June 10, 2025 Joint Meeting of Mountain View City Council, Shoreline Regional Park Community, MVCIFA

Video

Transcript

Segment 1

[00:08:28] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us for our study session. We will now have roll call. The city clerk will take attendance by roll call.

[00:08:35] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember Clark. Here. Councilmember Hicks. Here. Councilmember McAlister. Yep. Councilmember Ramos—I mean Ramirez, sorry. Here. Vice Mayor Ramos. Here. Mayor Kamei. Here. You have a quorum with Councilmember Showalter absent.

[00:08:51] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. So we'll move on to Item 3, our study session. Item 3.1 is our Citywide Transportation Demand Management TDM Ordinance update. The purpose of this study session is to review and provide feedback on staff's recommended framework for the Citywide Transportation Demand Management Ordinance and direct staff to proceed with preparing the draft TDM Ordinance to be brought to the Environmental Planning Commission and City Council in late 2025, early 2026. Transportation Planner Ben Pacho and Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer will present the item. If you'd like to speak on this item in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk now. And we'll start with the staff presentation.

[00:10:21] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Good evening Council. My name is Allison Boyer. I am the Assistant Public Works Director and I have Ben Pacho here, Transportation Planner, and we are here to cover the Transportation Demand Management TDM Ordinance framework.

[00:10:37] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: City Council identified the development of a Citywide TDM Ordinance as a strategic priority in fiscal years 2023 to 2025. The basis for the TDM was first established in the 2030 General Plan and will be informed by the specific TDM provisions that are required in the city's precise plans and sustainability action plans. The TDM Ordinance also seeks to align the existing policies used for the development review such as the city's MTA handbook, VMT screening analysis, and SB 743 that are important for understanding transportation impacts related to CEQA and required trip reductions.

[00:11:58] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Currently, individual TDM requirements have been imposed on projects in absence of a Citywide TDM Ordinance. This has resulted in a piecemeal approach and varying levels of trip reduction targets as seen on the bottom-left legend. The strategies required of these existing projects have also been non-standardized, which the TDM Ordinance seeks to address by improving the TDM planning process and selection measures.

[00:12:24] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Reviewing the project work plan, staff is in the current phase focused on development of the ordinance framework, seen here in blue. We previously brought the TDM framework to CTC in quarter 1 of 2025 where members had voiced their support for staff's recommendation. Staff will next begin working on drafting ordinance enforcement language for council adoption in early 2026.

[00:13:28] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: To set the stage a bit, staff is here tonight to review staff's recommended framework for the Citywide TDM Ordinance and get direction for staff to proceed with preparing the draft TDM Ordinance.

[00:13:43] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: In quarter 4 of 2023, CTC reviewed and approved the project's vision statement where the TDM Ordinance will seek to reduce single-occupancy vehicle trips for new development and increase use of multimodal transportation alternatives that are sustainable, equitable, effective, and respond to changing demands. The project goals shown below were informed by existing condition analysis and stakeholder input. For example, staff gathered feedback from the Downtown Business Association, the TMA, including several one-on-one interviews with developers, employers, property managers, and community members, all conveying similar themes, such as the need for a more predictable and flexible process to comply with TDM requirements and to expand access to sustainable transportation options.

[00:15:16] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: CTC had raised questions about the Citywide TDM Ordinance applying to all development, including existing and new development. Staff have determined that requiring projects that have already been approved by council would be infeasible based on pre-existing entitlements. However, staff will be exploring options for encouraging entitled projects to voluntarily opt-in and participate.

[00:15:44] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: The project vision helped guide the development of the TDM framework. The various framework elements can be divided into three key policy areas including applicability: this touches on who will be required to comply and what criteria is used to screen projects subject to the ordinance. Secondly, requirements: this section addresses what key metrics projects will be subject to for compliance purposes, as well as how they will demonstrate their intention to comply. Finally, we have monitoring: this addresses how staff and key stakeholders will monitor the ongoing effectiveness of TDM performance.

[00:17:04] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: At a high level, the TDM framework seeks to implement TDM requirements across a project's lifespan from the entitlement phase when a project is sponsored by a developer to the post-occupancy phase when the city later certifies new buildings are ready for occupancy. Moving from left to right, initial projects will be analyzed based on trip generation assumptions and estimated ADT using the city's VMT analysis, transportation impact studies, and multimodal analysis handbook. If proposed projects generate upward of 200 average daily trips, they will be required to mitigate vehicle trips by adopting a TDM plan. Following one year post-occupancy, project owners will be required to submit an annual TDM report that attests to their compliance with the ADT targets or face potential penalties assessed by the city.

[00:18:44] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Starting at the very beginning, we will first discuss project's applicability. The TDM Ordinance, once adopted, will apply to new projects seeking entitlements by discretionary approval by City Council. Projects will be reviewed on the basis of expected trip generation assumptions and potential to generate over 200 plus average daily trips, ADT. Such project review is consistent with the city's VMT policy and multimodal handbook. Additionally, the current regulatory environment is such that state and regional laws require employers with more than 50 plus employees to provide TDM resources such as commuter benefits and parking cash-out incentives. It is intended that the City TDM Ordinance will support these employers in meeting such state and regional TDM requirements.

[00:19:11] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Additionally, it is important to note that all TDM requirements under the ordinance will fall to the landowner and run with the land in case of sale. For existing projects, landowners of properties that were entitled prior to the adoption of the TDM Ordinance may participate in the TDM program on a voluntary or opt-in basis.

[00:20:38] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Projects will be required to implement TDM strategies that reduce ADT to the following levels: 30% reduction in ADT for small projects, which is the equivalent of a small office project of about 30,000 square feet; 40% reduction for medium projects, which is the equivalent of about a 45,000 square foot office building; or 50% ADT reduction for large projects of about 90,000 square feet. The reduction targets were informed by the city's existing precise plan targets, as well as case studies of similar TDM programs in San Francisco, San Mateo County, Redwood City, and San Jose.

[00:21:55] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: The TOD reductions reflect feedback received earlier this year from stakeholders such as BPAC members, who requested that the thresholds be designed to ensure that ordinance does not disincentivize desirable transit-oriented development TOD projects. Neighboring jurisdictions, such as San Mateo County City and County Associations of Governments, provides a 10% bonus for TODs given that they are near high-quality transit services and typically generate fewer single-occupancy vehicle trips. The definition of a TOD is a project located within half a mile of high-quality transit.

[00:22:36] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Prior to entitlement, prospective applicants will be required to submit a TDM plan for review. Specifics of the TDM plan will then be included in the conditions of approval proceedings adopted by council. In the proposed framework, TDM plans will be comprised of three types of strategies. Mandatory strategies will provide supportive structure necessary to implement the TDM and may involve submitting reporting on an annual basis and providing the city a point of contact detail. Whereas core strategies offer an array of flexible, proven trip reduction strategies that applicants may select from to develop the project's TDM plan. Some examples of core strategies are transportation subsidies and vanpool incentives. And lastly, auxiliary measures, when paired with core strategies, are complementary and more effective in reducing trips. Some examples of auxiliary strategies are wayfinding improvements and transportation-related marketing events.

[00:24:15] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Projects will be required to submit TDM reporting annually. Small projects will need to provide reporting for the first three years of occupancy, where medium projects will be for the first 10 years, and large projects will be submitted for the first 15 years.

[00:25:13] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: This chart shows the required core and auxiliary strategies required based on a project size. You will see that for a small project they have a selection of required strategies, and then they will need to select an adequate number of core strategies required to meet the specific ADT reduction target and then choose select two strategies for auxiliary strategies. And again that moves through based on the project size to three strategies for medium and five strategies for large projects.

[00:25:51] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Here is the toolkit showing the different types of strategies and the ADT reduction effectiveness for core strategies. They've been broken into categories showing 0 to 5% trip reduction effectiveness, 5 to 10, and then 10 plus.

[00:26:51] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: So here we have an example project on how it would be received and walk through the process. So a medium-sized project that is in a TOD designation, so it has 800 predicted ADT and a TOD recommendation means it would need a percentage trip reduction of 30%. That means the assigned trip cap would be 560. The required strategies would be a TDM agreement, annual reporting, annual travel survey, property transfer form, transportation coordinator contact, and annual driveway counts. Some core strategies that would help them achieve that reduction include bike and scooter share programs, bike facilities, unbundled parking, first and last mile transit, and rideshare programs. And because it is a medium-sized facility, they would need to select three auxiliary strategies; we've got transportation hub, holding transportation events, and onsite wayfinding.

[00:28:32] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: As for the compliance annually, they would have to conduct a survey, provide annual reporting, and conduct driveway counts. In the case of land sale, they would need to ensure that the buyers understand the ongoing requirements in the TDM agreements.

[00:28:48] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Moving into the monitoring element of the framework, this slide illustrates the various reporting activities that projects will be responsible for, which are organized based on project size. As you'll note, the burden of monitoring activities is less for smaller projects. This reflects feedback staff received given that smaller projects typically have fewer resources to comply with ongoing monitoring requirements.

[00:29:09] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Next steps for the ongoing project workplan, we will move following tonight's council meeting and the input gathered, staff will incorporate council's feedback and finalize the TDM framework. Once finalized, staff will set about drafting ordinance and enforcement language for council adoption, which is tentatively scheduled for early 2026.

[00:30:14] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: So tonight, staff is here asking City Council if they concur with the staff recommendation or have other feedback on the ordinance framework. Thank you.

[00:30:31] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Um, would any member since this is a study session we'll start with public comment first. Um, and then before we start with public comment I wasn't sure is there someone from the TMA that was going to speak?

[00:30:45] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Oh great. Would you like is there would you like to do it now and then we can get public comment because and then if there's questions Council can ask you after. Wonderful, thank you. And you can feel free, yep, pull it down. Okay great. Thank you.

[00:31:41] Public Speaker: Good evening Mayor Kamei, Vice Mayor Ramos, and Councilmembers and city staff. My name is Ronnie Hattrup and I'm the Executive Director of the Mountain View Transportation Management Association. It's a privilege to speak with you tonight on behalf of an organization that works every day to improve mobility options, reduce congestion in our community through practical people-focused solutions. I'm here this evening to voice support for the concept and direction of a Transportation Demand Management Ordinance for the City of Mountain View.

[00:32:08] Public Speaker: As the city explores options to manage growing transportation needs, I believe a thoughtfully developed TDM ordinance would be a valuable tool to help us reduce traffic, improve air quality, meet climate goals, and support equitable access to mobility.

[00:32:28] Public Speaker: TDM is not a new concept here. The city already encourages many forward-thinking mobility measures. What a formal ordinance can do is create a consistent and transparent framework, one that aligns with the General Plan, supports regional transportation goals, and ensures that all new development contributes to a balanced, efficient, and sustainable transportation system.

[00:33:34] Public Speaker: The transportation landscape throughout the Bay Area is constantly evolving and we need the right policy framework to shape development in a way that supports mobility for all.

[00:33:43] Public Speaker: At the Mountain View TMA we are already partnered with major employers, developers, and the City of Mountain View in providing TDM solutions, including the MVGo first and last mile shuttle, the Mountain View community shuttle, the MVGo midday mobility and guaranteed last mile program, TDM coordination services for our members, including hosted tabling events to educate people about the transportation options available to them, and our newly launched MVGo smart commute platform, a tool that allows riders to have planning functionality, ride-matching functionality, as well as incentives and rewards to people who register and log their trips in the tool, which is available on the App Store and on a website.

[00:35:08] Public Speaker: Looking forward, the TMA will continue towards supporting members in their TDM monitoring and reporting efforts, and we'll also continue to explore new initiatives, TDM initiatives as they become available. The TMA continues to evolve as we work towards accommodating the needs of our various member types. Last fall we successfully adopted a 2025 fee structure to accommodate 100% affordable housing projects. We worked closely with city staff and Eden Housing over the year to determine the best approach to bring in these members into the organization at an affordable rate and are pleased to note that as of today, Eden Housing is in the process of joining the organization.

[00:36:50] Public Speaker: The Mountain View TMA values its partnership with the city in working towards our common goal to reduce traffic congestion and we stand ready to be a collaborative partner with you to continue this process. We can offer insights from implementation, support stakeholder engagement, and help ensure that future ordinance language is both effective and practical. Thank you for your leadership in continuing to prioritize a sustainable and connected future for Mountain View and we look forward to working with you all as the conversation on this ordinance moves forward. Happy to answer any other questions you may have.

[00:37:07] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Thanks so much for joining us. Wonderful. All right, well we'll move on um since this is a study session to public comment. Would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide comment on this item? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk. I'm not seeing any in person and I am not seeing any raised hands. So I just want to make sure that that is the case. All right, I'm not seeing any public comment so I'm going to close it. Oh, here we go, here's our hand. Oh no, okay. The hand went down. So I'm going to close it and we can start with council questions.

[00:38:29] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So that we can does any member of the council have any questions? Councilmember Hicks.

[00:38:42] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I'm going to start with a question that I feel is a little foolish but I don't know the answer. Um, so when we're talking about metrics and thresholds in your presentation and we're talking about various percentage reductions that range from depending on the size of your project and whether you're located very close to transit or not uh between 20 and 50 percent, what are those percentages from? Are they from your expected level or what's what's the beginning point that we're reducing from because these are buildings that are not built yet, so it can't be current conditions.

[00:40:04] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: That is correct. So the predicted ADT comes from the ITE which is the transportation manual that is used to determine based on land use and size what the expected average daily trip uh will be generated from that development. So based on the square footage and the type of building there is a per square footage generation of trip and so that is how that is calculated.

[00:40:36] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And can I assume that the developments that are closer to transit already start with a reduced trip because of their location? Is that one of the—there seemed to—that may or may not be true because I've asked the question, I don't know the answer.

[00:40:52] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: They do not start there but they all start based on the ITE. So they all start with that as their their starting point. Then typically what comes from there is a trip reduction from the sorry, let me—there's a lot of acronyms and I want to make sure I give you the right acronym for the right thing here. So um let's see, it's the V yeah. Go ahead Ben.

[00:42:08] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: Thanks for the question Councilmember. So to Allison's point, the analysis looks at the land use characteristics and the project size. It doesn't necessarily take into geography or proximity to transit, so that's why applying a 10% discount from the ADT targets reflects a lower trip generation from what a TOD would otherwise generate. According to VTA's transportation impact analysis, it's shown that typically TOD projects do generate between 6 and 9% less vehicle trips. So rather than not accounting for that, we do want to take that into consideration because that is an important characteristic.

[00:43:32] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So you're kind of layering two different starting point metrics. The first is the one from the ITE and then the other is the one that has been seen in practice that there's an additional whatever you said 6 to whatever percent when you're near transit. Okay. Okay, now I understand what the starting point is better, thank you.

[00:43:54] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And then I have so one of my concerns, I'm you know, I like this policy, but one of my concerns is uh accuracy of uh when we're trying to get trip reductions from SOVs how how accurate are the counts? And I have particular concerns about driveway counts because from my experience many people park you know, you could take a Waymo and get off a block away and or nowhere near the driveway or you could park a few blocks away or bus or whatever. So can you tell me what other measures you use so that it's not or you can tell me it's just driveway counts but what you know, how would you uh sort of catch up for the difficulty of just using driveway counts?

Segment 2

[00:45:00] Councilmember John McAlister: have a system in which to make it streamlined and efficient for him to do so. So we really haven't done any monitoring of TDMs yet? This is all going—you said going forward that Ben will be doing this?

[00:45:15] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: We have existing TDM in place for a number of projects throughout the city, but they're not uniform in how the strategies are required or applied or how the reporting comes in. So Ben does take a significant amount of time to review each of those on an annual basis and chase after the ones who are, you know, non-compliant with their TDM goals.

Segment 1

[00:45:32] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: Thanks for the question. Um, so there's various methodologies. Driveway counts aren't necessarily king, so we work with the project to understand where the points of contact are around the site. So whether there while there may be you know, points of egress that incorporate the driveway, um we've worked with sites that incorporate survey intercepts. So they look at kind of the curb management and the vicinity, the proximity of the the area and they intercept people based on different modes that they might be taking whether they're walking from a transit stop that's down the block or whether they're getting dropped off by a Waymo, by an Uber, by a Lyft. And so those are properly categorized by you know vehicle mode and then um counted as a a trip to the site.

Segment 2

[00:45:44] Councilmember John McAlister: Thank you for the next question. How—is there any consequences for not submitting their TDM report?

[00:45:51] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: Right now for existing projects, there is not. But moving forward, we will explore the idea of some sort of strategy for dealing with non-compliance. Ideally, from staff's perspective, we want to work with the developers and with the developments to make sure they're actually achieving their targets. When we think of penalties, typically we think of money, and it's not the city's goal in this instance to make money. The city's goal in this instance is to reduce the number of vehicles on the roadway.

[00:46:29] Councilmember John McAlister: In the past, if they didn't meet their goals, they couldn't build more office buildings, so that was a very big incentive for them to do it. So I guess we can't do that now. Are most of our TMA members in North Bayshore?

[00:46:48] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: That's a good question. I think we do have a lot of our employer members are in North Bayshore. Our residential members have grown over the past five years, and a lot of them are in the San Antonio quadrant. We also have members in the East Whisman area as well. So we're sort of scattered now. I wouldn't say that majority of our members are in North Bayshore anymore.

Segment 1

[00:47:02] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So you're saying you would also survey them at various doorways or parking structure.

[00:47:06] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Right. Correct. So one of the required strategies in addition to the driveway counts is the annual annual travel survey, sorry, I've got to speak into it, not like this. And um so so that would be to either employees or residents and that would allow us to capture how they are getting to work. So even if they aren't parking in the parking lot they would acknowledge that they have driven to work and so we would be able to paint a clearer picture of how the residents and the employees are getting to the development site.

Segment 2

[00:47:06] Councilmember John McAlister: And are your members also including—I remember the Prometheus project over here on Evelyn, they were required to have an on-site coordinator. Are they members?

[00:47:18] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: They are members. Yeah. The Hadley and the Tillery both are part of the TMA. Okay. Yep.

[00:47:31] Councilmember John McAlister: Because that's one question I was concerned about is with the—had apartment complexes, the big ones were supposed to be part of it too. Okay. Um, thank you. You're welcome. You're going to talk about—let's see—tell Tom I say hi. Um, so again, a lot of the information that you're gathering is third-party assumptions, you know, we're going off of this report or this company and their policies. And I know we don't have the resources to get in there and really dig into to do it. But how confident do you feel with our numbers if we're using these things from VTA from '21? And I do have—I'm glad it's '21 because in your report you said 2014. And so side note, so that was glad to see that come up. And these reports don't really always reflect Mountain View. So how are you able to take these standardized estimates and apply them to Mountain View, to our circumstances?

Segment 1

[00:48:25] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: And that would help us determine if they are in fact reducing those ADTs. So we will use all of those different um approaches to paint a clean picture of what's happening when we get that annual report. Also it was mentioned in the staff report, but I just want to clarify that all of this reporting is to be done by a third party or a professional organization. We are not anticipating or accepting the developer self-reporting on these. They would need to have this done by a uh a different consultant before they pre they present it to the city.

Segment 2

[00:48:29] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: We are using them as case studies to show what is effective, what is working in other areas and other cities. We were looking at cities and counties that mirror our demographic, not necessarily our location always. So we're looking—and then also what our peers in the Bay Area and locally are doing. So, but again, this is a living document. So if we notice that something that worked great in, you know, Sunnyvale isn't working here in Mountain View, we can adjust and modify that. But we've—we've got to start somewhere. And what we have is these case studies that have worked in other cities and that have been effective. And again, there are case studies that have started in 2014, or some other cities that have implemented TDMs back in 2018. So there is a good amount of data available for us to determine what we think would work best here.

Segment 1

[00:49:01] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So another question I have is um is I'm a little unclear on how much the goal is um reducing our carbon footprint and how much the goal is congestion management. Um, because I think there's some tools in the toolkit that would appre that would impact both, but some that would um that would target one more than another so do you and I think some of the questions that various committees the EPC for example asked whether you're doing the um like the peak you've kind of gotten rid of the peak um that particular method the peak traffic count and that's more for congestion management. Um so can you kind of tell me your thinking about that and with getting rid of the peak traffic count do you feel like we're not addressing congestion as well?

Segment 2

[00:49:25] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: And if I may, too, one of the feedback that we've heard in our engaging stakeholders is that typically developers have multiple projects across not just Mountain View, but in the Bay Area. And it typically is an onerous environment where they have to navigate multiple different types of TDM requirements. And so there was careful benchmarking across different jurisdictions that have TDM to make sure that we're right-sizing the requirements, but also being very particular about our existing practice of TDM. So it was careful, you know, toeing the line between understanding existing conditions but also moving in the way of the region, really, and trying to reduce VMT and greenhouse gas emissions.

[00:50:15] Councilmember John McAlister: You—I asked the question, define high-quality transit, and you put down something that comes by every 15 minutes, and the only thing that you came up with, if I'm reading this correctly, was MVgo. Is that—throughout the city? Well, my question was for North Bayshore, but is that pretty much true for the whole city?

[00:50:40] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: The question was specific to North Bayshore, so that is the high—that is the high-quality transit available in North Bayshore. But no, the light—VTA light rail, Caltrain, the VTA bus system, there are several routes that all qualify as that high-quality transit throughout the city.

Segment 1

[00:50:43] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: Thanks for the question. So by selecting ADT it doesn't necessarily preclude that we're not monitoring peak hour traffic. We're finding that the lion's share of trip generation is happening during the peak hour, so by looking at average daily trips we're kind of holi- holistically looking at trip generation throughout the day and given hybrid work and flexible schedules we're seeing trip generation happening a lot more outside of the peak hour. So by selecting ADT that gives us kind of a broader holistic view and by developing this TDM toolkit also allows us to put forward measures that um projects can opt into and select and provide that work for people outside of the peak commute times, so it's it's really looking at holistically just trip generation in overall but it doesn't necessarily preclude that we're not looking at peak hour. It's just looking at the spread and distribution of trips throughout the day.

Segment 2

[00:51:00] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. I will address that in comments. Um, let's see. So when we're doing projects, initially when a project goes up, they may not qualify for being in a high area, and so therefore they don't need to meet certain standards. But as development works around them, all of a sudden that changes the level. So the last guy that shows up that triggers the requirement to be in it has to comply. And so based on yours, all the other people never really have to apply to these TDM measures?

[00:51:34] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: The projects that have already been entitled have their own conditions of approval, and we are not able to change those conditions of approval post-entitlement.

[00:51:49] Councilmember John McAlister: So let's use example of West Middlefield. Westman, West Whisman. That, you know, it's projected to have a lot of development. So initially they are going to have certain requirements, but as all the other development goes around it, it's going to be more intense. Maybe I should just wait until that happens. Okay. Because you're looking at—I'm trying to phrase the question so that it—the question I'm just trying to say is, the initial development doesn't meet one standard, but the person at the very end is going to be required to do it because of all the other developments push them into that area of a high quality or high density area.

Segment 1

[00:52:16] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I'm still interested in peak hour and how are you looking at peak hours and whether they're congested?

[00:52:25] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: Right. So typically when projects go through screening and analysis they do provide transportation impact studies which shows what the trip generation typically will look like during the peak hour. So um again based on certain criteria land use, project size, we're going to see whether we're going to see more peak demand. You might certainly see that for commercial non-residential use than a residential. Um in that case a project would then like select TDM measures for that specific use.

Segment 2

[00:52:30] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: It's not based on the density. Um, so they would all—once the TDM ordinance is adopted, they would all fall under that same requirement. It is based on the size of the development, so how many average daily trips are generated by that developer. So it's based on the land use when they come in for their permit.

[00:52:54] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Um, okay. Also one of my last questions before we go to the comments later. So I asked, do you expect light rail to be a tool as to decrease 10% of vehicle trips? Have you been able to validate that or do you say VTA says that their light rail will reduce trips by 10%?

Segment 1

[00:53:03] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay. Um, and last can you tell me what you do to address I mean people's lives um have gotten very complex um as opposed to for example when my parents were going to work. Um, there's all so can you tell me how the toolkit addresses the needs of people with complex needs like driving to childcare—most of them are children actually the complex needs childcare, after-school care, um different parents being responsible for that at different workplaces at different times, any other complexities you can think of that I haven't thought of.

Segment 2

[00:53:16] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: Thanks for the question. So in modeling the levels of effectiveness for each of the measures in the TDM toolkit, we looked at all of the strategies, and proximity to transit was one of them. So if a project were within a half-mile distance of high-quality transit like light rail, for example, you would see a 10% effectiveness. And this was modeled with our consultants who could potentially add more clarity on the methodology if you'd like to know more about kind of the underpinning assumptions for that.

[00:53:51] Councilmember John McAlister: I do have one more question. When I before—we were—the city was working on a multimodal transit-oriented map that would incorporate or show all the various transits that we have, either the TMA, the Caltrans up to the North Bayshore, everybody to see how bus routes, everything. That I seems sort of faded away over time. So this new active transportation plan or your new TDM, is that going to look at how all these different routes work together so that we get most efficient routing, transportation system in the city?

[00:54:35] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: So I'll just comment that the TDM ordinance, I mean, it's site-specific. So projects will be able to select from the measures from the toolkit that apply for that site. One of the things—one of the things that's being considered right now is the VTA VMT mitigation program. And it hasn't been developed yet, but it's one of the things that we're tracking. So this would be more towards a regional approach at mitigating trips beyond just the site. So for example, if a project wanted to opt in towards a pre-selected measure provided by VTA, which would be transit improvements, those investments could go towards improving the transit network. Again, it's still kind of in the infancy, hasn't been really developed, but because trip generation is regional in nature, goes beyond just the site, you know, we're understanding that that could be a potential solution towards meeting our addressing our problem with ADT generation.

Segment 1

[00:54:56] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Yeah, so the goal with this toolkit is to provide a lot of flexibility for those users that might change how they get to and from work or home on a day-to-day basis. So you can change what type of transit you are using um to fit your needs. One of the strategies that we have identified as one of the um support or auxiliary strategies is um guaranteed ride home. So that means that if you carpool to work and somebody has to leave early or you have a sick child or someone you need to take care of and you need to leave early you are guaranteed a ride home. So that is an added uh strategy in the auxiliary category that we will requir that would be um selected by small, medium, or large based on how many they need to do. But the idea is that there's a toolkit here that they can choose from to provide the most flexibility for their residents and um employees.

Segment 2

[00:55:41] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: But if I'm understanding the question correctly, you're looking for a map that shows all of the public transit available within the city of Mountain View and how they connect.

[00:55:51] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: I can interject. I think that was a maybe a work plan item from your prior tenure that went to the parking lot. Um, but yeah, cause I—I just—since I believe staff is relatively new to the organization, I just wanted to provide that historical background. I mean, I can look to my colleagues if that's how they remember it, but that's how I remember it. Um, but perhaps it's—it's fuzzy.

[00:56:20] Councilmember John McAlister: It went into the parking lot after I left, but okay. Yes.

[00:56:23] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Correct. Yes, but welcome back.

[00:56:25] Councilmember John McAlister: Thank you. That's my questions for now.

[00:56:28] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: I will say we do have a map that shows the shuttle services that are in the city that is run with the TMA and city for the City Community Shuttle and the MVgo. So we do have a joint map for those services.

Segment 1

[00:56:33] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: And if I may add to that. So the idea is, you know, travel behaviors and patterns have become destabilized because of the pandemic. So one transportation mode that one person might take one day will certainly be different from the next. And so the idea is with around this toolkit is to kind of curate a suite of options that will allow people the flexibility of coming to and from the site and not just beholden specifically to single-occupancy vehicle trips. So if you're you know if you have daycare one day it might make sense to drive in and then not maybe the next it might make sense to carpool or vanpool or use rideshare. So the idea is provide the suite of options that give that people the range of mobility to kind of um figure out and and to kind of meet their needs.

