Recording in progress.

Good evening, everyone.

I'd like to call this regular meeting of the South San Francisco City Council for Wednesday, August 13 to order.

Can I please have roll call?

Councilmember Coleman.

Here.

Councilmember Nogales.

Here.

Councilmember Nicholas.

Present.

Vice Mayor Adiego.

It's absent and Mayor Flores.

I am here.

I'd like to call our assistant city manager Rich Lee to lead us on the Pledge of Allegiance.

If you are able to do so, please stand and pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

Thank you very much.

Next item, please.

Agenda review.

We have no changes to the agenda, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you.

Next item.

Levine Act Disclosures.

Does the council have any reporting?

None.

Now we can move along to announcements from staff.

Great.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council members, and community members.

My name is Anjanette Lau, and I am the communications manager for the City of South San Francisco.

I have three announcements that I would like to share with you.

The first being Citizens Academy.

This Friday, August 15th will be the final day that we are accepting applications to participate in the City of South San Francisco City Academy or Citizens Academy.

A reminder, Citizens Academy is an eight-week course that engages participants in a hands-on overview of city government.

It is an opportunity to learn how and why city decisions are made and how city funds are allocated.

Sessions will take place from 6 o'clock p.m.

to 9 o'clock p.m.

every Tuesday evening beginning September 9th through October 28th at various city facilities.

Sessions include tours of facilities and details about various South San Francisco projects and programs.net or scan the QR code on the screen.

Next up, we have Cultura Fest.

We are inviting the entire South San Francisco community to join us on Saturday, August 23rd from 11 a.m.

to 5 o'clock p.m.

for Cultura Fest.

It will be a vibrant celebration of Latin American culture, creativity, and community.

This is a free family-friendly event for the entire South San Francisco community.

This event also supports local small businesses and run nonprofits working in youth mental health, family services, and the arts.

There will be a parade, dovesons of food, beverage, crafts, and resource vendors, live music, comedy, and entertainment for the entire family.

We hope to see you there.

And finally, we have the know your rights.

The city will be hosting this workshop for local businesses and employees next Tuesday, August 19th, to inform the business community about immigration rights in the workplace.

We have we are partnering with nonprofit Cyrin to provide resources on understanding steps to prepare prepare for an enforcement action, training staff on their immigration rights regarding I-9 audits and potential workplace rates, and determining the best practices following an enforcement action.

The workshop is free and will take place again next Tuesday, August 19th at 2 p.m.

at local restaurant La Nueva Burla, located at 222 Lux Avenue.

Information will be available in both English and Spanish, and a QR code is available on the screen to register.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Is that all?

Great.

Great.

Oh, one more.

Great.

Uh good evening, council members.

Mayor.

Flores.

I just quickly wanted to talk to you guys about this upcoming project in front of Martin Elementary School.

We're going to be doing a demonstration to implement a one-way street, which was a design option that we're considering.

It's going to be up for three weeks.

It's going to start on August 24th.

It'll be set up on August 24th, run for three weeks, and we're hoping that we can get feedback from the community using the school street feedback email address so that we can find out if this is something that works out for the community, not just the school, but for the entire community in that area.

Um and so we're going to be passing out flyers and um talking to the principal uh parents, informing them of this temporary project that's gonna be with our public works team to set it up.

Um, as I said, we'll set it up on the 24th and take it down on the night of the 12th of uh September.

Um there's any questions, you can either send us an email or contact me.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Just uh wanted to highlight also uh tomorrow night we're also having a child care uh town hall forum here um in the the hall um in back of us um held by Supervisor Jackie Spear and Supervisor Lisa Gaucher, uh Samateo County Supervisors.

Um if it's important for you, um, as we know, uh child care uh it's affecting all of us um in the region, not just here in South San Francisco.

So please come hear about resources, ideas, initiatives that uh both supervisors are are picking South San Francisco here uh to discuss and to hear also uh from constituents, residents here in San Mateo County.

So everyone is welcome.

It's a free event, starts at 6:30 p.m.

right here at the Library Parks and Rec building.

Um, and just to underscore a culturafest, it is a free event.

Um, all are welcome.

Everyone is invited.

You do not have to be of Latin heritage or origin or speak Spanish to be able to celebrate and enjoy.

Over 80 vendors will be uh uh participating.

Um, like Anjanette said, all sorts of delicious food and music and uh City Hall will also be um educational because we want to make sure that this event is also for our young uh our our young children to educate them about cultural heritage as well.

So, whatever culture means in how you define culture to be, please join us on August 23rd in downtown.

All right, next item, please.

We'll move along to presentations.

Item number one is a proclamation celebrating August as National Water Quality Month.

Tonight I'm proud to introduce a proclamation designating August as National Water Quality Month in South San Francisco.

Clean water, as we know, is essential to life to public health and the vitality of our community from our homes and parks to our biotech and manufacturing sectors.

This industrial city would not be uh made possible for many, many years without clean water and the importance of uh acknowledging uh good clean quality water.

This month reminds us that everyday actions impact our waterways, and it celebrates the tireless work of our city's dedicated professionals who protect and maintain our water systems.

So let's continue to champion uh and meet advocates for uh clean and safe water for all.

And I believe I am presenting who am I uh Superintendent Bryant Schumacher from our award-winning uh water quality control plant.

Um please give him a hand and welcome him.

Wow, thank you.

Well, on behalf of our entire team, just want to thanks for the recognition regarding the essential work that all of our staff does, protecting the community's most valuable resource, and that is water.

Uh, this proclamation really is an honor to the team behind the scenes.

They have a robust commitment to always putting public health and the environment first, as well as future sustainability.

So, again, on behalf of all of them that are behind the scenes working 24-7, thank you for this recognition.

Thank you for your work.

Thank you.

Next item, please.

Council comments and request.

All right, I will start with my left council member um Nicholas.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, first, I would like to congratulate the firefighters union and council member Nogales for the ultra successful touch truck event.

It was very well attended.

And uh from the count, they have gathered a lot of diapers.

My husband's suggestion also got me thinking about the seniors, and uh, you know, they usually not usually, some of them may need incontinence products or protective underwear.

So I'm exploring that program with our YMCA partners.

I know some people who have passed away and they have extra products that they don't know what to do with it.

So we will be instead of throwing it away, some other families may be able to use then an open packages.

I also joined our CERT volunteers at the disaster prep day at the San Mateo County Event Center.

I met a lot of our residents there and got a lot of feedback that I took back to our city manager, ranging from parking concerns in our neighborhood to asking what is being built somewhere.

I also learned a lot from other volunteers from the county who presented ways how to be prepared when disaster hits.

Kudos also to our library staff that featured the former Calma Mayor John Goodwin, who recounted his wild stories while serving as a national parks ranger.

I know Councilmember Nogales was there too.

In his book, uh, John Goodwin's book Echoes of the Badge.

We know that saying lightning doesn't strike twice, but you won't believe it.

He got hit twice and still lived to tell about it.

He was chased by a bear, he pulled the out tail of an alligator that he thought was dead, and he almost got uh snapped at and incredible stories and very enjoyable night.

The national night out also happened on August 5th.

I had hosted that one at the Elk Slodge, which was very well attended.

Thank you to our CERT volunteers, our police officers, firefighters, and staff of the library, parks and rec and public works.

A special thank you also to Dan and Ruth Dinardi, who were very generous with some of the refreshments at the location and also, of course, the Elk Sludge.

We have somewhat uh we have a somewhat captured audience there because every Tuesday they host a dinner for only $22, and it's open to everybody.

Um last Tuesday was New York State.

And um we doubled the amount of Lumpia this year, but still it went fast.

And also, in memory of the following, I would like to request that our meeting be adjourned.

Wilfred Ode Leon, Arthur Azusena, and Edna O'Rah, who are residents of our city.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilwoman.

Councilmember uh Coleman.

Yes, thank you.

It feels like it's been a long time since we've been all here together as a council.

Uh a couple weeks ago, two, three weeks ago, I was disappointed to hear uh that Planned Parenthood would be closing two of their clinics in our county, one in San Mateo and one here in uh our downtown of South San Francisco.

And you know, despite anyone's personal beliefs, Planned Parenthood with a lifeline that provided critical health care services to thousands in our county.

They provide cancer screenings for both men and women, contraceptive care, general wellness exams, HIV SEI testing and prevention, breast exams, prenatal care, and much more.

Uh, this is a loss uh for the South Aaron City community uh for the need of health care access for so many uh in our community, um, and I hope that uh you know, for for those who still need to access this source of care, their the Redwood City location is still open as well as the one in San Francisco, but I hope uh that our federal leaders um can uh can you know through advocacy make sure that federal funding does come back to California and to the healthcare clinics that our communities depend on in line with what is happening federally um if you've been paid paying attention to the many things that have been going on in LA, including uh the workplace raids of immigration and customs enforcement, uh many of which are legal uh in South San Francisco, we are partnering.

This is a project with of myself and the mayor and many other leaders of the community, including uh various nonprofits.

We are hosting a know your rights training, specifically focused on our business community, our employers and employees, ensuring that uh if uh there is an ICE raid in our community, um, that our businesses and our employees understand how to respond.

And what we've been seeing in San Mateo County is you know, we don't have rates yet, but what we're seeing is that even the fear and the belief that ICE is an area is enough to close down businesses to cause our restaurants to shut down for the entire day and to cause employees to go home for the rest of the day.

It is undoubtedly harming our community here in the Bay Area, and especially here in South San Francisco, and one of our best um tools in our toolbutt is education and understanding our rights and how to respond.

Um this past week, uh, sorry, this past month, I also had the opportunity to um attend uh several conferences and events.

Uh, the first was in Atlanta with AEPI lead, uh, a conference of uh Asian American elected officials and leaders nationally who gathered and discussed many of the issues that are pertinent to our community.

Um I also had the opportunity to attend a local progress conference uh where they uh in local progress as an organization, nonprofit that does a lot of work uh with um local elected officials from school boards, city councils, and supervisors, and so on.

And they had a host of workshops focused on immigration defense, affordable housing, sustainable land use, public safety, AI regulation, and more.

And this was definitely uh one of the most substantive conferences that I went to, and I hope to uh attend many more.

And I was also sad that I had to miss National Night Out this year, as this is usually an event that I really look forward to to meet others in the community.

Uh but this year I took part in a delegation trip uh to Montgomery County and DC.

And the reason why I was in Montgomery County and Montgomery County, not Alabama's Montgomery, but uh Montgomery County and Maryland right outside of DC is because they have pioneered uh a model, a revolving loan fund uh that allows for them to finance uh affordable housing to get it uh built much faster and to for them to achieve deeper levels of affordability.

And the way that they did that is they created a revolving loan fund, um, which provides five-year construction loans.

So every revolution of that fund is every five years, and it's able to make every dollar stretch um much much further than the status quo, where we have, you know, we may where we may be giving 30-year loans, where we're mainly relying on low-income housing tax credits at the state and federal level, which we all know are very very subscribed.

And uh when it comes to meeting the needs of our residents, those who need housing, uh, we know that the status quo is not working, and we have to look at different methods to ensure that we are building the housing that our communities need, and hope that we can uh learn from the model that has been pioneered from Montgomery County and see how it can possibly be implemented here in our county and our city, so that we can build a housing that we need much faster and make sure that it is permanently affordable, not just temporary.

And that is all I have for today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Uh Councilmember McCallas.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Uh, as Councilman Coleman said, it's been a while since we've been together, but um, been still very busy uh during that time.

Um, as councilman Nicholas mentioned, um the touch a truck slash diaper donation was highly highly successful.

Um, according to reports, there were 400 people that attended and over 9,000 diapers were donated.

Uh I really want to give a special shout out to Rich Lee, uh Chief Sampson, uh Dietrich Gale from our firefighters, our international association of Firefires Local 1507 and Genentech, who made this possible, just seeing kind of the community come together and rally around uh just a simple need.

But when times are tough, we you tend to forget about um some of those simplicities.

So I'm hoping we can do this again next year, and um even bigger, so hopefully we can get even more donations involved.

So uh looking forward to that.

Um I was very appreciative to have been invited to what's our South San Francisco uh brain explorations.

Um, this is actually an organization run by some amazing high school students here in South San Francisco.

I want to give a special special shout out to Isabella Toledini, who was actually my shadow uh for um Youth Government Day, and uh Sonia Gelati, who is actually one of our youth commissioners.

What they did was they put together a toy drive um to also um highlight the fact um of childhood cancers.

And um I explained the story about how we have um uh we light up a tree um for Juliana Pena, uh, who tragically passed away uh due to childhood cancer.

And um I wanted to recognize them because they really are doing a lot of work and making sure that um that this cancer, uh the people are aware of it.

And so I wanted to really say thank you to these amazing leaders who are gonna be future leaders in our community.

Um, and actually, right across the street, the Cowanas were having a garage sale, so I was able to go across the street and I'd say hi to uh members of the Kwanas and see if there was anything, any junk I can buy that my wife tells me to stop buying.

So um, as uh some of my colleagues mentioned uh we National Line out we had I hosted another barbecue, and we had about uh 300 people show up there, including our assembly member Catherine Stephanie, who said a few words.

I want to give a special thank you to also our firefighters, our police officers, our library, um, everyone that came by, our CERT members.

Um also want to give a special shout out to Kenny Komoda, who is who volunteered his service, and we actually had a DJ playing music, which is kind of nice.

Um, and then also to the Camacho family, uh Hector and Christie uh and also Xavi who donated their time to actually serve food while I was talking to people.

So thank you to the Camacho family.

Um over the weekend, I uh participated in the Piston Parade, which is a one of the largest Filipino festivals uh in the Bay Area.

It was great to kind of see a lot of the community leaders from the Filipino community come together and celebrate our culture.

Uh in the past, we've had uh a delegation participate.

Um, and so hopefully in the future we do that again.

Um, as my colleagues mentioned, um I also attended the the book reading for John Goodwin, who is a former mayor for for Colma.

Um as the adage goes, not all heroes wear capes, and he was definitely a hero.

I mean, the fact that he saved numerous lives uh while as a park ranger just speaks to his character.

Um and just proud of him and proud to call him a friend.

Um last week um I was part of what's called the A-Bag Road Show, where I am one of the representatives for San Mateo County uh for what's called the Association Association of Bear governments.

Um, and the the chair who is the Napa County Supervisor Bella Ramos and the Vice Chair, who actually happens to be East Palo Alto Council Member Carlos Romero and members of the ABAG staff came uh to the board of supervisors and we they were kind of giving us a presentation about what to expect.

Um, and you know, one of the things I talked about, and the councilmer Coleman was talking about affordable housing.

