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Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We are holding meetings in a hybrid format with both in-person and virtual participation available.

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 detailed instructions for public comment will be

provided on the screen when the time for public comment begins and if there's a

high volume of public comment this evening we may decrease the time allotted

for each comment or limit the total time for public comment in the event this

occurs please feel free to send your full comments to the city council at

Council at RedwoodCity.org.

Written comments are not read aloud,

but will be made part of the final meeting record.

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

Good evening.

Council Member Chu.

Here.

Council Member Gee.

Present.

Council Member Howard.

Here.

Council Member Padilla.

Here.

Council Member Sterkin.

Here.

Vice Mayor Aiken will be joining us shortly.

And Mayor Martinez-Caballos.

Here.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, everybody.

and we'll move on to the Pledge of Allegiance.

Council Member G, could you do the honors?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

If you would rise and join me in saluting the flag of our country.

Thank you, Council Member. With that, we will move on to item four, which is a procedural item for the purpose of identifying and confirming any Council Members who wish to participate in the meeting remotely and have not already provided a remote location listed on the agenda.

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

And I understand that a member of the Council is participating virtually this evening and has triggered the notification requirements under the government code section.

And so I'll pass things over to Councilmember Sturkin to address the council.

Thank you, Mayor.

And thank you for the opportunity to participate remotely.

I am participating remotely under item four here,

for having a contagious illness.

And there is nobody present in my apartment.

And I will have my video on and audio throughout the meeting.

great thank you council member

sir can hope you feel better and thank you for

participating in tonight's meeting

and with that we'll go on to

closed session which is item 5

we'll now convene

sorry to interrupt you may I

state for the record very briefly

that we do have at least a quorum

of the other council members

present in the chamber this evening

council member sterkin has not

exercised the just cause remote participation

more than five times this year,

and the city will be providing two-way audiovisual platforms

so that the public can remotely hear

and visually observe the entire meeting tonight.

Thank you so much.

Great. Thank you, city clerk.

And with that, we'll now convene closed session

regarding the anticipated litigation as identified on tonight's agenda.

Before we convene the closed session,

I'd like to ask the city clerk if there are any public comments

on the closed session items.

Thank you, Mayor.

I don't have any speaker cards or raised hands on Zoom for the closed session item this evening.

If anyone in the audience or anyone on Zoom would like to speak on the item, please let me know.

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

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

We'll now adjourn to closed session.

Once closed session has adjourned, the council will return to the dais for open session in approximately one hour.

So thank you for your patience, and we'll be back soon.

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Hello everyone. Thank you for your patience. It is 7.01. We came back right on the dot.

And we had no reportable action from closed session. And we will now convene open session.

And we will start with item 6A, our presentations and acknowledgements.

Our first recognition item this evening is a very special and probably one of my favorites of the year.

We get to present awards for the 30th annual Water Conservation Poster Contest.

Redwood City has many initiatives and programs that help our community conserve water year after year,

making us one of the most water-efficient communities in the Bay Area.

And some of these programs include the Drop Counter Water Use Portal and Flume Smart Home Water Monitor

for monitoring your water use and getting usage alerts.

the WaterWise Home Conservation Kits and Residential Self-Audit Tool.

We have rebates for lawn replacement, rain barrels, irrigation equipment,

and a discounted smart irrigation controller.

We have WaterWise Gardening Workshops.

And the reason we're here tonight, one of our longest-running and most successful programs

for school education, our Water Conservation Poster Contest.

And now I'd like to invite Nate Anderson, our Public Works Utilities Field Supervisor, to help present the winners.

All right. Thank you, Mayor Martinez-Caballos.

The poster contest is a fun and dynamic way for students to learn about water conservation

and reaches hundreds of students each year in kindergarten through fifth grade.

The kids love taking each year's theme, discussing how important it is to conserve water,

and then letting their creative shine in their artwork.

We would also like to take a moment to thank all the teachers who participated in our program this year.

If not for their help and cooperation, our program would not be the success that it is.

The theme of this year's contest is conserving with recycled water is our way.

Violet does it every day.

This year, we introduced students to the concept of recycled water.

Cities across California are adding recycled water to their portfolio, their water portfolio, as traditional water supplies grow tighter.

Redwood City is no exception.

Redwood City is reliant on just one potable water source from the Hetch Hetchy water system.

Replacing drinking water with recycled water for non-potable uses,

such as toilet flushing and irrigation, helps to stretch the drinking water supply.

New commercial and multifamily buildings within the city's Redwood City Water Service Area

are equipped to flush toilets, urinals, and irrigate with recycled water.

Students learned where recycle comes from, how it is processed, distributed,

and that recycling water is conserving potable water.

Their artwork includes images of violet, or recycled water drop, going through purple pipes.

The color purple is used to identify pipes that convey recycled water,

indicating that the water is not intended for drinking.

Redwood City's recycled water can be used for outdoors, for landscape irrigation,

water features such as decorative fountains, window washing, commercial car wash, and dust control,

and indoor uses, toilet flushing and urinal flushing, commercial laundry and cooling.

From the hundreds of entries, 12 winners were selected for their exemplary artistic efforts

and water conservation messaging.

Each of them will receive a personalized certificate from the City Council.

The certificate says,

and with the congratulations and great appreciation of the City Council of Redwood City

on this 26th day of January, 2026.

At this time, I would like to invite Mayor Martinez Ceballos to the front of the dais to present the awards.

All right.

Winners for kindergarten through first grade category are

theme winner, Colette Vasquez, Roy Cloud Elementary,

Miss Perez's class.

First place winner, Charlie Senegahia,

Roosevelt School, Miss Suchiyama's class.

Second place winner, Gianna Sussman, St. Pius School, Miss Brand's class.

Third place winner, Bridget Swenson, St. Pius School, Miss Brand's class.

Winners for the second to third grade category are...

Theme winner, Aoife Cosgrove, Roy Cloud Elementary, Miss Johnson's class.

First place winner, Leo Martinez, Roy Cloud School, Miss Johnson's class.

second place winner

Bryce Hornung

Our Lady of Mount Carmel School

Misty Martini's class

third place winner

Paulina Zarkik

Roy Cloud

Miss Garnado's class

Applause

Applause

Applause

Winners for the 4th through 5th

grades are theme

winner Liv Anderson, Clifford

School, Miss Capel

Curtis' class.

Applause

Applause

First place winner

Camilo Scherher

Clifford School, Miss Capel

Curtis' class.

Applause

Applause

Second place winner, Guadalupe Andre Alvarez, Hoover School, Mr. Borg's class.

Third place winner, Liva Duran, Clifford School, Ms. Capel Curtis's class.

Kids, we have two very special guests in attendance.

They are making a special appearance here tonight for this very special award ceremony.

Please welcome Violet and H2O Joe.

H2O Joe and Violet are here helping kids to save water.

So let's give them a big welcoming round of applause.

Thank you again for participating and congratulations to our students here tonight.

And to all the students who participated in our water conservation poster contest.

At this time, I would like to invite all members of the City Council to the front of the dais as well for a quick picture with the winners, H2O Joe and Violet.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Now that the doors have closed, we'll move on to the next item.

But that should be enough to keep us smiling for the rest of the evening, I think.

With that, we will move on to item 6B, our HIP housing annual update and presentation

of the 2026 calendar.

Our next item is another very exciting program.

our HIP Housing annual calendar.

For the past 25 years,

their annual calendars have brought us warmth

to thousands of homes

and have educated the community

about HIP Housing's affordable housing programs.

And I'd like to now welcome

a member of HIP Housing's Board of Directors

and a former mayor of Redwood City,

Ian Bain, to the podium

to share the 2026 calendar

and tell us more about HIP Housing's

meaningful work this year.

Welcome back.

Thank you, Mayor Martinez Ceballos, Vice Mayor Aiken, members of the Council.

First of all, I want to thank you for your service to our community because what we do

in terms of providing leadership on the local level is more important than ever.

So thank you for that.

And I also want to congratulate our new city manager, Mr. Heisinger.

Welcome.

And for some reason, I always seem to get put right after H2O Joe and Violet.

I think this is the third year in a row.

But hopefully this will make you smile as well.

So my name's Ian Bain, and I come here in my capacity as a member of the Board of HIP Housing.

And since 1972, HIP Housing has been helping low-income families throughout San Mateo County

to find and maintain affordable housing,

and we're listed in all 21 housing elements in San Mateo County, including ours.

a trusted and affordable housing partner last year we worked with more than 4 000 individuals

and provided housing to more than 1200 low-income households throughout the county

in redwood city during the 24-25 fiscal year we served 567 residents through our properties

and programs including 60 individuals who applied to the home sharing program 13 families enrolled

in our self-sufficiency program.

160 tenants were housed

under the Property Management Division

and 14 seniors through our Housing

Readiness Program. That's all in Redwood

City. On behalf of HIP

Housing, I would like to thank the

Honorable Mayor and members of the Council

for their enduring support

of our organization.

As a symbol of our appreciation

for your partnership,

I'm here tonight to present you with

the HIP Housing's 2026

calendar. I think it may be on your seat already. And each year, HIP Housing asks children from

around the county in grades kindergarten through fifth to draw a picture of home and tell us what

that means to them. This year, we had more than 120 calendar entries, and from those entries,

we selected 14 winners, 12 for each month, and one for the front cover, and one for the annual

appeal materials.

We're happy to have one of our winners

with us today, Victoria Lee.

Victoria, would you please join me here?

She calls Redwood City

Home and will share her quote

of what home means to her at this time.

Thank you.

Wow.

My home makes me feel safe

and comforted. My home means as much to me as the ground means to groundhogs. It's my shelter,

the place where I sleep, eat, and socialize.

Now that doesn't make you smile. I don't know what will. So with that, I want to thank you

again for your service, and I hope you enjoy the calendars.

thank you former mayor

before you leave the podium I think we have

one quick question for me the vice mayor

Mr. Bain

are any of these drawings available

on greeting cards

or any other

form than the calendar

that's a good question I can ask our marketing

committee and I suspect

we can probably get that to you somehow

that would be great thank you

thank you

and thank you again for the great presentation and the great calendars.

With that, we will move on to item seven,

our public comment on the consent calendar,

matters of council interest and items not on the 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.

And if you're attending virtually,

feel free to raise your hand on Zoom at this time

or press star nine if you have joined by phone.

Once we've gathered all the speaker cards

and raised hands and have begun public comment,

no additional speakers will be allowed to queue up to speak.

And I'll now turn it over to our city clerk

to facilitate public comment.

Thank you, Mayor.

At this time, I have one speaker card from the audience, and I'll give it another couple of seconds for our Zoom folks.

As the mayor had said, once we begin public comment, we'll close the speakers list.

And for the folks in the room, we have a timer on top of the podium.

The orange blinking light is your 30-second warning.

The red light with the beep means your time is up.

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

Okay, closing the public comment list.

we have Quinn Summers in person with us this evening for public comment.

Welcome, Quinn.

Hello?

Okay, sorry about that.

My name is Quinn Summers.

I'm an American citizen.

I'm a Redwood City resident for 15 years.

I'm a proud father and a husband.

occasionally I coach a little league because my boy likes baseball.

I have nothing but praise for our city council leadership.

You guys led us through the pandemic.

In my opinion, Redwood City has never been more prosperous afterwards.

I'd like to extend a word of praise to our local police forces as well.

In my limited interaction with our peace officers,

they've conducted themselves with utmost professionalism.

They seem to be members of our community, and they uphold the rule of law.

With that being said, I feel unsafe.

I've been watching videos of what's happened or the murders of two American citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of masked federal agents.

Those people who participated in that are not in jail.

I don't even know if there's an investigation.

That doesn't seem like the rule of law to me.

That seems like lawlessness and banditry.

my guess is that the minneapolis police department is not enforcing the rule of law

because they are outnumbered by 10 to 1 by masked federal asians with guns and so my request to the

city council and our leadership for the next city council agenda is to bring up the ideas of how we

can strengthen our community and protect ourselves if the premise of the ice presence in minneapolis

is on the pretext of some sort of fraud uh in minnesota and the administration is leveling

similar accusations of fraud amongst Californians,

it's reasonable to expect that we could also have a presence here.

And I don't think we're ready. We don't have enough.

We have, what, like 90 police officers across three shifts?

And so my recommendation is we consider exercising our Second Amendment rights

of organizing a well-organized militia.

We ask for volunteers from Redwood City.

We put ourselves at the disposal of Mayor Sebaos,

which is within our charter of our city,

or underneath the command of Police Officer Bell.

and we, sorry, Police Chief Bell, and we start getting ready.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Summers.

And that concludes public comment, Mayor.

Great.

Thank you to members of the public for providing public comment this evening,

and we will move on to item eight, which is our consent calendar.

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

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

Council member Chu. I will be recusing myself from item 8A as I live one block from the restroom in question.

Great. And that's council member Chu and item 8A. Are there any items on the consent calendar that council members would like to pull for discussion?

Not seeing any.

And is there a motion for approval of the recused items?

So moved.

Second.

Great.

That was a motion from Council Member Howard, a second from Council Member Aiken for approval

of item 8A.

And could we please get a roll call vote, please?

All items except 8A.

Which is the motion from Council Member Howard and a second from Vice Mayor Aiken.

Could we get a roll call vote, please?

Certainly.

We'll start with Council Member Chu.

Yes.

Council Member Gee.

Yes.

Council Member Howard.

Yes.

Council Member Padilla.

Yes.

Council Member Sturkin.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Yes.

Mayor Martinez-Zabias.

Yes.

The motion passes unanimously.

Thank you, everybody.

And is there a motion for the recused item 8A?

Mr. Mayor, I would like to make a motion to approve consent item number 8A.

Second.

It's a motion from Council Member G and a second from Council Member Howard for 8A.

Could we get a roll call vote, please?

Council Member G.

Yes.

Council Member Howard.

Yes.

Council Member Padilla.

Yes.

Council Member Sterkin.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Yes.

Mayor Martina Ceballos.

Yes.

Motion passes with six votes.

Council Member Chu is recused.

Okay.

Thank you, everyone.

And with that, we'll move on to item 9, beginning with 9A.

We'll now hear from our Arts Commission on their two-year work plan.