Segment 2

[00:56:49] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councilmember Ramirez.

[00:56:52] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate staff providing an hour and a half for us to discuss this item so Councilmember McAlister and I can ask 4,000 questions each. So I'll start—4,001. I'll start with housing element compliance. I appreciate the responses to the written questions. I want to make sure I understand how we intend to meet the housing element obligations. So for Question 2 on Housing Element Program 1.2c, the program requires the city to codify exemptions to parking standards for projects meeting enhanced transportation demand management criteria as determined by the city's TDM ordinance. And then in response to Question 3 for Housing Element Program 1.3d, a portion of the program reads, update the zoning ordinance to allow residential parking reductions for projects that implement TDM and exempt parking requirements from projects meeting enhanced TDM criteria. So a distinction is made between projects that merely implement the TDM obligations, which receive or have parking reductions permitted, and projects that meet enhanced TDM criteria, which are then eligible for exemptions from parking requirements altogether. So can staff share with us first what the definition of enhanced TDM criteria or what enhanced TDM criteria include? Because they're—I wasn't certain a distinction was made in the framework.

Segment 1

[00:57:18] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And I assume we can add to that toolkit over time if new tools become available.

[00:57:24] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: That is correct. It is intended to be a living document so that as technologies become available or ride ride share or mode shift changes we can adjust and um add to both the core and auxiliary strategies as we we see necessary. Okay, thank you. Those are all my questions.

[00:58:27] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, I uh thank you so much for this report. We've been looking forward for to this for a long time. Um so I have a I have a um some questions about how the monitoring is going to work. Um because it seems like you know the monitoring depends on um I mean you want to design the monitoring so it gives you the information you use you need and presumably the question we want to answer is are these strategies producing a reduction in traffic? Is that correct? That's the that's the question we're after. That is correct.

Segment 2

[00:58:51] Principal Planner Diana Pancholi: Thank you for the question. Diana Pancholi, Principal Planner with the city's Community Development Department. That is correct, we do not have a definition of enhanced TDM criteria in the housing element or the framework at this point of time. But as we provided in the staff response to Council questions, we will be doing—we will be identifying the enhanced TDM criteria. When we talk about enhanced TDM criteria, what we are looking at is TDM criteria which are going to be more effective in meeting the TDM goals. And we are going to do some cost analysis as well in order to understand how the TDM criteria will be implemented for residential and what the cost is, to see how effective they can be in order to meet the housing element goal as well for creating housing. And that will be then identified and incorporated into the zoning code updates that will follow after the TDM ordinance adoption.

Segment 1

[00:59:11] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And then we'll want to look into what works best correct over time. Correct.

[00:59:14] Councilmember Pat Showalter: So so I'm wondering what is our experience with existing TDM requirements that have monitoring? How um can you tell us a little bit about how that's worked?

Segment 2

[01:00:00] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Okay. Thank you. I have a question about implementation and then I'll get back to the underlying question. So this response suggests that after the TDM ordinance is adopted, we'll begin the work on the housing element program. Do you have a sense of when that work will be completed and the updates to the zoning code will be approved?

Segment 1

[01:00:08] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: Right. So as the existing conditions were written for entitled projects typically a year after post-occupancy they will provide an annual TDM report that attests to whether or not they're complying with the required trip reduction and have implemented the TDM um strategies that were codified in the conditions. So from a year out I get a TDM report and it shows what TDM measures have been implemented and the progress on that. And then in the appendix it'll show kind of a data collection or driveway counts or trip counts which show what the spread of trips were during the peak hour, the peak period, and whatnot, and that I'm able to verify whether or not how many trips it happened within the period that was monitored and make sure that they're under their target.

Segment 2

[01:00:24] Principal Planner Diana Pancholi: At this point of time, I do not have that specific timeframe. But I would like to suggest that, you know, what the staff response meant was that, you know, today we are presenting the draft framework where we're showing all the strategies. After this point, based on the Council's direction, we will be looking at identifying those enhanced TDM criteria and doing other work which is going to go simultaneously. But then there will be additional work which will be relating to actually figuring out the effectiveness of, you know, how much the reduction is going to be and how effective they are in reducing the parking demand for specific residential project type, and then come back for the zoning code updates. So at this point of time, if we are looking at the TDM ordinance adoption sometime maybe in Q1 2026, we are hoping that, you know, maybe by the end of 2026 or after that, soon after that, we might be able to present at least some draft back to our decision-makers for further direction.

[01:01:32] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. I think there was a question that I can't find the answer to about when the work on the TDM ordinance began. Can staff remind me roughly when we started this work?

[01:01:42] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: The contract was executed March 2023.

[01:01:45] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: March 2023. Okay. Is there a reason why we haven't given any thought to what enhanced TDM criteria might be over the past two years?

Segment 1

[01:01:58] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: And then there'll be some narrative piece which shows you know what progress they've made, what strategies are more difficult to implement, what strategies they're looking to implement. So it would be you know this is where we're at, this is where we're going. Um, and it's it's typically done that way. Because we haven't been consistently applying these requirements for monitoring typically the format for those reports kind of span all kinds of different um visuals and graphic things like that. So it it does take time to kind of parse through them but my work has been looking at how can we standardize this and I've kind of built templates and with the help of the TMA we've kind of onboarded some existing projects that you know would support them and in meeting these monitoring requirements. So it is kind of a bit piecemeal, it is inconsistent, but typically you know every year post-occupancy I'll get annual TDM reports and I'll I'll verify you know trip reduction targets being met, TDM measures being implemented, and annual commute surveys which typically show what the transportation mode share is to and from the site to get a sense of you know what the uptake is of these TDM measures and how effective are they.

Segment 2

[01:02:00] Principal Planner Diana Pancholi: I think I'll take the first stab and then I'll pass it on to the transportation staff here. It is not that we have not paid attention to that. At this point of time, we're trying to figure out and get direction from our Council on what criteria we are amenable to that we should be including in our toolkit and if what category they should fall into. The next step would then be to figuring out, you know, what is the cost and what is the effectiveness of each of the measures. Our consultants have been providing us information on the effectiveness, but right now the focus was to kind of create this framework so that we are putting the right first step forward before we actually go into further assessing on the housing element implementation part of things.

[01:02:45] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: We're working closely with them. Yeah, I'll just add that we see the framework as the structure that we're going to be using to write this ordinance. So we want to make sure at this check-in that we are on the right path and that when we bring this ordinance forward, it is within the same framework and the bumpers that have been set forth. So it's not that we haven't looked at it, we just are trying to make sure that we're on the right path and we will further develop this as we go through.

[01:03:13] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So I would—a lot of work has been done over the past two years, and you have some precise numbers at least in the TDM toolkit suggesting that staff already has a preliminary sense of how effective individual strategies could be. What—I guess I'm having a difficult time understanding the delta, right? It looks like, you know, between the ITE baseline standards—I'm not sure what whatever that term would be—and the analysis that you have done and then also the city's existing examples and experience with TDM in the 20-some-odd projects where we've implemented it. We should have a pretty good understanding, right? Can you help me understand what—what the missing analysis may include?

Segment 1

[01:03:43] Councilmember Pat Showalter: So so how does a land a landowner a building owner know what firms they can hire? Do we have a list or are there requirements as of I mean who's qualified to to put together one of these reports for someone?

[01:04:01] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: Right. So project applicants will be well-versed in what the consultant space is. They have firms that you know boutique firms that they go to, architects for you know design renderings and also consultants to help support them in the transportation impact analysis and studies. And so typically those who provide the analysis are also well-versed in TDM and will also look at okay well this is your transportation impacts we could also provide a TDM plan which shows how we mitigate those transportation impacts. So this hasn't been a problem finding someone.

Segment 2

[01:04:12] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: So I'll speak to sequence. So the housing element was adopted recently, I believe. And so development of the TDM framework and the housing element have been kind of closely tracking each other. So we are attentive to the considerations for delivering more residential projects. And so it's taken just careful analysis and looking at what the sensitivity is for requiring enhanced TDM measures and exacting those requirements onto residential to ensure that, you know, we'not affecting project viability. So whether that's kind of incorporating an additional 5% to 10% addition of enhanced TDM criteria, we just haven't set that standard yet. And so we just need to work with our colleagues in planning to understand what that threshold would be and what the exemptions from parking minimums associated with that. So it's a matter of sequencing and once the TDM ordinance is adopted, staff has in its work plans to develop a TDM program specifically for residential and downtown. So we do want to start first with kind of setting what the overall targets are city-wide and kind of, you know, work from there.

Segment 1

[01:05:12] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: But the goal with the ordinance is that necessarily they won't need to rely on consultant expertise, they'll just be able to look at the toolkit and say okay this is what the typical trip generation would be of a project of this size and here are the range of effectiveness of these measures that would work in mitigating those transportation impacts. So they'd be able to do a little bit of the homework without needing to go to a consultant right away. This process hasn't been transparent and that's one of the issues we've identified in the reporting.

[01:05:39] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, no, that seems good. And the other thing is you know making sure that there's some consistency between the studies so that you know the numbers from one one project are comparable to another that's that's always a you know you don't want to get maybe too um rigorous about that but in science that's always a you know a problem. Well I the other question I have is is the TMA um setting up uh assistance for the monitoring and how you know is that one of the advantages of being a TMA member and maybe you want to answer that.

Segment 2

[01:05:42] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: And I just want to clarify that by enhanced, we are likely going to be using the same toolkit of core and auxiliary strategies that we are setting forth right now. So it's not that we're going to have a completely different toolkit for enhanced, we're going to use the same framework that we're discussing here. We're just trying to figure out what that process looks like.

[01:06:07] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: We'll draw from the tools that are in the draft toolkit. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. Um, so those are the questions I have about the housing element for now. And then I appreciated the staff response about the Nollan and Dolan findings—and I'm going to have trouble articulating this question, but I guess what I'm curious to understand is, there are I think we have industry standards that we're drawing from for much of this analysis. But from what I understand about Nollan and Dolan, we have to make project-specific findings. So I'm curious, are we—are we going to have something more precise than the thresholds that we're contemplating? You know, in other words, you know, if—let's say we just use those thresholds, right, and a developer says, "I think my—what is it, ADT?—is actually lower than that, even though I fall within the medium or large-size project threshold. I can make a compelling argument that my ADT is lower than that sort of the baseline or the standard that we're proposing and challenge our imposition of a TDM set of obligations based on that medium or large threshold." Is that something—how are we responding to that, I guess? Is there—will there be project-specific findings where that won't be an issue, or will there be some way for a developer to say, "Actually, my project won't produce that level of traffic because of some factors that they can then articulate to us?"

Segment 1

[01:06:55] Public Speaker: So historically the TMA has not been privy to the members' TDM requirements um for each development. This is something that Ben and I have been discussing over the past year: how can we support them better in these trip monitoring, these trip reporting? Some of these are newer, they're doing their first um reporting to to the city. Um so for us to know that we need to be kind of looped in on what their requirements are so that we can help support them.

[01:07:21] Public Speaker: Something the TMA could explore and this would be again having the board approve this effort would be the TMA bringing on certain monitoring consultants to help support the members in that aspect so they don't have to go off and hire some trip count driveway count uh consulting firm. We might be able to help them do those driveway counts. So there's definitely interest at the TMA to support our members better on the monitoring side but we have not yet been looped into that process and we're looking to do that particularly through this ordinance as well is kind of supporting our members in that aspect. Thank you.

Segment 2

[01:08:00] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: So, my—trying to work through this here. So the Nollan and Dolan question that you asked referenced a nexus and proportionality. So that is not directly related to the ADT. We are still studying the exact financial cost that the city thinks that each traffic impact would have and to provide a clear nexus and proportionality. As far as would a developer be able to make a case that their ADT would be lower than the industry standard trip calculation, I think Jennifer has an answer for that one.

Segment 1

[01:08:38] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Thank you. Okay and then my last question is you know this is a living document, so that means if some uh developer comes up with a new strategy then you are willing to consider it, is that right?

Segment 2

[01:08:45] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: So I'll say, you know, the ITE trip generation handbook is a nationwide handbook. It's built upon a lot of case studies for a lot of different types of usages, land usages across the United States. And there are some nuances for what's happening a little bit more regionally. I will say that upon my career, I have found a couple of instances in which a development has come forward and they don't neatly fit into one of the ITE standard trip generation rates. So in that scenario—I can tell you what I've done in the past—and that is to solicit some information from the developer's team, typically from their traffic engineer. Often times it would be a development that has developed elsewhere, and they have the actual data for how a similar development elsewhere is generating information. But with respect to, you know, if it's a standard kind of development and we believe it should have X number of ADT and the developer feels like it should be something different, I think we're always willing to listen to a certain extent if there's some compelling reason why the information that we have is not relevant to that particular development. We can certainly intake that information and work that through the development at the time of application.

Segment 1

[01:08:50] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: That is correct.

[01:08:52] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Okay. Great. Thanks so much.

[01:08:58] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Great, thank you. Councilmember McAlister.

[01:09:00] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, thank you. Um, I'm laughing because there is maybe four people in this room that actually were involved with the uh beginning of the TDM in Mountain View. I think Diane's the only staffer that could be here and the other three are on the council, Chris, Pat, and myself. So um this is um a long journey that we're getting through here so I just put a little perspective on how this is coming along.

[01:10:12] Councilmember John McAlister: Um, do you know Mr. Harrington from Intuit? Oh very well. Okay. He was the the first TMA uh chairperson, sir. Okay.

[01:10:24] Councilmember John McAlister: So um Councilmember Showalter asked a lot of the questions I had and that's of how you're going to validate anything and so no program no matter how much how much effort you put into this is is good unless you can validate the people are doing it. And I know the only time we were doing validation—there is a question in here—um is with the entrance into North Bayshore because we could do a traffic count and that's how we were able to do things. Everything you're saying here is pretty much voluntary that I I have concerns about how you're going to get the validation. So you were saying you're going to have a third party, that's something I haven't heard before. Does does we have the staff to to follow up on this? Is there a dedicated person to do the TMA follow-up? Okay, my next question on that.

Segment 2

[01:10:27] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Okay. I think that's helpful. So just to clarify, so let's say we have a project, you know, a large project, 1,000-plus ADT, which puts them in, you know, a more—large size. Right. Yeah, so their ADT reduction target is quite high, which means that there's a greater burden on them to implement the strategies that we're starting to define. Right. So based—what I think I'm understanding is even though, if you just look at sort of the industry standard, they would clearly fall within that bucket, we would have some process or means for them to say, "Well, you know what, we fall—we appear to fall within that bucket, but there are extenuating circumstances that mean that we actually should be subject to the medium project standards or obligations." Is that fair to say?

[01:11:34] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: So if there's a very large project and it's projected to generate a thousand ADT, but there is something integral within the development that the developer says, "Hey city, you didn't recognize that we're doing X, Y, and Z, and therefore our ADT actually is 800," which would put them in the medium category, that is something absolutely that we can get together, have a meeting about, discuss, and evaluate.

Segment 1

[01:12:10] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: Good evening Jennifer Ing, Public Works Director. So one of the beautiful things about making a TDM ordinance is that it really makes a consistent platform for everything moving forward across the board. That includes reporting, that includes the style of reporting, um we're looking into options such as a standardized software where it's very easy to load the data into um and so the reports come out very consistent and they're very easy to compare against what's required in their conditions of approval. Right now we have Ben. Um he's been doing uh all of the um report analysis, I'll call it on an annual basis for um a while and as he stated they come in all different formats, all different you know um ways with respect to graphics, with how the data is provided to the city, and it does require a lot of staff time. As we're looking at developing our city forward into the future and we want to see more new development and development that is going to be big enough to trigger the TDM, um what we want to do is really just make it an a level and easy playing field um and streamline it for staff to review moving forward.

Segment 2

[01:12:11] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Okay, great. Thank you. You're welcome. That's very helpful. The last question I have is about the TMA. I really appreciate the staff inclusion of the map at the end. But I think what the map reveals is one of the things I've been concerned about and shared in the briefing that you provided and I'm grateful for the time, and that's the TMA routes don't serve every part of the city equitably, right? So in some cases, TMA membership is—provides a clear benefit to the developer or employer or to the residents of a housing project, and in other cases that benefit is ambiguous or perhaps non-existent depending on where the project falls within the city. But in every case we require TMA membership. And I'm having trouble understanding—you know, that's a cost. We don't know what the cost is because the membership fees are not able to be produced. But if it's a non-trivial cost, right, then we're imposing a fee where the benefit to the applicant is ambiguous at best or perhaps non-existent. So I'm having trouble justifying that, and then also if there is a Nollan and Dolan implication there, I'd be curious to understand whether in that case a developer could say, "I really shouldn't be obligated to join the TMA because the TMA doesn't provide any benefit to my employees or to my residents."

Segment 1

[01:14:06] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: It is both. We have Ben who will be um you know a good portion of his his work will be um validating and evaluating TDM moving forward and we are planning to have uh standardized reporting tools.

Segment 2

[01:14:10] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: Yeah. So the TMA is a requirement for medium and large commercial or large residential. So those are the developments that would fall under that. And then the TMA also has—I don't want to say tiers, but that's kind of what it is—of membership. So you have a one-time fee when you join and then if you are on the shuttle route and are using the shuttle services, there is a different fee than just a straight membership fee. So if you are not on the shuttle route or not using the shuttle services, then your new development would not pay the shuttle fees. That being said, the shuttle service is a good tool in our TDM ordinance and as more developers join the TMA, that shuttle service can be expanded with more members.

[01:15:23] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Awesome. Thank you. So just—is there sort of a proximity? So how close to a shuttle stop do you have to be before you're assessed the shuttle membership fee?

[01:15:41] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: I believe it's a half-mile, but please correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah.

[01:16:03] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Okay. Thank you.

[01:16:05] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: And I understand that there's also a reduction provided for 100% affordable housing too.

[01:16:07] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: That is correct. Fantastic. Those are my questions. Thank you.

[01:16:10] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you so much. I have a couple questions and not seeing anyone else in the queue I'll take the opportunity to ask them. So I'll turn it to you, Allison. I had a question. So Councilmember Ramirez asked about the 100% affordable housing development and the membership. And maybe you can share—I think we have a couple in the queue, maybe how you worked that out. And I think that we just celebrated the ribbon cutting last week, which is why I'm bringing it up and that was one of the questions that I was asked was, how will people get around? And we talked about how it's near VTA, but wonderful to hear about the membership in the TMA. So maybe you can share with the Council and the public a little bit more about the partnership.

[01:17:24] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Mayor. We had quite a bit of an effort on this for about three years trying to figure out how can the TMA provide value to the members at a very low cost? And that was the challenge. Our budget is funded by our members. So if we were going to be providing significant discounts, what would then be required of the TMA to fulfill the transportation needs of such developments? So looking through this and working with our board, we did settle on a theoretical 75% reduction in membership fees across the board. And the way we do that is all members that have below market rate units, all those units are exempt from paying membership dues to the TMA. And that's for all of our residential members. But up to 75% of the total number of units, so effectively giving them a 75% discount on the membership fees. We went back and forth on the various tiers on how to accomplish this goal. We wanted to make it simple without making it over-complex because our fee structure already can be perceived as complex. And so we were grateful to work with Eden Housing to kind of be our test case. How does this feel in terms of the benefits you're getting? And Eden Housing is lucky to be right across the street from an MVgo stop, so they're going to be very well-served by the MVgo and at a very affordable rate. So yeah, that was kind of where we landed.

[01:18:47] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Do you think that that would be information that could be available on the website or about maybe the usage or that—I'll just call it a pilot—worked out so that other affordable housing developers can learn and hear about that and especially, you know, that area in particular has those who are veterans or may have disabilities, so being in very close proximity to...

[01:19:19] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Exactly. We are looking at—so I'm interested in understanding the mapping of all incoming affordable housing projects. I don't know of all of them, but some of them are downtown, you know, close proximity to downtown which already is well-served by transit. And others we'll continue to look at and have those conversations early on with those developers to kind of map out where are they? What is our growth? We look every year at every project that's coming down the pipeline. We map it out, we know where incoming members are going to be, where we can expand our shuttle program. But we need those members to join in order to make that financially feasible to the organization. So we look at each development, we decide how can we be of value to them. We are expanding on just not shuttle programs right now. So our Smart Commute program, our TDM coordination services are going to be expanded. We've hired new staff to kind of lead this effort to promote transportation options available more effectively among our members. So we're looking at other strategies, not just the shuttle program, to benefit the members, and particularly residential members where they might not have resources to give them information about transportation options available to them.

[01:20:50] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Right. Well, and I think on it sounds like I guess dovetailing a bit off of Councilmember Ramirez's question, while maybe a member might not see have a usage now, as development projects come online both residential and commercial, that value of them being part of the TMA may increase. And okay, that's my understanding, and you're forward-thinking and looking at that and trying to work with city staff and others on that partnership.

[01:21:28] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Absolutely. Yes. And the, you know, with affordable housing it's so important to have access to free transportation. And having a free shuttle at your doorstep is going to be really a value to them. Now, we may not be able to accomplish that with all incoming affordable housing depending on where they're located, but that is our goal is to provide the value to the members. And yeah, absolutely. Great. Thank you very much.

[01:21:53] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Those are my questions on the TMA. Now questions for staff. So I had a question about one of the auxiliary strategies and that's auxiliary strategy number 22, support safe routes to schools programs. Given the importance of the safe routes to school for meeting our vision zero needs, I was curious if there was a way to move this from auxiliary to core or, you know, I'd love it for it to be a requirement especially since it's like at the initial occupancy. And I'm sorry that I didn't think of this question earlier when I had my Council briefing, but this came up I guess...

[01:22:05] Assistant Public Works Director Allison Boyer: Okay.

[01:22:39] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Oh yes, go ahead, Councilmember Hicks has a follow-on question.

[01:22:43] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: Thanks for the question. So right, really do value the benefits that our safe routes to school program provides. And I think modeling the various strategies we looked at the levels of effectiveness and for these auxiliary strategies, they don't necessarily contribute that much in trip reduction. And I believe it's a nominal change, it might be between 0.02 to 0.05%. So that's why they're in the auxiliary strategy. But the thing is, paired with core strategies could be really impactful. So um, that's part of the reasons why they're there, but we can certainly assess kind of how we can promote that a little more in the toolkit.

[01:23:29] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay. And I guess that's the rub, right, which is like the metric that backs up the strategy while maybe philosophically that's a...

[01:23:41] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I have a related question. I never thought of it until you brought it up, but in my—I do not have small children now, but in the past when I did, getting them to and from school was one of the main ways I used a car. So if I moved into an apartment, which I did during some of the time they were in school—Park Place right down the street—you know, that would be trip generation from that apartment. I was able to stop using the car because I was able to create a scoot pool, a group of kids I would scoot them to school and back. Um, but so I'm thinking that good safe routes to school do reduce, in my experience, do reduce daily trips in a single occupancy vehicle—I guess when my vehicle was full of kids it wasn't a single occupancy vehicle—but they do reduce trips. So I'm wondering if maybe the way we typically look at trip generation is biased to make that—trips with children—invisible, and whether it's something we could think about a little more.

[01:25:01] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: Yes, we can think about it a little more. In general, the idea was the required were things that we need to monitor the TDM ordinances, you know, a point of contact, an annual report, metrics. So that was the intent for the required. The core are things that have been studied in other agencies or have been effective in other TDMs that have been implemented and have a percentage that are pretty tested at this point. The goal of the auxiliary is when paired with those core strategies, enhance that trip reduction. So things like having bike parking and scooter parking would also help with that safe routes to school programming. So there's a tie that the intent is to help, but we will definitely look into if there's a way to mirror the priorities with our strategies.

[01:26:03] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you very much. Okay. And then just the last question so I—I think one of the things staff brought up was how those that have already been completed or those that have pre-existing entitlements can be voluntarily added into adopting our TDM ordinance. How might that happen? Would that be staff just letting them know once the TDM ordinance is adopted and that they could—maybe we need to do like prizes in an app like the TMA does to get... right.

[01:26:39] Transportation Planner Ben Pacho: So theoretically, we would engage existing projects when they submit their annual TDM report. And we would somewhat provide onboarding services to say that this, you know, ordinance is now available and that we'll be moving and shifting the monitoring requirement to an online platform essentially, which is how they would report. And then also kind of inform them of what the additional strategies would be available and kind of looking at an update to the penalty structure which would be more palatable to them versus the existing penalty structure. So kind of looking at more of carrots than sticks to incentivize them to opt in.

[01:27:25] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: And we've also heard when we did our outreach that the developers that are repeat developers will be coming in and it is enticing for them to see that they can report all of it at once and have the same requirements across all of their developments as they move forward.

[01:27:41] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you so much. All right. So I'm not seeing anyone else in the queue. Thank you to staff for all of the questions that Council had for them. Now is the time where we can provide feedback on the one staff question that we have posed in the staff report. So the question is, does the City Council concur with the staff recommendations or have any other feedback on the ordinance framework? So whomever might like to start. Councilmember Ramirez.

[01:28:14] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. I'll be brief so as to hope to set a good example. Much appreciated. Um, so I appreciate the work that staff has done on this. I know it's not easy to create a TDM, a comprehensive TDM approach that's going to work in every case. My primary interest, as probably was clear from the questions, is making sure that we're meeting our housing element obligations. So the two elements I'd be interested in seeing fleshed out over time are greater definition and understanding of enhanced TDM criteria and how they differ from ordinary or regular TDM criteria. The overriding considerations in my mind are beyond the stated goals of the TDM ordinance, ensuring that development remains financially feasible, that we're not putting in place regulations that, especially in this market—later in the question packet we learn that there have been zero multi-family housing starts this year and only one last year, and that was for one affordable housing project that was heavily subsidized by the city. So the trajectory is not good. I don't think things will get better. So as we layer on regulations and obligations and fees, I don't think we're likely to see housing starts anytime soon, and that has other impacts to the city. So we should be thoughtful in how we approach this. I think—different perspectives—but one component of the housing element program that is important to me is making available exemptions to our parking standards. Right. So how can an applicant be incentivized or pushed or encouraged to provide less parking and then also be exempt from our minimum parking requirements? That will, in my opinion, enhance our ability to meet our TDM goals and also make development financially feasible and also help us remain in compliance with our housing element. And the related component is—and staff I thought was very helpful in responding to this—ensuring that we understand what the costs are of these various TDM strategies. So that analysis I think will be essential so that way when we're putting forward the obligations and clarifying what those obligations are, the development community has an understanding of what those costs will be to their development. So again, I think the intent is we want this to be successful. We want fewer SOV trips. We want to encourage mode shift. We want people to be able to get around without necessarily driving alone in their car. But also we want to make sure that we're able to build, right, that we're able to develop projects so we can impose our TDM obligations and so we can have folks who can continue to live and work in our city. So those are the two things that matter most to me, basically Housing Element Program 1.2c and 1.3d. I think everything else, I trust you all. I think you're the technical experts. You've done the analysis. I think the strategies generally look good. I'm in no position to second guess the percentages and certainly not the ITE standards and those thresholds and comparison points. So as long as we're meeting our housing element obligations, I think the TDM ordinance will land in a very good place. Thank you.

Segment 3

[01:30:01] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I guess the one, I don't think caveat's the right word, but the one counterpoint I would say is that I think that these TDM measures when you build more dense housing you need to get you need to move people in and out of the area more people in and out of the area and there are multiple ways of doing that. We could build more mass transit and we could widen roads, which I don't want to do, and that would all cost money. And so in some ways this is a cheaper way of doing it, something that we're going to have to do—we're going to have to find some strategies for getting people in and out.

