June 24, 2025 Joint Meeting of Mountain View City Council, Shoreline Regional Park Community, MVCIFA

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Transcript

[00:05:40] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us for close session. City Attorney Logue will make a closed session announcement and then we welcome public comment on the items listed for close session. City Attorney Logue.

[00:05:50] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: Good evening, this is City Attorney Jennifer Logue. There are three items on this evening's closed session agenda. Item 2.1 is a conference with legal counsel regarding existing litigation pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.9. The name of the case is Whisman Action Committee versus the City of Mountain View, Forest Linebarger, and Tower Investment LLC, Santa Clara County Superior Court Case Number 25CV465735.

[00:06:19] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: Item 2.2 is a conference with legal counsel regarding existing litigation pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.9. The name of the case is San Francisco Baykeeper versus City of Mountain View and City of Sunnyvale, United States District Court Case Number 20-CV-00824.

[00:06:43] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: And item 2.3 is a conference with legal counsel regarding one item of anticipated litigation pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.9.

[00:06:50] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide public comment on the closed session items listed on tonight's agenda? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit a speaker card.

[00:07:04] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: I am not seeing any hands or public. So I will close public comment and we will recess to closed session.

[03:05:55] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Good evening everyone. Welcome to the joint meeting of the Mountain View City Council and the Shoreline Regional Park Community and the City of Mountain View Capital Improvements Financing Authority of June 24th, 2025. Please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

[03:06:14] Group: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[03:06:29] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: The City Clerk will take attendance by roll call.

[03:06:35] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember Clark?

[03:06:36] Councilmember Chris Clark: Here.

[03:06:37] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember Hicks?

[03:06:38] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Here.

[03:06:39] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember McAlister?

[03:06:40] Councilmember John McAlister: Yup.

[03:06:41] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember Ramirez?

[03:06:42] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Here.

[03:06:43] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember Showalter?

[03:06:44] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Here.

[03:06:45] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Vice Mayor Ramos?

[03:06:46] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Here.

[03:06:47] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Mayor Kamei?

[03:06:48] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Here.

[03:06:49] City Clerk Heather Glaser: We have a quorum.

[03:06:50] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you so much. We'll move on to item 2, our closed session report. City Attorney Logue, do you have a closed session report?

[03:06:59] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: Good evening, this is City Attorney Jennifer Logue. No reportable action was taken in closed session this evening.

[03:07:08] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you very much. So we'll move on to item 3, presentations. Please note this is a presentation only. The City Council will not take any action. Public comment will occur after the presentation item. If you would like to speak on this item in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk now. And we will begin with our Immigrant Heritage Month proclamation. We're happy to be joined this evening by Mary Kay Marina Marinovich on behalf of the Friends of Immigrant House to accept this proclamation. And I'll ask her to join me at the lectern.

[03:07:44] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right. So, we're excited to proclaim June is Immigrant Heritage Month, and we're excited that the Friends of Immigrant House is going to be accepting this. And the proclamation reads: Whereas generations of immigrants from every corner of the globe have built our country's economy and created the unique character of our nation; and whereas immigrants have been instrumental in building businesses, fostering innovation, and creating jobs; and whereas immigrants have provided California and the United States with unique social and cultural influence, fundamentally enriching the extraordinary character of our state and nation; and whereas immigrants have been tireless leaders not only in securing their own rights and access to equal opportunity, but also in having campaigned to create a fairer and more just society for all Americans; and whereas despite these countless contributions, the role of immigrants in building and enriching our nation has frequently been overlooked and undervalued throughout our history and continuing to the present day. Now, therefore I, Ellen Kamei, Mayor of the City of Mountain View, along with my colleagues on the City Council, do hereby designate June 2025 as Immigrant Heritage Month in the City of Mountain View. I like to share this. Yes. And we're so fortunate in Mountain View to have the Friends of Immigrant House and Mary, would you like to say a few words and share?

[03:09:09] Mary Kay Marina Marinovich: Sure. Thank you. Thank you Mayor Kamei and Vice Mayor Ramos, and Councilmembers for this meaningful recognition. Immigrant House is a rare surviving symbol of the hard working immigrant families who helped build our city and this country. It also honors Mountain View's agrarian past when orchards and farmland shaped daily lives. We are grateful to the City for preserving this historic home and to the Kiwanis Club of Mountain View and the Mountain View Historical Association for their continued support. In partnership with Parks and Recreation Department and the Kiwanis Club, which will be celebrating its 100th anniversary serving Mountain View next year, we're proud to be planning our seventh annual Harvest History Festival on September 13th from 9 AM to noon. We're also developing a virtual tour of Immigrant House and Heritage Park in collaboration with the Friends of R House. This immersive interactive experience will highlight the home and the park's features and serve as the foundation for a third grade field trip program, connecting our students with the stories that shape this land. Thank you again for shining light on the immigrant stories that continue to shape and enrich Mountain View. Zivili Mountain View! That's Croatian for 'Long Life to Mountain View'!

[03:10:59] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Did you want to take a photo?

[03:11:01] Mary Kay Marina Marinovich: Pardon?

[03:11:02] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Did you want to take a photo? Yes. So why don't we invite all of our friends, you know, Friends of Immigrant House, I see members of our Mountain View Historical Association, members of our Kiwanis. Why don't we all come up, Council will stand and we'll do a photo and we're lucky to have Armin here to take it. Great. Do you want to hold this one?

[03:12:19] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you so much to our members of our community who joined us. Um, would any member of the council like to say a few words?

[03:12:29] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Councilmember Showalter.

[03:12:30] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yes, I would I would like to thank the Friends of Immigrant House for the wonderful job they do and urge everybody to go to the fair that they hold in the fall. And I also wanted to mention that I was really struck last, you know, last year I was Mayor and I went and visited all sorts of things and helped open all sorts of things and one of them was the the Mountain View Adult School. And they have this map on the wall that shows um the the whole world and it has pins in it from all the places that people have come from that have taken classes at the Mountain View Adult School. And it would just, it just blew my mind. There were hundreds of those pins. I didn't really know there were that many countries. Um so uh if you have a chance to go visit the Mountain View Adult School, to take a class or just to see what the facilities are, check out that bulletin board just to see how many places our community is from.

[03:13:39] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you so much. I don't see any others in the queue, so I will open up public comment. We'll take public comment for the presentation item. Would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide comment on the presentation item listed on the agenda? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk now. And we will begin with our Immigrant Heritage Month proclamation. I am not seeing any public comment so want to thank the Friends of Immigrant House once more and we'll move on to the consent calendar. Thanks so much. These items will be 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. 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?

[03:14:43] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Oh. Oh, there we go. Councilmember McAlister.

[03:14:46] Councilmember John McAlister: Uh, oh pull. No I want to comment on 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7... Um... let's see. Ask somebody else cause I got...

[03:15:05] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay, yeah, I think we can take comments. Um... Councilmember Showalter.

[03:15:09] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, it it's my custom to go through the consent calendar and thank all the staff that have worked on this and um, boy this is a blockbuster consent calendar. There are 21 items on it. I I am not going to go through um it all and and and give out thanks for the various projects, um there just are too many. But just know that everybody up here is well aware of the body of work that goes behind it and we really appreciate that. So um I want you to know that and um I have to say I read every one of them and I'm pretty sure that all my colleagues read every page as well. So um we really appreciate your work. Thank you.

[03:16:03] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Um so seeing no others in the queue I'll return to you Councilmember McAlister if you'd like to make your comments.

[03:16:09] Councilmember John McAlister: Are... yeah follow up questions and comments to the people that did the... So do I need to pull it if I had questions for staff to clarify?

[03:16:19] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: No.

[03:16:20] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Getting a nod from Councilmember Clark there. Okay. I'll start off with um 4.4, the Grant Sleeper project. Uh, a general theme I've been doing since I've been on council is um cost allocation, um getting things done in a timely matter. Can we do things uh that uh meet the goal at less money? And this particular one at Stevens uh Sleeper and Grant Road has been a project that started when I was on council on a former 2018. And it seems to be rather a simple project to implement but this is one that I thought that uh it should have been done a long time ago. Now there's a lot of projects that I'm going to be talking about that have gone on, the cost inflation is just double the cost of doing business which is always a bad way of doing it. But this is one that I always thought was rather simple to solve and make it safe. This one we're putting in a crosswalk with lights and so forth and yet we could have easily just put a barrier at the uh Cuesta Park side and redirect people to Eunice Avenue where there is a signal and sidewalks which would have been much safer than going down Sleeper which has neither, or redirecting people over to Cuesta which has a s- a signal and and sidewalks. And for some reason this project seems to be growing and costing quite a bit but it's uh to me it's an indication that we are on a tight budget and we need to start looking at these projects to say what can we accomplish at a reasonable price and not and still maintain the goal of safety on that one. So that was on 4.4 the Grant Sleeper project. Uh I know it's coming and the considera- when when other considerations there's going to be tremendous traffic and this is not going to help the traffic so we need to keep an open mind when we do some of these projects. I know Public Works needs to get things done certain way but we need to be innovative and how do we solve some of these problems. On 4.5, uh this is the one where it was a simple one, was how was the 5% determined? This is for a fee for the for the park uh for the uh Chamber. And this one and we just finished up doing a fee study and yet this seems must have been passed because the fee was established in 2014 and yet we're still charging the same amount and I was and I was wondering why. So anybody want to tackle that one? We can get back to me. Oh. Okay.

[03:19:14] Christine Crosby: I'm here. Good evening Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council members. My name is Christine Crosby, Assistant Community Services Director. And thank you for the question. So in 2014 is when the City Coun- um Council Policy K14 was last updated and through that process staff had brought forward an administrative fee proposal of 6.5%. However from that meeting there was public comment received about lowering the cost impacts on special events and at that time council approved lowering it to 5%. It was not included within the citywide fee study as it's currently not listed within the master fee schedule, um but if that is something that council would like us to review we can certainly take a look into it. Thank you.

[03:20:01] Councilmember John McAlister: Do you have other fees like that that go back these many years, 15 years that haven't been reviewed?

[03:20:09] Christine Crosby: Off the top of my head I do not recall of any other fees that are not associated with the master fee schedule.

[03:20:14] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Then we'll go on to 4.6, Lot B, the um the homeless thi- uh. I had a question that didn't really get answered in here that I was hoping it would was what is the success rate of transitioning from safe parking to permanent housing?

[03:20:45] Praneet Dinsa: Good evening, Praneet Dinsa, Human Services Manager. Um, thank you for the question. So, um the county sets benchmarks for programs like safe parking and so for fiscal year 23-24 the exit rate for our safe parking program was 31%.

[03:21:07] Councilmember John McAlister: Is that good?

[03:21:09] Praneet Dinsa: Um, the benchmark is 50%, so we were less than the benchmark.

[03:21:13] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. And why are people if this the um safe parking lots were a uh transitional area, why was it stated that they can stay there as long as possible as needed?

[03:21:29] Praneet Dinsa: Yeah, thank you for the question. So safe parking is a temporary program um and the goal is to help residents get on the pathway to more stable housing. However, each client's um progress um and pathway can look different, so there's no um minimum or maximum amount of days that they are allowed to be there. It's really dependent on a case by case basis.

[03:21:58] Councilmember John McAlister: Is that a county uh requirement or is that something the City of Mountain View has established?

[03:22:05] Praneet Dinsa: It's a good question. Um because the county, we contract with the county, that would be set by the county.

[03:22:14] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Um is is there any programs to expedite their transition for people to get in there?

[03:22:23] Praneet Dinsa: So part of the requirement with the county is to have case management, and so case managers work individually with clients to help them get on the pathway to that stable housing. Um and again that can look different for each client.

[03:22:38] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Is is one of the deterrents for transitioning people the um the number of supportive housing that the city has, and have we acquired any recent permanent housing solutions in the last two years?

[03:23:00] Praneet Dinsa: I think I can answer your first question. I don't think I can answer your second question but I can definitely find that information and follow up and share with the City Manager. Um, in terms of potential obstacles to transitioning folks to stable housing, um the lack of um affordable housing um not only locally but also regionally can be a contributing factor as to why people might be um delayed onto that pathway.

[03:23:30] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. I do see the Director of Housing there, maybe he could help address that question.

[03:23:37] Praneet Dinsa: Thank you.

[03:23:38] Councilmember John McAlister: Thank you.

[03:23:50] Housing Director Wayne Chen: Good evening Mayor and Council, Wayne Chen Housing Director. So the question regarding an acquisition of affordable housing. The city has not um funded an acquisition of a project for permanent supportive housing. We did have the most recent project um La Avenida in North Bayshore that opened with permanent supportive housing. We have over 100 units of existing permanent supportive housing uh in the city and then we have a pipeline of I believe um over 100 units with in 100% affordable projects, but not through an acquisition project.

[03:24:19] Councilmember John McAlister: Well, in our homeless is there a uh goal or policy to help us acquire some units so that we can expedite the homeless er improve the homeless situation or transition these people out of the because I know understanding if we with the current status now waiting on grants and so forth it's three four five years before something comes along. So do we have anything that's a little more expeditious?

[03:24:50] Housing Director Wayne Chen: I don't know that there is necessarily an expeditious strategy for um permanent supportive housing or folks who may need more supportive care, uh who are chronically homeless and who need permanent supportive housing. Usually those units come with uh services and perhaps more intensive services with case management that is ongoing basis. In the homeless response strategy there are efforts um regarding increasing the housing supply and that um uh includes evaluating more interim housing strategies as well as building out our existing pipeline and then looking for funding partnerships to add more housing units. Um because these uh units are usually more difficult to subsidize because the residents don't have the incomes, they are harder to finance and if there were other strategies um it would still need case management. And so we would need ongoing operating funds to be able to support um whether it's an acquisition strategy or or a new project, we would still need the case management just because of the needs of the clientele.

[03:25:29] Councilmember John McAlister: Are present strategies effective?

[03:25:34] Housing Director Wayne Chen: The present strategies are effective. I would say we would need more funding to be able to advance our housing pipeline and get more pipeline in the ground. The existing permanent supportive housings are um really as uh Ms. Dinsa mentioned responsive to each individual's uh specific needs with the case management necessary to support their needs whether it's mental health, um employment, uh training et cetera. So that services piece is really critical and without it permanent supp- supportive housing um would not be able to serve the residents quite as well. So the housing and the services really need to come together and where they when they have come together they're very effective to stabilizing the residents.

[03:25:58] Councilmember John McAlister: Are there any potential housing in the pipeline right now?

[03:26:03] Housing Director Wayne Chen: There there are several. We have the Montecito project that is a um a Charities project um um over on Montecito. And then we have other projects on the pipeline that we're looking to um advance. We have the 87 East Evelyn project. We have our Lot 12 project that we are hopeful that they can get their tax credits. Uh that project will have permanent supportive housing and its uh units in there as well. And there are a couple of other projects that we're evaluating where um once realized it should bring in um more than 100 additional permanent supportive housing units.

[03:26:34] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate that. Okay 4.7, which is my I think my last question. Uh, it's one that's been quite uh fun to talk about is the McKelvey Ballpark, the sightline seating. And this is uh started in 2020. I was there at the grand opening of it and we realized that you could not see home plate. Um I was going past it going to work and I noticed that they were having a tournament there. And uh I thought it was sort of ironic that they're doing a tournament but what's nice about baseball tournaments or any sports tournaments that brings people into Mountain View, they spend their money here they stay here. But the ballpark to have a tournament and you can't see the ballgame from where you're sitting is sort of a detriment and so I'm glad to see that we're getting improvement there. The initial cost is still undetermined from reading the response to my questions and I know the city has uh working with the water district uh have been going, but is there any idea when they'll get an a true established estimated cost and when construction may begin on this project?

[03:28:17] Assistant Public Works Director Ed Arango: Good evening. Um thank you for the question. Uh Edward Arango, Assistant Public Works Director. Um, uh we didn't provide a cost estimate as we didn't have that information on what the final solution of the costs associated with remedying the bleacher sightlines. Um over the next six months we're going to be initiating um that design. We have a project manager assigned to it who will do more evaluation, determination of how to best remedy that, come up with a cost estimate, and then we'll have that information.

[03:28:44] Councilmember John McAlister: So we may have to go back to the water district to apply ask for more money?

[03:28:49] Assistant Public Works Director Ed Arango: Um, we won't know until um we have a cost estimate. Um and that'll that'll drive the conversation going forward.

[03:28:56] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Okay. Thank you. So within the next six months we'll see some progress on this?

[03:29:01] Assistant Public Works Director Ed Arango: Yes, that's correct.

[03:29:03] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, thank you. And I guess I lied because there was my last one 4.9. In the report there was a report that said the SOV um goal for North Bayshore was 45 and we're lowering it down to 35. And there was a second reference to the SOV goal single occupancy uh in North Bayshore was also mentioned 45 and yet in the staff report it mentioned something going about to 35 but in the response to the question they said well we're not really going down to 35 or was 40. So could I get clarity on that one? Please.

