.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, everybody.

We're going to go ahead and get started.

Happy New Year's to you all.

and thank you for joining our regular city council meeting of january 12th 2026

if you've joined our reception before the meeting to welcome our new city manager patrick eisinger

we thank you for being here and look forward to his oath of office as he steps into this new role

in just a few minutes we're holding meetings in a hybrid format with both in-person and virtual

participation the city welcomes public comment on topics within the city's subject matter

jurisdiction and members of the public may provide comments as follows. In-person speakers will be

called first. Speaker cards are located at the back table in the council chambers and must be

turned in to the city clerk here at the dais. Please be sure to indicate the agenda item number

which you wish to speak on. Attendees who have joined us by Zoom will be called to speak after

the in-person comments have been given and 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 comments

to the City Council at council at robertcity.org.

Written comments are not read aloud,

but will be made part of the final meeting record.

And one quick announcement,

that's item 9A on tonight's agenda.

This is a holdover from last meeting.

I will now turn it over to the city clerk to call the roll.

Good evening and Happy New Year, everyone.

Council Member Chu.

Council Member Gee.

Present.

Council Member Howard is absent this evening.

Council Member Padilla.

Present.

Council Member Strickland.

Here.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Here.

Mayor Martinez-Aballos.

Here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And we'll now move to the Pledge of Allegiance.

Vice Mayor Aiken, could you lead us?

Would you all please join me in honoring our flag?

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

and to the republic for which it stands,

one nation, under God, indivisible,

with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Item 4 is not an applicable item for tonight,

and so we will move on to the next agenda item,

number 5,

which is our presentations and acknowledgments.

Our presentation item tonight is to ceremonially administer

the oath of office to our new city manager, Patrick Isinger,

and I'd like to welcome his wife, Jill,

to do the honors of administering the oath.

Thank you.

that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States

and the Constitution of the State of California.

Again, all enemies born in the United States.

That I will bear two states and regions

to the Constitution of the United States

and the Constitution of the State of California.

that I take this obligation to you

without any mental reservation

without any mental reservation

or purpose of evasion

or purpose of evasion

and that I will well and faithfully

and that I will well and faithfully

discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.

discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Congratulations, Patrick.

Would you like to say a couple of words?

Thank you, Mayor.

I just want to echo what I had stated back in November

when we had the contract approval process.

Three folks I just want, or three groups I want to thank.

I want to thank the council for the confidence.

I really appreciate it.

To the staff, I appreciate all of you.

Thanks for being here.

We've already been rocking and rolling for about two weeks,

and I really appreciate it.

and to the community.

We're here to serve.

So please, please do reach out.

Several folks have already hit me up today.

I really appreciate that.

So no, I'm very serious about that.

We want to have really open lines of communication

and transparency.

So that, and then I'll always want to thank Jill, my family.

The kids couldn't come tonight, but they're here in spirit.

But love you, Jill.

And then my really good friend Anne came.

Love you, Anne, for coming.

Thank you.

That's it.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Congratulations, Patrick, to you, your family.

Thank you all for being here.

And with that, we will get on with our business for the evening,

beginning with item number six,

turning now to public comment section of the agenda.

We'll now take public comment on the consent calendar,

matters of council interest,

as well as items that are not listed on tonight's agenda.

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

And as such, speakers 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 dais.

If you're attending virtually, please feel free to raise your hand on Zoom at this time or press star 9 if you've joined by phone.

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

And I'll now turn it over to our city clerk to facilitate public comment.

Thank you, Mayor.

We have four speaker cards this evening.

As the mayor said, once we begin public comment, we won't be adding any more folks to the list.

So if you've joined us in person, feel free to turn in a card at this time, or if you're on Zoom, go ahead and raise your hand so we can identify you for public comment.

I will call two names at a time.

The timer will begin when you start speaking, and the timer, if you're new to public comment, is a series of lights on the top of the podium.

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

We will start with Bharat Patel, who will be followed by Pamela Estes.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members.

I wanted to begin by thanking the City Council and especially the Council Members who reached out to me directly.

I also want to thank the Finance Director, Beth, for taking the time and speak with me today.

our conversation was helpful and productive, and it provided an important clarification on the amendment related to TOT.

During our discussion, we agreed it would be beneficial for the city to meet with the local hotels to address questions and clean up concerns on both sides.

Based on the productive conversation we had today, I respectfully ask the City Council to postpone any decision on this ordinance until February.

This will allow time for the city and hotel operators to meet and gain clarity and move forward with mutual collaboration.

Thank you again for the time and understanding.

Thank you.

I now welcome Pamela Estes, who will be followed by Rona Gundrum.

Happy New Year to everybody, and congratulations to our new city manager.

I'm Pamela Estes.

I'm here on behalf of the Redwood City Parks and Arts Foundation, and I'd like to share about a fun community building event that we're hosting that brings together residents, small businesses, and also connects the community leading up to the big game, because I can't say the other word.

It's trademarked.

This month, the foundation is hosting the first ever chili cook-off, inviting amateur and home cooks who reside in San Mateo County to participate.

If you have a chili recipe that your friends are always asking you to make, then this event is for you.

Here's how it works.

We have contestants who need to register online by next Monday, January 19th.

And interested persons or teams can find the registration link on our website, which is www.rwcpaf.org.

Contestants can be individuals or teams up to four.

Teenagers can participate if they have at least one adult on their team.

We're looking for 24 contestants to bring the heat with their chili recipes.

We will have two categories, a meat category and a vegetarian chili recipe category.

On January 27, selected contestants will bring their chili to be judged by five local restaurateurs plus our mayor.

Thank you for agreeing to eat chili.

LV Mart, Mazra, Vesta, Ghostwood Kitchen, and Redwood Grill.

From the entries, five winning recipes will be selected, and then the recipes will be cooked by these five restaurants to be featured at a People's Choice Chili Cook-Off and Football Fan Celebration on February 6th.

Attendees will be able to taste the chili, vote for their favorites, and enjoy a lot of family-friendly community activities.

We will be co-hosting with the NFL Alumni Association, which is located here in Redwood City, and the Dominique Hoskins Black History Museum.

We wanted to make it approachable so there is no fee to apply, and we're also offering a stipend to those who participate for the cost of the ingredients.

There are prizes and serious bragging rights for the winners, so we hope you'll help us spread the word.

Thank you.

Thank you, Pamela.

Our next speaker is Rona Gundrum.

Good evening, all.

Happy New Year.

Patrick, congratulations.

Welcome.

I just wanted to bring to council and staff's attention an article that was in this Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle regarding sea level rise.

given that the sea level rise restoration project is underway in Redwood Shores.

I just wanted to share this article that talks about that some of the information is outdated

and some of the concerns that they mentioned are exacerbated during king tides

and also in areas where there's sinking around the San Francisco Bay

and development along the shoreline that's built on fill and what have you.

So my concern is that we use the best data possible.

I mean, this is a big project, very expensive.

It's got to last a long time.

so I think it would be helpful

for

everybody that's working on that

project to

really look at the data

and make adjustments

accordingly

so thank you Jessica I'll leave

this with you you could share it

with staff

thank you

thank you Rona

and the fourth speaker is actually for a different item

so that concludes public comment for this item

Mayor. Great. Thank you, City Clerk. We will now move on to Item 7, the consent calendar.

Items on 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 consent calendar from which Council Members would like

Mr. Poole for discussion.

Mayor, if I may, I'd like to make a comment on 7B.

I don't want to pull it.

I just want to make a comment.

Okay.

Please go ahead.

Okay.

Mr. Patel, thank you for coming in, speaking, and reaching out to many of us.

I just want to ask Patrick to make sure that we meet with our revenue generators on a regular basis.

I know we meet with our auto dealers on a regular basis with the hotel,

and it's not just one, it's the group,

and we have a new one coming on board sometime later this year,

that we have at least twice a year meetings with them,

and so we can exchange issues, concerns,

and be more communicative than we have been maybe in the past several years.

So I just would like to ask you and your team to make sure that happens

and perhaps the sooner, the first one can be sooner

and the next one be in the fall.

We should do one on a regular basis

with our larger revenue generators.

Yeah, we can do that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilor Ging.

Councilor Sirkin?

Thank you, Mayor.

Similarly, I would just like to make a comment.

When this item came before Council,

was it last year?

It was last year.

Okay, yeah.

Right.

I had suggested that we host an informational meeting for hotel owners on this subject.

And while that didn't happen, that's okay.

I am appreciative that staff made themselves available to speak with Mr. Patel

and to provide more information and clarify the impact

and clear up any concerns that were raised.

So thank you, and thank you for being here tonight.

And I would agree with Council Member Gee's suggestion

to convene the group of the hotel owners on a regular basis as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

Vice Mayor.

Your lights. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Just double checking. Great. Um,

if there's nothing else, I'll add my comments of support. Um, Mr. Patel,

we spoke earlier today. Thank you for your time.

I'm glad we were able to connect with staff. Um,

would also appreciate there being a regular meeting with our hotel operators

and our, I know, um, short-term rental folks were also lumped into this, uh,

this audience too. So just having more frequent communication would be really

welcome on this, but

if there's nothing else,

I will entertain a motion.

Council Member Chu?

Move to approve all items on the consent

calendar. Is there a second?

I'll

second. Great. That was

a motion to approve

the consent calendar from Council Member Chu,

a second from Council Member Sturkin, and

could we get an electronic vote, please?

The motion passes with six votes.

Council Member Howard is absent.

Excuse me.

With that, we'll now move on to item 8A, Parks, Recreation, and Community Services.

Assistant Director Lucas Wilder will introduce the item.

and PRCS Commission Vice Chair Elise Debussier will give the presentation.

Thank you both for being here.

Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, new City Manager.

Congratulations.

My name is Lucas Wilder, Assistant Director for the Parks and Recreation Community Services Department.

I have the honor of working with the Parks and Recreation Community Services Commission through our department

and I want to recognize Elise DeVizer for joining me today.

I think that's it so far.

We have a short presentation for you this evening.

Overview is on the screen there.

We'll have questions, talk about the commission itself.

Commissioner DeVizer will speak about the work plan,

highlights, priorities for the next year,

and then circle back on the questions again.

Questions for the city council.

Does the city council have questions regarding the proposed

Parks, Recreation, and Community Service work plan

for fiscal year 25 through 27?

And does the Council support the priorities included in the work plan as shown today?

Our Commission is made up of the following members on your screen.

Unfortunately, not a lot of them were able to be here on short notice tonight.

And at this point, I will turn things over to Vice Chair Elise DeBizer.

All right.

Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to present tonight on behalf of the Parks, Recreation, and Community Services Commission.

I'd also like to recognize the department staff for their continued commitment and collaboration.

The role of the Parks, Recreation, and Community Services Commission is to serve in an advisory capacity to City Council in policy matters regarding the acquisition and development of parks and the formation of a recreation program that meets the diverse needs of Redwood City residents.

The Commission's responsibilities include periodically reviewing and making recommendations on the recreation and parks elements of the general plan.

In addition, commissioners actively promote recreation and park activities within the city.

We also make recommendations on annual proposed budget for recreation and parks from a policy standpoint.

The commission's mission reflects this role.

Through community outreach and engagement, the Parks, Recreation, and Community Services Commission advocates,

advises, and recommends policies and programs to the City Council that enrich the lives of those that live, work, and play in Redwood City.

In 2023, Council approved the Commission's Fiscal Year 23 through 25 work plan, which has included our four primary goals.

Each goal included defined action steps and measurable outcomes.

Tonight, I'll briefly share highlights from the work over the past two years.

To increase community engagement activities, commissioners expanded public-facing engagement

by maintaining neighborhood association liaisons, including active collaboration with association

chairs both during regular meetings and off-site activities.

In addition, the commission sought to increase engagement by holding regular monthly meetings

at neighborhood locations and increasing commissioner presence at Redwood City's many community events.

These efforts helped gather feedback, strengthen relationships, and share department updates directly with residents.

With the goal of improving equitable distribution of park amenities,

the commission was tasked with developing and piloting an audit approach

to assess how park amenities and features are distributed across Redwood City's neighborhoods.

With the goal of using data-informed comparisons, we hope to identify gaps and future priorities.

Through this process, a subcommittee piloted amenity audits at selected parks,

refined audit definitions and criteria such as the number of restrooms, water fountains, and field space,

and advanced the framework needed to establish service-level indicators and inform future recommendations.

This progress will continue with an updated goal in the new work plan.

To address long-term environmental sustainability and resilience of Redwood City's park system,

the Commission aims to evaluate park conditions as well as outlining internal practices that can guide future park design and maintenance decisions.

Under the previous work plan, six sustainability criteria were developed and a subcommittee tested a practical scoring model during pilot park visits.

The subcommittee also drafted early policy concepts related to park planning and maintenance.

Again, this progress will continue with an updated goal in the new work plan.

In efforts to increase programming for youth, teens, and seniors, commissioners coordinated attendance with partner advisory bodies,

to strengthen alignment and collaboration with the Youth Advisory Board, Teen Advisory Board, and Senior Affairs Commission.

Commissioners also explored data-driven methods to better understand program participation and barriers to access.

Analysis of participation data was advanced through Parks, Recreation, and Community Services, as well as GIS staff,

though full completion was limited by available data and system constraints identified during the implementation.

findings from this process are being used to improve the department's data collection methods and to promote future analysis

you will see here the commission's proposed work plan priority projects for fiscal year 2025 through 2027

First, enhance park amenity, equity, and sustainability practices.

The Commission will build on the previous work plan's pilot audits by combining amenity and sustainability review into one unified approach.

Using these service level indicators and a practical audit tool, the Commission will help identify priority gaps and develop internal sustainability practice guidelines.

the resulting work would result in a clear set of recommendations to inform future park

improvements and long-term planning second increasing community engagement activities

the commission will continue building relationships and bringing its work into the community through

off-site meetings sustained neighborhood association connections and commissioner

presence at key events. The commission will gather feedback, share project updates, and support

community building efforts, including a target to help facilitate at least one neighborhood-level

park event by the end of year two. And third, improve field allocation for youth and community

equity. The commission will focus on equitable access to athletic fields by assessing current

allocation practices, gathering input from field user groups, and identifying opportunities to

to improve transparency and fairness.

This work will result in practical,

equity-focused recommendations

intended to support youth participation

and balanced community use.

In closing, the Commission believes this work plan

is focused, practical, and aligned with Council priorities.

We look forward to partnering with Council and staff

in the next phase of this work.

Thank you, and we are happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Vice Chair, for the great presentation.

Thank you, Lucas.

Before we bring it back to Council, we'll open it up for public comments, and I'll pass things over to the City Clerk.

Thank you, Mayor.