Segment 2

[01:30:10] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Councilmember Hicks.

[01:30:11] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I also support the TDM ordinance as proposed. And I agree with most if not all of what you said. I think the one, you know, that I do, I'm interested in enhanced TDM criteria and financial feasibility and making sure we meet our housing element requirements and just build housing.

Segment 3

[01:30:50] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I don't see this as—I see that this is a cheaper way of doing it in some ways and we have to make sure that we do get that people are able to be mobile to get there. So I may not be quite as scared of the cost as you are because I think it's cheap price to pay. My only other comments are first, I'm really glad that it's a living document. I think we're really in a time of change, particularly with automated vehicles, which may really change—they could threaten mass transit, they could change the way cars move around.

[01:31:50] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I think we have to pay attention to that and really be on top of that. And whether you can count people coming and going, although they can already take an Uber, so that's probably the least important thing. So I, you know, I'm glad it's changing, I'm glad we have staff to look at those changes and I want to make sure we do so. My other comment is regarding parking that Councilmember Ramirez brought up. I don't know whether there's any way ever a way of—one of the things I would like to encourage, and I don't think you can do it right now but just to think about it, is people using smaller cars and smaller parking—compact cars, subcompact.

[01:33:20] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I think that would be another way of reducing parking costs and reducing parking costs and reducing greenhouse gas use, although they're often electric anyway. So that's thinking about small car parking, and then the last one is, you know, within this program the vision talks about equity. And I would like over time us to think a little more—we talked a little on the dais about affordability but also about the needs of just different kinds of people: disabled people, people with children, maybe multiple other kinds of people with different needs that maybe we haven't flushed out too much. And that's it.

[01:33:53] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Vice Mayor Ramos.

[01:33:55] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Mayor. I agree with most of my colleagues who have spoken before. Uh just also emphasizing when we think about our transportation demand management, we're combining—it's not necessarily we're combining it, but it touches on so many other goals of our city. We want to get people out of their cars because we don't want—we one of the biggest greenhouse emissions is transportation.

[01:34:40] Councilmember Emily Ramos: And so it's as we grow and become more—more dense and more welcoming, including more neighbors essentially, we want to ensure that it is a pleasant experience for everyone under all circumstances of environment and also housing cost. So I also find it very important that we ensure that we are thinking about how this integrates with the housing element requirement programs that we are committed to, that we will get in trouble if we don't meet those goals.

[01:35:45] Councilmember Emily Ramos: So that's something to—to think through. Um on a specific note, um on one of the strategy in the TDM strategy number 32 developer-defined strategies, I kind of want to know more options or like what are we looking at there. Because I feel like when we have something like that, it is like a game of bring me a rock and then you're like not this rock and then you send it back and everyone's kind of upset about it. So having something more defined there—that feels like a big bucket, but I know that this is still baking. And those are my general—I I am happy with the direction it's going in general. So thank you so much for your work.

[01:36:28] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Councilmember Clark.

[01:36:32] Councilmember Chris Clark: Um, so I'm—I think I'm happy with the overall direction and the framework. I think it's really important that we—we stop doing this piecemeal and that we, you know, we move forward with a broad ordinance that will standardize everything across projects; everyone knows what the rules of the game are and and it provides some level of certainty. I think the, you know, times have changed since we first talked about this, as Councilmember Hicks alluded to, and, you know, transportation and the technology and innovations around that I think will continue to—to evolve.

[01:37:18] Councilmember Chris Clark: I think the thing that gives me the greatest pause here is the um—is the the regulatory burden on small projects and um I—especially, you know, I live in a condo complex. We're talking about small—I think we're a 50-something unit complex. This would say that even after the developer has turned over for some number of years, the HOA is going to have to deal with hiring, doing driveway counts, and submitting reports and things that they're not going to have any idea how to do even with a management company.

[01:38:20] Councilmember Chris Clark: And I think—I think they will want to comply with those things but I think they will struggle. I think a small 5,000 square foot retail business downtown shouldn't have to think about this. Um it just—I—if it were me, I would just cut out the entire small category column and just focus on—focus on the focus on the office—the really large office complexes that are really going to move the needle in terms of TDM; really think about the large apartment developers who have an apparatus and are proven and really know how to do this.

[01:39:20] Councilmember Chris Clark: As opposed to, you know, someone who's coming in and doing, you know, some small number of townhomes and other things, which also is going to have an HOA that's going to have to deal with this after the developer's kind of washed their hands of everything. And so it's not that those complexes and—and folks shouldn't be welcome and part to be this, but it should be really simple, like: your goal is to—right—what you need to do is join the TMA and work with them on—you—if you just have a really simple list of things that the smaller—smaller projects need to do, I think it will be much simpler than, you know, picking and choosing.

[01:40:25] Councilmember Chris Clark: It gets confusing because bicycle facilities is a thing, but you're required to put bicycle facilities in when you construct something—so is this bicycle facilities on top of what you're already required to do? Or—or maybe if you check certain boxes in terms of the bicycle facilities and the unbundled parking other things that you're already going to do anyway. Just—just making sure that folks understand what they need to do to—to meet compliance and making the burden for especially for small retailers or a small R&D center that's less than 20,000 square feet—it—it should be super, super simple for them.

[01:41:40] Councilmember Chris Clark: Because I really want to focus where we can move the needle on the larger residential developments, the larger office developments, the really large warehouse spaces which will have greater impact. So that's my overall feedback, is I just don't want to unduly burden the smaller projects that are going to I think really struggle unless they can rely on a TMA to come in and do their counts for them—they just pay them a fee and they—they just handle it for them. I think you're going to really struggle to get compliance, which—and we want compliance.

[01:42:23] Councilmember Chris Clark: We don't want people to just ignore things because they're—they feel like it's—it's too much of an effort um to actually comply. But overall I think we're on the right path; I would just really focus on the smaller projects and whether or not they need to be included or if there's some really, really small set of checkboxes they can—they can make. And then my last point or the last thing I wanted to mention is if you're within some distance of a major transit center, the big thing that we should focus on is trying to get people to use that transit and—and passes and, you know, providing passes and things are—are really important.

[01:43:40] Councilmember Chris Clark: I think are more important in that respect and an easy thing to do even though it costs money than it is to build additional infrastructure on that particular project, especially smaller projects. So that might be one of the simple checkbox things that a smaller project could—could do. Thanks.

[01:44:07] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. Councilmember Showalter.

[01:44:11] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Boy, we've had some great comments here—here on um—so I—I pretty much concur with what everybody has said and um I want to just to add a couple things. One is, I think that um when you're setting up programs like this, it's really, really important to think about what are the questions that you want to answer. And uh you know, so I asked that initially and I think that um uh you have to revisit that over time to make sure that what you're doing is answering those questions.

[01:45:13] Councilmember Pat Showalter: I would suggest that another question we might want to add on to this, not necessarily for um reducing trips but just to test how things are working, is parking utilization. Um if they have built-in parking, a big question in our community is: how much parking do we need? And you know this would be a sort of a touch point uh to test whether their parking lots are full or not. So that might be a question. But then the other thing I would say about that is I hope that you'll build in some time period after this has worked along—along enough so you have a reasonable amount of data so you sit down as a group, um perhaps with consultants, and say: 'Okay, how is this working?' and uh 'How should we uh update it?'

[01:47:16] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And I don't know whether that will be five years or 10 years or what's appropriate, but something along those lines. I think having a sort of an adaptive management built into it is—is always valuable. So thank you very much for this good work and um uh be interested to see what my colleague Mr. McAlister has.

[01:47:37] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Councilmember McAlister.

[01:47:39] Councilmember John McAlister: Well, I will try to honor Councilmember Ramirez's briefness and the Mayor's um reminder that this—it's a new world. Uh so mine are just some general comments. I've been in my history—I go—I know a lot about TMAs. I was here when we started them up with North Bayshore and how that got it and the whole how we started going—so uh I support everything you do. I give kudos to staff. I'm sorry I missed my uh briefing, but you guys are up to the—the questions.

[01:48:41] Councilmember John McAlister: So—but my only—well, I have a few concerns. Just the one: the—you—everything is based on assumptions and all these reports, and even back 10 years ago I was always saying: 'Validate these reports.' So that was a concern. The other one is: if you're going to do it, I always hate putting in on uh requirements, but if we don't follow up on them and make sure they're required and there's consequences, don't do it, because you're wasting their time and our time. And so hopefully that will be something that we'll do for sure.

[01:50:00] Councilmember John McAlister: And the third thing is uh being involved with VTA and on their board and um some subcommittees: light rail does not draw the people you think it does. It never has and so the assumption that it's going to reduce 10 [percent], it's not there. Um and we've had that before when we were doing some other projects, so don't trust that that's a 10%, and that's an assumption that's not good. Also be concerned about with VTA going through their financial struggles that the routes that you think are going to be there are not there because they are considering—we are reviewing the route structure right now.

[01:51:50] Councilmember John McAlister: And the reason—so everything—a lot of is assumptions here, but it's good. Um I have tremendous faith in uh with the new um Public Works Director. I've seen that person work and I know she—you—her and your department will get these things done, so that will be uh looking really forward to getting that. But again, be—I'm concerned about the assumptions, I'll watch them come along. I hope you guys get this thing done. Uh it's more than 2023, it's more like 20—2012, 2014 when we really started looking at this stuff and so um my desire is: if we start something, let's try to get it done sooner than later and I've seen the Department of Public Works tackle things and they can get things done so I look forward to everything working out.

[01:53:37] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. Um so uh just to add a little bit, which is um I just want to thank staff. I think this is a—I appreciate all the hard work and effort you've put into bringing this ordinance to us. I—it's just been a long time in the making and I know there's many different considerations so I just want to say thank you. So just some points that I'd like to highlight which um some colleagues talked about, which is just having flexibility. How does this ordinance remain evergreen so that people can comply or as different ways of getting around come up um the ordinance can address that um without the onerous task of having to come back to us on Council.

[01:55:11] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: And then, um you know, how do we streamline? So it's wonderful to hear about this new tool that's going to come forward um but what I really—my ears perked up on was like the TMA assistance. I think being able to work in conjunction with the city and offer that not only to the TMA members but to honestly to everyone, really speaks to um Councilmember Clark's um comments about like: how do we make this um really easy for—for everyone? Um and I appreciate that staff is going to be looking at um more carrots and things that actually help us meet the—you know—this—these goals versus um you know, just punitive.

[01:56:40] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: And then um lastly just want to thank staff for not only working on the developments that will be new but those that are um working on the voluntary, the opt-in basis. I think trying to capture people—I think everyone participating in some way in this TMA ordinance really helps us align the priorities that we have as the city and in our strategies and I think that'll be very helpful. Councilmember Hicks, do you have something else you wanted to add?

[01:57:39] Councilmember Alison Hicks: You know, I did. I—I enjoyed the presentation and the discussion. I thought it was very meaty, very rich, and I appreciated what all Councilmembers said um and I thought a lot—think a lot of them were complementary. But there were a couple things that I wondered whether we should check back on whether people agreed—in particular it was Councilmember Clark's um comment on making sure that the small projects, that those were especially simplified. I don't know whether staff thinks that needs a vote or do we all just nod our heads? I thought that was relevant. Or maybe everyone disagrees with him but me and we won't do it.

[01:57:42] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right, colleagues, if we could reconvene, it's about that time.

[01:58:49] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, good evening everyone. Welcome to the joint meeting of the Mountain View City Council, the Shoreline Regional Park Community, and the City of Mountain View Capital Improvements Financing Authority of June 10, 2025. Please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

[01:58:55] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So, you know, I didn't—I didn't hear three or more people bring it up so I didn't bring it forward as a straw motion; that's usually how—what I try to do. But I think staff got a lot of feedback and if they would like us to take straw polls on anything, that's fine, but I think that we're in a place where I think there was a majority consensus on what we're all looking for so that when it comes back—so that when it comes back—does staff need more on...?

[01:59:09] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: We'll move on to item two, which is roll call. The City Clerk will take attendance by roll call.

[01:59:15] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember Clark?

[01:59:16] Councilmember Chris Clark: Here.

[01:59:17] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember Hicks?

[01:59:17] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Here.

[01:59:18] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember McAlister? Councilmember Ramirez?

[01:59:22] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Here.

[01:59:23] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember Showalter? Vice Mayor Ramos?

[01:59:25] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Here.

[01:59:26] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Mayor Kamei?

[01:59:27] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Here.

[01:59:28] City Clerk Heather Glaser: You have a quorum with Councilmember McAlister temporarily absent.

[01:59:30] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Yes, he is here. All right. Um so just before we start off on our agenda items tonight, just wanted to make a brief statement in light of recent events. Mountain View remains committed to being a community for all. We have pride for our diverse community, which includes immigrants. And we will continue to stand in solidarity with our residents no matter where they come from as we are a community for all.

[01:59:55] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Our city's commitment was quite apparent this past Saturday when we held an incredible event: our first citywide pride celebration called Together in Pride. Thousands of neighbors, families, and Bay Area residents turned out to celebrate pride with us. We're community of all cultures and ethnicities.

[01:59:59] Councilmember Alison Hicks: You can do it when um—I mean...

[02:00:06] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you, Mayor. I'd ask staff to repeat back um what you had um—

[02:00:12] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Right. Yeah. I was going to wait for them to do a summary and at that point see if there was anything necessary. Thank you.

[02:00:19] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So perhaps staff can provide that summary. Thank you.

[02:00:28] Planning Manager Eric Anderson: And I do just want to clarify that 30,000 square feet is about a small project. So some of the references to downtown 5,000, they would not qualify in generating 200 new ADT so they wouldn't be required to follow this new ordinance. So um—so a 30,000 square foot is about that office or um retail space that would trigger that. Okay. You ready for my summary?

[02:00:40] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: The city does not participate in immigration enforcement with Homeland Security and our Mountain View Police Department does not ask for residency status. We are here for you. The community has resources at mountainview.gov/communityforall for more information and that includes resources available through the County of Santa Clara which includes the Rapid Response Network.

[02:01:08] Deputy Zoning Administrator Rebecca Shapiro: Okay. So I—what I heard is: we'll move forward with the general framework. Um we will continue to explore the housing element in what enhanced features will need to be um evaluated moving forward. We will have those cost strategies when we come to you next. Um this will continue to be a living, evergreen and flexible document so we will make sure that that is identified as well and streamline and work with the TMA to make sure that we are providing flexible and clear direction as new developments come online. Did I miss anything new? Oh, and follow up with the consequences and that will be part of the enforcement that comes with the um ordinance language that we are planning to bring forth in quarter one and quarter two of 2026.

[02:01:40] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: And now I'll share my remarks in Spanish. Y ahora compartir mis comentarios en español. Mountain View continúa con su compromiso de ser una comunidad para todos. Nosotros nos enorgullecemos la nuestra comunidad diversa la cual incluye inmigrantes. Y seguiremos siendo solidarios con las personas que viven en Mountain View sin importar de dónde vengan, ya que somos una comunidad para todos.

[02:02:26] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Are colleagues comfortable with that summary and what will be coming back or is there anything to add? All right. Great. All right, well a big thank you to staff. So this will conclude our study session. We'll take a quick five-minute recess so that um we can start our um delayed regular session. So why don't we um reconvene at 6:55 PM. Thank you.

[02:02:29] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: El compromiso de nuestra ciudad quedó muy claro este sábado pasado cuando tuvimos un evento increíble. Nuestra primera celebración de orgullo en la ciudad llamada Together in Pride. Miles de vecinos, familias y personas que viven en la área de la bahía asistieron para celebrar el mes de orgullo con nosotros. Somos una comunidad para todas las culturas y grupos étnicos.

[02:03:36] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: La ciudad no participa en el cumplimiento de inmigración con el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional y nuestro Departamento de Policía de Mountain View no pregunta sobre el estado de residencia. Estamos aquí para usted. Y yo quiero decir muy claro que somos un ciudad para todos. La ciudad tiene recursos para ustedes y para más información pregunta a nosotros. Muchísimas gracias.

[02:05:38] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right. And with that, we can move on to item three, which is our presentations. Please note these are presentations only. The City Council will not take any action. Public comment will occur after the presentation items and if you'd like to speak on these items in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk now.

[02:06:42] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: And we'll begin with item 3.1 which is the United States President's Volunteer Service Award recipient certificates of recognition. We're happy to be joined this evening by Ashley Yee-Mazawa, Senior Director of the Youth Community Service to recognize the service award recipients. I'll present the certificates to the students in attendance and then I'll turn it over to Ashley for a brief presentation. And I know there's a lot of students in the audience, so if you don't mind coming up now, that would be great. Um please come up to the front and I'll join you.

[02:08:26] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Do you maybe want to share a little bit before I start reading all the names? Maybe you could start.

[02:08:33] Senior Director Ashley Yee-Mazawa: Yes. Hello, good evening to the Mayor and the City Councilmembers and city staff. Thank you for allowing us to be here today. We are so excited to recognize the students in our community who have received the President's Volunteer Service Award as certified by our organization, Youth Community Service or YCS. My name is Ashley Yee-Mazawa, I'm the Senior Director at Youth Community Service and a Mountain View resident.

[02:09:21] Senior Director Ashley Yee-Mazawa: Today we are honoring 24 students who live in Mountain View or go to school in the city who've earned the award this past academic year. Um as you can see from the slides that we have shared that these students have served across diverse range of nonprofits including education, civic engagement, and mental health. YCS was founded in 1990 and uh serves students in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, supporting service learning in over 65 Bay Area schools.

[02:10:31] Senior Director Ashley Yee-Mazawa: We partner with over 250 local community organizations to bring service learning programming to over 14,000 community members. Um to learn more about YCS and service recognition, please visit our website at youthcommunityservice.org. Um I want to take a minute to share the mic with one of our students, a former YCS student, recent graduate, and an award recipient, Eric.

[02:11:24] Public Speaker Eric: Hello. My name is Eric Coca-Castillo, a recent graduate from Mountain View High School. I am also the recipient of the Presidential Volunteer Service Award. Um I am awarded this award through YCS, an organization that has inspired me and many others to go out into our local communities and provide service to the local um struggling communities.

[02:12:24] Public Speaker Eric: They have also uplifted many voices by giving them the opportunity to go out and provide service events ranging from park cleanups and—and also providing engaging activities in under-utilized spaces. I am glad to have been a part of such a caring and supportive organization filled with people who emphasize the importance of the impact the youth can have on their local communities. Thank you so much for your time.

[02:13:12] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: And all the students that were recognizing tonight live in Mountain View, which is really wonderful. And so I'll ask—Ashley, do you want to come up here and help me present these too? Congratulations. Thank you to all of our amazing high school students, our—our principal of Mountain View High School Kip Glazer for joining us and we'll move on to item 3.2—oh, mostly the parents, congratulations.

[02:13:51] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Item 3.2 is our Pride Month proclamation. We're happy to be joined this evening by Ken Yeager and Drew Lloyd, President of the Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee to accept the proclamation—but I think there's like a whole group of BayMEC folks so anybody who's in BayMEC, it's a party, come on down, come receive your proclamation.

[02:14:43] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: He—he was here for something else and he's joining the party anyways. I love it. Okay. So, uh: the city of Mountain View is committed to supporting dignity, equity, and visibility for all people in the community. And whereas Mountain View celebrates the history and diversity of our city's LGBTQIA+ community and promotes a society in which all residents can live free from discrimination.

Segment 4

[02:16:34] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Wonderful, thank you. Would any member of the Council like to say a few words? Councilmember Clark.

[02:16:39] Councilmember Chris Clark: Yeah, I just wanted to take a minute—they've stepped out, but for folks who don't know, Ken Yeager, who was just in here, has been working on these issues for decades. And many of us stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us, and I think the progress that's been made toward creating a more welcoming community, not just here in Mountain View but region-wide, is real due in part to some of the work that he's done along with Wiggsy Sivertsen and many others across several decades.

[02:17:17] Councilmember Chris Clark: And Drew as well, and Tom Meyers. So, it seems like sometimes we take several steps forward in a relatively short period of time, and then sometimes we take a step or two back—sometimes more steps back than we'd like in a short period of time. But I also want to just thank the Mayor and my colleagues and my past colleagues for their commitment to creating a community for all, and especially to staff for the event, the Pride event that we just put on.

[02:17:51] Councilmember Chris Clark: I never thought 10 years ago when we were raising the flag for the first time that we would have a staff or community-initiated event that wasn't something that was initiated specifically by the Council. And I think the turnout and the families and everyone who got to come out and enjoy that, especially in the current environment, it speaks volumes about our community and our values. So, thank you to everyone who was a part of that and who's helped us get to this point.

[02:18:25] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Would anyone else like to say anything? Okay. All right. I will now open up public comment for the presentation items. Would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide a comment on the presentation items listed on the agenda? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk.

[02:18:50] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay, I am not seeing any related to this item. So, I'll close public comment and congratulate those that we recognized earlier. We'll move on to Item 4, which is our Consent Calendar. These items are approved by one motion unless any member of the Council wishes to pull an item for individual consideration. If an item is pulled from the Consent Calendar, it will be considered separately following approval of the balance of the Consent Calendar.

[02:19:16] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: If you'd like to speak on these items or the next item, oral communications on non-agenda items, in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk now. Would any member of the Council like to pull an item? Councilmember McAlister.

[02:19:31] Councilmember John McAlister: I have a question on 4.2 and 4.8. Comment on 4.9.

[02:19:43] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Would you like to pull those—do those two items that he has questions on, do those need to be pulled or can those questions be asked? They can be asked. They can just be asked without pulling the item. Okay, great. Would you like to pull them or would you like to just ask the questions?

[02:19:55] Councilmember John McAlister: I'll just ask the questions.

[02:19:58] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay, great. So first, okay, 4.2. 4.2, 4.8, 4.9, is that right?

[02:20:06] Councilmember John McAlister: Yes, ma'am.

[02:20:08] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right. Let me go through the list and see if anyone else wants to pull anything. Councilmember Showalter.

[02:20:12] Councilmember Pat Showalter: I just have some comments.

[02:20:15] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay. Councilmember Hicks, do you have an item pull or comments?

[02:20:17] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I'm just going to comment on 4.4, which is the gas-free fleet, maybe ask a question, but not pull it.

[02:20:24] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay. How about Councilmember Ramirez? Is this a pull or a comment?

[02:20:28] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Madam Mayor. So, I think Councilmember McAlister pulled 4.8, is that right?

[02:20:35] Councilmember John McAlister: Question. Not pulling it, just had a question.

[02:20:39] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Oh, I would like to pull 4.8. And then a question about 4.5.

[02:20:46] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay. All right, I'm going to go back up then. So, the only item I heard pulled was 4.8. Okay. All right, Councilmember McAlister, you had a few items.

[02:20:54] Councilmember John McAlister: Just, yes, on 4.2, I wanted to get clarity on the development agreement and how it's handled for the payment. In the staff report, it highlighted the whole payment deal is highlighted in red, and I just wanted to get clarity how it works for the process because it says they will be paying the initial amount of $50,000 in 35 days. And then there is a following sentence that the second installment shall be paid no later than three years after the effective date of the development agreement.

[02:21:35] Councilmember John McAlister: And so I just wanted to understand when does the development agreement get authorized, when does the point of no litigation, and when do we get the amount of money?

[02:21:49] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: I can answer that question. Thank you. I was like, Jennifer Logue, City Attorney, good evening Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Councilmembers.

[02:22:00] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: Okay, so just for clarification, we're talking about the development agreement and we're talking about Section—let me scroll up, I apologize—Item 4.2. Yeah, this is Item 4.2, and then in the development agreement, which is an attachment to Item 4.2, it's Section 3.1a, and it's the public benefit fee. And what it does is it says the first installment will be paid in 35 days, and 35 days is five days after the effective date of the ordinance, assuming Council passes the ordinance this evening on second reading.

[02:22:33] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: Okay, the second installment has a longer deadline, and it's going to be 10 days after final approval or 35 days after the effective date of the development agreement. Okay, so the effective date of the development agreement is defined earlier in the development agreement, and it's going to either be December 19, 2025, or the effective date of the ordinance. And this gets complicated because under the law there can be challenges to the ordinance, and there are various statute of limitations for the way members of the public or other interested parties can challenge an adoption of an ordinance.

[02:23:18] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: You can do a referendum, there's going to be a deadline for filing a referendum, and then there's a petition for writ of mandate that could be brought, which is a 90-day deadline, and there may be other statute of limitations governing challenges to Council's approval this evening. So what we've done is, if any of those legal challenges are filed, it effectively stays your approval and they do not have an effective ordinance nor do they have an effective development agreement. So delaying the payment of the second installment with these dates and providing this type of information allows them to have actually a final approval, unchallenged, or if there was a challenge, the challenge was resolved in their favor before they make the large $450,000 payment.

[02:24:04] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: So what it does is it doesn't require them to pay until everything is done, a done deal. However, it does have this catch-all which says if there is litigation initiated or there is some challenge initiated and it takes longer than three years—which sometimes litigation can take longer than three years—they will pay that $450,000 no later than three years after the effective date. Okay, so it kind of gives an outer limit of how long we would wait to receive that payment, but it is probably unlikely that it will be three years later. It'll be a much sooner date that that $450,000 is paid.

[02:24:51] Councilmember John McAlister: So the three years is only if there are challenges, but once—so when do we define there are no longer challenges, when we approve the...

[02:25:03] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: So when all the statute of limitations run for challenges. So the petition for writ of mandate is a 90-day statute of limitation, that'll run fairly quickly after approval. But remember, it's 90 plus our 30, so the ordinance doesn't become effective until 30 days after you take action tonight, and then it's 90 days from that. And then there's, I think it's a 30-day statute of limitation for referendum, correct? If I'm—I'm trying to remember, I don't have all of these statute of limitations in my head, but there are various ones. So it's hard to say, I would say—I don't even want to guess, because there's too many potential challenges. But they are much shorter than three years, I can tell you that.

[02:25:49] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: So what we'll do is we'll go through the law and we will eventually get to a point where Merlone Geier's attorney and us, we will agree that there are no more challenges that can be brought, we're in the safe zone, and they will make the payment.

[02:26:02] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, so from a clarity for me is that all the legal challenges have to be resolved before they're required to pay the balance.

[02:26:12] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: If there is a legal challenge, yes, it needs to be resolved. Completely resolved through appeals and everything.

[02:26:20] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Thank you.

[02:26:22] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: That was that question. Okay. Go to the next one? Huh?

[02:26:26] Councilmember John McAlister: You had two others. Okay, so you want me to go through the rest. Okay. Comment on 4.8, the homeless response strategy and expenditure plan adoption. When this first came to Council, I had real concerns about it because there was no—it was the same plan that was 10 years ago that I saw, and that there was no real action being taken, it just says we will collaborate with people. And so I asked, was there any actionable items in this that have taken place, real units provided to the citizens or to the people that need it, and no, there wasn't.

[02:27:03] Councilmember John McAlister: And I bring up that I constantly show that there's opportunities to buy property to help get people situated out of homelessness, and they're relatively inexpensive. There's a property on the market right now that's 14 units, comes out to about $360,000 a door, whereas the latest we just had an affordable housing unit that was made over in La Avenida and that was over $700,000. And so at some point, we need to take real action and not rely on the county, rely on these other people if we want to solve this problem, because in the 10 years that I last first saw this, nothing—we haven't had any real units developed.

[02:27:42] Councilmember John McAlister: So I'm disappointed that we haven't got the action, and I probably will probably vote no on this because I just feel that we've got to put our money where our mouth is and actually put out some units to help people instead of just saying we're going to collaborate on that one. And then, what was the other one I was going to talk about? I thought there was three but that 4.8... you said 4.9. 4.9, the smart water meters. Okay, I am—I'm really glad that we're seeing it. I know when I brought up smart meters and trying to reduce—to get a better handle with if a drought comes along and people have water that's dripping away, we lose water a lot of that.