Staff Liaison Tiara Warner will give the introduction.

and Arts Commissioner Chair Anna Westendorf and Vice Chair Ashley Quintana will take us through

the work plan presentation. Welcome, everybody. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the

City Council. My name is Tiara Warner. I'm the Director of Parks, Recreation, and Community

Services. I have the honor and privilege of introducing Chair Anna Westendorf and Vice

Chair Ashley Quintana, who will be presenting their work plan for the Arts Commissions in

fiscal year FY25-26 and 26-27.

You can't spell heart without art,

and I'm really grateful for all the heart that they put into the work that they do now and continue to do.

Hello and good evening.

May have been a tough act to follow.

We don't have any costumes, but we do have some youth art components,

so we can get excited about that.

First slide, please.

So we're going to keep this fairly short.

we're going to go over the questions we're here to ask you.

We'll introduce you to the Arts Commission members as well as our mission.

We'll go over our previous work plan highlights and our accomplishments

before getting into our next work plan priority projects.

And then we'll have a question and answer session for any questions you may have.

Next slide. Thank you.

So our questions are, A, does the State Council have any questions regarding our work plan

as we're about to present it?

And also, does the State Council support the priorities we have decided as most important to us?

Next slide.

So our Arts Commission members are myself as chair and Ashley Cantana, who accompanies me as vice chair.

Additionally, we include Francesca John, Pamela Swint, Jason Newblanc, Paul Noss, and Suikredi Ratnam.

So the purpose of the Arts Commission is across a few facets.

It includes the establishment of programs stimulating and encouraging the development and maintenance of the visual and performing arts in the city,

and reviewing periodically such programs as they're established.

Additionally, the establishment of programs memorializing or giving recognition to matters of cultural significance in the city,

and to periodically review these as well.

The removal, relocation, and alteration of existing works of art or items of cultural significance in the city.

Next slide, please.

the acquisition of any work of art of cultural significance and the proposed location thereof,

the aesthetics of the design and site development of any building, monument, or other structure to be constructed or acquired by the city,

and any matter affecting the beauty and culture in the city.

The Arts Commission mission statement on behalf of City Council is ensuring that the visual and performing arts,

cultural and creative experiences are woven into the fabric of our community

by being an advocate, sponsor, and facilitator of art and culture in the city.

Reviewing the last two years briefly, we did a number of things, including launching our Redwood

City Tours app. If you haven't downloaded it yet, please do. And we hosted an art walk tour using

the new app in order to introduce some residents to it. We developed a non-profit grant outreach

plan and built out a database in hopes of continuing to expand our reach in our both

large and small grants programs. We completed guidelines for our Percent for Art program,

further making it easier and more accessible for people to understand what the program looks like

and how it works. And then additionally, we were awarded 28 large grants and nine small grants to

non-profit organizations supporting arts and cultural programming events, visual and performing

arts activities in Redwood City, including, and additionally, we had a recent youth mural

celebration in our youth mural alley. Next slide, please.

So our first priority is to advocate for visual and performing arts and cultural awareness.

The first is to streamline our current public art process. This is a carry-on of what we had

done previously with the Percent for Art program. The idea is to make this as accessible as possible.

Right now, there's quite a bit of back and forth of questions from developers and other parties

about how this all works. And our goal is to make it as self-serving as possible. So if someone has

questions, they can go to the website, they understand what the step-by-step process is and

what our expectations are as a commission. We'll also create an updated commission handbook to help

improve commissioner onboarding. As I'm sure all of the committees and commissions can relate to,

there's a certain onboarding process that kind of, there's a learning curve. And our hope is to help

commissioners feel more effective more quickly so that they can jump in and start feeling hands-on

with what is happening with arts in the city, rather than feeling like they need to take a

back seat for a few months as they figure out the ropes. And as a part of both of these, we're going

to continue to improve our commission website updates. Our first phase of that has occurred

in terms of making sure that all the information a party needs is on our website, making sure that

our public art app is updated. And now our goal is to continue to build it out and make sure that

everyone can understand, access, and make suggestions for the public art in Redwood City.

Good evening, everyone.

This is like one of my favorite parts of being a commissioner.

Okay, so we have several focus, one of them being a youth focus,

and so we're really hoping to extend and continue our relationship with the youth

and the community.

As Commissioner just mentioned, we had an amazing youth mural celebration,

and we just want to continue that momentum in the years to come.

Also, we love giving grants.

you all make it possible for us to give money

and really support the organizations here in the community.

So a friendly reminder to everyone,

we give small grants of $1,500 or less at a rolling basis,

which I think is an amazing opportunity.

And our large grants open up application in March

and ends the second week of May.

So we're really looking forward to that

and continuing that as commissioners.

And finally, a lot of the really fun idea that we had

is a vending machine.

so making it accessible for people to access artwork,

and that could be in many different ways.

We're still exploring that.

But especially getting a lot of our local artists

the ability to get their art out there without a specific event

or without the issues of being in a space

and actually having that space for them and provided.

So we're really, really excited about these upcoming opportunities.

And then one of my favorite things is just bringing the community together in our public

art events. As you guys can tell, the visuals were provided by me because I'm in a lot of them,

but I love the fact that we can bring folks together. And one of the things that we want

to make sure is we continue our murals in the community. And one of them is making them

interactive. So we always encourage folks that if they have any sort of blank spaces that you see

in the city to let us know as commissioners, because we're always looking forward to new

opportunities in where we can display murals in the community. The other one is not only is it

paint, it's not only art, but music. And so we really are exploring a day of music, bringing

people together, musicians together. And so that's something that we're looking forward to in the next

two years to make happen. And finally, making sure that we are working with RCIA to make sure that

we have a project in Broadway in making it more lively

and making sure that we make it much more colorful.

One of the things that we're actually looking forward to

is shadow art.

So if you all walk,

there's like shadows of things throughout the city.

That actually was created 10 years ago.

So they're in a little rough shape.

So we want to freshen them up

and hopefully celebrate that in the fall.

So stay tuned for that annual celebration

that we try to make sure we have.

and that will be one of our big projects for the year.

So we're really, really excited about all the different things

and we really want to make sure that we're making Redwood City

very vibrant when it comes to artwork

and we can't do this without all of your help,

all of the funding,

but also I just want to give a huge shout out to our staff here

because we could not make it happen without them.

So that said, I want to just go back to the two main questions

that we had as we started the presentation,

which is one, do you all have questions for us?

And two, do you support the priorities we just presented

or if you have any additional questions or comments for us

as we bring it back to the commission?

Thank you.

Chair, Vice Chair, thank you for the great presentation.

Before we bring it back to the council,

we'll open it up to the public for any public comments.

So pass things over to our city clerk.

Thank you, Mayor.

At this time, we don't have any speaker cards,

So last call to the audience or folks on Zoom who would like to give public comment on the Arts Commission work plan this evening.

Going once, going twice.

No public comment, Mayor.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, City Clerk.

And we'll bring it back to the Council who would like to get us started with any thoughts, questions.

Go to Council Member Howard.

Thank you, Mayor.

Well, first of all, thank you very much for the presentation.

It's very uplifting.

It continues the theme that we started with earlier in the evening.

So thank you.

You have one of the best jobs in the world working with.

We love it.

I mean, I can tell by the enthusiasm and the smiles on everyone's faces,

and I want to thank you for that because I know this is a volunteer position,

and you put in a lot of time and energy.

So we thank you for that.

Really appreciate it.

I did want to ask you, could you give me an example of some of your partners in the community that may be not known to us?

Do you do partnerships to kind of get more bang for your buck?

I'm just curious.

That's actually a really great question.

One of our biggest goals was to, well, specifically for the small and large grants, we want to make sure we get the word out there.

So we've actually partnered a lot with our local schools as well.

So not that partners you wouldn't know.

We actually feel that why reinvent the wheel when we can really have those partnerships

across a variety of organizations in the community.

So if anything, this is actually a call out for any organizations that anyone may have

and would like to either emphasize more of our arts opportunities.

Like this is the place that we want to make sure folks know that we're a resource.

But we have really have had an amazing network of folks that, you know, repeat in the sense

of like applying for grants.

But we love seeing them coming back and really offering a lot of dance, a lot of theater, a lot of movies and film.

And so if anything, we would just love to open it up and have this opportunity to say that if we haven't partnered with folks or if they have any ideas, we would love to partner with them.

Yeah, I think that generally covers that.

There are a few different ways to think about partnerships.

and I think one of the things that is truly an asset to the Arts Commission

is the extent to which all of the commissioners are involved in the community.

So it's really drawing on their expertise, their knowledge.

We have commissioners who are heavily involved with local schools.

We have commissioners involved with the RCIA.

We have commissioners involved in various non-profits,

such as the Center for Creativity,

and we really do use that to our advantage

to make sure we're getting the word out

and that we're getting to connect with artists and art organizations.

Well, thank you for bringing up the Center for Creativity.

I noticed that you work well together,

and sometimes you use the Sequoia Hotel and do things jointly.

So is that going to continue?

I'm imagining it will.

Yes, absolutely.

That's wonderful.

I did also want to know, could you, when you, there's no rush on this,

but I'd love to just have a summary of some of the things that you have this particular year, anyway, funded.

And it doesn't have to be, if it's like something unusual, maybe one time only, the first time only,

or someone who's a repeat, it just would help me, I think.

I try to catch it when you do your recommendations, but I have since forgotten.

But I know you do so many wonderful things with the money that you're given,

And so I was wondering if you could remind us of some of them.

If not now, then maybe send a summary to council of some of the programs you did this particular year that you're very proud of.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, you're correct.

There are so many that I would absolutely fail to name some of them.

I do want to point out that this actually raises something that ties to our commission website,

where we've talked before about should we have some type of calendar

about all of the Arts Commission-related activities in the city

so not only we know and can attend,

but so council members can know and attend,

the city can know and attend.

A few that come to mind for me include Casa Circulos, Dia de los Muertos.

We do sponsor that on an annual basis, which I love in the city.

And then additionally, we have given funds to the Center for Creativity

as we discussed further their mission.

And I have a complete list right in front of me

if you just want this.

And I think one of my folks,

that actually that I loved

was we supported a filmmaker

to create a film that shows

the hardships of seniors in fraud.

And so it was a really interesting way

for us to give funds

in a way that you don't normally see in murals

or you see it in other types,

but really support a film

and also educate community

on something that is very prevalent.

So that was a really awesome project to see in fruition

and be invited to their grand film opening.

Well, thank you for doing that,

but also mentioning the word murals.

I want to thank you for the work that you did,

and I know it was a joint effort with many different groups,

but regarding SB 456,

when the legislation passed that they wanted people

who had work as little as $500 having to get special permits

and special pricing for all of that.

I thought, boy, that program will go downhill real quickly

if we can't change that.

So I want to thank you very much because you took the time

to write to the legislators and tell them the problem,

and it was resolved, and I really appreciate that

because now we have muralists who will be able to continue

the fine work that they do,

and we don't have to worry that they have to get special licensing

and all kinds of things that really didn't seem necessary.

Yeah, absolutely.

And also thank you to city council because I know you also wrote in to support this.

I think that the last couple of years have been a little frustrating for us

because we did have a fairly good cadence of completing at least one mural every year

and weren't able to for a period of time while we were trying to work this out.

But the good news is now we do have a couple on call that were getting rolling again,

and we'll hopefully have those getting ready soon.

Well, thank you very much.

Great presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Howard.

Who would like to go next?

Go to Council Member G.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I just want to say thank you and all the commissioners,

because it takes all of you working together.

And one of the things I enjoy when I travel and go to other cities,

So I want to just plant a seed.

And I think our director of engineering has left us.

But maybe to look at partnering.

Because one of the things when I travel, I go to conferences, I stay downtown, I walk around.

And other cities have done some pretty amazing things with crosswalks.

And I'd love to see some of those in our city because we can take that art throughout the city, not just downtown,

but throughout our different neighborhoods, different gateways, different entrances,

and I always enjoy that.

So I didn't quite see it, but I can tell by the smiles there's people thinking about it.

And so I would just encourage let's get one going.

And I think for the first one, like we did the big mural over here,

maybe the council can help paint.

So I'd be happy to count me in as a volunteer to go help paint one.

Absolutely.

We were smiling at the crosswalk mentioned just because it's been a point of discussion in the past around the legal requirements for what a crosswalk needs to look like in order for it to be up to code.

But that being said, we are talking extensively, as Ashley mentioned, about interactive murals.

We're talking about the impressive B Street mural in San Mateo and how we could do it even bigger and better.

So we are thinking about things like that.

Well, if we need some policy changes,

I think you can know where to find the mayor

and the rest of us will be on board with that.

Fantastic.

Thank you, Council Member.

We'll go to Council Member Padilla.

I just want to echo and thank you guys for everything that you do.

Our inner community is so important and so appreciated.

It just makes everything more enjoyable when you're outside.

And I hear bigger is better,

but I also want to, if we're throwing out pitches for colorful crosswalks,

as a parent it's also I know children also love easter eggs so sometimes even tiny art

is is worthy and beautiful like hidden art that kids can see little birdies or stuff that they

look for and helps maybe connect them to some of our parks that we're building that helps maybe

correct we incorporate it with our wayfinding or our signage so there's little things that

lead you to things I think that would be really fun to engage all ages to look for things so

big murals are fantastic, but I'm also

in for little Easter eggs and tiny little

bronze sculptures or art pieces around.

I think that would be incredible, but thank you guys

for everything you do and sponsoring

art and providing funds for artists.

It's wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you. We're smiling because all of these things

we've actually discussed in some way we want to make sure

that we bring it to fruition.

We're so happy to be aligned with you

all and we hopefully will make sure

that that happens and you guys will be the first ones

to get the invite. So thank you.

Thank you. We'll go to Council Member Chu next.

So first of all, thank you for a terrific presentation and very supportive of your proposed work plan.

Just a couple comments. I'd like to echo my colleagues' comments about crosswalks.

I think there was some changes to the MUTCD in 2023, which makes sort of alternative crosswalk designs a little –

I mean, the director of transportation would know better than me.

But I think that there has been some loosening around that.

So I would also be very supportive of crosswalks.

And I think really excited about the shadow art being referred.

That's one of my favorite things.

And I haven't seen it anywhere else.

It's just like this bit of whimsy that I love.