I don't have any public comment cards at this time, so last call to the audience for any speakers on Item 88 this evening or on Zoom.

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

Okay.

Great.

Thank you, everyone.

we will start with council discussion we would like to get us started

i'm happy to get us started thank you thank you elise thank you lucas for coming in um

i think the world of parks uh i don't think that's a secret and i just want to thank you

guys for your continued work in our community i haven't met anyone who's

has let's see how do i say this i think that parks have such a special place in our city

because they touch our entire community.

And I'm so grateful because I think that is incorporated

in your entire work plan.

I really appreciate you guys going to different locations.

I think that just, you know, not, you know,

as much as I loved setting up the chairs at the cab,

it is nice to move around in the message

that that sends to community

and the different issues that you get.

I appreciate that.

Seeing you guys, you guys are active.

I know I don't see her right now,

but Yoshibel was literally a shining star in the holiday parade.

I mean, she was a star.

So our commissioners are passionate and engaged,

and I just want you to know how grateful I am for all of you

and all your hard work and the new leadership

and everything that you guys do from, Lucas,

from your innovation and getting games and arcades

and bringing all the amenities that families and children

that we don't have currently.

I love it all.

the programming, the engaging with the neighborhood associations.

I think you guys are just doing a phenomenal job.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

Would you like to go next?

Council Member Chu.

So I'd like to echo Council Member Padilla's appreciation and admiration for your work.

And one of the coolest things about being on Council is I've gone to a lot of the parks that I'd never gone before.

and you know just our parks department and the commission does an incredible

job. I just had a quick question. What was the measure

the unit of measure used for looking at geography? Was it census tract

zip code neighborhood? What was the

What do you specifically mean by geography? For the equity. So if you're looking at the distribution of parks

and access to green space what unit of geography were you using?

Quarter mile walkability or 10 minute walkability is kind of the trust for public lands measurement

that kind of echoes back to our park needs assessment.

Great.

So we utilize that.

Great.

That's very close.

Terrific.

So that was the first question.

And then just a suggestion.

I know that a lot of times when I think about the kids from my neighborhood,

one of the biggest barriers to access is often being able to get from our neighborhood to the park without a parent driving them.

And so insofar as you're able, working with transportation and SamTrans to ensure that there's practical routes for kids outside of a car without a parent having to drive.

I love the focus on fields.

I was especially encouraged about that.

My district, there's a lot of people who really want to, who love soccer.

There's a huge demand for soccer fields.

And right now there's no soccer fields kind of in the southern neighborhoods or I guess technically east, but, you know, sort of the south of Woodside neighborhoods.

And so that focus is is deeply appreciated. And, you know, I know it takes time and it takes resources, but but I appreciate it.

It's definitely on your radar. I also appreciated the focus on restrooms and water.

those are such essential infrastructure um and you know just a comment um i've been really impressed

with the throne restrooms at the um at the train station um they seem to have cracked the nut of

making public restroom you know free public restrooms that remain clean and in good working

conditions so just a thought um for that um just trying to think any other comments overall

terrific work plan. No other

real comments. Definitely

appreciate the focus on equity

and ensuring that all of our

residents have access to wonderful parks.

Great work.

Thank you,

Council Member Chu.

Who's next?

Council Member Chu.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

I wanted to say thank you to the

Commission and to the staff. I mean,

everybody enjoys everything that you

showed on the slides and more.

And it's a lot of hard work and there's a lot of passion, as Council Member Padilla shared.

I mean, the commission is passionate about what you do, and it shows.

One of the things, though, I would like to just offer for food for thought,

I'm projecting to a later item in the agenda,

is that one of the major initiatives for the city and the city council is the,

and we're going to say this right, GDAP, the Greater Downtown Area Plan.

Is that right to say it that way, GDAP?

and the framework we're going to hear tonight from staff is a framework that includes public

spaces and a number of things like that. I'd like to see everything that the Parks Commission does

also lean in on the GDAP process because this can make a major difference in our greater downtown

area and I believe that's true for all of our boards and commissions. Every one of our commissioners

as an ambassador for the council and to engage in that process to communicate to the people you

engage with our residents the families and things like that will make a difference because that

feedback will come right back into the gdap process and so here's a great opportunity i think

every work plan that we've seen so far and every work plan that we see coming up should include

participating and engaging and leaning in whether it be the transportation advisory commission

all of them because this is going to make a huge difference in our downtown area.

So I'd like to ask that you consider adding that fourth bullet to the previous slide

but leaning in on the GDAP process.

I'll just flag that we already had a study session with the planning staff and consultants for the GDAP.

That's a great start, but that can't be the end of it.

It's got to be more than that because having been here a long time

and Council Member Howard would say the same thing,

We went through, oh, gosh, probably a 12-year effort on the Downtown Precise Plan and a three- or four-year effort on the General Plan update.

And we still wound up with people saying, no one talked to me.

I never heard about this.

Where did it come from?

And we're always going to hear that.

But the more every one of our commissions, every one of our commissioners shares that information,

maybe we can reduce the number of no one ever told me or I never heard it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Gee.

Any other thoughts?

Council Member Sterkin.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you so much for your service

and for your hard work on this.

Very pleased with the goals.

I think they are a mission match,

of course, for the city

and the council's priorities.

I appreciate the focus on equity

as well as transparency.

And just bringing the community along

with just taking a fine-tooth comb

through the field allotment kind of strategy.

And with any strategy or process we have,

it's always good to do an update sometime.

So I appreciate that.

one thing I

know we haven't gotten there yet but in the GDAP

feedback that I saw was an interest in more

activities at Mezz's Park for example right

and you've already responded to that and I want to thank you

for that and making

more activities one of your top goals

so thank you in advance for

hosting events in

like the mobile rec for example

as a way to bridge the gap where there are gaps

and make sure that everyone has the chance to enjoy our fantastic recreation program.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

We'll go to the Vice Mayor next.

Thank you.

I, in spirit, share Marcella's enthusiasm.

She expresses it better than I can.

And also equity, absolutely.

And we're going to be coming to the GDAP where, you know,

hopefully to Council Member G's point,

we're going to be adding a lot of parks and merging to,

to Isabel Chu's reference,

merging parks or having pathways from park to park or regions to

regions and this is more to come and absolutely we should be talking and it sounds like you are

and all the more emphasis on why because Mr. G didn't say it or all of us haven't said this but

this all takes money and so all the more reason that thank you for your 2019 parks study which

was 54 pages long and which was the basis for our having the park impact fee so that when we're

looking at this 10, 20 year vision, there's a little bit of extra change in the couch cushions

to bring some of this vision to reality. So just building on amazing work.

I asked you earlier today and you answered, we typically host 150 days of programming per year.

That's just amazing.

You know?

So thank you.

It's something like a games built with four 20-foot sided.

It's a box that's 20-foot.

I don't know.

Can you just explain what that is?

It'll be our mobile arcade center.

So there are 20-foot shipping containers that are side opening,

so the 20-foot side of it opens up.

And at the 20-foot length, we're able to use transport companies like tow trucks in the area to transport them around.

And so we had them inside of the tent at Courthouse Square during the winter last year,

and they'll be coming back this winter.

And then when we transported them back to Red Morton was the next location,

and we put them kind of behind the armory,

and so we activated a space kind of behind

and to the side of the armory for a few minutes in the summer,

and it allowed us to kind of take advantage of the economies of scale

of the number of staffing that are covering other buildings

and can help cover, like, the arcade center operations there.

Just fantastic.

I like the planning.

when I read your report that you're studying current uses

so that you can base future planning.

That's really good.

And I just want to highlight, again, because I asked and you answered,

that there are 500 solar panels on the roof of the new Veterans Building.

Is that right?

It's right around 500.

They were counting them up the other day as we were doing a punch list walk

and got to a very, very high number.

and is that is that veterans center it's not open yet i know it's hotly awaited but um is it net zero

is it uh not net zero facility i mean it's a lead platinum facility it has battery backup it can

operate off grid for a limited duration of time with the battery backup that's there but again

kind of weather solar generation all of those pieces kind of come into into play there i know

there are strict standards for that but i just encourage you with the planning to add as much

solar as possible.

And one last one.

Yeah, I already did it.

That's it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

I'm not seeing anyone else's lights on.

I'll add my thanks.

Elise, thank you.

Lucas, thank you so much for the great presentation and all the hard work that goes into this

work plan.

I have to add to what my colleagues mentioned.

It's incredible to see you all balance the data, right, around where the needs are, where you all are making great strides,

and also where you're hearing from the neighborhood associations, the teen and youth advisory councils, the senior council.

It's amazing to see that much outreach and thought go into our city facilities.

and something else I just

would love to continue to see

and I know it's baked in here is

just the innovation that park staff

does

I'm thinking of the mini golf

you know at Courthouse Square event that

happened last year

the roller rink at the armory

of course the

the mobile rec facility

the box as the vice mayor

called it but

that is just such an amazing way to

not only be creative around the spaces we do have, but also to get programming to communities that

may not have those spaces. And, you know, thinking ahead as we start thinking about the GDAP and all

of the future changes we'd love, you know, something else that I want us to just consider,

I know it's going to be rare for us to find like a parcel that's big enough for new sports

facilities, right, a new soccer field.

We'd love for us to

think of creative uses for whatever

parcels we do find. I'm thinking of

you know, Jardin de Ninos,

we have that second piece of the park

that's being created right now that's going to provide

lots of public space for people to

spend their time, eat lunch, do

all the community building that

folks are

hungry for and it's showing up in

the input sessions we're having. So

just love to see that

continue forward and

appreciate all the great work in this.

So thank you.

Vice Mayor. I'm sorry.

I just wanted to add

again, welcome

Tierra.

And thank you, Derek.

You're

going to do amazing things,

Tierra. And Derek, you

did great things.

Anyway.

We've got a great team.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

With that,

let's see here are there any questions or other discussion points

one last thing i just want us all to acknowledge even though just like with water that we are out

of the drought we should still conserve water i want us to acknowledge that they're all their

good data did show us that we are park deficient so we have done a lot of good work but there's

still lots of good work to be done so i just want us to focus again on making sure we can

expand our parks as much as possible. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Is there a motion?

Council Member Chu. Sorry, just a quick plug for Taft

School as a location of a new soccer field. That has come up

multiple times. Great. Thank you, Council Member.

Council Member Chu. Mayor, thank you. I'll make the motion to approve the proposed

Park and Recreation Commission work plan for fiscal years 25-26

and 2627

with encouragement to lean in on the GDAP.

Great. Is there a second?

Second. Perfect.

That was a motion from Council Member

G, a second from Vice Mayor Aiken.

Could we get an electronic vote, please?

The motion passes with six votes.

Council Member Howard is absent.

Great. Thank you, everybody. Thank you again

to our team, Parkes team.

With that, we will move on to

Item 9, we don't have any public hearings set for this evening,

and neither do we have any staff reports for Item 10.

So we'll move to Item 11A,

which is the adoption of the 2026 City of Redwood City Legislative Platform

as recommended by the City Council's Governance Subcommittee.

And as chair of the Governance Subcommittee,

I'll give a very brief presentation on this item.

and so i serve on this subcommittee along with vice mayor aiken and council member jeff g

and if we go to the next slide

and the city's legislative platform guides how the city engages in state advocacy on

legislation that affects our key priorities programs and operations the platform works

alongside the city's legislative advocacy policy, which provides the framework for advocacy actions.

The platform is updated annually to ensure alignment with the City Council priorities at the start of each legislative session.

And updating the platform at the beginning of the session allows staff to act quickly and effectively as new bills are being introduced in Sacramento.

And while it provides clear direction for staff and our legislative consultants, it's intended to be a guide and does not restrict the city from engaging on legislative issues that may arise throughout the session.

And in addition, consistent with the legislative advocacy policy, individual council members may express personal positions on legislation provided they clearly distinguish those views are positions of the council and or the city.

And as part of this year's review process,

the City Council discussed the legislative platform

during our special City Council meeting

slash off-site in August.

And Council members had, through October,

to submit suggested edits.

On behalf of the Governance Subcommittee,

I want to thank my Council colleagues for their review

and taking the time to suggest updates

which were considered.

And in addition, throughout the year,

the Governance Subcommittee and staff

will continuously review the platform

as new legislative issues emerge.

allowing the city to remain responsive to evolving priorities and conditions.

Sorry, I'm going a little fast.

And this slide just demonstrates that process.

And this year's updates primarily includes non-substantial refinements

to improve clarity and organization.

In addition, the governance subcommittee is recommending a few updates to better align the platform with our current priorities and operations.

These proposed changes are shown in track changes in attachment A of the staff report and are summarized over the next two slides.

And for transportation, the subcommittee is recommending one modification and three additional statements that are shown in underlying here.

And these changes strengthen the city's support for regional transit access, gap closure projects like bicycle and pedestrian connections, and expanded eligibility to advance Vision Zero goals while reinforcing the city's role in regional transportation advocacy.

And next slide.

Turning to children and youth, the governance subcommittee is recommending two modifications and two additions, also indicated by Underline.

The proposed modifications clarify the city's support for full funding of key library programs and reinforces support for legislation that preserves or enhances library patron privacy.

The recommended additions affirm the city's support for legislation that protects the freedoms to read

and promotes access to library materials representing various perspectives,

as well as legislation that supports fair pricing for libraries to purchase digital content.

Perfect.

And finally, the Governance Subcommittee is continuing to discuss the carbon footprint and climate neutrality.

As this work progresses, the Subcommittee would return to Council with any specific recommendations as appropriate.

And with that overview, the recommended action for the City Council is to adopt by motion the Redwood City 2026 legislative platform as recommended by the Governance Subcommittee.

and the subcommittee members along with staff the city's legislative consultants are available

this evening for any questions before we take public comment thanks everybody it's a

great uh

great presentation not done by me i just read the slides

but are there any questions before we open it for public comment

I'm not seeing any. I'll pass things over to our city clerk.

Thank you, Mayor. We don't have any public comment at this time, so last call

for any public comments on the governance

subcommittee's legislative policy for 2026.

Anybody on Zoom? Feel free to raise your hand.

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

Thank you, city clerk.

and with that who would like to get us started

would any of my fellow colleagues on the governance subcommittee like to add

anything are there any comments

perfect council member g thank you mayor for the great presentation

um you know one of the things i just want to point out is there's a couple

things going on with our legislative platform it's kind of built for

speed or timeliness because the legislative calendar really doesn't

taking consideration of the city council calendar.

You know, when the legislative calendar moves

and the committee hearings are set,

I can probably say no one in Sacramento

looks at the River City Council calendar.

They march on their own.

And so having this sort of in front of our consultants

helps them be timely in looking for legislation

that may impact or affect the city.

