The South San Francisco City Council held its regular meeting on Wednesday, December 11, 2024, at 6:30 PM in the Council Chambers at the Library Parks & Recreation Building. All five councilmembers were present: Mayor Eddie Flores, Vice Mayor Mark Addiego, and Councilmembers James Coleman, Mark Nagales, and Buenaflor Nicolas. The agenda included a brief Successor Agency meeting, staff announcements, three presentations, public comments, a consent calendar, a public hearing on the CDBG Annual Action Plan amendment, administrative business items, and council committee discussions. The meeting also included a closed session for labor and real property negotiations.
The City Council approved the following consent items unanimously (items 4-15):
Here. Councilmember Nicholas. Present. Vice Mayor Adiego. Here. Mayor Flores. Present. Now I would like to call Charlie Peretti, who is our uh clinician, uh, to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance this evening. Charlie, please uh approach the podium. May we all please stand and follow the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which stands under God with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much. Moving on, uh agenda review. We have no changes to the agenda, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Next uh item. Are there any living act disclosures the council has to report? Thank you. We'll move along to announcements from staff. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Councilmember Scott Campbell, Chief of Police. I'm honored this evening to introduce and welcome our mental health clinician, Charlie Prette to our South San Francisco community. Charlie joined our department with the nonprofit Star Vista in April of 2024. She discovered she had a passion for helping people navigate crisis and decided to pursue education and social work and therapy. She holds an AA in communication from Chabot College, a BA in sociology from Mills College, and a master's in social work from the University of Southern California. Graduating with honors from all our programs. We are very excited to have Charlie working with our city, as she has already proven time and time again to be an asset to our community members as well as our department. As you're all aware, through this partnership, we have seen a significant decrease in mental health commitments. And we continue to see an additional decrease this past year. However, we understand that this reduction doesn't necessarily mean there are less people dealing with mental health crisis. But what it tells us is the good work that Charlie's doing, the behind the scenes work, uh doing the follow-up that didn't exist previously, where she's helping these individuals to step on a path forward, whether it be short-term or long-term solution. And on behalf of our personnel, we um want to thank Charlie for her unwavering support of our South San Francisco community, and she is really truly making a difference out there. So here is Charlie. Thank you. Welcome. I'm not that tall. I loved it so much that I actually moved here. And so I am now a resident as well. Beautiful. Yeah. Um I've had such a wonderful collaboration between the police and I. We go out together. It's so respectful. It's just, it's like a family, and yet we get so much done because we can collaborate together and understand what mental health is and how it affects the community and at large. Um I mean, some days I go, what am I doing? And I'll be honest, because it's hard work. Um yesterday it was busy, and I seen some clients that have been in the past, but I hadn't seen them in a while. So that was kind of nice to see that they are not so frequent as they used to be. Um, but it is the holiday season, and that does trigger a lot of mental health issues. But um, I also like doing the follow-ups.