified at presenting the background numbers than I am.

I'm also going to take advantage of the opportunity tonight to go through a little bit of our the history of our special, not special district, excuse me, our JPA.

So we were originally known as South Bayside System Authority.

It was a joint powers agreement that was first initiated in 1975.

So we are actually turning 50 years old in November of this year.

Ironically, despite the fact that we're 50 years old, not many people in the community have heard of us.

And it probably didn't help that we renamed ourselves to Silicon Valley Clean Water in about 2012 as well.

But there are several four member agencies, Belmont San Carlos, Redwood City, West Bay Sanitary District, and your mayor, Martina Savallo, sits on our commission as our vice chair.

Trying to advance.

Thank you.

So our service area is shown on the figure on the right.

We serve about 220,000 people.

Again, it's the wastewater conveyance, was what we call how collecting it from the individual member agencies to our plant, which lies very much at the dead end of Redwood Shores out by the bay.

So we are not only the member agencies but the also some of the unincorporated areas of the county plus Woodside.

And as was mentioned previously, the collection system itself is owned and operated by the member agencies.

Just to differentiate who does what we call our portion of it, the conveyance system.

And I'll go into a little bit of detail on that and some of our capital improvement projects.

So as a summary of what we're working on right now, the facility was commissioned in 81, makes much of the treatment plant over 40 years old.

The focus of the program so far has been what you've probably heard of as the rescue program as an acronym, which was the conveyance part of the plant.

Ongoing improvements remain at the plant, and that's some of the upcoming infrastructure that we really have to focus on over the next 10 years.

When you're dealing with mechanical systems like these, your concrete might last 100 years, but your pumps are going to last 30 at the most.

And so we're sort of in that life cycle of replacing some of the infrastructure that's getting to the end of its useful life.

Very few of the projects, although I will go over one, are actually based upon some form of return on investment.

And while we try it, we do have sustainability goals, they are mostly driven by infrastructure costs themselves.

So, one of the first projects that we're going to be undertaking is completing the conveyance system.

Projects one through three defined the rescue program.

That was a 13-foot diameter tunnel from in that green line, on top of several sort of improvements at the front of plant and as well as the pump stations.

The red line at the time the rescue program was undertaken, the engineers evaluated and determined they probably had at least 10 years left of useful life.

And since then, you know, that 10-year horizon is now within our current planning horizon.

So we're planning on replacing that force main that takes wastewater from Menlo Park and West Bay Sanitary District to the Redwood City Pump Station, and then it gets pumped from there to our gravity tunnel.

Another of the upgrades, this is one is that the plant is our fixed film reactors.

When wastewater itself, it was discharged to the bay, would consume a lot of the oxygen in the receiving water.

So one of the things that we refer to is biochemical oxygen demand, and one of the main things that the wastewater treatment plant does is remove that BOD from the wastewater before it goes into the bay so that it doesn't deplete the oxygen in the receiving waters.

So the FFRs, as we call them, are 44 years old.

We're in the middle of uh replacing the superstructure.

So in the bottom right photo, you can see that they've been, they're about 40 feet tall, they've been demolished, and we're rebuilding the superstructures back up, adding fire water, process water pumping capacity as well, so that we can use the treated water to fight you know for fire suppression on the plant rather than having to rely on potable water.

Uh also uh sort of at the end of their useful life are uh the final effluent pumps or just again because we like acronyms, we like we call them the FEPs.

Um, and these are original to the plant as well, they've been rehabbed several times, but they're at the end of the use of their useful life.

Uh the photos on the right don't sort of give it scale, but you know, those pipes are about a three feet in diameter, two feet to three, almost three feet in diameter.

And I'd say that the pumps themselves in that photo are about 15 feet tall.

So the size of this infrastructure is substantial, and that is also what affects the cost.

Within the plant itself, we have several pipes that are at the um that are sort of single points of failure.

And what we mean by that is if that pipe were to fail, we'd have to divert wastewater around and potentially be in compliance uh violation of our permit and be discharging partially treated uh wastewater to the bay.

So we have done a plant-wide condition assessment.

Um the steel pipe that we have there is encased in concrete, but the corrosive environment from the salt in the bay has um you know over the 40 years uh corroded some of the pipe, and we're going through a process right now to try to make sure that if any piece of pipe were to fail, we'd have pump arounds and other mechanisms to avoid bypass.

Uh the digesters are what we do with the solid side of the process.

So we have what we call a wet side and a dry side, and the solids are separated from the the liquids.

They go into a separate digestion process.

Um we have three digester tanks that are um uh at the facility.

One of them is currently being rehabilitated.

Uh, and these digesters are actually what generate methane.

We take that methane, burn it on site, generate electricity, and we have sort of an effort to um, and I'll talk about in a little bit to go 100% uh um powered our plant with 100% power generated on site from the methane that we're producing, both from the wastewater as well as from food waste that we're gonna be bringing onto the facility.