The other note I'd like to make is that

when we take a position,

we sort of adopt the Cal City's position document.

Support, support if amended, and Jennifer is going to have to help me a little bit,

opposed if not amended or opposed or something like that.

But those are sort of the categories.

And when there's the gray part, you know, if amended,

that's where the governance subcommittee comes into play to say,

what should those amendments be?

So there is the tension of being timely,

but also seeking feedback from at least the governance committee if not the full council

and so they have to work together based on the legislative calendar that's why this legislative

platform is so important because the legislative session again just starts and goes without

considering our calendar here in redwood city so i think it's worked very well since this has been

put in place. Sometimes we miss something or we have to play catch up, but it might be helpful

if they limit, Jennifer said 2,000 bills this year is at the limit because in the past it was like

5,000 bills and that's a lot of reading to do on an annual basis. So trying to sort what's going to

affect the city, what's going to align with our strategic priorities, this platform is very,

very helpful for everyone involved in legislation and advocacy.

Thank you, Council Member, for providing that extra context.

Council Member Chu.

We'll go to the Vice Mayor first.

Oh.

My light's not on.

Okay, sorry.

So overall, I really liked the priorities.

just a couple comments and especially like the amendments to the transportation priorities.

I did notice there were a lot of, you know, and I have a list of the specific ones,

emphasis on maintaining local control.

And my understanding is the intention of that was that because Redwood City does build a lot of housing,

because, you know, we're kind of a good actor early and often,

that we want to be rewarded for that and be able to retain local control.

My concern is not all cities have demonstrated that eagerness to provide housing without, you know, encouragement from the state.

And so I wanted to suggest perhaps reframing that a little bit to be encouraged the state to, you know, reward or reward cities that, you know, are compliant with, you know, arena allocations.

Something to that effect where the emphasis is less on local control and more on rewarding cities that are good actors.

But other than that, I thought it was terrific.

Thank you, Council Member.

Just to be clear, that's one of the statements that's already been included in the policy platform?

Okay.

Perfect.

Okay.

And are there any other comments?

Any colleagues?

We'll go to Council Member Sturkin next.

Thank you, Mayor.

thank you so much to the governance subcommittee for updating this document i'm very pleased with

it as well and i appreciate the emphasis on um vision zero and regional transportation measures

as well as the legislation for the concerning the library to protect privacy personal freedoms and

maintain accessibility the library to the community so thank you so much and I

also appreciate the continued support for a constitutional amendment to repeal

article 34 the California Constitution to enable cities to build more

affordable housing and I just you know want to ask them city manager if you can

kind of keep us updated um should the county consider any future measures you know no need

to wait till like a council meeting we'd love just to yeah update it as quickly as possible yes a lot

going on in this in this and and uh yeah we'll report back thank you thank you so much thank

you to the governance committee great thank you councilmember sturkin any other comments thoughts

I had a question. Maybe it was more for clarification.

Under the transportation section, I just wanted to know why crosswalks were removed.

It was on page 215.

There was verbiage where I just saw that pedestrians and bicycles were added and crosswalks were removed.

So if I could just have clarification.

I would like to advocate for funding for all of those things.

So I just want to know why crosswalks was stricken.

Maybe Jennifer can clarify.

Council Member Padilla, just to make sure that we're all on the same,

are you talking about item number six in transportation,

or was it item number five in transportation?

Maybe we can pull up the slide.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jennifer Yamaguma, Deputy City Manager.

And exactly to your point, Council Member,

the exact word crosswalk was stricken just so that the word projects.

So to city attorney's point, we're on transportation statement number five.

Am I correct with that?

Can we pull it up?

I just want everyone to see it.

Not just me.

I just want it to be on the screen.

Because it was expanding the definition, we didn't have it explicitly listed here

because we qualify that as less substantial.

So I will read it.

So in addition to increased road transportation funding,

the city supports increased state funding for citywide bicycle and pedestrian,

stricken crosswalks, the new word underlined projects,

and legislation that encourages the creation of walking and bicycle-friendly communities.

so we removed crosswalks so that it's not just for crosswalks but intended to have a word that

would be more encompassing beyond much to your point so the word now is projects it also includes

crosswalks but beyond crosswalks as well thank you for the clarification i just want to make

sure it's encompassing more and not taking away that's exactly right thank you jennifer for the

assist. And with that, if there are no other comments, we'll entertain a motion. I have one

more comment. And this can also come up at another time if we're taking things, but I have noticed

that it seems that more often than not, we are encountering increasing incidents of domestic

violence. And I would like to see us incorporate that in our legislative platform, because I think

that that is something that touches so much of this already. It touches homelessness. It touches

youth. So I would like for us to find, and maybe it isn't at this exact meeting, but it's happening

all the time. We have to address it. It's affecting our entire community. If there's a way for us to

advocate for stable and increased funding for domestic violence services, both locally and at

higher government levels, I think that's something we should all rally together. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Absolutely something that we should be talking about in governance

very soon. So thank you for that suggestion.

And with that,

who would like to make a motion?

Council Member Chu.

Second.

Thank you. That's a motion

from Council Member Chu, a second from Vice

Mayor Aiken. Can we get an electronic vote, please?

And that motion passes with six votes.

Council Member Howard is absent.

Well, thank you everybody for the great discussion.

And we will now move on to item 12A, our study session on the greater downtown area plan.

We have a first presentation from our principal planner, John Francis, followed by a presentation from our consultants from WRT,

Phunam Nakar, and Jim Stickley.

and study sessions are for receiving feedback from the public and members of the council

and no formal action will be taken on this item tonight.

And with that, we'll pass things over to John.

Good evening, Council members. My name is John Francis. I'm principal planner with the

planning division as well as the project manager for the greater downtown air plan process,

also known as GDAP. I'm excited to be here tonight to share our progress so far on this

work and to engage in a conversation around the emerging vision for GDAP. I'm joined by

members of the project consultant team,

including Poonam Narkar and Jim Stickley from WRT,

Brooke Dubose from Arup who is online,

and Jason Moody from EPS who is also online.

So, we have a lot of content to cover tonight.

So, I'm going to try and just spend a couple of minutes

setting the stage and reviewing what we

accomplished in 2025 in terms of community engagement,

before handing the mic over to

the consultant team to dive into the heart of why we're here tonight,

which is to provide an overview of the GDAP draft vision framework for your consideration and

feedback. So to provide a little context, the GDAP process will revisit and refresh the vision that

was adopted as part of the downtown precise plan effort back in 2011. The acronym is DTPP for that

for folks watching at home.

The goal is to build and expand upon what's working in the Plain Area

and to address new opportunities and challenges that have emerged since 2011.

And those include some things like a change post-pandemic economic landscape,

a growing need to mitigate the impacts of climate change,

the continued need to strengthen downtown's identity

and to improve mobility options for getting into and around downtown.

The GDAP planning effort, or excuse me, the planning area has been expanded beyond the

DTPP boundaries in order to allow us to develop a more holistic strategy that addresses local

opportunities and challenges.

So it includes all of the downtown and Stamba-Heller neighborhoods as well as the southern portion

of the Centennial neighborhood.

The planning process for GDAP is broken down into multiple phases.

Over the last 12 months, or actually about 14 months now,

our focus has been on evaluating existing conditions,

meeting with the community and stakeholders to understand their concerns and aspirations,

and developing a vision and framework that will eventually form the foundation of our recommendations.

THE FRAMEWORK PURPOSEFULLY ADDRESSES CONCEPTS AND THEMES AT A RELATIVELY HIGH LEVEL AT THIS

POINT SO THAT THE PROJECT TEAM CAN UNDERSTAND WHICH IDEAS RESIDATE MOST CLEARLY BEFORE

FLESHING THEM OUT IN MORE DETAIL LATER ON.

THE FRAMEWORK IS INTENDED AS A STARTING POINT FOR DISCUSSION AMONG THE COUNCIL AND THE

COMMUNITY.

WE'LL BE TAKING INPUT WE RECEIVE AND USE IT TO REFINE THE IDEAS AND BEGIN DRAFTING

THE PLAN. AND WE WILL REVISIT THE RBCC'S AND CITY COUNCIL AND THE COMMUNITY AS STRATEGIC

POINTS ALONG THE WAY FOR THEIR INPUT AND GUIDANCE. WE ANTICIPATE HAVING A DRAFT PLAN

FRAMEWORK FOR PUBLIC REVIEW AND CITY COUNCIL CONSIDERATION IN THE FALL OF 2026 WHICH WILL

BE THE BASIS OF THE PLAN'S ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW. AND THEN WE PLAN ON OR WE AIM ON HAVING THE

plan adoption towards the end of 2027.

So throughout 2025 the project team has been out in the community quite a lot sharing information

about the GDAP process and asking for people's input ideas.

And as noted on some of these slides, our engagement has been in various formats.

It has included project specific events that we've hosted as like focus groups, open houses

in a speaker series. And then we've gone out to meet people where they're at. And this

is included door-to-door canvassing and pop-ups at existing events. And most of our engagement

has provided translation or interpretation for Spanish language speakers as well. And

we're happy to go into more detail on the community engagement process if there are

questions in the Q&A. So before handing things over to the consultant team, I just wanted to read

the council questions. So is the vision framework in alignment with the city council's overall

strategic vision for the future of the greater downtown area? Do the district and neighborhood

framework and preliminary concepts for land uses and development scale support the key priorities

of maintaining land use diversity and identifying new growth opportunities? Does the vision framework

support an overarching public space network that contributes to the greater downtown's

role as a center of civic and economic life? Does the vision framework sufficiently identify

opportunities to improve multimodal mobility into and within the plan area? Does the vision

framework adequately explore a range of resilience strategies that could be incorporated into

the plan? Does the vision framework sufficiently center equity as a core principle? Does it

raise any new equity concerns?

And lastly, are there additional

methods of outreach the project team

should consider or stakeholders we should

engage?

Thank you, and if we could bring up the

second presentation.

And I'll introduce Pudum Narcar

from our consultant team.

Good evening, Council members.

I'm Poonam Narkar, Principal Planner with WRT.

So, as John mentioned, there was a lot of community engagement that was conducted as up-to-date,

and we received a lot of very valuable input from the community.

And what we heard quite strongly from the community members was, one, Redwood City has truly something to offer for everyone.

And number two was build on our existing strengths.

So this sentiment really informed the development of the vision framework that we are going to be sharing tonight with all of you.

The Greater Downtown Area Plan includes these five key components that you see in the diagram in a circle that really need to work together as a cohesive system.

And therefore, we are looking at the development of the GDAP, taking a holistic systems approach.

The GDAP will prioritize on six things primarily.

focusing new development near transit,

particularly leveraging the Caltrain station

as a regional transit connector,

integrating climate-focused thinking

in all future developments,

diversifying mobility choices that are offered,

available to the community

within the greater downtown area plan

to minimize dependence, a car dependence,

and increase equitable access to opportunities.

Equitable access to housing by offering diverse housing choices

across various income levels,

building on the city's success, existing success as an employment center

and really expanding job opportunities of different types.

And then lastly, strengthening downtown's identity

by celebrating the historic core.

So the next few slides, we are going to walk through the organizing elements or the vision framework.

So this first diagram, this framework really illustrates how the plan,

how we are envisioning the plan area to be organized as distinct districts and neighborhoods.

and it's envisioned that each of these districts will function as compact, walkable, complete districts

which are supported with essential amenities, public spaces that are accessible within walking distance,

and multimodal transportation choices.

So while each of the districts and neighborhoods will have a unique feel,

they will be connected seamlessly through a cohesive public realm network.

The next diagram is a distillation of the first one,

and it really highlights the concentration of commercial and employment-focused uses.

So as you see, the areas along Highway 101 and the transit center

are sort of really offering the opportunity for a concentrated employment and commercial-focused use.

But then Broadway, as the east-west commercial axis, really plays an important role,

offering commercial and retail uses

ranging from, that would serve regional as well as local needs.

Main Street is another axis that, a similar axis in the north-south direction.

And therefore Broadway and Main really start to become the key elements,

key organizing elements and identity defining elements in the plan area.

we also heard a lot from the community about the need for natural green spaces and more places for

the community to gather relax play with family and family friendly kid friendly spaces within

the plan area you know we recognize the current lack of or inadequate supply of public spaces

And we also recognize that there are limited opportunities for big interventions in terms of public spaces.

So the GDAP really prioritizes on creating a network, a connected network of public spaces that leverage your existing street right-of-ways,

really enhancing the streets, public lands that are available, and then privately owned public spaces.

So the key components that the GDAP would focus on would be streetscape improvements, neighborhood greenways, and really leveraging Redwood Creek as an asset.

This framework is really focused on the climate resilience aspect of GDAP.

As we plan for the future, climate resilience and climate-focused thinking is going to be important and central to every decision-making.

So the plan will focus on strategies and infrastructure that not only protect the community from inundation,

but also deliver multiple benefits in the form of improved public space, recreational access, ecological enhancements, and so on.

And we will be diving a little deeper into this framework later in the presentation.

And lastly, the last layer or the organizing element is the mobility and connectivity.

This envisions a high-performing multimodal transportation network that builds on the walk-bike-thrive plan that the city already has in place.

So how do all these elements come together and really work together?

So we are going to walk through the districts.

We will zoom in to each of the districts and neighborhoods and see how these elements together will create the unique experiences that we are envisioning.

We'll start with the downtown core.

It is the historic heart of Redwood City, a vibrant, walkable district, easily accessible by foot, bike, and transit, so a multimodal district.

This district is really unique in the way it blends together the historic character,

the historic buildings, and thoughtful infill development.

And that infill development may take form of mid-rise offices, residential development,

shopping, dining, entertainment, destination, all of them together creating a rich mix of experiences.

Broadway will serve as the district's primary shopping spine, sort of the destination, with active storefronts, lively street life.

Courthouse Square continues to anchor the community life in the city and is complemented by the historic architecture around it.

And the public realm is characterized by beautiful sidewalks with large shade-giving trees, public plazas, parks, and paseos that support outdoor dining, gathering, and celebration, and a lot of social interaction, making it really a memorable place.

The next one is the transit or the station area district, which is really focused around the Caltrain Station.

With the relocation of the Caltrain station, this area has the potential to become the new gateway to downtown.

And this area is really the one that offers the maximum opportunity for focusing the highest density development, both commercial and residential, within the planned area.

So this will make it distinctly different from the downtown core with its historic fabric.

The building heights and massing will be carefully shaped to be sensitive to the adjacent neighborhoods and adjacent districts.