[03:30:14] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: Good evening, Jennifer Ng, Public Works Director. So there was a there was a policy that was done several years ago which established how much we want for single occupancy vehicle um uh in the North Bayshore area and that policy at that time was to stay between um I believe it was 35 and 40%. And so we are staying within that timeframe. At this point we're not planning to change uh what was already established at that time.

[03:30:42] Councilmember John McAlister: And right now the present rate is around 60 to 70%?

[03:30:47] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: Um, it is higher than what we want, yes. Um but there is a number of factors that go into that and it talks about it in the staff report but it talks about sort of the return to hybrid um and other factors that are going on um in the business world that are are driving some of those numbers. It's definitely the city's goal to eventually get back down uh to what our policy numbers are.

[03:31:08] Councilmember John McAlister: Mahalo, thank you. I'm done.

[03:31:14] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Wonderful. Thank you. Would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide 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'll take in person speakers first. Each speaker will have three minutes. So we have in person for item 4.14, Mark Linn Hansen. And then we have a virtual um public comment after that.

[03:31:40] Mark Linn Hansen: Hey, good evening. Um I'm Mark Linn Hansen, I'm a resident of Mountain View. And I'm here to speak on uh 4.14, the Rengstorff Avenue safety improvements. Um, I'm a crossing guard for ACMS. We contract with the city, the police department to keep Crittenden School students going to Crittenden School and all the other schools in the in the district, okay. And I handle Rock and Rengstorff Street, Rock Street and Rengstorff Avenue. There are particular issues about that intersection that I get from the kids I cross, from the bicyclists that come across, the pedestrians that come across. You have a situation on Rengstorff where you have a lot of traffic coming either direction but mainly from the Middlefield intersection. They have a very short window before they hit Rock. And Rock Street does have flashing lights perhaps with the pedestrians can can flash them but they're not always working. They're not always working. The other situation is with members of the public aren't educated to the idea that they really should hit the buttons when the lights on Rengstorff are red because while they are green those cars are going to keep coming. And they often keep coming even when the lights are yellow. And um what I've done uh mostly for the last school years I've sent the license plate numbers of cars I see making violations either speeding or in the event of turning left on Rock. They're turning left on Rock while I'm in the crosswalk and children are in the crosswalk. Or the children are across and I'm not out of the crosswalk but they're already starting to turn off. Or they're crossing right behind me behind my back turning off Rock the other way going up Rengstorff. So I wanted to see more interaction with the police department like the Los Altos police when I worked at Edith Avenue and Foothill. They were always in communication with me. They would come by and they'd say how you doing what's going on. They could see where the issues were there. And I took license plate numbers for uh people for almost a year sending to my supervisor she'd send to the police department and they say well at the last point there was one officer who said he was going to come out and visit with us maybe two, three weeks at the end of the year but nobody came. So we'd like to have a little more interaction with the police department with our particular intersection if even if it's just a a meter maid that sits at the corner of Rock Street for 25 minutes in the morning or so. That would keep some of these people from making their illegal left turns while people are in the crosswalk and keep a little of this impatience uh out of the out of the picture. Um that's mainly the thing I'm here to just speak about is that partic-

[03:33:34] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you, sorry the timer was right here. Okay. Thank you so much and we can work to follow up with you um offline. Um any more in person public speakers? All right. Seeing none, we'll move on to our virtual. Uh first I see April Webster, then Mary Daddeo, then Bruce England.

[03:33:56] April Webster: Hi friends. Um thank you for the opportunity to speak. Um I'd like to speak on agenda item 4.14, the Rengstorff Avenue complete street study, and more generally about 4.7. Um I'm really glad to see green elements, green street elements in scope um for Rengstorff. That foundation really matters. But I am concerned that the project name as it's presented tonight is missing something really important and that's the word 'Green'. And this isn't just semantics. Um in the May 13th council meeting the project was titled Rengstorff Avenue Green Complete Street Improvements. In the CIP documents the description called out green stormwater infrastructure, street trees and pollinator landscaping. But tonight both that word is gone as are the specific green elements. And this is really important. Um the devil is always in the details. And when we don't name climate resilience from the start it's easier for those priorities to fall away. The project title sets the tone. It tells consultants, the community, uh future funders what matters. And if we don't lead with green it can quietly slip to the background. We also saw this just a few months ago with the Moffett Boulevard Precise Plan where Pocket Parks and Linear Parks, both green streetscape elements uh which were supported by the community, were left off the list presented to council to vote on on April 22nd, 2025. This was an a missed opportunity to integrate green right from the start. And this the erosion of green features and the disconnect it creates is really concerning for the public. So I'd like to ask that the project name be restored to include the 'Green'. We recommit to green infrastructure wherever we can. Um in the studies that are reviewed I'd like to see the inclusion of the Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan for the consultants. Um I think it's important also that in this project we coordinate with the fire department who is managing um our MRP 3.0 water permit compliance. We have a deadline coming up to meet of 5 acres converted from um impervious to pervious. And I'd really like to see greater transparency in how project scopes are carried forward and what specific green elements we're integrating. Um finally um as I said you know this same sort of concern applies to all of our um capital improvement program um agenda item in 4.7. Um we really need to see green elements start being explicitly referenced in all projects where it matters and to consider them as well. And um I just want to point out I also sent these comments by email earlier um but it was a little bit late. And I just want to finally say if we can't plant a green fut- we can't plant a green future if we keep paving over our plans. Thank you so much for the opportunity to comment.

[03:36:05] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Mary.

[03:36:07] Mary Daddeo: Um good evening. Um it's Mary Daddeo and I just wanted to echo um the the concerns and the recommendations that um that April just um mentioned. Regard- um regarding the dropping of of greening from our active transportation projects. Um greening um adding plants and trees is so important for a number of reasons but one of them that's really caught my attention lately is um of they're needed to make active transportation practical because of the cooling effect that they have. So um when air temperature um is is gets pretty hot like up around 90 or 100 degrees which we is not unusual these days in Mountain View, um we have quite a few days that get like that, the surface temperature can get 50 degrees hotter than the air temperature. So if you've got 90 degrees Fahrenheit which is not unusual for us, you know the surface temperature can be 130 or 140 degrees. And biking and walking um become not very practical for a lot of people at that temperature. So um it those conditions are just really difficult. So uh we need to keep greening um adding of trees and plants especially trees in scope for our active transportation projects. Thank you.

[03:37:22] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Bruce England.

[03:37:28] Bruce England: Thank you Mayor. Um Bruce England, Whisman Station Drive, member of Mountain View Coalition for Sustainable Planning and GreenSpaces Mountain View. And uh yeah just I'll be brief. I just want to echo the last two comments related to active transportation projects and including green and the project descriptions and titles. Even if it seems like a minor point sometimes these things really do define the projects going forward and then we and people who care have to go back and remind that green was intended to be part of the project. Um so this there's a a lot of interest in the community in this and so you're hearing multiple comments tonight but believe me there are other people in the community too who are not speaking tonight who still care about it. And um uh I also just think that the um tying the diff- different plans and projects together just makes sense overall. We advocate for this too, the sort of pushing back against siloing that can happen across departments. Um having those open conversations across departments and making sure that where the sustainability team and community services and public works where they have mutual concerns and um areas of expertise and control do hear these points from members of the community that we represent. Thank you.

[03:38:31] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Seeing no others uh in uh virtual speakers, we'll bring this 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, 4.6, 4.7 and 4.21 and acknowledge the revised minutes for item 4.1. And we have a brave soul in Councilmember Hicks who's going to read everything. So Councilmember Hicks.

[03:39:12] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I am I I am gonna read them all. I I am making a motion to uh to accept the staff report. I would like to know whether I think I want also add for 4.14 add the word 'Green' back into the title. I don't think that's gonna make or into the title. Is that going to make a will that be a problem?

[03:39:44] Public Works Director Jennifer Ing: Hi Jennifer Ng again public works director. So this project is funded it's a study and it's funded by a Caltrans grant. We actually tried to get the word 'Green' into the title for the grant and Caltrans told us no because the word 'Complete' actually includes the word 'Green'. This is a study. We do have the green scope elements within the study itself. Um the actual design and construction of the project you'll note is on the unscheduled list of the five year CIP and that project does have the word 'Green' in it.

[03:40:18] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay. In that in that case I won't push anymore now from the dais. I will push at other times on on green street elements constantly but um and probably later in this meeting as well. Um and I just wanted before I read and this is quite a long time so if anybody doesn't want to hear all the titles it's a good time for a restroom break. Um uh but uh I I just wanted to note the the um theme we've kind of had during public speaking which has all been about um our CIPs and how they relate to uh green elements, shade and safe routes to school. So something that I I hope we'll all take note of tonight and in the future. Um so uh now I will move to um I I will move to accept the staff reports for the all of the consent items including Item 4.2, adopt an ordinance of the City of Mountain View amending Mountain View City Code Article uh 13 centralizing purchasing systems to align the Mountain View City Code with Public Contract Code Section 22034 and make other clarifying amendments to be read in title only further reading waived. Item 4.3, adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain

[02:15:00] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Fiscal year 2025 through 26 appropriations limit to be read in title only, further reading waived. Item 4.4, adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View approving a request to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission for the allocation of fiscal year 2025 through 26 Transportation Development Act Article 3 pedestrian bicycle project funding to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:15:28] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Item 4.5, adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View, one, approving a special event permit and sound amplification permit for the Oktoberfest special event subject to conditions; two, approving the closure of certain public streets in the downtown area on Saturday, October 11, 2025 at 2:30 a.m. through Sunday, October 12, 2025 at 10:00 p.m. for the Oktoberfest special event pursuant to California Vehicle Code Section 21101E; and three, delegating authority to the Community Services Director for future Oktoberfest events to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:16:14] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Item 4.6, adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View and the Shoreline Regional Park Community authorizing the City Manager and Community Manager or designee to amend the amended and restated amphitheater ground lease agreement with Live Nation to extend the term for use of Lot B for safe parking through December 31, 2030 and finding that adoption of this resolution and the actions taken herein are exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, further reading waived.

[02:16:42] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View finding that adoption of this resolution and the actions taken herein are exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act and authorizing the City Manager or designee to amend the lease agreement with the County of Santa Clara for safe parking at Shoreline Amphitheater Lot B to extend the term through June 30, 2026 to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:17:08] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View authorizing the City Manager or designee to execute fiscal year 2025 through 26 funding agreements with the Community Services Agency of Mountain View, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills for housing related services in an amount not to exceed $177,000 and the County of Santa Clara for homeless prevention services and programs in an amount not to exceed $825,000 to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:17:39] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View authorizing the City Manager or designee to amend the grant agreement between the City of Mountain View and the Community Services Agency of Mountain View, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills for capital improvements to current and future Community Service Agency facilities to extend the term by two years to June 30, 2027 and authorizing the City Manager or designee to further extend the term without returning to council upon showing of good cause to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:18:09] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Item 4.7, adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View adopting the proposed amendment to the McKelvey Park detention basin SCVWD coordination CIP 14-54 as identified in the fiscal year 2025 through 26 through fiscal year 2029 through 30 capital improvement program excluding the Shoreline Regional Park Community to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:18:38] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View adopting the recommended fiscal year 2025 through 26 through 2029 through 30 capital improvement program including all amendments to existing projects excluding the Shoreline Regional Park Community to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:18:57] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Adopt a resolution of the Board of Directors of the Shoreline Regional Park Community adopting the recommended fiscal year 2025 through 26 through fiscal year 2029 through 30 capital improvement program for the Mountain View Shoreline Regional Park Community including amendments to existing projects to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:19:18] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Item 4.21, which is the last item. Adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View accepting and appropriating a cannabis tax fund grant from the State of California in the amount of $314,998.25 to help reduce and mitigate the impacts of impaired driving in Mountain View and authorizing the City Manager or designee to take all steps necessary to receive the grant funds to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:19:50] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. Let's vote.

[02:20:04] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great and that passes unanimously. So 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 to the City Clerk now.

[02:20:39] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right. We've got quite the queue so we'll set the timer for two minutes and we'll begin with those in person first. So that will be Mike Meredith, Andy Blank, Gavin Actemeyer, Joshua Nietzel, and Alex Brown. And then we'll move on to virtual.

[02:21:20] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right. Let's just make sure that the timer is all queued up for you. Is it up in the little screen here yet?

[02:21:33] Mike Meredith: Yeah, go ahead.

[02:21:34] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay great.

[02:21:35] Mike Meredith: I'm tasked with persuading a superior court judge to appoint a receiver to bring a small Mountain View condo project into compliance with the building code. The judge would rather not intervene and is asking, where is the city's building department?

[02:21:52] Mike Meredith: My response is that the building department has been distracted by commissioning millions of square feet of residential and commercial space in recent years and that's basically it. As evidence, I'm pointing out that we've had six fires here in multi-tenant residences in the last two years and preliminary indications were that there are only, were only two fires, such fires in the previous five years.

[02:22:19] Mike Meredith: So at this point, I'm concerned that the city's building inspection, code enforcement process has been stretched thin by the growth agenda and that there are problems that are being overlooked. So, thank you for your attention.

[02:22:42] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Let's see. Andy, then Gavin, then Joshua. If you could all queue up that would be great. Then Alex.

[02:22:57] Andy Blank: Councilmembers, my name's Andy Blank. I'm a Mountain View resident, an employee of Google, and an organizer with Google's labor union, the Alphabet Workers Union. And I'm here to ask for your help in getting Google to follow the CalWARN Act.

[02:23:11] Andy Blank: So in April of this year, more than 140 employees in Mountain View were informed that their roles were being eliminated. They had 60 days to find a new role at Google or they would be laid off. More than 90 of them ultimately lost their jobs a little over a week ago. And because that layoff affects more than 50 people in Mountain View, the CalWARN Act requires that Google should have notified the employees, the California Labor Commission, and the Mayor of Mountain View.

[02:23:39] Andy Blank: To date, the Labor Commission has not received a CalWARN notice from Google, and we suspect the City of Mountain View didn't get their copy either. So the CalWARN Act explicitly enables cities to enforce it through civil action requiring the employer to pay employees 60 days worth of wages and benefits. And our union is asking each of the council members to publicly affirm that Google must follow the letter of the law by paying laid off workers the wages and benefits that they're entitled to.

[02:24:08] Andy Blank: And we're further asking the City of Mountain View to let Google know that if it doesn't remedy this situation, the city is willing to take action. Most companies would rather not disclose the details of these mass layoffs. That's why laws like this exist. Doing nothing here sets a precedent that employers in Mountain View and everywhere in California can just ignore the law with impunity. Enforcing the law helps us hold employers accountable and provides transparency around mass layoffs. Thank you for your time.

[02:24:40] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Gavin?

[02:24:43] Gavin Actemeyer: Hello. I'm Gavin Actemeyer. I'm from Santa Clara. I'm also a member of the Alphabet Workers Union and a Google employee. Madam Mayor, I believe Andy just broke the news to you about these layoffs. These layoffs will remove millions of dollars from the local tax base. Google had a legal obligation to have notified you in particular, or your office, in writing of this over two months ago now.

[02:25:12] Gavin Actemeyer: This was widely reported at the time when they were first announced in April but reports couldn't name the exact number of people who were laid off. That's because the notice wasn't filed. That is something that goes in the employer's benefit and to the city and public's detriment. That means that news reports can't write about this properly. That means that the Labor Commission and labor retraining efforts aren't prepared for this.

[02:25:34] Gavin Actemeyer: The WARN Act was specifically written for cities like Mountain View. Cities with single employers that employ a large portion or otherwise provide large portions of revenue to the city and to the people who work there. The WARN Act was built to help the city, built to help the people of the city, and built to help the public and agencies that are meant to help these employees who are laid off. So we're again asking both the city and individually each council member to publicly reaffirm that this is not acceptable, that Google is beholden to the law and that they will be held to account if they continue not to follow the law. Thank you.

[02:26:21] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Joshua?

[02:26:25] Joshua Nietzel: Hello, my name is Joshua Nietzel. I'm a resident of Sunnyvale and also a worker at Google with Dan and Gavin, member of Alphabet Workers Union. I'm here to reaffirm and support what they just said, that I believe it is in the public interest for the City of Mountain View to ensure that Google complies with the law in all ways. Thank you.

[02:26:49] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Alex Brown.

[02:26:54] Alex Brown: Hi friends. April, I heard you. Jack, I missed these. I'm a former Googler and a supporter of unions and labor rights and I would like to stand in solidarity with my former coworkers. I think the City of Mountain View should do what it can to help the people of Mountain View and the employers, especially in the face of a very powerful corporation. All right. Awesome. Bye.

[02:27:27] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Alvin.

[02:27:33] Alvin Kura: Mayor Kamei, Vice Mayor Ramos, Council, City Manager McCarthy, City Staff, the flowers are very becoming. You guys look great.

[02:27:40] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: We're getting ready for summer recess.