This slide is not a project, but it's sort of to set the context for the next slide.

Um, some of you may have heard back in August of 2022, there was uh the largest ever uh algal algal bloom in the bay.

It started over in Alameda and over the course of a month worked its way pretty much through the entire bay.

The image on the right in red sort of shows the chlorophyll concentrations uh in the algae in the bay, and you can see that it was uh in what we call the South Bay, which is sort of south of the um the Bay Bridge, was a predominant location.

The algal bloom was attributed to nutrient discharges from wastewater treatment plants.

Um, that was the primary source.

So, it's not it's not the BOD that I was talking about, but the residual nitrogen that's in the wastewater that hasn't been removed in the treatment process.

Um, and uh what happened is that the algae then die off when they decompose, they deplete the oxygen levels in the bay, and we end up with anoxic conditions and ended up with fish kills as a result of that.

Uh fast forward a couple of years, and uh the regional board has adopted a watershed-based permit to establish nutrient limits uh for the wastewater treatment plants, uh, largely as an effort to control um and prevent future algal blooms.

There are a total of 37 plants in the Bay Area.

We all have to meet these requirements.

Um, the chronicle that on the right, I've seen numbers estimating anywhere between 11 and 14 billion dollars Bay Area-wide to achieve um the modified nutrient targets.

So, this sort of sets some of the context of what we're trying to do for being very unknown in terms of an agency.

What we do obviously provides a great benefit to the bay.

Uh, the one project that I can talk about that actually is a great payback and is also a sustainability effort on our part is our biogas augmentation.

So, what we're doing here, you might be familiar with AB 1383.

It is the diversion of food waste from landfills, and uh it's uh it's a state law.

We have received uh 8.4 million dollars of grants from a number of different agencies to build this project, and what we're doing is basically taking that food waste, putting it in with our digestion, uh, generating additional methane from it, turning around and um uh using what are called linear generators to uh produce electricity on site.

Uh that project literally just broke ground this week.

The linear generators are the boxes on the right.

Uh the insides of it look really cool, the outsides of it are just you know pretty pretty plain.

Uh, but this project itself, even if we don't get the IRA tax credits, it's a 6.4 year payback.

Uh if we do, it's a 4.2 year payback.

So even on the economics of it, it makes sense.

Um, but we're pretty excited.

We just started receiving, we're already getting food waste from Sun uh from Sunnyvale.

We just started receiving food waste today from uh city of Santa Cruz, and we're working with our SBWMA partners as well to hopefully be able to be receiving food waste from them going forward.

Um, with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Matt Anderson and he's gonna go through some of the financial needs on the right.

Good evening, Council.

I'm Matt Anderson.

Going to talk about some of the financial um terms that uh we have been facing as part of this effort.

So this chart in front of you, it's a history of capital expenditures since 2009.

The reason it started in 2009 was that there were very little, if any, dollars spent prior to that.

So between 1970 when the plant was, excuse me, yeah, 1979 or so when the plant was constructed, very little, if any, activity was was happening.

So in 2008, a master plan was developed.

At that point, planning and design started.

And along that way, you'll see an orange is treatment plant projects, and in the blue is what we call conveyance.

That's rehabilitating pump stations or rehabilitating pipes between our pump stations and the treatment plant.

So you'll see for the first 10 years, most of that was treatment plant activity, just pumps, valves, pipes, then comes rescue.

That's the regional environmental sewer conveyance upgrade, which was new pump stations, the tunnel that Mr.

Zuka just described, and that was the bulk of spending over the last eight years.

That project is now complete, and what that's turned to is towards the right of this chart, you'll see projected.

We have about 400 million dollars of projected expenditures.

Most of that is again focused on the treatment plan to address those very projects that Mr.

Zuka just described.

Current funding over the following three years is what we're here specifically to talk about.

Is this next three years is spanning that's around 100 million dollars of total expenditures in the next three years?

That's followed by another 300 million in the following seven years.

So with that specific focus on the next three years, we can look a little closer and drill down, and you'll see some of the activities that again Mr.

Zuka talked about fixed film reactors, pipe repair, final effluent pumps, treatment facilities is the large part of that expenditure for the next fiscal year.

And then the following two fiscal years, it goes down.

So again, this is about a hundred million dollars over that three-year period.

The good news is that most of the funds for that hundred million dollars is already in place.

So starting at the top and working our way clockwise, new 2028 bonds will be coming, but the 2021 B notes, we have 30 million dollars of that as the time of this chart.

We have working capital of about 17.

We have some other funds that you see 8 million and 4 million in grants.

So what remains to be funded is the pink section of this chart, and that is the cash contributions that we're requesting of the members.

It's about 32 million in total.

So over the next three years, needing 32 million dollars and more liquidity, we turn to the members, and during the budget cycle, rather than pursuing additional debt, the feedback was well.

That looks like this chart.

So you will see Redwood City as the largest members, 48.57%.