We were gonna plan to put an affordable housing bond measure on the ballot in 26, but unfortunately that didn't happen.

What that would have done is we would have gotten two billion dollars in San Mateo County for affordable housing.

And what we weren't able to do it this time around, but we're gonna do it again.

We're gonna put it on the ballot, and we're gonna pass that, and we're gonna put affordable housing and have the cities here ensure and build those housing dollars because uh building housing is unbelievably expensive.

And so we have to make sure when we get those dollars, we use those dollars to build affordable housing.

And I'm gonna make sure we do it.

Um also school starts tomorrow.

So for those who are dropping off their kids, please please please slow down, take your time, because it's gonna be pretty busy for the next couple of weeks.

So just be more aware out there.

And I also wanted to give a shout out to public works.

I saw the delineators out there, Juniper Sarah.

Um, one of the cool things that I've been seeing is that I'm seeing more people actually going out there and jogging and biking.

I actually saw a mother record her daughter who looks like it was maybe learning to ride a bike, and she was riding there.

It was amazing to kind of see that because she felt more protected because of the delinearies there.

I thought that was really awesome.

I know that Councilman Coleman has been pushing that project for the longest time, so um happy to see that.

And then lastly, um mentioned, you know, Planned Parenthood, and um, you know, South San Francisco, we value access to affordable health care service for all our residents, and we I was really sad to hear about when it closed.

You know, that location served over 4,000 patients in the last 12 months, and the services included cancer screening, breast exams, and general wellness exams.

And um it played an important role in providing affordable health care services here in South San Francisco and really in the region.

Um, I've talked to our congressman, I've talked to our supervisor, Jackie Spear, and I've also talked to the property owner who's also interested in hoping that another somewhat similar clinic or medical provider can come to that space.

So I know that staffs talk to both the supervisor's office about this.

So I joined my colleagues in being disappointed and hoping that we can find some sort of uh resolution so that we can ensure that we can provide um affordable health care services to our residents.

Uh with that, Mr.

Mayor, that's all I had.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, uh, Councilmember Nagales.

Um, this month, you know, every year, um, every council, mostly every council in San Mateo County, uh, they they call it going dark, meaning that they skip a meeting for other reasons, right?

To many times is to uh allow city staff to be able to take vacation and whatnot.

But for us elected officials, I've seen this summer be tremendously tremendously busy um in having the the great honor to be able to serve as an ambassador for South San Francisco while my colleagues here are attending our local events.

I have been representing South San Francisco externally and also internally here.

Uh, but this summer has been a little bit different because I've gotten to really address and working with our terrific staff on addressing a lot of constituent requests and concerns, and sometimes we could even call them complaints.

Um, but we have a amazing, very professional, skilled uh staff teams in all departments across the board.

And when I elicit their their assistance and support and help, they are quick to respond to monitor to assess, to go out there, including it and be able to be there in the street, um, seeing and meet the resident um at their at the place of concern.

So, been doing a lot of those individual meetings and following up a lot on that, as well as visiting many of our our local restaurants here and being able to partake.

But I'll tell you that the most uh exciting part uh in being able to serve as uh an official ambassador to South San Francisco was uh this past July, um we received an invitation uh from uh the mayor of the city of Kishiwara, which is in uh the uh Kansai region near Osaka in Japan.

Um the mayor extended an invitation to attend the world expo, the world exhibition, which is uh being held in Osaka until October of this year.

Uh, having a very strong partnership with our sister city organizations, uh which I see some members in the audience today, uh, we were able to take uh a trip, uh a sister city trip.

Um there were no expenses on the city.

I want to be clear about that and underscore that.

Um it was an invitation from the mayor of Kishiwara, in which we were able to partake and learn uh what city uh business is like in Japan.

Myself and a few staff members were able to attend.

Uh, we got to visit uh the fire station, the police station, their local government, how it operates, many of the counterparts got to meet their newly elected mayor.

Uh, he's just uh was sworn into office uh in this past April.

Uh, uh Mayor Sano Hidatoshi.

Uh so he's very still learning a lot of of what happens, but um it's a very solid strong relationship.

I can't tell you.

Many times we hear in the news how we uh hear elected officials say, well, we have a very bilateral, strong partnership with so and so country.

Well, I can tell you uh they have our back in Kishiwata.

Um a hundred and ninety thousand uh population, very similar to South San Francisco.

Airport right on the bay, water on the bay.

When you land, you land kind of on the water, very similar to SFO.

Um, but I send greetings back uh from uh the mayor, the staff, uh incredible hospitality.

Um the the sister city organization here in South San Francisco kind of gave us uh uh a brief update of what to expect, but it surpassed uh above and beyond uh what they um were able to provide.

Um the mayor is looking forward to attending or visiting South San Francisco, fully next year, around the time for concert in the park.

Um, this coming week, we have 15 students, high school students that will be uh hosted here in South San Francisco from Kishiwara, Japan.

Uh, they will also be attending our Kultura Fest parade and partake um different uh uh tours around the Bay Area with our Rotary Club, our sister city organization that will be hosting them.

So it was a great experience overall, but that's not all.

Um I invite you to come to the council meeting on August uh 27th, next one coming up.

I will do a slideshow presentation because this is something that I want to share with you all of what we were able to partake and share as our strong relationship continues with one of five sister cities that South San Francisco has.

Um, in addition, coming back, I also attended a national conference along with um our school board trustee Mina Richardson, our board of education, Samateo County Board of Education trustee Edith Arias, as well as our county uh supervisor, Noelia Corso.

This is a National Association of uh Latino elected officials.

Um, what I got out of it, because I always go for what can I apply back, how do I represent South San Francisco?

And I'll tell you that it resonated what Council Member Coleman um shared.

They were talking about immigration, they were talking about how it impacts the economic development of a city.

Not only is it the fear um and the the limits that it places on our community, but also on our business uh uh sector.

Councilmember Coleman described it uh spot on on how business has shut down.

We had an experience um earlier last month about La Tapatia on Grand Avenue.

Thankfully, it wasn't a raid.

There was nothing involved on that nature, but it was misinterpreted as such.

And as we know now, we live in the day of rapid fire social media where things get misinterpreted and misinformed.

Um, but that's really where this has come from.

I want to thank the Chamber of Commerce.

I want to thank all the businesses, our economic development team, our wonderful staff from City Manager's Office for putting this together coming up on August 19th.

This is not the only one we're gonna do.

We're likely gonna do many more because just like our um immigrant community needs to be informed, also our business owners need to have the tools and the resources to know how to um operate their businesses and not live in fear.

That's essentially what I want to make sure and underscore.

South San Francisco does not leave live in fear.

We're continuing on and doing great things for our community to improve and uplift the quality of life of our residents, as seen by events and activities that continue to happen, and we want to make sure that we underscore that all around.

The North County mayor's collaborative and hosting hosted mayors of Colma, Brisbane, um, uh San Bruno, and Milbrae, uh, to discuss essentially how we can advocate to the rest of the county for the interests of the cities in North County, including South San Francisco.

One of the topics that came up, of course, was the shutdown of a healthcare facility, because that's really what it was, Planned Parenthood, and how we can advocate for all those individuals that now are really probably going to end up in the emergency room.

And what does that cost to taxpayers?

When individuals probably with chronic illnesses could now be in danger of losing their lives or end up, like I said, in emergency rooms.

So advocating on that regard, advocating on our the transportation needs of our North County residents.

As we know, many of the cities here, we share Caltrain as well as BART.

So these are some of the conversations that we will engage, as well as climate change.

And what does that do in terms of sea level rise and the work that we're doing?

And that segues into, I attended and was invited by our congressman, Kevin Mullen for a press conference right here in East of 101 at Oyster Point.

And it really brought out what we're all thinking about.

This in particular was really a very exciting type of bill that he's introducing.

It's legislation that would map forecast and study the phenomenon and develop mitigation strategies for groundwater rise.

But here's the really important piece that this is also a co-author, a bipartisan bill moving forward with also support from a Republican uh member of Congress in New York to make it as tangible and practical.

So, of course, as you know, South City is at the center of all this, whether it's sea level rise or climate change, we need to discuss how it will impact.

I talked to them about 2023.

I think many of you remember right before New Year's Eve, when it was a very strong storm and literally 101 was shut down, the the entrances and exits that cross through 101 in South City.

These were folks that were trying to get through the airport, Mr.

Flights, likely.

Literally, we're the gateway to the rest of the peninsula and the South Bay.

So examples like that resonate of what do we do when it happens.

We talk about emergency preparedness and all of that, but we also need to plan ahead and be proactive about infrastructure and mapping out what really needs to uh happen in that regard.

Got to um uh do the ribbon cutting of two local businesses, which I want to shout out, very important ones because they're they're different in nature.

You know, we do many restaurants and and food eateries here around town, but this uh last six weeks, we were able to uh do a ribbon cutting in partnership with the South San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, Solis Boxing Gym, which has stemmed off out of Magnique uh uh physique magnifique.

Uh, this boxing gym is now in the east of 101.

It really focuses on supporting our youth and our our teenagers.

Many of folks come and tell me, well, there needs to be something where youth can get involved and they don't have to be roaming the streets and we can get them more focused.

Well, this is it.

They're doing uh special sales training, doing sparring, doing boxing training, all sorts of great things, uh, boxing gym.

I think some members of our community are already participating in them.

Uh, we also did also in the east of 101, which is an unlike um uh location, but early days child care center has relaunched, um, beautifully done again with the partnership of the South San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

We were able to uh celebrate them and had a really wonderful Saturday morning celebration.

Um, they can house up to 60 um toddlers' children um in child care center, and here's the catch which I want to communicate out.

They're still uh looking for um spots.

They have spots available, about 30 available.

That was shocking to me.

Hearing that in our uh child care after school program, uh there's a very strong wait list, and here we are opening up a new child care center in South San Francisco that has open slots.

So look them up, early days uh child care center east of 101.

Uh lastly, I will say that I also have been doing a lot of work with the anti-displacement citizen advisories committee.

This is um a joint uh work through our economic development team.

Um, Tony Rossi and and a few others have been working together to really bring um insight and advice and counsel uh to create a roadmap of what we can do in terms of anti-displacement.

A lot of folks say, well, it's overpriced buildings, it's overpriced housing, it's overpriced commercial that has driven businesses out.

Well, we unpacked that.

And we looked at it, whether it was true or not.

And it's different.

And this is the beauty of this advisory committee.

Not everyone's thinking the same.

It's different uh views, different lit perspectives, and um tenants and landlords, different industries, but we're getting together and um I'm very optimistic about the work that has been done there and the results that will bring to our community.

I brought this about focusing on we don't want to see residents leave South City.

We don't want businesses to leave South City.

We want to preserve the culture and the nature of a small town.

And those three pillars have been marking our work.

Finally, before I I conclude, I want to thank all the staff, the city departments, uh, public safety teams, and entire um friends and neighbors and everyone who came out to the national night out.

I unfortunately was very ill that night, um, had a stomach virus and was not able to be out there with everyone.

But I want to congratulate my my colleagues here on the Dais who hosted uh amazing and very successful, terrific events that really brought all of our neighborhoods neighbors and neighborhoods together uh one uh one more time together uh as a as a as a really strong South City to be able to create community and build community.

All right, I think I've said enough now, but it was a busy summer indeed and uh invite you all to continue to stay engaged in all these events that we've been doing and working on your behalf.

With that, I will turn it over and let's go to the next item, please.

Thank you, mayor.

We'll move along to public comments.

I do want to note that one e-comment was submitted and made available on the record.

Uh we do also have six signed up for public comments at the moment, and we'll begin with Corey David.

I apologize.

I'm gonna do a little executive privilege here.

I do have two very important ones that I remiss to say on this.

Um, this is this is very um, it touched my heart.

It was with a heavy heart that I want to announce this to the community.

Um tonight we honor, uh I also want to adjourn in memory of these two individuals.

We honor the life and legacy of uh Shakuntla Rosling Dut.

She has been a longtime South San Francisco resident who passed away June 2nd of this year at the age of 90 years old.

She is the aunt of our South San Francisco chamber CEO, Mary Prem.

Uh, she was born in Fiji on November 3rd, 1934, and Shacuntla moved to South San Francisco in 1973.

She and her husband George Dude, the first Fijian Indian pilot in the United States Air Force, built their home and apartment complex right here on Rail Road Avenue.

Together, they raised four daughters and became an important critical part of our community.

Recently, she was also recognized by the president of Fiji as one of the few surviving women of her generation who embodied self-reliance and independence.

So, with that, I want to remember Shakuntla Rossling Dute for her contributions to education, culture, and her community.

We send our heartfelt condolences to her family, and may her memory continue to inspire all of us.

I also would like to adjourn in memory of Gina Ramos Bayo.

She was a beloved South San Francisco resident whose sudden passing really has left our community in mourning.

On July 31st, Gina, at the age of 30, tragically lost her life in a car accident when a large SUV ran a red light and struck her vehicle in San Mateo.

Her two sons, Mathias, six-year-old and Mateo, five-year-old, survived the crash and are now out of danger, recovering.

Her husband, Alejandro Londonio Rojas, also a devoted father and husband and a resident here of South San Francisco, is now facing an unimaginable reality, grieving the loss of his wife while caring for his injured children and managing an overwhelming financial burden left behind.

Um a GoFundMe campaign has been launched to help cover funeral and memorial uh expenses and support the children.

Uh, you can contribute or share by visiting uh in memory of Gina, bringing her home on the GoFundMe page.

And with that, I want to uh honor her memory by standing with uh London Rojas Bello family in compassion, solidarity, and love.

Thank you.

Now we can go on to next item, please.

Thank you, Mayor.

So we'll move along to public comments.

We do have uh five individuals looking to speak to our general public comments and one linking uh looking to speak to our consent calendar item number five.

So we'll begin with Corey David for several years.

South San Francisco city officials have stalled a resident movement to reopen and repurpose the municipal services building for community benefit.

Finally, a decision was made to put that effort on an indefinite delay after a detailed staff report revealed that the facility had fallen into tens of millions of dollars in disrepair.

You were reminded that the building had been used without interruption for this for decades until the city moved operations to this facility across the street.

This is proof the building was sound and now the city maintains it is not, and can't think of a more and I can't think of a more ironic usage of the word maintains.

You were asked what party of parties were responsible for this tens of millions of dollars in neglect so that they could be held responsible.

And to date, after a public record request, all I received was a reference to the staff report.

Either the city is lying about the condition of the MSB or they are protecting the parties responsible for the neglect.

You owe the resident owners of the building an explanation.

Now I'd like to call your attention to another issue.