[02:27:41] Alvin Kura: We're saying aloha to summer recess. Oh boy, it looks good. So, my name is Alvin Kura. I'm a resident of the Sylvan Park neighborhood. I just wanted to just make a comment briefly on the California Street project. It's looking good so far. I'm very grateful that the road is smooth, but I was given some pause, I guess last week when I drove along it with the Alamo Draft House Cinema now open, which used to be the Icon Theater, and the new project, the seven-story project approved.

[02:28:06] Alvin Kura: I'm wondering whether or not that particular section of California Street between San Antonio and Rengstorff should be dieted. Of course, the area between Rengstorff and Shoreline, you know, what happened to Mr. Ware in 2012, I think we understand very well why we have to look after safety there. So I just have a request for the Council to just keep an eye on how the traffic patterns flow as those businesses develop because the villages in San Antonio may have to have more than one freeway access to it.

[02:28:30] Alvin Kura: San Antonio's freeway complex is kind of bad, right? It's pretty bumpy and the ons are bad, whereas the Rengstorff complex has more ramps on, what with Charleston and Old Middlefield around there, so you can get on and off more easily. So if you can keep your eye on it, that would be great. Thanks you guys.

[02:28:48] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. All right. And then we'll move on to virtual public comment. We have Bruce England.

[02:28:54] Bruce England: Thank you, Mayor. Bruce England again on Whisman Station Drive. Two comments. One, just want to express my support also for the workers at Google who are affected by the latest actions. And as a member of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition Mountain View team, we're actually Mountain View and Los Altos, I'm hearing quite a bit from people about vehicles continuing to park in the bike areas on El Camino.

[02:29:23] Bruce England: And the real problem is that the signage and the red curbing and all of that is somewhat ambiguous. So if people understand, they can't park there. Street parking, that entire length of El Camino in Mountain View, then they wouldn't park there. But because of the ambiguity, they might continue to do it. Then it puts the onus on the police department to enforce and ticket and they can only do so much, right?

[02:29:48] Bruce England: So collaboration between Public Works and Caltrans and the police department to make this work will be really important. Of course, we don't want bicyclists to have to pull out into the vehicle lane on El Camino to get past the vehicles. One thing to attempt that on Middlefield, it's something else again to attempt it on a place like El Camino. Thank you.

[02:30:10] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. So seeing no others in person or virtually, I'll close public comment and move on to Item 6, which is our public hearing. Item 6.1 is the adoption of fiscal year 2025-26 budgets, funding for fiscal year 25-26 capital improvement projects and fiscal years 2025 to 27 council work plan. City Manager McCarthy will kick us off and then our Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone and Assistant Finance and Administrative Services Director Grace Tsang 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.

[02:31:49] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: All right. Good evening Mayor Kamei, Vice Mayor Ramos and Councilmembers. Derek Rampone, your Finance and Administrative Services Director and like you said, I'm joined by Grace Tsang, the Assistant Director. So what you have in front of you tonight is the final step in the adoption of the 25-26 budget.

[02:32:13] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Just as a couple reminders, this is a structurally balanced budget. We did propose a few limited number of new ongoing positions in the budget. It really focuses on our long-term service delivery, Council strategic priorities, the innovation and improvement of city operations and downtown and economic vitality.

[02:32:36] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: We did make some improvements to the actual budget document this year as you noted earlier. We did reduce the document by about 200 pages, I'm happy to report. We consolidated and streamlined some of the department pages. So we basically got rid of any duplicate information that might have been in numerous places in the budget. And we've modernized the look and feel and design of the budget as well. So glad to report that.

[02:33:05] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: As you're all aware, the budget process really starts in November of each year. Each department is asked to propose budget changes or propose changes to their budget and those are reviewed right around after the holiday season with the budget team, including the City Manager's office. In February we bring the mid-year budget update to the City Council for review and any possible budget amendments are included in that.

[02:33:37] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: This year on April 8th, we actually had a new step in the process of the budget development where we provided a preliminary review of the 25-26 recommended budget and that's where we received input from the council on some of our proposals. In on June 10th, just last meeting we had our first public hearing for the recommended budget and now here we are on the 24th where we have a couple recommendations, a couple motions in regards to the 25-26 budget adoption including the appropriation of funds for the CIP, which was just approved, and also the fiscal years 25-27 strategic priorities and work plan from Council.

[02:34:28] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Directing your attention to the General Operating Fund for 25-26, we are showing a small operating balance of $232,000 for next year. In future years as you can see on this slide, we are projecting some nominal deficits in some of the outer years after next year. As we continue to look at revenues, staff has also been looking at ways to analyze the overhead and other expenditures of the general fund. And as we finalize that analysis, we hope to bring some positive news or a more favorable update in the February mid-year budget update in February of 26.

[02:35:29] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: There were two adjustments that were made that just didn't make it in time for the June 10th meeting and those are shown on the screen. It's actually one, one of them is $400,000 that we're proposing to be appropriated from the budget contingency reserve for one of the CIP projects, the solar projects. This really is only to be used if our funding from the Inflation Reduction Act does not come through. And so obviously as of now, we're still anticipating that funding, but we wanted to put this in just in case there is an issue and Congress reverses any of the decisions on the Inflation Reduction Act.

[02:36:09] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: The other item is $40,000 of rebudgeted funds for the community for all grant program for Phase 2 of the fiscal year 25-26 program. As mentioned earlier, the CIP appropriations is also included in this item tonight. This section is included in the recommended budget starting on page 6-1 and contains the details of each of these categories and can be referenced for further details.

[02:36:37] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: These projects, as a reminder, these projects were discussed at the March 25th and May 13th CIP study sessions. And as I mentioned earlier, the CIP was just approved tonight as item number 4.7. Now Council is being asked to appropriate the funds. Also included in this item tonight is the adoption of the Council strategic priorities and fiscal year 25-27 Council work plan. As you can see, there are 16 projects in the work plan to advance Council's strategic priorities.

[02:37:14] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: And mentioned earlier, there are three motions included with this item. They can be seen on the following slides, but it does include adopting the recommended budget for fiscal year 25-26 including the Shoreline Regional Park Community, the salary plans for 25-26, and adopting the strategic priorities and work plan for fiscal years 25 through 27. And that's all of presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions.

[02:37:44] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you very much. Would any member of the Council have a question? Councilmember McAlister.

[02:37:55] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, thanks. So there was one mention about Council payroll included in there about, so as in the staff report, you don't have to look into it. Question is, did you happen to notice what other cities are paying their council members?

[02:38:15] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: Finance has not done a in-depth detail look on what others are being paid. So no, I have not.

[02:38:21] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, that's all. Thanks.

[02:38:24] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay, great. Any other Councilmember have a question? Not seeing any, I can 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 star nine on your phone. I am not seeing any in person or virtual public comment. So I'll take the, I'll close public comment and bring the item back for Council deliberation and action and note that a motion to approve the recommendation should also include reading the title of the resolutions attached to the report. And we do have a motion by Councilmember McAlister, seconded by Councilmember Hicks. So I can turn it over to you Councilmember McAlister if you'd like to read.

[02:39:38] Councilmember John McAlister: There used to be a way where you just say as written, so now we have to read everything, huh?

[02:39:42] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Yes.

[02:39:44] Councilmember John McAlister: Thanks. Okay. 6.1. Okay, thank you. Adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View appropriating $200,000 for capital improvement project 14.54 McKelvey Park detention basin, Silicon Valley Water Department, and authorizing the Finance and Administrative Service Director to make adjustments and correction to capital improvement program amounts and determine final capital improvement program amount based on Council's direction to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:40:24] Councilmember John McAlister: Adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View adopting the fiscal year 2025-26 city budget; two, appropriating funds to cover expenditures approval by said budget; three, authorizing the City Manager to execute a funding agreement consistent with nonprofit funding appropriations in the adopted budget; four, adjust the business license tax amount by the annual consumer price index in accordance with section 18.7 of the City Municipal Code; and five, authorize the Finance Administrative Service Director to adjust appropriations in various funds as needed to align with actual revenue earned and received as specifically set forth herein.

[02:41:12] Councilmember John McAlister: Make final adjustments to the community stabilization and fair rent act and mobile home rent stabilization ordinance budget and fees, adjust appropriations related to the Graham Middle School site based on billed invoices and determine final budget amounts based on Council's direction to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:41:39] Councilmember John McAlister: Adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View amending the regular and hourly salary plans for fiscal year 2025-26 to be read in title only, further reading waived. Adopt a resolution of the Board of Directors of the Shoreline Regional Community, one, adopt the fiscal year 2025-26 Shoreline Regional Park Community budget; two, appropriate funds to cover expenditures approved by said budget; and three, authorize the Treasurer to adjust appropriations as needed to make payments in accordance with the tax sharing agreement with Santa Clara County and the Education Enhancement Reserve Joint Powers Agreement, to align appropriations with actual revenue earned and received as specifically set forth herein and determine final budget amounts based on Board direction.

[02:42:22] Councilmember John McAlister: Adopt a resolution of the City of Mountain View Capital Improvement Financing Authority adopting the fiscal year 2025-26 budget for debt services payments, appropriating funds to cover expenditures approved by said budget and authorizing the MVCIFA, which is the Mountain View Capital Improvement Financing Authority Treasurer, to make budget adjustments and determine final budget amounts based on the Mountain View City Capital Improvement Financing Authority Board direction to be read in title only, further reading waived.

[02:42:59] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you, Councilmember Hicks.

[02:43:01] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I'll second that and also I just wanted to thank staff and the City Manager for the way the budget and associated, the CIPs, the work plan has been handled this year. I think we had some early presentation, sort of a preview and I think that allowed us to make much more meaningful comments this time. And for those of you who didn't make our exciting previous meetings on this subject, the Council did ask lots of questions then and give lots of feedback so it's not always this quick. This is carefully considered. Thank you.

[02:43:44] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thanks. Councilmember Clark.

[02:43:46] Councilmember Chris Clark: Yeah, I just for the record, thank you Councilmember McAlister for reading all of that. Just for the record, the motion is the staff recommendation which included the reading of the titles of the resolutions and we're taking, instead of voting separately, we're taking a single vote on motions that include the actions of the City of Mountain View, the Mountain View Shoreline Regional Park Community and the City of Mountain View Capital Improvement Financing Authority, on bunk it sounds like.

[02:44:19] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Yes, thank you, thank you for clarifying. I was, it was listed motion 1, 2, 3, so I wanted to make sure they encapsulated all of that plus the reading of the resolution. So appreciate that. All right. Seeing no other colleagues in the queue, let's vote.

[02:44:49] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Wonderful and that passes unanimously. Thanks again to staff. So we'll move to item 6.2, modification of 777 West Middlefield Road below market rate housing. Housing Director Wayne Chen 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.

[02:45:26] Housing Director Wayne Chen: Good evening Mayor and Council. I'm Wayne Chen, your Housing Director. Thank you for your time tonight to review considerations for modifying the below market rate housing requirements for the residential project at 777 West Middlefield Road. A brief background. Council approved this project back in May of 2019. It was a gatekeeper project and it was approved with a BMR alternative mitigation. The developer, Miramar Capital, partnered with the Mountain View Whisman School District to build the BMR units in a separate standalone building. The BMR units were financed with school bonds, Measure T. The goal for the BMR alternative mitigation was to allow higher income levels to achieve middle income housing and to achieve the purpose of attracting and retaining teachers and staff in a high cost area.

[02:46:27] Housing Director Wayne Chen: The total project has 716 units. 20% of the units are BMR units, again delivered in a standalone building. That's 144 units, of which 124 units are for the school district staff and teachers and 20 units for city staff. The school district has achieved some key milestones over the past few months. The Staff Housing Oversight Committee was created to oversee the project and there have been several meetings over the past few months. There was a great ribbon cutting event in October of last year to celebrate the project. In December, the BMR application process began for both teachers, school district staff and city staff and tenants began moving in in February.

[02:47:27] Housing Director Wayne Chen: Over the past few months, city staff have been discussing with the school district some challenges that they're experiencing filling the moderate income units. As you can see on this chart, there are both low income units, 80% AMI, and moderate income units, 120% AMI. The majority of the units are moderate income units and there's currently a 93% vacancy rate on those units. There's been really two key barriers that have led to the low lease up for the BMR units. First you'll see that the current 120% AMI levels, what they are adjusted by household size, and some of the key comments have been that while an individual could potentially qualify for the units at these levels, it's very difficult to qualify if there is a dual income household.

[02:48:28] Housing Director Wayne Chen: And if there is an initial qualification, right now there's a grace period that if a household becomes over income, there's a one year grace period to find alternative housing. And that has, those two factors have led to the units being less desirable. So basically the requests from the developer and the Mountain View Whisman School District have been related to these two items. One is to consider increasing the AMI level to a 150% AMI level, which could help initial qualification, and then also extending the one year grace period to three years to allow more time for a household to find alternative housing and to help support school district operations.

[02:49:15] Housing Director Wayne Chen: There's some key findings that went into evaluating this request. First of all is just again the high vacancy rate of the moderate income units, they're just not being filled and the rents are necessary to keep the project financially viable. There's also been a recent school district survey that showed that at the higher AMI levels, the interest would significantly increase for the units. Again, a higher income level can help with the qualification and keep folks qualified and not become over income.

[02:49:48] Housing Director Wayne Chen: The extended grace period again helps with the attractiveness of the units, provides more stability, provides more time for teachers to find alternative housing if they become over income, and it supports the district operations by helping to attract and retain staff because the BMR units are more beneficial at that point. It can help with operations to actually fill hard-to-fill positions. And the school district does provide a lot of investments in its teachers through professional development and other efforts. And if a teacher would become over income and would have to leave the area in the school district, then the school district wouldn't be able to really see the benefits of those investments.

[02:50:30] Housing Director Wayne Chen: And then finally, a more of a qualitative aspect of the ability for teachers to live in the community in which they teach helps strengthen the connections with the students and the community and it brings along those other benefits that come with living and working in the same place, reduced traffic congestion, reduced commute times. Just a few other considerations to note is that there is actually a specific state Teacher Housing Act that was created to establish a policy around advancing and supporting teacher housing and providing some flexibility to do so. Again, the BMR alternative mitigation was intended to help attract and retain teachers and staff.

[02:51:14] Housing Director Wayne Chen: Just a note that the provisions of the project does include a waterfall provision that if the units are not able to be leased up by the district or the city or other school districts, that they can waterfall to the general public. And those general public units, if council were to support these requests, they would just stay with the provisions that they have currently, which is the 120% AMI level and the one year grace period. Finally, just to note that the Sevens is a unique project because it is a teacher housing project and it qualifies for these special considerations and other projects that are not similarly situated wouldn't have these special considerations accorded to them.

[02:51:57] Housing Director Wayne Chen: If council supports and approves the recommendations, there are two steps that we would have to take. The project itself, the underlying project, has a conditions of approval 66 which has the AMI level which would need to be updated from 120% to 150%. There's also a BMR regulatory agreement that governs the project and that includes among other things the AMI level and the grace period and then that document would also need to be updated as well to reflect the changes. I won't read the recommendation but the recommendation is to support the approved, the requested two changes of increasing the AMI levels from 120% AMI to 150% AMI and extending the grace period from one year to three years. That concludes my presentation. Happy to answer any questions you may have.

[02:52:47] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you very much. Do members of the council have any questions? Councilmember Ramirez.

[02:52:56] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate the presentation from staff and the responses provided to the council in advance of the meeting. I just wanted to clarify one thing. The responses suggest that each of the sections in the Teacher Housing Act ought to be considered I guess independently. So for instance, affordable housing or affordable rental housing is defined in section 53572 and the responses to the council question seemed to suggest that that only applies to section 53572 and not to the other parts of the Teacher Housing Act. Is that a fair understanding?

[02:53:45] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: Why don't I jump in here and explain those responses. So when you read the provisions of that act, that term is defined in one section, the 53572 affordable housing. It's just a specific definition. And then when you go to the other provisions of the act, if the term is not used in that provision, it wouldn't be applicable, right? So the term affordable rental housing is used in section 53574, but it is not used in 53573, which provides broader ability for establishing affordable housing for teachers and school district staff.

[02:54:29] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: And so, yes, it's not that you read the provision separately, it's just that the defined term, if it's not used in the provision, then it's not applicable in that provision. And so when we were citing to referencing 53573, we were stating that that provision was drafted more broadly to provide almost an exception or an additional method for establishing affordable housing for this group of persons. And so the provisions, the act should be read together, but that term was not used in the particular provision we were referencing.

[02:55:08] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Okay, thank you.

[02:55:10] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Councilmember Showalter.

[02:55:14] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, I was curious about how the renting out of these units is expected to go now. I mean so if we pass this tonight, that will change the rules and people will be able to apply, I take it. But, and then the other thing I wondered is, you know, teachers usually do things on a school year. And I would assume most teachers would have gotten their housing all set up last summer at least for this school year. So the fact that we didn't open the apartments for renting until February, how big a barrier or a sort of a bump is that view, those two things?