Those the city's share of that total 32.4 million is 15.7 million over that three year share.

So, been working with your staff and describing these values and talking about ways to um to source these funds.

The indications so far is that these funds would be made available through cash, but we are always able to uh to use other um other alternatives as well if we needed to.

You'll see respectively the other members of SVCW.

Some are contributing cash, some are doing a hybrid, and one of them is is solely using our reserves to fund for the next three years.

To that point, if there is a use of reserves, excuse me, um, forgive me.

To that point, um, we would talk about the mechanism.

If if members are to borrow, it would be a framework that would allow for that to be um fair to all members.

So if you're going to borrow from those reserves, they would be replenished, they would be pay paying an interest that is based upon the actual cost of that money that they're using, and we would make all the members whole at the end of this three-year cycle.

So again, it's a matter of fairness and making sure that's a transparent process as well.

Timelines and next steps, we will be bringing this to our council to our excuse me to our commission uh even next week, and then of course, I think city staff is here to talk about their role in that.

So, with that, I think I'll turn it back over to city staff.

Thanks, Rob.

So just to conclude, staff is recommending utilizing our existing sewer fund reserves to fund our estimated 15.7 million dollar contribution over the next three years.

And with that, we are planning to bring a mid-year budget amendment before council this coming February.

Any future costs for SCCW operations or capital improvement projects will be incorporated whenever we next go uh to study sewer rates, looking at fiscal year 27, 28 and beyond.

And so with that, we'll just return to the questions that we've prepared for council consideration this evening.

And thank you very much.

Thank you, Robin.

Thank you, TK, Matthew Suco, Matthew Anderson.

We appreciate the great presentations today.

Are there any quick clarifying questions from council?

I have questions.

Any vice mayor, please go ahead.

Okay.

Vice Mayor.

Well, I I don't know that they're quick and clarifying.

All I have is questions.

So it I mean, okay.

They're not quick and but hopefully they're clarifying.

Through the mayor.

Would you like to see if there's any public comment first, and then that's a good idea.

If they're not gonna be quick and clean, let's go to public comment first.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We don't actually have any public comment at this time.

So last call the audience or folks on Zoom.

If you'd like to give public comment on this item, please let us know.

And it's looking like no public comment, so please proceed.

Easy enough, Vice Mayor.

So thank thank you all.

Um I'm not sure if this question is directed to me, so I but I just stood up.

I some of them are you'll choose.

I'm I'm not but but welcome.

Um this is your seventh week, you said uh started July 1st, yes.

Okay, well, welcome.

Thank you.

And uh I'm I just have a few questions.

I'm um I'm looking forward to the partnership, the continued partnership.

I'm the chair of our utilities committee, and so we had your predecessor um presented to us several times over the last few years, and I'm looking to can I'm looking forward to continuing and strengthening that partnership and and welcome you.

Um, so let's see.

Oh, so first question.

Um, do you because this is all so amazing in all those pictures?

Do you give tours to the public the way recology does?

We do.

Um we can schedule those.

Uh the only criteria are that you're gonna have to wear a hard hat and safety glasses while on the tour.

But yes, absolutely.

So, how does that work?

That the public would just call you and say, Can I have a tour, or do you have regularly scheduled?

We don't have regularly scheduled one, ironically, uh there's not a lot of people beating down the door to tour a wastewater plant.

Um I mean, we love it, but um uh but no, we we we do host those regularly.

It generally tends to be an event happens you know nearby or at the plant, and then we host the tours then.

Um, but it's something that we're looking at expanding on as we you know talk about improving the outreach that we do and and making sort of the value that we you know provide to the community and to the bay and the environmental protection more widely known.

So we definitely want to expand on it as well.

But if people are interested, they can just reach out and we can schedule one.

Um and I can provide a comment or I can provide staff with some contact information for that.

Thank you.

I like that I guess this isn't a question.

I like that you're building in redundancy in case of failure with your pipes that are old.

So good job.

Um, so the generating electricity, so that you're basically net zero.

Um, do you know when that'll be that you're April of next year.

The infrastructure will be in place by April of next year.

Uh we need to continue to work with our um solid waste partners to make sure that we're getting the uh food waste uh to generate the methane, but we'll have um the the digestion in place, and we literally broke down this week on the um linear generators.

So all of that will be in place.

And uh yeah, we we're gonna be working pretty aggressively over the next six months to see what we can do.

Um a lot of it's gonna be based up to how quickly SBWMA can ramp up their uh food waste projects as well.

And um do I didn't hear you say recology, which is our composting.

Sorry, uh South Bay South Bayside Waste Management uh Authority, I think, uh is the recall ecology contracts with them.

They run the Shoreview Environmental Center where all of that is actually processed.

So they're the I think they're also a JPA, um, and Redwood City is a member of uh so they're there we're working with their 12 member agencies for them.

I think it goes all the way up to Burlingame and then I'm not sure how far south.

Um, but yes, it would be Recology is the transportation arm of that.

