Good evening, everybody.

It is six o'clock, so we're gonna go ahead and get started tonight.

Thank you all for joining a special city council meeting of September 29th, 2025.

We're holding meetings in a hybrid format, which are both in-person and include virtual participation.

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

In-person speakers will be called first.

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

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

Attendees who have joined us by Zoom will be called to speak after the in-person comments have been given.

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

If there's a high volume of public comment this evening, we may decrease the time allotted for each comment or limit the total time for public comment.

In the event this occurs, please feel free to send your full remarks to the city council at Council at Redwood City.org.

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

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

Councilmember G.

President.

Councilmember Howard here, Councilmember Padilla.

Here, Councilmember Sturkin.

Here, Vice Mayor Aiken.

Here, Mayor Martinez Avaez.

Thank you.

Thank you, everybody.

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

Council Member Street.

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

Paula Uccelli and her late husband Pete Uccelli are being honored with this proclamation for their long-standing contributions in establishing and nurturing Redwood City's sister cities relationships that have laid the foundation for international cooperation and community growth.

Whereas in 1990, Paula and Pete Uccelli partnered with a group of local residents to establish Redwood City International.

And whereas Pete and Paul Paula's initiative led to the establishment of one of the first sister city port relationships between a West Coast American port and a Chinese port during China's economic opening, fostering business, educational, and cultural ties that endured to this day.

And whereas Paula Uccelli has been a dedicated and visionary leader in Redwood City, whose commitment to community volunteerism and civic engagement has left a lasting and positive impact on countless lives.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the city of Redwood City hereby honors the Ucellies for their dedication, leadership, and enduring legacy in promoting global friendship, cooperation, and cultural exchange.

Be it further resolved that I, Elmer Martinez Aballos, Mayor of Redwood City, on behalf of the City Council and the people of the City of Redwood City recognize Pete and Paula Uccelli's lasting influence, which continues to shape the activities of Redwood City International and inspire future generations to build bridges of understanding across the world.

Let this proclamation serve as a testament to their enduring legacy as a heartfelt expression of gratitude from a community deeply touched by their service.

Thank you.

And now I'd like to welcome former mayor and RCI board member Barbara Pierce to give a few remarks, as well as the legendary Miss Uccelli to accept the proclamation and say a few words.

First of all, I'd like to thank the city for uh presenting Paula and Pete with this proclamation.

It's very important to remember the history.

I don't think there were many of us in the 1980s who are here today when Pete and Paula were rebuilding their docks, and it was out of that need to find someone to help them build their docks in the way Pete wanted that our sister city relationship began.

They spoke so highly about Redwood City to the engineers and the people who came to build the docks from China that they fell in love with Redwood City as well.

And out of that grew a sister city relationship that continues to this day.

And uh our RCI, Redwood City International, partners with the city of Redwood City with all the sister city visits.

And so I think it's a lasting legacy.

And I'd like to thank you, Paula.

I'm sad that you retired.

But you know, since the 2000s, I mean, really, we have to give the woman a break.

Even a legend, you have to give a break at some point in time.

But thank you so much for all of the time and effort and care that you've given to RCI and to the city, all of the board members who served with you in the past and the current board, we're delighted to spend that time with you.

And so thank you.

No gifts because you wanted no gifts.

So congratulations and thank you very much.

Thank you.

Well, mayor, when you were reading the proclamation, I was thinking, who are these people, you know?

But I really do appreciate it at times.

We're different then, and uh the sister city relationship uh ongoing uh with the younger generation that have come, and there's some here today that are doing just a wonderful job.

And the city has been so wonderful working with with uh RCI and entertaining all the wonderful people that have uh that have come over.

We have really, really remarkable, lasting and memorable relationships with people from other countries, and uh all they want is the same thing that we want.

They want a good quality of life, and they want their children to have a good life, a better life than they had.

So I appreciate everyone who has worked with Redwood City International and uh the future workers to help uh promote it for a long period of time.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr.

Celle.

Thank you, Ms.

Ucelli.

Before you take a seat, can we get a photo to commemorate this day?

Thank you.

Yes, and if there are any board members, please come on up.

Thank you again for your service, Mr.

Celle, and to the RCI board members who came down today.

We'll now move on to item five B, which is our career online high school graduation.

And we're recognizing newly graduated students from our career online high school program.

And I'd like to turn things over to our library director, Derek Wolfgram, who's going to introduce graduates.

That's better.

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

I'm delighted to have the opportunity to honor our three newest graduates from the Career Online High School program at Redwood City Public Library over the past year.

As you may recall, we've previously honored 17 graduates, so we now have twenty inspiring individuals who have earned their high school diplomas through the Redwood City Public Library.

Yeah, okay.

So in partnership with the California State Library and the Redwood City Library Foundation, Redwood City Public Library provides scholarships for adults in our community to earn an accredited high school diploma free of charge.

We thank all of our partners who make this possible, and we do have a few of our board members from the Redwood City Library Foundation here tonight, so thank you.

Through career online high school, every student is paired with an academic coach, board certified instructors, support the classes, and students have twenty four seven access to an online learning platform.

Students can transfer previously earned high school credits and are given up to 18 months to complete the program.

In addition, the students receive wonderful support from the staff of Project Reed, particularly Cassandra Levy, who's here tonight.

Thank you, Cassandra.

Earning a diploma as an adult, often while working and caring for families, is a tremendous challenge, and I'm so proud of the folks who have successfully balanced everything to complete this program.

Two of our graduates are unable to be here tonight, but we do want to celebrate them.

So I will share their stories briefly first, then I will invite uh Silvana to join me up at the podium in a bit to be recognized and receive her diploma from the mayor.

And then after the awards, we'll invite the graduate family members, Project Reed staff, and City Council members to take a celebratory photo.

So our first graduate uh is Ezra Flores Solorio.

In Ezra's own words, they said my chance to finish high school on my own terms was taken from me due to severe bullying and having to get a job immediately after turning 18.

I like the chance now that I've I've healed from that trauma slowly over the years to work hard and finish completing my high school diploma.

I gained a lot of refreshers from things of topics I had forgotten about.

Right now I'm a receptionist at a hotel, but I plan to go to college and get a better job.

I'd like to become a forensic psychologist eventually.

Ezra looks forward to going to college and pursuing a career in criminal justice.

Our second graduate is Olga Gonzalez.

Olga shared her story with us at the start of the program.

She said, I had some medical issues during my last year of high school.

So I would like to finally complete gaining my diploma.

I have most of my credits completed, so would love to join a virtual program so it doesn't impact my current job.

Now that she's done, she said finishing my high school diploma was a personal goal I wanted to achieve.

I'm now eligible to apply for a PMP certification, which aligns with my career goals of growing my expertise in project and program management.

I'm currently a full-time employee and plan to study for the certifications that will help boost my career.

Olga's interested in pursuing a career as a program manager.

So let's have a applause for Ezra and Olga, even though they're not here.

And I would like to uh welcome our third graduate we're honoring this evening.

Uh Silvana Daniela Leon Diaz to join us at the podium here.

How do you do that?

On her motivation for a career online high school, Silvana said what most inspired me to get a high school education is to be able to comprehend, read and write in English.

Also, I feel like having an opportunity to learn more things will improve my knowledge and speaking skills in order to pursue my education path.

I should start with high school knowledge in order to get the opportunity to get into college.

This way I could be able to help my community through my job and my skills.

She wanted to finish her diploma because it was a personal goal she set for herself and for her future.

She said, I gained a lot from the program, starting from all the activities shared all the way through the support I receive from my coach and Project Reed.

Silvana is interested in pursuing a career in childcare or social work and continuing her education in college.

And also, I was just chatting with Silvana before the program, and I found out that she is enrolled in the Redwood City Community Building Academy for this year.

So also we'll be able to contribute to our community through those relationships that we'll build.

So very excited about that.

So we've got the diploma has been handed off.

Do you want to say anything, Silvana?

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

First of all, I want to thank you all because this community has given me a lot of opportunities.

Previously, I had joined the police community academy, and I had a great experience there, and now like earning this diploma has been a great achievement for me because it's just the starting, the starting in this path for being able to help to my community.

I have been living here for six years, and I love this community.

I love the people that live here, I love the library because they have helped me a lot as an as a reader, as a nanny too, because I'm working currently a full time as a nanny.

So I take my kids every day there, and as a student earning this achievement.

Thank you so much, and thank you for all the people that has helped me.

And thank you for my family.

I asked Silvana before the meeting.

She didn't want to say anything.

She said she had no remarks prepared prepared.

So uh that was all just truly from the heart.

So we're very proud of all of our graduates and what they've accomplished with the support of their families, and we look forward to hearing about the great things they will all achieve in the future.

Uh the library has a few more students who are currently enrolled, and we have additional scholarships available.

So if you know someone who could benefit from this program, they can reach Project Reed staff at the downtown library by stopping by, calling six five oh seven eight oh seven oh seven seven or emailing RCL Reed at Redwood City.org.

Uh please join me in congratulating Ezra Olga and Silvana one more time.

And I'd like to invite family members, City Council, and Project Reed staff up front for a photo.

Thank you.

There we go.

Okay.

That was incredible.

Thank you, and congratulations, Silvana.

Um, our graduates, everybody from the Project Reed team here at the library.

It is incredible.

We were just talking about welcoming stars last week, and I think this is the embodiment of what we were all discussing.

So thank you for the great work.

With that, we'll move on to item five C, which is a proclamation recognizing national service dog month.

I'm delighted to share that the month of September is National Service Dog Month, a time to honor the significant contributions of service dogs and their handlers, and to raise awareness about the importance of service animals, which are individually trained to perform specific tasks for people with disabilities.

And before I read the proclamation, I wanted to come clean.

I have a personal connection to service dogs.

My lovely girlfriend Lena and her family have been longtime volunteers with Canine Companions training dogs to do the great work that they do for our community.

And uh it is a true labor of love to see them from puppy to graduation day when they're ready to make that big leap and train with either serve an individual or to go on and become facility dogs that are constantly with a trained companion.

Um they do incredible things, seeing dogs, therapy dogs, skilled companions, facility dogs.

They have so many different roles in the ways that they support our community.

And uh we have a couple of VIPs in the meeting.

I did want to acknowledge.

We have Sammy, Amador, Turbo, Garrett, and Gigi, Bin Yay, Guzzi, and Swayze, who are all here in their uniforms.

Um, thank you all for being here.

I'll read the proclamation now.

Whereas we believe in the joyful, transformative power of the human canine bond and inclusivity of all citizens, and whereas Canine Companions is a nonprofit organization that enhances the lives of people with disabilities by providing expertly trained service dogs and ongoing support to ensure quality partnerships free of charge.

And whereas canine companions and their service dogs empower people with disabilities to lead life with greater independence, following by providing, excuse me, best in class training, ongoing follow-up services in a deeply committed community of support.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Elmer Martina Sabayos, Mayor of Redwood City, on behalf of the City Council and the people of the City of Redwood City, in recognition of service dogs and the adults and children with disabilities in our community, hereby proclaim September 2025 as national service dog month in Redwood City and encourage all residents to celebrate service dogs and be respectful of the rights to safe access in our community afforded to the adults, children, and veterans who lead more independent lives because of their assistance.

And we have a few representatives from Canad Companions, like I mentioned, who have joined us tonight, and I'd ask that we there's one of them who's ready for a photo.

So for anybody who brought up up any volunteers, it'd be great to take a quick photo with the council.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, some remarks.

That was probably the cutest photo to ever have been taken here at City Hall.

Thank you, everybody, for being here.

Great.

The doors are now closing.

Move on to our final proclamation of the evening with item 5D.

Our final recognition this evening is to celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, annually recognized from September 15th to October 15th with Redwood City's strong Latin American representation.

It's important to celebrate the rich cultural heritage of our residents and recognize the many contributions that have helped strengthen the fabric of our community.

On behalf of the City Council, it's my honor to present the following proclamation.

Whereas the City of Redwood City recognizes the Hispanic heritage is American heritage, and we have seen the influence in almost every aspect of our lives.

And whereas each year, Americans observe National Hispanic Heritage Month by celebrating the histories, cultures, and contributions of Americans whose ancestors come from Mexico, Spain, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.

And whereas for over 30 years, the Multicultural Institute, or MI, has envisioned a community in which immigrants, regardless of their immigration status, are embraced and valued in the communities in which they live and work.

Whereas with its gradual and steady growth, MI has continually nurtured partnerships with diverse civic, business, and community leaders.

These partnerships have been instrumental in the implementation of several successful projects and community leadership endeavors.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Elmer Martina Saballos, Mayor of Redwood City, on behalf of the City Council and the people of Redwood City, do hereby proclaim September 15th, 2025 through October 15, 2025, National Hispanic Heritage Month, in honor of the rich culture that Hispanic Americans have brought to Redwood City, and in recognition of the endable footprints of Latin American Heritage in our daily lives.

Be it further resolved that in recognition of National Hispanic Heritage Month, the Mexican national flag will be displayed at Courthouse Square from September 14th through the 29th, 2025 for the Fiesas Patrias celebration, and the national flags for Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru, will be displayed in the council chambers at City Hall this evening in celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month.

I'd like to now welcome the Multicultural Institute's Executive Director, Mirna Cervantes, to the podium for remarks and to present her this great proclamation.

Is this on?

Yes.

Good evening.

Mirna Cervantes, executive director of the Multiculture Institute.

I'm here with Josuera Volorio, our programs director.

Gloria Villaseñor, our lovely domestic worker coordinator, and Debbie Torres, Deborah Torres, our board member, who's also a resident of San Mateo.

On behalf of MI, we would like to thank Mayor Martina Zaballos and Vice Mayor Eakin, as well as the city council, for this special recognition.

It's an honor to accept this proclamation during such a difficult time in which our nation is targeting our immigrant communities, just for being who they are.

And so I it's thanks, I want to thank you all, and also just um to acknowledge that it's thanks to collaborations and support like individuals like yourselves and communities like Redwood City that embrace our immigrant communities and our work, that we are able to continue to do our work with dedication and with our heart.

Our team works very, very hard and puts our heart out there with everything we do.

And this is the only way that we're able to continue to be a home away from home for thousands of immigrant families across the region.

And so I want to thank you.

I want to thank you for acknowledging the Jornaleros and the Trabajal Rosomesticas and our immigrant communities in your city, in our city.

And again, just thank you for this proclamation and what a wonderful way for us to celebrate a Heritage Month.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mirna.

We have a proclamation for you and the team and would love to take a photo too.

Thank you.

All right.

That unfortunately brings us to the end of our presentations and acknowledgements for the evening.

We'll now move on to item six, which is our public comment section of the agenda.

We'll now begin to take public comment on items on the consent calendar, matters of council interest, as well as items that are not on the agenda for this evening.

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

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

If speakers do not, they will 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 days.

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

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

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

Thank you, Mayor.

At this time we don't have any in-person speakers, so I'll do a last call to the audience.

Seeing none, we'll move to our Zoom speakers.

We have one public comment this evening from Aaron Fieberling.

Welcome, Aaron.

You can begin your comments, and the timer will begin when you start speaking.

Hello, hi.

Um, my name's Aaron.

I work at Stanford Redwood City, and I live in San Francisco, and I take Caltrain down and bike um to my office a few times a week, usually.

Um so I just wanted to address comment or sorry, um, item 11, which is the Vision Zero program progress report and study session.

Actually, Erin, I'm sorry.

Got it.

Thank you.

Feel free to raise your hand when that item is called.

Thank you.

No problem.

That concludes public comment on this item, Mayor.

Thank you.

Thank you.

City Clerk will now move on to item seven.

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

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

Not seeing any.

Are there any items on the consent calendar which council members would like to pull for discussion?

And not seeing any.

Is there a motion to approve all items on the consent calendar?

So move.

Second.

That was a motion from Councilmember Howard, a second from Councilmember G.

Could we get a roll call vote, please?

Council Member Chu.

Yes.

Council Member G.

Yes.

Council Member Howard.

Yes.

Councilmember Padilla.

Yes.

Council Member Sturkin.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Yes, Mayor Martina Sabayos.

Yes.

The motion passes unanimously.

Great.

Thank you all.

We'll we'll now move on to item eight A.

We'll now hear a presentation from the Housing and Human Concerns Committee on their fiscal years 2025 to 26 and 2026 to 27 work plan.

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

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

Excuse me, Mayor.

Yeah.

Did you want to read the items from the consent calendar?

I actually don't do that anymore.

We don't have to do that anymore.

So we're saving.

What a time saver.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for double checking.

With that, we will welcome housing leadership manager Alyn Lancaster who will introduce the item and housing and human concerns chair, Katie Getz, who will give the presentation.

Welcome both.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council members.

I'm a Lynn Lancaster Housing Leadership Manager and one of the staff liaison to the Housing and Human Concerns Committee.

And I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank them for all their hard work that they've done on our last two-year work plan and all the work and effort they've put into the work plan before you this evening.

And so with that, I just want to turn it over to our chair getz to give the presentation.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and City Council members.

It's hard to follow puppies.

I'm not sure any of us should have to follow puppies.

Tonight we will be asking the city council to consider and then respond to two questions.

