All right.

All right.

Good evening, everyone.

Thank you for joining our regular city council meeting of February twenty third, twenty twenty-six.

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

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

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 is 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 Redwood City.org.

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

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

Good evening.

Councilmember Chu.

Here.

Councilmember G.

Present.

Councilmember Howard.

Here.

Councilmember Padilla.

Here, Councilmember Sturkin.

Here.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Here.

Mayor Martinez Saballos.

Here.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, everyone.

And we'll go to the Pledge of Allegiance.

Councilmember Padilla, can you leave us?

Thank you, Councilmember.

We'll move on to item four.

And item four is not applicable tonight, so we'll move on to the next agenda item, which is item number five, presentations and acknowledgments.

And our first recognition this evening is to honor women's history month in annual observance to highlight women's roles and contributions in securing equity, equality, economic, and social justice.

And whereas, excuse me, and I'll read a few of the whereas of the proclamation, whereas the city of Redwood City designates the month of March as women's history month.

American women of every race, class, and ethnic background have made historic contributions to the growth and strength of our nation in countless recorded and unrecorded ways.

And whereas American women were particularly important in the establishment of early charitable, philanthropic and cultural institutions in our nation and served as early leaders in the forefront of every major progressive social change movement.

And whereas we commemorate all of the wonderful women of Redwood City, both past and present, their lasting impact and influence will forever be a staple in our community.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Elmer Martinez Saballos, Mayor of Redwood City, on behalf of the City Council and the people of the City of Redwood City do hereby proclaim March 2026 as Women's History Month in Redwood City and encourage all residents to observe this month in honor of the history made by American women.

And it's now my honor to invite Andrea Jones, inductee of the 2026 San Mateo County Women's Hall of Fame to the podium to accept the proclamation and share some remarks.

Welcome and congratulations.

Thank you, Mayor Sabayos and the City Council.

I am just it is such a privilege to accept this honor in honor of Women's History Month.

We've been residents of Redwood City since 2008, and are so happy and um just work really hard to try and make our community a better place.

And I know that there are so many fabulous women tonight here in the chambers that um lead their lives in the same way, and also on the city council and city staff.

So once again, thank you so much, and um, yeah, I appreciate the honor.

Thank you, Andrea.

We have a proclamation, so it'd be great to get a photo.

Um, I'm gonna get a Thank you, Andrea again for being here and congratulations, and please extend our congratulations to the other inductees who couldn't be here.

I know Terry Nagel, Alison Suzuki, Danica Gonzalez Johnston, and Amani Schroaff are all being inducted with you.

So please extend our congratulations and thank you for all your great work in the community.

And with that, we will now move on.

Excuse me, item five B.

We are celebrating Lunar New Year, which began Tuesday, February 17th, and honors ancestors, welcomes spring, and signifies turning away the old to embrace a prosperous new year.

I'll read a few excerpts of the proclamation.

Whereas the City of Redwood City joins people around the globe in celebrating Lunar New Year, ushering good fortune and warm wishes with the new year, and lifting up the diverse and dynamic communities that make our community, excuse me, our city, states, and country what they are today.

And whereas Asian American and Pacific Islander or AAPI communities have shaped our communities through foundational contributions to our past, present, and future.

As we celebrate this rich heritage with its many amazing leaders and accomplishments, we also recognize the unfortunate history of violence and discrimination against these communities and reaffirm for the sake of our neighbors and loved ones, all of us must confront racism in all its forms.

And whereas the City of Redwood City is a proud is proud to partner with Redwood City International for the last 15 years to celebrate one of the most important holidays in Asian heritage with festive performances, symbolic foods, and traditional decorations, all focused on bringing back bringing good luck for 2026, the year of the horse.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Elmer Martina Sabaios, mayor of Redwood City, on behalf of the City Council and the people of Redwood City, do hereby celebrate Lunar New Year 2026, and show support and solidarity today and every day for our AAPI brothers and sisters for their irreplaceable contributions to our American story.

And as the year of the horse begins, we wish happiness and good fortune to all.

And I'm delighted to welcome members of the Redwood City International Board of Directors, Ernie Schmidt, former mayor, Barbara Pierce, and Director Raymond Kong to the podium to accept the proclamation and tell us more about the upcoming Lunar New Year celebration this coming Saturday.

Welcome all.

Gotta go get that lottery ticket.

Which is associated with boldness, courage, and transformation.

At this time, we also wish to thank Councilmember G for spearheading this very important cultural event year after year, where community members from all over the county come out and celebrate these important traditions as well as allowing them to continue a share, continue to share a part of their own heritage with their own children.

Thank you, Councilmember Jane.

In the spirit, in this spirit, we want to wish everyone celebrating this lunar year new year courage in your convictions, optimism in the face of diversity, and spirit of inclusion and goodwill to all.

Redwoods RCI would also be amiss if we did not continue to encourage the city to continue to find ways to become more involved with RCI, as well as letting our fellow community members know that they are here tonight, and those that are watching at home this evening wishing you prosperity as well.

If you're curious about Redwood City International, we invite you to check us out at our website, Redwood City International dot org.

And if you don't know yet, Lunar Festival is happening this weekend, Saturday on the twenty-eighth from 11 to 4 p.m.

It's a lot of fun, a lot of food, and a good time for all families.

So we are definitely looking forward to seeing everybody uh there and enjoy this wonderful cultural event.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you again for putting on this great event, Ernie.

If we can get a quick photo, amazing.

Good job.

Great.

Thank you, everyone.

Our final presentation this evening is from San Mateo County Executive Mike Callaghi and assistant county executive Justin Mates, who will be giving us a presentation on the recent developments related to the revenue from the state's vehicle license fee or VLF.

As I welcome them to the podium, I'll pass things over quickly to our city manager.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

On February 12th, the mayor, Vice Mayor, and myself attended a briefing that they the county had uh for various elected officials and city and uh other officials.

Um talked about a myriad of topics, one of which was was this topic here tonight about uh the vehicle uh license fee.

Um it was such a powerful presentation in that I, like many who've worked in this county now going on six or seven years, have constantly heard about VLF and this, that, and the other, and you know, for the most part uh until last year had always been quote made whole.

But after hearing Mike and Justin's presentation, it became clear that that this year is different.

And so um the mayor and I cornered Mike.

Uh he said, Hey, please reach out here and said, Hey, we have the mid-year budget coming on the on the 23rd.

So would you would you gentlemen mind coming to present?

He never batted eye and said yes, absolutely.

So thought it would be great to hear directly from the county tonight, and then it really tees up some of the discussion that we'll have here later time.

We talk about mid-year budget and more importantly, the forecast for next year.

So thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Patrick.

And we'll pass things over to Mike.

Great.

Thank you, uh, Mr.

Mayor and honorable board members and staff.

Thank you for having us here tonight.

We are faced with one of the most daunting situations to ever, ever face this county, and that is literally the taking, and I'm gonna call this a taking of uh potentially over a billion dollars in county funds.

And when I say county, I mean county and city funds.

This is unprecedented.

As you know, for the last several years, we have had to go to Sacramento hat in hand, begging for money that was owed this county, or uh vehicle license fees that are owed this county.

The Department of uh the uh Department of Finance believes that they do not owe us those funds, though those funds were generated in this county, and uh and certainly they've been paying those uh to this county for uh for many, many years.

In fact, we are only uh uh one of three counties that are being treated out of the fifty-eight counties differently uh in this state.

Uh, this is serious because it will impact everyone, and just to give you an idea of the magnitude, um this will eclipse our entire Measure Cave funding uh this coming year, uh, which supports housing and certainly homelessness and mental health and foster kids and parks and everything that we're used to.

This will fundamentally change the county as we know it uh if we do not uh receive uh these funds from the state.

Uh as you know or are aware, last year we filed a lawsuit uh in that we only received two-thirds of the VLF funding last year.

Uh we were shorted some 30 million dollars.

Uh and uh we filed suit on that, that suit is pending.

Um in the uh uh governor's budget, there was no funding for VLF for San Mateo County, and we don't expect it in the May revise.

Um therefore it is important that we get the message out to everyone in this county.

We're gonna be doing a study session tomorrow in front of the board to make sure that they're fully uh aware of that.

We have committed uh we have um committed to uh to keeping the board and every council updated on this.

We have a uh subcommittee of uh that's uh of the board that is joined by uh city managers, uh superintendents of schools, um, certainly Diane Papp and our assembly member and all our assembly uh all our members in the in the legislation have done uh in the legislature have done an incredible job representing us and uh and trying to get this funding for us, but they're out of time uh and they've gone to the well too many times, so we don't believe it's gonna be funded through the normal process.

Um it's a complicated issue, but uh assistant uh county executive Justin Mates has done a very good job in distilling this information down, so hopefully uh you will all have a deep understanding of how this came about.

And uh with that, I'll turn it over to Mr.

Mates.

Thanks, Mike, good evening, everyone.

Uh Mr.

Mayor, honorable council members, thanks for having us here tonight.

Um happy to go through this in a little bit of detail.

Is this all right, perfect?

Um uh it it is a very complicated issue, but I think it helps to have a little bit more of the background to understand why it is such a tricky issue for us to solve and why it is only San Mateo County and two other very small counties that have this uh this issue across the state.

All right.

Uh you don't have to read every word on this screen, but this is sort of if you take nothing else from the presentation, this is the bottom line.

There is a payment mechanism that every city and county in the state of California depends on for an important source of general funds.

That is VLF.

Uh it uh through this mechanism in the statute passed in 2004.

Over 12 billion dollars is goes from the state to the local jurisdictions.

That pavement mechanism broke in our county through no fault of our own, through no uh policy decision of any local official, and for the last five years, we have not been made whole through this process.

The state has been making us whole.

Uh, Mr.

Heisinger mentioned it through an appropriation through the budget process until recently they stopped doing that.

And the shortfall this year is 119 million countywide, and there is nothing in the governor's recommended budget to make us whole on that.

That's the bottom line.

Why don't I take just a few minutes to talk about uh what that means and how we got here?

Maybe I'll just um okay.

Uh by way of additional background, we call this the VLF statute.

Right off the bat, want to be clear, vehicle license fee statute has nothing to do with vehicle license fees.

Uh historically, local jurisdictions did get a portion of the amounts that uh residents would pay to the DMV to register their vehicles.

In 2004, this became a campaign issue or 2003 in 2004 as part of the budget compromise, which involved a whole set of exchanges between the local governments and the state that we don't need to go into.

But as part of that uh 2004 budget compromise to solve the state budget crisis, the VLF statute was completely rewritten and the mechanism and framework was complete completely uh redesigned.

Next slide, please.

So what did it do?

First of all, it disconnected the VLF from actual vehicle license fees uh paid by folks to register their vehicles.

Instead, it promised the local governments who had historically depended on these vehicle license fees, something called the in LU VLF amount or the VLF adjustment amount.

It's got a lot of different names, none of them intuitive.

Um, and essentially it was a promise of a payment, a base year amount that all the counties and cities were promised with a growth factor that was based on local assessed value growth.

This statute, so in addition to then making this promise disconnected from actual vehicle license fees paid, the statute also created a local payment mechanism, right?

So instead of actually coming from those revenues, it had to come from somewhere.

And this payment mechanism is where you have to set aside all intuition, all things that you think would try to make this make sense, it doesn't.

They just picked a payment mechanism, and it was tied to the local property tax distribution system and specifically the distribu uh the distribution to locally funded schools or excuse me, state funded schools locally.

I'll get into that.

This whole statute's called the VLF swap.

Next slide, please.

Okay, so what does it do?

It the VLF statute piggybacks the state's Prop 98 obligation to backfill schools.

How does it do that?

The in lieu VLF amounts that are owed to all counties and cities are calculated by local auditor controller, and those amounts annually are paid in the first instance from the local revenues of state funded school districts.

Just stick with me on this.

There's a category of locally of state funded school districts where the state has an obligation to make sure that they uh reach minimum funding levels, and from those districts, the local auditor controller takes the amounts owed for the cities and counties and shifts that over to the cities and counties all over the state, but this happens at the county level.

The state then reimburses those state funded school districts for every dollar that was used for the VLF payment so that the school districts are held harmless as a matter of their total revenues.

Through this two-step process, the state pays every single dollar of the VLF obligation owed to the cities and counties, but does so through the backfill of the state funded local school districts.

As I mentioned earlier, through this funding mechanism, over 12 billion dollars was distributed to cities and counties across uh the state last year.

This happens as a matter of course, it happens as a matter of uh the local property tax distribution uh system.

Next slide, please.

So just real quick, this is a visual representation of what I just said.

The world of school districts is divided into two groups.

The basic aid side on the right side of this uh uh slide are those districts that get enough in local property taxes to meet the minimum funding guarantee per student funding guarantee from the state.

We call those basic aid districts.

The districts on the left, and this is a hypothetical representation, uh, are those districts that do not get enough in local property taxes to satisfy their minimum funding guarantee.

So they also get something called ERAF, which is another uh complicated um property tax uh feature, but uh the state then has the obligation to fill those districts up further to have them reach their minimum funding guarantee, also known as the local control funding formula.

Animation, please.

It's a simple animation.

There you go.

The state comes through and backfills everyone up to that minimum funding line.

Okay, next slide, and let's see how the VLF statute is an overlay on this.

What the VLF statute says is in the first instance, first animation, please.

You pay the VLF from those local revenues of those state funded districts or non-basic aid districts.

You can take them down to dollar zero as needed to pay the VLF obligation owed to the county and cities, and then the state still has this obligation under Prop 98.

Next animation, please.

And so the state backfills them, whatever dollars were taken, the state backfills them up to their minimum funding guarantee per student.

So again, the districts are held harmless in this.

The state pays every dollar VLF, but it's all a piggyback to this local property tax distribution system.

Next slide, please.

VLF funds is important is an important part of every local government's budget.

You all know your budget uh and know its um uh its role in the city's budget, but in terms of across the county, the VLF obligation was 283 million in 2425.

That's the last complete year we have numbers for.

And this funds everything basically that cities and counties do with general funds, all of the things listed on this slide, public safety, health care and mental health services, local libraries and parks, homelessness prevention, everything.

Next slide, please.

So why do we have a shortfall in this county?

Well, if you remember the slide that uh depicted the school districts, you need non-basic aid school districts to be able to pay the VLF payment.

In our county, we are having an uh fewer and fewer non-basic aid districts.

More of our districts are locally funded, not state funded.

And in fact, in the last 10 years, there has been a large number of districts which have turned basic aid, if you will, have gone from being state funded to being locally funded.

Just as a matter of statistics, 10 years ago, there were 12 out of 23 non-basic aid, excuse me, 12 out of 23 total districts were non-basic aid.

Now there are only four left.

So it we have a shrinking number of non-basic aid districts.

Now there's all sorts of complicated reasons why districts have gone basic aid.

That could be the topic of a whole other um presentation.

For now, I'll just say it's not as simple as rich property tax area means um uh locally funded schools.

Uh Ravenswood School District, which serves uh Bellhaven and East Palo Alto is a basic aid district, a locally funded district.

Burlingame elementary school district is a non-basic aid district, a state funded uh uh district.

So it's just a complicated story.

But the bottom line is has no, it's no policy decision by any city or county official that has uh facilitated this phenomenon.

It's just what has happened, and as a result, there simply aren't enough non-basic aid districts to fund the VLF obligation that we're entitled to under the statute.

Next slide, please.

Hopefully you can see this.

Uh this is a depiction of the VLF shortfall and its history.

This came up as a blip in 1112, uh fiscal year 11 to 12, and then went away, but then came back consistently in fiscal year 1920.

You can see the countywide shortfall numbers on the left side of this um uh slide.

And what's uh clear is early on the state recognized this is not what's supposed to happen.

This is not what the statute ever intended.

Uh, only in San Mateo County and the two other counties are Alpine and Mono counties.

Does this happen?

Basically, very small counties with essentially one school district or very few number of school districts.

So when those districts go basic aid, there's nothing left to pay the VLF shortfall.

And so, in recognition that this is not how things are supposed to work, uh the governor and the DOF uh was putting uh put in the governor's recommended budget, uh a reimbursement for the cities and the county every year.

Then, as the numbers got higher, and as uh the state and the DOF had other issues they want to address, they stopped putting it in the governor's recommended budget, and as Mike mentioned earlier, our legislative delegation worked very hard to get the full reimbursement into the legislature's adopted budget uh by the end of the uh budget cycle for the state.

Last year was the first year where the state did not make us whole for this VLF shortfall.

Um we only got two-thirds of our claim, where full claim for county wide VLF was 114 million, and we only got 76 million, still a lot of money, still through the heroic efforts of our legislative delegation, uh, but not a full uh amount of the amounts that we were owed under the statute.

Uh as you know, the county, with all the cities in partnership sued the state for this um uh failure to fund the VLF shortfall, that legislation litigation is still pending.

Next slide, please.

So the current shortfall, that was last year.

The current shortfall for this year is 119 million.

Remember, I said there was 283 million of the VLF obligation.

We have a shortfall of 119 million this year.

Um we have filed a claim in August, as is the practice for the last many years uh for that 119 million, but the governor's latest recommended budget last month did not have any money for the VLF shortfall reimbursement.

Um, to give a sense of the scale of what 119 million in general fund dollars means, it it can be uh difficult to really think about these things, especially when you're talking about the distinction of general funds versus um uh more specific revenues, but a hundred and nineteen million in terms of scale is more than the county's annual funding of the homelessness system, all of our investments in affordable housing, the big lift literacy program, and our foster youth support system combined.

119 million dollars in general fund is a very significant uh loss of funding.

Next slide, please.

This is gonna be a little hard for you.

Your number, this is how the hundred and nineteen million spreads out among all of the jurisdictions.

Sometimes we just say the county shortfall, but of course, every one of our cities is affected by this shortfall, as is the county, and as significant as the counties is with respect to as Mike mentioned, Measure K.

These numbers are always obviously very significant for our cities.

In many cases, the VLF shortfall is greater than recently passed uh business license taxes, sales taxes, a lot of local efforts to raise funds essentially are going to be wiped out if this shortfall does not go reimbursed or goes unreimbursed.

Next slide, please.

So what what are we doing about it?

What do you want to talk about tonight?

Uh we have the lawsuit, as we mentioned uh previously for the failure to fully uh fund the VLF shortfall last year.

We are working with our legislative delegation with our city partners on potential solutions both for this year's shortfall and ideally for uh future shortfalls as well for a permanent solution.

We are in the process, as uh Mr.

Heisinger mentioned earlier, doing outreach to all of our stakeholders to locally elected fish uh officials to spread the word, to educate about this issue.

We have been made whole up to this point, and there wasn't a need for everyone to understand this problem, but it feels that this is a turning point, and we are not going to be made whole at uh from this point on.

And so it's very important that all of our uh city councils, our schools, everyone understands the impacts of an unreimbursed shortfall on the cities and the county.

And then we are also uh doing our own planning, encouraging our city partners to do planning for what service impacts will be necessary as a result of these VLF cuts, VLF shortfall unreimbursed.

And with that, I'm happy to take any questions that you may have.

Justin, thank you for the great presentation and that chart is so sobering.

Five point four almost five point four million dollars lost in Robert City.

That is our business license sex that we had just passed.

So colleagues who has questions.

We'll go to council member Howard.

Thank you.

Uh Mr.

Mates.

Who who initiated the lawsuit?

Was it San Mateo County or the three counties together?

We initiated the lawsuit and then very shortly work with all of our city partners and the other counties to join the lawsuit.

So the lawsuit now includes all of the city affected cities and the other two counties.

Have any other counties who receive funding been there for you or signed on to support something like this?

Uh I will say the other counties are sympathetic, but there are no other counties other than the three who see this as a real threat to them.

It's the it's the uniqueness of these three counties and our mix of school districts that makes us uniquely vulnerable to this shortfall.

And as far as we know, no other counties uh see this shortfall imminently.

There may be some in five or ten years, but for now we're being told no other county is is seeing this as an imminent problem.

Is there any benefit to working with the schools to change the way that they are reimbursed?

I mean, this trend we're talking about seems to be getting worse and worse.

Um is this for their benefit?

I mean, is I I know it's a complicated issue, but is there a benefit in talking to them about trying to help by staying a uh not basic aid, but um, non-basic aid.

Yeah.

So we have engaged uh uh in the last uh month or so our school partners to uh talk about those kinds of things, opportunities to partner, um, opportunities where they're seeing that they might like to see how Prop 98 is administered a little differently and how that might affect the VLF shortfall.

We don't have any concrete proposals from that, but we do have we asked the superintendents to form a subcommittee of their own uh to work with us on these issues, and as Mike mentioned, we have already had a meeting with that subcommittee and with a larger group to strategize uh how we can address this issue.

But certainly there's a lot of attention on the Prop 98 system right now, and certainly a lot of districts in our county uh who might like to see some changes to that system as well.

All right.

And if I can just add to that, during those conversations, we learned that Prop 98 is not as stable to the school districts that we once thought.

Um, so it would be difficult to um to use that mechanism to move forward to secure VLF.

Even though everyone would be made whole, it would just be a difficult uh vehicle to to move forward on.

But it's a really good question.

It's something that we actually tried to go down that path and met with our uh superintendents and uh got a lot of feedback on that.

And my last question are we planning another lawsuit?

Or are we going to wait for?

So we certainly have our current lawsuit.

If we are to be unfunded again this year, I imagine we would be amending that lawsuit to add the losses from this year as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

We'll go to Councilmember G next.

Thank you, Mayor.

Mike and Justin, thank you for coming here and giving us this update.

I mean, this is not a new battle.

It's been gone on for years, and thanks to our Bay Area delegation, we have been successful most of the time until last year.

And the prognosis isn't very favorable to the county or in our cities going forward.

So any time we do litigation, the question always is what do you think our chances are of succeeding?

Would you, you know, do you think it's 50 50?

Do you what are your thoughts about our ability to be successful in this litigation?

Sure.

As a uh former attorney for the county, uh certainly um uh have experience with in how you try to estimate your likelihood of success in a lawsuit.

I will say it's always uncertain when you have a statute that simply doesn't address the issue.

We certainly think we have good arguments for why the statute uh should be read to require the state to make us whole, but it's always uncertain when the statute just doesn't speak to the issue and you're asking the court to interpret the statute as you want to interpret it.

So always hard to know for sure.

What is the status of the lawsuit?

It is still in early days.

Uh the state did not try to get it kicked out initially, they actually answered, um, which is a good sign, and it'll continue to move on, but there's no trial dates that uh it's still in early days.

And do you to Councilmember Howard's question?

If we are not successful in this current fiscal year, will we do an amended complaint if the trial has not been heard yet or set date yet?

That would be the plan, yes.

And then going forward, as we have kind of the mid-year budget.

Should we assume any money from VLF going forward?

From a financial standpoint, what would you advise the city?

It is highly uncertain.

I would say that the VLF reimbursement has never been so uncertain as it is now.

As you mentioned, this is not a new battle, but we were reimbursed for every time we fought that battle until last year.

And every signal we've received from the Department of Finance, from the Governor's Office, from our legislative delegation, is that the fight that we barely eked out two-thirds of last year would be harder this year.

So I would say it's highly uncertain.

Mike, you want to put a final point on it?

Yes, thank you.

And I can talk to what we're doing.

Um, these are cuts that we simply can't sustain.