[02:28:29] Councilmember John McAlister: Or that we have staff that are running around trying to get this information manually where we could all do electronically, and the Council's always been hesitant to move forward and bring in new technologies so that we can get a better data on how we do things. And I'm so glad to see that we're actually doing something now, I mean we're—we have funds to start putting out smart meters. It's just the way of the future, it's going to be environmentally friendly for us so that we have a better handle on the water. We're going to—and make it more efficient for us to get this data. So, I believe that's it. Thank you, Mayor.

[02:29:04] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Councilmember Showalter.

[02:29:05] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, well I think I'll start with the smart meters where you ended off and I basically concur with all the things you said. And in addition to that, I think it's going to be very instructive for us personally because we'll be able to log into our water meter and figure out how much water we've used in the last like six or nine hours. So we'll be able to track that with—did we water our lawn? Did we run the dishwasher? Did we have, you know, run three loads of laundry? And kind of see how these things make a difference on a daily basis and—and really control our behavior. And so this is a long time coming and I'm—I'm delighted to see it.

[02:29:47] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Okay, 4.8, the homeless response strategy. It's so needed and I—when we get to the budget section, I hope we'll be able to answer the question of how much of this program is in this year's budget. Or maybe now, how much of these programs are in this year's budget?

[02:30:11] Senior Director Ashley Yee-Mazawa: Good evening Mayor and City Councilmembers. There's approximately a million dollars that is devoted to homeless services currently and that's included in this upcoming year's budget.

[02:30:20] Councilmember Pat Showalter: That's excellent. Thank you so much. I just wanted that confirmed. All right. And then 4.4 and 4.7, I want to thank the sustainability staff for this progress. One is a ordinance related to landscaping equipment and EVs, and another one is the inventory of our greenhouse gas use. We do that annually now and it—it provides a tremendous amount of data for us to know, are we on track? It's very, very valuable. So thanks to staff for doing that.

[02:30:57] Councilmember Pat Showalter: 4.5, closing down Landings again. This isn't anything that we wanted to happen, but we appreciate—everybody appreciates staff's work to make sure that the right-of-way for the easement is established in that area. That's very, very important for the long-term development of the North Bayshore. And also that the environmental impacts that have already occurred related to cutting down so many trees have been taken care of in a good manner. There—there will be a lot of trees planted all over Mountain View related to this project. And then, I think that's it. Thank you so much.

[02:31:41] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Councilmember Hicks.

[02:31:45] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So, I'll start with 4.8, just as—which is our homeless response strategy. Two comments. First, I think we have—when I read the staff report, we have developed and are in the process of developing permanently supportive housing and rapid rehousing units for—some of which will serve formerly homeless people. So, I hope that's true. And second, I was recently at a Mountain View Community Land Trust meeting where they were encouraging residents to report to them any appropriate housing for sale that might be rehabilitable or whatever, rehabilitatable. So please talk to them about the sites that you—in case they're not watching tonight—the sites that you know about that you might recommend. Also our housing department might be interested.

[02:33:25] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So that's 4.8. And then 4.4, which Councilmember Showalter highlighted, which is about adopting a greenhouse gas-free fleet and landscaping equipment purchase policy. I wanted to highlight it as well because many people in the community have been encouraging this, and I wanted to say that for—if you do read the staff report, for standard-sized vehicles, the total operating cost is estimated to be—and correct me if I'm wrong, those of you on staff who work on this—is estimated to be either the same or, I don't know, possibly if technical developments keep going along well, the same or less than gas-powered vehicles. So we're not even spending money over the long run on that.

[02:34:59] Councilmember Alison Hicks: For larger vehicles, the cost may be more, but in my opinion, it's not compared to other things we spend money on, not that much more. So I think it's totally worth it. And who knows, maybe costs will go down over the years we're making the purchases. And I also wanted to highlight as Councilmember Showalter did that there's landscaping equipment included in this. And the one thing that was not in the staff report that I'd encourage you to talk up in the future is many people were interested in electrified landscaping equipment because it's much quieter. So not just for the air quality and greenhouse gas savings benefits but also that's super important to residents, so I wanted to call that out.

[02:37:24] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And then, I know this is—this is my only remaining question on this, I know this is a rapidly changing field. And so for instance, the way we charge electric vehicles may change because BYD, the Chinese firm, has just done apparently super-fast electric charging. And that may change the whole charging landscape, which is in the staff report, maybe you'll do things differently. So I just want to make sure that this is a—you know, that you're going to be able to make those changes and track those changes, that this is a—you know, an evolving plan, not a plan that's set in stone.

[02:38:32] Danielle Lee, Chief Sustainability and Resiliency Officer: Good evening. Danielle Lee, Chief Sustainability and Resiliency Officer. Thank you for the question, Councilmember Hicks. We certainly will be tracking technology. We've seen quite a rate of change across many climate change technologies. So we'll be eagerly watching this and—and will certainly be able to change our course if this technology becomes more widely available.

[02:38:58] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay. Thank you. And thank you for working on this.

[02:39:02] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Councilmember Ramirez.

[02:39:03] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. I'll save my comments on 4.8 for after the balance of the Consent Calendar's approved. But a quick question about 4.5, the Landings project. Just to clarify, the tree mitigation fee that or fees that may be paid will be the updated fee, which is substantially higher than the current fee, is that right?

[02:39:43] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: Good evening Mayor and City Councilmembers. So, we're currently in the process of negotiating an agreement with Google with respect to the tree mitigation plan. It is a set amount that we've been discussing thus far. I do not recall off the top of my head how it compares to what's moving forward. I do not know if Christian, do you know that off the top of your head? Okay, we can certainly look into that and let you know if there's a difference.

[02:40:12] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Okay. Thank you.

[02:40:15] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay. I see a motion—oh, I see, yeah. Okay, great. Would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to comment on these items? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk. We do have an in-person commenter, and that's Mr. Albert Jeans. We'll give him three minutes. I don't see any virtual speakers.

[02:40:51] Public Speaker Albert Jeans: Good evening Mayor and Councilmembers. Yeah, I've been following this project since it started, so this item caught my eye. Not because of the easements, but because of the, you know, the tree thing. This is a picture—it's interesting watching them pull all the foundations—I don't know how many millions that cost. Next slide, please. So yeah, they're proposing about 66 trees along the freeway as sort of a, you know, a break there. But do you remember how many trees were pulled—were cut down for this project? Next slide, please. Over a thousand. Over 400 heritage trees. A thousand trees.

[02:41:28] Public Speaker Albert Jeans: Now I don't know, you know, if their mitigation is including replanting all these trees they took out, but the fact is those trees are gone and for many years, you know, we won't have those trees sucking carbon dioxide out of the air, we won't have their shade or anything like that. Next slide, please. And guess what? Tomorrow at the PRC meeting, two more homeowners are going to be desperately trying to get the PRC to reverse a denial for, you know, a heritage tree removal. And so, you know, this—it's very—I've seen one case where it was reversed, and in most cases the denials are—I mean the appeals are denied and the homeowners are left with the tree that they no longer want and have to live with. Next slide, please.

[02:42:14] Public Speaker Albert Jeans: So my takeaway here, there seems to be something vastly unfair about this fact that developers seem to be able to cut down hundreds of trees without, you know, any kind of, you know, oversight by the Council. Nobody complains about them. They never halt a project because a tree has been cut down—can't be cut down. And yet homeowners, you know, are nickel-and-dimed to death and they can't cut down a tree even though they may want to put in a better tree for their property. They have to live with this tree, which maybe they may have even planted themselves. I've run across this myself.

[02:42:49] Public Speaker Albert Jeans: And it boils down to, of course we want these big projects to come go through, you know, economic development and all that. But in the end—at the end of the day, if we prioritize economic development over the environment, the environment's going to suffer, and that's how we got to where we are now with climate change and everything like that. At some point, you have to say enough is enough, you know, we're not going to cut down heritage trees unless it's a really, really important project. Otherwise, you know, what meaning does this ordinance have? It hamstrings homeowners but gives developers, you know, a free pass. Thank you.

[02:43:25] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Any other in-person or virtual public comment on the Consent Calendar? All right, not seeing any, I'll bring the item back for Council action and note that a motion to approve the Consent Calendar should also include reading the title of the ordinance and resolutions attached to Consent Calendar Items 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, and 4.6. Councilmember Showalter.

[02:43:51] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Okay, I move the remainder of the Consent Calendar and am going to attempt to read all of this, it's quite a bit. Item 4.2, adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View amending the San Antonio Precise Plan related to the Transfer of Development Rights program and office development regulations and adopting an addendum to the previously certified final San Antonio Precise Plan Environmental Impact Report and finding that the addendum and previously certified EIR adequately address the potential impacts of the precise plan amendments and related approvals for the commercial development project at 365 to 405 San Antonio Road and 2585 to 2595 California Street project pursuant to Sections 15162, 15164, and 15168 of the California Environmental Quality Act to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:45:33] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View conditionally approving a master plan, planned community permit, and development review permit for a new 182,352 square foot, seven-story commercial building with 150,000 square feet of transfer of development rights from the Los Altos School District transfer of development rights program, a provisional use permit to allow an office use and a heritage tree removal permit to remove five heritage trees on a 0.99-acre site located at 365 to 405 San Antonio Road and 2585 to 2595 California Street, APNs 148-22-005, 148-22-006, 142-22-007, and 148-22-023 to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:47:37] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Adopt an ordinance of the City of Mountain View approving a development agreement between the City of Mountain View and Merlone Geier Partners IX LP for the Village of San Antonio Center Phase 3 project on a 0.99-acre site located at 365 to 405 San Antonio Road and 2585 to 2595 California Street to be read in title only, further reading waived. Item 4.3, adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View appointing 15 members and 11 members-at-large alternates to the Youth Advisory Committee for the 25-26 school year term to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:49:00] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Item 4.4, adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View to adopt a greenhouse gas-free fleet and landscape equipment purchasing policy. Item 4.5, adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View amending Resolution Number 18478 to modify conditions related to the vacation of public easements at 2001 Landings Drive, formerly 1860 to 2159 Landings Drive, to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:50:19] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Item 4.6, adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View approving and authorizing the City Manager or designee to execute a first amendment to the disposition and development agreement between the City of Mountain View and RGC Mountain View 1 LLC for the development of Hope Street lots 4 and 8 to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:51:25] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you Councilmember Showalter for reading all of that. That's seconded by Councilmember Hicks. Let's vote.

[02:51:41] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right, and that motion passes unanimously. We'll go back to Item 4.8, which I believe was pulled by Councilmember Ramirez. We'll turn it over to Councilmember Ramirez. Go ahead.

[02:51:51] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. So I first want to express my appreciation to staff for the revisions incorporated into this document, which I think is very strong. I'm generally supportive of the revisions and will happily move to approve the plan. But I did want to amend the metrics chart, which I think is a very valuable addition, to include a lot of the information that actually is shared in the Council—the responses to the Council questions that—City Manager, if you could help me with this.

[02:52:31] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: My understanding is there's an annual report provided to the Council which I had forgotten about. So even though unlike the Economic Vitality Strategy, which explicitly includes an annual report about that plan and the implementation, the update that I think we're provided is more comprehensive than just this plan. But I think that this plan will certainly feature heavily and it will be an opportunity to see how much progress we've made over the preceding year.

[02:53:08] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: But the metrics chart, I think, can be a little bit more robust. So what I would hope to include—and certainly staff is welcome to include any other metrics that you think would be valuable for us—but the breakdown of the clients served through City-funded programs and partnerships. The number that's provided right now, 350 clients, is lacking in context. Right, so future Councils will look at that and may not be privy to what the programs and partnerships include. So this breakdown in the staff responses, I think, is very helpful. And I think over time, once we have, for instance, the direct financial assistance program implemented, we'll see additional programs included.

[02:54:17] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So my request would be—so I'll move to approve the plan, but then also with that breakdown in a revised or updated metrics chart. And then also the permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing units that exist, that have been constructed, and are also under construction and in the pipeline. The permanent supportive housing metric here is useful, but it will remain small until we see that pipeline ultimately built out. So I think providing that Council the periodic updates about units that are under construction will be very helpful. And then we can see annually our progress in meeting our—I think it's 200 unit goal.

[02:55:50] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So that's the motion. Separately, I did want to share I appreciate the information provided by staff about the LifeMoves HomeKey project. I'm concerned about the financial viability of that project in the long term. I'm grateful that LifeMoves is able to at least in the short period fundraise to sustain operations, but a worst-case scenario would be in the event that they can no longer generate enough revenue to sustain operations, which right now appears to be around four and a half million dollars a year, we will be faced with a choice to subsidize with the general fund or close the interim housing and have 100 folks sent out onto the streets, which I think is not an outcome that we're seeking.

[02:57:21] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So I think, you know, this information is valuable. It looks like it's able to operate for the foreseeable future, but in future updates in the next annual update, for instance, I hope staff will continue to elevate this to future Councils. Eventually I'll be gone, everyone will be so grateful. And just make sure that we're always cognizant of the fact that we may have to think about a long-term operational funding plan, because none of us want to see, you know, 100-plus folks evicted and, you know, sent without a place to go. So that's the motion and I'm again grateful for all of the work that staff has done on this.

[02:59:25] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay great, so we have a motion by Councilmember Ramirez seconded by Councilmember Showalter. Any questions or discussion? No? Let's vote.

[02:59:37] Councilmember John McAlister: Could I hear a recap of that motion? It seemed to be multiple items on there, so could you break down each item, please?

[02:59:45] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Sure. And I forgot, I want to agree with what you said earlier about this item, Councilmember McAlister. I do think it's—at the end of the day, what matters most is that we create places for unhoused folks to go and live stable and productive lives, right? So I appreciate your comments earlier. The motion is to approve the plan with modifications to the metrics chart—so not the plan itself, but the metrics chart—to include basically what you see in Question 53. There's a breakdown of what the clients served through City-funded programs and partnerships would include.

Segment 5

[03:00:00] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: ...255.5 full-time equivalent positions in a wide range of management, professional, and front-line classifications. We have the Service Employees International Union, SEIU, which represents approximately 190 full-time equivalent positions in maintenance, clerical, para-professional, and technical classifications. We have Mountain View Professional Firefighters, Local 1965 that represent approximately 85 non-management sworn fire employees, which are firefighters, fire engineer, fire captain, and three new non-management sworn fire positions that are included in the upcoming recommended budget for a total of 88 positions. We also have our fourth bargaining unit, which is the Police Officers Association, which represents approximately 84 non-management sworn police employees, which are police officers and police sergeants, and 23.5 non-management non-sworn police employees, which are community service officers, police record specialists, etc., for about 107.5 positions.

Segment 4

[03:00:30] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: And so rather than 350 clients, which is not useful information, it would say, here are the programs and the number of clients served by that program. So that'd be the first revision, and then the second revision would be something akin to the charts provided in Questions 54 and 55, so we have a continuous elevation of our progress in constructing and maintaining permanent supportive housing units and rapid rehousing units. Kind of like what you were describing, but within the context of PSH and rapid rehousing.

Segment 5

[03:01:13] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Currently, the City of Mountain View vacancy rate is hovering around 8%, which is well below the public agency industry standard of 10 to 11%. This provides a very quick vacancy snapshot per labor union as of May 19th. You will see that the EAGLES vacancy rate is 7.07%. SEIU is 14.32%, MVFF is 13.24%, and POA is 3.72%. So overall, it's about 8.88% our vacancy rate. However, we do have seven new hires that will be onboarded by the end of the fiscal year, which brings us to right about 8% overall citywide for our vacancy rate.

Segment 4

[03:01:55] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right. Now we're going to vote.

Segment 5

[03:02:07] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: The City, as you know, continues to invest in our recruitment and retention efforts. We have really worked in our expanding our outreach and our partnerships through job fairs. Our public safety collaborates with academies. We advertise in LinkedIn, CalOpps, government jobs, MMSC, and other professional organizations. We have invested in our hiring technology in an effort to streamline our processes and make for a better candidate process coming into the city. We have dedicated staff in both HR and PD for the recruitment for public safety to make sure that it continues to be a high-priority hiring our public safety positions. We continue, again, our retention efforts by investing in employee development and well-being. We invest in our leadership and training opportunities and programs. We have our paid parental leave program. We have multiple employee events throughout the year in the city. We do really work on our culture of growth and support. As you will see in one of our performance measures in HR, it's about internal promotions and our performance rate is 30% and we continue to exceed that. At mid-year, we were at 39%. So we continue to foster this culture of growth and support, whether it's through internal promotions, we have our hybrid work options, we have student loan and housing support and other wellness-focused initiatives.

Segment 4

[03:02:11] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay, if you're going to record a no vote on 4.8 then it would be no now. Okay.

[03:02:21] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right, and that passes unanimously, 6-1, with Councilmember McAlister voting no. So this closes the Consent Calendar. We'll move on to Item 5, Oral Communications. This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the Council on any matter not on the agenda. Speakers are allowed to speak on any topic within the City Council subject matter jurisdiction for up to three minutes during this section. State law prohibits the Council from acting on non-agenda items. If you'd like to speak on this item or the next item, in person, please submit a blue speaker card.

[03:03:15] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Or click the raise hand button in Zoom. We'll take in-person speakers first and each speaker will have two minutes. First is Michael Meredith, then Justin Zagunis, then Ray Martel.

[03:03:33] Public Speaker Michael Meredith: Hi, I'm here to—if you could wait, we're going to update the speaker timer to two. Okay. Quite a speech contest. Um, I'm here to complain about the continued structural hazards at 400 Del Medio Avenue. I'm concerned there's confusion about what the City building staff sees in the report. The report in what was submitted to court in 2023 indicates that the structural engineer feels that 'all necessary safety measures'—I'm quoting—'should be implemented to ensure people are prevented from standing on, near, under the elevated decks, which could be lead to severe injury or death,' unquote.

Segment 5

[03:03:58] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: The other area similar to other local government agencies is that we're all facing similar challenges, such as filling hard-to-fill technical and public safety positions, such as dispatchers and police officers. Some of these public safety positions are, have a longer hiring process, but that's due to California law POST standards. We also know that we will have an upcoming retirement wave not only just in our organization but just throughout other organizations and local government, which is going to be one of the challenges to retain our employees in such a competitive market because there will be, just we're all kind of facing this similar upcoming retirement wave and continuing to stay competitive. And the other challenge just in general when talking with other colleagues in other jurisdictions is just attracting more candidates in public sector careers and that seems to be an ongoing challenge throughout the area. So that is my presentation and that concludes my presentation. Thank you.

Segment 4

[03:04:19] Public Speaker Michael Meredith: I concerned the building department staff is assessing the situation on the basis of telephone comments and not this statement. Further, I'm very concerned that in this case, half the building is being used as Airbnb short-term rentals, and I think this is a case where the City needs to move under Chapter 44, Section 6 to revoke registration of these units because there is no liability insurance place—in place. This practice is putting people and the City's finances at risk.

[03:04:56] Public Speaker Michael Meredith: Further, I would hope that the City—it's been a long time since the STR policy was put into place—I hope the City has a chance to review it. I've sent a bibliography of sources looking at academic sources primarily in the last five years to each of the Councilmembers, and I hope they do get a chance to reconsider the existing STR policy. Thank you very much, I really appreciate your service to the City, especially in these troubled times when democratic process seems endangered. Thank you.

Segment 5

[03:05:10] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. We'll now hear from our presenters. So we'll start first with John Castleberry, Public Safety Dispatcher 3, on behalf of SEIU, and feel free to come on down. Each presenter will get five minutes and I think there's a timer probably right here under me. Okay, perfect. And your presentation's up so if you just want to let us know when you want it to go through. Thank you.

Segment 4

[03:05:31] Public Speaker Justin Zagunis: Thank you. And good evening, my name is Justin Zagunis, and I am a resident of Mountain View, and I'm here tonight from Silicon Valley Clean Energy, or SVCE, where I'm the Director of Customer Success. SVCE is your community's provider of electricity. We buy the clean power that PG&E delivers to over 95% of Mountain View's residents and businesses. Since our inception in 2016, we have invested nearly $4 billion in new renewable energy and energy storage projects.

Segment 5

[03:05:38] Public Speaker John Castleberry: Thank you, honorable members of the city council. Thank you for having me tonight. My name is John Castleberry and I am a Public Safety Dispatcher 3 with the City of Mountain View's police and fire department and a proud member of the SEIU Board, our city's second largest union.

[03:05:54] Public Speaker John Castleberry: This briefly shows our unit vacancies overview. All these statistics were provided by HR to our union and I was hoping to give them some context. I will primarily use my specific work unit, our city's 911 dispatchers, as examples, but the themes apply across all worksites including here at City Hall, at parks, and various shops at MSC. This slide is particularly relevant to me as I work in our city's hardest-to-fill classification. In fact, we have been in a staffing crisis in dispatch since 2018. I've been a city employee since 2020 and we have had at a minimum four vacancies out of 14 positions since that time, oftentimes exceeding having six vacancies. These numbers include trainees, many of which don't make it past probation or are ultimately let go, painting a much rosier picture than what actually exists.

[03:06:43] Public Speaker John Castleberry: This is just a brief description of the difference between vacancies and turnover, both of which issues do affect dispatch and various shops across our union.

[03:06:52] Public Speaker John Castleberry: Turnover and retention. This slide is very informative because it does show the median length of employment here at Mountain View is 5.7 years and the average is 6.4. One of our comparison cities, Redwood City, the median tenure there is eight years. 13.7% of current Mountain View employees have less than one year tenure. This is very stark in dispatch and it's the story across the bargaining unit. Like I stated earlier, I started with the city the very end of 2020. I'm about to reach my five-year anniversary. I'm sure many of you are shocked to know that I'm the second-highest seniority dispatcher. In a couple of years, if I still work here with under 10 years of service, I will be the most senior. It's great for me but not great for the city.

[03:07:35] Public Speaker John Castleberry: Why employees leave. The cost of living in Santa Clara County is no surprise to any of you. In addition, many of our neighboring cities are facing the same exact challenges and competing for the same pool of people. In our comparison cities since the last negotiation, despite repeatedly sounding the alarm to management, our comparables are continuing to slide and we're further down. We're continuing to drive our employees to live farther away in places like Brentwood, Hollister, and beyond the Altamont Pass. Especially in terms of dispatch, with every neighboring city hiring, we're no longer competitive. The new generation is highly focused on pay, not benefits, due to the astronomical cost of living.

[03:08:14] Public Speaker John Castleberry: The impact is no surprise to any of us. It's expensive to hire people. Like the HR director said, you have to have a polygraph, a psychological and a medical evaluation and go through an extensive background process to be hired as a dispatcher. All in all, Mountain View's much better at this than most cities, it still took me four months to get hired even though we only had eight dispatchers at the time.

[03:08:38] Public Speaker John Castleberry: We're so incredibly fortunate to live in a well-resourced area, to be able to constantly expand services to our residents. However, this places a huge burden on city employees who are expected to consistently do more with less. For example, both the police department and fire department recently expanded services that everyone, including our bargaining unit, are excited about, our new ambulance and our new flock cameras. Both of these have increased the workload and scope of responsibilities for our nine dispatchers, who are already subject to mandatory callback and forced overtime on a regular basis. For 18 hours a day, we have only two people to answer all 911 and non-emergency calls, handle police, fire, and Mid-Pen open space radio traffic, and for most of the day, MSC calls and dispatching as well, plus handle the records division at night when they get to go home. Only Palo Alto asks their dispatchers to do as much, yet they have at least three dispatchers working and oftentimes a fourth dispatcher on duty, yet they have a smaller city population and pay more. We continue to add responsibilities while we are short-staffed but don't increase compensation as a result.

[03:09:42] Public Speaker John Castleberry: This slide's blank because there's a lot that we could do to fix it. The five-minute time limit that I have is not nearly enough to go over all the ways. Yes, pay is the largest factor and something that needs to be addressed, but I'll give a different example. Our police department has recently expanded our wellness program, which is great. When the issue was brought up that dispatchers don't have access to the same employee assistance program benefits that police officers do, primarily access to trauma-informed first responder therapists, our department's wellness team was told it's a negotiations issue. Yes, we will bring it up in a year and a half when we're able to negotiate again, but the last time a dispatcher talked to an EAP therapist, she was told that she just needed to work less and not take that type of call. Not easy to do when you're forced to work overtime and you can't choose the calls you take. SEIU has been wonderful about making sure dispatch challenges are heard. California now recognizes dispatchers as first responders and the city could address our staffing and retention issue by affording us the same benefits and rights as the other first responders in the city. In conclusion, I want to thank you for allowing me the time to speak about some of the challenges. This is a wonderful city to work and I'm happy to always speak about these issues with anyone as allowed by my chain of command and the city manager's office. Thank you.

[03:10:49] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. We'll now hear from Timothy Ouilette, Senior Management Analyst, on behalf of EAGLES.

[03:11:03] Public Speaker Timothy Ouilette: Good evening, Mayor, Councilmembers, and city staff. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening. Again, my name is Timothy Ouilette, I'm the president of the EAGLES employee association. In accordance with AB 2561, we appreciate the city's efforts to report on vacancy rates and workforce strategies in a transparent and open forum. Our bargaining unit's vacancy rate, as you heard a few minutes ago, stands at 7.2% of the total number of authorized full-time positions. We recognize that recruitment and retention continue to be a challenge across the public sector and we're grateful that Mountain View is prioritizing this issue.

[03:11:48] Public Speaker Timothy Ouilette: Looking ahead, we believe there's a real opportunity for the city to strengthen its workforce by transitioning more hourly, temporary, and contract positions into permanent full-time union positions. Doing so not only supports long-term stability in our departments but ensures that employees are eligible for critical benefits such as CalPERS, health care, and professional development, all of which help attract and retain high-quality staff.

[03:12:13] Public Speaker Timothy Ouilette: We also respectfully encourage the city to minimize the use of temporary workers and retired annuitants to fill ongoing union-represented work. While we understand these tools are sometimes necessary, relying too heavily on non-union labor can dilute the strength and continuity of our workforce. Our goal is to partner with the city in building a resilient and committed team, one where employees feel invested because they have a long-term future here. We appreciate the spirit of collaboration and we look forward to continuing our work together to support a strong and sustainable public service workforce in Mountain View. Thank you.

[03:12:52] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. We will now hear from Officer Eric Nelson, Police Officers Association President, on behalf of the POA.

[03:13:07] Public Speaker Officer Eric Nelson: Thank you, City Council, for having us. I don't have the cool PowerPoint, but I do have a statement I would like to read. The members of the Mountain View POA appreciate the continual community support and are constantly striving to provide the highest level of law enforcement service to the City of Mountain View. The reality for many of our members is very true for many law enforcement professionals. The societal demands of our officer's work product are increasing. The staffing numbers have been difficult to maintain. Our patrol division, which was normally staffed to be eight patrol teams, are currently working with six. Our traffic unit is down to one officer and one supervisor from four officers and one supervisor. These staffing challenges are causing our members to work longer, work longer shifts, and increased work weeks. As a result, MVPD is relying more on overtime. Currently, we have four vacancies for sworn police officers. We have eight recruits in two different academies, four of which graduate this month. We have four recruits, three of which are potential recruits because they are still in the background process, which are supposed to start in August academy. As we discuss vacancies, we must also recognize that academy personnel are not deployable police officers and trainees or academy graduates require one-on-one supervision for every minute of the field training program. These individuals offer hope and potential, but they do not contribute to the safety or service to the community as they take at least one year from the time of hire to be able to work independently as a patrol officer, and under some circumstances, they may even take longer than that.