The questions are does the city council have any questions regarding the proposed HHCC work plan for fiscal years 2025-2026 and 2026-2027.

And does the city council support the priorities included in the work plan for those two fiscal years?

I also want to acknowledge that the next slide has the names of all of the members of our committee.

And we've had two of those members join just within this last calendar year.

One of those members was at a meeting for the first time this last week.

So we're we're a committee that has a variety of levels of experience, people who've served eight plus years, some of us kind of hanging out in the middle, and then new folks as well.

Um and so that's exciting for for us to just represent diversity of time commitment so far.

And age, right?

We just got our first youth member, at least during my time on the committee, and so that's that's really cool.

On the next slide, you will see our mission statement, which is that the housing and human concerns committee advocates for the improvement of the quality of life of residents of the city to assure that human considerations and housing needs as set forth in the general plan are given adequate consideration in the decision-making process.

And then on the next slide, you're gonna see a um review of the work plan that we have just concluded, by which I mean at our meeting that was less than a week ago.

Um the first item in the work plan was the community development block grant, CDBG, home investment partnership home, and human services financial assistance, HSFA grant funding.

Under this item, the committee reviewed applications and made funding recommendations for CDBG home and HSFA grant funds, the most recent of which you the council approved not too long ago on those HSFA funds.

Then the next piece we worked on were tenant protections.

Under this item, the tenant protections ad hoc subcommittee assisted with the research and holding of focus groups related to the right to return.

The ad hoc subcommittee presented their findings to the full HHCC, and the HHCC has made it has made recommendations to the city council that will get presented later this fall to the full council.

The ad hoc subcommittee also conducted research on various models for collecting data on multifamily rental units.

Unfortunately, the ad hoc did not find any viable examples for collecting rental data.

We've looked at a number of different things, and none of them quite made sense for Redwood City and how we operate here.

Next, we moved on to affordable housing production.

An ad hoc subcommittee researched and produced a report on extremely low-income housing production opportunities with a particular focus on faith-based properties and looked at ways to reduce barriers to ELI housing production.

The production opportunities, particularly on face-based faith-based properties and surplus land are being recommended to further explore in the next work plan.

So we'll talk about that in just a couple minutes here.

Separately, committee member Scheiman also researched and produced a report on office space conversion opportunities, but did not find this as a viable option to produce affordable housing.

It can be done, but it's kind of prohibitively expensive if the housing's gonna stay in the affordable range.

Housing preservation, the committee tracked the implementation of the affordable housing preservation fund, and the committee had originally included the development of a mobile home closure ordinance as directed by the anti-displacement strategy, but at the council's direction, that work has been postponed until fiscal year 2028-2029.

Basic human needs, an ad hoc subcommittee conducted research on existing mental health and substance abuse programs in Redwood City and met with the city's equity and inclusion officer Brianna Evans.

The ad hoc subcommittee found that while there are many existing resources, they can also be, they can often be difficult or confusing to access.

Okay, so that was the work that concluded just a week ago, and now we move on to the 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 fiscal years work plan priorities.

Over the past several months, the HHCC has met off-site and at regular meetings to discuss priorities and develop the following proposed two-year work plan for 2025 through 2027.

The first one is CDBG and HSFA grant funding.

Similar to the last work plan, the committee will review and make funding recommendations for CDBG and HSFA grant funds.

Sorry, the city is joining the county's home consortium in fiscal year 2026-2027.

So the city itself will no longer be administering home grant funds.

For this work plan, the committee also proposes the restart of site visits of funded agencies as part of the program audits.

The second one is the assessment of the HSFA evaluation criteria.

I actually didn't have a little note, but the funding recommendations are also directed by council.

So this would be to we propose that we form an ad hoc subcommittee to monitor the implementation of the ordinance and produce a report after the first year.

And then a member of the ad hoc subcommittee will be designated to attend meetings of the city council subcommittee on homelessness and to brief the HHCC on the data presented at the subcommittee meetings.

Moving on to affordable housing production.

For this item, the committee proposes that we form an ad hoc committee, subcommittee to identify and facilitate to the extent possible an affordable housing test case at a faith-based institution or other site with surplus land.

As previously noted, the work outlined in this item is a continuation from the last work plan.

And for this item, a member of the ad hoc subcommittee will also be assigned to help monitor changes to the affordable housing ordinance and report back to the full HHC.

Number five is monitoring the anti-displacement strategy implementation and affordable housing vacancy rates.

For this item, the committee proposes to monitor the implementation of the anti-displacement strategy by receiving regular updates from staff.

The committee also proposes to receive regular updates from staff to monitor vacancy rates in affordable housing properties.

And then we move on to the greater downtown area plan.

The committee proposes to receive updates from staff and to provide input on the development of the GDAP.

Well, this item will require staff time to prepare updates.

It is work that staff is already doing, so impact to staffing resources should be minimal.

Next up is the economic mobility action plan.

And for this item, the committee proposes to receive updates and provide feedback on the implementation and administration of the EMAP and to contribute to process improvements for future EMAPs.

And again, while this item will require staff time to prepare the presentation, it is work that staff is already doing, and so staff resources should be minimal.

Then we have the timeline.

The CDBG and funding recommendations, those are ongoing work.

Um the HSFA assessment would take place within the first year of the work plan, and that work would occur after this, it would not affect the application that goes out like any day now, basically, right?

Again again, right?

So there's an application for HSFA funds that goes out in within the month.

We're not going to try and fix things or modify things between now and then.

That's too fast.

Um, but in the months after that thing sort of going through where are places where we can ask questions better, that kind of thing.

So that'll be within the first year.

The monitoring the anti-camping ordinance, the hopeful horizons, that would be within the first year of the work plan.

The affordable housing production, um, that is a two-year commitment at least.

Um, so that's happening there, monitoring the anti-displacement strategy and vacancy rates, that work is ongoing.

Um, the GDAP would happen within the first year, and the EMAP would be ongoing work.

And so then our recommendation is that by motion that the council approve the HHC work plan for fiscal year 2025-2026 and 2026-2027.

And then the next slide should take us back to the questions for city council, which is does the city council have any questions regarding the work plan?

And does the city council support the priorities included in the work plan?

Sure, cuts.

Thank you for the great presentation and all the hard work over the last few years.

Council who has questions, comments.

Do we take public comment?

Public comment is a good idea.

We'll go to public comment first.

Thank you.

We don't have any at this time, so I'll do a last call to the audience or folks on Zoom.

If you wish to give public comment on item 8A this evening, seeing none, I'll turn it back to you, Mayor.

Great.

Thank you for double checking city clerk.

Who would like to get us started with any questions, comments.

Councilmember Howard.

Sure.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate your presentation.

This is an extremely ambitious two-year work plan, and I know how hard the committee commission really works.

You work very, very hard.

I I on page, well, I guess it's page one of the background.

I wanted to ask a favor, and that is, it's the first item says monitor changing social needs within the community and make recommendations for improved, changed and or new services.

And I was wondering if the time was available.

I would love if you could find out more information about what the status is right now of child care availability.

I went to the child care symposium, I went to the child care symposium at the CAB building.

I guess it was about six or eight months ago, and there were many child care providers in attendance, and every single one I talked to had space available.

And I said, Well, why do you think that is?

And they said one of the reasons is because families are leaving Redwood City.

Many families may consider leaving in the future.

Also, the elementary school district took on the pre-kindergarten, and that's kind of confused things a bit uh for families, not sure whether they should do child care or go through the school district.

So before I know we've always said child care is one of our top priorities, and I want to be sure is that something that's still in need in Redwood City, and has it changed?

Uh have the needs changed, so that we should be aware of that.

Um that was just one thing I hoped if you had time, or maybe a member of your committee would like to look into that for us.

I think it would be very, very helpful, especially as we approach next year in our budget cycle when we talk about our top priorities and where to designate funding.

Thank you.

Um I have all sorts of anecdotal stories, none of which are actually, you know, data.

So, anecdotal stories are good too.

I was just surprised, and I thought maybe it's just a fluke, but I want to be sure.

Is there a problem that we're not aware of?

Has the school district taken on this responsibility and and left a problem for child care providers?

I just don't know.

So it would be nice to find out and see how, if at all, how different agencies can help in that regard, even if it's just educating families on what's available.

Yeah, this the real quick anecdote I have is the child care center that is at the church that I I serve, which is the Redwoods International Montessori, um at Woodside Road United Methodist Church.

And they have definitely taken a hit with the creation of the transitional kindergarten.

Now that that's open to all four-year-olds, um, four-year-olds in kindergarten preparation were kind of their bread and butter.

And so they've definitely lost kids to that.

Um, their solution to remain economically viable has been to get license to host, have younger kids there, little toddlers.

But that becomes really expensive because your your ratios are smaller, and so you need to charge more in order to hire additional teachers, and child care is expensive, and teachers get paid peanuts.

There's a right, there's a disconnect that you'll pay over two thousand dollars a month easily, and the center can't afford to provide the teachers with health care.

So there's that's that's one anecdote of just there's a mismatch as well as just the sheer cost of child care.

It may be necessary in the future to have a discussion with the child care providers about possible consolidation uh in order to save expenses.

I know we've done it in other fields uh like hotlines and others that they've consolidated in order to save funds on uh administration.

So it's something to consider for the future.

Does child care look different in the future?

Thank you.

I always found that to be so incredibly helpful when you could see what your money is doing, what the city's money is doing.

And if you ever are going to do a site visit, maybe if you'd like to extend it out to the council, if uh anyone would like to join you and visit some of these agencies.

That would be really fun.

And I'm I'm excited that the five years after COVID, we're talking about this again when things got shut down.

It's amazing how much is still working on opening up five years later.

That's true.

That that is true.

I'm glad that you're planning to uh stay in touch with the planning commission as well as the city council.

I just think the sharing of information is just going to be invaluable so that we don't trip over each other.

We're working together and uh and watching out what each is working on.

Um Commissioner Scheineman is uh on the board, he's been elected to the board of heart because of the expertise he carries with preservation of existing housing.

And I have spoken with Armando Sancho of Heart, and he's just oh, he's just wildly enthusiastic about uh Mr.

Scheinman's participation.

So I am so glad that he is working on our behalf as well as the county of San Mateo in preserving existing housing stock in perpetuity to keep it affordable.

It's a really valuable program that we're embarking on.

Then there was one other thing.

Oh, I'm glad you're going to be uh monitoring the anti-camping ordinance.

Again, information shared is very useful to all of us.

So thank you for doing that.

And I think that's all of my comments, but I wanted to thank the committee.

I know not all of them could be here tonight, but thank you so very much for the work that you do.

It's such an invaluable job that you do, and it's time consuming, so many hours of reading and studying and all.

And I know you're all very busy people, so thank you very much for your service.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard.

I will add my before I jump to somebody else, my plus one for the child care taking a closer look at that.

Um, when we talked about our the application that's opening up in a couple of weeks, um, saw such incredible uses listed there.

Childcare was definitely an area where I thought we could make a bigger impact, aside from what Councilmember Howard mentioned around TK opening up and taking lots of the uh students away from providers here in Robert City.

Something else I was thinking about was not just our center-based providers, but the people who are working out of their homes, right?

Family-based who that is running a small business on their own when uh typically these folks are people of color who haven't gotten a business degree, right?

So they definitely need extra support.

Um be curious to see what we all come back with with that.

But do I have any colleague questions?

Go to Councilmember G.

Thank you, Mayor.

Chair Getz, thank you and the committee members for all the hard work, and I uh appreciate the site visits.

I think that's very very important to do to make sure who we fund is actually performing the work and servicing the clients in our city.

In the future, one of the things that in my travels I see is a growing area of interest, particularly the human concern side of HHCC, would like to just ask the committee to think about partnering with the county on behavioral health.

The reason I say that is that we need to be looking ahead, not just reacting, but projecting what our needs might be in the community and with regard to behavior health.

I just see there are more issues out there in the community at large that are growing.

Uh I'm a trustee at a private university that does degrees in psychology and psychiatry, and I tell them the sky's the limit based on what we've learned through COVID and after, but we can't be the thing for everyone.

But there are going to be growing community needs, and I'd like to see us be proactive in identifying what we can do or we can do as service providers to address some of those issues in our community rather reacting to it after they happen.

So there's a great two-year plan, but as you have those conversations going forward, perhaps there might be room to at least partner with the county and bring back that data to the council and then the city about what our emerging needs that we need to be on the lookout for, and how can we bring services to our community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember G.

Council Member Video.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate all your work.

I guess going off of what Councilmember G said, you had mentioned with basic human needs, that you found that the resources were available, but you said it was they were hard or difficult to access.

So I think exactly to that point, along with you know the assessment and the monitoring of the anti-encampment ordinance, I think it's really important that we make sure people know how to access the resources that are available.

Um so whether that's partnering with the county or nonprofits and around, I just want to whatever we can do to make sure whether that's you know behavioral therapy or whatever kind of mental health access people need.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Padio.

And I see Councilmember Chu's hand is raised.

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

And you know, I echo my colleagues sent to that.

I know how much work this is, and uh that you guys really devote yourselves to this uh committee.

I really appreciate um pretty much everything in the work plan.

Uh just a few comments.

I I'd like to second the uh councilmember Howard's thoughts around uh auditing um the needs uh in uh for child care and the ways in which um the school adding uh that service has impacted our local businesses.

I thought her idea of consolidating childcare or offering uh support uh in consolidating.

I mean, you know, obviously we can't make that decision for private businesses, but we can offer support um in doing that.

Um I'd also like to to second um council member G's comment on partnering with the county around behavioral health.

I think you know what we've really learned is is that that um multiplies uh the success of those kinds of programs rather than just being merely additive.

And then the only thing I would, you know, uh maybe add, if there's bandwidth, I certainly think you have a very full plate that as we're looking at preserving existing housing, if there are models or strategies that are effective, particularly cost-effective, uh, in lowering the cost of producing new affordable housing units, particularly on existing sites, like if there are ways to swap out units or add height or add to the footprint of these kinds of buildings uh in ways that are very integrated and cost-effective.

I think that could also be a way to not just preserve existing uh affordable housing, but but to add to that stock and turn it over, um, at least when I was door knocking, um, there was a you know, there's a lot of naturally affordable housing in my district, but at least what I experienced was a lot of it was in serious disrepair and nearing the end of its natural life.

And so I think something that was really top of mind for me is how do we preserve this while replacing the infrastructure because um a lot of those uh units were in pretty rough shape.

So um, again, only if you have the bandwidth, but uh terrific presentation that's more of a I like this idea that that it it can be our job to figure out how to drive down the cost of housing production.

Um that that might be outside the scope of the code.

It's not really your job, but if you know, I mean, if you hear of success stories or hear of best practice, you know, like if you come across it, it's not really your job to do that.

That's construction industry, but if you're aware of strategies that are effective, I love it.

In Pennsylvania.

My father-in-law's Amish next door neighbor can build ADUs for a hundred dollars a square foot.

Um that is a really good price.

It is a really good price.

And when there are no unions, and you're employing a bunch of Amish folks who also don't pay into Social Security and all of that, you can you can do some amazing things.

So that would be my suggestion is we all become Amish and start building some housing.

Yeah, although I would I would note that the Carpenter's Union has actually done some really creative innovative things uh around using union labor and producing units of affordable housing of high quality um at about a quarter the price uh a quarter of the going rate.

Yeah, so yeah, and I'm not yeah, yeah, I'm not knocking the unions.

I'm just like, oh, this is this is what can happen when finances are just done differently.

Yeah, yeah.

So anyway, if you if you come across to create a success stories, we'd love to hear them.

No pressure.

Thank you, Councilmember Chu.

We'll go to Councilmember Howard.

Go to Councilmember Circle.

Thank you.

Thank you for mentioning that.

Uh a startling statistic that will blow people's minds is right now to build one new affordable unit.

It's a million dollars.

That's fresh land, building a unit, it's a full uh one million dollars.

However, if you preserve an existing unit, if you take a building and preserve all those units and sign that contract in perpetuity, it's five hundred dollars.

So there's your savings right there.

Find those old buildings, which we have many of in Redwood City, and try to preserve those buildings so that you create affordability well into the future, half the price.

Thanks.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you.

Um, thank you.

I was gonna say cheap gets.

I gave you a promotion.

Um chair gets.

Anyway, and the whole committee as well for all of your hard work.

I I am very fond of this committee and appreciate how much of a working committee y'all are, and you know, I got a little sneak peek at this um work plan when I came to your last meeting, uh, but it's it's great to see the final product um and see how it's evolving as well.

I just wanted to um kind of throw my support behind some of the suggestions that were made up here as well by my colleagues uh about looking into child care and partnering with um our partners in the community that are already you know very uh close to that work, like four triple C's build up Sam County, and also uh partnering with county on behavioral health needs as councilmember G uh suggested, and then to some of the um results of the previous work plan.

I did want to make sure that we don't you know lose uh some of that data and maybe suggest that with Elon's um research on the conversion of office to you know affordable housing, maybe that could become a one-pager or a case study that could be shared, just you know, available uh in case you know community partners, corporate partners are interested uh in looking at it.

Um that way it doesn't go to waste and it is available as a resource and I also second uh inviting council to join on the site visits.