[02:55:59] Housing Director Wayne Chen: Yeah, thank you for the question. Just on the first part, based on the school district's information, they believe that the increased AMI level and the grace period would help a lot. We would still have to see how many folks apply and go through the screening process as well. But they do see a significant potential benefit including the information that they received from the recent survey with their teachers. Regarding your second question, I believe the Superintendent is on the line and perhaps he could speak more to the operational aspects of your second question.

[02:56:41] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Hi Dr. Baer.

[02:56:43] Dr. Jeff Baer: Hi, this is Jeff Baer, Superintendent of Mountain View Whisman School District. In response to Showalter's question, yes, I think we would see, typically see a greater opportunity for teachers to change residences in alignment with the school year, right? So summertime being a more natural time for teachers to choose to move or staff to choose to move. So yes, I think that's more on the cycle. Whether it will play out is something we certainly hope.

[02:57:25] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And Mr. Chen, another question I have is what, how much time are we going to allow to go by offering these units up to teachers and city staff before we go into the waterfall process?

[02:57:44] Housing Director Wayne Chen: Thanks for the question. So there are provisions in the BMR agreement in terms of the process for the waterfall. I believe this is still a piece where the specific time frames would just be developed and coordinated on with the school district and we can flush those out further after this meeting in terms of time frames.

[02:58:04] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Councilmember McAlister.

[02:58:06] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, I sort of have the same question, but I notice that we have the President of the School Board here in the council chambers and I wonder if Mr. Lambert could answer a question for us please?

[02:58:18] Councilmember John McAlister: Well if you came up here, I'll be glad to ask it to you.

[02:58:33] Councilmember John McAlister: Aren't we lucky that you're here today.

[02:58:39] Bill Lambert: Bill Lambert, President of the Mountain View Whisman School District.

[02:58:46] Councilmember John McAlister: My question is once you get this rolling, do you have a time frame that you will release, going along with Councilmember Showalter, when you would release the units at the 150 level to the other school districts?

[02:58:56] Bill Lambert: We haven't discussed that and I can't answer that question.

[02:59:02] Councilmember John McAlister: So I mean, your vacancy rate is pretty low, so I was just wondering, you do you have a time frame that you're going to keep it in house to get as much as you can or is the financial realities going to kick in and says we need to start getting some people?

[02:59:17] Bill Lambert: Well I think following up on what...

[06:00:00] Councilmember John McAlister: Or said it will help to understand how the vacancies are filled with the new teachers coming in this year and I think we'll have a better idea after that how many vacancies remain and then we'll have to decide what to do going forward.

[06:00:15] Housing Director Wayne Chen: So it's pretty fluid then, you have just see what happens to...

[06:00:19] Councilmember John McAlister: Well within the next couple of months the school is going to start again so we will know how many teachers are moving in or not moving in.

[06:00:26] Housing Director Wayne Chen: And then you'll open it up to the, so you potentially around September may open it up to other school districts like the high school district then potentially?

[06:00:36] Councilmember John McAlister: That was written in the waterfall provision. Exactly what we will do and how we will do it, we have not discussed that yet.

[06:00:43] Housing Director Wayne Chen: Okay. Thank you.

[06:00:45] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. Any other colleagues have questions? All right. Seeing none, I'll bring the item for public comment. If any member of the public has public comment on this item, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or press star nine on your phone. And we will can display a timer, but I'm not seeing any. So I'll close public comment and bring the item back for Council deliberation and action and note that a motion to approve the recommendation should also include reading the title of the resolution attached to the report. And we have a motion by Councilmember Clark seconded by Vice Mayor Ramos. So Councilmember Clark.

[06:01:27] Councilmember Chris Clark: Yeah, the motion is to adopt the staff recommendation which is to adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View one amending the City of Mountain View resolution number 18329 to modify condition of approval COA number 66 to increase the income eligibility for moderate income housing units from 120% of the area median income to 150% of the area median income, also known as AMI, for qualifying Mountain View Whisman School District and City employees finding that pursuant to California Code of Regulations Section 15060 C2, the proposed modification of COA number 66 is not subject to the California Environmental Quality Act and three authorizing the City Manager or their designee to amend the below market rate BMR regulatory agreement to increase the income eligibility for moderate income housing units from 120% AMI to 150% AMI for qualifying Mountain View Whisman School District and City employees and extend the amount of time Mountain View Whisman School District teachers and staff have to vacate an income restricted BMR unit after exceeding the income limit from one year to three years to be read in title only further reading waived.

[06:02:39] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. I see Councilmember Showalter in the queue.

[06:02:45] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yes, I just wanted to make sure that we took the opportunity to to thank the staff and everyone who has been involved in this process. This is a very unusual project and I think that's one of the reasons why it hasn't gone quite as smoothly in terms of renting up as as it might have. It's a new, you know, this is sort of a new kind of affordable housing for us and and it's not common at all around the state. There are a few of them but very few. So we should be proud that this project is going forward and it's been built. It certainly is a lovely building and it's a great example of the positive collaboration that we can have between the City and the school district. And I think we should all really be celebrating that because it's I mean it's just so important. We have the same kids and the same community and it's very important that we work together. And then in addition to that, I wanted to say a special thank you to our colleague Lucas Ramirez who has served on the the coordination committee with the school district to work out some of these kinks that have come up in the last few months and he will be working on it I'm sure for quite a while actually. No?

[06:04:15] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I will let the Superintendent or the Board President correct me, but I think the intention is to retire the oversight committee and then a successor body will be responsible for for the operational...

[06:04:28] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Okay. Well anyway, thank you so much for your service. We really appreciate it.

[06:04:32] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All the things he's doing there are giving him grey hair I'm sure. All right, so let's take the vote.

[06:04:44] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you and that motion passes unanimously. Appreciate staff. We'll move on to item 7 which is new business. Item 7.1 is our water supply reliability contract actions. Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel and Assistant Public Works Director Lisa Au 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 a staff presentation.

[06:05:45] Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel: Is that better? Good evening Honorable Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the Council. I'm Elizabeth Flegel, Water Resources Manager. Joined here by Lisa Au, Assistant Public Works Director. And today we'll be discussing a proposed package of water supply reliability contract actions.

[06:06:06] Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel: These recommended actions pertain to the City's water supply from San Francisco which is the primary water source for the City of Mountain View. The proposed package includes two discrete but related actions. One action is to adopt an amendment to the water supply agreement between San Francisco and its 26 wholesale customers which includes the City of Mountain View. The second action is to adopt a drought allocation plan between the wholesale customers. This second action is independent of San Francisco.

[06:06:44] Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel: The San Francisco Regional Water System is governed by the water supply agreement or WSA between San Francisco and the wholesale customers. The WSA determines how water and system costs are allocated between the parties. Today's actions relate to only a few aspects of the WSA. Specifically, the minimum purchase requirement for agencies with a secondary imported water supply and drought allocations at two levels. Tier 1 which allocates water between San Francisco and the wholesale customers collectively and Tier 2 which allocates water amongst the wholesale customers individually through a separate agreement that is referenced in but not directly included in the WSA.

[06:07:24] Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel: This chart shows the use of Mountain View's four different water supplies over the last quarter century. San Francisco water is shown in dark blue, Valley Water supply in light blue, groundwater in grey and recycled water in purple. As one of the four wholesale customers with access to a secondary imported water supply, in our case from Valley Water, the City of Mountain View has a minimum purchase requirement from San Francisco, which is currently set just below 9 million gallons per day represented by the dashed red line.

[06:07:57] Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel: Although originally intended to prevent source shifting to other imported supplies, over the past 15 years Mountain View has struggled to meet its minimum purchase requirement due mostly to a back-to-back sequence of severe droughts where the City was required or requested to conserve water. As a result Mountain View has paid over $15 million dollars for water we could not use. The bill last fiscal year was nearly 4 million. These charges are inconsistent with the original intent of the minimum purchase requirement and in direct conflict with other provisions of the WSA that support conservation and the development of local water supplies including groundwater and recycled water.

[06:08:37] Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel: The proposed WSA amendment will provide several changes to address the City's minimum purchase problem. The first, it will reset the minimum purchase quantities or MPQs at 80% of current non-drought usage, with an opportunity for review in 10 years. Second, it will allow agencies to ease back into their MPQs after a drought. And third, it will create a collective waiver for years when the aggregate usage from all four minimum purchase agencies exceeds the total MPQs, similar to a cell phone family plan.

[06:09:14] Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel: These changes are expected to eliminate future charges for unused water and realign the minimum purchase requirement with its original intent. The City's reset MPQ is shown here by the solid red line which you will note is below the City's recent usage of San Francisco water. Today's actions also affect the allocation of water during droughts. Water shortage allocation is governed at two levels. Tier 1 which is included in the WSA distributes water to San Francisco and the wholesale customers collectively. Tier 2 allocates water between the wholesale customers individually as a standalone agreement separate from the WSA.

[06:09:54] Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel: The recommended WSA amendment would add a collective waiver for Tier 1 compliance very similar to the MPQ family plan previously discussed. The recommended Tier 2 plan is the specific method used to allocate water between the individual wholesale customers which I will describe in detail in the following slides. The proposed Tier 2 plan is based on four policy principles. It aims to provide for basic health and safety needs, to minimize adverse economic impacts, to provide predictability and flexibility, and to incentivize water use efficiency and the development of local alternative water supplies.

[06:10:32] Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel: The Tier 2 plan accomplishes these goals by allocating water in a stepwise fashion for residential, commercial and seasonal irrigation uses with an extra bump in allocation based on agencies actual use and their individual supply guarantees or ISGs which are documented in the WSA but are not affected by the actions being considered today. The negotiated package requires concessions from all agencies agreed upon by agency appointed representatives through more than 60 meetings over two and a half years.

[06:11:02] Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel: The Tier 2 plan must be unanimously adopted by all 26 wholesale customers. The WSA amendment must be adopted by all wholesale customers and by San Francisco. In conclusion, today's recommendation includes the adoption of two resolutions, one to approve the WSA amendment and one to approve the new Tier 2 drought allocation plan contingent on passage of the WSA amendment. I'd be happy to take any questions.

[06:12:30] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you very much. Does any member of the Council have a question? Councilmember McAlister.

[06:12:40] Councilmember John McAlister: What is our independent supply guarantee amount?

[06:12:45] Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel: 12.46 million gallons per day.

[06:12:48] Councilmember John McAlister: Has that changed over the years?

[06:12:50] Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel: Um in 2017 I believe we sold 1 million gallons per day to the City of East Palo Alto.

[06:12:58] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Thank you.

[06:13:00] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. Councilmember Showalter.

[06:13:05] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yes, I just thought this would be a great opportunity for you to share with people kind of why our water use has continued to decline even though our population's gone up.

[06:13:18] Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel: Well I think there are a lot of contributing factors. Um certainly the increased uh conservation both in terms of response to drought and in terms of long-term changes um to building efficiency to landscape efficiency and aesthetic aesthetics. Also we have been developing our own alternative supplies through recycled water um and general water use efficiency has im- improved pretty greatly over time.

[06:13:53] Councilmember Pat Showalter: So so it's it's really I mean when I when I look at these figures our our population has has more than doubled over this time period. Um I'm pretty sure it ha- or over the time period of your graph. And um but our our water use has has has declined and I think that's important for us to remember that that this conservation has really worked. And um the changes in the building code like we all have low flow toilets now. I mean those things um we we're much more conscious about using water. Those things really work. And um I just at these times I think it's important to to share uh this success and it's not I mean you can see it in the numbers. It's very very clear. So thank you very much for taking care of this. That was my question.

[06:15:20] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. Councilmember Hicks.

[06:15:24] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So uh Council asks questions of staff in written form before um before we ask you verbally and and one of the questions which I I have to say I got late in the day and skimmed but it sounds like we have been paying uh multiple millions of dollars in fines for not using enough water, a little contradictory as you've been saying, and that in the future you think we will not be paying any fines? Did I read that right or do you think in the future we may occasionally pay some?

[06:15:55] Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel: The way the minimum purchase amendment is set up is it is designed to avoid future uh future fines, future payments for unused water. So we have the three pronged approach um which we believe will um eliminate the unused water charges.

[06:16:15] Councilmember Alison Hicks: You think it'll eliminate them completely?

[06:16:17] Water Resources Manager Elizabeth Flegel: We sure hope so. We did build in also uh a 10 year review so if the problem were to reoccur in 10 years then there is a process by which we can open up that conversation and um address future issues.

[06:16:35] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Good because that was gonna be my next question. Um and I had always thought that because we're working on recycled water and you want to encourage things like that that maybe it should be directly tied to the production of that but if it's going to if it's going to potentially eliminate all the fees anyway that seems good enough to me. Thank you.

[06:16:55] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. So seeing uh no other colleagues in the queue, I'll open up public comment. Would any member of the public on the line like to provide comment on this item or anyone in person? I see uh one member in person. So we will uh each speaker will have three minutes. Hello to our old colleague. Hello.

[06:17:20] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Good evening. I'm Lisa Matichak and I'm here tonight to express my sincere appreciation to Elizabeth Flegel who as part of her role here at the City is to also be the water management representative to BAWSCA. I was on the I was the City's representative on the BAWSCA board for six years and saw some of the results of your great work. I'm sure a lot of other work was going on that benefited the City in other ways. I recognize that tonight the Council is discussing two significant items that Ms. Flegel has been working on uh that pertain to the City's supply of water from the San Francisco PUC. Uh but I want to focus on the amendment to the water supply agreement between the SFPUC and the 26 members of BAWSCA. I think Ms. Flegel has always had the goal of doing everything she possibly could to eliminate the penalties the City was paying for not purchasing the minimum amount of water uh that the City was contractually obligated to purchase from the SFPUC.

[06:18:24] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Um and I'm sure she encountered many challenges and it took her a while to accomplish this but I greatly appreciate that you never gave up, that you stuck with it, and now this is finally coming to fruition as long as all the other 26 or 25 jurisdictions approve this. Um Ms. Flegel is tenacious and she strategically and skillfully worked with the other water management representatives to BAWSCA to negotiate the change to the water supply agreement. The change as you've heard tonight reduces the City's minimum purchase requirement and in effect eliminates the penalties. It does require all the 26 jurisdictions to that purchase water from the SFPUC to approve this and I encourage all of them to do just that.

[06:19:11] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Um it seems like it benefits everyone and um I really do want to make sure this passes. Uh the City's the City and the residents of Mountain View have done a superb job of reducing their water use and this change to the minimum purchase requirement recognizes those conservation efforts. Um we should all celebrate Ms. Flegel for doing such a superb job on the new agreement and on behalf of the residents of Mountain View, thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.

[06:19:59] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Wonderful. Um and um Lisa do you mind telling the public what BAWSCA stands for? In case they don't they don't know. Sorry I just realized that we've been using the acronym...

[06:20:15] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency and I believe Councilmember Showalter is now the representative.

[06:20:20] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Yes. Thank you. And a big thank you to you as well for your six years of service on behalf of the City of Mountain View because it's a team effort between staff and the colleagues our colleagues currently but their colleagues that came before so thank you so much for your work because it's been a long arduous road to get here so thank you.

[06:20:39] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: It was my pleasure but really the credit goes to Ms. Flegel. I was there cheering her on and trying to support her but it was really Ms. Flegel who did the boatload of the work.

[06:20:49] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. All right I'm not seeing any other public comment in person or virtually so I'll turn it over to Councilmember Clark who has made the motion and Councilmember Showalter who seconded it.

[06:21:05] Councilmember Chris Clark: Yeah I I just I also want to start by thanking Ms. Flegel and former Mayor Matichak. This is one of those things where when I first got on Council you learn about all these strange things that are going on you would have no idea that were going on and this is one of the most head scratching things because it we're you know when uh when I was first on Council we we very quickly got into a severe drought condition and then you learn that essentially the system is is set up to to punish you for con- conserving water um and and we ended up in this world where there were secondary markets we were selling water rights to East Palo Alto and um and then you of course try and figure out how to how to fix it and you're like well these are long-term contracts and you know you could maybe change it someday if you got 26 agencies to agree to something and and and all these other things but um and here we are to because of the tenacity of of of of folks like former Mayor Matichak and and Ms. Flegel and and the team um and everyone who was working behind this we we actually we're going to get it done hopefully uh fingers crossed that everyone else uh approves this and we'll be sav- not only will be saving uh probably millions of dollars over time we will also um be incentivized or or the the incentive structure will adjust so that we aren't being all these agencies aren't being punished for doing the right thing which is conserving water over time. So um thank you all again for this hopefully hopefully this is um uh and and the mechanism to to address this in the future is really important because obviously that mechanism didn't exist or else we wouldn't had to go through all this so.

[06:22:49] Councilmember Chris Clark: Um I will move that we um adopt this staff recommendation which is to adopt a resolution of the City of uh Council of the City of Mountain View approving an amendment to the amended and restated water supply agreement between the City and County of San Francisco and wholesale water customers in Alameda County San Mateo County and Santa Clara County to be read in title only further reading waived and adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View approving the Tier 2 drought response implementation plan pursuant to section 3.11.C of the amended and restated water supply agreement with San Francisco to be read in title only further reading waived.

