Good evening, everyone.

Thank you for joining our regular city council meeting of June 22nd, 2026.

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

And the city welcomes public comment on topics within the city's subject matter jurisdiction.

And members of the public may provide comments as follows.

In-person speakers will be called first.

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

Please be sure to indicate the agenda item number 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 with that, I'll now turn it over to our city clerk to call the roll.

Good evening.

Council Member Chu here.

Council Member G.

Councilmember Howard here.

Councilmember Patia.

Should be joining us shortly.

Council Member Sturkin.

Here.

Vice Mayor Aitken.

Here, Mayor Martinez Savayos.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And with that, we will move to the Pledge of Allegiance, and I'll ask Councilmember G to lead us on the pledge.

With that, we'll move to item four, and all council members are participating through traditional.

Through our regular participation.

So we'll move on to item five.

Item five is our presentations and acknowledgments for the evening.

Our first presentation this evening is by San Mateo County Transportation Authority, Director of Programming and Grants, Patrick Gilster, who will give us an update on the one-on-one corridor connect program.

Welcome.

Good evening, Council members.

Patrick Gilster, director of planning and fund management for the San Mateo County Transportation Authority.

Quick overview for folks in the room that may not know who SMCTA is.

It's a collaborative program that we've been working on to identify and prioritize congestion management projects all along US 101.

It's looking beyond just highway infrastructure.

It's considering the mobility needs of all users of the corridor as a whole, and we've been working in partnership with Caltrans, all our local city staff, transit agencies, San Mateo County, and City and County Association of Governments.

What this program is doing is helping us to put a better definition of what does congestion management mean.

It means very many different things to many different people.

So we wanted to work together across the county to help identify what are those priorities that our agency and our partner agencies can be helping to move forward.

This effort also now makes us eligible for the Solutions for Congestion Corridors program, which is a Caltrans funding mechanism.

So making us eligible for more funding sources across the state.

But our key program goals, we tried to sit keep it simple, really looking at making a safer, more connected, more sustainable, and more inclusive transportation environment along and across US 101.

We wanted to give a quick shout out to those that participated in our working group.

I know Malahat has been so gracious to give up her time and other staff to participate in the South County Working Group and as well as the mid-county working group for Redwood Shores.

So the first initiative I'll cover quickly, it was our multimodal strategies.

We broke the county and the corridor into three different segments: North, mid, and south county, to really focus on being able to hear from residents and visitors and people working in those areas of the county and customizing the priorities in those areas of the counties.

So our multimodal strategies are planning documents that help us identify and rank the needed projects in each part of the county.

So these take a look at every project, transportation project, I should say, that is an adopted highway, active transportation, transit, or other type of improvement.

These were not projects that we came up with, these are all projects pulled from all of your local plans.

So we weren't trying to reinvent the wheel with this effort.

As you can see, this breaks it up into those three different planning efforts.

Redwood City straddles both the mid-county and the South County plan.

Each of those three efforts included an extensive community engagement process with a website, online survey, interactive presentations, pop-up events, small group community-based organization meetings, temporary signs at bus stops to hear from folks traveling across the county.

These are just some snapshots of some of the community and stakeholder pop-up events, and then our stakeholder meetings as well.

In total, we had about 6,000 votes on how to improve transportation, attended 12 pop-ups, had 574 interactions at those pop-up events, and really heard from thousands of folks across the county on different ways to improve mobility along the US 101 corridor.

Don't expect you to all see what are the little lines on these maps.

I'll touch on the priority projects for Redwood City and what that means for you and what's next coming from SMCTA to how we can help you move those forward.

But each of those three planning efforts identified the top 20 priority projects as the community, provided their prioritization and customized that, and then we ranked those from there as well.

Our second initiative, known as Active 101 or the longer name, US 101 San Mateo County Crossings Improvement Plan, focused solely on improving walking, biking, and rolling across and directly along US 101.

So looking at areas where we need potential for improvements at grade of the freeway and across the freeway as well with pedestrian overcrossings.

It can include anything from curb extensions to sidewalk gap closures, bike lanes, pedestrian overcrossings, those types of things.

That had a whole separate different community engagement effort as well, multilingual pop-ups, presentations to stakeholder groups across the county, and an online funded tool to get folks to help tell us how they'd spend their money across the county.

In total, you can see that the effort developed a network in that orange line.

You'll notice it's not a straight line from the top part of the county to the south part of the county.

It's not intended to get you the quickest way across the county.

It's intended to help those living and working on either side of 101 to actually get across and along 101 and identify those areas where the transportation authority and our county partners can help actually help move the needle on some of these projects.

So this is kind of our blueprint for what we'll be working to help advance over the next five to 20 years from the transportation authorities.

So now that those are adopted by the Transportation Authority Board, we wanted to report back to you all at the council level about what does that mean for you and what opportunities does the Transportation Authority have to help you advance those.

So from the multimodal safety and congestion relief side, so from the multimodal strategies, I won't read every single project on here, but I will say Redwood City has the largest number of projects out of any of our cities.

I think understandably so.

But that can range from anything from bigger projects such as El Camino to smaller projects on Brewster Avenue, things like that.

So lots of different projects from the multimodal strategies that are now a priority for funding.

On the Active 101 side, so that orange line that includes Industrial Road, Whipple, Veterans, Woodside, and Bay Road.

As you can see on the right, the Bay Road gap closure between Woodside and the existing project underway, was one that our plan took an even further dive into and did extra community engagement on to hear how best does the community want to see that gap closure get filled as well.

So what we're here tonight to promote, uh, is a new multi-year effort.

Uh, the transportation authority, I like to say uh we had some extra discretionary interest earnings uh and our board uh decided to, like I would like to say, kind of put our money where our mouth is and tried to figure out how we can help you move these forward.

So we set up a jump start planning grant program, or what we call the mini-grant program, uh and we've dedicated four million dollars to help uh kind of figure out how we get all these different lines on a map uh actually into the planning process and development process as well, so they can get into the transportation authority pipeline.

Um so we have this grant program open now, and it can fund things like multimodal corridor studies, conceptual design alternatives, and community engagement.

Um we call it a mini grant program, but they can fund up to 750,000 per project and up to a million for multi-jurisdictional projects.

Um I think most exciting to most of our cities is there's no local match requirement on this, and you don't get extra points if you provide local match, so it doesn't actually give you any um uh benefit in this, like our other programs that it does.

Um, and I think most important to staff, we have a streamlined application that's a letter format as well to help get these funds on the ground.

Um, and then any project uh that we are looking to fund through this, uh, we're hoping to do a site walk uh with someone from our board and hopefully a representative from your council as well.

Um we've found that it's become better to have project champions at the council level for projects that are getting into our funding pipeline, uh, and hear from you all of why these projects are important.

So these are due here uh applications at the uh toward the end of July, uh, and then we are going to be looking at making funding decisions in August.

So trying to get the money out as fast as possible.

So some key actions for consideration, uh, talk to staff uh at the city or any staff at SMCTA if you have any questions and apply to the mini-grant program, participate in our site walks if selected.

Um and one other thing we're promoting is we just launched a community-based organization pilot program where we're funding CBOs through our funds to help on transportation projects.

If you have any other active projects that are out there, we can help pay CBOs to participate in those as well.

And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much, Patrick, for the great presentation.

And colleagues, who has any questions or comments?

Councilmember Sturger.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you so much for your presentations.

Very exciting.

I was most excited about the no local match part.

Um, you called it.

Uh, but I wanted to ask, um, although the the you know plan has already been approved by the TA.

One question did you consider um a pedestrian bike crossing at 2nd Avenue by chance from friendly acres over to you know East Bay Shore?

If it's an identified project already in your local plan, it's not then no, probably not as this part.

Uh, our goal is to update these every five to ten years.

So it's not that this is set and done and will never be updated, but all of this used existing proposed projects from the local jurisdictions.

Got it.

Thank you for helping me understand better.

Uh, so as a quick follow-up to that, and then I'll wrap up.

Um, so it's still possible for that to happen in the future.

I think you just answered my question.

And then my final question was: how much are the grants to CBOs?

They are anywhere from 5,000 to about 20,000.

Okay, so for community-based organizations, five to twenty.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Howard.

Thank you.

Patrick, thank you very much for the presentation.

I don't know how many projects we may be able to do.

I do see that's quite a ambitious list.

But I did want to ask our staff, is this something that you've been aware of?

And do you have a way of uh grading it and maybe coming back to us at some date giving us information on some of the things you think we should move forward on?

Yeah, uh thank you for the question.

I'll probably ask Malahat to speak to that to talk about the internal process on how projects are identified and recommendations are made.

Yes.

Um so the application is due on July 15th, right?

Um so we took the list of projects to our transportation advisory committee last week with a few options for TAC members to wait on.

At this point, um, based on the comments we received from TAG, we are thinking about applying for um crossing of Maple over 101.

Um so that's one project we have in mind.

I don't think there is enough time to come back to City Council um to get input on what we are applying for.

And the second application is a joint application with county on Bay Road between Woodside and Fifth Avenue.

So these are the two proposed projects from Reboot City.

We can apply for one, it is one application per agency and one application as multi-jurisdictional application.

One application, meaning we can put things in up to 750,000 dollars.

Yes.

So it could be several projects or one project that requires 750.

Maybe, yeah.

The deadline seems so quick.

I mean it's gonna be tough to to do that and bring everything together, but if you're using the transportation advisory committee, then maybe some things are already partially in place, and you can move it along.

Um, but you feel we'll be able to take advantage of this deadline, be able to meet the deadline.

Yes, the application is very short.

Um we're hoping that we can put together athletes for the Maple.

It's like working on how to um improve bicycle and pedestrian access on Maple over 101.

So it's it's a it's like applying for a concept design.

Um, it is simple, so we hope that we can make the deadline by July 15th.

Yes, thank you.

And if our city manager wouldn't mind keeping us in the loop on that, um, because it is such a short deadline, it'd be nice to know if we're able to participate in what we'll be doing.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard.

Councilmember Jude.

Thank you, Mayor.

Patrick, thank you for coming to Redwood City and updating us and our community on what the TA is doing and the plans.

Um couple questions, actually three.

If I were to write you a blank check or give you a blank check, do you know what it would cost to do the whole corridor?

We have not added all of those up yet.

Um, some of them include different grade separation projects, and others include things like the Redwood City for Transmission, which the cost estimate I think changes every now and then.

Uh so it's upwards of a few billion, I would say, uh once you add everything up.

That's a big number.

Yes.

You know, and given that Redwood City has a good number of them, do you would anyone know what the total number for Redwood City might be?

I don't have that number off the top of my head.

Could you follow with Malahat about that?

And I can absolutely.

Yes.

Great, thank you.

This is probably around four billion.

Because our great separation is now three million.

Well, I mean the corridor wide crossing study, my estimate is about twelve to thirteen billion from San Francisco to Santa Clara.

So it's a part of that.

Yeah.

Um and then Patrick, can you, you know, remind us all who is on the TA board?

So we have seven representatives uh on the Transportation Authority Board.

We have a SamTrans representative.

Um we have a what is it?

A there's three different city representatives chosen by the city selection committee.

Um so Julia Mates is our current board chair, the mayor of Belmont.

You're gonna really test me on everyone.

Then we have um uh South San Francisco.

Mark Negalis uh is our vice chair right now.

Uh Rico Medina uh is our at-large member at the moment, I believe, and our Sam Trans, and we have two county representatives, uh Ray Mueller and Noelia Corzo.

Um, and then we have uh Carlos Romero from East Palo Alto, um, and then Anders Fung from Milbrae right now.

Excuse me, thank you.

I think Rico made me the Sam Trans appointee to the I believe so, yes.

I think I did that last year.

Yes, Chair.

But it just is a reminder to my colleagues, you know, if we do have the largest number of projects, when there is an opportunity, you may want to consider drawing your hat in the ring to be appointed to the TAM because we have Belmont to the north of us and East Palo Alto to the south of us as representatives on our behalf, and serving on the TAE might get a little peek and give staff a little further heads up about when application deadlines might be coming.

So just something to consider, as I do believe there's some appointments coming up next year.

Patrick, again, thank you for coming and updating us on what's going on, and hopefully we can get uh a couple grant applications and a couple grant awards.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you all.

Thank you, Councilmember G.

We'll go to Councilmember Chu.

Um, thank you so much for the presentation, and I really appreciate the work your group is doing.

Um, could you talk a little bit about like how you think about how to prioritize projects?

I mean, there's sort of linear uh accessibility, there's over the over the freeway, like kind of how do you think about what to prioritize?

What's your framework?

Yeah, so that's why we broke these efforts into two different initiatives.

So the one-on-one corridor connect effort started with the multimodal strategies, and that takes a look at every project type, and it really builds on a plan that Caltrans did.

Um, you get unfortunately the very condensed version of our presentation.

Uh, but it is originally there was a three county uh comprehensive multimodal corridor plan.

It's Caltrans jargon for priority projects along San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara County for US 101, which makes us eligible for the solutions for congested corridors plan.

What that doesn't do, or program funding program from SB1.

What that doesn't do is tell us locally here in San Mateo County what are the projects that we want to prioritize and what should we be helping to move forward and potentially bundle together to be more competitive in those programs.

So what we did was take a look at what are the funding criteria and grant um evaluation criteria for that program, along with talking to our board about what are their priorities for the corridor.

So those four main goals I talked about for 101 Corridor Connect.

We actually tied uh technical metrics to those and actually ranked every project according to those.

And then we also took the input from the public of where they said they wanted to see those improvements.

And the different facilities, there's different ones in each part of the county, but the different uh priority facilities that we heard the most feedback on got an extra 20 points in our evaluation criteria to bump those up.

So we really wanted to make sure our evaluation criteria really both reflected the technical merits of projects where there's the highest need and most competitive ones for grants, along with what we're hearing from the public about what they want to see.

Great.

Thank you so much.

And uh I would I would like to second the interest in seeing uh a safe overpass uh at second uh in friendly acres.

I think there's a high need there.

Thank you for your terrific work.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Any other questions from council?

Okay, not seeing any.

Patrick, I'll just add my thanks for you coming down to Redwood City to share more about the great work you're doing and um really cool to hear that you all are building councils into the process so that we can champion the projects that we have in our neighborhoods and can speak to what change we're gonna see with with this great funding.

So thank you for doing that.

Thank you.

Thanks, Patrick.

All right, we will keep this moving.

We'll move right into item 5B.

Next, we'll have Sam Trans major corridors manager, Cassie Holes, who will present an update on the Grand Boulevard Initiative and Central El Camino Plan.

And welcome, Cassie.

Thank you.

All right, um, so I'll jump right into it and I'll try to keep it moving because I have a lot of slides, but um happy to clarify anything on any of these uh slides that I present today.

Um so I'm covering a fair amount of information of SAMTrans projects we've been coordinating with Redwood City.

Um, one is the Grand Boulevard Initiative, which you all have hopefully heard about, so this will just be kind of a reminder of what we're doing, and then I'll be talking about the central El Camino Real Multimodal Plan and next steps for Redwood City.

Um, so today um this is intended to be informational presentation on primarily focus on the central El Camino Real Multimodal Plan, and I'll be asking for all of your feedback on the concept alternatives that will be submitted to Caltrans as a part of the project initiation document.

Uh so just as a quick recap, Sam Trans is leading what is called the Grand Boulevard Initiative, which is an effort between a coordination effort between SAMTrans as well as other regional agencies, cities, countywide, mentioned that countywide agencies, Caltrans, advocates, and business groups, and what we're trying to do is modernize El Camino Real and make it into a corridor that is safe and providing mobility for all.

And one thing to note is that this broader vision for the Grand Boulevard Initiative builds upon and kind of knits together all the local corridor studies that individual cities have been working hard at over the past decade.

So, for example, in Redwood City in particular, we are referencing a lot of work that has already been done.

Um the Central El Camino Plan, which I'm talking about today, includes Redwood City and helps create a vision for the mid-county portion of El Camino.

So the Central El Camino Real Multimodal Plan is working to create a shared vision of El Camino in San Mateo, Belmont, San Carlos, and then a portion of Redwood City between Brewster Avenue and up to Brewster Avenue.

And the reason why we're only focused on a small segment of Redwood City is there's actually a Caltrans project underway for the rest of Redwood City.

And so we're kind of closing the gap and helping provide planning support and working with Redwood City to make sure that that the vision for that segment is cohesive with San Carlos and its neighbors.

And the goal of this project is to improve people, improve El Camino to better serve people walking, biking, and taking transit.

And this plan is not just gonna sit on a shelf, um, it's going to be advanced and is already being advanced as a part of a coordinated countywide Caltrans project development process.

Since El Camino Real is State Route 82, we have to go through this particular process that Caltrans has us go through, and what we're doing is we're leading one effort for the whole county, so that individual cities don't have to go through the process themselves.

So for the Central El Camino Real Multimodal Plan, we started this back in 2025.

Um, and we are wrapping it up at the end of this calendar year.

We're aiming for the fall.

Um, and we've done multiple rounds of community engagement.

I can talk briefly about that, but right now we are just to the point where we're narrowing down alternatives to be advanced to this next implementation process.

Okay, so some of the feedback that we heard from phase one from the public was that there are there's a lot of congestion on El Camino, there's a need for separated bike facilities.

This is probably all very familiar to you all.

If you go on El Camino frequently, unsafe pedestrian crossings, narrow sidewalks, and particularly for rowdy CR riders, which is SAMTrans's bread and butter service.

There's a need for bus stop amenities, higher bus frequencies, and better infrastructure.

And then for Redwood City specifically, we heard very similar themes.

Um we also heard the need for refuge islands at wide intersections and the lack of sufficient bicycle infrastructure.

Phase two, which was conducted more recently in the spring of this year, or spring of summer of last year, we conducted a broad survey that had more than 700 survey respondents.

And what we heard were very similar themes, you know, support for safer crossing, wider sidewalks, more green spaces.

And for Redwood City specifically, we got a lot of responses.

And there were a couple things that we heard.

So we heard that there was a preference for a transit alternative, which I'll show you shortly, and then also support for wider sidewalks and bike lanes to improve safety.

So I'm gonna walk through the concept alternatives that we presented to the public during phase two.

And before I do that, I just wanted to speak to the improvements that we're gonna make on El Camino regardless of the design concept that gets advanced.

For all of the alternatives that we are proposing for this project, we're gonna include traffic calming, medians lighting to improve safety, other improvements.

For active transportation, we're gonna improve crosswalk and make crosswalk improvements, make more opportunities for crossing, adding street trees, urban greening, and for transit, we're making bus stop enhancements.

We're improving our transit signal priority, which allows the buses to move more quickly through the intersection, and we're also making access improvements.

So these are all of the three alternatives plus the current of what we considered and what we shared with the public for this study.

And so the upper the far, sorry, the upper left is what El Camino looks like today.

So we have two lanes in each direction plus parking, and we have three different alternatives that we propose to the public.

One which we're calling transit, which is faster bus service and bike lanes, which has a dedicated southbound bus lane, as well as a class four, so protected bicycle lanes in each direction.

We also propose a pedestrian alternative, which had wider sidewalks and more trees, but kept the roadway conditions the same, for the most part, narrowing the lanes slightly.