I'm really glad to hear y'all are doing that and to build on council member two's point, uh kind of addressing kind of aging housing stock and and making sure that homes are livable and um again this is kind of turning into a wish list at this point, but if we could look at soft story uh retrofitting um ordinances that have already been passed in like Berkeley and other communities across the bay, that's a you know, at least in my district, um, I think a big priority, especially since we've had a few earthquakes recently.

Uh, there's a lot of soft story construction, old uh 70s era apartment buildings, 50s, 60s, 70s in my district.

Um, that could use some updating and retrofitting.

Um, so if there were capacity for that again, wish list maybe next year um or the following uh work plan.

Um but otherwise um y'all are amazing.

Thank you so much.

So Elon has a white paper on the office conversions.

Um it is in my email somewhere.

I will make sure that it gets sent on to to all of you.

And he actually has talked about the soft story research being an interest being a research interest of his as well.

So he is the he is probably our wonkiest um member, and I for one am grateful for the way that he thinks about those kinds of details.

We'll go to the voice mayor next.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for your wonderful work.

I agree with my colleagues on the site visits.

Um I'm also happy to hear that you um spoke with Brianna Evans.

I um I know that she sometimes refers to the Urban Land Institute, which has such fascinating data about criteria that make you, you know, at birth, we can predict if you're going to grow up to be underserved or grow up to be not underserved.

You know, things like what was the educational attainment of your parents, what um what type of neighborhood were you born in in terms of was it underserved and certain criteria, and and the reason I bring it up is that I feel that housing and human concerns, or I've learned in the last two years serving in this capacity and attending various things that the availability of housing, as my colleagues have mentioned, that the availability of housing um is one of the key problems with um homelessness and and these types of issues, and so understanding um core economics, uh what would you call it?

Um uh you know, economics of the underserved, um through a lens of socioeconomics, can inform, and I'm guessing, as you called Mr.

Scheinman a wonk, he's probably way ahead of me on this.

But I I guess I'm I guess what I'm focusing on is to focus on socioeconomics in addition to all these other things, and and tools that are out there that um Urban Land Institute just has an amazing website, and maybe you referenced before data and how important anecdotal versus data is, and so maybe it can inform some of your white papers and and studies.

Also, of course, I support Mr.

G's um vision of um joining more with counties behavioral health, and uh you know, two plus two maybe equals six, and finding those opportunities.

Um I echo also what um Mr.

Stirkin and Ms.

Howard said about the vital importance of um preserving existing affordable housing, and that can be require really creative, you know, just first of all identifying it and saying, Oh, this is naturally occurring affordable housing.

Wow.

The people who live here are really happy, and uh they've lived here for 30 years, and you know, maybe being a little proactive there and creating a win-win, and you have partners such as Hart that can swoop in, and the city too.

Well, I'm telling I'm not telling you anything you don't know.

We we have a fund also, so I just encourage that to continue.

I think I've done.

Let me look.

Um, I just wanted to um also, as some of my colleagues have, thank Mr.

Scheinman for looking into converting um vacant office into housing, even though he discovered it's not feasible because it's too expensive and it's just apples and oranges.

It's as um one of my colleagues mentioned, it's important to look into it.

Um and then I just want to make the added comment that um why build more if if we're looking at the the vacant office that we currently have not being feasible to go into housing, which is a strong need.

Um and and there may be a reason why you build more office.

I don't have all the answers, but it's just a glaring thing looking at me, is if we have a 30% office vacancy rate right now in downtown Redwood City or in Redwood City, and that vacancy rate is not amenable to be converted into housing, which is an extremely high need.

Um let's look really long and hard about building more office.

Is that the right thing for the community?

Just pops out at me.

And um I think I've done just uh.

Okay, that's it.

Great, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I think that having the economic mobility action plan as part of our work plan will address your concerns about um socioeconomic pieces and how Redwood City um is working on those.

So we were actually really excited to get that presentation.

Um I don't even remember exactly when we got that presentation in the spring, maybe, um, about that new work that that Redwood City is doing there.

Yeah, yeah, what I wanted to what what really um uh alerted me to the socioeconomic aspects is uh a speaker at at a hip housing event in maybe March or April of this year, a PhD professor from Seattle who talked about the socioeconomics of housing and how sometimes people overlook how important it is to increase the supply.

And um, so I I just uh there's there's some academia out there that supports that and thank you thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Not seeing anybody else's hands raised.

I'll go ahead and add my remarks.

Thank you, Chair Katz, Alin, the whole committee for all the great work that you do.

Um, you know, as I mentioned before, I'm very interested in if uh there is capacity for uh an investigation or I guess a study into child care here in Redwood City.

Um I greatly appreciated the the consistency around extremely low income units and looking for ways to build that up.

I know that's the the most expensive kind of affordable unit we can build, but also the the greatest need in the community.

Um I'm also really curious about the office conversions, the white paper that Elon's been working on, be curious to see.

Um even if we're not able to build affordable housing, what kind of housing units may come from that.

I'm curious, um, regardless of the the income level, just to have that information.

Um I'll also add my my plus one to Councilmember G's points around partnering with county behavioral health.

I think that makes so much sense given um Opal Horizons implementation here locally, and um, I you know, with you all looking at affordable housing and how we can continue to drive that and meet the housing goals.

I'm also curious around um you know permanent supportive housing, right?

And what best practices we can learn from other cities that are doing great work on that.

Um but I know that as a county continues to build its own outreach and build the units that um these wraparound services are going to, you know, I hope become the standard.

So we'd be curious to hear more about that.

But aside from adding to the wish list, I think that's all I've got, so I appreciate your time to chair guides.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And many of you commented on the thoroughness of the report.

And so a big shout out to Alyn and Victor, who do so much to facilitate our work and make our jobs a whole lot easier than they they would be otherwise.

So they probably put more hours into this report than I did, by far.

So kudos to them.

And mayor, before we leave this item, I'm wondering if you might like the committee to take in the feedback and consider some revisions to their plan.

It feels there's a substantial wish list that is really a big expansion of what was otherwise contemplated for the next two years, and the committee may want to make some modifications based on that feedback if they're to take up the issues you've you've all raised.

Should we just build that into the motion?

Like adjust the motion that we have from staff.

I think you might consider having the commission return, so not act on it tonight, but to actually return with an update based on the feedback you've provided tonight.

Thank you, City Manager.

That's a research.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, city manager.

I just have a quick question to follow up on that.

Would that prevent the committee from getting started on some of the items or continuing the work that they're already doing in any way?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's a little bit of a challenge, honestly.

You know, as I listen to the list get longer and longer, it it didn't strike me as items that could just be add-ons to what they already had, and you you did acknowledge there's a substantial work plan already developed.

So I'm concerned about the commission not having capacity to do all of those things and being a little bit at a loss to prioritize based on the comments tonight.

So I don't think there's um a lot of clarity now.

One option would be to adopt it for this evening so that for example the things that are quite imminent, such as the the Human Services Financial Assistance Program, perhaps getting started on that, but then ask them to come back, you know, in a couple of months with some revisions to take in the other feedback.

But I I think it is really expanding the scope significantly of the work plan.

One of the questions that we had had kind of as our meeting this last week was concluding was what happens if there comes a moment when we need to amend our work plan.

Um so that might be what I'm hearing from you is that there maybe need to be amendments to this in order to address some of council's concerns, because I wouldn't I wouldn't want to end up where we were two years ago, which was that we went back to the drawing board on a bunch of stuff, and it was then months before we could get started on things and form the ad hocs to do the work and that kind of thing.

Um that would that would really be disappointing to report back at our next meeting.

Yeah, I certainly understand that.

Um so perhaps that's kind of a question back to the council.

So so your wish list um is how urgent are the suggestions you made tonight compared to what the commission has prepared.

Might you consider um say approving the two-year work plan so they can get started on their first year of it, and then perhaps after the you know, in in the course of their first year, they can then come back with feedback about what else they could incorporate in the second year based on your feedback tonight.

But I I think there's just an imbalance between what additional work you've asked for tonight versus what they and staff were prepared to support for the next two years.

Does that seem better for the commission?

I would think so.

It would be it would be nice to be able to form ad hocs at the end of October instead of waiting until probably January.

Thank you for that.

We'll go to the vice Mayor and then council member Howard.

I'm I'm speaking for myself now, but in light of what the city manager said, and I I don't want to belabor the point, but so for me, I'm okay with leaving, given that you want to get started, and there's so many needs, and you you've already got a robust work plan.

I myself am okay with not investigating child care.

I mean, the the public schools are providing pre-K now.

So that that may be hard on daycare businesses that previously served that community that now are being served by the public schools, but I'm not so sure that's something that the committee needs to get into.

I'm not so sure how connected, but that's just my opinion.

And so if taking the hands off of child care research, um streamlines things, that's fine.

I'm not saying child care isn't important, I'm just saying I'm not sure.

Anyway, thank you, Vice Mayor.

Councilmember Howard.

No, I was I saw the um our staff member Lynn Lancaster, I believe she wanted to uh no, I'm sorry.

I thought okay, I thought you wanted to add to the conversation that we were having.

It certainly would be welcome.

Yeah, there I was just gonna highlight there are a few things that um the committee's kind of mandated to do, and we are uh subject to deadlines that are not our own, so that is the kind of CDBG HSFA funding.

Um, and then as kind of mentioned, the GDAP and the EMAP are bigger citywide processes, so um, those aren't really things that can be tabled um easily.

So I just wanted to highlight that you know, as you're thinking about priorities.

Um that was it.

Well, I I would be certainly amenable to saying approve the work plan, and then if when you go back to your committee and you have these discussions, if there are any changes, maybe six months to a year, you can come back to council and let us know if that's something that uh you would like to uh investigate further.

I I never said this as a mandate, it was just information I thought would be helpful, and along the way you may even find out some of these answers as you interview some of these different agencies uh during the funding cycle.

So that's what my recommendation would be.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard.

I see Councilmember Chu's hand is raised.

Um I was just gonna add I I thought the city manager's suggestion was very sensible, and I didn't get the sense that any of the things we asked for were hair on fire or mandatory, it was just kind of like hey, this would be great.

Um and so um I would be very supportive of the city manager's suggestion, which as I understand it, was to approve the work plan as written tonight so that they can get started and meet important deadlines, and then you know, in six months to a year, as things evolve, that if there's modifications in response to what we shared tonight, that they could represent in a year.

It was was did I correctly understand?

Of course, okay yes, thank you.

And I I would add you know that the comments made were varied, and I don't want to presume that some of these things can't come up in the course of the work the commission was doing, but some of them are a little more substantial, and so um it feels like a lot to add without the commission having a chance to weigh them all.

If there's no other comment.

If there's other comments, I'll wait, but if there are no other comments, I'll make a motion to um approve the plan is written, and then or I'm not sure quite how to articulate this and then suggest that uh as things evolve, uh if they want to come back in six months to a year uh with an amended plan in response to the things suggested tonight, and as things evolve, um move forward to to approve as is.

Unless there are more comments.

Thank you for the making the motion, Councilmember Chu, and I see Councilmember Howard.

I'll second that motion.

You said it very well.

Great.

That's a motion from Councilmember Chew, a second from Councilmember Howard.

Could we get a roll call vote, please?

We'll start with Councilmember G.

Yes, Councilmember Howard.

Yes, Councilmember Pattia.

Yes, Councilmember Sturkin.

Yes, Councilmember Chu.

Yes, Vice Mayor Aiken.

Yes, Mayor Martinez Sebayas.

Yes, motion passes unanimously.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Much appreciated.

Thank you, Chair Gutz.

Thank you, Allen.

And please thank the team for us.

It's greatly appreciated.

With that, we will now move to item 9A, which is the adoption of ordinance adopting the 2025 California State Building and Fire Codes.

Chief Building Official and Community Development Services Manager, Christina McTaggart will give the presentation.

Excuse me.

Welcome, Christina.

Thank you for being here.

Great.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council members.

Again, my name is Christina McTaggart.

I am the chief building official and the manager of the building division.

I'm here this evening with our fire marshal Janice Chung and our fire chief Baraka Baraka Carter.

This will be our second public hearing and the adoption of the 2025 California Building and Fire Codes.

Every three years, the state of California updates the California Building Standards Code to incorporate new technology, safety standards, and energy efficiency methods.

These codes will become effective on January 1st, 2026.

For the implementation of any new or updated local residential amendment, they must be filed by tomorrow, September 30th.

The new state codes exceed the energy efficiency requirements of the city's prior reach codes for new construction.

Local amendments for Redwood City are mostly administrative in nature.

When the ordinance was first introduced earlier this month on September 8th, there were not any changes requested by City Council.

So everything tonight was already reviewed.

The high-level overview can be found in the September 8th staff report and in the staff report from this evening.

If you can go to the next slide, thank you.

Here are the same city council questions that were introduced from the September 8th meeting.

We can take any questions or comments after the public hearing.

This concludes our presentation, great.

Thank you, Christina, for the presentation.

We'll now open public comments, the public hearing, and I'll turn it over to our city clerk to help facilitate.

Thank you.

We don't have any speaker cards at this time, so last call to the audience for any speaker cards on any speakers on item 9A this evening, and that includes folks on Zoom.

If you'd like to give comment on this item, go ahead and raise your hand at this time.

Seeing none, turn it back to you, Mayor.

Okay, with that, we'll now close the public hearing and turn it back over to the city council who has questions or comments.

I don't really have any questions or comments, but if council does adopt, does that mean we don't have code updates for six years?

I think with the new state ordinance, they're frozen after adoption for a period of six years.

For residential.

Hi, good evening.

They're frozen for residential construction projects only.

Well, good.

That means board of building review can at least meet once in the next six years.

That is correct.

We would still be on a triannual otherwise for all other construction.

Very good.

Thank you.

If there aren't any comments or questions, I'm happy to make the motion to adopt the staff recommendation.

Second.

Great.

That was a motion from Councilmember G, a second from Councilmember Howard.

Could we get a roll call vote, please?

Could it could I just make one comment?

Uh those of you in the audience and at home, please read this report.

There are so many good rebates available to people to do the right thing as far as updating and uh I mean electrical panels.

There's all sorts of rebates that you may not be aware of that almost completely cover the cost of doing some of the recommendations.

So I wanted to thank the staff for including that in the report because I just don't think enough of us are aware that we can save a lot of money as we try to take on more electrification when we can.

But thank you very much.

Vice Mayor.

I just echo the um Councilmember Howard's comments.

Yes, please read this to the community.

And then as to Mr.

G's comments, I just wanted the public to be clear that it isn't it is not our choice not to update building codes for housing for six years.

It is a state law.

So we we're we have to comply with state law, and uh so I just want to make that clear.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

I think we're ready to vote.

Can we get a roll call vote, please?

I'll start with council member Howard.

Yes, Councilmember Padilla.

Yes, Councilmember Sturkin.

Yes.

Council Member Chu.

Yes.

Councilmember G.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Eakin.

Yes.

Mayor Martina Savallos.

Yes.

The motion passes unanimously.

Great.

Thank you, Christina.

Our fire marshal, the whole team for being here for the great presentation.

We will now move on to item 10A.

Which is excuse me, tentative side letter agreements between the City of River City and all city bargaining units.

Resolution for underrepresented executive management and confidential employees regarding changes to dental insurance for calendar year 2026.

Human resources manager Felicia Oise is here to give us the presentation.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Thank you for being here.

No problem.

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

I am Cox She Master.

I'm a senior HR analyst here with the city.

Um ready to do the next slide.

Great.

So we have some recommendations for council today.

We're asking first for council to approve tentative side letter agreements related to dental benefit changes effective in 2026 calendar year for all employee bargaining groups, um, and also to adopt a resolution approving um uh amending the 2026 dental insurance benefits for employees and the unrepresented executive management group and in confidential employees group.

And so the questions before council are um listed here.

First, does council have any questions regarding the process to evaluate the potential changes to dental insurance for city employees?

And second, um, does the city council have any questions regarding the proposed dental benefit structure?

All right, in the most recent round of contract negotiations um for successor labor agreements with the bargaining groups.

Uh there were uh there was feedback received by employee groups regarding dental benefits, one was low coverage for basic services and or the dancia, and the other was difficulty finding um providers who accept delta dental insurance, which is what most of our groups care have.

So the city agreed to convene um a group uh committee together of the labor groups, all bargaining units had representation at this group, and any agreed upon changes would be effective January 2026.

And so here are some background on the dental plans that are available right now at the city.

We have two different types of dental plans available and three different types of arrangements.

So first are um public safety employees at the fire department in IAFF and COA.

They have a um health reimbursement account, and that is separate from what all other employees have at the city, which is a Delta Dental um PPO.

And so would that the Delta Dental PPO has some variations in terms of what the city covers and lifetime and yearly maxes for different bargaining units just depending on what was negotiated.

All right.

And so the committee had some findings.

One first was that Delta Dental does cover a reasonable amount of providers, in comparison to other carriers in the area with similar services.

And employee organizations based on that did want to stick with Delta Dental.

And what we looked at is possibly enhancing some of the benefits through Delta that would be beneficial to employees, which we did find at a relatively low cost.

And so this slide does cover what this would look like going forward, but to highlight the changes.

So 80% of in-network services are covered by the plan currently.