It would seem that the resident taxpayers will be subjected to an onslaught of new revenue soliciting ballot measures in the upcoming election.

Transportation taxes, college bonds, and our own parcel tax.

While the resident taxpayers of South San Francisco have limited control over county measures other than their vote, we can control the future of the proposed parcel tax.

After a handful of concerned residents have taken upon themselves to audit taxpayer expenditures, we've discovered reckless spending with questionable justification after just scratching the surface.

I can't say this was an easy task as the information information seems to be delayed for some reason or another.

At this moment in time, the residents will assume that the city does not share a desire for fiscal responsibility.

We're not in this together.

That being the case, we will be working to defeat any parcel tax that should make its way to the ballot, and I suggest that those city fish city officials who intend to stand here to clean up the mess, learn to work within a budget that includes no new revenue.

You have given a new meaning to go for broke.

Thank you.

Next comment, please.

Next speaker is Margaret Baxter.

Good evening.

My name is Margaret Baxter, and I want to address uh the bathroom and municipal service building.

The number three stall has not been functioning for two months.

Now, number one basin has been out as well.

And a plumber did come to fix the problem with the number one basin, but in left, never came back.

I don't know, but it doesn't work.

I asked Bruce that's at the counter.

I said to him, where is the plumber from?

And he said he's the city.

Well, I said if I had the tools, I bet I could fix it.

I mean, I it's a disgrace.

There's always something going wrong at the Magnolia Center.

So I mean, I addressed this to Flo Nicholas a week ago up at the Elks.

So I did, and nothing has happened.

And if we never had a problem, I went to the municipal service building for many, many years in classes, and I never had a problem with the bathroom.

Thank you.

I hope it gets fixed.

Thank you.

Next comment, please.

Mary Pram.

Good evening, Mr.

Mayor.

Mayor.

Council members, city staff.

Um, my name's Mary Pram.

I'm the CEO of the South San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

I want to invite all the business community to join us in the parade at the Kaltura Festival on August 23rd.

And I would also like to say our ballots are open for nominating businesses for the awards, which will hold on October 16th at the um South San Francisco Conference Center.

So we're back.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next comment, please.

Gladys Reyes.

Good evening, Mayor Flores and honorable council members and city staff.

My name is Gladys Reyes, and I am the community programs manager at 4Cs of San Mateo County.

At 4Cs, we are committed to helping working families access affordable, high quality child care, and we're proud to serve as a trusted resource in our in your community.

I want to thank you for considering item five and five A on the consent calendar.

An MOU with the South San Francisco Promotores that will help bring the family child care provider pathway services to families and family child care providers right here in South San Francisco.

This program will support the creation of new family child care homes and support existing family child care providers to sustain and grow their child care programs.

We're also working to expand access among providers who typically have trouble accessing services, such as Spanish, Chinese or Chinese speaking providers, and those who live or work along the coast.

Ensuring that support reaches communities who have often been left out of these opportunities.

Approving this MOU means bringing more resources, jobs, and child care access to the families and providers of South San Francisco.

Thank you again for your time and your continued leadership in supporting working families and the early learning workforce.

Thank you.

Next comment.

Thank you.

Next comment.

Our last speaker is Annie.

During the last two council meetings, I raised questions on the process and data related to the women of the year 2025 event after I had reviewed the relevant data provided by the city.

I also shared a response from the office of the city clerk on behalf of the city manager's office, stating that please note that nominations were welcome but not required for the mayor's award for women of the year.

This is similar to the Chamber of Commerce's mayor's aboard for business of the year.

Both awards are solicited at the mayor's question.

This response from the city manager's office contradicts with what I read on the website, which, you know, stated that with the strength and support of his mother always in mind, Mayor Eddy is proud to invite his community to submit nominations for the second annual 2025 women of the year award, blah, blah, blah.

So based on this, I was led to believe that the nominees from all of the fellow residents would be considered by the mayor and awardees would be selected amongst those nominees submitted by the published deadline, which was April 30th, 2025.

So if that was not the case, when our voices didn't really matter, since three of the awardees this year were manually input onto this list on May 1st, 2025, a day after the due date of April 30th, why waste our time and the staff's time on this?

Fake democracy facade.

You told us that you were the one who started the women of the year award last year.

Was it also your idea to solicit nominations from the public, but to ignore the submissions and use of discretion as mayor last year to decide on the awardees and Mr.

Flores just follow suit?

And why not just do a proclamation of the woman of the woman that you like to put, you know, um recognize?

Since, you know, I think that this is a very common practice among the council members to award proclamations whenever you you like.

So this would definitely save time for all of us to fill out the forms and thinking that you know our voices and our nominees matter and save the city staff's time and the resources for running this event.

So if an event as inconsequential as a women of the year nomination and selection process would turn into such a deceitful conspiracy, how could we ever trust you on more consequential matters and important decisions made for our city?

Thank you.

Next item, please.

That concludes our public comments.

I do have a question to staff, if I may, through the mayor.

Yeah, um, I I do understand that you're in our one of our former meetings um on the MSB, uh, an idea was thrown out that potentially Kaiser could use the MSB for uh a temporary flu clinic.

Do we have an update on that status?

Um we did invite Kaiser to come and tour the site, and their uh facility staff came and toured the site, but unfortunately it was their conclusion that the building does not meet their seismic standards.

So they withdrew their request and they are no longer interested in using the municipal services building.

Okay, next next item, please.

Move along to consent calendar.

Item number two is a motion to approve the minutes for the meeting of July 9, 2025 and July 15, 2025.

Item number three is a motion to accept the construction improvements of the crack seal patch based repair project as complete in accordance with plans and specifications.

Item number four is a report regarding a resolution awarding a construction contract to Roofing Constructions Inc., Western Roofing Services for San Leandro, California for the corporation yard roofing project, and an amount not to exceed $1,586,100 dollars and authorizing a total construction budget of $1,744,710 dollars.

Item number four A is the resolution.

Item number five is a report regarding a resolution accepting $18,750 from childcare coordinating council of San Mattel County Inc.

toward the South San Francisco Promotoris program authorizing the city manager to execute a memorandum of understanding and approving budget amendment number 26.015.

Item number five A is the resolution.

Item number six is a report regarding a resolution accepting four thousand five hundred and seventy nine dollars at 83 cents from the South San Francisco Friends of the Library to support library collections programs and services amending the library department's fiscal year 2025 to 26 operating budget and approving budget amendment number 26.011.

Item number six A is the resolution.

Item number seven is a report regarding a resolution accepting twenty-five thousand dollars from genentec to support the library summer learning challenge twenty twenty-six, amending the library's department's fiscal year twenty twenty five to twenty six operating budget and approving budget amendment number twenty-six point zero one three.

Item number seven A is the resolution.

Item number eight is a reporting as a report regarding three separate resolutions authorizing the submittal of three grant applications to the San Mateo County Transportation Authority for Cycle 3 Transportation Demand Management Program funding and similar grant applications requiring less than a total amount of one million two hundred and twenty thousand dollars in local matching funds item numbers eight A, eight B, and eight C are the resolutions.

Are there any items that colleagues would like to pull?

Ms.

Mary, I'd like to make the motion to sorry, sorry.

No, you're good.

Um I just want to pull item number three if we can, and then I'll let you make the money.

Sorry, good.

Mr.

Torres, thank you.

Um is there a way that we could put up the attachments up on the screen IT?

Uh the picture attachments.

Rich, can you okay, great?

Um, mostly wanted to bring about this um to highlight many times um uh residents and in the community to talk about our streets and talk about how you know quote unquote messed up our streets are with potholes and whatnot.

And I wanted to showcase this as uh improvement, construction improvement um of the crack seal patch and then our base uh repair project.

And uh, Mr.

Torres, if you could highlight a little bit about what was done and what the intent was for for this item, please.

Yes, um, thank you, Mayor.

Of course.

So this project was set up so that we can address potholes and base repairs um that were um extending beyond our ability to you know uh do full reconstruction.

So in the meantime, while we're trying to set up funding projects for future, we uh came out and did base repairs.

These are areas of the pavement that are failing.

Um, so we removed, milled it, and replaced it and filled in any potholes um at intersections where the last season's rain events had uh weathered the street and caused it to open up and so there was cracks um in some of the joints um that were being exposed, and we filled those in.

And so this project focused in area six of the city, and this year we're looking to do another project with similar um in other parts of the city as well.

Okay, what is what is the area six, and which other areas are coming up?

So area six is uh the streets that are east of 101.

And this year we're hoping to get a project out um before the rainy season to do uh streets that are in the Lindenville uh neighborhood, um, the commercial area, and any other streets that may need it before we um process uh or get projects out to do the the surface seal as we're doing it as part of our pavement management program.

So we're trying to get ahead because that area is not scheduled till 2020 um 2028 for surface yield.

So we want to maintain it while we, you know, and take care of it now.

Great.

And I uh thank you for that.

And I just wanted to remind uh folks that every um if I don't know if the vicinity map could be pulled up.

Sorry that I cut off a staff caught off guard here.

Or trying.

Okay, great.

Uh, but the vicinity map really showcases also the work that we will be doing um in upgrading our streets in a different neighborhood.

So we're currently in in what face of that or or what area?

We're currently um actually today was the first day that we started surface sealing in area uh one.

Um, no, area five and area area one and area five are are currently being done as part of our surface healing as program.

Um, your areas is the map.

Yeah, I think there's a both of them.

Thank you.

As you as you continue, if we could click through it and and you could show uh those watching and those here in the chamber just some of the repairs and the upgrades that we've done.

Again, this is um done in the east of of one on one the gateway corridor.

Um, I see what you're looking for is the five year plan, the five year correct map.

Yeah, right.

We'll do we'll do that after.

Could we show that too?

Thank you.

As many times these um pictures and these improvements get um, you know, tucked in in staff reports and folks sometimes aren't able to find them on the website.

So I want to highlight this for the community as well.

Great.

Before and after, thank you.

Um, and if we could look at the vicinity map, um, also the attachment on this item, please.

Thank you for indulging me on this.

It's the other attachment.

Yeah.

There you go.

Beautiful.

Okay.

Now you can tell us what are what area are we on and what areas coming up.

Okay, so area five, which is the if you could get closer to the mic too, please.

So area five is the area in gold, uh-huh.

And area one is the area to the far west of the city, uh, Westboro.

So those two areas are in the process of getting uh surface seal treatment.

Uh so there's base repairs that get done.

There is some concrete repairs that were done as well to uh fractured um areas uh we're adding some curve ramps as part of another project, it just happens to be in that same area, but those two areas will be taken care of this year.

Um area two to the north of the city is scheduled for next year in 2026, so we're currently in design for that project.

But the project that we just completed, the one that we're accepting is in area six, which is east of 101.

And um next year uh or later this year, we're hoping to do uh the area three, the green, um, to do um small base repairs and crack seal and and take care of potholes before the rainy season.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Torres.

That's all I I wanted to highlight.

Many times these items get tucked in in the middle of a city council agenda when most of the public has gone home or shut their TVs off.

So I wanted to make sure that the community knows that our staff are amazing award-winning staff is working.

There is a plan.

We are proactive, potholes in resurfacing our streets.

Thank you again.

Appreciate that.

Now, Councilmember Nicholas, it's all yours.

Excuse me, fine.

Wrong timing there.

Okay.

Uh, can I have a motion to approve the consent?

And I second that.

I have a first and a second.

Can I have roll call, please?

Council Member Coleman.

Yes, Councilmember Nogales.

Yes, Councilmember Nicholas.

Aye, Mayor Flores.

Yes, motion passes.

Mayor Flores, if you could just interject a comment uh on the consent agenda.

I just was quickly adding up.

There's almost 50,000 dollars worth of grant funds, which staff brought in uh in the lat in this period, and I just want to acknowledge the library and economic and community development and also public works applying for 1.22 million.

So uh that's another thing that sometimes does slipped in the consent agenda, but uh just acknowledging staff for bringing resources into the city.

And thank you.

That's your job for calling us out.

Thank you to all staff here in the chamber as well uh for making all that possible.

It is a teamwork approach, and thank you for your tireless time in submitting all those grants and working together.

All righty.

Um, um now uh to the next item, please.

We'll move along to our public hearing.

Item number nine is a report regarding consideration of a planning commission recommendation of zoning map amendment plan development, tentative parcel map, design review, and transportation demand management program to construct 70 single family town house units located at 500 Railroad Avenue in the T4 Lindenville zoning district, in accordance with Title 20 of the South San Francisco Municipal Code and finding the project is consistent with the Certified General Plan Environmental Impact Report pursuant to California Environmental Quality Act guidelines sections 15183.

Items number 9A and 9C are the resolutions.

Item number 9B is the ordinance.

Thank you very much.

And with that, I'd like to open the public hearing.

And invite our Tina, great.

Good evening, Mayor.

And okay, good evening, Mayor and Council members.

Um I'm Adina Friedman, Chief Planner.

I'm actually not going to be giving the presentation tonight, but I wanted to introduce Victoria Kim, who is the planner, project planner for this project.

Victoria has actually been with us for a few years, I think three years.

Yes.

Yes.

Three years, and she's been doing a ton of project work.

She's been to the planning commission many, many times, but this is her first um foray to city council.

So I just wanted to give her a warm introduction.

And now I am going to pass the mic over to her, and she will be giving the presentation tonight.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Is that your way of telling my colleagues to go easy on her?

Welcome, Victoria.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members.

Um Project Manager Victoria Kim.

I'm very excited to introduce 70 uh single-family townhouse units uh located in T4 Lindenville because it's going to be the first multi-housing um project in Lindenville.

So the project site is consists of two parcel um located between South Lindenville Avenue and South Spruce Avenue along the Railroad Avenue.

And the width of total uh parcel is about 15 feet, and the depth of the uh parcel is only 50 feet.

Um because the property was previously used um for the Southern Pacific's SSF line branch in the site on the site, and then the site has long narrow shape with the spur, and it has been left unused uh and vacant since um the Union Pacific decommissioned the parcel.

Uh a Pacific uh branch uh line in 1990.

And the current site condition is unpaved as you can see on the screen and filled with grass and trees.

The neighboring land uses a mostly uh light industrial to the south, and then one or two-story residential building to the north.

And the subject site is also about in the retaining wall along the railroad avenue, and the primary access for each individual unit will also from the railroad avenue.

The gateway, as the project name uh indicated, the proposed 70 townhouse unit will be a gateway to the Lindenville, uh, to create a multi-residential housing uh opportunity and the transition Lindenville to the active and inclusive community.

And here are some existing photo of around the uh project site.

I want to mention that the North Canal Street uh and the Colma Creek are about a 0.1 from the project uh spur area in the south.