And then a bicycle alternative where we proposed continuous separated bike lanes, wider sidewalks, and more trees.

We also did a so I mentioned the 700 person survey that we did.

This is what we heard for Redwood City in particular, that there was a lot of support for the transit.

I'll just show this.

So there was a lot of support for the transit and the bicycle alternative.

So this was very clear in Redwood City, less clear in other cities, but in Redwood City specifically, it was very clear that the transit and the bicycle options were the favorite.

So moving forward, what we're proposing is to advance these two alternatives, the transit and the bicycle alternative.

And why we have to narrow this down is basically for the whole corridor, we have to identify alternatives.

We have to identify multiple alternatives, but we don't want to have so many alternatives for the whole corridor that it's really difficult to study and hard to move forward.

We're trying to narrow it down as much as possible to make it so that we don't have to analyze every single option, you know, in the sky, and just have a clear set of options that are also aligned with what cities have been proposing on the local plans.

So both of these alternatives align with what Caltrans is proposing as a part of their Redwood City bike safety project, which is running from Brewster to Selby, so that's a project currently in the works, as well as the Redwood Cities adopted 2017 El Camino Real Corridor Plan.

So next in the fall, in September, we will be seeking support for continued participation in the Caltrans process.

We're gonna be asking for a resolution of support for these complete streets improvements on El Camino Real.

So this is not tied to any specific alternative, but basically we want to make sure that you know council is supportive of continuing participation in this process.

So phase one was May to August 2025.

Phase two was April to June of 2026.

So right now we're narrowing down those alternatives.

And in phase three in September, we'll be passing those resolutions of support.

So the this is just a recap slide, and this is where I'll leave it so that you all can provide your feedback.

But we are interested in hearing from you all of any comments on the two alternatives to be advanced.

And just to note that we don't have to select a preferred until 2027-2028 timeline.

So really you don't have to decide on which of these two you prefer, but but just making sure that council's supportive of advancing these two as Redwood Cities options to be further studied.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Cassie, for the great presentation, and I'll bring this back to council.

Not picking one or the other, but just initiating the process.

So colleagues, any questions or comments?

Councilmember Padilla.

Thank you for your presentation.

I have some questions.

If we can just stay on this slide, please.

This visual is very helpful.

But when I want to stay on this visual, but I would like to talk about your community engagement and your survey.

So I think you told us the number was 700.

Were you rounding?

Because I see 642 on the slide was, or is that a different number?

So the full survey, we had 700 respondents, but not everyone responded to each city.

We had an individual question for each city.

So I think only 642 responded to the Redwood City question.

Okay.

So how was the survey distributed?

And I'd like to just, if you have any metrics you can share with us about the distribution of the survey, how it went through, that would be helpful.

Yes.

So we did the survey through, we did a lot of outreach.

So we worked with all of the cities along the four in the included in the project to make sure it was included in city newsletters, any kind of city engagement that was going out.

We also had temp signs at the bus stop, encouraging people to provide their input.

We also did a survey in phase one, but it was a it was a map that people could put in their comments of issues.

So we focused on phase one, it was existing conditions, and phase two, it was the alternatives and feedback on the alternatives.

But the techniques by which we did outreach were similar across the two.

We also did community-based organization events where we would work with individual community-based organizations to have them invite their members.

We had them have you know gift cards to give out for people so that they're not, you know, a lot of times harder to reach populations need that compensation.

And then we let me see what else.

I can go back.

Let me just quickly go back to this slide.

Um we also did virtual listening sessions with focused populations, so in multilingual sessions.

We did pop-up events, so at libraries and places where people were already going to.

We had a virtual workshop, uh, we presented to city councils and and promoted the survey when we did that.

Um happy to speak about more of any of those.

Thank you.

Um so I hear the online, so you're you're talking a lot about how the online survey was distributed.

Were there any other means?

Was there so like when you had these pop-ups?

Were there paper surveys available?

Were there CBOs helping facilitate that?

So I just how was the survey only online?

Did you gather other paper results as well?

It was not only online.

So the all of the in-person engagement was intended to be in addition to the online.

So we would, you know, encourage them to fill out the survey as well.

But we collected input.

We had boards at um libraries where we asked for people's input to put stickers.

So we wanted to make sure that it was accessible to everyone, even if they aren't digitally uh literate or okay.

I appreciate that.

Now can you go back to the slide with the the images please of the potential concepts?

Thank you.

Okay.

This is where I just this is where I know when survey and community engagement and small sample sizes, and we all have to state the obvious.

The people who tend to do surveys generally feel very powerful and passionate, either one way or another.

So that has to be taken into consideration.

So I think these numbers are not fully representative of our community, um, and when I see this, and I have to tell you as a community member myself, seeing a bus only lane on El Camino, when I see at certain times the amount of traffic and congestion that can be on there for people commuting.

Um I want I want to make sure that we do real solid community outreach on this because um this is people getting to work, this is people getting to school, these are people's livelihoods, the conditions of the road.

Um I just want to make sure we have other projects that I'm already hearing a lot of feedback.

Jefferson Farmhill.

I just as we're taking on more and more, I really want to make sure we're listening to our community and the true needs.

Uh I would be helpful.

I heard you reference this as the bread and butter stop.

It would also be helpful if there was metrics to see those ridership numbers on that route in Redwood City, and if there's ways we can increase that.

I mean, I think it would be better if we made some sort of if any effort to help programming and even youth feedback or getting in touch with the youth as we can encourage them to use public trans, but I would love to see some focused outreach to the youth in our community as well.

But those are my comments for now.

Thank you.

I just want to make one quick note, which is we are going to be doing even more extensive outreach in the PA and ED phase.

So this was outreach for kind of vetting the initial concepts.

Um we'll be doing a lot more outreach in the 2027-2028 time frame, and we can, you know, before that we select a preferred, that's definitely an opportunity to get even deeper.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

I just know that here in Redwood City and with our community, I think it's always better the sooner we involve them than later.

People don't like to think that they're being given alternatives and we're not really ever a part of the process.

So I want to make sure they're really part of the process.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

We'll go to Councilmember Chu.

Um, thank you so much for this terrific work.

I'm very excited about both of these options, and you know, to to council member Padilla's point, I think the best way to increase bus ridership is efficiency, you know, frequency, safety, uh, quality of service tends to be the best way to increase ridership, and so having a BRT lane is a single best way to increase utilization of the bus.

Uh the ancillary benefit of this kind of design that the transit design is for emergency services, and so typically if there's a bus, a BRT lane or you know, really wide bike lanes, emergency services can use those lanes because they're not filled with traffic, which is what really what prevents uh emergency services from having a quick time to event.

Um, so really love both of these options.

Uh, really appreciate your your outreach.

Um, I do think that, you know, 50 people on a bus should have, you know, how can I say that our current system allocates the same amount of space uh for 50 people on a bus versus one person alone in a car, and so the idea of of bus rapid transit is that this can become a really efficient way to move people safely at scale.

Uh so I love I love both of these alternatives.

I think they're both gonna increase um the efficiency of El Camino, the safety of El Camino, obviously.

If you've got a BRT lane, the bike lane becomes much safer.

Uh, and I really appreciate that there's physical separations in all of the plans uh protecting the person on foot or on bicycle from uh vehicular traffic.

Um so I think these are all terrific plans and really appreciate both of the finalists.

So um look forward to seeing kind of where we land in the end.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Chu.

Go to Council Member Howard.

Thank you.

We're pretty excited about this because we know we want to make El Camino Real a much safer environment.

I wanted to know how are we paying for this?

I didn't see that in there, and it sounds like you're ready to go, but I did not include that slide in apologies.

Um I was trying to cut things down, but ultimately this whole corridor-wide effort is gonna be up to a billion dollars.

Um so it's not you know a small project, no a billion dollars, so it's not a small project.

Um, but the good thing is with you know, SAM trans, SMCTA at the table.

Um, we're able to access funding, you know, working with MTC, working with CCAG, able to access funding sources that individual cities could not access.

Um, so for example, um the TA has their highway call for projects.

We're able to fund up to 50% of the project costs through that competitive process.

Um so that's you know, 500 million through that process, and then we will be, you know, working very closely with cities to apply for federal, state, local grants.

Um, and the one, you know, exciting thing about having this corridor-wide effort is it's much more attractive for bigger, and you can really you know sell the the benefits that you'll see from the corridor-wide changes more than you can if it's just a piecemeal approach.

So we think that it's gonna be very competitive for all of these grant programs.

When would you anticipate shovel in the ground?

Um, that's a good question.

So it's gonna be a while.

The Caltrans process is very extensive.

Um we hope to begin construction at least for individual, maybe not for the whole corridor, but maybe for a segment in 2030 plus.

So it's gonna be a long time horizon, but this is a huge project, and um, you know, it's just the Caltrans process is very extensive.

And we'll have a coordination of effort considering that uh, you know, different uh we don't own El Camino Real.

It's SAMTANS, and uh so I just figure we should have a coordination of effort with all the cities that we're all working together on this and doing the same thing, so it really does become a true coordinated efficient route.

Yes, yeah, so it's Caltrans that owns the right of way.

So Caltrans as well as Sam Trans and the TA, and all the cities are involved in the Grand Boulevard initiative.

So that's the main forum by which we are advancing this coordinated approach.

And we've had a total of seven workshops, you know, half day workshops over the last year and a half and made a lot of progress in, you know, creating a vision and creating cohesive ideas for how we're gonna move this forward.

And we have actually started the Caltrans process.

Um we started the first phase as of April.

So things are moving.

Is there any discussion on how to handle scooters, electric bikes, and such?

I mean, that's a problem we're having, and is that been addressed at all?

I think it's a great question and something we'll continue to look at.

It's also hard to know where we're gonna be in a few years when we actually put in these improvements.

So it could be a totally different landscape.

Um, but this is an issue that all the cities are facing.

So we're definitely, you know, we're making sure that we're looking at best practices, um, having protected, you know, separated bike lanes that are off the sidewalk, like what you're seeing here is a great way to separate those uses, um, but it is something that's evolving.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard.

Any other questions?

Councilmember G.

Cassie, thank you for visiting Redwood City and giving us an update.

No, I'm gonna echo some of my colleagues here that you know to move people on El Camino Real, it's really got to be a coordinated plan.

I mean, it's reminiscent, and I know some of my colleagues have sat on the local policymaker group for caltrain.

And many years ago, all the cities were not in alignment.

Some wanted up, some wanted it at grid, and someone at it underground.

And unfortunately, trains don't do that, at least commuter trains don't do that.

So the number one thing first is getting all the cities to agree, and that's not easy because we have quite a few cities in San Mateo County, even on the El Camino Real corridor.

The second thing is that we I think we're past the days where we can look at what's best for a city and say not best for anybody else.

And so the plan what we have that you have now on the Grand Boulevard is all the cities basically in agreement about how they connect.

Even when we go south with these two visions here, um we know our neighbor south of us isn't too fond of sidewalks and bike lanes on El Camino Real, but nevertheless the buses do have to connect on El Camino Real and keep going south to Menlo Park.

And so the the magic here is that coordinated plan, number one.

Number two, none of us by ourselves can write a grant and hope to be successful for a billion dollars.

However, when we do it jointly with other partners, our chances of success increase significantly.

So having a plan along the Grand Boulevard, El Camino Real, having other cities bought into it, just amplifies our uh ability to succeed on a grant application.

And while 2030 plus sounds like a long ways away, it is, but at the same time, you know, when we talk about time scale and Caltrans, that's not very far away.

I mean, a Caltrans project when we talk about quick build is usually five years, and anything else for Caltrans is 10 years plus, and so you gotta start to get there, and I'm glad we're starting.

So looking forward to updates.

Um, we've heard this at the Transportation Mobility Subcommittee.

Um we've had a lot deeper conversation, but I think the the Transportation Mobility Committee was supportive of these, but there's another big piece, um, is education and outreach.

Um, this is a change.

This aligns with the work going on El Camino Real right now, but looking at driver habits right now will not work if this and when this is implemented.

Drivers need to be educated, trained, talked about transit islands and things like that, and um a lot more outreach, a lot more engagement will be required and a lot more education.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember G.

We'll go to council member circumstances.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you so much.

I'm very excited about this.

Um, I support both of these alternatives, especially fond of the transit alternative.

Just having uh taken ECR rapid when that existed, and knowing that that service no longer exists.

This is the second best way to uh increase the frequency uh and ultimately move people faster, as my colleagues have said, up and down El Camino on on a bus.

So in terms of outreach, I I do echo my colleagues um Councilmember Adias comments.

Uh and want to just go a little bit deeper there in terms of doing in-person outreach at transit stops during commute hour high frequency stops.

If you haven't already, um in talking to writers themselves in person, more than just putting you know the little pamphlet on the on the wall-mounted um, you know, survey uh shelf with with the schedules, you know.

It's uh that's great too.

And then also business outreach.

That's something I didn't hear.

Uh, we did get roasted a little bit um when we did um the people's budget project and installed a bike lane uh between Maple uh and Jefferson going north on El Camino, and so just making sure that we're proactively reaching out to businesses on El Camino along this that the stretch you're referring to doesn't have too many, but still, it's you know, to Councilmember G's point, it's good for us to do that outreach uh early.

Um I'll wrap up there.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I will mention that we did do outreach at the bus stops at high frequency um locations or you know, higher usage locations.

I think we did at the Redwood City Transit Center to make sure that we are, you know, often people aren't looking at signs, they're just you know on their phone or they're getting on the bus.

So we made sure that we were doing some intercept serving as well.

Um I'll have Malahat quickly mention the business engagement that was done.

Yes, um, so I did work with um our economic development manager.

There were about 96 businesses in that segment of El Camino Realidad.

For this project, it was around February March this year.

Yeah, I think that was mailers and uh walking to door to door, yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Any other comments?

Not seeing any.

Cassie, I'll add my thanks.

Um, I I think there's a lot of benefits in both of these designs.

Um, quickly, I'll add my support for the BRT line.

I think you know, I hear the the concerns around community engagement.

Happy to hear that it's gonna get more robust now that we've whittled it down to these two alternatives.

Um I hear what my council members are saying, and um absolutely don't want anyone to be taken by surprise, and education's gonna make it an effective tool, right, for us to really make this stick.

So um happy to hear that that's going on.

Um I also really appreciate the dedicated bike lanes.

I've heard um I've said this, I've heard my colleagues say this that you know, paint on the road can only do so much, right?

So to have a physical barrier is gonna be really helpful for people who um want to feel safe going down El Camino.

Um, and then the other thing that I didn't hear but um wanted to highlight was just the the traffic islands.

I think that's gonna be really helpful and a big benefit.

I know we have some closer to Whipple that are currently in use, and you know, every once in a while I'll see somebody who wants to get away with that and will run to the media and right um if they don't make it across the street all the way.

So I think having that option is gonna make it safer for people.

But um aside from that, again, really happy to hear that the outreach is gonna get more robust right as the process goes through.

And um, and thank you for doing the hard work of going to more than 20 jurisdictions in San Mateo County, right?

Who have some part of El Camino running through them because um coming up with a comprehensive design that feels like one grand boulevard is is gonna be uh a lot of work, but I appreciate the work that's going into this so far, and um we'll look out for that resolution in a couple of weeks.

Thank you so much.

Awesome.

Thank you, Cassie.

All right, not seeing anyone else.

We'll keep moving to our next presentation, our final presentation for this evening with the youth leadership institute.

Uh we have senior program planner Andrea Gill, along with members of the Vibrant Opportunities for Involvement Community and Empowerment, better known as Voice Program, and Elizabeth Prado and Juvia Ruiz Savera are here to tell us a little bit more about their work this year.

Welcome.

Welcome, welcome.

Thank you all for having us.

We're really excited to be here.

Um, this is really special moment for us.

A lot of us are also they're they graduated high school, and so I just want to take a moment for that.

So the pictures on the on the first slide is just really the past three years of what embody the be part of the voice program.

If you never heard of Youth Leadership Institute, we are a statewide organization.

We go all the way from Eastern Coachella Valley to Long Beach to Central Valley, and in the Bay Area, we share offices with Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo County, but I'm happy to say we've been working so closely with you all in Redwood City for the past three years.

And so it's also thank you for saying voice, what it means.

You just call it voice for what it is because that's what we do.

Our young people use our voices every day, and so okay.

And then so just about us, um, we actually started off of partnership with you all of really understanding of how can young people be engaged with local government in the when you all really had recommended for boards commission and committees to now have under 18.

And so young people are equipped with the knowledge schools and skills and tools necessary for effective civic engagement and leadership.

And just as we do at Wild Live, we adapt the program.

And so especially the past three years, given to what the state of house things are in the media in our communities, we adapted arts as an expression to center young people lived experiences, and so we completed a community mapping project, a photo voice project for them to understand: well, what makes up our community?

How are role structures?

What is frequent to us?

What do our neighborhoods look like?

What is a safety protocol?

What do our stories look like?

And so within that, young people identified these top three priorities.

First being housing justice, youth employment, and accessible youth services.

And so with that, our voice leaders have co-designed and facilitated people's panels and showcases that really embodied how do you build connection between young people and local government.

And then the next slide, um, you know, the one thing about data with us.

And so the first two years was a pilot program.

That was what the funding allowed was to get healthy Samateo County.

And so I spoke to you all a little bit just after the first year, but I have not been able to speak to you all after the second year of what the program entailed.

But within the first year, we just highlighted that folks, young people at the end of the first year, they recognize they held power of influences, that they engage in networking directly with local boards, commissions, and committees, and uh all at least 75% of them held a speaking role at our events.

And then with that, um, 80% of at least the first year felt prepared, and six youth applied to sit on committees.

But with the second year, um, you know, it was a hard year last year for our youth leaders to really be engaged in politics and to be engaged in understanding how is our you know constitution, how is our laws being built, and so second year we had to really recognize that put a pause a little bit and say center well-being, our emotional well-being.

And so by the second year, we really saw that again young people recognize that they hold power of influences, that they were able to at least facilitate conversations at the police advisory youth town hall, and that was a really special moment for our youth leaders to be engaged in that way with community with local government and whatnot.

And so they played an essential role again with our designing our programming, and this now this is our third year, and this is after the pilot program.

But at Wild Live, we really want to make sure voice remained the pivotal programming within because we saw how much this meant to the young people to continue showing up week after week and engaging in what how their community affected them.

And so, this was just some of the workshops we hosted this um past couple of years, and I just want to say thank you if you have spoken directly.

I know council member Sturkin, you're with us outside on a windy day, and you were talking about exactly how is housing policy shaped in Redwood City and really explain the whole gravity of the situation, right?

And then also um I past city manager um had a chance to mock, had a mock city council, and that was always what young people walked away with-of sitting in your seats, actually, and hosting of like, well, if we had 10,000 in the budget, what would you want to shape it and what would you want to divide in?

And I'm actually gonna pass the mic now to Yuva to share a little bit about how the program has shaped her.

Well, good evening, council members.

My name is Yuviah.

I joined Voice's first cohort to be a part of my community alongside my friends.

I was nervous and hesitant to join the program at first, but making a change in my community made me grow and increase my confidence to use my voice.

The most memorable experience was the mock city council with Melissa.

As I got to practice using my voice in an important space like the city hall.

