Cool comments to the city council at council at road city dot 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.

Good evening.

Councilmember Chu.

Here.

Councilmember G will be joining us shortly.

Councilmember Howard.

Here.

Councilmember Padilla.

Here.

Councilmember Sturkin.

Here.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Here, Mayor Martina Saballos.

Thank you.

Thank you, everybody.

With that, we'll move on to the Pledge of Allegiance, Vice Mayor Aiken.

Could you do the honors, please?

Could you all please rise to join me in saluting our flag?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

And to the Republic for which it says one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Item four is a procedural item for the purpose of identifying and confirming any council members who wish to participate in the meeting virtually and have not already provided a remote location listed on the agenda.

This item does not pertain to public comment from the public.

We'll now convene a closed session regarding existing litigation as identified on the agenda.

Before we leave the dais, I'll turn things over to the city clerk for any public comment on our closed session item.

No speaker cards.

Seeing none, I'll turn it back to you, Mayor.

Thank you.

And we'll now convene closed session, which is expected to take less than an hour, and following the conclusion of closed session, we'll return here to the dais uh to continue with the rest of our regular meeting.

And um, we again I know this is a little awkward since we have some ceremonial pieces, but we'll work as quickly as we can.

Thank you for your patience.

Hello, everybody.

Good evening.

Thank you for your patience tonight.

We're going to go ahead and get started.

We're going to pick up where we left off with presentations and acknowledgments.

Our first recognition item this evening is to acknowledge National Memorial, excuse me, National Emergency Management Awareness Month, typically celebrated in August, a time to highlight the vital role of emergency managers in coordinating disaster response and recovery efforts.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Elmer Martinez of Ayos, mayor of Redwood City, on behalf of the City Council and the people of Redwood City hereby proclaim August 2025 as National Emergency Management Awareness Month, and express sincere appreciation to the emergency managers in every sector who worked diligently to prepare, protect, and serve our cities, our counties, our states, tribes, territories, regions, and organizations against all hazards and risks.

I'd like to now welcome Redwood City's CERT coordinator and emergency preparedness outreach coordinator Alana Fulvio to the podium to accept the proclamation and give some remarks.

Thank you for being here, thank you.

Good evening, good evening.

Good evening, Mayor Martinez Sabayos, Mayor Aiken, Vice Mayor Aiken, and City Council members.

It's really nice to be with you tonight for the first time.

I am your Redwood City Emergency Preparedness Outreach Coordinator and CERC coordinator.

To start off, I'd like to thank you for recognizing Emergency Management Month with this proclamation.

It's an honor to receive it for this community.

This is the first time in history that such a proclamation has actually been made, and it powerfully highlights the work that often happens quietly behind the scenes, yet is essential to the safety and resilience of us all.

Emergency management is about more than responding to disasters when it's when they strike.

It's about building preparedness into the fabric of our community, so that when challenges come, whether a power outage, flood, wildfire, earthquake, or any localized event, we are united and ready.

The role of emergency managers is to prepare for all possible incidents, ensure our responders are resourced, informed, and empowered in real time to protect lives and restore stability during an incident and support recovery thereafter.

Always with the goal of keeping our community safe, supported, unified, and prepared for whatever challenges may arise.

Preparedness is not just a city responsibility, it's something we build together.

Residents, businesses, and leadership.

Each action we take now ensures that in times of need, our community can lean on each other with confidence.

As September is also National Preparedness Month, I encourage everyone to stay take one step forward in their own readiness.

A great resource is Ready.gov, where you can find practical guides and tools for households, families, neighbors, and friends.

And so to find finish this off, I just want to thank you very much for your support, the recognition, and it truly, truly matters.

Together, we can build a more connected and resilient city.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Ms.

Fulvio.

Before you leave, it'd be great to take a photo of a proclamation for you.

But it's always incredible seeing all the CERT volunteers in front of the Fox Theater in Green, just doing the amazing work that they do.

So thank you.

Yeah, they are wonderful.

Thank you, Sweden.

All right.

Next we'll be proclaiming September 12th through the 21st, 2025 as welcoming week here in Redwood City.

In 2017, Redwood City became a welcoming city and joined the Welcoming Cities and Counties Initiative.

Since then, the city is committed to building a neighborly community that is inclusive, hospitable, and welcoming to all.

And I'll now read a few excerpts from the proclamation.

Whereas Redwood City has a diverse community in which at least 34% of residents have immigrated to the United States, and whereas the city of Redwood City stands strongly in the support of inclusivity for our diverse community, honoring and protecting every individual, regardless of race, creed, color, gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality, orientation, or identity.

And whereas the collective work of the City of Redwood City and Redwood City together to build a more welcoming and inclusive community not only supports but also enhances the city's existing strategic priorities.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Elmer Martina Savallos, Mayor of Redwood City, on behalf of the City Council and residents of Redwood City do hereby proclaim September 12th through the 21st, 2025 as welcoming week, an important step in bridging divisions as well as strengthening our communities and affirming the importance of welcoming and inclusive places in achieving collective prosperity.

And I'd like to invite members of Redwood City Together's team to the podium to accept the proclamation and give some remarks.

I moved to Redwood City when I was six and have been living here for the past 11 years.

Over time, I've slowly become more involved in my city, and I've discovered how much I love helping and contributing to my community.

I love how Redwood City has always felt like a home.

Being here, I've grown up surrounded by a community that's shaped me who I am today.

Hi, my name is Mercedes, and I am the public relations intern and welcoming Redwood City Portfolio Lead at Redwood City Together.

I'm also here on behalf of Redwood City Together to accept to accept Redwood City's proclamation of welcoming week.

I've also grown up in Redwood City all my life, and I absolutely love the sense of community this city has and all the resources available to everyone.

Welcoming week is an initiative started by Welcoming America to bring communities together to promote building inclusive, safe, and equitable communities for immigrants and refugees.

This is important to me because it helps people feel like they belong.

It's a chance to meet neighbors, learn about the community, and get involved in programs and activities such as the ones that I am in that make the city feel like a home.

I love how events like this bring people together and celebrate everything that makes our city special.

We want to thank the city council and the mayor for signing this proclamation, and we hope that everyone can participate in welcoming week with us, September 12th through 24 to through 21st, 2025.

Please visit the library's page for more information about free events happening next week, including celebrating our welcoming stars, art and wellness festivals, and other fun events.

Our first event will be this Friday, September 12th, starting at 1 30 at Askina restaurant.

And everyone there will have a chance to speak with our district for supervisor, Lisa Goshe, while having free food and drinks.

We hope to see you there.

Thank you both so much.

I love the food at Squina.

Seeing our supervisor there is going to be even better.

But appreciate you for hosting all these great events, and we have a proclamation for you, and it'd be great to get a photo.

Thank you.

Thank you both again for being here.

In month in the month of September, we also recognize Suicide Prevention Month, a time to wear awareness raise awareness, spread hope, and spark meaningful action around one of the most urgent mental health issues of our time.

Additionally, it is also National Hispanic Heritage Month.

It's kicking off this September 15th and continues through October 15th to celebrate the histories, cultures, and contributions of those whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.

This Sunday, September 14th, from 2 to 8 p.m., Courthouse Square will be transformed into a festive, fun and beautiful setting in celebration of Mexico's Independence Day, a patriotic holiday in the Mexican culture.

Enjoy live music and entertainment, authentic Mexican food, arts and crafts, vendors, and a traditional flag ceremony conducted by the Concejal General de Mexico.

The square will be filled with colorful and glamorous Ballet Foclorio dancing and live mariachi music, kids, uh a kids' area, and lots of other live musical performances.

And we will also be celebrating here in Chambers at our next September meeting on the 29th.

So please uh join all month long.

Um and I'd like to also turn things over now to our city manager Melissa Stevenson Diaz to introduce the city's newest department head, Tiara Warner.

Thank you very much, Mayor, and I'll invite Tiara to join us at the podium.

We're very excited.

Just last month, Tiara Warner started as our new director of parks, recreation, and community services.

She brings over 15 years of great experience in recreation and community services with a strong record of leadership, innovation, and equity-focused programming.

Most recently, she served at the city of Roanert Park, including serving as the acting director of community services there.

But previous to that was in several full service communities who also have high expectations, including Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Long Beach.

She's overseen a wide range of programs, including youth sports, senior services, large-scale community events, and inclusive recreation initiatives.

She has a master's of science in recreation administration and a bachelor's in business administration.

So we're excited to welcome her here.

And I will ask her to make remarks in just a couple of moments.

But before I do, I also want to recognize Derek Wolfgram, who was oh good, who is still sitting in the very back and acknowledge and appreciate his 15-month temporary gig as the Director of Parks, Recreation, and Community Services.

And we're also grateful that he has been able to return to the library where he is continuing to do amazing work.

But with that, I would like to welcome Tiara as well.

Yeah, thank you so much, Melissa, for that great intro.

I did do all those things, but it's interesting to all hear it all at once.

So just really quickly, I was getting to new getting to know my new area.

I'm new to the peninsula and new to Northern California, really.

I'm a SoCal native.

And I realized that 10 years ago I was visiting the peninsula going, how do I move here?

How do I get here?

And so to be able to wake up in my new home and say I'm I'm grateful to be in my dream job is really a blessing.

So I'm really happy to be working for Melissa.

I'm so sad to see her go.

I'm still gonna try to convince her to stay somehow, someway.

I know I'm the new guy.

Um but I'm really grateful to be working in this wonderful city.

I have a great team, and thank you, Derek, for loosening the jar for me on a bunch of things so that my intro to Redwood City has been um really great and a smooth transition.

So I'm excited to get to work with you all in the near future and to continue to serve this wonderful community.

So thank you so much.

Thank you, Tara.

We're so happy to have you.

And it's great to uh finally put a face in the name.

Thank you for being here.

Great.

Um, and before I move on, Derek, thank you for those 15 months.

I know that was not easy, but very glad to have you back at the library, back at home.

Um, with that, we will now move on to public comment on the consent calendar, matters of council interests and items not listed on tonight's agenda.

We welcome speakers providing public comment, but please be advised that this is a limited public forum.

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

If speakers do not, they'll be warned.

And if they continue to disregard city rules, their opportunity to speak will be limited.

If you're attending in person, please fill out a speaker card and submit it to the city clerk here at the Dais.

And if you're attending virtually, please feel free to raise your hand on Zoom at this time or press star nine if you've joined by the 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 with that, I'll now turn it over to our city clerk to help facilitate.

Thank you, Mayor.

This time we have 10 speaker cards, and we'll give it a few more moments for the folks on Zoom to raise your hand to speak.

And as the mayor said, we will close the speakers list after that.

Okay, so total 11 speakers, Mayor, two minutes each.

So we'll start with the in-person speakers.

We'll call two speakers at a time.

The timer will begin when you start speaking.

There is a timer on the top of the podium.

Orange light is your 30-second warning, and the red light with the beep means your time is up.

We'll start with Colleen Shannon.

Colleen will be followed by Lori Todd.

If you prefer to go back, that's okay.

Oh, like Jim.

Members of the council.

On December 13th in the Redwood City Costco parking lot, a man tried to park illegally in a blue striped access lane between two accessible parking spots.

In doing so, he crashed into my car and refused to exchange information with me, repeatedly telling me it's fine, it's fine.

Then walked into the store.

And when I then turned when I was photographing the damage to both vehicles and his license plate, while leaving the scene, he backed into me and my service dog intentionally.

And while we were in the marked crosswalk, luckily my service dog was able to jump out of the way, but I was knocked down and received minor injuries, including a back sprain and a large checkered bruise the shape of the crosshat marks of my shopping cart.

Um at the scene, the responding officers indicated that they were investigating the incident as a felony hit and run, but then two days later, the officer called and asked if I was satisfied with receiving the other party's insurance information with no further follow-up.

I indicated that I was not, given that the other driver intentionally tried to run my dog over and also fled the scene and wouldn't exchange information with me.

In the months that's followed, the police department has told me four times that the case was sent to the DA's office when it actually had not been, and it's remained under police investigation.

Um I've tried to get an update on the status of the investigation with and they haven't gotten any response to my emails.

Um I know that many lesser crimes have been fully investigated and referred for prosecution in the last nine months.

Um I know they have a video of the accident, they have photo documentation of the injuries, statements from the witnesses who told the driver not to leave the scene and saw him do so, and even the statement in the preliminary report from the other driver saying that he knew I was behind his car when he backed up.

So it's really hard to understand what other investigation is needed for this incident to be actually pursued.

Um I've lived and worked and paid taxes and um been in the city for the last 17 years, and it's been a shock to discover that crimes aren't being pursued.

Thank you for your comment, Colleen.

I just wanted to let you know, although we can't directly reply to your comments today, I'll ask that staff connect with you and we'll circle back.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Lori Todd, who will be followed by Elisa Wrangle Sims.

Hi, good evening, everybody.

Um, my name's Lori.

Um I'm an outreach case manager here in the city of Redwood City.

Um I came here tonight to uh talk about the no camping ordinance that is being implemented.

And um I, you know, we realize this is happening.

And I really think it's uh crucial how we implement this ordinance and enforce it, and it'll determine whether they get housed and services or or jailed.

Um so um we kind of need more tangible housing options for everybody.

Like I said, I have a caseload that there's a lot of mental health, and they don't just fit into any shelter environment.

There every individual has different traumas and stuff that you know you can't see by looking at them, but you know, and they haven't been able to address them.

So there's a lot of engagement we have to do to help them.

But I appreciate everybody listening to and have compassion when you see our clients.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Elisa, who will be followed by Robin Vaca.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Um, I just wanted to follow up with Lori.

What Lori said.

Um, I'm here for the ordinance.

You know, we do see that people are on the streets and housed, but they do have a lot of challenges, and it is impacting it is with the mental health that they're already suffering, it's making it worse now because now our clients are no longer attending their mental health treatments, they're no longer attending their doctor appointments or their dental appointments because they're so worried about having to be moved, losing all their stuff.

We ourselves have um gone to the Mexican council, we've got gone to the DMV, we've gone to Social Security.

These are hours and hours that we are working with our clients to get these documents, to get their documents ready for housing.

Um, and then the ordinance comes and our people have to move and they lose all their stuff.

Now we're paying for this, which the government is also helping pay for this.

Now they lose their documents, so now we have to go get them all over again.

We have to start all over again.

We have to find our clients.

It's really hard, and it's impacting the clients are suffering even more because now they're not getting the services that they need.

They're not sleeping less, they're already not sleeping because they don't have a safe place to sleep and worried about what other things are gonna go on while they're sleep, you know, being kicked by a police officer telling them to get up, or some community member coming and taking pictures of them and telling them that they're bums and to stop, you know, it's really impacting not only the physical but the mental health as well.

So if we are here to work with everyone, the community, police officers, council members, everyone, we go the hospitals, the jails, the courts, everyone, we are here to work.

If you guys need our number, life moves.

We're here to move these lives off of the streets.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker was Robin.

I don't think she is in the room at this point.

We'll move on to Michael Reagan, and Michael will be followed by Yana Jacobs.

Good evening, counsel.

I'm here um representing uh my wife and our tenants, um, which is at uh 15 14 and 16 Hawes Court.

This is about the cell towers that you guys have been discussing over the last couple of years.

Um, I personally am in San Mateo, but my first rental was in the Redwood City, and the first home I bought was also in Redwood City, so I do have connection with this town, and I think it's a wonderful town.

Umateo went through a lot of discussion regarding this topic, and they came up with a great plan that was implemented by many cities up and down California.

And the document is a 51-page kind of an assessment of how these uh say, for example, Crown Castle should be is installing these devices in in the community.

And I think it would be behoove you guys to follow their example as we did follow others.

We had attorneys, and it was a very um debatable topic, but I think some of the three things that we're concerned about is the location of the devices.

Uh brief, I can't go over all of it, but a brief uh part of it would be the location with residential to mixed zones, any location within 300 feet from an existing residential dwelling unit, any location within 300 feet of an existing daycare facility or school structure and any location with a very high fire hazard uh severity zone.

So I think this is quite important.

I hope you guys can do something.

This is for your citizens.

I think that the health and safety is the number one object of what you guys are doing up here, and I think it's very important that these types of programs are put into effect.

So I will leave at least the um location standards and and maybe you could look at the full uh 51 pages.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Yana Jacobs, who will be followed by Ronnie Ben David.

Good evening, City Council members and members of the public.

My name is Jana Jacobs, and I'm here again to talk about the placement of the wireless towers across Redwood City's neighborhoods by the developer Crown Castle on behalf of Verizon.

Most residents of Redwood City are not aware of the plan of these wireless facilities.

A quick recap.

Within less than a year, Verizon and Crown Castle submitted over 70 permit applications to install wireless towers throughout the city, close to schools, parks, and homes.

Some of those have already been approved, and some of them are awaiting review.

These wireless towers present multiple hazards with no added benefit to residents.

Their purpose is not to boost cell service, but to provide wireless broadband internet by Verizon.

We are a group of concerned residents of Redwood City who have tried for months and months to communicate openly with the city, and specifically members of the city council.

Every request to partner with us has been rejected by the city, and many emails and other requests have gone ignored and unanswered.

Our neighboring cities of San Mateo and Palo Alto have been working with residents to find an amicable solution to the wireless tower issue.

And they succeeded and launched an updated wireless ordinance to meet all the needs.

Why can't the city council partner with residents?

Why do you seem more willing to partner with a proven bad player like Crown Castle than our own than your own constituents?

Why won't you work with San Mateo and Palo Alto city leadership to find out more and implement a similar ordinance for our city?

It just doesn't seem right.

Again, we're asking to be added to a future city council meeting agenda for a 15-minute opportunity to present facts and more background on this matter.

We will be reaching out again this week to all members of this council about this.

On behalf of our growing group, I'm asking you again to partner with us and find a solution that works for everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Ronnie Ben David, who will be followed by Olga.

I'm sorry, no.

Followed by Martin Elliott.

Hello.

So I'm here to share the top five reasons why you want to partner with residents to update our wireless ordinance.

Okay.

Number one, you can help protect the property value of Redwood City residents.

As you probably know, for some people, their homes are their only means of passing on wealth to their children.

New research published on cell towers and property value found a significant impact on the proximity of wireless facilities to the residential property sale prices.

Two, you can exert your authority to regulate placement before it's too late.

Once a wireless facility is in place, federal law allows other carriers to later expand to 10 feet in height and 10 feet in width if they want to co-locate or stack new antennas and wireless equipment.

Even if those modifications violate Redwood City zoning rules or the terms of the existing permit.

So homeowners and the city have zero control over its expansion and associated buzzing sound once it is there.

So our opportunity, your opportunity to regulate is now before they go in.

Three, build on the work that our neighboring cities have already done, as you've heard.

And we were so pleased to hear that Mayor Martinez Sabayos recently spoke with San Mateo's mayor and with council member Lisa Diaz Nash about their wireless ordinance.

So we'd love to learn from their progress and and not feel like we have to start from scratch.

Four, protect the health and safety of the most vulnerable in our community.