Uh the board has formed a subcommittee to start looking at what services we're gonna have to discontinue uh in order to make up for these cuts.

This is a painful, painful process that we will go through uh in doing this because every dime of this money that is spent are on serious public issues that are are necessary.

And that's what I'm not being dramatic when I say it will change the face of this county if we lose this money.

We're talking billions of dollars over the next decade.

Well Mike, thank you for the sobering news.

It's even more amplified with the changes in the federal funding formulas and the money we receive from Washington, D.C.

So the cuts we're talking about, or the cuts at least the county's talking about, are amplified with you get both the VLF and the federal changes in funding.

Yes, thank you, Councilmember, for for putting that fine point on it.

Actually, they're magnified uh incredibly with the cuts on HR one and what we're seeing at the uh at the state level right now.

This is um uh like I said, it's gonna be very painful to try to get through this.

Thank you for the update.

Hopefully, uh next time, if they set a trial date or something, you can give us an update or give our city manager update so we know where we're at.

Because we're like the county, we're going through our budget process, and we need to make assumptions on what we do next year.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember, and we'll go to Council Member Chu and Councilmember Sturgeon.

Uh thank you for the presentation and and for the clarification.

Um, I think I know the answer to this, but as I understand it, this the schools are made whole, so this doesn't impact the funding of the schools, the it's just sort of a spillover effect on the county and the cities.

Is that a correct understanding?

So the VLF payment framework, which has been in place for over 20 years, holds the non-basic aid districts harmless, so our shortfall doesn't have anything to do with the schools and how they're funded.

They're not impacted by our shortfall.

Um, it's just because our mix of types of school districts we have locally no longer has enough for us to to um shift the payment over.

So for those that remain non-basic aid, they continue to have to be in the system, the system they've been in for over 20 years, uh, and so they're not extra affected in some way by the shortfall.

Great.

And then a follow-up question.

Um, you know, obviously our hope is that we'll prevail in the lawsuit, but in the event that we don't, is having commer, you know, are we in conversation with the school districts about this or is is it just dealt as completely separate?

The school districts are gonna do what they do, we will deal with whatever the consequences of that are, and then those remain entirely separate issues.

Yeah, in our discussions with the school, they're very sympathetic to to where we're at, and um they simply don't think uh uh Prop 98 is a vehicle that uh that we could pursue.

Um the if we lose a lawsuit uh you know it would effectively end the controversy here and and we would be out this money.

Um we have incredible attorneys working on this.

Uh and as Mr.

Mates said, we feel that they have uh put forth a very good argument, but it's really the interpretation of the statute uh that we're asking a court to make that's gonna be difficult.

Um so but we're we're open.

If the state came to us uh and we collectively, as the county and cities, um, you know, want to sit down and come up with some solution.

I think that we would we'd be amenable to that.

We'd have to really talk about that uh and see if there's a path forward that we haven't thought through.

Uh and uh um, you know, if one of the legislators came up with that idea, one of the things that we're asking um uh some member papin to move forward with again is just a straight legislation that reimburses us.

Um it's been shot down before, but you know, we'd like to take another shot at it.

Thank you.

And council member, we'll go to council member.

I saw council member circumstances light on, and then we'll go to council member Padillo.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mr.

Calaghi, thank you, Mr.

Mates, for your uh advocacy on this front, uh, alongside our delegation.

Um, one question for you, and then a question for staff as well, and then a couple quick comments.

Firstly, um with the amended complaint that you mentioned that could possibly be filed, that would be an opportunity for additional plaintiffs to join, potentially, right?

Sure, I mean that wasn't the only opportunity.

Another plaintiff could join if there's another uh affected party they could join at any time, actually.

At any time.

Okay.

And what do you anticipate the timeline being on that?

If we know uh it is so difficult to say, but I what I would say is for something like this, that's a matter of statutory interpretation that would whatever happens at the trial level would be appealed.

It's probably years before we get a final judicial decision on this.

Seeing that it was before the 2023-24 fiscal year, that yeah, that makes sense.

Um, okay.

So we have time.

Uh thank you.

Um, and then for city staff, um well, firstly, county had mentioned that the board has um appointed a subcommittee to look at this very issue, right?

So has this come up and finance an audit?

Will it come up and finance an audit?

So it hasn't come up yet.

What I would say is is the meeting on the 12th really planted to me that we got to start moving on this.

Now the county definitely is is in a leadership role with with polling folks together.

So I do think it would be good to ask ourselves is how do we want to respond?

You know, obviously we we want to be aligned with the county and other other partners, but um, but no, I would say this is kind of like step one tonight, and then we can take it from there.

Thank you, City Manager.

Um, definitely I'm interested in it going to finance and audit subcommittee.

And then just as two quick comments for staff, um, appreciate and echo Councilmember G's uh request to have an update.

Uh, when you get the chance, uh County Manager, um, on if and when the trial date gets set, uh, so that we can be kept in the loop.

And if there is any way that we can partner on the legislative front that Papin is championing, please do keep our our legislative um advocate uh aware.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Councilmember.

We'll go to Councilmember Purdue.

Thank you both for your presentation.

I guess this is so frustrating for me because these funds were generated here.

So I'm just so confused why we have to fight so hard for monies that are owed to us.

Um, and I I think I see, to me, I want to know.

I I everything I read and I see your presentations, and I went on the county website, and it's all everyone describes these funds, and I highlighted, and all the words are used as critical, vital.

So these and these are all words that are true for all of us, these are huge pots of money.

Um, I mean, I feel I look at our finance director.

We do forecasting that is hugely dependent on this number, and just to to go to them and say one day, you know, plan everything that we have it, and now say, Oh, now we don't.

I mean, it's these are these are huge pots of money that take care of uh groups throughout our community.

Um, and I just want to make sure that you know it's great that we have small groups and we have a lawsuit and there's legislation, but is there anything else we can do?

I saw I think it's great that you said, you know, before you mentioned in the past it was to me, I've never understood this.

I've could just have thought maybe I'm so green, but this has always sounded like a broken system.

Like we used to get this money directly, and then we decided that we wanted someone else to hold our money and decide to give it to us.

Like that, I'm not fond of that.

Uh so I just want to know what we can do as a community, because to me, I'm at a point where I want it, I think more than our electeds, more than community leaders need to know.

This is the people's money.

This is this is money, like you said, that takes care of our children.

So maybe you know, to me, it's shocking.

You know, we see our governor on social media memes championing all these groups that this money is not there for now.

So I wonder if we shouldn't be taking a different type of action or engagement, because this is not a small amount of money, and we need this money, it's ours and it's owed to us.

So I don't understand.

Um, I think we should maybe be doing more.

I don't know if it's just legislation.

Maybe you know, he it's engaging our community.

I I don't think I think this is a really big deal, and I think more people should know about it.

Thank you.

Absolutely, all great points.

And um, I can tell you within the next several weeks, we'll be working through the city managers uh on a unified uh strategy and on a unified front to address this holistically, and um you were so correct when when you talked about the um just not understanding how this can happen.

You know, our governor always talks about uh this being uh California being a donor state to the rest of the country.

We are a donor county to the state of California.

And in other words, we give them a lot more money than we receive uh from the state.

So for them to come in and take this is an absolute taking county vital resources, it's just unconscionable.

Thank you.

County executive, we'll go to the vice mayor.

I'll be very brief and because my colleagues and this presentation have done such a good job.

Just emphasize what uh Ms.

Padilla said that it is our money, and um so we it's too bad we have to fight for it, but so be it.

Um I would, it sounds like in two weeks you'll have a more strategic um vision of how your partners like Redwood City can you know pull the oar of the boat um toward getting the money.

So how can we help?

It sounds like we'll hear in two weeks, or what can we do to help you get us all our money?

You all will play a vital role, I promise you, uh, in that uh in that process.

Um we have formed a subcommittee of uh city managers and of school districts uh and of uh uh our legislators uh and others uh to help us uh come together as a community as a county to address this um from daily city to East Palo Alto, and we will do that uh and uh certainly we'll keep uh your um very capable uh city manager who's involved in this process, uh, involved so he can keep uh all of you informed.

And we're happy to come back at any time and update you as to what we're doing.

Thank you.

And in the meantime, we will just make sure our city and community is aware of this, and and this tonight is a big step.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Not seeing any other lights on.

I'll add my thanks, Mike and Justin, for the great presentation and just your level of partnership around this.

Um, like our city manager mentioned, this is the crucial first step in just educating the rest of our colleagues and also sharing this information out with the community.

So um please keep us informed and you know where to find the seven of us when it's time to start knocking on doors and hitting the ground.

So thank you again.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And with that, we will move on to item number six, which is our public comment section of the agenda.

We'll take public comment on the consent calendar, matters of council interest, as well as items that are not listed on tonight's agenda.

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

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 are attending in person, please fill out a speaker card and submit it to the clerk here at the datas.

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

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

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

Thank you, Mayor.

At this time, we only have one in-person speaker and one raised hand on Zoom.

So if you joined us virtually, please raise your hand at this time.

As the mayor said, once we begin public comment, uh we will close the speakers' list.

So last call to the audience or folks on Zoom.

You are for item 9A.

Yeah, not this item.

And for those who are joining us for the first time, we have a timer on the top of the podium.

It's a series of lights.

Yellow blinking light means you're uh you have a 30-second warning, and the red light with a beat means your time is up.

I'll close the speakers list.

We will begin with Bill Johnson, our in-person speaker.

Welcome, Bill, who will be followed by Jason Solomon on Zoom.

Hi, my name is Bill Johnson.

I'm the um owner of Dima Gillen Johnson.

I own apartment complexes here in Redwood City.

Uh about 17 complexes, six duplexes, about 300 doors.

Uh, been fortunate since 1997 to never have a fire, but on January 30th, I had a fire here on Rollison Road.

And what I'm here for is uh the response.

Um that happened on a Friday on a Sunday.

There was a meeting of over 25 people, county and city, to be able to put together a way in which to house the 18 families that were disloc displaced.

Uh by Monday, I had a permit to be able to do construction within the building to get things started.

I was uh got building uh department, uh Thomas Sillipin was a great deal of help.

Uh a place that was the most help in putting everything together was Farroaks Community Center.

And uh Miguel Andrade there worked with me from seven in the morning until 10 o'clock at night for 10 days, in which to move those people around house them and take care of the community.

And what I'm here for is to thank you for what the city has done and how quickly the response was in getting everything done and helping those people find a place temporarily.

We moved some back into my units.

We moved others to other, you know, uh units complexes of mine.

We moved others to other, you know, people's you know, units, but it was all coordinated by um uh Miguel and he was fantastic.

The city was fantastic, the county jumped in.

Everybody was a great deal of help, and I'm just saying, you know, a lot of times you get nothing but negative, but I'm just saying, you know, thank you for what everybody did.

Thank you, Bill.

We'll turn now to our folks online.

We have Jason Sullivan.

Oh, Jason, not sure if you still wanted to give public comment.

I think you're in one time.

I do.

Hopefully, you can hear me now.

We can hear you just fine.

Thank you.

Terrific.

Thanks so much.

Um, I will be brief.

I want to talk about the issue of ice and how it's affecting our communities.

Um, I want to also just start by recognizing that you're dealing with some very difficult local issues I just heard in the prior discussion, and I want to thank you for that and recognize that this is a um subject, which you might think, hey, we have nothing to do with this.

Um, but I think we all want to do what we can both to protect our communities and also to send a message um to the nation.

The communities don't support what ICE is doing.

I understand that most of what's been happening in terms of sanctuary city and non-cooperation has been happening at the county level.

Um, and that's fine.

Um, what I want to uh raise is something different, something that's happening in other communities, and that is the possibility of different kinds of employment bans on people who are currently working for ice.

So the Los Angeles City Council, as you may know, voted unanimously late last year to draft an ordinance prohibiting city employees, including police officers from taking secondary employment with ICE, CVP or any enemy engaged in immigration enforcement.

This is uh a declaration of that community's values, and I hope it can be a declaration of our values as well.

Uh, there's a bill in the state assembly uh that's been introduced to ban uh people who have worked for ICE in this administration from take from from ever getting any jobs in the public sector in public education or law enforcement in the state.

That's something that Redwood City can do as well.

So, what I would ask you is at this time, when of course you're dealing with so many issues, um, that you stand up and take a stand and consider um one of these ordinances, particularly the secondary employment ban, uh, that will demonstrate to folks that there is a cost in participating um with ice and take a stand uh to protect our communities.

Thanks so much.

Thank you, Jason.

And that concludes public comment mayor.

Great, thank you everybody for making public comment this evening.

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

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

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

Not seeing any.

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

We'll go to Councilmember Sirkin.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just more polling a seven B as in boy for um commenting question.

Thank you.

Great.

Councilmember Sirkin pulled item 7B.

Do we have a motion for all other items on the consent calendar?

So moved?

Second.

Okay.

That was a motion from Councilmember Chu, a second from Councilmember G for all items on consent except for 7B.

And could we get electronic vote, please?

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you.

And we will now turn it over to Councilmember Sturker.

Thank you, Mayor.

Alrighty.

Uh firstly, thank you to staff for um preparing this report and appreciate the information.

I wanted to just draw our attention to page two, specifically option uh one, and just express uh how much I appreciate the detail.

Um the explanation of the process.

Um my concern here is that we are making a concession by going with option two.

Uh, because in option one, it that gives us the opportunity to negotiate pricing.

Um to estimate the full potential cost of additional time and materials.

Um, whereas in option two, I see that there's no estimate of the additional cost.

Um, let me back up for a second here.

Apologies.

Um, so with option two, we know it's eight percent on top of the ten percent contingency.

That is what's proposed and recommended by staff.

With option one, we do not know what the additional contingency would be on top of the 10% that's currently approved.

And so that is the kind of information and detail that I would like to see when we are voting on options uh that cost the taxpayers money.

Um again, as is mentioned in option one.

I do see that we have the opportunity to estimate uh the to get a conservative estimate for the full potential cost of additional time materials and negotiate pricing.

Whereas we do we forego that with option two and just eat the additional cost of eight percent in total eighteen percent uh contingency over the initial cost of this project.

So hopefully that makes sense to my colleagues, but I can't imagine we have the support to go with option one tonight.

Uh however, I did want to just ask staff for feedback as to why um we didn't include the let same level of detail uh in option one and if maybe going forward we could have an apples to apples comparison, uh please.

Great.

I'm gonna ask uh our director of engineering transportation, uh Tanisha Warner to just provide a little bit more color, but noted on on providing additional um information in the future.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for the question.

So I'm Tanisha Werner, director of engineering and transportation.

When we uncover unforeseen circumstances in the field, we really have only a few options available to us.

One is to stop the work that's impacted to work with the contractor to negotiate a price up front, and then once we both agree to terms and a cost, proceed.

The other option is what's called a force account.

So we proceed with the work because the cost of not proceeding outweighs the cost of um of getting a conservative estimate for the price of the work.

And so we track really closely the labor, the materials, the days that are out there.

We have our contract inspector out there watching the contractor to make sure that we can agree upon how much time it actually took them to do the work, how much material was removed, and what material was put in.

Um the eight percent is the total amount of what that estimate would have been.

And typically when you're doing forest accounts, it doesn't always come out more expensive than it would have if you would have uh pre-negotiated the price.

Thank you very much, Director Warner.

That is really helpful context that even in my four years on council, like I just don't have.

And I know some of my colleagues are more experienced up here and may know that, but yeah, for some of us there, we don't know.

And so I really do appreciate you adding some color to this.

Um, and I'm glad to hear that there is the potential that um this would be a cheaper alternative than option one.

So, even when you look at the cost of, so we we encountered a high groundwater table, so water is filling in to the trench, and we have to consistently dewater or take that water out.

That element is going to be there whether we proceed immediately with force account or if we stop the work, stabilize the trench, water's still going to be filling it up.

We still have the cost of dewatering the trench, so that cost only increases as we're negotiating with the contractor.

So there are pros and cons.

Thank you very much.

That's also helpful context.

So, with that, I'm happy to make a recommendation to approve S7B.

Um, and then it looks like there might be a comment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Sirkin.

We'll go to Councilmember.

Thank you.

Tanisha, thank you.

I'll second Council Member Sirkin's motion, but this is exactly what I teach in construction management twice a year about a cardinal change.

And when that happens, the documentation you put together in the staff report is exactly what's needed to make sure that the delay cost does not exceed the actual cost and force account work for unforeseen conditions, is exactly what you need to do.

Because when we talk about construction, as soon as we snap the ball and say go forward, what I always say is the meters running every day.

So every day delay is money being spent for if we were to do option one for no work other than the watering, um, staff, port a potties, safety barricades, all that stuff.

And so the force account work is a very good way of doing work.

You have staff there full-time documenting yards of soil being moved out, yards of water fill being brought in.

The eight percent is just the way it turned out, but it's all based on work tags, daily work tags of number of staff, quantities, materials, and things like that, and it's not unusual.

And to keep a 20-foot deep open trench open would have cost probably tens of thousands dollars per day to do all the things that you listed in the staff report.

So, as I shared with the city manager, this is exactly what needs to be happened when you encounter things like this and the documentation needed so that a cardinal change accusation can be easily defended.

So, thank you for doing that and the entire team.

Thank you.

Thank you both.

I heard a motion from Councilmember Sergen, a second from Council Member G.

Could we get an electronic vote, please?

Motion passes unanimously.

Great.

Thank you, everyone.

We will now move on to item eight, our public hearings beginning with eight A.

And we have uh our city consultant Leo Scott with Gray Bowen Scott, who's joined us virtually and will give us a presentation.

And we also have staff available for any council questions.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the council.

I will jump through the slide deck as we did just two weeks ago.

Uh so let's jump to the next slide.

Uh we've gone through most of the details in this, so what I'm gonna do tonight is just uh highlight a few of the uniquenesses relative to tonight's hearing.

Uh so with that, let's uh go to the next slide.

Uh stop here for a moment.

Before the council tonight is a proposed resolution of necessity that would authorize the use of imminent domain to acquire property located between 1101 and 1185 Broadway that is needed for the state 84 Woodside Road US 101 interchange reimagined project.

The project is designed to enhance traffic safety, reduce congestion and pollution, and provide safer bicycle and pedestrian facilities.

Next slide.

So tonight the council is being asked to find the following that the public interest and necessity require the project, that the project is planned and located and/or located in a manner that will be most compatible with the greatest public good and leave private injury and least private injury, that the property interest sought to be acquired is necessary for the project, and that the offer required by government code section 7267.2 has been made to the owner of record.

The issue of compensation for the necessary property interests is not before council tonight, but will be determined through the eminent domain litigation process.

So with that, we'll go jump to the next series of slides.

These are slides that we've talked through.

There's certainly no change to these over the last two weeks.

And the next slide.

The project purpose as recorded in the environmental document is here.

We've covered this.

I just want to reiterate that it is straight from the environmental document.

So what's being considered tonight is consistent with that.

The next slide, a view of the interchange in its uh future condition.

And then the next slide shows a cross section at Broadway.

So the particular parcel that we're looking at is to the right here, just off the page along Broadway.

Next slide.

Project status we've covered.

Want to just highlight here for the record that the environmental document was approved back in December of 2016.

That the project is now currently fully funded, and we're proceeding to final design and then ultimately construction in early 2027.

Next slide.

This is a the larger picture of parcel acquisition, which we've also covered.

If there were questions, we can come back to this.

Next slide.

And then the overview of all the parcels impacted by the project, which we also discussed in previous meetings.

So then we get to the focus of tonight's Ron hearing on the next slide.

So portions of the property located on the south side of Broadway between Woodside Road and Charter Street, also known as the Rinker Development Corporation property.

The next slide shows the location just uh to the east of Woodside Road along Broadway on the south south side of Broadway.

Next slide.

Parcel description is a 25-foot wide roadway and public utility easement located on the south side of Broadway between Woodside Road and Charter Street.

The need, a fee fee acquisition of 141 square feet, a temporary construction easement of an additional 125 square feet.

The purpose is the accommodation of improvements to Broadway near the SR 84 intersection.

This necessitates widening of Broadway adjacent to the subject parcel to accommodate six total lanes of vehicular traffic, including two turning lanes.

Next slide shows the actual parcel subject of the hearing.

In green here, you can see the area is uh it's a it's a driveway uh to a parcel that is as you can see along the upper left here, right between two other parcels.

Alright, next slide.

So, next steps.

Discussion with the property owner will continue while the team proceeds with eminent domain steps, as was true for the hearing two weeks ago.

Tonight's action will not prohibit continued negotiations.

Upon approval tonight, the team will file imminent domain law the imminent domain lawsuit that's necessary, pursue uh court proceedings, and seek the order of prejudgment possession from the court.

The eminent domain litigation can be resolved through negotiated settlement between the parties.

If the parties are unable to negotiate a settlement, just compensation will be determined through a jury trial.

The final slide.

Require the project, determine the project is planned andor located in a manner that will be most compatible with the greatest public good and least private injury.

Determine the property interests sought to be acquired are necessary for the project.

Determine the offer required is required by government code 7267.2 and has been made to the owner of record.

Determine that the actions authorized by this resolution are adequately analyzed by a previous CEQA action for the subject property, authorized commencement of imminent domain litigation and seek an order of possession consistent with civil procedure section 1245.220.

And with that, that concludes my presentation, and I'm happy to take questions.

Great.

Thank you, Leo, for the wonderful presentation again.

Before we bring it back to the city council for questions, we'll open the public hearing and I'll ask the city clerk for help taking public comment.

We don't have any speaker cards at this time, so I'll give a last call to the audience for any folks in the room or on Zoom who would like to give public comment.

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

Thank you, City Clerk.

And I'll bring it back to my council colleagues for any questions.

We have Leo online and staff available.

We'll go to Councilmember G.

Mayor, if there are not any comments from council and with the city attorney's permission, this is just one action.

So we could just make one motion.

If there aren't any other comments, I'll make the motion to approve the staff recommendation to adopt a resolution of necessity as recommended in the staff report related to properties or the access located between 1185 Broadway and 1101 Broadway.

More commonly known as the Rinker Development Corporation property as indicated in the staff report.

Second.

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

Could we get an electronic vote, please?

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you, everyone.

And with that, we'll move on to item nine, our staff reports beginning with 9A.

Our city manager, Patrick Heisinger will provide a brief introduction before turning the presentation over to our deputy city manager Jennifer Yamaguma and our finance director, Beth Goldberg.

Great.

Thank you, Mayor.

This is a brief introduction before I turn it over to Beth.

But first, I just want to express a lot of gratitude.

It takes a lot to get to the mid-year budget, really.

When you're looking at a lot of the work that's been done by departments, uh, all departments, including the city attorney's office, as well as the budget forecast.

About a month ago, the forecast was quote unquote baked for that specific period of time.

And then we heard about the VLF or whatnot.

So Beth has been doing a lot of Excel, uh, you know, rerun in numbers, rerun in figures.

You'll see certain elements of that on on this on this presentation.

So again, I just want to give a lot of kudos.

Thank you, Beth, for helping to coordinate it and get it together.

But really, the whole organization is part of what you'll see tonight.

And part of what you'll see when we come back, you know, in June on the two times when we come back.

So with that, I will turn over to Beth.

And just a heads up, there is one slide I'll be tackling later.

Um, but Beth will be doing a line share of it.