20% are covered by city employees.

And so this change would result in 90% being covered by the plan and 10% being covered by city employees for approved services.

And in addition to that, we have increases in our annual dental cap and our lifetime orthodontia cap.

You can see the cost is minimal, it's about 63 cents per month for employees or 32 cents per month for SEIU, which has a different rate.

And then what we'll be doing this year is in October, upcoming, we'll be distributing information about the changes to the dental plan for an open enrollment in November for changes to be effective January 1st.

All right.

And here again is just the recommendation to approve the tentative side letter agreements related to Delta Dental or to the dental changes and the unrepresented executive management and confidential groups.

Following public comment, we can return to the questions.

Staff gave me a note I was reading too quickly than look up, but thank you for the great work.

With that, we will now go to public comment.

And no speaker cards at this time.

So one last call to the audience or to folks on Zoom for any public comment on item 10A this evening.

And no public comment, Mayor.

Thank you, City Clerk.

We'll bring it back to the council.

Do we have any questions or comments from council members?

Sorry, Councilman Rucci.

I think this is great.

If you can do the same 63 cents per month increase for health care coverage, I'd be making the motion in a heartbeat.

Other than that, great job in keeping the premiums down and having increased limits and coverage.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Sturkin.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you so much.

It's just the right thing to do.

You know, with my employer, I work for a nonprofit, and the coverage I had over there isn't as good.

And so I actually use the Delta coverage that we have here to have more options.

So it it really uh does work.

And I found it to be very um good coverage.

So I I guess the only question I had just I would like to ask if you could just refresh my memory on SEIU's particular kind of formula there, just for anyone who might not understand the 63 cents versus the 32 cents and all that.

Sure.

So um that just is basically what the what the premium is, the coverage from the city versus what the employees covering.

Um and so SCIU, the city covers 95% of the premium employees cover 5%.

And so basically what would be happening with all of the plans is that it would be about an increase in about 5% in the premiums.

Thank you very much for clarifying that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Sturgeon.

We'll go to Councilmember Howard next.

If there are no other questions or comments, I'd like to make the motion to approve the tentative side litter agreements and adopt the resolution amending the 2026 dental insurance plan.

Second.

Great.

That was a motion from Councilmember Howard, a second from Councilmember G.

Could we get a roll call, please?

Councilmember Padia.

Yes.

Council Member Sturkin.

Yes.

Council Member Chu.

Yes.

Councilmember G.

Yes.

Councilmember Howard.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Yes.

Mayor Martinez Aballos.

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

Great.

Thank you again.

Thank you, Kakshi, for the great presentation.

Thank you.

We'll now move on to item 11A, which is our Vision Zero Program Progress Report study session.

Now hold a study session where no action will be taken.

Study sessions are opportunities to hear community and individual council member feedback, but no formal action will be taken at the end of this meeting.

Engineering and Transportation Director Tanisha Warner will introduce the item and principal planner, Malahat Olrang, and police lieutenant just, I'm sorry, Azus Castro and Police Sergeant Peter Kang will give the staff presentation.

Thank you all for being here.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Martinez Sabayos, City Council members, city staff, and members of the community.

My name is Tanisha Werner.

I am the director of engineering and transportation.

And tonight we're here to give you an update on Vision Zero, which really solidifies the city's commitment to enhancing transportation safety within our city network.

The last time you received an update was in September 2023.

And this is our two-year update, which we have per our work plan.

Tonight we will have uh the presentation delivered from your principal planner, Malaha Oweng, on our transportation team and two of our wonderful police department officers.

With that, I will pass it to Malahat to give the presentation.

Thank you.

Okay.

Good evening.

My name is Milohad Orang.

Um, principal transportation planner with Revolu City Engineering and Transportation Department.

Tonight I'm going to give you an update on um Vision Zero programs that we've been working on in the past few years.

And there are um sections that our uh Revue City Police Department is going to present to you.

Then I'm doing the presentation.

Um, these are the questions.

Please keep those in mind.

Um, we have the same slide at the end of the presentation.

Um, so think about does the city council have questions about the factors associated with collisions in Revue City.

Does the city council have input on current infrastructure projects to improve safety?

Does the city council have input on proposed education efforts to improve safety?

Does the city council have input on proposed enforcement efforts to improve safety?

Next slide, please.

Um, so just give you a background.

What is Vision Zero?

Vision Zero is um an idea, an international movement, and a data-driven strategy to eliminate all traffic related fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, and equitable mobility for all.

The idea is started from North European countries, and in the past 20, 15, 10 years, many American um cities adopted this idea and this strategy.

In summer 2022, our city council adopted the city's first vision zero Plan combined with the first bicycle and pedestrian master plan, which we call a Drevo City Wi-Fi drive plan.

Um I also have to mention that in the past few years, Vision Zero has been one of the City Council's priorities.

Transportation is one of the three strategic priorities for the council.

And one of the goals is to implement and adopt Vision Zero Plan's recommended recommended strategies to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries from traffic collisions.

Next slide, please.

This data for Rebu Cities from our police department, it's for the roadways in the city, does not include freeways, 101 and 280.

So per data from our police department between 2019 and 2024, there were about 3,287 collisions in Rebus City, an average of 657 every year.

About 591 or 18% were related to bicycle and pedestrian, and 112 or 3% were fatality with fatality or severe injuries.

Next slide, please.

Our GIS team uses the data from police department.

We update this data every quarter.

It's these are online maps, open to the public to view.

We call them hot spot maps.

I'm sorry, I need to go to my notes for the hotest spot maps.

They are along wider streets, the street that has a higher volume and higher speed.

So there are four series of maps.

I believe you have a printed version in front of you.

Sorry if it doesn't have the street names, but again, this is an online map that you can go and zoom in, zoom out and see what's going on on Rebu City streets.

So the first map is street speed injury that shows the hotest spot of injury involved collisions.

And those areas around El Camino Real, Jefferson, Middlefield, Vetrance, Brewster, east of El Camino Real between El Camino and Vetrance, Broadway, and some intersections on Revut Shores.

Next slide, please.

This map shows the hottest spot of pedestrian-involved collisions, and they are around Broadway, El Camino Real, Woodside Road, near Middlefield Road, Maple, and Vical Avenue east of El Camino Real.

Next slide, please.

The next one shows the hottest spot of bicycle-involved collisions, and they're around El Camino Real, Veterans Boulevard, Middlefield Road between Maple Street and Caltrans Station.

And the last map shows, next slide, please.

The heatest heat map of vehicle only collisions, and those are around Rebush Parkway between Twindolphin and Bridge Parkway.

Woodside Road, Jefferson Avenue, Veterans Boulevard, and Middlefield Road.

And as you heard, lots of these corridors are repeated for different types of collisions.

Next slide, please.

In the staff report, in figure five, as you can see, the total number of collisions in Revut City from 2019 to 2024, we had an increase every year, a slight increase.

In this diagram, I tried to compare the Revus City fatal and severe injuries in the region.

So this slide shows the status of Revus City went up, it came down in 2023, again went up.

And as of for the first two quarters of 2025, we had about 10 severe and fatal injuries in Revus City.

So we have to wait until end of the year to see the status.

So it doesn't show a specific trend.

Next slide, please.

This slide shows the same fatal and severe injuries in nine county bay area.

And as you can see, it has it shows a decrease and decline in the past few years in the region.

Next slide, please.

There is another way that we can compare the status of Revut City with see what's the size of Revus City compared to other cities in the area or other cities that are similar to Revus Cities.

So OTS, which is the State Office of Traffic Safety, they do publish rankings of different cities per day population in different population category, in different categories of collisions.

They rank the cities.

By the way, the latest data for this OTS ranking is 2022.

It takes time for the state to clean the data and update their database.

So Revut City is in group C, which there are 104 cities in group C in the state of California.

And these are the cities that their population is between 50,000 to 100,000.

And there are a few categories of collisions, such as driving under influence for drivers under 21 bicycle collisions and speeding.

That the Revut City's ranking is very low.

Very low means divorce and high, probably 104 is the best.

And as you can see, because Rebus City ranked low in some of the categories like bicycle accidents, total number of bicycle accidents, accidents or ranking, and DOI for drivers under 21, our ranking is three between 104 cities in the state.

Again, the best one or best situation is to be 104.

Next slide, please.

So what are primary collision factors in Reboot City?

This is probably similar when we did the update two years ago.

I'm not sure about red light running, but speeding and driving under influence or DOI and red light running are three primary collision factors in Revus City based on the data from 2019 to 2024.

Next slide, please.

So these are the information, just a background about the status of collisions and ranking in terms of traffic safety for Rebus City.

In terms of traffic patterns in Rebus City, there are about 59% of our population commute by car.

And this shows the unique situation of Revus City because we have major destinations in Revus City, like county offices, medical destinations, that lots of people who drive in Revus City, they are not regular commuters, they are not Revus City residents, they are one-day visitors to the city.

So it's very important when we pick the countermeasures, we actually target those populations too.

Next slide, please.

So with all this information, then a few years ago we were working to develop our vision zero action plan or walk by drive plan.

We did a very comprehensive overview of where the collisions are happening and primary collision factors in Revut City.

And we used the safe system approach, which is a um, which you see the diagram on the screen, to come up with infrastructure and non-infrastructure projects to include in our vision zero um plan.

So the safe system approach, which is from federal highway and administration, and there are many agencies currently.

They use this approach to develop their vision zero and safety plans, is based on safer people, safer vehicles, safer speed, safer roads, and post-crash care.

So when we developed our Vision Zero plan, I don't know if you read through the plan.

Um the projects and programs that are identified and proposed in the plan were based on this approach.

Next slide, please.

Maybe there are different corridors when we do a new analysis.

But there were 10 top 10 Vision Zero locations, either spot or intersection or segments of the road identified as top 10 Vision Zero locations.

Next slide, please.

And this is the map of those locations.

And as of now, in September 2029, um, out of 10 Vision Zero locations, eight of them they had some sort of improvements, or there are projects on their design, or getting ready for construction for those um those eight locations.

There are two remaining um areas, um VPAL Avenue between El Camino and Vetrance and segments of Revut Shores that currently there is no active project, but our plan is to start those projects in the next five years.

Other than projects that we call them Vision Zero projects because it is uh top 10 in our Vision Zero plan.

Um there are other traffic safety improvement projects that um my team, transportation division is actively working on those.

Uh, there are a few of them are getting ready for construction.

Um, as you can see on the screen, these are very large capital projects.

Um, Vero Bike Board, Permanent Project, El Camino James Intersection Improvement, and El Camino Real Bike Lane, Southbound Bike Lane, are getting ready for construction, and currently we are working on final stages of the design for Roosevelt Avenue, permanent traffic calming project, we are doing planning and design for Jefferson traffic enhancement and Bay Road project.

This is a joint project with the county.

So these are major traffic safety improvement capital projects that are coming.

Next slide, please.

Um, in terms of funding, um, this is just for last year.

Um, majority of traffic safety projects are grant funded currently.

We supplement those funds with capital outlay or um city funds.

Uh we do receive in transportation division, sales tax pass-through funds and SP1 funds through a state, and we use um impact development impact fees to cover the cost of those projects.

Uh, with all that, when um during the mid-year budget amendment um in April 2025, uh the city council allocated about five million dollars to two programs, funding programs that are mainly funding source for traffic safety enhancement projects.

And at the end of the fiscal year, with the new budget allocated about six million dollars to traffic safety enhancement projects and active transportation, which is basically bicycle and pedestrian projects.

Next slide, please.

There are other ways to um implement um traffic safety enhancement and vision zero projects.

Um these are um smaller um scale projects compared to larger corridor projects that we currently have.

Uh one of them is uh which is very popular is adding leading pedestrian interval, which um is uh basically a technology on the signal system that gives turns the pedestrian signal a few seconds ahead of cars starting move moving and entering the intersection.

So with every new and retrofitted traffic signal, we add this technology to the signal.

Um, all 13 intersections allowing El Camino Real currently have LPI as of a few months ago.

That was something Caltrans installed um less than a year ago, I believe.

Um, the other thing that we um try to do is as part of our payment projects, um, and re-striping the road.

We try to add bike facilities and um high visibility crosswalks and other uh improvements that we can do uh with a striping and smaller scale projects again, one of them that we are currently working to um roll the phase one of it, um, getting ready for construction is marking red care or what we call a California daylighting law.

Uh we are starting with areas around parks, schools, and some high priority locations, um such as Kaiser medical offices.

So these are smaller-scale projects that um we are working on the address traffic safety and vision zero.

And the photo um I added to this presentation is the parking protected cycle track on Arguello, which um we did add that as a part of uh 2022 pavement project.

Next slide, please.

Um, so there are other categories of um addressing traffic safety um enhancement, and that is CEFRA to school.

So SERFA to school, it could include uh infrastructure projects and it could include uh public education or an encouragement uh projects.

We do have a CEFRA to school staff who is stationed in our parks department youth program, but um she's actually sitting engineering one day per week, and we do coordinate on different projects.

One of the major SERFA to school initiatives that uh we've been working on is the changing the speed limit around schools.

Um it's um it needs lots of coordination between different city uh departments.

That is why we phased it.

Um five schools have been um completed, and we have five schools, school areas remaining in Revu City, which our goal is to complete those by summer 2026.

And there are other activities under CERA to school um that have been done with our parks department um and with um grants that we receive through County Office of Education, um, several bike rodeos and programs to encourage safe biking and um safe walking and barking to the schools.

Next slide, please.

All right, good evening.

I'm Lieutenant Jesse Castro with the Rebel City Police Department.

Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and City Council for this brief moment to provide some information.

Uh so on this slide.

Uh the Robert City Police Department was awarded uh a STEP, which means saturation traffic enforcement program grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety for fiscal year 2024 and 2025.

The STEP grant funded safety equipment officer training and staffing for special details to reduce the number of fatality and injury collisions involving alcohol and other primary collision factors.

Implementation efforts focused on enforcement of specific traffic safety laws such as DUI and destructive driving, providing traffic safety education and informing the public as planned enforcement activities about plan enforcement activities.

Each month, the grant directs us to focus on statewide safety campaigns.

For example, September is pedestrian safety month.

So our efforts emphasize walking and biking to schools.

While April is distracted driving awareness month, focusing on education and enforcement on the dangers of texting or using a phone while driving.

These targeted campaigns allow us to align with statewide initiatives while tailoring enforcement and education to address the safety concerns most relevant to our community.

Next slide, please.

With this grant funding, we also conducted three DUI checkpoints.

We also held 10 DOI saturation patrols, which resulted in five DUI arrests and 11 special enforcement operations that issued approximately 65 citations and two arrests for high risk violations, such as red light running and illegal cell phone use.

Pedestrian safety also has been a priority.

Plain closed officers ran crosswalk enforcement details where we issued approximately 140 citations for failure to yield to pedestrians.

High visibility enforcement has been concentrated at collision hotspots like Woodside and Middlefield, El Camino Real at Shelby and Finger.

Overall, the STEP grant has been essential in keeping our community safe by funding the proactive enforcement and education that hold dangerous drivers accountable and prevent collisions.

Thank you.

Yes, back to this question.

So that was the last slide of our presentation.

So these are the questions we have from City Council.

Does the city council have questions about the factors associated with collisions in Redwood City?

Does the City Council have input on current infrastructure projects to improve safety?

Does the city council have input on proposed education efforts to improve safety?

Does the city council have input on proposed enforcement efforts to improve safety?

Thank you.

Thank you, Malahat's Lieutenant Castro, Tanisha for the great presentation.

We will open it up with public comment first.

Thank you.

Great.

So at this time we have one in-person speaker, and we've got a couple folks lining up on Zoom.

So we'll start with our in-person speaker, Dylan Finch.

You have two minutes to speak, and the timer will begin when you start speaking.

Hello, council.

My name is Dylan Finch.

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

I think there's definitely still some work to do.

But I wanted to thank council and staff for their hard work and for making this a priority.

Um I know that the city has been working on a lot of projects to try to make streets safer.

Um I walk down Vera Boulevard a lot, and I I think on that side of El Camino, there's a lot happening and in downtown as well.

Uh, I've I've been seeing it um happen.

So that's that's really great.

And I I wanted to say thank you for that.

Um, I I'm not sure about all of the factors influencing this, but I do think in the long term, a focus on infrastructure will pay off.

Um, it will save us money and enforcement and free up police to do um other kinds of traffic enforcement or um other kinds of police work.

Um, and I do think that vision zero should continue to be a focus, um, so that we can all enjoy a safer Redwood City.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll turn now to our Zoom speakers.

Our first speaker will be Aaron Fieberling, who will be followed by Mike Swire.

Heron, you can go ahead and unmute yourself, and you have two minutes.

Hi, hi council.

Um, I uh just wanted to point to a few things in the report.

Um, the spokes program specifically.

Um, it sounds like right now it's only operating at one school.

Um, it's a program to give a free bike and bike lock to children and schools, um, which is an amazing program that teaches bike safety, etc.

And um I was hoping, oh I just like to express my support for that program and um the need for that to be in more schools.

Um, I'd also like to express the need for more protected bike lanes, especially across the intersections that are identified in the report, um, as well as the need to educate drivers themselves who are the cause the cause of most of the fatal accidents.