There are 11,000 pages of evidence documenting biological effects and illness from wireless radiation, and the most vulnerable are children and women.

And finally, just fulfilling your duty as our council members.

This summer, a few of us went to the locations of houses that where there's already wireless um permits under review or approved, and none of the people we talked to knew that it was going in, and all of them were concerned, the ones that we talked to.

So they're waiting for your partnership, and I have faith that it will happen.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Martin Elliott, who will be followed by Olga O'Neill Marcoy.

Hi, good evening.

My name is Martin Elliott.

It's a pleasure to be here tonight.

Uh I want to read you a list of cities.

They represent about 20% of the population in the state.

San Mateo, Palo Alto, Mill Valley, Davis, all of Contra Costa County, San Santa Barbara, Encinitas, Sassoon City, Calabasas, and all of San Diego County.

Now, what do all those 12 cities and counties have in common?

They all have ordinances mandating specific setbacks to protect their communities against 5G small cell towers.

And the question that you've heard tonight is why hasn't Redwood City done the same?

Why don't we want to add our name to that list?

And really, what are we waiting for?

We raised this issue a couple of months ago.

It's an important issue.

And quite frankly, to be blunt, it's a ticking bomb for you.

The reason I say that is that many, many people don't know this is happening.

And by the time they find out, it's going to be too late.

And then what's going to be open to them is some form of litigation.

And there's plenty of folks in this county that have the means to bring unwanted and unnecessary actions that will tie you up.

So stay clear of it.

And the other thing I want to raise is what I heard tonight.

I think it's fantastic how Redwood City is open to DEI and a truly inclusive community and wants to protect the rights of the underprivileged.

But I'll tell you what, if you really want to do that, then take action to this because what do you think Crown Castle is going to do in the underserved communities?

Those 34% of Redwood City citizens that live in lower income areas, they're not going to have a means to fight back, and they shouldn't have to.

This is in front of you, and you need to action it now.

And I'll tell you, it's disappointing to not see the city attorney here because if I was on your council, I would be all over my city attorney to pay attention to this issue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Olga, who will be followed by Dylan Finch.

Good evening, City Council members and members of public.

My name is Olga Onaimar Ku.

I'm a resident of Redwood City, last almost 20 years.

I'm here because I'm also one of the concerned residents about this 5G cell towers that are planned to be installed all over Redwood City by Verizon and Crown Castle companies.

These towers present many potential hazards, including the most concerning to me is the health risks.

I'm a physician, particularly pediatrician, and I'm very concerned with the electromagnetic radiation exposure to our children.

There are multiple schools all over Redwood City that these towers are planned to be implanted.

I am surprised that I did not even get a notification about this.

Just randomly heard about it on next door post.

I'm very surprised that Redwood City does not have any regulation or ordinance, serious ordinance about this.

It seems that I'm learning some Mateo Palo Alto City has already implemented these regulations.

I would kindly like to ask Redwood City and City Council members to review and update the city's wireless ordinance for a better oversight and better regulation.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Dylan Finch.

Uh hello, council.

Um I'm speaking on item 8G.

Uh my name is Dylan Finch.

I'm on the planning commission, but I'm just speaking for myself today.

Um I believe that council is looking into a larger study on parking in the future, but I just wanted to comment here in case the garage parking rates are set in this contract.

Um street parking in Redwood City is very congested, especially during um peak hours.

And um the garages also seem to always have open spaces even during these peak hours.

Um there could be many reasons for this, but I think one of them is the price difference between street parking and uh garage parking.

Uh street parking is a dollar an hour until 8 p.m.

when it becomes free, and garages are 250 an hour all night.

Uh, the garage does give you an hour and a half free, but I think the sticker shock of 250 might be might scare some people away.

Um, and anyone staying past uh eight or for more than two and a half hours also has an incentive to park on the street.

Uh the garage is less convenient than the street, so I would argue that it should be cheaper than the street.

Uh currently the largest uh the longest parkers are incentivized to use the street, and the shortest parkers are incentivized to use the garage.

I would argue that it should be the opposite.

The street should be for pickups, drop-offs, and quick runs into businesses so that we get high turnover and serve as many people as possible, and so that passers by can quickly find a parking spot.

And the garage should be for people who are staying a long time.

Uh I don't have any data on why people park on the street over the garage, but I do think that cheaper garage parking or more expensive street parking would help to incentivize people to use the excess capacity in the garages.

Uh there may be some compromise here of cheaper garage parking and more expensive street parking.

Um I think that more people in the garages means easier access to street parking for first-time visitors uh who don't know about the garages and more spaces for quick stops into service businesses and more spaces for uh delivery drivers and pickup orders.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll move now to our Zoom speakers.

We'll start with Clara Jekyll, who will be followed by Tony Crapo.

And when you're prompted to unmute and go ahead and begin, the timer will begin when you start speaking.

Yeah, my name is Clara Jekyll.

My comment is for item 8H regarding the anti-camping ordinance.

And 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 want to urge you once more not to adopt this ordinance.

It will not make real connections to get people into housing matched to their needs where they can be successful long term.

All it does is use the threat of jail to force a false choice on those of our residents who are already facing the greatest adversity.

Which disincentivizes them from trusting outreach workers and access and treatment.

And if more cities create ordinances like this one, it will leave people in an impossible bind where there is no place that they can legally be.

I urge you to invest in outreach work instead and to work towards solving the root issues of the high cost of living and the lack of affordable housing without adopting this harsh and counterproductive approach.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Tony Crapo.

Welcome, Tony.

Good evening.

My name is Tony Crapo.

I am speaking on item 8H, the anti-camping ordinance.

I'm a homeowner here on Bear Island, located in District 2.

I want to express my deep disappointment with our district two council members, just Chris Stirkin, and his lack of acknowledgement of the very real fire danger the Bear Island community faces on a daily basis.

Just two days ago, Councilmember Sturkin posted on social media stating, quote, any improvements you've seen are the result of our current outreach and enforcement efforts without penalties and jail time, end quote.

Unfortunately, the statement doesn't reflect the reality we experience every single day.

Our community has not seen any improvements.

Instead, we've seen an increase in homeless activity and an explosion of encampments in our area.

This has led to a number of serious issues.

Multiple off-leash dogs from encampments threatening students walking to school under the one-on-one underpass, individuals openly defecating into the creek, and frequent package thefts, many of which we witnessed firsthand on our security cameras.

Given these ongoing problems and the extreme risk they fire risk they pose, I strongly support the anti-camping ordinance, and frankly, I also support voting out Councilmember Sturkin in district two, as he's failed to acknowledge even failed to even acknowledge the very real safety concerns of his constituents in our community.

Thank you.

That concludes public comment mayor.

Thank you.

Okay.

With that, we will now move on to the consent calendar.

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

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

Not seeing any in person or online.

Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?

So move.

Sorry.

That's all Councilmember Sirkin's legal first.

Thank you, Mayor.

I would like to pull item 8H, please.

Okay.

Perfect.

We'll pull item H and go to Councilmember Howard, who I think had a motion coming.

So moved minus item H.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

Second.

Perfect.

And could we get a roll call vote, please?

We'll start with Council Member Chu.

Yes.

Councilmember G.

Yes.

Council Member Howard.

Yes.

Councilmember Padilla.

Yes.

Councilmember Sturkin.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Yes.

Mayor Martinez Sabayos.

Yes.

The motion passes unanimously.

Great.

Thank you everyone.

And we'll go to Councilmember Sturkin for item 8H.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um.

Since we've already belabored this topic over the course of multiple meetings, I just simply wanted to pull it for a vote to be consistent with the prior uh votes that have been taken.

Um and just reaffirm that I I do believe it is going to be ineffective and inhumane.

So that's that's all I have to say.

And I'm ready for a vote whenever anyone's right.

Okay.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Howard.

I'll make the motion to move item H.

Is there a second?

Eight H to be specific.

Thank you.

Second.

Perfect.

That was a motion from Councilmember Howard and a second from Vice Mayor Aiken.

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 Saballos.

Yes.

The motion passes with six votes.

Councilmember Sturkin opposed.

Okay, we'll move on to item nine, which is our board's commissions and committees' work plans.

I'll start with 9A, reviewing and adopting the Planning Commission work plan for fiscal years 2025 to 26 and 2026 to 27.

Each of these cities' boards, commissions, and committees present their work plans to the city council generally every two years.

And we'll be hearing more from our BCCs throughout the fall.

Planning Commission staff liaison and assistant community development directors who excellent will introduce the item.

And planning commission chair Philippe Sengorak and Vice Chair Kimberly Koch will give the presentations.

Thank you all for being here.

Thank you, Mayor and Council Sue X-line, Assistant Community Development Director and Lee's under the Planning Commission.

And I'll just turn it over to Chair Sonagarbatz and Vice Chair Koch to give the presentation.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Martinez Aballos and Honorable City Council.

My name is Philip Sinogoras.

I'm the chair of the Planning Commission.

And this is Kimberly Koch.

The Vice Chair.

Many of you have been on the planning commission, so I guess you know generally what the planning commission does are key functions of our body is to make decisions on land use entitlements and environmental documents, including DEIRs.

We also make recommendations on zoning and general plan amendments.

We appoint members of the Historic Resources Advisory Committee and the Architectural Advisors Committee, which we've done actually just last year with a new crop of very talented individuals.

It's been great.

And finally, we also make recommendation recommendations on historic resources.

And our mission statement, sorry, the next slide.

And you know, decide and evaluate proposals to the best interest of the whole community, not just uh the people who are impacted immediately next to let's say a project.

Um also to mean high moral and ethical standards uh in our communication and uh of course have honesty integrity and reliability.

Um and finally, we also like to permit all members of community to to bring you know their voices uh to the to the uh decision making process uh and we're very excited to potentially reintroduce public comment via Zoom.

Um I know it's always difficult to have certain segments of population join.

It's evening time.

People have kids, uh, sometimes they work late, so having disability.

Uh I know the city council has moved to public um comments by Zoom, and we're hoping that the boards and commissions eventually will have the same ability.

Uh and we're very much looking forward to that.

Um I will let um Kimberly talk over about our achievements for the last um two years, fiscal year 24-25 and 23-24.

Go ahead.

Good even good evening.

Mayor Martinez Saballas and City Council.

Um, our planning commission work plan fiscal year 2023 through 2025.

What we've done so far.

Um, our collaboration with other city boards and commissions.

We did have a joint session with uh historic resources advisory committee, HRAC, and a joint session with architectural advisory committee is upcoming.

We are looking forward to that.

Um, additionally, planning commission held a joint session with city council for Redwood Life Project.

We all really enjoyed that.

We got a lot out of it.

We felt it was really fruitful.

Umgoing professional development training.

Most of our commissioners have attended the League of California Cities trainings, and the majority of us have attended ongoing um 21 elements training because that's local, usually happens somewhere in San Mateo or Burlingame, and those have been really helpful for us as well.

Um, housing element uh implementing programs and APR zoning code updates have been approved by city council in September of 24.

Further implementing housing elements, APR submitted to the state on time, and I believe we were the first in the state to have that approved.

That's fantastic.

We hope things continue on that trend.

Um, gatekeeper projects.

We have approved two, and things have finally started moving forward for 1900 Broadway and 901 El Camino Real.

They were approved by City Council, and hopefully we'll see those things moving forward.

Um, our work plan as we continue to move forward in 2024 into 2025, Redwood Life.

Um, our environmental review and precise plan preparation has begun.

Um we did have, or we will be having a brief overview of that.

And um we look forward to that.

That's gonna be a long one.

Historic preservation ordinance that is scheduled to begin in summer of 2025.

I think that's going to be rewritten and redone.

It's been quite a while.

So we're looking forward to participating in that as well.

And that's our update thus far.

All right.

Thank you, Kimberly.

The uh the city's strategic initiatives and goals uh for this year, of course, are housing transportation and children and youth.

Uh and of course, the the activities of the planning commission very much tie into this housing obviously by uh the way we implement the housing element and all the policies that kind of tie into increment increasing the uh the available units available uh for our citizens.

Uh transportation really has to do with um the overall um plan um that we're implementing.

Uh and then the children and youth um for those particular opportunities, usually has to deal with increasing the number of child care facilities within projects that are coming in because there is a shortage within our uh city uh and we have here we have heard from residents that this is a pain point that we would like to address.

Uh so we certainly prioritize that.

Uh the ongoing goals, of course, are collaboration with the other um committees, like the uh the historic resources advisory committee and architectural committee uh and ongoing professional and training and development.

Kimberly already spoke about um the 21 elements.

It's a local training, so most of our um members can go there.

Uh there was some discussion on the planning commission about having the city support um some of the expenses because the legal California um cities training, which is a two-day training session, sometimes happens in Southern California and it's it's on our own dime to travel lodge and um for for all those expenses.

So some of the new commissioners are young people.

I I know they're um potentially could use some help uh to be able to afford uh to to join.

And they'll I think it's a very uh beneficial um effort to go through.

I've been through my mine as well in San Ramon.

It was local, so it was easy for me, but um, it would be helpful for to have that level of training uh and bring it to the table.

Uh specific project goals, we're continuing with our housing element implementation.

Um for this year.

Uh the goal is objective design standards, uh, and we're continuing to comply with the state law and annual uh progress reports and number number of units uh made.

Kimberly spoke about gate keeper projects, and we're also working on the Metropolitan Metropolitan Transportation Commission transit-oriented communities policies.

Wow, that's a long one.

Um basically the idea is that we want to have policies as a city that qualify us for particular sources of funding so that we can um fund the improvements that have been already identified by the TAC committee uh things like bike lanes, uh crosswalks, uh rights route, safe routes to school.

Um so uh all those things to be built.

Of course, we need to identify more funding.

Um finally we have the Great Greater Down Area Plan.

We kicked off the outreach uh process for that.

Uh the Redwood Life Plan, the EIR has just started, we're in the public comment period.

Uh and finally, the biggest uh um ordinance update that's happening this year is the historic preservation ordinance.

So we've been working carefully where the HRAC committee uh on that.

Um it's a lot of information.

Uh, sorry for uh uh overloading, uh, but I'm open for any questions, and so is Kimberly and our staff member uh in case you have any further clarifications.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Before we bring it back to the council, we do have public comment.

I don't have any speaker cards at the moment, so I'll do a last call to the audience if anyone wants to speak on the planning commission work plan this evening.

I also don't see any raised hands, so a couple more seconds for any speakers on this item.

Seeing none, I'll turn it back to you, Mayor.

All right, thank you again, Commissioner Sinakora, Commissioner Koch, Sue, thank you all for your great work and for the great presentation.

Colleagues who has questions, comments.

Councilmember Howard.

I'll get started.

Um, thank you for the presentation.

This is very thorough and what an ambitious agenda you have, although we know the Planning commission is a very, very challenging and hard-working group of people.

So thank you for coming to us and explaining some of the things you have been doing.

Uh I'm curious about um the uh meeting with the different groups like historic resources advisory and housing and human concerns.

I I know that um it's really important that we talk to each other.

Sometimes we do get into a silo mentality because we're so busy, but we forget that there are other commissions and committees in the city who would highly benefit from the work you're doing, as would you from the work they're doing.

So I really highly encourage that.

There was a time where we used to have a liaison from the planning commission go to the housing and humans concerns committee, not every month, but like twice a year.

And then vice versa, housing and human concerns had a liaison that went to the planning commission to report back.

You might have that discussion.

I don't know if we can do that in today's world.

Um there may be reasons we cannot, but I always felt it was so helpful because you got you know up-to-date information what each group was doing, and it made it so much smoother to make decisions, and you knew you weren't tripping over each other, duplicating certain decisions or services.

So something to think about.

Yeah, but I'm glad you're meeting at least on an annual basis.

Um I believe in professional development training, particularly for the planning commission, because it's a complicated job.

So I am glad to see that staff has come up with a way to fund two commissioners to go each year, is my understanding.

I think it says they I shouldn't say that.

Oh, she's raising yes, she's saying yes, okay.

Thank you.

It says sending up to two commissioners per year to the Cal Cities training, which I know is excellent.

And so any kind of training that we can help you with, I think is very, very important.

So thank you for the including that in the plan.

I'm glad to hear that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard.

And we'll go to Councilmember Chu online.

Um, so thank you so much for a terrific presentation.

Um, really, you know, just appreciate the thoughtfulness, uh, the thoroughness.

Uh I know how hard you work uh on the the um planning commission and how well the meetings are run.

Um I am also very excited to hear that that there is support for training uh for at least two uh members per year.

So I think that's terrific.

Um didn't have any particular questions or comments, just really appreciate the presentation.

It looks awesome.

Uh you guys clearly have a lot coming up in the coming year or two.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Any other comments?

Well, Councilmember Video.

Thank you.

Yes, I just also wanted to echo that.

I think you know, everyone who comes to serve on our boards is a volunteer.

So I think at the very minimum, if you're excited and eager to learn more and bring that education back to us, I I would hope we as the city are gonna cover your costs and expenses.

So I'm definitely in support of making sure our volunteers are compensated for their expenses when learning at uh any necessary trainings for their commission.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember G.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, Chair and Vice Chair, just want to say thank you and to all the commissioners.

That one slide about the work plan in front of you.

That's a lot of work.

And one of them is going to guide the cities downtown for many, many years moving forward.

And that's a big lift to get it right, or at least mostly right because things change and evolve over time, and we're making it always considering making adjustments tonight and some ordinances.

But this one slide here alone.

That is a big ambitious work plan going forward.

And so my hats off to the entire planning commission, our staff, and our community, because you can't do this with just the seven of you.

Community input's going to be very important, and listening to different voices as you make your decisions, are gonna be very, very important.

So thank you very much for engaging, for participating, for volunteering as Councilmember Padilla said.

This is a passion and a commitment, so much appreciated.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Go to the Vice Mayor.

I echo all that my colleague said, and I'll be very brief.

Congratulations.

Thank you so much for your dedication and your work, and uh, then I just uh I wanted to reiterate what Mr.

G said.

Um, just how important that greater downtown area plan is.

Thank you so much for undertaking it.

Please listen.

That's the gold standard is community-driven um planning rather than developer or or um, what not not developer, but application-driven planning.

We want to get ahead of those applications, and and so do our business friends as well.

They they like certainty, and so the more certainty we can provide saying, you know, hey, this is really what the community wants.

And if you give them that what you they want, we'll all be better for it.

So it's kudos to you for working on that greater downtown area plan.

I'm excited uh to hear about it.

And then just the other on the education.

I just wanted to highlight um that another just amazing Northern California research for education is the California Preservation Foundation.

Um, they do such cool trainings.

Um, sometimes it's at the Presidio in San Francisco, sometimes it's in Monterey, sometimes it's in Oakland.

Um they are so cool, those trainings, and you don't have to stay overnight.

And the the city there isn't a problem with the city paying for the training, it's a problem with paying for overnight accommodations.

So to the extent that you can find these local yokel, but but California Preservation Foundation, the city's been a member for decades.

Um, and um they are just such fun um educational programs.

They usually have last half a day, and um you'll learn some, you know, more bells and whistles.