So appreciate it.

Uh good evening, everyone.

I'm Beth Goldberg, uh finance Director.

It's nice to be with you this evening, uh, Mayor, vice Mayor, council members, and um uh the public.

Um, so um we do have a presentation for you this evening.

Can you do the honors for me?

Thank you.

Um, so first uh the presentation outline.

Um, we're uh gonna give a brief overview of the mid-year budget adjustments that council considers at this time of the year.

We will give an update on our progress or mid-year progress on our goals for fiscal year 25-26, and then we'll go into the meat of the forecast, which will include an overview of the economic and financial landscape, our 24-25 results, our mid-year outlook for fiscal year 25-26, and then our forecast for the next fiscal year 26-27.

And then we'll turn it over to our city manager to discuss briefly the framework for our budget development process this year, and then I'll uh wrap it up before turning it over to the city council for questions, and certainly feel free to interrupt as we make our way through the presentation as well.

So if we can go ahead, uh two slides.

The next one there, okay, perfect.

Thank you.

So this is uh slide provides an overview of the mid-year budget adjustments that we are recommending for council consideration this evening.

Um total impact um across all funds is uh nearly 5.9 million dollars.

Uh, to the general fund, um it results in a net change to fund balance of 2.3 million dollars, 2.4 million dollars, and um some of the highlights um that contribute to that are um some technical adjustments related to our recently negotiated labor contracts.

Uh the time, there were some timing issues, so this factors in those um some of those costs related to those agreements.

Um in addition, there are some modest FTE changes through uh a few uh reclassification position reclassifications.

Um there's funding to uh support a comprehensive facilities assessment study in the upcoming year, and this will go in support of uh the city's work to develop capital funding strategies, which is a council priority.

Uh, there's funding for the city cybersecurity program, um, changes to reflect receipt of grants, including uh see the CDBG grant, uh federal highway infrastructure program and project read, and then some uh equipment purchases for police and fire, including portable radios and uh purchase of a fire engine.

So that uh covers the highlights of the mid-year budget adjustment.

There are more details in your packet.

And with that, I'll turn the next section of this report over to Deputy City Manager Jennifer Yamaguma.

Thank you, Beth, and good evening, Mayor and Council and the community and staff.

So I get the pleasure of walking through the progress on our current goals, which is attachment C to the staff report, and then I'm gonna do a quick recap of the community satisfaction survey results that you heard last month.

So this is a chart that is um a comparison between the mid-year status, which is the inner ring and the semi-transparent portion of this pie chart.

That shows the ex uh the current status of all of our SMARTE goals that are in the budget book.

The outer ring, which is a little darker, is the expected status of the goals at the end of the fiscal year, so at the end of June.

So as the chart displayed um at mid-year, 33% of the goals are completed, 48% are in progress, and 19% are delayed.

So this again reflects the work that where departments are currently at with the implementation across all of the goals.

The outer is um again expected to go up.

So you'll see the dark green component is represents those that will be completed by the end of the fiscal year, which is 74%.

The yellow is 22%, which really represents significant progress on the goals.

So even if they were not completed at the original time frame that may have been identified when you adopted the budget, significant progress has been made.

So that has been accounted for in the yellow section.

And the red is 4%, which really just equates to a couple of projects, just to put it into perspective as you go through the all of the different updates in the attachment.

So just to provide a little uh a few examples behind this data.

A completed goal that has already happened through mid-year is the tenant protection ordinance.

So that is something that is already being implemented and completed with council's approval.

An example of something that's in progress is the greater downtown area plan engagement strategy, which you've heard lots about, where most of the outreach milestones have already been achieved, but there will be additional engagement continued throughout the rest of the fiscal year.

So that would be in the yellow.

So that's now one that is expected to be completed in spring of 2027.

Work is underway on it, so don't think that nothing is being done, but because of some of the extra additional components to it, it's delayed the original time frame.

But again, complete completion is expected in spring of 2027.

So as you can see, this reflects an overall strong trajectory of being able to complete or make significant progress on the goals that support the council's strategic plan.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

So following last month's uh comprehensive presentation that we had for the 2025 community satisfaction survey.

Again, community feedback continues to reinforce several key priorities, including housing affordability, support for youth and families, neighborhood safety and mobility, and the importance of communication and community connection.

So housing definitely is continues to emerge as a major theme with residents expressing ongoing concern around affordability and the ability to meet housing needs across all different income levels.

Survey results show strong support for creating safe, healthy places where children and youth can grow, learn, and play.

Residents generally report feeling safe in their neighborhoods while continuing to identify traffic flow, pedestrian safety, sidewalks, and ease of travel as important quality of life issues.

And finally, residents continue to emphasize the importance of clear communications, transparency, and staying connected to city decision making.

So these themes are familiar to you from the last presentation, but wanted to highlight them here as a refresher as we balance that with the goals that have already been set for fiscal year 25-26.

You can see where there's lots of integration, and this will continue to help with the um setting of the 26-27 goals and budget recommendations through the city manager to the city council.

I'm going to turn it back over to Beth and I will highlight if you have specific questions on any of the individual goals, all of our department heads are available for that later.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Jennifer.

If we can go ahead to the next slide, this next section, I'm gonna give an overview of the economic and financial landscape that we find ourselves in.

With regards to the economic landscape, I um I've put up here a quote, may you live in interesting times.

I worked for a budget director for many years that um used to invoke this quote um regularly, and it seems like a good time to bring it up here.

Um boy, do we have interesting?

We have tariffs, we have people watching GDP growth that was maybe tempered by the federal shutdown, but maybe not.

We have inflation that is sometimes going up, sometimes tempering, sometimes back to going up.

Uh we have a job market that is changing in front of us.

We heard from the county representatives about uh the uh VLF shortfall money, and then um on a positive side, there is um a clip from uh early January that said San Mateo County's economy is stable.

So um there's all sorts of things going on out there, ups downs, and so um this forecast is being prepared in the midst of all of that.

If we could go to the next slide, please.

So um, in terms of the uh financial landscape, want to just ground everyone in um how we got here and a little bit of history over the last uh year or so.

Um, so in fiscal year 24-25, um, and then continuing into 2526, the city has been working to refine its revenue and projection uh or expenditure projections to more closely reflect recent trends.

Um so that work is um in progress in fiscal year or for fiscal year 2526, um we introduced staff introduced and the council adopted a multi-year budget balancing plan that would deploy um our one-time balances that have accumulated, and uh the money that we proactively, thanks to council leadership reserved to offset future uh CalPers obligations in the Section 115 trust to balance the budget through fiscal year 28-29.

Um we also in the 25-26 budget, thanks to passage of measure BB, as well as as just refined uh forecasts, we were able to add funding to add 26.6 FTEs, and uh the council may recall that there were many years where we didn't have uh sufficient funding to expand our employment base and our service offerings, and so uh fiscal year 2526 with the passage of measure BB was um an important milestone in allowing us to just start to make some uh headway in those uh much needed investments.

Next slide, please.

Uh the city's outlook for fiscal year 25, 26, and 26-27.

Um is now indicating that we have less flexibility than we've had um in past years, and some of this we planned for.

Um so uh as I mentioned on the previous slide, with um having more precise forecasts, it allowed us to invest ongoing revenues to meet ongoing needs and would temper the unexpected, unexpected um one-time fund balances that were accumulating in in recent years.

Um but we've also seen um some revenue weakness since um the budget was adopted in June and um lower unassigned fund balances that we were relying on to balance future year budgets.

So I will talk about how all of that impacts the forecast as we go on tonight.

Um while we're not anticipating any budget reductions this year, we don't have a lot of resources in both fiscal year 25-26 um and 26-27 to make significant additions to the budget unless they are essential or come with matching revenues.

Um these changes that I will talk about uh throughout the evening will mean that we will need to start drawing down the funds that was set aside in the Section 115 trust earlier and faster than anticipated, and I'll get to that at the end uh this evening.

If we could go to the next slide.

So we starting uh last year have taken a new approach to budgeting, and that new approach, as I mentioned in the previous slide, is to get more precise with our revenue expenditure forecasts so that we could minimize the level of budget variances that we were seeing at the end of the year.

That was a little dramatic.

Sorry about that.

I talk with my hands, so maybe I should move that out of the way.

So the numbers on this slide are less important than the concept, which is we were getting to the end of the fiscal year, and we were seeing fairly sizable variances in our expenditure and revenue projections, which was putting um one-time money on the table, some years in excess of 15%.

Uh, by way of example, uh the 45 million at the end of fiscal year 23-24 represented about 20% of the general fund budget.

So while that presents an opportunity at the end of the year to deploy those one-time resources, it also means because this pattern has been fairly consistent that we haven't been able to allocate those on the ongoing aspects of these to meet our ongoing needs.

So that kind of encompasses the new approach that we're taking to budgeting, which is how do we get more precise so that we we can deploy um ongoing ongoing resources to meet ongoing needs, but it does come with then less flexibility with one-time monies.

Um, in terms of uh next slide, please.

Um, in terms of revenue trends, since uh we were here with all of you in June, um, we are seeing, and I'll I'll expand on this weakness in some of our revenues.

Um you heard this evening from the county about the VLF shortfall.

We in city vernacular um frequently refer to that as the VLF pack fill money.

So um that obviously is is a source of weakness that we were not anticipating.

We're seeing modest weakness in our sales tax revenues, not hugely significant, but but there is some some weakness there.

Our business license tax revenue has not been performing as well as forecast, and then our utility user tax um is is performing slightly worse and is not forecasted to grow significantly in the out years, and I'm bringing that up here because I know capital infrastructure funding is is a priority for this council, and uh utility user tax is one of our key dedicated revenues to support those capital investments, so want some awareness there.

Um, in terms of sources of strength, um, transient occupancy tax, the TOT is continuing to recover from the post-COVID years, which is fantastic, and we're expecting another hotel to come online, so hopefully that helps boost those numbers.

We're seeing some strength in uh charges for services, that revenue category, and then certain department revenues, department-driven revenues are performing better than expected, and this is fantastic news, but also um with the new approach to budgeting, we were focusing on those more now and making sure at the outset of the budget process we're aligning those forecasts to what the recent trends have been.

So looking to capitalize on those revenues um uh as well through the process.

If we could go to the next slide, so this is another slide.

Don't want you to pay attention to the numbers here in part because you can't really read them, but more um conceptually as a preview of where we are going.

Um so the light blue to the left is the results uh for uh the last fiscal year 2425, the medium blue in the middle is 2526, and the the darker blue on the right is um 2627, and I'm gonna go through each of those sections now through the rest of the presentation.

Next slide, please.

So uh before we do that, I want to just give a preview of um our un uh the our unassigned fund balance levels.

So um again, this was an important component of our budget balancing strategy last year because we um we were gonna deploy um the unassigned fund balance to help balance future budget years along with the Section 115 trust.

Unfortunately, with the changes that I'm going to be talking about, we are seeing a more rapid uh depletion of that unassigned fund balance than what we forecasted in June.

So the dotted line, the dotted green line is what we were forecasting in June, and the darker line that happens to be the lower line, unfortunately, is what we're forecasting now.

So in June, we were forecasting to have unassigned fund balance through fiscal year 26-27, and now we're seeing that based on this forecast depleted in the current fiscal year 25-26.

So if we could go forward to the next slide.

So I'm going to jump now into an overview of our results from the last fiscal year.

So the two columns I would like everyone to focus on are the last two columns to the right.

So the the column second from the right is what we had forecast for revenues and expenditures and fund balance when we came to the council with the adopted budget.

We were forecasting to end with uh 31.8 million dollars in any ending unassigned fund balance.

We now have our preliminary results for fiscal year 25, 24 25.

And a couple of things have changed since June.

First, um revenues performed a little bit better, and this is thanks to what had been our strategy for budgeting VLF backfill prior to this year, which is we weren't budgeting for it, it would come in at the end.

So that is that's contributing to some of that.

There was strength in a variety of other revenues.

So it ended about uh three 3.5, 4 million better than we anticipated.

Um expenditures did finish higher than what we anticipated in June, and so that that and higher to an extent that that negates um the improved revenue performance.

So when you look at the bottom line, um we ended 2425 with 2.6 million less in unassigned fund balance than what we had assumed when the budget was adopted, and this number is gonna be important when I move on to uh 24, I'm sorry, 2526 momentarily.

Next slide, please.

So this chart provides um an overview of how our revenues uh performed in 2425 compared to what we had forecast in June.

And one of the things that stands out is that there are is not a lot of a lot of space between the blue bars and the green bars, which um suggests that that the forecasting was was fairly reasonable.

Um but there are there are some there are some signs there.

So property tax performed slightly weaker, sales tax was pretty much right on par.

Um, and then you can see some strength in charges for services uh and recreation revenues, and this is fantastic, and this is a signal to me as I'm looking at the forecast of like okay, let's look at past year's trends, let's look at current year's trends, and then let's update the forecast to reflect those trends.

So there are opportunities, and we have capitalized on this in 25, 24, I'm sorry, 25-26, too many years, and 26-27 of we're we're easing that up a little bit to to reflect those trends.

With regards to the VLF backfill, so that is captured in the property tax bars.

Um, and um last year we were due to receive $5.3 million dollars, and there's there's a there's a year lag on this, so um, the amounts that the county was talking about this evening, that 5.3 million would have been the amount we would have been owed this year.

It just happens to be the amount we were owed last year, also.

So um we were owed 5.3 million, but only received 3.5 million.

So um that's about a 1.3 million dollar difference that that um impacted our property tax performance last year.

Next slide, please.

So here's a visual of uh VLF backfill revenue is a percent of our property tax revenues, and you will see variation in this, which is one reason why it was difficult to predict, but um last year the 3.5 million we received represents about 4.3 percent of our property tax revenues, so not an insignificant amount.

If we had gotten the full backfill amount that we were owed, it would have been closer to six percent of our property tax revenues.

Next slide, please.

So now uh gonna look ahead to where we are in the current fiscal year, 2526.

So there are three columns on this chart.

First was where we were when the budget was adopted in June, and when the budget was adopted in June, we were forecasting that we were gonna end with a 9.1 million dollar ending unassigned fund balance.

Um, that was contingent.

If you look at the top of that column on ending of having a beginning fund balance, meaning ending 2425 with 31.8 million.

I mentioned uh earlier that uh fund balance ended a little bit worse in 2425, so that starts to feed through if you look at the far column on the right, um, that we're starting with lower fund balance, so right there that serves as a negative.

We are forecasting some modest improvements in overall revenues uh in June, we were at um 206, 207 million, and we're projecting that to be about five hundred thousand dollars higher, uh, which is fantastic.

Um, we're also projecting that expenditures are gonna end higher than what was anticipated in June, and that's fairly normal for us.

So we just walk through some mid-year changes, we also roll over multi-year contracts and things of that nature so that that increases expenditures.

Um, and then um want to point out um uh also on the far right column uh the economic stability reserve.

There's a circle there with nothing in it.

Um that is because as part of the VLF backfill strategy last year, we had set up the economic stability reserve to act as a hedge, and now that we are forecasting based on the information from the county that we will no longer receive that VLF backfill, we are we are zeroing that out, meaning we won't make a contribution, so that'll help that will help balance the budget.

Um, and I should I realize as I'm talking very fast right now.

Um, I should remind everyone that 2526 was the first year that we built the VLF backfill revenues into our base budget, um, that we had consistently received it year after year after year with our new approach to budgeting, trying to minimize the the one-time balances.

This seemed like the year to build it in, and we built that reserve in as a hedge, and you know, Murphy's law comes into play the year you do that is the year maybe something happens.

Um so um, so anyway, that that that is it's a big game changer for us, and what we are now forecasting is rather than ending with a positive fund balance of 9.1 million, we're projecting a negative fund balance of 1.2 million, and I'll talk uh at the end about how we're gonna we're recommending closing that gap if we could go to the next slide um so revenue performance again um the the green bars are are pretty close to the to the the blue bars property taxes down be primarily because of the VLF backfill sales tax is down modestly and that's based on um the latest forecast from our consultants um blt which I will business license tax which I will talk about a little bit more momentarily is not performing quite as we had forecasted when the budget was adopted and then again we're seeing some strength in department um driven revenues that we have we have captured in this forecast including um the recreation revenues that um I spoke about earlier and I want to just pause here for one minute um one of finance's goals for 2526 was to generate uh budget to actuals reporting to allow us to better monitor our budget position and um the inaugural budget to actuals report is in your packet I believe it is attachment uh B and so I encourage everyone to read that it includes data through uh January and we'll be updating uh the data for February uh shortly so encourage you all to take a look at that next slide please okay so business license tax uh measure BB was um forecast to generate about 3.85 million in additional business license tax revenue for uh 2526 um and so that was gonna bring our total BLT collections up to uh 7.4 million dollars um and that represents about a hundred and twenty four percent increase over what we would have collected um had measure BB not passed um we are seeing some weakness in this revenue we're taking uh the forecast down by about 1.9 million dollars and that is because the collection trends have just have notched what what we had projected um so um the middle bars there show actual collections through september and business license tax is paid primarily at the beginning of the fiscal year so we get most of those payments in uh June July and then it then it tapers off so what we were seeing in the performance through September was not a collection rate that was matching 124% increase rather it was more like a 52% increase so that that was causing concern and so you might recall that we came to the council um in September or October I can't remember exactly when um council approved an expanded contract with HDL to um uh take a more active role in um in compliance um with our business license tax um more so than what we were capable of with existing staff and so um I'm pleased to report um that the uh two bars on the right hand side of this chart um while smaller are starting to yield results so since October when uh HDL expanded their their uh responsibilities on our behalf um we have seen collections exceed last year's rate by 143 percent um and this is through January I can also report that um we are expecting uh very significant increase in our February collections based on HDL's work so um hopefully um this is an area that when we lead into June, we might be able to take this revenue up a little bit um which would help not only with this year, but also next year's projections.

So I wanted to make sure I I touched on that for for all of you.

Next slide.

Okay, so now looking ahead.

So when we presented the 10-year forecast to the city council in June with the adopted budget, we were projecting a positive ending unassigned fund balance, a modest small uh positive ending unassigned fund balance.

But with the various changes that I've talked through this evening, including the loss of the VLF backfill monies, we are now projecting to end with a negative ending unassigned fund balance of about 14 million dollars.

As I said at the outset, we are not expecting to need budget reductions this year, that we are recommending a strategy where we start using our reserves a little bit earlier than anticipated.

But it does create concern as we look to the out years about our ability to sustain services at these funding levels.

So want to talk uh very briefly again about our revenue outlook, and then I will talk about uh the strategies that we will use to ensure we do not end um the next fiscal year uh with a negative um fund balance.

So if we could go to the next slide, please.

Again, here is the chart that you're familiar with on revenues.

You will see property tax is down, and this is this is uh a result primarily of the VLF, the loss of the VLF backfill money.

Um sales tax again, modestly weaker.

Um other taxes modestly weaker.

This is where the BLT revenues are captured.

So if we could get that to boost up, that would help.

And then the other the other bars are one less significant contributors to our revenue picture, but they're all kind of very much in line with with what we had uh projected in June overall.

So if we could go to the next slide, please.

So this is where, and again, the numbers on this are less important, but this is where I want to display for everyone the impact of these changes and what it means for use of reserves in balancing the budget.

So when we were here in June, we were anticipating uh starting to use the Section 115 trust starting in fiscal year 27-28, and that uh the balance in that trust would carry us through fiscal year uh 2029-30, and that there would be a need for modest reductions or identification of revenues beginning in fiscal year 29-30 and then continuing through the balance of the 10-year forecast.

With the changes I've gone through this evening, you will see that that has now been accelerated by by two years that we would start to draw down a modest amount of the Section 115 trust in the current fiscal year to bring fund balance up to zero, and then uh deploy it and exhaust it in uh fiscal year 28-29, at which point that would be when we would need to start seeing reductions and and more significant reductions than what we had anticipated in June.

So the take-home message is that we have balances to sustain us, you know, current course and speed, forecasts can change, but current course and speed, we have resources to sustain us over the next couple of fiscal years, but um we're we're we're digging into our reserves earlier than anticipated, and um certainly the out-year, the out-year numbers um are looking um a little bit more bleak than what we had anticipated in June.

And with that, um I'll turn the next part of the presentation over to our city manager.

Great.

Thank you, Beth.

Uh, next slide, please.

And I and I just have one slide that really tries to sum up what the um proposed framework would be.

And the word that really comes to mind uh for me is is a measured approach.

Um Diana and I, uh Councilman Power and I were talking earlier.

I'm I'm trying to get to cautionally optimistic, but for now we're gonna say measured.

So hopefully by the time we get back in June, we'll be we'll be um a little bit more optimistic.

Um but really what you're seeing is is almost like a you know, I don't want to use the word status quo budget, but we're really gonna try to focus on our core services, you know, police fire, so public safety, our our work we do at the counters, supporting our neighborhoods, but also within core services is really, you know, making sure that we're supporting our most vulnerable residents as well.

So the values are definitely part of our our core services.

Um, something that we've been talking a lot about at City Hall is really uh focusing on modernization and efficiency.

So as part of the budget process, I've asked each department to identify multiple modernization and efficiency activities that will be brought forward as part of the budget process.

That when you talk the way I've defined modernization as things that the benefit the community from a cost perspective or or processing perspective, making things quicker, whether it's building permits or inspections or or or other things, but modernization, really thinking about the end users' efficiencies are things internal.

How can we process our work faster, better, more streamlined?

Um, really trying to say is can we do more with with equal to or or less if we have to?

Um so the departments are actively doing that.

So in June, we'll we'll bring forward a plethora of recommendations for that.

Um being future ready to be being future ready is really about if it is a a status quo budget, what are we doing to prepare for the future?

Um, you see a lot of language in the report about really starting to make a dent into our infrastructure planning and how are we gonna fund for this infrastructure?

Not just building the new infrastructure, but the maintenance of said infrastructure.

What is the total cost of doing the business of delivering great um infrastructure and utilities?

And as you heard uh earlier tonight, is also combining our facilities with that.

You know, we've we've built and we have really nice facilities, but we don't have any money to make sure that we are um operating and maintaining those facilities, so really want to do some comprehensive studies to figure out, you know, in a couple years, how are we positioned to really you know make sure that we are um funding those activities?

Um economic development, this is something that we do, you know.

We have a great economic development manager, which you'll hear from soon on on another item.

Um, but I would say now's the time to get real serious about economic development.

I do think this community, this council is supportive of of economic development, but we can do things like like the digital billboard that'll bring in a couple hundred thousand dollars potentially.

Um, but with the with the deficits that Beth has has posed here is we need to make a real big dent in economic development.

And you'll see some language that I inserted into the report about some property owners have came to us about potential rezoning options, normally we would not even entertain those.

Um, but when you look at the cost basis of a property tax by a class C or Class B office, that that's not filled.

And if it were to be converted to housing or something like that, you're it's probably like a 50x return on property tax.

So, however, you don't want to just convert everything to housing and have no job producing land, right?

So there's some policy work that we'd like to explore and explore rather quickly because without a significant increase in economic development, without cutting a bunch of staff, it's gonna be really hard to make those um revenues work.

The final thing I'll say, and folks might be saying intergovernment relations, what what's that?

Um, in years when might not be adding a lot more things to do.