Um, currently, that's not part of the DMV code.

Um, when someone gets a driver's license, and it should be.

Um, I'd also like to um point to the lack of coordination between neighboring cities.

Um, for example, I bike between Redwood City and Palo Alto, and there's a lack of a consistent protected and separated bikeway.

Um, that makes the route very dangerous for bike riders, as well as for pedestrians.

I'd also like to bring attention to a particular intersection that's really highlighted in the report and on the hot spots.

That is Middlefield Road and Woodside Road.

This intersection that I bicycle on multiple times a week.

Even as a confident bicyclist, I feel unsafe.

It's identified as one of the most dangerous intersections, but I can't find any sort of plan for its improvement.

And it's it's silly to invest in such a great bikeway down middle field out of, you know, out from the Caltrain station and then dump people into a very, very unsafe intersection.

Yeah, I also really want you to look at the speed cameras in San Francisco.

Thank you.

Thank you, Erin.

Our next speaker is Mike Swire.

Mike, you can go ahead and unmute yourself.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Sorry about that.

Yeah, thanks so much, Mayor and members of the council.

My name is Mike Swire.

I'm a former resident now living in San Mateo, and I chair the CCAG B Pack by South Pedestrian Advisory Committee, although I'm speaking on my own behalf.

I want to thank the team for making this a priority and for the data-driven approach that you are taking.

You can't improve if we don't know what the current situation is, and you have some great data here.

And I think you also have a great team and are really poised to make a difference.

She is one of the best planners there.

Councilmember Chu is knows more about this stuff than the rest of our BPAC combined.

So please leverage her as much as possible.

And also thank you to Councilmember G for all his work on transit SB 63.

Unfortunately, uh the data was pretty um uh frustrating.

Uh the city is third worst in the state for cities of its size.

The data seems to be trending in the wrong direction with cra fatal crashes increasing.

Two weeks ago, we saw a student hit um either on or near school grounds uh while he was on his bike.

And then uh sadly last week um a pedestrian was killed by a driver on Woodside.

Um this is not um positive news, and I'm hoping that we can do more.

Um the Vision Zero plan is good, but remember this is just a piece of paper, and unless we accelerate the pace of the projects that are listed and increase the number, um, change will not have happened fast enough.

I'd really encourage the city to focus on quick builds in the near future.

These are the quickest and most cost-effective means to create change.

Um, given the crash on Woodside, I'd hope that the city is going to go out and do a quick analysis of the intersection.

Um I haven't been there recently, but um on Google Maps, it looks like there is absolutely no crosswalk there.

It seems like that is an easy quick fix.

Um, and in the end, I think the key question is are we spending enough?

Because without increasing spending, the projects are not going to happen more quickly.

So I'd love to hear um thoughts on that.

Thanks so much.

Thank you, and that concludes public comment.

Thank you, City Clerk, and thank you to members of the public who joined us in person and virtually to provide their thoughts.

We'll now bring it back to our city council for questions, comments.

Thank you for your report.

I had some questions on just why, particularly, I think it was table one on page 387.

Why don't we separate separate out severe injuries and fatalities?

Can you speak to why the numbers are combined?

And if we do have the data, can you please share them separated out from severe injuries and fatalities with us?

Thank you.

Um there's no specific reason because Vision Zero is focused on severe injury and fatality.

We usually combine them, but we do have separate data.

So the um map which um is a public uh platform.

It um it has the table, and um, I believe we send you the table too, but I can't send you the table again.

Yes.

And if we could put it up to show with everyone too as well.

I think it's very helpful.

If we have all the data, let's separate it out so we can see it.

Injury separate from fatalities.

It's very helpful.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Oh, and I well, I'll save it for now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Padilla.

And we'll go to Councilmember Chu.

I have a quite a few comments, but I wanted to ask two clarifying questions first.

The first is are we able to separate out in uh serious injury, just crashes, injuries, and fatalities on Caltrans owned roads versus city-owned roads.

Um the second one was is the counts and the estimates of severity of the crashes based only on the police report, or do we wait for sort of medical reports uh indicating the severity of the crashes?

I can't answer your first question.

Yes, we are able to separate those.

I believe about 25.

26% of all collisions are on Cal Trans.

Um roads, which are El Camino and Woodside Road.

But the second question, I let P the answer.

Sergeant Peter King, I'm the traffic unit supervisor.

Um to answer your question on that, um, when we write the police report, it's based on the information that we see receive at the time of the collision and further follow-up that is done with the uh patient at the time.

Um we only go so far if the people don't respond back to us, we're not gonna be able to do anything further with that.

Um, and then when we do go to court to prosecute, we will ask them to sign a medical release so we can get all their records to determine what type of uh injuries they have.

Great, and then can you give me a sense of what percent of report injury reports are amended with medical information?

Is that rare?

Is that common?

Is that 50-50?

Just sort of a sense of the incidence of that.

It's very rare that uh somebody will come back to us.

Uh to give you a great example would be like if somebody said they had a complaint of pain in their back and but they decline medical services at the time.

We will um call them up if we want to proceed further with the case to ask them if they've gone to see a doctor.

Because that's usually what the um uh attorneys will ask for us is to provide uh the medical records for that person, okay.

So absent litigation or something like that.

The the police report is sort of the final, the initial police report is sort of the final estimate of of injury severity.

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Those are my only questions.

Thank you, Councilmember Chu.

Bring it back to the data snow.

Who would like to go next?

Welcome to Councilmember Howard.

Thank you.

I do have a few questions.

Um I know recently uh you mentioned that you did a um, the police department uh did a an operation where they went into crosswalks and were hopefully trying to educate people, but also gave out warnings.

So uh could you just let the public know how successful an operation was that and should we should should we be doing more of that?

Yes, um, those operations are very successful, especially at intersections like finger and ECR, uh, where we did have a multiple fatal accident there, not related to pedestrians, but because it's such a busy intersection.

Um we tend to get about 60 uh to 80 citations a day when we do these events, and that's only using four police officers.

Uh we could get more if we had more officers available to help us out doing these events.

Sometimes we will collaborate with the sheriff's department or with like Atherton PD, which we've done twice this year, and we will do events in our city, like one part of the day, and then go to the other city and do events there.

Uh that gives us usually two to four more officers, which will definitely increase the amount of tickets.

So the officers who are in plain clothes really have to watch themselves.

I've been out there when cars have actually driven around the officers who have been walking in the street, and the officers in flag and cars now, but they just continue to go.

So that's why we do these events.

And what do you usually do?

Do you start with a warning?

How does it what's the process that's worked best for you?

It really all depends.

Well, one maybe on their attitude or the severity of how they did the driving.

Um so yeah, it really all depends.

The officer has discretion to give a warning or give a citation.

Do we have any opportunities in San Mateo County to almost mandate people?

Like with driving school, you know, you get a ticket, you can take some training and so forth.

Is there anything in regards to uh that in San Mateo County where you can uh mandate they take a class in pedestrian safety?

You as the driver, how can you ensure pedestrian safety?

So um when they do get the citation, one of the options is uh attending a online uh traffic school.

Um, they used we used to go in on our Saturdays, right, and spend all day at traffic school.

I'd be myself even so um, but now it's an online course.

Um they can do that course every 18 months.

It's really at the discretion of the judge.

I almost wonder uh for new drivers, this isn't something that should be mandated for for new drivers, especially young drivers, that they they be mandated to take this course before they can get behind the wheel of a car.

Is there any legislation that you know of that may help you do your job?

Uh I honestly don't know.

I know it's been more difficult for schools to provide driver's training.

Um when I was a kid, as we all were, we had driver's training in our high school, right?

Now they don't have that.

My kids, I had to pay for them to go to a school for driver's training.

So, well it might be something that we talk to our legislators about on how they can help us here because I know the younger you get people, the more you can influence their behaviors, and it would be nice if they'd help us with something like that because uh it can't be all done by you, that's for sure.

No, that's for sure.

Are you worried that funding may dry up at some point?

I'm worried about it right now, yes, just because of the political climate, and it's very unfortunate.

Um I really rely on that money.

The city relies on the money, it provides us a lot of uh abilities to do things.

Um, again, if there's something that we can do to write to our legislators, I know this is more federal than state, but um let us know.

Well, we you guys just approved the cannabis grant, which is a state grant, which is really gonna be beneficial to our department.

Um it's the OTS grant that we're talking about now that uh we get every year.

Um, and this will be the probably the first year we're not gonna accept it.

I know the daylighting uh bill passed, and I wanted to ask you about that.

Have you had any experience now thinking that this is actually going to be a benefit and should we figure a way to speed up the amount of red curves that we can paint to allow the visibility on added intersection?

Yes, so um city council approved 300,000 as a part of the new new year budget for first phase of the project.

Um, which we did complete the inventory.

We are getting ready for construction.

Um it covers um areas around the schools, parks, and hospitals right now.

I don't know if we have capacity to red care every corner, but that's the first phase we are going to start.

Well, I figured that would be part of the problem, the cost of doing these red curbs, and I know we don't have enough staff to do that.

Um I just wonder in the future it's some some thought should be given to.

And they were able to do quite a bit of work in one day.

And so that was something that was um actually people wanted to do because they knew it meant something, it was going to provide safety.

Don't know if in this day and age we'd be able to do that, but I'm looking at Veronica, I'm not sure.

Sorry, I don't have the answer for that.

Um, usually any care caller is initiated and done um by city.

Yeah.

Well, it I can't say I can't say, and you can't say right now whether we can do that.

I'm just saying that if we get into an impossible situation, I mean we really do need to to make the trend change.

Uh we're none of us sitting here like the way the trend is going, so let's change it and let's see what we can do to change it.

And we may have to really think outside the box.

So it's something that maybe we have a discussion on in the future.

Is what other possibility is there to s to slow people down and uh make Redwood City safer to drive around and make people more aware so that they understand the consequence of their actions.

I don't think a lot of people do.

I bet when the police officer stops some of these people, they're looking like what did I do?

And they don't clearly understand what it is, the danger that they may have put people in.

So let's try to turn that trend around a little bit.

And I know we can.

Um I have to note that with all these new projects, any new development project, any city project that we do, uh, we implement the day lighting.

Um so all the corridor projects, all new developments, they do that.

So that's what they can take care of that.

Yes, they do implement that.

So that takes care of a portion of it.

That's helpful.

That's very helpful.

I also wanted to ask you, I've had quite a few complaints about speed hump height in different neighborhoods.

And so I drive around and I can tell a little bit of a difference.

There are just different heights for different areas, and I'm not sure why.

We are looking to slow people down, but we're not looking to jar people who are driving slow enough, but maybe the hump is a little too high.

I know Edgewood uh road is a very good example.

Uh there were so many complaints when we first put those speed humps in, we shaved them down a bit.

Now, last I heard the traffic has slowed down in that neighborhood.

We don't get complaints from that neighborhood now, but the speed humps are softer and easier.

So people know to slow down, but they don't have to almost stop to get over hump without causing a real jarring effect.

So could could that be considered having some what's the word I'm looking for?

Um where speed humps, there's a certain height that's acceptable, and maybe that's carried through all of our neighborhoods for consistency purposes.

If you drive in one neighborhood, you don't expect it to be a way different experience than another.

Is that something that we could give some thought to?

Yes.

Um, so speed humps are um the dimensions are based on what is in our engineering as standards, um, and there are some locations that the grading of the street um is um in a way that some of them are very gentle.

But that's something that we definitely can take a look and see if it's too high.

We may want to reconsider our engineering as standards, but that's what we follow.

Yeah.

So would that be complaint driven?

It will be so we do update our engineering standards, I believe, every year, right?

So that could be addressed and re-evaluated in the next update.

Yes, definitely.

I don't I wonder how we could let people know.

I mean, I'm hearing it from people, I'm sure other council members are too.

And I do I just tell them to contact, maybe use our app, our Redwood City app.

Yes.

Yes.

And put that in.

Could you please evaluate the height of these speed humps in my neighborhood as opposed to what I'm experiencing in other neighborhoods?

That might be effective.

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

I guess we need to get a lot of information out to people so they know how they can help and how they can respond to certain questions.

I'd like that.

Because I hear coordination of effort and make it more consistent throughout Redwood City is really, really important.

Also streamlining uh certain things that need to get done.

I've noticed in some neighborhoods, it could be as simple as changing the stop signs from east-west corners to north-south.

Uh I can name two streets right now that it would make all the difference in the world.

Instead of making it four-way, because I know that's more complicated, just change changing where the two stop signs are so that the street that really is a long straight chute uh actually slows people down, whereas the shorter street, everybody's stopping and stopping, and it becomes a situation I think that could be remedied more simply than a lot of other the a lot of the other things that you do.

Uh how would that be?

So these are the things that we do literally on a daily basis.

Um so we do get a very high volume of neighborhood traffic requests, which are um speed humps, stop signs like minor modifications.

Um the way um stop signs are put in, they are calculated based on the traffic volume.

And based on that, it is warranted two-way or is this warranted four way?

So and you've seen they're all the changes or anything new is approved by City Council Resolution.

In some locations, the stop sign might be in place years ago, and the traffic pattern changes, and when we get a new request from a community member, we do counts and in may warranted change.

Um we did have a few of those examples, at least a few of the those I've worked on in the past few years.

Um we wouldn't know because we don't monitor the volume on every intersection until someone actually submits a request to our team.

Um but that's something that we do have one and a half staff in transportation division assigned to all these small requests, such as a speed home and stop signs.

Okay, thank you.

That's all for now, but thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard.

Over to Councilmember Padilla next.

I had a question for uh the safe routes to school.

Or maybe it's more of a comment.

Um could we can we go to the slide that shows where we currently or where the the side that do we have the slide that lists the current schools and then the the timeline for the future ones?

No, the the current schools are Hoover, um Roosevelt, Kennedy, Harreford, Roy Claude.

Okay, so my comment would be: I think it's fabulous.

I think when we see that the factors associated with collisions, the number one is speed.

Um I think it's fantastic to take our schools and protect our children and families walking to and from school to have the 15 mile an hour speed limit.

Um my only thing is that I I would like to see it rolled out consistently to all the schools.

I don't I think it would really be hard for me to say how you can pick one school to have a safe route versus the other one.

So I and I also think just consistency builds fairness, it makes rules easier to follow.

It protects all children equally and ensures smoother adaptation of new speed limits.

So I think it's just we're talking about education.

I I would really love to see all the schools be out of 15 mile per hour.

So um there are five school areas remaining there are two in Redwood Shores, three in Robert City.

Um that our plan is to take care of those um by summer 2026.

Um it may sound simple, but it's a lot of work on coordination.

And I looked at um all other cities that um they roll out the program like San Mattel.

Um most of them they phased it.

Um because it's a multi-step, they have to change um the speed limit on our streets by a city council policy change, a resolution, we do studies, um, order the size, these are all custom-made size, and um installation, so public works of staff time.

Um so that is why we phase the to be able to take care of it, otherwise the amount of work will be really, really um high to finish all of those.

Right.

Um, understood.

I just think that it's it's such an important thing if it's in terms of I would if there is monies to be moved or to prioritize.

I think the safety of our children not getting hit by cars and speeding cars is is very important.

I'll leave it at that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Padilla.

Not seeing any.

Oh, Councilmember G, and then we'll go to Councilmember Chu.

I'll have thank you, and and Lieutenant Sergeant, thank you.

I just was curious, just kind of some random thoughts here.

I want to follow up Councilmember Howard's conversation about the um sort of the uh intense um whether it be a DUI checkpoint or uh pedestrian in the um crosswalk.

When you cite the driver, what do they say?

What's their excuse for driving around a pedestrian at crosswalk?

Go ahead, Pete.

Most of the time they say they didn't see the person, or they thought that the person was uh on the other side of the road and they thought it was uh okay for them to go.

And the um letteral law really says that um they have to go to a position of safety.

So when they're crossing the road, um there's no telling if they uh suddenly change their mind and want to go back the other direction.

So really the courts look at going from one side of the street to the other.

Um it just really depends also on the type of street, if there's a island in the middle, that's considered a place of safety.

So if they can make it that far, like slow walkers, uh, then it would be okay for the people who they have just passed to go at that point.

So I was just curious because in the earlier slide, I think you said the top three reasons or or causes of collision.

Collisions are speeding, DUI, and red light running.

And at least I think all of them, you have to be present in some form or fashion to be able to cite or you know, stop the driver.

You can't just I just can't call 911 and said, you know, the mayor was speeding down El Community Reality can go pull them over.

You have to be there to see it yourself.

And it's just hard when they're the driver is the one causing, you know, speeding, red light running, or drinking or driving under the influence.

So thank you for that.

I was just curious because you know, you said some pretty high numbers of citations, and for someone to be driving and then see a pedestrian to drive around the pedestrian in the crosswalk.

I didn't see that person.

It's just hard for me to.

It's just hard to kind of connect the dots between that.

So thank you.

Malha, in your beginning slides, you talked about the city's ranking amongst the hundred and other cities, but is there an adjustment factor?

Because we do have some unique things, as you said.

We have the county center, we have the courts, we have two hospitals, we have MOB, and a lot of the drivers that come into Redwood City don't live here.