Of course, you need that 21 element thing, and you need the meat and potatoes.

But the California Preservation Foundation has the meat and potatoes and quite a bit of fun.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Councilmember Sterk.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you both so much.

Uh, really appreciate all of your service and that of the rest of the commission as well.

Um I want to just start by saying this is such an impressive body of work, and I'm super excited for what's to come these next uh couple years, and appreciate what you uh suggested said as well about listening to all the community, um, not just those who are most directly affected by a given project, and um also appreciate the financial assistance for commissioners too.

Um that's really important.

And I want to second um Councilmember Howard's suggestion of liaison's.

I think that's a fantastic idea.

I myself went to a housing human concerns committee meeting uh last week, found it very um and enlightening and was really exciting to get a snapshot at their uh work plan that will be coming to council later uh this year.

Um and hope that you know, as a council, we can maybe do that too.

Um but uh anyway, uh amazing work, great job.

Thank you for your service.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Just double checking.

Okay.

Well, thank you both for being here again and for all your hard work.

Um, you know, as a former planning commissioner, I just have the most respect for all the work that you do.

I know it's a lot of complex materials and subject matter, and um that's exactly why the professional development opportunities really make a difference, right?

So I'll add my my plus one to you know having the council look at that during budget season, right, so we can figure out how do we at least start allowing for more than two to be able to participate in these opportunities, right?

But see what we can do.

Um, yeah, uh, like my colleagues have mentioned the Greater River City Central Road City Plan, um I mean the Redwood Life Plan.

We had an incredible conversation here, right?

That I think all of us benefited from.

So I just appreciate you all helping make that big lift for us before it gets to us, and uh yeah, just look forward to the great work in the next couple of years.

So thank you both.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And we have recommended action from staff.

Who would like to make a motion?

Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to accept the planning commission work plan for the next two fiscal years as presented this evening.

Perfect.

Is there a second?

Second.

Great.

That was a motion from Councilmember G.

A second from Councilmember Howard.

Could we get a roll call vote, please?

We'll start with Councilmember Howard.

Yes.

Councilmember Padilla.

Yes, Councilmember Sturkin.

Yes.

Councilmember Chu.

Yes.

Council Member G.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Yes.

Mayor Martinez Sabayos.

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

Amazing.

Okay.

We will now move on to item 10 public hearings beginning with 10A.

Interim measures to support housing production and activation of commercial space and financial market constraints.

Incentive program for all residential developments and suspend green infrastructure development standards for commercial remodels.

We have assistant city manager Patrick Heisinger here to give us a presentation.

Thank you, Mayor.

Good evening, members of the city council, Patrick Heisinger, assistant city manager.

With me tonight will uh is Lynn Lancaster, our housing leadership manager.

Um she'll be chipping in on on some of the housing um questions, and then uh Tanisha Warner will be uh our director of engineering and transportation will be doing the the second part of the presentation tonight's presentation is a is a two-parter for you all, just like the staff report.

It's really two separate policy recommendations tonight.

We'll go through one presentation and then we'll take questions from there.

As far as the outline, like we typically do, we'll have questions for the city council to consider.

Um, I will go over the affordable housing incentive program, and I'll turn it over to Tanisha who will handle the uh green infrastructure, and then we'll turn it over to the city council for the recommendation and discussion.

Uh the questions for the city council.

Uh there's two for each, uh, two for the housing incentive and then two for the green infrastructure item.

Um question number one: does the city council have any questions about the city's housing pipeline?

The second housing question does the city council have any questions about the rationale behind staff's recommendation to establish the affordable housing incentive program.

Third question does the city council have any questions about the city's commercial vacancy rate?

And then finally, does the city council have any questions about the rationale behind suspending the green infrastructure program for commercial remodels?

By way of background, um the city of Redwood City adopted its housing element in April of 2023, was one of the the first in the state uh to achieve this this milestone.

The current housing element lays out the the policies, the plans, the objectives that really guide the city's housing policy and work for the next eight years.

What was included in the housing element is is the acronym that everybody loves to talk about RENA, or the regional housing needs allocation.

What this chart uh shows folks here is really what is the city committing to from a RENA perspective.

Um right now the city, basically saying over the next eight years, six years now because we're two years in, is the city's gonna do everything they can to create uh 4,500, about 4600 units, and as you can see, there's different income uh categories by those units, so it's not just market rate units, but it's a mix from extremely low, low, moderate, and above moderate.

So, like many folks say all units count, and every unit that is created does fit one of those uh four bands.

So, how are we doing?

Um, this information was presented uh back in March, and these figures are good through December of 2024.

Uh, but essentially we're about the 25 percent mark, and the city's a little bit behind.

Um, I don't want to alarm anybody.

That's that's usually how housing element processes work.

Uh it takes a little while to build a pipeline.

Um, but you know, if you fall behind each quarter or each half a year, you you'll fall fall farther and farther behind.

But really, the the uh column on the left shows the 4600 units essentially.

We should be at roughly 25 percent, which would be 1147 units, and we're about 831 currently, so about 18 percent, so about seven percent uh behind.

One thing I want to notice that it was in the staff report several times, and you'll see it in in the this presentation.

Um, to achieve RENA, only building permits polled count.

So we can talk about this real robust pipeline, but until those permits are polled, they do not count.

So you'll see we have an asterisk there and we have a couple other slides there.

So we really want to get folks thinking about that.

It's really about what actually gets gets pulled.

So a little bit behind.

So let's talk about the city's current inclusionary housing ordinance.

It's affordable housing ordinance, but really what it is the city's inclusionary housing ordinance?

As you can see, it pertains to both rental and ownership projects, as well as small projects.

On the rental side, it's a 20% obligation.

And then you can see there's a moderate of 10%, and then the low and the very low five and five percent, respectively.

On ownership, it's a straight 15% across the board for moderate.

For the smaller projects, five to nineteen units, those projects simply pay a fee.

So they don't have to create a unit on site, but they can pay a fee.

Folks may ask, well, what about one to four?

Essentially, those are exempt.

So if a project comes in and it's one to four units, they don't uh do anything.

This table will come back uh later.

Um so we're really talking about the affordable housing um that's created through the cities.

Again, I'll use the term inclusionary.

But then folks are like, but what's the gatekeeper and the development agreements?

Here are other ways in which the city is uh endeavoring to create different uh additional affordable housing.

So we do have the gatekeeper projects.

We have projects that are governed by development agreement.

Sometimes we dispose of land, we require developers to build affordable housing, and then we also do issue subsidies to affordable housing developers to build, usually 100% supportive housing.

Uh, sorry, 100% affordable housing development, sometimes supportive.

Um, so different tools to create the housing.

But again, really want to uh frame the discussion that for tonight we're talking really about the inclusionary housing um ordinance.

Um a little bit of background here.

Uh in April of 2024, the city council did approve a two-year economic development work plan that had a litany of of policy recommendations for economic development for the city's economic development program.

Um, created the the acronym of art, adapt, reimagine and thrive.

Um, really gonna just focus on adapt.

Adapt was really about providing to the extent possible flexibility to applicants, whether it's small businesses, developers, through this very difficult financial time.

Shortly after that process, we started sitting down and meeting with applicants to say, hey, what could it maybe take to get some of these projects moving forward?

So we met with housing developers, we met with um architects, we met with commercial brokers, um, we've met with several owners, uh, property owners who are just trying to get an ADU through or an SB9 lots, but really trying to get to the bottom of what are you facing out there, and is there anything the city can do within reason to try to move these projects forward?

Um, these five illustrations really identify what most of folks have been saying, and these aren't gonna be a surprise to anybody.

Interest rates remain high, the rising cost of construction continues to go up, inflation is really going up at the same time.

There are labor shortages, we've we've known that.

Um last December, things really started to get a little bit better, but that's when the tariff discussion started coming out.

So there is about a three-week period, and I'd say late November, early December, where you know we had a lot of calls, we're meeting folks, but as soon as the tariff discussion came in, everything came to a halt.

These are from large developers to folks uh trying to do new siding on homes.

The tariff stuff is real, and folks are it's very unpredictable.

So it's really put a um another layer of complexity around feasibility.

So we took that information and we tried to say like what can we do within reason?

Like I said, to try to figure out how to move some of these projects uh moving forward.

Um before doing that, I kind of want to define what we think as define as the pipeline.

These are projects that have either been approved and the construction has not commenced, so think of it as a stalled project, or a project, the second bullet there, a project that's been submitted and is currently under review.

We really have those two types of buckets of projects, the stalled, and then the others that have submitted thinking hopefully something gets better in the economy.

We'll just get the project built.

Sorry, we'll get the project entitled and see if it can work.

That was really our universe of outreach that we focused on.

As far as the residential developments, when you look at them that meet that definition, about 2,600 units in the pipeline.

That's a tremendous number, of which about a thousand are affordable.

So those do include the gatekeepers, those do include some projects with development agreements.

Those also include small seven-unit, you know, uh developments throughout the city.

So think large and big, but that's really the the true pipeline.

Um, and then we have the the point there on the right that RENA compliance is really measured by the number of building permits issued.

So again, trying to show that if if projects don't move forward, then we're gonna fall farther and farther behind.

Through this process, we started to really understand that there are other city priorities on the table here with these projects.

Um what this chart illustrates here, all the development impact fees that are basically tied up on with within these projects that are stalled or have not yet been approved.

Um, about 25.6 million dollars in in impact fees that fund our park uh expansion and maintenance of parks, transportation impact fees, water capacity fees, sewer capacity fees, and there are some that have small affordable housing impact fees as well.

When this is information was very compelling because at this time we started hearing what other jurisdictions were doing with regard to how they were trying to incentivize development, and we'll talk a little bit about that.

I think in the this slide right here.

So a lot of jurisdictions have taken pro, I would say been proactive and trying to move their housing pipeline as well.

Uh, the city of San Jose did it between a 30 and 50 percent reduction of all impact fees and other fees.

I say other fees because they do have construction taxes in San Jose.

Um, the 30 to the 50 spectrum was hey, if you can get in, you know, sooner, you can have a 50% reduction.

If you get in a little bit later, so again, trying to further incentivize it.

San Jose is unique as well because in North San Jose, they have a slightly different incentive program than downtown, but 30 to 50 percent across all fees is what it took to get projects moving forward.

In the city of San Francisco, they did a 45% reduction on affordable housing obligation for a time-limited duration.

I know Sal Salito isn't uh you know a great comp for the city of Redwood City, but this is relatively new.

But they eliminated all affordable housing obligations for smaller projects.

Um, City of Milbrae has paused all impact fee escalations.

Um, and then you'll start to see the this final bullet here is almost every week we see another jurisdiction, whether Santa Clara County or San Mateo County, either extending development agreements or um doing other types of things, maybe modifying conditions of approval to try to get projects to either move forward or at least maintain the entitlements that they currently had.

So, what is being recommended tonight?

Um, what staff's recommendation is to temporarily to do a temporary 25% reduction in housing obligations for eligible projects, which I'll talk about on my next slide.

So, what this table shows is is a 25% reduction, whether it's a rental project, a for sale project, or uh the fee.

So it's essentially the one I showed before, but with a new column to the right that showed what the developer, how the developer uh comply with uh a 25% reduction.

Keep in mind for let's say 100 unit uh multifamily development, um, they still have to achieve the number of moderate units, the number of low-income units, the number very low.

They can't just do all moderates or or or they could do all low if they wanted to, but um, for the most part, they still have to hit those bans.

So, who how do we define eligibility?

So on the left, it says any project obtains, sorry, project entitlements by June 30th of 2026, and obtains building permits.

Um, I'll just call it building permits, we can get into vertical construction, but a real building permit by June 30th of 2027 would be eligible.

By having the two dates, you really find out who's serious.

It's not just about getting an application in and then you're in, is you have to you have to get approval and you have to pull your building permits.

This is important again because RENA only counts if you get the building permits.

It's also very important to support the counter and engineering and the community development department to keep those to keep the lights on, as we say with bread and butter uh projects.

But really, what we're trying to do is say developers, if you or applicants, if you can meet these targets, then you will benefit, may benefit from the 25% reduction.

Again, on the right, we talk about the projects that aren't would not be eligible under this, so gatekeeper projects, um develop projects governed by a development agreement, or non-residential or commercial projects.

Reason being, especially for the gatekeeper and the development project or uh the development agreement projects is they have those their own independent processes, those have been individually negotiated.

Some have had ad hoc meetings, very comprehensive process, and some of the gatekeeper terms might be 10 years or whatnot, and we're just not ready to seek a lot of relief yet on those developments.

So then the question is is okay, um, of the current pipeline, how many may benefit.

Talked about the 2600 units before.

Right now there's about seven projects that meet the criteria for about twelve hundred and fifty-three units or two hundred and thirty-four uh affordable units.

Now, if this uh incentive program were to be approved, could a project come through and achieve those two dates that I talked about earlier?

They could, especially now with streamlining.

Um, and we did get some um emails recently from folks that were very appreciative that this was going to be discussed.

Um, but but right now we we have a solid uh batch of seven projects.

We don't know what's out there, what might be speculative.

Oh, let me back up.

I do want to say, as noted in the staff report is what really is on the line here is a reduction of about 57 affordable units.

When you look at all the projects and what a 25% reduction um would be, the staff does not take that lightly at all, but when you weigh the other impact fees and you look at the large amount of parking pack fees, especially is we tried to find trade-offs between other city priorities as well as the city's affordable housing goal.

And and luckily for us, we have such a robust pipeline of 100% affordable housing developments that we thought giving a little bit on the 57 units would help to preserve the other much needed impact fees uh programs.

So, as far as the staff the rationale for staff recommendation, we do think this would help the city achieve its RENA goals.

Um we have a really large, like I just mentioned, being a little redundant, large uh robust affordable housing pipeline.

Um the city does, and there's a there's a great attachment in the staff report that even when you show this modest um reduction of 25% of the affordable, we're then still in line with our neighboring jurisdictions, but at about 15% of their uh affordable housing obligations.

Um other jurisdictions have provided greater uh concessions.

I know we don't want to just hang our hat on other jurisdictions, but we really studied this hard and had really good open dialogue with with the applicants to figure out what is the bare minimum we might have to do.

Um, and we do like the amount of impact and other capacity fees that could really benefit other city uh obligations.

Um, key bullet here is just to remind everybody, know this.

If projects don't move forward, the city doesn't get anything.

And so, really, again, it's a balancing act.

The final thing I'll say on that similarly is we have projects right now that are fully entitled, you know, some of them with hundreds of units, that have said, you know what, if we could come in here and do 125 townhomes, you know, not a threat, but just saying that's really the only feasible thing, so and they have all the right in the world to do it.

And so, would it make would it be better public policy to try to find a way to get the 400 units or just simply say sure, submit the townhome uh project for 125?

No developer has said they want to do that, they're really trying to get the much higher density um product that was that was uh thought of through the original entitlement process.

My final slide before I turn it over to uh Tanisha is the planning commission did consider and did support uh this this uh proposal, um, let's say general uh support.

One commissioner did raise a concern about uh due to the fact that the item did not go to the the housing and human concerns committee.

Um, totally valid point.

Um, we did have internal discussions about it.

As you know, the planning commission does have purview over the zoning code, and it was really it would have just added two more months onto the process, but a really good point just wanted to acknowledge that um publicly.

Um, two commissioners did say, hey, we want you guys to monitor, and this isn't enough.

We'd really like to engage with you guys to see if further uh concessions would be required.

Um we said we thought we needed at least nine months to see how this would would play out before we'd even entertain that.

Um there was two public comments in support of it.

And with that, I will turn it over to Nisha.

She has much fewer slides than I did.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the city council, staff, and our community members.

My name is Tanisha Werner.

I'm the Director of Engineering and Transportation, and today I will be going over the green infrastructure portion of the presentation.

Before I start, I just want to say thank you to you have a really great land development team on your staff, and a lot of this work really wouldn't be possible without the outreach to stakeholders that Christian Craig and Patty Scrottenbauer have done on our team.

So I want to say thank you to them.

But green infrastructure is something that every single city in the Bay Area is required to do.

The whole purpose is to reduce the impact that development is having on our local waterways, our watershed, and that's through stormwater treatment and improving water quality.

Is through the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board.

They issue a municipal regional permit.

We call it the MRP to all of the municipalities within the San Francisco region.

Within this permit, we are required to have green infrastructure requirements for all new construction.

And we also have requirements in Redwood Cities individual green ordinance, green infrastructure ordinance policies for commercial remodel projects.

The green infrastructure, it's really trying to mimic what's happening in the natural environment.

It's using natural or engineered solutions to treat and manage stormwater runoff.

Some of the elements that we use are silva cells, bioretention areas or bioswells, pervious pavement, as well as green roofs.

One thing to really note about this green infrastructure requirement through the MRP is that it is an unfunded requirement.

So cities really rely on public and private developments to introduce this new infrastructure.

Thank you.

So since 2017, the city has been looking at ways to be proactive in how we are implementing the GI requirements.

And so if we start in 2017, the city approved a green infrastructure work plan.

And this work plan was really a long-term strategy to help us meet our green infrastructure goals.

Fast forward to 2019, the city implemented green infrastructure development standards, and this was for new buildings and substantial commercial remodels.

At the time, we were defining a substantial commercial remodel as a tenant improvement of 10,000 square feet or more.

Staff returned to the council to seek a revision to our green infrastructure policy.

And we wanted to change the threshold that would trigger GI improvements for commercial remodels from 10,000 square feet up to 25,000 square feet of remodeling.

The council did approve this, and the council did ask us to analyze the impacts that RGA policy was having on the community, as well as just to reach out to our partner stakeholders and other jurisdictions.

One really interesting thing to note is the MRP requires that we have five acres of green infrastructure treatment, and that is through June 30th of 2027.

Redwood City has been very proactive in implementing or introducing green infrastructure to a majority of the projects that the large projects that come through.

Some of the notable projects that you may be aware of are in 2022, the CZI headquarters.

They completed their construction and their construction included bioretention areas.

We have two projects that are currently under construction, pretty close to completion, and that's Elco Yards and the Broadway Plaza projects.

Those will be treating the frontage street frontage with bioretention measures.

We've had a lot of projects since 2017 that have contributed to our tally for green infrastructure.

And as of 2021, Redwood City was at 18.48 acres, which is well above the five-acre minimum.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

So throughout the implementation of our GIP, we've been looking at engaging with different stakeholders to really understand how is this impacting the community and how are we, as compared to our partners in our neighboring jurisdictions.

There were three key items that kind of rose to the top in our discussions.

The first was that it can be cost prohibitive.

The cost of labor and materials are rising.

In order to implement a green infrastructure strategy, developers have to engage with a specialized civil engineer in order to design it.

That is an additional expense.

Another of the three factors that rose to the top in our stakeholder coordination was competitiveness with neighboring jurisdictions.

So Redwood City has been very progressive in its implementation of GI, and we are not in line with what our other neighboring cities are doing.

The other neighboring cities are not imposing GI on commercial remodel projects.

And then the third item that really rose to the top was the vacancy rate.

In Redwood City, in and around the downtown area, we have a 35% vacancy rate.