And the district will feature also high-quality public spaces with walk, bike, and transit options.

options. So these are again some examples of the public spaces, the street experience,

and the type of development that can occur here. The next one, what we are calling as a north of

downtown district, is really, it's characterized by two distinct types of development. The first

This one is a commercial only use along Highway 101

that maintains and continues to promote commercial uses

that are expanding on the existing commercial use

within this area.

And then the other part of this district

is a mixed use district that blends the commercial

and residential along with neighborhood serving uses.

uses. This district

is distinctly

different from the previous two

that we saw because

of the presence of the Redwood Creek

as a natural resource,

natural asset, but also

as the district that

is very green forward.

It's really characterized by

open spaces, the green ways,

green infrastructure

that will mitigate

any inundation risks.

And then there will be activity nodes that offer neighborhood services, conveniences, and other supporting uses.

Some more examples of what this district, the development in public spaces, could look like.

And then the next one is the Innovation and Incubation District, which is also part of north of Veterans Boulevard on the other side of the Redwood Creek.

And it straddles Veterans Boulevard and Broadway.

And this district really expands on the existing light industrial and commercial uses.

It creates a vibrant economic zone that can house startups, advanced manufacturing, fabrication, R&D types of uses, and again, a very job-centric, employment-focused commercial district.

The east end of Broadway will serve as a district's walk to social center, while the proximity to Highway 101 really helps provide more visibility to this district.

And then it is also envisioned that linear greenways will be integrated within this industrial and commercial district as well.

And then lastly, we are going to be looking at the two neighborhoods, Centennial Neighborhood and Stambaugh-Heller Neighborhood.

Both of these residential neighborhoods will continue to have a balanced mix of housing types

and really offering a range of housing choices from single-family residential to low-rise multifamily residential

and the missing middle, supporting a range of affordability and household types.

These neighborhoods are envisioned to have pedestrian-friendly streets

that will offer safe routes to schools, better connectivity to parks, services, and to the downtown amenities.

And then lastly, streetscape enhancements and improvements with more trees,

green infrastructure and a comfortable neighborhood environment.

So with that, I'm going to hand it off to Jim Stickle for a deeper dive on the other two frameworks.

Thank you, Poonam.

Mr. Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor, members of the Council, it's a pleasure to be here.

Jim Stickley, Principal Urban Designer with WRT,

and I'm gonna walk us through a little bit

our approach to resilience and mobility

as two separate layers of the plan framework.

So for the resilience piece, I like to start here.

This is a historic map of Redwood City

that some of you may be familiar with,

but what's really interesting about this

is that the lower edge of the tidal marsh

is approximately where the current Veterans Boulevard is.

And north of that is where we're now starting to experience

some of our most pronounced inundation risks.

So keep that image in mind,

and you can see some of the landmarks there,

Broadway and Main Street, where City Hall is.

But the curve of that lower marsh

almost exactly coincides with the curve of Veterans Boulevard.

So keep that in mind.

Two slides forward, you're going to sort of see those shapes again.

What we're trying to address in the resilience plan are a number of hazards.

So it's a multi-hazard analysis and a multi-hazard response to resilience,

including earthquake, liquefaction, extreme heat, which is becoming increasingly important.

And then the last three, coastal flooding, inland flooding, and groundwater.

And all three of those are sort of working together, creating flood risk in different zones around the downtown.

We're going to sort of focus a little bit more this evening on those last three

because those are where some of the most significant challenges are in some of the future planning of the GDAP.

The photos you see there were taken just last Friday, January 2nd, on King Tides Day.

And I don't know if any of you were out there.

A lot of our team was out looking at king tides all around the bay, really geeking out on what was happening with those significantly high tides.

And I think the thing to sort of register here is as high as those waters are, those are approximately a foot higher than what our normal high tides are.

In 2050, that level of what you're seeing here will be normal high tides.

On top of that, if you add a king tide in 2050, it'll be approximately a foot higher than that,

so a foot higher than what you're seeing in these photographs.

And then forward fasting to 2100, it will be three to six feet above that.

So every 10 years or so, it's sort of adding another foot to those extreme high tides and king tides.

So you can see that very soon we're going to be overtopping the banks.

And I think what our team remarked when they were here on Friday was the bank was still just barely containing these high tides.

things were in pretty good shape in the vicinity of Redwood Creek.

But that is going to start changing quite rapidly as we move forward into the next decade.

So just keeping that in mind, these maps on the left and center are mapping the conditions that I just spoke about.

So 100-year flood map currently on the left, the 100-year flood map in 2100.

So you can see quite an increase in floodable zone.

And in that middle diagram, you can start to see that curvature of the old tidal marsh that roughly follows Veterans Boulevard.

And then on the right is our resilience framework that PUNAM touched on just a few minutes ago.

And what the framework starts to do is it shows where the higher inundation risks are, which are the darker colors,

and then the medium colors are a little bit less risk, and the lighter blues are a little bit less risk than that.

But each of those zones wants to have a response appropriate to the level of risk.

So in the very dark purple, we need to get that much more serious about green infrastructure

so that we have a place for that water to go when those flood events happen.

And then the next level, the medium blue, we still need some of those green infrastructure,

but they're not quite as extensive.

We can handle a lot of those in bioswales and detention areas and things like that, some of it on private property.

And speaking of that, these are the tools that we have to use in addressing these risks.

So on the left, the tools are policies, they're operational measures, and they're actually physical improvements.

And in the center circle in the purple, you can see what some of those policies and physical improvements can include.

They can be improvements to public space, improvements to street corridors like stormwater infrastructure, improvements to building sites.

So having regulations where private developers

are also building a small piece of green infrastructure

along with their project to add to the overall network

of green infrastructure.

And then for the utilities systems themselves,

doing the proper hardening that we need to substations,

to pump locations and things like that,

so that they're ready for this increased incidence of flooding.

So these are just some illustrations of some of the measures that we can start to use.

Green infrastructure built into streets.

Thinking of parks as floodable, flexible spaces.

So certain, you can see in the top right, a space that is a little bit sunken.

It's playable during most times.

but when a big storm event comes through, there's a place where water can go

and then be released slowly after the storm or after the high tide event.

There are things we can do along the creek in terms of creating flooding shelves and things like that.

And these green infrastructure improvements can also be quite nice public space destinations.

So Redwood Creek is a real opportunity

to create sort of a central park for downtown Redwood City

and then have connectors coming into that

for the community to access it easily.

So that's a little bit about resilience,

and I'm gonna end here with a very sort of quick approach

to mobility, and we have Brooke on the line,

to correct me if I say anything wrong.

But as Poonam said, our goal in the mobility framework is to better balance the modes of mobility.

So rather than cars sort of dominating the circulation network, we want to balance out so that it's equally accommodating pedestrians and bikes in a safe and comfortable and shady manner.

and it's also accommodating transit so that that can be efficient and easy to use.

So to do that, our team has really pulled each of those modes apart

and looked at them individually.

So this is a pedestrian priority zone that's really focused in the downtown core.

And this is an area where we really want pedestrians to be comfortable.

We want to really encourage people to be a pedestrian, get out of your car, access the downtown on foot, have comfortable sidewalks, shady, wide sidewalks, particularly in this area.

So you can get from the transit stations and between all of these different downtown destinations, employment centers, et cetera.

So much better sidewalk infrastructure.

the bike network the bike the the walk bike thrive plan is pretty good you know it's an

impressive document but in looking at it we think that there may be some gaps so we want to fill

those gaps and these sort of the the wider green sort of caterpillar looking lines on here are

where we think some of those gaps may be so it's building on the walk bike thrive plan in making

making sure that we have just really seamless accessibility

throughout the downtown, but also out to the neighborhoods.

We want people to come to downtown on their bikes,

and we want them to feel really comfortable doing that.

And then the transit, are there ways that we can have,

we can consolidate the transit routes a little bit.

So you see the fuzzy gray caterpillars are streets

we're thinking maybe we remove transit from those streets and consolidate it to certain

transit priority streets, make that more efficient.

And the trick with accommodating all of these different modes is you need space.

You need space to accommodate pedestrians.

You need space to accommodate the bikes.

And you need space to accommodate transit as well as the cars.

And so the width of the right-of-way becomes really valuable.

And how do we allocate that properly so we're making space for all those modes?

So if we can focus transit on certain key corridors, as this is showing, that leaves space on some of the other streets that we can really expand the bike facilities, expand the pedestrian sidewalks, et cetera.

So it really becomes a competition for space on these different streets.

And here you can see, this is just an illustration of where you take a width off to one side of the street,

and all of a sudden there's all of these different ways that we can use that width.

We could use them for bus stops and bus lanes.

We could use them for a protected bike lane.

We could use them for pickup drop-off areas.

We could use them for accessibility and loading.

All of those things are competing for that space, so how do we allocate it when you go from one corridor to the other to the other?

So that's sort of the little puzzle that we're trying to solve, and I think we're just sort of getting into the complexity of that now,

and I think there's starting to be some clarity on how to do that.

And then lastly, the four big corridors that surround the GDAP, Veterans Boulevard, Whipple, El Camino Real, Woodside, we'd like these to be not barriers, and in many ways they feel like barriers now, but to be conveyors, safe conveyors of all the different modes,

Be comfortable for pedestrians and bikes as well as for cars and transit.

Be crossable in a comfortable way so you're not taking your life in your hands when you want to cross one of these corridors.

So looking at each one is a little bit different in terms of their characteristics.

Woodside is really tough, you know, in terms of thinking of how we can do safe crossing of that.

El Camino Real is already starting to have some clarity

in terms of the improvements there, et cetera.

So we want to treat each of those in a way

that they become joiners and also safe conveyors

of all the modes.

And I'm gonna turn it back to, put them, John.

Can we go back to that last slide?

Sorry.

Thanks.

So we're just about wrapping up the main part of our presentation.

But I just wanted to highlight some of the key feedback we heard in this vision framework

portion phase of our work from the community and from all of our boards, committees and

commissions. We visited I think six BCCs over the course of October and November. Did a little

road show, got to talk to a lot of people and hear a lot of great feedback from lots

of members of the community. But just a few things I'll just highlight is the support

for our mixed use district concept, really being strategic about where we're putting

or ground floor retail.

A lot of support around growth opportunities

near transit, and as well as interest in growth

north of the Veterans Boulevard area

where there's right now some underutilized properties

compared to what we think could be possible there.

We heard a lot of focus on improving connectivity

and safety for both walking and biking.

You know, especially as Jim mentioned across some of those really big corridors that really

act more as barriers to our downtown from the rest of the neighborhoods in Redwood City

than as connectors.

A lot of support for, you know, thinking about how we can find more space for open space

and parks.

Climate resilience, as Jim mentioned, is a really important topic that, you know, I think

it's really great and really important that Redwood City and our community is recognizing as the challenge that it's going to be.

But I think it also presents some really interesting opportunities.

And, you know, as always in Redwood City, affordable housing is key, and, you know, our community really recognizes that.

So that's just a brief summary of some of the really big themes we heard.

And then lastly, I just wanted to touch upon what our very next steps are.

We're going to be refining the vision framework based on your feedback and all the feedback

that we heard from the community and other BCCs and really refining and developing, further

developing some of those ideas.

And then in the spring and summer, we're going to be returning back to the community and

the BCCs for another round of input and feedback.

And then bringing a preferred plan framework to you all for an endorsement in the fall.

And then we will be, you know, the end of this year and into 2027, we're going to be

drafting our plan policies and implementation strategies and conducting the EIR that will

be necessary to adopt a plan.

And we're looking at a final plan for your consideration at the end of 2027, early 2028.

And that concludes our presentation.

Thanks for being patient and bearing with us.

John, thank you for the great presentation and Poonam and Jim for the great add-ons.

It's an incredible wealth of information to just get this all in one slide deck before

the weekend.

Thank you for hustling to allow us to get some studying done.

But with that, we will now take public comment on this item,

and I'll turn it over to our city clerk to facilitate.

Thank you, Mayor.

We have a few speakers on this item.

I'll do one last call to the audience,

and I'll prompt our folks online to start raising their hands.

Once we start public comment, we won't take any more speakers.

I see a hand raised.

There are speaker cards in the back of the dais

or I'm sorry in the back of the chambers if you fill it out real quick.

Oh there it is.

Thank you. Anyone else on the greater downtown area plan?

All right I'll give my quick elevator speech. The timer will begin when you

start speaking. The timer is on the top of the podium. Yellow blinking light is your

30-second warning. And the red light with the beep means your time is up. So we have three in-person

speakers, it looks like. We have three folks online, totaling six. I'll start with our in-person

speakers. Danny Gasparini, former mayor and council member, welcome, who will be followed by Michael Arusa.

Oh, my gosh.

Can you even see me?

I forgot to wear my high-heel shoes today.

I feel like I need one of those stepping stools from back in the day.

All right.

Thanks for allowing me to come.

I'm actually pinch-hitting for Susie Payton tonight.

She's at a board meeting for a center for creativity.

Patrick, it is so awesome to see you across the dais.

I'm so excited.

Yay!

Anyway, I digress.

Does that mean I lost 30 seconds of my time already?

No? I'm good.

Okay.

So thank you, Mayors Martinez-Vaios and Vice Mayor Aiken and members of the council and Diane, who's not with us.

I'm here just to remind the council members that were in attendance at a meeting in February of 2022.

And for those council members that weren't seated at that time,

A decision was made by that current council to include an arts center as a community benefit as part of the central Redwood City plan.

Now, I just learned tonight the GDAP.

I think we need a rap song to go with the GDAP.

And the reason why I'm here to ask you to include that language is we know that the city doesn't have the funding to necessarily build a comprehensive art center, nor does our steering committee for center creativity have the ability to raise the millions required for a comprehensive art center.

And we also know that it shouldn't be on the backs of a developer to bring that to the city.

But as partners between the city and folks like myself and the Center for Creativity and a developer who might be wanting to do a visioning project in the downtown or the greater downtown area, this might be perfect to bring.

We talked before about strengthening and bringing visibility to our downtown.

We all know we've been in cities where there have been comprehensive art centers performing arts.

It's over already.

Well, anyway, we have data to show that it's economic benefit and also arts know no boundaries, ethnicity, religion, political views, age, gender.

It's a place to really gather.

I think it would be perfect in our downtown greater area.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Dani.

Our next speaker is Michael Arusa, who will be followed by Yukari Schneider.

All right.

Good evening, members of City Council. My name is Michael Arruza, Redwood City resident and volunteer for the Yesin Redwood City chapter of Umbi Action.

I want to thank staff for the thoughtful plan that they put forth, and I appreciate the city's commitment to taking the housing crisis seriously and ensuring that our plan allows for us to build enough homes for everyone who needs them.

I love the progress so far, and I also love the vision that's taking shape of a walkable and vibrant downtown.