Thank you.

Yeah, so UVA was actually with us from the first start, and you had just graduated Sequoia High School alongside, and then we can keep it, and then so this is actually one of our most loved events that we hosted.

So we hosted this third annual, and also thank you, Councilmember G, that you were their first year of hosting an opening remarks at voice basement.

And our this year, we actually switch it up a lot because we co-design it with young people.

Like, well, how do you want to build spaces?

We always, you know, folks are always hosting forums or panels or wanting you to listen to someone.

How do you want to shape an event?

And so we were lucky enough to find ourselves at the yard coffee.

And it was very beautiful.

I was like, because it's a little bit of a Netflix moment for us because how the lights are and the community that gathered.

We had over about 60 folks in attendance, and there were just young people, teachers from Sequoia High School, as well as community members being involved.

And thank you for um Mayor Martinez, right?

For being there for opening remarks and really talking directly with young people about what is their aspirations.

And I think every young person walked away with at least shaking hands, right?

With one representative that represents them.

And with that, with this year, we also wanted to focus on youth power.

Previously, we had adults speak at the panel, and so this year we wanted to make sure young people understand that you can be on the teen advisory board.

You can be on the PACE advisory board that represents different community nonprofits, as well as the teen resource center.

They have a youth advisory board.

So boards look different at different levels of institutions that young people are currently engaging with, and we also had our very own Allison represent the voice program to speak around the outside, being a community member who's involved in our local community.

And then with that, um, you know, really it's about building youth power.

I think that's a really strong point of what the voice program represents.

Is that you know there's an issue that you have.

I think I was a little bit with Sam when I first joined.

When I first started the program, I asked them, like, well, what do y'all care about?

And they took a pause.

They're like, no one really asked me that question before.

No one ever took the time to really ask me, like, well, what are different degrees that affect you?

And then so we looked at the community environmental prevention and whatnot.

And so you have seen us before at city council meetings, um, making public comment, but I will pass it to Elizabeth to really speak to this portion.

Hello, good evening.

Um, let me switch to my paper because I'm getting nervous now.

Okay, but my name is Elizabeth.

Um I'm currently in San Jose State right now, so I commute and I'm a fellow in the voice program.

How I joined was um a friend of mine told me about is this working?

Okay, yeah.

A friend of mine told me about the voice program, and I honestly I didn't really think much of it, but I was just like, okay, I'll join because you know, my friend's there, so it'll be a nice program and you know, community hours.

But the more I got to join, the more I realized that voice was a place where we can talk about situations like I guess adult situations, um, and it was a place where we can problem solve and find solutions.

An example of this can be how we had the opportunity to create like public comments and come to speak at city council meetings to support agendas we believe will make our city a better place, and we've been spreading the word about this program as well in areas like the Sequoia Teen Wellness Fair in order to bring more youth and allow them to have a space where they can gain skills like decision making or planning process like how we do in the um the thing, anyways.

Um we also learned skills like speaking up for our rights as youth, and something we've spoken up about has been affordable housing um in Redwood City, and I think this campaign has supported me through media training and gaining I'm still learning, but you know, gaining public speaking skills as well.

Yeah, Elizabeth is very modest.

You should see her outreach, you know, nothing like young people do peer to peer direct outreach and really understanding of spreading the word and the message.

She collected over 20 signatures to sign up for the voice program at the ORIA conference, and that was a pretty big number for us.

And so that's really what we believe in, is just really understanding, recognizing that young people have a voice, have a power in their community.

And so I just want to move on to our last slide.

It's really about building a legacy.

I put these six photos up there because they were actually been part of the program from the first one, or they had a friend bring them to a community event the first year, and so it really just showed of just how young people are invested in one program.

And it's I always tell me this is just a milestone for you, but I'll remember you forever because you shaped what we were able to work on.

And so one of the pilots was actually um building a youth trainer.

So it's actually why I do this a lot of trainer consultant services, but actually they teach folks something or two.

And so they actually were hosting know your rights workshop.

They train young people of how to use a hotline because young people they text, and it's not really custom, right?

To call someone and identify and remember what's happening in the community, and also to spread around um distilling misinformation.

And that if you see something on social media, ask the right questions, whoever posted it to make sure they're also not spreading fear.

And then with that, um, we have our trainers teach adults of how to build equitable youth adult partnerships, because one thing, right?

We always want young people in the room and at the table, but another thing to understand how do you work alongside them and really bridge a healthy environment for decision making.

And one thing we're gonna continue exposing youth to boys commissions and committees.

I think with the people panel, it is really a way to really shape it.

It's to share out what are the priorities and how how can young people get involved at different levels.

And so that's one one items we want to continue, and also we have a privilege of working with the San Mateo County Youth Commission, and that's one thing we want to continue fostering that is that our own county youth commission that they understand what the priorities in Redwood City and Northford Oaks is, and then most importantly, increasing youth civic engagement.

We're gonna continue the program.

We're gonna start a whole new cycle.

I have to say goodbye to a large amount of young people who are in the program because they're going off to college.

But this is something that they shaped around the curriculum, and so that's something that we were able to form because of work with you all as well.

And then most importantly, we have our um, actually, because of Redwood City together, we're able to host summer fellows, and so young people are actually able to deeper dive into power mapping and to understanding like what laws legislation have passed at a statewide level, what's currently being talked about.

And so that's something that really branched out from the voice program of young people who are really committed to making the extra deeper dive to do research, to do storytelling, to do policy.

And then with that, I just want to say thank you to all our partners.

You are such amazing Jessica.

I don't like so many words of always just like answering my emails, but um, especially with the teen advisory board, the they always show out with us and get healthy Sam Mateo made this possible for the first two years for us, and then our trusted allies like we while I hadn't didn't host like an intimate relationship like this, but because of the trusted partners you see there, they were able to open the doors alongside the community collaboration for children's success neighborhood action team.

And with that, I just want to say thank you all, and yeah, that's the end of it.

I know y'all have a packed agenda, and thank you again.

Andrea, Yuvia and Elizabeth, thank you for the great presentation.

Yuvia, congratulations on your graduation.

Um I'll bring this back to my colleagues for any questions.

Well, I just have some quick comments.

I just want to say thank you for all everything you guys are doing.

Um, I started out on the teen advisory board on the youth advisory board, so I hope you know get comfortable, like these seats.

They are open for you, and I I want to thank you for encouraging our youth to make public comment.

Um I hope people know that you don't have to be in any special club or program to do it, that we encourage public comment all the time.

But I really appreciate you being ambassadors with our youth and helping them feel safe and empowering them to come and speak in places, and I just want to applaud all your efforts.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Not seeing anyone else's lights on, I'll add my own thanks.

Um, sorry, Councilmember Howard, please.

Okay, um, I'll add my thanks um for the work that you all do.

Everybody has a voice, right?

But um, our young folks need to understand how much influence and power that carries.

So thank you for teaching them that and connecting them to the opportunities for them to put that energy and passion to work.

So um, thank you again, and uh we'll see you out in the community, but appreciate all the good work.

All right.

And with that, we will keep moving to item six: our public comments on consent calendar matters of council interests and items that are not on tonight's agenda.

And we welcome speakers providing public comment, but please be advised that this is a limited public forum, and as such, speakers must address matters within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city.

If speakers do not, they'll be warned, and if they continue to disregard city rules, their opportunity to speak will be limited.

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

And if you're attending virtually, feel free to raise your hand on Zoom at this time or press star nine if you'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 queue up to speak.

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

Thank you, Mayor.

At this time, we have five speaker cards, so last call to the audience or anyone online to go ahead and raise your hand, be recognized for public comment on the consent calendar, matters of council interest, or items of within the city's subject matter jurisdiction that are not on the agenda tonight.

And once we begin public comment, we won't take any more speakers at that point.

Okay, we'll move forward with our five in-person speakers.

And if you're new here, uh we have a timer on the top of the podium.

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

So we will begin with Kristen Mercer.

And following Kristen will be David Sapper.

Welcome.

So, Council, the EIR for the Redwood Life Project has been delayed by several months, but I'm here tonight to urge you to start looking at the true scale and impacts of the Redwood Life Project right now ahead of time.

Despite how it's been characterized by staff, this project is more than five million square feet in total.

That's five times the current development.

It's twice the size of the Oracle campus.

Redwood Life would be the largest development in Redwood City's history, and one of the largest complexes in the entire Bay Area.

This project deserves special scrutiny because of its enormous scale.

Its auto-dependence, 43% of the building mass is for parking garages.

Its isolated location, its proximity to homes and protected habitat, its underlying dump, and its sea level exposure.

Here's my concern.

CEQA requires consideration of feasible alternative scenarios that meet the project goals and have fewer environmental impacts.

But the draft EIR currently underway presents only an all or nothing approach.

It ignores any responsible and feasible middle ground.

It's a five-fold mega expansion or no project.

That's a false choice, and it's one that's rigged to favor the developers' plan.

Redwood City's decision will impact the entire region for decades.

Residents deserve to see a full range of options.

And decision makers deserve the opportunity to choose a responsible middle ground that works for everyone.

So I urge the staff, I urge the council to direct staff as mandated by CEQA to include a feasible middle ground alternative scenario in the Redwood Life EIR.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is David Sapper, who will be followed by Bob Highsmith.

As part of a point of departure for negotiations, some argue landovers can landowners can do whatever they want with their land.

But this is the same playbook that's been used by city councils across the country as they quietly push warehouse sales to big tech and the federal government for data centers and ice prisons, often while trying to avoid the environmental impact processes and its effects.

A Google search alone shows dozens of examples in 2026 across the U.S.

where residents rose up to stop such non viable developments with no supporting infrastructure, especially if they haven't run environmental impacts first.

There's a mega example of this playing out in Utah as we speak.

Don't believe me, look these up yourself.

And what other plans are being lined up for the shores, possibly making this predatory grab even bigger.

How does adding more biolabs to the empty ones already along the 101 corridor?

This one handled deadly pathogens in the middle of a dense neighborhood and an ecological reserve, add value.

Fallout from an accidental airborne release or mishandling would blanket the area.

What could possibly go wrong?

This is an avoidable disaster in the making by the city council.

And why is the environmental impact assessment for this project being slow rolled?

Is it is it because it's an inconvenient first draft?

The landfill fragility was spelled out clearly in the original Westport plan, which the council is now conveniently ignoring.

That plan explicitly said the landfill cap shouldn't be breached, yet this proposal calls for punching through it 10,000 times for 10,000 new pilings.

The city council will be held financially responsible for related foreseeable damages.

By discarding the West Point plan, the council wipes away restrictions that would have disqualified this from the start.

So tell me what laws of physics has changed that make this magically safe now.

Thank you.

Thank you, David.

Please don't disturb our community for one percent or profit.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Bob Highsmith, who will be followed by Pearl Martinez and Maria Martinez.

Good evening.

Um my name is Bob Highsmith, and I've lived in the boardwalk community of Redwood Shores for over 25 years.

Speaking tonight about the proposed Redwood Life development development.

I have two major concerns.

First, the sheer scale is staggering.

The project would expand the present 980,000 square feet to over five million square feet when you're counting the parking structure.

Buildings would reach 120 feet tall, making this one of the largest office complexes in the Bay Area, more than twice the size of the Oracle campus, and four times the size of the Salesforce Tower.

That's amazing.

Second, we're looking at 25 years of disruption over seven to eight phases of construction.

That means thousands of pile driving strikes at 115 decibels per strike into an unlined dump with unknown buried toxins.

I googled 115 decibels just to see what it what it was, and I found out it was like sitting in front of a speaker at a loud rock concert, about the same level of sound.

This, in addition to 36,000 dump trucks, dump uh truck trips, removing the debris, and importing uh the new fill.

Plus 5,000 new cars added to the already gridlocked 101 marine parkway corridor.

We need a third option, um, something like a livable plan.

Um a plan that would offer a balanced alternative that would respect both the goals of the developer and the quality of our life here in the Redwood Shores.

Um, thank you, Bob.

That's your time.

That's it.

That's your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speakers are Pearl and Maria.

Welcome.

We'll be followed by Tony Gapistone.

Okay.

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

My name is Pearl Martinez Gadea, and this is my mom Maria Martinez.

Uh, thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

Um, and thank you for your continued service during these um uncertain times.

I'm here on behalf of the small community living on a dead end street, consisting of just five homes.

Despite the size, our neighborhood has faced many obstacles and hardships while trying to raise families and maintain a safe, harmonious environment.

The res the residents of Redwood, I'm sorry, the red residents of Manzanita Street have in the past endured challenges, including homelessness, drug use, drug sales, graffiti, sexual assault, illegal dumping, disruptive behavior, damage to personal property, and just a just to name a few.

Helping to deter criminal activity.

This measure would also provide an added layer of protection and oversight that supports a safer, healthier quality of life for our residents.

The only shortcomings of this small group of residents is our unwavering optimism that positive change is possible.

We continue to believe that our community can be safer and stronger with your support.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our final speaker on this item is Tony Gapestone.

I'm always a proud member of Redwood City community and appreciate everyone's investment and time to think through all these things that impact us.

I'm Tony Gap of Stone.

I'm the founder and executive director of Brave Maker.

We're a film festival that's been here for eight years, and I just resonate so much with the plight of all of us to make our community better.

And I believe the arts can do that and improve our mental health.

So I wanted to give you a quick overview for those of you who might not know about us.

We're five days this year.

Our first day will be July 8th, and we have an amazing speaker and documentary being shown by Kevin Hines, who is a survivor of suicide jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

So he will be talking about his journey, and he's a global activist now, all around the world.

That's Wednesday, July 8th on Broadway.

Uh, we lost our CZI, Chan Zuckerberg space because they had a flood.

We just found out a few days ago.

So we are totally pivoting and making everything happen.

So we are always looking for more support volunteer-wise, as well as grants.

So go to Bravemaker Filmfest.com to be a part of that.

But uh the ninth, we're in the Fox Theater.

We have a great film called Under the Lights, which is about a boy who risks his life going to prom.

Yes, because he has epilepsy.

Uh he wants to be normal and fit in and flashing lights could propose a C a seizure and take his life.

So he does it.

It's a really great film under the lights.

It's uh inspired by a true story that's gonna meet the Fox Theater, just giving you overview to hopefully tempt you to go to our website, Bravemaker Filmfest.com.

And we also have Loretta Devine coming.

She's a star of Broadway's um uh I'm blanking on the the show now.

Uh Dream Girls, Dream Girls, and she's been in so many cool films and TV shows.

She will be with us on Friday, July 10th.

I'm doing a career retrospective with her because we filmed a film with her right here in Redwood City.

And I have so many other things, and I want to make Redwood City a destination for the arts for this amazing film festival and for filmmakers to come here and make their films here.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And that concludes public comment mayor.

Great.

Thank you to our city clerk, and thank you to everybody who made public comment and came to share your thoughts.

We always appreciate hearing from the public.

And with that, I'll move to our consent calendar.

And are there any items on consent from which council members are recused.

Vice Mayor yes I'm I would like to recuse myself from 7G because um of the proximity it I'd like to recuse myself because I have a conflict of interest.

Okay thank you vice mayor councilmember G.

Mayor thank you I will also recuse myself from excuse me item 7G I serve on the board of Casa Ciculo Cotaral and they're a tenant in the building.

Great thank you Vice Mayor and Councilmember G who have recused from item 7G and out of a abundance of caution I'll be recusing myself from item 7a and uh before we get into that let's vote on what we can and uh take all the items that we haven't recused from so um is there a motion for items without item 7a or 7G.

So moved oh Mr.

sorry I actually want to take a poll for just comments 7B as in boys yes thank you.

I appreciate that so 7A 7b and 7G are being I also want to pull if could we pull more than one just I also want to pull 7e for comments.

Okay.

And mayor I'd like to uh just make a comment about 7a I have a couple of questions.

All right let's see how good I am at taking notes.

We will pull 7a and 7e for council comments and we have recusals and 7B excuse me and we have recusals for 7A and 7G so let's left yeah let's start with our items 7C DNS.

B F motion to approve second to be clear for the record these are items all the consent items mine is 7A B and E.

So moved again all right so move to second from Howard a second from Starkin and could we get a just to clarify so this is a vote on C D and F is that right H and I and H and I.

So all items on consent except 7A 7B 7G and 7E.

Making our city attorney's life a little easier um with that could we get an electronic vote please motion passes unanimously.

Great and next we'll move to take up item 7G which Vice Mayor Aiken and Councilmember G have recused from if there aren't any comments or questions is there a motion on item 7G.

So moved second perfect that was a motion from councilmember howard a second from council member Chu could we get an electronic vote please motion passes with five votes vice mayor aiken and council member g recused.

Okay um so we have taken up now our items not being pulled for discussion and now 7G so with that I can't oversee the conversation around 7A which council member pedias pulled and mayor if I may because it's been pulled for discussion I do need you to step um off the dais thank you.

Perfect so for 7a I'll pass things over to the vice Mayor.

Yes uh so would anyone like to comment on um consent item number 7A?

If we could just wait for the Mayor to step out of the room, I'd appreciate it.

Thank you.

Okay.

Would any would any of my colleagues?

I see two red lights.

I didn't notice who.

Oh.

Okay.

Um, so Ms.

Howard, would you like to comment on 7A?

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Uh it's regarding the grant application from the state of California for homelessness encampment funding.

And I just wanted to mention that uh I've been watching next door, and it seems like there's a lot of misinformation floating out there about the program that we're doing called Dignity on Wheels.

And I know that this particular pot of money may not cover dignity, but it's part of our comprehensive program to handle homelessness in Redwood City.

And everything that I've read about Dignity on Wheels has been they do excellent work.

We get value for the money that we spend, but my concern was is that on next door there are several people who are encouraging the city council to stop funding this.

So I was hoping that Mr.

Wolfgram wouldn't mind just explaining the tremendous benefit we receive from Dignity on Wheels and that how we hope to continue the program.

Thank you for the question.

Good evening, uh Vice Mayor and Councilmembers.

Uh Derek Wolfgram, assistant city manager, uh overseeing homelessness among other things.

And yeah, Dignity on Wheels is a program that uh we've been funding for several years for people who may not be familiar.

It's a program, uh mobile program that provides uh shower and laundry services for unhoused individuals.

Um we currently uh it's currently available in Redwood City uh three days out of the week.

Um Wednesdays, the Fair Oaks Community Center hosts them for a few hours.

On Saturdays, the downtown library hosts for a few hours, and on Fridays, the behavioral health office on Brewster uh houses for a few hours.

Um the Brewster location is funded by the county, the other two locations at Fair Oaks Community Center and the library are funded by the city.

Um in a recent month, just looking at statistics for those uh two visits, the two sites that the city manages at Fair Oaks and the Library.

Um we had 211 visits to take advantage of the laundry and shower services that are there.

Um that was 88 unique individuals, so each person visited on average a little bit over two times during that month to take advantage of those services, and it's something that you know fills a unique role to help uh people lead uh healthy, dignified lives in our community.

And Mr.

Wolfgram, isn't it true that life moves stops in and there are other services that can be available such as mental health or um information about how to find housing, things like that are offered when they do come.