Okay, so you are getting from them.

Yeah, I I've had explained to me multiple times because Recology has like 25,000 different names, and there's a logical reason, except it doesn't make sense to me, but that's another story.

Um, so um so thank you.

I think I have a few questions for Mr.

Anderson, or actually, I don't know who it is.

Let me ask the question.

Maybe I can answer.

So, really, from 1979 until 2009, there was not one penny of money put to maintaining or capital preservation of the sewer plant.

Is that what is that my understanding?

I wouldn't say a penny.

There was no a concerted program.

It was mostly replacing um uh pipe or sorry, pumps and infrastructure as it broke.

So it was more reactive and less proactive.

So there was no like there was no program in place.

It was really operational.

The the one thing also to keep in mind is that this plant itself was built um with money from the federal government during the 1970s when the federal clean water act came out, and uh the EPA basically funded these plants almost in their entirety throughout the nation.

So there was also no dollars put in by the community to build the original plant.

Um that was basically free money, and what goes with that is the rate structure was never established for the initial plant, so it's also not established for when the plant starts getting to the end of its useful life and requires significant reinvestment.

That's where we happen to be right now, and why the cost increases are so substantial is that the rate base was not there initially, and uh we're having to get it to the point where um as we over the next 50 years, hopefully 50 years from now it'll be a lot easier as the same infrastructure gets rehabilitated.

Yeah, but it was very limited investment for the first bit of the of the plant.

Thank you.

I that's that's helpful context.

I really appreciate it.

So what um Mr.

Anderson, you said something about reserves.

You said some cities for that that um 32 million in cash that you need for the next three over the next three years for your capital improvement phase that you're in right now.

Um you said some are choosing to do it in cash, and then you said some are choosing to do it in reserves.

I don't really know what that means.

Could you what does that mean?

They're borrowing the money from you and then they're gonna pay it back.

I don't could you explain that?

I think you said that correctly.

So we have at the moment approximately 30 million dollars in what we call our CIP capital reserve program.

It's a it's a capital reserve meant for future projects.

So that's funds, those are funds that I think the fund uh that was established by policy around 2012, knowing that we've got all of these projects coming, and we're going to have a future.

It's like the Golden Gate Bridge.

You're never quite ever going to be finished with that thing.

So wanting to put funds in place so that A, the restructure was in place, and B, options could be there in case of a you know unfortunate break and something needed to be paid for quickly.

That said, as I said earlier, it's about 30 million dollars in cash that we have built into this reserve with a target value in about five or six years that we'll will reach that target number.

In the meantime, because this was a a rather um abrupt change in strategy, we were intending to go out to the market and borrow money in fiscal year 2026.

That that policy or that practice was changed during the budget, so we pivoted to well, let's use another tool.

Many members are in a cash flush position because we've had the fortune of having a having a much lower debt cost of debt than we had uh expected.

Our our weighted average capital costs.

We're borrowing money for about 1.58%.

Wow.

So remarkably low versus the three to four or five percent that you would typically see for a project of this magnitude.

So what that did was it allowed members as they're establishing rate rates, they have a little bit of a surplus situation.

They've been accumulating cash along the way.

Most, if not all the members have been doing that over the time that you saw in the charts.

So at this point, some members have that cash they can use.

Other members say, well, let's use your reserves because we're not in a position to use that cash of our own.

So we're giving that option to the members to make this as flexible as we can.

Well, I guess thank you.

That's fantastic that you have a one point something interest rate.

Wow, good job.

Um I just want to representing Redwood City because we're paying cash.

You'll keep track of it so that they actually do pay out our absolutely.

We will we will be tracking this by my member very carefully and making sure that everyone is made whole.

Thank you.

Those those are my questions.

Um I guess I just want to say that um because we are the largest payer and the largest user, almost 50 percent, as compared to our other member agencies.

I really appreciate your coming tonight, um, and I really value this partnership, and I I heard the word transparency somewhere, and um that's always good.

So I'm looking forward to continuing to work together.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Go to Councilmember G.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um Matthew, welcome.

Thank you.

Seven weeks.

You're not new anymore.

I only have my staff too.

So sadly that's true.

Almost three times more.

So no, welcome and thank you for coming to City Hall.

Um, there's a series of questions I'm gonna lead up to.

So I'm just wanna I'm I'm glad you've done a plant-wide FCA facility condition assessment.

Would you mind sharing what the outcomes of the FSA were?

Of the sorry, the FCC.

The facility condition assessment.

Okay, so that was looked at just the piping itself.

Uh, it wasn't the entire facility, just to be clear.

Um, and I don't have the details off the top of my head, other than uh the pipe that we have in the program was identified for a couple of reasons.

Um, when they built it, they originally thought that they were picking steel.

Well, that what they did is they took steel pipe, put it in concrete, and thought the concrete would protect it from the bay mud, norm, which is very salty, very corrosive.