And, you know, kind of to that point, I love the art in ordinary objects.

you know, the way, I don't know if your organization is responsible for painting the

utility boxes. I think that kind of like whimsy and art in ordinary objects is especially fun,

and it's something very special in our city. And, you know, I know that there's, you know,

limited time and money, but insofar as you can partner with other organizations, you know,

if they're doing something anyway, if we, if, you know, you can just amp it up a bit,

that would be great. One final comment. I know that what I've learned tonight is that we have a

lot of children very interested in art and quite good at it. And I love seeing kids art in unexpected

places. And so I know we have many adult artists who are very, very good in this area. But insofar

as we can incorporate children's art, I think I would appreciate that. And I'm sure many other

people would as well. Terrific work. Thank you. I actually forgot to give a shout out to Vice Mayor

Akin who actually came to our event and spoke and we really appreciate you being there for our

youth mural. So very excited. Thank you, Council Member Chew, for your remarks. Who'd like to go

next? Go to the vice. Perfect. We'll go to Council Member Sturkin and then we'll go back here to the

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'm sorry, I sound like a frog, which is why I'm not there in person right now.

But I want to say thank you so much, Chair Westendorf and Vice Chair Quintana and the whole commission for your hard work.

It's all very exciting.

I am very supportive of your entire work plan and just wanted to share my appreciation for some of the ideas you threw out.

I love the arts vending machine idea.

I've seen that like in the city, for example, at the Fish Tank Gallery in North Beach.

Also at the Center for Creativity, they have their, the old safe in the hotel doubles as like a free art shelf where you can like grab and go.

So kind of similar idea.

I think that's great.

I appreciate your engagement with RCA on improvements to Broadway Pedestrian Mall and love the idea of doing a mural on the ground that's even bigger and better than San Mateo's.

And not that this is a competition or anything.

And then I definitely love the idea of decorative crosswalks.

I know it's kind of a hot topic right now, but would love to see a pride crosswalk.

And I think there's ways to do that without risking liability.

So I would just love to throw that out there.

Thinking of Los Gatos has one across from their city hall where they just kind of outline the crosswalk with a rainbow.

So it's subtle, but complimentary.

Anyway, so throwing it out there.

But once again, thank you so much for your hard work.

Really support your work plan.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

Go to the Vice Mayor.

Well, ladies, I echo everything and your team.

I echo everything that my colleagues have said.

It was just so fun to read the report and just so exciting all that you're doing.

I'm going to echo what two of my colleagues said about the partnerships.

I encourage more partnerships.

And for me personally, I still am sad that we lost the Dragon Theater.

And I know it's a heavy lift to try to get a professional acting company to land in Redwood City.

I don't think we'll do it today or tomorrow.

But I would love for all of you folks to put it on your windshield.

as if you hear opportunities that drama companies

in surrounding towns need a home

or you find out that...

Just keep your ears to the ground and keep us posted.

I would love to have a dramatic acting company

back in Redwood City, so I'll just throw that out there.

And so that...

I have a question.

So that...

What is it?

is that thing that mural that's halfway up in the sky.

The Causeway mural.

Pardon?

The Causeway mural.

You guys did that?

We did it in partnership with the San Mateo County Office of Arts and Culture.

It is just, when did it go, it went up like six months ago?

A little more than that, I think, but time flies.

Oh, okay.

Because there was a length of time where we had it designed,

but due to just team changes internally on San Mateo's side,

it took some time for it to actually go up,

and then there was some time before opening.

So it's been actually a few years in progress.

Well, anyway, I just remember the first time I turned the corner and saw that,

I just love it.

It's amazing and just really eye-catching.

Just keep up the good work.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Not seeing anyone else's hands up.

I will add my thanks, both of you and your colleagues,

for all the great work you do year-round.

The Arts Commission is truly special.

Art is one of the great ways that we get to talk to the community

in visual, in all these other mediums,

where we get to display our history, our culture, our values.

And so I am very excited to hear about the work plan.

And looking ahead, would just love to see us continue to build on that, right?

I think the Jefferson Avenue mural is such a perfect example of that great history.

I think I saw some council members and overalls helping paint that.

But, you know, it is just that perfect intersection of history and community values that I would love to see us continue to build out,

especially in different parts of town.

As we talk about the greater downtown area plan, thinking about those gateways to our downtown and how do we mark that with art, that really helps us kind of just visualize that transition into a new neighborhood.

So other than that, I really greatly appreciate your focus on youth engagement.

It is always incredible to see maybe some of these posters will make it onto the alleyway,

but also just streamlining the process for developers who are interested in getting involved

and finding ways to make it easier for them to support that effort and to help finance that

because that is always an incredible opportunity we're able to unlock.

So thank you for streamlining that.

But aside from that, please look out for an email about crosswalks.

We'll be talking soon.

Noted, guys.

Noted.

We'll make something happen.

But I think absolutely just activating the areas where people already are

and where they're spending their free time is the core, I think, of what I'm hearing.

So greatly appreciate this work, and thank you all again.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And with that, is there a motion to approve the staff recommendation?

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve the proposed Arts Commission work plan for fiscal years 25-26 and 26-27.

And is there a second?

Second.

That's a motion from Council Member Gee, a second from Council Member Howard.

Could we get a roll call vote, please?

We'll start with Council Member Howard.

Yes.

Council Member Padilla.

Yes.

Council Member Sturkin.

Yes.

Council Member Chu.

Yes.

Council Member Gee.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Yes.

Mayor Martinez Ceballos.

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Congratulations.

All right.

And we will move on.

Item 10 is our public hearing section.

We have no items set for tonight's meeting.

We will go on to item 11, our staff reports.

Beginning with 11A, we have our deputy city manager, Jennifer Yamaguma,

who will introduce the item, and consultants from Polko, Cindy Mays, and Jason Neumeier,

who will give a presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Jennifer Yamaguma,

Deputy City Manager, pleased to be here tonight with you. I have Jason Neumeier on Zoom,

who's going to be kind of co-presenting with me tonight on the 2025 Community Satisfaction

survey results.

As you hear the presentation, here are a couple of questions that we'll circle back around

to at the end.

If you have any clarifying questions on the survey methodology or the results or if you

have any suggestions on how we can share the results with the community.

Collecting feedback and input from our residents is a key source of information in developing

the city's budget and service recommendations and guiding initiatives that we have in the

future.

So we have a very robust and always evolving community engagement program, and we welcome

feedback from the community through various approaches, including community surveys.

So we have had a long history of having community satisfaction surveys done statistically valid

surveys, which just means that they're representative of the entire community.

Typically, we do them every other year.

And this is one way that we measure satisfaction with our city services, programs, quality

of life, sense of community, and other relevant information to better help us understand the

interests, concerns, and priorities of our residents.

So I am going to hand it over to Jason and he's going to share his screen to present some of the key highlights from this year's results.

Great, Jennifer. Thanks so much. I'm going to get my screen up here.

All right. Looks like you can see it on your end. I can see it on my end.

Well, it's great to be here tonight to present a summary of these findings from Redwood City's most recent National Community Survey.

Before I begin, on behalf of myself, my PULCO co-workers, I would like to extend a big thank you to Jennifer for that nice introduction here.

But she was also our main point of contact throughout survey development and the implementation process,

providing thoughtful, detailed feedback on the survey instrument, the report that's been shared with you all,

and this deck that we'll work through here tonight.

I would also like to acknowledge my colleague Cindy who's unable to join us tonight.

She's actually out sick as well this evening.

But she provided the main bulk of the work for this important project as the main point

of contact for Jennifer and others as we put together this presentation and report.

So a little bit about who we are before we dive into the results.

So Polco is an online community engagement polling platform.

And we work with local governments to provide resident and employee feedback.

Today, we work with hundreds of organizations nationwide, and they work with us to really set up their strategic plans, set up their budgets, and most importantly, to empower their resident voices.

POLCO merged with the National Research Center back in 2019, and the National Research Center

or NRC is best known for our benchmarking surveys, like the National Community Survey,

the National Employee Survey, and the Community Assessment Survey for Older Adults, among

a few others. Since 1994, NRC has worked with hundreds of jurisdictions nationwide and now

has the largest benchmark database of local public opinion in the United States. You can

also see here that we partner closely with ICMA and the National League of Cities as well as many

other local government leaders like the Alliance for Innovation and many academic partners including

the American Association for Public Opinion Research. So I do want to emphasize before we

turn to some high-level results and then a few key findings that there are a variety of ways that

these results can be used. So most commonly the jurisdictions that we work with will use their

survey data to monitor trends and resident opinion over time, and to inform budgeting

processes and strategic planning. As I mentioned before, our results also allow you to benchmark

your community's specific characteristics against communities in our benchmarking database.

So ultimately, the goal here tonight is that as these findings are presented, it's going to spur

some ideas for you on where you might want to dig a little bit deeper. So the National Community

Survey or the NCS is a standardized five-page comprehensive survey that assesses municipalities

resident opinions on their community and local government. The NCS focuses on the livability

of Redwood City by categorizing the survey questions into these 10 facets of community

livability that you can see on the slide here. These facets have been identified through extensive

survey research as those that are most impactful to residents overall quality of life. And if you've

review of the reports, you know that the NCS also includes items within each of these 10 facets

to provide a full picture of how residents feel about their community. And then finally, and I

think most importantly, these facets also tend to align with municipal departments, making it really

easy for city staff to find the information that's most important to their day-to-day work

in the final report of results. So all households within Redwood City were eligible to participate

in this most recent survey. A list of all households within the zip code serving Redwood

City was purchased based on updated listings from the United States Postal Service. And then using

GIS boundary files provided by the city, addresses located outside of Redwood City's boundaries were

removed from the list of potential households to survey. Meaning in the end from that list,

3,000 addresses were randomly selected to receive the survey, all geolocated to ensure that they

were located within your boundaries. The 3000 randomly selected households received mailings

beginning on September 4, and the survey remained open through the middle of November. The first

mailing was a postcard inviting the household to participate in the survey online. The next

mailing contained a cover letter with instructions to the survey questionnaire itself and a postage

paid return envelope. Both the postcard and the cover letter included a web link and QR codes to

of residents the opportunity to respond online should they so choose. A total of 280 completed

responses were received from these efforts, providing a response rate of around 9% and a

margin of error of plus or minus 4.5%, excuse me, 5.9%. We then compared the demographic profile

of survey respondents to that of all adults within Redwood City using the most recent census and

American Community Survey data, and we waited the final survey results. Now, in addition to this

randomly selected probability sample of households, a link to an online community-wide open participation

survey was also publicized by the city. This open participation survey became available to all city

residents on October 2nd. That survey remained open for the final seven weeks of data collection,

and an additional 290 responses were received from those efforts. Now, the presentation that

we're looking at here tonight and the report are based on the 280 responses from that random

probabilistic male based sample. The responses to the open participation survey are provided

separately in the online report of results. Now, as I said before, one of the major advantages

for local governments in participating in our community surveys is this opportunity to compare

ratings given by your residents to those from communities across the nation. This allows

jurisdictions to compare ratings of services in your community to ratings of similar services

in other communities. And as you can see on the slide here, there are currently around 400

communities in our national database. Now, Redwood City received comparisons to the entire benchmark

database, which I'll refer to as national benchmarks, but also opted to receive custom

benchmark comparisons to a subset of communities within similar population bands here in California.

So we'll call those the custom benchmarks moving forward, and you'll see them in the report as well.

So next we'll turn to an overview of survey results before we dive into a few key findings and takeaways.

So in the survey, we have two questions that ask directly about those 10 facets of community livability.

We looked at a few slides back.

The first question, as you can see on the slide here, asks residents to rate the current quality of each of these 10 areas.

And you can see the result in comparison to the national benchmark here in the shading on the chart.

The second question asks about those same 10 facets of livability, but is centered this time on how important residents think it is for the community to focus on those areas in the coming two years.

So we asked both about current quality and future importance, and we use these answers to create the quality importance gap analysis, which you can see on the slide now.

So we use this chart, which is also included in your final report, to help determine which areas are of relatively higher importance and lower quality to residents.

So those with the largest gaps you see on the screen.

This chart is just one of many ways to interpret your data.

It can be used to help identify key findings and to assist communities with determining what areas might need additional focus or maybe some additional resource allocation in the coming years and which others are performing well by comparison.

So speaking of those national benchmarks, there are 123 survey items on the national community survey for which residents provide evaluative ratings.

And of those 123, seven items here in Redwood City received ratings that were higher than the national benchmark.

106 received similar ratings and 10 received lower ratings.

Ratings are considered similar if they're within 10 points of the rolling national average and higher or lower if they're more than 10 points different from that average.

Now, as I prefaced before, Redwood City also elected to compare their results to a subset

of communities within the national database, other communities in the state of California.

Of the 123 items, again, for which residents provided evaluative ratings, seven items here

in the city received ratings that were higher than this custom cohort. 112 received similar

ratings and we had three items that were lower.

we have comparisons to the nation, we have comparisons to the state, and because we have

trends here, we also have comparisons to yourself. So when compared to results from Redwood City's

NCS in 2024, here in 2025, 23 items received ratings that were statistically significantly

higher than the previous survey iteration. 96 were similar, and we received three that were lower.

Now results are considered to be a statistically significant change if the change is plus or minus

seven percentage points between the 2024 and 2025 survey. Now we're going to highlight these

significant changes as well as some of those national and state benchmarks here as we move

to the key findings in just a few slides. Before we get there, we did want to take a look at how

different groups of residents responded to the survey. And when we looked there, several patterns

stood out. So younger adults, those between the ages of 18 and 54, tended to give more positive

ratings when it came to the local economy and to mobility options in the city. In contrast,

older adults had more favorable impressions of access to parks and recreation opportunities,

as well as their ability to engage with the community. We also saw some differences based

on gender, with men generally providing more positive ratings than women in most areas,

aside from education, arts, and culture. You can see here homeowners tended to give more favorable

ratings than renters throughout the survey, aside from our mobility facet that was a little bit more

mixed. Households with children offered more positive feedback than those without. And finally,

residents with higher income gave higher marks for safety as well as education, arts, and culture.

Now, these are just a high-level look at the comparisons by population subgroups. These

insights can help to provide a fuller picture of the different segments and how they experience

life in your city. But all 123 evaluative items, as well as the custom questions we'll talk about,

can be broken down by these different demographic characteristics in the online report of results.