[03:15:09] Public Speaker Officer Eric Nelson: Our true sworn vacancy numbers are four, but the non-deployable number for staffing is at 16. And that doesn't include officers that are out for various short, medium, or long-term leave. As a result of these vacancies, MVPD relies increasingly more on overtime, which not only impacts the quality of life of the employees and their families, but also means extra costs to the employees due to fuel, bridge tolls, wear and tear in their vehicles, as a large number of our police officers cannot afford to live in the County of Santa Clara, much less the City of Mountain View. These costs are significant and the toll it takes on our officer's quality of life should not be underestimated. Potential lateral or experienced police officer candidates may choose East Bay cities for shorter commutes and similar or better pay. MVPD not only loses out on staffing, but also the knowledge, training, and experience of these prospective candidates. MVPD needs to distinguish itself from the likes of Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Milpitas, and Santa Clara County for our officers. The continuous reliance on overtime means additional time in the uniform, wearing duty belts, equipment, ballistic vest, and greater frequency of going out in and out of patrol cars, inevitably contributing to the greater rates of industrial disability injuries.

[03:16:52] Public Speaker Officer Eric Nelson: But vacancies are one aspect of the challenges facing Mountain View personnel. In the 1990s, the population of Mountain View was just over 66,000 and in 2023, the population was over 81,000. That's an increase of 22%. That doesn't account for the daytime population growth due to the expanded business population, tourism, which in the city's website documents it as over 120,000. The expansion of duties, which is nowhere where it was in the 1990s, including some examples are fentanyl, the increase of fentanyl, the homelessness, and mental health crisis. Over that same time period, the staffing levels for the police department have hardly changed. Staffing levels were set at just over 90 sworn and they are now at about 97 sworn. One of the things that the POA can recommend is a staffing study. The study will determine the staffing levels and make sure they are aligned with the services level that are expected of the police department. Staffing is not a static number. We all know that officers who are here today may not be here tomorrow and this could be due to retirement, disability, termination, or lateral career opportunities. Also, it should be noted, not every recruit that attends academy will complete it, and not every academy graduate that graduates the...

[03:18:27] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Sorry, thank you. Your five minutes is up. Okay, thank you. Sorry, I wasn't sure if you were close to, but thank you, yeah. Oh, okay, great. Thank you, appreciate it.

[03:19:35] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yeah, I just wanted to thank everybody for coming in. It's good to hear details from different perspectives. I've been on both sides, I've worked for cities and I'm sitting on the dais now, and it's just good to hear a lot of details and I'm sure we'll be mulling them over. So thank you for coming.

[03:19:53] Councilmember Pat Showalter: I wanted to basically say the same thing. I think this is a great opportunity for us to hear some of the issues that you have in between contract negotiations and so we really appreciate the time that you took to get this information together for us and to share it. Thank you.

[03:20:13] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. All right, not seeing anyone else in the queue, I'll just echo my thanks to all of our presenters and most importantly thank you for your service to the City of Mountain View. We appreciate it. And we will take the vote. And that item passes unanimously. Thank you again to everyone. Moving on to item 6.2 is our fiscal year 2025-26 recommended budget. City Manager McCarthy will kick us off and Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone and Assistant Finance Administrative Services Director Grace Zhang will present the item. If you'd like to speak on this item in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk now. And we'll begin with City Manager McCarthy.

[03:21:31] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and councilmembers. I am really happy to be here with you tonight. This is our third check-in, I guess in the last few months about the recommended budget, so I'm happy to be here to present this or kick it off with our finance director, Derek Rampone, and Grace Zhang, our assistant finance director. So the good news is that our budget is structurally balanced. That means that our ongoing revenues are the same as our ongoing expenses. And I do want to touch a little bit on the positions in the budget. We do have a very limited number of new ongoing positions that were added. So there were four positions that we were able to add to this budget. That is less than we've been able to add than most of the prior, I believe six years. And that is just simply because our budget is less robust than it has been in prior years. Our revenues, as you will hear soon from our team, just have not been growing at the pace that our revenues have grown in the past several years. But the good news is that over the past several years, we have actually added over 50 positions. So 50 positions and we are now at the levels of staffing that we were at over two decades ago. So it's taken quite a long time to get to where we are now. The Great Recession certainly impacted Mountain View and many other agencies across the state and so we are finally at the levels of support that we want to be. And I do anticipate in future years being able to bring more staffing positions and recommendations to the council as the budget allows for more ongoing revenue. So I am pleased that we have been able to add those positions.

[03:23:30] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: So this budget allocates resources towards that long-term service delivery, also council priority projects. That includes areas like economic vitality, continuous improvement efforts, and also various innovative programs and processes that we know that we want to look at to improve. So the transmittal letter speaks to a lot of the various processes and technologies that we're really going to be focused on over the next fiscal year and that is really meant to help not only improve the organization's way of doing business but also help for our customers. And I do want to highlight one aspect that we're going to be really focused on over this next fiscal year and that is building on the Matrix development review organizational study. So if you remember, this was a study that was done about our development review process about three or four years ago. There were about 90 recommendations that came out of that study and how we can improve and change our either our processes, our technology, or increase staffing related to our development review process. So this next several months, we're actually going to be building upon that process, it's kind of 2.0, where we're going to be looking at the evolving organizational culture in all of the divisions and departments that touch development review. So there's about four or five departments involved in that review and the goal really is for us to understand how staff are addressing the challenges that we've seen over these last few years, what internal and external pressures that staff are perceiving in the development review process, and then also how they are orienting to these challenges, meaning are they being more of a facilitator or a regulator, and which posture calls for which situation.

[03:25:39] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: As you all know, there's been a lot of evolving new laws, new state regulations over the last several years and staff have had to very quickly and rapidly adjust to these changes in laws and regulations sometimes without a lot of notice. So the end goal is that we really want to do better and be better and this 2.0 process is really meant to help staff and bolster staff and to really help them focus on being creative and innovative and really focus on solutions. So really, really excited that we're going to be doing this and I really wanted to make sure that council is aware that this process is going on because I think this will have a big positive impact on the community and also our staff teams that work throughout the development review process.

[03:26:33] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: So I also would like to take the opportunity before I turn it over to the team to mention the improvements that we've made to the budget document that were informed by councilmember feedback. So thank you all for that. This still large budget book is actually 200 pages less than it was before. So we have reduced the size so that it's more streamlined and we've made the pages hopefully, the look and feel is better. We've updated the performance measures, as you may recall last year, we did a complete overhaul of our performance measures, so we took a look at those this year and made any tweaks or changes that we need to. And then we've also changed our department pages, which we call the D pages. So those pages have also been updated to be a little more modern and visually appealing and have more data. So it's our hope that the budget is just easier for not only council but the community to really read and understand. So with that, I'd like to turn the presentation over to our finance director to kick us off on the details about the budget and get a little granular with the numbers.

[03:27:45] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: All right, thank you, City Manager McCarthy, and good evening, Mayor Kamei, Vice Mayor Ramos, and Councilmembers. As you know, the budget process really starts back in November, really eight months prior to the fiscal year beginning. In November, we send out a kickoff memo to all departments and requests are then returned by each department around the holiday of each year, December holiday, excuse me. We then give a mid-year budget update in February that includes an economic update. Following that, we implemented a new step this year which was adding the preliminary review of the recommended budget that occurred in April. At that time, the city council was able to provide feedback and insight on the shaping of the recommended budget. The recommended budget was then published on May 30th and now we are at the June 10th council meeting that includes a full analysis and economic outlook. The next step after tonight will occur on June 24th with any updates or direction from tonight's meeting when we'll come back to the city council for the approval of the adopted budget.

[03:29:00] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: The City, as you know, has a long history of sound fiscal practices, including balancing ongoing expenditures with ongoing revenues, not using one-time revenues for ongoing expenditures and only using one-time revenues for one-time expenditures. Annually, as we are doing tonight, the City Manager recommends a structurally balanced operating budget. We also have prioritized paying down long-term liabilities of the city including pension liabilities, which has really resulted in savings of millions of dollars in interest over the years. We also maintain adequate reserves not only for emergencies or contingencies but also for programs that benefit the public, including setting aside funds for future capital costs, which have also been a priority for the council over the years. And having staff at all levels and all departments with solid financial backgrounds and varying experience helps ensure the execution of the council's financial direction.

[03:30:09] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: As a result of these sound fiscal practices by current and past city councils and current and former staff having strong financial acumen, you can see the city has received numerous awards over the years and continues to receive these accolades. In 2001, the city was awarded a Triple-A issuer credit rating by Standard & Poor's, one of the nation's top-ranked independent credit rating agencies. I'm pleased to announce that S&P just reaffirmed that rating last month, which will ultimately result in lower debt costs and savings to the city when we issue debt anytime in the future. The city continues to receive the excellence for budget presentation and financial reporting awards for the budget and the annual audit report from the Government Finance Officers Association and in addition, the purchasing section of the finance department has been awarded the Achievement of Excellence in Procurement by the National Purchasing Institute. All of these awards really are great examples of the excellent products the city prepares in the fields of budget, reporting, and procurement.

[03:31:16] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Now we're going to turn to the economic outlook. As most are probably aware, there continues to be quite a bit of economic uncertainty and the nation is currently facing some significant challenges overall. Prices of goods remain elevated. Tariffs have been implemented, rescinded, delayed, and have changed in amount and by country on a regular basis recently. As a result, inflation still remains a real concern for most economists. Interest rates also remain elevated, making it expensive for businesses and consumers to borrow, which further hampers economic activity. A hot topic at the national level recently has been the potential reduction or elimination of federal funding, which we'll dive into in a couple of slides. The California state budget is also showing some signs of slowing with a projected shortfall of $12 billion for the next fiscal year. In addition, we're still seeing continued corporate layoffs that have a negative impact on the local economic activity. Not only does that impact the business license tax revenue the city receives but it also results in lower sales tax revenue generated. As the financial markets remain volatile, the results of the stock market really have an impact on the economy as well. Capital gains on investments help the state's income tax revenue, which in turn helps them with their budget at the state level. In addition, the health of the stock market impacts the returns at CalPERS. If they don't meet their 6.8% assumed annual return, the city has to contribute even more to make up for the loss in investment earnings. All of this really points to uncertainty and volatility and slow or stagnant economic growth in the near future.

[03:33:19] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Here are just some recent headlines that we've seen as recent as last week and today, actually. Overall, just seems to be a lot of economic uncertainty and the economic outlook is not really rosy right now, really expecting slower expected growth as you can see on this slide here. Staff will continue to monitor and watch any data that we hear from any economist and our revenue specialists as we start the next fiscal year.

[03:33:48] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Turning to revenue, as you can see on this slide, we're showing that most revenues are experiencing a slower growth or even declines and we are not experiencing the revenue growth that we saw the last few years. On the flip side, we do continue to see growth in the city's lease revenue and investment income, which is the city's second largest revenue source in the general fund. Having a higher percentage of revenue coming from lease revenue and investment income is a rather unique situation, as we've talked about before, which the city really has benefited from in the past, especially during economic slowdowns. Most cities usually have sales tax as their number two revenue source, but Mountain View's actually our number three.

[03:34:39] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: As we turn to look at potential impacts on the city if federal grants are either reduced or eliminated, there are a few areas I'd like to highlight. The city has been awarded over $35 million in federal funding related to capital projects. A majority of this has not been spent yet and some of it is yet to even be formally budgeted as we are awaiting on some final agreements to be signed by the grantors. Of this 35 million, there is $10 million, over $10 million that has been awarded to the City of Palo Alto as part of the phase one of the advanced water purification system project that really benefits the City of Mountain View, so we've got to keep an eye on that. There is 5.1 million in housing funds that are still expected for this year and for next fiscal year. We've had no indication that these funds are in jeopardy as of right now. However, we have identified 3.1 million in federal funds that could be at risk, which includes 1.6 million of housing funds, 1.5 million in sustainability funding, and approximately 26,000 in police grants. In addition, there is 200,000 in sustainability and energy-related grants that the city has also been told are not in jeopardy at this time, so we're kind of in a wait-and-see period. Last fiscal year, the city did receive over $6 million in federal funds. To put that in perspective, it's a little over 1% of the total city revenue. As indicated earlier, staff will continue to closely monitor the situation with the federal impacts and how they may impact the city and what actions are taken at the federal level.

[03:36:30] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: We're going to turn now to the building the Mountain View of tomorrow. I'd like to provide an update on a new revenue source that the city is currently authorized to receive. As you know, Measure G, an increase in the property transfer tax of any property transfers over $6 million, was approved, it became effective on December 20th of last year and was approved by over 72% of voters in November. Staff is still estimating between approximately 8 to 9.5 million dollars annually, though we know it will be sporadic and could be bumpy, certain years could be more or less. So far there have been three transactions of over $6 million, but two of them are currently under review and protest for exemption by the taxpayer. At this time, it really remains to be seen when or how much the revenue will be and depending on property transactions, like I said, it could take a while to see significant revenue coming to the city.

[03:37:34] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Now we'll dive into some of the numbers of the recommended budget. Kicking off the budget overview section, this is a chart on total recommended revenues citywide. The total budgeted revenues for fiscal year 25-26 is nearly $663 million. That's all funds. As you can see in the pie chart, the general operating fund, general fund reserves, enterprise funds, and Shoreline Park community fund make up over 85% of the city's budgeted revenues, with special revenue funds, capital project funds, internal service funds, and other general fund-related funds comprising the balance.

[03:38:14] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Now we'll switch to citywide expenditures. The total recommended budgeted expenditures are nearly $649 million. Once again, you can see that the general fund, enterprise funds, and Shoreline Park community fund make up nearly 80% of the city's expenditures. I will note that expenditures in some funds may be higher than revenues and that's really just due to timing and using funding from existing resources that have been accumulated, so you may see expenditures higher than revenues at times.

[03:38:48] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: As you know, the general operating fund is the largest city fund and provides funding for core community services of the city, such as public safety, parks, recreation, library, some planning and public works, sustainability, and all city administration support functions. This slide shows that revenue projection for the general operating fund for next fiscal year, and as you can see, we're expecting growth of just over 6% or 11.5 million in revenue when compared to the current fiscal year's adopted budget.

[03:39:24] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Here's a slide that really just shows the city's tax revenue sources. This table provides two different analysis. You can see the change in dollar amount and percentage from the 24-25 adopted budget to the 25-26 recommended budget on the left side of the chart or the table, and the change from the estimated actuals for 24-25 current year versus the 25-26 recommended budget on the right side of the table. You can see that some of the changes are positive increases in black, while others are negative, as shown in red, which really means that the 25-26 recommended budget revenue amounts are less than the 24-25 adopted budget and less than the estimated actuals for 24-25. However, you can see on the top line there that property tax does remain relatively strong and consistent when compared to the current year's budget and current year's estimated actuals. Overall, when compared to the projected actual amount for 24-25, the recommended budget is only showing a nominal increase of 2.8 million or 1.5% on the bottom right.

[03:40:44] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: This slide shows the historical growth of major revenue sources of the city's general operating fund. This chart does not include the use of money and property, which is the lease revenue and investment income I spoke about earlier. Those revenues tend to be relatively stable when compared to other revenues. But as you can see on this chart, the growth in 25-26 is expected to be 2.8%, which is much less than the average over the last 14 years.

[03:41:14] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Now we'll turn to expenditures in the general operating fund. They're expected to grow by 6.9% or $12.6 million next year when compared to this year's adopted budget. In comparison, as you'll recall a few slides ago, revenues are expected to increase by only 6.3% or $11.5 million, which means that revenue growth is not keeping pace with the increase in expenditures.

[03:41:42] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: This slide relates to the general operating fund forecast, which is a five-year forecast included in the recommended budget document. As you can see for 25-26, the general operating fund recommended budget is balanced, showing a small operating balance of around $230,000. Staff is projecting modest deficits in the outer years, starting next fiscal year 26-27. So as a result, in addition to researching revenues, staff has also been analyzing the overhead that the general fund charges to other funds and we're making sure that the general fund is recovering its cost. As we finalize the analysis, we're hopeful that we'll have a more favorable update at mid-year after reviewing those charges further.

[03:42:33] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: This chart shows a breakdown of the general fund's operating revenue sources. As you can see on this chart, we're expecting almost nearly $196 million in general operating fund revenues, with property taxes being the largest source and use of money and property again, the lease revenue and investment earnings, being number two on this chart.

[03:42:58] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Now we'll turn to general operating fund expenditures. We're showing nearly $205 million. This does not include, as you can see on the bottom left of this page, this does not include a vacancy factor of $9.3 million, which will really bring the estimated expenditures down to 195.4 million, basically in line with the revenues.

[03:43:25] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Here is a summary of the general operating fund expenditure recommendations that are included in the recommended budget for 25-26. A total of $7.7 million in limited period costs are being recommended. This is made up of one-time costs to directly support city programs and staffing of city programs that serve the community. The total ongoing costs that are being recommended are only total $2.6 million, which are 1.6 million in discretionary costs and 1.0 million in non-discretionary costs. More details on these can be found on pages 1-25 through 1-27 of the transmittal letter.

[03:44:14] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: There are other major funds of the city that I'd like to highlight, such as the Development Services Fund, which as we all know is a separate fund that's been set up to track revenue and expenditures related to development activity. Staff, as you can see on this slide, we are projecting a deficit for this fund in the 25-26. We also have a conveyance tax fund, which we recently set up as a sub-fund of the general fund to track and account solely for the real property transfer taxes. For the next fiscal year, we are expecting revenue in the amount of 14.6 million, with 5 million of this coming from transfers.

Segment 6

[03:45:00] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: valued at $6 million or less and $9.5 million in revenue that is could be generated from property transfers valued at over $6 million, the Measure G. The Shoreline Regional Park Community Fund, which is a special government district administered by the city, is also another major fund and is expected to rev revenues that exceed expenditures next fiscal year. Circling back a little bit on the the Development Services Fund, I just wanted to show a chart that we've included here that has some historical data on revenues and expenditures. As you can see over the last few years, the fund has started to experience deficits. I think as a result, it really is critical for the city to rightsize the development fees as the general fund cannot continue to reliably subsidize this fund. And if development fees are really not increased to recover the cost of providing the service, the deficits in the in the future will continue to grow. I will now turn to the capital improvement projects that's included in the 25-26 recommended budget. This section of the recommended budget starts on page 6-1 and contains the details of each of the categories here and can be referenced for further details. These projects were discussed at the March 25th and May 13th study CIP study sessions, and the recommended budget document includes feedback provided by the council at those meetings. Now we'll turn to reserves. As part of the 25-26 recommended budget, staff is proposing contributions to various reserves as can be seen on this slide. The amounts range from $5 million in funding for the public safety building reserve to $1 million for the replenishment of the parental leave reserve. These reserve contributions will be funded out of unallocated one-time funds. These reserve contributions are also in accordance with Council Policy A-11, the city's reserve policy, and more information can be found starting on page 5-40 of the recommended budget. That leads us to next steps in the budget process. We will return to council on June 24th with any updates or modification discussed this evening as well as the Gann Appropriations Limit for approval and adoption. In conclusion, here are the recommendations that are included in this item tonight. Grace and I and other staff are happy to answer any questions you may have.

[03:47:43] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you so much. Does any member of Council have questions?

[03:48:15] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, very short for me. You say we have a structural balance. What's the next highest, what's the highest level of a balance of the term for a budget?

[03:48:34] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: It would be called a operating surplus.

[03:48:36] Councilmember John McAlister: And that's our goal.

[03:48:39] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: I would say a goal is to be have a structurally balanced budget every year. I wouldn't say, you know, as a service organization, we don't are not in the business of profit, it's more of a service delivery. So that's how we really look at our budgets.

[03:48:55] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. And the other question is, you're looking the property taxes, is that down, the decline, is that mostly North Shoreline?

[03:49:09] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: No, the property taxes we're actually showing relatively consistent. So we're not experience a decline in property taxes. It's really sales tax and some of the other taxes that we're expecting a decline in, especially sales tax.

[03:49:23] Councilmember John McAlister: Sorry, okay, because on prior years our big corporates they would go to the assessor's office and say, 'Hey, this property's down, give us a and challenge it and bring it down.' Have we seen that yet?

[03:49:34] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: We have seen a few of those. That's mostly in the Shoreline Regional Park Community Fund, so that has a direct impact on that fund and not the general fund.

[03:49:45] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, that's what was going down. And when Wisman is developed, or if that's part of a East Wisman area, will that, because you showed five years of declining budget or we're going to be in a deficit, if that starts picking up, is there any estimate of what kind of property taxes will increase? Do you see a large increase in property taxes going forward in that area?

[03:50:11] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: I'm not familiar with the specific area. I would say that it takes a while to get on the tax roll and so we aren't seeing a lot of change. Once they come on, it takes a few years, so we have not incorporated any large increases in property tax in the future due to that timing.

[03:50:28] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. And you had three recommendations and I just love to see this one recommendation included. It says a 'enhance public art via a public art strategy reviewing options and adding a new position to the division.' So hopefully you're looking where I found that. I would like to see it because that will definitely, that's on page 2 of your staff report. That would be a great addition, I don't think it'd be a lot of money, but we could squeeze it out because that would definitely help for our downtown vitality strategy and make the quality of life better for the citizens of Mountain View. Okay. Oh, that was a comment? Well, I'm sorry. I just, but I asked the question if you have some money for it.

[03:51:18] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Mayor, Councilmember McAlister, so I'll answer that question. That is intended to be a recommendation brought back to Council at mid-year. We do not have ongoing revenues right now to add any new positions. And to provide context a little bit more to the slide, can you move to the slide that showed the discretionary versus limited-period? So what we had to do with the budget this year was primarily use the blue, the limited-period. That's basically a fancy jargony word for one-time money. So one-time money has funded certain one-time expenses and we only had $1.6 million for anything new ongoing. So when you think of our whole budget to only have $1.6 million for new ongoing programs, staffing, that's not a lot of ongoing money. The non-discretionary means it's things that we can't control that we have to fund. So it would be like janitorial cost increases, electric bill increases, things that we just have to pay for that we can't say yes or no to. So to answer your question, the plan is for us to assess how revenues are going to look over the next several months. And we are very positive about bringing an update back to you at mid-year which would include a position related to public art, really focused on enhancing the arts and culture of Mountain View, along with looking at increased library staffing to coincide with potential hours increased on the weekend, and there are a couple of other things. So we are working on it as staff. It's just that at this time the budget the way that it looks right now, there's not a lot of room for ongoing. So we're going to assess how things look over the next few months and remain positive that we'll be able to bring back some recommendations in February.

[03:53:19] Councilmember John McAlister: So your idea of mid-year is February?

[03:53:23] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Yes, sir.

[03:53:26] Councilmember John McAlister: Thank you.

[03:53:29] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Councilmember Showalter.

[03:53:31] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, I have a question about slide 22. The development services fund. We have operating revenue and operating expenditure. Anyway, I wondered if the operating revenue, does that, is that at the level of fees we currently have or that's not the ones we may be enacting shortly?

[03:53:57] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Great question. It includes a 30% increase in fees that we would expect to happen, but we don't expect the fees to take impact right away because of what's in the queue already or what's already been submitted through the permits. So we have included a 30% increase on the original forecast for revenues in the development services fund to make up for that potential increase that we're proposing in fee increases.

[03:54:26] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Okay. Thank you very much.

[03:54:28] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Any other council members have questions? Not seeing any. We'll move on to public comment. Would any member of the public on the line like to provide comment on this item? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or press *9 on your phone. I'm not seeing any in-person public comment, so we'll move to virtual, and I see Tim McKenzie. You'll have three minutes. Sorry.

[03:54:55] Public Speaker Tim McKenzie: Thank you. Greetings council and staff. Greetings Mayor. This is Tim McKenzie, he/him pronouns, a resident of the Montelobo neighborhood for a decade. It's good to see you virtually, and sorry that it's been a little bit, I've had a lot going on personally. I'd just like to register my opposition to the line item in the budget spending nearly $400,000 on an armored troop transport for the police, especially in light of what we've seen with local officers in LA collaborating with occupying federal forces. I'd also like to register my opposition to the continuation of the so-called pilot program with Flock ALPR cameras and note some concerns and questions. Specifically reporting in the Mountain View Voice, I believe it was in March, highlighted that the extent in terms of the number of cameras and the duration of the program have already extended, and the one-year timeline for the pilot project that was approved one year ago has not even started. Notably, we need permits from Caltrans for some of the cameras to be installed. That's, the plan according to the reporting is that the one-year timer won't start until the final camera is installed. And the if the permits are through Caltrans, not us, we don't even have the power ourselves, it's not in our hands to decide to move forward. And furthermore, there are still no metrics for success for the pilot program to determine what success looks like or what criteria would be used to decide whether to continue or cease the pilot program. I'd like to note Flock cameras have been utilized to attempt to enforce abortion restrictions and have been utilized by ICE for immigration enforcement. This happened in Illinois where it is illegal for local law enforcement to collaborate with ICE. Even though it was illegal and against the rules like it is here, it still happened. Given the major change in conditions since the program was approved a year ago, I have serious concerns, they're continuing concerns about these Flock cameras and request that we cancel the pilot program with the Flock cameras, plus the armored troop transport militarizing our local police. That's nearly half a million dollars that we could save. I just want to note opposition to those specific line items and note my questions and comments about the Flock cameras which when it was approved we were told that there would be at least updates twice a year, but now that PSAB has been disbanded, we have heard nothing. Thank you.

[03:57:46] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. I'm not seeing any other virtual public comment, so I'll bring the item back for a motion and deliberation. Councilmember Ramirez.

[03:57:58] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. Ordinarily I have a lot to say about the budget, but I'm very happy. I think we could always quibble about small things here or there, but it just goes to show that we can put together a robust balanced budget without silly things like pay for performance. But I did want to comment on a few things that were discussed in the presentation. So first, I'm very excited by the work that the City Manager was describing in continuously improving development services and the opportunity to learn from our staff about impediments to their work and opportunities to make adjustments to facilitate development review in our community. I think that will be increasingly important as we need to focus on resilience, right, knowing that what's happening at the federal level is almost going to get worse not better and development services is a pathway to economic resilience and vitality, especially looking at the charts showing revenue generation in our city how important property tax revenue is in particular. A lot of that is in part because of redevelopment, and cities that haven't enjoyed or as have actively stifled redevelopment have seen slower property tax growth. So I think it's imperative that we as a council continue to support that work and I'm grateful to the City Manager and also to our community development director for continuing that effort. You all in finance are doing a great job. I really like the budget document improvements and I know that's small, it's more of an aesthetic concern, but it really is helpful for us to help just read through a very complex and lengthy document and then also make it accessible to to the public and also other stakeholders for whom the budget is a valuable tool. So I'm grateful to you for investing that time and effort on top of all of the other things that that you're doing. So just wanted to share a quick note of thanks for that. I also am grateful that that staff have incorporated the revisions that the council directed the last time we reviewed the budget. I also I think I mentioned it last time, but having an opportunity to review the budget early is terrific and I'm grateful for for that opportunity so we can give you early input to make sure you are able to craft a balanced budget, you know, even when we have little things here or there that that we think are worthy of exploration. I remember the Mayor had suggested the AI translation tool and I'm grateful to you for finding the money to help make that happen. So that's very exciting. I'm also grateful for your incorporation of my crusade against the equipment replacement fund. I'm grateful that we're not necessarily investing more in a fund that is already quite healthy but instead using that funding for another priority that we're going to have to make some I think difficult decisions on later on. I really hope that we start seeing more revenue from Measure G, and I think, you know, part of that is just the market. It's challenging right now. So would love to explore opportunities to to increase interest in and and, you know, to help facilitate a healthy real estate market so we can see a little bit more revenue produced there. But as a strategy to help bridge the gap, I think the equipment replacement fund makes a lot of sense. So wanted to commend you all for that work. I'll share more in the next item on the fee schedule. The development services fund is concerning but, and I'll reference it one more time in the next item too, but you know looking at multifamily housing starts this year and last year, I worry that even with and with a healthy or, you know, robust increase in fees, if we're not seeing development occur in practice, then Mayor and now Congressman Sam Liccardo who is capable of basic multiplication would remind us that any dollar amount multiplied by zero is zero, right? So if we have a healthy fee multiplied by zero housing starts or zero office starts, you're going to get zero dollars in fees. So I think we need to monitor that carefully and I think the focus on economic vitality in this budget is encouraging and I'm grateful for that focus because I think that's actually the answer, right? The fees are an element of that, but I think the work that we're doing on continuous improvement, investing in additional staff but also the economic vitality strategy broadly is really how we'll start seeing a turnaround in the development services fund. So I think I'll conclude there. I'm happy to move to approve the staff recommendations. I don't see a long list of resolutions, I think that's next meeting, so at least we'll get going here. But thank you all for your work. It's it's always good to see the fruits of your labor approved hopefully unanimously by the council. Thank you.