I think it's really important for staff to start focusing, and our staff does, but really making sure that the city of Redwood City has a seat at every single table around the area with the different boards and commissions that the council um sits on.

And we we know you all you all go, um, but we want to make sure that we're paying attention to what one shoreline is doing, but actively talking with one shoreline.

How can we help you move your um your um progress forward as well as ours?

Um, Silicon Valley Clean Water reached out to us.

They want to start talking about what the next JPA looks like.

Um, still in discussion with the port about the fire training facility, but all this to me comes down to intergovernmental relations.

A lot of times that gets kind of pushed off to the wayside because we're we're trying to focus on how do we get those permits through.

How do we make sure the library has what they need?

How do we make sure places of fire?

But um, a real big emphasis on making sure that if we're not adding a lot of new um, you know, activity as part of the budget process, that we are well equipped to make sure that we are at the staff level influencing, you know, what we can for the city of Redwood City.

So that would become a big focus for my administration partnering with um the rest of the department heads so um there are seven items in there, but I think I I tried to lump a few in there, but I'm happy to answer any questions after.

Um I'll turn it back to Beth to wrap it up.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

So here is our budgets calendar.

We're at that point of the presentation where we get to look ahead to the budget calendar.

So um we're here tonight presenting uh the mid-year budget update.

On April 13th, we will be back to present the capital improvement um plan at a study session.

Um there will be a study session in May on uh the CDBG and home grants, um, and then um June 8th, we will be back um to submit or present the recommended budget to the city council for consideration with um final adoption and a public hearing coming on June 22nd.

So uh that is what we are looking at in the months ahead.

Um, in terms of um questions for uh the city council to consider this evening.

Um, first is are there any uh changes that the city council would like to make to the mid-year budget amendments?

Um does the city council have any questions about the forecast?

Does the city council support the overall strategy for development of the fiscal year 26-27 budget?

And is there any other feedback that the council would like to give us as we develop uh the recommended budget?

And then in terms of SNAF recommendations, uh we recommend that um the city council um accept the update on um the year end results for 2526, um, accept the update on the mid-year uh goals for 2526, adopt a resolution appropriating and transferring certain funds related to the mid-year budget amendment, um, accept uh the economic update and budget outlook that we presented this evening, uh provide direction on the recommended framework for developing the fiscal year 2627 budget, and then uh by motion approve the dates for the city council for city council action on the fiscal year 26-27 budget is set forth in um in the staff report.

And so with that, um I'll stop talking.

Beth, thank you so much for the very thorough presentation, Jennifer as well.

Um I know it takes a village just to get this presentation ready and all of the work that went into the staff report.

So thank you so much for for that great work.

Um, before we bring it back to the council, we'll take public comments so pass it over to our city court.

Thank you, Mayor.

We have one in-person speaker and one hand currently raised on Zoom.

So I'll give it a few more moments for folks to submit a speaker card or raise their hand virtually.

Okay, so we'll close the list now.

We have Aaron Coleman and followed by Clara Jackal on Zoom.

So I just wanted to chime in on how much it costs to close Dr.

Tom Marina.

Last estimate was 29 million dollars.

Um, as some of you might know, my uh I bought a floating home at the auction, um, and it was not built to code, it had no handrail on a spiral staircase, and my daughter subsequently, 11-year-old fell and died in that floating home.

Um it's been traumatic for my son and I um to lose her.

She she was our whole world.

Um, and at the time I asked Terence Cod just to buy us out at fair market value, uh and we would leave.

Uh, he refused.

He said that the city didn't have the funds to to do that at the time.

They spent 11 million dollars.

Now it's at 29 million dollars, and and nothing's really been done there.

They just closed down the marina.

I've taken pictures of every bit of work that's ever occurred there.

There's no justification for that extra money.

So I mean, uh just recently my floating home is has now gone up for auction again with everything I own still inside, including my daughter's cremated remains.

The city will not grant me access to go inside, and um I don't know what to do.

I have an attorney that wants me to sue because it was not built to code, the city sold it to me.

They're talking like a 10 million dollar lawsuit, and I don't want to sue, I've never wanted to sue.

I was always told that they would take care of me, they never have.

Um a judge even told the the city attorney to go to negotiations with me.

He offered me 750 dollars.

The floating home has a frame market value of 750,000.

Uh the city put me in a homeless shelter where I still remain, it's been five months, and and no one will work with me.

The city attorney, Maxwell Blum will not work with me at all.

So I need help.

If there's anything the city council can do, I really appreciate their time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Aaron.

Our next speaker is Clara Jekyll.

Welcome, Clara.

Yeah, thank you.

Um, I want to start with the disclaimer that I'm a member of the police advisory committee, but I'm making this comment just as an individual resident.

Um, I'm concerned about the police department's proposal to allocate funds for a new five-year agreement for body worn camera services.

The reason for having police wear cameras is to increase officers' accountability for their own actions, and that's why body worn cameras have been touted over the last decade as part of a more modern policing philosophy.

But ProPublica reported in 2024 that using the cameras did not make officers change their behavior in cities where the police department itself controls who can review and release the footage.

It takes an independent civilian oversight board with power to review the footage and determine if any should be made public to really make an impact on police use of force.

Since we do not have a body with independent oversight authority here in Redwood City, we're not getting the intended accountability benefit from the body worn cameras, and consequently, it's just not useful to make a further investment in a new big contract for them.

I would urge you instead to look at ways that we could use our communal funds to meet residents' needs in ways that are proven to reduce crime.

For example, crime rates are lower in neighborhoods with lower eviction rates when funds are available to respond to calls to housing emergency hotlines among youth who participate in summer employment programs and neural libraries.

Among the police department's own plans, there was discussion in the last PAC meeting of proposals to hire another clinician for the community wellness and crisis response program and to create more youth programs, both of which would also have more immediate benefit for what's Redwood City residents.

So let's put our investment into services that truly serve long-term community stability and public safety.

Thank you.

Thank you, Clara.

And that wraps that public comment mayor.

Thank you, City Clerk.

And before we bring back to the council, I'd like to ask staff if we can reach out to Mr.

Coleman on his situation.

I know this is I think the second time he's been here, but um I know we can't address his concerns.

Happy to do that, thank you.

Um I do want to let the council know this isn't relevant to this agenda item, but the city attorney's office has been in um contact and has been responsive at every opportunity.

We just haven't been able to reach resolution.

Um this already did get uh litigated in court, and the city is just proceeding per its judgment.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, city attorney.

And with that, I'll bring it back to the full council for any questions or opening comments.

No, sorry, we're going to take public comment from the council.

Sorry, comments from the council members on the agenda item now.

Thank you.

And we'll go to looks like council member Howard is reaching.

Thank you for getting us started.

I'll do my best here.

Um, first of all, Beth, and I thank you, Jennifer, Beth, and uh, of course, our city manager, thank you all, and uh everyone who helped put this together.

Uh I had to go over it a couple of times.

There's just uh it's like information overload, but it's so important.

And so I really want to feel like I had a grasp on it.

So uh really appreciate that.

But I do have a couple of just clarifying questions that would be helpful for me and maybe for others before we start uh in the conversation.

Uh I really uh like the fact that you um identified our source of weaknesses.

That was really so helpful.

Um just you know, you put it out there and then you explain what it is, and I think that's gonna be very useful going forward.

But could you help me understand why the utility user tax and any others that are just not producing?

You explained the business license tax.

Now we have a responsible group doing the uh delinquency and things, and I think that money will go up.

So I was real happy to hear that.

But things like the utility user tax um or um sales tax or even property tax, anything, any any plans in the works to counteract the negativity that the negative direction it seems to be going in.

Uh for utility user tax in particular.

Um that is a tax on utility bills.

Um, so for example uh PGE and um solid waste and um an important variable in in this in Redwood City is not unique to this.

Um but there's utility tax on um telephone usage um for example and cable usage and um one of the challenges that have been facing uh utility utility user tax um entities like Redwood City over the years is that people are moving away from um some of those utilities that had been that had been taxed.

So that is um a cause for it's not that it's going down per se, but it's it's stagnating and it's it's not growing at the rate um that it was anticipated for.

So for example, in uh 24-25, um we were forecasting about 12 million dollars.

Um we ended the year with I think 11.8, 11.9.

So pretty darn close to the forecast.

Um, but what we're seeing this year and had continued that 12 million dollars out, um, we're we're seeing some weakness there.

So it's it's at about 11.5 million is what we're projecting now.

Not a huge difference, but um our utility our I'm sorry, our infrastructure needs that that revenue source has been tied to is um is so critical, and we just it's it's an added pressure that the utility user tax was never enough to support all of our capital needs and the fact that it is not growing at a particularly rapid rate or not really growing at all, just puts that much more pressure on it.

So that's that's why I wanted to highlight that.

Um in terms of delinquencies, you know, we are stepping up our efforts on the business license tax, and that is starting to generate some some results.

Um we also were here in January to strengthen our transit transient occupancy tax ordinance to allow uh stronger follow-up there, and we're working on that as well.

Um the team also is looking at our our utility billing in general, um, which is separate from the utility user tax, and um focusing more on on how do we get that delinquency rate down as well.

So um it's it's we're approaching this from from multiple fronts, and hopefully it will it will start um yielding like business license tax some some results for us.

Oh, I I certainly hope so, but I'm glad that you're looking at it from many different angles to see how we can make this a better situation.

Um may not realize, but one great example is Stafford Park.

In the 90s, we were able to build Stafford Park.

It was totally trash.

Uh, I mean it was old equipment, I wouldn't say it was trash, it was t old equipment, unsafe equipment for children.

And we rebuilt that entire park with utility user tax, as we have done with many other park structures and many other um infrastructure in Redwood City.

And I I hope that we're hope that we can make it robust again somehow, some way, but studying it is certainly a good way to start, and hopefully we can do that.

But thank you.

Um, so you have a plan of action with that.

Um see, I wanted to thank you for really utilizing the customer satisfaction survey.

I found that was an amazing survey.

I mean, it really dug in deep and really brought up some very wonderful.

I don't know, I just feel good about our city right now.

With what what came out of that survey was honest, but it was hopeful and optimistic in many ways.

The community feels optimistic and hopeful about the future of Redwood City.

Everything else may be flying around, but I got the sense from our city because a majority of people felt very optimistic and hope that we will continue to grow the city in the way that we have been proceeding.

So I'm this advanced planning should give everyone comfort.

We're not going to wait till the last second and start doing things on the fly.

You're you're really planning ahead, and hopefully we'll get community input along the way, which I know we will.

Um, if anyone has any ideas on what else we can be doing, because we don't have all the answers.

This vehicle license fee, I just felt like I was kicked in the stomach.

I mean, I knew it was bad, I just didn't know how bad.

And now we do, and it could be worse than we're hopeful that we'll get something, but it it could even get worse.

So and it's the cumulative impact.

So, you know, four million, five million in a year, it's you know, that's not it's not an insignificant sum of money, but when you start looking at five million year after year after year after year, um, you know, it it it takes the toll, which is why you're seeing those those out-year shortfalls increase significantly.

And here we are trying to talk about infrastructure needs and and building on our future.

Uh this is we'll get there.

I mean, we've been in worse spots before, I think.

I I hope not, but I mean, but we we've come through because we always plan ahead, keep working and looking for new ideas.

So anything we can do to help in that area, that's what we're gonna do.

Um so you have accounted for the backfill crisis.

I can see that, and thank you for highlighting that again because it's kind of hidden in some of the small charts.

I had to really look for that.

So thank you for highlighting that that we are addressing it and we are um planning for the lack of funds that may be coming or not coming at all.

Um I'm glad we were doing able to do the hiring that we did.

Uh that was money well spent.

We've been working lean for years, and people know it.

We haven't had enough police, we haven't had enough fire, we haven't had enough staff in park and rec.

There's so many I could name so many, almost every department.

Um, human resources was so short staffed that we couldn't get regular work done within the house.

And I'm so glad that we have made the hires, and let's really work hard to make sure we don't have to have anything like a layoff in our future because we need these people.

We need these employees.

Um at the moment, I don't think I have other questions, but I'll give it all, hand it off to my other colleagues.

Thanks again.

Thank you for getting it started, Councilmember Howard.

Who would like to go next?

I see Councilmember Chu reaching.

We'll turn it over to her.

Okay.

So thank you for this presentation.

I know this was a huge amount of work, and you know, this isn't, you know, we've seen this kind of all along the way.

And I think I'm just reminded how how much the prudence and the thoughtfulness and the foresight of your team and and the city manager's office has put us in a good position, even as you know, we've lost the vehicle license tax, even as you know, revenues have dropped off, even as we're heading into uncertain times.

And so I really just want to appreciate not just this presentation, but the thinking that led to us being in a good place.

Um I do think that we are headed into a lot of uncertainty.

I mean, I you know, I wouldn't presume to know what's going to happen, but I do think we can confidently say things will be are uncertain.

Uh so I do really appreciate you know you continuing to sort of have that mindset about our city's finances.

Um, you know, I work in uh, you know, I I'm on uh soft money in in research, and the NIH has had a saying for a long time flat is the new new growth.

And you know, there has been a little bit of an uptick, but I think there's been pressure on uh the profession I'm in to constantly innovate and learn to do more with the same amount.

And so, you know, to um manager Heisinger's comment about innovation and modernization.

I I have a robot that allows me to offload a really, really boring, tedious task that the robot does it 10 times better than I do.

Um, and the use of that robot has not only freed up you know a ton of my time, but it has resulted in many grant uh in in quite a sizable grant.

So, you know, you never know when you innovate, when you modernize, um, there can be really out good outcomes with that.

Um, and also you can offload really boring tedious tasks onto robots.

That's another benefit.

Um I I really appreciated the comment about maintenance.

Um, you know, if you think about buying a car, you would never buy a car uh without being able to pay for gas insurance and oil changes, and so uh as our city moves forward, I I'd really love to see us uh continue in that vein of of being conservative and thoughtful and the foresight you've shown.

Um, and also appreciated uh the sort of thoughtfulness around land use, and it's one of the things we actually control is what you know what things are zoned for, and uh looking forward um we may need to be more creative there depending on how crazy things do get.

Um, so overall, terrific job.

Uh, really appreciate um the presentation and the budget, and um forward to the future.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Who would like to go next?

Thank you, Councilmember G.

Break the silence.

Thank you, Mayor.

Beth number one, thank you.

Thank you, and the entire team.

This is so critical for us as a council to take a look at where we're headed financially.

I mean, you know, as council member Howard shared and as Jennifer shared the importance of the community survey, but just as important of potholes and affordable housing is the financial sustainability of the city.

Not just for one year at a time or two years, but five and ten years.

And doing the work you and your team have done over the last two years have gotten us to a place I believe where we now kind of know with a pretty good degree of certainty, at least from a numbers standpoint.

The numbers have a face to it.

There are staff, there are organization, and the people we serve.

So those two things, three things all go together to see what do we want to do as a council for the communities that we are elected in to serve here in Redwood City.

So I'm gonna kind of weave a couple different themes, both in questions and my comments.

And so, number one, um, I want to thank you and our city manager for the including our facility condition assessment as a priority.

Um I believe that's a liability waiting to blow up in our face right now.

And to illustrate, we are getting ready to open a new senior center.

The Veterans Memorial Senior Center is gorgeous from what I hear that people have seen it.

But to our city manager, how much money are we going to set aside every year for a capital reserve?

What do we have in the budget for it?

At this time, we don't have any.

That's the problem.

The building is gonna age over time.

The mechanical system needs to be replaced, electrical, and we do not do that.

And we're not the only ones here in Redwood City.

I can say that to every single public institution along the West Coast, they don't do that.

And so we have sewer lines.

Well, I can't say that because Terrence and Adrian and the team do a pretty good job of water sewer vehicles.

But when it comes to the buildings, we just wait till everything fails and we find a way to pay for it.

And that's not the right way to take care of our assets and our libraries or police stations and things like that.

So knowing where we are, and then looking to the finance and audit committees, how do we how do we plan for this financially?

Is gonna be really, really critical.

Beth, I want to go to your slide 10.

You don't need to go there, Crystal, but it's the slide that says may you live in interesting times.

And we talked about that earlier today.

There's nothing new on it, six months later, eight months later, is there?

Um variations of themes.

There's variations, but there's nothing new.

We it's still uncertain, and and you know, maybe the job markets up, maybe AI is hiring, maybe Meta's laying off, maybe, but it's still uncertain times.

So I think that is gonna be the new normal for at least from my perspective, the next five to ten years, or let's just call it five years, that we're going to continue to live in interesting times.

And it was an interesting comment that you made that you start to include some of VLF or before we didn't, so we might have jinxed ourselves by including it in in the budget, because I think we knew it was gonna be a fight last year as the budget set up, and it's gonna be an even bigger fight given the budget deficit that the state's forecasting right now.

So the probability of getting anything, at least from politically, is probably gonna be remote, and it's gonna take either a court decision or something else to get us some money back.

But I I think we kind of knew that we knew the play last year, and and you know, I think you and the city manager at the time recommended an economic stability reserve that the council kind of cut in half, um, because I think the comments were that we should spend the money and not save it.

And the results are showing on your analysis right now.

If I understood your slide right, our ramp on the 115 trust is four years and then it's emptied.

Is that correct?

I think that was slide 28.

Yes, there's about 30 million.

So once we start and we do this four-year plan, it's zero at the end of well, starting 2930, there's nothing left in the 115 trust.

Correct.

Correct.

I'm not too crazy about that, but I I understand what you're doing because there's, you know, the government's committee.

We've heard legislation about changing some PERS retirement ages that would just only increase our PERS liability.

And that's legislation that's been introduced.

It's got to go through its legislative process, and that's only gonna just increase our PERS liability, which then it will manifest itself on the top line because there's no middle line, the white line anymore.

So I appreciate the planning, but I don't know if I want to empty the 115 trusts or plan on emptying the 115 trust as a way to solve our budget.

If I remember correctly, slide 13 was, you know, now you know exactly what our one-time fund availability is where we were kind of sort of know, but now we know.

Is that did I hear that correctly?

Higher degree of accuracy now.

Higher degree of higher degree of accuracy.

You're never gonna have a forecast that is gonna be spot on, and if you do, go buy a lottery ticket.

Um, but the but the idea is through looking at past trends, looking at current trends, and then regular monitoring that the results become more known and you can proactively respond to them is is the idea behind it.

Very good.

And then as you talk about the increase in business license tax collections, I think we got an email the other day.

How do we deal with I don't think it comes from the city of Redwood City, it comes from like some weird email address like HDL.

How do we make sure that stuff doesn't get caught in a spam filter?

How do we legitimize that email address?

That HDL is sending.

Um, it doesn't come from the city of Redwood City for business license tax.

That is something I could follow up with with HDL on.

I don't know the answer this evening, but I can follow up.

I think that needs to be followed up on because you know, if we're relying on technology to give people invoices and it's a weird address and not the city of Redwood City, I'm not gonna pay a hell of a lot of attention to it.

I mean, I did this with the city manager of the day go, is this a legit email?

I mean, that just with our cybersecurity training, that's what we need to do is question these emails we get before we open them.

Which leads me to the cybersecurity.

I think we're not spending enough on cybersecurity.

Um I'm really worried given the sophistication.

Um I think we have a new CISO, cyber, you know, security officer.

I don't think we're spending enough on cyber security, and I think we need to make sure we are budgeting correctly for that.

And then I'm gonna loop back.

Well, maybe I can just summarize what I think I heard in your report.

Um, basically, that at the mid-year budget presentation this evening, there's no money available for one-time expenditures for whatever our priorities are based on what we where we are today.

Um, expenditures are going up and revenues are either nominally going up or staying flat.

Um, the VLF probably shouldn't count on anything for the foreseeable future.

And then to our city manager and city attorney, we have a project that's gonna wind up in some sort of settlement and litigation.

So, where's that money come from?

Yeah, it's a great question.

So here in Redwood City, we don't have a like a litigation reserve or whatnot.

So we essentially cash flow these um activities.

Um we have had an internal internal discussions about how to set that up next year, but essentially some of the money that Beth I talked about has gone towards some of these um these efforts around litigation and whatnot.

I mean, we know we're gonna spend legal fees, and we know this project that you know staff has been working on trying to get across the finish line is late.

We know there's probably gonna be a claim, and so we're just gonna cash float from general funds at this point.

Unless unless we structure something dramatically different for next fiscal year, correct.

That's that and so as we take a look at the facility condition assessment and capital, we need to figure out how to have a reserve for some of the stuff.

Um, because we're not we're not doing a good job of planning for these things financially.

And then I just want to go back to your slide, Patrick, on um, I think it's slide 22, and ask that as we study what we need to do going in the future.

My polite request is that take a look at any policies that councils put in place that are barriers to economic development.

Um, you know, we've talked about when we brought green infrastructure back to reconsider that that we've lost five employers who went to someplace else because we're not competitive.

So if we have policies in place that are making it making Redwood City not competitive, we should look at it as a council and say, do we want to change it or are we okay with that?

Because we we want the community benefits.

We've been provided with the community benefits, but if we put barriers in place that property owners who've developed can't fill their office buildings, we should be aware of that.

So council can decide what we want to do if that's okay or want to make a change.

But if there are policies like that, we should take a look at that.

And then as we modernize, as council member Chu mentioned, time is money.

And so if there are things that we can do that can speed up processing or speed up adjudicating, I'm not saying everything needs to be said said yes, but if we say no more quickly, then people can move on and free up staff resources to do something else.

So those are the things that I like to see us take a look at, and that you and your team take a look at.

Very sobering presentation, but I think it's really really critical because while potholes are really important to our communities, so is financial viability and sustainability.

And I think I feel like we're at a place now, Beth, that we can really dig into and plan in detail rather than at a 10,000 foot level.

And so, again, thank you and your entire team for this hard work.

Um, and there's just more work we have to do together, but thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember G.

We'll go to Councilmember Padilla.

Hi, Beth.

Thank you for your presentation.

Uh so I went through the numbers, um, and I know that I I appreciate the optimistic tone, and I hate to go back to it, but I just want to acknowledge that when that the money that we take out of the section 115 trusts will help us now, but as council member G, we are still responsible for this.

So, this is something that will help us in the short term, but there are still these are still responsibilities that we have.

So we may kick this can a little bit further down, but these responsibilities won't go away.

Um I'm very excited about the budget to actuals reporting.

I that I think is going to be extremely helpful, and I'm very excited about it.

Um, I I also think about when I think about ways that we could be bringing in more revenue.

Is there low-hanging fruit?

How we can make permit processes easier.

I hear friends and neighbors who live in other cities talking about kiosks that they have or easy just experiences that were um easy for them to facilitate whatever paperwork that they needed.

Is there low-hanging fruit that we can have?

Are there programs or softwares or just ways that we can incentivize people to build things and get things done in their home and keep them in our city, whether that's their licenses or permits, um I did know that you know when we do use these funds that I even though there are no budget cuts suggested now, you know, 2028 and 29 is fast approaching.

Um, and it from after our presentation from the county, it doesn't look like we can count or should be even forecasting with VLF money anymore.

Um so I think we should just keep in mind alternative forms of revenue.

I know that we've mentioned things like billboards, but I would also look into like to look into alternatives such as solar or maybe generating energy.

Uh so I would like just to keep all kinds of opportunities to welcome new ideas.

Uh, some other notes here.