Um normally you'd expect to get a lot longer life than 40 plus years out of a steel pipe.

And so what they found though, that there was enough salt intrusion into through the concrete into the steel that caused the corrosion.

Um, so that was the person sort of in the pipe and the inspections and whatnot.

Uh, through those inspections, we've identified which sections of pipe we think need to be replaced, and um have included those in the capital cost.

So um that's kind of it at a high level.

I haven't to be honest with you.

In the seven weeks, I haven't read the details of that report.

Um, but I do know that we are again operationally trying to make sure that a failure doesn't result in a non-compliance event as well.

And those are sort of the two guiding principles that we have.

Well, the soil conditions out there, since I live out there in Redwood Shores, are amplified by very, very low current in the soil, too.

So the combination of water, salt and low, very low current amplify corrosion so nothing lasts as long as it 100%.

Especially in the ground.

Is there a plan to do a plant-wide facility condition assessment?

There is.

Actually, so one of the things that we're going to be undertaking actually uh since I came on board is what we call a um uh a long-range facilities plan, um, and so an LRFP.

And what that does is it looks at sort of the entire life cycle of the plant rather than a 10-year CIP.

Right now we have a 10-year CIP based upon sort of identified needs.

This lays out more um sort of if I'm if I'm replacing infrastructure now, what's the when it's gonna last 50 years?

You know, it lays out the whole life cycle of it so that we can come up with a longer-term sort of uh range of costs and a longer term projection with certain factors in there as well, like if it's just facilities and pumps and pipe and the traditional um engineering versus what if we get regulatory changes that we think are coming down the road, such as PFOS and our biosolids, um, a lot of the Central valley that accepts it right now for land application is considering banning it.

The regulatory environment might change on that.

We're also looking at microplastics and our effluent might change the regulations on that might change, and we might have additional uh and more stringent standards.

So, what we're gonna try to do is bracket what we know and as well kind of uh estimate the probability of some of the risks and share that with the member agencies so that you guys can do longer-term financial planning as well, uh, and not just coming to you sort of on a three to ten year cycle, but rather if you want to take advantage of time value of money knowing that there's a big investment 30 years out, we have that foresight and can provide you with that information.

That'd be great because um, you know, having projects being built in the 70s and no maintenance or no investment in capital renewal, Silicon Valley Clean Water is not the only institution that's gone through that.

Exactly.

And that was that was the lot of the plants are facing the same thing, new nutrient removal, none of that is uh unique to our agency.

And I would say the the benefit of free money is that you got a free wastewater treatment plant.

The downside of free money is now we're having to get up to the point where we can sustain it in the long term.

Um, and uh um that's the the push and pull on this whole thing.

Well, and some of the business I'm involved in, we call the gift of buildings the gift that keeps on taking.

Because you still have to maintain it and operate it.

As you do your facility-wide or plant-wide facility condition assessments, I would encourage you working with the board to figure out what condition that the um aspiration should be, whether it be A or B plus or whatever, and then the plant standards align with that, whether it be code minimum, code minimum plus, two X, whatever it may be, to maximize that return on investment.

Uh, so that you do have longevity to the extent the funding can match that.

Yeah, no, absolutely, and that's something that we take into account right now, where we're trying, and I'm trying to come up with the example I had it earlier today, ironically, where sometimes a small increase in capital cost might double your lifespan.

And which one are you would you do you want to be short-term, you know, uh cost conscious with long-term liability, or would you rather spend the extra whatever percentage it might be?

So we're very cognizant of that, especially out in this kind of an environment where uh it doesn't take much.

I mean, I I've designed plants in the past where the corrosion that happens by the bay, uh, and I live maybe three miles inland in Belmont, um, and I'm a ratepayer too, so you know, it's like but the corrosion that happens in Belmont versus the corrosion that happens right there on the front of the bay are just orders of magnitude different.

Um, uh it would be great to I'm gonna dive into slide 10 or slide 23 on the 10 year CIP though.

One of the interesting challenges is it it's not a even it spikes.

And so my request number one, and this is probably Robin, um the staff recommendation is fifteen point seven million from Redwich City Reserves.

What what is the balance after that?

If we were to do that, our reserve.

Sorry, I'm getting my notes.

Or you can let us know later, but it'd be interesting to know if we are at zero or we have a balance left.

We would we would have a balance left.

Um the last time we kind of took a look at our reserves was the cost of service study that we performed last year, and at that time that was before we had anticipated this 15.7 million contribution.

But um for this fiscal year, we had anticipated reserves around the 45 million, and then for next fiscal year it would have been around 42.9 million.

So um from that we would be taking away the 15.7.

Great.

So thank you very much for that.

So my request then between the 10-year CIP and hopefully longer view eventually, and um our reserve and our rates is to find a way to smooth out rate increases.

And we've many of us have been here when we've considered sewer rate increases, and we have a pretty large audience in person and in the email.

Once you have a long-term CIP, to smooth out rate increases so that we don't have peaks to accommodate the CIP requests.