So there's a lot more meat on the bone here in terms of demographic crosstabs.

So with that, we'll turn to a few key findings. I did want to point out a few items that stood

out to our survey research and data science teams here at Polko. As you know, if you've reviewed the

report, there's a lot of additional data that we won't cover here tonight. But the rest of this

presentation is going to focus on a few areas that we found to be most noteworthy within the survey

results. So key finding number one, generally governance ratings improved compared to our

previous survey iteration. So around two thirds of residents expressed satisfaction with treating

residents with respect and being honest while around six and 10 positively rated treating all

residents fairly. When about six and 10 also viewed favorably being open and transparent to the public

and generally acting in the best interest of the community. You can see the four items here which

saw statistically significant increases from our most recent survey iteration in 2024. Being honest,

being open and transparent, generally acting in the best interest and informing residents about

issues facing the community. Our second key takeaway, most items related to safety scored

in line with our national benchmark comparisons. So while the overall feelings of safety in

the city scored below national averages, we saw that in the facets slide a few back,

merely 9 and 10 residents expressed feeling safe in their neighborhood during the day,

while more than 8 in 10 positively rated their safety in the downtown and commercial areas during the day.

Around three-quarters of respondents favorably viewed their safety from fire, flood, or other natural disaster,

while just around 7 in 10 indicated feeling safe from violent crime.

And again, you can see with the shading on the chart here, each of these are scoring in line with our national benchmark comparisons.

Now, in addition to these broad feelings of safety, residents were also asked a battery of questions related to safety services within Redwood City.

So more than eight in 10 residents expressed satisfaction with fire services and ambulance or EMS services. About two thirds of residents rated positively or police or sheriff services and fire prevention and education, while about six in 10 residents gave positive marks to emergency preparedness.

Our third key takeaway here, ratings for the local economy are on the rise in some areas, but affordability remains a challenge for residents.

Around 8 in 10 residents expressed satisfaction with the vibrancy of the downtown and commercial area.

This rating was actually higher than both our custom and national benchmarks and saw a statistically significant increase from 24.

or about three quarters of respondents positively rated the overall quality of business and service

establishments and Redwood city as a place to work. About seven and 10 favorably viewed the

variety of business and service establishments while six and 10 indicated satisfaction with

Redwood city as a place to visit. When we get toward the bottom of the slide here, you can see

only about one in six residents gave excellent or good marks to the availability of affordable

quality housing that was in line with what we see around the nation. But cost of living was given

positive marks by 14% of respondents. This item did score lower than the rolling national average.

Key finding number four, mobility infrastructure may present some opportunities

for improvement. About seven in 10 residents expressed satisfaction with the ease of walking

throughout the city. This item did see an increase from the 2024 survey while around half of residents

positively rated the ease of travel by car. You can see here around four in 10 respondents

indicated satisfaction with the ease of travel by public transportation transportation excuse me

while only about one-third of residents expressed satisfaction with traffic flow

on major streets. Again we're in line with national averages here on this slide as well.

Just like we asked that battery of safety services questions, the NCS also includes a number of

questions related to mobility services in the city. You can see that more than half of residents

express satisfaction with bus and transit services. This rating was higher than the national benchmark.

While around half of residents gave excellent or good marks to street lighting and traffic

enforcement with four in 10 residents favorably viewing traffic signal timing throughout the city.

And then key, finally, key finding number five, inclusivity and community engagement

in Redwood City surpasses benchmarks both national and statewide.

So around three and four residents expressed their satisfaction with valuing and respecting

residents from diverse backgrounds, the general openness and acceptance of the community toward

people of diverse backgrounds, and attracting people of diverse backgrounds to the city.

Those first three items were higher than our national averages and higher than the California

state averages here over the last five years.

About seven in 10 residents rated positively the opportunity to participate in social events

and activities.

This improved from the 2024 survey while around two thirds of residents gave excellent or

good marks to the opportunities to volunteer.

And then finally, in addition to our standardized questions, two questions were added to the

survey that were unique to Redwood City and I'd like to show those results here next.

So the first question asked residents to rate how important if at all they thought it was for the

community to focus on each of the following topics in the coming two years. Our first item here nearly

all residents viewed creating opportunities for children and youth as either essential or very

important. In fact less than one in ten rated that as somewhat important or not important at all.

meeting the housing needs for people of all income levels was rated as essential by 41%

of respondents and very important by another 38% while just 12% rated it as somewhat important.

And you can see there 9% gave that a rating of not at all important.

And then finally, our second question asked, how comfortable if at all,

are you, do you feel contacting the Redwood City Police in an emergency?

About two-thirds of residents, 64%, said that they felt very comfortable contacting the Redwood City Police in an emergency, while about one-quarter indicated that they felt somewhat comfortable.

You can see here only about one in 10 felt uncomfortable contacting the police in an emergency, with about 5% feeling somewhat uncomfortable and 6% feeling very uncomfortable.

So just to recap here, we went through a lot of data there, a lot of key findings.

Our five key takeaways, again, that our data science and survey research teams here pulled out of this most recent report.

First and foremost, governance ratings did improve compared to the previous year.

Most items related to safety did score in line with our national benchmark comparisons.

Ratings for the local economy were on the rise across a number of different areas, but that affordability measure continues to remain a challenge.

A fourth, mobility infrastructure may present some areas for improvement for the city.

And then finally, inclusivity and engagement in Redwood City surpass benchmarks, both national and statewide.

So with that, I'll catch my breath here.

And I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have about the process by which we developed the survey, got this data, the report of results that's been shared, or the deck that we just went through.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Jason.

We have just two more slides from the staff side.

So again, the 2025 Community Satisfaction Survey is just one tool that we have when we're trying to develop the budget that will be presented to you as we evaluate our services and programs and have future planning efforts.

Thank you.

and departments are going to use these results

to evaluate those services

and support the continuous improvement

as we have done in the past

and like I mentioned

it also does provide important context for you

as we develop our budget

through the city manager

for the recommended budget

survey findings in general

also definitely help us inform policy

and long-term planning

And one of the great things that you saw in the presentation and in the report, and if you visit the online dashboard, is being able to have trends established through data.

So this is the second time that the city has used Polko for our survey.

The survey questions are identical to the last time that we did the survey.

So it really is an apples-to-apples comparison.

And that is something that will continue.

So as Jason mentioned, three different ways of evaluating the data against ourselves from our last survey against the custom subset of cities that are like Redwood City in a demographic component, as well as the national benchmarks.

I will return to the council questions, and Jason and I are here to do our best to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Jennifer, and thank you, Jason, for all the hard work on this.

It's incredible to see.

Before we bring it back to the Council,

we'll make sure to open it up for public comment,

and I'll pass things over to our city group.

Thank you, Mayor.

We don't have any speaker cards on this item yet,

so if you'd like to speak on the Community Satisfaction Survey results,

please turn in a speaker card or raise your hand on Zoom at this time.

No public comment, Mayor.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you again.

We'll bring it back to the Council.

Who would like to get us started with comments or questions?

Council Member G.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Jennifer, Jason, thank you very much for the survey, the results, and the analysis.

I'm a fan of the last bullet you had on the previous slide, looking at long-term trends,

and only having done this twice doesn't count as long-term yet.

but hopefully in the next two years and two years we'll be able to see some trends in the right direction.

But I'm curious, Jason, you know, you've worked with a number of cities.

You and your colleagues have worked with a number of cities,

and if we use the data to help guide the council and how we invest in our budget and resources and people and things like that,

how long does it take typically to show results from those investments and deployment of resources?

Because some of these things like increasing the quality of affordable housing in Redwood City,

that's not going to happen next month.

It takes time.

And, you know, improving public safety takes time.

You know, so what is a reasonable expectation that if we were, you know, we have a mid-year budget,

then we have the budget, if we were to deploy resources, what's a reasonable expectation?

Yeah, that's a great question. Typically, what we see for jurisdictions that we work with is they'll conduct the NCS biannually, and usually that leaves enough space to see some trends in one direction or the other.

Anecdotally, I can point to the one that we see the most movement in is often the mobility facet, because there's the opportunity for public works to go out and improve sidewalk maintenance or potentially put in more crosswalks that you were talking about last time in the last block.

But typically within a two-year period, we will see enough, that is enough time to see some turnover.

The other thing I will say is you're not just comparing to your own trends, right?

But you can see, for example, if affordable housing scores the same as it did in, it scores the same in 28 as it did in 26, let's say, you can still see your comparison to the national benchmark and your rank there, right?

So if you were similar this time and potentially lower next time, we can see your rank in the nation and you stayed flat, but maybe the nation improved over those two years.

So there's, again, another lens through which we can view it.

Even if the trend internally hasn't moved, we can still see the national trend and draw some comparisons that way as well.

Very good.

And just while Polko has been on board for two surveys,

is there any way to go backwards and extract data from previous community surveys to see some trends?

I know it's easy if it's the same question every two years.

That's easy.

But we've been doing community surveys for many years,

and I was just curious if there's a way to go backwards a few.

I know different firms have done it, but is there any data that can be extracted to establish some trends?

Yeah, Jennifer, if you have the copies of those results, or especially if you have the raw data from those results, we can certainly code those responses.

Assuming, again, that they asked similar questions and that their structure, I'm assuming, was similar along a grid or something, a scale that was comparable.

We can certainly code those and add it to our database and then see trends backwards as well, again, as long as they're somewhat apples to apples comparisons.

I suspect they were not exactly the same questions,

but I think looking at the trend over time,

because that's important, would be very helpful.

I would be very interested in seeing that.

And, Council Member, just to piggyback off of that,

that is what we did our best to do in the last survey results

because that was the first year of using this particular survey instrument.

So where there were areas where we could feel pretty confident

that while the wording of the question might not have been the same,

the sentiment of what it was asking would have been perceived equal enough

that you could do a comparison.

So we have that work from the 2023 survey,

and so we can certainly go back and try to measure it against this one as well.

Great.

I think going as reasonably backwards as we can to establish those trend lines.

So if we're headed in the right direction consistently, I think that's great.

But if we're headed consistently in the wrong direction, that might give us some more input,

say that we may need to do something different sooner than later to stop that trend going in the wrong direction.

So thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Council Member.

We'll go to Council Member Chu next.

So thank you for your terrific work on the survey.

I just had a few clarifying questions.

So I'm looking at the demographic sort of comparison table on page 147, and, you know, it's pretty consistent with all surveys.

You know, older people are more likely to respond.

Certain sociodemographic groups are more likely to respond, and this is pretty typical.

One thing I did wonder is if you have a heat map or have a gestalt about the distribution geographically across the city,

were there concentrations of responses from some neighborhoods

and sort of a sparse response rate from others

and in future reports if you could include sort of a heat map

of that that would be super helpful and again this is very consistent

with survey results nationwide so it's an apples to apples comparison

and then if you have thoughts

for future years on how to increase those numbers and again I know this is

a very difficult problem for those groups

that are less likely to respond.

That's always appreciated and welcome.

But overall, you know, terrific job

and really appreciate seeing, you know,

where our city has done well

and where we can still grow.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Cheatle.

We'll go to Council Member Howard.

Thank you.

Hi, Jennifer.

Hi.

Great report. I want to thank Jason. I'm glad you did it two years in a row. I mean, it really was encouraging to see the increases as well as the reality that not everything's going to increase and get better.

I think the fact that you're the continuum in all of this was very, very helpful.

And I look forward to it just improving over time.

I can't tell you how.

I know there are many people who help make some of these positive, wonderful increases happen.

But the fact that the community has spoken, that our transparency and our engagement has improved so much,

I do remember times when people felt we never hear from our city council.

We never hear that we don't know what's going on in the city.

We feel out of it.

We heard that quite a bit.

and some of it maybe was because we weren't working hard enough

or we didn't have the tools to make it really successful.

But I just think it's the persistence of our staff and our council

and the people who work in this building and these buildings every day

to try and do the very best that they can.

It really is reflected in this, and I think we should be very proud of that.

Not cocky.

we need to improve, we always need to improve.

But I just was so pleased to see how many people felt positive

about that we really are inclusive, that we're working at

making sure everyone feels welcome in Redwood City,

that we are transparent in the work we do.

I just think that's something that we should celebrate

and see what we can do to improve on that.

So thank you for highlighting that.

I think that the way you did it, Jason, with the arrows up and the stairs, simple but very effective for me.

I appreciate it.

I go, oh, that's a good thing.

I don't always feel with surveys that I quite get it sometimes because of the way that it's given to us.

I did want to know that you said there were things you did randomly selected households as well as open reports, a lot of different things.

did you have a way of incorporating it all to make sure that all the voices were heard

and you weighted it so that it, do you know what I'm saying?

You didn't see a complete disconnect between one type of gathering over another of information, did you?

We did not.

So we did re-weight.

we weight all randomly selected surveys

because ultimately what that does is it helps

to bring it in line with the demographics

of your community.

So you can find that in the methods section,

it should be on page three or four of the PDF report.

We did not see, I mean, there were some differences

by demographics, right?

And we highlighted some of those in the slide deck

we just went through.

You can find a full interactive component

of that online as well if you wanted to see

different geographic or demographic breakdowns.

But at the end of the day,

we were able to reach our target

for nearly all of the demographic breakdowns of the city

based on the sample we had, which is always our goal.

That's that waiting table you see in the methods section.

So no major difficulties there methodologically.

And council member Chu just showed me the page

that it's highlighted on.

So thank you.

I appreciate that I can do that comparison.

In your opinion, you're pretty unbiased, I would imagine, at this point.

You don't live or work in Redwood City, right?

I wanted to know, when you saw this survey, what was your takeaway as where do we most need to improve, step up?

That's a good question.

I think what I will say to be as impartial as possible is there are three, again, three different ways that I would suggest you look at this data.

The first we've talked about enough is trends, right?

The second way to look at this is the national benchmarks, but you also have the custom comparison here, which is really nice, right?

It compares you to demographically similar communities around the U.S.

The third is the raw result.

And the raw result is something I think that sometimes gets lost in our reporting because there's so many cool features with trends and benchmarks and comparisons and things like that.

But as a reminder, when you see that you're similar, for example, on the economy one that we looked at, similar in terms of affordable housing.

So that's, you know, maybe good or fine, right?