And I would argue even the slides of the comparable Bay Area cities.

They don't have county courts.

They don't have the county center, they don't have maybe even a hospital.

So is there what influence or can you extract those influences to really get a true comparison?

Because I can guarantee you some of those cities you cited don't have these elements.

No.

The data that state provided it doesn't consider that Revu City has major regional destinations.

Okay.

They're just curious.

Yeah.

And then Sergeant, I'm of the same generation where when I went to high school, they had driver's ed in high school.

We also got to see movies called Scared Straight and I think was Blood Alley or things like that.

Or red asphalt.

There we go.

Thank you, Councilmember.

And I remember my driver's ed instructor kind of, you know, we all had to line up by height, and they'd put the tall kids in the smallest car, um, packed us with, you know, four of us.

But that driver ed instructor said there's no such thing as accidents.

They're only consequences because someone made a decision to do something.

And so perhaps the high school two by two, we can begin a conversation about what it would take to get drivers ed back into the high schools and coordinate and and with our legislative advocates and legislative delegations to see what it would take.

Because if we can get our younger drivers to understand the consequences of getting behind the wheel and their actions, perhaps we can make a difference for a nominal investment compared to the numbers we've seen here.

Um I think starting with our younger drivers, and I know we can't show red asphalt in the schools anymore or scared straight anymore, probably.

But having our drivers understand the consequences of getting behind the wheel and driving responsibly, could make a big difference in our communities.

And we can coordinate with the high school districts and the high school trustees across the county to try and make something happen in a positive way.

And the last thing, Mala, I asked you this question in 2022, and we heard tonight about, you know, funding makes a difference on infrastructure.

So we were to give you a blank check to fund all the infrastructure needs under Vision Zero, and Tanisha you can weigh in too.

What would you put in that blank check to do it all today?

I think when we did update our impact fees um last year, we did a calculation on that.

I think it was something a little bit more than a hundred million, 104 million, something like that.

That's a lot of money.

Yes.

And we get a lot of that money from grants, MTC, state grants, maybe not so much in the current environment from the federal government, DOT, but you know, we get what, 10 to 20 million a year, probably combined from the you know, CCAG, MTC, and the state.

Is that about right?

No, less than that.

Majority of our current grants are through the county um sales tax, measure, measure W.

Um.

Not every year, these projects, especially the ones through MTC.

They're um they require NEPOS, so they're very long processes.

Um I can say yes, we have around like 20 million grants right now for for a current active project, something like that.

Yes.

So we we've got a ways to go.

With the funding as limited as is, there's gonna be always a list of infrastructure improvements until we get there.

But it's good that through impact fees, um, the vice mayor said, well, why do we allow development?

At least there's some money coming in from impact fees.

Yes.

And when the developments are built, they're contributing their share, at least to improvements, whether it's bike lanes, red curbs.

Yes, whatever the whatever the situation dictates.

And the recent project on Redwood Avenue.

So that's an example.

Um many of them other than impact fee, they do um contribution to the community that they use for traffic safety.

Very good.

Thank you for the update in the report.

I really do think working with our high school trustees and our legislative delegation and trying to advocate for getting drivers.

I think that make a huge difference.

Um so I would ask our council members that are on that committee to just begin that conversation and then share with the rest of us what can we do together to try to influence funding for that program.

Bring it back.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Chi, and we'll take it to Councilmember Chu.

Um wanted to make sure everyone had had their opportunities uh to ask questions, but I had several comments.

Um, this, you know, first of all, thank you for a terrific presentation and um just the thoughtfulness that that's gone into this.

Um, this is a very important issue to me personally.

I've had multiple members in my close and extended family either catastrophically injured or killed in car crashes.

Um, and it's a frequent request of neighbors in my in my district.

People are constantly saying, you know, people speed down our street all the time.

Is there any way you can help it to be safer?

Um so this is a very important issue in our city, and you know, I know I I cite this all the time, but car crashes have been the leading cause of child death in this country by far for close to a century, particularly starting in the middle of the last century, there is no close second.

And the US is actually getting worse as pure nations get better.

So we are on trend for the US, um, and following the similar pattern where where the rates of crashes and and injuries and fatalities are going up.

Uh California is ranked 11th nationally, but in uh safety for people on um foot and bicycles, we were ranked 43rd and 42nd respectively uh in 2022, and then we just saw the data for our city.

So, you know, California is kind of down in the bottom 10% uh with respect to to pedestrian safety and and bicyclist safety, and then Redwood City is is among is ranked number three.

Um, so so from a a public health and safety perspective, um, there is no close second.

There's nothing else we could do that would do more to protect our children and youth than to make our road safe.

And I also wanted to comment on something called tombstone outcomes.

So because deaths are definitive and easy to count, there's a tendency just to count deaths for every person who dies in a car crash.

So the deaths alone are the number one cause of child death.

For every person who dies in a car crash, sixty-five people are injured.

And uh there was actually a study that looked at, and this is not in any way a criticism of police, but what what tends to happen is is uh crash injuries tend to be blunt force trauma, are blunt force trauma injuries, and so the severity of injuries is is often underestimated on the initial police report.

Um, there was um, and that's that's just because they don't have you know CT can't scanners and X-rays and the ability to diagnose things like internal bleeding and things like that.

Um and so the injury rates are almost certainly a very large underestimate of the actual number of uh serious and long-term injuries.

Um, and so if we want Redwood City's children to reach adulthood and particularly to reach adulthood free of disability or um pain, then then this is the most important thing uh we could be doing.

Um I did also want to comment on what we emphasize and the approach.

Um, and so um in in disciplines like occupational health, um, sewage and sanitation, things where the the disciplines have effectively achieved vision zero, it's actually not a circle, it's a pyramid.

Um, there's NIASH uh has had a sort of what's called the hierarchy of controls for, I don't know, probably 30 40 years.

And so at the top of this pyramid are are you know, eliminating the hazards, separating people from the hazard, sort of what we would call engineering controls, and then come administrative controls, and then come things like personal protective equipment, that's things like shiny shirts and foam hats, um, and education, things like you know, public service announcements, things like that.

So the least effective mechanisms to improve road safety are things like education, personal protective equipment, and and even enforcement.

Although enforcement is very effective when it happens, in order for enforcement to be effective, it has to be certain, um, ubiquitous and and consistent.

So if a grant goes away, then you know, enforcement is no longer there.

Um, and so I would really like us to emphasize.

Well, first of all, I'd like us to take this incredibly seriously.

I mean, I think our our staff are some of the best.

I mean, you know, as others have commented, we have an incredible staff, they're deeply committed to this.

I would really like us to emphasize engineering controls.

So, for example, if you narrow a street and you put out a chicken, you know, with a tree, and there's examples of this at Palo Alto and in North Rare Oaks, even after the grant is gone, that still enforces a slow speed because somebody has to go around it.

Um, if you know, and and I actually prefer lateral uh traffic calming to speed bumps, people tend to complain about it less, you can put trees in it.

Um, it's it just makes people go around.

Um, and so um, you know, a bollard or jersey barrier is always going to be there, it's gonna last 40 years.

Um, it doesn't need a grant to continue to calm traffic and to continue to enforce good behavior.

So that's the first thing that the second was a comment on education.

So the automobile industry spends 20 billion dollars a year advertising automobiles, about half of that is directly advertising dangerous and aggressive driving.

They can afford the best data agencies in the country, they can afford Super Bowl ads, they can afford product placement in movies where every single action movie has you know driving that would cost mass casualty in real life, and so any that Redwood City brings to the table is trying to override a 10 billion dollar year spend by the automobile industry actively promoting dangerous driving.

That's the first thing.

The second thing is that the automobile in uh designs and promotes their cars for power, um, you know, power and comfort basically, and to blunt the sensation of speeding.

So when you're speeding in a new car, I mean, I have quite an old car, when you're speeding in a new car, you don't feel it, you're insulated from all that.

And so the combination of messages, encouraging uh high-risk groups to engage in risky behavior at the at you know 10 billion a year, and the design of cars both promote and encourage dangerous driving.

Um, I don't think Redwood City, California is resourced to counteract that with education campaigns.

What we can do, we actually have control over, is the ability to design our streets in such a way that you can't speed.

And so I would really like us to focus on the permanent long-term solutions that engineering provides while recognizing that you know, I'm not saying we shouldn't have education and enforcement.

We absolutely those are absolutely essential, they're important.

They are not nearly as enduring and effective as engineering solutions.

Um, so that's um my comment on that.

Um, and then I was gonna sort of compare, you know, sort of our approach.

Um, I'd like to see it be more like sewage and sanitation.

So if you think about sewage and sanitation, at the beginning of the 20th century, you know, diarrheal disease still killed lots and lots of kids.

And people said, you know what, we don't have to live this way.

And so there were these enormous expenditures to have safe systems where you actually separated sewage from drinking water, and now, you know, we don't have cholera deaths.

We don't have deaths from diarrheal disease.

So an education approach to that would be something like having filter boil test campaigns where we shift responsibility on to school children to you know to be mindful or have a police officer at the purple pipes to make sure nobody drinks from them.

And I would really like to see us move more towards a safe systems thinking where we engineer out risk.

So, yeah, lots of other thoughts around this, but I'll I'll start there and just see what people think.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Chu.

See the Vice Mayor reaching for her life, please.

Do you want to go, Chris?

Okay.

Thank you, Isabella.

Tough act to follow.

I I won't even try.

So two things that jumped out of me from that report were third worst out of 104 cities of our size out of 500 cities in California.

I want to really understand what and the other statistic that really jumped out at me, whether it's 58% or 60%, 59%, whatever it is, single, one person in one car driving.

60, 58, 50, 60 percent of all driving in Redwood City in a day is one person in one car.

Those two things really jump out at me in this report, and are things that I really want to work on.

I echo Mr.

G and Ms.

Chu on engineering and road and infrastructure and building how important that is.

So to get from you've got in San Mateo County, you've got two major freeways, 280 and 101.

There are three would three um highways that bisect that in San Mateo County.

You have 380 that was kind of built in the 80s, 90s, you've got 92 that was kind of built in the 60s, 70s, and then you've got Woodside Road that started as a dirt road in the 1800s, and was never created as a highway at the time that it became required that there weren't cars, and um, so I would posit that um one of the main reasons or or a reason that Redwood City, because all the other a lot of the other factors happen in the United States, happen in California.

So why is Redwood City so much worse than all its peers when the other factors exist everywhere?

And I would posit that one of them is you know, Woodside Rose goes through two highly dense neighborhoods, it bisects it, it bisected it out of need because it was a residential road or an old timey business slash residential road that as the car got invented, you know, maybe 60 years after Woodside Road existed, it kind of got gerry-rigged into being a highway, and um both the mayor and I represent districts that are bisected by this state highway.

And so I just I just would suggest that we we work on getting more recesses to address these concerns to mitigate these challenges because as both Ms.

Chu and Mr.

G noted, these are all expensive fixes.

And as Ms.

Chu noted, if you get a grant to fix a road, the grant goes away, but the road is still fixed.

So I would I would encourage staff to really advocate at the at San Mateo County, whose budget is four or five billion dollars annually compared to Redwood Cities, which is 200 million.

I would advocate that we really push for more measure W and more funding.

Um it's not needed on 380.

That was engineered in the 90s, 80s, it's really needed on Woodside Road, and um so so and then I'd like to I agree with Councilmember G on we used to have simulate on the driver training.

We used to have simulators.

And so you could, if you want to drive crazy, you could do it in a simulator, because you were 16, and that's just what 16-year-olds do.

You could do it in a simulator, and then you could see like that that how bad an idea that was.

And so I I wholeheartedly agree with starting with two by two, and and what the um police officer said also that I think about.

So if you're in high school and you can't afford to buy um driving lessons, when you're 16, when you turn 16, you can't get a driver's license.

But when you turn 18, you can apply for a driver's license even if you've never gone to driving school.

And so a lot of under-resourced kids, it's just automatic that they wait until they're 18, having no driver training at all, and you know, try and try and try and get their driver's license.

And so again, that's why I agree.

We really need to get, we really need to work on getting driver training in the schools.

Um, I on this safe route to schools, this I want to um explore with Mr.

G for a minute because of your expertise on multimodal public transportation.

But on this safe routes to school, of course, nobody wants unsafe routes for kids to go to school, no one.

But what really bugs me is 60 percent are one driver in a car, and a lot of those are one driver driving, one parent, one nanny, one dad, um driving a child to and from school.

When when I walk by um Henry Ford elementary school in the middle of the day, the cars are just lined up forever.

The traffic is unbelievable on a residential Massachusetts, a residential street when schools get you know about to start or are getting out, and I think that um we're aiming way too low by just saying, oh gosh, let's tell all the kids about safety.

Let's get let's get those um cars off the road.

That's that shouldn't be happening in Redwood City that you have one driver with one kid, that's I don't know, 300, 500, 600 cars at Henry Ford Elementary School twice a day in a deeply residential neighborhood.

Do you know where I'm going, Mr.

G?

School buses.

That's the other thing that when we were young, uh, we didn't just have fully paid for uh driver training.

We had ubiquitous school buses, and when people say now, oh, it's too expensive school buses, that just can't possibly happen.

It's just so ridiculously expensive.

Well, it happened for 50 years.

So how come people could figure out how to do it 80 years ago, 70 years ago, 60 years ago, but but now it's like inconceivable.

And this is where you come in, Mr.

G, with partnerships with SamTrance, Caltrains, shuttles.

Um I know it's complicated, but I'm just wondering from you, how pie in the sky am I being?

What what am I missing?

It just seems so obvious to me, school buses.

What why why am I?

If you could.

Um Mayor, may I?

Well, school buses are funded by the school district.

Um, and so Redwood City School District does have school buses, you can see them.

There's a yard just off of 101.

Um, so that is dedicated to serving schools in that school district.

San Mateo Foster City has school buses, so school buses, the vehicles, and the drivers are funded by the school district.

Uh federal law is in place that public transportation districts like SAMTRANS is prohibited from providing dedicated school bus service.

However, if there is happens to be a SAMTRANS route along where school is, SAM Trans can provide transportation for those students that want to go to that school.

So there's a very fine line between what a public transportation district can provide in terms of school bus service versus a school district providing school bus service.

Very fine line.

So this morning, for example, when I was leaving, Sam Trans has, I counted six buses that will take students to Ralston Middle School and Karma High School from Redwood Shores.

And so from our SAMTRANS perspective, we work very closely with the school districts across the county to try to make sure that our bus routes are as best aligned where there might be a school location.

But SAMTRANS is prohibited from providing dedicated school bus service in that kind of strict definition.

And Caltrain can't provide it because we don't have schools next to the train.

But the there are other mechanisms to get students from, and particularly the private schools provide shuttle service from train stations to the private school.

Why can't they to the public schools?

The private schools provide the shuttle service.

Okay, and public schools don't.

And the public schools would have to find a funding stream, just like they would have to provide dedicated school bus service.

So I'll stop there.

Thank you so much, Councilmember G.

It's just so obvious how competent that sounds so scoop simple, school bus, is actually so complicated.

And I'd like to continue the conversation because it is an issue.

And maybe more with two by two and maybe more.

I would just like to keep the conversation going on that and thank you.

I have a few more, and then I'll um, and then I'll let others talk.

Um yes, of course, I agree with um council member Chu on yes, enforcement, of course, but the core thing is road improvements, and a few more that I I just want to bring up because I've noticed it, and I know uh maybe the um law enforcement can confirm this, but I'm pretty sure that it's illegal to have a driver's side window blacked out so that you can't see into the car.

Um, and that's a safety issue because you want to be able to have eyesight with a driver to know they see you.

You want to be able to see the driver to know they see you if you're you know going into their lane or for many reasons, and um you see a lot of cars where the driver's side window is blocked out.

I've even seen cars where the windshield is blacked out, and I know that I'm pretty sure that's illegal and both those things.

Yes, you are correct.

Um the front driver's side window, passenger side window, and obviously the windshield cannot have any tint application.

Yeah, but don't we see it a ton?

You see a ton of cars.

It's fashionable, it's cool.

I don't know why, but is it's it's hard to I guess enforce.

Uh not necessarily.

There is actually quite a bit of enforcement with that.

Um, it's just unfortunately, just like everybody else, we're limited on with resources, but uh it does get enforced quite often.

Um, most of my questions about enforcements were answered, and um let me just look one more place.

I mean, just getting back to I won't.

Um, okay, I'll I'll leave it there with uh thank you so much.

I'm really this is a robust discussion.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

I just had a quick comment.

I think it's uh important given the conversation about the percentage of one-person drivers with children, and I will admit I am a driver with the child, and I think that it's we should note that the makeup of schools has changed the way homeschools and neighborhood schools work.

So it isn't always possible for everyone to walk or ride their bike.

My daughter goes to Clifford, people come from all the way across the freeway in Bear Island.

So I think that's important to know that not all school, not all children are like where attendance is has changed, so that also contributes to some of these things.

And I'm not trying to cast aspersions.

I know, you know, the thing is we all have many places we need to be, and people aren't always set up.

People can't always do carpools or have access to public transportation.

I mean, I know that my daughter would have to cross Alameda, and I don't know if I'm ready for that yet.