The 70-town home unit are um split in five separate buildings, and then there will be 42 residents unit with a two-bedroom and 28 units with a three bedroom units.

And the applicant proposed um paying in new fee instead of a providing inclusionary uh unit, and this is by right option uh according to city uh ordinance.

So, I'm gonna go over the project entitlements.

So, as I mentioned earlier, the project uh has a depth of a 50 feet parcel, and this restricts the project's ability to be uh compliant with a lot development standards such as uh minimum density and minimum real yard setback, and which typically applies uh to the standards uh shape lot, however, because of the unusual shape and then constraint, um the uh applicant proposed developed planned uh plan development.

And under plan development, the following standard uh uh development standard will be exceptional will be applied, and also two citywide uh objective design standard exception will also apply to the project.

And once um plan development will approve and adopted, the zoning will change to T4L to uh PD.

I want to go over briefly about the project design.

Uh there will be five uh buildings, and then about three to four story high building, uh, including two car parking garage on the ground level.

And the height of a building will be approximately 34 feet to 45 feet, and each building has a different design with a distant colors and materials.

And the project will also provide 50 by 50 um publicly accessible open plaza at the intersection of Linden and Railroad Avenue.

And the applicant team provide two uh potential public open space design uh and the final design will be determined and then provided to the city prior to building permit application submittal.

And both design have uh multiple open space uh feature, including landscape planting area and bioretention area, as well as uh street uh furniture.

And this in 2020, the city council uh certified programmatic environmental impact report for the 2040 general plan, and the project COA compliance checklist was prepared and provided substantial evidence that project is within the scope of the certified environmental analysis, and no subsequent environmental review is required for the project.

At uh planning commission meeting on May 15, 2025, uh the commission reviewed the project and expressed general support for the project and recommended it via vote 520, but expressed the concerns regarding uh vehicle speed on the railroad avenue and the required permit parking for residents along the street.

And the staff acknowledged the concern and confirmed that if the traffic coming is required, the um a traffic advisory committee will review and determine appropriate traffic calming measures.

So the project gateway is very creative, development ownership housing on a very difficult and challenging parcel.

And then the project is located in Lindenville, which is identified as opportunity sub-area to create a new residential neighborhood.

And the project will help achieve the city's housing goal that um therefore staff recommends the city council follow the planning commission's recommendations as follows.

Adopt resolution making a sequel determination, wave reading and introduce an ordinance amending the zoning map to rezone the project, and adopt a resolution approving the planning entitlements.

And this concludes a staff presentation and will be followed by applicant presentation.

Thank you.

Great, Mayor Flores, Councilmember Lagales, Councilmember Coleman, and Councilmember Nicholas Manuskenki.

I on behalf of the developers um Live Live Life LLC, I want to take the opportunity to uh thanks to having us over here to present this wonderful project.

And before I begin, I want to acknowledge uh the staff, especially Billy, Victoria and they are super good and very supportive.

And without them, we will not be able to present this project in front of you.

And also acknowledge my team, Eugene Sim, Sims Architect and John.

They're fabulous, like what Victoria mentioned that this site is such a very difficult.

I remember we took we bought the lot from Union Pacific UP a little bit over five years ago.

And it took five years to do a visibility study.

I guess Eugene did not sign up for this long period of time when asked him, hey, can you create be more creative and put housing on the site?

And it's super challenging, and Eugene did a fantastic job to bring forward and had having us to present this project here.

As the name implies, the gateway is the first for sale family housing in the Lindenville corridor with 70 proposed single-family homes.

Most of the entitlement are for rental in the downtown corridor.

And that project is very impactful.

And I believe some of the residents are serving the community, they're popular community members and within the city.

That tells me that they are more engaged, the residents more engaged, and they're part of the community.

And I think for sale housing is one of the opportunities that for residents to participate in community benefit.

And let's get this next slide.

And we have the retaining wall issue that we had to decommission.

This is very technical.

How do we medigate and all this?

And it the job is just super challenging.

And also design different buildings, and how do we separate the buildings and allow open space?

It's just super challenging.

And the current site has been vacant for a long time.

There's like public tracing site over there.

Remind me that to clean up the site every now and then.

And I had to be there when the police there to call from neighbors, especially the site because there are people in camping over there.

There are people who do a lot of illegal dumping.

So I think having this site developed would make a lot of sense.

And also transition to Londonville to more housing.

And what I believe is that once we develop a housing, the gateway residence, I'm sure other developers will come to the town and develop the southern part of Lindenville.

And I think that would be the vision of the gateway and also the Lindenville.

So we just talk about the system conditions and just kind of briefly about the community benefits that we offer for this project.

But that might be too steep and people might not be able to utilize the space, the open space.

And this staff recommend that having we should put move the open space toward to uh Linden on the corner where open to the public create a community park.

That you know, residents and community members can uh enjoy the park.

And we we believe that's a good idea to do that.

Um it it and also we have to look at the challenge of the other stuff, but then it generally is a very good idea that we have a park on the corner of London, and that costs roughly about $800,000 to a record park over there.

Um we also obligate to repay um well, the entire well from between London and Spruce Avenue.

That costs around roughly around $750,000.

And then we have the impact fees.

Um the major one is actually the inclusion of housing in new fees, which will contribute about $4.6 million into the fund.

Um, what we believe is that there's other way to provide uh affordable housings, and my understanding from the city staff that uh the city on an average basis subsidized by a hundred thousand dollars uh per unit per family.

Uh with this 4.6 million dollars, that possibility can provide 46 families uh for uh to use the fund.

Um, the reason why we up for a new fees is that the uh the performance that we have, uh especially the product that we have is uh is very very slim in terms of margin, and we took a lot of risk on this project and not especially housing development costs being going up for 30%.

Uh it's just super challenging.

We we had a hard time to try to pencil out, I would say.

Um it's been difficult and five years ago between five years ago data and today's data is just this is so much different when we first bought the lot five years ago versus what we experience today.

Um that's uh this is super challenging.

Uh but it is what it is, and this is uh this is commitment we do, and uh we have uh lineup with the investor to fund this project.

So that is a good thing that we have uh investor align up to fund the project where most of the development uh project are there entitled, but they're not being built because of the challenge of the uh funding source now.

And um, so roughly speaking is per door basis about close to $150,000 per door, uh, if we count the community benefit and the impact fees.

Now uh in addition to that, what we pay in property tax now is we're paying about $40,000 a year on the property test because they're vacant lot, that's how much we pay for, you know, at that time, and the property test around $40,000 a year.

Now imagine that once the side photo developed and we have housing order, and that potentially the property tax would be about a million dollars a year perpetually, it increased with inflation factor every year.

So that is a large sum of money going to uh property tax fund that would help school, a local community.

And in addition to that, we have 70 family housing, meaning that this family, these people would die now on Glenn Avenue, they were still making a local economy, sales tax, and um this benefit is huge, and not only that, but then having a sense of community.

We have Lindenville that had more family-oriented, which we lacking, that we have lots of apartments being built around the area, but there's no for sale family housing.

And I think this gateway project will bridge the gap.

And uh with that, I want to introduce Eugene to talk a bit more the technical part of this project, and after that, we're happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Good evening, uh honorable mayor, uh city council.

Uh it's great to be back home in South San Francisco.

What a beautiful facility you have.

Again, a piggybacking on Kenny uh Ken Suey's uh comment.

We'd like to really thank the city staff, uh, including the engineering department, Una Jan Kim, Ian Hardish, to make this very difficult site a possible site for a really interesting and important housing uh addition.

So going to my slide, I'm gonna be focusing on as the architect director what our idea was, what uh motivated us to do certain moves on this so you can understand the poetic idea.

If there is to be some poetry in this project, we as architects love some poetry, but in this project, it's about the narrowness of the site.

Again, uh Victorian indicated 50 feet.

That is a very, very difficult site to develop on.

Uh 1,410 feet long, uh long longitudinal um street here that has a frontages of five buildings.

So you can see in this diagram.

I like this kind of diagram because it shows you the pattern of our city, how the character of the density of development up north, right?

Single family detached old town neighborhood.

Uh very vibrant neighborhood it is, and a lot of possibilities in the future, obviously, there, as well as the future aspiration hope of the Lindenville new master general plan that the planning staff and youth city council have work very hard to uh create a new vision to transform that neighborhood into a viable living, working environment.

So we're at the intersection here, very uh difficult site, but it's also a very important site in my way of looking at it as a designer of this project.

And uh, so you can see this uh caricature here, okay.

So I'm gonna move on to next.

So we didn't want to create one long linear building, of course, right?

We need to break it apart, and we need to scale it so that we can be sensitive about the neighbors above us as well as the future aspirational hopes of the city.

Wonderful South San Francisco as it is.

Um, so what we have uh I heard overheard Victoria indicate that there's three to four story buildings.

I want to be very clear with you.

They're really three-story buildings.

Off Railroad Avenue, which has up and down hilly terrain, right?

Longitudinal section.

It's not a flat site.

Cross-sectionally, at that 50-foot dimension, it also cuts down.

Wow.

There's also a retaining wall, which you'll see later on in some configuration.

So allow the honorable mayor, city council to understand the challenges as well as what kind of creativity do we do here to create some housing, much needed housing in our community.

So we took it took the idea of taking about 10, 12 bundled units together to building one, two, three, four, five down the stream.

We also know that the city requires open space.

We want some of the apparent existing condition because I think the neighbors would like to still see something about the other side of the street, right?

So these open spaces allow the neighbors as you walk along or across the street or up the hill, could see through the slice through this 1,410 feet long corridor.

Okay.

The other thing that we're doing here is to allow future potential opportunity, which we really are committed to do for some kind of an open space right at the South Linden area to allow it to be contiguously integrated to the overall city planning objective to activate and create open space, variety of open space, I believe, because I remember Art Rise Theater days at that Quant up North got right demolished, created a park, a beautiful park that is, and now we can continue some of that downstream.

Let me also be clear with that linear spur, that curve of linear spur.

That is we tried everything we can to make that usable.

It is not doable as an open space.

We are using it though for the code compliant bioretention C3 ordinance, because we do need that space to allow that water, strong wire to be captured.

And that's all we can do.

It's too narrow, a very, very difficult area.

So our site is that whole linear stretch of building one, two, three, four, five.

Okay.

So this is just an indicative of a um uh artistic rendering of the aspirational hope that this street character is not mundane, it works with the slope.

And the first building, it does step up.

It's it's a steeper incline.

And then as you get shallower, there's some opportunity to lessen the curb cut, right?

We don't want a lot of curb cuts everywhere, right?

That's an issue that the engineering department uh alluded to as well as I was very concerned, and we as a team were.

Okay, so these slides are gonna be themed by some of the uh challenges and unique features of this project.

First and foremost is the retaining wall.

That red T-shaped retaining wall there, that's the turn of the century retaining wall.

The city staff at the outset said we do not want anything to do with that.

We ourselves don't know what's in there.

We do not have any right documents about what is inside.

That's road.

So what we are doing and why we can make this work is that we have uh our own retaining wall.

That retaining, ooh, sorry about that.

I thought that was a highlighter.

Is this it?

Oh, I don't have any highlighter here.

Anyways, parallel to the red T-shaped retaining wall, that is the turn of the century retaining wall.

We're not touching it, we're decommissioning it.

We are creating our own retaining wall at that building edge.

You see that?

The very vertical, robust one that we are uh we have our engineer, geotech, everyone uh confirmed that we can do this, and we're gonna be able to therefore make this uh doable project.

So you can see that we're relying on our own own on our own retaining wall there, and so that's one of the big issues that we resolved through that effort.

Next, um uh the uh width, and that you could see in these cross-sectional uh elevations.

You see the uh diagonal trace of the black profile, that's the slopage, you see, right there.

It shows uh building one, two, three, four, five right along the way.

That should show you what kind of other difficulties we are bearing on this project, right?

There you go.

Railroad Avenue is on the right flank of each one of this cross sections.

We have all kinds of slope there.

Wow, really, really interesting uh challenges, okay?

And then you can see the overall pattern of elevation along that street, 1,000 again, 410 feet long at the low uh uh lowest uh uh drawing that you see there, the longitudinal elevators.

You can see the character that we're trying to project there.

And so I don't know, this is out of sequence a little bit, but let me just show you.

The other challenge is that these units have to be workable, right?

We cannot make this unit where it's not workable from both for Ken to be able to mark it and also make the folks who live there be humanistic.

So uh the challenge is that every inch counts on the site, and we made it, and the marketing um uh consulting everyone seem like uh indicate very confidently these units are really good units to have, but they're all minimum dimensions here, right?

Okay, and so again uh building one.

That's about the same slide that I was seeing last time.

So, first building is very challenging.

Oh, by the way, I do have a model at the back of the chamber.

I would like anyone in the audience to go check out the model, 3D print model, both contextual plan model and a long, a large sectional model that would give you a better sense of the entire project and how and why we're so excited about this project tonight.

So let's go to the next slide.

Um, this is building two.

You could see again on the cross, you see how steep that is, right?

It's very challenging, okay.

And then we have a retaining wall inside of that uh wall, that that uh section that we have to deal with, okay.

All right, so on this one, you could see that we were able to flatten the terrain, right?

Uh, where the garages become paired almost to feel like a larger house, and so you only have one curve cut, right?

Rather than two curve cuts.

And then another building, we needed to develop a new vocabulary by using um similar type of uh a prototypical typological plan, but the elevation with the material changes, the effect of the balconies uh that go into that uh uh unit.

Uh we were able to give a little different flair to each building like this.

Okay, here it is.

All right, and this building four, again, um, similar prototype, but again, varying the look of it, the materiality of it, massing of it, and so on, like that down the road.

And we can't have the same look, so we have another variety of look here.

Okay, so that's it.

Thank you for bearing with me my energy and my excitement about this project.

Thank you.

We're here to uh answer any questions you might have, and I'm gonna go back say oh, I also finally want to thank Ken and his uh team.

Um, this is a very strong commitment and uh courageous investment because I was on the planning commission for 16 years.

Many many developers tried this project site, it didn't pencil out for some reasons and other.

I think we finally figured out how and what could happen here that works with the code, fire, engineering, planning, and all the balance that we need, and we need to get that Lindenville going, and this will help to uh instigate that.

Thank you very much for your time and patience.

Thank you very much for the presentation.

So the way we'll do this is we'll uh do questions right now or clarifications on uh the proposal, then we'll take public comment and then we'll come back for final comments and a vote.

So any of my colleagues have questions, anything that needs to be clarified, Mr.

Mayor, yes, go ahead.

Um, I just need clarification on the orientation.

I want to make sure I got this right, either Eugene or Ken.