Yeah, since those are services that some of our unhoused individuals uh take advantage of who may not currently be taking advantage of any of the other services that are offered, it does provide a great location for outreach workers and other services to make contacts to build relationships to have opportunities for um those folks who are taking advantage of the laundry and the shower services to learn about uh more impactful options that they might have like shelter or mental health services.

And I believe this all began with the people's budget.

I could be wrong, but the people's budget, we had people and they were given an amount of money, it was not our decision, and one of the things that rose to the top was the service.

So I just thought it would be good for the community to understand and know it's a really valuable service, and I'm so glad that we can offer it.

Yes, thank you.

And we will be um we have we've done a variety of annual funding strategies since the people's budget to keep it going, um, and we'll actually be bringing an item to the council probably late summer, early fall to extend that service and try to have a little bit uh uh potential for a longer term contract uh contract with some renewals rather than piecing it together one year at a time as we have been doing.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Wouldn't oh uh council member Sturkin, please.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Uh just to echo my colleague, uh Councilmember Howard's comments.

Uh yeah, it was part of the people's budget, so the community in Robert City did vote to fund this.

Um and it's the Brewster site is in my neighborhood, and I see it on a regular basis, people using it uh regularly.

Um, and that's essential service for you know the dozen or so uh folks living in RVs, vehicles and and tents in my neighborhood on a given day.

Um and then last thing I want to say about this, and I said this to constituent is that you can't put a price on human dignity.

So I'm really glad we have this program.

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember Stirken.

Would anyone else Ms.

Oh yes?

I was going to move to approve uh if there were no further comments, but I can wait for my colleagues.

Uh uh motion by Councilmember Chu, a second by council member G.

May we have a vote, please.

Motion passes with six votes.

Mayor Martina Saballos is recused.

Thank you.

All right, I am back.

And we are on item 7B, so I'll pass things over to Councilmember Sturkin who pulled the item.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, firstly, I want to say I support uh this measure and I will be voting for it.

I just wanted to provide a bit of perspective and um I'm so sorry to hear, you know, both from a couple of my colleagues as well as uh folks who made public comment today about the incidents that have occurred in your neighborhood over many years at this point.

Uh it's absolutely awful.

Um, and I'm so sorry.

Uh but I I wanted to just um we've talked a lot recently in previous council discussions about unintended consequences, and with the using a residential permit parking program will have the uh intended effect I I think of um re reducing some of the activity that you have seen in the neighborhood.

But the question that leads me to ask is where to where does it go then, right?

Where did that does that activity occur afterwards?

Um where do the people living in their RVs or in encampments go afterwards?

So I think it's important for us to uh have a citywide perspective and um and plan for addressing all of those issues uh together.

Um, you know, for instance, as I just mentioned earlier, there's about a dozen folks in RVs and and vehicles and vans in my neighborhood, and we don't have a residential parking parking program.

Um I'm not saying that's what we need in that neighborhood, but uh I just want to make sure we're being cognizant of unintended consequences and addressing root causes of the issues that you've been experiencing in your neighborhood.

So once again, I uh support this.

I'm happy to move to approve, and unless there are of course other comments.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Chu.

Uh so just to save the the uh suspense.

I will also be supporting this this um measure.

Um I did want to briefly comment on our permit parking program.

It uh my neighborhood implemented it, and it was incredibly effective.

It really did alleviate an incredibly impacted parking situation.

Um my only comment would be it's a little bit like getting a ballot measure passed, and the threshold for implementing a simple parking permit program when the need is obvious, it's empirically demonstrated.

Uh it's just much too hard to get this done.

And so I'd really love to um you know, see more communities implement it uh and see us move towards making this easier to implement.

Um, and you know, our our city has certainly done a lot to uh support uh the unhoused or unstably housed community.

Um yeah, I I think that this is a terrific solution, and it and it has been very effective, at least in my neighborhood in alleviating uh impacted parking.

So I'll be supporting it.

Thank you, Councilmember Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

Pearl and Maria and Christian, I think I s there you are, Christian.

This is an example of how community works.

We we have been meeting on.

First of all, I just want to thank you, Pearl and Maria for being here and and your son.

We have been working on your neighborhood since I got on council.

And I I want to thank you for showing up for your neighbors, showing up for your community, and for working hand in hand with the police, working hand in hand with the um all of the staff that you deal with day in and day out.

Your patients, you're putting things in with uh my Redwood City.

You you have been a pleasure to work with, and I'm really excited about this new phase.

Um, the permit parking problem, there's been extreme abuse of the parking in your neighborhood, um, beyond unhoused people, beyond dumping, although there have been all those issues, but just people uh dumping cars that don't work and just letting them sit there for days and days.

And so I'm so proud of you and your neighbors for choosing to take this step.

Um I think Christian would caution, I've heard him caution and perhaps Derek as well, that it won't happen overnight.

It it takes why a while for the signs to get installed, and then it may take a while for um staff to get up to speed on the whole situation, but it's real progress.

And thank you so much for coming today and please keep us posted.

Thank you, Vice Mayor, and I won't belabor this.

Um Pearl, Maria, and company, it's great to see you all here in person.

Um, I I want to thank you all for your patience going through this process.

I know you all wanted uh the process to move a lot quicker, right?

And I know the the challenges that you're seeing in the neighborhood aren't unique to Joseph Monsanita, right?

There are so many other parts of our our neighborhoods who are feeling this.

So I'm grateful that our our colleagues pull this item because um this is something that will come back for a fuller discussion, right?

I think during the last uh maybe two meetings ago, I had mentioned that in the fall we will have a fuller conversation on what the on what the permit program looks like and what changes are due later in tonight's meeting.

We have the neighborhood response team that's proposed as a part of this budget, right?

Where we're bringing in code enforcement PD, right?

Internal actors so that we can respond to these kind of challenges even faster.

Um so I think we're moving in the right direction, but grateful for your partnership in this.

And um, you know, I I think the last thing I'll mention is that you know, we we're thinking about the people power, right?

The permit is only as good as our ability to enforce it.

So I think that is um something that we're all carefully looking for.

So if there's anything else that we can be doing, um, you know where to find us, but thank you again for being here tonight.

Um colleagues with that.

I'll take a well, I guess I'll move the staff recommendation, Vice Mayor.

I move that we approve B or you moved it, I second that.

Perfect.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Can we get an electronic vote, please?

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you, colleagues.

And then we will go to item 7G.

I'm sorry, we already handled 7G.

That leaves us item 7E, and Councilmember Padilla pulled 7E.

Thank you.

My comments are very short.

Um, this was just in regard to our disposal of surplus personal property.

Just given our current financial state, I would always just I read the language and I just would always want to make sure that and I still go to the city manager that staff that we are always trying to think first about cost recovery.

I think um donations are wonderful, but if there is the opportunity to recover costs for any um, you know, surplus things, property that we no longer need, whether it's evaluating it for its recycling costs.

I just want to make sure we're always exploring cost recovery first in these efforts.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council.

Oh, excuse me.

Thank you, Councilmember.

We'll go to the vice mayor.

Uh I that brings a up a question for me.

Maybe maybe I wasn't a careful reader.

Um, are all of these going to be donated?

These items that was on the Excel spread list, or are we trying to sell them and recycle them, or could you talk a little bit more about that?

I'm gonna ask uh Adrian Lee, uh our interim uh director of public works to speak on it.

Uh, the resolution uh just to draw some attention to it does have various elements of ways that property can be disposed of, but Adrian might know line item by line item on what the goal is.

So thank you.

Uh good evening, uh Edrin Lee, interim uh public works director.

Uh thank you for the question.

So um this um uh is actually um seeking permission just to uh first um uh uh kind of uh have the um property declared a surplus and at that point it kind of a decision is made whether to uh donate it or um auction it you know to to council member video's point we do try to uh do cost recovery wherever possible we are um you know we do sell it to at auction and use those proceeds to um you know uh fund future purchase of uh equipment and vehicles um but the the the decision to for donation is um you know one that's uh made um you know with uh uh kind of uh you know city manager and uh potentially other um uh you know we I know I know we in the past we have the um uh reached out to sister cities for you know to see if they're interested in so that that would be um you know discussion further further down the line but first is just to declare the um property a surplus and then from there we can uh kind of figure out uh you know the proper way to dispose of it thank you yes I I seem to recall that last year maybe there was an old uh fire truck that we did donate to um a town a sister city town in Mexico I think okay thank you.

Thank you vice mayor thank you council member not seeing anyone else's lights on I'll move staff's recommendation on item 7E.

Is there a second?

Second and that's a second from councilmember G.

Could we get an electronic vote please?

Motion passes unanimously thank you.

Thank you everyone that was our consent calendar so we'll now move to our public hearings beginning with 8A we have our city manager Patrick Patrick Heisinger who will give a review overview excuse me and our finance director Beth Goldberg will lead the presentation thank you mayor um I'll be very brief on my my opening remarks so back on June 8th uh the proposed budget was introduced um for city council consideration um we received a lot of feedback um uh with that item and so what we've done about in the last two weeks is compiled that feedback and and uh place into the staff report um when we think we can address those items on the current work plan and then other items if we can't get to it on the work plan but there's a comprehensive staff report I'm gonna turn over to Beth for a brief um presentation that will hit on those elements that were um raised so with that I'll turn it over to Beth Goldberg our director of finance thank you uh good evening mayor vice mayor and council members we are on um the last stop on our fiscal year 2627 budget journey yay go team um and um just a brief thanks to everyone who was involved in uh putting this budget together um it um is not the work of of one person or one department but a collective um a collective effort so thanks to everyone on that um I am going to briefly um highlight um the key points that we discussed on uh June 8th uh the first of which is the operating budget that is before you for approval totals $40 uh 10 million dollars including $206 million dollars in the general fund.

There's an additional $40 point six million um in the CIP and um we are balancing the operating budget uh using uh one-time fund balance and a small amount of the Section 115 trust.

But the general fund, the 15% reserve that the council set up, is fully funded in the budget at $31 million.

And then the gloom and doom portion is that the out years we are projecting $22 to $29 million annual shortfalls beginning in fiscal year 2027-2028 through the end of the 10-year planning horizon.

So as a reminder, the recommended budget before you tonight responds to top priorities, including enhancing quality of life.

And as a start to that effort, the police department will be conducting an evaluation and report back to the city council with a mid-year budget update next February.

As part of this evaluation, the police department will also be exploring whether the program could be integrated or there could be integration with a domestic violence co-response model as well.

So that was one piece of feedback that we heard from council members.

And in your packet is the third quarter fiscal year 2026-2027 third quarter budget to actuals report.

A report reflecting the information in this way is included in your packet in attachment F.

We received feedback from the city council to increase funding for street maintenance and rehabilitation to approve the PCI index.

And if the bid environment holds, we will have enough remaining to support neighborhood and corridor projects in 2027.

And then longer-term funding will be part of the infrastructure funding work that we will be contemplating, including going back to the finance and audit committee this fall with some different funding options.

We also received some feedback from the city council that given the economic and financial climate that the council wanted to see strengthening reserves to prepare for future obligations.

And staff recommends in response to this feedback that any positive fund balance that we see at year end fiscal year 25-26 beyond what is forecasted that that be set aside in reserves to start to seed these reserves and prepare for these future obligations.

Also recommend that if we are successful in receiving VLF backfill funding, that we also allocate that current year funding, we allocate that also in a reserve to prepare for some of these potential potential hits to our budget.

Also want to point out that the risk rates that are in the recommended budget included a small reduction in cost to the general fund, and we, as part of the recommended budget, had recommended actually keeping the general fund rates as is for the risk fund, and then allocating that it's about 434,000, reserving that in the risk fund for potential litigation.

So that remains in the recommended budget before you this evening.

And we are embarking in response to this to an economic vitality strategy that will provide a comprehensive five-year roadmap designed to strengthen Redwood City's business climate and local economy, and it will include outreach, and we are planning on coming back to the city council at a study session, either late 2026 or early 2027.

In homelessness, we received feedback that the council is interested in continuing to strengthen our response to homelessness through the Hopeful Horizons ordinance as well as increasing permanent supportive housing.

And we are continuing our efforts to implement the Hopeful Horizon ordinance, and we plan on returning to the City Council in October before October 2027 to evaluate that ordinance's effectiveness.

And then the last two bits of feedback were to continue to identify strategies to facilitate the development of affordable or excuse me, approved housing projects that have been unable to move forward due to current conditions.

And in the next month, staff will be presenting to the city council a package of zoning code amendments that are aimed at streamlining the process.

So that will be forthcoming in a matter of weeks.

An important milestone in that it was included in the budget approved by the legislature, although there are a few more steps in terms of getting it signed by by the governor, but uh the advocacy work so far has paid off and we'll continue to keep our fingers crossed and continue that advocacy not only for funding in this year's budget but also um longer term for a permanent solution since this is such an important uh source of revenue for the city.

And uh with that um we have uh series of recommendations spread over uh two slides.

I'll go through these quickly before uh moving to discussion.

Uh first is to hold public hearing, um, and then requesting a series of motion or emotions, maybe there will be some emotions around it, but motions to um adopt uh the budget to adopt the operating budget to adopt the five uh the uh five-year CIP, and then um a motion on uh the successor agency budget and then last um a resolution approving uh cities uh change amending the city's classification and salary plan to add uh a new classification.

So uh with that I will pause and um let the council get on with um its business.

Thank you, Beth, for the great presentation, and of course, all the all the hard work leading up to today, and we'll bring it back to the dais, and we will start with some public comment.

So I will turn things over to our city clerk to facilitate.

Thank you, Mayor.

I don't have any speaker cards um at the moment.

So if anyone in the audience would like to speak on the budget item tonight, please step forward with your speaker card.

And if you've joined on Zoom, go ahead and raise your hand to be recognized for public comment.

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

Thank you, City Clerk, and we'll bring back to the days for council conversation.

We'll start off with Councilmember Howard.

Thank you.

I'm guessing the public's pretty satisfied with all the hard work that our staff has done.

I mean, that must be it.

Uh I have to compliment our staff.

I mean, we you listened to us, you really really listened to us.

I sound like that, accepting the academy award.

You really listened.

But I mean you did.

We had things that we weren't sure we were going to be able to do, but the aspirations were there that we can do better, and we should try to plan for that.

So I really appreciate Beth your presentation and how you really listened, and you've highlighted how we can get there over the course of the next couple of years.

So I am ready to adopt the budget after council comments, but thank you so much.

There's so much need in our community.

I'm glad that we're able to address a lot of it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard.

Any other council questions or comments?

Councilmember G.

Beth, I want to thank you and the entire team and our city manager.

I mean, you did listen to the feedback.

And I want to really want to highlight attachments, ENF.

Um, attachment E and to get into quarterly cadence is going to be very important so that we're not waiting here in May or June to see where we are.

We can see where we're headed over time, what the trends are going to be looking like, both either up or down, hopefully up on the revenue side and down on the expense side, but at least we can see where we're going on a more periodic basis.

So thank you for doing that.

And my apologies if it's manual, and hopefully in the future it can become more push a button and the report comes out.

Looking forward to that.

And then attachment F, I think was a lot more work to tie the budget summary to the detail report.

But it's also important the way you did that because uh my request was by fund source.

And we talk about the color of money many times, and the most precious money color that we have is our general fund.

It can be used for almost anything.

And that's really, really important to be judicious on where we allocate that.

The other columns of funding, and that's on pages 33 to 35 in the staff report are more constrained.

They cannot be moved around, and the technical term I think is fungibility.

They're not as fungible.

I mean, the general fund, we can spend it for people, we can spend it on furniture, fire trucks, police, whatever.

But the other colors of money are highly constrained.

And so that's why you know my advocacy is always let's control what we spend the general fund is on, and then go get grants and other monies to spend on other things.

The other magic though is when you add up the total fund column, and by program initiative, we can see where we're spending money on per program from top to bottom, high to low, and really to align it with council priorities.

And if there's a live spreadsheet, which some of us had, you can sort by that column, and you can see are we spending it on police, fire, unhoused, different initiatives, and that really reinforces that are we walking the talk from a day.

And so hopefully we can be able to do that going forward, because that's from a from an analytical standpoint.

Those are I think critical tools.

Where are we headed financially on a quarterly basis and where are we spending our money and our is it alignment with our council priorities?

So thank you for doing that work.

And then Patrick, thank you for trying to deal with some reserves for the unknown.

Because I think none of us, and whoever says they do, know what's going to happen over the next 12 months financially.

I'll call you a liar.

Because if unless you know exactly what's going to happen, when it's going to happen, and how much I think all of us can do a good guess, but no one knows exactly what's going to happen.

I mean, I think even the new chairman of the Federal Reserve said they're looking at potentially three rate increases over the next 12 months.

I don't think some president was expecting that comment from the new chair of the Fed, but it there's just too many things going on in the world to really be highly predictable about what's going to happen.

So having a reserve, being fiscally prudent, I think is a good place to be until we have a better way of projecting where we're all headed.

So again, to our city manager, to Beth, everybody, thank you for the hard work.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Councilmember G.

Go to Councilmember Chu.

Uh so I'd like to echo the comments of my colleagues.

Uh thank you so much for the hard work and the thoughtfulness that went into this, and for listening, you know, to to Councilmember G's point.

We don't know what's going to happen.

What is certain is that there's a lot of chaos uh in and uncertainty in our economy over the next year.

Um, that's the first certainty.

The second certainty is that our infrastructure is going to age, you know, time and chance happen to us all.

Um, and so I really appreciated the the thoughtfulness around kind of planning for the future, laying aside funding to deal with the inevitable.

I mean, things always happen.

That is a certainty.

Uh so I really appreciated the thoughtfulness there.

Um, I really appreciate the fiscal responsibility of our city.

We do run a tight ship, and we do really make sure that we're not just able to take care of our infrastructure and city programs, uh, but really do care for our unhoused community, our youth.

Um, we do an incredible job of, you know, kind of serving the community and have an incredible parks.

You know, like I feel like our city really gets a lot of bang for its buck.

That's what I'm trying to uh articulate.

And thank you so much for this work.

Uh thank you for listening to us and for uh being wise and and laying aside funding for the certainty of you know uh uncertainty over the next 12 months.

Thank you, Councilmember Chu.

Any other comments?

Councilmember Padilla.

I'll keep mine short and sweet.

Thank you.

I know we've been talking about this at length for quite some time, and I appreciate how many um I know when we think of a budget, everyone thinks it's finance.

I mean, finance has to orchestrate and put all together, but I know that there's lots of teamwork amongst the departments that are involved in this, and I know that hopefully I saw there's some line items that will make less of this manual in the future.

So I'm optimistic and I appreciate all the great attention to detail and care that went into this.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember, Councilmember Surkin.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you to all the staff who made this happen.

What a huge body of work and appreciate it very much.

I uh also just want to thank you for listening to our feedback, uh, including you know, with regards to uh the crisis response.

Um that's such a creative uh suggestion.

I'm looking for um cheap.

Oh, yes, thank you, Chief Bell.

Uh what a uh great um uh you know recommendation there to uh you know consider a co-response model uh to address um intimate partner violence, possibly of Cora or however that shakes shakes out, right?

And um I I just wanted to suggest that maybe it might be we might benefit from uh partnering with the city manager's office in terms of evaluating the current um crisis response uh program, if you will.

Um that is just one kind of suggestion I have.