So I mean we all have our own situations, but I do think it's relevant to know that not everyone lives within walking distance to their school.

Thank you, Councilmember Padilla.

We'll go with Council Member Sturkin and then Councilmember Chu.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, thank you, colleagues, for such a robust discussion.

I wanted to kind of go back to enforcement and specifically uh the DUI um uh saturation points and and checkpoints.

Uh really appreciate the progress that um our officers have made in that area.

And I wanted to just ask, so recognizing that while you know we are fifth worst in this state, I think it was for drivers who aren't supposed to be drinking under 21, um, but still seeing that um impaired driving is is one of the driving factors, and and we are 17th uh ranking in the state.

Can you tell me have we been following any of the legislation around extending hospitality hours at local um bars and restaurants?

Uh and I did look at the governance you know subcommittee's um agenda and I didn't see that in the legislative platform update.

That's maybe we don't have a position on one on the most recent bill that didn't go through the legislature, didn't finish going through the legislature.

But but can you tell me thank you, Chief Bell?

Like, are we following any of that any of that legislation?

And would it be helpful if say a hospitality zone were established in Redwood City?

Would it to allow um drinking uh up to 4 a.m.

in the morning um in that zone to anyway?

I'll I'll let the chief deliberate.

So I have not been following the legislation too closely, but um when bars close at two, that means theoretically people stop drinking at that establishment around 145 too.

Extending the hours perhaps extends the uh consumption.

Um so then that plays into a factor.

Um, but again, we're talking about human behavior, so everyone kind of does their own thing, right?

So it could really go either way.

It it may allow more time for people to sober up.

It may, like you said, extend consumption, which would then lead us to the same issue.

Uh, but I don't know that that's something I'm interested in us following and maybe taking position on future legislation should it come through the legislature uh to see if they're or at least you know where there are states that have um where their laws are different, uh, seeing if there has been any success in reducing impaired driving and resulting deaths and injuries, um I have a feeling that council member Chu had a question that maybe pertained to the previous conversation so I'm happy to pause where I was at and then come back.

Great thanks Councilmember Sirkin we'll send it over to Councilmember Chu.

Okay I was gonna say please finish um so just just a few comments uh responding to my colleagues the first was uh buses so from my neighborhood to the schools and from the whole district to the schools in my neighborhood there is really robust uh SAM trans service I take the city bus all the time um and they're clean they're wonderful and I've really been trying to understand like why don't parents uh have their kids take the bus and sometimes I'll catch a really early bus and it is full of school children um and Sam Trans also provides uh passes to school children so there's no cost to taking the bus and so I've kind of been talking to parents trying to to wrap my head around their concerns and a lot of it is they don't feel comfortable having their children um on the bus with strangers basically and so one of you know I'm sure you've all seen those like bike buses and walk buses and one thing I thought would be really cool to try is a bus bus where there's a chaperone we coordinate with the school to have adult chaperones ride the bus with the kids so the transportation is provided by SAM trans and then see if that if the presence of an adult chaperone lowers that concern for the parents where they're not quite there and letting their kid take the bus um so that was one idea um I have other comments as well about other things but I just wanted to make that comment about the bus.

Sam Trans has terrific programs it's just trying to figure out what the sort of lingering concerns of parents are thank you Councilmember Chu will go to Councilmember Howard thank you I really appreciate all this discussion we're having uh I wanted to ask I know that red light running is a real problem we all know that we've seen it every day uh what is the status of being able to use cameras to capture people running red lights and issuing citations is there any change in the law on that?

Are you talking about the red light camera or the speed cameras or both how about both which one would be more effective so we could start with red light cameras um the city did have those a bit ago and I am that was predated my time and I don't know why that went away um so that's something that we could look at potentially um in the future but for speed cameras um that there's a assembly bill that passed I believe in 23 it was uh AB645 that allowed for uh six cities to pilot uh five years for uh speed cameras and so we were not one of those cities it's a larger city like San Francisco San Jose Oakland Glendale LA and I think I'm forgetting one uh but they're yes so they're in the early stages of that so depending on how that pilot will go will depend on what that looks like for us in the future so there are two tools that maybe you'll be following to see if that in fact could help us I I those cameras when we were able to use them and I just didn't know why they disappeared.

I think it had to do with some kind of potential suits throughout the California wasn't necessarily Redwood City I just know at the time there was real fear about that but I think that has changed since I hope it has but uh it it was helpful when we were able to use them so uh thank you for at least following up and seeing if in fact that might be a useful tool and how we could go about using it.

Thanks.

Of course.

Thank Councilmember Howard will go to the vice mayor just following on with Ms Howard on bad behavior and enforcement, I mean, may as well let it all hang out.

Um, you know, something that I never saw, you know, six or seven years ago that I see every week now is road racing you you know, you see you'll see either one car or two cars on on surface streets, on freeways, on bridges.

You'll see a car coming up behind you 10, 15, 20 miles um above the speed limit and just swish right around you and then high speed going between all the cars like they're in a bumper car um uh at a at a fair.

And um I I think maybe it's what Ms.

Chu is talking about, that 20 billion dollars of um advertising of aggressive behavior, making it look sexy, and we we can't combat 20 billion dollars of national advertising, but I just want to mention that I see it on a weekly basis, and um it's it's terrifying.

So it's not just Redwood City, it's it's um all around the Bay Area that I see it.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Welcome to Council Member Sturkin.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um apologies for not introducing that bill earlier.

It was AB 342 by Assembly Member Matt Haney.

Anyway, I wanted to continue turn it, bring it back to um how paint painting red curbs, painting bike lanes, does unfortunately does not deter drivers from either parking in those spaces or from driving through straight through the lane.

And so I know it was mentioned the importance of having protected bike lanes, and we've discussed that at length here before.

And so I did want to ask um there's quite a robust list of projects in the staff report here.

I'm so proud of our staff for um the progress you've made on many of these um vision zero projects.

But I did want to ask about one, which of course is in Cal Trans Purview, which is the El Camino bike lanes from Brewster to Madison.

And do we know if those will be protected bike lanes, you know, with a a Jersey barrier as um Councilmember Chu mentioned or or otherwise?

It will be protected with um delineators.

It um will not look like what El Coyard built.

Um it is um there are some delineators in the buffer.

Um so that's the current treatment.

Um, and the reason we didn't do that because Caltrans does have a very large-scale project on Al Camino Real, which we call it shop project, and they are um currently almost done with their environmental phase, and they're actually going to build something similar to what El Cayard built.

Um in Rebu City from the Source From Selby and Zambrewster, so that's Caltrans project.

Um that is why we decided to do it just with the delineators, the project we're building in the coming year.

That makes sense.

That way we aren't throwing away money, so to speak.

Um, yes, yeah.

Okay, but there'll be there'll be some kind of signal beyond paint to um, you know, tell drivers that this is not a lane.

Yes.

Um that is fantastic to hear.

Thank you.

But I also want to just move the conversation to pedestrian malls here.

So we we I know I bring this up every time.

Sorry, folks.

Um, but we've had such success with the Broadway pedestrian mall, the theater way, and I know there are multiple avenues for achieving that same goal.

The pedestrian mall route is is lengthy and and involves a lot of great outreach as we experienced.

But can you just speak a little bit to how we achieved the theater way closure and is there are there plans to any similar closures in downtown?

And I know we can't just focus on downtown, um, of course, that's my favorite uh because it's my district, but uh I did want to ask if there's you know what was the route that was taken for Theater Way in.

Are there any plans to replicate that?

Thank you.

I'm looking at Veronica again.

Um I was not um at city when all the planning for theater happened, it was before my time.

Um right now, the only location that I'm aware of um is um the smallest street next to Court has a school that um is in our plans to be closed, like a street, the pedestrian area.

So that's the only area I'm aware of.

And if it'll be just Broadway and Theaterway and I believe we call it Hamilton, something like that.

I don't know which route we are going to take.

I know there are two different methodologies.

Go through the pedestrian mall act and the way we took for theater way.

Veronica, if you want to add, there they're usually lengthy processes.

Nothing new to add.

You did a good job of summarizing it, even though you weren't at the city when that was done.

And Hamilton, we do believe will likely be a pedestrian mall that will be proposed along with the project.

But again, that's that's still in the works.

Thank you.

I'll pause there while I collect my thoughts and turn it back over to the mayor.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Surtain.

And we'll go to actually Councilmember Chu online.

Sorry.

Lots of comments tonight.

So I wanted to offer just my support for Councilmember Howard's suggestion of the minute speed cameras and lead red light cameras become available and practical.

I I would I'm very very supportive of getting them as soon as we can.

And then being supportive of legislation which supports these technologies.

And one potential way that we could think about this is have pilots.

Like so, for example, I would love to see us pilot you know Broadway bikeway from you know 5th or 2nd to uh El Camino on Sunday afternoons.

They they do it for Canyada, they'll close it, and you can bike Kenyatta without fear of um automobiles, and so having sort of temporary closures, piloting things and seeing if people like it, because at least you know, with the with the closure of Kenyatta with Broadway, they're immensely popular, and it's a good way to kind of test things out and see if we can do them.

Um, and then the other thing I wanted to just sort of mention related to why it's so hard to get traffic calming, why it's so hard to get a pedestrian street and things like that, and uh to council member G's point about having lots of people come in from outside of our city, is that the current traffic standards from the MUTCD and Ashdo, the Green Book, all of those things uh were written to optimize automobile throughput for individuals coming from suburbs uh to cities, and so our current traffic laws generally prioritize the convenience of the person passing through a city from somewhere else or coming to a city from somewhere else over the um over traffic calming, you know, over calm uh slow streets and and resident preferences uh in neighborhoods that that the laws are actually written to prioritize the person coming from outside of the city over our residents, and so if there are standards like NACTO standards which prioritize mobility, health, safety, um, over automobile throughput and storage, I would really love to see us uh consider those um and also really push the envelope on engineering judgment.

And you know, for example, when I'm in Mount Carmel, I'm continually amazed at what has been able to be done with respect to traffic calming, pedestrian islands, you know, bike lanes.

It is a delight to walk and bike in Mount Carmel, and they were, you know, all of this was done under the existing sort of framework, and so where we can use engineering judgment to sort of push the envelope and honor um resident wishes for safe calm streets, even if they're not warranted.

These warrants um have not produced the desired outcome.

And you look at US statistics, you look at California statistics, you look at Redwood City statistics.

I would like to look at abolishing parking minimums for any business selling alcohol.

It does not make sense if DUI is an issue to require that businesses provide parking bars, for example, provide parking.

You know, they could have a drop-off place for uh, you know, ride share things like that.

But if somebody's driving to a bar, um, if they have to hike a bit for parking, that may give them an opportunity to sober up.

So um, those were just some other suggestions.

Thank you for the great ideas, Councilmember.

We'll bring it back to the days.

Councilmember Padio.

Just responding to Councilmember Chua.

Thank you for speaking.

I just want to make sure at the heart of this that we don't lose the community outreach and actually giving the community what they're asking for because oftentimes residents are coming to me and they're saying, you know, we wanted cars to drive slower.

We didn't say we wanted a new bike lanes, we don't want to lose a lane.

So I just want to make sure at the heart, whatever we do, we are actually talking to the communities around.

I think of San Francisco and the great highway.

I mean, I just want to make sure we are talking to everyone that we need to talk to and actually giving the people what they want and what they need.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman O'Call with Council Member Sir.

Thank you, Mayor.

I appreciate your comments.

Uh Councilmember for the but I also want to make sure that we're always that we're continuing to ground uh our decision making and in data and ultimately choosing to preserve people's lives over convenience and and I just weighing those not so much equally, but but taking both in consideration, holding both in tension uh at all times.

Um but I do see your point in making sure that we are listening to what the community wants uh and continuing to conduct robust outreach.

But I wanted to just support what Councilmember Chu was suggesting about uh really focusing on um uh pedestrian malls, uh not just in downtown, but across the city.

And I one of the I think one way we can kind of make it easier going forward is to maybe unlock some of the streets that are more difficult to uh close to cars but remain open to pedestrians and bicyclists, and that's as a result of our traffic calming um policy and how it restricts certain measures on Broadway, Middlefield, Maine, and Jefferson to preserve emergency response times, of course, from station nine.

However, um there's new technology available, and I think it's worth us revisiting that policy to so that we are not closed to the possibilities of a more walkable, bikeable, safer downtown for everyone.

And then to also follow up on uh councilmember Chu's suggestion of doing some kind of temporary regular closure on Broadway.

Um I did notice on page nine at the staff report on the project list that there's no current plan at the moment for the segment of uh Broadway between Jefferson Avenue and Winslow Street to do certain traffic calming improvements.

And that is a great suggestion I think that Councilmember Chu made uh that we that doesn't cost much money, it's it's not um concrete infrastructure uh that we don't have money to fund, it doesn't depend on a grant.

Um, but what creative ways can we use to um to take the streets back for pedestrians and bicyclists while increasing business for restaurants and bars on the streets?

So just wanted to throw that out there as well.

Thank you.

There's one thing I um want to mention maybe in the next few city council meetings, you will see that.

Um we are actually updating our um chapter eight of Municode, which is bicycle, um, it's um remove our replacement.

And one thing that we've been hearing from the community, especially our senior community, is there concern about mixing bikes and pets?

And that's something that we are actually mentioning in the new proposed code.

Um, so um in future, um the pedestrian malls, um, it is just for pedestrian.

Um, it won't be bike and pets.

So if um we go ahead with any pedestrian mall or pedestrian area, we have to think about a different route for bikes, especially because bikes these days, some of them are electric bikes, they're scooters, they have higher speed, and um we have to think about ways to separate them.

Vice Mayor.

Can I just give an anecdotal story?

Um, Councilmember Stirkin, you said how did we get um Theater Way blocked off?

And so this maybe is apocryphal, maybe it's I'm misperceiving, but I remember the former owner of the Fox Theater, uh, John Anagnostew, he just kind of blocked off in front of La Tartine, which is now a hot dog place.

He I just remember him telling me, you know, have you read Jen Jane Jacobs about urban planning and creating urban villages, and I'm gonna do it right here.

And from my perception, I'm talking back in maybe 2009, 2010.

He just kind of had a vision and just kept telling everybody about that vision and telling everybody about Jane Jacobs and and um he just kind of willed it into being now.

There's probably more to the story, but I just thought I would share that.

So if I may, I am not the right person to be talking facts, but I do want to let you know that actually Theater Way um was closed down initially temporarily because of construction that was having happening, both at 815 Hamilton as well as you know the block two, and so there were there was there was so much construction going on there, and as far part of the 815 Hamilton project, we were connecting the underground garage that was under what we called block one in the early days, which is where the theater, the city's parking lot is under the cinema, and we were connecting, giving a secondary access point for that public garage through 815 Hamilton.

And so we needed to close that street, both for the A15 Hamilton construction as well as for all of the engineering that needed to happen for that new pass-through under Theater Way.

So that's initially why it was closed temporarily during construction, then COVID came and um we kept it closed, and and then the city went through the process to actually permanently um maintain it vehicle-free, and so that's that's how that went.

And like Malaha mentioned, there are different ways to close a street.

The most protective for the city is the pedestrian mall act.

Um, and and so the more property owners you have, the more tenants you're dealing with.

The best way to go about it is through the pedestrian mall act, but there are different ways to do it.

And theater way was kind of one of those that just happened um through several different kind of iterations and ended up where it is today, but it is permanently uh vehicle free and uh pedestrian.

Thank you, City Attorney.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Any other comments, questions from the council?

Not seeing any.

I will add my my thanks then, my comments um to the team.

I do have a few questions, and um I'll start with an engineering one, transportation.

One since Malhat is at the mic.

Um the the PLI, um the pedestrian driver delay that we have installed in a couple of the intersections where we've replaced the the traffic lights most recently.

Um how do those work exactly?

I want to make sure I didn't hear incorrectly that pedestrians will see their light change first before, okay.

Yes, so um for the movements that there is um, so imagine the James on El Camino intersection, the left turn movement.

Um their cars turn from James to El Camino is in the same phase currently, with pedestrians crossing El Camino.

What LPI does, it changes the pedestrian signal a few seconds before it changes it for cars turning left.

So then pedestrians either they finish crossing the street or they are in the middle of the cross spot and more visible to drivers, um, then the car starts moving.

So it is to give more time for pedestrians to cross and to make them more visible for um left-hand vehicles.

Okay, thank you, Malad.

And is there a delay for the vehicles at the lights?

So, yes, there's a delay for vehicles.

And what's what's that difference?

Um, it's um it really depends how you do the setup.

I've seen six um seconds, it's it's just a minute of seconds, like um six seconds, ten seconds.

Okay, it really depends on um the length of the crossing.

Right, that makes sense.

And the reason for my question is I've worked at intersections of El Camino, and this was in a Redwood City where people have run that red light and have done so super fast.

I would hate for pedestrians to be that first layer right that people would see when they're crossing the road.

So um I just want to make sure the timing of that is where they'll see the red light.

Cross traffic isn't gonna go, and neither will pedestrians for you know however long it is.

Um that's best practice, but just wanted to be sensitive to that too.

Um thank you, Malha.

That's that's really helpful to know.

And then you know, I have a couple of questions um that are more geared towards PD.