I'm especially delighted to see missing middle housing explicitly called out as part of the vision for the Stumbaugh-Heller neighborhood.

However, I also hope that the city doesn't limit its commitment to increasing this kind of missing middle housing to only the downtown plan.

I'd love to see duplexes legalized across most of the city in contrast to today where due to single-family zoning

they're effectively not allowed in 62% of the city's residential land.

I also hope that given the Centennial neighborhood's proximity to the new Caltrain station,

the final plan takes into account the need for enough homes and services that are within walking distance to the station.

The Centennial would be a great location for multifamily housing given its proximity to transit

and I hope the final plan takes that into account.

but otherwise the plan is looking really awesome

and I'm excited to see it take shape moving forward.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Michael.

Our next speaker is Yukari Schneider.

Welcome.

Hello.

My name is Yukari Schneider

and I just want to say I love Redwood City.

I lived, yay, right, yay.

I lived in four different countries

in five different states before I finally landed here in Redwood City.

And I just thought, like, really, truly, I finally found my people,

and I finally found my place.

So I just want to thank you all for being a part of all of that.

It is a lovely, lovely city.

And it is my honor to be able to raise my kids in it

and to gift Redwood City to them.

So thank you all so much for that.

I am also the president of the Friendly Acres Neighborhood Association,

and I'm here both as that representative and as a mother in that neighborhood.

One of the things, I have two points to make.

One is to really ask when we talk about Broadway to consider, actually, you are correct.

I actually read it.

Broadway is going to be the key organizing and identity identifying element of our greater downtown plan.

And I just ask that you consider what happens when people turn left, right, from 101.

We're saying from 101, we're going to get a lot of people coming.

And so absolutely go right.

There's fantastic things on the right side.

But when you go left, that is our beloved neighborhood.

And so please consider the continuity of that opportunity to go through the rest, a little bit more of Broadway.

And I actually have one critical point for that.

One is that on our side of the neighborhood, Stanford is building out their medical centers.

There's a lot of innovation happening there.

And it is so exciting.

It's really great to see the beautiful development.

It is so fun to ride bikes on those paths.

And that's actually going to take me to my second point.

And we have so much fun there.

But one of the things with these big organizations is that we start losing some of those personal touches that make it our hometown.

Things like we lost our tamale lady.

And at one point, we actually almost lost our only food truck because of parking meters.

So one of the things I ask, and I know my time's ending, is that on Broadway,

if you can consider micro-businesses and opportunities, because those are the people and the food that really make our home our hometown,

and please create a space like shared kitchens and those opportunities down Broadway,

be just a really great addition

to what's happening on the other side of Broadway.

I feel like there's a fancy side

and then there's like home side.

And that would be a fantastic way to look at it.

So please consider adding that.

Last one, I'm gonna just play.

It was already mentioned.

I just wanna reiterate the safety

at the Broadway Woodside intersection problem.

That's your time.

So if you could send the link to us,

we'll make sure to do that.

All right, it's my fourth grader

talking about how unsafe he feels

at the intersection on his bike because he loves to bike there. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank

you, Yukari. We will turn now to our Zoom speakers. We have three. Our first speaker is

Carvin Dasanayake. Welcome, Carvin. Good evening, City Council members. My name is Carvin Dasanayake.

I'm a resident of Redwood City. I bike, walk, and drive around Redwood City, and I'm also the founder

of Robot City's newest transportation advocacy group,

the Bike Walk Bus Alliance, shorting to Buwaba.

As a resident of Robot City

and someone who lives in the greater downtown plan area,

I'm so excited to see the city's efforts

to improve the area with intention.

I want to strongly encourage this council

to incorporate projects, initiatives, and goals

that are focused on really addressing

some of the long-term needs of the city

and the many people that are connected to it.

As walkable as the downtown is,

I want to ask city council to consider how are people going to get here? How connected is the

city to regional destinations? A focus on public transportation and low-stress bike facilities

that are comfortable for any child to bike on are a great way to build a strong downtown core.

And I also ask that future projects really scope in quote-unquote everyday travel. For instance,

how can I bike or get to the grocery store, the gym, or even Redbourne and Park.

I do want to lastly take this chance to ask that the city council, potentially as part of this work,

look into an effective bike share system for the city. It's a great way to reduce emissions,

connect upcoming destinations like the Port of Rabbit City and the Stanford campus buildout.

As great as our bird e-scooter adventure was, I do think a docked bike share system that the city

is really invested in can be a great way to bridge the gap for active transportation

without having to rely on regional partners or long-term transportation projects like the

Broadway streetcar. A lot of cities in the region have good downtowns with retail and

residential areas, but I think if Redwood City truly invests in making the downtown an attractive

place to visit, work and live in based on its local and regional active transportation

connectivity, I know it can be a great downtown. Thank you.

thank you carven our next speaker is council member diane howard who has joined us as a

member of the public this evening welcome diane diane if you can hear us you can go actually

oh steve on diane's computer welcome steve thank you very much and thank you for giving typhoid

marry the day off. Thank Danny Gasparini for her fabulous suit. Appreciate that.

I was wondering if these are the right consultants, given that Scott Wiener has passed a bill that

puts the entire centennial neighborhood at risk of developing five-story buildings,

where single-family homes used to be, and whether these are the right people to give the council

an assessment of the level of risk and how much they should be pressuring state officials

on pushing back. As was mentioned at an earlier part of the meeting by one of the council people,

Redwood City has been a good guy as far as building housing, and they shouldn't be penalized

in the way other cities have been. So I think we're early in the game, and again, I'm not sure

if these are the right consultants, but if they are while they're doing this, because

should that development occur in that neighborhood, it would drastically change what the intention

and the ideas of what you're doing in that area.

So anyway, thank you very much and all have a good evening.

Thank you, Steve.

Our third speaker lowered their hand, so that concludes public comment, Mayor.

Thank you.

Thank you city clerk and thank you to everybody who made public comments

who are here in person or joined us online. With that

we will bring it back to the city council and who would like

to get us started.

Council member Chu. Thank you. Okay. So this was

terrific and super excited about. So the headline is love it.

I did have many comments though. So the first thing I wanted to express is gratitude.

And so I remember I moved to the Bay Area in or moved to Redwood City in about 2000.

And I was on it was a Friday night and it was eight o'clock and we were trying to find a place

to have coffee and there was nothing open. And I remember it and that was during the first dot com

boom and i remember thinking this is crazy like this city could be amazing if it with just a

little bit of effort and um you know fast forward a few years and now we have one of the most

wonderful vibrant uh downtowns um you know anywhere um and uh that is due to the vision

and the courage of the people on council at that time i'm so bummed diane wasn't here because she

was one of the people who was instrumental in or Diane Howard was not here because she was one of

the people who was instrumental in that I believe Council Member G was as well so so just to see

this even become extended is is really exciting so the second thing is that cities are among the

most effective ways to deliver access to opportunity prosperity connection to other people and years

of life at scale. So people who live in prosperous places like Redwood City live significantly longer

than people who don't have access to prosperous places like Redwood City. And so when we build

cities, it's not just, oh, this downtown is fun. It actually gives people access to the economy

and adds years to life. So really, really excited about this. I did have a number of comments.

let's see here I just want to make sure

so one of the things I really appreciate is

I feel like you got the hierarchy of transportation right

you know everybody talks about Amsterdam

but really one of my favorite cities is Copenhagen

so you can bike anywhere in Copenhagen

and you feel completely safe and comfortable

and you can also drive anywhere in Copenhagen

or take the train

but the priority is the person on foot

because everybody is a pedestrian

And what I noticed was that if somebody had a physical disability, that they had a myriad of options to be able to get around the city.

And I feel like you've really expressed that priority of the person on foot, transit, and also accommodating bicycles and cars as well.

So I really just wanted to call that out as awesome.

I appreciate the emphasis on parks and sort of thinking about parks a little differently, linearly.

I'd love to see us even think about rooftop spaces, public space, you know, just sort of really creatively thinking about parks and green space and public space.

I do have some requests.

So as I think has been mentioned, roads like El Camino, Veterans 101, and Woodside act as walls.

And in particular, I live, I always think of it as south,

but I guess technically it's east of Woodside.

It can feel like there's a flaming sword at Woodside

and nothing ever comes east of Woodside.

And I was disappointed to see that barrier there.

And even if you notice on the El Camino side,

it kind of goes across El Camino and sort of,

that El Camino is not that hard barrier.

And there's a simple solution.

Broadway is already in the works.

You know, Stanford is going to be, you know,

already has their project entered at 5th.

They're going to be doing another part of that project.

So Stanford has most of the land along Broadway.

There's a short piece, and then you get to the new, the GDAP.

I would like us to consider adding a spine, a spoke,

maybe hub and spoke is a better way to think about it,

a spoke down Broadway to 5th.

um and what that does and and making broadway a person-centered street what that does is it gives

everybody from the southern neighborhoods a way to get downtown safely pleasantly outside of a car

um you know there's still many car routes it's not like you know it doesn't take anything away

um but that's the most intuitive and logical uh route because stanford's doing things there anyway

you know, we're already 80% of the way there. And instead of having a bridge that goes 80%

over the river, we could have a bridge that goes all the way over a river. A lot of times people

say, oh, why doesn't anyone use, you know, the bike lane or the sidewalk or whatever?

In the same way, if a bridge only goes 80% over the river, nobody's going to use it.

And so I think by making a spine down Broadway, we could see much more utilization of the excellent

infrastructure that Stanford's going to put in. And, you know, both sides of that are Redwood

City. So I wanted to pitch that. A second thing I would like us to consider is applying NACTO

standards instead of MUTCD and Green Guide standards in the GDAP. And the reason for that

is because I think it's a contained amount of space. It's not like trying to redo the whole city.

but if we could consider NACTO instead of MUTCD and I don't know what the technical term for the

typical standards are the the only city in the United States that's actually achieved

vision zero is Hoboken and they have adopted NACTO standards for I'm not sure exactly how long

but it was part of their actually getting there was it was adopting NACTO standards

So I'd like to ask us to consider that.

Let's see.

I like the idea of the micromobility share system.

I think, you know, sometimes it's a little far to walk

if you're sore, tired, injured,

having a little stand scooter that you can just pick up is great.

Just a comment, too, about, you know, sort of complete streets.

And you've probably already looked at this.

but I'd say Broadway from the train tracks to about Maple is what I consider the platonic ideal

of a person-centered street. And it doesn't have a bike lane and it doesn't need one

because it's, I'm not sure how wide those lanes are, but because the lanes are narrow and the

sidewalk is big, a person on a bicycle can just ride at the speed of traffic. I, you know, I'm

pretty risk averse and I feel completely it's fun it's comfortable it's easy and having a similar

design as far down as we can possibly have it would be amazing let's see here sorry I'm just

trying to make sure I get all this speaking of getting getting to downtown outside of a car

there you know how can i say this if we want our downtown to be person-centered uh and you know

comfortable to walk comfortable to bike comfortable for transit i think we need connectivity from

every neighborhood in the city and so it doesn't mean that the down you know obviously i want the

gdap to extend down broadway but really integrating jefferson you know the existing plan to make

Jefferson a low stress route. Consider making maybe Brewster a low stress route, Maple a low

stress route that people have to get to downtown outside of a car if they're going to walk or bike

and they can't teleport there. So really integrating thinking about how are people

going to get from every neighborhood in our city to downtown as part of this outside of a car or

on transit. Let's see. I hope that improvements to veterans are part of this. I wouldn't,

I do not enjoy crossing veterans on foot. I'll leave it there. I'm trying to think if there's

anything else. I wanted to echo the Ms. Schneider's comment about provisions for micro businesses.

You know, if you think about the capital requirements to go from like, you know, a little cart to a food truck to a storefront, there's a huge leap.

And a lot of that, I mean, I've been places where there's tons of tiny little storefronts like, you know, the size of this or four seat restaurants.

You know, these really granular, dynamic, flourishing cities.

cities and and a big part of that is because you can do that you don't need for parking spaces and

you know sprinklers and you know I mean I'm all for sprinklers that's a safety thing but

you know that that they have removed unnecessary barriers for micro businesses and so I would also

like to see us try to accommodate those kinds of footprints as much as we can particularly if

if you're so willing, down kind of at the eastern side of Broadway, because that's a big part of the culture of our neighborhood, I think, is to have these little businesses.

And just finally comments on what kinds of industries I'd love to see escort.

You know, obviously biotech, you can't work from home or you certainly shouldn't.

Electrical engineering is similar.

It's very sort of bench and lab based.

And just really courting car light households. I think

a lot of people want to have a car but don't want to have to rely on it for everything.

And so even thinking about

how could we make life excellent for these kinds of households.

And then finally for the historic districts of Stambaugh, Mezzi,

and Centennial, thinking about what I'd call like historic forms that aren't necessarily the houses that are there now.

So for example, Standby Heller has a lot of historic, beautiful buildings.

If we could have a Redwood City vernacular architecture, like have things in that style,

but maybe a bigger footprint or a smaller setback or courtyard blocks or things like this,

where they're honoring the history of that district, you know,

from an architectural perspective, but maybe can accommodate more families.

So I think that's it.

I realize that's really a lot, but terrific presentation.

I'm very, very excited about it.

Thank you, Council Member Chu, for getting us started here.

Colleagues, who would like to go next?

Thank you, Council Member.

My arm hurts, Mayor, but thank you.

To the entire presentation team, thank you.

This is a lot of work, and I'm just going to preface my comments.

I'm not interested in expanding your scope of work.

I want to make sure you hit the budget and the schedule,

but I think there are appropriate steps for subsequent phases,

particularly with a lot of different pieces moving around in the city by different

either projects or agencies and things like that.

They need to be all stitched together.

And trying to do it all at once will never get done.

And I can guarantee you will not get done on your schedule that you presented.

We keep adding scope.

And that's one of my main concerns because I just want us to get stuff done

and not just keep planning forever.

We can plan forever and never get anything done.

and we need to do both.

So I'm just going to start with some of the outreach.

I said earlier in one of the presentations,

I believe that all of our boards and commissions

need to be engaged in this initiative.

I know you've met and reached out to six or seven of them.

All of them need to be reached out and touched.

They all need to be engaged.

They all need to know what's going on.

They need to be ambassadors to the community.

Some are very easy to see where they fit.

but others need to also be engaged and know what's going on.

I may have missed it,

but I don't see anything about the neighborhood associations.

They need to be engaged.

They need to know what's going on,

not just the ones downtown or right next door,

but all the neighborhood associations.

And I believe, Mayor, you and the Vice Mayor meet with them at least once a year,

and they meet quarterly, I believe.

That's an easy place to be able to present to the neighborhood associations

all at once.