Um, you know, more eyes are better than one, I suppose, and then also to have a you know an external perspective, a third party perspective, right?

From outside the police department could be beneficial.

Um, and then I wanted to also thank you so much for the funding of the um repaving of centennial neighborhood streets.

That is a long time in coming, folks.

I mean, yeah, um I agree with Sarah over there.

Yes.

Um since I started up here four years ago, um, there have been a number of accidents around Mezes Park, and I'm really looking forward to those controlled um intersections, four-way stops where it makes sense, and I appreciate our staff using your best judgment um and your expertise to uh make those decisions uh for the the neighborhood.

Um okay, I need to wrap this up.

I just wanted to say I wanted to ask um to what extent there will be.

I understand that the design is finalized for the pavement um project in Centennial, but to what extent will there be input on you know additional crosswalks or exactly where the uh stop signs are installed?

If um anyone can answer that.

I'm gonna ask our uh director of engineering at Connecticut Water to address the question because I believe we're right in the middle of the bid process.

So it's it's a timely question.

So thanks, thank you.

Good evening, Council.

Thank you so much for the question.

So, right now we're not making any changes to the design.

However, we're always looking for opportunities to improve our network.

So if you have suggestions on safety improvements or ways to better enhance the neighborhood, we can always incorporate those into a future project, or depending on what the improvements are, we can incorporate those into a change order.

Thank you.

Just to clarify the last part, we depending on what the improvements that are proposed, you could incorporate those into a right.

So since the design is 100% and we're out to bed right now.

Our design is basically baked, it's cooked.

And so during the construction process, we typically ask for a 10% contingency for any unforeseen um things that occur.

If there is room within that contingency to add in additional safety improvements or enhancements, we can definitely take that opportunity to do so.

Absolutely, thank you.

I just want to make sure that you know after the project is complete.

I I don't have we don't have you know residents coming to us saying, like, hey, you know, I thought you were gonna put in the stop sign here or put in a crosswalk there, and that we you know cross all of our T's and dot all of our I's there to ensure that it is uh reflective what of the community needs and and input.

Um so I appreciate you building in that contingency.

Hopefully we don't have to use it.

Um but uh those are my comments.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Sirkin.

We'll go to Councilmember Chu.

Yeah, sorry, if you can just um yeah, I just wanted to echo uh Councilmember Sirkin's comments.

I know that a big part of why we really wanted to increase the funding for um you know infrastructure and particularly uh pavement improvements and and road repair is so that we could implement safety measures as we go.

Um and so just making sure that as we plan these projects that the safest design is is the default uh and then that's what gets implemented.

Um I know that that's something my my community is constantly asking for is improvements to safety of our streets, and so I'll I'll just add that our transportation team, they look at every single intersection, every single crossing, every opportunity we can do to slow or calm down traffic.

It is a mini-month-long process, but they look at every single inch of the roadway, and um if there's anything that we may have overlooked or there's an outside of the box suggestion, we're always welcome to those feedback.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Vice Mayor.

So I'm just delighted to see so much so many of our expert and wonderful staff here.

Thank you.

It's not that late, but thank you for, I'm sure there are other places you could be right now on a Monday night, and uh it's wonderful to see you here, and the 450-page budget um has your wonderful work.

I this is the first year I haven't had it.

Um, but two um Councilmember G's point about the certainty um in the budget and and looking forward and his mention of a Federal Reserve Chair, I it just brings to mind that of course Alan Greenspan died today.

He was the Federal Reserve Chair for decades in um the United States, I think over 20 years, and um he he died at 100 today, and one of the quotes that I was hearing is that he said he was quoted as saying he was famous for being vague.

He was famous for never saying what was really going on with the federal budget.

People actually wanted to wait and see how he was gonna be vague this quarter as compared to last quarter.

And so but but um councilmember G is correct.

We don't want to be vague, we don't we don't want to be surprised, and so thank you.

I know it wasn't easy to do the quarterly reporting, um, but we really appreciate that you're doing that.

Um I'm so excited about so many things that are in this budget for the next year, but I would be remiss if I didn't point out some of the things that I saw in the 450 page budget that I just adore that we did last year, and that it's so important that um folks know about and that we stop and celebrate.

We don't know what the future holds, but but we we know what what we did last year.

And um, so first and foremost, of course, the amazing senior and veteran senator center.

I'm in awe, and uh each and every one of you has a fingerprint on it, plus so many more.

Just can't can't believe how amazing that building is, just cannot.

Um I think at the library uh we had let's see what let me let me get this right.

Um we had an additional 40 volunteers at the library from the year before, um, and they volunteered an additional 8,000 hours from the year before.

Thank you.

I I looked and I saw, I appreciate it.

I'm very excited about our fire training center out at the port that's that's funded and and that's very very exciting, and I I hope it happens soon.

Um, and I know it will because of our wonderful leadership.

Um I also want to congratulate, you know.

Sometimes it's the small things.

This isn't small, nothing is small.

When you're dealing with 85,000 people, 650 employees, and a 200 million dollar general budget, general fund budget, nothing is small.

And so I didn't take that word away.

I did not say small, but but I really want to congratulate Felicia and her team and Michelle because we reduced our workers' compensation pending liabilities, and the number of pending cases were reduced by a whopping 38 percent.

An open claim is is a closed claim is better than an open claim, and that takes meticulous work, and um so I I thank you for all of that, and I think I'm done.

Uh and thank you all for being here.

Amazing budget.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor, Councilmember Howard.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I just have a question about um uh councilmember Stirkin brought up before about um working with the police chief, and I I'd like to understand that better exactly what are we proposing because I want to be sure that we're not overstepping our boundaries here.

We do have a police advisory committee that uh works with the police chief on these things.

Um, but if if the police chief feels this is something that will be of a benefit, but uh before we say that this is what we want, I think it's important that we take into consideration is in fact this something that's just gonna make our job a little bit more difficult.

Could a report back to council on a regular basis on how this is working suffice.

So maybe I could ask council member Stirk and maybe I misunderstood what you were proposing, and I just want to be careful about what we are suggesting, uh what I'm suggesting is simply uh having the city manager's office partner with the police department to conduct the evaluation in the same way that they partner together on many other initiatives and programs and evaluations and reporting.

I think that is routine in nature and would be beneficial to the council and the community.

Okay, I did misunderstand because I thought you were proposing that the council get involved in doing that.

Okay, no, I'm glad I asked because I just wanted to be sure that we weren't taking that on as a responsibility.

I'm definitely in support of what you're suggesting, and probably would happen anyway.

Thank you.

Thank you both.

Before we go to the vice mayor, um Mr.

City Manager, anything else to add on on that point?

No, I I think it makes I think it makes sense.

Um every analysis does come through my office anyway, however, being intentional upfront with it, we've structured a little bit different.

But you know, we do have the equity arm of our organization sitting in the city manager's office, and I think it'll also be really helpful uh in that as well.

So no, we look forward to partnering with uh the with the police department on it and Chief Bell.

Excellent.

I always say G Bell's a gun, so I got to partner with her, you know.

Thank you.

We'll go to the vice mayor.

I just want to say generally that I I don't I don't think it's of good service to the people of Redwood City for the seven of us to micromanage our highly capable staff or to use a vehicle of approving a budget as a reason to try to find a way to micromanage.

I just, you know, if if problems arise, we we're capable of of um addressing them, but sometimes you can get in the way.

You know, there's the saying there are too many cooks in the kitchen, and you know, we're all here because we love policy, because we love community, because we want to affect our community in in good ways.

But um, I I just I just feel we we need to get out of Steph's way, make sure they understand policy, but then get out of their way.

It's their job to implement it.

I I don't want us stepping anywhere close to the line of micromanage how they implement our policy.

And I, you know, there's a tendency, because we sit above the entire organization.

There's a tendency for for staff to do whatever we ask them to do, because we have a lot of power, and I I think we need to be really careful about understanding that we're policy, they staff implements the policy.

We don't tell them how to implement, and and we need to be careful.

Thank you, Vice Mayor, and thank you to my colleagues for the discussion today.

Not seeing anything further.

I'll go ahead and add my points here.

Um, Beth and the whole team.

Thank you for your great work in getting us to this point.

Um to the vice mayor's point, you know, think that um we had a very robust conversation last time, and we had um I think a couple of members of the public who joined us to give us their thoughts too.

But um I was really happy to see our additions being reflected in this um in this latest version.

I think from I think I saw all council comments reflected in this actually from our our PCI improvements and what we were thinking around uh you know street improvements to housing and homelessness to of course the um the co-responder model.

So I was grateful for that because there's a lot of balance here between council priorities, our city initiatives, and the unknowns that we face.

But I think that the proposal we have in front of us is doing an incredible job at holding all those things at the same time, and still making this community feel like Redwood City, right?

I think we're able to drive the initiatives that we have and also the quality of life services that our residents expect.

I think that remains at the same level, and that's I think that's incredible when there are so many question marks about what our budget looks like just for the rest of the year, right?

Not even thinking about beyond what uh 2027 holds for us.

So I'm very grateful for this, um, for this proposal, and I think that there's there's absolutely a lot more work ahead, but I think some of the direction that the council gave at the last meeting really helps us remain remain nimble with the financial reports and have us in a position where we can pivot and uh and do that a lot sooner than next February when we would have our media report.

So grateful for all the the additions to this, and uh I'll leave it there.

Um but we do need some voting to happen, so I will move staff's recommendation and look for a second.

Second, thank you.

That was uh second from Council Member Chu.

And could we get a vote please?

We need one more vote.

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you, great, thank you to council, and thank you to our staff again for the great work.

And we'll move on to item 8B, and we have our interim assistant public works director, Justin Chapel, who will give us a presentation on the urban water management plan and water shortage contingency plan.

Over to you.

All right, thank you.

Yes, uh good evening, uh Mayor Martinez Abaios, Vicemar Aiken, and council members.

So my name is Justin Chappell.

I'm the interim assistant public works director, and tonight I'm presenting the 2025 updates to Redwood City's urban water management plan and water shortage contingency plan.

So my presentation will cover the purpose of the urban water management plan, our service area, and historic water demand, projected supply and demand, water supply reliability, and an overview of the water shortage contingency plan.

So we prepared uh these questions for the council to consider uh as we go through the presentation tonight, and we'll revisit this at the end of the presentation as well.

So the urban water management plan is required by state law and must be updated every five years.

It includes a description of our service area, historic supply and demand, and projections through 2050 for normal single dry and multiple dry year scenarios, and it also addresses water conservation and drought planning.

So the urban water management plan is a foundational document for long-term water supply and demand planning.

It's required to remain eligible for state funding.

It supports water supply assessments for new developments and provides a framework for discussing water reliability and shortage planning.

So our water service area includes Redwood City as well as parts of unincorporated San Mateo County, the town of Woodside and San City of San Carlos.

We serve just under 90,000 people through about 24,600 service connections.

Our pool water supply comes entirely from the SFPUC or the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission through its regional water system.

And we also operate a recycled water system with supply from Silicon Valley Clean Water.

So this slide shows how water is distributed across different customer categories in Redwood City, and single family and multifamily residential uses make up about two-thirds of the water use in the city, with commercial landscape irrigation and recycled water making up the majority of the remaining one-third.

So in the early 2000s, Redwood City was exceeding the contractual amount of water provided by SFPUC of 12,243 acre feet per year, which is also known as our individual supply guarantee.

Since then, you can see that poolable water demand has generally declined from the year 2000 through 2020, even as population has increased.

This is due in large part to investments in water conservation and the city's recycled water system, but also due to improved water use efficiency by our customers.

The demand projections in the 2025 Urban Water Management Plan reflect near-term assumptions based off the city's general plan, housing element, and current development activity.

Long-term projections rely on regional forecasts from the Association of Bay Area Governments or ABAG and the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency or Orbosca.

Poll demand is expected to remain relatively stable while recycled water use will continue to grow.

As you can see, demand is projected to be well below the city's individual supply guarantee from the SFPUC through 2050.

So the state's new urban water use objective approved by the 2018 water conservation legislation establishes efficiency standards for indoor and outdoor water use.

And these objectives use weather data for outdoor water use, and uh the chart shows projections representing low and high ranges needed to maintain healthy landscapes.

Our projected demands fall below the projected objective, which indicates the city is on track with current conservation and efficiency efforts.

So we'll now go over water supply and reliability.

So the Bay Delta Plan amendment adopted by the State Water Resources Control Board in 2018 would require increased unimpaired flow releases in the Tuolamere River, which represents about 85% of the city's water supply, potentially resulting in uh 40 to 50% rationing from the SFUC system in dry years.

This translates to about 31 to 48% for Redwood City.

Although no immediate impacts are expected due to the implementation challenges, to implement implementation challenges of the Bay Telta plan, the SFPUC and other stakeholders have proposed an alternative called the Tuolamy Healthy Rivers and Landscapes Proposal that reduces water supply impacts and includes methods to improve fish habitat.

However, there's currently no timeline from the state for this action or for state action on this proposal.

So Redwood City relies uh entirely on the San Francisco Regional Water System for potable water.

The SFPC provided two reliability scenarios for inclusion and number urban water management plan, one with full implementation of the Bay Delta plan and one without it.

With implement implementation, SFP reports they would be unable to meet the contractual service levels that they typically provide to us.

However, without implementation of the plan, SPC can meet 100% of projected demand in all year types.

So in uh normal years, uh this chart includes both potable and recycled water supplies for non-drought years, and our supply from the SFPUC and recycled water are sufficient to meet projected demand through 2050, and we do not project any supply shortfalls in normal years.

Under the Bay Delta plan scenario, a single dry year would result in total system shortfalls of roughly 27 to 31%, and potable shortfalls would be higher in a ranges of 31 to 38 percent.

For multiple dry years, the projected shortfalls increase further with total system shortfalls of 36 to 40 percent, and even even higher reductions of potable water.

So supply shortfalls will be met through implementation of the water shortage contingency plan, which is designed to reduce water demand to meet the available supply in a drought.

The water shortage contingency plan outlines six standardized stages of action designed to reduce demand when needed.

The focus is on outdoor use where cutbacks are most achievable, and the city has a water allocation program that bases reductions on water needs rather than historical use, which helps avoid penalizing customers who were already conserved.

This is similar to the state's urban water use objective.

Um where the water allocation program uses daily weather weather data to calculate outdoor irrigation needs and provides per person indoor allocations.

So this concludes my presentation.

I'd like to pass it back to the mayor for the public hearing.

Thank you, Justin, for the great presentation.

And before we bring it back to council discussion, we'll open the public hearing for public comment.

Thank you, Mayor.

No speaker cards on this item.

Last call to the audience or our folks on Zoom if you'd like to give public comment on the item this evening.

Seeing none, Mayor, turn it back to you.

Thank you, City Clerk.

We'll take it back to the council.

Any council questions or comments?

Councilmember Chu.

Um, thank you so much for the presentation.

And um I just had a couple questions.

The first is, um, do you do you have a sense of what percent of our water use is things like land, you know, uh residential landscaping.

So in the in the pie chart that you uh saw earlier, um the irrigation uh portion of that, maybe I can go back to real quick.

Yeah, yeah, you had it.

So that's in the the darker green that that includes all uh dedicated irrigation.

That includes commercial irrigation and multifamily irrigation, but not single family.

So everything for single family would be mixed into that dark blue color.

And uh I I think it could be close to around a maximum of 30% of that would be attributed to irrigation.

So around 30% of 43%.

Yes.

Okay.

Um, and um do you have a sense of how much, say going to like from a grass lawn to, say, you know, pollinator plants uh would reduce uh somebody's water use?

Sorry, I'm not trying to grill you here.

I just trying to get a sense of like how much bang for our, you know, like does that really make a dent in the in the water you deliver?

Um, so uh, you know, I don't I don't really have the number off the top of my head, but I think the uh the just going off the amount of water needs for turf versus uh non-turf, I think it's it is roughly around uh half or so.

Okay, terrific.

So, you know, I you know, I personally went um, well, we had a wood chip hellscape and then it became a pollinator garden, so we didn't really see that savings, but um uh it's a terrific way, and if there's ways the city can encourage support, and I I know we're already doing things like, but I think the more we can help people understand the benefits of these pollinator gardens, these drought tolerant pollinator gardens.

Um, that's a terrific win-win.

Uh, and giving people even estimates of how much money they might save uh by doing that.

Um certainly appreciate your efforts uh, you know, and and that we're you know kind of running below our our targets, that's terrific.

Um there has been some uh talk that uh perhaps Oscar and and that organization is a little conservative.

Uh their modeling does have pretty considerable reserves, I think for thousand-year drought, something like that anyway.

Um, so I will be watching kind of how that progresses with a lot of interest.

But uh overall a terrific um presentation um and no further comments.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Chu.

See, Councilmember Howard.

Thank you, Justin.

Great report.

Really appreciate how you and your department work to save the water of Redwood City.

And I have to give a shout out to Vicki Sherman because she really does a wonderful job out there in the community with our schools and comes to all the cleanups, and she's just terrific as far as encouraging people to get more involved in saving our water.

So thank you, all of you.

Appreciate it.

And I know it's mandatory that we do this, but it's for a good reason.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember, Councilmember G.

Thank you, Mayor.

Justin, thank you and the entire team, and and even a bigger thank you, number one, to our residents and our businesses for adjusting over the last several years to climate change, hotter months, drought, and all those different things.

Uh Councilmember Howard and your colleagues back in the days where we were here till three o'clock in the morning debating recycled water, because we were one of the first communities that went there, and those were meetings that did go to two and three in the morning.

Um, they were spirited conversations.

Um and I think it was Mayor Clare who presided over some of those late night meetings.

I think he owns the record for the latest meeting.

Mayor, don't try to be number one.

You know, what is remarkable about all that work, though, is the differences between slide eight and slide nine.

Uh, with the architecture review committee and recycled water, and we were over our water allocation.

And because of a lot of different things.

Recycled water, you can see in 2010, changing from grass to turf fields, water conservation, a whole menu of different things, incentives to replace your lawn with more natural drought-resistant landscape.

We get to slide nine, which then shows we're significantly below where we started at before in 2000 and 2005.

So again, congratulations to all of our residents for conserving.

Congratulations to our new developments that are now dual plumbed and extending the purple pipe down into downtown.

And thank you to the entire team for making sure we are capturing and making the best use of beautiful water from the Hedgehogi.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

We'll go to Councilmember Padu.

Oh, okay.

Along with that, thank you for your presentation.

But I also just want to plug um the way that we're changing things, and we've been talking a reoccurring theme is change in education, and I just want to shout out the wonderful partnerships that public works has had with our school district and our other the schools in the community.

I think some of our best ambassadors for change and being better are our youth.

They're the ones who, you know, my daughter, when she sees that a faucet is leaking, she'll put the cup there and say, I noticed that it collected this much water.

When are you gonna have someone come and fix this?

So I just want to keep encouraging any time we have programs in our community.

If we can work with um nonprofits or our schools, I really think that they um will be our champions in this front in saving our water.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilmember.

Any other questions or comments?

I'm not seeing anything.

Vice Mayor, please.

So thank you for this five year report and this planning.

And um I I want to start out by saying to your point, Councilmember Padilla about your daughter and the drip and and not wasting water.