[06:23:29] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great thank you. Councilmember Showalter.

[06:23:30] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yes I too would like to thank um uh uh Ms. Flegel for all of her efforts. It has been a many years effort and uh it it was one of those things that when you learned about it you just kind of I mean it it was just really hard to believe uh that that uh it would be so difficult to change but um getting 26 jurisdictions to agree on something is very difficult. But um all of the paperwork has been put together and the first and maybe the hardest vote was to get the San Francisco PUC uh the San Francisco Board of Supervisors um to approve this and that has happened and I think a few other cities have already approved it. We are the third or fourth I think. And it's I I've seen a a a a potential schedule and if everything goes well which uh uh it will um we will get this done in the next three or four months. So um when the we will be reporting back as as needed about how you know the progress but it's uh this is this is our job to vote for it. So thank you very much Elizabeth and and and Lisa for all the work. And and Lisa Matichak and also our previous BAWSCA reps I think the one before Lisa was Mike um Kasperzak and undoubtedly it that was being worked on then as well because this has gone on a long long time. Thank you.

[06:24:30] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great thank you. Um let's vote.

[06:24:38] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great and that passes unanimously. Thank you again to staff. We'll move on to item 8 which is unfinished business. Item 8.1 is our new Council policy G-9 gatekeeper application policy and procedures. Community Development Director Christian Murdock and Assistant Community Development Director Amber Blizinski will present the item. If you would like to speak on this item in person please submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk now. We'll begin with the staff presentation. Colleagues are asking for a break. Um so we'll let them get set up and we'll take a 5 minute break. Okay.

[06:31:58] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right everyone we're going to reconvene and we'll uh begin item 8 unfinished business item 8.1 is our new Council policy G-9 gatekeeper application policy and procedures. Community Development Director Christian Murdock and Assistant Community Development Director Amber Blizinski will present the item. If you would like to speak on this item in person please submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk now. We'll begin with a staff presentation.

[06:32:28] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Good evening Honorable Mayor Vice Mayor and Council my name is Christian Murdock and I'm the Community Development Director. I'm joined on the dais by Assistant Community Development Director Amber Blizinski and also in the Council chambers by Assistant Community Development Director Lindsay Hagan.

[06:32:50] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: As we begin our discussion, I want to just set the baseline of information by explaining what a gatekeeper application is. A gatekeeper application is a development project that requires a legislative amendment such as a change to the City's general plan or zoning map or standards because the project as proposed would not comply with the adopted regulations. The City's gatekeeper policy stems from 2001 when City Council determined a mechanism should exist to manage staff resources expended on processing of applications that require legislative amendments. In June 2023, Council placed an update to the gatekeeper policy on its two-year priority work plan. Council held study sessions and other discussions of the policy in 2023 and 2024. The Council held an authorization hearing in September 2024 using the existing policy and that was the most recent gatekeeper authorization. More recently, the Council policy and procedures committee or CPPC met in March 2025 to review the draft policy you're considering tonight.

[06:33:50] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: When considering an update to the gatekeeper policy, it's important to keep in mind obligations the City has in the housing element related to gatekeeper applications. These include identifying additional exemptions for gatekeeper or for residential projects rather and holding at least one gatekeeper authorization hearing per year which may be limited to projects with proposed residential development. The City has already fulfilled its obligation to accept gatekeeper applications before June 30, 2024. The flowchart here helps to visualize the processes for the two types of gatekeeper applications. The streamlined gatekeeper application process allows an applicant to directly file a formal planning application and begin project processing. Staff will determine compliance with the adopted criteria for streamlined gatekeeper applications at that time. No Council authorization hearing is required. For standard or regular gatekeeper applications, an initial application must first be made to allow staff time to evaluate for consistency with adopted Council criteria. Once that evaluation is completed, applications are brought forward to a Council authorization hearing. At that time, Council will determine whether to allow a project to file a formal planning application and begin processing.

[06:35:04] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: The draft policy proposes two categories for streamlined gatekeeper projects. The first is for 100% affordable housing projects. This would expand the affordable housing project category beyond the current limitation to projects seeking funding through the City's notice of funding availability or NOFA process. The second category is for projects of limited size that provide substantial community benefits. This would replace the two existing categories for projects on sites up to two acres that involve either an industrial to residential conversion or that have split zoning. The list of criteria reflects staff's efforts to pull together various Council feedback from prior discussions on the gatekeeper policy. The first four criteria relate to project type, density and location, while the remaining criteria relate to different project characteristics or performance standards. As drafted, the policy would require all of the criteria to be met for a project to be eligible for streamlined gatekeeper processing.

[06:36:00] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: This map demonstrates parcels in the City that are 3 acres or less in area and that are adjacent to areas zoned for residential development at more than 12 units per acre. We'll shift now to discussing the regular gatekeeper application criteria. As with the streamlined gatekeeper criteria, staff has pulled together eight categories that reflect prior Council discussion about key areas of focus for gatekeeper projects. These eight categories are intended to provide examples to applicants about project characteristics they can feature with their projects to demonstrate high quality project design, alignment with Council priorities and policies, and providing substantial community benefit. In general, the theme across these categories is to exceed any adopted City requirements. The policy provides examples of ways an applicant can incorporate characteristics from each category into a project. The first three categories are affordable housing, business retention and expansion, and parks and open space.

[06:36:57] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: The categories continue with community facilities, transportation, and trees and biodiversity. And lastly, our categories for historic preservation and sustainability. Distinguished from the streamlined gatekeeper criteria, none of these identified categories are required for a regular gatekeeper project in the draft policy. An applicant can propose project components addressing all or many of these categories or none at all and still be able to move forward to a Council authorization hearing. However, the policy encourages maximum alignment with the identified categories to increase the chances of favorable consideration for a regular gatekeeper project. The draft policy also includes a number of administrative provisions. These are intended to clarify how the City will process and consider gatekeeper applications. Of note, the draft policy includes a requirement for gatekeeper applicants to enter into a development agreement with the City to provide a mechanism to ensure provision of the community benefits proposed by applicants during the gatekeeper process.

[06:37:45] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: For next steps, staff wants to emphasize that adoption of the updated gatekeeper policy this evening will be necessary in order to open the gatekeeper process in 2025 under the new policy requirements. If for any reason Council does not adopt the policy tonight, then we'll bring back further revisions for consideration at a future Council meeting and carry forward with the 2025 gatekeeper process under the current procedures. If Council adopts the policy tonight, we'll move forward with publicizing its adoption to announce the open application period, prepare ordinance amendments for Environmental Planning Commission recommendation, and bring those forward for Council adoption later in 2025. And finally, with the new policy, we anticipate holding the 2025 Council authorization hearing in the first quarter of 2026 due to the mid-year timing of the new policy adoption and anticipated time required for applicants to prepare their gatekeeper applications. Staff recommends that the Council adopt a resolution to adopt the new Council policy G-9 governing gatekeeper application policy and procedures. Thank you.

[06:39:10] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great thank you. Does any member of the Council have any questions? Councilmember McAlister. Oh sorry I Councilmember Hicks I can go to you first.

[06:39:25] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So um now I'm thank you very much. Um now I'm my question I'm a little puzzled. You can tell me whether I should be asking this question or not because the staff report and the presentation are seem a little different to me. So um so in the staff report it mentioned TDRs and I was going to ask if for a little uh longer explanation of that because I didn't fully understand how that related to the gatekeeper process.

[06:39:58] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Uh so there there could potentially be um different ways that your question relates to the gatekeeper process. Um there is an established uh Los Altos School District transfer of development rights process that uh in the past has followed a gatekeeper-like um authorization process for applicants to utilize the square footage um to allow their projects to exceed um the applicable general plan or zoning limitations. Um there also was an earlier consideration of uh potentially allowing use of transfer of development rights as one of the ways to show community benefits uh but we need more time to think through how that would integrate with this new gatekeeper process. And so we don't have it uh in the draft policy at this point in time.

[06:40:40] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay. For some reason I saw that somewhere and I think it is the second uh point that you referenced that it's something for I mean I think it I personally now I'm getting into comments I think it it could be interesting but it doesn't I don't believe we're ready for it yet. So I'm glad you said that that the same thing. Then the second thing is um regarding historic preservation I also um you know that's one I'm also interested in but I felt like I needed a little more detail.

[06:41:15] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Sure. So um the draft policy addresses historic preservation uh in two different ways. Uh one is through the streamlined gatekeeper criteria. And so um if I can go back in the slides and just bring up the criteria for the streamlined gatekeeper process. Um so what the policy currently uh presents is essentially that uh a streamlined gatekeeper cannot propose demolition of a historic resource and it also would need to contribute funding to preservation of historic resources located off-site in a value proportionate to the land value of the project site. So essentially creating a fund to allow um off-site preservation either through the City and its actions or potentially through some sort of non-profit um partner. Um the other way is through the list of categories for um a regular gatekeeper application. So um in this case as noted earlier there's no requirement to do a particular thing but examples would include um preser- preserving on-site historic resources so not altering or demolishing them in an adverse way um repurposing historic resources for public enjoyment so perhaps making an older historic building accessible for public um access and enjoyment um or funding long-term preservation of off-site historic resources similar to the explanation a moment ago through a cash contribution for example.

[06:42:38] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So thank you for running through that. Those are the two different sections that I'd seen it in and they all all of those different ways of addressing historic preservation sound interesting to me like the TDRs did but it seems like we're going to have a process where we where Council thinks through historic preservation a little more and I again like the TDRs I'm wondering if you feel it needs more I mean it seems to me it's going in the right direction but do you feel it needs more work? How do you feel let me ask that a different way. I I feel that with a lot of the things uh in the gatekeeper proposed gatekeeper process Council will be reviewing aspects of them over the next year or so so historic preservation uh biodiversity uh and urban forestry and objective design standards. There it seems to me that there's an that tho- what we come up with in those projects may inform the gatekeeper process. So are you thinking about that? How are you thinking about that? What will be the conversation between the the two?

[06:43:50] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Sure. So um I don't see any incompatibility at this point. I think you um touch on an important theme which is that the gatekeeper policy will likely need to be amended over time. And so for example um you know as we move forward and the Council considers and ultimately adopts an update to the historic preservation ordinance um there may be a need to reflect some sort of different parameters in the gatekeeper policy for example. So um what we have envisioned in regard to that or other um changes in circumstances is that Council will need to periodically review this and uh determine if changes are warranted to ensure the right outcomes are being achieved for the community across the range of important policy considerations that Council has identified today or that may emerge in the future.

[03:45:00] Councilmember Alison Hicks: ...we were thinking about and the written answer I got was that they were named in the CPPC meeting. But I read that just before I walked here so I was not able to watch the CPPC meeting. Do you remember what any examples or people who were on the CPPC might remember any examples of what, um, what community facilities were named?

[03:45:25] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Sure, uh, I'm not recalling at the moment specific facilities, uh, being named. Um, what was discussed in my recollection from the CPPC meeting was, um, consideration that projects in the City's capital improvement program could be a source of potential community facilities associated with, um, a given project or other adopted City, um, policy documents that have, uh, identified community needs that could be met through provision of a facility.

[03:45:55] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Through the Mayor.

[03:45:56] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So I, I agree with the Community Development Director. If you're looking for an example, uh, that has come up, I don't remember if it was in the CPPC meeting, but in prior conversations about Gatekeeper, things like a branch library, for instance. If, uh, a development proposal included, uh, you know, dedication of a facility that would serve a function like that, then it would meet the, the spirit of the, the criteria.

[03:46:22] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay. Thank you. Those are my questions.

[03:46:24] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you Councilmember McAlister.

[03:46:27] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, um, it's been a while since I heard Gatekeeper because my first stint on Council there was quite a bit of it because it was a, there was a big demand for doing a lot of development in Mountain View and my recollection with Gatekeeper was a very special event and, uh, it was to pick out items that were specifically that the City wanted. So help me with the history, how did we... why are we here now at this particular point? What did prior Councils say that, that was wrong with the Gatekeeper process?

[03:47:04] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: I'll start and allow either, uh, Amber or Lindsay to supplement. I think, um, my understanding includes in part a desire for greater clarity in the Gatekeeper process, uh, including some Councilmember discussion of trying to include more objectivity and, and criteria that were clearly put forward. Um, currently there's not a central place to go and see what the Gatekeeper policy is. And so as we talk about it, we recognize we don't actually have a Gatekeeper policy, we have a Gatekeeper past practice. And we have, uh, some limited provisions spread across different parts of the City code. So really what this effort is intended to do is to bring together in a singular, sort of unified manner, um, what are the criteria, what are the aspirations and policy priorities of the City, and in what ways can we provide clarity and direction to Gatekeeper applicants as to how they could fulfill those. So it's somewhat less of a guessing game and somewhat, uh, less of an exercise only for, or, um, significantly resourced applicants, and something that applicants of all levels of, uh, resourcing potentially could have a better opportunity, uh, to participate in.

[03:48:14] Assistant Community Development Director Lindsey Hagen: Good evening Council. Um, thanks for the question. Lindsay Hagen, Assistant Community Development Director. Um, just to add on I think to what, um, Director Murdock was just stating. Uh, additionally having a policy like this there are definitely some, um, administrative procedure aspects to the policy that are not in our code that by publishing them in a policy does provide a lot more clarity to the process and steps and expectations. Um, I would say the other piece of this too is, um, historically, as someone who's been here with the City for a while, um, a lot of times what was happening is, uh, developers would come forward with their proposal and they'd start asking staff what the expectations were, um, about some of the community benefits and quite frankly staff doesn't set the policy or the interest there, so, um, it kind of put a little bit of a conundrum for us in terms of trying to assist people in the process and knowing, um, what's important to the community or Council at the time. And so having a policy like this really just centralizes all that information in one place, um, and allows us to, um, sort of revisit it, uh, when needed as things progress and change over time.

[03:49:25] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Follow up, Lindsay, just a quick question. So back then... or, sorry... I thought that long ago. Uh, staff was doing... getting... fielding questions about was... was expected. Did you see that back then, you said just come back with the best community benefit package you can? Was it more free flowing then about what people were offering versus now there's a criteria to say well all we have to do is match this, but prior they were going beyond to get whatever... to get that, uh, appointment or the, uh, recommendation to approve?

[03:50:04] Assistant Community Development Director Lindsey Hagen: Yeah, I think your question's a bit tough to answer in the sense that so many factors go into a development and somebody proposing a Gatekeeper, right? There's a lot of market conditions, economic conditions, other things that play into what, um, they might package that, um, you know, may play into what they're doing. So I think, um, I think the time in particular you're speaking to was a time when we did have a lot of development demand, we had just adopted our General Plan, there was a lot of momentum around new development in key areas of the City. Um, and so, um, I would say we have to kind of acknowledge, you know, we're not in that time now. I think we're in a different era. Um, and so I think ultimately this policy being that living document helps us evolve that stuff, you know, over time and be clear about what's expected. But at the end of the day, um, you know, if applicants do come forward even after the adoption of this policy to City staff, we will obviously point to it. Um, but we have conversations with developers, you know, about their proposals and sort of, um, aligning with this policy would, would be sort of how we would start directing those conversations moving forward.

[03:51:10] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: And I'll add, um, as drafted, the policy is clear that, um, an applicant is not required to provide any of these, uh, criteria. And so they could come forward with something else they thought was, uh, better or more enticing for the City, um, and they would be allowed to come forward and, uh, make their case to the City Council. So again, these are guidelines and criteria for someone to shape their Gatekeeper application, to reduce some of the guessing that would have been associated in the past, and allow them to shape their application that way or to put forward something else, uh, if they so desire.

[03:51:40] Councilmember John McAlister: This, uh, where did the streamlining, uh, process come up? Is that... is that required? Is that something required by the City to do now?

[03:51:54] Assistant Community Development Director Lindsey Hagen: Um, so, uh, it's really just a reframing or rephrasing of what we already have in our code today. So, um, some of the history of, of the Gatekeeper process, so 2001 is when we actually adopted it formally into our code. Um, and then around 2012 is when we introduced, um, some amendments and then I think 2017 was another round. And, uh, it was really in the latter amendments, uh, where we introduced these exemptions, is what we called them, um, in the code today that are still there. Um, that are effectively if you meet certain criteria, uh, you are exempt from going to the Council authorization hearing. So, um, the two main ones or the three main ones we have in our code today are around, um, NOFA projects, um, are around split zoned parcels of two acres or less in size as well as industrial to residential conversions that are less than two acres. So instead of calling them exempt cause we felt like that wasn't a great term, we've now sort of relabeled it as streamlined. And, um, as we're proposing based on the feedback to date, um, from Council and CPPC, uh, we've sort of reframed them into the two categories you see today which is still 100% affordable, just sort of removing the limitation on it being, um, City, you know, funding being associated with it, and then the other one being sort of, um, the list of measures in terms of, um, performance measures that were listed on the screen before.