Yeah, sure, sure.

I think you gene up here.

Um, so what I'm looking right now, that's the front of the front of the building, correct?

That is the corner of Railroad Avenue and South Lindenville.

Right.

So the so railroad will be the f where the front entrance of the building is, right?

There's only one front, okay.

And then the back side, um that with the facing the business area where the retaining wall that is the back.

Sure, sure.

Let's uh go to let's say an example like this.

The garage doors you see in this uh depiction, yeah.

It's the front.

Your back has really a fence.

We have 50 foot wide property, and then we have five foot setback required.

Yeah, five foot setback on the front, and we're left with 40-foot dimension, and so that's what we have here.

Yes.

Can we go to the the map kind of overseeing the top?

Yeah, sure, sure, Mark.

Because there's there's a one or this one.

Uh the one before.

There's that, so I get railroad, yeah.

There's this back lane here.

That is an improvement that you're going to be doing in terms of the road.

And I guess I'm trying to understand.

You can I'm seeing that.

Is that a that back road?

I'm let me be clear.

Um that highlighted red uh uh bubble or um dotted dashes around at the top.

Let's call it north side.

That's Railroad Avenue.

Right by, you know, the T intersections, Maple Avenue, right?

Road Avenue.

All right.

That's where we'll have a new sidewalk, new trees, by the way, also.

Okay.

Right there.

That's where an important bike lane already exists, so we have to navigate around that too.

Uh Mayor and City Council.

The back side is what I would call south elevation.

That's the bottom side of the dash red mark that you see there.

That is not a public walking area.

It's a private domain, and we don't have any space.

What we have there is an underground utility line.

We can't put it in our building.

We have to have a separate right-of-way area for that.

But we are going to put a nice fence that um is gonna uh screen that or a whole area from safety, uh, from aesthetic.

The back side will have balconies above, right?

But knowing we'll go in that area.

That's that's what I needed the clarification.

Then so on the on the TDM reports.

I love reading about TDMs.

Okay, um it talked about 140 parking spaces.

Uh that was the require I'm gonna look a billion dollars for this one.

That was required amount of parking spaces.

So when you look at the front front of the building, there is one image that showed a car parked in front.

Uh it's on the other side.

Uh, keep going.

That one right there.

Oh no, it's driving.

It's driving?

Okay.

It's an artistic red well, there's well, others.

I mean, it looks like the red light is not on.

He's not, he's driving.

He's driving.

Because it seemed pretty close to the curve.

I was like, I thought there were the, you're not supposed to park there.

So close to the curve.

Okay.

So that's why.

To be more exacting, you need the bicycle lane, and then that car should be more toward the yellow.

Please forgive me.

We have summer interns and we have uh architects.

Better and better, but I will let one of my interns don't mind.

I was just a little concerned because we were talking about uh cutout curves and you're not allowing there.

And so the the question was for me, the 140 parking spaces, that is what you're counting in terms of the garages, correct?

Yes, they're tandem parking, we don't have luxury for parallel.

So there are two parking per unit, right?

Yeah, they're tandem.

So 70 units times two, 140.

That's how that equation probably came.

We don't have any benefit of any kind of place because we have bike lane there already, pre-established.

We can't relocate that.

That's an important uh uh asset coming um you know for the community, right?

So we have to do that.

We are going to have to resolve some trash uh temporary trash uh collection day type of venue there too as well, but that's just beyond this agenda tonight, but we'll figure that out.

So any other question for you uh oh yeah, I'm not done.

Well, rare times I get the push okay, okay.

Uh so in terms of the the level of service, yeah.

It it said that it it wasn't gonna add in terms of of traffic, it was very minimal, that's what I'm reading.

But I guess there's concern for for the residents there who live across the street in that neighborhood that because you're building 70 units, you're gaining you know, large number of residents there, that traffic is gonna be impacted in that site.

So I just I'm gonna go look at Billy Nell.

Yeah, thanks a lot.

Yeah, so I'll have Billy come for the house.

So maybe walk me through and maybe alleviate the fears that some residents might have in terms of the traffic going through there.

Well, what I would say is the residents that have lived on the north side of railroad haven't had to deal with any traffic coming from this house high.

But for that entire length, um, if you look on the north side, there probably are a similar amount of residential units along that entire length on the north side, as there will now be introduced on the south side.

So from a analysis standpoint, I think we look at it as it's not going to be any different than any typical residential street that has residential units on both sides.

Um the street is a similar width as other residential arterials in the neighborhood, and um would be able to take on that amount of traffic that's coming from from each of these individual units.

Yeah, I I think the concern that that residents might have is I mean, I I appreciate the fact these are family orn K units, which are two to three bedrooms, because what we've been seeing a lot when you build apartment units is either uh one-bedroom apartments, and so you're gonna get more families to come, and you're gonna get more cars to come.

And typically when you have three to four members in your family, there's gonna be more multiple cars in the household.

So, and so I I kind of wanted to ask, so there's a possibility at some point that there could be residential parking required.

Some if that was the conversation that I think they were talking about the planning commission, they were questioning about that.

Someone asked the question of could there be residential parking.

Yeah, and then as we've had many discussions with with council, um, there there's a process to allow for residential permit parking.

Um it's not a simple process.

Obviously, there's an enforcement side to it.

There's probably lots of neighborhoods within South San Francisco that would like to look into that.

Um, but it becomes a larger citywide kind of operations discussion.

And so there's there's nothing currently planned for looking at that in this neighborhood.

It was more of a discussion of yes, there is a process to allow for that, um, but we haven't gone any further than that.

Then there were there was also talk about providing like transit passes to the residents there in terms of the TDM plan.

Is that I might ref defer to Victoria about the TD.

There are typically for any of these residential projects um required TDM measures, and that would be one of them.

And so um, I'm not certain if it's because the question I'm gonna ask, I think we've asked this before is how do we tr have accurate numbers that they're actually using these transit passes?

I mean, they're supposed to be a benefit, and they're supposed to encourage the residents because the Caltrain station is just down the road, but they're supposed to track it, and they're supposed to provide that report to us.

Now, we haven't used it where like the numbers have like skewed where they're not using it, but how do we know that the numbers are gonna be accurate and they're gonna be providing this information?

So part of a TDM plan according to uh CD ordinance for resident resident um shell project needs to meet the certain points, and this case the minimum 20 points is required, and I believe that um CD Council um Council Member read the TDM plan that developer will provide first year the uh transit pass, and that will attract more transit oriented uh user to the residents to the project, and that was part of the requirement for um for the TDM plan, and uh, no, I understand, but I guess my my question is how do we know they're actually gonna use it and the numbers are gonna be accurate?

We won't we don't that's my issue is that we we have this TDM plan that we would require even businesses at the East of 101 or residential, like, hey, you we have this benefit for you to use so you can reduce the number of traffic.

So it's kind of like carrying the stick, but we're not punishing.

Part what what I'll say is where we when we updated the TDM plan, where we get the most enforcement or or the residential projects aren't the largest users.

It's and so we will be requiring that kind of reporting back for all of the life science projects.

When it gets to residential projects, and then which are type ones, type two are like the smaller retail commercial uses.

For those, it's basically set up to have there's required measures that you have to do as part of your buildings, and then you have a self-certification.

But the number of trips that are involved with that compared to what happens with our type three and type four, which are the tier three, tier four, the life science.

Those projects do have to show that they're meeting a certain percentage of um getting away from single occupancy vehicle trips.

One of the things that we'll be bringing forward to council, we've talked about this a little bit, and we're we're close, we haven't gotten there yet, but is actually adopting penalty fees and kind of going through that process.

But um the amount of work it takes to do the monitoring and enforcement for residential projects and some of the smaller ones, that's not the best use.

But these projects do have a requirement that they have to implement bicycle parking, like some of the physical measures that make it easier in that sense.

And they do have to do the first year transit passes to at least get people to start using it, and hopefully some of them are like this is actually amazing for me.

I'm this close to the Cal Train station, it makes sense to do this.

And I'll just combine these last questions.

So for the uh for the housing, um, sorry, the forgetting the terminology for the housing inclusionary dollars that they're doing, um, was it four million?

I don't have the number in front of me right now.

Yeah, it's about four billion.

Yeah.

How much is that gonna add to our housing inclusionary fund?

Um, it will be the full amount, 4.6 million.

No, how much in total?

How much do we have right now?

I guess I'm adding.

I want to know what we added.

Percentage-wise, oh, I don't know that.

I will ask our deputy ECD director, Tony Rossi, if he may have information.

You guys do it know I would ask that question.

Come on.

I can't see Mayor.

Probably a 20% increase in what we have right now.

We're holding about 20 million with a lot sort of forthcoming as projects coming.

And we get that money when entitlements happen, correct?

When we issue building permits.

So tell me kind of the timeline when that's gonna be.

I could the reason why I'm asking because the other money I'm looking at is is the park fee acquisition, and I'm looking at the mayor's district in terms of Lyndon Park and making that money available so we can make your park even better.

Their potential or other potential places, yeah.

Well, if the council approved it tonight.

Yeah.

Oh, throw it back to us.

And then we do uh uh CD process, which would take about six months or so uh for the construction documents permits and all that.

So um I would think that construction would begin sometime uh early next year.

Um that's my best guess.

Okay, uh, because I don't think we should break ground doing weaknesses like November, December, where it's soil saturate, and uh it's just not a good idea to break the ground at time.

So my best guess probably on January February, where we break ground, and um the project will probably take about a year and a half, between a year and a half to two years to complete.

So the uh to answer a question, the BMR fee will be uh before the um the um uh the certificate occupancy pool.

So that will be with fund, we'll move on to impact fees.

Okay, okay.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you, council member.

Uh questions, go ahead.

May I make a mayor?

I just wanted to make a quick clarification regarding fees.

The BMR inclusionary fee is due at building permit issues.

That's not all of them happen that way.

They're all there.

No, this one's different.

That's totally.

And the other fees, the impact fees for residential are due at certificate of occupancy.

The council members reminding me of a new bill that just went, it was like last year, right?

What is that bill again?

It is.

So that it can still be due at building permit issuance.

But the other fees that are impact fees are deferred to certificate of occupancy.

Correct.

That's the depends who you ask about the nature of an inclusionary fee, but I believe that Adina is correct that it's the case that the inclusionary fee can be collected at issuance of building permits, but all the other impact fees for infrastructure are now deferred to certificate of occupancy.

Developer has the option to pay earlier if they choose, but we can't require it until that point in time.

We would love that too.

All right.

I'm sorry, the bill number?

Yes.

I don't recall.

It's been it's been a the inner year.

It's been a the past the past couple of years have been such a um an onslaught of planning and building bills, I can't keep track of them by number anymore.

Okay, go ahead, Councilmember.

Well, thank you very much for the presentation.

I know that this is this parcel of land is really a non- non-typical uh development parcel, and it's really hard.

Um five years, man.

Um I really like that it's transit oriented development.

Um it of course the community benefits help, and it's also consistent with the Linden specific Lindenville specific plan.

Now, uh I didn't hear much about, I know that they mentioned that this is a sustainable development, but could you please elaborate on the sustainability features?

Well, I guess uh one of the things that is important in every project in our city here is that we have to meet Cal Green code.

I think that requires it to be certain equivalency to I believe silver, uh, you know, lead type of format.

Uh you know, I could be wrong, but that's the way we operate.

But on our office, we try to put in as much as more of things we could.

This is project located near the transit or into development line.

If you could see the big picture, I believe our property is right at the border of the downtown umbrella, like a uh super uh uh high-level umbrella of what is defined as your downtown TOD area.

And we just need you to change the orange say you're now in it, but we're right there at the edge.

So in that sense, this has got some sustainability because people could within walking distance travel about.

Uh, you know, some cities even limit parking these days, you know what I'm saying?

But we don't say that uh with any uh easiness here.

Obviously, people still rely on cars, but uh again, material selection, we'll look at that, right?

But we have photovoltaic ready to go roof uh infrastructure bill is required.

We also have um EV uh ready to go and John correct me if I'm incorrect on this, but in the parking garage inside of it, we have a charging station for all the electric vehicle uh that would be potential as well.

So there you go.

There's probably other things I've skipped here, but yes, we all are at our office practicing uh best practice as much as we can, right?

Okay, thank you.

Most welcome.

Did I answer your questions?

Yes.

Okay, all right.

I just want to comment on what uh council member Nogales was talking about about the public uh transportation vouchers, you know.

It's like uh leading the horse to the water, but you can make the horse drink, right?

So and also the issue about the TDM, it's one also of the issues why a lot of uh workers in the east of Grand don't want to go back to work, even though it's now being mandated to at least work.

Majority of the month, they, you know, sometimes it's one of the reasons why they would say, you know, we don't want to increase your TDM or the driving.

And so and that hurts.

I I was at the Tai Sate last Thursday for lunch.

There were just four tables for lunch, and the owner was telling me it's there's hardly anybody in downtown.

Thank you.

Councilmember McCulleman.

Yes.

Um, so just questions, and then we'll come back for comments.

Sure.

Um, I would like to kind of get some help visualizing what's currently there and what's going to change in terms of what the road looks like, and the sidewalk.

So currently, is there any street parking on that side?

There's just a bike lane.

Is there a sidewalk?

No.

So after construction, what will that road look like?

So currently there's no um any structural site, and it's vacant, and there's no parking allowed along the railroad.

And the project will bring five feet uh pedestrian and then potentially bike lane.

Um I don't know if there's an image for the far left.

Oh we'll go back to the slide.

Right, you know, go back to next question.

The circle at the very top left.

That's the edge of the property.

Oh.

You work so hard for us, and so we need to help here.

Um, where's this going?

This is your part.

Oh, here it is.

Okay.

Is it the next one?

How did this go into this slide?

Oh, next.

Mr.

Mayor, if I may.

Um IT, if you could go back to that previous presentation.

Oh, I see.

I think it was that slide right there.

So there you go, the finger.

There, you see where the hand is that that's the image right now, James, of where the um existing condition looks like.

A bike lane, you see.

I think that white stripe is indicating uh the bike lane, and then you see a little bit of metal um guardrail, right?

That that's the edge where we're building from toward the left.

So when construction is complete, we will have five feet of sidewalk.

Uh and a bike lane.

I won't really check that correct.

Actually, there'll be we're requiring at least five feet of accessible sidewalk.

There might be certain areas that have a little bit more for planting and such.

One of the things that is still being worked through just because of the slope of the lot during the building permit level of design.

We'll know exactly do we allow a rolled curb or is it a normal curb and gutter, but yes, it'll be a bike lane, uh, travel lane, and at least a five-foot wide clear sidewalk path along the entire southern portion.