Yes, streamlighting services, helping get filling our vacant buildings.

I mean, partnerships, I think anything that we can do with the county and helping would be great.

I think this I think the VLF is something that we're all going to need to rally around together.

I think that we need to be a united front in a much bigger group around this, because um it will add up.

And it is a big number, and we didn't get as much of we didn't get a lot of it last year.

Um, and I did have a question that I wanted to pose about just the way we use monies in terms of funding things, and I don't know if this is necessarily for you, Beth, in terms of when we fund projects with unused monies from vacant positions.

Is that is that something we do as as a one-off, or is that part of our philosophy?

I just want to make sure, and maybe this is more for the city manager, Beth.

Because there are certain things where I looked and it said, you know, vacant positions were monies from vacant positions were used to fill projects.

So if you could speak to that city manager.

Yeah, I would say there's no hard and fast rule, but it is fairly common at mid year budget if a department has funds because maybe hiring is taking too long as they'll try rather than ask for a new budget ask.

They will try to utilize monies that are already pre-budgeted.

So but the reason why I say there's no hard and fast rules is some departments do it.

Some departments have long-standing history of doing it.

And this gets into some of the policy work we have to do is we have to come up with are we gonna do that or not?

Um sometimes it can be a disincentive to hire positions that are vacant because folks like to have you know, I'm not saying we have that problem, but um I've seen it in other organizations where you you know you you you kind of have a not a slush fund, but you know what I mean.

You can really build and then use some one time.

So um so yeah, so we're aware some departments do it, but typically at mid year is when, and maybe the very end of the the fiscal year if there's a little bit of money left over.

And maybe if I could add that um in building the forecast for uh the current year, um, we are assuming um some level of underspend.

Um, because that has been um typically our practice, and it takes a heck of a lot of planning to get it down to zero.

So um inherent inherent in our forecast is a level of underspend sometimes that is achieved through salary savings, um, sometimes it's achieved through through other mechanisms.

Um with reallocating salary savings through a mid-year or year-end process, we're we're looking at that um on an individual basis of of what are the requests and um how is how's it being allocated.

I appreciate that.

I just think that it is something for us maybe just to think about in the bigger picture when how certain monies are used, it um there are different ramifications.

Thank you.

Yeah, and you can you can say no, we're not using salary savings, but you you will see that in the the mid-year list in those instances where salary savings is being used, it's not it's not being used, um I would suggest for kind of the nice to have's of let's let's kind of have something, you know, fancy and new that it is meeting it's meeting um needs that were it not for the salary savings, there might, as the city manager pointed out, be a separate ask.

So for example, um I'm gonna pick on my friends in parks a little bit.

There's some reallocation of salary savings to help offset um some capital costs, and so you know, we need those to keep the project moving.

Um similarly, I'll pick on my friends and in police um using some of those vacant positions for for example for overtime, which is needed because we've got positions vacant.

So um I I would say um generally speaking, where you're seeing that happen in the mid-year budget adjustment is to address um not kind of the nice to have necessarily, but things that costs that would be before us, um, and we would need to we would need to figure out a way to get to cover it were it not for that salary savings.

Thank you, Beth.

Thank you, Councilmember Padilla.

Who would like to go next?

If there aren't any other comments, thank you, Councilmember Sterken.

I was waiting for the vice mayor to go.

Likes to go after me, it seems all right.

So um firstly, thank you so much very much for your presentation for all the work that's been done to get us to this point um firstly I wanted to mention uh outreach um I I was very pleased as we discussed at a previous meeting with the results of the community satisfaction survey but I do want to remind folks that only about 800 people completed that survey so it is a good um data set to reference but it can't be the only source that we're basing this how many million dollar budget on gosh well the general fund is roughly over 200 million and then when you add in the other funds were it like I think 985 or anyway.

200 million yeah no well that's a general fund but yes versus the um mid-year budget updates thank you um yes but uh so I just want to reiterate that there are additional opportunities for the community to participate uh and if possible could we return to that slide that included the timeline please for the making of the budget just for as a reminder I should have written down which slide it was sorry um it's towards the end um it's slide 31 I believe 31 thank you right so there are still additional opportunities to weigh in as members of the community on the budget um and you can also email the city council following the discussion a public comment at Revitcity.org um and then to Councilmember Padia's question earlier you know looking at page five of attachment D, uh that was the um well anyhow um the resolutions and so we see that in response to one of the public commenters that there's a proposal to reallocate 1.5 million in unspent regular salary wages to secure five years of uninterpreted service uh without requiring additional funding for the body worn cameras and I think contracts of this magnitude and size should be subject to further review um in this case we had a member of the police advisory committee um mentioned that the use of body worn cameras is not proven uh but then in this line item here it states that they are so just making sure that we are engaging the very board commissions and committees that we appoint as the city council to inform us on the contracts of this magnitude and size um would be important and what I wanted to mention in echoing Councilmember Padia's comments was more about the use of ongoing funding for from vacant positions to fund one time expenses like the contract such as this in my opinion isn't best practice or sustainable I understand it's one of the ways one of the few ways that we are able to be nimble and ensure that we're paying for overtime as you mentioned you know with our police officers for example but it does go against one of our principles in the staff report that is using ongoing revenue to fund ongoing expenses and conversely using one-time revenues for one time expenses so I just want to make sure that going forward, we keep that into consideration.

Um, not to say that I am not supportive of body warrant cameras, I am, and it nationally is supported as well.

Uh we see polling on that, but just that just jumped out as me to me as an example since I'm member of the public named it.

And then also again it if we're having vacant positions when we've heard from the community satisfaction survey that we the community wants us to continue investing in public safety, then we should be filling those positions wherever possible uh versus diverting those funds for one-time expenses.

And we also heard loud and clear from voters with the passenger measure BB that they wanted us to continue investing in essential services, including public safety.

So these are just the things that are coming up for me that I wanted to name.

Um but moving on.

Uh I do agree with Council Member G that in the drawing down of the pension 115 pension trust fund, and with Councilmember Pavilla that that is in a sense kicking the can down the road.

I understand why it's necessary.

Um, however, meanwhile, our pension liability will continue to balloon.

So I also don't want to see that zeroed out either.

And I'm just yeah, so maybe a little bit of a reminder on the origin of this Section 115 trust, and um I was not here for all of this, so I'm gonna go based on what I know.

But if um if I'm gonna look at it uh Michelle Flaherty if she wants to jump in on this, is that so we have our ongoing pension obligations, and then we we cowPers requires us to pay down this unfunded liability.

My understanding of the situation is that those the unfunded liability costs were expected to peak sometime around now, and that when um the city adopted its 80 20 strategy for use of one-time monies, and would put some of the one-time monies to pay down uh uh future obligations, it was put into the section 115 trust.

We had a choice of do you pay it to CalPers now or do you put it in the trust where it's gonna earn interest, we benefit from the interest, and then it's gonna grow more, and during those peak years, we could then draw draw that down.

So, um the proposal to to use the section 115 trust that was part of the 25-26 adopted budget was part of that long-term vision.

So it was it was my understanding uh was that it was never intended to sustain us over time.

It was to get us through those those peak years when when the unfunded liabilities were were higher.

It does not affect our ability to pay our ongoing obligations.

That that is that is is baked into the budget.

Now, certainly council could say okay, we want to stretch those funds out longer and maybe not spend them down in four years or the three years that was was proposed when the 2526 budget was adopted, um, and that and that's certainly an option, but you know, the the underlying point of this is that we are using one time resources, which the section 115 trust is also to sustain us for a period of time, and that period of time is important because it also gives us time to plan of okay, what are you gonna do when it gets there?

But it certainly council's prerogative to say we want to use less of it, but it will accelerate depending on how that's structured and depending how future years end up looking, it could accelerate the need to make reductions to the budget or identify new revenue.

So it's just it's a trade-off.

I'll just reaffirm everything she said was absolutely right on and um when the plan to set up the trust was developed, it was developed in conjunction with the finance and audit committee and brought to the full council um on several times around.

So there were there were several discussions about it, and it was uh intended to be used exactly as Beth has described.

Thank you.

I forgot to ask some of my questions.

Just going back to the body warrant cameras there.

Do we know which positions would be affected by the diversion of funds from vacant positions to that contract?

Thank you, Chief Bell.

Yeah, and my understanding just from a high level is that it's taking time to get people through the academy, so these will be filled, and so this really is kind of redeploying in that way.

But that was the 30,000 foot view, and now we'll get down to road level.

That's how tall I am.

So if I understand your question correctly, you're worried about the vacancies.

Yes.

Uh, how many of those positions that are vacant are the funds being reappropriated for?

And are they sworn officers?

Are they community service officers?

And did this go to the police advisory committee?

So okay, that's a lot.

Hold on, break it down.

So we averaged about eight to ten officer vacancies through the last calendar year.

Um we've hired a lot, we've had a lot of retirements.

Um currently we have six vacancies, and we have six or seven in the um pipeline to get hired.

So the intention is always to be at zero uh for vacancies, and that's been my goal since I've been here.

So it's hard to say exactly because we'll have an officer be in a position, they'll retire, and then it takes, you know, it will be vacant for a certain amount of time, then we'll fill it right.

Same thing with CSOs, for example.

Um, so that does that make sense a little bit.

It's hard to say, it's very fluid, I guess is the best way to say that.

No worries, and I'm assuming those are sworn officer positions, it's not just sworn officer because we have vacancy, we have dispatch vacancies.

We had a lot of dispatch vacancies in the early part of the fiscal year.

If you guys remember our crisis that we had, um, so we're looking great in that arena.

Um, same with CSO, it took a minute to get those positions um on the books and on the um get them hired.

So we're actively going through another CSO recruitment right now.

So if anyone has someone, tell them to put in.

But yeah, and thank you to HR for all the work that they've done to get those recruitments because that does take a lot of time, and it takes a long time to get people hired and fully trained.

So I'll just imagine it's third, third, and third dispatchers sworn in CSO, roughly, I wouldn't even be able to say that.

Like I don't know exactly because it changes every month, and I report out on our vacancies to the PAC every uh time we meet.

Thank you.

And did the reappropriation go before the PAC?

Reappropriation of the funds from the vacant positions.

Okay.

Um, one thing we might be getting a little bit caught in in definition to me, um, body warrant cameras, unless we the city are gonna decide not to have them, are totally baseline operating costs, and so insofar as thinking about it's like one time either we're gonna have to fund it this year or we're gonna have to fund it next year, right?

And so uh so it's not like money shifting from positions or or whatnot, those those positions are are fully funded, they're there.

Um so I just want to articulate that it's it's totally part of the baseline operating cost for the department, just like computers are, just like uh vehicles are uh unless we the city decide that we're no longer gonna have them, then it would be you know looked at differently.

But just want to clarify that.

Thank you, city manager.

Thank you, Chief Bell.

Thank you.

I'll pause there.

It's I it's been quite a few minutes.

Thank you, Councilmember Sturkin.

We'll go to the vice Mayor.

Thank you so much.

Um I'm just uh going to say I'm I'm glad that last year we had 26 hires, and uh we've needed them for a long time, and I hope that we can stay stable with that.

Um I I support this budget, I support um all of the assumptions and uh I think it's a good it's a sustainable budget for the unknowns that we have and for this VLF lack of funds.

Um I just have some things so the um the sales tax weakness, I I would like us to um redouble our vigilance, and I see Amanda there, and I know you're doing amazing work, and um hopefully some of these 26 full-time hires can help.

But um, we really need more of our ground floor retail in our downtown and all over Redwood City.

And um, so maybe if we get some of these vacancies, uh the I was happy to see that the vacancy rent for office went down from 36% to 28%.

Uh 28% is still a lot.

So I do I really do support this idea if they're stranded class two office, class three office that are kind of just I don't know, just stranded out there, and then we can repurpose that for housing.

Um that's a that's a great idea if possible.

That was in the report.

But um, if we get if the vacancies are down, which it sounds like the trend is, which is exciting, partly because more back to work, um, you know, more requirements of people being back to uh working in the office.

So maybe if the if the uh vacancy rate is down on office, maybe that will turbocharge our um retail uh ground floor retail.

Um and then maybe that will increase our sales tax revenue.

That's a hope.

Um so now I'm gonna Chief Bell, you didn't go far.

Come back up.

Um what what I want to something that's exciting to me every year is the budget, you know, it it tells us and it tells the public what we do.

And um it's not just 200 million dollars that we stare at in a bank.

Um, and and so I want to ask you about uh where am I?

Um, the student interim program that's in our that was funded, and it's tell me about that with the police department.

Uh you have a student intern program that's in the budget.

Can you tell me a little bit about that?

We have a contract with Year Up, and it is a program that gets brings in youth and they train them for six months and then they place them with us based on the match and based on our needs.

So we're currently trying to place someone in the program because the first individual didn't work out, so um, but again, we're um that's something we're committed to to bring in youth and allow opportunity and exposure to uh government work, but also with the police department.

And once we have the intern, not only we don't just silo them in the police department, we have them look at different departments as well, so they're exposed to the potential of landing a job when they're done with their internship within the city.

I mean that's just fantastic.

Very, very proud of it.

Um I also uh I know this is I just want to give you kudos because um I know that the community wellness crisis response team clinician is now an employee of Redwood City.

They were contacted through the can't contracted through the county, and this is a woman with a PhD in psychology, and when we have crisis, mental health crises out in the community, she goes out with the police uh and tries to de-escalate.

Can you tell I I I saw her get pinned last month or the earlier this month, but could you I mean, it's just fantastic that we have a community wellness PhD gal who goes out on these calls.

Could you just talk about that for a little bit?

Yes, so having her on board as a city employee has allowed us more flexibility with her ability to adjust her hours based on our needs in our community and also the department.

We didn't have that before.

So bringing her on as a part of the city, we we really have that upper hand.

Um, and she's been allowed to do more.

She wanted to do more before, but she wasn't allowed to because of the contract.

So it's just really elevated our service.

Well, and and it's a feather in our cap that a woman of her caliber is interested in working uh as an employee for us, uh, and it's due to your leadership and many others in the city.

And uh I'd I just like to thank you for that.

I'll go on now.

I see Tierra.

Go up, please.

I mean, you're all are here.

I'm gonna.

So uh let's see, where am I?

Hello.

I have the five, nine and three-quarters view.

Um I I wanted to uh notice that we we have an increase of what is it, 37% in our uh parks fee income.

Um and uh Pat Patrick told me it's because COVID is kind of winding down, and now folks are really coming out and actually really getting more activated with our park programs.

Can you just tell me a little bit about our park programs or or about that increase?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, now that it's it's more safe to be outside.

Programs are being impacted with increases in participation numbers, so that's really great.

Um, our youth and teens, um, for instance, for our summer camps, we're seeing an increase in demand for for spots in our summer camps.

So we're making some of those adjustments for the next year also because we don't want to see giant waiting lists.

We want to see as many kids as possible in our program.

So, yeah, people are outside and they want to be in our parks and our programs and recreating, which is a really great benefit to the community.

Well, thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

Um, let's see, where am I uh well, this is to you, Patrick, uh, and to Melissa uh before you that our community building academy participation.

Uh I'm really glad that we brought back the community building academy last fall.

Um, and I hope that we keep it.

We we had 100% of the people who took the survey said they loved it.

And uh that's a real great pipeline for us to get community volunteers and future planning commission, future boards and commissions, future um city council members.

We need a v uh really robust pipeline, and so I'm really glad we we didn't have it for about eight years, and I'm thrilled that we brought it back, and I hope that we I'm glad to see that it's in the budget.

Um let's see.

And then I I just, you know, also in this, you know, it may sound prosaic or whatever, but we we have a plan to prevent illegal dumping.

It's a huge problem in our neighborhoods where folks go in the middle of the night and just dump stuff in a neighborhood that isn't theirs, and and we're working on a plan, you know, with with recology and so forth to to get it get our arms around it, and I'm really proud of us for doing that.

And the same with this again may sound like who cares, but you know, we have a plan for proper disposal of fats, oils, and grease, which is a real problem because it goes out into the bay and and uh restaurants make a lot of it, and we have a lot of restaurants.

So I'm really happy that we have a plan, an outreach plan.

I know you're working on that, Amanda.

And um, just uh a couple more cleanup things.

Um, I'm I'm okay with the uh 115 trust because it was addressing that peak.

I'm really glad you asked that question.

Um so it's addressing uh a peak in um people retiring that's um so I feel pretty comfortable about the plan of spending it a little early, but it was never meant to be there forever anyway.

So um I I really like our hazard mitigation plan, and when we talk about building, um, when we talk about building new projects and red tape, if you have a lot of green stuff, the other side of that is if you build something where you haven't planned for sea level rise and you haven't planned for ground level rise, uh which is required that we do by uh the hot hazard mitigation plan that the state of California requires we do.

Um and and it's in our budget to work on it this year also.

So uh it's very important that we do plan for for these things, um, because businesses can go out of business if they if we don't.

And um to to um uh Marcella's point and uh Isabella's point.

Uh so Marcella was talking about, oh, let's do more solar, let's do more green stuff.

And to uh Isabella's point about innovation, innovation, innovation.

I just want us to keep a really good look on, you know, battery, battery, batteries are becoming cheaper and cheaper, that technology, highly technical, highly expensive, but the prices are coming down every month, and that's a real linchpin to solar.

That's a real linchpin to electrical.

That can save us money, and uh that can be good for our budget.

So with innovation and green, I'm I'm excited uh for us to keep looking at that.

So libraries uh uh I'm amazed with um some of your projects.

Um thank you.

Um HR, um fire.

I I'm I'm really happy you're all here, and um we we want to sustain this budget for you guys.

I I approve I approve the budget we have here.

And your voice mayor, we'll go to Councilmember.

Just thank you, Vice Mayor.

You reminded me when you said the fog that um the FATS oils in Greece.

I was reminded in college, I learned about a big campaign that went on during the war about encouraging people to collect this and save.

It was a kind of it was a campaign to collect your Greece.

Um, I'm not saying we suggest that kind of campaign.

But I do think that I I see that we're at 50 percent, and I always want to find ways that we can engage our community, whether it's through I don't know, Girl Scouts or organizations.

We have so many, I think of when we get these kids come in and they are so enthusiastic and passionate about conserving water.

I think how can we get a great community outreach or a campaign, a social media campaign?

Because I I don't think many people know about the fats, oils and grease outreach, and you know, getting these food scrapers out.

Maybe we engage our schools, maybe this is something we can do with the schools in partnership.

I mean, the reason I have my mug here is because my daughter told me to stop using paper cups.

So I think if there's a way that we can engage the youth on this and maybe a partnership with the library, to a lot of these, I mean it's for the fog or I mean it's also for the smarty goal for the flume.

Um I think we we have two people using this.

I personally think I know one of the people, and he tells me how awesome it is, but we have so many great opportunities.

Let's just get the information to the people.

Let's let them know that we'll the city will come, give you this awesome tool, help you install it so you know if you have any leaks in your water.

So we have so many great resources.

I just want to make sure we're doing whatever we can to get the information out to the people.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

We'll go to Councilmember Sturger.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just wanted to wrap up my comments.

I agree with Councilmember G about looking at processes to keep us competitive and with Councilmember the to make our permit processes uh easier.

Just looking at page nine of um attachment C.

One of the items is implementing 75% of the priority one and two recommendations in the engineering transportation matrix matrix uh organization and operations assessment.

And so the question I had asked Patrick was, well, what are those recommendations?

Just to, you know, remind us here?

And uh uh city manager, you mind if I highlight a couple from the listing, sure.

Okay.

So it was item 40 was the development process uh analysis, and item 56 was expanding the get-a-permit web page on a city's website, uh, homepage.

And so I just want to elevate those two.

They're, you know, we they're in priority level three, so we haven't got to them or finished them yet.

But if we can in any way kind of accelerate the process uh to make planning application submittals um digitized, reviewed, and uh integrated with a permitting software system as soon as possible, um, and update that get a permit web page just so that is easier for the community to go through that process, open their business, uh, get a permit, etc.

That would be really helpful.

And um then you mentioned economic development city manager, and I I saw um one of the item items was just discussed AI and specifically AI use in government and coming up with a um a government use policy, which is very important.

Uh, but in addition to that, one thing it made me think of is our economic uh development uh economic mobility action plan and how we we didn't quite discuss AI and the impact of AI on the workforce in Redwood City, and so going forward, if we can discuss you know, as you had mentioned, Councilmember, um uh too about you know robots taking on tedious tasks, right?

How are we reskilling and retooling our residents to adapt this changing economy in the AI future?

So just want to make sure that we address that, and that is the end of my comments.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Storkin.

We'll go to Council Member Howard.

One quick comment.

Um this has been a great robust conversation.

I'm really glad we've had it now, and we'll have it more in the future.

But I did one thing I want to add that I haven't heard, but I I know our city manager's going to be all over this and probably tell me it's probably in the in the works, and that is um I'm concerned that that going forward.

Let's make sure our staff is totally in the loop that they're part of these difficult conversations that we're having, that uh they feel they can make suggestions if if they may have ideas we haven't even thought of.

I'm just making sure, and I I guess you're gonna tell me you probably are already doing it.

So I just wanted to, because I hadn't heard that, and I see all these wonderful staff people sitting here, and they all want to do they want to make Redwood City very successful, so let's make sure they stay actively engaged and in the conversation.

Thank you.

No problem, thank you.

Being future ready.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Not seeing anybody's hands up, I'll go ahead and add my thanks to staff, Beth, uh the whole team for the great presentation.

Um, you know, my colleagues have talked about this tonight that we've we've been here before.

We have been in uncertain financial times.

Um so we know that we can persevere as a community, we can get through this, right?

Um, I think the difference is that we can't expect or we can't rely on, you know, any extra help from either the county, the state, right, or the federal governments.

Um, everyone is hemorrhaging to be able to get through their own financial crisis.

So I'm really happy that we're we're looking at what the weaknesses that staff has identified.

I thought that was really helpful.

Um, so knowing that the BLT hasn't fully collected what we projected it to, but we're using HDL to help with that collection is super valuable.

Um, but also I think it's such a a huge value add to use economic development as the other lever here.

Um, you know, I thought some of the ideas around just modernization and um and increasing efficiency was super helpful.

The land use review as a concept, I thought really stood out.

I thought that would be a really great way to identify some some revenue drivers, um, but also planning applications, right, and how long it takes for staff to process that.

In governance last week.

We heard about a state bill that was gonna make that process a little bit streamlined, right?

And kind of uh bring us in line with what bigger cities are doing and the timelines that their residents expect.

So um, you know, that's uh an area that we could be looking into.

Um, you know, policies acting as a barrier.

We absolutely saw that happen last year, and so I think that would be uh an interesting thing for us to reconsider as um as we start to get creative, right?

Um, something that you know I was curious about as a young planning commissioner was just around what the economic impact of proposed projects look like, right?

What does a completed project do for a certain neighborhood and the economic impact of having that building completely full, what that does to the businesses that are nearby, it's something that we haven't fully captured that I think would help us in our decision making over the next couple of years.

Um, I also wanted to just mention some of some other things that I saw that was really great in here.

The the citywide plan, the master plan for facilities.

We've been talking about that for a while, and so that 100,000 is gonna really get stretched right when we start talking about what the needs are currently and also the new buildings, how we best take care of them.

Um, you know, something else that stood out to me was just our parks programs are bringing in the money.