[03:53:39] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: And to the part of your question about are we required to have them, we do have a Housing Element obligation in program 1.3.f to identify additional, uh, exemptions or in this case streamlined Gatekeeper categories for residential projects based on, uh, certain criteria. Um, so I don't think that we have an opportunity to pull back entirely on streamlined Gatekeeper, uh, project types, but we do have the opportunity to think through and shape what those, um, should look like.

[03:54:10] Councilmember John McAlister: So, Lindsay, just a question. So we had exempt Gatekeeper five years ago?

[03:54:15] Assistant Community Development Director Lindsey Hagen: Yeah, we've had them on the books for a while.

[03:54:18] Councilmember John McAlister: But did anybody ever come by and do that?

[03:54:20] Assistant Community Development Director Lindsey Hagen: Oh, oh yeah. We do, uh... I wouldn't say regularly, but we have gotten them. Um, we actually have a couple in the queue now.

[03:54:30] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Now. But that's what I was wondering five years ago.

[03:54:33] Assistant Community Development Director Lindsey Hagen: Uh, yeah. We had them then as well.

[03:54:34] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Thank you. Here... so the statement about the Housing Element... is... so are you using the, uh, streamlined process to fulfill one of the Housing Element [programs] or do you... did you require to use the streamline in it, because you could have used other processes?

[03:54:54] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: So as it relates to the, um, Housing Element program to identify additional exemptions, um, we are envisioning that the streamlined Gatekeeper project criteria for the project of limited size with community benefits, um, is our mechanism to fulfill that Housing Element obligation. Um, there is the other obligation, right, uh, to hold at least one Gatekeeper hearing per year for projects including residential uses, and so that's not specifically met by the streamlined, it's... that's met by the regular Gatekeeper process.

[03:55:25] Councilmember John McAlister: Are there any other... if you didn't use this streamlined process exemption, is there any other ways that you could have satisfied that, uh, requirement under the Housing Element? Or have you thought of another way?

[03:55:35] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: I'm... I'm not aware of a... another way that we've thought of to satisfy that given that the phrasing, uh, of the requirement in the program.

[03:55:43] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay.

[03:55:45] Councilmember John McAlister: So with this streamlined process... and, uh, Councilmember Clark and I were both here involved in the General Plan, 2012 going through... through it and then all the Precise Plans. So I see hundreds of thousands of dollars were been put into determining the General Plan, determining Precise Plans if this is what we want in these particular areas. And I would think this streamlining sort of, uh, skirts a lot of those requirements. How do we justify bypassing all this work that we've done in the past to circumvent because of this, uh, exemption policy? Is it... so we're losing potential benefits because of this potentially?

[03:56:35] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Well I think fundamentally what you're asking is a policy question. Um, I would say the City Council needs to determine, you know, whether and under what circumstances it wants to allow applicants to deviate from adopted land use policies such as the General Plan or the Zoning. Um, in the specific case of housing, right, um, since the General Plan's, uh, adoption in 2012, um, it has become clear in our region in particular and in many places across the state that there's a housing crisis. And so, um, related to residential uses and projects with residential land uses, um, we do have an obligation in the Housing Element to think about how to broaden those exemptions, right, as we've talked about, uh, a moment ago. And so, um, I don't see that we have an opportunity, uh, readily available to sort of further restrict this opportunity for residential projects. Um, but it remains an open policy question whether Council wants to widen the opportunity in some way for, um, non-residential projects to pursue this.

[03:57:36] City Staff: I think too I'll just add that it's... the streamlining, the streamline is that they just are not going to the Council authorization hearing. They're still asking for the legislative changes. Which means that Council is still able to potentially ask for more of those projects. And that's what that list, you know, of requirements are in the streamlined version. You know those are essentially translated into community benefits. And so, you're... it's not that they're skirting through and then they get to... they get to just use SB 330 and not, um, you know, and, and waivers and concessions and everything. It's... this is still a legislative project and it's still gonna come to the Council to decide if you want to grant that legislative action of a rezoning or a General Plan designation change.

[03:58:29] Councilmember John McAlister: Well I was looking at your flowchart and said exempt... boom, bypass Council and goes up. So what did I miss? Cause you're saying there's something different. So the flow... explain the, the flowchart and what you just mentioned.

[03:58:44] City Staff: Yeah, so it's only... it's only skipping the Council authorization hearing. But it will still, the project will still come to Council for approval of those legislative actions. At which case the Council could say no.

[03:58:59] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, does it go through the EPC?

[03:59:03] City Staff: Mmhmm.

[03:59:05] Councilmember John McAlister: So all the other hearings... so they get a go pass... go free card? Yes. And then go that way. Okay.

[03:59:10] Councilmember John McAlister: Um... okay. And, let's, um... yeah I also had the question about when we did it before... the... Council did it before we did it once a year... and that made everybody bring their, you know, their shiniest development to us... and now you're saying well let's do it ongoing... and so that seems to me is that okay we're just gonna... sort of, uh, nickel and dime us as we go along. But you're saying that this is more... less work for the, uh, department to have them ongoing versus one big showing at one time?

[03:59:49] City Staff: So I think that what we envision is that there will likely be one hearing per year unless, you know, we hear otherwise or we, you know, discuss modifications to the policy or we're getting so many applications that it's overwhelming. But I think the way that we're envisioning it as, as a department is that will be... we will have one hearing per year. It's... the only difference is that people could submit their applications throughout the year instead of during a specific three month time period. Um, they just have to submit their applications per the policy as we've written it 90 days before that hearing date so that we have enough time to analyze the project. So as a staff it, it... it's not going to mean that we're coming to the Council constantly for authorization hearings. We're coming maybe once, or once, at least once per the Housing Element and potentially more only if we're, we're seeing a very heavy volume of these applications.

[04:00:44] Councilmember John McAlister: You mentioned that you would analyze it. So you're potentially saying you could weed out a potential Gatekeeper if they come in and say yeah we don't think it's gonna meet a threshold or you're missing certain elements?

[04:01:00] City Staff: No, we will present every single project that is submitted to you... or to, to us, to you. Uh, with an... the analyzation comes in the form of us letting you know what is within their project that, you know, is in these guidelines and, you know, what their community benefits are, what they're asking for, what their designation change that they'd like to do, what their future project looks like. That's, that's what I mean by analyzing the project.

[04:01:30] Councilmember John McAlister: And just one clarification... um, projects that are complete meaning that they've submitted the minimum application requirements... all of those will come forward... regardless of the degree to which they provide community benefits or meet any of the criteria.

[04:01:44] Councilmember John McAlister: And just to re... uh, reconfirm that during our conference that the requirements to get through Gatekeeper we're asking more than the minimum? We're asking if...

[04:01:55] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: So the way the criteria are drafted, uh, for the regular Gatekeeper applications, um, it says you can do this by for example exceeding the City's minimum below market rate housing requirements, exceeding the City's minimum parkland dedication requirements, or providing a parkland dedication if you're not required to provide one. So, um, for areas where the City has an adopted policy, this policy sets the bar higher saying you need to exceed that, um, minimum requirement and show us essentially your, your best way of doing that.

[04:02:25] Councilmember John McAlister: But you also said they don't have to meet any requirement.

[04:02:30] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: That's correct. These are guidelines or suggestions or criteria... we're giving examples of how they can, um, reflect their project favorably when it reaches the City Council, but there's not a minimum set of, uh, requirements.

[04:02:40] Councilmember John McAlister: Why not?

[04:02:44] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Uh, I think the intention as we understood it from prior Council discussion was to provide some flexibility and to allow, you know, more or less resourced, um, applicants to have an opportunity or to provide an opportunity to, um, put, put together an enticing project in some way that the City hasn't thought of in its identification of, of priority categories.

[04:03:05] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Thank you.

[04:03:07] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Councilmember Showalter.

[04:03:10] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Okay, um, thank you so much for this report and, and all the work to get here. Um, I know it, it has been going on for quite some time. And I really appreciated my briefing. Um, and I have a couple of questions that, um, uh, I, uh, I've thought about the last just the last day or two. One is, it seems like in the staff report it mentions the, um, amending the Gatekeeper process. So when we get this Gatekeeper... so I'm, I'm not clear on what, um, what sort of amendment process you have in mind and, and why we would need to amend it... I, I believe it said every year. Why would we need to amend it annually? So could you talk a little bit about that?

[04:04:00] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: So I think, um, what you're referring to was the discussion at CPPC about imagining an annual, um, evaluation for that. Um, the way the policy has come forward, it just simply indicates the policy may be amended at any time. So as need emerges or is identified the Council can direct that the policy be amended. There's no minimum requirement for an annual, um, evaluation or updates to the policy.

[04:04:24] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Thank you.

[04:04:25] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Okay. And then my other question is, um, uh, it seems like one of the... one of the things with Gatekeepers... streamlined or otherwise... that were, you know, what we're doing typically is we're making things more dense usually. And, um, so it's making, um, making our community a little more urban. And there are kind of neighborhood issues that go along with that. Like wider sidewalks and circulation patterns and all that kind of stuff. And I was wondering where does the evaluation of that come into the project? Do you... I, I, I got the feeling that they, they write a letter and a letter answers many of the questions. Or would you instruct people to talk about that? Or that's what you look for? So could you talk about that a little bit?

[04:05:10] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Sure. So I think, um, the answer is it... it is relevant or is evaluated in a couple of different ways. Um, not every Gatekeeper project is going to develop their plans fully enough to be able to demonstrate, you know, finer grain details like sidewalk width for example. Some applicants may choose to do that, but there's no requirement, um, in the draft policy to develop that level of detail. Uh, it is time consuming and resource intensive, i.e., it costs a lot of money to hire professionals to prepare those kinds of plans. So ultimately it's up to an applicant to put that information forward at that level of detail or not, or perhaps just commit to it, uh, more qualitatively in a, a letter committing to exceed standards or...

[04:05:53] Councilmember Pat Showalter: But these are concepts that they're taking into account.

[04:05:55] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Exactly. And so, um, that would sort of address the transportation category that's in the draft policy. Um, the other way it comes, um, to be analyzed is through the formal application review process. And so if an application is, uh, authorized to submit through the Gatekeeper authorization process, then, um, through the City's standard development review process we would evaluate is it meeting the minimum standards? Is there opportunity to push for more? It is still a legislative amendment and so the Council has broad discretion to approve it or not, so that gives the staff greater leverage and ultimately the Council greater leverage to push for those, um, improvements that exceed the minimum standards as well.

[04:06:34] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Okay.

[04:07:14] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Okay. Cause ultimately with every project we're trying to improve the city. That's, that's what we want to do. We want to, we want to help the developer make the design so it improves the city. And so I think that, you know, with these Gatekeepers it's important to make sure that we, you know, we consider that right from the get go. Thank you.

[04:07:27] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Do any other colleagues have, uh, questions? Not seeing any, I'll open it up for public comment. Would any member of the public like to provide comment on this item? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or press star nine on your phone. A timer will be displayed on the screen and each speaker will have three minutes. We'll start with in-person public comment first. And I believe that's James, uh, Guzmal?

[04:07:44] James Kuszmaul: Yes. Um.

[04:07:46] James Kuszmaul: Thank you. I'm James Kuszmaul. I am speaking in part for Mountain View YIMBY's, uh, letter on this item. And I just wanted to thank staff and Council for revisiting this as was, uh, required by the Housing Element. And first off comment just on the general principles of the Gatekeeper project as we see it, um, or process. Ideally most new development in the City can go through standard ministerial approvals and what not and be compliant with the zoning and everything but there will always be exemptions. Um, personally I would hope for fewer need, less need for exemptions than we have right now but even in an ideal world there is going to be need for exemptions and this helps provide, provide that process. And on the topic of streamlining in particular, one challenge when we have a long convoluted Gatekeeper process is that makes financing for projects complicated. It makes it un... the, the, the process unclear. Makes it so you might have to constantly go back and change things in unpredictable manners. And so setting more guidelines upfront for do this and this is what Council wants to see and then you can go to Council once and if you've met those guidelines in good faith they will approve it in all likelihood, um, is great. Uh, however we have some concerns about the current streamlining criteria. Basic... basically they seem likely to make it so that we just aren't going to get any projects using the updated streamlining criteria as is. Um, having to provide 25% BMR units plus some amount of parkland dedication plus the other requirements is in all likelihood just going to result in zero or near zero projects using that process. And like 25% BMR units of no projects is not fulfilling the City's goals. Um, and so we would encourage figuring out how to loosen those criteria for the things the Council cares about. Whether that is making it so more of those criteria are ors. Like a project that provides 30 dwelling units per acre of which 25% are BMR units is probably a project the Council wants to see regardless of the exact parkland dedication that it provides. Um, and perhaps similarly for some of the other criteria. Um, and just as a general matter I would encourage thinking about which these criteria correspond to things that the Council and the City cares about versus the cost imposed on the projects. Um, something like requiring parkland dedication is extremely expensive because of the cost of land but other criteria maybe like some of the sustainability criteria may be very important to Council but may impose lower costs on the projects. I honestly can't speak to the exact costs imposed by the sustainability criteria because I'm not sure they're well defined yet. Um, and as, uh, Director Murdock was alluding to this is also required by the Housing Element and hopefully if we're fulfilling that in good faith we actually result in lots more projects coming forward and with the minimum density requirement hopefully that means that they are old projects that are valuable to the city. Thank you.

[04:10:24] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. David I see you but I don't see... Yeah. It's okay you can fill it out after. Just... It's all right. I just, I just wanted you to know I saw you but there was no card yet so.

[04:10:35] David: Uh, yeah. Um. Yeah I... James had a great comment. I, uh, I, I, I didn't, I wasn't ready for him to have so much ready to say but, uh, yeah, uh, please, uh, adopt the streamlined Gatekeeper, uh, updates including the small parcel exemptions. Um, the, uh, the, I think that also as, as he just said, uh, the, uh, large parkland, uh, dedication requirements, uh, are gonna or, or, you know, excessively high, uh, uh, BMR unit requirements are going to result in nothing at all, uh, getting, uh, getting proposed and then nothing at all coming to Council. The fact is, uh, no matter what you decide on for, uh, for streamlining here, you still get to make the decision of whether to let them move forward or not. You can still deny them, uh, if you feel that, uh, they, you know, well maybe they, they, they think that they met the letter of it, uh, that you feel that the, the, the project is not good for, for the City. You still have the option to, to, to deny them. Uh, these are meant as guidelines again as, as staff I think pretty clearly laid out at the beginning. This is a list because staff didn't want to get asked, hey, uh, what does Council say that they want? Right? This is just a way for you to tell staff what to tell developers when they ask, hey, what's going to get me through Gatekeeper? This is the list of things that they can say. It would be good if, you know, you're probably going to approve the things that are on or projects that meet these requirements but, uh, again it's future Councils. This is, uh, and this does not actually, uh, uh, bind on them as far as I can tell. He's nodding. It, it doesn't bind future Councils, uh, and as, as was also discussed it can be changed at any time. So that's, uh, all I have to say. Thank you very much.

[04:12:25] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. So I'm not seeing any more in-person public comment so we'll move on to virtual. Our first virtual public commenter is Robert Cox and then Leslie Friedman followed by Bruce England and then Louise Katz. So Robert we'll start with you.

[04:12:47] Robert Cox: Can you hear me? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Um, Mayor Kamei, Vice Mayor Ramos... Okay... And members of the City Council. I'm Robert Cox speaking for Livable Mountain View. Um, we are not supportive of the new Gatekeeper proposal and we ask you to set it aside for now and just move forward with the current Gatekeeper proposal this... until this proposal can be properly vetted. The new Gatekeeper proposal includes streamlining processing of applications for a huge fraction of our City. A policy change with this significance should only be done after community outreach and EPC hearing and notice on the Council. We believe also that land use matters like this are best handled by the Council initially and not by the CPPC. Um, beyond this we have some deep questions about what is in the staff report and I mean we really want to see this stuff clarified before we can, uh, get on board with what's, uh, being proposed here. Um, in particular many of the included areas for streamlining Gatekeeper projects are in the R3 zones that were specifically not selected for the R3 upzoning process. So that the streamlined Gatekeeper process could be used to circumvent the Council's choices for the R3 high intensity areas. There's no minimum lot size and yet the criteria asks for, uh, open space. And generally Gatekeepers in the past were large enough to create significant housing and merit consideration of a zoning change. Um, but now it looks like we see a streamlined process with no density or height limits indicated or even suggested for the project. So we don't even know what to make of that. The proposal includes a provision for no project Gatekeeper proposal which doesn't make any sense to us as the whole point of Gatekeeper process is to get new projects. Um, I want to make a comment about what was discussed about, you know, the, the former exemptions that were like split zone and next to industrial. Um, this is... what's in this map is far beyond that. Okay, and that's why we feel like this was left out as like a huge surprise to us. So that's, that's why we really want to hear more about it. I'm heartened a little bit to know that the projects would still get an EPC hearing. I hope it means also a Council hearing and we're not talking just about the idea of you put the application ahead of you and then it means that, you know, there's just some final Council vote at the end maybe even on the consent calendar. So really I want to hear that clarified and in any case, um, I'm just nervous because we just don't understand this well enough now and I want, uh, to hear more about it before it gets a final approval. So thank you for hearing what I have to say about it and I'll let you go.