The nation is struggling with it too.

But only 14% gave that an excellent or good rating, right?

So I would suggest seeing the benchmarks and then looking past them and setting a goal for what percent of your population do you want to give excellent or good marks to these items?

And then maybe, again, start to slice and dice that by demographic breakdowns.

Again, there was nothing out of the ordinary here that really jumped off the page.

Everybody is struggling with affordability.

Everybody is struggling with housing.

Everybody is seeing downward trends.

And do you think the economy will be positive for your family in the next six months?

Those are the big three items in the economy section that we saw downward trends in.

So that would be my suggestion, and I hope that answered your question.

That was very helpful.

I did also notice that there's a common theme, and public safety always seems to rise to the top.

Would you say that's pretty clear?

Yes, economy, safety, and mobility are almost always our top three facets in terms of importance.

Not a big surprise, I don't think, to anybody here.

And in that gap analysis, you can see the differential between your current quality ratings from residents and their future importance.

If you're going to look at just one page on the report, my suggestion would be the facets of livability page.

That shows the butterfly chart and that gap analysis.

That's helpful. Thank you.

The mobility infrastructure, I saw that and I said,

well, maybe we are.

Regarding affordability, we are clearly doing more than most in that arena.

But what I take away from it is maybe people just don't know enough about what we're doing.

I mean, we've been told that before sometimes,

that we don't get the messaging out or we're not really clear on what we are actually doing.

I'm wondering if we were able to get that information out more clearly and more frequently,

if that number would change.

It is hard to build the units, there's no doubt, but we're still doing more than most.

So I think we need to do more about letting the community know what we are doing in that arena.

For mobility infrastructure, I hope people stay tuned,

because right after this we're going to be talking about Jefferson Avenue.

And so I know it's of major concern to Redwood City that we improve the mobility of our community,

and I think we've really been working hard on that.

So, again, we'll see what happens in two years, how people feel about these same topics.

But I really felt this was very, very helpful.

And come budget time, it really will help us make intelligent decisions about how to use our money.

So thank you very much, Jason and Jennifer.

Thank you both.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Council Member Howard.

Who'd like to go next?

We'll go to Council Member Padilla.

Thanks, Jennifer and Jason.

I appreciate this.

I love community outreach and I love surveys.

I love developing them.

I like understanding them.

I like seeing what kind of standard.

I appreciate the time and effort that went into this.

And I appreciate Council Member Chu bringing our attention to page 147.

I think when we're developing surveys and we're bringing up the question of who takes surveys, it's very important when we discuss what questions we ask.

So I think a very important question we asked was, I think we said something was shared that 64% of the survey respondents feel comfortable with police.

And I think that's wonderful and that makes us feel great.

And I love that.

I want everyone to feel safe with our police.

I know that I do, and I want that to be a sentiment that we all feel.

But then I go and I look at page 147.

And I go and I say, okay, let me go look at age first.

55 and over is the largest chunk.

Okay.

And then I look at the areas where we live to see who filled it out.

And then I look at the genders.

And I get a good idea, as Council Member Chu mentioned, of who completed this survey.

So I want us to also imagine not only do we want to think about who's taking the survey,

but it's who do we need to engage who isn't taking the survey.

So I just want to make sure that we think about that as well,

because there's the information that surveys tell us,

and then there's what's in between.

So that also makes me want to go to page 144.

I had a few questions about reporting results and a few comments.

Under reporting results, it says,

on many of the questions in the survey, respondents may answer, don't know.

The proportion of respondents giving a don't know response is shown in the full set of responses included in the complete data section.

However, these responses have been removed from the analysis presented in the main body of the report.

Therefore, the tables and graphs display the responses from respondents who had an opinion about a specific item.

So it's the page number.

So if you wanted to reference it.

But there is no page 140.

In the PAC.

In the packet, our packet.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

Sorry, I'll continue.

My only point is when we're dealing with this information,

if we're going to ask, give someone an option

and allow them to say, I don't know,

it's very, them not knowing or having an opinion

is actually having an opinion.

So I actually don't want to not see that information.

I want, even though it's part of the data set,

I think it's very valuable to include it in the presentation because then we can zero in on a

select group of people who are showing that they're not engaged or they don't have an opinion. And I

think that's valuable information if we're going to be doing this. But other than that, I think this

is fantastic work. I too was really impressed and encouraged by the engagement of the community,

people attending meetings, watching meetings, volunteering. I think it's a wonderful thing

that our community is coming together and participating,

but I just want us to make sure we're getting all the information we can

and engaging with everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Padilla.

I'd like to go next.

Not seeing anybody.

Oh, perfect.

We'll go to Council Member Sturkin and then Vice Mayor Akin.

Thank you Mayor. Thank you Deputy City Manager Yamagoma and Mr. Neumeier. I really appreciate your hard work on this.

And so I have a few questions first. Excuse me. Beginning with my connection cut out briefly when you said what happened to the 290 online survey responses.

Can you just restate what was done with that please?

Yes. So there's two samples in the survey. The mail-based sample could have responded

online or completed the paper packet and sent it back in. For the last about five to six

weeks, I believe, of the data collection period, we also opened it to the whole community.

That data set is fully available and comparable online in the online report. But the survey

or I should say the report and the presentation that we went through this evening was based

on the probabilistic randomly selected sample, the mail-based sample, ultimately. But we do have

some additional response from those who are more engaged. We're likely to see your link or your

activity. That's also available online as well. Oh, thank you. I would have liked to see those

results here tonight as well, though I do understand the reasoning behind why you kept

it separate. So to make sure that it was a weighted and geographically reflective sample.

that we are receiving results from. But thank you. And my second question,

it's interesting that we ask a question about safety during the daytime, but what about during

the nighttime? Is there ever consideration of a question like that? In the past, we have asked

in the evening. One of the difficulties in a question like that, it's known as,

as a potential bias known as a leading question

with interconnected responses,

is I think the technical term for it.

But what we've done is we did a lot of analysis

on that question because we used to ask

both during the day and at night.

And we were consistently seeing,

regardless of demographic,

regardless of geographic location of the city,

about five to eight points lower on that response,

regardless of where the individual was located

or where the city was located, I should say.

It's certainly something we can add as a custom question. Some communities do include it, but it is one we took out just in terms of space and to ensure that we weren't asking a question that had some potential leading indicator bias because one follows the next.

sure yeah that makes sense uh though i it would be interesting to have that data going forward

uh so as to know if we need to you know put more money into street lighting or other kind

of improvements that make people feel safe at night right yes thank you and then um

the response rate a question about that so 280 out of 3 000 like about 9.3

percent response rate. Is that typical? Our typical response rate in 2025, or I shouldn't

say typical, our average response rate in 2025 for all national community service was closer to 12%.

In California, it was a little bit lower, I believe. I can get you the exact numbers for

California if you'd like them. Ultimately, the response rate is less important in the math than

the number of responses total, but we still want to utilize that as an efficiency measure.

And I do think there are some additional outreach options for us that Jennifer and the team here can

consider moving forward, things like potentially SMS or texting pre-notifications for those who we

have it for. I think we can continue to use the outreach kit like we did this time, but

that's a new component that we're folding into our standard national community survey. So I think

it's something we should consider next time here too i definitely agree um a lot of people they

just they toss mailers right that's just the reality most people get junk mail um so adding

that component that reaches people directly um would be really helpful thank you for suggesting

that and then um so there's no opportunity really to provide narrative responses you know additional

context in response to a question with this survey, right? So I have seen it done with other

surveys like the, you know, Samtuck County Pride Center's LGBTQ plus COVID impact study,

where you could write a response in addition to the question. And then staff compiled in a

supplemental section, additional comments shared by respondents and group them by the

area. So housing, income, employment, like we see in this survey. So it would be great to see some

narrative responses just to add that context and color to the data to bring it to life, really.

Granted, not everybody's going to do that. And I understand that.

and it would have to be disaggregated, of course, as well, so that there's no identifying features.

It's not connected to any one person.

But is that something you have done in the past or with other surveys?

It is, and there's really two options.

Some people will utilize the space for their custom questions to add some open-ended questions.

And as you said, as part of our standard reporting, what we do is we go through each one of them by hand,

And we create general categories and then kind of alphabetize, get them into those groups, do percentages, kind of just some summary statistics, ultimately, on what they were and give you the verbatim responses to then dig deeper.

So that's one option.

The other option is as you're, you know, contract with Polko, you don't just have access to the National Community Survey.

You have access to our engagement suite of tools in between the major assessments.

So what a lot of other communities will do is they'll say, we set the baseline with the NCS. Now I want to dig deeper into mobility. And let's ask a very specific pulse survey to, you know, three or four questions with open-ended opportunities. And let's push that out as far as we can, get as many responses as we can.

you know, it's not going to have the scientific rigor of an NCS, but it could have hundreds and

hundreds of responses in an area where the NCS pointed you to go, right? The scientific survey

pointed you potentially toward mobility, and then we follow up with those efforts. So Jennifer and

her team and my team here will meet in a couple of weeks to look at those other tools, and we'd be

happy to, you know, discuss it with you all, what areas might we want to dig deeper where we can

continue to use those tools. We have some really cool simulation prioritization tools that we can

we can show you and you get a lot more information than a standardized paper survey like the MCS.

Thank you. It's great to know about those options. I'm definitely open to it, although at least in

the interim, the verbatim responses I think are really key, especially since with the alternative

you mentioned that might contribute to survey fatigue, right? If we, you know, do another

kind of micro poll, it depends on when, I suppose. So that's just a concern that comes to mind.

Agreed.

Thank you. And then another question, I think final question is with that on page seven figure of positive ratings for the availability of affordable quality housing, you know, being at 16%, does that in the gap analysis chart on page eight, and this is of the attachment.

so the numbers are different than Councilmember Ferdiah mentioned.

Would that fall under the economy or community design bar?

That is the community design.

Community design and housing is its long-term full name, I guess.

And some of the affordability measures do fall under economy.

Some actually fall under health and wellness as well

because there's the availability of affordable quality health care as well.

And one availability, excuse me, affordability measure falls under education, arts and culture.

That's the availability of affordable quality preschool or child care.

Okay, so this bullet point contributes to that overall importance, you know, rate of 77%, right?

So I'm hearing that affordable quality housing, among many other things, is, you know, is important to 77% of respondents.

exactly yes it's one of the sub questions underneath uh community design you have it exactly right

okay thank you so it confirms our council priorities um and maybe lets us know that we

need to do more uh but anyway last three things here um with the bullet point on uh police sheriff

services rating being down 5% from 71 to 66%. I would love to see us break out police versus

sheriff or eliminate the sheriff component in a future survey just so that we get a direct

response to how Redwood City Police is doing that is not maybe muddled by what may be going on

around us, what occurred in the community for the past year with the sheriff's office, right?

so um you know so just going forward if we can remove reference to sheriff and future surveys

to make sure that it clearly reflects rabbit city police services only that'd be great

noted thank you and then finally just want to support councilmember g's comment about looking

backwards at trends at previous surveys um before polko as well um and support councilmember

Padilla's comment about including folks who

maybe responded, I don't know,

and just broadening

our pool of

data there.

But overall, fantastic job.

Great information.

And appreciate your time

and being here tonight.

And Deputy City Manager

as well. Thank you so much.

I'm back to you.

Thank you.

Council Member Sturkin. We'll pass things over to

the Vice Mayor.

so thank you

I just want to say wow

I mean these survey results

overall

you know

huge increase in

transparency

above the

peers inclusivity

huge increase above the peers

our community

is really happy with our events

really happy with our downtown

really happy with our transportation

so many people in our staff worked so many hours to go above and beyond we see it and it's so

gratifying to see that the community sees it and i i could single out so many people but then i'll

forget somebody uh but but this is really wonderful on in so many different categories and uh

I've always known we have an amazing staff,

and this would be Exhibit A.

So, of course, we can always do better.

Of course, we will do better.

But I think we can be on a landing pad right now

of just saying, this is really wonderful.

And so I want to thank staff.

Mr. Sturkin, that was a really good question

that you asked about the response rate.

and that it's lower than the national average,

that only 7.2% and the average is 9 or 12.

So I would ask staff when you have the brief with the consultant

that you try to unpack that a little bit.

I think money would be well spent.

I don't know what the methods are.

I wouldn't pretend to know.

But I do think money would be well spent.

and number one, trying to understand why it was a lower response rate

than the national and state average,

and number two, what would be the cheapest,

the least expensive and most efficient ways to increase the response rate.

So thank you for asking that question, Mr. Sturkin.

Regarding narrative, requesting narrative answers,

i'm guessing that's expensive and you know when i look at some of these survey results

it makes sense like um cleanliness of streets we we because we have parking problems we we don't

have street sweepers you know along the streets so it kind of makes sense that that wasn't a

stellar. So I don't know that narrative answers would help. And I also think like we know our

community really well. So I'm not, maybe it's worth spending more extra money to get narrative

question answers. I don't know. I just asked the question. Um,

so, and, and again, the two, what I saw, the two, two areas, not the only two, but two that's,

stood out to me is that

street cleaning and sidewalks

that we could do work there.

And then,

let's see.

Oh, one thing that I just thought was amazing

in this survey,

it doesn't really speak to Redwood City per se,

but

so one of the

answers was participates in meetings or

looks on television at council meetings or participates.

And it increased 11% in one year.

So I thought that was great. You know, Redwood City is participating more,

which it is. But then I saw that that

same increase is happening nationally and is happening

statewide. And I think that's positive.

that citizens here in our country are participating more in the democracy at the local level.

That's a positive thing.

So I was happy to see that.

And then I did just want to...

So you don't do this survey twice a year, right, Mr. Neumeier?

You just do it once a year, right?

we just do this once a year with you all yes okay i i thought that but then i thought i thought i

misheard but and i'm sorry just to clarify we do it every other year usually so um just to clarify

the results comparison in the reports at references 2024 it's because we had the tail end of it in

the first week of january but the bulk of the survey the last time was in 2023 so it is often

and has consistently over the last 10-plus years or more

been in the odd years of every other year.

Okay. Thank you.

Then I'm glad I asked.

Okay.

And I do think this survey, and I think my colleagues agree,

it's really good for budget purposes

to see what do our citizens think of the services we're providing.