When we compare that to our neighbors, Minlo Park is at 24.5% vacancy, Mountain View is at 26 point, sorry, 28.5, and then Palo Alto is at 9.4.

Just to break down the Redwood City number a little further, the 35% is only looking at in and around downtown.

But if we look at Redwood Shores, we're at a 17.1 vacancy rate.

So throughout the city, we are experiencing vacancies.

Next slide, please.

Our proposed approach that's before you today is to suspend the green infrastructure development standards for commercial remodels until such time that those standards are fully adopted by the San Francisco Bay Area National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, our municipal regional permit.

Next slide, please.

And then the rationale for the staff recommendation.

That's great news for Redwood City.

Our current requirements that are in place, we have seen feedback that it is placing the city at a slight disadvantage in attracting new employers to our area when we're comparing to our neighboring cities that don't have this commercial remodel requirement as part of the GI policy.

And then we don't really know what's going to happen officially with the policy from the regional water board, but they may eventually mandate that GI requirements are included for all commercial remodels.

If they do, that would put all of the cities in our jurisdiction in our region on an equal footing.

And then our green infrastructure for small tenant improvements could also place an additional financial burden on the business community who already have very limited budgets.

And with that, I will pass it back to Patrick Heisinger.

Tanisha?

So the recommendation is before you.

I will not read it.

And then the same questions as before.

So with that, we appreciate your patience.

We'll turn it back over to the mayor.

Thank you.

Thank you, Patrick.

Thank you, Tanisha, for the great presentation.

We'll now turn it over for public comment.

Thank you.

No speaker cards or we do have a couple raised hands on Zoom.

Any speakers in the audience who would like to speak on this item this evening?

Seeing none, we'll turn to our Zoom participants.

We have two speakers.

We'll start with Michael Arusa, who will be followed by Clara Jekyll.

Welcome, Michael.

Hello, um, hello, members of city council.

My name is Michael Arusa.

I'm a Redwood City resident and volunteer lead for a peninsula for everyone.

I'd like to speak in support of the proposed affordable housing ordinance incentive program, as I think it could go a long way towards helping the city spur more housing development in the midst of the current development slowdown.

While inclusionary zoning can be a useful tool for producing affordable housing and meeting arena goals, setting the rates too high can have notable trade-offs on overall housing construction.

The Berkeley Tanner Center released a study in April of last year simulating the impact of various different inclusionary zoning rates on both market rate housing production and affordable housing rate production in Los Angeles.

And they found that not only can high inclusionary zone rates significantly reduce the production of market rate housing, but large rates can actually have diminishing returns on affordable housing production as the number of total units built starts diminishing at a faster rate.

In fact, they found increasing the rate past 25% actually produces a net reduction in total affordable units as a reduction in overall development starts to decrease too sharply to keep up with.

The proposed temporary rate of 15% better trades off the need to build more affordable housing with the need to increase overall development of new housing in the current development environment with higher interest rates and tariffs increasing construction costs.

We've already seen an overall slowdown in construction with multiple projects being withdrawn or delayed due to no longer penciling.

The city should consider any and all levers available to help counteract the slowdown, and a temporary reduction in inclusionary zoning is one potential tool that has research backing its effectiveness.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Clara Jekyll.

Thank you.

Um I want to ask you to consider keeping the required percentages the same for the very low and low-income households at 5% each.

Uh and if there must be a reduction to focus it on the moderate category.

I think it's important to protect the people who are least able to find housing otherwise without the benefit of these policies.

And I also want to urge you if you reduce the affordable housing requirements to put in place even stronger measures and other aspects of the anti-displacement policy and tenant protections to compensate for what we'd be giving up in the new developments.

Thanks.

Thank you.

And that concludes public comment mayor.

I'll turn it back to you.

Great.

Thank you, City Clerk, and thank you to our public commenters for this item who'd like to get us started.

Oh, sorry, I should clarify.

So we have a big topic on many incentives.

We thought it'd be helpful to break the conversation into the incentives on housing, and then we'll speak on the incentives on green infrastructure.

Just to make sure we're not sort of mixing up the two, and we can give each item its time, but who would like to go first?

Vice Mayor?

Well, I don't have to go first.

Um, but I can.

Please.

So on the housing, let me get my notes here.

This is really difficult for me.

Um, I have a couple of questions.

This site, this is really hard for me.

I've had to think a lot about it.

Uh so let me start with the question.

So you you referred to attachment C, which um describes the percentage of inclusionary inclusionary percentages for neighboring towns in Santa San Mateo and Santa Clara County.

So it's very helpful and it gives a context.

What in addition is that report that's scheduled to come out in 2026?

In other words, what more do we need to study other than knowing what other people are doing?

Maybe that's a naive question.

Are you no great are you referring to the 21 elements work we're embarking on?

Uh let's see.

It is from page three of your staff reports I believe so.

Where you talk about a um study that is it is an it is anticipated AHO was let's see it is anticipated that the studies will be completed by the summer of 2026 and that the planning commission and city council will review potential revisions to the AHO in the fall of 2026.

So sort of behind that question is why don't we wait till then if we're doing a study and the planning commission and the council are going to really dive deep what is it we're studying that we haven't already studied and why don't we wait till then to make this change is the question.

Thank you.

I'm gonna turn it over to our housing leadership manager Elena Lancaster to provide a little bit of context on what that work is and then I'll I'll take the second part of that question after.

Hi good evening Alyn Lancaster Housing Leadership Manager.

So the study that we are going to be undertaking in collaboration with 10 other jurisdictions in San Mateo County is a new Nexus study.

So this is looking at the impact on development has on affordable housing and establishing um a potentially new impact fee rate and then we're also going to be looking at the feasibility of what what rate can we charge and still make development feasible as well as looking at what inclusionary requirements we should charge or not charge implement and still still being feasible.

The last time we did this was in 2015.

2015?

Yes so about 10 years ago so we are looking to update those studies to reflect kind of the current market in today and we're doing that in collaboration with 10 other jurisdictions.

Thank you so much that context is helpful and then you're Patrick going to answer the other yeah thank you and one of the one of the reasons why we really had a a much an 18 month process was it's going to take a while to go through the the process that Elena said it really comes to being proactive and trying not to wait those 18 months so what can we do in the interim to bridge the gap to try to get some more units uh pulling those per much needed permits.

Fair enough and and my compliments to the staff it's a it's a very well written report and you you do lay out the immediacy the need and I I appreciate that it's still hard for me.

Then I have another um in the staff report something that was interesting to me let me find it no it's in yeah here it is um so uh something that was interesting to me is that we're reducing the number of affordable units if if we approve this tonight by about 42 or 47 something like that but what's interesting to me is in the staff report it says that um so certain units that were deed restricted and affordable therefore had no um what do you call that um impact fees they're now market rate and so they have are subject to impact fees and what was interesting to me is that you're not hearing pushback from the developers about oh gosh we we have to pay those impact fees they're kind of like we'd rather pay the impact fees and have market rate than not have to pay impact fees but have to build market rate that kind of jumped out at me and I'd just be interested in any reflection you had about that.

Yeah it's a good point I not to speak for you, Vice Mayor, but I think we're alluded to is really the park impact fee for the most part where there's a 50% reduction on park impact fees for moderate income units or a hundred percent reduction on anything below that.

And if if those 57 units if they went to market then yes the impact fee would apply to that.

The conversations with the applicants have been so respectful in that they're like we're not trying to get out of that.

But when you when you pro forma a restriction because the the the rental restriction will be for 55 years the difference of the lost opportunity to have a unit for 55 years where they could collect 1500 or 2000 per month less is far larger than uh an increase in the park impact fee.

So at no time was any of the applicants saying oh we also need to get out of that no it was like you know what we think we can make that work that's how how good those conversations have gone everybody's really pulling out the pencil trying to try to make that stuff work.

But yes it would increase the park impact fee on those the um just impact fees not necessarily park impact but impact fees well the most of the impact fees are there's not really reductions on some with the transportation but like sewers are a straight number but you know it's really the park impact fee that adjusts based on whether it's affordable or not okay fair fair enough that thank you that that's just really great context and so I'll I'll I'll wind up here those are my questions.

So I'll wind up so it's really important to me that the proposed 25% reduction will sunset in 2027 when we have that more in depth report that's that's that's really valuable to me.

However I'm concerned that a dangerous precedent will be set um and and I want to give some context here a dangerous precedent that you know these impact fees were the result of studies going back years and years and this precedent of saying well the economy's bad so we're gonna back down from those very studied very specific community benefits.

And I want to add another context to that and and I want to make sure that we none of us forget that the downtown precise plan was uh implemented in 2011 and it wasn't until 2016 four years later or 2015 four years later that we implemented any kind of impact fee system.

So we were we were already behind in 2015 and there was a lot of movement from 2011 to 2015.

So that's another thing that really is very sobering to me that we're backing down because of economic reasons when we were already four years behind when we started in 2015 and and 2011 to 2015 saw so much activity in our downtown great activity wonderful activity beautiful but lost opportunities so this is very sobering for me to then say we're backing down how however and and so I want to be very intentional about stating that however this report is is written very well and you have presented very important reasoning and the impact the uh balancing and what what really um matters to me or something that convinces me to go along with the staff recommendation is uh that we um we are in line if we if we lower it we are in line with most of the other jurisdictions and I do believe there is um an economic stress um and we we are a community we have to work together so I will be supporting this reluctantly supporting this staff housing recommendation.

Thank you for getting us started, Vice Mayor.

Any other thoughts on the housing incentives?

Oh, thank you, Council member chuckle um so first of all, thank you so much uh for a terrific presentation.

Um, just gonna pull up my notes here.

Um so um I uh I was really um how can I say it?

My instinct is to be a huge fan of inclusionary zoning.

Um, mostly because it integrates lower income unit, you know, lower income individuals and in uh units that are available at a lower price with you know, sort of all the other housing, and there's not a you know, this building is for lower income people and this building is for rich people.

I love the inclusion of those units.

However, the last couple years um there's been more and more evidence that it actually encumbers and inhibits housing, that the net effect, even though it might create you know, sort of a lottery winning for whoever gets one of those very rare, very precious affordable units, that the net effect is less housing overall, which deeply impacts the affordability of housing for everybody, uh including those who don't qualify and who may not qualify for one of those units but are still struggling to stay here, um, and that it can actually have a net result of fewer affordable units because you know, 20% of zero is zero, or 20% of a much smaller number uh is a smaller number.

And so uh, you know, I I share the vice mayor's sort of disappointment and reluctance.

I love the idea of inclusionary zoning, but if it's not actually producing what we want, uh then we have to be very outcomes focused.

Um, you know, so I don't want to let perfect be the enemy of good.

Um, I think the other thing, you know, I've been thinking a lot about is that we shift a lot of the costs of housing, you know, affordable housing and new infrastructure, like a huge fraction of those costs are shifted on to new housing.

And we have to remember that the people who are living in that housing are often younger and poorer and newer than the people, you know, like myself who've been fortunate enough to be here for a long time and purchased a home and sort of locked in, you know, sort of very affordable taxes and things like that at a you know their their mistake is being born 15, 20 years later.

And so I think if we really want something and we want equity, then we shouldn't be encumbering uh and shifting costs to to young people to new people to renters.

Uh, that those costs of affordable housing should be more equally distributed throughout the population, and so I would be even interested, not now but in the future, looking at um, you know, sort of we could have inclusionary zoning mandates, but it would be a funded mandate where there was resources from the city to cover that.

Obviously, not now.

Um I was also very supportive of the recommendation uh per the planning commission to evaluate the outcome and keep a close eye on sort of how things turn out.

Are you know, are we accomplishing our goal as 15% enough?

Um, I was also very supportive of the idea.

Um, one of the the uh community members commented that if the 25% was worth an absolute amount, like let's say 25% or sorry, not 25%, say 15% of the project, the you know, the moderate, the low, and the very low were worth say a million dollars, that if a developer were willing and able to do more low and very low uh units and be exempt from the moderate rate units since moderate rate units tend to be very close to market price.

Um, I would be very interested in allowing them the flexibility to make that swap.

Um, I I'm not wanting to require it, but I would certainly be very supportive of letting them trade moderate units for very low and low-income units.

Um and then, you know, again, just you know, the most important thing we can do to make housing affordable is to have an abundant supply of it, and so for that reason, um I'm very supportive of this uh recommended ordinance.

Thanks.

Thank you, Councilmember Chu.

Coming back to the days.

Any other comments on housing?

We'll go to Councilmember Paddy.

Yes, I'm very supportive of it.

I think that it's important to reassess, and I think we need more housing of all types, so um, I appreciate the effort.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember, Councilmember Howard.

Oh, thank you.

Uh thank you very much for a very thorough, thorough report.

And I really want to thank the planning commission who gave a lot of thought and uh the great conversations that they had.

I want uh the one uh planning commissioner, uh, I spoke with him and he said it it his concerns were he didn't feel that housing and human concerns was brought into it, that there was enough engagement.

However, this is a critical time, and I think that's probably part of the reason why it was moving more quickly, but I want to thank him for bringing it up because it just adds to the what I said before about the importance of talking with each other, so that one isn't guessing what the other's doing or doing work that maybe could be duplicated and doesn't need to be.

Those kinds of things could be remedied remedied with communication with each of the bodies that you work with or overlap with.

So uh I was going to say um it's amazing.

We have such progressive policies in Redwood City regarding uh green infrastructure and include that one yet.

I know.

Oh, sorry.

Uh, where was I?

Uh we have progressive policies in Redwood City, and it and it seems like because of this unusual time of stalled development, it's coming to bite us.

Uh, you know, it 18 acres.

That I know it's another topic for the this evening, but just the number of houses that we've committed to building and and made and start making significant progress in this area, it kind of hurts a little that uh we have to say, gotta back up now and slow down a little bit.

However, this is an unusual time.

There's no taking it out of this it's crazy time.

And when you've got high inflation, you've got construction costs, labor shortages all over the peninsula.

All of this adds up to not being able to get the job done.

So I want to commend the staff because maybe the easy thing would have been to look at all fees and just take a percentage off or do but we what you did was better, and I'm not going to say any other city should do it differently.

But for us, I think it you did a great job.

Where are we losing our competitive ability?

It could be right now with those very two things we're asked to make adjustments to.

And if we are losing our competitive edge, that would be a disaster.

And I don't want to see that happen.

It is a temporary measure.

I I feel we'll get back on our feet and we'll be able to write the ship at some point.

But I do understand the need for this now, and I am going to support it.

I know we'll produce less units, but we're going to produce units.

And as you said, if we do nothing, we could come up with an empty basket of nothing to offer for RENA, and that would be tragic in itself.

I'm hoping this will help the vacancy rate factor.

It says in the report that you strongly feel it'll stimulate our economic development and our workforce development, and I sure hope that turns out to be true.

I'm sure you'll be monitoring that and getting back to us on that subject.

And um I'm glad it's temporary.

I hope we do become more competitive.

We were 18 acres, my gosh, we're clearly way ahead of most of our friends, but I'm glad we have the 18 acres.

So anyway, thank you.

I I on the housing, I'm comfortable with this, especially because your report was really thorough, and I had the chance to digest it and understand better why this is being done.

So thank you to you and the planning commission and the staff.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard.

Councilmember G.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um Patrick, Galen, Jeff, the entire team.

The most important thing here is the outreach you did to see what the barriers were.

I mean, most often the people we see here at the Planning Commission or at a council meeting with a project aren't the ones making the decision.

It's the equity partner back looking at a pro forma spreadsheet to see if the math works.

And they're usually home or their office in New York or Chicago or someplace else, but they never come to our meetings.

So talking to the applicants, asking them the question what can we do to help make a difference is really really critical.

And then sharing that information at the Planning Commission and here at the council and with the public.

So thank you for doing that.

I think it is a very unusual time.

And you know, when you look at attachment C, Redwood City is a leader.

That is a good thing.

And during some stressful economic times, that could be a bad thing in both of these items before us.

I mean, here we have 20 cities just in San Mattel County, and five of them have the highest in Redwood City's one of them, inclusionary provisions.

You know, the better question for me is how come the other cities aren't doing their part?

And that has been the perpetual argument in this county.

We have done our part.

How come you haven't another city in San Mattel County?

And the easy answer for some of those electeds, well, my constituents don't want it here.

They don't want affordable housing in our community.

But if we all did our fair share, or did a little bit more than our fair share, it wouldn't be as bad as that we're doing and being challenged with right now.

And Redwood City can't solve the affordable housing crisis in San Mateo County alone.

I appreciate that this is a temporary one.

I am counting on your conversations that you had.

If the council does approve this, this will unlock these projects and move these projects forward.

So we're taking your word and the words of the people you talk to that this will make a difference.

And if they don't, coming back with their word again is gonna be a little bit different.

But I'm hopeful that these will make a big difference.

Um it's a short timeline.

Entitlements by July, or entitlements by June of next year, and permit by the June of the following year, that's not a lot of time because applicants aren't gonna bet on permit drawings until they have their entitlements.

So that means if they are entitled by July 1 of 26, they'll probably have to have their permit applications six, seven months later to allow staff to have time to do review and permit.

That's not a lot of time.

So we'll know pretty quickly if this is successful or not.

And so um again, the most important thing for me was if the applicants have said we're gonna unlock all this stuff if we council approves it, we'll know pretty darn quickly.

The other part is because of that speed and that timeliness, I would like to give you and the team the flexibility to negotiate whatever it's however that 15% works.

You know, I don't want to hamstring staff and the applicant.

I'm I'm okay with the 20 to 15, but I don't want to go any further between, you know, I'm gonna know 10, 2.5, whatever the numbers are.

You need to work with the applicants to make sure that math works.

I mean, I think you mentioned like, or Lynn said $2,000 difference maybe in rent.

With the five 55-year deed restricted on one unit, that $2,000 difference is 1.3 million a year times 55 years.

That's a long time.

And if you say that's 10 units, that's a big number that without tax credits, without public assistance or other funding, it's hard to just absorb that rent.

So I would like to just give you and the team the flexibility to work on that 15% between low, very low, and whatever the math may be needed to make this an effective policy to unlock those housing units.

So thank you, Mayor.

Great.

Thank you, Councilmember G.

Councilmember Sirkin.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, staff, everyone, for all of your hard work on this, um, and for the outreach, as was mentioned that you conducted as well.

Thank you so much.

I admit I wasn't initially a little skeptical uh and sensitive about reducing the number of potential affordable units, but I do um understand that, you know, if these projects don't go through, then we don't get any units, right?

Affordable or otherwise.

And so it is critical that we uh at least help them along in some small way.

Um I was, you know, open to the idea, uh, and it was reinforced by one of the members of the public that made a public comment about maintaining the percentage levels for the extremely low income and low-income units.

But I do understand, as you know, Councilmember G mentioned that that flexibility is crucial uh in and making a project a pencil and infeasible.

Um and also just considering the cost of one unit is what million dollars more.

Um, yeah, thank you.

Over a million dollars now, so every bit counts.