Now, I think you know, in my experience, raising rates a dollar a year is much easier than every few years raising it ten dollars.

You know so you're almost there but not yet with the CIP where you can look longevity do a cash analysis do a um needs assessment and then smooth out sewer rate increases recognizing everything is costing more and minimizing um you know like I said I'd rather do a dollar year than $10 every five years because the that's just a hard impact to our ratepayers one last question and and Matthew I know you're new but maybe Matt or Terrence.

I'll do my best in in the work I do we have maintenance operations MO capital replacement and renewal and deferred maintenance do we have deferred maintenance of the plant?

Can I answer that question after I have my long range facilities plan.

Yeah I'm sure we do right and and the reality of it is uh when you're doing when you're doing um 10-year CIP projects and you have a 50 year lifespan there's no way we're on top of it right so we definitely have it uh I don't know that I could quantify the number right now but our our goal to your previous point is to get our planning such that we're able to provide a um you know to the extent that let's say we have a 300 million dollar peak some point out in the future uh Redwood City could elect either to uh start raising rates earlier and fill in the troughs you know so to speak um either through collection through rate stabilizations all that kind of thing and uh try to get to the point where we have uh you know a little bit more future visibility on this right um because at the very least when we do these long range facilities plans we know that the pumps are only gonna last 30 years I should be able to plan out 30 years for replacement and make assumptions at least about what the cost is going to be it'll be wrong I mean 100% because we can't we're not accurate at those kind of predictions but as long as we continue to chip away at it and come back to it periodically you know we'll hone in on the right number over time and as we get closer.

And once you get that deferred maintenance number please share with the boards so that they can help plan.

Absolutely but um again I'm I'm a fan of whether it's rate stabilization smoothing whatever um just to minimize the impact to our ratepayers understood.

Thank you.

Thank you council member councilmember Sirkin.

Thank you Mayor thank you all so much uh for your leadership especially in uh the trajectory of making this plant net zero it's very exciting um the council member g asked my question which was you know what is the no no I'm really glad you did about what the status of our reserves was so thank you so much for uh sharing that and I would I am inclined to agree that we should uh gradually increase rates each by little by little each year to reduce this sticker shock that our um residents experience um so that is you know my guidance or asks the staff and like how what what it does it look like for us to do that and then um and then why were we planning on waiting until you know fiscal year 2027 2028 for the next rate increase for the next uh funding um I think that right now go ahead so that's because um last year council did adopt rates for a three year period so that takes us through fiscal year 2627 um and so those rates are all have been established and set um so following that the next time we would be coming before council is to set rates starting in 27 28 thank you very fresh amendment I appreciate that and I um you know don't want to take up additional staff time with us uh having to revisit that necessarily but going forward in the future um beyond when we come back to the days to have that conversation in 2027.

Maybe we can look at um establishing a year by year gradual increase uh to again soften the blow.

So that's you know would be my um my ask.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council member.

And we'll go online, Council member chuckle um so thank you for this terrific uh presentation and many of the the questions I had uh have already been asked by my colleagues.

Um I was especially gratified to see you know your goals to get to net zero.

Um I you know, huge fan of sewage and sanitation as a discipline.

It's so interesting and you know, just a massive wonderful uh thing.

Um I would also be supportive of sort of smoothing rating increases uh again just to ensure that we don't have these big spikes and and sticker shock, which I think um create a lot of feelings and and are harder for people to to manage.

Um so really very impressed and and supportive.

Thank you, Councilmember Chu.

Councilmember Pittio.

I have a question.

I just want to, and maybe these are I want to understand.

I very exciting about the you know, the taking the food waste and the and uh turning it into methane and uh using the linear just creating your own electricity.

I think that's great.

But what are is this project intertwined with the funding you're seeking from all of the members?

Or these is the replacement of pipeline and this electrification project.

Are they how are they together?

Are they separate?

Because you talk about how quickly the ROI will come from that project.

So I'm wondering what there's not a bigger focus on that project, and then maybe not the need for so much contribution.

It's all together.

Uh and so the funding, in fact, there's a slide with the three bars.

Um, if I'm not sure what slide which one number that is.

Um, the second financial slide.

24, 24, slide 24.

That's it.

Thank you.

Uh so here you can see the nutrient um removal treatment facilities, where is oh, sorry, efficiency regulatory.

Yeah, the um the efficiency side in orange is sort of where the funding is going for the remainder of the costs associated with the food waste project.

8.4 million of that was in grants.

Um, and so what we were trying to show is that uh, you know, wherever we can, we're also trying to get you know uh additional funding to make some of these projects happen and reduce the impact on member agencies.

Uh so it's all kind of all those projects are kind of in not necessarily the next three years, um just for example, the next 10 years is when we really have to get nutrient removal 100% done.

But we're doing the planning for that within the next three years for sure.

Okay, thank you.