So I'm really glad that we do this surveying

and I do like comparing apples to apples,

and this is a really in-depth report,

so keep up the good work.

And I don't know about statistics,

and I wouldn't pretend to.

Others know way more.

But what Ms. Padilla said about that it's important

when someone says they don't know or they just don't answer,

that is an answer.

So that's an astute observation,

and any way that we can quantify that,

does that mean our residents are not engaged

or didn't understand the...

Anyway, if you can sparse that out

or suss that out a little more.

I just wanted to go to the facets of livability page,

which is page 8.

So I won't spend too much time on this,

but I did, I just thought it was so interesting.

so safety was number one economy was number two and uh no and and parks and recreation was number

three i'm getting that wrong yeah parks and recreation was number three is that yeah and um

so i just think that's really interesting that parks and recreation was one of the top three

both things that people think is important

and that they ranked highly.

That Parks and Recreation was one of the top three.

That's just awesome.

And then tied for fourth was transportation

and open space, no, natural environment

was tied for fourth.

So here's, it's a statistical question.

If, is it, is the, so natural environment is kind of similar to parks and recreation.

They're both kind of about not being in your house and kind of being in nature.

So the fact that two that are similar, both ranked really high, the two of them together,

if you rated them together, does that mean they'd be first?

What is the statistical significance of that, if that makes any sense?

Yeah, I think I understand it.

So ultimately, Parks and Recreation had a 70% quality rating,

excellent or good, current quality, I should say.

Natural Environment was at 65% excellent or good,

both in line with national benchmarks.

if you were to do you mean if we had asked that question as a how would you rate the current

quality of parks and recreation and natural environment my guess is not that they'd be

number one my guess is they would probably fall in the middle of 65 to 70 percent

sure so you're talking about how people uh rated it in terms of quality the left side

but on the right side in terms of how they rate it in importance yes so 82 and 81 yes so if if

if you ask the question how do you rate in importance parks and recreation and natural

environment as one would it rank higher than it separated out i think likely it would rank

between those two, right?

The people who rated the parks and recreation

a little bit higher may still rate it that way.

People who rated the natural environment,

but also we're splitting hairs a little bit

because it's only a 1% point difference, right?

So it's really plus or minus five points around that

is our margin of error.

So we want to be careful in saying

that there's a difference between the two,

but no, I think they would have fallen

in a similar location to answer your question.

Fair enough, Mr. Neumeier, and I see your point, and thank you.

So I'll just finish up by saying there's so much to take away from all this data,

and I'm guessing staff and all of us will be referring to it for a long time,

and it's a hugely wonderful tool.

so

three things that stood out

for me well I already mentioned

that street cleaning and sidewalks

need improvement and

I just found it

really interesting that

parks and recreation and natural

environment

that our community felt

those were among the

most important

ranked third and fourth

in terms of importance

That surprised me.

Safety makes sense.

Economy makes sense.

Transportation makes sense.

But that parks and recreation and natural environment would rank so high surprised me.

And I think we can think about that a little bit.

Wonderful report.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

We'll go to Council Member Padilla.

I actually was not surprised that our parks and recreation was so high.

I just want to put it out there.

We have amazing parks and activities.

It's one of our huge draws to our communities.

And maybe also people with families.

We want to be outside.

We want to take our kids outside and families.

I actually have the complete opposite.

I was not surprised at all to see how fabulous we scored.

Thank you, Council Member Padilla.

Great.

Anybody else?

Not seeing any I will Jennifer add my thanks Jason. Thank you so much for this this great body of work

Like so many of my colleagues have mentioned. I think there's there's so much to celebrate in the data here

You know outreach transparency seeing those numbers is incredible

I think

valuing and respecting residents from all backgrounds was at 78% which in these times is his music to my ears I

I, and also I just, you know, recognize the survey is helping shape the budget, right?

And so, like my colleagues, I have questions around, you know, the response rates.

But first, I was curious, you know, in the future, it would be amazing to get this data

sort of drilled down to geographic neighborhoods or even districts, right?

I do think that if we sent the survey out by district, we would get seven different types of responses, right, about what the top three priorities are in each neighborhood or in each district.

So moving forward, I think that would be really valuable for us to keep in our back pocket and realize where the trends are and where we could be doing more investment or more programming.

I think this would be another way of finding those data points.

But separate from that, Jason, I was really grateful that I saw Hispanic, Latino, Spanish origin included in the survey.

And I was wondering, were Spanish-speaking ability included in the survey too?

Jennifer, maybe I'll give that one to you in terms of outreach and reach of the survey.

The survey was available in Spanish.

I will say that I think to Jason's point, as we hear all of the council comments tonight,

I will say that I think there is room for improvement in making sure that we're reaching our Spanish-speaking community members.

And so I have noted that.

And we can make sure to include more robust outreach.

I will say that for the statistically valid component of it,

that is where we did do an extension of time just so that we could try to increase the response rate

um it came in a little bit better but that is another note that for sure we've taken back not

only just holistically for a higher response rate but to those that are our spanish-speaking

members or the harder to reach members of our community well noted great thank you so much

jennifer and i was happy to see so many you know so much response from folks who identified that

way and I in my head imagine these are the the younger members of the household who are filling

out the survey data right so definitely a whole other population that we could be reaching out to

but you know that brings me to just the next point around the the tools rights to dig deeper

into the other areas where we're seeing lots of lots of either concern or interest from community

members in in safety and mobility I think that makes a lot of sense and where we can I think

also we should explore incentives, right? I think that's really common in the non-profit world to say

if you respond to the survey, you're either raffled off to get a gift card or you will get

a $5, $15, whatever it is, you know, incentive to just complete that survey and for their time,

I think we might see a bigger response rate if we got a little more creative

with how we encourage people to take advantage of this survey.

But aside from that, again, I think this is really incredible work.

It's amazing to get a snapshot of what our community is thinking, too.

And, you know, in areas where we're doing good,

let's keep our foot on the pedal,

and let's keep building on what already our community knows

and feels is happening here at City Hall.

So I'll leave it there.

but yeah Jason, Jennifer, thank you so much.

And I'll just put in a plug for visiting redwoodcity.org slash community survey.

You can find all the results in an interactive dashboard

and we'll be promoting this through the community so they can do that as well

but I couldn't resist the opportunity to share that.

Of course.

Thank you.

Thank you Jennifer.

And with that, thank you colleagues for the discussion.

It's very much appreciated.

These are the results of the 2025 Community Satisfaction Survey, and no further action is needed on this item.

So we will move on to item 11B, the Jefferson Avenue Traffic Safety Improvement Project.

We have Engineering and Transportation Director Tanisha Werner, who will introduce the item,

and Principal Planner Malahat Orang, who will give us the presentation.

We also have engineering staff Peter Belgado and consultants Allison Mills and Andrew Kotelik from Tool Design who are joining us online to answer any questions.

So thank you, everybody.

All right.

Thank you very much.

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

My name is Tanisha Werner.

I'm the director of Engineering and Transportation, and tonight I'll be introducing the Jefferson Avenue Traffic Safety Improvement Project.

With me tonight, I have staff from Engineering and Transportation, Malaha O'Rang and Peter Delgado, and staff from our fire department.

We have Fire Chief Carter, Battalion Chief Chan, and Fire Marshal Chung.

We also have two of our consultants from Tool Design, Allison Mills and Andrew Kotalik.

Next slide, please.

This is an outline of what we'll be discussing tonight.

We'll give you a background of the Jefferson Avenue project.

We will go over our project goal.

Then we'll move into our design development and a summary of all of our outreach activities.

There is a recommended staff improvement alternative.

And then finally, we will end with next steps and our timeline.

As you're listening to the presentation, we ask that council consider these two questions.

Do you have any questions about the project planning and community outreach process?

And do you have any questions about the staff recommended improvement alternative?

Transportation and traffic safety have been longstanding city council strategic priorities.

When staff brought the Vision Zero report to council in September of 2025, we shared a very sobering statistic with the council.

Out of 104 California cities of the same population size, our city ranks third worst in traffic safety concerns.

This statistic is furthered by looking at Redwood City local data.

Since 2017, there have been 101 collisions reported on Jefferson Avenue between Farm Hill and El Camino.

Of those collisions, 15 of those involved pedestrians and four involved bicyclists.

Some of the serious traffic safety concerns on Jefferson have really led it to be identified as part of the high injury network in the countywide local roadway safety plan.

These statistics really underscore the reason that we need strong traffic safety projects on Jefferson Avenue.

And tonight we are going to be presenting our Jefferson Avenue traffic safety project.

I'm going to pass the presentation over to our principal transportation planner, Malaha O'Ring, for the remainder of the presentation.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Can you go to the next slide? Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Malahat Orang.

I'm Principal Transportation Planner in Revo City Engineering.

And I am one of the staff working on the Jefferson Avenue Traffic Safety Improvement Project.

In the next few slides, I'm going to give you a background and some data about Jefferson Avenue.

So the project safety improvement was identified as a community priority project when in 2018

we did our citywide transportation plan, Revo City, moves.

Since then, City did some safety improvements at some spots on the corridor, including adding

a full traffic signal at the Cleveland intersection and a hog signal at Clinton in year 2021.

However, the corridor overall needs more safety improvements.

With the upcoming pavement project that is due on Jefferson Avenue,

the city decided to add pedestrian safety to the scope of the project.

Next slide, please.

Just some data about Jefferson.

Jefferson is an arterial road in Rebus City.

It carries between 16,000 to 20,000 vehicles per day,

on average, 16,000 is for the west segment closer

to Alameda, and 20,000 is for the area closer

to El Camino Real, between Hudson and El Camino Real.

Jefferson is a primary emergency response route

for our fire department.

There is fire station 10 along the corridor,

so we made sure that whatever we present to the community

and as a staff recommended alternative works

for our fire department operation.

There are several intersections along the corridor

that currently do not have any crosswalks.

And there are many homes and driveways

along the corridor, especially between Hudson

and El Camino Real, and accessing and getting in and out of driveways to their homes was

one of the concerns we heard from people who live on Jefferson.

We heard from them during the outreach.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

And so with all said, the project goals is to improve safety, improve access and comfort

for pedestrians and bicyclists, manage speed, especially around crossings, and accommodate

other needs of residents, especially the ones on the corridor, get in and out easily to

their homes and other needs like garbage pickup and deliveries.

Next slide, please.

We started the project planning process last year, but this time we did some traffic, we

traffic counts, did some basic traffic analysis,

and came up with the existing conditions report.

The project, we did a walk audit for the Orion School

last March to hear from the school community

about their needs of accessing to the school's site safely.

These are some photos of our walk audit.

And then a month after that, we went to the community.

It was an in-person community meeting for the first meeting for the project.

The way we did reach out to the community and invited people to the meeting was we sent

mailers to about 2,400 addresses that are one block at two sides of the street, advertised

through neighborhood associations,

and we kept the same method of reaching out to people

throughout the project development.

Next slide please.

At the first meeting, we went to the community

with three concepts, and we asked feedback

on these three concepts.

The first concept is to basically focus more

on pedestrian crossing improvements.

keep the travel lanes the same number as they are,

two travel lanes in each direction,

and parking at both sides of the street.

The second option proposed to remove

on-the-street parking at two sides of the street,

add use that space for bike facility,

and keep two travel lanes in each direction.

And the third option that was proposed

was to keep the honest street parking at both sides,

remove one travel lane in each direction,

and use that space to add bike facilities at two sides.

Next slide, please.

Through the first round of outreach

and based on what we heard from the community,

alternative two did not get community support,

and that's the alternative that proposed

to remove honest street parking at both sides

to add bike facilities.

So we continued doing more traffic studies

and more detailed concept design on the alternative one

and two, which we renamed them to A and B.

Next slide, please.

Since April 2025, we worked more on the alternatives,

worked more on identifying which intersections

are going to have hock signals or pedestrian flashing begins.

We did more in-depth traffic operation analysis

to understand the impact of removing one lane of traffic

on some segments of the Jefferson.

We did a conceptual cost estimate for the project,

applied for a grant through

San Mateo County Transportation Authority

for the construction phase of the project.

And in October 2025, we went back to the community

with refined alternatives, with two alternatives

to the community and asked them for their feedback.

At the same time, we did presentation

on Mount Carmel Neighborhood Association.

We had a focus meeting with Orion School parents.

And we did publish a community survey

that was open about six weeks in October and November

to receive feedback from the community.

And we asked them to vote on the two design alternatives,

which I'm going to talk more about in the next few slides.

Again, the outreach we did, the mailers went out

to 2,400 addresses that are at one block

at two sides of the street.

We used neighborhood associations

to advertise the meeting and help us with the outreach.

Next slide, please.

So at the second round of outreach, as I mentioned,

we worked more to have more details for the community on the design concepts.

And we proposed two design alternatives.

Alternative A, which is shown on the screen.

Basically, again, more focused on pedestrian crossing improvements.

This alternative will have curb extension along the corridor,

pedestrian crossing improvements.

ADA care bomb improvements, and a new traffic signal at Valoto intersection, and pavement

overlay.

The two lanes of traffic will stay same throughout the project corridor, and the bike facility

will be same as what it is now, which is a shared road or class 3 bikeway.

And alternative B, we presented to the community.

This alternative includes removing one travel lane

in each direction between Farm Hill,

the west end of the project,

all the way to one block west of Hudson.

And in that segment, what we call it road diet,

we add a center turning lane, add bike lane,

keep the on-the-street parking, but one lane of travel in each direction.

This option, same as two options, alternative A will have curb extension throughout the corridor.

It will have crossing improvements and new traffic signal at Valoto intersection and pavement overlay.

I'll just give you some features of each of these alternatives so you can decide on your preferred alternative better.

Alternative A improves safety by adding horizontal deflection to a slowest speed.

And horizontal deflection means medias and pedestrian islands that you're adding along the corridor.

It maintains existing vehicle capacity, which is for travel lane throughout the project corridor.

The trade-off is there is no dedicated bike facility in this option, and there will be minor parking loss at the intersections,

which is same in both alternatives because we are implementing the new California Daylighting Law for all our current projects.

Alternative B, some of the features, it will have a class two bike lane with or without

buffer, depending on the available right of way throughout the corridor between Farm Hill

and almost Hudson, one intersection based of Hudson.