It is incredible to see um how much revenue is being generated by these community events.

I hear from our staff all the time that we really just we have the cream of the crop that folks want to be in our downtown, and we see that and um it also feels like that could be an opportunity for us to maybe develop a community events um that we haven't had before to help seed funds either you know the economic resilience fund that we just spent out, or you know, help us replenish the 115 trust account, right, so that we could just build the local resiliency and be prepared for whatever comes next.

But um having that question mark is something that I think we should be answering or coming up with a plan of answers.

So, you know, I don't know what's what that trigger would be, but absolutely having that dedicated to the services that have been ID'd in the community survey would just be so important.

Um as I wrap up, I also want us to think carefully about what downstream costs we might see.

I know the county our county uh partners mentioned that in two weeks they'll have a better idea of what they're expecting, and so as we start to get that information, we should think about the Fair Oaks Community Center and what services that the county helps provide that they might not in a couple of months, right?

I want to make sure that we're preserving the things that are keeping people above water because it's just gonna be that much more expensive for us to take care of them if something were to happen, or even worse, if there isn't that service to be provided anymore.

We're leaving neighbors in a vulnerable situation.

So um that is just something that I think should be our our guiding light in the next couple of months.

But with that, I will go ahead and hoping I can make just one motion for all of Staff's recommendations, getting the head nod.

So I will move staff's recommendations.

Is there a second?

Second.

Great.

That was a motion from myself, a second from council member Howard.

Could we get an electronic vote, please?

Motion passes unanimously.

Great.

Thank you everyone again for the robust discussion.

Thank you to staff for all the great work.

And we will move to item 10, our study session, beginning with 10A.

We'll hold a study session regarding potential updates to Redwood City's municipal code regulations for mobile and sidewalk vending.

As a reminder, study sessions are to receive feedback from the public and the city council, and no formal action will be taken on this item this evening.

And with that, we also have Spanish interpretation for this item, and I'll turn it over to our interpreter to give instructions for hearing the meeting in Spanish.

Yeah, it's minor.

Gracias.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gonzalo.

And I will pass it over to our deputy city manager, Jennifer Yamaguma, who will introduce the item.

And we also have economic development manager Amanda Anthony who will give us the presentation.

Thank you both.

Thank you, Mayor.

And thanks for having me up again, two times in one night.

It's a pleasure.

So tonight we are bringing forward a study session on street vending to help frame the current landscape and support council discussion as staff continues this work.

As you'll hear this evening, there are two types of vending motorized and non-motorized, each governed by different sections of state law and providing different levels of local authority.

So I just wanted to call out to help orient you throughout the presentation.

We've come up with two icons.

So as Amanda goes through the presentation, when you see an icon in a subject line that looks like a food truck, we're talking about motorized.

And when you see an icon that looks like a push cart, we're talking about non-motorized.

So these icons maybe can help you remember where we're at throughout the presentation.

It is um different for each of them, and so uh just a visual cue there.

So again, as Mayor mentioned, we are not seeking council action tonight.

Our goal is just to clarify what is currently allowed, identify where there are policy gaps and opportunities, and then better understand where the council would like us to focus as we move forward.

So I'm gonna turn it over to Amanda Anthony, our economic development manager.

Thank you.

Hello, Amanda Anthony, economic development manager.

Um I am a little bit under the weather, so if I have to stop and cough, I really apologize.

I will try not to, but I have lemon water.

Um, we also have a number of um business owners in the audience who I think are here to make public comment.

So um I just I know that we'll get to that after the presentation, and that you guys have received a lot of public comments um on this item, and so hopefully that can this will put this all in context.

So I'll start with our.

Oh, there we go.

Uh oh, I made a type on the slide.

Our guiding principles provide an overview of existing sidewalk and street vending regulations.

I'm gonna clarify what's allowed, where and under what authority.

I'm going to identify policy gaps and enforcement challenges and receive counsel and public feedback on potential next steps.

I do have two colleagues from San Mateo County Environmental Health online.

Uh thank you so much to Deputy Director Wayman Wong and head of our food program, Bogart Marquez, uh, for joining us.

So if you do have any sort of questions about SMC Health stuff, they are online.

As we go through this, you'll see that there are some restrictions we have from state law, but there are a lot of things that we can do.

Uh think about policy direction within the limits of state law.

Are there any regulatory approaches that city council would like uh to prioritize, modify, or exclude in future ordinance development?

How do you want to approach enforcement?

Uh, for vendors operating without permits, and then other considerations, things that you've been seeing, observing, thinking about that you want to make sure that we address.

For example, uh fat soil in Greece.

Our guiding principles are these.

Uh, we really do want to we have to uh align with state and county laws and regulations.

Uh, we want to respond to concerns from our community and from our business community, and identify ways to support our mobile and sidewalk vendors in meeting the regulatory requirements.

So as Jennifer was saying, there are two types of vending, and this is sort of an awkward uh phrasing, but uh when we think about mobile vending, mobile vending is sort of like all things that move, right?

And so that's why we've split it into sort of motorized vending.

Motorized vending is food trucks, it's food trailers, ice cream trucks, like driving trucks and service vans.

These are uh vehicles that are on the street.

And then we have non-motorized uh vendors.

These are our sidewalk vendors.

What you think of as sidewalk?

These are hand carts, wagons, push carts, stands, and you can think of them as people powered.

So if people are pushing things around or standing things up, um that's that we're calling non-motorized or sidewalk vending.

This is primarily, it's important to note that motorized vending is on public streets, like either driven by or pulled by a truck.

And non-motorized is on sidewalks, plazas, and parks.

And like I said, not powered by a motor, but by a person.

This is like hot dog carts, fruit stands, flower cellars.

I'll go into motorized vendors first.

Motorized vendors are allowed on public streets under the California Vehicle Code.

And they the food vendors need permits from San Mateo County Health that verify their compliance with the California Retail Food Code.

So the retail food code tells you how you can prepare food, how you need to set up your kitchen.

Every restaurant and every food vendor in Redwood City and beyond in California needs to be meeting these requirements.

The city can establish permitting time, place, and manner regulations, really with a focus on public safety.

So making sure that our roads are safe, our sidewalks are safe, and that people can get around.

Our current city ordinance is almost 40 years old, and it does have to be aligned, updated to align with state law because our current mobile vending ordinance lumps both motorized and non-motorized vending all together.

And so this is something that we have to do to update and address that.

Just to give a kind of overview of the different types of things that can fall under motorized vending, it's a lot of food.

I think that's what most people think of when they think of uh motorized vending is food trucks.

It's the ice cream truck, it's food trailers.

Um, and this is regulated by San Mateo County Health and our RCPD.

Our Redwood City Police Department gives out a mobile vending permit.

In order to get your uh food truck permit and and become a licensed food truck uh operator, you have to get a seller's permit from the state of California.

You have to have a mobile food facility permit from San Mateo County Health, a mobile vendor permit from Redwood City Police Department, and a business license from our finance department.

If you're selling goods that are not food, for example, uh when I worked at Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center, there was a flower truck and she drove around and sold flowers or a clothing boutique truck.

Um this is only regulated by Redwood City Police Department.

They issue a mobile vending permit.

Uh you do have to get a seller's permit because you're selling something that has sales tax, and then a business license.

And then finally, you've got a sort of non-food and service, and so you've probably seen the proliferation of our uh pet grooming vans or auto detailing vans right now.

Uh we don't really have any regulations around those.

You don't have to get a mobile vending permit, but you do need a business license, and so that's something we do require.

As I said, the mobile vending permit is uh applies to food and to goods.

So it's the sale of actual products but not services.

And when you apply for this, even though uh obviously they are mobile vehicles, um, the permit can be denied.

Uh, we do ask where you're going to be vending.

Uh, if it's local if it's unsafe or if it's improperly zoned, um, then we can deny it.

If they don't have the required county health permits, if the operation would disrupt nearby residents, that doesn't have a great definition in the code, so um that's something to be thinking about, or the vehicle is not mobile, right?

You you can't actually move it.

Uh, it has flat tire, it's sitting there.

That's not something that we would permit.

And right now, our code uh doesn't have any sort of administrative citations explicitly.

Uh, if you are via in violation, uh, you can get an infraction, which is a criminal citation for operating without a permit or violating operating standards.

So that's another reason uh that we are really looking to update this code.

Uh locations are subject to traffic safety, pedestrian and ADA, and temporary use.

So this is not meant to be uh the permanent home of a business on the public street.

And so that's I think really important to keep in mind.

And our enforcement is looking at permitted vendors who are violating operating standards, uh which we don't have a ton of operating standards right now, and unpermitted vendors, vendors who don't have their health permits or their Redwood City permits.

Our biggest operating standard besides the location traffic safety considerations and ADA is our hours of operation.

So motorized food vendors in our code are only allowed to operate from 6 a.m.

till 10 p.m.

This enforcement challenges are many.

When we receive complaints about motorized vendors, our Redwood City law enforcement and code enforcement work primarily to get the unpermitted vendor to get their permit.

We have really stopped short of issuing infractions because we don't we just have.

We don't have any administrative fine levels outlined in the ordinance or resolution, which means that we're also not issuing administrative citations.

And you might be thinking to yourself right now, well, why is Redwood City responsible for this?

Why isn't San Mateo County Health responsible for enforcing on unpermitted vendors?

And that's because the county really has administrative authority and really the power of permitting.

So if a business is permitting, is permitted and they're not maintaining food safety standards, we get a complaint.

They can go out and investigate that and revoke their permit, but otherwise, enforcing aspects of the permit and local operating standards falls to Redwood City.

And so unpermitted vending falls to Redwood City for enforcement.

Secondly, both Redwood City and San Mateo County Health operate on complaint-based enforcement, and so respond response is dependent on staffing and prioritization.

And just a few other things on this.

Our current penalties are limited in addressing repeat violations.

We have permit revocation for those who have permits, and then criminal infractions, which we haven't used.

The criminal infraction penalties do increase over each violation.

So again, the takeaway here is that we have some outdated regulations that we have to update to align with state laws and some that we get to update.

So as we go, I'll come back to this slide, and so you can put it aside or you can keep it.

As we're thinking about this, these are some of the key changes and considerations that I want you to think about with regards to motorized vending.

Okay, the food trucks.

We cannot ban food trucks from operating on public streets, but we are able to enact time, place, and manner regulations that protect public safety, health, and welfare.

So I said we'll come back to these.

So that's something really important.

We do retain authority over certain time, place and manner restrictions.

The most important thing that I want you guys to take away from this is that recent state law has significantly changed to decriminalize sidewalk vending.

So many codes, including parts of ours, say that if there's a violation, it's a criminal violation or it's a misdemeanor.

Ours is not a misdemeanor, sort of.

The law has changed at the state to say that this is no longer a crime.

This is an administrative penalty.

But we can set objective time, place and manner standards that address real defensible health and safety concerns.

Just like I did for food from motorized vendors, I just want to talk a little bit about the non-motorized vendors.

Again, we have three different buckets.

We have roaming food vendors.

These are vendors who move to sell their food.

You can imagine things like ice cream or hot dogs.

This are regulated by San Mateo County Health and the Redwood City Police Department.

Um, like our motorized vendors, they have to get a seller's permit.

They are selling something that requires them to remit sales tax, and that's what a seller's permit does.

San Mateo County Health issues what is called a compact mobile food operation permit.

This is a new permit from about five years ago uh that reflected changes that came along with the state law changes.

Redwood City Police Department issues a peddler permit, and then you still have to get a business license.

We also have a stationary food vendors.

By and large, these are selling uh pre-packaged food at a stand.

Um, it can also be it's it's mostly pre-packaged food, okay.

Um, in this case, uh, you may need to get a compact mobile food operation permits.

San Mateo County Health would work with you on that.

Uh, you still would get a peddler permit from Sam uh Redwood City Police Department, and you have to get a seller's permit because again it's a sales tax-bearing item, and then non-food, so like this like jewelry and flowers.

Um, I'll hit this a number of times, uh, but again, one of the biggest issues is enforcing on vendors.

Um, San Mateo County Health has limited authority if a vendor doesn't have a health permit.

Uh, mostly it falls to Redwood City.

So, uh, as I wanted to mention, um, our peddler permit right now requires um applicants to get a live scan, um, and that's no longer allowed under state law.

And so we we definitely need to adjust our permitting regulations to address that.

Um, and there are not a lot of other regulations uh around operating standards.

Uh we can ask vendors to accommodate pedestrian access, but there's not going to be a penalty if they don't really.

Um, and and they are supposed to wear their ID badge to identify them as permitted.

I think it's really interesting.

This code was adopted really to address sort of door-to-door sales, if you can imagine.

It was really, it was adopted in like 1971.

Um, and so it was like an encyclopedia and vacuum cleaner salesman.

Um, and so it was from 9 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

And if you made an appointment, then you could go there after 6 p.m.

But otherwise uh you were not allowed to go and knock on somebody's door to sell them a vacuum cleaner after 6 p.m.

Um and so you know this is also a fairly outdated uh regulation because it's not we can't have regulations for these vendors that are more restrictive than for other types of similar businesses, right?

If we say that something can be open 24 hours nearby, uh, this can be open 24 hours nearby too.

And and we can only enforce it in the interest of public safety.

Um, so again, very similar enforcement challenges.

Um state sidewalk vending law does uh restrict us quite a bit more.

Uh state sidewalk vending law says uh kind of says what we can prohibit.

Uh we can't prohibit vending.

Uh, we can say this only these kinds of things can be required for a permit.

What kind of penalties can be levied?

Um, our city's admin fines for peddlers right now are also not in compliance with state law, so this is also something we'll have to update when we um bring back a potential ordinance.

Um, and it's also important to we can remember that we can only enforce on the laws that we have.

Um, and so those laws have to directly address health, safety, and welfare concerns.

So I'll come back to that a lot.

And so these are the key questions for uh non-motorized vending.

Again, we'll keep this kind of slide to the side.

We'll come back to these questions.

I do want to talk about two other things that are really critical, and um I think you've received several pictures in your mailboxes, um, and you'll probably hear about some of these um tonight from our public commenters.

Um, a lot of the complaints that we get are about unpermitted food vendors, and I talked a little bit about what you have to do to get permitted as a food vendor.

A vendor selling food needs a permit from San Mateo County Health.

And there are some permits, some setups that are out there right now that are not permitted by the health department, and they cannot get permitted by the health department.

And I show one example here, and I just tried to zoom in on like the worst part, which is the open flame under a tent with unsecured propane tanks and no water, and no toilet, and those are the kinds of things that San Mateo County Health won't permit.

This is something that could get permitted as part of a special event, like our lunar year new year night market.

We, the city guaranteed a lot of things to make that happen, including you had to be checked for running water, you had to be checked for hot water, you had to have uh toilets within 100 feet of the of the booth, etc.

So this is really uh an important uh distinction.

Uh SMC will not permit this for regular operations, and and yet they also have limited authority to enforce on these unpermitted vendors.

They will come out with us and help explain, but they're not gonna be signing or fining.

So the main option available to us uh for this is education and enforcement.

This is another example.

Um where folks are preparing food at home and keeping it um in a cooler.

Um again this uh as it is being sold cannot get permitted, uh, but there are ways to legally sell food made at home uh through microenterprise home kitchen operations and cottage food operations.

So it's not unequivocally impossible, but this setup is impossible.

Uh and so again, our city regulations have to focus on enforcement, not permitting.

We haven't done a ton of outreach um to vendors at this point.

Uh we did do some in July to understand kind of what this the landscape was.

Um, after getting direction tonight, we will do more educational outreach and talk with them about some of the things that you guys are considering before we bring back any sort of uh ordinance to consider.

Uh we also want to identify funding for after hours bilingual support with educational outreach to vendors.

Um my Spanish is not great, and I'm already working a lot, and so I really I'm looking forward to having support and in redoing the outreach um to our vendors.

We also, if we come back with an ordinance may need to think about enforcement and having funding for enforcement.

Um right now, a lot of these things are happening um after 6 p.m.

And so our code enforcement is not there, and I I think we're all aware of what it looks like in the evenings for PD.

It's busy, and so what does that look like if we want to come back?

That's that's kind of down the line.

So we're hoping to come back in early summer with a draft ordinance for your consideration.

And tonight I really want to gather um input from you on some of the parameters that you want to have in the code.

Uh everything that you suggest tonight will be um considered by me and our city attorneys to make sure that it is uh defensible and uh meets the parameters of state law.

Uh but I just I'm I'm looking forward to getting your feedback.

I did put some example regulations in.

Um these are some things that that other cities have looked at that you may want to consider as well.

Uh, this is for motorized mobile vending.

You can keep this together with a question slide from earlier.

Uh we have non-motorized mobile vending.

This is the sidewalk vending again where you might want to think about.

And so I really look forward to hearing more.

I've got my pen ready uh to hear some more feedback on these questions and more.

And happy to answer as any questions.

Thank you, Amanda, for the great presentation.

Before we bring it back to council, we'll open it up for any public comment.

Thank you, Mayor.

At this time, I have two speaker cards.

So if you are in the audience and wish to speak on this item and have not given a speaker card, please do so at this time.

And that includes our folks on Zoom.

If you do wish to give public comment this evening, go ahead and raise your hand.

Thank you.

Oh, sure.

And if our public comment takes place in a Gonzalo.

At this time, I will ask our interpreter Gonzalo again, if you could please make the announcement on how to check out a listening device for Spanish interpretation this evening.

And I do want to let the uh audience know that interpretation will also be offered if public comment is to be given in Spanish.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Gonzalo.

We will begin with our in-person speakers.

We have three four cards, and we have one speaker on Zoom, that's Timothy Russell.

And I'll be closing the speakers list once we begin public comment.

Thank you.

Our first speaker will be Fergal O'Boyle, who will be followed by Dylan Finch.

Good evening.

Thank you for uh giving me the time here to speak.

My concern is more uh neighborhood related and food truck related.

Uh born and raised in Rabbit City, um, Stafford Park was my hometown community park.

Uh I moved back and I live right across the street from it now.

What I've noticed recently is a kind of a creep that's happened.

Um love music in the park, so it's not about music in the park.

But what has happened is music in the park started with a small tent by the council to help support youth organizations.

One food truck.

What I've noticed the last couple years, two food trucks, three food trucks.

Last year there was as many as eight or nine food trucks.

They pretty much take up all the parking on Hopkins and a majority of the parking on Lowell.

I sent a video in that shows you the noise level, huge noise level.

I can I have to leave to go two blocks away to actually hear the music because of noise is so loud from the generators.

Safety concerns with this as well.

What has happened is not just eight days a week anymore.

We now have somebody who parks at the park five days a week, usually gets there around 10 30, 11 in the morning, and we'll stay till dark.

There's a sight line issue.

They park on Hopkins.

It's a huge truck.

As we all know, food trucks aren't small, they're medium-sized RVs coming off of Lowell or King.

Many drivers aren't paying attention to the flashing white lights.

I've seen several small children almost get hit by these uh cars because this food truck is blocking sidelines.

We've also seen several cars try to pull out on Lowell and Hopkins, which has caused the same issue.

Very, very close near accidents that have happened.

They're putting a generator on the street, the generators emitting gas and fumes all day long, and while also opening up onto the sidewalk where if there's a line could obstruct the sidewalk to people passing by.

With that, I think my time is up, so thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr.

O'Boyle.

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

Hello, Council.

Uh, my name is Dylan Finch.

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

Uh, I went to uh this is very interesting because I have a different perspective on the issue.

I feel like living in downtown, which is much more of a commercial district.

Um I I went to uh Santa Cruz um a while ago for a trip, and um they had a lot of sidewalk vendors there.

It seemed like they gave them like designated spots on the sidewalk.

I saw like numbers painted on the sidewalk.

Um, but there were a lot of vendors there, they were selling a lot of different things.

I felt like it really made the atmosphere of the downtown a lot more vibrant, seeing all those different sellers there.

Um just added uh like some vibrancy and uh some dynamism there.

Um I I also think that the sidewalk uh vending opportunities are really great for small businesses and and very small like local businesses because you don't have to pay the rent for a storefront, very low like startup costs.

Um, so I think there's some good things about it.

And again, I'm mainly talking about this mainly non-motorized non-food vendors in downtown.

That's kind of what I'm thinking about.

Um, but I actually think it'd be nice to encourage more of that in the downtown, um, just so we could increase the variety of retail that we have there and again give those opportunities to those very small, very local businesses to sell uh their wares there.

Um, and it might be nice to have those designated spots or maybe designating an area of downtown, maybe around the public plazas or parks that we have.

It seems like state law kind of ties your hands a little bit, unfortunately.

But um, yeah, that'd be nice.

Um, and that's it.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Edwin RG, who will be followed by Anthony Persons.

All right, good evening, everyone and council members.

And yes, we are indeed living in uh interesting interesting times, uh, especially regarding financials and permits, essentially permits are the talk of the night.

I do want to emphasize I'm actually happy for all the entrepreneurs who do provide great products in Redwood City.

It showcases uh smart egoals that you know, Redwood City has been emphasizing for economic mobility.

We're experiencing that great economic mobility shift that we have been working so hard for, and it's growing at a rate that we wish to continue.

But what does continue continuing the uh trend lead to more permits, right?

So it's definitely talking tonight.

I'm not leading to either strict or lose regulations.

I'm here to provide another perspective.

We're not too different.

I'm all I own the cafe and I pay my fair shares of taxes, and it may be with a forced smile, but I know for a fact that it returns back to the community for core services like modernization and of course economic development in River City.

And in Rose City, and especially for me, we love little friendly competition.

But who are we competing against?

I can tell you from the restaurant perspective.

We actually competing a bit more than other restaurants, other food businesses.

I can tell you it's the business price inflated materials, the maintenance, repairs, rents, utilities, employees, insurance, which by the way, has been doubled compared to the previous years, which is none of your fault, just throwing it out there.

But these costs continue to rise, especially for a storefront like myself.

And yet, we continue to provide that Redwood City smile to everybody.

But that does lead into the question has previous regulations favored specific group of people that have a little bit more money, a little dough.

Do the previous regulations prevent any mobility besides those who have that money?

Did the city mask that favoritism behind the term public safety?

We're making great progress, but we finally develop a different perspective that we have open our eyes to different ignorances in society.

Thank you, Edwin.

Our next speaker is Anthony Persons, who will be followed by Olivia Bracamontes.

Excuse me, good evening, everyone.

Thanks for your time.

We have a problem.

If we want to support small businesses, can we please move them out of the residential areas?

And please not have them like on the side of my house where they use the bathroom and a litter and all this other stuff.

I'm all about people getting their hustle on and making money, but with some freaking tact and some respect for everybody who lives there.

So since I live off Hudson and Redwood City, why don't we move all the people who can set up in residential areas and put them by the school instead of because I don't feel comfortable?

It's a fire hazard.

There's an open flame, they block my driveway, they're late.

The out the quiet hours aren't even enforced.

They're there till midnight half the time selling the wares.

And that's fine.

Sell your wares, but have some respect and don't take it out on the people that work just as hard as people with trucks, if not harder, to own a house and to finally find an American dream.

So all I'm asking is can we please move this around away from outside of my house?

Whether it's fire hazards, you saw the picture, that is my house.

They're defecating, they're urinating, they're leaving all kind of plates and stuff all over my house.

It's a pain.