[04:03:46] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. So the item has been moved by Councilmember Ramirez and seconded by Councilmember Clark who has comments next.

[04:03:56] Councilmember Chris Clark: Thank you. Yeah, you beat me to it. I think we've had a number of briefings and sessions leading up to to tonight and and two weeks from now. I appreciate that staff has incorporated our feedback along the way and things look to be in relatively good shape structurally right now. I think we all recognize and and I appreciate that staff has their eye on, you know, the challenges that we'll face in the future with our revenue sources not growing at the rate of our expenditures and that will probably eventually force some some tough decisions down the road or some additional revenue measures because humans are expensive and infrastructure is even more expensive. So we will, but we've we've been able to to meet those challenges head on in the past and I think we will going forward and I think this this budget sets us up well to do that. So thank you.

[04:04:58] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Councilmember Hicks.

[04:05:00] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So my colleagues Ramirez and Clark have said much of what I was going to say. Thank you very much for such a comprehensive and readable budget. And also I really appreciate and I don't have any friendly or unfriendly amendments to add or request. I really appreciated the preliminary review. I find of the years I've been on council, I think that allowed us to make constructive tweaks at a in a timely manner like not at the last minute. And and I appreciate all the tweaks and changes that council members made and that you incorporated, you know, the, I mean most of them have been named, the changes to library hours and AI translation, the change with the equipment replacement fund. I also, the ones that I don't know if they've been mentioned so far, the economic vitality strategy, the ones that are coming up, recruitment for the vacant position, and then also the ones that are being considered for the future. I want to underline the one that Councilmember McAlister mentioned, I do support the public art strategy, possible new position in regarding arts and culture, looking into an entertainment district, I'm just reading from your staff report. And I'm looking forward to seeing that during the mid-year budget update. I also appreciate putting in the citywide objective design standards funding. I hope that that will make better developments but also more streamlined, more predictable, and the downtown storefront activation and pop-up program as part of economic vitality. So I appreciate all of that. I I also really like the photos in the of the downtown and the park. They're like the most beautiful photos of Mountain View I've seen that you put in the in the slideshow. So thank you very much.

[04:07:13] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Councilmember Showalter.

[04:07:16] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Well, I'm going to continue in the in the theme of praise. Yes, I really have appreciated the process this time. The briefings have been very helpful, you know, an opportunity to ask questions in a sort of private manner so you don't have to worry about if they're really not very intelligent. So that that was particularly helpful. I I also really appreciate the ongoing report on the possible impact of federal funding. I I think that we are, you know, in many ways, we are the bulwark of government at the moment. And but at the same time, we can't, you know, we can't forget what's happening other places and and how other levels of government are impacting us. So I really appreciate how, you know, you've taken a very objective view to that and just been, I know that it's a vastly moving target, but, you know, you've just you've taken an objective view and provided us with with facts that and I think that it's always very important to have facts that we can, you know, we can hang our hats on and rely on. So I really just want to thank you for that. And I know you'll have to revise those numbers, but anyway, thanks for doing that. And then I also have really appreciated in the last couple years the outreach documents that you put together afterwards, the budget in brief brochure and the videos. I mean, those are all just great tools for communicating to people what you get for the money that government spends. And I think that's that's an important thing to do. And then I'm just really delighted that the homeless funding, the funding for our homeless program is now a regular part of our budget. I think that this is it's just a very important social and economic move forward. So thank you for that. And also, I know I've said this before and I'll say it again, this is a good economic environment for recruiting talented, a talented workforce. And so I'm really glad to see that we are adding positions, and I know you're adding as many as you can, but, you know, as much as we can take advantage of this opportunity to have a huge pool of people who might be interested in moving to government, I hope we'll take the opportunity to do that. And also as was said before, the improvements to the permitting process are really just valuable to the the quality of service that we give our community. And so that's really something that we should be proud of. Thank you.

[04:10:27] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Vice Mayor Ramos.

[04:10:30] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Mayor. I would also like to repeat the thanks to staff for a very great budget document. I do also really like the new structure of it. It makes it much easier to absorb and read. I'm also grateful that we have such a robust budget. I've been following budgets from other cities. We are we are in so much better a position than than many other cities. And that I think is a reflection of some of how our values reflect in that budget. We are an open and welcoming community for for our neighbors and for businesses. And that I'm hoping that as we move forward Measure G will pick up as we improve our economic development. It's also a result of a very collaborative governance. We're a collaborative city, we do our best to to try to make it work, which we're starting to see in other levels of government that is a little bit more difficult. So thank you to staff. I'm hoping for actually not just Measure G, but Measure P to pick up as we improve our economic development, particularly Measure G because Councilmember Ramirez lost 30 years of his life on that campaign. So hopefully we can move forward and really be grateful and thankful for all the work that staff has done on this. Thank you.

[04:12:14] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Councilmember McAlister.

[04:12:15] Councilmember John McAlister: Well, I'm just going to say it's nice. What I appreciate a lot is that you actually recognize the importance of our public art. And I'm still harping on that because it's something that can get done. And I know mid-year is February, but we do have a visual art committee that could potentially with a little funding help start the cause and add some economic vitality to downtown. So we do have other avenues that we can encourage and but I'm glad that you realize the importance of what art can do to a community and to the enjoyment of people coming downtown. So I appreciate that and hopefully we look forward to the City Manager and you Derek to find that little niche of $2 million. But I'm just kidding. But in whatever you can find, but I appreciate that you found it and everything looks good. But I do have to bring it down a little bit because this year is great, but look at the others, so you're going to have we're going to have to start tighten the belt a little bit so some of the projects that you thought we might get or need money, it may not be there. And so we got to start being realistic of what's going to be coming up. And the more we can look at it now, it will be easier when we transition to those four years going forward that it's going to be tough. Thank you.

[04:13:39] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thanks. So I think just before we take the vote, just want to echo colleagues' thanks to staff. I feel, you know, under our City Manager's leadership and with our finance team, as long as the collaboration of all of our city staff, we are still leading and not only kind of locally but but statewide I would say in terms of the fiscal health that we're in, the prudence, winning awards, making sure that we are retaining our high rating and I just want to take a moment to thank you all for that. I think that's exceptional. Not only that, we have a budget document that I feel like year over year is more streamlined, accessible, even reading it this year I read it entirely online versus like the printout and it was a lot easier to read along with the various improvements. And so there's just I think it for what I see I can feel the imprint of all of the different feedback from all of my colleagues in that document and I think that's really great. And I do want to just highlight a couple things that I think will make life for our residents easier despite what we're going to be I think facing with potential strains financially coming from our federal side which is, you know, the AI translation, the library hours. I also want to call out how the city's been leading on child care. Earlier this morning the Vice Mayor and I attended a Build the Future Santa Clara County event that highlighted 14 of the 15 cities signing onto a child care proclamation and in Mountain View we have been contributing not only to our child care center which has a subsidy that offsets the costs so that operators can continue to provide low-cost child care, but we've also been leading in our eight weeks of paid family leave for birth adoption or fostering a child and that was a pilot that we will now make permanent. And I know for people like myself, a mom of two young children, and that makes all the difference and I feel like this is another way where we're celebrating being a community for all, as well as the allocation of permanent funding for our unhoused residents. And not only that we're making sure that we are trying to as Councilmember Showalter said to create positions, make sure that we have more capacity to bring all these amazing services to our residents and, you know, also doing the performance measurements and the complete overhaul and the development review intersecting with the four to five departments, it's just incredible. And so I just want to take pause, take a moment to celebrate that before we take the vote. So thank you. All right. Great and that passes unanimously 7-0. All right.

[04:17:02] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: The next item is our item 6.3, our modifications to the City of Mountain View master fee schedule. Our Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone will stay, and Assistant Community Development Director Lindsey Hagen will join us to present the item. If you'd like to speak on this item in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk now. And we'll begin with the staff presentation.

[04:17:48] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Hi again. Joining me is Lindsey Hagen, the Assistant Community Development Director. We also have other staff that is available for questions as well as our consultant from Willdan Financial Services is also here as well, Tony Thrasher. The item you have in front of you tonight is the proposed modifications to the master fee schedule. There were several components that went into the development of these modified fees. The first component is the user fee study. As part of a general cost recovery strategy, local governments including the City of Mountain View have adopted user fees to fund programs and services that provide limited or to no direct benefit to the community as a whole and mainly benefit the user. These user fees do not include development impact fees, utility rates or taxes. The city's fee schedule was last comprehensively reviewed and updated over 10 years ago and substantial changes haven't been made to building or planning fees in the last 20 years. Since that time, a lot has changed. Costs have risen. There are new laws and regulations and community needs have evolved. As a result, the user fees need to be updated to ensure they are current and appropriately recover the city's cost to providing the service. In 2024, the city engaged Willdan Financial Services to conduct a cost allocation plan and user fee study as part of a formal RFP process. Some of the references for Willdan include the city of Hayward, Foster City, Salinas, Gilroy, San Bruno, Napa, Petaluma and Richmond, just to give you a sample of other fee studies they've done in the area. One of the purposes of the study was to develop indirect cost rates that can be used in calculating the actual costs of providing a service. It also assists the city in recovering administration and overhead costs from federally funded grants. So going forward we will actually have a approved cost rate that we can charge on federal grants. Hoping that we still receive them, but we will be able at, we've never had that before, at least in the last few years. So this was a new thing for the city that we'll be able to charge a on federal grants it's an approved rate. Other purposes for the study really include determining the actual full cost to providing a specific service. We were able to review the fees and the structure to ensure that they are updated with current practices of the city. It also helped us identify any new potential fees that should be charged and ensured that we know the maximum cost recovery amounts which will ultimately reduce any general fund subsidies. The final product is a model that staff will be able to update annually using the average salary and benefit cost increase citywide for all service-related fees. And it also provides transparency to the community about how much certain services really do cost. This is a snapshot of the methodology of the how the cost of service was developed. Generally, there's three cost layers as shown on the slide. We have central services overhead, these are the administrative support departments such as finance and IT, HR, City Manager's Office. Department, the next one is department overhead, these are the costs of departments providing such services which are overhead that you're typically associated with such as supplies, memberships. Then they also looked at personnel costs, the third main component is personnel costs which are direct salary and benefit costs broken down into an hourly rate, a fully burdened rate. Once these costs are known, they're all put together and we develop a what we also call a fully burdened hourly rate and that's developed by job classification, so every job classification of the city has a total cost. Once that was developed, meetings were held with each department to discuss and analyze the average number of hours to provide the service to the customer. And then once those number of hours were known by classification, a total cost was generated. The cost is what you see in Exhibit A to the Attachment 1 to the staff report as known as the total cost. As we had expected, numerous fees were not covering the actual cost to provide the service. As stated earlier, this results in a normally of a subsidy from the general fund. As a reminder, cities are allowed to charge up to the actual cost to providing the service, however the fee cannot exceed the cost whatsoever. The fee can be lower but then the cost, but it can never be higher. We are not even allowed to round up the fee due to this rule. So we do show a comparison of some of the planning and building fees, but comparing other user fees to other cities can be difficult due to cost variances that differ by city. In addition, the organizational structure and the way in which a city operates and conducts business can be very different as well. So we have provided some comparisons but not to all. In a totally separate study, the city hired Bartle Wells Associates to prepare a water and wastewater capacity charge update. The last time one of these studies was performed was also over 10 years ago. This study was really designed to equitably recover the cost of infrastructure that benefit new development and are only charged on new connections to the water and sewer systems. The results of this study indicate that increases in capacity charges of 20 to 125% are needed to accurately recover the costs. And as a reminder, these are only charged to users who add to the system, add units to the systems. It should be noted that ADUs are exempt from these capacity charges. This slide shows the current capacity charges for an apartment and a single-family home along with proposed fees, which are in the right middle of each chart. As you can see, the current fees are second lowest in the area compared to our compared cities. And proposed fees will be basically right in the middle when compared to others. As part of this process to update the city's fees, this item was presented to the Council Finance Committee on May 8th. At that meeting, the committee provided feedback and direction and recommended that the item be presented to the City Council for approval with including their recommendations. The day after that on May 9th, the Community Services Department sent out notifications to user groups informing them of the proposed updates to the fee schedule. And a few days after that on May 12th, the semi-annual meeting with developers was held by the Community Development Department where both the user fee study and the capacity charges were discussed. Now Lindsey will talk a little bit about the recommendations made by the Council Finance Committee related to building and planning fees.

[04:26:07] Assistant Community Development Director Lindsey Hagen: Thank you. So before I dive into some of the fee modifications that staff has done, I did want to briefly mention to Council some of the feedback we received from the development community from that May meeting. We heard from the development community a general acknowledgment of the city needing to recoup our costs for providing the services that we do provide. There was also feedback around encouraging us and encouraging us, excuse me, to continue working on our permit process improvements, most importantly the timing and timeline of our permitting. Additionally we heard from them an interest for city staff to really look at all costs that development bears when they do a project in the city. So costs that are outside the means and bounds of this particular study in front of Council tonight. That would include things like impact fees, taxes or other exactions. And then last but not least, we did get a request from the development community to provide sort of sample project showing the existing fees and the proposed fees, which we did include in Attachment 3. So moving back to the slide, the CFC did provide staff direction on various fees. And so specifically in regards to development permitting fees, CFC requested staff to add some clarification around the parking in-lieu fee. So we added a footnote describing that this fee is in place under the requirements of the Downtown Precise Plan and provisions of state law. Moving on to the next recommendation, the CFC requested staff to look at our gatekeeper preauthorization application fee. So to remind folks, this is the application fee that is required for gatekeeper projects that are required to go before Council at a public hearing to be authorized to submit a formal development application. The request from CFC was for staff to look at maybe a lowering the fee for smaller scale projects. So staff took that recommendation back and has proposed a definition of a smaller scale gatekeeper project to be one that is less than one acre in size and staff is proposed a reduction of the fee by 25% compared to the standard gatekeeper fee. And so what that translates to is that the applicant would be paying 75% of the full cost of the fee and the General Fund would subsidize the remainder. CFC also requested staff to look at reducing fees around child care and nonprofit related planning permits. So staff went back and looked at actually our current subsidy of what's currently in our fee schedule and found that it's roughly 75%. And so we've come back and proposed to continue that subsidy in this new fee schedule. And so that would translate to the applicant paying 25% of the full cost and the General Fund providing the subsidy. And just to be clear, when we're speaking about these two different categories of uses, there are various permits they may be subject to, and so the subsidy applies to all planning permits, conditional use permits, provisional use, temporary use, etc. And when we are speaking of these two uses, we are talking specifically about child care centers, so permitting around that, as well as nonprofit housing needs, meals, similar programs operated by nonprofit agencies. That's a very long title, but a great example would be the Community Services Agency. And then last but not least, CFC did provide some recommendation...

Segment 7

[04:30:00] Assistant Community Development Director Lindsey Hagen: ...or requests for staff to look at reducing our safe parking planning fee. Again for those not familiar with that application fee, when we adopted the safe parking program years ago, we did implement a permitting requirement for a non-discretionary conditional use permit if a safe parking facility was proposed on a private property not operated by the city or controlled by the city.

[04:30:28] Assistant Community Development Director Lindsey Hagen: And so with that feedback, we did go back and look at our permit history and we do not have an application on file, which would indicate that we've never had one proposed on a private property that we didn't control or own. So all of our safe parking facilities are on city-owned controlled sites.

[04:30:48] Assistant Community Development Director Lindsey Hagen: So with sort of looking at that history, staff is proposing to reduce the fee 100%, so essentially the applicant would be paying nothing, and the General Fund would subsidize that. I will pass it back over to Director Rampone.

[04:31:08] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Thank you, Lindsey. Other fee recommendations that came from the Council Finance Committee included direction to recover 100% of the city's costs on operating permits related to abandoned shopping carts, adult entertainment, card rooms, and massage parlors.

[04:31:24] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: The heritage tree removal appeal was recommended to be increased to recover 10% of the cost rather than 5%. And two updates were proposed by city staff to increase the number of free rentals of City Hall facilities from one to two per year for nonprofits and community groups,

[04:31:44] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: and also to allow up to two free City Hall facility rentals per year for school district purposes. In addition, for ease of payment and simplicity, staff was proposing to round down most of the fees to the nearest dollar.

[04:32:00] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: As with any modifications to user fees, there are various policy considerations. Council has the ability obviously to subsidize fees to encourage participation and promote compliance. However, as we noted earlier, it comes at a cost, which usually involves the General Fund subsidizing the cost of the lower fees.

[04:32:27] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Staff is also recommending as part of this process an annual update of all user fees that are primarily driven by salary and benefit costs. The Finance Department will use a average increase for citywide salaries and benefits and apply that percentage to the fees on an annual basis.

[04:32:48] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: That will keep the fees at amounts that we feel are consistent with the cost of actually providing the service. In addition, staff is proposing that a comprehensive study such as this one be performed no less than every five years. This will help ensure the city is informed of actual costs of providing services to the public on a regular basis.

[04:33:15] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: And here is the staff recommendation for your reference. Staff is available for any questions. Thank you.

[04:33:24] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. So we'll move on to Council questions. Councilmember Ramirez.

[04:33:31] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. First, I'm grateful to staff for the presentation and work, and also our consultant. And the revisions that you've incorporated are greatly appreciated. So thank you for taking that time. I had a few questions about Attachment 1, the resolution.

[04:33:57] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So first, the concealed—I wish our police chief were here. Bless you. The concealed weapon permit is pretty heavily subsidized, and I'm curious if there's a reason why.

[04:34:09] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: I am not familiar with the reason for that. I don't know if our consultant may recall.

[04:34:18] Public Speaker Tony Thrasher: Sure. Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council. Tony Thrasher of Willdan Financial, the project manager for the study. So, concealed weapon permit. So that's gone and undergone a few different regulatory changes in recent years.

[04:34:34] Public Speaker Tony Thrasher: And so the cost of actually providing these services is shown to be considerable, but the amount of fee increases needed to kind of get to that full cost recovery has caused certain ripples and challenges with other cities when they try to go for full cost. And so typical recommendation is to increase—do a moderate increase now,

[04:34:51] Public Speaker Tony Thrasher: see how that works, see how things kind of shake out at the regulatory level, and then you can kind of proceed from there. But you don't really want to completely stick your head up and start charging thousands of dollars for concealed weapon permits at this point, would be the recommendation.

[04:35:01] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So—let me read between the lines. So, I think what you're saying is if we increase the fee to maximum cost recovery, no one will actually get a permit? Is that—is the problem compliance?

[04:35:18] Public Speaker Tony Thrasher: The problem would be, um, I'd say people might contest the fee that you would charge for their implied access to certain rights that they perceive. And so there's certain cities that have been challenged on that—don't want to name them in a Council setting—but they have been challenged and sued based off the fees they charge in inhibiting access to that.

[04:35:44] Public Speaker Tony Thrasher: And so that's currently kind of shaking out.

[04:35:46] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Second amendment issue. I see. Okay. Thank you. Because I'm—obviously, I'm uncomfortable with this, but I understand what you're saying. I think this is an error: dance permit falls under the concealed weapon permit heading. Is that—is that intended or should that be relocated?

[04:36:05] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: No, there should be a miscellaneous above that. So my apologies if that wasn't inserted. But yes, it is not connected. Should not be connected.

[04:36:13] Public Speaker Tony Thrasher: We'll get that moved for the final document that's available to the public for—

[04:36:17] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Okay. Great. No, so that—I figured, but I thought—I know you've been at this—point, this is probably version 30, right? I think when you shared this with the CFC it was version 11. So I know it's gone through multiple iterations. So thank you for that correction.

[04:36:37] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I'd like to walk through—my old boss used to say, you know, walk me through this like I'm five years old. Help me understand the cost associated with the gatekeeper pre-authorization hearing. That's a pretty substantial fee, and I appreciated the staff response to the Council question, but I'm having trouble understanding the fee level for the cursory review.

[04:37:13] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Good evening, Honorable Mayor and Council. Christian Murdock, Community Development Director. Regarding the gatekeeper pre-application authorization fee, so this is a rather involved process, even though I think as has been pointed out in some of the Council questions, it's characterized as a cursory review,

[04:37:33] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: which is true depending on the context in which that statement is made. So compared to a full review for a project approval, it is a cursory level review. But still, as a standalone review process, there is a fair amount of work that's required across multiple departments from the intake of the application and the routing,

[04:37:51] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: to evaluating the characteristics of a project relative to General Plan standards, zoning standards, and other city policies and priorities that may have bearing on the project's compliance with or failure to comply with applicable legislative requirements, which would trigger a gatekeeper requirement.

[04:38:12] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: And so going through that process and allowing staff to have enough information to assess compliance, to describe the nature of the gatekeeper request, along with evaluating proposed community benefits and how they would align or not align with city policies and priorities and adopted plans, is much of the work that's associated with that process.

[04:38:33] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: In addition, there's then a staff report process, all of the internal administrative functions required to prepare items for City Council, staff preparation, presentation materials, and so forth. And so even though it's a quote-unquote 'cursory review' relative to the formal review process, there is still a significant amount of staff work that goes into that across departments that feeds into the fee that's proposed to Council tonight.

[04:39:01] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I think one challenge I've had is understanding—is it fully loaded cost? I think that may be the reason then that the fee is so high because we're talking about cost recovery across multiple departments. Is that—is that really the thing that I'm not quite grasping?

[04:39:23] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: I think there are at least a couple components here. One is the number of hours that are additive across staff in multiple departments and multiple staff in individual departments. It sort of goes both ways in that respect. And then I'll defer to my colleagues at the dais in terms of describing the fully loaded component and what that means relative to the hourly rate or other cost factors that are applied to the fee.

[04:39:47] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. So I would just add, you know, looking at Attachment 2, the CFC questions, question number 8 specifically laid out some of the hours and staff positions involved in the gatekeeper process.

[04:40:00] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So to answer your question more specifically, it's quite literally taking the number of hours those positions spend and then the cost of those positions, adding that together to get the fee. I will say there's also a cost of doing public noticing.

[04:40:21] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: And so coming to a hearing like Council and preparing, printing, mailing out postcards, as well as putting in the newspapers, a thousand-dollar price tag per hearing, so that's also incorporated in this fee to cover that cost.

[04:40:36] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I appreciate that. And I think that's—I've been in my mind comparing that with the heritage tree removal appeal process, which also includes noticing and a public hearing and a substantial number of staff, but that's half the cost.

[04:40:53] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So if it's possible, and I know it's apples to oranges, but why is the heritage tree removal full cost recovery, right, $6,000, half of the gatekeeper authorization cursory review cost?

[04:41:08] Assistant Community Development Director Lindsey Hagen: Appreciate the question. I think I would follow up to say it does come down to the technical level of the position, the salary for that position is quite literally what is compensated in these fees or, you know, accounted for in these fees.

[04:41:31] Assistant Community Development Director Lindsey Hagen: So the cost of someone who holds a professional license might come at a different salary than a position that doesn't hold maybe certain licensing requirements. So I think some of this does just come down to the actual staff position involved and their salary.

[04:41:42] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: And I think part of it in my mind as well is the breadth of issues typically addressed in a gatekeeper pre-application review relative to, I would argue, a more focused set of issues related to findings for a heritage tree removal permit.

[04:41:59] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: It's sort of a different scale of analysis and magnitude in my perspective, and so I think it contributes to the greater number of hours required for the gatekeeper process rather than the more focused, if you will, appeal process for a heritage tree removal.

[04:42:10] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. Last question I have is we'll be approving fees tonight, but I recall somewhere there's a request or an intent to review the fees over the next several months. Is that specific to the gatekeeper fee or is that comprehensively we'll be—staff will be looking at the fees again to discern if they're appropriate?

[04:42:41] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: My understanding is that that's limited to the gatekeeper fee specifically. As Council's aware, we are working through putting in place or at least proposing to Council to put in place a new policy for review of gatekeeper applications.

[04:42:56] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: And so we believe that that new policy, if and when adopted by Council, may have a different level of review for certain applications and so warrants review of the fee associated with that review once that policy's in place.

[04:43:10] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Okay. Thank you. Those are my questions for now.

[04:43:13] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Councilmember McAlister.

[04:43:15] Councilmember John McAlister: So, Derek, you gave us a report on the budget and the looks of it. Once this fee schedule is fully implemented, how much do you anticipate us getting an increase in our budget?

[04:43:33] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Depending on the fund—thanks for the question. Depending on the fund, we're really expecting a larger increase in the Development Services Fund due to the fees that are being proposed tonight.

[04:43:48] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: But that will take a few years so by the time it ramps up and activity comes back, I would say. We are expecting not a large increase for the General Fund. However, we will start seeing the fruits of our labor realized because we are hoping the General Fund won't be subsidizing as much as it was in the past with million-dollar transfers to the Development Services Fund.

[04:44:12] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: So it's really twofold. We are not expecting a major increase in fee revenue in the General Fund. However, we are expecting to not have to have those transfers in the going forward once these fees are implemented and have had a chance to be in place for a little bit of time.

[04:44:30] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: And I don't have an exact dollar amount if that's your question.

[04:44:34] Councilmember John McAlister: Can you ballpark it? Because I mean, you've got to be figuring and go, 'Oh, I'm going to get some money.'

[04:44:39] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Yeah. So for Development Services Fund, we're figuring could be $5-plus million a year depending on the activity, of course. For General Fund, I think it's more in the $100,000 to $200,000. So it's not a windfall by any means, but like I said earlier, we will not be having to do the transfers to subsidize the DSF. So that will help.

[04:44:59] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. My other question is, how many childcare centers have applied for a permit?

[04:45:06] Assistant Community Development Director Lindsey Hagen: Appreciate the question. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to answer in all of history, but I can say, yeah, I would say in one of the Council questions the question was asked in the last five years, and we have not received any applications for any new childcare centers in the last five years.

[04:45:23] Councilmember John McAlister: I'll be glad to give that a comment later. Okay, safe parking. Have no churches approached us to put safe parking in?

[04:45:36] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Councilmember McAlister, I can answer that question. So the short answer is no. And the long answer is we have been working for many years to find options to put any safe parking lots on private property, and so far it seems like the Shoreline lots and partnering with our affordable housing developers, that's been very successful for us. So we have been less successful with other private or nonprofit entities.

[04:46:09] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. There's—okay. And that's it. Thank you.

[04:46:18] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Councilmember Showalter.

[04:46:21] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, I have a more—a couple of general questions. One, who has the authority to waive a fee? Like, if there's someone—for instance, I'm looking at the resolution and there's a fee for—these are just really de minimis ones—like, copy of the City of Mountain View canceled check is got an $11.85 fee.