So my question would be was it considered was was adjustments in your timeline considered into in order to reduce the cost burden with the member agencies?

Yes, it was.

In fact, we deferred for this proposal, we deferred several um projects um from the original concept when we got the feedback that the that financing wasn't going to be uh preferred.

So what we've done is we've tried to shrink this down to the minimum project that we can move forward over the next three years and still get some of the um uh the goals accomplished.

So we have to move forward on some of these, like nutrient removal, uh the final left flow and pumps are you know in construction, um, but this represents sort of the minimum uh that we think that we can you know invest in the plant over the next three years, and we've deferred a lot of the work uh for the subsequent seven.

Thank you.

And I'll just say the the advantage and disadvantage of that is that we defer it.

Unfortunately, what usually ends up happening is it's more expensive when we get to it, so there's that whole time value of money, and we're gonna end up we'll have to revisit what the budgets are and that kind of thing when we get there.

Unfortunately, construction inflation tends to outpace normal CPI uh and other um escalators, and we're talking about steel, right?

It's certainly steel and concrete and labor and all things that are increasingly more expensive.

Exactly.

Great.

Not seeing any other questions.

Thank you, Councilmember.

I'll go ahead and add my thanks, Matt.

Um, Mr.

Suka for you.

You know, it is um you could have you all could have sent in a PowerPoint or just the information.

It matters a lot that both you and Matt are here to give us this information and to help us see behind the curtain.

Um, you know, a few weeks ago the the rate increases and notices went out, and I started getting lots of email, lots of questions, kind of wondering about that history and how it all works.

And so I think this is an important step, right, to making sure everyone's on the same page.

Um, you know you mentioned it, transparency, right?

And I think this is a big building on what Teresa was working on and trying to uh have regular council report outs.

Um so I guess my only question is, you know, how could a council members who aren't driving down radio road and the public who are tuning in, you know, how can they stay up to date on what's going on with clean water?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I mean I think that my my mission, um, you know, sort of as a as a funny segue.

Um, when I first applied for this job, my wife, we've been 35-year Belmont residents.

If there's anybody that should have heard about Silicon Valley Clean Water, it would be the person married to me.

And when I said I applied to Silicon Valley Clean Water, she her comment was, why are you driving down the Red or San Jose?

Uh, and I'm like, no, no, no, it's it's it's it's you know, Silicon Valley Clean Water, it's at the end of Redwood Shores.

And her response was, Well, that's not Silicon Valley.

Uh, and I said that's okay, it's not clean water either, don't worry about it.

Um, but so that's sort of the joke.

But the point is, no one, you know, the community doesn't know what we do, right?

And I think that uh one of the things that we're undertaking right now is uh looking at all of our outreach material.

How can we be more present out in the community?

Um, whether it be participating with public works events, providing literature about what we do so that they can be handed out at those kind of events.

Um, also, you know, sort of where can we be present and sort of talk about the mission of us as a JPA, the economy is a scale that we get from regional infrastructure so that everybody's not having to build their own wastewater plant.

I mean, there's a lot of goodness there that just hasn't the message hasn't been capitalized on, right?

So uh I don't have a uh absolute concrete answer for you, but I would absolutely say happy to come back as often as you guys want to talk about wastewater.

Generally that's not uh you know exciting topic for many, but happy to do it presenting at the subcommittee as well uh regularly, and then working also with the TAC and staff to make sure that we're trying to get that message out.

But I think that you know, a lot of this is gonna have to be word of mouth because uh or just being present where the community's gonna be walking by, right?

And um, I think it'll it'll evolve.

That's awesome, Matt.

Thank you.

Thank you.

No, I um look forward to continuing the good work, but appreciate the the presence today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Great, just as a reminder, no action will be taken on this item.

So we won't be voting.

Um we will now move on to item 10, matters of council interest, and we'll begin with 10A, which is designating a voting delegate and alternate to the League of California Cities, Cal Cities, which is having its annual conference October 8th through 10th, 2025.

And so I'll be designating the cities voting delegate and alternates currently myself, the vice mayor, council members G.

Padilla, and Sturkin are planning to attend, but just want to throw it out there in case anyone else is registered.

Want to make sure we're capturing everybody.

Okay.

Not seeing any new hands.

Is there any interest burning interest to serve as our voting delegate?

I think council member Stirkin served last year as our voting delegate.

There was no resolution, so you didn't have to stay around.

It was a while.

Would you have interest in serving again?

Would you like to pass that on to someone else this time?

If you're looking, if you I would be happy to serve again, Mayor, if you if you would like me to.

But I'm happy to give it to somebody else as well.

We would love you to serve.

Alrighty.

And um seeing, you know, all five of us here are going to be in attendance.

Um, I'll make myself alternate in case something pops up.

Perfect.

Thank you, everybody.

And um, we'll go on to 10 B city council member report of conferences attended.

Does anybody have anything they'd like to share?

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'll be very quick.