I I think I heard earlier today that some cities have an unbelievable waste rate because they have old infrastructure, and it's just too expensive, and so they waste a lot of water because their pipes haven't been fixed in a long time.

And our infrastructure, what we only have what, a three percent waste rate, city manager?

I don't know if we're that good, but just I think Justin will know that one.

Justin, you know, right?

Yes, yeah, it's close to its four percent right now.

Oh, okay.

But some cities have like 20% waste rate just because their pipes are old, right?

Or yeah.

So the water losses that we have are very low for for the state.

Oh, low for the entire state.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well, that's wonderful.

So I just want to talk a little bit about the history of water in California.

You know, water in the West, there isn't enough of it.

It's more valuable than gold.

Uh, you know, the San Francisco earthquake, what a calamity.

The actual calamity was the fires.

And the fires were a calamity because there was no water.

There's never been enough water in the West historically.

And but what happened in the 1800s and the early 1900s in the state of California, is that the farmers, because we were a farming, we're agricultural place, they got senior water rights, senior legal rights to the water a hundred years ago when water law was first tested in the U.S.

Supreme Court and in the courts.

And so you fast forward, but nothing is ever just today.

You have to look at what happened in the past.

So you look at the Central Valley of California, the central valley of Northern California, and you know, here I brought this book.

It's called The King of California.

It's on its 14th edition.

It's a classic.

It's about a man who uh monopolized all the legal water rights in central California to grow cotton, which is an extremely water-intensive crop.

And um still there are water barons in the central valley that grow unecological crops like pomegranates, almonds, cotton, rice.

These are crops that are extremely water-intensive.

The Central Valley is arid, and um it doesn't have the marine layer and the the climate that we have here, and so they uh the the amount that big agriculture, the amount of water that big agriculture uses in the state of California dwarfs, dwarfs, dwarfs, dwarfs, the urban usage.

Um I am ch I'm gonna vote for this report uh and for the staff report and for this plan, but I just want to say on behalf of urban and urban person in an urban environment, we are paying for recycled pipes.

We are incentivizing folks to not use a lawn, but but to use cacti.

We're uh working so hard to economize water ourselves, and and yet in the Central Valley, because of ancient, you know, laws that are a hundred years old and don't fit with the climate crisis that we have right now.

These big agribusiness farmers, they can just grow whatever crop is the most profitable.

They don't have to think about water usage, and um most of the the almonds they send overseas, and um so uh our next five-year report, I would like it to mention more about these are how big agribusiness is economizing on their water and also on the healthy rivers.

I'm a little frustrated that Bosca is saying, Oh, we can't, you know, we have to sacrifice salmon health and river biodiversity health, because we can't just let that water go into the ocean because, you know, what if we don't have enough water when they're not saying, hey, farmers, hey, big agribusiness.

What are you doing to economize?

How are you justifying a water intensive crop in an arid soil?

I'd like to see more urban pressure on big agribusiness water to um show how they're adapting to climate change.

Um I that's just big pack picture, it's policy, and I I just wanted to talk about it a little bit.

But uh if you have anything you wanted to add, Justin, that's fine.

It's a it's a bigger policy than just Redwood City, I know.

Yeah, so the um so the Bay Delta plan, I think is like the crux of the issue.

Uh when the state water board adopted that in 2018.

So there really isn't a uh a solution yet.

There's still uh lawsuits against it.

There's a voluntary agreements, which is um become this uh healthy rivers and landscapes plan.

So uh hopefully we have some answers in the next few years, but we have been waiting for a few years already, so it's hard to say what actually will happen.

And I just want to go on the record.

I'm I'm I'm a little bit frustrated that Bosca chose to join SFPUC's lawsuit, frankly.

But maybe I don't understand it well enough, and um I would, but you know, an agreement I'll I'll leave it there, but and thank you for that explanation.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Go to Councilmember Chu.

I'll keep it brief.

I would like to to echo my colleagues' comments.

I grew up a farm kid, you know, and I am very pro-farmer.

However, uh California's uh agricultural water policy is guy with the biggest straw winds, and it's just not sustainable.

Um and number one, number two, um there is one couple who got control of a public land uh public water bank who uses as much water to grow thirsty crops in the desert as the entire city of Los Angeles.

And so as cities are being called on to conserve water, to do our best, to change our landscaping, to use, you know, left low flush toilets, our colleagues in the Central Valley are incentivized to waste water.

So certainly agriculture is going to use more water, of course, we're growing food for the nation, but I think the problem is wasting water, and if there is a way that we can engage to put enormous pressure on Sacramento to rationalize California water policy, um I'd be very interested in that as well.

Um that is outside the purview of this meeting right now, though.

I think that's a great segue to my remarks here, Councilmember.

Um thank you, the vice to the vice mayor and councilmer Chu and just all my colleagues here and Justin for the great presentation.

Um, I agree.

And I think, you know, it's it's been a while since we've um since we've gone a report out from our Bosca rep.

I think former Mayor Pierce has gone to the utilities subcommittee to be able to give out report outs, um, and maybe it's worthwhile to reach out to see if the full council could, you know, get uh an update on this and the ecosystem, but um, as somebody who sits on governance, I also thought maybe this is something that we can start considering updating our policy platform too, right?

So um, yeah, I think that there is there's lots of work that's gonna be coming our way in terms of water, so um, but agree, you know, it's we always have a tough meeting every year when we have to raise our rates, right?

And the state really clearly defines what we can how we get to define what those rate increases look like.

Um anyway, it to see us saving water and to be a good actor in conserving water, right, is pretty incredible.

Um, so I think it's time for a little advocacy on this front, but I know that's a separate conversation, so I'll leave it there, but not seeing seeing anything else from our colleagues here.

Um is there a motion?

Mayor, I'd like to move the staff recommendations to adopt a resolution approving the city's 2025 urban water management plan and the other um recommendation to adopt Urb City's updated water shortage contingency plan and water conservation program.

Great.

Thank you, Councilmember's or second.

Second.

That was a motion from Councilmember G.

A second from Vice Mayor Aiken.

Could we get a vote, please?

Motion passes unanimously.

Great.

So thank everybody.

Thank you, Justin.

And we will keep moving to item nine.

Our staff reports beginning with 9A.

Our City Council appointments to several of our BCCs this evening.

And we have our city clerk Jessica Castro, who will give an overview of the item.

We'll take public comment and facilitate the appointments to the Board of Building Review, Housing and Human Concerns Committee, the Library Board, the Parks Recreation and Community Services Commission, Planning Commission, and Senior Affairs Commission.

And with that, I will pass it over to our city clerk.

Thank you so much, Mayor.

So tonight you're being asked to make appointments to fill a total of 20 seats on six of our boards, commissions, and committees.

A recruitment was conducted earlier this year to fill seats on the arts commission, board of building review, board of port commissioners, housing and human concerns committee, the library board, parks recreation and community services commission, planning commission, and senior affairs commission.

This recruitment also included the architectural advisory committee and historic resources advisory committee, and those applications have been forwarded to the planning commission for appointment.

Following the close of the initial application period, the city clerk's office had not received the desired number of applications for the arts commission, Board of Port Commissioners, and the Historic Resources Advisory Committee.

At the direction of the mayor, we extended the application period for those three BCCs through May 31st, which did result in a sufficient number of applicants for the Arts Commission and Port Commission.

And those interviews are scheduled for July 13th with appointments to occur on July 27th.

For tonight's appointments, City Clerk's office received responses from 75 qualified applicants who were interviewed by the city council at a special meeting on Monday, May 18th.

This evening, you'll be asked to make your selections for the Board of Building Review, Housing and Human Concerns Committee, Library Board, Parks, Recreation, and Community Services Commission, Planning Commission, and the Senior Affairs Commission.

You'll also be voting to maintain the current BCC applicant pool to fill any vacancies that may occur on those BCCs through January 31st, 2027.

So in terms of process tonight, all appointments will be made by roll call vote.

A candidate must receive a majority for votes in order to be appointed.

If a majority vote is not reached for any candidate, or if there is a tie vote, we'll proceed with additional rounds of voting until a majority vote is achieved.

We'll take a vote to fill the full-term seats first, followed by the partial term seat if applicable.

In this case, it's for the senior affairs commission.

I'll also be reading all the candidates available for consideration for each BCC, and I'll repeat back each of the council selections before rec recording the vote.

So before we proceed, we're proceed with voting and appointments, I'll take any council questions, and I'm also happy to take public comment.

We'll go to Councilmember Sirkin.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you so much, City Clerk, for recapping the process.

Just a quick question.

So public comment would be probably the final opportunity for any of the candidates to just add any additional comments about their candidacy and kind of refresh our memory since it's been what a month since we heard their uh interviews, right?

That's correct.

Okay.

So just I know there's some candidates in the audience, so if anybody wanted to make a final comment about their candidacy, this is your last chance.

Thank you, Councilmember Sturley.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Seeing any other questions back to the city court.

Awesome.

So we will proceed with public comment on this item, and I welcome any speaker cards or any raised hands on Zoom.

Thank you.

Okay, we can begin with public comment.

We have Rona Gundrum, followed by Michael Arusa.

And we have one more in person, and we'll have a couple more on Zoom.

Welcome.

Justin Stall.

Good evening, Mayor Martinez Abaios, Vice Mayor Aiken, members of City Council and staff.

I'm a member of the Transportation Advisory Committee, but my comments this evening are my own.

I had the opportunity to hear a number of the committee interviews of the applicants before you, and I don't envy you the task of making selections from the pool of so many wonderful candidates.

I would, however, like to voice my support of a few candidates.

For the Board of Building Review, Herman or Joe Rossbach seems like he would be a tremendous asset to the committee for housing and human concerns.

I feel that Katie Getz would continue to be an asset.

I would also like to lend my support for Scott Granit for the HCC.

About 20 years ago, I worked with Scott at a professional level.

I think he would be a great asset given his profession and that he's a very thoughtful, pragmatic problem solver, the kind of person we need to help get to the crux of and identify some solutions for homeless issues.

As I was unable to hear all of the interviews for the other committees, I'll limit my comments to these two committees.

Good luck to all the applicants.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rona.

Our next speaker is Michael Arusa.

And if you have speaker cards, please bring them up.

Okay.

Hello, members of the city council.

My name is Michael Arusa.

I want to um first of all just thank you for considering my candidacy.

Um I'm really I've been trying to get involved with uh local Rebuard City um housing advocacy organizations, um, like YMB Action and Yasmur City, and I um hope to have a chance to serve on the planning commission in order to help further the city's poor housing goals.

Um, I have um been attending all the planning commission meetings between um the previous interviews and today, just to ensure that uh I have um all the required context moving forward.

Um, should I be appointed to the planning commission?

So I include the reading through the objective design standards um staff report, um, as well as the recommended zoning changes that were um discussed in planning commission uh in the meeting before that as well.

Um apart from my candidacy, one thing I also would like to um note is um that I also uh enthusiastically support Dylan Finch's reappointment for planning commission.

He has been a really great planning commissioner throughout his term.

He has been engaging the community and he even runs a transit um book club in Fireside Books and more.

Um I just wanted to call that out.

I think it's been spectacular, and I hope to see him reappointed to Plan Commission as well.

Um I don't think I have much more to add that I didn't already say in my interview.

Um so thank you for taking the time and for considering me.

Thank you, Michael.

Our next speaker is Raksheath Mandayam.

I believe it's Rocky.

Thank you, Rocky.

Hi, it's I go by Rocky, uh, put my legal name like I usually do for these things.

Um, so thank you.

I did not realize I could give a supplementary uh bout of information here, but I took the city councils and um Chris Turkins' advice, and I attended in person the uh the meetings.

That was fun.

I even saw a little bit of drama in one of them that I attended, so that was fun.

So I don't have too much more to add.

I applied to the library board and the senior affairs commission, and it was hard to choose which one, so I applied to both.

And I will say, you know, earlier I had um had a good time teaching English to some senior immigrants.

And so I guess that's a good history of how it's hard to choose senior affairs commission or or literacy being more important that kind of combined the two.

Um but I wanted to say that since I've applied, it's been cool, you know, it's it's been kind of uh uh a back and forth where my interest in serving the community had had led me to apply, and also applying led me to kind of dig in and learn more about the community, and that was exciting.

And although I had driven past the uh the new center, I had not actually gone inside um until the senior affairs uh commission.

So that was a cool opportunity, and I am done, yield my time.

Thank you, Rocky.

Our next speaker is Edwin, who will be followed by Frida.

Hi, council members.

Good evening.

Great to be back up here again.

And I remember I kept saying that I like to apply my skills to and the applications that we can to the housing and humans concerns, and I believe that it's still as powerful as today.

And more than anything, I believe I have value in both sides of you know renting and owning a house.

I believe that you know it's pretty powerful to have ownership, yeah, ownership and property and specifically assets, and I believe that those owners do have the ability to you know continue the ownership and not have anything um compromised.

So I understand that perspective, but also understand that some people do need housing too.

Some people do need uh additional uh supplements to actually stay in the Bay Area.

And more than anything, there's a human element that connects us to to the residents of Rose City.

And I believe that once we start to publicize our our agenda or publicize our motives to get people involved and get people's perspectives into how we should run this board.

I believe that we can have a input be implemented into how into our operations and make it more effective.

And that's all I gotta say.

Thank you.

Thank you, Edwin.

Our next speaker is Frida Sanchez.

Welcome.

Well, good good evening, everyone.

Um I know you guys might be surprised to see me up here.

I am just 16 years old, but I have mentioned before that one of my biggest passions since I was a little kid was to be a leader, and I feel like um to I have been a part of so many programs that for that um the Redwood City um board, like has either gone to or have sp or has sponsored, and I have always enjoyed enjoyed like being a leader and being a part of my community.

And I just feel like being having like a chance to even apply to this, it's such a huge accomplishment for me.

Um to be here and speaking up.

I think it's it matters a lot to me, and I it is specifically when I join the human and housing concerns committee because I have met people who are homeless, and I have um not lived it, but my family has lived homelessness at a point, and it just brings out to me the importance of it, and to think that there's people in this city um who are not as fortunate as I am to have a home right now makes me really want to make a change for that.

And although I may be young, I feel like I could bring a lot of good set of values and the youth side.

I know um you guys, a lot of you guys have mentioned here, especially with boys that the youth are the future, and I feel like I would really want to start that future, although I may be young.

Like I said.

I feel like I would I am really passionate about this, and I am and I would be extremely committed to this cause.

Um I remember the emails they would send with the with the handbooks of what we read.

I think I read that three times because I was like trying to find a way to stand out, even though I may be young, but I feel like I would love to be a part of this, and I would love to continue growing in any possible way that I can.

But thank you guys for your time.

Thank you, Frida.

Turning now to our Zoom speakers.

We have four speakers, and our last speaker will be Janice.

Pardon, it will be Bill Newell.

He snuck in there.

All right.

We'll start with Chiara Murphy.

You can unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Welcome, Chiara.

Hi, um, hopefully you guys can hear me.

We can hear you.

Great.

Hi, I'm Ciara Murphy.

Apologies for not being there in person.

Um, you guys are impressive for working this late, but it's past my baby's bedtime.

Um, but I am an applicant for the library board, and I wanted to echo saying thank you to Councilmember Strugn for the recommendation to go to the board meeting.

Um it was very interesting to see the actual nitty-gritty of what the how the meetings ran in addition to reading the the minutes.

Um, there was also cake at the one I went to, so extra thank you.

Um I also really appreciated getting to know some library staff a little bit better and when I uh was the vote center lead at one of our vote centers in the main library, up in the community floor where I got to see the bees um for myself, which was very exciting to see some more of the things that the library board, together with the friends of the library board supports.

Um, and I would just like to reiterate my um interest in this uh important board and thank you for your consideration.

Thank you all.

Thank you, Kiara.

Our next speaker is Benjamin Aredondo.

All righty, hi everyone, good evening.

Can you guys hear me?

Yes, we can.

All right, awesome.

Thank you, Mayor and City Members, city council members.

Uh, thank you for your time and service to our community.

Um, I appreciate the opportunity to be considered for the Redwood City Planning Commission.

Uh, through my work at K uh as a case manager at Kinos Women Training Center, I've had the privilege of supporting individuals and families facing housing and other life challenges.

Um that experience has given me a deeper understanding of how the planning decisions affect residents giving the quality of life of Redwood City.

Um as a Redwood City resident, I would be honored to give back to the community, bring a thoughtful and community focused perspective, but also help and support responsible growth that benefits current and future generations here in Redwood City.

Again, thank you so much for your consideration tonight and hopefully um we all have something in our pockets down the line.

So good luck to everyone.

Thank you, Benjamin.

Our next speaker is Paul Boca Negra.

Good evening, Mayor Savallos, Council members.

My name is Paul Bocanera.

I live here in Eagle Hill community.

Uh and I serve uh our community in different capacities, but one of my uh strongest that I serve the community is working with the youth uh and working with the youth.

I've gotten an opportunity to reach out and work with their extended collaterals, their families, their parents, and realize that a lot of the issues that are plaguing our senior community are the same issues that our youth are uh uh struggling with.

And I think that I could be a bridge.

I would like to try to work to connect our local seniors with the youth population.

I think that there is a need, and I think it would be a great service uh to our community if I could commit to this, and that's something that I've I'm open to doing.

And I just want to thank you all for this opportunity and uh and allow me to apply for this position, and good luck to you, everyone.

Bye.

Thank you, Paul.

Our next speaker is Janice, who will be followed by Bill Newell.

Welcome, Janice.

Hi, good evening.

Um, my name is Janice Valoria.

I'm an applicant for the housing and Human Concerns committee.

Um, I just wanted to thank you for the water conservation report that was presented today, as well as for the staff, um, and all the work that they've done for that.

Um, I'd also like to recommend Katie Goodz as uh chair for the committee.

Watching her um and her leadership uh these last couple of meetings has really been a big part of why I um submitted my application and would love to continue working with her.

So um thank you.

Thank you all.

Thank you, Janice.

Our final speaker is Bill Newell.

Uh good evening, council members, um, mayor um Marquine Sabayas.

Um, I'm Bill Newell.

Um, as some of you may know, I'm one of two currently um incumbent remaining um members of the uh senior affairs commission right now.

There's myself and um Alfredo Choro.

Um we are unprecedented filling five positions tonight for our commission.

So I want to stress the importance of the appointments.

In particular, I want to point out that Michael Lynch is somebody who's been a um uh a past member, current a member of our commission.

He's also a veteran as well as a senior, and uh I would hope he would get he's applying for reappointment, and I would hope you would support that in addition.

Uh several other people have um come forward to me and wanting to know more about how they can serve on the commission, attended some of our meetings, and I learned about their background.

In particular, I want to um ask for your support for Angelo uh Pisani.

Angelo uh previously served as a um director over at the uh North Fair Oaks uh Senior Center for several years, so he's well versed with the um older adult senior um uh Spanish speaking population in that section of the city.

He's also a geriatric dentist who works with a lot of seniors for dental care out of his office in Sequoia Station.

Um the uh other person I want to point out to you, um, who you just uh heard of from a moment ago is Paul Boca Negra.

Paul's a little modest about his background.