So, recently there was an accident, I believe, in Burlingame, a very tragic accident where I believe a bike collided with a car, and there might have been visibility issues on the car side, and it eventually led to uh the tragic death of a young individual.

And so one thing that I'm concerned about is the visibility of cars who may be backing out the garage, and just ensuring that that visibility of the road of the sidewalk of the bike lane is not impeded by anything included in the development, I do want to clarify it's not a separate bike lane, it's a shadow lane there.

So it's it's a is that a class three um whatever class I mean, I never can keep those straight, but it it's it's not a standalone bike lane.

It's a sharing road, correct?

And how how high is the traffic in that road right now?

Is it a lot?

Is it not much?

Does it warrant a separated bike lane?

It's a typical the traffic levels on that road are not high in the grand scheme of what we see in the neighborhood.

Um I believe that the Active South City plan calls for a class four bike lane in the future along railroad.

One of the discussion points with that though, to do that, we would have to likely remove parking on the north side.

So there's no room for a protected bike lane currently or a separated bike lane, unless you would have to remove parking.

That is likely the case, yes.

We have we haven't looked in a lot of detail on this corridor itself, but that is more than likely what would be required.

On the north side, those are all old residences, right?

Correct.

Okay.

My next question has to do with the public spaces.

I know that you're including I think several pockets of public space.

Um what are we envisioning putting there?

So one of the um because of the difficulties with the site from an open space standpoint, we wanted to make sure that the project met the Lyndonville specific plan standards as much as possible.

Uh and so they do meet the private open space requirements.

Um and then there's a quite a bit, so there's those spaces in between the buildings.

Those are common private open space, those wouldn't be open to the public.

The only portion of the open space that would be public open space is that corner portion.

And so the specific uses of it haven't been determined.

Um we first started this, we were looking at actually having something on maple because the long-term vision for the Linnaville specific plan was maybe there's a way to connect uh a bike lane coming from South Maple across the creek and go up.

But because of difficulties with redevelopment of the South Spruce or the Spruce Business Park, that could be decades before that happens, and so we wanted to have something that was more usable.

Um, and so across the street, the Seven South London project, which is currently under construction, they're going to have some public open spaces along some of their frontage.

Right now we've just identified, and I believe it's like 4,500 square foot along that area.

So I think it's a depth of 40-ish feet from Lindenback, would be public open space with that's uh immediately adjacent to the sidewalk.

The specific design and uses within that area are still to be determined, and that would happen during the building permit stage.

Great, and I think maybe this is a question to the developer: what do you envision putting in those open spaces?

Oh, to your question.

Um, I think we're looking at the possibility of again big picture, um, place to sit, uh, some south escape if we could put it in, but we have a critical important need of creating more bio-retention C3, right?

Storm drain issue to meet the code and be sustainable.

Um, secondly, uh, we also um have some idea.

Uh oh no, not I guess, sorry, I got one more important uh issue there, uh PG<unk>E transformer, which we're gonna we're working hard to see if they could be undergrounded, but you know how PGNE is uh if you have some contact there, let us know.

But we probably have to locate that somewhere there in that uh terrain, and they have to be fenced from security standpoint and accessibility for a PG<unk>E to allow us to permit to have PGA transformer there.

Okay, so the other things are soft and hard scale, right?

Like a like a it's an urban design opportunity for our city.

Oh, sorry, I I'm no longer in a city, but I feel that way right now today.

But it is an urban design feature, right?

To activate the South Linden corridor, um, we would have places where people could walk by and see a place to pause and see some activity there and be there to read a newspaper, maybe, you know, these kind of things, right?

Um, but it's not a grandiose big site that we have, but we want to give as much as we can, and but the idea here is quality, right?

I think um this corner is an important part.

Uh, but again, we're gonna be working with city staff, uh Billy and Victoria and all the departments to make this really a nice place for you guys, okay?

Great.

Thank you.

And uh another question for the unless you have.

Yeah, well, in addition to that, um, I think there's an open space between the five buildings, uh, where um there might be um opportunity where we can put uh a terrace type of uh landscaping when uh residents can grow their vegetables over there.

So I I think that will be a pull via opportunity uh in addition to the park on Linden, but then the space between uh the buildings where we can take that an opportunity that for residents to grow their vegetables over there, yeah.

I just want to be clear, Ken.

Um I think one of the concerns from um Ken and the investment group is about them uh owning up and maintaining, right?

From a liability, insurance right, all that, those are all factored in.

So the corner, like Billy mentioned, is public, again, public open space.

It won't be fenced.

You know, it's something that Ken is committed to to help maintain, right?

I don't think, you know, our dear parking right director, I think Greg is around here, but uh Greg, you don't have to maintain this one.

You got enough going on.

So that's the commitment Ken is putting there.

The other ones are private open space, right?

They're gonna be fence because we don't want nuisance there.

We don't want more, you know, we care about homeless and all that.

That's important to take care of.

But this area, because safety and all that, right?

We're gonna fence it, and only for residents of that area, right?

But the corner will be open.

Yeah, but I don't know the insurance, I don't know the insurance costs for that.

It's gonna be uh more questions.

Last question.

So you see that I think you call it the finger that kind of curves downwards on the map that we're currently looking at.

That's for the utilities.

Yeah, uh you know what you want to try.

So the railroad spur that's coming off the backside.

Yes, that is going to be um basically the stormwater runoff kind of catchment area, the C3.

They're able to use that area to take a lot of the runoff and put it in that spot.

So it also will not be open to the public.

We we we pushed a lot to see if there were ways to do that, but it's only 20 feet wide, and with the uh industrial uses on either side, um, and the need for the C3 that's what I think.

And so who would have uh ownership of that railroad?

It's part of the residential project.

And so, what do you think?

So, the reason why I ask is because in the future, like we have zone Lindenville for higher density uses, and I mean we kind of see in the map, right?

That railworld railroad spur has in a way shaped the development around it, correct?

And so if there's redevelopment, I mean, it may make sense for that property to be part of what whatever is redeveloped, and there might be the ability for a project that's redeveloping a larger portion to do something that changes, say the southern portion of that and allows for some of the stormwater to go on to their side, yeah.

So my question is like is the intention to hold ownership of that railroad spur in perpetuity, or is it could potentially be part of a different development?

So James, uh, for our project we need it because we need to meet the bioretention C3 ordinance.

So if we don't have that, we don't have any even inches in that whole 1,410 feet long corridor or 50 feet wide, right?

So we need that extra area to accommodate that code compliant bioretention C3 ordinance uh mechanism, right?

And we're gonna uh what we call what is that called hydro seat, right?

Uh, but we're gonna do something.

But Billy you have a better way.

So I was just gonna say it's it's a it will say it's private property, and it would be a private property engagement.

What I can say is staff could introduce the two sides to are there ways to help make something change with that, but uh the way this is set up, it would say as private property in perpetuity.

Great.

That's the answer I'm looking for.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um looking at uh the impact, so so it's it's all fine and dandy in renderings and in plans and whatnot.

I like the practicality of it.

And I always talk about staff, including it's been mentioned today about Linden Park.

How and what is it gonna look like?

The impact to residents when all this building starts to happen on one single road?

What's the mitigation plan for all the construction trucks?

What's the impact that it's gonna have on the neighbors across the street on the north side?

That's that's really what I want to know.

That's that's my kind of question mark on it's great that we're doing housing, it's great all the the show and tell pieces, but once we're there, is it gonna be building by building?

Is it gonna be entertained on uh economies of scale and all five buildings done at once?

Somebody tell me.

I'll answer the question about construction impacts or just how the city will deal with that.

Um there will be construction, and that's a reality, and we know that, and we have a plan in place to work through that.

Um, our construction coordination committee will meet with the applicant prior to issuance of building permits to develop a comprehensive plan for construction, including hours of operation, deliveries, truck routes, hauling, um, fencing signage, the whole gamut of you know the potential uh mitigations to ensure that the impacts to the neighbors are as low as possible.

Um so we'll meet with them, have all the affected departments would be involved.

It would be ECD, public works, police, fire.

I'm sure I'm forgetting others to really work that all out ahead of time.

Um we typically require noticing to neighbors to let them know this construction is gonna happen.

In some cases, we require pre-con meetings with neighbors to invite them and let them know this is gonna be happening to um address any issues and questions that come up.

So that's the process in place.

Um, in terms of the phasing and timing, I will ask the developers to answer that in terms of how they envision rolling out the building.

Thank you.

Um I'm confident on the city uh planning.

I I would like to hear from the developer on that end.

Well, thank you for the questions.

Um based on what we or what our experience doing the Linden project, uh we we did um do uh community outreach work, and we work with the city uh in terms of uh uh setting notice and and uh again, like uh certain hours that we can do deliveries or an hours that uh uh the impact to residents, and uh we work very closely with the city staff.

Uh and and also we uh from time to time we have uh hosting events with the community members, uh, neighbors around, and and trying to hear their concerns and uh comments that uh that uh uh it might impact them and and from there we based on the feedback we will do mitigations and uh um and change uh the how the way that we do.

Uh but we're part of the community, and we will hear what the neighbor concerns are uh and um and we adopt.

So that's our experience.

In turn, how long uh the process are we gonna build uh internal economy scale?

Um, as a developer is it would be a great idea to do the economy scale because then how you reduce the construction costs and and a certain time to develop, uh, but there are things that would doubt uh control uh things that might prolong and and typically most construction they always delay.

And uh I don't think any project that uh can uh issue a spec one year and then can uh finish in one year, but it was our goal uh to uh to find the project as soon as possible, and because the longer do you wait, the more costs and you know holding costs, you have financing costs, you have all kind of costs that you know it's it's our intent to uh uh little impact as possible and get it done over with a sort of pure time.

Thank you.

So, what I would like to hear from you is commitment to I I get all the outreach pre-planning, right?

All the meetings are required as part of the process.

I'm talking about like once it is developed.

Are we gonna be listening and having meetings at that point about the impact, right?

Are we gonna be eliminating parking from the current neighbors because we have to park construction trucks there?

That's that's the impact I'm talking about.

That's where I want you to lend uh an ear to the concerns of of that computer.

Absolutely.

We'll be open-minded and we would uh listen to neighbors and what was uh every single uh interest party, and um uh we we're here for long term, and we we're not just finished project and go, we know we're here, we're local.

Uh my office on Grand Avenue, you know, and and I just want to make highlight this point because that's really where the concern is from residents.

Residents are okay about you know housing at all different levels and needs, it's how it impacts their data day, right?

Can the family take someone to school because they can't because that the truck is block blocking their driveway, so therefore they have to reroute their entire day.

Those are the nuanced data days things that here as an elected, I hear about them, right?

I walk up and down railroad and I've seen it.

I mean, it's a great project, it's gonna transform it.

But I want to make sure that you're committed and and that you're aware and that you're paying attention with a proactive approach, right?

Not a reactive, because it doesn't help any of us to pass all these uh um developments um and and then our our community is not it's feeling the the burden of it, right?

I get it long term there will be benefits, but it's also to pay close attention when we're building.

Absolutely.

We're um I'm part of the community, and uh I've been in downtown for 20 some years, so uh downtown is just part of my life, and and everybody is yeah, I consider them my uh my community uh is my community, and I do not want uh you know to uh to to cause any problem to the community, and and in fact, we want to be uh more proactive in and uh in input to well being.

So uh it is our goal uh to what would our interest body, including members of community and neighbors around, and we will be open-minded, and we'll be proactive.

Great, thank you.

Um I do want to remind my colleagues here that we do have an other items in the agenda tonight, so I'm gonna try to speed this last part um on.

Uh, can I have uh opening it up for public comments, please?

Mayor, there are no speakers for this item.

However, I do want to note that there were four e-comments submitted.

Great, thank you.

All right, um, final comments from anyone or anyone that wants to add anything to this.

I'll I'll just add, you know, we've we've talked about in the past as a group that we want to see more for sale housing uh throughout the city because we've we have been inundated with apartment for rent.

And so I think this is a step in the right direction to have ownership.

Um, because that's something I think we've been talking about and seeing this come to, especially for this site where there has been some problems in the past.

Uh hopefully that cures some of the problems.

Um, I think the mayor makes some good points in terms of making sure that the developer is a good partner with their residents because we have seen it in the past where there's been trucks while there's been one construction's going on and it has caused some delays for people trying to get to their locations, and it's been troublesome seeing that.

And so, you know, I'm sure that this is the since this is the mayor's area here, he's gonna be watching very closely in terms of making sure that the residents' concerns are being heard by the developer.

And so um, I'm gonna support this project.

I think if this is something we've like I said earlier, we've been talking about we wanted to see for sale units and the fact that we're gonna get money back to potentially we can use for affordable housing projects down the road and also potentially for parks projects.

Um, I think it's a win win situation.

So thank you, Councilmember.

Yeah, and many times, like you know, Councilmember Nagala said there had been a clamor for um homes for sale, and so this is uh really a right step towards the right direction, and so I will also support this project.

Thank you, uh yes, you're doing something truly remarkable uh with this project.

I mean, just looking at the design and and seeing how you've uh really thought about everything.

And are making it possible when so for so many years it has not been possible, and and doing so while checking the box for sustainability, checking the box for homeownership, and and just making it um you know more attainable for folks like my like who are like me and my age looking to move out and grow a family.

I don't know, maybe I'll move out to District Five and join uh Mayor Eddie over there.

That's your time.

Okay, but I I'm very happy to uh support this.

I look forward to derived cutting.

Thank you.

Uh thank you.

So uh I want to paint a picture.

Um thank you for my colleagues to highlighting.

I had written a few items and you all brought them up.

I want to start off with the walkability of railroad.

If you look up the at the top left, I guess, uh circle there, there is no walkability.

And council member brought up um pedestrian fatalities that have been occurring.

As I've driven there, and remember, it's a slope down and it's a slope up.

I've been there in the evenings and have had to put my high beams because I've seen pedestrians walking on that side of the road.

That has scared me.

That has made me wonder why don't they get on the other side?

Well, for many reasons, right?

And this project in and of itself is addressing that.

Number two, yes, we see a lot of greenery and and trees and whatnot.

I've often wondered what if someone throws a match, lights up something around that area.

It's been a concern of mine ever since when what happens in that in between?

You can't reach it through the other side through the um uh spruce business park, you can't reach it through railroad, but people hop over those fences, as we've heard and seen.

That's concerning.

What if all of that uh brush caught on fire?

How do we get there?

How do we access it, right?

How do we get water out there?

How does our our public safety teams get out there?

What are people throwing over the fence that we don't know about that potentially is is harming that community.

Um this is a very complicated geographically um site.