So please, I'm just here to advocate.

Move them somewhere else.

There's not in residential areas.

Please don't.

That's all I ask.

Pretty pleased with sugar on top.

I'm done.

Thank you, Anthony.

Our final in-person speaker is Olivia Bracamontes.

Welcome.

Buenas noches.

My name is Olivia and the negocio de las chiquitas aquí in Redwood City.

Thank you.

My name is Olivia.

And my husband and I have a business, Las Chiquitas in Redwood City.

And the problem is what they were saying before that there are a lot of street vendors, a lot of them without permit, especially with me in that corner, because we are at Broadway and Maple.

And there is a club right there.

And Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Same thing.

They have the same.

And many times when we go the next day to open our business, there's a lot of trash.

They throw oil, fat everywhere.

I have two planters for decoration.

They throw them, they kick them.

And that's what's what I'm asking.

I don't know how can you help me in that regard.

The requires refrigerators, uh freezers, and for us to have the adequate cooling, and we have to have different uh ways to wash our hands every time we touch food and to have our permits current and we require all those things.

So that's the win, which I hope that you can help us somehow.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Gonzalo.

Well now turn to our Zoom speakers and Timothy Russell, welcome.

You can unmute and begin your comments.

City Council members, the mayor, vice mayor, and the members of the council.

I'm Timothy Russell, um, regional director for Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center and longtime contractor and partner of Redwood City on small business development, uh, working within the economic development division uh of your funding.

And you know, I think that this is not only an awesome opportunity for small businesses that are in need to um make a living for themselves and um have a sustainable living for themselves.

Um I think this is an awesome program or opportunity for them.

However, I do understand that in order for these individuals to really be legal and sustainable, they have to have the not only the technical assistance, not only the training, but the understanding of how to be legal and sustainable and organizations like Renaissance and others um would love to be a part of this process.

Um I'm familiar with um some of your staff, and one that spoke uh in general, uh Manna Anthony, and she knows the importance of the training, how they need to be trained to be legal and sustainable and have that ongoing support.

And then there's programs that we have that um could align with um this opportunity so that these small businesses uh and these entrepreneurs can get the necessary training and support to be successful and understand um their neighbors, understand the importance of um this isn't just your yard, it's everyone's yard.

How can we uh make sure that we're doing the right thing?

So we're available.

Just wanted to say that and uh wanted to chime in and look forward to hearing more about this opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank you, Timothy.

And that concludes public comment mayor.

Thank you, City Clerk, and thank you to all of our community members who joined us tonight and and start around so that we could um get to this item.

So thank you for your patience with that.

I will bring it back to my council colleagues for any questions, any feedback.

Thank you, Councilmember G.

Ouch, my arm hurts mayor.

We'll get us going.

Manna, thank you for the um conversation and the discussion.

I know this is a study session, so we're just providing feedback.

I think I'll approach this kind of in a macro bucket, and then I guess motorize and non-motorized.

So, number one, I mean, not touching our ordinance for 40 years is probably not the right answer.

I think state law has changed a little bit over those 40 years, and so number one, we need to update to comply with state or county law.

I mean, that's that's sort of a given uh from both both categories.

Um, with regard to the motorized, and this sort of again the macro bucket.

While we are supportive of entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurs still need a permit.

I mean, whether it be a health permit or a business license, they need to operate just like any other business in Redwood City.

And so that's still the macro bucket, number one update, and they need to have a health permit, and they need to have a business license.

When we look at our neighborhoods, and we had several speakers talk about neighborhoods, I think it's really important that we engage our neighborhood associations and that we get input from our neighborhoods about what is tolerable or acceptable and what isn't, and to shape an updated ordinance around input from our neighborhood associations.

What we heard this evening about, you know, not being a kind neighbor in the residential neighbor, it's just not acceptable.

Leaving trash, leaving, you know, we talked earlier about fog, fats, oils, grease in somebody's planter, using somebody's bushes as their restroom, and they're just not acceptable.

And so those are things that need to be shaped in an ordinance.

And when I saw your presentation about hours, we don't even align the hours because we haven't touched it for 40 years with our noise ordinance.

And so that's sort of the baseline.

We don't let contractors start at 6 a.m.

Why do we let a food vendor start at 6 a.m.?

We need to start with number one aligning our ordinances across the city like we do with the contractors, and then based on what the neighborhoods, if we do allow them in neighborhoods, what's acceptable in our neighborhoods.

I'm not I'm not even supposed to pretending they are going to be acceptable, but I think having the neighborhood associations weigh in on that is important, and every part of the city is different.

You know, as Councilmember Sirkin said earlier, or as Dylan said earlier, downtown is different than other parts of the residential parts of Redwood City, so maybe there needs to be some flexibility in that.

You know, I would think the downtown district would have a higher tolerance for different hours versus the residential neighborhood.

When we talk about the non-motorized, I think it's the same thing.

They need to be have to have a permit.

They need to have a health permit, they need to have a business license.

Um the problem I have though is as someone who hosts events downtown, and I'm gonna walk into this one I know, because our city attorney knows.

When you're hosting as a nonprofit, you mentioned the lunar night market, or we can talk about Dia de las Meritus or Lunar New Year.

That nonprofit, and you had others listed in the staff report.

Number one, they have to pay for a permit, number two, they've got to provide insurance.

And so I'm not too interested in the individuals that bring the pushcarts with the hot dogs and other things.

I'm more interested in the master operator who brings all the push carts in their vans and drops them off and then has people, independent contractors, I'll use the polite term, sell goods because they're not paying for the permit, and they're not paying for the insurance.

And it's hard enough right now, and we talk about the economic climate earlier, as a nonprofit trying to get sponsorships for the events by having competition, as many speakers talked about this evening.

It's hard already to get sponsorships, and if we, you know, sponsors have stopped sponsoring events because of those um non-motorized operators, it makes it really difficult to continue to host uh events in Redwood City downtown when it's even harder to get sponsorships and people are leaving or not willing to write a check because we allow others who aren't participating and paying their fair share to participate.

Whether that means we have to designate a special area for them or whatever, but we need to do something because it's just not acceptable to look to our nonprofits to do something on these festivals, and the others who aren't paying their fair share participate.

So we've got to figure that one out within the legal realms that we can.

And I think there's a way to do it, but we need to update our policies accordingly.

Did I make sense, city attorney?

You did, thank you so much.

I did want to mention for the rest of the council.

I know uh councilmember G.

We've spoken about this, that uh the state law does allow for um prohibitions of sidewalk vending in the immediate vicinity of special event areas, and so that is definitely something that um city staff is looking at and that we'd be happy to entertain depending on what we hear from the rest of the council.

Thank you.

Thank you for that update.

The other part, you know, about health and welfare.

I mean, they you know, vendors can't block sidewalks.

They can't inhibit ADA access.

I mean, there's just a number of basic health and welfare things that all of us, whatever our businesses, we can't do.

And so everybody needs to play by the same rules.

And and so I think those are kind of the updates, and again, we shouldn't be updating ordinances every 40 years.

It should be a little bit more frequent than that.

Thank you, Mayor, for letting me get things started.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Chu, I see you're reaching again.

We'll go to you.

All right, um, so thank you.

Uh I'm this is a tough one.

Um, so uh I just wondered if you could let me know.

So if you think about a brick and mortar restaurant, a food truck, and a push cart for those three business types.

What is the total?

You you'd listed all the different licenses and and permits and everything they need.

Can you give me a sense of how much for a brick and mortar, how much for a truck, and how much for a food cart would the total be per year?

Um I do have um SMC health staff on here because there's different levels for the different types of vehicles.

Um Bogart or Waymend.

Yeah, I can chime in and speak to that, and I hope you all can hear me okay.

We can.

So if we're talking about, for example, a prepackaged food truck, which would be the most basic, just a producer ice cream truck, that might be 489 dollars for an annual permit.

Okay.

If we're talking about a larger food truck that does, for example, tacos, uh larger risk category, that would be 1,804 for an annual permit.

And now if we are talking about a brick and mortar, that will take me one second to pull up.

Sorry, the very largest restaurants would be just under $3,000 for an annual permit.

Great.

And then how much for a cart?

For a prepackaged cart, which would be the most simple, would be something like $439 a year.

Okay.

Yes.

Great.

Um and then, you know, if you bundle that with the business license tax and everything else, do we have a sense of how much that adds over and above these these costs?

So um our business license tax.

Is a $90 uh base on an for an registration fee plus.

And this year we've got um a discounted rate.

So it's five dollars per employee.

Next year it'll be ten dollars per employee for the first 10 employees, and then it kind of goes up from there.

We don't have a special permit, uh, for allowing restaurants to operate, but they do typically have to do building permits, and those are expensive because it's based on what you're doing and how much square footage you're doing.

Thank you.

So it was so good the first round.

Yeah, you're doing um the carts and the peddler permit.

So this is the this um non-motorized, thank you so much.

The non-motorized vendors, uh, our peddler permit costs $33 a year.

Okay.

And our food, uh, our mobile vendor permit costs two hundred and five dollars a year.

So, wow, I should have put that down before I started coughing.

Okay, should be good now.

Um, so all told it it obviously depends quite a bit um on what you're doing, um, but it sounds like a cart would be approximately 500, 550, 600 a year.

Uh some food truck would be um around Bogart, you said the the food truck like mobile food facility permit is around a thousand.

Uh a mobile food facility permit is just under two thousand.

Just under 2,000.

Okay, so then we would be looking at around twenty-two hundred probably because you probably have three employees.

Um, and then a restaurant uh would be just under three thousand plus the building permit and any sort of other work.

If you had a lot of employees, the the biggest uh health permit is for a 51 person employee uh 51 seating, is it 51 seats?

51 plus seating, uh risk category three, yes.

Okay, so I mean you can imagine that probably be 15, 20 employees at a time.

Right.

So thank you so much.

That's really helpful.

So you know, and again, I don't run any of these kinds of businesses.

None of these sound particularly onerous.

Um, you know, as as the gentleman um you know shared, I think the key drivers of costs are, you know, land, you know, the the building, the rent, um, staff, you know, labor and and materials, that's really the key drivers of the cost of operating a business.

And so um, you know, I do note that as a percent of the likely revenue of any of these kinds of businesses, the this, how can I say it, the the fees do seem to be higher for carts versus trucks versus a brick and mortar, but but I do understand brick and mortars carry a lot of these other costs, like you know, they pay property tax and they have much higher overhead costs.

So, so I do think it it kind of balances out.

Um yeah, I I think council member G uh made a really good point, and I I think the thing I've I've heard a lot of people express is you know what I would call the the free rider problem that you always have a problem where you know if there's sort of an interstitial space where people can operate without permitting uh without um you know sort of oversight, there they're you know, it's easy and and there's a tendency to want to do that.

Um so I do agree that you know, especially in the case where we have like nonprofits and and things like that doing events that you know everyone should have to have a permit, or we could have, you know, off Broadway and and the carts could be at you know at some location further away from the event or you know, a certain perimeter from the event.

Um so that's one thing.

I mean, to me that the fees do seem reasonable, um, but again, I don't have this kind of business.

I would really love to understand, you know, what does what are the what do people find onerous?

Is it the permitting?

Is it the is it just the overhead of of land labor and and materials and and there's very little we can do to make it easier?

Um so I think better understanding like kind of what are the barriers to the our restaurants succeeding.

I want all of us, you know, all of the restaurants to succeed.

I want the brick and mortar to succeed, I want every cart to succeed, and I want every truck to succeed.

And so what is a way that we can make sure we provide an environment where each of those types of businesses can do well.

Um I mean, to the extent we can.

We don't have control over everything.

Um I do think the issue of of being bad neighbors, it is somewhat um, I mean, obviously, if somebody's pouring grease into your plant or leaving trash or not cleaning up after, um, that's that's an issue that we need to address.

Um, but I do know that you know, for example, the the president of the neighbor, the chair of the neighborhood association in my neighborhood implored us, please make sure that the food trucks can stay.

Please make sure that when you plan, you know, the new um Broadway corridor that you provide places for the food trucks.

And so I think each neighborhood is very different.

I know in my community, it's a very big part of our vibe.

You know, it's a lot of what makes our our neighborhood wonderful, and they're very popular, and so there are um sort of differing views on this.

I think even uh in the situation if food trucks are doing well, that's kind of a revealed preference.

I mean, there's a really powerful mechanism to shut down these businesses if they're not popular, and and that's if they don't get business.

Um, so you know, if if the food trucks are doing well, that that is kind of a revealed preference that some people want them there.

Um so the question is how do we accommodate that without, you know, driving the neighbors crazy.

Um I'm probably not I'm just kind of these are the the conflicting goals that I'm you know trying to figure out how do we make everyone happy.

I don't know that we can do that, but how could we kind of balance these competing interests and needs?

Um something I've been thinking a lot about, you know, you said we can regulate when, where, um, you know, time, time, manner, and place, I think it was.

Um, one thing I'd love to see us think about is parking lots or designated areas where um you know nominal fees, really encouraged, there's a thrown bathroom, you have everything you need, um, you know, prosper.

Um so maybe something like that.

Um I think something else I'm really interested in.

Um I know you know I walk downtown quite often, and on my way there are several vendors that do block the sidewalk, and I you know I can go around.

Um, but I keep thinking, you know, we have six and a half billion dollars worth of parking in the city, um, and I would love to be able for these vendors to be able to kind of move into available parking spots.

I I know that there's clear laws, but you know, if we have little platforms or tables or things like that, if somehow we could leverage that space as well.

Um if if there's a way to do that, um that might help with the uh ADA compliance, um, because you know uh little business is usually about the size of a parking spot.

Um I I think um I do want to make sure that whatever boundaries we set really are providing a pathway to success.

You know, I I I and I realize the ethos has been, you know, try to help people get compliant, try to help educate, you know, don't be punitive.

Um but I'd really love to see these little carts become little storefronts, you know, and have this kind of smooth on-ramp to prosperity, really.

Um so uh I'll leave it there.

I I don't have brilliant ideas on how to do that, but um, very supportive.

Oh, sorry, one more thing, the hours.

Yes, absolutely.

Um, I don't think we need uh vacuum cleaner salesman hours.

Um and I agree that it probably should correspond with the noise ordinance.

That that makes I think a lot of sense to me.

I just want to say one thing um that Patrick would be upset with me if I didn't mention is that our regulations can cover the city right of way.

Um so if it's a city parking lot, we could probably think about something, but private parking lots would be um under our temporary use permit ordinance, it would be a zoning thing.

So uh this is really about um city right of way.

Just want to make sure that's clear.

And I would imagine a parking, a private parking lot could say, okay, it's vendor night, and they that's something they could already do, right?

That is a question for planning.

Um, but I think that they could uh under the temporary use permit process.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Chu for the great questions.

We'll go to Councilmember Howard.

Thank you.

First of all, I'd like to um apologize to the public that this is coming to us so late.

I mean, and it's not not since not staff's fault, it's not our fault.

It's um quite honestly um we have a a cue of problems in Redwood City that people would like us to address, and I sure wish we could do them uh real quickly.

It just doesn't work that way.

It's a complicated problem, requiring real thoughtful solutions.

And so uh those of you who have been communicating with all of us uh for at least two years that I'm thinking about it, uh I'm glad we're here tonight, and I'm glad we are moving forward with it, and I hope that we can make some sense out of all this and uh come up with some fair compromises to get it going.

Um so I in the interest of fairness, which I I really believe in that.

I I don't feel that uh that this time that we are being fair to our brick and mortar.

I mean, I and I'll just start with that because I hear that all the time.

I I go to restaurants quite a bit, I don't cook anymore, so I I like to support our Riverwood City restaurants as much as I can.

But uh I hear it over and over that this is what I have to pay for, this is what I have to do.

I have to keep a clean shop, I have to abide by so many rules and regulations, and there's a cart right outside, as was mentioned on Broadway and Maple, because there are a number of lovely restaurants there that have great food, and there's someone there all the time, and is noise, the generator goes way into the night.

I've been there coming out like 10 30, that thing is still going.

And they're selling the same thing.

Now, is that right?

I don't think so.

I don't think that's fair.

And so that that's why I'm glad we're at this point, because what we have to tell this person is you can't be there.

We want we want to help you succeed if you want to have a business in Redwood City, but you have to do these rules and regulations.

Otherwise, I'm sorry, you can't.

And I'm okay with that, because I mean I really think that in order to keep our businesses thriving, both brick and mortar and as well as the motorized, non-motorized, we have to come up with fair resolutions that they can all live with.

So that's where I'm at with it.

I mean, I was at um Safeway in the well, Massachusetts, there's one there all the time.

Again, running noisy, everything, and there you have four restaurants in that mall trying to make a living.

So, this is good that it's coming up now.

And I think it's okay to talk about uncomfortable topics.

It is uncomfortable, but we can allow it to go the way it's been going.

So I I got the uh thank you for the average cost.

I th I get this feeling that um we have that answered.

Um I wanted to ask about uh private property because there's some people who ask a gas station, and I know of one, and they said, sure, put it over there and do your thing.

I don't think that should be allowed, but um maybe that's something that we need to consider.

Uh, I'll just that's a again, a situation where um the food truck could apply for a temporary use permit.

But those are limited in time.

Um the temporary use permit is I think for a six-month period.

And I don't know how many times it could be renewed.

Um but um on private property.

Uh we do have our zoning um code that regulates that.

Okay, so maybe you could bring up the slide that you're you're asking us to comment on the different things that uh you've suggested that we could do.

I think that would be easier for me anyway.

Let me start with the motorized.

Well, do you have one that uh could there's a lot in common between motorized and non-motorized, uh like the health certificate, things like that.

Could you do that one first, or do you have that one?

Um I didn't combine them.

Uh, I didn't combine them.

Uh but we were more we are more constrained with non-motorized.

So if you want to start with that one, then okay.

No, that's a good idea.

Thank you.

Um I do want to require the applicants to all have um health certificates and all relevant permits.

I suppose we could have a discussion at one point about what do you mean by relevant permits and do we need all of them?

Do we need a peddler's permit?

And uh, I know the seller's permit, that has to happen.

Business license, I want to happen.

Um, health certificate for sure.

We want to give the police the authority, uh, the tools to do what they need to do, and and someone the health department be able to do their job too.

So uh those three things I would definitely all relevant permits uh and health certificate, definitely.

Um I would think you'd want them to have waste containers and re well it's common sense, don't leave litter around your neighbor's house or anywhere.

Anywhere.

I mean, that just has to be in there.

That if you're out of compliance with that, that's something that we can actually enforce.

Okay.

Um prohibit seating on city property.

Um I'm not sure what that means.

Uh this would be uh uh some vendors are are taking a lot of chairs and then putting them on the sidewalk next to their um cart or um truck, and so that would be something so it's not having a place for people to sit.

It would be more temporary, so that people are taking their food and going.

Well, I I wouldn't mind in the future looking at an area where vendors could be located, and then there could be chairs.

Um we were talking about that um at some point.

I uh anyway, that's a discussion we could have.

Maybe there's a location or several in the city where vendors could go there and people would know they could go there for the outdoor eating experience, and they could use chairs.

Would I want that to be something that isn't regulated?

Not no.

I, because I think that's a problem.

I mean, I we talk about the city events, and I agree with council member G.

We are having trouble getting sponsors, and I talked to some of the sponsors, and they say I don't see me getting my money's worth out of this sponsorship anymore.

This compet competitor all over here, and and it really bothers me.

So I'd like to try to eliminate some of those limiting factors, some of those problems that we're having.

Um, no generators.

I don't know what that means for these trucks because they're all using them and they're all loud, noisy, and they have the fumes going, so what would you say about that?

So generators, and I'm I'm glad that Bogart and Wayman are still online.

Um I think food trucks have to have generators in order to run their operations.

Um Bogart, do you want to speak to that?

Yeah.

Um, generally, yes, that's true.

Uh California has some newer laws around newer vehicles being sold.

We are transitioning towards battery power.

But largely, yes.

Uh generators are a necessity, especially for running an affordable operation, should we say.

So I would my recommendation would be that we don't allow these type of vehicles in neighborhoods.

I just and and not near schools.

I I'm I know that we have a lot of them around the schools, and that's just not safe for those children to be crossing the street when you've got all the vendors there.

So I don't know what the answer is.

Maybe there's um I know we don't allow a lot of things around schools, so that there'd have to be discussion about it, but as far as the neighborhood, I feel pretty comfortable saying I'd rather not have these big noisy trucks in neighborhoods.

I just think that's not something that's um acceptable.

So uh I'll let Vonica verify me, but uh we can't uh for food trucks and so the the motorized vendors, we can't say you can't be in residential areas.

They they have a right to park on all streets.

It's there they are allowed to park on all streets.

We can put limits uh, for example, within a distance of a park or a school.

So those are both fair game.

For the non-motorized vendors, we could uh prohibit stationary vendors from residential areas, but not roaming vendors.

So a guy who's pushing a cart, we couldn't stop that from uh happening in in a residential neighborhood, but we could say, hey, you can't pop up and sit here all day.

If I could just qualify that, thank you.

So uh no qualification on the motorized uh so just to reiterate for motorized vendors, um, the state has preempted the streets, and so that's why we cannot prohibit motorized vehicles or vendors from being on the streets.

Uh regarding the non-motorized, the city can prohibit stationary vendors when there is a public health or safety concern that needs to be addressed by by that prohibition.

So it's not a blanket.

We do need to have a public health and safety reason for prohibiting them.

And I also want to be a little bit more specific about the language that I use.

So it's an area that's used for exclusively for residential purposes, and it's zoned for exclusive residential purposes, not just it's being used exclusively.

So it is limited where we have that authority, and it's definitely something we can look at.

It's just not as clear and simple.

But definitely if we hear folks on the council having an interest in trying to see what types of regulations will look at it, but it it is very narrow the ability to prohibit even stationary street vending or non-motorized vendors.

So this will be challenging.

But we can prohibit vending within 300 feet of a park or school.

If they don't have for motorized, we have a little bit more latitude.

Um, yeah, the motorized, that's what I'm looking at now.

That we could prohibit prohibit the 300 um within 300 feet of a park or school, which might help a bit with the problem.

And it's it says without express permission, we may decide um at Stafford Park that we're going to allow, can we, at least have a discussion.

Could we allow four vendors on music nights?

So that's something I'd have to look into for sure, but I do recall when we were talking about these ideas, is that um parks specifically said, hey, we we do pub in the park, and we want food trucks there.

That's actually helpful to our event.

And so, you know, you don't want to say, oh, you can't have them at all, because then we're also hurting our own events.

I think that there's that that that's kind of what we mean by the express permission, but I think we have to still be pretty specific about it.

And I would agree with that, yeah.

I mean, I'm just throwing things out there, but um I think we need to limit the hours if we can.

I don't know if the state has something to say about that, but that gives you a little bit of I've seen these cars go way into the dark, and I and I just don't know if that's necessary that that kind of noise in a neighborhood, for instance.

So I wouldn't mind looking at the hours, but uh, Councilmember Howard, if I may, through the chair.

Um, I do, you know, you identified parks, and I did want you to, you know, know that the city does have authority, um, in you know, kind of how they allow for uses in the parks of these motorized vehicles, and so that's definitely something that if the council is interested in creating a program for motorized vehicles for food trucks at the parks, um, that's definitely something that the city has authority to do.