On Friday, August 22nd, I and many of my colleagues in this room and in the county attended the San Mateo County Central Labor Labor Council 45th annual COPE Banquet.

The Unity Award recipient was Fred Wood.

The community award recipient was Don Cecil, and the keynote speaker was assembly member assembly member and chair of the assembly labor committee, Liz Ortega.

And then finally, earlier today, I attended the one shoreline board meeting and learned among many other things that the proactive cost of adapting to San Mateo County's coast and base shorelines, sea level rise is approximately 97 billion dollars, and the cost of doing nothing is approximately 230 billion dollars or two and a third times higher.

Great.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Not seeing any other hands go up.

We'll move on to 10 C City Council Committee reports, beginning with governance subcommittee, and Councilmember G has a report.

Thank you, Mayor.

The governor subcommittee comprised of Mayor Martinez Abaios, Vice Mayor Aiken and myself met on Monday, August 18th, 2025.

The subcommittee received a state legislative update from the city's consultant, California Public Policy Group, CPPG on state budget and budget trailer bills, redistricting legislation, and the city's position bills.

The subcommittee unanimously voted to maintain the existing structure of the police advisory committee with the city council providing input to the PAC on its work plan during its annual update to city council.

The committee subcommittee also supported reassessing the PAC's scope periodically to determine whether changes are needed.

As a footnote, when we met as a governance subcommittee on the 18th, the newly formed PAC had not met yet.

Their first meeting was scheduled for Wednesday, August 20th.

And so making changes before they even met.

We wanted to see how they got started before we made any suggested changes.

So we will be looking to see how they're working and the effectiveness and when their work plan comes before council.

The next governance subcommittee meeting will be held on September 15th, 2025.

Great, thank you, Councilmember.

Next is a report out on 84101 Project Ad hoc committee, and I have a brief update.

Um sorry, not last week, August 1st, feels like last week.

Um but the committee is comprised of myself, Councilmembers G, Council members, and uh Councilmember Chu.

Consultants and staff reported on the project status, including a review of property acquisitions, agreements needed for construction and ongoing advocacy efforts to help secure project funding.

The project team also updated the committee members on the overall project progress schedule and outlined the next steps for the projects, and we will next be meeting on September 12th, 2025.

And I'll also be reporting out on our ad hoc committee on our city manager recruitment.

I'd like to announce that we formed our ad hoc committee to coordinate with our executive recruiter who is conducting the city manager recruitment process on behalf of the city council.

The committee is comprised of myself, council members Chu and Councilmember G.

And the committee met on August 11th with the executive recruiter and staff to finalize the city management recruitment brochure, which everyone has a copy of here at the Dais, and discuss the recruitment timeline.

The committee will meet on a as needed basis over the next few months, and their committee, I'm sorry, their work will conclude once a new city manager is announced in December.

And with that, we will pass things over to the city manager for the oral update.

Thank you, Mayor.

That really seems like an amazing job.

And I think some wonderful people are going to be great candidates.

So I have two updates this evening.

One, just to remind you and the community that next Monday, a week from today, is the deadline for applying for a community building academy.

We uh have a number of applications in, but we still have many spots available, and so we're hoping to get great representation from across our city, people of all walks of life, to join us for a seven-week program that's really meant to be a behind the scenes look at city services and a chance to build community with others.

Uh it's a series of seven uh Wednesday evenings, will include presentations but also meals and time together.

So please do encourage folks you know to apply.

The applications are available online.

And then, second, there was uh mention earlier that tonight to the greater downtown area plan.

And as you know, this is our community uh informed visioning for the future of the downtown and beyond.

We have two speaker panels coming up, one this week and next, which we think will be really interesting and informative as we gather ideas and share perspectives.

The first is this Wednesday, it will be at the women's Redwood City Women's Club from 6 to 7 30, and it's uh a panel that's going to be talking about strategies for sustaining and building on Redwood City's success.

And then next week on Thursday, September 4th, we'll have a panel from 6 to 7 30 at the Grove Community Space, which is inside sports basement.

And they'll be talking about downtown resilience in a changing climate.

So I think both very insightful, and we hope for many people to join us.

Thank you.

Thank you, City Manager.

With that, we will now move to closed session.

The City Council will now convene to close session regarding labor negotiations, existing litigation, and anticipated litigation as identified on the agenda.

Before we convene the closed session, I'd like to ask the city clerk if there are any public comments or Mayor.

We don't have anyone in the audience, either in person or in Zoom, so no public comment.

Great.

Thank you, City Clerk.

We'll now adjourn to closed session.

As this is the last item on tonight's agenda, there will be no reportable action.

The meeting will be adjourned immediately following the conclusion of closed session.

And the council will not be returning to the dais.

Again, tonight's meeting is adjourned in memory of Stephen Carl Britsky.

And with that, we thank you for joining us tonight.

Our next city council meeting is Monday, September 8th at 6 p.m.

I wish everyone a great evening and a great week ahead.

Thank you for joining us.