We heard earlier this evening

that the hotel owners,

if we meet with the auto dealers,

we should meet with the hotel operators and owners

to get them engaged because part of,

I would say if you put a map on this,

a large concentration of our hotel operators and owners

are in the GDAP boundary.

So they should be aware.

And then I may have missed it.

I didn't see any mention about Chamber of San Mateo County.

and I don't know if that was

I missed it or they're not

but they need to be engaged in the process

too

one of the

things that is important

is

because of the

boundaries of the GDAP area

this needs to be tightly

coordinated with the Caltrain

corridor wide crossing strategy

one of the reasons if not the number one

reason that the Caltrain station has contemplated

moving north is the

great separation projects here in Redwood City.

And Caltrain is

working very hard

on a corridor-wide crossing strategy

and examining

multiple different ways

of funding that because that number

corridor-wide is very big

and no one's going to write a check

and no city can afford to write their own

check as we see what's going on in Burlingame.

So there's a lot of

things going on with that and you need to be

very, very engaged with that, including economic analysis and value capture and all those things

that are going on as we look for different ways of funding the Caltrain corridor-wide grade

separation project. I'm going to pause here and let you, John, or someone from your team talk.

There's a brief mention about SB 79 and the flexibility in it, but out of the eight pages

of staff where I think there's only one paragraph.

So can you talk about

the adaptability,

flexibility to

the GDAP plan

and current and future

housing legislation?

Anybody want to take that one on?

Sue?

Sue Axline, Assistant Community Development Director.

I'll see what I can

I'll probably leave out future housing legislation, see if I can get the rest.

So SB79, I think folks know, was recently approved,

and we are still in the middle of analyzing it and kind of figuring out how it will apply to us

and what we want to do, if anything, sort of in response to it.

So I don't think I want to go into too much depth on that right now.

It does cover some of the area that SB 79 will go is part of the greater downtown area planning.

Part of the geography covers it, and part of it doesn't.

So we are thinking when we go into our next phase of this work, how much density is in that area.

and then you can think of it, I think John actually had a good metaphor to think of it

as sort of a box that can be squished and moved potentially if we want it to be.

The density has to be, we have to have that amount of density,

but we can potentially squish it and move it.

So that's as far as we've gotten to date in terms of what we know about it.

We have time, we have a little bit of time to kind of figure out how that will work,

and we do want to actively sort of think about that in our greater downtown process.

but I think timing wise we're in a pretty good place to do that.

Thank you.

That's probably the best answer you can give at this moment in time.

Our city attorney.

You know, I just wanted to, for the rest of the council

that may not be as attuned to SB 79 and maybe the community,

I just wanted to mention that SB 79 was adopted

really intending to allow for greater heights and densities

for residential developments that were near transit stops.

And so that's what SB 79 was meant to do.

So I just wanted to get that overview.

And there's a kind of loose definition of what major transit stop is,

but in our downtown area plan,

the Caltrain station and the Samtrans transit center are pretty clear that

they qualify in that definition.

A bus stop is maybe a little iffy,

but the cal train station and the sam trends transit center are clear compliance as in that

definition yeah that's correct and thank you sue for that i think it's constantly changing so that

squishy box that pull and take is going to have to be there for however long the gdap stays in

place i think this next year i think the state legislature is still going to be pushing on

housing production at the local level yeah and there i think there are some more amendments

that are in the works right now to that legislation,

so we're kind of keeping our eyes on it.

Very good.

Sort of the follow-up question is,

with the framework, how does the framework

fit with existing precise plans?

I mean, the GDAP area does cover

the North Main Street precise plans,

so does this incorporate it,

supersede it, change it?

How does that work?

So the two precise plans that are in the GDEP area are the North Main, as you mentioned,

the DTPP, and then actually there's the Kaiser precise plan is also within the area. So

So our intention is that the GDAP will supersede the DTPP and the North Main Precise Plan, but would not supersede the Kaiser Plan.

We've met with staff from Kaiser, and they had the same question.

So we wanted to make clear to them that we're not planning to make any sort of land use changes or anything like that in their Precise Plan area.

Thank you for clarifying that.

What I then would encourage very strongly is another stakeholder engagement,

particularly with the property owners of the North Main Street Precise Plan.

They really pushed and championed that in front of the council many years ago.

The DTPP, I mean, I think RCIA and others,

but you really need to engage stakeholders

if the framework is going to supersede those two precise plans.

For sure. Thank you.

And then two other topics.

One is I see mention of the Grand Boulevard Initiative in the framework, which is great.

I think I mentioned the Caltrain corridor-wide crossing strategy.

But I wasn't clear about the Dunbarton Reimagine Initiative by Sam Trans.

How does that fit in here?

Yeah, that's a great question.

So we've met with our Sam Trans colleagues a couple times, partially because they're

a big part of the transit station area, the future transit station area, and they're going

to be fully integrated into that.

So we've touched on that.

And then in terms of the Dumbarton bus route, they're pretty early in their, I'll say, environmental

I can't remember now exactly which phase they're in, but I'm pretty sure they're at environmental

phase of kind of looking at the route and making sure it can be environmentally cleared.

And they're a key stakeholder, and we will be kind of touching base with them throughout

the process and sharing information, and they'll be sharing information with us.

We have a very good line of communication with them.

And with Caltrain, I wanted to mention, because you mentioned the crossing strategy, so Malahat

Our transportation planner meets monthly with Caltrain to just coordinate.

And I've been sitting in on those meetings on a regular basis as well.

So we're making sure that we're in regular conversation about the strategy around the

station and the crossings as it relates to the GDAP as well.

Very good.

And I believe the Sam Trans Dumbarton Corridor Reimagined Project is in the community engagement process right now.

It's not even that far.

So this is a great time to make sure whatever is being put on the table as alternatives are connected.

I mean, that's the worst thing to do is to have every single piece stand on their own.

and I'll make sure on the other side where I'm a director on both boards

that communication is occurring.

For sure.

And then my last item is just on the environmental risk.

I want to make sure we're not repeating anything,

that we are looking at lessons learned from the Bayfront Canal

and what we learned there, what we can do different

and make it better and faster and less expensive.

or Belmont Creek.

I did go around during the king tide and saw what flooded,

and Belmont Creek definitely rose above its banks.

I believe the Bayfront Canal did a decent job.

But there are lessons learned about those two projects

of what can be done differently or maybe better

so that we'll repeat ourselves and are effective

in the consultant resources we use

and the money we spend on this initiative.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilmember G.

Anybody else have comments or questions?

Councilmember Sturkin.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, first and foremost, to staff.

This is a huge body of work, and to the consultant as well.

Thank you so much for the community outreach you have spearheaded.

I went to one of the open houses at the Redwood City Women's Club

and was impressed with the attendance

and met somebody there from Nuestra Casa as well,

so appreciate the engagement of some local nonprofits

to reach the community in multiple languages,

especially knocking on 175 doors in Stambal Hiller.

Very impressed with that.

so thank you um i definitely want to second council member g's comments on engagement of

all neighborhood associations i do appreciate that you um already held a joint session with

stanva and with centennial that's great though i did hear from neighbors and residents that

they are looking for maybe some more direct engagement so a standalone meeting um if at all

possible and um second reaching out to all the bccs the chamber um and having you know this be

maybe the first topic of that kind of hotel round table right um and you know something that uh was

also mentioned when we discussed this uh i can't believe it over a year ago now um councilmember

g had mentioned reaching out to employers outside of downtown and so i just wanted to kind of follow

up on that, did we reach out to employers like in

Bridgewood Shores or elsewhere to make sure that they're aware of

this plan and were consulted as well?

We've generally been focusing within the plan

area. There's a lot of stakeholders to engage

with.

We're trying to reach as many folks as possible.

And so, you know, if you have specific employers,

we would be very grateful for suggestions

and contacts for those folks.

We would be happy to engage.

Yes.

I will definitely follow up with you.

Feel free to email us.

All right.

Thank you.

But otherwise, you know, you're doing a great job with outreach.

I do have a couple organizations I wanted to add.

And, you know, I know we don't have a lot of time,

but I do appreciate that one of the stakeholder groups

was specifically for people with disabilities and seniors.

But maybe reaching out to the Center for Independence

of Individuals with Disabilities specifically

might be a good organization to add to the list.

And then also the San Francisco County Pride Center.

And they have a community advisory board.

And then, or if not the Pride Center, there's Outlet, which is a program of adolescent counseling services, which is located on Woodside Road.

So they serve queer youth and trans youth in the city and in the county.

So both good organizations to reach out to, if at all possible.

And then getting into the plan itself.

it's so comprehensive fantastic I was really glad to see that we're baking into the plan

traffic calming and I think it was in the feedback document on page two that there's

recurring feedback for speed reduction measures on Broadway Jefferson and Stambaugh so you know

focusing on those corridors, as well as expanding that list to correlate with the streets that we

currently restrict traffic calming measures on in downtown. That's including Middlefield and

Main, as well as Broadway and Jefferson that are already listed, right? So if we could just kind

correlate with that policy and take a second look at it,

reevaluate what traffic calming measures are possible.

That would be fantastic.

And let's see.

Yeah, another topic of mobility.

It is a little surprising to see that areas west of El Camino

that are within that one-mile radius around the Cal train station

or even the future Cal train station,

are included in the plan area,

especially since there's such a focus on mobility.

And so I do like,

and I second Council Member Chu's suggestion of,

you know, identifying a strategic nodes,

or I think it was spokes, right?

That could extend the downtown into neighborhoods

to foster more walking and biking

and ensure that neighborhoods outside of the downtown of the GDAP area

get to take advantage of these amenities.

And then kind of zeroing in on Centennial,

I really appreciate the idea of a greenway on Hopkins.

I will say that in my experience in living in that neighborhood,

a lot of the kind of traffic in terms of bicycling pedestrians goes north-south.

So like when we had the slow streets on Allerton, for example, those were well utilized.

And so maybe that Greenway could run north-south.

Just putting it out there.

And then on the corner, that site that's identified as an active node,

there was a comment and the feedback about making that a community garden.

And I would argue even a park in order to help increase the number of parks in downtown and Centennial.

Granted, it's private property, right?

There's a whole lot of things that go with that that make it very challenging.

But just want to throw that out there as maybe a different way to envision that particular lot.

or that active node. And let's see then kind of zooming back out again.

I really appreciate the

the greenways on veterans and kind of incorporating to those refuge islands. I saw that on page six of

of the feedback, a document, making veterans safer to cross, giving people more time, a place to

rest should they need more time to cross that street, especially given the housing projects

that are already completed on that side of, on the other side of the east side of veterans,

and then the ones that are currently proposed, right, or in the mix.

And then also the collision history with bicyclists that has occurred on veterans.

Sorry, I'm almost there.

So and then I thought this term was kind of funny,

but the spongy landscapes, I do think that's a great, you know, dual-purpose, multi-purpose concept there.

You know, one, a lot of these green infrastructural improvements are dependent upon redevelopment, right?

As I think you had mentioned.

But with that said, there are, you know, select small parcels that our city owned,

like the one we just purchased from a redevelopment agency at Lathrop and Maple.

Yeah.

That while it gives us access and is primarily procured for us to have access to our utilities,

it could also have the dual purpose of being that sponge, right?

Helping to absorb some of that rain during major storm events.

and

Let's see

Yeah, I will leave it there. Thank you very much

Council members sirkin before we leave your questioning I just wanted to clarify you had mentioned an activity node at a

Parcel in Centennial and I don't think we caught exactly which

location it was at right that is the the corner of Brewster and Arguello it's

it's an empty lot next to the liquor store oh yes yes yes I never tell you

thank you thank you thank you Councilmember Sturkin we'll go to Council

Mayor Padilla next thank you wonderful presentation I'll just echo some of my

colleagues comments when it when it comes to neighborhood associations

speaking from my years on parks and rec most of them actually meet as needed so i would go ahead

and say take the initiative and tell them you want to meet with them and make them meet so you can be

the presentation i think that this is a fantastic presentation and i think they would all welcome it

so i i think there are a few that meet regularly but a majority of them meet as needed so i would

go ahead and say just take that initiative um i think it's important we're building community

so i also agree with council member sterkin to reach out to businesses out or outside of the

downtown area and i would even say to maybe give some attention to people on woodside road

el camino that maybe through some different processes have felt a little left out of the

process not not through the city but through other agencies i think that there are some

opportunities there and they would welcome the dialogue um when i joined the parks and rec

commission i was years ago i all i ever asked for i felt like i asked chris beth all the time where

can we have pocket parks can we have pocket parks and i was always told we didn't have enough workers

and there wasn't any money so once again i would i'm all for pocket parks or any way we can activate

to space, whether that's through promoting

exercise, with even

just signage to encourage

stretching in an area, passive

parks, but just making them beautiful, or

community gardens.

So I

love all the different ways you guys are engaging

the community. And I would also just

like to say that, I know Bella mentioned,

I love all the coffee we can. I

also envision a time when I can do a lot

of shopping. I would love to do some retail

shopping in downtown. I would love

for people to come down here and not just eat

and drink but want to spend their money on retail.

So I think that would be a wonderful thing for us,

and I look forward to that in the future.

I want us all to be connected,

but I also want to make sure we are connecting with our seniors

and our population with disabilities

who are going to have parking concerns

and may not be able to use scooters or things like that.

So I just want to make sure that there are several groups

and that we make sure that we take the needed attention

to address any of their concerns.

Thank you for the good work.

Thank you.

Council Member Padilla.

We'll go to Vice Mary Eakin.

Thank you.

I'm going to focus a little bit on sea level rise.

I mainly have questions.

But before I get to that, I just want to, well, first of all, amazing plan, as I wrote in my notes to staff.

So excited on so many different levels.

I feel that my colleagues have really addressed a lot about transportation and asked good questions and made good comments.

And I support that.

And just before I get to the sea level rise on the transportation, the plan says those corridors are difficult.

and Ms. Chu said they're a wall,

and one of the consultants said, you know,

Woodside Road is particularly difficult.

And, you know, you guys are not magicians.

Neither are we.

But I just echo, like, please, please, please,

let's try to be creative on the wall of Woodside Road.

and I am open to Council Member Sterkin mentioned as well the creativity on moving.

I don't know.

Ms. Chu talked about 80% of a bridge.

Mr. G talked about let's focus on what we're already doing or the plan will never get done.

I don't know who's right.

but I do really want us to focus on making Woodside Road,

all the corridors, but I live off Woodside Road.

My district is Woodside Road.

I see every day people taking their life into their own hands.