And um, you know, I also reached out to Hart and to you know one of our former assistant city managers just to get a uh additional feedback, his second opinion, um, in addition to our expert staff's opinion.

Um, and they said the same thing that you know the current uh rates are onerous and is well intentioned but uh onerous.

Um and it does, I think as was stated, you know, put us at a competitive disadvantage uh to other cities in the county.

So I see the necessity uh to lower these percentages for the time being.

Um I will be supporting uh this.

Well, I know we're not there yet, but I will be supporting this part for sure.

Thank you.

Great, thank you, Councilmember Sturkin.

Well, I'll add my support for staff's recommendation.

I like so many of my colleagues was very sensitive to changing our affordable housing ordinance.

Uh from my planning commissioner days, I thought we could go deeper and create a goal for extremely low-income units, but it costs a lot more money to reach that level of affordability, right?

And so it's it's gonna be fewer and harder to come by.

Um, I think aside from just the sort of economic environment we're finding ourselves in.

I mean, Councilmember G mentioned all of the tax credits and incentives that the federal government offers, those are drying up and changing.

And this is one of the few levers that we have to be able to help unlock these units and at least secure more than a thousand housing units, um, is incredible.

And also, you know, the many 26 million dollars of impact fees that we're catching up on, right, is for our current infrastructure, our current neighbors, right, provide the service levels that they're expecting to.

So, you know, it's um I think the way that staff has thought about this, having those two checkpoints, right, to make sure that the folks who are gonna go through this process are really serious about making sure that they'll be able to pull entitlements and get shovels in the ground.

I think that's incredibly smart.

Um, so you know, I'll leave that there.

I know we have green infrastructure next, so I just wanted to say, of course, yeah.

Um, I as to the flexibility on low, very low, and moderate, I think it was council member Chu who started that conversation, and then council member G and Stirken Wade in.

I'm all for flexibility, but what I'm not um what I'm not liking, and I think Councilmember Chu said that as well.

I don't want to increase the number of moderate, um, because they're basically market rate, it's kind of like giving a tax subsidy to so I I'm okay at increasing low and very low or giving flexibility on that.

But for me, I'm not okay with um incentivizing more moderate.

That's me.

And just to clarify, there is a what we call an equivalency standard built into the ordinance where we can shift around between low and and moderate, but but so there are there are safeguards in place where we can't go all martyr already, but we can play within the band somewhat, which has helped.

Yeah, so I just I wouldn't want that playing.

I wouldn't want to give you more freedom to have more moderate, in my opinion.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

And before we go to Councilmember Chu, I think our city attorney has her hand raised.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

I actually was going to ask a Lynn to speak to exactly what Patrick spoke to since we've had had multiple council members talk about the flexibility of providing different mixes, and just wanted to highlight that you already have that built into your ordinance and your regulations, so that staff and you can and the planning commission, you know, can approve affordable housing plans that have that type of flexible um you know kind of configuration that that they're able to make.

Thank you, Veronica.

Appreciate the input there, and we'll go over to Councilmember Chu.

Um, so you know, at the risk of belaboring the point, um the vice mayor is correct.

I I would wanted to give them the flexibility if they're willing to swap out their moderate rate units for more low or very low, that that could be a trade um as long as they come out kind of at the same absolute value.

Um but it sounds like it's already in place, so we don't even have to worry about it.

Great, thank you, Councilmember Chu.

And we'll move on to green infrastructure.

Does anyone have comments on the incentives for GI?

Go with Councilmember Howard.

Well, I'll I'll just say again, eighteen acres.

That's fabulous.

Let's not lose it.

Let's hold on to it, put it in the bank and hold it there for a while.

Um I'm very proud that we're able to do that.

So but I can we've done some wonderful work in that area, but at this critical time, I can understand why you chose to back off a little bit because it's unfunded mandates we're dealing with at this time, which have always been very frustrating for not just us, but for anybody who in any city, any county, we're all dealing with that.

But thank you.

That's all I had to say.

I'm glad we have the 18.

We won't lose the 18.

And uh, everyone else in the county, please catch up with us.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard.

We'll go to Councilmember Chu next.

Um, just a clarifying question.

Um, so I noticed that we have a vac uh office vacancy rate of 35 percent.

What is sort of a healthy range of sort of vacancy in a healthy dynamic circulating market?

Um do we have a target?

Uh they can I mean, zero would be ideal, but I just don't know how.

Um it's a it's a tough question, and you Councilmember G might have a better answer for you.

I'll give you my my pers perspective.

I think most cities I've worked in, 10 to 15 is pretty healthy.

Now Palo Alto is is usually an outlier and and whatnot, but cities that can achieve a 10 to 15 are are usually pretty successful.

Okay, so 35% sounds like kind of a hair on fire, like we have to really be thoughtful about this.

Um, so you know, I I kind of uh echo my colleagues' comment that you know we need to kind of get that number down if doing this helps and we already have more than you know is required.

Um, so all the similarly to the inclusionary zoning, I'm bummed.

I love the idea of this kind of infrastructure, but um it's more important to get our offices filled.

I'll be supporting it.

Thank you, Councilmember Chu.

We'll go to Councilmember Sergeant.

All right, really quick.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, and thank you so much, uh, Director Warner.

Um, I I was really you know saddened to hear that five to six large employers, I think that including some retailers, you know, walked away because of the green infrastructure uh requirements, so definitely want to avoid that in the future.

We can some supportive of this um temporary uh waiving of this uh requirement and and recognizing that you know eventually the uh regional water quality control board will likely require it.

And so seeing they have not yet done so um I understand we can let it go for now.

Um but ultimately want to make sure that we're filling these downtown vacancies in my district, especially here in downtown.

So um thank you, and we will be supporting uh both of these items.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

We'll go to Councilmember G.

Thank you, Mayor.

Tanisha, thank you very much for the update.

Uh I think there's a couple important things that you said in your presentation.

Number one, um, this the green infrastructure requirements.

They're on an unfunded mandate.

The codes were passed, the ordinances were required, but there was no money provided, and it was up to individual cities and jurisdictions to come up with their own funding stream to fund this.

Echoing Councilmember Stirken, it's very, very disappointing to learn that we've had potential businesses look at Redwood City, and this was maybe not the only reason, but one of the reasons why they chose another jurisdiction.

Because we again were leading, but when other cities were waiting, they may have been at least a number from a number standpoint more financially attractive to go to another city.

And so my position, and I if I recall correctly, I was the one voted only no vote on this when it first came forward, is that would put Redwood City at a competitive disadvantage.

And we're not going to get those five businesses back, I don't think.

Just if the council were to approve it tonight, but like to make sure we avoid giving businesses the reason to not strongly consider locating here in Redwood City.

And so thank you again for the outreach to the applicants and to the business community who looked at Redwood City and the brokers who are talking to potential businesses and tenants that come to Redwood City and trying to find out where the levers are that we can say locate Redwood City, bring your business, bring all the people you have, shop Redwood City, Redwood City, be part of Redwood City.

So I support this, and I think there will be a time where the Regional Water Quality Control Board says everybody has to have something, but for those cities that have something and the rest don't.

It puts us at a very difficult competitive disadvantage.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember G.

We'll go to Vice Mayor Aiken.

Thank you, and thank you for the excellent report, and thank you for calling out your your colleagues who did a lot of the yeoman's work.

That's very generous of you, and I thank them as well.

Um I'm just I'm I'm proud that we have green infrastructure standards that exceed others.

Um it's important to our safety.

It is uh I do acknowledge that it is creating a problem in terms of um new business, and that's important too.

And so you're doing a balancing act here.

This this is hard for me.

I do look forward to the day when um green infrastructure is required uh by the state so that it's an a level playing field.

I don't think the answer is let's not do green, and just cater to business.

I don't think that's the answer.

I think the answer is a level playing field where everyone has to do green, and I think that's I hope that's coming, and I think a level playing field is important.

Um but just for myself, I'm proud that we exceed that our green infrastructure requirements exceed other jurisdictions.

That's I'm proud of that.

Uh let's see.

I do understand it's a balancing act and that there are multiple factors to weigh, and I understand that we can't afford to continue to lose business, but I'm also concerned that it will be harder in the future to reinstate these green infrastructure policies once the economy improves.

Businesses aren't going to volunteer.

Oh, hey, the economy's better.

Why don't you put more regulations on me because it's good for the environment?

That's not the way the world works.

So it's it's very hard for me.

It's it's a bitter pill for me to swallow to um because it's it's always easier to take away a regulation than to impose a regulation.

Um and I it also, as with the other, it I don't like the precedent that it sets that.

Oh, we can reduce our regulations if the economy is bad.

You know, again, these regulations took a long time to implement.

There was a lot of study.

So, this is really really hard for me.

Um, you're uh before I go to my conclusion.

I just want to, this is a side note, but council member Chu brought it up and others have too.

But I'm just gonna say a 35% vacancy rate of office.

Why would we build more office if we already have a 35% vacancy rate?

It's that's just an obvious statement, but that's on a different subject.

I will be supporting this staff recommendation.

It's well reasoned, it's a balancing act.

I am um I hope it will be temporary, and I hope that everyone will be required to have these uh this green infrastructure because we need it to keep us safe.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Any other comments?

Not seeing any here at the dais or online.

I'll add my thanks.

Thank you, Tanisha, for the great presentation.

Um, you know, it's hard going seventh after we have two discussions, but my colleagues have said it.

You know, I um normally wouldn't support reducing right our our leadership on green infrastructure on affordable housing, right?

But the times we're finding in ourselves are finding ourselves in right now.

Um the prospects of losing these projects of losing more companies that are gonna bring business to Redwood City, bring jobs, right, is um isn't something I'm willing to let pass by.

And the sunset date is really important and it'll only be until 2027.

Um, and then we'll have a chance to recalibrate and figure out what things um should come back, what things may need tweaking if they're gonna come back.

So um that makes me feel really good about supporting the the entire staff recommendation today.

So thank you, Tanisha.

That's is there a motion?

Councilmember Sirkin.

I would like to make a motion to approve the staff recommendation.

Uh shall I read the whole thing?

Or do I need the room?

Both recommendations warnings.

Actually, if it's on the slide, if we could just go to the the two slides with the recommendations, then you can just acknowledge that you're moving the the staff recommendation.

I think we're good.

All right, so they'd like to uh make a motion to approve the staff recommendations one and two.

And we're still getting to the right slide, so just give us one moment.

It should be toward the end.

There we go.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Perfect.

That was a motion from Council Member Sergen.

I see Councilmember Chu's hands raised.

Second.

Perfect.

So a motion from Sturkin, a second from Councilmember Chu.

Could we get a roll call vote, please?

We'll start with Councilmember Padilla.

Yes.

Council Member Sturkin.

Yes.

Councilmember Chu.

Yes.

Councilmember G.

Yes.

Councilmember Howard.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Yes, Mayor Martinez Sabayos.

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

Wonderful.

Thank you, everybody.

With that, we will move on to item 10B, introducing an ordinance adopting the 2025 California State Building and Fire Codes by reference and local amendments.

There to chapters 9 and 12 and municipal code amendments.

There to chapter 14 refuse read nuisance and abandoned shopping carts regulation and abatement and code enforcement generated permits and chapter 24 noise regulation.

Community development director Jeff Schwab, Chief Building Official and Community Development Services Manager Christina McTaggart and Fire Chief Marshal Janice Chung are here and will be giving the staff presentation.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Sabayos.

Martinez Sabas and members of the council.

I'm joined tonight, as you noted, by our chief building official Christina McTaggart and our fire marshal Janice Chung, and to review the proposed building code and fire code adoption along with some local amendments and some local municipal code amendments.

I did want to acknowledge the team behind this effort.

It has been a big team.

In addition to the folks that I mentioned, we've have um two of our management analysts, Varshayan and Giovanna Erkut, and our building secretary, Ashley Vendell.

A number of building inspectors have also contributed to this, and Chief Carter is also here to assist with the fire thing.

Next slide, please.

Next slide.

These are the questions, and you'll have an opportunity to ask about these different areas of the code that we're amending.

And then finally, next slide.

And the reasons for it.

Every three years, typically, the state building standards commission updates the standard fire and building codes and to incorporate new technology, safety standards, and efficiency requirements and methods.

This process ensures that the building's community or the state's buildings and communities are safe, sustainable, and resilient.

Cities may adopt uh state codes as is, or if they don't do anything, the state codes will take effect.

But it does usually give us a limited window to consider local amendments, and that typically happens between the release of the building codes in July and the end of the year when we have to have our adoption done.

This year, however, with the state budget bills, uh AB 130 accelerated that time frame, and it really gave us uh until the end of this month to adopt any local amendments to the code.

After that, uh the residential component of the building codes will be frozen.

Next slide.

And this freeze period lasts for six years from October of 25 to June of 2031.

And so it's important for us to uh adopt these local codes now, so that because we won't have that much opportunity going forward.

There are a few exceptions.

Uh, a couple of those are listed on the slide here.

Uh we can adopt amendments for home hardening and wildfire mitigation, such as defensible space and fire resistant materials.

And I'll note the new building code actually contains a new chapter on this topic and it is moving in that direction already.

Uh it does provide for an exception for emergencies for health and safety risks.

This typically occurs sometimes after, say a major earthquake.

They discover different methods and techniques.

Um, so there may be some ability to amend codes after that.

And then the one that we're using tonight is really any previously adopted uh revisions.

So we're hoping to meet that window and get it done before September 30th with tonight's public hearing and then the following one on September 29th.

And then there is another special provision in there that might allow us to go further with codes that would help with climate uh resilience and climate adaptability, energy efficiency, if you will.

It's a little unclear based on the language in the law as to how this might work, but it generally looks like if the general plan and the climate action plan adopted before June of 25, which is our case, might give us some flexibility to push the envelope further.

And so we're basically going to take a look at that uh as we go into future years.

And with that, I think I'm going to turn it over to Christina McTaggart right now, and she'll highlight some of the state residential building code changes.

Great.

Thank you, Jeff.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council members.

I wanted to share some highlights of the 2025 residential building codes, including those listed on this slide, such as all electric is the baseline for new homes, EV readiness, increased ventilation and water efficiency, and additional safety features shown on this slide.

As such, the new state code exceeds the energy efficiency requirements of the city's prior reach codes for new construction.

Next slide.

Some key commercial code updates focus heavily on electrification, requiring most new construction commercial buildings to have solar panels with battery storage, while also significantly increasing EV charging requirements for all property types.

There are tougher seismic anchorage rules for equipment, and the new standards allow for much taller mass timber buildings.

Accessibility standards are more stringent with the focus on accessible housing units and assuring proper access to EV charging stations.

Again, the new state code exceeds the energy efficiency requirements of the city's prior reach codes for new construction.

Next slide.

This slide explains the new all-electric baseline requirement.

For all new construction, the code now sets a performance benchmark that makes building all electric the easiest way to comply.

It also future proofs any building with gas to make sure it is ready for an easy switch to electric later on, and it includes certain exceptions for commercial kitchens and labs.

Next slide.

Under the 2025 code, additions, remodels to existing buildings are not grandfathered in and now trigger updates to meet all current safety and efficiency standards.

For example, this requires installing high efficiency appliances, EV chargers when altering parking, modern electrical safety outlets, and stricter fire standards for exterior renovations to home located in the wildlife urban interface.

Next slide.

The prior local reach code amendments will not be carried forward since the new state building code now sets all electric as a baseline for new construction.

In addition to adopting state codes, we propose local code amendment updates, which are primarily administrative clarifications, such as residential address numbers must now be illuminated and clearly visible from the street to assist emergency responders.

Next slide.

Any unregistered, unmaintained or inoperative one must be stored out of public view to keep our neighborhoods looking their best.

Next slide.

Again, the new state codes exceed the energy efficiency requirements of the city's prior reach codes for new construction and expand electric ready requirements for remodels and additions.

To support our communities' transition, the city and peninsula clean energy continues to offer rebates for key electrical appliances like heat pumps and water heaters.

This is the end of the building code presentation, and I will introduce Janice Chung, our fire marshal.

Thank you, Jeff, and thank you, Christina.

Good evening, mayor and esteemed council members.

I'm Janice Chung, your fire marshal for Redwood City.

It's an honor and privilege to present to you the Fire Code portion of our 2025 state code adoption this evening.

Because of AB 130, our adoption timeline, the cycle is shortened, and that shaped our priorities.

First, we wanted to ensure continued compliance with the 2025 California Building Standards Code.

Secondly, we also wanted to identify areas to streamline and promote regional consistency, including the acknowledgement of state and nationally recognized standards paired with cost awareness.

When we meet again in three, possibly even six years to discuss this, my goal is a deeper principle-driven refresh of our local amendments to fully reflect our prevention philosophy.

With our approach, we retain the majority of the 2022 local ordinances and incorporate the state's 2025 updates with concentration on local changes on easing expenses and minimizing impacts, especially for homeowners and residential projects while maintaining safety to be in line with AB 130.

We also recommend eliminating or modifying certain past local amendments that proved excessive or not significantly beneficial to community and fire life safety.

These revisions do not reduce the reasonable expectation of fire life safety, but they do lower construction costs, particularly for residential work, and they support consistency across San Mateo County as well as the state.

This is important given our automatic aid agreements with the county in San Mateo.

We'll also include minor editorial updates to align numbering, formatting, and references with the 2025 California Fire Code.

Some of the key cone changes in the 2025 California Fire Code include wildfire resistant construction standards that are strengthened.

Earlier this year, I had presented the fire hazard severity zone maps that we had adopted.

And for Redwood City, we don't have any that are in a very high hazard severity zone.

So the net impact on this, there's no net impact in terms of changes for us in this community.

With automatic detection and suppression requirements that are expanded, they're expanded in targeted occupancies that improve early notification and water delivery.

Some of the common areas that we see changes include areas targeting lithium-ion batteries, institutional occupancies, micromobility charging areas, and in one area, schools with 500 or more occupants are now required to have a mass notification risk analysis done.

As for evacuation and emergency planning provisions, those are strengthened.

In this case, it's stricter for California to adopt when California previously did not have a stricter adoption.

This is existing language that had exist that had already been in existence with model codes that we as a local have already adopted and have put in place.

So for us, it is not stricter.

There are also more rigorous inspection and documentation requirements so that life safety systems are maintained and test results are recorded.

Next slide.

Some of the local additions include requiring a UL certification requirement for emergency responder communication enhancement systems.

This improves the reliability and allows shorter testing timelines and streamlined validation with a nationally recognized test standard.

We are also proposing to expand fire sprinkler protection in areas with electric vehicle charging.

These are targeted areas for new construction in larger commercial developments to be designed under the NFPA 13 standard.

This is not applicable to low rise residential developments or one or two family dwellings that are using the NFP 13D or NFP 13R standard.

Some local revisions and deletions are some of the highlights are also up on this slide.

Under section 12.8, we will be updating the high-rise definition to match that of state law.

State law does have a definition for high rise, and we are moving removing what is an outdated local definition for us.

We are also restoring discretion as a fire marshal for fire access route exceptions where alternative compliance meets intent.

