The South San Francisco City Council held a regular meeting on January 24, 2024, at 6:30 PM in the Council Chambers. The meeting included a proclamation, council comments, public comments, consent calendar approvals, and several administrative business items. All consent items and most discussion items were approved unanimously, with one item passing 4-1.
So we'll just have one item in the closed session this evening. Thank you. And do we have any announcements from staff? We do not have announcements this evening. All right. That means moving on to proclamations and presentations. Thank you, Mayor Coleman. Before we move on, uh Madam City Manager, what item from closed session will we not be hearing tonight. It's item 13. 13. Thank you. Moving on to presentation number one is a proclamation recognizing National Gun Violence Survivors Week, January 22nd through January 26, 2024. Sure, I can leave this one off. So this week marks the sixth annual National Gun Violence Survivors Week, and it is a time when we come together to honor and amplify the stories and voices of gun violence survivors who live with the impact of gun violence every day of the year. And so just this past week, I had the opportunity to travel to Washington, DC for the U.S. conference of mayors, and there I met with uh some advocates um against gun violence, and they invited me and I graciously signed um a form that allowed me to join mayors against illegal guns to really join the fight against gun violence uh throughout the country. And I know our our city of South San Francisco, we uh are doing a lot when it comes to addressing gun violence. We uh host we have hosted multiple anonymous gun buyback programs, uh partnering with our county of San Mateo, and we also have a gun storage and lock ordinance uh that we passed about a couple years ago. And uh of course there's always more we can do, and I'm looking forward to working with our city staff, our police department, and our and my colleagues, of course, to addressing gun violence and seeing how many other ways that we can really reduce that here. Every day in America, at least 120 people are shot and killed, more than 200 are shot and wounded, and countless others experienced trauma from gun violence. And um, you know, early February, you know, by early February, more people are killed with guns in the US than are killed with guns in any other high income country in the entire year. Tragically, our gun death rate is 13 times that of our pure countries, and sometimes it really hits closer than you would think at home. This week marks this week also marks the anniversary of the two deadly mass shootings at Half Moon Bay and Montreal Park here in California. So during National Gun Violence Survivors Week, we really recommit ourselves to honoring survivors with action. And so I have this proclamation and I am uh honored to present this to our uh our police chief Scott Campbell. Uh good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Councilmember Scott Campbell, your chief of police. Uh first and foremost, our hearts go out to those that have lost loved ones due to uh gun violence and blessings to those uh survivors that are out there. We all know the impacts that it has on them and their families. Uh I could ensure you that your police department is doing the best that they can to prevent gun violence from happening in South San Francisco. In 2023, uh we encountered 38 individuals with illegal firearms or assault weapons who are safely taken into custody. That is a uh 70 per 17 percent increase from 2022. So um the guns are out there. We're doing our best to safely uh take those guns off the streets and hold people accountable that are gonna use those to cause harm. Once again, thank you. I'm honored to receive the proclamation. Thank you. Moving on to council comments and requests. Who would like to start off? I can go first. Mine is not very extensive. Um, I want to thank uh the mayor for hosting which I hope it will be an annual lunar new year celebration that we've been doing. Um it was great. The crowd um it was a f packed room. Um and the lion dance performance was fantastic. Um I appreciate kind of just us recognizing the the multiple cultures that we celebrate in South San Francisco. We are a very welcoming inclusive city, and we keep showing that. And the and I know that Unar New Year's are very um festive celebrations, so I look forward to kind of seeing um the celebrations throughout South San Francisco. I look forward to kind of seeing the celebrations throughout South San Francisco. And I think it was great that we had Bulba and Dimsom there. I think that was one of the major attractions for people.