[04:15:45] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Leslie Friedman.

[04:15:54] Leslie Friedman: Hello. Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak. I have just a short impression from listening to this discussion. It seems to me that a simple vote tonight will not really cover the extremely, um, diverse categories that have been discussed. They aren't going to be treated in the same way. It's, it's almost a, a new sort of government sideline, a new government parallel to the existing excellent government. So I would suggest that the City take time to review what's going on in this rather complicated tapestry of services and plans. Thank you very much.

[04:16:52] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Bruce England.

[04:16:59] Bruce England: Thank you Mayor. Um, Bruce England, Whisman Station Drive again. Well, yeah listening to this discussion and listening to the comments, it just sounds like you got a lot to consider here. However, um, I am heartened to see at least an attempt, a valiant attempt, to pull together a lot of existing goals and priorities that the Council has been talking about, um, and that the community has been talking about. So you have, uh, affordable housing brought up here, this is very important. I just want to mention that longtime housing advocate Roy Hayter just passed away this weekend and so that's on my mind in terms of the housing part. But then we also want to make Mountain View a great place to live for everybody while we're making it affordable and this is very hard to do. But you have one of the paths to meet, um, uh, requirements include prioritizing preservation of large healthy trees on site and incorporating biodiversity measures from the City's biodiversity strategy, uh, such as a minimum 75% native trees in landscaping and dark sky measures for lighting. So that's all great. Um, so in ways that those can be tied together and still make the community comfortable, that would be great to see. And then just last comment is on the community facilities. I don't know like Councilmember Hicks exactly what that might include and I brought this up many times here before, but we need more, uh, uh, public facing restrooms. And if we're a community for all, seeing signs in windows that say restrooms for patrons only doesn't pass the test for community for all. So that puts it on not only, um, our public facilities but also on what developers are, are willing to provide including at places like the transit center. Thank you.

[04:18:49] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Louise Katz.

[04:18:55] Louise Katz: Thank you very much Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. Um, first I'd like to address quickly the complaints about parkland requirements. I think it's important for the Council to remember that we already have thanks to the, uh, laws in Sacramento five foot setbacks for new buildings. There'll be no trees, there'll be no greenery on those projects. When we have no requirements there will be no action on no benefits. The lack of clarity on these changes as Robert Cox has already addressed, um, I would, um, agree but I would also like to point out the problem with historic preservation. If the idea is that again we have this very vague concept and in the meantime we have other projects that could impact what historic preservation even is and how it should be dealt with, then it's going to be too late to then say well we can just amend later because when we need to amend it it's because there will have been quote unquote bad actors as one of our Councilmembers previously used that term. And then it's too late because the projects will be moving forward and the amendments will certainly take time and effort especially if there's going to be any public input. And also the comment that it appears as if and this may not be your intention but it appears as if we are bypassing public input when we then go back and change the R3 areas that have already been put together with public input. And when we do have public input for precise plans etc and it's successful, the Council is, is, uh, very laudatory that, um, these efforts have been made. But now we're basically turning back the clock and avoiding any opportunity for the public to have input until the projects are basically, um, there. And finally, um, I would think that it's extremely important that we have some understanding of the need for to retain whatever local control Sacramento allows us to have. And I think it's only with public input, it's only with clarity as to what we are going to do about, um, preservation. And having at least some requirement, maybe just one public benefit out of this extensive menu that staff has provided because again without any type of requirement we know developers will have the upper hand. And we appreciate the concept that, that our City Council would be able to negotiate but I don't think that's realistic. Thank you.

[04:21:40] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Peter Katz.

[04:21:49] Peter Katz: Here we go. Uh, thank you Mayor and esteemed members of the City Council. I'm Peter Katz, CEO of the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber is very grateful to City staff for proposing critical updates to the Gatekeeper program. As we've stated before, Gatekeeper remains an important tool for ensuring our City can attain its Housing Element goals. We have been supportive of many of the CPPC requests and recommendations noted in the staff report, especially ones that encourage creative solutions for our future development needs and provide flexibility and discretion for City staff and Council. We'd like to make a few key points. With a shared goal to produce more housing units as quickly as possible, we add our support for streamlining residential and maybe even mixed use projects. But as noted by earlier speakers, imposing costly and burdensome criteria on small projects adds unnecessary barriers to the production of housing and is not consistent with the goals of the City's Housing Element. The Chamber also expresses its support of moving requirements out of code and allowing a wide range of products to apply each year as updating the zoning ordinance can take years or even decades. Submission of a Gatekeeper project application where only a zoning or General Plan map change is required will maintain Council flexibility and allow the City to be much more responsive to site specific issues and market changes. Again, a real win-win. Additionally, we support making criteria suggestions but not mandatory thus leaving discretion with Council. Um, while it's a bit of a bummer we won't have a Gatekeeper this year, we are glad that they will be at least held annually. That said, we do not see a reason to have a two year minimum for resubmittal. It just slows the process and adds to the already significant costs. If satisfactory changes are made, a project should be allowed to come back in the next opportunity, especially if Gatekeepers will be held each year. Again, we applaud the City's commitment to a more efficient and defined Gatekeeper and towards processes that will enable housing projects to better pencil out. Thank you.

[04:23:55] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Manuel Salazar.

[04:24:04] Manuel Salazar: Hi, uh, good evening Mayor and Councilmembers. My name is Manuel Salazar and I'm here on behalf of SV@Home. Uh, first I'd like to begin by thanking staff and Council for your time and thoughtful efforts in revising the Gatekeeper process. You know this has been an important opportunity to modernize how Mountain View evaluates housing proposals and we really appreciate the meaningful progress that has been reflected in this update. Uh, we're especially encouraged by the introduction of an annual Gatekeeper hearing, the long overdue exemption for 100% affordable housing projects, and the move forward towards objective thresholds for streamlined eligibility. These are important steps and they are leading the program in the right direction. Uh, that said, we remain concerned that the policy as drafted continues to pose procedural barriers that may unintentionally discourage urgently needed housing. Especially projects with high levels of affordability. To better align with Housing Element program 1.3.f, uh, and support the City's housing goals, we would recommend the four key refinements. First, uh, broaden streamlined eligibility specifically to include mixed income projects with at least 20% affordable units particularly near transit or in identified growth areas. Second, reduce the public benefit requirements for mixed use projects that exceed 20% on site affordability to ensure they remain financially feasible. Next, allow flexibility in how community goals are met instead of a one size fits all checklist, you know, consider more adaptable context sensitive pathways. Uh, and finally, uh, remove the mandatory development agreements for streamlined projects that already meet all of the City's, you know, standards. Uh, you know, ultimately we believe that the City should continue moving towards, you know, uh, the framework based on clear objective standards and community driven planning. But if the Gatekeeper process is to remain in place, uh, it must be carefully calibrated to enable not slow affordable housing production. Uh, we really appreciate your leadership on this item and thank you for your time.

[04:26:12] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Chuck Muir.

[04:26:15] Mary Daddeo: Hi this is Mary Daddeo. I heard Chuck Muir called but... um... I guess I'll go ahead. Okay. Thank you. Yes Mary Daddeo so... um... regarding the project criteria, uh, for streamlining. Um, I was very pleased to see that environmental criteria were included specifically, um, tree preservation, um, uh, the requirement for 75% native trees plants, the dark sky measures, and also the net zero, um, carbon emissions. I think, um, it's wonderful to see so many environmental, um, factors included and just thank you for including all these so early in the development process.

[04:26:59] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Albert Jeans?

[04:27:03] Albert Jeans: Hi, I just wanted to voice my support for what was said by Livable Mountain View. Um, I'm particularly concerned about the lack of public input up to this point for this pretty monumental change in a, you know, pretty important legislative process. Um, I'm glad to hear that, you know, streamlining does not mean automatic, you know, ministerial approval that there still will be a, uh, Council and EPC hearing on different projects. But I'd like staff to clarify that and make sure it's a full hearing and not just an item on the consent calendar because those items tend to get overlooked. I can see why, you know, the streamlining might save some time. I mean it's kind of like, okay this project meets these criteria it can automatically go straight to the Council for final approval. On the other hand I'm not clear in the current process or what Council authorization actually accomplishes. Does streamlining really save that much time for an applicant? There are a lot of questions about this process and so I think Council would be well advised to, unless you feel like you really understand it completely, um, to take some more time and maybe do a study session, one more study session on it to really firm it up. For example, one of the criteria says as long as the parcel is next to another parcel that's allows a density of 12, you know, they get, they get the go ahead. But what if all the other adjacent lots are just single story? Does that still give them, you know, the go ahead to build a four or five story building there? There are a lot of exceptions that we may not have thought about and I think so I think we need to more carefully go through the different criteria that staff came up with and make sure it's more bulletproof so that, you know, applicants don't say, oh well we met all these criteria, you know, once they get the final Council approval, you know, why can't we just go forward? And, you know, there might be pressure on the future Councils to say, okay well they did meet the criteria so we should okay it. So in general again I think we should just take our time with this, it's a very important change, get more public input, and yeah, put together a process that will really work for the future. Thank you very much.

[04:29:20] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. All right, Chuck, let's try again.

[04:29:29] Chuck Muir: Uh, good evening Mayor Kamei and City Councilmembers. This is Chuck Muir, I live in North Whisman, uh, neighborhood. Um, I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight. I share my concerns about the proposed Gatekeeper policy under consideration. Um, while the intent to streamline development process is understandable, I believe this policy as written risks undermining Mountain View's thoughtful and community driven planning network or frameworks, excuse me. By allowing near automatic approvals this policy could unintentionally bypass the rigorous review that has long, um, ensured developments reflect the need and character of our city. Uh, this approach not only threatens to disadvantage very residents who have invested their time, energy and passion into building Mountain View, but also risks prioritizing developers' interests...

[09:00:00] Housing Director Wayne Chen: community well-being. Since this policy requires council approval, it is critical to ask who truly benefits from this. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that developers will gain expedited approvals. Our future tenants, many of whom face affordability challenges, will see little advantage. Meanwhile, long-term residents may bear the impacts of increased traffic, congestion, and strain on city resources. I respectfully urge City Council to carefully reconsider the vote against the approval of this Gateway policy tonight. Let's continue to champion policies that support balanced growth, protect our community's character, and ensure Mountain View remains a place where we're all proud to call home. Thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration.

[09:00:45] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. All right, not seeing any members of the public in the queue or in person, I'll bring the item back for Council deliberation and action, and note that a motion to approve the recommendation should also include reading the title of the resolution attached to the report. Councilmember Hicks.

[09:01:08] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay. Well, I um I agree with every member of the public who has spoken. And let me break that down now into into something sensible. Um so no, seriously, I do. I think all the sentiments that have been voiced are important. Um so I, you know, I like a lot of this that staff and the CPPC have come up with. Um in particular, I like the objective criteria. Um and uh you know, having that instead of as some people have said, a guessing game.

[09:01:55] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Um at the same time that I that I like a lot of it, I think it needs some tweaks. I think everybody has said that so far, so I'm still agreeing with everyone. Um uh the first tweak I would make is that I think re-evaluations, and I hope they're not too many of them, I hope that I think that re-evaluations need to go to the full Council and not to the CPPC. Um I that's because this is, you know, you can hear from the numbers or the sentiments of the public that this is the Gatekeeper is an important process. More than that, our General Plan is important. And I think to be respected, it's the work of so many community members um regarding what they want the city to be.

[09:02:50] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I think that and one resident said to me that this decision we're making right now on the dais is the most important thing we've done all year. So I think when we visit it and revisit it, hopefully not too many times, the full Council needs to um needs to go over it. Um secondly, so that's the first tweak I would make. Um secondly, uh and so as the Mayor said on one of our previous times when we were looking at Gatekeepers, uh the the Gatekeeper projects that we look at really have to go above and beyond.

[09:03:35] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Um and I think that these the objective criteria that's listed are list out sort of ways to go above and beyond. Or at least not sink below. So I think that a number of them have to be um uh not nice to haves, but have to haves. Um I mean, I I'm I'm fine with saying that they're all guidelines and somebody can come up with a an absolutely miraculous project we've never thought of and maybe skirt them, but really I think that um, you know, many of them like uh 75% native landscaping is something we ask of everyone, I think. Not so to me that's not some of them like that one for example are not going above and beyond.

[09:04:27] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Um so the second thing, I think I would like an even more specific list of um of objective criteria that they that um that applicants need to um abide by. But not that they have to, I know that they sometimes come with half or quarter baked plans. Um just explaining how they do them rather than uh, you know, having a fully fleshed out plan. I'm talking about things like streetscape improvements. So that would be something like sidewalks widened to align with new building heights, planting or furniture strips with trees added if not currently there, that sidewalks can be widened via cantilevered second floors where appropriate.

[09:05:21] Councilmember Alison Hicks: But I think that that would be one example of something I would want to run by everyone. Um or another one would be adjacent land use buffers. Explain how the project will buffer residents and users from adjacencies like freeways and homes. I think we can I think a list like that that everybody has to explain in some way um is something that I would like to see. And then for some of the other things, I'm talking about the Streamlined Gatekeeper, like parkland and open space, community facilities, um I think that those maybe you choose one or two of them. Um so tighten up I would say on things that we usually ask of everybody anyway and loosen up a little on the ones the criteria that's extremely difficult.

[09:06:18] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Let's see if I had any more. Anyway, basically, um I like that it's becoming hopefully less of a guessing game. I want to make sure that what we do is not um doesn't kind of open the floodgates to just gut the General Plan um and produce more more projects than we can handle, so when we have a Gatekeeper hearing, we have 20 of them and Council doesn't really have time to go over them. Because it doesn't, you know, having them all come to us if we don't have time to look at them doesn't really help. So, those are my preliminary comments. Thank you.

[09:07:00] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Councilmember Ramirez.

[09:07:03] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. Uh first, I want to express my appreciation to everyone in the community who participated uh during this meeting. Um and also um express my uh my appreciation to Staff for uh putting together uh this uh policy, which I think is very strong. I know it's taken a long time to get here and that's in part because there are seven different perspectives on the Council uh and many different perspectives in the community. It's not not an easy thing uh to uh put together a policy uh that uh addresses all of the concerns that we've heard, but I think this is this is very strong.

[09:07:40] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Uh and it achieves one of the most important objectives in my opinion, which is to shift away for what we're calling the Streamlined Gatekeeper process, uh to shift away from uh focusing on things like industrial to residential conversion, which really isn't something that the Council I think actually wants to facilitate. And I know Councilmember McAlister has talked over the years about um the importance of not eroding our industrial base and I agree, but right now, in our municipal code, industrial to residential conversions are streamlined. They don't have to go through the Gatekeeper Authorization hearing, which is where the City Council provides permission to submit an application that then goes to uh through the entitlement review process.

[09:08:29] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So rather than focus on things like that, what the policy does instead is identifies performance criteria. If we're going to allow a project to bypass the authorization hearing, then it must achieve uh community and and City Council objectives. So that's what this policy provides a framework for. You have to do things like provide additional affordable housing or parks and open space or community facilities, which I think are the things that we often hear from our community, and they are hard things to deliver, especially when you know, because of State law and other considerations, our ability to require some of those things is limited. So this is our chance to ask for more, to achieve many different community priorities, uh maintain our local control, because at the end of the day we can always say no, and uh and provide an incentive to developers to say, yes, I want to help the community, I want to help the City achieve certain goals.

[09:09:36] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: If they don't do those things, then they do not pass Go, they do not collect two hundred dollars, and then they have to go through a very political and challenging process where they go up there, you know, among other applicants and they say, please Council, uh allow me to submit my application, and then we take turns grilling them and we say why should we do that. So the the performance criteria I think is is an essential component of of the policy. And uh I think the the foundation here is strong, but as Staff had indicated and as we've heard from some of the public comments, uh circumstances change. And there may be a reason why we would want to make different parcels eligible for the streamlined process. Or we may want to de-prioritize certain performance criteria and instead say we want to achieve something different.

[09:10:29] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So uh I think having uh a periodic uh re-evaluation of the process is really important. And I agree that it should not be done by the CPPC, that should be done by the full City Council in a public hearing and um and ensure that uh members of the community can participate. So I'm going to make a really complex motion. And I'm going to do so recognizing that there will probably be a lot of friendly amendments and requests for clarification, but most of the ques- most of the things I'm I'm going to suggest are actually fairly uh technical. Some of them are are more substantive, but I'll try and walk through everything um as as uh carefully and concisely as I can.