In this case, this is more specifically speaking to instances where we cannot reach beyond 150 feet of hose length from a fire access road.

This impacts particularly homeowners that might be in a backside of a flag lot or on a long driveway.

In these instances, the state code already has a provision that allows me to have the authority to grant credit if they decide to fully sprinkler the home.

By bringing this exception back, we now no longer need to have homeowners to go through a formal equivalency process to have it formally prepared and written.

Under section 1216, we are removing the fixed eight-inch fire main minimum.

This was one of the areas that uh Tanisha's team had approached me early on when I had started about the challenges we face with requiring an eight-inch main.

When in many cases, if you're talking about a single story daycare or a single story retail shop, that you don't need a six or eight-inch main.

Something like this could be hydraulically designed and prepared with analysis and provide for actual flow and actual demand for the sizing of that main.

By right sizing that infrastructure to the actual demand, you are resulting in a cost savings to the applicant and to the project.

We are also providing clarifications on hydrant spacing.

This is with respect to requiring a hydrant within 50 feet of a fire department connection.

We are making that specific to high-rise applications and not for all buildings or not all projects.

In doing so, we are avoiding us having to space hydrants every 200 feet.

The model codes and state codes allow us to space them a lot further down.

And this is huge for engineering and transportation as well as applicants because there are limitations on how many taps you can place on a line.

And engineering and transportation can now have the flexibility to review and not have to require a project to expand their footprint because of too many taps within the same short segment of pipe.

Other items include easing certain piping requirements by recognizing proven residential systems that meet performance.

We are just going back to the standards and what the NFPA standards have allowed, as well as removing the locally increased water demand for heavy timber and mass timber buildings, namely type four type construction types of buildings.

This supports sustainable construction while still meeting state safety criteria.

Next slide.

Before we move to public comment, this is a quick recap of the questions we've brought forward earlier tonight.

And as Jeff noted at the top, staff recommends that the council introduce the ordinances to adopt the 2025 California building and fire codes with the local amendments presented tonight, along with the related municipal code updates and any non-substantive corrections from the city attorney's office.

This concludes our staff presentation.

We now will open with a public hearing and we'll take public comment, followed by city council questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Fire Marshal Chung for the great presentation, Jeff, Christine.

It's really appreciated.

Before we go back to council, we'll go to public comment.

Do we have any public comments, City Clerk?

Not at this time.

Last call to the audience or folks on Zoom to speak to item 10 B this evening.

Seeing none, that concludes public comment.

Okay.

And we'll bring it back to council.

Who would like to get us started.

Thank you, Councilmember.

My arm hurts me here.

No, uh, Jeff, Christina, um, Janice, thank you for the presentation.

Um, I do appreciate that.

Unfortunately, we are under expedited timeline for everyone to do this before AB 130 kicks in.

So thank you and the entire team for for all the hard work in the short amount of time.

It is a code cycle that is important that we do adopt.

But Christina, I think one of the things that was understated was the impact of the new Cal Green State Building Code.

And then having just completed all my continuing ed for my architectural license and learning about embedded carbon.

It is a game changer in the new state building code and what it is going to do to building projects, both not only new construction, but renovation projects too.

And while the thresholds are set fairly high right now, that's going to change in a few years to make most renovations comply with the new embedded carbon rules.

So this is a big deal where we're going forward.

Why we tackled green infrastructure a few minutes ago.

Cal Green is now going to start to tackle embedded carbon in building materials and existing buildings, and that is going to have a uh huge impact on not only building applications and building construction, but on permitting too, because there's gonna be new requirements on when applications come forward.

They've got new worksheets to submit about their embedded carbon and how they're addressing um carbon, you know, trying to get to net zero.

So this is a pivotal moment for building codes because I think they're just gonna get stricter moving forward, more energy efficient, and more carbon neutral as we move forward.

But thank you for all the hard work and a very shortened amount of timeline to the entire team because we do need to meet the AB 130 deadline or abdicate our local authority to the state.

So thank you very much.

Thank you for getting the ball rolling, Councilmember.

We'll go to Councilmember Chu next.

Um thank you so much for a terrific presentation.

And there are a few things that really stood out.

The one I really appreciated was the thoughtfulness around which regulations is the juice juice worth the squeeze, and being very evidence-based and data-driven and thoughtful about where we are requiring more, uh, without it we're adding cost to construction without any attendant real attendant benefit in fire reduction.

So that was deeply appreciated, and I hope we can always have that mindset about any kind of regulation.

Like, is this actually reducing uh the incidence of fire in a way that justifies the cost?

Um, so really appreciated that.

Uh I was particularly encouraged uh to see the requirement of electronic appliances.

Um there is emerging evidence that gas stoves are really bad for health.

So setting aside the you know the environmental concerns uh there is uh emerging and building evidence that having a gas stove in your house um is not great for health, and so I think this will really help uh not just you know how those be more efficient but with public health.

Um, and you know, obviously we have to do this quickly and be aligned with state law.

Uh so I really appreciate all the effort that went into this, the thoughtfulness, and I will be supporting um the uh ordinance.

Thank you, Councilmember Chu.

Go to Councilmember Howard.

Thank you.

Um I'm in complete agreement with uh council member Chu and uh Councilmember G.

I don't have anything to add to it.

I do have a question.

It was mentioned that taller, larger wood buildings.

Uh there are going to be changes to allow taller and larger.

Could you elaborate on that?

Uh how long?

I I know there is a height limit right now for wood construction on larger buildings.

What exactly is this going to accomplish?

Right.

So the revision that we're proposing to um remove is the requirement of a higher sprinkler density design that was adopted through local ordinance.

So the availability of type four construction or tall wood type construction type buildings have already been enacted, I think, since the 2016 or 2019 code title.

And it we currently allow type 4 construction, as you could see, county center building is an example of that.

Um and there are many others that are starting to come up in the county as well.

Um we as a local had language in place that required a higher sprinkler system design demand, but that that's not required by NFPA design standards, and it's been proving through it's been proven through tests, it's been written in journals, it's been published that the design densities provided for in NFP 13 are sufficient to provide for adequate protection of the tall wind buildings.

Well, then thank you very much.

It sounds like you're taking a common sense approach to this, which will save people money when it's not a necessary, absolutely essential thing to be done.

And we wouldn't have been able to do this unless you got these amendments to our ordinances in on time before that deadline.

Thank you for having the heads up to do that.

Appreciate it.

There's so many things happening so quickly, uh, but that's really important, and I'm glad that our staff stayed on top of that because now you can make the changes you feel necessary for a lot of different reasons, and I really appreciate that.

I also wanted to thank you in the report giving the public the update on our rebate program, which is an amazing program, and I hope people take the time to read it because if you really want to be more responsible about appliances you choose or solar panels or everything, the these rebates might encourage more people to do more of that kind of construction around their home.

But thank you so much.

Good report.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard.

Any other comments, Vice Mayor?

Just really quick quickly.

I uh echo my colleagues.

Yeah, we can't do it again until 2031, June of 2031, according to that new law.

So thank goodness we got your hard quick work got it done before then, and um I I just highlight a few things from the report.

I loved reading about the Redwood City Solar App program that streamlights streamlines permits for solar panels, and um, since it was implemented, we've had 374 permits in the last two years for solar panels.

That's great.

Um I really like that we're fast tracking over-the-counter electric vehicle charging.

Thank you for doing that.

Um that's it.

Wonderful job.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Any other comments?

Councilmember Howard, just making sure you didn't have okay.

Just double checking.

Perfect.

Well, I'll just add my my thanks to staff, fire marshal, Christine, Jeff.

Thank you so much for the great presentation.

I am I know this was a rush, right?

With the state deadline, but I'm just so impressed with how specific these building codes these codes are.

Um so just really appreciate all the hard work and I think my council members all said it, so I'll look for a motion.

Council moved.

Thank you.

And so, Mayor, you do have three actions.

If we could have those on the screen, thank you.

Um you'll have a resolution and then you have two ordinances if you could go to the next page as well.

Um, so if the council would like to, oh, actually, multiple actions.

If the council would like to do all of them in one motion, you can do that, or you can break them up.

Mayor, if I may, I would like to make a motion to approve all actions on the screen on both screens.

I heard a council member Sterkin and a second.

Council member Howard, just barely.

Um could we get a roll call vote, please?

We'll start with Council Member Stirkin.

Yes, Councilmember Chu.

Yes.

Council Member G.

Yes.

Councilmember Howard.

Yes.

Councilmember Padilla.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Yes.

Mayor Martinez Saballos.

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you so much, everyone.

With that.

We will now move on to item 11 staff reports, which we have none scheduled for this evening.

We'll go to item 12, our study sessions, beginning with 12A study session on the 910 Marshall project.

Downtown planned community permit application for a state licensed senior residential care facility with 222 units consisting of 188 market independent living units and 34 assisted living and memory care units.

The applicant is seeking waivers under the state's density bonus law for heights up to 250 and 21 stories and several other zoning requirements in the downtown precise and general plan.

And so we, as a reminder, this is a study session, and no action will be taken by council today.

We have assistant community development director, Sue X Law, who will introduce the item.

And we have principal planner Lindy Chan who will give the presentation.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members.

Sue Xline, Assistant Community Development Director.

And I'm here with uh Jeff Schwab, our community development director, and Lindy Chan, the principal planner.

After our presentation, the applicant will do their presentation.

So next slide, please.

So as you know, the study session is really to receive preliminary feedback on the project.

This is just the beginning of this project and the application.

It's still being reviewed for completeness, which means that the applicant has yet to provide all the materials for staff to be able to review the project to see if it's complying with all of our regulations.

So tonight we're getting this preliminary feedback from you, and there's no other action needed at this time.

A couple council questions on the next slide that we wanted to bring to your attention.

What feedback do you have on the height, massing and design of the project?

Are there affordable housing provisions that the council would like to see in the project to assist the howdy how to assist the city in meeting its housing goals?

And is there any feedback the city council would like to provide regarding the project?

I'll turn it over to Lindy to present the project.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sue.

I will start with some project context and then we'll get into the project details.

So on this slide, it's shown the downtown area and the dashed lines in red is the project site, which is 1.08 acres on one parcel, and it's located within the downtown precise plan area.

The project has frontages along Marshall, Walnut, and Spring Streets.

To the north are medical buildings within Kaiser Precise Plan area and residential housing.

To the west, within the dashed yellow area, is the 1900 Broadway uh gatekeeper project that was entitled last year, and would remove a section of Spring Street and Widen Walnut Street.

To the south, which intersects with Broadway and forms the entry of the downtown is Spring Street.

And to the east are developed parcels with one story medical buildings and Maple Street just beyond.

Next slide, please.

So this slide provides just a high level of the project details.

Um again, it is for a state licensed uh senior residential care facility with 222 units consisting of 188 independent living units and 34 assisted living and memory care units.

All of them are at market rate, a 1200 square foot retail space and 95 total parking spaces, which includes 20 tandem spaces and 24 valley spaces.

The facility offers an extensive range of on-site amenities, including a theater, fitness rooms, dining rooms, community rooms, and private open space.

Next slide, please.

This is a site plan which shows the project's roof terrace with private open space at the third floor, above two-story parking garage, and the tower along Marshall Street.

At this view, you can also see in the lighter shade of gray the areas of the adjacent properties and includes the entitled 1900 project Broadway project to the west.

Next slide, please.

So this view is a rendering which is generally from Broadway Maple Street of the project.

The two floors of the podium parking are shown fronting Spring Street with the rooftop terrace open space above that parking podium.

The tower is set along Marshall and extends up to 21 stories to its maximum height.

In the foreground is the Broadway entry to downtown in front of grocery outline and the appropriate at the 1900 Broadway location.

You can also see in the courthouse dome in the upper left side of the image.

Next slide, please.

So this is just an overview of the state density bonus law.

The proposal is eligible for state density bonus law, which allows for senior housing with 35 units or more to qualify for 20% density bonus and unlimited waivers.

No affordability is required for senior housing development through state law.

The proposal is seeking 20% density bonus, totaling 37 bonus units and waivers from 12 or more development standards to accommodate the bonus units.

Next slide, please.

This slide compares the proposal with the maximum allowed height.

The area in pink reflects the maximum height of eight stories and 92 feet allowed in the downtown precise plan area.

The proposal is 270% or 2.7 times the maximum allowed height at 250 feet and 21 stories.

This would make the building 158 feet taller than the 92-foot allowance.

The tower element is the entire building elevation along Marshall Street.

Next slide, please.

Because the downtown project is a form-based code and does not calculate density on a site-by-site basis.

The applicant is required to provide a base study which estimates the density on the development standards based on development standards, which includes height, setbacks, open space, site coverage, and other requirements.

This base density is then used to calculate the 20% density bonus.

The proposal is required to maintain the same average unit size and other project details as the base study.

So the base study is on the left and shows a courtyard proposal.

The base study for this project, again on the left, estimates that 185 units can be accommodated within the 92-foot eight-story height limit.

On the right is the proposal.

With each floor at 19,000 square feet.

This creates a bulky massy appearance fronting Marshall Street, which can be seen from offsite views, and I'll show those in the next coming slides.

As a housing project, the proposal is required to comply with objective design standards, but does not have to comply with guidelines.

Next slide, please.

So this view shows the proposal from Veterans Boulevard at Jefferson, generally in front of Inn and Outberger.

And go ahead and hit next.

What I've done here is shown a visual of a more slender tower concept, which is consistent with the downtown plan.

So if the applicant were to comply with the guidelines, it would result in a more narrow, slender concept as shown here.

Next slide, please.

This shows the proposal from Main Street at Veterans Boulevard, and this is at the gas station with the creek on the right side.

Go ahead and hit next.

So this provides a again, high-level conceptual view of what a more tower, more slender tower concept would look like if they were to comply with the design guidelines.

Next slide.

This view shows the proposal from Jefferson at El Camino Real with the Sequoia Station to the left and the ATT building to the right.

I don't have a more slender concept for this view.

Next slide.

This shows the proposal from Maple along 101 with Kaiser in the foreground.

And if you hit next, this is a general visual concept of the more slender tower concept if it were to comply with the guidelines.

Next slide.

Next slide.

So this slide shows downtown building heights.

The area in pink is the downtown precise plan area.

In the center there, labeled in number three is the courthouse, and the dome has a height of 110 feet to the top of the dome and 50 feet to the entablature or cornice.

The area within the dashed red line is where the downtown plan allows for the tallest building heights at 136 feet and 12 stories.

And within this zone, and in the bottom right, sorry, bottom left corner is the crossing 900 or box building at 128 feet and 10 stories, which is the tallest building in the downtown area.

The area within the dashed yellow line is the next tallest area within the building heights, which allows up to 114 feet or 10 stories.

And within this zone is the indigo apartment buildings, that's in the upper left story, the second tallest building in downtown at 114 feet and 10 stories.

Generally, the remaining area not shown in these dash lines reflect the maximum heights of eight stories or 92 feet, and the 910 Marshall project in the upper right corner is within this eight-story maximum height zone.

Next slide.

As we previously indicated, we are in the very beginning of the review process.

The project was submitted in early July and is within the beginning stages of the review.

The city has deemed the project incomplete, which means that the applicant has not provided all the required materials for us to evaluate the project.

And this is the first step in the project review cycle.

Once the application is deemed complete, the city will evaluate the project for consistency and compliance, including design analysis with the required design standards that are objective.

And then this is the second phase of the plan review.

The city will then determine the level environmental review required and complete this review.

Finally, the city will hold public hearings to review, recommend, and act on the project, including the environmental review.

As noted previously, the architectural advisory committee will review and provide recommendation on the project to the planning commission.

Who is the final acting body on this proposal unless appealed or called up to the city council.

As a housing accountability act project?

There is a five-meeting limit on the project.

Next slide, please.

So this is a repeat slide from earlier in this presentation.

We have prepared a few questions for council feedback and hope that the council and the public can comment on these three, these questions in front of you.

Next slide, please.

And again, staff is seeking preliminary input on the project at this early stage.

No formal action is requested.

That concludes staff presentation, and we are available for clarifying questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lindy, and thank you, Sue, for the great presentation.

And I believe we have another presentation from the applicants as well, Steve Reller and Kevin Deng, who will give a presentation, and they'll have about 10 minutes for their presentation.

So whenever you're ready.

Um thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Sabayos, uh Martinez Sabayos and Council members.

My name is Steven Reller, and I'm with RM Properties, the applicant for 9-10 Marshall.

I grew up in Palo Alto and my partner and I have raised our families there on the peninsula.

And I'm excited to bring forward the project that invests in this community.

I'd first like to thank Lindy Chan and all the planning staff for all their hard work on the project thus far.

We look forward to working with you throughout the entitlement process.

We are proposing a once-in-a-generation opportunity, a beautiful senior living community in the heart of downtown Redwood City.

At 21 stories, 910 Marshall will provide 222 residents with a full continuum of care, independent living, assisted living, and memory care.

The building will also offer dining venues, wellness facilities, arts and activity spaces, and over 25,000 square feet of outdoor gardens and terraces.

The project addresses an urgent need.

San Mateo County's population over 75 will double by 2045.

Two-thirds of those seniors will require moderate to high levels of care.

Yet in the last 30 years, only about 200 senior RCFE units have been built in Redwood City.

Our project alone will more than double that supply, allowing local retirees to stay near family, friends, and the city they love.

The building's height is a key part of the solution.

By rising taller, 9-10 Marshall can provide many more residences for seniors.

Homes that Redwood City urgently needs and simply wouldn't be possible otherwise.

The slender design also preserves open space, bringing natural light into both this residences surrounding the streets and the surrounding streets, and creates outdoor terraces and gardens that would not be possible in a shorter, bulkier building.

9-10 Marshall is uniquely located directly across from Kaiser and minutes from Sequoia and Stanford hospitals, giving residents unmatched access to health care, shops, dining, and culture.

By bringing up to 300 older adults downtown, the project will also strengthen local businesses, generate millions of new tax revenue, and create hundreds of construction and permanent jobs, all without require requiring public subsidy.

This will not just be a building, it's a vibrant supportive community that brings energy to downtown, promotes multi-generational connections, and sets a high standard for thoughtful urban design.

It's an investment in the generation that built Redwood City and one that ensures they can continue to thrive here.

We look forward to working with you with the city and our neighbors and our community partners to make this vision a reality.

And now Kevin Dang with HGA will get into more specifics about the project.

Thanks, Stephen.

Uh good evening, Mayor and uh council members.

As you know, Redwood City established its strategic plan around housing, transportation, and children and youth as its priorities.

Our project directly contributes to each of these in direct ways, providing our elders with quality care and homes, connecting residents and staff to cult to a cultural urban core, and fostering meaningful and cherished multi-generational time with families.

Next slide, please.

Our site is right downtown and is easily accessed.

Five minutes will get you to City Hall or to Courthouse Plaza, as well as a host of dining, retail, entertainment, and other cultural venues.

10 minutes through historic downtown will give you, will bring you to Caltrain Station, not only connecting residents to the Greater Peninsula, but also easily brings Bay Area residents and families, kids and grandkids to our community.