Some segments of the road when there is no interruption in the driveways, like the area

close to O'Reilly School, the bike facility will be a protected class for bikeway.

This option will propose dedicated left-turn lanes between Hudson and Farm Hill,

which help with the current queuing and left-turns at uncontrolled intersections.

and it improves safety but visually narrowing the travel lane, especially the areas that

we are doing road diet.

And again, some of the trade-offs will be minor parking loss at the intersections because

we are implementing the new California Daylighting Law.

When we did the outreach for the second round of outreach

and out of the survey, we received about 427 responses

to the survey.

About 74% of the respondents supported Alternative B.

And that was one factor that impacted our decision

to recommend Alternative B for further engineering,

design and construction.

Other factors are alternative B has more safety features.

It aligns with our Vision Zero commitment to eliminate

or reduce traffic collisions in Reboot City,

especially on Jefferson.

And the other thing that I need to note is

the cost difference between two alternatives

were very close.

So cost was not a factor in our decision-making process.

Next slide, please.

Again, some more details about alternative B.

Between Hudson, between King, I think it is Iris,

Iris and Farmhill, one travel lane will be reduced

in each direction to add bike facilities

on the center turning lane,

and protected bike facility close adjacent to the school.

At this scenario, because bike lane ends right before Hudson,

we are proposing to add bike shower signs at King and Iris

for bicyclists who want to divert

to lower stress side streets right before Hudson.

when the bike lane ends.

There will be a new traffic signal at Valoto intersection.

There are new pedestrian beacons proposed

at Ruby and Adams intersections,

and RRFPs, which is flashing crosswalks,

are proposed at Topaz, King, and St. Francis.

And in this option, having a left turn pocket

or center turning lane will help

traffic operation because currently at the uncontrolled intersections, cars who want

to turn left along Jefferson, they have to wait for a gap in the upcoming traffic and

that creates queue behind them. With this scenario, they can wait in their own dedicated

left-hand pocket and we won't have that queue. Next slide, please. This option will have,

Similar to alternative A, ADA care ramp at the intersections, pedestrian crossing improvements,

and pavement overlay throughout the project corridor.

About 10 days ago, we had a third community meeting for the project, which we advertised

and sent mailer to 2400 addresses at one block at two sides of the project corridor.

We used Facebook ads to advertise for the project.

The purpose was to give a status update to the community

about what we are recommending to City Council tonight.

About 25 people attended the virtual meeting.

The first two meetings we had for the project

were in person, and the third one was on Zoom.

And I believe all people who talked at the meeting,

they were supportive of staff recommended alternative B.

So that was a background about our planning and decision-making process and how we use

community outreach to refine the design alternatives.

In this slide, I want to show you the cost estimate.

Our current cost estimate for the project is about $8 million for Alternative B. We do

have two grants for the project.

One of them is through the San Mateo County Transportation Authority and one of them is

through MTC's Housing Incentive Pool Program that covers about $5.5 million of the project

cost.

The remaining balance will be covered with our current balances in the pavement program

and transportation impact fee program and ADA Transition Plan funds.

At this point, we consider this project fully funded.

hopefully it will stay fully funded until we start construction next year.

Next slide, please.

This is a draft of the project scheduled.

In the next few days, we will issue an RFP to hire a consultant to help us with engineering

design and construction building support.

I assume that will take about a year.

Because part of the grant is a federal grant,

we are required to have both CEQA and NEPA,

and we need to do right-of-way clearance with Caltrans.

Our time frame for that process right now

is to end by the end of 2026,

and we are getting ready for construction,

beading in early 2027,

and construction later in 2027.

And the project has a dedicated webpage

and we try to update all the project milestones

at this project webpage.

That was the end of my presentation.

So you received the summary update

on the Jefferson Avenue Traffic Safety Improvement Project

and we came up with the staff recommended alternative B

for the City Council to consider for final engineering design and construction.

And then for the slides, this is the last slide of our presentation.

Do you have any question about the project planning and community outreach process?

And do you have any question about the staff recommended improvement alternative B?

Thank you.

Thank you so much for this great presentation

and all the work leading up to this.

I know this has been many months in the making, so thank you.

And before we bring it back to Council,

we'll make sure to open it up for public comments,

and I'll pass things over to the City Clerk.

Thank you, Mayor.

We have two speaker cards so far and two raised hands on Zoom,

so three raised hands.

Give it another second, and then we will close the speakers list.

Okay, we have five total speakers this evening on this item.

We'll have two minutes for each speaker.

We'll call our in-person speakers first, Ulysses Manciron, who will be followed by Carvin de Sanayake.

Good evening, everyone.

So thank you for the great presentation.

I just wanted to show up today to show up my strong support for the Alternative B.

I live on Jefferson, and I bike to Caldrain.

I cross the street with my one-year-old daughter.

And when I take her to the daycare or to the amazing Rainmorton Park,

sometimes I have to cross the lane, and it's kind of challenging to do so and to do it safely.

I've not been involved in the accident so far, but there have been many close calls where when I cross the lane,

the first car would stop, but not the second one.

and so they would either pass quickly or just stop at their last second in the middle of the intersection.

And yeah, so having a single lane would prevent also people from passing between cars and trying to go fast.

A single person that drives randomly would prevent other people to go faster than the speed limit.

And lastly, having the turning lane would be helpful because sometimes people stop on the left lane

and then people would have to quickly go on to the right.

that is also a cause for more accidents.

So, yeah, that's it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ulysses.

Our next speaker is Carvin Dasanayake.

Thank you.

Hello, City Council.

My name is Carvin Dasanayake.

I'm a resident of Redwood City

and a resident of District 2.

I attended one of the community feedback events

for this project,

and I was absolutely shocked

at how many people had poignant emotional stories

about loss and fear regarding Jefferson Avenue currently.

Personally, I always want bike facilities,

but there were people at this meeting

sharing emotional stories about near misses and lost pets,

and they just want to cross the street

without fearing for their lives.

So this project is long overdue,

not only for the community, but for Redwood City.

I want to encourage the city council

to go for Alternative B.

the staff recommendation.

As someone who has attempted to ride Jefferson Avenue

on a bike from downtown Redwood City,

this project will make an incredible difference

in not only bike safety, but also pedestrian safety.

Whether you or a high school student or a young family

are on a bike or walking,

it'll be much safer to go to school,

go to Red Moorland Park, go to a library

for people of all ages and mobility levels.

I know I and many others will be using it heavily once it's implemented.

That being said, almost all except for a block of the bike facilities in this project are class 2 bike lanes at best, meaning paint only without physical barriers for separation.

I do encourage the city council to see if it's possible to put more physically protective facilities there,

such as with more flex posts, a low concrete barrier, or even a low mountable barrier to still allow for driveway access.

Considering that there have been so many traffic deaths recently in San Mateo County,

like on Holly Street, Overpass, and San Carlos, or even a couple days ago in San Mateo,

where a Redwood City resident was sadly lost or alive.

crossing a street in broad daylight.

It's important for the city, as our city priorities show,

to make sure this can never happen in Redwood City.

Thank you.

Thank you, Carvin.

We will turn now to our Zoom speakers.

When you're prompted to unmute yourself,

you may begin your public comment.

You'll have two minutes to speak.

We'll start with Matt, who will be followed by Dylan Finch.

Hello. Thanks for taking my comment.

My name's Matt. I live on Jefferson Avenue and I have a two-year-old and we try to cross the street to go to Red Morton Park.

And right now, every time we cross, it feels like you're going to die.

And I want to thank Malahat and the engineering team.

They've been amazing and persistent in getting community feedback.

And this plan B is excellent.

Safety is a priority for both pedestrians, cyclists and drivers in this plan.

and I've witnessed accidents in the past couple months here

in the exact same situation that Ulysses described.

I saw an accident just like that where someone was crossing the street.

One person in a car stops and then they got rear-ended

and it's scary trying to cross the street to go to the park here.

So plan B is amazing.

I hope you guys will take the recommendation

and go forward with it as soon as possible.

And I really appreciate the consideration for this, specifically at St. Francis, the rectangular rapid flashing beacons at St. Francis.

That's where we like to cross the street, although the traffic signal at Voloda will be a really good alternative with this project.

So really excited about that.

And yeah, I think the engineering team is amazing.

The proposal is really good.

And, you know, I hope you move forward with it as soon as possible.

And thank you so much.

Thank you, Matt.

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

Hello, Council.

I'm just speaking for myself today.

But first, I wanted to say that I wanted to thank staff for the robust and informative community outreach.

I attended the meetings, and they were both informative.

And it really felt like the staff cared what the community members had to say.

And, you know, we're writing it down and incorporating it into the design.

And next, I wanted to voice my strong support for the staff recommended alternative B.

Overall, I think this is an improvement for pedestrians and bikes using Jefferson with only a modest impact on vehicle traffic.

I like the addition of the dedicated left turn lanes to get the left turning cars out of the through travel lanes.

I think that would that would help improve the traffic operations for vehicles.

And I also I really like the curb bulb outs and the pedestrian refuge islands that are included in the design.

I would prefer protected intersection designs similar to the one that was recently installed at Maple and El Camino to further reduce the turning radii and the crossing distances for pedestrians.

But I still think this is a major improvement.

Looking at the designs, it also seems like the curbs do not bulb out for the crossings of side streets.

For example, at the intersection with, for its intersection with Jefferson, Quartz Street is still the width of two car lanes plus two parking lanes.

The bulb outs could reduce this to just two lanes at the intersection, removing that parking space where the parking is already prohibited near the intersection.

This would just make it shorten the crossing distance for those side streets and make it a little safer.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dylan.

And our final speaker is Cameron Matthews.

Thank you, Mayor and Council members.

I submitted an email as well, but I wasn't sure I would be able to attend.

So here I am.

And I support the recommendation for Alternative B as well.

My family has lived one block off of Jefferson since 2013, both on Jetter and King Streets.

I serve as the chair of the Mount Carmel Neighborhood Association and the co-chair of the Orion Alternative School.

PTO Traffic and Safety Committee, both of which have Jefferson as a boarder. I've been involved

in a lot of these community meetings. I'm also a volunteer youth sports coach and regularly use

school and park facilities nearby. And I echo all the sentiments that have been shared here

about support for the project. I wanted to add one other thing, which is that in my role as

Neighborhood Association Chair, I've also heard concerns about traffic diverting off of Jefferson

into neighborhood streets, and also that the current version of Alternative B doesn't go far

enough to support safe biking, as I think some other speakers have said. So I would ask the city

to continue monitoring and looking at mitigation of potential traffic diversion into the neighborhood

streets and also urge the city to keep pursuing a complete connected bike network beyond this

segment on other parallel streets as well. So while imperfect, I believe Alternative B can't

come soon enough. Thank you. Thank you, Cameron. And that wraps up public comment, Mayor.

Thank you to everybody who provided public comments tonight. It is greatly appreciated.

We will bring it back to the council and invite my colleagues to share any thoughts,

comments, questions. Who would like to get us started?

Thank you.

Council Member Chu.

Sorry.

Just a few questions.

One is, do we have a sense of what percent of bike crashes or injury bike crashes or doorings in Redwood City?

Doorings?

I don't have that information right now, but I can provide it to you.

Okay, great.

And then can you help me understand why, given that the more frequent entrance and exit of a car is from the driver's side, we didn't go with, I saw on option three at the beginning, parking protected bike lane.

Is there a reason we didn't select parking protected bike lane since?

It was originally it was proposed to have delineators, but there are only a few segments

that there is no interruption.

So wherever there is a longer distance that there is no interruption in the driveways,

we will be able to add the delineators to make it a class four bikeway.

and the reason it is not recommended for most of the corridor is just interruption of the driveways.

So because every plot has a driveway, you would effectively have to remove all the parking

or could you still have, I mean, because what's the distance between, you could have two,

how many parking spots could you have between each driveway?

They're what, 20 feet long?

The parking spaces, I believe they are 20 feet long, but it varies, honestly.

I'm not sure if I completely understood your question.

I think what I'm trying to get at is I'm trying to understand the reason.

I understand it's not recommended.

I'm trying to understand the reason it's not recommended.

The class 4 is not recommended.

Why is the parking protected bike lane not recommended?

I believe, Alison, do you remember that we had that conversation at the second community meeting?

I'm asking our designer because I remember we did.

Yes, can everyone hear me?

Yes, yes.

We did look at that one too.

Right.

So Malahat was getting at it with the fact that the driveways are so frequently spaced that based on how a protected bike lane, a parking protected bike lane is laid out, there would be few places that you could even have those floating parking spaces.

and so that's why we moved away from that particular design okay thank you that's very

helpful so i think what i was trying to get at is this a geometry problem where because these spots

are 20 feet long you really would effectively have to remove the parking completely because

you have to have you know visibility at each driveway or is it a we don't want to lose parking

issue. And the other reason, as I remember, at the second community meeting, we did talk about

that, and one concern people had is if I park, if we have that option and I park in front of my home,

it will be very difficult for us to unload and unload to our car because they have to cross the

bike lane to get to their homes.

So that was another reason.

That's what we heard from the community.

But we did talk about that.

But we dropped that idea.

Okay. Thank you.

That's very helpful.

And then I wondered,

and I tried to zoom in on it

when you were showing.

Overall, I too very strongly

prefer option B.

Is there a buffer

between the dooring zone

and where the bicycle lane is?

or are they right up against those doors?

There are some areas that we could add buffer.

It really depends on the available space we have,

and it varies throughout the corridor.

Okay.

We have more space where it is closer to Alameda.

Okay.

And then what's the width of the bike lane for most of the corridor,

and does it include the gutter?

It does not include the gutter.

I think the details, the minimum, I believe I'm looking at our TULA staff, the minimum is five or six feet.

Andrew, sorry, there's a loss of detail in the design.

Andrew, if you can look at the design, I believe it is at least five or six feet.

Okay, that's nice.

That's a nice, comfortable bike lane.

And so I think people will be able to sort of move away from the doors and back and forth safely.

If you get too narrow of a bike lane right up against the doors, people have a harder time protecting themselves.

So thank you for answering all my questions.

Overall, I am very excited about this change.

And I think it's so gratifying to see so much engagement from the community and that, you know, they are also excited about the change.

I think it really speaks to the way you guys have engaged the community, have really listened and responded and prioritized safety.