The slope there, I I remember knocking on doors and walking on there and trying to watch for traffic too.

And I think this is gonna be a different.

I mean, the the fact that we're now creating a pedestrian pathway in and of itself, um, right now, I do also drive through this because GPS often reroutes you to this area instead of Grand Avenue or Baden if you're going downtown because this again it's less traffic.

Um, it has so many wins right now for our community.

Um, in particular, the fact that it's all electric buildings, there's no gas.

We're building for the future, folks.

That's something that we need to recognize in terms of sustainability where our climate, and thank you, Councilmember Nicholas, for highlighting and asking about that, uh, because this is part of our climate action plan.

We also are doing our part, not only eliminating natural gas, but also um reducing the risks for toxic air uh contaminants um as it is being built.

Um it is it is it is something that I've seen already.

I think there's a project on Mission Road near as you approach El Camino High School that um we're all familiar that is stacked level townhouses that went really fast.

I mean, they put them out there and people bought them, and we could have said, oh no, they're gonna sit for a while.

Um, it introduces Lindenville, it reimagines Lindenville, and I appreciate the questions from Councilmember Coleman too, thinking about not just this project, but as we move forward, what it will look like.

Greenery has to be part of all developments moving forward in this area of town.

We want to preserve the industrial aspect, but because the Lindenville plan addresses that, this makes the really good sense.

I appreciate also the the fact that it's different buildings and it's not all one single um, although it looks like it in the back.

I do encourage folks to look in the back of the room here.

Uh, thank you to the developer taking time to create that model for all of us, uh, to to be able to do that.

Um, as the elected representative in this district, this is something we've been waiting for to redevelop this area for a long time.

Um, like council member uh Nagales said we also need to uh think about those homeowners, right?

We know about homeownership creates, legacy creates uh sustainability and also creates long-term uh families and generations to live in South San Francisco and make South San Francisco uh their home.

Um it is important that it's uh the walkability, the protection of that, and also walkability to Caltrain as well, is what um all of this um as a whole is is makes makes it a really rewarding and positive moving forward uh project.

Um, so with that, I will now uh move uh to see if anyone would like to make a motion uh to or actually Mr.

Mayor, yes.

I was gonna ask you to close the public hearing.

Close the public hearing, yes.

And then if you could take up each of the three items uh separately, a separate record on each one.

Got it.

Okay, we'll go with uh first item.

Uh can I have a motion to approve?

So moved.

I'll second.

I have a first and a second.

Can I please have roll call?

Councilmember Nogales?

Yes, Mayor Flores?

Yes, Councilmember Coleman.

Yes, Councilmember Nicholas.

Aye.

Motion passes.

Um can I have a motion to approve item 9B?

So move for 9B.

And that I'll put I'll second.

Okay, first and second.

Can I have a roll call, please?

Mayor Flores?

Yes.

Councilmember Nicholas?

Aye.

Councilmember Nogales?

Yes.

Councilmember Coleman.

Yes.

Motion passes.

Um I will move uh item 9C, the resolution.

Make a motion for that.

Can I have a second?

Second.

First and a second.

Can I have a roll call, please?

Council Member Nogales?

Yes.

Councilmember Nicholas.

Aye.

Councilmember Coleman.

Yes.

Mayor Flores.

Yes, motion passes.

Thank you very much for everyone that is involved in this project.

Good luck to you.

Godspeed.

We'll make sure that this moves along here for the benefit of our community.

Thank you.

Next item, please.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you.

We'll move along to administrative business.

Item number 10 is an informational report regarding update on the City of South San Francisco's investment portfolio as of June 30th, 2025.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mr.

City Treasurer.

Good evening, Mr.

Mayor, Council members.

I'm cognizant of the time, so we will do our best to truncate the um the presentation as much as possible.

Uh I'm Frank Cariso, your city treasurer.

It's my pleasure to come before you this evening to provide an update to the on the city's investment portfolio as required under the reporting clause of our investment policy.

Joining us this evening are Karen Chang, Director of Finance for the City and Carlos Oblita's senior portfolio strategist at Chandler Asset Management, our external investment advisors.

Carlos is going to take us through a uh portfolio presentation, including some key economic indicators as of the quarter end June 30th, 2025.

And I just want to clarify before we get into the presentation, the council's well aware of this.

City staff are well aware, just for the public's understanding.

As we go through the portfolio, the portfolio are basically funds, you know, for the city's operations that aren't needed today, right?

These are funds that are fully allocated for projects.

Most of it is for CIP projects that are ongoing that are going to be used down the road.

So without further ado, I'll hand it over to Carlos.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Council members.

Uh, let me take a moment to walk you through the investments.

I'm going to keep it brief, but of course, ask any questions that you may have.

Uh a lot of people are not as familiar with the investment side for a local government.

As a local government, you are subject to California government code section 53600.

In essence, it really limits the types of investments that you can have.

You are limited to investing in the bond markets.

You are a lender.

That's what a bond is, it's a loan.

You're a lender, and you are making money from interest income that comes from lending that money out when you purchase that bond.

And the value of that principle and the future cash flows coming to you can go up and down on paper, and those two dynamics comprise your return.

Um the objectives of from California government code are safety first, followed by liquidity.

After those two objectives are met, then it's returned.

So it's a very limited uh scope in the portfolio, but very specialized because it is it is all debt securities.

The value of those debt securities are generally determined by interest rates and their movement, and those interest rates get moved around by the status of our economy and what investors think the economy will do into the future.

If I can just poke through, I'm gonna pass the economics.

I'll leave you with three bullet points on the economics.

Investors right now are concerned about the direction of interest rates, which can be driven by by the Federal Reserve's monetary policy.

The expectation is that at some point soon the Federal Reserve will lower short-term interest rates.

That will have a dual effect on your portfolio.

It will cause your investments to go up in value, but your future reinvestments will be at a slightly lower interest earnings uh level.

It'll be at a lower yield, okay.

Um the second piece that investors are focused on is fiscal policy.

We had a large fiscal bill that was passed recently by Congress and sponsored by this administration, and that generally is being viewed as as a direction where we're increasing the national debt and widening the budget deficit.

And that over the long run is not necessarily a good thing.

And investors are, you know, they're a little bit nervous about that.

Um the third thing, of course, is just so a lot of unknowns related to geopolitical risk and the overall direction of of just uh on a global perspective where our nation is and what sort of risks are posing to our economy over the long run.

Luckily, your portfolio is built, it's designed for safety and liquidity.

It's supposed to withstand um uh situations like that.

That's the design, and uh and and thus far it has been meeting its objectives quite handsomely.

Um, what you see here is a breakdown of the portfolios, uh, their sub-portfolios in in uh in the investment program.

Uh the top three mid the midterm limited maturity and pension reserve are portfolios that we manage on your behalf, but we do that in collaboration with your treasurer and also with city staff.

Nothing is done in a black box.

This is a very transparent program, and it's very collaborative.

Your treasurer and your and your finance director, all your staff, uh, even the city manager's office uh people come in and sit in on these uh meetings and understand what's going on.

There's a voice in all of this process, so it's very collaborative.

We do the heavy lifting because we have the resources as a professional money manager to drive the portfolio forward and to mitigate risk.

Uh, the midterm portfolio is generally a slightly longer portfolio that maintains investments between one and five years, averages somewhere around two and a half years.

The limited maturity portfolio generally stays between one and three years and averages a little bit shorter, a little about one and three quarter years, but lately we've been managing that even shorter for cash flows.

There's money moving in and out of there.

The longer portfolio generally doesn't experience that.

That pension reserve is just a tiny, smaller sliver that's been set aside for pension uh reasons to be to mitigate uh budgetary changes in pension expense.

And then liquidity is basically cash that sits at the bank and also at the state pool, local agency investment fund.

Uh, and and staff with your with your treasurer control that directly.

The three top portfolios uh are the portfolios that that we as your investment advisor, those are the ones that we manage, and those are actively managed.

We don't simply just buy a bond and sit and forget about it and collect the income.

We position and sometimes sell before maturity if we think we're gonna earn the city more money while improving the safety and liquidity of the portfolio.

The overall program is uh approximately $391 million as of the fiscal year end, and like your treasurer stated, there's a claim on all these assets.

It's not just extra money that can be sort of found and spent.

Um overall, you had a fantastic year, and the reason for that is because we've seen some of the highest interest rates we've seen in the last 15 years.

We came out of a very, very low interest rate environment pre-pandemic, during the pandemic.

They were starting to rise before the pandemic, then they fell to the floor almost zero percent.

And they stayed that way until until shortly after the pandemic and the economy reopened, and they've gone up to the highest levels we've seen basically since 15 years ago.

Um, for that reason, you'll note uh we have more we have the history on on the last fiscal year on the port on the managed portfolios, the top three, and um, and we have that history for last fiscal year, and for this fiscal year, you'll note that you handsomely outperformed the liquidity component, also did quite well.

Your overall interest income, just interest income alone, is 12.8 million dollars.

If I were to put my hat on as a policymaker, someone like you, uh policymakers are always thinking about budget and and how we're gonna meet that budget.

What sort of revenue sources are going to be able to are we gonna be able to spend to deliver the services that we need to our citizens?

And so these dollars go directly to that budget.

The fair value component of the assets also went up.

Um, but those those, of course, you can't spend.

However, they do impact your overall financial position, it goes into your financial statements.

If there's any capital markets activity, if you go to borrow and issue bonds, uh the rating agencies look at that, and then of course, over the long run, when that builds up, you build up the size of your program, which nets you more money in which to go out and invest and get more yield.

Um, I will uh pause there and end with these three things.

You've met your objectives of safety, liquidity, and return.

Uh you are well positioned into the future.

As I stated earlier, the anticipation is that through the end of this calendar year, most investors anticipate that there will be lower rates.

Rates have been falling over the past year on a net basis, although very volatile along the way.

And it's expected that by the end of this year you might see the Federal Reserve lower short-term rates once, perhaps twice.

Um, that will mean that what you hold in your portfolio will go up in value, but your reinvestment will be lower.

You're gonna purchase new bonds, those bonds are gonna offer you a lower yield.

The the beauty of your portfolio is that these uh the top two portfolios are longer portfolios.

On average, it takes longer time for maturities to come up.

Um, and when they come up, you you reinvest in these lower rates.

Well, it takes a longer period of time, and for that reason, you you you're gonna hold on to that income for a little bit longer, and when the rates fall, it will immediately appreciate in value.

I'll stop there, take any questions you may have.

Thank you, uh, Mr.

Bolita.

Sorry, I didn't make mean to make you feel rushed or anything.

All good.

It's good to keep it concise.

Thank you, appreciate that.

Any questions or comments from my colleagues?

I think we're happy that this is compliant with the California government uh code and cities um investment policy, so.

The volatility of the market though is really scary to for all of us.

Uh council member Nicolas, uh that's exactly right.

The the investment portfolio, what one of the things that that your treasurer and staff have us look at is every time we execute a trade in the portfolio, we have to make sure that we're compliant with California government code and that we're compliant with the city's investment policy.

And we collaborate with your treasurer and staff every year to update that investment policy to capture any changes from code.

That's a very important part of this investment program.

That's part of the safety and and stewardship for the citizens of the city.

So that's a very important part of the program.

In terms of the overall economy, uh there's a lot of uncertainty, definitely.

And um, and you see that uh it's stabilized quite a bit.

Tariffs have had a big uh space in the news, and uh ultimately we think that those tariffs may not have the deep impact that a lot of investors thought initially, but it is still an unknown, and the direction of of where the Federal Reserve is still uncertain, uh, we're not sure we're gonna they're gonna end up, uh whether they're gonna lower rates now or wait.

Um it's an unknown.

These are unknowns that make investors nervous, and um, if this deficit that's widened because of this bill, for an already growing deficit, if that's not addressed over the long run, um, investors may demand more yield to loan to the United States government.

So when you purchase treasury bonds, because you loan some of the bonds you have in your portfolio are US Treasury bonds.

You're lending to Uncle Sam.

And so to make up for that risk that that may be inherent in the markets, you may be demanding a higher yield down the line.

So it it just depends.

There's a lot of unknowns right now, but like I said, it's it's a safety liquidity portfolio.

It is, it is there's no guarantees in anything in high for in this portfolio, certainly, but uh, but it is designed and positioned to withstand those shocks.

It's not a risk portfolio, it's a safety liquidity portfolio.

The program that your treasurer and staff alongside with our help has it, the program they've established for you is is one of uh checks and balances and risk management.

It's all about risk.

When you talk about safety in a portfolio, when your primary goal is safety, it's about risk management.

Um we're not going to Las Vegas on this, we're not uh taking risky um bets or anything like that.

This is really about maintaining an income stream and having the money ready and available when you need it.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you again, Mr.

Oblitas.

Uh, Mr.

City Treasurer, great job as always.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

This is an informational item, no action needed.

We'll move on to the next item.

Item number 11 is a report regarding a resolution to approve successor memorandums of understanding between the city of South San Francisco and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 829, Teamsters Local 856 mid management unit, Teamsters Local 856 confidential unit, South San Francisco Police Association, an international association of firefighters local 1507, and a resolution approving an amendment to the executive management compensation plan and improving budget amendment number two 26.010.

Items number 11A and 11B are the resolutions.

Good evening, Director Lockhart.

Hi, good evening, Mayor Flores and City Council members.

It is my pleasure tonight to present you uh five tentative agreements that we have reached with uh city bargaining units, our employee organization as well as uh the executive management unit recommended compensation plan changes.

So I'm gonna go through briefly um who our bargaining units are, our uh employee organizations which represent uh the um uh the totality of our full-time employees here.

We have uh apps me, which is our largest group.

Um most of our um our maintenance workers, our um library workers, parks, uh, most of our frontline staff who are not in our safety groups are part of AFSME.

We have two uh units in the Teamsters uh local 856.

That's our mid-management.

So uh everybody that is a manager but below a department head, and our confidential unit is uh primarily clerical technical workers.

Um the International Association of Firefighters, IAFF, that is um as it says our firefighters and fire captains and related staff, and we have our police association, which uh is comprised of police officers, corporals, and sergeants, so the non-management police.

Um we do have one more unit that is um uh uh still in progress, and that is our operating engineers union, uh, and they are um primarily represent the workers in the water quality uh plant.

So uh we will not be presenting on that tonight.

We hope to have that forthcoming.

We do have two unrepresented units, and that is our executive management unit, department heads, uh, as well as our public safety managers, so the command staff of the police and fire departments.

Um, so just a little bit of background.

Uh we uh we are required by under law to uh engage in good faith negotiations with all of our employee organizations uh over wages in terms of employment.