[04:46:48] Councilmember Pat Showalter: So if somebody comes in, I don't know, they're working on an estate issue or something like that and they need canceled checks, it seems like it almost would cost you more to process their payment than—than this. So who—or there was one a little further down, stop payment, you know, there's a $27.87. So who has the authority to waive fees?

[04:47:23] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: If I could jump in, I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt. This is Jennifer Logue, City Attorney. Cost recovery fees really cannot be waived. So because they're cost recovery, they have to be applied across the board to everybody equally.

[04:47:35] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: Because if—you cannot have one member of the public subsidizing another member of the public. If you do that, when that happens, it starts to become a tax and not a fee that is exempt from the definition of tax in the California Constitution. So waiver of fees is—is really not possible. There may be some very rare exceptions, but I would just say across the board fees can't be waived.

[04:48:02] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Okay. And also kind of in that line, appeal of a fee. You know, if somebody feels that their fee has been put together in error, who do they go and complain to that about?

[04:48:18] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: I'm not—I think it would—it would depend on the department that imposes the fee, and I'm sure that there is—should be some sort of process by which they can submit a request for modification of the fee if they think—if they feel like they were overcharged.

[04:48:38] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: I would have to kind of work with the Finance Department and each of the departments to figure out what that process is for challenging a fee, but that is something that it would not obviously be illegal to correct an incorrect imposition of a fee. But I'm not quite sure if we have a fully baked administrative appeal process for fees.

[04:48:58] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: I am not aware of one, but we—we can look into that.

[04:49:02] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Well, I just feel like whenever you have a fee, there's also—there should be an appeal process that's, you know, that's available even if it's just you talk to a certain person about it. I mean, I just think it's good governance to include that. So that's a question. And yeah, those are my own questions. Thank you.

[04:49:32] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay. Councilmember McAlister, you're still in the queue. Should I clear you through?

[04:49:37] Councilmember John McAlister: No, I just have one question.

[04:49:38] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Oh, you have another question. Okay. Well, I'm going to go to Councilmember Hicks and I'll come back to you since you've had your—your bite already. Okay. Councilmember Hicks.

[04:49:45] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I'm just going to follow up on Councilmember Showalter's question. It sounded to me like when you were raising the examples of the very small fees on—I can't even remember what they were—canceling—stopping payment, canceling checks. I don't think you were saying on a—I don't know what you were trying to say, but it seemed to me you should have been trying to say, are there any that are so small they're not worth doing across the board?

[04:50:09] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Not to each—not to each person individually, like you know, that there would be a staff person who would say this person should pay it and this person doesn't have to, which I—I would not vote for that. But it sounds like you're saying more—they, you know, they have to be across the board.

[04:50:30] Councilmember Alison Hicks: But it sounds like what you were trying to say is, are there any that are so small they're not even worth doing? Is that what you were trying to say?

[04:50:56] Councilmember Pat Showalter: No, but I think it's a very good point.

[04:50:59] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yeah. Because I don't think—I mean, for small fees, we don't want—I don't want to make them more complicated by saying they apply to some people and not to other people over an $11 fee. That's just a lot of work for nothing. Or coming up with—people will come up with—say when they want to say they're being wrongly charged. We don't want to have complicated processes around either of those things, in my opinion.

[04:51:13] Councilmember Alison Hicks: But if you were just saying, are any of those so small that they're not worth doing, that might be worth raising. So I don't know. Are any that are so small that they're not worth doing across the board?

[04:51:17] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: I didn't read that in the staff report, but I'll let staff—

[04:51:18] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: I think that that's a—Council policy decision more than a staff recommendation. We—we have recommended the fees that we think are appropriate based on the cost.

[04:51:28] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And that's what Councilmember Showalter did not ask me, she asked you. But that was going to be my answer to your question, who can say that these fees don't apply? It's us who could say that, I think, as a policy.

[04:51:42] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Councilmember McAlister, you had another question.

[04:51:45] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah. Was park-in-lieu fees part of this study? Or if it's not, is it going to be coming to us?

[04:51:53] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Um, sorry, just to clarify, do you mean parking-in-lieu fee or parkland-in-lieu fee?

[04:51:55] Councilmember John McAlister: Parkland-in-lieu. Yes.

[04:52:00] Assistant Community Development Director Lindsey Hagen: Um, so the parkland-in-lieu is considered a development impact fee. So it was—it is not included in this fee study. Development impact fees require separate nexus studies to be done and conducted, which were not part of what this particular item is. So separately, the city is undergoing a study of the parkland fee that we're just in the very early, early phases of.

[04:52:26] Councilmember John McAlister: So when do we expect it?

[04:52:30] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Councilmember McAlister, it is expected to come to Council before the end of the calendar year, this fall. The calendar year, not the fiscal year.

[04:52:42] Councilmember John McAlister: Correct. By the end of this December 2024. And once it comes to us, will that be a final or will there be additional hearings on that after that?

[04:52:54] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: I think it'll be final. Yeah. It would be the recommendation and you would act on it. Or our Community Services Director's getting his exercise in up and down. Did you want to share? You're good? Okay. You can make the walk down. No? Okay.

[04:53:19] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right. Any other Council questions? All right. Not seeing any, I'll open it up to public comment. If anyone has public comment, they are welcome to submit a blue speaker card or raise their hand in Zoom or press star-9 on their phone.

[04:53:34] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: We'll display a timer on the screen. Each speaker will have three minutes. And I think we have an in-person public commenter, Robbie Gray.

[04:53:42] Public Speaker Robbie Gray: Thank you so much. I am here because I am an avid user of a lot of the recreation facilities around the city. I use the trails, I use the parks, I use the golf course, and I use the swimming pools. And one of the things that came to light as I was looking through the fee schedule—I'm always kind of curious as to what's going to happen.

[04:54:06] Public Speaker Robbie Gray: And I found one little teeny line item which almost made me laugh because it was so ridiculous. It was increasing a fee for a non-resident swimmer by 50 cents. And I looked at that and I thought, 50 cents, it's going to cost you more money to change paperwork and do a whole bunch of other things, not the least reason being someone might have to, you know, have quarters on hand and whatever.

[04:54:31] Public Speaker Robbie Gray: But it also kind of brought up a larger question that myself and my fellow swimmers—I actually happen to be a senior, and I will say uncategorically, you treat me really great in this town as a senior. My fees are—are really low. But some of my fellow swimmers really feel like Mountain View treats out-of-towners much better.

[04:54:51] Public Speaker Robbie Gray: And on—I—I left a piece of paper, I think, for all of you that kind of explains, you know, how it is. If I were to go to Sunnyvale and want to swim laps, it would cost me $12. If they come here, it's only $7. If I go to Palo Alto, it's $10. We still only cost $7. Now we're proposing that we're going to increase it by 50 cents. It just seems like we're not paying attention to what's going on out there in the market.

[04:55:09] Public Speaker Robbie Gray: So I really have two requests. One is to revisit the prices for our non-senior residents because they actually pay three times more than I do. If they go somewhere else like Palo Alto, it's much better. So I actually am requesting that you take a look at that and then also revisit the 50-cent item because I think both of those things are questionable at this point.

[04:55:31] Public Speaker Robbie Gray: So anyway, my contact information, I did all the research of what was available from other places, and hopefully you'll take this under advisement and maybe take some action on it. And just in closing, I would like to say this is not the first time that I have uncovered something like this. About a year ago, um, I played golf and I found out that Mountain View was actually treating our non-residents better than it was treating our residents. So I ask you to please take a look again. Thank you.

[04:56:00] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. All right. Any other public comment in person? Not seeing any, we'll move on to virtual. So first virtual is Rashmi, then Nancy, then James Kuzma.

[04:56:15] Public Speaker Rashmi: Hi, this is Rashmi. Can you hear me?

[04:56:17] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Yes.

[04:56:18] Public Speaker Rashmi: Great. So I wanted to express my concern with the fee increase on heritage tree appeals. The fee schedule proposes to increase the fee from $50 to $650 in July 2025 and then to $1,250 in July 2026. Every year hundreds of heritage trees are cut down.

[04:56:36] Public Speaker Rashmi: In 2023, 1,511 trees—heritage trees—were cut down, and in 2024, 238 heritage trees were cut down. Equally concerning, over 90% of the heritage trees that were requested to receive a permit to be removed were approved.

[04:56:59] Public Speaker Rashmi: As a result, Mountain View residents often have to step up and submit an appeal if they want to save a heritage tree. So increasing the fee by more than 10 times will make filing an appeal cost-prohibitive for most Mountain View residents, removing the democratic process and an important public check on the enforcement of this ordinance.

[04:57:18] Public Speaker Rashmi: To be clear, we do not think that the appeals process is the primary way that the city should be protecting heritage trees. In fact, as—as a resident who has participated in the appeals process, I feel that it's incredibly time-consuming and results in pitting neighbors against neighbors.

[04:57:35] Public Speaker Rashmi: However, right now, the appeals process is one of the few ways that heritage trees are being protected. So instead of increasing the fee, we urge the city to expedite the work on the biodiversity strategy and urban forest plan and ensure that the plan addresses the failure of Mountain View's heritage tree ordinance as currently enforced. Thank you.

[04:57:57] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Nancy.

[04:58:13] Public Speaker Nancy: Do you mean Nancy Ster?

[04:58:15] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: It just says Nancy, but that's you I'm assuming. Mm-hmm. Go.

[04:58:18] Public Speaker Nancy: Okay. I too am expressing my great concern for the—the dramatic increase. I mean, most of us who do—make these appeals, you know, we pay for this stuff out of our own pocket. It is incredibly time-consuming. We work very hard and we're very, very passionate about it. And we think it's an important thing.

[04:58:38] Public Speaker Nancy: You just mentioned that user fees don't benefit the community directly, but I beg to differ in this instance. Our heritage trees benefit the entire community. They belong to the entire community. It looks like it's cheaper to get a gun permit, concealed weapons permit, than appeal to save a heritage tree. Um, that's really terrible.

[04:58:59] Public Speaker Nancy: I think that, you know, most people just can't afford to pay $650 to appeal it, and this feels like a strange action for a city to take who boast that they're a Tree City designation. I mean, this is just unconscionable, truly. I—I'm very, very, very disappointed at this. I urge you to separate out this fee for reconsideration.

[04:59:28] Public Speaker Nancy: I get that you need to increase fees over time, but this—this increase is neither fair and I don't believe it's necessary. Thank you for your time.

[04:59:38] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. James Kuzma.

[04:59:43] Public Speaker James Kuzma: Good evening. Um, it's James Kuzma speaking for Mountain View YIMBY. Um, I was—just wanted to raise some moderate concerns about some of the fee—how the current fee structures tend to scale to large projects. Um, on the example 200-unit project provided in one of the attachments,

[05:00:05] Public Speaker James Kuzma: some of the—the numbers for fees including the land use document fee and the um building permit and plan check fees seem much higher than intuition would suggest should be reasonable for what it would take for the city to actually do those tasks.

[05:00:21] Public Speaker James Kuzma: Um, perhaps I am simply grossly misunderstanding what work goes into that, but it is also the case that when you look at the fee structure, we are assuming that the same percentage um cost to the city applies to a million-dollar project as a $100 million project,

[05:00:38] Public Speaker James Kuzma: which if you have no $100 million projects is probably a reasonable approximation. But if we are anticipating 200-unit apartment complexes being common, which we should be, um, that scaling probably does not make sense.

[05:00:55] Public Speaker James Kuzma: I'll also note that it is I am somewhat confused as to the how the numbers in that attachment were calculated since I believe in the attachment the plan check fee was higher than the building permit fee when my interpretation of the proposed changes is the reverse.

[05:01:14] Public Speaker James Kuzma: Um, and that is—but other than that, I think we appreciate and understand making sure that the city is charging fees that actually compensate the city staff—well the city for the work that its staff are doing. Um, and separately from the Mountain View YIMBY comment, I will just tag on to the comment about swim fees,

[05:01:33] Public Speaker James Kuzma: that I actually personally am more than happy to always have us welcoming non-residents that—means that friends I have that do not live in the city are more inclined to come and swim at the same time as me so I get to say hi to them. So, thank you.

[05:01:50] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Leslie Friedman.

[05:01:56] Public Speaker Leslie Friedman: Hello. I'm Leslie Friedman. I'm calling to say that although the one of the pictures showed that the there would be an increase of 10% or of—the fees, however for the rest of this year it's a 12 times new fee, and then if they're going to keep doing that next year, it will be 24 times of the recent usual $50.

[05:02:30] Public Speaker Leslie Friedman: The huge amount to file an appeal is a way to silence the public's voice. If you have plans for piles of money from the fees, you will be surprised. If you price the fees high enough to keep citizens from exercising their right to appeal, you will not get the money from appeals because you have fixed it so that there will be no appeals.

[05:03:05] Public Speaker Leslie Friedman: I really did respect the arborists and fellow employees in the Recreation Department. I did think that showing up at the meetings of the Parks and Recreation Commission would be part of their job, and people do get paid for jobs.

[05:03:26] Public Speaker Leslie Friedman: So whether the money is meant for salaries or other meaningful causes, you will have painted yourselves into a corner. There will not be the money you want because you fixed it so there will be no appeals. Someday office buildings could learn to build around trees.

[05:03:41] Public Speaker Leslie Friedman: You toss the trees away. You undervalue the lives of the trees and how they impress and improve all of our lives, and they can save your life. Thank you.

[05:04:03] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Louise Katz, then Robert Cox.

[05:04:09] Public Speaker Louise Katz: Thank you, Mayor and Council. Um, my name is Louise Katz, a long-time city resident. Um, I would like to start by saying that the very first few sentences that our consultant provided, I think explains where the problem is in this issue of the trees.

[05:04:29] Public Speaker Louise Katz: It says the general cost recovery strategy is be—is based on user fees to fund programs and services that provide limited or no direct benefits to the community as a whole. So this um standard, I don't believe should even be used for the appeals. We're just checking off the boxes.

[05:04:53] Public Speaker Louise Katz: I believe that asking the city to allow a tree to be taken down is um a not a community benefit. That's a private benefit, and there should be fees to cover that. But the appeal, as several people have pointed out, is a direct benefit to the community as a whole because the trees are the direct benefit to the community as a whole.

[05:05:15] Public Speaker Louise Katz: That's why we have the ordinance. If they're not a direct benefit, we don't need such ordinances, we don't have them for other kinds of plants or structures. So I guess I'm confused as to why that is not the first point of consideration for these huge fees.

[05:05:35] Public Speaker Louise Katz: Second thing is as people have pointed out, these kind of massive fees will clearly have a chilling effect on exercise of our democratic rights. The other point is there is a huge difference between a developer asking for a gatekeeper project to increase their—their profits and get—get it done faster, often billionaire companies,

[05:05:59] Public Speaker Louise Katz: whereas a tree removal appeal is basically the exercise of neighbors and residents. So I would—and the other point is that there is no alternative to save a tree. We have to go through the appeal process, whereas again for gatekeeper projects, they choose this strategy and their choices are respected.

[05:06:19] Public Speaker Louise Katz: So I believe that these are some important points that we would very much appreciate the Council taking under consideration. Thank you.

[05:06:25] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Robert Cox.

[05:06:34] Public Speaker Robert Cox: Can you hear me?

[05:06:36] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Yes.

[05:06:37] Public Speaker Robert Cox: Okay. Um, Honorable Mayor Kamei, Vice Mayor Ramos, and members of the City Council. Thanks for the opportunity to comment on the proposed large increase in fees for filing a heritage tree removal appeal. I am opposed to this large increase and I hope you will be as well.

[05:06:52] Public Speaker Robert Cox: I stand with Nancy, Leslie, and Louise on this. First, I want to comment that increasing the fee from $50 to and in two years $1,250 is not an increase in 5% to 20% cost recovery, which would be four times. This is a 25% increase, so I don't get the math.

[05:07:14] Public Speaker Robert Cox: Increasing the fee will not generate substantial new revenue for the city as Louise and Leslie just pointed out, it will just discourage public advocacy for the preservation of our heritage trees. Many of our heritage tree advocates, some of whom you have heard from tonight, are senior citizens or others with a limited discretionary income.

[05:07:36] Public Speaker Robert Cox: The large appeal fee could effectively cut them out of the appeal process. Saving our heritage trees is in the public interest. The city should bear the financial cost of giving each of the heritage tree the continuing ability to enrich our common environment. Thank you for listening to my concerns. I concede the rest of my time.

[05:07:54] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Hala Alshwani.

[05:08:00] Public Speaker Hala Alshwani: Yes. Hello. Good evening, Mayor, City Council. This is Hala Alshwani, long-time resident in Mountain View. Um, the ability of Mountain View residents to appeal um tree removal applications is a vital mechanism for the public, for us to give input and to protect the community green assets, the heritage trees,

[05:08:21] Public Speaker Hala Alshwani: against sometimes subjective reasons by the applicants and/or um poorly substantial—substantiated reasons by the staff to deny the appeals. There are plenty of proofs and cases you can look at from the history of um appealing removing the trees. I attended quite a few in the last couple of years,

[05:08:42] Public Speaker Hala Alshwani: and many of those trees were saved by the public um with the approval of Parks and Recreation commissioners. The suggested increase from $50 to $650 this coming July and then to $1,250 effective next year in July is very unreasonable and it's highly inequitable to demand from the public.

[05:09:03] Public Speaker Hala Alshwani: It will um most definitely lead to uh significant losses of our uh mitigation to climate extremes, our heritage trees. Um, and there really there should not be any fees as Louise was saying, the scope really of of what this, you know, item is, 6.3, is to to increase the fees on items that have no uh minimal or no direct benefit to the community.

[05:09:33] Public Speaker Hala Alshwani: And and that should definitely most definitely not include um appealing the removal of heritage trees. This is direct benefits to all the community. Um, it is really, really uh very difficult to to see this continuing and happening uh when, you know, we're losing so many trees.

[05:10:02] Public Speaker Hala Alshwani: We should be doing things that will enable us to save them rather than uh losing them. Um, uh there there should not be any fees as I said for wanting to protect and to preserve vital resources for our environmental sustainability. Thank you.

[05:10:35] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Bruce England.

[05:10:43] Public Speaker Bruce England: Sorry, missed the unmute button. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Bruce England, Whisman Station Drive and a member of GreenSpaces Mountain View. I'll be brief. I support all of the um comments that have been made so far on the issue of the heritage tree uh appeal fees.

[05:11:04] Public Speaker Bruce England: And I want to emphasize the need to expedite the plan, the biodiversity strategy and urban forest plan. It seems like the fee increases are coming, this is a cart-before-the-horse kind of thing. That the plan should be evaluated, discussed, and approved before you entertain the idea of those fee increases for the heritage tree removal appeals.

[05:11:27] Public Speaker Bruce England: And I also want to point out that there are different kinds of appeals. And what people have spoken to tonight, they're talking about people who want to protect trees in the interest of the full community. And I hope that you Councilmembers will give this full deliberation and consideration when you get to that. Thank you.

[05:11:39] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. All right. That concludes our virtual speakers, so I'll bring the item back for Council deliberation and action. Councilmember Hicks.

[05:11:46] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So, first I wanted to thank staff for preparing this um suggested changes to the—what the—do I have the correct title—the Master Fee Schedule. Um, like you said, it hasn't been done comprehensively for 20 or so years, and I think it's long overdue and it'll be super helpful and I support almost all of it.

[05:12:14] Councilmember Alison Hicks: With the exception of what so many members of the public have brought up. And I do tend to agree with what uh many of them said that I actually don't know that this particular fee belongs in this category because um I—I don't think that it falls in the category of limited or no benefit to the community as a whole.

[05:12:34] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I think that much of the community sees uh tree canopy and shade as something that benefits all of us. That said, uh my personal preference would be to not talk about it at length tonight, to keep the fees the same, and then to talk about it under the rubric of uh of uh urban forestry and biodiversity.

[05:12:53] Councilmember Alison Hicks: You know, then we can talk about whether we keep it under this schedule, whether we don't, whether it's a benefit to the community, whether there are maybe other ways of even reviewing it. I think, you know, if we talk about it tonight we could probably—we could probably talk for, you know, a good half-hour, 45 minutes, who knows, and not solve the problem.

[05:13:21] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So that would be my solution. Um, let me see if I had anything else to say. Yeah, I mean I basically think that at this point with heritage trees, I don't want to say it's community policing, but the community is doing the work of reviewing our tree canopy to some degree for us and that we should—we should encourage and enable that.

[05:13:48] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So, and and I have heard some people say that uh it's kind of like CEQA, that people are just using it to not to not uh allow development. But when you look at the numbers, there—there's a Council question to staff, there really are not very many of them and I frankly haven't seen any of them stop development.

[05:14:06] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I think more they've been a review of when maybe there's sort of unnecessary removal of heritage trees. Anyway, I could say much more on that subject, but I would propose not—not um going—doing a deep dive on that tonight and just keeping it the same. And that's all I have to say. Again, thank you very much.

[05:14:27] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Councilmember McAlister.

[05:14:28] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, I like this uh talking about this tree heritage program, and I do uh I could support uh Councilmember Hicks' proposal. But I'd like to get a better understanding. I asked the question, are there two lawyers assigned to a tree appeal hearing? And I got the response, one is for Community Service Department and one is for Park and Recs.

Segment 8

[05:15:00] Councilmember John McAlister: I've been sitting in this, is this a relatively new deal where we have two lawyers sitting in the hearing?

[05:15:12] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: So I don't know if it's new, um, but it is necessary to have two attorneys sitting in the hearing. And the reason why is that you have the attorney that is assigned to the Community Services Department and advises staff when staff is making the preliminary the initial determination on whether or not to approve or deny a tree removal permit. And so to the extent that staff has legal questions on the front end when they are reviewing the application and deciding whether or not to approve or deny that application on the front end, she is there to provide advice.

[05:15:46] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: When there is an appeal and there is a hearing, you have a body that is considering that appeal hearing. And you have to have a separate attorney advising that body to the extent that they have procedural questions, can they continue the hearing, can they ask for more evidence, um if they have a legal question with regard to interpretation of the code and which will inform whether or not they should uphold or reverse the appeal, you need to have two separate attorneys because the attorney that advised staff is going to be biased because that attorney was already advising staff.

[05:16:41] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: You have an appeal that is challenging staff's decision, so you need a second neutral attorney to help the body when the body itself has a question. So yes, it is absolutely necessary, it is very common in every city to have two separate attorneys, um when you have the attorney advising the department and the attorney advising the body.

[05:16:51] Councilmember John McAlister: I have a question for Community Services Director John Marchant.

[05:17:05] Councilmember John McAlister: Thank you. Oh, you're going that way? I have a question for you. So oh, the question is, you've been doing this for a long time. So ten years ago, five years ago, did we always have two attorneys and how common is it for these attorneys these these hearings because you have the Park and Rec, they wear two hats, to get into this kind of complexity.

[05:17:30] Community Services Director John Marchant: Thank you for the question, first of all. John Marchant, Community Services Director. Thank you for the question. Um, I would say that the um the process of having two attorneys has been in place since 2018, '19. Um and we do find it very valuable as we go through the proceeding. So as you may be aware, the Urban Forest Board is the final say on Urban Forest decisions and there are times where there are complex questions in which there are questions about the the ordinance itself and in those cases the um the attorneys are there to help support staff. In addition, um we are now utilizing ordinances and as a way to um complete the process and the attorneys are helping us craft the language as necessary based on each tree.

[05:18:27] Councilmember John McAlister: So how often do we have a complex appeal?

[05:18:34] Community Services Director John Marchant: The attorneys are asked questions at each meeting.

[05:18:37] Councilmember John McAlister: No, no. No, I'm not talking about... how often do we have an appeal where somebody comes in and it's a complex meeting, it's prolonged versus it's a quick one, say no, it's we're done and gone.

[05:18:52] Community Services Director John Marchant: That's a tough question. Trees are living things, as you heard tonight, and depending on the situation, what could seem to be a simple task could turn into something more. Um, I would say the average time for a what you would consider a regular appeal could be 45 minutes. Others could go an hour and a half. Um, just depending on the situations, number of people that are involved, whether it is a homeowner appealing the tree versus um another resident appealing the tree, um and the circumstances the circumstances thereof.

[05:19:35] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Okay. Thank you. Those oh, thank you. Those are my questions for you for you. Um and to go back to Councilmember Hicks...

[05:19:46] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Sorry, I think City Manager McCarthy had um some answers for you. Thank you.

[05:19:52] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Thank you.

[05:19:53] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Um thank you, Mayor. And actually, um Mr. Marchant could come back. Can you clarify for Council what the appeal is for? Is it appealing the approval or denial? Can you clarify that for everyone? And also clarify that this does not include staff's time, attorney time, the cost. So I don't think the fee took into calculation our time, did it?

[05:20:18] Community Services Director John Marchant: It's my understanding that it did.

[05:20:20] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Oh, it did. Okay. For this. Okay.

[05:20:22] Community Services Director John Marchant: Um and so the the question that um City Manager McCarthy's asking me to respond to is the circumstances of our tree appeals. The majority of our tree appeals are homeowners um that have been told by staff to not remove a tree based on their review and they would like to go to the PRC and and request to remove that tree. Um, there's also the flip side which is um someone has um, I'm sorry, is so a tree has been approved to be removed and then a a member of the the public then provides the um the paperwork and application to appeal the removal of that tree. And so the majority is the case of which the homeowner has already been told no and they they are looking to come back.

[05:21:22] Councilmember John McAlister: Follow up question.

[05:21:23] Community Services Director John Marchant: Yes.

[05:21:24] Councilmember John McAlister: City Attorney said she brought up my curiosity, are you including the law the attorney's fees? And you said yes. So I'm trying to figure out as how much is it and should it really be included because they do that's their work is to advise these committees without so how much is their fee included in this $6,000 potential?

[05:21:51] Community Services Director John Marchant: And I do have a staff member, City Clerk, from City staff on...

[05:21:58] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Russell? Is that correct?

[05:21:59] Community Services Director John Marchant: Yes.

[05:22:00] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Yes. Okay. Yeah, he's anticipating this. Good for you.

[05:22:06] Community Services Director John Marchant: He's my lifeline. I thought JP was.

[05:22:09] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Hello Russell. We're going to phone a friend. Yeah, let's unmute him.

[05:23:01] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: I don't I don't have the exact number, but I will say that our time is recoverable. So legally, it is recoverable. All the time that we spend, it's not just a it's everybody's job. All these fees that are collected, it's our job to do these things, but under the law the the time that is expended in doing this is recoverable by the city. Now, it's a policy question on whether or not you want to recover it, but it is legally recoverable.

[05:23:33] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. So it is a policy decision. Okay. But we have a dollar amount coming from your lifeline, your friend?

[05:23:43] Community Services Director John Marchant: At the moment no. If I get one, I will let you know we're having some technical issues.

[05:23:48] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Councilmember Clark?

[05:23:49] Councilmember Chris Clark: I can share. It's in the master fee schedule, um the column that says the removal appeal, the estimated full cost is $6,351.46.

[05:23:59] Councilmember John McAlister: I knew it was 63, but how much is of that is the attorney fees?

[05:24:04] Councilmember Chris Clark: Oh, oh. I have no idea.

[05:24:05] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah. Thank you, John.

[05:24:06] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Russell, are you unmuted?

[05:24:10] Staff Member Russell: Believe so. Can you hear me now?

[05:24:11] Staff Member Russell: Yay! There we go. Sorry about that. Good evening Mayor and Councilmembers, I appreciate you taking the opportunity to ask that question. Just of it is is I don't have the specific number in front of me, but it's in the ballpark of about $400 I believe that we had assigned to the attorney's office. It was in the neighborhood of about three to four hours considering both review of the staff memo as well as the attendance at the hearing.