Uh, you can completely prohibit them from your parks.

You can also regulate them within your parks and allow for them to be there on certain days or um, you know, through through some type of programming.

So that's definitely something the city could look at.

I'd like that.

That would be that sounds fair.

So I'd be interested in looking at that.

And if others do, then they could let uh let you know.

I think that's a good idea.

I also like the idea of, I don't know how we pay for anything, but education was brought up by the gentleman on the phone, and education is a wonderful idea, training, uh teaching of what the steps are, and and I just don't know if maybe we could look into some kind of grant to help us do that kind of service.

I think it would be really helpful, and we'd get more compliance for sure if we had someone helping them walk through the process.

Yeah.

That is something that we are requesting uh funds for in the next year's budget is for education.

Um we did talk about a grant for folks to to phrase some of those startup costs, uh, but since it would basically be a transfer of funds from Redwood City taxpayers to San Mateo County Health, we kind of thought that that was maybe not the best uh best thing.

But education and permitting help.

We have to hold on whatever dollars we can right now.

Is there anything else that um because I know it's a study session, so I I just and I want to give others a chance to talk, but is there anything else you wanted us to?

I do I do I hope we just get it all out there and let's see what we can do and see if we can come up with fairness and reasonableness and engage the public on their input.

I hope this isn't the last time that we'll be able to have people speak to these items.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard will go to the vice mayor next.

So thank you.

Thank you, Amanda and Patrick and Veronica for your hard work.

So um, you know, we are very limited by state law.

I just want to make sure the public hears that we're we're preempted.

We we're limited in in what we can regulate here.

And um I also agree with Mr.

G that forty years um it's I'm really glad we're here tonight to work on crafting um uh an ordinance.

And um my preference is that we not let the enemy be the perfect, we not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Let's get this ordinance to, you know, to press as soon as possible.

And if we have to tweak it a year from now or two years from now, that's fine, but let's not cogitate on and on.

Let's do our best right now.

My concerns are health and safety.

So, first of all, I want to make sure that we do a lot of communication with the county because that they do the health.

We don't have a health department, that's them.

Um so they have vital information we need about keeping people healthy and well, but they don't do enforcement.

So we need a lot of communication, and if that costs extra money, let's provide it.

Um, you know, the the the curb, so on these big places, say like Target or Safeway or uh canned goods, um, those those big grocery stores where lots of people come in and out.

It's it's a attractive business opportunity for these um big trucks, but they can provide a traffic safety problems because they're big.

Um, you know, I was driving by Safeway this morning, and uh a truck was a food truck was kind of like a maneuvering, and it was parked partly in the and it wasn't parked permanently, it had just gotten there, but it was blocking the entrance.

I I would like us to see some sort of regulations like hey, you can't be 15 feet, and maybe the same for daylighting, the same reasons the state passed, you know, you can't park within 15 feet of a crosswalk because it's dangerous.

Uh maybe we need to explore you can't park within 15 feet of a driveway entrance to a big megastore.

Um, or uh so I'm I'm really in because these are big trucks, so I'm concerned about safety.

Um I just want to tell you big big picture.

I I'll let you and the attorney and staff micro uh test it, but just big picture.

I'm really concerned about the safety of these big trucks.

I do, I mean, I did the big lift um last October or whenever it was that we do it every year, and I went to clean up near where one of these big huge stationary, non-motorized places is always there in a residential neighborhood.

And I picked out, I don't know, on a Saturday morning, 30, 40, 50 cans of beer and cartons of beer and garbage in a tree well, you know, on the side of a those kind of hidden through bushes.

And I mean, I was there for 15 minutes, just picking out junk.

And uh we that's that's low-hanging fruit.

I mean, once we get this ordinance up and running, we can stop that.

That's those are bad actors.

I want to speak to Jeff's point about the tiny vendors that that bring in a uh, you know, maybe they oversee a whole bunch of tiny vendors and none of them are permitted.

I'd like to see us be vigilant with the police about them.

Um, you know, uh, you make a good point about uh I don't know what the hours are, I'm not sure it's six to ten.

We don't our nose noise ordinance doesn't allow construction at six o'clock in the morning, as someone pointed out.

Um I believe that we can do reasonable regulation, that if our regulations are tied to safety, and uh reasonable things about noise and hours, that it will stand up to the test of time.

Um I think that the first year that we have this ordinance, sure, fine education so people know how to get the permits and know how to do a business, that's fine, no problem.

But I think we're gonna need more enforcement, more money for enforcement to get the bad actors out of there, the ones that uh flout the law with impunity, um so in next year's budget or maybe this year's budget, we I don't know what that looks like.

Maybe it's like a parking uh like park, I don't know.

I I again I leave that for the details.

Um another thing that concerns me, and I won't spend a lot of time on it, but state law is never gonna preempt state law, right?

Uh so you know, things like proving that you're an independent contractor if you're working for somebody else and they're stealing your wages, which is I'm is happening with these food carts.

Um not you know, getting paid over time if you if you're being forced to work more than eight hours.

Uh if you if you're not an independent contractor, if you really are just doing whatever your boss tells you to do at this food truck or this food uh vending non-mobile vending place, and you really have no autonomy, you really aren't an independent contractor.

You're still standing at this uh non-mobile vending place on the sidewalk, you're working 12 hours, you have no autonomy, you do whatever your boss says, even though they're not standing there, that is not an independent contractor.

Then you get workers' compensation, you get overtime, you're entitled to uh if you get fired to unemployment, just like the restaurants have to do.

Um, and so that should be part of the education, is this is what an independent contractor is.

This is not an independent contractor, you know.

So, you know, a small family business that's that's really trying to share their grandmother's wonderful recipes with the community and create the culture, as Bella was saying, absolutely, let's energize those folks, let's get them going.

But let's cut out the bad actors, and um we're never gonna be in trouble with state law preemption by forcing these people to comply with state wage law, state unemployment laws and all that, and and that will kick out a lot of these bad actors right away.

So we're we're gonna need more enforcement.

Um I don't I don't um to Mr.

Taylor's point from the county about um these generators.

I mean, I think they're kind of like um gas leaf blowers in that they're they're really not green and there is a trend to try to go electric, that's another story.

Um then I'll I'll leave it there.

No, I'm glad that you brought up the question about um wage law.

I think that that probably falls outside of the range of this ordinance, but um I think it's a good reminder that we partner with the Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement at the county for these issues.

So I'd be happy to provide the um labor advice hotline to anybody who's talking with me funders and let them know that this is available to them.

Thank you, Vice Marin.

Thank you, Amanda, for mentioning the OLS.

We'll take it over to Councilman Padio, brought her thank you, Amanda.

Uh I appreciate the presentation and let me see where I want to start.

I guess I want to start where when I when I first think of food and I think of health and safety, I don't think of the city.

I immediately think of the county.

When I think of food and health and safety, my immediate thoughts go to the county.

So I actually want to pose to us how I would like to see how the county could be a better partner in this.

I um I think it was great.

I appreciated our presentation on the VLF.

I think that's fantastic.

But I guess when I go through the presentation, every every slide was, and the county is limited, and the county is limited.

So they don't have permits, so the county can't help.

I I just I don't know if I really accept that.

I think it seems like a lot of it falls on our police and RPD, but I think that this is an opportunity for us to be good partners, and I hope there's an opportunity for us to work with the county because this is not just a Redwood City problem, this is a county issue, and I think that this would be something that we could deal with in partnership.

So I think I would like us to consider bringing the county to the table.

And I appreciate their representatives on the phone giving us the the numbers for the costs of carts, but I think this is a bigger policy issue that I would really appreciate having to be able to work with them on this.

Um yes, to the vice mayor's point, enforcement.

I mean, it doesn't matter if we keep making ordinances ordinances.

If we don't have the money or the ability to enforce them, it's it, I don't know if it's worth the time.

If if we keep making things, and that when what kind of trust does that build with our current our community either?

We have transparency that we'll make ordinances that we'll spend money on that we can't enforce.

So these are things that we we need to think about.

Um can you go back?

Oh no, actually, this is fine.

Actually, no, you can stay here where you were because I I want to look at this.

Um I also agree about I understand that yes, certain people have overheads.

There are businesses that you know, whether they're customers or not, they still have to pay their utility bills, they still have to pay for their insurance.

Um I think the the truth is I know I someone mentioned, you know, we want to make everyone happy.

I've for we're never gonna do that.

We we can't.

I think we just have to put that aside.

We're never, and if we want to make everyone happy, we should just know that that's not gonna happen.

But I think if we change our focus and try to just make things more balanced, more fair, and I think I really appreciate uh the representative for Renaissance being on here because I think education.

How can we help people get compliant?

How do we get people to know that there are commercial kitchens that they can rent that they can have or that they can get permitted to have their kitchen in their home?

I had friends during the pandemic who explored this, but how do we get again?

I feel like I keep saying this.

How do we connect people with these resources?

So maybe there's another opportunity where we can partner with the county.

They do have a bigger budget than we have.

So I would like to work on these partnerships.

And I think so much of that can be how do we uplift people?

How do we we need to people don't know it's hard enough for people to navigate websites to let alone know which paper or form to fill out?

So I think we have a lot of real work to do there.

Um yes, I think that's important time place, but I I'm not exactly sure about where I feel about the prohibition about the downtown and farmers markets and special events.

I I don't want to get too into that.

I think uh I appreciated uh Dylan's comments about the vibrancy of downtown.

And when we go to certain festivals, I know that there are the vendors that are there, but there are other vendors that come and they bring special things that maybe aren't part of that, but I they do contribute to the feeling.

So I just I wouldn't want to rush in competition is great, and I think we have to be careful on how much we regulate things because there are unintended consequences of that.

So I would like us to think carefully and I want us to support our nonprofits, but I want us to be creative in that.

I mean, we have a small kiosk downtown that I know we use for art at times.

Is there ever the opportunity that we could have an open house and let other small businesses use that as a pop-up?

I mean, I've seen some of the things that hang up there for extended periods of time.

Could that be used for other people or groups as pop-up space?

I mean, I think we could get creative in supporting all groups in our community.

So I just want to make sure we consider things like that.

Uh but yes, I think health is important.

I think it is important to have access to hand washing and running water when you are dealing with with meats and foods.

There are certain things that I like to not worry about because I want to know I just eat somewhere and I I shouldn't have to think about that.

There are certain things that you know we we shouldn't take for granted.

Um, and that we appreciate that we don't have to, you know, we don't want to have foodborne illnesses.

That's something that we've come we've come a long way to have these processes and procedures in place, and I hope that we are thoughtful when we communicate with our community, and not just in engaging with neighborhood associations.

I think we should also get a little bit not more non-traditional with the groups that we reach out to.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Shirkin.

We'll go to you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you so much.

Um, Miss Manthany, um Anthony.

There we go.

Late apologies.

Okay, well, um, very supportive of one in response to one of the questions um about exploring one-time funding in the budget for technical assistance and appreciate the outreach plan, especially outside typical business hours uh to reach vendors in the evenings as an example.

And I say that because I'm really glad that we heard a lot from uh brick and mortar businesses tonight uh from some residents tonight, but I didn't hear from any that I can recall uh food truck owners themselves or uh cart owners.

And you know, I can think of a whole list here just to give you a little list.

Like there's the a pop-up on Allerton and Whipple, there's um the the guy who's you know selling food in front of 840.

Um there's three at Mezes Park.

There's the food truck next to the DMV.

Um food truck next to the car wash on what's that road, um next to Wells Fargo, Evelyn's food behind grocery outlet.

The list continues.

It's and and we'd haven't heard from those folks tonight.

And so I want to make sure that as we prepare uh these really impactful ordinances for council to consider that we are reaching out to folks outside typical business hours.

And I think we heard, I heard at least from at least four of my colleagues' interest in interest in designating space for food trucks and for anyone, okay.

And I very much support that in all parts of our city.

That our downtown, and as we heard from some of the public commenters, is very vibrant, in part because of these vendors, and so we do need to have standards, but I think these standards shouldn't be that there shouldn't be a blanket across the whole city.

Umtown, Mount Carmel, Mount Centennial, that there's different the nature of things is different.

Um my hope is that we become a you know a downtown at least a 24-7 downtown.

And we have uh bars open till late, uh, we have a nightlife now that we didn't before, and people need to eat, they need to sober up before they go home, right?

So I think I would like to see us reconsider the hours of allowing uh vending in certain areas of the city, like downtown, um, to for as a matter of community safety, right?

And also as a means to increase revenue, and also as a means for people to provide for themselves and their families.

So there's just a whole host of benefits to re-evaluating the allowable hours, um, and then as for other parts of the city, like around parks, I've heard both support and opposition to having food trucks and and other vendors around parks.

And so there's a few things I uh that come to mind is in that if we want folks who are doing pop-ups to be to come into compliance, they need to have that access to a restroom within 100 feet, right?

And I haven't pulled out my measuring tape, but I would imagine that with some of the vendors say at Mesas Park, they are within a hundred feet of that restroom at Mesus Park.

And if we prohibit them from being around the park, from being within 300 feet of the park, then they can't access the restroom and be compliant, at least in that area, right?

There's other factors that they had to consider to come into compliance.

So this really does have to be nuanced and cannot be a blanket ban or prohibition.

Uh in certain parts of the city or around certain areas, uh, we have to work with people and create space for them to bring home the bacon, serve the bacon, and um, and bring in revenue for the city.

So I really do appreciate the interest in an outreach, and I'm glad to hear that um Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center is making themselves available as they have already been to support us in that.

Um I don't know if you saw this.

We got a flyer about their beyond the kitchen program, giving folks access to commercial kitchens so they could come to compliance.

I mean, I would love to see how we can collaborate in that way more.

Um let me just pause there.

Thank you.

I may through the chair.

Please.

I did want to um make uh one clarifying point.

Um, when I spoke of uh being able to widely kind of regulate what food trucks are in our park, and if we allow food trucks and in what hours, I was only speaking to motorized vendors, and so when you're talking about other vendors, sidewalk vendors, uh non-motorized vendors using staff's language.

We cannot prohibit them from being in our parks.

Um and so I did want to be very clear that I was talking about food trucks when I was talking about regulations, limitations, things like that.

So thank you, City Attorney.

We'll send things over to Councilmember Chu.

Um I just wanted to respond to a few things my colleagues have said.

Um I would be very supportive of how can I say I would really prefer we did not prohibit um vendors in parks and for many reasons.

One, um, you know, if if we've been to Europe or even New York, one of the great joys of life is having food in the park.

Um it's a natural place to sit, it's beautiful, you get hungry, you're exercising.

Um, and then if we, you know, prohibit uh motorized vendors, the sidewalk vendors or the uh non-motorized can still be there, and so it creates an uneven uh playing field.

So I I personally think the parks are kind of an ideal place.

Um I would like to see us again, you know, um provide incentives or structural incentives to park uh in parking lots uh rather than on the street.

Um I'd be very supportive of um uh daylighting laws for vehicles of all types over 60 inches.

You know, most children are under five feet, and so I'm happy to uh think about daylighting laws if it because that is a real health and safety issue.

Um and then uh I really appreciated um Vice Mayor Aikens' point about bad actors.

Like I don't think anyone wants to crack down on the tamale lady.

I mean, I have a little girl who comes to my door selling tamales, I want to adopt her.

She's wonderful, but I think she's in high school now.

But um I think you know, to her to your point about the bad actors and so structuring things so that we can go after people who are behaving badly, but not make sure and then the other thing I really appreciated was kind of the idea I I don't know a better way to say that punching up, that we're not going after the little guy, that if somebody's exploiting the little guy that we have a mechanism to sort of crack down on them, but not you know the person making below minimum wage trying to sell hot dogs.

I that's I don't think anyone wants to go after that person.

Um I'll leave it there.

So just wanted to offer support for those points, because I thought they were great, and then uh uh also council member Sterkin's point about nightlife, certainly in my neighborhood near the Stanford campus.

We you know, we had the neighborhood association chair say please, you know, make space for food trucks and vendors, and I think downtown I've heard that sentiment expressed as well.

So, thank you, Councilmember.

Is there anyone else?

Just uh piggybacking off of Councilmember Chu, I just want to highlight that one of our one of the goals was that we where I think maybe we could maybe accelerate was our daylighting that we are not I think as far as where we could be, and I think it said that it was starting this month, so maybe when we do look at some of these things we can fast track things where they could help in other areas.

So if daylighting could have even more benefits, maybe that's something we could move.

That's it, thank you.

Thank you, council member.

Not seeing anyone else's lights on, I'll go ahead and add my comments.

Thank you, Amanda, for the great work, the great presentation on this.

Um, I will try to be concise.

I you know, as somebody who was born and raised in Roadwood City, um I have very fond memories of hearing the sounds of horns honking on the street, letting me know that there were cups of fruit, cups of a lot of um food was on its way, and rushing to go grab five dollars from my dad, right?

Or being at Red Morton and playing a soccer game and being able to go get a Gatorade from the ice cream truck that's parked in the parking lot, right?

Um I mean, those feel like such important uh amenities, right?

They're not um these are such important amenities in areas where parts of our town where you don't have access to food in that way.

So thinking about just who these folks are, right?

They are coming from such a vulnerable situation, and uh to bring them into compliance.

You know, I'm thinking of something really similar to what we had with um what we've done with all the big hard conversations we've had, where you know, I'm thinking about our safe RV lot where we did education and outreach at the forefront before enforcement was even being triggered, right?

Um so you know, as we work on this ordinance, I think reaching out to folks, right, especially the people we didn't hear from today, to bring them to the table to start getting their input will be important.

Um, I'm grateful you brought up the micro kitchens.

There's one across the street from me, and it is on Thursday nights.

You know, they have a small neon open sign, and cars will pull up, park, grab food, and go, and it is so incredibly popular, and even the bear cash market is very active in the evenings where people don't want to run to grocery outlet or to whole foods.

So there's absolutely an appetite in our neighborhoods for another option, right?

And so I think there's there's opportunity here for us to have a little more flexibility for our neighborhoods, like the core downtown or the greater downtown area plan as we come up with those new boundaries.

Um but I also want folks to be able to play by the same rules, um, health and safety is obviously important.

Um, and as we think about enforcement, I would much rather have code enforcement be the entity that's going out to these businesses to deal with those issues like trash, like loitering, and save our police staff until we have you know real concerns where we need an immediate and urgent response to one of these sites.

But in the interim to help build that trust, to build that education, I do think code enforcement should be leading on the front here.

Um let me see what else I'm missing here.

And so I think just having those those health permits in alignment with right uh the micro kitchens, what already exists, I think will be really helpful.

But if we can show folks what the benefits are of the different models that they can go for, right?

So if they have a cart, that's what they can afford to do now.

Maybe food truck is next, right?

And all the all the things that would come with that decision, right?

So um I'm really grateful Mr.

Russell's joined us online tonight.

I thought the idea of having one-time funds to help smooth over this process, the new system would be really helpful.

But um, you know, the Renaissance Center and Amanda knows this well.

Um, I mean that training and that hands-on coordination with these folks is gonna make the all the difference, right?

Um, and coupling that, you know, it was mentioned by one of my colleagues that some of these folks are um are being managed by somebody else who, you know, I don't know what you would call them, right?

But um these folks are are managing 10 independent contractors, right?

So, you know, I think informing these folks of what their what their rights are.

You mentioned the Office of Labor Standards, I think that should be coupled with our outreach around county health.

Um, folks should know what their rights are, what is okay, what isn't, right?

Um, but I'll leave it there.

I think that is I mentioned expanding, you know, hours in our downtown core and other areas, getting that neighborhood impact um or input rather, would be helpful.

And you know, uh again, somebody in my colleagues mentioned the having safe vendor sites, right?

Um, designated areas where people could gather, I think that would be incredibly helpful.

Um, you know, I'm also thinking of the restroom issue, right?

Um, and I just wonder if we started to designate these sites and it's either we move them from time to time to just get greater access for food for different parts of our neighborhoods.

But I'm also thinking we have really incredible uh new facilities in the throne uh restroom at Sequoia Station.

We've seen that work, so I wonder if we started to designate a parking lot.

Could we locate one of these temporary bathrooms to that site?

Umway, so I I will leave it there, but um really grateful for this work, Amanda, and this is a study session.

Um, yeah.

And thank you, Vice Mayor.

Um, Amanda, is this enough feedback you've heard tonight?

Was there anything that was?

Yeah, I think uh we've gotten a lot of uh broad strokes.

Um it sounds, I mean, I have a sense of of what what are your concerns?

Um, and I think we can look into what we can do.

Um, I hadn't considered um different regulations for a downtown area versus non-downtown.

I'm not sure what that looks like, but we can look into it.

Great.

Thank you, Amanda.

And Councilmember Howard, any final thoughts?

No, I I was going to say I'd like to ask for an extension of the meeting to 1115.

Make a motion to do that.

Second, great.

Could we get a quick electronic vote, please?

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you, Amanda, for being here.

Thank you so much for your feedback.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, everyone.

And just as a reminder, this is a study session, so we will not be voting on any items tonight.

This was only feedback.

Um, and with that, I will move to matters of council interests.

And before we begin the oral reports, I wanted to announce the formation of an ad hoc committee on special events.

The ad hoc committee will evaluate the vitality and safety of community events and propose recommended measures, if any, to the full council in anticipation of the summer season, including the FIFA events and potential additional measures following the summer events.

The ad hoc committee's work should be completed by October, and I've appointed council members Padilla and Councilmember Chu to serve on this committee with me.

And with that, we will go to 11A city council member report of meetings and conferences attended.

Not seeing any, so we'll go to 11B, beginning with uh a report out from governance.

We'll go to the Vice Mayor.

The governance.

The governance subcommittee comprised of Mayor Martinez Sabayas, Councilmember G, and myself met on Tuesday, February 17th.

The city's legislative consultant Dane Hutchins of California Public Policy Group provided an update that included a recap of the 2025 legislative session, the 2026 outlook, key timelines, and emerging policy themes affecting Redwood City.

The subcommittee reviewed key bills and took action to in alignment with the city's 2026 legislative platform.

Great.

Thank you, Vice Mayor, and we'll go to finance and audit next.

That's me too.

The finance and audit subcommittee comprised of council members Chu Howard and myself met on Thursday, February 19th, to receive and discuss a report on the capital funding strategies process and to provide feedback to staff on next steps.

As my colleagues know, the city has been limited in its ability to make much needed capital improvements due to resource constraints.

Staff at council's direction are exploring options, including defining the gamut of unmet capital needs as well as potential funding options.

To help facilitate this process, the mid-year budget amendments includes a hundred thousand dollars to allow the city to retain a consultant to prepare a comprehensive facilities assessment study.

In addition, the finance department will be issuing a request for proposals in the coming months to select a new municipal advisor to partner with staff on exploring funding strategies.

Staff will report back on the progress of these efforts within the next year.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

And from the 84101 ad hoc committee, the committee comprised of myself, Councilmembers G and Chu met on February 20th, 2026.

The consultant reported on the project status including a review of property acquisitions, design and construction.

The project team also updated the committee on overall project progress and outlined the next steps for the project and the ad hoc will be meeting next on March 20th 2026.

And I will pass things over to the city manager.

For the sake of time no there will be no report tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you for the mercy city manager.

With that we will adjourn thank you everybody for the discussion we'll be back March 9th 2026.

Have a great evening and a great week ahead of the