Um we with our unrepresented staff, we uh do conduct uh similarly, we negotiate with them in good faith, uh try to reach agreement.

It is um you know more of an informal process, but um still a good faith process.

So in earlier this year, we had uh all of our labor agreements expiring in June of 2025, and I apologize for the typo there.

It was it was not early 2024, it was early 2025.

We started, so we uh met with each group at least 10 times uh during that process, had a very good collaborative process.

Um, want to thank our labor representatives uh for working with us on that.

Uh we did reach tentative agreement with five of these groups uh before the expiration date of June 30th.

Um, took us a little while to finalize all the documentation and bring it back here for council.

Um, but you know, we we we did recognize those as timely uh completion of negotiations.

So I just want to go through some of the key terms, the economic terms, that are changes in our MOUs, and this is organized by topic.

So each group you'll see had a few items under each topic.

For the main term, these are two-year terms.

So a two-year memorandum of understanding, and there will be a 4% across the board wage adjustment.

It is actually retroactive to July 1st, so the beginning of the contract, and then another 4% in the second year, so July of 2026.

And this is commonly called a cost of living adjustment.

I did want to mention that is part of what we consider looking at the trends in the CPI, which has really been kind of volatile.

There's been a lot of changes in the economy that we know try to keep up with that and make sure that we're paying in accordance with rising cost of living, but also looking at trends in the labor market and recruitment and retention trends and the overall financial condition of the city.

So what we are calling equity adjustments are when we look at specific jobs or specific classifications that may be we're having recruitment difficulties, or we have identified that salaries have fallen below those of our comparator cities.

So cities of similar size and scope of services that are in the Bay Area.

So I want to mention that we did identify some significant gaps with our police, our police association represented personnel.

Recruitment has been hard.

A lot of agencies have provided enhanced pay, enhanced incentives, trying to get new police officers in.

And even though, you know, we've we've kept up with cost of living adjustments, we've we've fallen behind in terms of total compensation.

So that was one area that we addressed.

There is a 1.5% equity adjustment for police.

FIRE had a similar, not as extreme, but you know, falling a little bit below market, so we tentatively agreed to a 1% equity adjustment.

With our other groups, in some cases, noting where specific positions are under market, there was a 1% increase, and there were just a small number that were increased by 1.5%, and that was due to being very significantly below market.

And so that was our communications dispatchers, some of our recreation and community services coordinators, and a couple of other positions.

We did do, as noted in the report, some internal alignment adjustments based on studies that were completed this year.

We typically do those on an annual basis.

So that's just realigning internally where uh salaries, where skills and abilities and things like that seem to align.

So there is an increase in the assistant city clerk salary to match that with management analyst too, and the deputy finance director making that equal to a similar deputy director.

Excuse me, longevity pay.

This is common in city government and other public agencies where people max out at you know the top step, and there's really nowhere to go for that.

Um, and this provides additional recognition for those with longer tenure.

So somebody's been 10, 15 or more years in the organization recognizing that.

Um we did have a longevity program in our MOUs.

It was cut off at new hires after 2020, so nobody was no none of the new hires were eligible for it.

Just looking at the trends in, you know, in other cities and in the labor market, we thought it was time to bring that back, and we actually enhanced it a little bit based on our turnover trends, and the fact that some of our newer employees in their first 10 year are where we're seeing more turnover.

So for uh these agreements, we have with our FSME and Teamsters unit.

Um, they will receive one percent at 10 years, and then a total of 3.5% at 15 years of service.

With our public safety, we move those time frames up a little bit because of their turnover trends, two and a half at seven years, three and a half at 15 years.

Um so education incentive pay is another item of compensation that we have typically included in our MOUs, and there are some enhancements on these, particularly with respect to our police association.

Again, looking at what other cities have done and uh compensation items that they're receiving.

We've augmented their existing program so that they're able to receive a little bit more for their advanced degrees and their post certificates, advanced post certificates.

We also added a two and a half percent crisis intervention training certificate pay.

So those who uh spend the time to go to crisis intervention training, that is uh a very high priority for our city, um, will receive another two and a half percent of pay.

Um our confidential unit, we just restructure their program from a flat dollar amount to a percentage of pay similar to others, so one percent for an associate's degree and two percent for a bachelor's degree.

And with AFSME, there were some minor enhancements to their existing program, really just adding a couple of additional certifications that they can utilize to receive um incentive pay.

Um, another item that was added to the police association MOU, this is something that uh the association has long sought, is differential pay for night shift workers.

Um this is a really common compensation item in the industry.

Uh historically, we have not paid our night shift workers more than our day shift workers.

Uh, this provision would provide for an additional five percent premium for those who are working the swing shift or graveyard shifts.

So those, you know, that uh into the evening and then late evening hours.

Um this was a new uh item I wanted to uh explain a little bit.

So I'm our fire group, our IAF group, uh we have tentatively agreed on a $500 residency stipend.

For those who are living in the peninsula counties of San Mateo, San Mateo, uh San Francisco or Santa Clara.

As is typical with firefighters who work shifts, typically it's 48 straight hours on shift and then you know, several days off.

It's very different from your typical work week.

Um, and as cost of living in the Bay Area rises, there you know tends to be a trend of people moving further and further away and commuting long distances to get to the city.

One of the you know downsides of that is that we don't have as many local people here ready to respond if there's a major disaster if they're off duty, and we want to call them in.

And so recognizing that the cost of living is a barrier for especially, you know, um, some of our our newer, our younger folks who are are just joining the department.

Uh, we wanted to provide some incentive for that uh for living in the area.

And um uh in addition to that, what we've added to the MOU is a requirement to live within the state of California.

Uh, we did allow exemptions for those who currently reside.

Uh I have a couple in um uh neighboring states of of Oregon and uh Idaho, actually one of them.

Uh, but we you know we will allow them to maintain their residence um and and but no new employees can move out of state.

Um for the executive management compensation plan, there are not a lot of significant changes.

The uh cost of living or across the board adjustments are the same as subordinate units, uh so four percent in each year.

One change that we did make is we had uh provision called management incentive pay, essentially uh gives the city manager and council ability to recognize uh staff with additional duties or additional um uh unique responsibilities that have been uh provided to them.

So um we felt it was uh better to just add that amount into the employees' base pay and get rid of that provision.

So everything is on the salary schedule, it's more transparent and uh easier to manage that way.

So there was uh one position receiving that management incentive pay, that was the public works director.

So on the salary schedule, that 3.6 percent uh that uh that position was receiving is now in the base pay, and we will no longer pay that as a separate incentive.

Okay, and so for the fiscal impact on these agreements, um, just wanted to note uh the timing.

You know, we weren't able to really get these into the budget this year.

Uh we do have did have a uh somewhat conservative estimate of a three percent wage adjustment in the operating budget.

Um, as mentioned, we um uh reached tentative agreement over a four percent increase plus these other uh enhancements that uh I have uh uh gone over, and so uh that is approximately a 2.6 million uh adjustment for our represented groups and then a 46,000 adjustment for our executive and executive management.

And uh the budget amendment included in the resolution will appropriate these funds.

Uh I say it's primarily general fund reserves.

There are a handful of staff uh in these units that are um in the sewer enterprise fund, but uh that is really you know less about one and a half, one to one and a half percent.

Uh so our recommendation is to approve the tentative agreements for the sex successor memorandums of understanding with the represented employee organizations, as well as improve the associated salary schedules and budget amendment.

Uh and also uh staff recommends to approve the amendments to the executive management compensation plan and associated salary schedules, and with that, uh again, thank you very much uh council for your direction and uh support through this process, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Director Lockhart for the presentation and going over for the community um and our audience here.

Any questions from my colleagues here?

Um go ahead.

Just a comment that you know, thank you for um preventing a protracted negotiation this year.

That's really great.

And um, so because we don't we still have one unit that has that adjustment or are they all coming from the enterprise fund?

Uh the one unit that's outstanding is from the enterprise fund.

We do also have the public safety managers, it's a smaller group, but they are general fund.

And and for that, you will ask for the additional when the time comes to prove it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

If not, I'll take comments.

It's more of a comment.

I just want to thank Leah and everyone on the negotiation team.

Also, although all the units, all the units, labor units who've uh come to an agreement.

Uh, as Councilman Nicholas said this, what I just say thank you for not prolonging this contract negotiations and uh um I look forward to agreeing to these contracts.

Thank you.

All right.

I also want to thank you, Leah.

Thank uh all the bargaining units from each of the employee organizations for um meeting us at the table and avoid any uh sort of impasse and and uh deadlock.

Um I wanna I want to put this on record and highlight how important and valuable our employees are here uh to this council.

This now has been I think the second iteration of this cohort of of council members that has gone through collective bargaining, and I can't tell you how much this council and staff and everyone really values the work, the commitment, uh, the legacy, the years that you all have put in uh to make this city what it is today.

Um so I know that I speak on on behalf of all my council, including my my colleague, my vice mayor, who's not here today.

Uh we're all advocating and making sure that that we understand that the conditions that the city is in as good stewards, we need to take that into account, but we also uh want to uh commit to rewarding and keeping the excellent uh professionalism and service that all of you as city employees um have uh dedicated for many years here, and also not only retain but recruit.

Uh so I'm very proud and thank you again uh Leah for for getting us quite almost to the finish line, one more to go.

But um it's also um a sense of pride for me as as a mayor to be able to uh deliver this um and and not have any uh ulterior um occurrences happen.

So thank you with that.

Um and with that um there are two uh resolutions.

So I will take a motion for the first one, item 11a.

So moved.

I have a first, can I have a second?

I'll second.

I have a first and a second roll call, please.

Mayor Flores.

Yes.

Council Member Nogales?

Yes, Councilmember Coleman?

Yes, Councilmember Nicholas.

Aye.

Motion passes.

Um can I have a motion to approve item 11b?

I'll move forward.

Uh of a first, can I have a second, please?

I will second.

Have a first and a second.

Can I have roll call, please?

Councilmember Coleman?

Yes.

Mayor Flores?

Yes.

Councilmember Nicholas?

Aye.

Councilmember Nicholas.

Yes.

Motion also passes.

Thank you again.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate that.

Uh next item, please.

Items from council, committee reports, and announcements.

Item 12 is the discussion on League of California voting delegate for 2025.

As it's done every year, uh, the league requires um that the mayor uh get approval from its council to be a voting delegate since South San Francisco is a member of the League of California cities.

Wanna move this forward, making sure that my council agrees to put me forward.

Agree.

Yes.

Yes.

Do I do have a question?

Yes.

Uh is October 8th to 10th.

Yes.

Does that mean our council meeting on the 8th will still happen?

Will it not happen?

We will need to revisit that, as I believe a majority of the council might be traveling.

So can we look into that, please?

Thank you.

Madam City Manager.

All right.

Uh, any other items from council or committee reports and announcements.

I do.

Yes.

Right.

Uh, number one, uh, I am the appointee on the hope housing our people effectively interagency council.

Uh, at our most recent meeting, uh, we decided to dissolve the council.

Um, and the reason being is the responsibilities of our council, uh, which was mostly informational, were duplicative with other existing bodies that existed uh throughout the county, and the hope is for an existing body, possibly home for all, which does similar work uh as as one to replace the role of the Hope IAC.

Um, and if anyone has any questions, I'm happy to uh send a staff report from Hope uh to uh anyone who may have some concerns over that.

Uh the second item that I want to bring up is um, you know, I've been following uh the discussion among opting into the regional transit measure very closely.

Uh first I want to thank the mayor uh for his role on CCAG in being an advocate for South San Francisco and being an advocate uh for making sure that our transit systems do not fall off a cliff uh next year, that we have a fighting chance, and that San Mateo County is part of the solution, and uh you know, working collaboratively, uh regionally with the other four counties.

Um as such, I'm pleased to report that last year, I'm sorry, not last year, last week, uh SAM trans voted to opt in eight to one.

Uh there are still details that need to be ironed out about SB 63 in the legislature, but uh as of now that our county will be included.

Uh, what I want to bring up though is our is uh another bill that is currently in the legislature, it's an assembly, uh, is is SB 79.

And the reason why I bring this up is we cannot be going out to the residents for taxes every time our transit systems is facing a fiscal cliff, and we need to be creating systems that are self-sustainable.

Um, and that you know, we'll basically fund itself.

And what SB 79 does is it legalizes transit oriented development for all communities that are served by robust public transit systems.

These are things that we are currently already doing in South San Francisco, right?

If you look at the map of what we're upzoning, we are upzoning areas that is near Caltrain station, that is near BART station.

The reason being is because we want those individuals to not be clogging up our roads but to be uh using uh BART and Caltrain and further sustaining our transit systems.

We but but just the city of South San Francisco cannot self you know sustain BART and Cal Train.

This has to be an approach that is done region wide to ensure that beyond this transit measure that we have uh the demand that that we are building the demand for the people who will be riding Barton Caltrain every day, not just to commute, but to also get from place to place from their homes to retail uh to other uh places of interest in addition to work.

And so I'm hoping that our city can send a letter of support for SB 79 to the legislature, including uh you know our uh that the legislator to represent um our uh city to urge its passage in assembly but also in the Senate for concurrence.

Thank you.

That's a question that would have to come from the council to approve this or city attorney for the process to do that.

If so, then I'd have to recuse myself from that just like the SB 63 conversation.

Sure.

If the council was to take a position for this, if the city as a whole wanted to take a position, it would need an action by the council, in which case, yes, you should probably recuse yourself.

Okay, and and we could decide whether it could come from you or myself, Madam City Manager as well, too.

Um thank you, Councilmember Coleman.

Um yes, I just wanted to provide thank you for highlighting that as member of C CAG.

Um the vote was 17 yes, two no and one abstention.

So um I wanted to report that out as committee report.

All right, any other committee reports?

If not, uh we'll move on.

We'll move along to closed session.

Item number 13, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation.

Name of case is LC General Engineering and Construction Inc.

versus City of South San Francisco.

Item 14 is conference with labor negotiators, agency designated representatives.

Sharon Reynolds, City Manager, Rich Lee Assistant City Manager, Leah Lockhart, Human Resources Director, Employee Organizations, International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 39, unrepresented groups, our executive management, public safety managers.

Item 15 is conference with real property negotiators, properties 616 and 700 London Avenue, South San Francisco.

Agency negotiators Nell Sealander, Economic and Community Development Director, Greg Mediati, Parks and Recreation Director, and Skye Woodrow, City Attorney, negotiating parties, San Mateo Countywide Oversight, board under negotiation, price and terms.

Alrighty, thank you, Assistant City Clerk.

We'll adjourn to a closed session.

Thank you, everyone.

Have a good night.