Our growing elder population are urban-minded and value proximity.

They have the power to animate downtown spaces and contribute to a city's urban fabric and history.

They're more likely to participate and make these social connections if they can walk or take mass transit to community centers and events.

Next slide, please.

Success for our project will also depend on its operation.

It's building staff and caretakers.

For all the reasons seniors will want to live in downtown Redwood City, potential employees will want to work here as well.

It's no secret that senior living facilities face enormous staffing and retention challenges.

Our building intends to provide generous staff amenity and service areas, as well as promote the use of transit systems to get to work through various benefits.

We are taking full advantage of the city's vision to create a connected downtown through enhanced bike paths, bus routes, and attention to the pedestrian experience around our site.

These modes of connection will play a crucial role in how we attract the best candidates to serve this community and encourage a transit-oriented lifestyle for both staff and residents.

Next slide, please.

So let's take a look at our building beginning at the street level.

Toward the north, we recognize the importance of the bit of the pedestrian and vehicular experience on Marshall Street.

A Grand Port Cochere will allow residents and their drivers to pull off of the street and take their time at a drop-off.

Retail is located at the main street corner to continue public engagement directly to our site.

Towards the south, Broadway and Strings Spring Street bring visitors to the downtown core, and our building front frontage provides an opportunity for public art to welcome drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians to the city center.

Next next slide, please.

Above the street, Class A amenities and outdoor spaces are provided to our residents and their visitors.

These programs, activities, and contemplative spaces are crucial for the mental and physical well-being of our seniors, giving them a variety of ways to connect with each other and to nature directly from their homes.

Next slide, please.

We believe that good design is central to a dignity-centered transition process and the ability to age in place.

The units themselves will feature high quality finishes, fixtures, tall ceilings and windows, and generous space spaces and kitchens with views of the city and beyond.

These tactile features as well as sustainable materials and high performance building systems are all baselines to wellness-centered design principles for protecting this vulnerable population.

Next slide, please.

Here we are at Main Street at the Main Street Corner at Marshall and Walnut with retail in the foreground at the corner of the building.

Our building is a tall tower.

However, our design greets the street with warm tones and materials, rich landscaping, and pedestrian scale forms.

There's an obvious optimization in the residential tower, but we understand the importance of textures and variety at the street level.

Architectural and material articulation breaks down the mass of our building into distinct features and at pedestrian scales.

Next slide, please.

Here we see the activity at the drop-off portcocher and a main lobby beyond with residential units and amenity floors directly above.

Mindful interior and exterior lighting design and street-facing programs will activate our main street frontage, site frontage to welcome both residents and visitors to the building.

Next slide, please.

Yes, it's taller than any other building in the area.

But we believe our design not only fits well in your city, it will energize your downtown in new ways.

What we are proposing is an attractive, rich environment for elders to live, work, and play, and appreciate a golden time of their lives.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Dang and Mr.

Reller for the uh great presentation.

Before we bring it back to the council, we will do some public comment.

Thank you.

We do have four in-person speakers this evening.

And if you've joined us on Zoom, feel free to raise your hand at this time so we can identify you for public comment.

We'll begin with our in-person speakers, starting with Nicholas Kennan, who will be followed by Vicki Avila Medrano.

Hi, my name is Nicholas Kennan.

I'm a Rebuit City resident here to speak in favor of the 910 Marshall Project.

With our population continuing to grow in age, I feel like these facilities are only going to become, you know, more necessary, and we should get ahead of any you know shortages in the future and you know plan accordingly for demand in an aging population and you know try not to have too many delays in getting this built.

I think about everyone at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Redwood City where I'm a member.

Um, you know, it's a church that skews old, and I want all my elderly friends there, should they need help in the coming years to have options that are nearby so that they can stay in the community and be a part of it.

Um I don't think we should shy away from you know the height, which is very obvious feature.

I feel like with the geographic constraints that we have living on a peninsula with you know abundant, you know, public open space that we love that you know, if we have the option to build up, we should.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Vicky Avila Medrano, who will be followed by Ernie Schmidt.

Vicki.

Not in the room.

We'll move on to Ernie Schmidt.

Welcome, Ernie.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, uh, Vice Mayor, Council members.

I truly appreciate the study sessions.

These have obviously always helped our council members well.

Um, as a former long-time member of the planning commission meeting, study sessions have always helped us, you know, get to the point to come up with great developments.

Um I would just like to put this in your guys' mind when you're doing the study sessions for this show, uh, for this show for this uh for this development.

Um I would ask the council to consider when they're talking about this throughout the uh as we go through the time of looking at this project to determine if the communities or find out if the tolerance for building heights for the community has changed.

Um we really really need to talk about that and reach out to the community members, especially making sure that we have multiple study sessions with the community.

I think we remember what happened when Lowe's uh surprisingly put out uh the Sequoia station uh building heights uh and that how how that kind of buzzed a little bit because nobody was aware that that was happening and it would came out in the newspapers.

Um if the community says yeah, we're ready to go with a 21-story building.

Hey, let's let's go for it.

But um, I definitely would reach out to the community.

My other thing is safety.

With a 21 tall building, I'm looking at our great firefighters here.

I can only imagine the challenge, especially with a senior um uh care living uh location, how difficult it's going to be, God forbid if there's a fire to get those senior citizens out of the building.

And keep in mind, Redwood City come at five o'clock.

It's a wind tunnel.

So imagine all the winds, you know, going through Redwood City uh, you know, during God forbid a fire situation there, and the equipment that the fire department currently has to be able to manage a fire 21 stories.

The other thing I'm a little bummed out as is, and I get it, it may not pencil out, but I'm bummed out that there's no affordable element on this project.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

We'll move now to Zoom.

We have two speakers on Zoom beginning with three speakers on Zoom, beginning with Lily Milton.

Okay, looks like Lily has lowered their hand, so we'll start with Vicky.

Vicki, you can go ahead and unmute yourself for your public comment.

Hello, are you kidding me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Okay, thank you so much.

I approve with you because this is Vicky Avila Medrano.

I was in the room, but it was uh long meeting.

Thank you, Mayor and Council members.

Thank you for your time.

I like to support 90 Marshall Project Transform as community worker promotora in the city for a long time.

I am listening the secret noises in the community, and this night uh representing as a Circulo Cultural.

I like to share with you this is the moment and this project is more than housing, it's uh a Carolis economic activity and a foundation for downtown dynamism.

It is our one opportunity to support our seniors.

I'm senior and I represent seniors in our small business at the same time is more of that.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Anthony Viscuso, who will be followed by Lily Milton.

Good evening, council members.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Okay, excellent.

My name is Anthony Bisquizo, and I'm a business agent for local 16 heat and frost insulators.

Um, I'm also a delegate to the San Mateo Building Trades Council.

And um, as I look at this project and I think about the potential for this to be um eight stories at the minimum or you know 21 stories at the maximum, um, I see a definite need here as safety was already mentioned for making sure that this building is built by the best trained, the best trained construction workers in the area.

Um, I think this this project could be a prime candidate for project labor agreement, um which would definitely ensure that you get uh local apprentices working on this job and creating more pathways for the middle class for for residents that are going to keep their money in the city as they return home from work to spend the money that they were in this project.

Um we would definitely look forward to uh entertaining um a conversation with the with the developer to see how we could help suit those needs, a great thing.

Market rate housing or market rate building.

Um it always pencils out with us.

So I think this could be a good opportunity uh, you know, for you guys to be leadership in this in this city and be able to make the best things happen.

Um, we'd really be looking forward to that opportunity.

So with that, I'm gonna conclude my share and uh thank you guys so much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Our final speaker is Lily Milton.

Hi there, good evening, council members.

Um I am calling in to support this project.

I am a longtime Redwood City resident and parent and a board member of the Redwood City Education Foundation, and I think any project that brings um increased housing and also increased community intergenerational support for our seniors and um strengthening our um this overall uh economy and community is a project worth um supporting.

So uh thank you for your time, and I look forward to learning more as this project progresses.

Thank you.

And that concludes public comment, Mayor.

Great.

Thank you, City Clerk, and thank you to everyone who provided public testimony today.

We'll now bring it to the council for discussion, and we'll start with the vice mayor.

Thank you.

Before I make my comments, I'd like to disclose that I met with uh the applicant RM back in June for about half an hour.

We did not discuss anything different than their presentation tonight.

They simply uh walked through some of their aspirations for the proposal.

Uh I could make my comments now if you um I'm concerned about 21 stories.

I'm concerned about the massing.

I want to make sure that um the applicant understands that Caltrans also has, in addition to the FAA, that Caltrans also has jurisdiction over land use near all airports in the state of California.

And whether or not Caltrans thinks a 21-story building near the San Carlos Airport is appropriate, I don't know.

And I don't know who knows, but that is a concern that I have.

You know, concerned that this is 158 feet taller and 13 stories taller than what's contemplated in our general plan and our downtown precise plan.

I'm concerned that the applicant has chosen a specific application, that's not the word for it, but one that is a quick application.

Because this is such a drastic deviation from our years and years of planning of for our downtown.

This is a gateway to beyond the downtown of Broadway.

It's right next to our climate best by government test sign, which is sort of like the gateway to our downtown.

That they want to do something quickly, is concerning to me, and I think might be concerning to the community.

The height, the massing, the design, doesn't look appropriate to me.

I'm not sure, but I have concerns about it.

I have concerns about the sidewalk width being different than what the plan the downtown precise plan and the general plan, the setbacks.

I have concerns about all of this.

I also want to bring up something that concerns me.

The gentleman from the applicant talked about Redwood City's priorities, which are transportation, youth, and housing.

And I'm glad, I'm glad that he brought that up.

But this proposal requires non-refundable entrance fees.

So it's kind of like you're buying a condo, except that if you decide to leave, you don't get your money back, so it's not really like buying a condo.

It's it's called an entrance fee arrangement, and the comparable facility about three miles away is the VI in Palo Alto.

And for the smallest studio apartment at the Vi, the non-refundable entrance fee, I think it's 900 square foot, is 2.3 million dollars.

And if you want that entrance fee to be partially refundable, then it's 3.5 million dollars.

For the largest VI apartment, which is three bedrooms plus a den and four thousand square feet, the non-refundable entrance fee is uh seven million dollars, and the partially refundable entrance fee is eleven million dollars.

The gentleman referenced that these are for folks that own a house maybe on an acre and need to downsize because they're older.

People in San Mateo County that live on an acre live in Atherton, Woodside, Pertola Valley, Hillsborough.

I don't think that this uh project is aimed for most Redwood City residents.

The assisted living facilities that we have are not entrance fee facilities, they're month to month.

And it concerns me greatly that this is an entrance fee facility.

I understand that this will be expensive to build.

So I understand that the applicant needs to recoup that investment, but I'm not so sure that that helps the community.

And this is in our core downtown.

I know we can't have underground parking because it's too close to sea level and can't be done in this site, according to the report.

But this just isn't just any place.

This is our core downtown.

We spent years and years and years developing our downtown precise plan.

And I'm concerned about the historic resources.

Since about 2005, has worked really hard to make our downtown the envy of the county.

It's not a coincidence that Redwood City is often referred to as San Mateo County's living room.

And we I feel we need to be deliberate, and um.

The elder folks tend to have more fire calls than others, that it could tax our tax our already very busy fire department.

Um I I'm just uh I'm really open to learning more, and um but I Redwood City has a history of partnering with its business businesses and with its um applicants, and um I hope that tradition holds with this applicant.

I I hope that that they are concerned with the community concerns and our concerns.

Let me just look.

Yeah, I just think it, you know, our the the gentleman referred to our historic district.

There's the main street historic district about half a block away.

There's the historic climate best by government test sign, very close by.

Um Redwood City is the oldest city in San Mateo County, and um we need to preserve that legacy and uh this project seems not um not in compliance with our general plan or our downtown precise plan, and it and the pictures that I'm seeing don't look attractive to me that concerns me as well.

Thank you for getting us started, Vice Mayor, and thank you for the reminder.

Per our council guidelines.

If you had an opportunity to meet with a developer, it would be great to share that at this time before your remarks.

Thank you.

Who would like to go next?

Councilmember Howard.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Let me see.

Who would I address this to?

Maybe our staff, maybe uh Patrick.

I'd like to know the greater downtown area plan, which will include this real estate.

When is it coming back to us for just to touch base on how successful you've been or when is the next time the council is going to get to weigh in on the uh community engagement that you've been going, you've been doing for quite a while.

Yeah, thanks.

I thought I would just jump in.

Um, Sue X-line.

We um have tentatively scheduled um session with you all, study session with you all in November to come back and kind of present the initial the initial concepts and the initial ideas.

Okay, and that's going to include the citizen input from how many meetings have you had now and hope to have more?

I'm gonna try to count them up in my head.

Um, I think at least five, but I'll I'll double check my numbers.

At least five so far, and then before we come back to you, we'll be going to um I'm trying to think of all of the BCCs will be attending.

There are several.

I can't even list them all off the top of my head, but we're going to add kind of a road show through all of the BCCs before we before we get to you as well.

So there will be other opportunities through those meetings for public comment.

That's an excellent idea.

That's really an excellent idea.

Um, so I'm very anxious to see what this robust engagement turns out to be.

Uh we certainly did quite a bit when we developed our downtown precise plan.

And if I'm remembering correctly, at the time we said the cap was on 12 stories, but those 12 stories never materialized, right?

At to this date, we I believe the highest building in Redwood City in downtown Redwood City, it's between Box and Indigo, both of whom claim 10 stories, but I think doesn't indigo even have a higher height than Box.

But I'm not aware of anything higher in in our central downtown plan.

And I remember there was a great deal of discussion and angst on the community about what the heights would be in our city, and what we promised at that time was the height should occur in the heart of your downtown.

We weren't going to put it in neighborhoods, we weren't going to push out to Redwood Shores or other areas with residential heights that didn't complement the community, but the downtown core was the perfect opportunity to do height.

And over time, I think what we've seen is that the appetite is for about 10 stories or 11 stories tops, and it hasn't materialized that we had the height that we certainly offered, but it's due to a lot of different reasons.

So the reason I bring this up is that I'm excited about expanding our reach to make it a greater downtown area plan, because I see the next evolution of our downtown going out to Woodside Road and to Whipple and on Veterans and El Camino.

I particularly think that the area between Broadway, uh down Broadway downtown going out to Woodside Road, that corridor I believe has the potential to be the next lovely neighborhood that come combines housing above and retail below, and I just think it could be absolutely magnificent.

So I really think it's so important before we get ahead of ourselves with this particular project that we understand what is the appetite as was brought up by Ernie.

Uh sorry, Ernie, I shouldn't call you by your first name, but um but I mean I he he brings up a really important question.

What is the appetite for height in our community?

We had a ballot measure brought about by the residents of Redwood City that took down a project over on the water side.

Um what was it called?

Marina.

The one with 22, it was 17 to 22 stories, multiple buildings, and it came to a vote of the public, and I don't remember the year exactly, but I just know it went down miserably because the people said we do not want that kind of height in Redwood City.

So when we said we're going to do the downtown precise plan, we really made an effort to keep the height there.

Now, this is something that I am not comfortable with, the height, because I think what we're doing is starting a precedent of that corridor that I never envisioned that kind of height going on.

And maybe it's the only one, but had a proportion to anything else that would go there.

I really appreciate your rendering showing the current buildings alongside this proposal.

We don't always get that, and so you don't really understand the impact of that height.

I do with your renderings, and I really appreciate it.

That's my biggest concern is the height of that building looking like an Empire State Building, basically, because that's it's a pencil going up in the air.

Everything looks quite small, surrounded by the Empire State Building, but it's the middle of Manhattan and it's not in the middle of Redwood City.

So I I really am struggling.

I I don't think it's the right proportion of the right height to have that new neighborhood that I think in my head is what we're going to create, and I hope we do.

It doesn't make sense.

And then everything else is dwarfed by shadows and whatever else could happen because of something that towers so much over everything else.

So I am concerned about fire safety.

Do we even have the apparatus that can handle a 21 22-story building?

I don't believe we do, but we could ask that question if the fire department would like to answer that.

But that's a concern for me.

Are we setting up ourselves up for something that is really not the vision that we had for that area?

And I feel I'm at a loss because we're not gonna get it until the end of the year.

So I'm just going to say I'm not happy with the height.

I just feel it should be probably 10 to 12 stories, but I can't mandate that.

This is my own personal opinion.

I just feel that what's being proposed is way too high for the area.

Probably not the vision that's going to come back to us from the public, but I certainly want to know what it is.

And I hope that you're bringing things up at this meeting is what is your tolerance for height as we present this new plan.

I'd like to know.

And if we ask that question, maybe we can get a real good sense.

Is this a good path or a bad path that we're going down?

I'll leave it at that right now.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard.

We'll go to Councilmember Cheer.

Um, so first of all, you know, I think almost everyone in this room has at least one relative who within the next you know five to ten years will need a facility like this.

And you know, as the baby boomers are, I think I think they've been surpassed by the millennials, but um still one of the largest generations.

There is going to be a desperate need uh for this kind of housing, and this one project will probably do probably produce more, you know, senior assisted living housing units than Redwood City has done in the last 20 years.

Um I personally have looked into these sorts of things for for some aging relatives of mine, they're very hard to find, and then the proximity of this building to the hospital is an incredible benefit.

Um, you know, we talk about you know fire risk, but really fire is a remote risk.

The real risk to seniors is isolation, it's not being able to find this kind of housing at all, it's it's being too far away from medical care.

Like, like so.

So this project addresses many of the of the likely risks um to our aging population.

Um certainly the price point is high, but um, you know, again, the way to make things affordable is to have a lot of them.

Um I also wanted to comment on the height.

Um, and I loved uh council member Howard's vision of a new neighborhood along Broadway.

I share that vision.

That's the route from my neighbor, that's the logical natural route from my neighborhood and the neighborhood south of Woodside to the downtown area, and to have that be a beautiful, vibrant, you know, human-centered uh route from the southern neighborhoods to to downtown Redwood City would be amazing.

Um, I think what we have to think about is what is our vision for our city.

Um we are the capital of San Mateo County, um in a economic powerhouse in the fourth largest economy in the world.

And you know, something I always think about is are we the city of Redwood City or are we a sleepy suburb?

And my vision is for a thriving, prosperous, flourishing city, teeming with life, where everybody can find a home, where everybody can find opportunity.

Who wants to make a home or work in our city?

And I think that the idea that you know height limits were set back in the 50s and they can never change.

Um, again, the the highest the the tallest buildings in most of our cities, you know, Palo Alto, San Mateo, were built in the 50s and the 60s.

Um, and the idea that you know those height limits were set before I was born, and I'm pretty old, I'm in my late 50s, uh, and that they can't change, I I don't believe that's true.

I think what happens is when people, you know, initially people don't like change, and once they see it, it's no big deal.

I mean, people really were worried about the box building and the indigo when it was initially built, and now you really don't hear anything about it.

It's just way the way our downtown is, it's vibrant, it's flourishing.

And so I really like the project.

I think it delivers desperately needed housing.