And as people from the community were sharing, you know, it's a fact of American life that almost nobody in this country is more than one or two degrees away from a serious injury or a road death or serious injury.

This is something that affects every single one of us.

We can't leave our homes.

You know, there's no alternative transportation system.

We have to work within the roads we have.

And so your work is incredibly appreciated.

I will be supporting Alternative B.

I would also encourage us to put cement and really strong barriers anywhere we can.

I also, you know, and again, I was trying to zoom up in on it in the images.

Any place we can put pedestrian islands.

So the more complexity you add and the more width you add to a crossing, the more difficult it is to get across.

And so every place we have an opportunity to add those islands, that would be great as well.

I saw quite a few.

It looks like most of the crosswalks had them.

Did I see that correctly?

I believe at the major intersections we add those.

But what you see is concept when we get to the detail engineering design is where we figure out more about the design.

We have to look at the available right away, grading and all of that to figure out the size of the curb extensions and medias and all of those.

Great.

And then a community member, I believe it was Mr. Finch, also mentioned the side streets that we've still got side streets that are four lanes wide.

And so when people are coming around a corner fast, that increases the force of the impact if there's a pedestrian.

So also narrowing those side streets, I'd be very supportive of that as well.

Overall, just terrific work.

I didn't have a lot of other comments just because I feel like you guys were very, very thoughtful and did a really terrific job.

So thank you for all your work on this, and I look forward to seeing it.

Oh, sorry, one more thing.

Sorry, I did forget one thing.

So we had a few people write in saying, you know,

basically it's the bridge that goes 80% over the river problem,

but, you know, having it go all the way from the top of the hill down to El Camino.

Can you remind me where this design stops?

How many blocks from El Camino?

It stops right before El Camino Real.

Yeah.

So the last change we propose to make is crossing improvements on Adams,

and we are making some modification to the current median right at El Camino Real,

but we will stop our project right before the crosswalk on El Camino.

How far?

Just a few feet.

Oh, okay.

Not a few blocks.

No, no, it's not.

It goes all the way almost close to El Camino Real, but usually for the corridors that get

all the way to El Camino, we stop right before El Camino, so we don't have to deal with encouragement

permit from CalTrance.

Okay.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Terrific work.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Chu.

We'll go to Council Member Howard.

Thank you.

Again, I want to say this has really been quite a very, very good abundance of information.

And from what I can read and what I've heard, the people feel like they were really heard.

I went to one meeting, and it was actually a morning meeting, and I was wondering how many people are going to show up, even though it's an important topic.

I was shocked.

I was shocked how many people showed up and really wanted to engage in this topic of safety,

getting their kids to and from school as well as themselves to the parks and other areas.

So I really believe you hit a home run with that.

I'm hoping we can follow up after it's all installed.

Maybe we follow up in six to eight months.

And with the same people, I'm sure you have gathered signatures or emails.

and let them know and hear from them.

What are your thoughts?

Did we do it right?

Is there something missing?

Help us with that.

I just think that would be really, really a good idea to follow up and make sure.

Because then again, people feel heard.

Gee, they said they were going to do it, but did they do it?

And then when you tell them it's done and we want to hear from you in this amount of time

to see what you think, please use it.

I think that will be useful.

Sure.

I did have a question, a couple of questions.

Several people brought up making the bikeways safer,

so I would agree with Council Member Chu

that whatever you can do,

if there's room to do a safety barrier of some kind,

I would say you have our permission probably to do that

because that may save someone's life.

So I think with the hawk and the rapid flashing beacons,

I think we need more education.

I ride that street all the time,

and I can't tell you how many people go through because they don't understand.

What is it blinking about?

Oh, it stopped blinking.

What does that mean?

I'm shocked because I just take the fact that I have road knowledge

and I've driven for so many years that I know these things.

But I see people going through and looking like, oh, what did I just do?

and I'm afraid somebody will get hurt even with our best intentions.

So is there something we could do to educate the public,

whether it's before a council meeting, running on the screen,

or getting information out in our e-newsletters,

letting people know, give them a basic 101 on traffic safety

and what do the lights mean, what do the green lines mean.

And I've had people ask me, I don't understand the green stripes.

Well, it's not for you.

You try to...

But I just think we could be more helpful in explaining

and getting that education out,

maybe before the project even gets started,

so we can get people educated on how to do it right.

We do have an educational video on the Hawk Signal,

and we do have educational brochures

for the time we installed the Clinton one in 2021.

on. We develop those. Maybe I work with our communication staff to refresh and post those

on our social media channels. We do have all of those already.

That would be great. Sure. That would be great. I just, the more education the better. It's one

thing to do these things, but if people don't understand how to use it properly, that's going

to be a real problem. Yes. So let's see if we can do it. And like I said before, we even

complete the project, people might feel a lot more confident going through and taking Jefferson.

Is there anything being planned for going west to east on Jefferson to El Camino, the queue,

going as you want to go north on El Camino Real?

That queue can go all the way down to Clinton, past Clinton sometimes,

and you have people making very dangerous maneuvers trying to get around those cars

because they want to get to the front of the line to just cross over El Camino.

So I was wondering, is there any plan to lessen that queue, shorten that queue?

Yes.

We listened to your comment through the last community outreach,

And our proposal right now is to change that median right before El Camino to add capacity to that left turn pocket right after Adams.

So hopefully helps with that long queue.

Well, that's a start.

That's great.

I'm glad to hear that because it's becoming increasingly dangerous.

And I even see pedestrians trying to scoot through, and somebody will get hurt because it's not safe to do those things.

But thank you.

I'm glad you're looking into that.

And let me see my last one.

Oh, the Sharrows on Iris Street and designating it a Class 3 bikeway.

is there a plan or has it already begun to educate people who live along iris street

and i'm guessing it's going to go from jefferson all the way to whipple

more than likely and i know on iris there's already a speeding problem and people have

been complaining and asking for more traffic safety calming on iris street so i i'm a little

concerned about making it a bike thoroughfare because it is a narrow street. Everyone parks on

the street. So there's little visibility. And so could you, is there any thought being given on how

to handle that transition? You mean adding more like traffic speed management on top of the

shadow signs? That's probably not the right question now because I think you need a petition

from the people in order to get things done,

which I plan to talk to them and let them do that.

But this sounds like it's going to go into effect by 2027.

Yes.

So I'm wondering if there's an opportunity here

to work with the Irish Street neighbors

to let them be aware that this is going to happen,

bring them on board about it,

and then maybe listen to the concerns about

how can we make this a safe bike thoroughfare

because it is a narrow street compared to some other streets that people use with their bikes.

So I just thought it might be an opportunity to get them engaged.

Yeah, sure.

People who we did outreach to Mount Carmel Neighborhood Association,

people should receive the mailers, people who live at least one block on Iris.

but yes we are willing to help

and engage them more

and see what their recommendation is

for the designated class 3 bike facility

and other transportation needs.

Thank you.

And my very last question is about the funding.

Where did I put that?

I thought it was an unusual

request, maybe you can explain that. It was page 8 of 10. Because we're using federal

funding, we are required to allocate 14% of the work to disadvantaged business enterprise

contractors. Is that going to be difficult to do?

No. We do have it for lots of our projects. It is a requirement by, at least as far as

I know all transportation projects that has federal funds. It is not difficult because

the main contractors, they usually have subcontractors for smaller works like striping or signage

and they usually can fulfill that percentage, sometimes even higher. So far I don't recall

a project that that required percentage has been a problem.

And you find you're getting good quality work?

Yes.

Yeah.

So it's a win-win then?

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you for explaining that.

It's the first time I saw that and I just wanted to be sure I understood it properly.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

Council Member Fidea.

Thank you for your presentation, Malahut, and thank you for the robust Q-immunity outreach.

I just want to acknowledge that I think our staff probably sent mailers farther than they were required to

and had more meetings than they had to, and I think that it was very meaningful to all of us here

and so meaningful to everyone in the community, to the neighbors.

I got calls from people that got their letters, and people, even if they don't show up to the meetings,

it's meaningful to be told that something's happening in your neighborhood.

So I just want everyone to know that the mailers are worth it, the community outreach is worth it, and that it's all appreciated.

And I'm excited.

And I would just say I love that you guys met with the Mount Carmel Neighborhood Association.

I just think moving forward, it would also be great to tap into the Senior Advisory Commission and also the Teen Advisory Commission, everything that's going around there with Magical Bridge and Red Morton.

I think those are great resources that we have.

But thank you for the great work.

Thank you, Council Member.

Good luck to go.

Perfect.

Thank you, Council Member Gee.

Thank you, Mayor.

Well, thank you.

Some of us have been here for a while, and we remember Farm Hill.

And I think Council Member Howard, you remember.

So I think there are a lot of lessons learned, and number one is the community outreach.

As Council Member Perdia said, there's never enough.

There's always going to be someone who says, I didn't know.

How come you didn't tell me?

But no matter what, you have to keep doing it.

And here we are at this moment.

You're asking council for feedback.

One of those lessons learned is that no matter what we decide today,

you have to keep doing it until the project's done.

And so that consistent neighborhood outreach, the mailers,

the engagement of the neighborhood associations, our BCCs.

You didn't say park and rec.

You missed one.

Any of them that want to talk?

All of them.

There are ambassadors.

So all of our boards and commissions should know about a project of this magnitude

so they can share with their neighbors, their networks, that something's coming.

Another lesson learned, when construction starts,

don't start construction the first week of school.

that was very painful i i already spoke with our city manager about that this morning

that that that is a painful lesson learned so let's not start um the first week of school

you know when we talk about the um the funding because there's federal funds you mentioned

earlier not only we have to have to seek what we have to do nepa also and so as that process started

I'm sorry

that process starts after you approve the alternative

I can't start the paperwork with Caltrans

until I show them the design that we are going to build

so that will start tomorrow

yes

because that can be

a challenging process to get to a record of decisions

for NEPA. So just so everyone knows, that's what we call a rod in federal terms, the record of

decisions, so that they can release the funds. Are there any expiration dates with the funding

from the federal government? Yes. What I heard, and that's why we are in a rush to get everything

done is our deadline to have the construction paperwork, what we call it E76 from Caltrans,

is January 2027. It doesn't mean we have to start the construction, but we need to finish

the design and have that funding authorization through Caltrans by next January. And that's

what I heard for OBAC funding. That's a pretty aggressive schedule. It is. Here we are. Where

are we? January 20th. That is a very aggressive schedule to be able to do CEQA NEPA, get PS&E,

go out to bid, and be able to say we're ready to start construction. We don't have to do the

construction bidding. We have to have the final design. The final design? The bidding documents

ready. Yes. Do you have an estimate

of how long construction will take?

Eight months?

Maybe more. Eight, ten months.

Ten months. Eight to ten. It's called eight to twelve

months. Yes. Yeah.

That again reinforces the

need for consistent

communication with the community because

that's a long time. Yes.

And no matter what we do,

someone's going to say, I didn't know,

but we just need to keep doing this

consistently, just one of those lessons learned.

I think this is a major improvement.

I mean, I don't live in this part

of the neighborhood, but I do hear

about people being rear-ended because

of the left turn, and

this will make a big difference.

While my preference would

be the parking-protected

bike lane, I understand this is also a

residential neighborhood with a

lot of driveways, and

if I were to back out

of my driveway and have to go across

a bike lane and a car parked.

For some people, that would be even a bigger challenge right now than otherwise.

So I think this is a major improvement.

And I want to thank the speakers that spoke tonight,

particularly the co-chair of the Neighborhood Association

and part of the Orion School Traffic Committee.

We're going to tap on you to continue the outreach and engagement

because this is, if I do my math right,

we're not going to be complete with construction maybe until the end of 27.

And so we've got two years ahead of us to keep going.

Yes.

But good work, great work, and thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member G.

I'd like to go next.

Go back to Council Member G.

Yeah, I just wanted to reflect on something Council Member G said.

I think, you know, we've talked a lot about pedestrian and bicyclist safety,

But I think it's really important to note that when we make it safe for people on foot or bicycles, it becomes much safer for everybody.

And these kinds of changes can reduce all crashes by, you know, between 20 and 40 percent, I mean, around 30 percent.

So this is this is just going to improve everyone's safety.

I want to make sure that that's emphasized.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

Anybody else?

We'll go to Councilmember Sturkin.

Thank you, Mayor.

And thank you to staff and the consultant as well for your hard work on this project.

Fantastic job with the outreach.

And as was mentioned, I think just going above and beyond additional blocks, additional meetings,

especially the engagement with the Mount Carmel Neighborhood Association.

Thank you so much.

Excuse me. And I just had a couple of quick questions. Firstly, on the topic of outreach, was there any outreach to neighborhood associations south of the project, like Central Neighborhood Association, for example?

So whatever outreach I did, all the communication was with all the neighborhood associations.

I believe there are four or five of them at two sides.

Unfortunately, the only one who is very active is Mount Carmel.

So that is why they heard more.

But the outreach was to all of them.

I believe there are five neighborhood associations around the project area.

Yes.

Thank you, Malah.

Totally understand.

All right.

And then I think there was mentioned that the bulbouts in this project don't extend around the corner to the side streets.

And so there's one example with one exception, which is on Adams.

And so could you just speak to why the bulbouts don't kind of wrap around the corner in most cases?

There was no intention on that.

I think that is something that could be changed as much as possible.

I know Andrew from Tool, he did test different scenarios.

Andrew, do you have anything to add to that?

I believe this is something that could be adjusted,

especially on the side of the streets that have higher volume of turning.

But I let Andrew talk about that.

Yeah, I agree with you, Malhot.

To reiterate, yeah, there's definitely opportunities to make changes to cover extensions into the minor streets.

So I think it was really just a design choice at that point to show only work done on Jefferson rather than minor streets.

But since we're going to be, the construction will be occurring on those corners in the future,

we can reanalyze and redesign into the minor streets, all those curb extensions that are feasible.

So totally, totally possible.

Thank you both. Oh, sorry. I would definitely appreciate that additional second look at the high traffic cross streets.

As a follow up to that, with the California Daylighting Law, are we required to extend those?

Well, I mean, the bulb out is a way to fulfill the law, right? We don't have to do a bulb out in order to fulfill the law.

But would that, would it make sense to use the bulb out?

to comply?

Yes.