[05:24:37] Councilmember John McAlister: Is that 400 per attorney or total per attorney uh both?

[05:24:42] Staff Member Russell: I'm trying to look it up as we're talking and I think that's the uh, I don't want to give you the wrong information, so I'm thinking that is combined but I don't like I said, I don't have the spreadsheet in front of me, sorry.

[05:24:59] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Uh. So he said okay well okay either way I think it's if it's a policy decision that this Council could take that off. So...

[05:25:11] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay great. So we're in the deliberate- thank you very much to staff. So we're in the deliberation and action. So um if there's something you're proposing or- no, sorry to Councilmember McAlister. Yeah. So we have a motion we have a motion by Councilmember Hicks, so if you'd like to hear it we can do that. Okay. Great. So Councilmember Hicks.

[05:25:31] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I'm going to make a motion to accept the fee schedule as is but leave the heritage trees leave the heritage tree fee, accept the whole proposal as proposed but leave the heritage tree fees in their prior state so that we can talk about them in all the details that you're bringing up now and many more, um when we talk about the biodiversity plan and urban forestry. That's my motion and I guess uh Councilmember Showalter has seconded it so we can go on to discussing it.

[05:26:07] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Well, that I mean that solves my concern because we're taking that out all together. So I could support that motion.

[05:26:12] Councilmember Alison Hicks: But your questions were very interesting, I was...

[05:26:15] Councilmember John McAlister: Very interesting. Okay. I I would support that motion.

[05:26:19] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay. And then um just to for jogging the memory, so the urban forestry if we incorporate that in the urban forestry and biodiversity plan, that would come back to Council and we would discuss it when? Just since we have the the public would probably want to know, so just wanted to make sure. Thanks.

[05:26:42] Community Services Director John Marchant: I'm trying to remember off the top of my head.

[05:26:43] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: I know, I I was trying to think too but...

[05:26:45] Community Services Director John Marchant: Um, we are scheduled to go to the PRC starting in um the fall. Yep. And then coming to you shortly after the New Year.

[05:26:59] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you.

[05:27:03] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. Um, I'll start with the non-tree stuff first. Um, I have a suspicion I will be on the minority side of this vote. Um, so I'm encouraging my colleagues on the prevailing side to include some other modifications unrelated to trees. So first, I thought you were going to talk Councilmember McAlister about the fact that there have been zero applications for child care over the past about five years and members of the public raised a good point that when you have a fee that is substantial it could deter people from submitting an application. So the cost recovery fee for child care is meaningless if we have zero applications. So I would encourage a member of the prevailing party um to include a further um reduction in the fee, so increasing the general fund subsidy for child care because it's desperately needed um and it doesn't matter if we're getting zero applications if we more heavily subsidize child care in our community. Um so that would be the first request. The second...

[05:28:10] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I would accept that one, maybe you can tie a number to it since you've been thinking about it.

[05:28:16] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Well, I I would be fine with a 100% uh subsidy because if we're if there were zero applications then anything that would help facilitate the introduction of child care in this community is a good thing. But I'm any numbers are arbitrary.

[05:28:34] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Right now is the is the child care planning fee 100% and zero people are applying at the 100%? I just want to clarify what was the baseline. Is that correct? Um so currently the child care uh fees in today's, you know active fee schedule is is currently subsidized about the same as what staff's proposing here of roughly 75%.

[05:29:02] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. So the baseline is that it's already there. Thank you.

[05:29:07] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Will the- I have an amendment.

[05:29:09] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Wait. Okay. I'll wait I'll sit in the queue to address his question.

[05:29:14] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay. So there's a modification that would go from a subsidy of- let's see, a 75% and reduce it to zero?

[05:29:27] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Yeah.

[05:29:32] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. Uh so that would be the first request. The second request would be um something similar for the nonprofit planning fees. The staff responses to Council questions were enlightening, right, these applications have been associated with CSA and with um the cold weather shelter in downtown. I these are these are uses that provide a tremendous community benefit, right, providing a place for um women and families to go during the winter when they are unhoused and you know, we've we've been blessed to have a tremendous partner in CSA. So I would hope that um a member of the prevailing party also consider um an increase in the subsidy to help nonprofits um provide services to vulnerable and low-income people. So all it's it's currently proposed to be a 75% subsidy. I think for that maybe like a 90% subsidy, but I'm I'm also open to other numbers.

[05:30:35] Councilmember John McAlister: When you're giving your percentages, could you put dollars to it?

[05:30:38] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Well, wait, can we finish, sorry. Thanks. Well, I want to hear all of his stuff and then we can go to questions, is that okay? Because I think he's going to have more for us.

[05:30:52] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate that. Um and I can get back to those. The um attachment one, the resolution has the the fee schedule on and all of the the full cost recovery number number is in there. Um, so that's the the document I'm referencing. Um, so then a a broader comment and then I'll get to trees. I think one thing that um we we ought to seriously consider is um financial feasibility and the impact of escalating fees on um our ability to achieve community goals and city goals. These many of these fees are quite substantial. Fee increases are are quite substantial. There are a number of um I think um terrific subsidies proposed, um a lot of what we've seen um for recreational activities and um a lot of the work um through CSD, I which I personally support and I'm grateful that staff has um suggested allowing free use of community facilities for instance for um community groups. I think that's um that's amazing. Not every city does that, so I I strongly support those.

[05:33:45] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: But for things like development review, cost recovery is absolutely appropriate. But if we're starting to see um diminished or zero activity, then a very high fee does nothing for us, right? It a high fee acts as a deterrent and as members of the community shared in the case of trees, right, um one member said um you're not going to see any revenue generation um if our fees are very high. Well, so that that applies also to housing construction. So I I don't think we necessarily need to adjust the fees in this moment, but I do think that's something we need to be mindful of especially if over the next couple of fiscal years we continue to see a a distressed um development services fund, right? If there's no or minimal activity and the fee increases end up impeding or or discouraging development then we're going to have to contend with some or you all are going to have to contend with some very challenging uh decisions over the next fiscal years because I am going away.

[05:35:06] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: On trees, um I I think the answer that the community is looking for is is a an improved heritage tree ordinance. Right, I think there is some discretion which you know once upon a time may have made sense um that creates uh subjectivity and um and disagreement about when a tree should or should not be removed, right? And I think the answer is in allowing our professionals on the city staff to let us know when it's appropriate. Um I don't want to step on Councilmember Clark's toes, but um I did want to ask to confirm uh most of these appeals are property owners who were told no, you cannot remove your tree. Is that correct?

[05:37:01] Community Services Director John Marchant: That is correct.

[05:37:07] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So that's great. So thank you. Um, so what that means is if we have a heavily subsidized fee, what you all are saying is those homeowners should have a chance to remove their heritage tree in their property, right, because we can't distinguish between the two. So it this I think could actually have the opposite impact for what members of our community have shared with us. Also, I strongly disagree that this has, you know, great community value, right? So my tax dollars are going to subsidize the the appellant and that's money that could otherwise be used to, you000 provide subsidies for low-income people to benefit for recreational activities in our community or it also detracts from staff capacity, right? They're wasting time on an appeal that has a high probability of failing, right? So they're sitting around in a meeting where everyone's upset, the appellant usually loses so they're mad, the property owner's mad because they have to go through this appeal process and the staff are sitting around for two or three hours when they could be doing actual work on things we care about. This doesn't feel like good public policy. So I would strongly encourage a mem- you know, anyone in the prevailing party to to rethink this and I believe yes, we should think about this in the context of the biodiversity strategy and updates to our our tree ordinance. A low subsidy doesn't actually solve this problem. One thing we I could support though is maybe what we need is to increase the application for a tree removal in the first place a fee for the- so that way you at least get some cost recovery there that might have the intended effect of deterring people from submitting an application for removing a tree in their property. There are problems with that though too, right? I many of you know I I'm sort of a de facto property manager because of um my family trust and a neighbor's tree has caused substantial damage to um my grandparents' um property. There's nothing we can do about it because it's not on our property, but I understand better the the plight of homeowners who have to contend with substantial costs associated with trees that are maybe not in the best location or not the right species. So I get why we have this process in a way that I wouldn't have understood several years ago and I I don't think I appreciate what our community is trying to achieve. I don't think this is the right solution. So I can't support the motion on the floor. Um but I uh I could support um uh directing staff to to consider our community goals in the broader and more holistic context of the biodiversity strategy. The last thing I forgot was I appreciate the member of the community who shared the swimming fee um schedule here. I don't know what the right number is, but I think including direction to staff to review this and then to return with modifications if it's appropriate um would would also help address some of the concerns that we heard from that member of the public. Thank you.

[05:40:27] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So Mayor, may I say which I accept and which I don't among those recommendations?

[05:40:32] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Do you mind if we get through everyone's comments first because I'd rather- let's see where other people land. Thank you. Councilmember Clark.

[05:40:43] Councilmember Chris Clark: Thanks. So as CFC chair, I just want to kind of defend how we ended up where we where we ended up here. Um, I know a lot of attention's been paid to to trees. I'll start with some of the other things. I appreciate um Councilmember Ramirez's comments. I my I think for example child care is kind of a solution in search of a problem. I'm not sure the application fee is the reason why we haven't had any new childcare centers come in um and and I you know, if I thought moving the you know changing the fee would help then I I would but I just don't think that is the issue and I don't think it's an impediment. Um, and I think that the journey that we've been on to get to these fee updates for after many many many years, um yes, there's going to be discomfort on some of these because they haven't been modified in a really really really long time and they even though they they should have kept up with time modifying fees is tricky because you have to do studies. Um, so we invested the time and the energy into the study. Um, I think overall I'm okay with most everything that's presented here. Um the um I think and and to address the issue of trees, I think there's a little bit of a false narrative and I understand that that folks really want to believe that the the appeals process is, you know, this democratic process where you know neighbors keep neighbors in check but the reality is of how this is used is as we've heard today, most of the appeals are actually folks who've been told no they can't cut down a tree and then they're able to pay less than the initial application fee to appeal that and maybe get a different answer. Now, there's also a few cases, there's some statistics in here, there are a handful of of folks who are told they can cut down a tree and someone appeals and um and and every now and then um the the appeal succeeds. Um, that that is that is much more rare than the other um type of appeal. And so in my mind, one, the appeal fee hasn't been changed in forever, it costs a lot of money to go through an appeals process, especially the way that we've set it up with the Urban Forestry Board being a PRC meeting and everything like that and um I just think that it it shouldn't cost there should be a barrier to entry here for both sides and it shouldn't be not be $50. It should at least at minimum be more than the application fee. And so, you/000 landed on with the study was you know somewhere around just adding a zero to that you know 500 in this case 650. If folks want to if folks want to just do the the base level increase now and and then because the second level increase isn't going to kick in until next fiscal year anyway if we just want to cancel that second increase and address that through the urban forestry um the biodiversity the plan and everything that comes back then I think that makes sense. But um but I really think where we're missing there really should be um it it should cost more than your application fee if you don't get the answer that you like um from arborists, you know folks who are professionals in in city staff who see these things all the time. There should just be a greater um barrier on both sides to- we should be recovering those costs. It's it's not about the barrier, it's more about understanding the the cost and the effort that has to go into something and you really should think twice before you second guess a decision whether you're a homeowner who's upset that you've been told that you can't cut down a tree or whether you're a neighbor who um is upset that your your your neighbor is is being authorized to to cut down a tree on their property. So that's a long way of saying I'm not going to support the motion on the floor. anyway, but I would prefer to just move this whole thing forward with the the the initial increase in the in the appeal fee um not deal with next fiscal year's um increase which doubles it again, that can that can be something that we talk about what the right level is, but there's no world in which I think the level should be you know under $500 or $650. That's just um it it should cost more than the initial application and there should be a recognition of the time and effort that folks are going to put in um to an appeal. So anyway, this is a long way of saying I'm not going to support the motion on the floor. Great. Thank you.

[05:45:12] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Before we get to Councilmember McAlister, let's see, who hasn't spoken? Vice Mayor, did you want to take a turn because I'd rather- I'd like to speak before we go on round three or four with Councilmember McAlister. Just to see where people are and then we can see where we land with the motion. Thanks.

[05:45:32] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Mayor. I guess now you guys have a a sense of what was going on in the CFC meeting, um when uh some of these recommendations came out. Um, but the overall message that we got in the CFC meeting was this fee study was to show how much these services cost us. And it's our policy decision to determine how much we want to subsidize it and that's why um we made the recommendations that we did. Um when you think about um the the things that we we want, we want more housing so we want to encourage um that the permitting fees don't provide an impediment to that. We uh want more nonprofits doing this community this necessary community work of providing safe parking and and cold weather shelters and other services that are benefiting our community, so we were looking at subsidizing that. Child care, we wanted more child care providers in our city and therefore we wanted to subsidize that. The interesting thing, the conversation with the heritage tree, we were kind of just surprised in how much it costs and how much we were charging. So like it says in the staff report that uh we recover like 5% and we're increasing that to 10%, but it's a $50 fixed cost. And if the cost is $6,351.46, um we're actually subsidizing 99% of that. And then we were wondering well, people might be angry that um we are trying to block them from saving trees and then we find out that it turns out most of these appeals are actually people who want to remove their trees. So we were just like, well let's let's see about increasing some of that cost and bringing it in front of Council for all of us to decide and debate on. So I feel like overall we landed in a decent place. I'm supportive of my colleagues on the CFC in our robust discussions. Um just because this was the logic behind that and and um my colleagues are more inclined to look really deep into some of these numbers, um and I do trust that. Um I I am okay with not having a dramatic increase um with the heritage trees but I think the bigger thing to kind of narrow home in is our policy decisions. We know how much these things cost and now it's up to our policy decisions to determine how much we want to subsidize to it. So I am I am supporting my colleagues on the CFC, um hopefully there's going to be some movement on on what the the motion actually is now that we have a little bit more context in some of these things that caused a lot of people to freak out on. Um so until then, I'm I'm inclined to support um what the CFC um initially asked for.

[05:49:01] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. All right. So I think um I just I just wanted to weigh in and perhaps I'm thinking of this from a bit of a different perspective. So you know tonight we talked about our vacancies, recruitment, retention. We talked about budget. Um, we had a I think very um I don't know um stark um I don't know outlook of what our you know DSF will look like. And and we're looking at a fee schedule that we haven't updated in over two decades. And so I think before I'm looking at you know I appreciate the due diligence and the work of the CFC, I think that before I'm looking at reductions of any fees, I would like to make sure that we're achieving full cost recovery. Um and moving away from relying on our general fund to subsidize you know the difference. I don't- we are facing potential I would say cuts or pauses on federal funding, um we're not seeing the growth in measure P and measure G. Um and relying on our general fund um I think doesn't help us achieve I think the overall goal with which we heard, which is how are we going to increase staff capacity, bringing more resources to our community, um help make the development process more efficient um if we're not getting a full cost- full cost recovery and we're already deciding that some of these fees are as Councilmember Clark said the barrier to entry. I don't I don't know yet because we haven't raised our fees in over two decades. So I don't feel it's- I have the full information, the full picture on you know in particular I think the difficult one um for me was the gatekeeper pre-authorization and reducing that and subsidizing that from our general fund by 25%. Staff has made it clear that whether it's a, you know, a gatekeeper, even if it's a small- on a smaller parcel, it's still the same amount of staff time. And I think it's very important that we are valuing our staff time and understanding that we're going to be discussing gatekeepers separately as another policy item where if a parcel is going to be less than one acre in size, we're already discussing streamlining that and the fee not applying to them, for example, if it's 100% affordable housing. So I didn't- I don't feel like it's necessary to in addition to what we're doing with gatekeeper to already decide that we are going to reduce it after we hear of the impact that it has on staff time. So I just want- that's just one example. Um I think that the nonprofit planning fees, one of our the work plan items that the Vice Mayor brought up was how the city works with our volunteer organizations, which I would feel nonprofits fall under, and so perhaps as we're looking at that work plan item we can discuss, you know, being able to use our facilities or or work it through there. So that's where I also felt like not prepared yet to do a fee reduction because I want to understand how we can do that through the work plan item that that you brought up for example. So I think the fees kind of intersect with some other policy areas that we've been been looking at and while I appreciate that CFC was already trying to be proactive in this, I think the most important thing is full full cost recovery. I think it signals yes, a moving away from reliance on general fund subsidy, but I think it also shows value to our employees who um are working honestly tirelessly for the city, um and being able to make sure that we are showing them value in their time by getting um getting the full fees that we have not been doing. So, um I also cannot support the motion as it stands, we'll see where the motion ends up but I just wanted to share that perspective. Councilmember McAlister.

[05:53:35] Councilmember John McAlister: All I wanted to do was respond to the child care and to Councilmember Clark's it's not the fee. The industry is under tremendous stress. Um, TK is coming out, transitional care, that's taking thing out. Family- you've heard me say the three things. Family leave, parents are able to stay home so they don't need to have their child care lose that. And then with the TK they're doing and then the parents have options so it's not the fees. It's just not economically viable to put out a child care. The schools are really putting the pressure on it because of that. So no matter what you do, it's keep the fees the same. Um and so I was I like what the Mayor was saying, so I I would support- you know I was looking at the fees for go and reducing a 25% like $3,000 and a gatekeeper is in the millions of dollars. I mean every gatekeeper I've seen is millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars. So the fee is minor. So keep the fee keep the same because that reduction is not a big deal. You're going from 93 or 12 to 93 from and so that's only $3,000. So let's keep the fee going. Concerning the heritage tree, um $500 I think is a barrier. $300, I'd like to see start at what Councilmember Hicks said, let's leave it at this and take a look at it the process to Councilmember Ramirez's the ordinance. So that's a different discussion that goes tonight, that would have to bring back and say hey if there's a problem let's fix the ordinance on that. And then also including the city attorney fees that's another policy decision that we could come and take that out of the equation to make it more realistic of what we should charge. So in that regards I could support everything keeping the heritage fee low, making the gatekeeper keep that without modification. So you're right, there's a we're throwing some mixes in. So that's what I'm thinking.

[05:55:43] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Councilmember Hicks, where um where is the motion now? I I would say what would you like to propose now?

[05:55:50] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So where I'm landing on all this is so I do I do support the idea of cost recovery in general and I do think that for our development services in general it's not the it's not the fees that's stopping people from um gatekeepers and child care, I doubt it's the fees that's um making those projects come forward. I do have a difference with the heritage trees. I think it's a different group of people. Um I would be and and my purpose is not to, you know, I loved everything everybody said tonight who's doing the appeals, it's the homeowners, etc. etc. But I feel that the community has not had first I don't think it makes very little difference in terms of um how many fees we're it's a very small amount of activity. It's very important to the community. They haven't had time to really weigh in. I don't think this is the context for them to weigh in. Um, I think it's during the biodiversity and urban forestry plan and we may change the procedure a little. Um, I think that's the time to allow the community to weigh in and I don't want to you know, they're not developers who are general- well, maybe some of them but generally it's residents who are participating in this. So um I would I would go with um Councilmember McAlister's change to what did you say, $300?

[05:57:20] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, I mean yeah, the 500 or whatever, I yeah, it's just I'm just putting a number out to move in the conversation later when the community can weigh in and I don't think for a development services fund I don't think it makes a difference.

[05:57:35] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I think it's currently 50 and then staff was recommending what?

[05:57:41] City Clerk Heather Glaser: 650.

[05:57:43] Councilmember Alison Hicks: 650. Okay. So we're maybe cutting that in half, you want 325? Okay. And then pause and and discuss it more thoroughly the whole procedure and let the community weigh in. Okay. Is my... as a seconder I'm happy with that.

[05:58:43] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay, so but that recommendation, so where would that where would that land with like gatekeeper the child care nonprofit? So those you would go with the 75 with the 25% subsidy or would you or would it be...

[05:58:55] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Well, I was going with the staff recommendation.

[05:58:57] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay.

[05:58:58] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I was going with no subsidy on gatekeeper.

[05:59:00] Councilmember John McAlister: No no on gatekeeper, gatekeeper one because that's only $3,000. Is anyone else lobbying me on that on the gatekeeper?

[05:59:26] Councilmember Chris Clark: I think overall I think if the if the modified motion is the staff recommendation which is basically the the CFC forwarded fee schedule with um I might get the number off. It sounded like um the appeal fee starting in July until until we make some other change, you know at some point in the future, it would be $350 if I...

[05:59:52] Councilmember John McAlister: 325.

[05:59:54] Councilmember Chris Clark: 325. Okay. Close. I was trying to get it to be more than the application fee which it is. Um, I was hoping to be double the application fee because I think it but whatever. Um but but so it would increase and then um we would just it sounds like you you would not do the scheduled increase for next fiscal year automatically. It sounds like we'll we'll just address that through the urban forestry um the plan and everything that comes back. Okay. All right. That seems like a reasonable compromise. Um, I I'm I'm sympathetic to kind of the other things that were raised with gatekeeper and other things, but I think you know staff are back at the CFC meeting, I think they made their the best adjustments that they can and I think as the Mayor said, I think the focus now really should be should be cost recovery and I think a lot of these application fees really really aren't the barriers to entry and we really should move forward with um getting something closer to cost recovery. Um just just so just so folks are aware, even even with the $325 appeal fee, that's like well over a 90% subsidy, but it's fine. But we'll talk about it later. Okay. Thank you.

Segment 9

[06:00:00] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: ...is that this item be reviewed every three to five years. There's different tracking that they can do, hopefully get more information on what the impediments may be for some of the things with which we are collecting fees for or should we be collecting more on a fee or getting closer to 100% fee recovery. So that's what's giving me solace in the compromise vote. So, I think seeing no others in the queue, if yes, I'd like to vote. Councilmember McAlister's ready.

[06:00:29] Councilmember John McAlister: Ready.

[06:00:30] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right. Oh, please cast your vote.

[06:00:38] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Wonderful, and that passes unanimously. Thank you very much to staff and the public for their input. So we'll move on to item seven, our council, staff and committee reports. Do any members of council or staff have reports to share?

[06:00:57] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Councilmember Showalter.

[06:00:58] Councilmember Pat Showalter: All right. Um, I-I received an email from the clerk earlier today with a slide deck that I received um, uh from the National League of Cities EENR um Zoom meeting. We have-we have Zoom meetings maybe four times a year and they're just, the slide decks are just really information packed. And this one in particular, I wanted to share because it has um a-it has about six or eight slides that are titled Federal Budget Legislative Update: What's at stake for local government. And it's really a series of fact sheets um on what NLC is doing or recommending for advocacy on various subjects related to ongoing federal um changes. So I think you will want to take a look at that, and the first few slides, it-this-this part of the slide deck that you really want to look at starts in like the third or fourth slide. The first two were just EENR scheduling and stuff which, you know, you probably don't care about.

[06:02:04] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And on June 2nd, I went to a Silicon Valley Clean Energy Finance Committee meeting. Um, lots of um development, lots about the development of um the budget and um, thank you to Justin for coming and talking about how much money that Mountain View has saved. I really think it's-SVCE and the money we saved for the community is something we should really be proud of. But, the happy news I wanted to share with you is that um, you know, we have um had a goal of providing 100% clean energy. That's-that's-that's the goal. This year we weren't quite able to do it because we weren't able to buy that much clean energy, but it looks like next year we're going to be able to buy 106% of clean energy. And the reason that matters is because you lose 6% of the energy in the transmission. So to get everybody to-to actually have 100% clean energy that we're selling to everybody, you have to have more than that to start with. So it appears we will be able to do that. So I think that's nice to have a little good news.

Segment 8

[06:02:22] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. Um so if I understand it, it's the staff recommendation um with uh the adjustment to the appeal fee, instead of 650 it'd be $325 for now.

[06:02:40] Councilmember Alison Hicks: For now, no later raise because we're going to talk about it during the biodiversity and urban forestry discussion.

[06:02:48] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Okay. Thank you. Um so I will I'll I will reluctantly support that. Um, I still feel very strongly about that. I don't personally feel a great deal of um empathy for um I I I appreciate what you're trying to achieve. Um you know I do feel it's if an industry is um struggling, imposing a cost recovery fee on top of it is not going to improve its prospects. So I do feel like do we care or we don't? If we don't care, that's fine, we can you know impose a fee to generate zero revenue because we're going to continue to have zero applications. Um I would rather make an effort and try and attract you know child care. The same thing with the nonprofit thing. Like I are we better for charging you know CSA a couple thousand dollars to you know get a permit? I don't think we are, but that's fine. I'll support the compromise.

Segment 9

[06:03:18] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And um, there was a special meeting of Silicon Valley Clean Energy on May 29th um about reach codes and their importance. And it was very nice to be um joined by um the Mayor and Chris Clark, um and several staff people, Danielle Lee and um Christian Murdock were also there. And I think that the um the real message is that this is going to be very difficult moving forward because there are um a number of legal constraints and we expect that there may be more from the um the Trump administration. So-so we need to be very careful about how we move forward with this. And yet at the same time, the impact that um this electrification has on our um on our GHG reduction is-is just really significant because um it takes care of GHG emissions from all new construction. And um that's a really big deal. And it also helps to reduce um GHG emissions from existing buildings which is like a-a huge percentage of our GHG emissions. So, um just wanted to share that and thank you.

[06:04:37] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Vice Mayor Ramirez.

[06:04:39] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. Uh, we had a Council Neighborhoods Committee meeting, um and I got to chair it, and it was my neighborhood, so that was like a doubly fun. Uh although they-and then we had three winners of a three-way tie for the most questions. Uh, it was uh to Police, uh to Public Works and to um Parks and Rec. So fun times. Lots of questions. Most of them were happy questions.

Segment 8

[06:04:44] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay, great. I think we're all we're all stretching on the compromise, so I will I'll support the compromise. I think the other thing that I'll that I'll highlight that staff had shared was, you know, there will be it will be less painful in the future because the staff recommendation is- oh wait, I ran out of time.

Segment 9

[06:05:08] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Um, so I wanted to share we had a majority of our council at the Evelyn Park grand opening on the 28th of May, which was really great. It's our 46th park, which is just an incredible and amazing achievement. Um, on May 30th the Urban Land Institute-ULI TAP-sorry, we presented the ULI TAP which was the finding on if middle income housing was going to be possible, and colleagues helped and joined that. I joined the ribbon cutting for the YWCA Golden Gate Silicon Valley, they're opening a North County site in Palo Alto so people don't need to travel all the way down to San Jose. And I just wanted to share that with colleagues that it's a, you know, beautiful resource for those in North County um to not be able to-who, you know, there's going to be so many different barriers, um knowing that they can go right to Palo Alto is going to be um wonderful. And then we talked a lot about it, but uh many of us were able to join our Together in Pride event um this past Saturday and want to once again thank our city staff for um organizing and and leading that effort. It was um I have heard nothing but positive radiant feedback. My neighbor ran in-ran up to me in my garage, I was like ah! Um just to say how much it meant to them for them to feel seen. So that was really great.

[06:06:36] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right, seeing no other reports we'll move on to item eight which is our adjournment. Tonight we are adjourning-adjourning the meeting in honor of Sue Graham, who provided special service to our community as a former Mountain View-Los Altos Hills school district board member and recent president of the League of Women Voters for Los Altos and Mountain View area chapter. Sue was a Mountain View resident for nearly 50 years and a fixture I think for-for many of us um at community events. So our thoughts are with her family and loved ones and we adjourn our meeting tonight in her honor. The next City Council meeting will be held on June 22nd, 2021, and this meeting is adjourned at 11:06 PM. Thank you. Have a good night.

Segment 1

[1233:05:47] Councilmember John McAlister: So is that a yes we have someone to do it or we are going to have a system that's going to be looked at?

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