He uh personally has been bringing his uh mother-in-law over to the senior center for as long as I've known, which is several years, and he reaches out to other seniors in the neighborhood.

He lives very close to the senior center in that community, so he's involved with the seniors in that community um in terms of just making sure that they get their meals.

Uh, the other two people that I'd like to mention is um, Mr.

Newell, sorry to interrupt, that's her time.

Yes, yes, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Newell.

Thank you, Mayor.

And with that, I'm happy to proceed with the appointments if there aren't any final questions from the council.

Not seeing any.

Let's keep going.

Thank you very much.

We'll try to make this as efficient as possible.

Uh, we'll uh start with the board of building review.

I'll read all of the names and again I'll read back, I'll repeat back your selection before we finalize it.

So for the Board of Building Review, we have two full term seats expiring May 31st, 2030.

When I call your name, if you can give me two names only, please.

We'll start.

I'm sorry, candidates.

We have four candidates tonight for the board of building review.

Enzo Constantini, Joanne Kurz, Daniel Navarro, and Herman Rossbach.

Again, two names, please.

We'll start with Council Member Chu.

Joanne Kurz and Daniel.

No, I'm sorry, Joanne Kurz and Herman Rossbach.

Thank you.

Councilmember Chu has selected Joanne Kurz and Herman Rossbach.

Councilmember Howard.

Joanne Kerr, Herman Rossbach.

Councilmember Howard has selected Joanne Kurz and Herman Rossbach.

Councilmember Howard.

Joanne Kurz and Daniel Navarro.

Councilmember Howard has selected Joanne Kurz and Daniel Navarro.

Councilmember Padilla.

Joanne Kurz and Daniel Navarro.

Thank you.

Councilmember Padilla has selected Joanne Kurz and Daniel Navarro.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Joanne Kurz and Herman Rossbach.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Aiken has selected Joanne Kurz and Herman Rossbach.

Mayor Martinez Sabayos.

Joanne Kerrz and Herman Rossbeck.

Thank you.

Mayor Martinez Saballos has selected Joanne Kurz and Herman Rossbach.

One moment, please.

Okay, thank you for the votes.

We have Joanne Kurz receiving a unanimous vote.

And she will fill the one full-term seat.

And then Herman Rossbach received five votes and will receive and will be seated for the other full-term seat.

Thank you.

Moving now to Housing and Human Concerns Committee.

The candidates before you are Nurshila Chand, Vanessa Correa, Max Disher, Augustine Espino Diaz, Katie Getz, Edwin Gonzalez, Scott Grenett, David Kasuf, Marlin Medina, Regina Mercerow, Frida Sanchez, Jennifer Tomasino, and Janice Valoria.

We have four full-term seats on the Housing and Human Concerns Committee expiring May 31st, 2030.

When I call your name, please state four names only.

We'll start with Councilmember G.

My apologies if I get the names pronunciation wrong.

Nursheela Chan.

Scott Granett.

Thank you.

Councilmember G has selected Nurshila Chand, Max Disher, Scott Grenett, and Janice Valoria.

Councilmember Howard.

Excuse me, Max Disher, Katie Getz, Scott Grenett, and Janice Faloria.

Thank you.

Councilmember Howard has selected Max Disher, Katie Getz, Scott Grenett, and Janice Valoria.

Councilmember Padilla.

Thank you.

Okay.

Max Disher.

Kate, how do you pronounce your last name, Katie?

Getz.

Katie Getz.

Edwin Gonzalez, Frida Sanchez.

Thank you.

Councilmember Padilla has selected Max Disher, Katie Getz, Edwin Gonzalez, and Frida Sanchez.

Councilmember Sturkin.

All right.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sturkin has selected Max Disher, Katie Getz, Edwin Gonzalez, and Frida Sanchez.

Councilmember Chu.

Max Disher.

Augustine Diaz.

Sorry.

Frida Sanchez, and Scott Granett.

Thank you.

Councilmember Chu has selected Max Disher, Augustine Espino Diaz, Scott Grenett, and Frida Sanchez.

Vice Mayor Aiken, please.

Nursilla Chand, Max Disher, Katie Getz, and Scott Grenett.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Aiken has selected Nursheela Chand, Max Disher, Katie Getz, and Scott Grinnett.

Mayor Martina Saballos, please.

Max Disher, Scott Grenett, Marlon Medina, and Frida Sanchez.

Thank you very much, and one moment, please.

Thank you.

We did get four candidates that received a majority vote.

Max Disher received a unanimous vote.

Katie Getz received four votes.

Scott Grenett received five votes.

And Frida Sanchez received four votes.

So those will be the four appointees.

Thank you.

Turning now to library board.

We have three full-term seats expiring June 30th, 2030.

The candidates for consideration are Caitlin Chambers, Suwaima Figueroa, Anthony Godluski, Daryl Holliday, Ann Lane, Chiara Murphy, Amy Swanson, and Lindsay Verma.

When I call your name, please state three names.

We'll start with Councilmember Howard.

Amy Amy Swanson.

Lindsay Verma.

And Anthony Godluski.

Godluski.

Godluski, thank you.

Councilmember Howard has selected Anthony Godluski, Amy Swanson, and Lindsay Verma.

Councilmember Padilla.

Thank you.

Amy Swanson, Lindsay Verma, is it she Kara Murphy?

Thank you.

Councilmember Padilla has selected Kiara Murphy, Amy Swanson, and Lindsay Verma.

Councilmember Sturkin.

Anthony Goduski.

Apologies.

Amy Swanson and Lindsay Verma.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sturkin has selected Anthony Godluski, Amy Swanson and Lindsay Verma.

Councilmember Chu.

Amy Swanson.

Lindsay Verma and Ciara Murphy.

Chiara Murphy.

Councilmember Chu has selected Chiara Murphy, Amy Swanson and Lindsay Verma.

Councilmember G, please.

Anthony Godluski.

Amy Swanson and Lindsay Verma.

Thank you.

Councilmember G has selected Anthony Godluski, Amy Swanson, and Lindsay Verma.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Chiara Murphy, Amy Swanson, and Lindsay Verma.

Vice Mayor Aiken has selected Chiara Murphy, Amy Swanson, and Lindsay Verma.

Mayor Martina Sabayos, please.

Amy, excuse me, Amy Swanson, Lindsay Verma, and Anthony God Lucy, excuse me.

Thank you.

Mayor Martinez Sabayos has selected Anthony Godluski, Amy Swanson, and Lindsay Verma.

One moment, please.

Thank you very much.

We did have three candidates who received a majority vote.

Anthony Govluski received four votes.

Amy Swanson received a unanimous vote.

And Lindsay Vermach also received a unanimous vote.

Thank you.

Moving now to Parks Recreation and Community Services Commission.

We have four full-term seats expiring May 31st, 2030.

And the candidates for consideration this evening are Natalie Badkar, Old Duz Berenge Farouche, Elise DeBiser, Zori Gomez, Alice Kaufman, Wendy Moltrup, Molly Neighbor, Zayn Razak, Ben Sario, Jason Simpson, Pratik Verma, and Siang or Becky Zhao.

When I call your name, please state four names.

We'll start with Councilmember Padilla.

Thank you.

In no particular order.

Alice Kaufman.

Ben Sario.

Elise DeBowser.

Natalie Badkar.

Thank you.

Councilmember Padilla has selected Natalie Badkar, Elise DeBiser, Alice Kaufman, and Ben Sario.

Councilmember Sturkin.

Elise de Beiser.

Alice Kaufman.

Ben Sario.

And Zayn Razak.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sturkin has selected Elise DeBiser, Alice Kaufman, Zayn Rozak, and Ben Sario.

Councilmember Chu.

Elise de Beiser, Alice Kaufman, Ben Sario, and Becky Zhu.

Sorry, what was the last one?

Becky Zhou.

Thank you.

Councilmember Chu has selected Elise de Beiser.

Alice Kaufman, Ben Sario, and Sion Becky Zhao.

Councilmember G, please.

Elise DeBizer.

Molly Neighbor, Zane Razick, Ben Sario.

Thank you.

Councilmember G has selected Elise DeBizer, Molly Neighbor, Zayn Rezak, and Ben Sario.

Councilmember Howard.

Elise DeBizer, Alice Kaufman, Ben Sirio, and Molly Neighbor.

Thank you.

Councilmember Howard has selected Elise DeBiser, Alice Kaufman, Molly Neighbor, and Ben Sario.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Old Duz Baron Jufush, Elise de Beiser, Alice Kaufman, and Ben Sirio.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Aiken has selected Old Duz Berenge Fourouche, Elise DeBizer, Alice Kaufman, and Ben Sario.

Mayor Martinez Saballos, please.

Elise DeBeiser.

Molly Neighbor, Zayn Razak, and Ben Sirio.

Thank you very much.

Mayor Martinez Saballos has selected Elise DeBizer, Molly Neighbor, Zayn Razak, and Ben Sario.

One moment, please.

Thank you.

So we had three candidates that received a majority vote.

Elise DeBizer received a unanimous vote.

Alice Kaufman received five votes.

And Ben Sario received a unanimous vote.

So since we need four seats filled, we will have to go through another round for one more candidate.

So cross out the names.

Okay.

So the candidates remaining are Natalie Badkar, Ulduz Bareng Farouche, Zori Gomez, Wendy Moultra, Molly Neighbor, Zane Razak, Jason Simpson, Pratik Verma, and Siang Becky Zhao.

When I call your name, please state one name only, and we'll start with Councilmember Sturkin.

Zane Rizak.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sturkin has selected Zayn Rozak.

Councilmember Chu.

Zayn Razak.

Thank you.

Councilmember Chu has selected Zayn Razak.

Councilmember G.

Zayn Razak.

Thank you.

Councilmember G has selected Zayn Rozak.

Councilmember Howard.

Molly Neighbor.

Councilmember Howard has selected Molly Neighbor.

Councilmember Padilla.

Zayn Rizak.

Councilmember Padilla has selected Zane Razak.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Molly Neighbor.

Molly Vice Mayor Aiken has selected Molly Neighbor and Mayor Martinez Saballos, please.

Zane Razak.

Thank you.

Mayor Martinez Saballos has selected Zayn Razak, and with five votes, Zayn Razak has been appointed to the fourth seat on the Parks and Rec Commission.

Thank you very much.

And now for the Planning Commission.

We have two full-term seats expiring June 30th, 2030.

The applicants for consideration are Benjamin Arredondo, Michael Arusa Cruz, Laird Bennian, Cynthia Bickerstaff, Christopher Cicero, Dylan Finch, Jack Gertridge, Bernadette Hadniki, Dennis Murphy, Jose Rubio Sepeda, Eric San, Chris Smith, Jason Webb, and Alison Zom.

When I call your name, please state two names.

And we'll start with Councilmember Chu.

Michael Aruso and Dylan Finch.

Councilmember Chu has selected Michael Arusa and Dylan Finch.

Councilmember G.

Dylan Finch.

Jason Webb.

Councilmember G has selected Dylan Finch and Jason Webb.

Councilmember Howard.

Dylan Finch and Dennis Murphy.

Councilmember Howard has selected Dylan Finch and Dennis Murphy.

Councilmember Padilla.

Dylan Finch and Benjamin.

Oh, sorry, Michael Arusa.

Thank you.

Councilmember Padilla has selected Michael Arusa Cruz and Dylan Finch.

Councilmember Sturkin.

Dylan Finch and Michael Arusa.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sturkin has selected Michael Arusa and Dylan Finch.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Dylan Finch and Dennis Murphy.

Vice Mayor Aiken has selected Dylan Finch and Dennis Murphy.

Mayor Martinez Saballos.

Dylan Finch and Michael Arusa Cruz with four votes and Dylan Finch with a unanimous vote.

Thank you.

And finally, for the senior affairs commission, we have five total seats.

Three of those seats are full term, expiring May 31st, 2030.

And we'll begin with the full-term seats first, and then we'll move to the partial term seats, of which we have two.

So for the full seats, and for the candidates that are up for consideration this evening, we have Paul Bocanegra, Shafon, Cecilia Fay, David Sue, Nancy Keegan, Nino Lazaro, Michael Lynch, Roxheet, Rocky Mandayam, Angelo Pisani, and Ira Yenko.

So at this time, when I call your name, just state the three names for the for the full-term seats expiring May 31st, 2030.

And we'll start with Councilmember G.

David Sue.

Nina Lazaro and Michael Lynch.

Councilmember G has selected David Sue, Nina Lazaro, and Michael Lynch.

Councilmember Howard, please.

Paul Bocanegra, Nancy Keegan, Michael Lynch.

Councilmember Howard has selected Paul Bocanegra, Nancy Keegan, and Michael Lynch.

Councilmember Padilla.

Michael Lynch, Paul Bocanegra, and Cecilia Faye.

Thank you.

Councilmember Padilla has selected Paul Bocanegra, Cecilia Faye, and Michael Lynch.

Councilmember Sturkin.

Cecilia Faye.

Angelo Pisani.

And Paula Bocanegra.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sturkin has selected Paul Bocanegra, Cecilia Faye, and Angelo Pisani.

Councilmember Chu.

Michael Lynch.

This is a hard one.

Paul Bocca Negra and David Sue.

Thank you.

Councilmember Chu has selected Paul Bocca Negra, David Sue, and Michael Lynch.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Cecilia Faye.

Nancy Keegan.

And Marty Yee.

Sorry, I don't have Marty Ye on the list.

Does she mean Michael?

Okay, let me try again.

Sorry about that.

And he withdrew his application before tonight.

So sorry.

Cecilia Faye.

Nancy Keegan.

And David Sue.

Thank you.

So Vice Mayor Aiken has selected Cecilia Fay, David Sue, and Nancy Keegan.

Mayor Martinez Saballos, please.

Michael Lynch.

David Sue.

And Cecilia Faye.

Thank you.

Mayor Martina Saballos has selected Cecilia Fay, David Sue, and Michael Lynch.

One moment while we tally.

Thank you.

So we do have one who received five votes, Michael Lynch.

Then we have a three-way tie between three of the candidates.

So we will proceed with another round of voting to break the tie.

So Paul, I'm sorry, Michael Lynch will get the one full term seat on the senior affairs commission.

And we'll do another round of voting, please to break the three-way tie.

So the candidates left Paul Boccanegra, Cecilia Fay, David Shu, Nancy Keegan, Nino Lazzaro, Roxheet, Rocky Mandayam, Angelo Pisani, and Ira Yanko.

Basically everyone except Michael Lynch.

Yep.

Thank you.

And we'll start with Councilmember G.

Two names, please.

Thank you.

Excuse me, Cecilia Fay, David Su.

Thank you.

Councilmember G has selected Cecilia Faye and David Sue.

Councilmember Howard, please.

Paul Bocanegra.

And Rocky Mandayam.

Thank you.

Councilmember Howard has selected Paul Bocanegra and Rocky Mandayam.

Councilmember Padilla.

Cecilia Faye and Paul Bocanegra.

Thank you.

Councilmember Padilla has selected Paul Bocca Negra and Cecilia Fay.

Council Member Sturkin.

Cecilia Faye and Paul Bocanegra.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sturkin has selected Paul Bocca Negra and Cecilia Fay.

Councilmember Chu.

Um I'll go with Paul Bocanegra and Roxheith Mandayam.

Thank you.

Councilmember Chu has selected Paul Bocanegra and Rocky Mandayam.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

Cecilia Chu and David Sue.

Cecilia Faye confirming.

Pardon?

You meant Cecilia Fay.

Cecilia Fay.

Thank you.

And the other one, please.

David Sue.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Aiken has selected Cecilia Faye and David Sue.

Mayor Martinez Sabayos, please.

Cecilia Faye and David Shue.

Thank you.

Mayor Martinez Saballos has selected Cecilia Faye and David Shu.

One moment.

Thank you.

We did receive two applicants who received a majority vote.

Paul Bocanegra with four votes, and Cecilia Fay with five votes.

So we filled the three full-term seats.

Thank you very much for that.

And finally, we'll do the partial term seats on the senior affairs commission.

And there are two partial term seats.

Okay.

So the candidates remaining, David Shu, Nancy Keegan, Nino Lazzaro, Rocky Mandayam, Angelo Pisani, and Ira Yenko.

And when I call your name, please state two names only.

And we'll start with Councilmember Howard.

Nancy Keegan and Rocky Mandayam.

Councilmember Howard has selected Nancy Keegan and Rocky Mandayam.

Councilmember Padilla.

Nancy Keegan and Angelo Pisani.

Thank you.

Councilmember Padilla has selected Nancy Keegan and Angelo Pisani.

Council Member Sturkin.

David Sue and Rocky Mandayan.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sturkin has selected David Sue and Rocky Mendiam.

Councilmember Chu.

David Sue and Rocky Mundiam.

Thank you.

Councilmember Chu has selected David Sue and Rocky Mendiam.

Council Member G.

David Sue.

Nancy Keegan.

Councilmember G has selected David Sue and Nancy Keegan.

Vice Mayor Aiken.

David Sue and Nancy Keegan.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Aiken has selected David Sue and Nancy Keegan.

Mayor Martinez Sabayos, please.

David Sue and Nancy Keegan.

Thank you.

Mayor Martina Sabayos has selected David Sue and Nancy Keegan.

Thank you.

So the two partial term seats on the senior affairs commission will be David Sue with five votes and Nancy Keegan also with five votes.

Thank you very much.

That concludes the tally.

And I believe we have one more vote to take to keep the applicant pool open through January 31st, 2027.

Mr.

Mayor, I'll make the motion.

Okay, thank you, Councilmember G.

Is there a second?

Second.

Perfect.

Could we get elbow, please?

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you.

Amazing.

Thank you, everyone for applying for being with us tonight, and to our incredible city clerk team for doing the recruitment and getting all of these incredible applicants through the process.

So we really appreciate it.

And we will keep moving to item 10 items from City Council subcommittees.

And we'll go with 10 A and our City Clerk.

Jessica Castro has a presentation for us.

Thank you, Mayor Vice Mayor, and City Council.

Um Jessica Castro, your city clerk.

And the item before you this evening is an update on legislation that creates significant changes to modernize California's open meeting laws, also known as the Brown Act.

Senate Bill 707 was enacted in 2025, with some provisions taking effect the beginning of this year, January 1st, 2026, and some provisions set to take effect July 1st, 2026.

At its meeting on May 13th of this year, the City Council's governance subcommittee comprised of Mayor Martina Saballos, Vice Mayor Aiken, and Councilmember G received an update on SB 707 that included staff recommendations in six key policy areas.

Tonight's presentation will offer a high-level overview of the law, cover the provisions discussed and recommended by the governance subcommittee, and share a brief implementation timeline.

At the conclusion of the presentation, we'll seek council's approval of a technology disruption policy and ask individual city council member feedback on the provisions to help staff guide implementation.

So as we go through the presentation tonight, I'll ask that you keep these two questions in mind.

Do you have any questions regarding the requirements of SB 707?

And are there any questions regarding staff's proposed approach to implementing SB 707?

And for a quick overview, SB 707 is a really complex piece of legislation with almost 30 provisions that really aim to clarify existing law and impose new laws that increase access, transparency, and accountability.

In Redwood City, many provisions are already in place, while some will require minimal changes to our current policies and practices.