I see all sorts of bad behavior,

but the built environment makes that bad behavior even more dangerous.

and so I don't know the answer but I really support Ms. Chu's visioning of

making that transition friendlier and maybe it is that you just need one portal and then maybe

people go four blocks from Broadway on Woodside Road one way and four blocks from Broadway another

way and maybe if you make that Broadway crossing of Woodside Road just the most beautiful gorgeous

amazing inviting people friendly intersection you solve a mile of Woodside Road's problem I don't

know. But please, please keep visioning on it. So let me go to Mr. Stickley. I have, well, before I do that,

foundational question. Is there a difference between a specific plan and a precise plan?

and if so, which one is this or do we know?

And if there's no difference, that's okay.

So there are some statutory definitions

and the city attorney might be able to chime in

a little bit more than I can,

But I was going to say, this plan will be called a specific plan.

We haven't used the terminology because it doesn't really mean very much to most members of the public.

It's kind of a very technical term.

So we've kind of avoided using that.

But when it comes down to it, our plan is for this to be a specific plan.

Okay.

I don't want to get into the minutia of law.

but my understanding and I ask because I worked on the downtown precise plan that was approved in

2011 and so I and and I recall at that time people were saying it was just such a big deal

that it was a precise plan and so I don't want to go into the weeds of that but basically I just

want to say my understanding and then you can tell me yes my understanding is correct

So basically we do this plan, and then if a developer or a landowner or a business comes and goes,

hey, you know what, I own that land or I own this, and I'm going to do exactly what your specific plan says I can do.

And then because the planning is already in place,

they don't have to spend thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars

on doing an EIR and doing zoning

and complaining about this horrible bureaucracy,

they just get to start building right away, right?

I would say there's aspects of that that are accurate.

I would say that you're right in the sense that this plan

will have an environmental review document, an EIR,

that will basically kind of pre-clear development

up to whatever the EIR has studied.

So if we say this week,

we say that this plan has a capacity of,

you know, I'm just going to throw a number out there,

10,000 housing units.

You know, and we've studied that.

I'll study the environmental effects of that.

and it's

cleared and we passed that, great.

Then

if someone came and said, I want to build a

100 unit housing development,

they

would only have to do very

minimal environmental clearance

and basically, most likely, they would

point to the environmental

document for this plan and say,

you can advise ours have already studied this.

We are well within the geography

and boundary of what the

environmental plan said and so therefore we don't need to do any extra

environmental review. So that's that is true and city attorney you can correct

me if I've said anything wrong there. Okay that's the basic gist of it. Now

now there may be other aspects of a proposal that require some additional

study. It's hard to without a specific project in mind it's hard to imagine

exactly what that would be. But that's the intent of this. That's the intent of

this thousands of dollars that we are spending is to incentivize the kind of

development that the community says they want. And, and so that,

that's why I ask it because I remember after we, I mean,

I remember sitting there in one of those chairs the night that we,

that the council approved the downtown precise plan and it took off like

wildfire.

It was envisioned to be a visioning process for 20 years.

The office and business was built out within, I mean, the whatever you call it, the word isn't coming to me, the permits or stuff.

The development caps?

Yeah, were reached.

I mean, developers were like racing.

It was, and building was immediate.

And the developers are saying, why didn't you do this all along?

We love this.

This is wonderful.

And I think they will again.

And so I just...

Yeah, I was just going to say, I think you're generally accurate in that a plan like this sets a vision

that the development community and others can say that we have some predictability in what the city wants.

and we can fulfill that.

And part of that was also for the DTPP, for example,

we created a set of development standards

that made the design of certain developments

more predictable for folks who wanted to build and develop.

So that was also, I think, a really important aspect of the DTPP

that helps kind of spur that very quick growth

that you're talking about.

And this plan will also include development standards.

You know, some of them might be carried forward from the DTPP,

but we're also going to take a second look to make sure they're still meeting

all the needs that we think are present today.

So, and I would just say, too,

that I know that this planning document cannot exist on the moon.

It exists in the real world.

and we're vulnerable to economic cycles just like everybody is.

But I just want to state that that downtown precise plan, I have to say it,

still has not built all of the housing that was envisioned in 2011

but exceeded the business cap within like, I'm exaggerating,

but within like six months, maybe a year and a half.

and then housing 15 years later still hasn't been met.

And I want to say to my colleagues here on the dais

that we need to hold that line.

Whatever this visioning ends up being,

whatever we end up approving a year from now

or two years from now, let's hold to it

and not just say, oh, economies are economies,

we have to do whatever.

Because that cycle is going to change again

And so I just wanted to say that.

So let me get now to the sea level rise.

So maybe we start with, I have a fundamental question about slide 16.

And I'm just curious, and not too technical, because I took science for non-majors in college.

So just be very fundamental to me, Mr. Stickley.

How is it with slide six?

It's the one with the purple and the blue.

Oh, okay.

so how is it

that

how is it that

this one on the right

the purple and the blue on the right

how is it that

something closer to the bay

a region closer to the bay

you had it right before

Oh, okay.

That one, okay.

How is it that a region closer to the bay,

like just along Bayshore Freeway,

is less vulnerable to sea level rise

than a lot of our downtown?

If you could just, is it those, why?

I think it has to do with topography.

You need to put your speaker on.

Is that on?

Yeah.

I think it has to do with topography and some of the drainage infrastructure that's in place there.

But, yeah, that little pocket there is actually better protected than the dark purple that's surrounding it.

But is it better protected because of the way it was 150 years ago?

I think it's been maybe the fill is a little higher there is part of it.

It actually sits higher.

All of that is bay fill.

But that portion is maybe set a little bit higher than some of the other areas around it which are lower.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'm glad to hear.

I mean, that makes sense.

I understand that answer.

Let's see.

So now going to slide 32.

This is referring to when you went out last week and filmed.

I just want to understand where some of those pictures are.

Yeah, most of them are around the edges of the creek.

Okay.

So the one on the far right, lower far right,

is that building in Redwood Shores?

What is that building?

No, that building is on the, what would it be,

the north side of the creek,

sort of in the corner where the creek meets Highway 101.

There's an office building right there

across the creek from Sports Basement, right?

So that bridge that goes across the street from Sports Basement?

Across the creek.

Creek from Sports Basement.

There's an office building.

And on the mountain side of 101 or on the bay side of 101?

Mountain side.

The mountain side of 101.

Okay, so like convention.

Is that Monterra Bank?

Oh, that's Monterra Bank.

So, oh, wow.

So I'm sorry, that's not Monterra Bank.

It is probably Kitty Corner from Montero Bank.

Okay.

The image is a little deceiving.

The water is not going right up to the building.

There's an embankment there.

Then there's a parking lot between the creek and the building.

And the water in this picture had not quite overtopped the bank.

So the parking was actually still dry.

Okay.

But just barely.

Okay, and then the one to the left is is Redwood Creek

Correct looking back inland towards downtown towards some of the new housing there after the bend in Redwood Creek

Okay, and one of the sentences that you said when you were thank you. Yeah

Thank you when you were talking to us you you said the sentence or the you said bio swales on private property

What is a bioswale and why would you put it on private property?

So the toolbox of stormwater management, of flood management, includes some facilities that would be on public property, like in streets, you know, bioretention, bioswales that run linearly along streets.

What is a bioswale?

Bioswale.

Bioswale is a swale, right?

What's a swale?

A swale is a little channel that conveys water.

Okay.

And a bioswale is one that's set up to absorb that water for stormwater purposes, basically.

So it's a detention facility for stormwater, and it's linear.

Okay.

And sometimes that can be a requirement of private development,

and that is one of the tools that we need to consider to get enough storage capacity in the dark purple area.

So it's going to be a combination of private property is going to have a lot coverage requirement,

and they're going to have to provide a certain amount of stormwater retention on their site.

And then in public corridors and in parks, you can add to that by building bioswales into roadway corridors, building some of the detention, you know, depressions into parks and things like that.

And then the combination of all of those things in a network will start to handle the volume that we need to handle.

Thank you, Mr. Stickley.

that is so helpful to me because I just, you know, I like history and, you know, there's this

principle that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years that's entrenched in British law,

which comes to America and is now our law. And it's that a man's house is his castle.

But it's this idea that our brains are hardwired by hundreds and hundreds of years that I own this.

And so we need to make sure that all over Veterans Boulevard, all over a huge swath of this,

that we are talking to the property owners and saying, look, this is a new world.

You may not know this, but bioswale, private property bioswale.

I mean, we're going to start making sure these property owners understand that there are going to be some tradeoffs.

And it's not like, well, no one told me this, you know, four years from now when they say, well, why should I have to do this?

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you.

And to that point also, I understand I just, this is a controversial thing to say, but we're in a study mode right tonight and we're not voting on anything.

We don't need to convince anybody of anything.

We're studying.

And so it's really important to talk about when you're studying, like study, you know?

And so I'm going to use up a, I'm going to bring up a controversial word, not because

I am in favor of this word or against this word or I'm trying to anger people, but because

it needs to be a part of the conversation, and that word is retreat.

You know, Redwood City is the oldest city in San Mateo County by decades.

And so a lot of this infrastructure was built before anyone knew anything about sea level rise.

And retreat is where you just say, you know what?

sea level is rising, ground level is rising, it's going to cost $7 trillion to fix this inch of curb

and so we're just going to retreat from this inch of curb or this building because no one's coming

up with $7 trillion and it's not safe to be in this building. And no one wants to talk about

retreat because it's yucky.

And I'm not saying I'm in favor of or I'm against it,

but I think it's really important when we're planning to understand for the

public and the business owners and the property owners that say,

I own this land.

It's really important for everyone.

And we as policymakers, the seven of us,

It's really important for us to say that that elephant is in the room, whether we like it or not.

And we need to plan really carefully.

We need to plan really carefully so that we don't have to retreat.

and I just also as a policy matter want to add

in my perspective and I'm not a science-y person

but it seems to me like the 20th century

was the century of engineering. We can engineer

anything. Everything is solvable. We created

cars. We engineered cars. We engineered freeways. You know

in 1900 there weren't freeways. There weren't cars and then

And by 2000, there was nothing but cars and freeways.

And so, you know, this idea of the 20th century is we can engineer anything.

And I will predict, we're only 20 years into the 21st century,

but I will predict that the 21st century,

we're going to be retreating from the idea that we can engineer anything.

And we're going to start to be going back to the land and saying,

you know what, we have to,

look at

what nature

is that we can't

out-engineer, where nature

and do it now

in 2026,

2027, 2028

instead of doing it in

2050 or

2100 after we've spent

billions of dollars engineering

something that really couldn't be engineered.

I don't know if that's the case or where

that's the case, but

I don't want staff to be afraid to suggest it, thinking, oh, no one wants to hear it,

so we better not say it. Let's say it now, or that it's not true. So that's,

I've talked a long time. What did you mean when you said there are portions, I'm back to transit,

where you said there are opportunities to remove transit.

Do you mean closed roads?

Is that what you meant?

No, just to aggregate lines onto one road

instead of having transit on two or three adjacent streets, right?

So we might have a transit priority corridor in downtown

where we try to consolidate transit lines onto that street

rather than three parallel streets all having transit on them.

And so there's nothing that is sort of figured out yet.

We're in the midst of studying if those kinds of efficiencies could actually make the transit operate more efficiently,

but also to create space on those other streets where we're consolidating from.

So that's the idea there.

Thank you so much.

That's really helpful.

I'm trying to sort of...

So I could not agree more with Ms. Padilla that I love the idea of retail, more retail.

So yes.

I also, when she was talking, when you were talking, Ms. Padilla, I also thought on retail too,

I love the idea of retail like coffee shops or cafes in our parks.

or maybe a cute boutique in our park.

I don't know why we couldn't.

Or a really boutique-y ice cream store.

Well, we have that.

We have that a little bit.

Anyway, I'll stop envisioning there because I'm taking a long time.

Oh, so on these parklets, or the pathways, the trails,

I don't love all the pictures, but I love the idea of all the walkways between corridors, the corridor walkways.

And one of the things, I like more permeable surfaces, but as I understand it, they're more expensive than concrete or asphalt.

And I just wanted to point out that the Atherton City Hall and Atherton Library, which all kind of together, they used a quote-unquote new, as of two years ago, kind of permeable surface for their parking lot, or for a lot of it, their park.

and it was really expensive.

And so it's not really scalable.

It's not, as I understand it, it's not really replicable.

But that was three years ago, and maybe technology has advanced.

And so I would just like staff to maybe touch base with Atherton

and take a look at it.

It's really, really pretty.

It's gorgeous.

It's expensive.

But why not in Redwood City?

Oh, in the Innovation and Incubation District,

I just wanted to highlight that the Planning Commission said,

according to the report, something I read,

that they were a little bit worried about building out that area of the district

because it's far from transit from the railroad tracks.

So I'd like you to take that comment seriously because we don't want more cars on the road.

I like that.

I don't, to Mr. G's point of we could plan forever and never get anything done, never actually build anything,

I'm not in love with talking to businesses outside of Redwood City.

I mean, that's me.

I just, I don't, I think we need to get going.

I'm almost done.

I made that point.

I really like that you're not

I won't waste time saying it

it's a great plan

I really do encourage you more

just in general to talk with the county

because they have some walkways

they have a really cool walkway

more or less from 400

county center to veterans.

It's paved.

It could be a lot.

Anyway.

And it looks like they really have a lot of cool visioning about open spaces,

but a lot of it is paved.

And maybe we can help them reimagine that and have it be more parky.

I just want to make sure that we're coordinating with the county as much as

possible, particularly since their budget is 200 times ours on an annual basis.

I'm exaggerating, but they have a much larger budget than we do.

And let's see.

Did that one?

just all

my colleagues already covered

Woodside Road and Transit

I love the vision there was so much in this

that I just really loved

and just

also make sure that you reach out to the businesses

so they know

that if they want to speak now

or forever hold your peace.

If they can't come to us in four years and say,

no one ever told me.

I mean, maybe the big landowners.

And I know you deal with, what do you call it,

realtors or development realtors.

I forget the name of them.

But talk to the property owners too, the big property owners,

not just the realtors, not just the consultants.

because the business owners and the property owners

may have a different opinion than the real estate consultants

if they are third, fourth, fifth generation Redwood City people

when the consultants aren't.

So I'll leave it there.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Thank you, my colleagues, for the great discussion so far.

and, of course, to our city staff for the great presentation,

and Mr. Stickley, thank you for adding on.

I, you know, as a former planning commissioner,

I always get really excited when we get to talk land use,

so I can't help but smile when I was going through these maps.

You know, to what my colleagues mentioned around outreach,

you know, absolutely.