I know um Lieutenant Castro mentioned, or I think it might have been Sergeant Kang mentioned that um, you know, we have our our motorcade team is now fully staffed.

I also have heard sort of anecdotally from internally that our motorcade team used to be um much bigger and had um more officers dedicated to that force, but I was curious if you could speak to that.

Yeah, and yours passed before my time.

Um, I believe there was nine or so, if I'm not mistaken.

Motor officers.

Currently, right now we have four motor officers and a sergeant, so uh uh five officers total on the motor team as it stands.

Right now, also our focus at the police department is to keep them on their motorcycles as much as possible and not pull them from their assignments to do other assignments.

Because we understand traffic is uh huge concern for the city road of city, so whatever we can do on our end to keep them on their motorcycles so that they can do traffic enforcement and all those other extra details, that's our goal.

Great, thank you.

And I know it's it's tough hiring police officers right now.

Is there a lot of interest from current employees to get the special assignment?

What's staffing um at that level like?

Uh I think that's up and down.

Um, but for as long as I've been here, we've never had an issue staffing the position.

Um, so it it gets done and it gets filled, and officers do want to do the position, so that's some good news, I guess.

That's awesome.

Okay.

Thank you.

And I imagine, you know, the officers we are dedicating to Motorcade aren't able to do other tasks, right?

They're focused on traffic enforcement, right?

So they're not working other issues unless it's an emergency, is that what it sounds like?

No, so our motor officers are actually pulled in a lot of different directions.

They have collateral assignments, for example, their firearms instructors or their first aid instructors or whatever that may be.

There might be situations as well where they get pulled from their motor assignment and get pulled into patrol because of a sick call or a vacancy because of a training issue or something that came up.

So they do get pulled from their assignment quite often.

But right now, again, the push has been to keep that um motor team staffed with five officers to keep them focused on what they need to do, go out there and do traffic enforcement, be at the schools, do whatever type of community engagement we can do.

That's the focus right now, and we're gonna try to do that as much as possible.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lieutenant Gastro.

Um I know it's recruiting is incredibly hard right now for the police department.

Um, and I know we're we're still understaffed in the department by almost 10 officers, right?

Or community service officers.

So until we're able to hire those folks, I appreciate the the commitment from the team to be prioritizing this.

Um the other question I had speed safety cameras were brought up.

Um I know we had a camera on Whipple when I was starting to learn how to drive.

Did we have other cameras in different parts of town, or was it just that intersection?

I'm only aware of that one as well.

Okay.

And you know, I'm curious.

We have automatic license plate readers.

Is the technology set up in a way where we could use those devices as speed cameras in the interim?

Thanks, Chief.

With our current flux system, no, because they just capture photos, images.

That's it.

Okay.

I'm sure in the future some tech company will come up with that if it's not already in existence already.

Right.

Okay.

Thank you.

I um occurred to me hearing um Sergeant Chang mentioned that um, excuse me, Kang mentioned that grants for enforcement are shrinking, right?

I speed safety cameras could be another way for us to you know continue the enforcement.

I looked up what San Francisco's MTA was doing, and they even have um a tiered system.

So they're charging a different rate for people who are low income qualified for that, or if um somebody is using public assistance, they're charged a different fee, different ticket, right?

Citation.

So that would be something interesting as that opens up again for us to kind of keep in the back of our mind that um we could have enforcement still happening without having uh a live person to do it, right?

Um, another question that occurred to me was just about the school commute patterns.

Um, I wasn't surprised to hear that lots of folks are commuting to get to class or doing it with what one parent driving the car, right?

Um I was curious, do we have data around how many kids are commuting out of their neighborhoods?

Um we definitely have the data, they are mapped.

Um, I can't share with you.

Um there are two reasons.

I think I don't know where then it starts started in Revue City, but I believe the setup for Revo City School District is the schools are not based on neighborhood, they're a school of choice.

And um people come from everywhere to to the schools.

Um I was helping Cleaford actually with May's Day a few years ago, and I was very surprised there are some people come from East Palo Alto to Clayford Elementary.

Um I can't share those maps with you.

Um they're based on the residence um home address and where they um attend.

And the other reason um it got um more severe in the past few years in terms of longer communities because of the change in a school student population.

We had Rebo City School is reclosed for schools, and they did a school consolidation.

Hoover, Roosevelt, Orion, those are the schools that other schools merge to them.

So there are like 400, 500 new kids were assigned to those schools from other parts of the city.

But I can share those data with you.

Thank you, Malah.

Yeah, that would be wonderful.

I also saw in the staff report that back in 2023, the walk and bike to school maps were updated for all Redwood City schools.

And I was wondering, does that how do we make sure that those routes are also aligned and overlapping with our project priority map and where the city wants to make improvements?

We are differently very sensitive about any project we have.

So that's our priority.

Any current project we have, like Jefferson Traffic Safety, on top of any community outreach we do, we reach out to schools separately to make sure their needs are addressed.

So the staff we are very aware of that we need to do more outreach related to school needs.

Yeah, amazing.

Thank you, Allah.

That's that's good to hear.

I um want to make sure the routes we're sending our students on are also the ones that we're gonna be improving on, and that that isn't that disconnection there.

Um, thank you.

I think the other comments I have are just remarks.

I appreciate the the great responses, Malhat and Chief Bell.

Um, you know, I a couple of thoughts occurred to me.

I 100% agree with what my colleagues have been saying tonight that I mean so much of these issues stem from engineering, right?

And the fact that our capital needs cost so much, and the way that we fund it, unfortunately, is um it's often piecemeal.

I'm thinking of El Camino, where a lot of the protected bike lanes have been piecemeal funded through the projects that we've approved.

Um would love to see um, you know, through the next budget process, the engineering team look at internally what tools you all are missing, what controls you all could implement that would help your work and just move us a little further short of writing you the what was it a hundred million dollar check that you said you needed?

Um what other ways can we help, right?

Um, aside from that, you know, it's doesn't surprise me at all to see the heat maps and where um where collisions are, you know, El Camino and and Woodside Road really um they're great ways to get through town, right?

But if you're not in a vehicle, um it could be challenging to feel safe there.

Um I know we have great representation from um from Sam Trans, right?

From Caltrain.

Um I've heard our new Caltrans rep is a lot more responsive and communicative.

Um how often do we have representatives from those agencies going to our transportation advisory committee?

Um I do have um very regular meeting with Catherine and Sam Trans um probably twice every month uh just because of the current joint projects we do have.

Um to be honest, not anyone from Caltrans, unless there is a request and there is a need, even though they do have assigned staff for their El Camino Real Shop project.

Um, unfortunately, the communication is just this the system is not set up.

Hopefully, when the their shop project starts the design, uh we do have we will set up regular meetings.

We did have that for more than a year, weekly meetings for Roadside Road project with the construction engineer.

So but with other agencies, we do have very regular meetings, Sandrans and Cal Train.

Okay.

Yeah, I would um thank you, Malah.

The Vice Mayor and I, I hope you don't mind me sharing.

We we met with a couple of residents over the weekend by Manzanita and Shasta, which are under the Woodside Overpass.

And I had seen workers working on the top part of overpass on Woodside Road, but looking at where the pedestrians could enter the walkway there was so overgrown, it just left me wondering.

Aside from just quality of life issues, I'll call them.

I think with grants becoming as competitive as they are, right?

Having these folks come to meet with the TAC to tell them about grant opportunities to let them to hear where we're running into issues, right?

Or we have pedestrian concerns or cyclist concerns, I think makes a lot of sense.

We've reached the point where you know we are we're a growing community, and we have a ways to go to make sure that people can move within Redwood City safely.

So I think that is a small commitment from them to show up to give us that time, right?

Especially when um according to state metrics, we have work to do.

So I think that can actually make a lot of sense.

Um and then my last comment, and I always bring this up, um, protected bicycle tracks, cycle tracks.

I think um using parked cars to help protect bike lanes where we can make so much sense.

Um, you have less infrastructure to pay for, less concrete to pour, right?

If you have vehicles in the way, but also I, you know, I lived off of Hilton and Chestnut and got to see the middle field project just completely transform that side of town, and um it's incredible to see.

And you had a photo of Broadway where we have that on that side of town, where cars are being used to protect bicycle lanes, and uh, and you don't have that overlap, but um I I think that is the gold standard where we can have that.

Um, and then lastly, I just wanted to say um the red striping came into play, and I know that is such a um, it feels like a chicken versus the egg situation about what happens first.

Does it paint come in?

Does you know how does enforcement work, right?

Something has to give.

Um, and it feels that um, you know, we had a few different issues listed out where um, you know, the DUIs, the um other main causes.

I feel that I hear from residents that visibility is such a big issue, right?

Um, that as dense as our neighborhoods are, that creates a whole other set of driving conditions that they have to work through.

Um, so I would love for us to be able to also um to be able to speak to that and talk about the challenges of driving through the residential streets versus you know um the main corridors like El Camino like Woodside.

Um yeah, I I think I will end my remarks there, but appreciate all this great work Malha.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And before we move further, Council Mr Sirkin.

Thank you, Mayor.

Sorry about that.

Um just to your point about one of the originating factors being speeding.

Um, I did want to uh suggest that we review the traffic calming petition process just to modernize it.

I know that it is in the tax work plan.

So you will see that we we currently do have a residential and neighborhood traffic calming policy.

Um it is not for any every type of a street, but um it is in the TAC work plan to start um working on it um and update it so it will be a more than a year process, it's a policy change, but it's you will see that in the work plan on November 10th.

Um, so yes.

Thank you.

And I I just I hope that that will include changing the definition of representatives in the project area from property owners to any resident, property owner or tenant, and then in making it digital forms as well as making it available multiple languages.

But sorry, I'll let the TAC work through that.

And then the last thing was just echoing support for the leading pedestrian intervals.

I'm glad you included that in the staff report.

I know it costs money.

Maybe that's a conversation we have, say for another day mid-year budget or otherwise.

But that I think would be an effective strategy as well.

Thank you.

So adding LPI is easy and cheap when you put in a new signal or retrofitted.

But if you want to add that system to existing signals, there are lots of our signals, especially in downtown.

There um the cabinet is old, it doesn't support the technology, so we need to like basically replace the whole cabinet.

But that's the goal to at least do that for the downtown area.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Not seeing anyone else's hands raised.

I know this was just a study session, so we're not taking any action, but was there any questions, Malhot that you didn't hear response to?

No, thank you for the comments on feedback.

Awesome.

Thank you.

We appreciate it, and thank you to my colleagues for the great discussion on this.

With that, we will now move on to item 12 matters of council interest, beginning with item 12, a city council member report of conferences attended.

And we'll go to the vice mayor.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, on Wednesday, September 10th, Mayor Martinez, Sabayos, and I, along with Assistant City Manager Patrick Heisinger, attended the annual meeting of the Redwood City Improvement Association.

Among other topics, we discussed techniques for bringing more retail into downtown Redwood City.

On Friday, September 12th, I and Councilmember Jeff G.

and economic development manager Amanda Anthony attended a chamber of commerce leadership alumni reception in Redwood Shores.

I am a proud graduate of the class of 2012, along with assistant library manager Sarah LaTora, who was also there.

On Wednesday, September 17th, I attended the San Mateo County Department of Emergency Management Board meeting chaired by Supervisor Lisa Goshe.

She distributed an announcement of a countywide survey requesting participation from all Redwood City and County residents.

The venue was packed, and the show aired nationally with several glowing references to downtown Redwood City last Friday, September 26th at 11 a.m.

On Monday, September 22nd, I attended the board meeting of one shoreline in San Mateo County.

Among other issues, we discussed participating more robustly in the San Francisco Bay Wetland Mitigation Bank, which could potentially allow San Mateo County to receive cash to restore more wetlands to restore more wetlands along its very long Bay Shore.

And finally, on Thursday, September 25th, I was honored to join over a hundred community members at Juanita Thomas's 103rd birthday party at the Sequoia YMCA.

As she told us, she was born in Texas and was part of the historic Great Migration from the South to the West when she and her husband came to Redwood City.

Her husband, formerly a Pullman Porter, worked at the Cadillac dealership.

And Juanita raised children in San Mateo in San Mateo, including her own.

Celebrating with her were her family, including great grandchildren, and there's a picture of some of them.

She's the one in from the left, including her great grandchildren, fellow church members, fellow fitness class members, friends, a comedian, a singer, and the son of her doctor, who is now her doctor.

Among her words of wisdoms, she told us all always speak tra always speak straight to the person, never behind their back.

Juanita, happy birthday from all of us here in Redwood City, and we'll see you at next year's party.

That's the end of my report.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Not seeing any other mics lit up.

I'll um I'll just quickly add that on the 17th of September I got to celebrate with Miss Gloria Caps, who wasn't turning 103 but was turning 100.

And um it was a wonderful time, but she was born the same year that the town picked its motto, which I did not know, but Googled beforehand and found out that the prize was $10.

So yeah, must have been a nice steak lunch back then.

But um, we'll move on to item 12b, City Council Committee reports beginning with governance subcommittee, and I think the vice mayor has a report.

Thank you so much, Mayor.

The governance subcommittee comprised of Mayor Martinez Sabayos, Councilmember G, and myself met on September 15th, 2025.

The subcommittee received a state legislative update from the city's consultant, California Public Policy Group, on timing for the governor to consider bills, the city's position bills, and key development developing legislation.

The next government governance subcommittee meeting will be held on October 20th.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

And I have a quick report from our 84101 ad hoc committee.

The committee comprised of council members J.

Chu and myself met on September 12th, 2025.

Port Commission Chair Stan Malpin joined the meeting as well.

Consultant and staff reported on the project status, including a review of design progress, property right of way acquisition progress, agreements needed for construction, and ongoing advocacy efforts.

The consultant also updated the committee on the schedule, budget, and next steps for the project.

The next ad hoc committee will be meeting on November 7, 2025.

And for a final report, I believe we have an update from our Pride and Beautification Committee.

Thank you, Mayor.

On September 20th, we celebrated our coastal cleanup, working in partnership with the San Mateo County.

We had over 200 volunteers, including Vice Mayor Aiken, City Manager Melissa Stevenson Diaz, and former Vice Mayor Diana Reddy were there.

We collected 3.1 tons of trash that day, and donations and support were given to us by the Shenuan Temple, Monterra Credit Union, and Recology, who also provided free compost.

Some of the groups that came out include Shenuan Temple, Kaiser Permanente, Grassroots Ecology, BIAC, Filipino teachers of the Redwood City School District, Carlmont High School Key Club, many PACs and troops from Scouting America, including Cub Scout Pac 61, Troop 146, and Troop 149, and Fossil Free Mid Peninsula.

And I wanted to thank especially our staff at Public Works, Adrian, Vicky, and all the staff of Public Works, who helped make it such a smooth, enjoyable day to clean up Redwood City.

A lot of happy faces there.

And it was just a joyful day cleaning up our community.

And our next one will be in the spring for our spring cleanup, so there'll be more to come.

But thank you to everyone who came.

It was a great day.

The weather was perfect, and we made Redwood City shine.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember, and thank you to the committee for the great work.

It is always amazing to see the photos and hear of the good news.

With that, we will go to 12C, our City Manager oral update.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just three things for this evening.

First, we know that homelessness is one of the top issues of concern to Redwood City residents.

You hear often from residents about that.

Wanted to highlight that we did issue a blog post updating the recently adopted anti-camping ordinance that the city council has adopted.

We point in that blog post to the implementation, which will begin next month.

It's not quite effective until October, and that we will be providing continued updates through our website.

So encourage folks to check out that new blog post, and it's highlighted on our website on the home page.

Second, we're very excited that next Wednesday, not this coming Wednesday, but on October 8th, we will begin the community builders' academy.

We have over 35 folks confirmed that they would like to join us for a seven-week academy where they will visit many different city departments and learn about city government and each other.

There's an important community building within the community members.

Really want to thank all of the departments who are working very hard to put this program together and thank council members because I know you will be coming over the course of the time to engage with our members who are participating, including, I was delighted, one of our most recent career online recipients today.

And then one highlight, looking ahead for the October 13th council meeting, uh several good items for that evening, but one will be presenting the annual water quality report.

We periodically hear uh topics of concern from residents about water quality, and I just wanted to preview to make sure you know that we have substantial uh obligations to meet state and federal regulations for water quality, and we do.

We meet and exceed those obligations.

We have a comprehensive program that tests water quality over the course of the year.

We produce an annual water quality report, which you will receive and have the the former reports also available online.

We also have some new things that have more recently been required, um, including testing the drinking water for PFAS, and pleased to say that none were detected in our water.

So much more information coming on the 13th, but I did want to preview that's coming in for folks who may be interested in issues of water quality, encourage their participation.

Thank you.

Mayor, I just wanted to mention someone sitting in the audience who's been with us since the beginning of the night, Dylan Finch, he's our planning commissioner.

He was with us on the day to help clean up Redwood City.

I wanted to acknowledge that.

Thank you, Dylan.

I think Dylan was in one of the pictures.

It's like we saw you, Dylan.

Thank you.

Thank you for wearing all the hats, Dylan.

With that, we will adjourn the next city council meeting is scheduled for October 3rd, 2025.

Thank you, everybody.