Staff prepared a table of all the provisions enacted by SB 707, including the City Clerk's Office's proposed implementation actions, which was attachment A to the agenda packet.

Tonight we'll be discussing the key elements only.

However, should the council have specific questions about any of the other provisions, staff has prepared to discuss.

Through all the aspects of SB 707 implementation, the city seeks to underscore the principles of transparency, consistency, effectiveness, and efficiency of the resources.

While SB 707 allows greater flexibility for certain Brown Act bodies, staff and the subcommittee encourage all Redwood City legislative bodies to go beyond minimum requirements and implement practices that encourage meaningful community access to public meetings conducted by the city.

The first key element we'll be discussing is likely one of the most consequential mandates created by SB 707, which is a requirement for all legislative bodies to include an opportunity for the public to attend all open and public meetings by a two-way telephonic or two-way audiovisual platform, for example, Zoom, unless adequate telephonic or internet service is not operational at the meeting location.

In this case, all legislative bodies means that only the city council must provide a two-way audiovisual option.

However, all meetings of Redwood City legislative bodies currently offer this feature.

Staff in the subcommittee recommend maintaining this practice to ensure consistency, transparency, and access for our community members.

The subcommittee also recommends clarifying in the guide to city council communication and business that the city's obligations as they relate to technology support are limited to ensuring the city's technology functionality at the meeting location and not that of other agency representatives or community members who may be participating from other locations.

In light of the virtual meeting requirement, the law also requires the adoption of a policy outlining a process to diagnosing and resolving technology disruption during public meetings.

The law requires that the policy only apply to the city council.

However, the city has historically aligned policies and procedures across all legislative bodies, which would include city council subcommittees and cities boards, commissions, and committees.

Staff and the subcommittee recommend the same approach for this policy.

Following the governance subcommittee's review of the draft policy, staff made further refinements to ensure that the requirements imposed on the council were right-sized for all other Brown Act bodies.

The refined policy was included with the staff report as attachment B.

And for just a few key features of the policy, it'll prescribe steps and timing for diagnosing and restoring virtual meeting access.

It gives authority for the city council to either recess the open session or meet in an agendized closed session while staff is attempting to restore virtual meeting access.

Should efforts to restore service be unsuccessful, the policy allows the legislative body to adopt findings that continue the meeting without Zoom outweighs the public interest in attending the meeting remotely via Zoom.

This determination is nuanced and it'll be heavily impacted by factors such as remaining items on the agenda, the number of existing Zoom attendees at the time of service disruption, and whether there are statutory deadlines impacting the items yet to be heard.

For example, if the policy was in place for tonight's meeting and the budget adoption had been heard when a technical disruption occurred, staff would work dutifully to restore Zoom service.

If Zoom could not be restored, the mayor, in coordination with the city manager, city clerk, and city attorney, would need to consider whether the circumstances warranted meeting adjournment or continuing to hold the meeting.

In the case of the budget tonight, there is a statutory requirement to adopt the budget by June 30th.

And since this is our last meeting scheduled in June, it could be found that continuing the meeting without Zoom in order to hear the item in a timely manner outweighs the public's interest in joining via Zoom.

Then a roll call vote would be taken to adopt any fine things to continue with the meeting.

Staff is also currently working on a resource to help presiding officers and staff navigate technology disruptions and help determine the best course of action.

This means our staff liaisons for our subcommittees and our BCCs.

The law requires that this report this policy be adopted by the full council not on consent, so future changes will require City Council discussion and approval.

SB 707 requires the city council to adopt the policy by July 1st, 2026.

However, the subcommittee supported a delayed implementation for all other legislative bodies to align with the rollout of our new agenda management system, which we plan to launch this fall.

Another key consequential feature of SB 707 is the requirement to translate the agendas of the legislative body in jurisdictions with populations of non-English speakers that exceed certain thresholds.

According to the most recent American community survey, our community includes 31% of residents who speak Spanish, and of those 31%, about 61% speak English less than very well.

So Redwood City does meet the threshold for this requirement, and that means that beginning July 1st, agendas for all city council meetings will be translated into Spanish and posted prominently alongside agendas in English on the city's website and at the physical meeting location.

The legislation allows translation through automated translation technology like Google Translate, and it does not hold the city liable for the accuracy of the translation.

This legislation also requires the city council make a physical location available for members of the public to post their own translations, and the location must be open to the public and in reasonable proximity to where agendas are posted.

As with previous provisions, staff in the subcommittee recommend extending the requirement to translate agendas to all legislative bodies for consistency, not just the city council.

The subcommittee recommends delaying implementation also for non-city council agendas to align with the upcoming agenda management system, again expected this fall.

So we'll plan to start translating city council agendas July 1st and the City Council subcommittees and BCCs in the fall.

Okay.

SB 707 also seeks to expand engagement in public meetings of subsidiary bodies.

So subcommittees and boards and commissions by allowing eligible subsidiary bodies to seek council approval to allow members to meet fully remotely.

While this provision would allow some of the members, some of the bodies to meet remotely, the city would still be required to have a physical meeting location from which community members could participate and provide public comment from.

Eligible subsidiary body to exercise this provision, the item must be heard in open session within 60 days of receiving the request, at which time the council would discuss the merits of the request, and certain findings must be made to allow the use of this provision, and if approved, it must be reauthorized by the city council every six months.

This legislation authorizes the city council to also prohibit eligible subsidiary bodies from using teleconference at any time.

So, because of the inability to apply this provision uniformly and at the risk of creating confusion and uncertainty about meeting practices for our community members, staff does not recommend operationalizing this provision and recommends proactively informing staff liaisons of this decision.

SB 707 also enables multi-jurisdictional bodies to hold meetings all remotely, provided various requirements are met.

For Redwood City, this applies to our two by two by two committees with the Belmont Redwood Shore School District and with the Redwood City School District and Sequoia Union High School District.

A majority of the members must attend from one or more physical locations, and all members who receive compensation, which conceivably is every single member, must participate from a public physical location.

The agenda must identify the remote members and the remote members must be at least 20 miles from any physical meeting location in order to be able to participate remotely.

Remote participants must include audio and video technology, and it only applies to two meetings per year for bodies that meet one time a year a month or less.

Currently, the city's two by two by twos operate in a similar manner with members of each jurisdiction attending the meeting virtually from an agendized location within their respective jurisdictional boundaries.

Generally, these meetings occur three times per year.

Because the current meeting practices are supported by the Brown Act and offer consistency and transparency for the public.

Staff in the governance subcommittee does not recommend implementing this provision and supports maintaining the current meeting practices for our two by two by twos.

SB 707 also requires eligible legislative bodies, the city council in this case, to make reasonable efforts to engage groups that do not traditionally participate in meetings.

The legislation allows broad discretion over meeting outreach requirements, allows cities to tailor efforts to their specific community needs.

Currently, City Council agendas are routinely distributed to almost 3,000 individuals and entities that have signed up to receive agenda notifications via email and is shared broadly through various social media channels.

Some examples of those recipients, Casa Circulo, Faith in Action, Patch, Palo Alto Daily Post, KNTV or NBC Bay Area, our various labor organizations such as the Carpenter's Local 217, Parks and Arts Foundation, Redwood City Education Foundation, Kenyatta College, Stanford, Midpen, 4Cs, and Sienna Youth Center.

Just a couple of examples.

The subcommittee discussed the city's current outreach practices and suggested additional media partners to include in agenda publication notices.

We're seeking individual city council input tonight on whether additional efforts should be made to engage in underrepresented groups for city council meetings.

Any additional efforts will require coordination with the city manager's office communications division.

And now for implementation, as with other all other jurisdictions in California, Redwood City is preparing to stand up a pretty complex regulatory framework that impacts all of our city council members, our BCC members, community members, and city staff on a pretty short timeline.

This work has and will continue to create workload impacts for the city clerk's office and all city staff who support council subcommittees and BCCs.

And as with any new regulatory framework, we anticipate there will be some implementation challenges and issues that'll need to be worked through over time.

And we do ask for your patience and flexibility from the public stakeholders as we navigate implementation and, of course, we refine as we go.

On the screen is a quick implementation timeline.

We have many provisions that have already taken effect, and others will begin July 1st.

Staff is prepared to roll out the technology disruption policy and city council agenda translation beginning July 1st, and we'll continue to work on new training resources for staff liaisons and BCC members.

We expect the new agenda management system to be operable by November, and we'll align implementation of the disruption policy and agenda translation with those activities.

We'll also work with the governance subcommittee to revise the city council, the guide to city council communications and business and return to the city council at a future date to consider any changes prompted by SB 707.

And finally, the recommendations this evening, we do need to adopt the Brown Eck Technology Disruption Policy as recommended by the governance subcommittee.

And of course, receive the update, and we'll take any city council member feedback on key aspects of SB 707 related to virtual meeting participation, agenda translation, remote for remote meetings for eligible subsidiary bodies, remote meetings for multi-jurisdictional bodies, and community engagement efforts.

So that concludes the presentation.

I do want to take a quick moment to thank our wonderful management analyst, Kimberly Daniel.

She was the mastermind behind all of the many SB 707 provisions that made us pretty crazy.

So she was able to put it in a nice place and tie it up with a pretty bow.

And thank you, Kimberly, for all your work on that.

So with that, I'll take any questions.

Thank you, Jessica, and thank you, Kimberly, for all the great work walking us through this uh really complicated state bill.

Not seeing any questions, so I'll turn it back to you all for public comment.

Don't have any speaker cards.

I don't know that we have any speakers left.

So anybody on Zoom.

Seeing none, Mayor.

Thank you again.

And I'll bring it back to our colleagues for any questions or comments.

Not seeing any.

Councilmember Jr.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just want to say thank you to everyone.

This is not easy to implement.

It's not even easy to read.

And you didn't cover every item in the bill.

So thank you to everyone.

The most troubling part is just the cost of implementation.

I mean, we're just gonna have to roll with it because last time I checked July 1 was like next week, and we have to kind of do it because that's what the bill says, and that's what the law was signed.

So if there's any way to track implementation costs, I think we would like to know what, you know, because of the rolling schedule of implementation, maybe at the mid-year budget.

Just to reflect back, what did it cost us to implement SB 707?

I think, you know, I've said it here during the budget process.

I'm not a fan of writing a blank check.

This is a law we have to comply with, and we should know how much it costs us to do this.

So, and but I think it's it's good policy to be engaging and to reach out to communities, but we need to have the funding to do it, and that didn't come with this bill.

So, again, thank you to everyone that did this, and to the extent we can help make it a little easier.

Please feel free to reach out.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Go to council member Padio.

Thank you for the presentation.

And I think you shared some statistics that definitely sat with me that was 31%.

I think you said of our Redwood City residents.

I think was it or are not our Spanish speaking primarily?

And then I think you said of that percentage, sixty-one percent don't feel very confident with the English that they have.

So I think, you know, given everything my colleagues said, implementation is expensive, but I think you know, something we all gather around is how important community engagement is.

And even though some things are difficult, it doesn't mean that they're not worthy.

Um, I know I heard Google translate, so I just want to make sure that when we when we are translating things, I don't want to just check the box and saying we're being compliant and we're translating.

I want to make sure there's quality translations.

I've had friends who've used all kinds of free servers, and I've looked at it and said, Oh, that that is not what that says.

So I just good intentions, but I want to make sure if we're doing it, um, we're doing it right, and we're not, because I think what's worse than someone not having information is having misinformation or inaccurate information.

So I just want to make sure that we're um doing right by our translations and engaging our community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Go to Councilmember Chu and then the vice Mayor.

Yeah, um, just really briefly, thank you for all your hard work on this.

Yeah, I agree.

It was it was uh a handful.

Um, and again, happy to accommodate anything we can do within the bounds of the law to make your life easier.

Um I do agree for our community that translation is essential, and I I'm actually really happy that we're doing that, even if it does come in a cost.

I think especially uh the the Spanish translation is is a really important thing.

And and I imagine there are other languages in our community.

I mean, you didn't mean you know, I would be interested in even seeing what the costs of that are and considering additional languages as well, as there's need.

Um, and then to to Councilmember Padilla's point, like uh, you know, tech is getting really good, just really making sure we have best in show um translation tech um within a reasonable budget.

Um so we're happy to support you in any way we can.

Thank you, Councilmember Vice Mayor.

So I just I just want to echo what uh Councilmember G said, you know, this is what's called an unfunded mandate.

And you know, there are so I just and I really feel for staff, you know, needing to, on top of everything else that you already have to do, have these additional mandates.

So I myself am fully supportive of staff's recommendations.

I do not want to make your job harder.

I do not want to burden our budget more.

So I just trust you.

I I trust your recommendations, I trust your implementation.

There are a lot of things we need to do that are good things to do.

And you know, but I I support staff's recommendations.

I don't want to put more work on you.

We don't have the money already.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Not Councilmember Sergen.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you very much, uh, all the staff that uh put work into this.

I'm so glad we're doing this.

I think it's overdue, but I do understand that you know we have not yet had the resources to do it, and so um just to echo some of my colleagues' comments, you know, with regards to uh the translation.

Um I appreciate that the bill gives us the flexibility to start with you know Google Translate, but I I definitely echo my colleagues and I appreciate in the staff report the recommendation or the suggestion that um we could use that that it that documents could be uh proofed um with the support of cities certified bilingual staff.

So that is great to hear, and I would I hope that we can have that be the baseline.

Um you know, you know, when I uh were to HIP housing, I would take the first stab at translating our uh rooms for red flyer, which we get in our inboxes each month, right?

And then I'd always would check it um with uh colleagues who are bilingual.

So that's just that was part of my process that was built in.

Um then uh with the recommendation regarding um additional outlets.

I support the outlets that were recommended by the governance subcommittee, uh, you know, Singtao uh Pensa 360 local school newspapers, especially after we heard that from one of the BCC applicants about that, right?

Um and I also want to suggest um, you know, news for Chinese and El Repertor, um both circulate here in Robert City.

Though to Council Member G's point, happy to maybe start with the list you came up with and then maybe reevaluate at the mid-year budget and see what capacity we have to do more, if any, right.

Um so yeah, supportive of where you're headed with this.

Um would love to see a little what do you call it?

Bulletin board in like Courthouse Square.

That's the only thing I'll put out there in terms of a location to post.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

I'll seeing anyone else's lights on.

Um thank you all for the comments.

This as somebody who sits on governance, this bill was a lot to unpack.

Kimberly and Jessica, thank you for the presentation, both presentations, because um this is so much more complex than I think how it reads on paper, right?

And I mean the flexibilities that are mentioned in this bill aren't aren't as simple as they're promoted.

We um I remember hearing from our two by two committee members with uh with the school districts about how excited they were about potentially being able to take that meeting online just for us to find out that no, actually someone's always gonna have to be in person, right?

And so it removed the flexibility that we thought it was giving us.

And the 20 mile radius is a whole other problem if you're working 20 21 miles away, right?

So there are there's just so much nuance and um and complexity to this, and I think the staff proposal is realistic about staff capacity and also how quickly we can implement so um really grateful for the work so far and uh and yet more work to come, but uh appreciate this so far, and um, really excited about what the opportunity that this presents uh for our uh neighbors who aren't a hundred percent uh bilingual in English.

This is a way for them to connect with us.

So um I'll leave it there and uh we'll entertain any motions, Councilmember Chu.

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Perfect.

That was a motion from Council Member Chu and a second from Councilmember G.

Could we get a vote, please?

The motion passes unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, everyone.

We'll keep moving to item 11 matters of council interest.

And I have a brief announcement.

I'd like to announce the formation of two new ad hoc committees.

First, I'm establishing a project labor agreement ad hoc committee and appointing council members Jeff G and Chris Sirkin and myself to the committee.

The purpose of this committee will be to explore and assist the city manager in bringing forward for city council consideration a potential project labor agreement or PLA policy options, including the evaluation of applicable, excuse me, applicability to future city capital projects, workforce considerations, project delivery impacts, and potential cost implications by December 2026.

And second, uh I'm also forming an intergovernmental relations ad hoc committee, which will be comprised of the vice mayor, vice mayor Aiken, Councilmember G, and myself to collaborate with city staff on intergovernmental relations matters, including engagement with regional, county, state, federal, and affiliated agencies and organizations, identifying opportunities to advance city priorities through partnerships and advocacy, and provide input on strategic initiatives involving external governmental entities with the goal of making recommendations to the full council by December 2027.

And that takes us to item 11A, City Council member report of meetings and conferences attended.

Not seeing oh, Councilmember Howard, please.

Well, I did want to mention this on uh June 18th.

Last week, I went to Thread Talks, which was sponsored.

I think I know there were many of us there.

Uh, sponsored by Sam Ceda.

And the speakers were really, really good, very interesting people.

Ben Jaros uh from the Hoover Institute talked about the wealth tax and how it won't work.

And then um, let me see.

Patrick McLaughlin was very interesting from the Hoover Institute, talking about the price of neglect when it comes to regulations.

Regulations need maintenance, they're like infrastructure.

We need to review them and make sure that they're pertinent and that they still apply.

Uh California has the most regulation in the country.

Shouldn't surprise any of us.

San Mateo County still has a regulation on the books from nineteen forty-five charging fortune tellers for doing fortune telling.

And so there are fees on the books that shouldn't even be there anymore.

So it was a very I thought he was very interesting.

And then Cara Newport from Fyloli gave us a lovely view of the Fyloli property and its purpose.

And Cecilia Phillips from KQED.

Check, please.

Uh Bay Area.

She was there and she was fun to listen to.

So it was really a very group, but boy, I learned a lot in that one session.

I'm really glad I went.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Howard, Councilmember Chu.

Uh, on Thursday, uh, June eighteenth, or sorry, yeah, Thursday, June 18th, I went to the Association of Bay Area Government uh Assembly meeting.

Um, it was really interesting.

Uh, obviously, talked about um transportation issues and plans to sort of uh further uh improve and enhance uh collaboration between cities.

Um, and uh I'll leave it there given that given the hour was terrific.

Thank you, Councilmember Chu, and Councilmember Howard, don't see anyone else.

We'll move to eleven B City Council committee reports, which we have none of today.

So we'll go to our city manager for eleven C.

Great, thank you.

Just a real quick reminder that this Thursday there will be the tour at Silicon Valley Clean Water for those who are able to attend.

Um tomorrow we'll send out a detailed email on carpooling options and and whatnot and whatnot, but uh probably a couple hours on Thursday afternoon, so if if uh council members have the time, um I think we have several staff members that will be there as well.

So just wanted to throw that that reminder out.

Thank you, Mayor.

Excuse me, thank you, City Manager.

With that, we'll move to item twelve closed session.

We'll now adjourn to closed session to discuss existing litigation as identified on the agenda.

Before we move to closed session, I'd like to ask the city clerk if there's any public comment on the closed session item.

Thank you, Mayor I'm not seeing any uh last call to anyone online who would like to get public comment on the closed session item this evening.

No public comment, Mayor.

Great.

Thank you.

And as there will be no reportable action following the closed session, we'll adjourn the meeting immediately following closed session, and the city council will not return back to the days.

With that, I thank you all for joining tonight's city council meeting.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, July seventh.

I wish you all a great evening and week ahead.

Thank you.

El turismo compartier de los que se transforman los últimos no.