I know the neighborhood associations,

some meet more regularly than others.

you know I'd love for us to be able to the vice mayor and I can mention this at the next meeting

quarterly meeting with them but also individually right especially in the areas where folks might

be impacted by these changes I think it makes sense to have a individual discussion for those

neighborhood associations where where it's possible because I know it's it's tough and folks are busy

but you know I heard also you know businesses outside of the downtown I think that makes a lot

of sense. Everybody benefits from a thriving downtown, so it'd be good to know how this is

going to impact, you know, all of our city partners, not just the folks who are in this

particular section. And then also our chamber, right? If our chamber of commerce members haven't

heard yet, it'd be great to get this in front of them and try to catch many people in one place,

right in terms of the framework i i really like the framework i feel like this is a crystal ball

and we're looking into the future and i like what we see um you know i like the approach around

having specific districts that are really distinct from one another um i think a couple of thoughts

around that i know we've talked about this when we've discussed broadway before but making sure

that our corridor is just active, right?

I know the downtown core is really active and busy,

and we've heard from businesses on both ends of Broadway

who say that it gets a little sleepier on those sides of the street

and they'd love to see activities.

So I'm thinking of ways where we can encourage neighborhood commercial

as one of those ways of just having more foot traffic

and places that are open after these places where people are,

you know offices and r&d labs close down for the day it'd be great to have a reason for folks to

still be walking on foot biking driving to go get food or or groceries whatever it is but

really just finding ways to build the amenities that will help encourage you know those after

hour activities and also just community building on you know i'm thinking of the incubator district

where you know there's not a lot of community activity there just because it's so commercial

and industrial already, just preparing that, right, doing the table setting for it.

You know, on climate resiliency and just around the creek in general, I think, you know,

what my colleagues have mentioned, you know, makes a lot of sense around just wanting to work with

nature instead of fighting it, right? We can't engineer ourselves out of all of our problems,

but our water pump stations are effective.

And before we consider all options,

I think it makes sense to look into that.

And I liked a lot of the imagery

and some of the ideas around

what open space around the creek could look like.

If I had a magic wand,

it would be great that as we look at that sports basement,

that whole infill development that's currently there,

finding ways to flip it and have our frontages face the creek.

And, you know, we can have parks right side by side with restaurants and other retail uses.

But I think that'd be a really great way to take advantage of our natural resource there.

On safety and just safe mobility in general, I think Woodside Road is a constant,

something we just constantly want to work on improving on.

Council Member Chu described it as like the firewall, right?

And for a lot of people, it feels that way.

And I used to live off of Chestnut and Hilton.

And so getting across Woodside Road was always very interesting.

And I'm very hopeful that Woodside,

the Woodside 101 interchange is going to help improve things.

But I think looking at this plan,

and thinking about, you know, Caltrans having to work with them

and their priorities for making sure that Woodside Road is a thoroughfare.

You know, I think we need to prioritize where those safe crossings are.

So I'm thinking Broadway would be an excellent extension point.

Like Council Member Chu mentioned, we have some development opportunities there

that could help connect those dots there.

and then you know specifically on the Stamblod Pedestrian Bridge I have crossed that bridge

many times we've heard from you know our young folks who come to this meeting who

mention how often they use it but always feel unsafe crossing it especially at night so

you know I think there's an opportunity with the Stamblod Bridge to either

greatly improve upon it or find a new accommodation but

that is just something that we absolutely need to tackle because

looking at hoover park and just driving today there are

very few ways to get across woodside road right

and i've seen folks do very risky things to just

save some time so just want to make sure that we don't see people

putting themselves in harm's way.

And just on the mobility issue,

I'm also thinking of Vera Avenue

and the ways the spokes to our downtown

and the different ways that our bike lanes

and our current infrastructure connect to the downtown.

And it was written in one of the constituent comments

that Vera is amazing,

except when you want to cross El Camino, right?

And we are so close to having a safe connection

between the bike lane and main streets and i think the elco yards development is really helping that

um speaking of the refuge islands there's one on lincoln now that's been super helpful i already

tested it out and um you know i could see that being really helpful along veterans but just other

parts where where folks need an extra second um and let me see here and then you know just

generally. I'm on page

7 of 15

looking at the public spaces

map

of the staff report, figure 4,

thank you.

There is,

I feel like I've been talking lots about public space

in the last couple of months, but

this is a really exciting map

to me.

I think my

very excited about

sort of the Greenway creation.

I think that would look really beautiful, especially in our sort of historic neighborhoods in Stambau.

The baseos and the parks are really interesting.

And I think my only comment around that is just I would love to see more south of Main Street.

And, you know, I know this is an expansion of our downtown.

and I want to make sure that the benefits of that expansion

aren't just regulated to the core of the downtown.

I want to make sure that we spread those benefits

to other parts of our community

because looking at, you know, around south of Maine,

Elko Yards and the open space that was created

through that project seem to be the only public spaces

that are currently there.

I know we have some privately owned public space, but it seems like there is more opportunity for us to be looking into giving them parks or parklets or, you know, these other creative ideas of just creating community building spaces.

And then just generally, it felt like we are knocking on so many of our different priorities.

It's housing, it's transportation, economic development.

and something I just thought we could use more intentionality on was a priority around children

and youth. You know, I know lots of these public spaces will be usable for folks of all ages

and abilities, and I just want to make sure that we give some intentionality towards spaces for

children and youth, and we had some folks from the Center for Creativity who have done some great

programming and I am very interested in making sure that we we don't lose sight of that and

we make sure that we continue to to provide those spaces for for our kids and youth.

I was just walking through Elko Yards yesterday and passed by the the Redwood Roller Ring skate

sign and just thought to myself you know it's everyone always talks about how how much they

miss it, but there are some opportunities here to bring back spaces like that here.

So aside from this, I did just want to add that I would also be supportive of maybe taking

the pencil and drawing around a few of our blocks around El Camino.

I don't want to expand the work that you all are doing, but I know that there are lots

of commercial businesses and sort of small hubs of office spaces along El Camino as you get to

Whipple and down towards Woodside Road. I'm thinking of the Five Points Commercial Center

there too. So I'm just wondering how we prepare for those areas to maybe come into play. So

aside from that, I guess my only question really is just sort of next steps. I know

there is going to be some work that has to be done with the San Carlos Airport.

And I was just wondering what that process looks like

and if there's opportunity for us to advocate.

I was just wondering if someone could speak to that.

So the San Carlos Airport has a land use committee

that has some authority over the jurisdictions in the immediate vicinity of the San Carlos Airport.

Related to basically, you know, they have a land use compatibility plan

that the local jurisdictions need to make sure that we're in compliance

with some of the requirements and regulations in that plan.

And so whenever we have zoning amendments

that we're taking forward to you,

before we bring them to that council,

we have to go to the ALUC, the committee,

and kind of pre-clear them with them

to make sure that we are in compliance

with all their requirements.

So we will have to do that with this entire process as well.

I think that will be some time off into the future.

We're not, we haven't, we don't have enough detail to be able to take anything to them yet.

But, you know, if we do end up changing some densities in certain locations or heights in certain locations,

that will be something we'll have to study closely with them to make sure that, you know,

we're in compliance with any height restrictions that might go along with the airport ALUCP.

So that's kind of to that specific thing.

But I don't know if you, did you want me to give any more details about next steps or?

No, I was just specifically thinking about the airport and how we engage with them,

let them know about the process.

So that's helpful.

Yeah, and we have a contact with the CCAG staff and we've sort of let them know that

this process is happening. So it's on their radar at this point. If I may, Mayor, so staff definitely

works really closely with the Airport Land Use Commission and with that process. The pilots at

the San Carlos Airport have also separately advocated on certain projects that hit kind of

close to where the airport is, and so we may see advocacy specifically from the San Carlos

airport and it's usually the pilots and that is separate from the county airport land use

commission and so that that is maybe where you were going with that but definitely the

san carlos airport is a different entity from the airport land use commission and so if you

would like different outreach this is the time to let staff know

absolutely i thank you for for that clarification both of you and

I think it makes absolute sense to reach out to both

bodies and

absolutely start letting people know

I think you know

a tough part of a multi-year project

is just the outreach is going to need

to be sustained and consistent

right so as it continues to

evolve and it comes back to council

I just imagine once we endorse

a framework that there's another

outreach round right where folks

are being educated on the changes

but

yeah, I am very excited about this plan, John and Sue.

Thank you for your hard work on this.

I think this is going to be something that all of us look back on with great pride as something that we did together.

And so, yeah, with that, I will entertain a motion.

Oh, it's a study session.

We're not taking action on this.

Vice Mayor, closing comments.

Really quick, really quick.

And I'm sorry that Ms. Wagner just left.

She's the representative for Kaiser.

And I just learned tonight that there's a Kaiser downtown precise plan.

And so I'm sorry that she left.

I would encourage, do you talk with Kaiser because they're in the.

Yeah, we've had an initial call with Kaiser just to kind of,

kind of set the context for them,

let them know that this is happening

and ask for their input.

And so they gave us some, you know,

a few points of interest that they have

and that we're sort of considering

as part of the planning effort.

But, you know, yeah, we're definitely,

you know, I think their biggest concern was,

are you planning to repeal our precise plan?

And the answer is no.

So I think that was kind of like the biggest thing

that they wanted to understand

as part of the context of the project.

But they own a lot of land in this area,

and there might be some opportunities

to create some of these privately owned parks,

which I don't like the name of that.

Yeah, and they already have a new kind of,

I guess you'd call it a park, that's open to the public.

It's kind of exactly what you're talking about,

that opened not that long ago.

One thing I just wanted to note about parks,

I know it's come up a lot tonight,

is that I want to just highlight the fact

that the land available for new parks

within the planning area is extraordinarily limited,

especially when it comes to land that the city owns.

So we're trying to be creative

in where we can think about places to have spaces

that they might not look necessarily like traditional parks,

like you mentioned, I think pocket parks, linear parks,

ways to use the right-of-way or street rights-of-way

in ways that they might not, like I said,

there might not be a park in the sense of like there's a ball field

and a water fountain and all the sort of typical trappings

but we're trying to think of ways that we can use the limited resources we have

to still create green and places where people who come together they can go for

a walk they can enjoy their neighborhood and safely travel among the different

kind of sub districts of this plan area so just wanted to briefly highlight that

because I know it's such an important topic for the community thank you and

I'll hand it back to you, Mayor, but I agree with you that it's a good idea to reach out to the pilots at the San Carlos Airport and the airport in addition to that other agency.

And back to you, Mayor.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Thank you, John.

We'll go to Council Member Sturkin and Council Member Padilla very quickly.

Mine is very quick.

I just wanted to also express support for spreading a little love a little further down Broadway.

I think it would have a huge impact.

I think it would, and also I think about what Council Member Chu said and Council Member Gee,

but I think about planning, but then I also think there's just sometimes you have to seize opportunities.

And I think that we could have potentially a phenomenal partner,

and I think we could build great goodwill with the community

and build just community with Stanford and that entire area,

and I think it could be a really good opportunity.

Maybe it wasn't planned, but sometimes opportunities arise,

and I think they're worth looking into.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

Council Member Serkin.

Thank you, Mayor.

I agree, plus one.

and I also hope that there is support for extension of a note or spoke on at the other

end of Broadway you kind of started alluding to this mayor since the GDAP and current DTPP

area already does cross El Camino and encloses around a few commercial properties surrounded by

Broadway and Brewster.

Maybe hard to envision without a map, but

thank you.

And

and so, and I wanted to kind of respond to the vice mayor.

I'm curious if there were more nodes

like that, the west end of Broadway

as an example, could that help address

some of the concerns you raised about creating opportunities for

redevelopment or these amenities west of El Camino, away from flooding zones, as well as

within that one mile radius of the Caltrain station? It's kind of addressed that Planning

Commissioner concern

you raised?

I'm directionally

challenged.

When you say west,

you said west

of where? Next to Sequoia.

Sequoia High School?

Okay, so you're talking about Sequoia

High School.

I got lost because

I'm not good with directions.

You're saying that you want a

node there? Yes.

Yes, similar to what we have discussed about extending.

So Sequoia High School is, no, you go.

Tell me.

Similar to extending the GDAP along Broadway into Crosswoods I Road into Friendly Acres,

doing kind of the same thing across El Camino, going past Sequoia.

So, I mean, that's really, really residential.

I mean, that's the demarcation.

El Camino there, right at Sequoia High School, which is Broadway.

Okay, now I see what you're saying, Broadway.

Yeah, I guess on the other side, there are a couple of, like,

90s, 20s, Art Deco,

really

adorable Art Deco

buildings

that are, because that's a really

old part of town, and

so

some of those are businesses.

So you're talking about those

cute little Art Deco buildings. Is that

what you're talking about? No, not necessarily.

But you're absolutely right.

There are some businesses along Broadway

and Brewster there,

and there's a few blocks.

But a couple of blocks there.

But other than that, it's just super residential.

So you're saying let's bring business into the residential area?

Is that what you're saying?

Well, all we can do with the GDAP, right,

is zone for any type of possibility, right?

Those properties are still owned privately

and can only be redeveloped

should the property owner decide to redevelop, right?

So that is not guaranteed.

What's your mission?

Your mission is that you want to bring more businesses into the residential neighborhood.

I'm not, what do you mean by node?

Yeah, so I think the mayor had mentioned earlier neighborhood commercial.

So, you know, getting, having some of those coffee shops or that retail.

along that corridor to serve.

So you're talking about Broadway,

but west of?

Of El Camino.

For how long?

Like how many blocks?

I would leave that up to staff to determine.

Well, I don't know.

I'm not sure,

because those really cool Art Deco buildings,

I would hate for them to be torn down

to build a 75-story glass high-rise.

so I don't know.

I'm exaggerating.

No worries.

And so that leads me to my final question,

I think, for staff,

and maybe this will help appease any concerns about that,

is with historic districts in the city, right,

how do those interact with this plan?

So we can...

I'll let you take that.

so we're not yet at the point of the zoning proposals and the specific height proposals

but something that we mentioned to vice mayor when she asked some questions too the

the existing historic districts do offer a lot of you know quality homes that we want to retain

and there isn't a thought to say we want to change these neighborhoods.

That's not the purpose of this planning process.

I think that there is very unlikely to be any changes to those historic districts.

Some of the zoning does allow it already.

So in parts that are, and I'm trying to track exactly what you guys were talking about on the block.

So I would have to look at that more closely.

But we can definitely get back to you and kind of think about.

I think if I'm understanding your sort of spoke concept, it is how do you get to the downtown?

So you've got this kind of what looks like a hard boundary on our planning process.

And you all want to sort of think about what do I do to kind of get out of that boundary and get to these other places and understand that connectivity.

So if we captured that, let me know.

And then, because I think that we can do

without necessarily changing the boundaries,

but trying to understand what's the connectivity

to sort of, once you leave this,