I'm fine with the height.

I think that had our city been allowed to um evolve organically, we would probably have buildings that are much, much, much taller because the tallest buildings in the area were built in the 60s, uh and then they've actually gone down since then.

And I believe that cities should evolve over time uh to meet the needs of their populations.

Um I really like the project.

I think especially the ground floor is pretty pretty.

I'm I am not crazy about a two-story garage, walking by a garage is kind of not fun, and garage scape is usually not pretty.

Um so if there's anything that could be done to sort of buffer anyone walking by from garage scape, that would be great.

But um, overall, I think you know, maybe I you know, I realize there's probably not gonna be a lot of support for that kind of height right now, but I do think our city should look to the future and be the city of the future as an anchor city in Silicon Valley in the year 2025 and not have height limits from the 50s.

That's that's a very long time ago.

Um, and I think it would be an amazing anchor uh for a vibrant community along Broadway.

So I'll leave my comments there.

Thank you, Councilmember Chu.

We'll take it back to the days.

Sure.

Um, I just wanted to go over the numbers.

I know that it's designed to be a uh independent living, assisted living in memory care.

So I wanted to know if there was any thought about where the memory care facility or uh part would be, just because I know that that is such a more sensitive uh group with higher needs and higher ratios to care needed.

Hi.

There is a dedicated floor for memory care that is on the third floor.

Um I don't I don't know that this clicker works, but there is a floor plan in our um in our presentation at the appendix.

If you go to the end and then click.

Yeah, you can see the third floor right there.

Uh there are all those blue units there are for memory care.

There's a lot less in the memory care units because of their high acuity.

But you'll also see that surrounding this area are uh building staff spaces and support spaces for that community uh for that for that type of resident, as well as security functions uh to kind of keep them safe.

Uh they also have their own dedicated outdoor space kind of to the right there, um, again with particular requirements.

And also, oh, sorry.

Oh no, no, I just wanted to say so the so the memory care will I just want to, it's on one of the lower grounds, it's on the third floor.

On the third floor.

Okay, thank you.

Sure.

Um I did want to make one observation.

There was some concern about um seeing a large two-story garage along Marshall.

Um the Marshall Street frontage does not have an exposed uh garage uh to it.

If you see in the plan there, Marshall is to the north to the top of the page.

Uh there is an exposed portion of the parking garage facing Spring Street, as well as the shared property line uh along uh the kind of eastern side.

So you will not actually see a parking garage as you're walking along Marshall Street.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Padilla.

Any other comments?

We'll start with Council Member Strike.

Okay.

Uh thank you firstly to staff and the applicant uh for this proposal.

Um I where do I start?

I I would agree with council member Chu's uh comment that to bring prices down, we ultimately need more supply, right?

That's just basic uh economics there, and this this gets us some supply.

So um and it's not the Empire State Building.

That's five times the height of this building.

I had to do a little calculation to figure that out.

But um, I also did meet with the downtown, uh excuse me, with the applicant um to hear about the project.

Did not learn anything new other than what we have uh received here tonight.

Also um heard part of their presentation to the downtown business group or excuse me, downtown uh downtown neighborhood association.

There we go.

Thank you for bearing with me there.

Um there were a couple interesting questions from the community about you know what does an emergency evacuation look like.

What you know have you considered a project labor agreement?

Um, and so uh, you know, since that is a concern of some folks at the dais and the audience.

Can you speak to those two questions?

Uh what you know, maybe our fire department staff can like what would it look like to evacuate this building in an emergency?

I mean, you can't use the elevator.

Um, Chief Carter.

Well, good evening, Mr.

Mayor, uh, Madam Vice Mayor, Council members and community members.

Uh Barack A Carter, I have the pleasure of serving as your fire chief.

Um, that's a great question.

Uh we don't typically um this would be a first of its kind, uh, not just for the city of Redwood City, uh, but for the county of Cemetery, and as far as we can tell, for the state of California.

Um, so to really look at vertical evacuations, would take um the department in a completely different understanding of you know how would we evacuate you know 21 stories um with the mixed use um residents?

Uh that's something we would really be working with.

We'd have to work with the developer to do a lot of you know um training and and uh studying on our own to be able to identify those concerns and to identify how we can implement those safety measures during this process.

Thank you.

I understand.

And then to the other question about project leader labor agreements.

Um, the building Trades Council suggested.

Are you open to working with labor on this uh front?

Thank you.

Yes, yes, we are open to working with labor.

It's it's a little early in the process to kind of commit to anything like that, but but for sure, we're open to working with labor.

Thank you very much.

All righty.

Yeah, I'm I am interested in seeing where this goes.

I look forward to seeing how it develops and look forward to more community input.

And I appreciate the presentations, the proposal, and um we'll turn it back over to the mayor.

Thank you.

Thank you for the reiner.

I actually also met with the developer for about 20 minutes.

I cannot even remember when it was some time ago.

As with everyone else, the same information was shared with me.

So I forgot to disclose that.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just to follow up, everyone else I did meet with the applicant a couple months ago.

Didn't have the pretty pictures, it was just more the computer generated drawings to learn about the concept.

You know, I've been a longtime proponent of a project like this in Redwood City.

The only thing missing from me and from independent living to assisted living is the skilled nursing piece.

Because you know, in San Mattel County, the largest and fastest growing demographic is our seniors.

And to have a place where our seniors can call home, and as they age, they don't need to move from one place to another.

That continuum of care is so critical and so missing in our county.

This one's changed a little bit because it's if I wrote this down right, independent living, assistant living, and memory care.

Um, and so if you are memory challenged, at least there's a place for you in this facility on the third floor.

Great location, right next to the Kaiser campus on the edge of our downtown.

Um, but I would be very interested in learning more about how our communities reacting to the the high massing of the design of the project.

Um, you know, I think our staff shared some of the guidelines that the current downtown precise plan has, and I would just ask the applicant continue to work with staff to see what adjustments could be made in the design to bring it closer in alignment with number one the downtown precise plan guidelines, but also a very rich community engagement process to see.

I think the question was what is acceptable to our community today in 2025 and would be acceptable to our community in 2035 when this project might be built and occupied.

You know, is it too big?

Is it too bulky?

Is it acceptable?

Do you change it?

I think the community engagement through the downtown area plan and other engagements would be helpful to help us understand where the levels of tolerance are, what's acceptable?

But from a housing type that's needed here in Redwood City, this is definitely needed because this is the fastest growing demographic in San Mateo County.

When it comes to um fire safety, I'm less concerned about the potential for fire in a high rise like this because of the type of construction and the fire and life safety systems.

But as council member Sturkin alluded to, what is going to be different for our public safety um teams is time on scene for a building like this to respond to a medical or any call here?

Our teams are gonna be here on site longer, and that is important because that means they can't go to someplace else.

And so, as the conversations continue while affordable housing may not be required here.

What I would be looking for in the conversations that the applicant has with our staff is what kind of community benefits could be offered beyond just having this type of facility in our city.

Um, how can you support our fire department?

How can you support them with equipment that might be needed for evacuation?

How can you partner?

Because there's no question in my mind that time on scene for our fire department will be much longer here in a project like this, which means they can't respond to other situations in our city.

So I would encourage more conversation with our staff about how this might fit on our city, how this might fit with the new and emerging neighborhood.

And asking what our community, what's what's acceptable?

What can you stomach?

What is what are you looking forward to?

Not just in 2025 or 2026, but 2035 and 2045.

Because I think someone mentioned about what is it in 20 in 10 years, there's gonna be a growing group of new seniors.

I'll be in that group in 10 years, so I don't really want to move out of Redwood City, but I'd like to have choices of where I could be in Redwood City.

So it's a very interesting application.

I think that deserves a lot more conversation before it comes back.

And then Lindy, you you showed the chart about the kind of steps one, two, three, and four, but you didn't put years or decades or months or days.

So what are we talking about in order of magnitude?

Are we talking a couple years, three years, four months?

What what what is your what is your vision there?

Sure, and I think if you go back a couple of slides, it'll show that um a lot depends on when the project's deemed complete.

Once the project's deemed complete, then it kicks off the next series of review processes, and a lot also really depends on the environmental review and what that environmental review will be, which we haven't determined at this phase.

Um the environmental review could take up to a year if that were to trigger some kind of an EIR or focused EIR.

Um if it were subject to something less of a review process, then it could uh result in a more rapid review process.

So um a lot to be determined at this phase.

Again, we we don't have all the information yet to make those determinations.

Um we could just state that we're in the beginning phases, and as far as we're aware, the applicant is uh working very diligently to get us the information, hoping to get that project deemed complete.

So I'm gonna use I'm gonna try to translate what I think I may have heard, and there's a lot of ifs in this process, but from where the arrow is to maybe where the end of four is it could be two to three years, depending on a lot of EIR, depending on a lot of other things.

Is that reasonable, even if one year is for the part three?

It's it's certainly reasonable.

I suspect probably not that long, but it just depends on the IR process and the environmental review process and what that ultimately looks like.

So certainly within the ballpark of a year plus would be, I think, reasonable.

So will there be time for more community engagement and more conversations between the applicant and staff and the applicant and the community?

Yeah, I I will note that um this is a housing accountability act project, so there is a limit of five public meetings that the city can require, and so once the project's deem complete, we have a limitation on those number of public meetings.

Um that said, the applicant can certainly do some engagement on their own or is not required, so um it's something that uh we we can discuss and see how that could fit.

So, does this meeting count as one of those five?

Because the project has not yet been deemed complete.

This doesn't count towards one of the five once the project's deemed complete, then those those um hearing hearings count towards that five hearing maximum.

Would you and the team have any thoughts about how we can gauge community thoughts without taking one of those five meetings?

If not, what I would just ask is maybe think about how we might be able to do that because I think many of us would be very interested in in community thoughts and not sacrificing one of those five meetings too quickly.

So I I don't know what the right answer is, but I wouldn't appreciate if the collective think tank of everyone, including the applicant might be able to figure out how we might measure that because I I think it is a challenge to to take a look at how this project is being presented and thinking ahead, thinking about the future and trying to make the best judgment today about what our city might look like 10 or 20 years from now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilmember.

We'll go to Councilmember Chu and then Vice Mayor.

Um I just uh forgot to disclose that I too met with the applicant for about 20 minutes.

I did not learn any new information tonight but it was just an opportunity to to see the earlier pictures of their um project.

Thanks for letting us know council member we'll go to the vice mayor I would just like um I would maybe not maybe not tonight and maybe but but generally speaking for me it would be interesting for me to know whether whether and to what extent the applicant is interested in in engaging with the community is interested in hearing what the community's vision is and whether the applicant also is interested in transparency about the the price points um of what it's gonna cost to buy one of these units I I want to emphasize that the report says that one of the reason the massing is so big and the height is so high is that the applicant wants an average of 1,200 square feet that's average that means some smaller some larger there are many houses in Redwood City three bedroom one bath three bedroom two bath houses that are 1200 square feet that's the average of one of these units.

Why because to ask someone to buy to pay millions of dollars to buy something you have to give them a lot of square footage do they need that so this is catering to very very wealthy people and and we have many wealthy people in San Mateo County so it probably will fill but are we those people that can afford that kind of housing really aren't in need they can find it anywhere I'm not so sure this I don't know I'm open I'm open to learning a lot more but I I'm curious about the applicant's transparency and whether the applicant would be willing to do more than five um community outreach events co-sponsored with the city even if they don't have to just because they're good community folks I that would be curious I would be curious about that Mr.

Mayor I just wanted to um stay for the record uh I believe I had a zoom call with the applicant so I just wanted to say and I it was very basic and uh I just want to make sure I mentioned that great thank you for letting us know council member anybody else council I have a question about parking because we always love talking about that um I saw that there's 95 parking spots can we can I I just want to have a little more clarity on the 20 tandem spots how do 20 tandem spots work there how do I just want to know like are those are are they assigned do certain units like if there I saw that there's three bedroom units do you get two spots how does the parking allocation work well I can't quite speak to the allocation but it there is a plan that shows the parking levels and there are general generally the parking facility will be managed by uh staff and so should you have a car in the facility it will be taken to a spot for you and retrieved for you you know at at a certain location.

Yeah I guess I can just is the tandem so the tandem you would be if I if I'm a resident there I would just pull up to the lobby to the front, and then someone would go park my car for me.

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Padilla.

We'll go to council member Chuck uh my only request with the parking, other than if it's possible to reduce the amount of parking, that's always great um especially since these uh residents will be older and and most likely not driving anymore, but that you would unbundle it and price it at what the land and improvements are actually worth.

So I request that the parking be unbundled and priced.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Council Mr.

Thank you.

One real quick question on transportation as well.

Would you be providing any type of like shuttle service, you know, to get to local amenities, including the new senior center when it's finally done?

Yes, there would there would be a shuttle, uh, maybe two vans or small bus and a car service, and there would be yeah, and everything would be valet parked, so we would be providing that service.

Thank you.

So for folks who may not you know be able to get around very easily, or may not be able to, you know, walk that 10 minutes into downtown.

They could still hitch a ride.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, council member.

Any other comments?

Perfect.

I will start with my remarks.

Um, thank you again, everybody for for being here to the applicants for coming with so much information early on in the process.

I um have seen this in my personal life, in my professional life.

You know, our fastest growing population is our seniors, and the needs that they have are so diverse in ability, in you know what kind of medical issues that they are dealing with, and this feels like a grand opportunity to be able to have these folks age in place with support staff so close to groceries, and and you know, we have Kaiser nearby, station nine is just down the road, it's very close.

Um but I am curious.

I think I heard the developer mention, you know, we are catching up on the amount of senior housing that the city has built, and I missed how long.

I'm curious if staff could confirm how many senior units we've been able to develop through the last arena cycle.

Um I would have to look up for the previous arena cycle how many we have.

I can say in this um arena cycle, I don't think we've had a senior project in this current arena cycle.

Okay, and do you happen to know how many senior residential care facilities we currently have operating in Redwood City?

I do have that.

Maybe just a second, or do you have it, Andy?

Yeah, I think so.

Um, I will note that there was an all-affordable senior housing project, not a residential care facility that was built recently, the Arroyo Green project with 117 units, 116 of those are affordable.

Um, in terms of the number of facilities.

Uh I believe that we have 36 assisted living facilities.

Um, but those are both for seniors and non-seniors that was within the housing element.

Great, thank you.

That's that's helpful to know.

I um you know, we have a lot more work to do, and I think this is an opportunity to look at what the community needs, and like it's been discussed, get a sense of what the interest of the community is as well.

But um, you know, this is just the beginning of the conversation.

I I agree, I'm I'm curious to know, you know, what sort of um what sort of interest there is in a project labor agreement, right?

I know this is exempt from our affordability requirements for inclusionary housing, um, but it is absolutely a win for the community when we're able to use union labor to develop our housing.

And I, you know, putting my planning commissioner hat on, it's been that kind of night.

Um, you know, I I love the design of this building.

I think that boom that we talk about from 2011 to 2015, lots of the buildings sort of look alike, and it's because so much of the money was going into the insides of these buildings, right, rather than the design, which is um sometimes you know just an extra cost.

So I really appreciated the breaking up the massing of this building, the use of different materials.

I'm sure when you're on the ground, buildings that have different materials, Arroyo Green comes to mind now.

Um, something that blends different materials and public art, always looks really attractive and appealing from the street, right?

Especially when you're walking by.

So I you know, I know that the the height of this building is is concerning for some of my colleagues and I'm sure for some residents.

Um, and so I just ask that they continue to engage in this process, right?

We're going to come up with the the Robert City project that really checks off all the boxes for us.

Um, and I think this is a really great showing for our first meeting on this.

But um aside from that, you know, I will add my plus one to my support comment for um wanting to get a better sense of what you know evacuation plans would look like.

You know, I am very curious what other major cities, San Francisco, Los Angeles are doing right, um, who have taller buildings or are able to do.

I um I know that is a developing um that is always in development, always in changing, and um outside of just California.

I'd be curious what you know best practice is outside of the state and what other cities, what other um states who have facilities of this scale are typically doing, just so we can be prepared for any eventuality for that.

But again, I do think it's it's a beautiful building, it's a strong start.

I'm looking forward to just seeing how this continues to progress and um and hopefully we will get more public input through the Central Redwood City plan through these other opportunities because that is all gonna help make this project more cohesive with what this new downtown core is going to look like.

So I'll leave my comments there.

But again, appreciate staff being here, the developers, the applicants.

It's really appreciated for you all to just answer all these questions.

With that, we don't have an action item.

Are there any questions staff didn't get enough responses to?

Awesome.

Great.

With that, we will now move on to item 11, which excuse me, item 13.

Matters of council interests beginning with 13A, City Council member reports of conferences attended.

And not seeing anyone reaching for their light.

We will now move on to city council committee reports 13b, beginning with the utilities subcommittee, and council member Howard has an update.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I serve on the Utilities Committee with Vice Mayor Aiken and City Council Member Padilla.

And on Friday, September 5th, Barbara Pierce presented to the utilities subcommittee on Bay on the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency activities, otherwise known as Basca.

The agency recently published a 2021-2023 drought report, which describes actions taken by the state and wholesalers, steps taken to reduce customer water use and the lessons learned.

Staff present the ongoing electric vehicle fee study and two potential options for EV chargers in the future, city owned and maintained or consultant owned and maintained.

Staff will be presenting on the latter option in a future city council meeting for consideration.

Finally, staff presented and recommended proposed maximum solid waste rates, either adopting one year or two years of rates.

Staff will move forward with mailing the public hearing notice and seeking city council authorization for the proposed maximum rates for two years.

Subcommittee received and discussed these items.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard.

Lastly, I'd like to also announce the formation of an ad hoc committee for the city Atturnment Employment agreement.

The ad hoc committee is comprised of myself, Vice Mayor Aiken, and Councilmember Padilla.

The purpose of the ad hoc committee is to discuss these council appointees or the city attorney's compensation.

We expect the committee to meet on a as needed basis for about one to two months.

And we will turn things over to the city manager for the oral update.

Thank you.

Just two updates.

And first, wanted to share that on Thursday we'll be looking forward to the opening of the new police substation that will be located at Sequoia Station.

This is a partnership between the property owner, Hunter Properties, and the city.

And the intent is really to help have a place where officers can be periodically to be taking reports, to be following up on issues, and really to help be a deterrent to any concerns that uh can exist in terms of crime in that general area.

So they'll have the opportunity to operate uh on site.

It's not going to be the kind of place where it's staffed all the time so that people would come in from the public and and give reports that that would still need to happen either online or or through the main police station, but they will be a much more visible presence.

So many people have already been seeing that the uh signage is up and vehicles are there uh fairly often, and that will be more so beginning on Thursday.

And then we're just really looking forward to celebrating Fiesta's Patriots this weekend.

Uh, as mentioned earlier, so on Sunday, the celebrations began at two with the flag raising and then continue through 8 p.m.

So I want to make sure the community is aware and will be joining us.

Thank you.

Thank you, City Manager.

With that, we will now adjourn the next city council meeting is scheduled for September 29th, 2025.

Thank you all.