[09:11:20] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So first, I'll move to adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View adopting City Council Policy G-9, Gatekeeper Application Policy and Procedures, for the review and authorization of private development applications with legislative amendments to City regulations referred to as the Gatekeeper Process to be read in title only, further reading waived. So the first change I'm going to suggest is for the Streamlined Gatekeeper projects in Category 2, we pull out A and B. A is size and B is density. And we put that in a special category of what I call eligibility criteria. And I'm deferential to Staff for what it should be what it should be called, but it's basically tho- that those aren't performance criteria. Those are who is eligible for a streamlined process, right? So the size of the parcel, the minimum density. It says residential only. We have to have one site that uh uh more a site has to abut at least uh one one side with, you know, residential density greater than 12 dwelling units per acre. So this is page 5 of the uh of the proposed Gatekeeper Policy, which is in attachment 1, the Resolution. Um so.

[09:12:39] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Yeah. Let's sorry, so okay, so you move the Staff recommendation and as you're making changes, let's just allow colleagues to go and pull up the resolution.

[09:12:53] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Is it attachment 1?

[09:12:54] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So it's the resolution page 5, he's going into page 5 of the resolution. And you are under which letter?

[09:13:10] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So uh two qualifications, Category 2.

[09:13:14] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So page, so it's page 6 of the P- yes. Sorry. It's all good, I'm on the same page. All right, so page 6. Is everyone there? Okay, no problem.

[09:13:36] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay, so it's page 6 of the PDF, which is actually page 5 of the resolution, and we're under item 2 which is qualifications. You are specifically trying to call out in under Category 2, is that correct?

[09:14:07] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Yes.

[09:14:08] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay, Category 2. So you're you want to amend the resolution.

[09:14:18] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Uh thank you, Mayor. So uh to div- we're going to distinguish between eligibility criteria and performance criteria. And I'll explain why that's important in a minute. Um but the first change would be what are currently criteria A and B, size and density, would be shifted to a different section and I'm deferential to Staff on formatting name, but arbitrarily I'm calling it eligibility criteria and that any uh project must do both of those things. And then the second change would be, as Councilmember Hicks was mentioning, you know, what are the things that we absolutely require in the performance criteria. And I'm going to recommend that we require F, which is Trees and Biodiversity, that's page 8 of the PDF, and then G, which is Historic Preservation.

[09:15:24] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So those two are required of any application. I'm also going to suggest that we include the recommended language, and then uh of course deferential to Staff if there's a better way of expressing this, um so Trees and Biodiversity and then the his- the Historic Preservation. Those are the two that would be absolutely required. And then the Trees and Biodiversity criterion would be amended to say this project proposal includes a minimum of 75% native trees and landscaping, and then here's the revision, this is proposed by uh Shani Kleinhaus, utilizing the North Bayshore Precise Plan plant palette unless otherwise specified by the bio- the Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan. So it's 75% native trees and landscaping but we're further specifying the plant palette used in the North Bayshore Precise Plan.

[09:16:22] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: And then the next change would be, again this is something uh Councilmember Hicks uh I I agree very strongly about, that of the remaining performance criteria, the qualifying application would do one of the following, and that's C, Affordable Housing.

[09:16:50] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So what part of the PDF are you on now? And you're calling performance criteria what Staff has defined as performance criteria or the new sub-category that you have now defined? So, I'm just, can you can you please clarify?

[09:17:06] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So this was this would be in pages 6.

[09:17:10] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So page 6. So was it says page 6 of the PDF or page 6, okay, so.

[09:17:19] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I'm sorry. Yes.

[09:17:20] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: The first the first part that you've done is you've moved the Staff recommendation. You want to amend the resolution to create two different categories of criteria that Staff has not recommended, but that you're saying you want eligibility. Under eligibility, you want to put size and density. Then you're calling the other category performance?

[09:17:47] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Yes.

[09:17:48] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay. And you want Trees, Biodiversity, Historic Preservation.

[09:17:53] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: To be required of all projects. So now moving on to your third part of the motion.

[09:18:02] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Right. Which is for the remainder of the criteria, Affordable Housing.

[09:18:09] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: The criteria as you define or as Staff define? And please say which page.

[09:18:14] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So this is all of these are Staff defined. Pages 6, 7, and 8 of the PDF. Uh so that would be C, Affordable Housing, D, Parkland/Open Space.

[09:18:34] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: C, D.

[09:18:35] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: E, Community Facility.

[09:18:38] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Uh-huh.

[09:18:39] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: And H, Sustainability.

[09:18:41] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: H.

[09:18:43] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So there's four. Right. Remaining. That's one of the four would be included to be eligible for the Streamlined Process. Okay. Um thank you for bearing with me, I'm almost done. Um then uh one thing that is another change from the Staff recommendation is.

[09:19:08] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So is this a fourth?

[09:19:09] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Yes. Uh currently the Staff recommendation says Streamlined Gatekeepers do not have to have a study session. And so the change would be that a study session of the City Council would be required even for streamlined projects, because we we've heard that community input is essential. And it also gives the Council a chance to say, is this really what we want? Is this really our expectation? And then also clarifying that in no case could a Gatekeeper project be approved on the consent calendar. That it would have to come to a Council uh be approved by the Council in a in a public hearing. So I I think that's already the case, but if it's helpful to spell it out, then I want to be very clear that we're not talking ever about a Gatekeeper project being approved by uh or on the consent calendar.

[09:20:20] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: And then also uh if it if I think this is, yes, thank you. Um if it's also helpful to say in the policy that a policy amendment or re-evaluation must be done by the full City Council and not by the CPPC. Then I I think that's an important element to include. So those are the proposed amendments and additional direction. And then direction to Staff to come back with a recommendation for uh if if if Staff thinks it's appropriate. Right now this is residential only, but I don't think we necessarily intend to prohibit, you know, ground floor retail or a coffee shop or something. Um for Staff to return to City Council with a recommendation for language to expand eligibility to mixed-use projects, so predominantly residential but allowing for ground floor retail or some other supportive like neighborhood supportive commercial use. I think that is helpful to providing neighborhood amenities in areas where they may not exist.

[09:21:38] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: And then also uh based on the Staff response to question 75, um also for Staff to return with a recommendation for objective criteria for a project that was rejected uh to be reconsidered. So right now it says a project must wait two years before submitting a substantially similar application, but substantially similar is not defined. And I think that pro- that's going to be challenging for Staff. So if there isn't an easy way to know if a project is substantially similar, then Staff actually suggested a possible solution, but I would say for Staff to to come back with a recommendation for an objective definition of substantially similar. So those are the proposed amendments and additional direction.

[09:22:24] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Mayor. May I just um ask for a clarification or make a point on two of the recommended modifications from Councilmember Ramirez?

[09:22:35] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Um so I was actually going to take a brief 5-minute recess so that because I am counting eight different motions um that I have written that would be associated with this item. And I think in terms of clarity for the discussion as it goes forward, it might be helpful to have that all up and on screen for colleagues to be able to be on the same page. So I'd like to call a brief 5-minute recess um if that is all um you have, Councilmember Ramirez, so that I can confer with Staff to understand the different motions and elements that were that are involved. And I think that might be helpful um in terms of the clarity for the discussion going forward if Staff is amenable to that? Okay. Great. We can we can confer and Great. So I'm going to call a a brief five uh minute recess and we'll reconvene once we have a clear understanding of the motion on the floor. Thank you.

[09:38:00] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right everyone, thank you for your patience. We're going to reconvene. I have heard through the grapevine that we have even further amendments, so we're just going to all have to put our patience pants on as we as we go forward. All right? So um Councilmember Ramirez, you're still in the queue. Do you have anything else to add?

[09:38:24] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Uh no, thank you Mayor, and thank you everyone for your patience and and Staff for your work on preparing the uh the slides.

[09:38:32] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. All right, Councilmember McAlister.

[09:38:35] Councilmember John McAlister: How faster would a project if it's in the express lane versus the non-express lane? How much time is saved?

[09:38:49] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: I think it's hard to say because we don't know exactly um when and how many authorization hearings will be conducted, but I think it's fair to say several months to potentially a year or more depending on when an application would be submitted relative to when the next authorization hearing would be conducted.

[09:39:05] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. And why why wasn't there like a study session with this? I mean, you had all these other meetings, I didn't participate, Chris didn't participate in. So why you consolidated now and then said because so, yeah.

[09:39:22] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: I think the Council has held, you know, more than one study session on this subject already. Um additionally uh taking this to the CPPC provided an additional public input opportunity. And I think we are really trying to formulate this in a way that Council can hopefully adopt and allow us to move past and complete this um Council Work Plan item within the two-year period, which is why we really pressed hard to try to get something before Council for action um at this time.

[09:39:50] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. So I guess I'll put in some comments. Um I uh to me, Gatekeeper is a very important process and should be handled with only those most most items that are most exceptional that move forward and meet the emergency need not urgent needs of the City. The last Gatekeeper the Council approved a U-Haul center storage. To me, that was not a Gatekeeper level of uh raised to the level of a Gatekeeper. I thought that was just uh rather interesting how that came about. To me, a Gatekeeper is is again a something special and that's why in the past people put in all these, you know, here's what we're going to do that's more than the normal, and this process, you don't have to do anything to go forward and uh I don't I do not I couldn't support I don't like that idea.

[09:40:58] Councilmember John McAlister: We need to put something in there that if you're going to do a Gatekeeper, it's going to be exceptional. It's going to be above the bar. And yeah, we'll spend the time and we will allocate you and you will get a free pass to get to the line. So that to me is is a criteria that I I would like to see. Also, parkland. Um I to me, we are building all this housing but we're not putting in the parkland to to provide the recreational release of people to go and do and we're already short on our three acres per thousand. And so we're just making it worse. So some in the Council want to say, well, more housing will be better and I'm saying I want a balanced life to present to our people. We want to have them enjoy it, not be stacked into where all the cars are out in the street because there's no parking and there was no parkland and that yeah, we got housing, which basically we're turning into silos because people aren't getting any use to it.

[09:42:01] Councilmember John McAlister: So I'm concerned about the criteria that you're not having any. So at this present time, I can't support what I hear. And, you know, I sort of like the old pro- the old way that and I do appreciate the objective saying, okay, here's some criterias, but our criterias are you said somebody can show up with nothing and and be get in the queue and I go, that doesn't warrant a Gatekeeper. So making it a little more defined but those requirements are are higher up than nor- I mean, really up there. And so the it's just like buying a house. You want to pay a hundred thousand but, you know, you got to keep raising the prices to get up to where if you want it, you got to pay pay more. And so until I see something along that line or requirements, uh this smorgasbord approach I I'm not I can't support because it just doesn't meet my level of uh concern.

[09:42:56] Councilmember John McAlister: And we do need to make sure we get public input on some of these things. And where you did say you would go to the to the EPC and I agree totally that going to the CPPC is not and I I I was, you know, I'm on it but I wasn't able to make it, but to put that much weight on two people's voice and to incorporate it into is I think is is a little premature. That it should have been part of many uh voices included, but to say CPPC said this and so we're going to roll with it, um I think that needs to be evaluated a little bit more. So um I guess I'll sit here on this roller coaster and see where we end up. But uh yeah, that's that's where I'm at coming now.

[09:43:45] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Vice Mayor Ramos.

[09:43:48] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Mayor. So uh seven members of Council and seven very seven different perspectives on the Gatekeeper, and they're all really nuanced. Uh some some are farther than others, some are closer than others. Um I view the Gatekeeper as um pretty much give us your best spiel. Give us um uh tell us what you want to do and we'll see if it's worth our time to do it, essentially. Um and for some members of the Council, they they want it to be something absolutely extraordinary for us to to consider it. I'm I'm a little bit more lenient at that. I I just I want to be able to hear what is going to be proposed and and if it matches how I view meets the goals of our City, I'm okay with it moving forward. Um I am inclined to support uh I'm I'm likely supporting um the amendments to the uh Staff's recommendation. Um I I I also believe that as as Councilmember Ramirez says and actually a few other colleagues have said that um it should.

[10:30:00] Councilmember Emily Ramos: ...a CPPC, it should probably go to all councils when they uh as we make these decisions. Uh I've been as a as long as I have been on council and I I have the least amount of years as everyone here, uh we've had two uh study sessions on Gatekeepers. Um so so there has been input. This is not something that was just sprung on us. Um and so um I'm glad that we will be moving forward on this. It is something that is required through our housing element and just on a reminder our housing element is supposed to be our plan to how we are addressing this housing crisis. And so um that is why we are moving forward with things like Gatekeeper because housing and particularly affordable housing is very important to our community and has impacts to our community in so many different ways in our quality of life. Um so I will be supporting the motion on the floor. I'm curious to see if anything el- any other changes will be moved uh brought into this motion. Um and thank you Staff for for diligently working on the minutia of this policy.

[10:31:10] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Councilmember Clark.

[10:31:15] Councilmember Chris Clark: Thanks. Um so the motion on the floor prompted a a couple questions and um there were a couple things in the presentation that um I'm not sure um I picked up in the in the staff report which is probably my uh fault. So on the historic s- focusing on streamlined Gatekeeper criteria for a moment. The um does not demolish historic resource um I agree that should just be kind of a standard thing if you're going to get streamlined. But um the the slide presentation mentioned a contribution to an off-site preservation fund. So would that um would that contribution be required of all streamlined projects even if they're not messing with historic resources? Was that the idea?

[10:32:05] City Staff: Correct.

[10:32:06] Councilmember Chris Clark: It's just part of a contri- okay. Um that's helpful. And then the community facility for public use um at uh one percent of land value. Was the um I assume I assume because there's a percentage value they they could either provide uh a community facility of approximately that minimum value either on-site or they could make a contribution toward perhaps the the city has a community facility it's working on like a public safety building or something. Was the idea that they could provide a a cash equivalent um in lieu contribution or...

[10:32:55] City Staff: As it's drafted, um it doesn't provide for the cash contribution alternative. Um that could be added to the policy language.

[10:33:04] Councilmember Chris Clark: Okay. Um what what would be examples of a a community f- an on-site community facility? Someone mentioned bathrooms, public restrooms um...

[10:33:13] City Staff: Uh perhaps a community meeting room uh is another example.

[10:33:15] Councilmember Chris Clark: Oh yes. Okay. That makes sense. Um and then on the regular Gatekeeper um okay I think I'm done with questions uh except for sort of related to that. There's so in the mix and match performance criteria or the proposed mix and match performance criteria um one is for at least twenty-four percent of the site area to be public park, trail, plaza. Um if a site if it if a site just doesn't if it doesn't make sense on that particular site to to maybe it's just um to have a a park, plaza or trail um could there would an off-site land dedication or cash value equivalent to that be okay? Twenty-four percent seems like a lot but maybe maybe that is not a big deal. Um compared to the one percent community facility that's that's why because someone's gonna choose one over the other always is what I'm trying to avoid. But...

[10:34:40] City Staff: It's a sizable dedication requirement to be sure. Um this does not currently provide for a cash in lieu contribution but again that's something that could be added to allow the the value to be converted to cash.

[10:34:54] Councilmember Chris Clark: Okay. I think the I I'm not opposed in theory to to the mix and match performance criteria. I think it's one, I just don't want this to come back to us again. Um I I I i- over the summer or in the fall. And so I'd like as painful as it will be to hash it out tonight and what I want to avoid is having one of these one of these pick ones being way more attractive than any of the others. Like there needs to be some basic equivalency. And that's where it's gonna get really tricky doing it on the fly. Um but uh but but let me just give you my my overall perspective. So um you know the world of yesterday slash today was you know we had our annual or however often we had them we had the beauty contests. Those were the were for the non-exempt Gatekeepers. We all remember those in the good times. Um but there but there were as um I think Ms. Hagan mentioned earlier there was there was an exemption route um that was unfortunately for staff poorly defined by council and council's minds changed over the years as they naturally do. Um and so I think where we end up crafting something tonight and and through this process that's been going on for quite a while is something a little bit more um concrete in that we we still have there there's still the annual sort of beauty contest sort of thing um where you know you can propose a lot of different things and there's there's much more I think um fungible criteria even though we we set out the things that we we really care about. But at least instead of the the previous exempt process where it wasn't as defined we're basically changing the name to Streamlined and we're adding in additional criteria. Um so I think in at the end of the day we end up in a better place. On the regular Gatekeeper side I think the framework that you provided is is excellent. Um the the only thing that I would ev- say we might want to entertain and maybe we just don't mess with it tonight is um there's there's affordable housing and there's business retention and expansion and parks and open space. On the business retention and expansion one of the things that's come up especially in the current economic times is is um not just retaining a business under its current use but allowing a site to um develop into an adjacent use. So we we've heard there was demand at one point for for bio-sciences and labs instead of like a a traditional commercial office. We're not really probably gonna have data centers in Mountain View um because land is so expensive but you I can see different uses being proposed over time that wouldn't necessarily be so different that it would create a conflict with the surrounding uses. So that's a long way of saying in in addition like business retention for me means not just you know retaining the current use but also um you know being open to a change of use to something reasonably similar. Um that's the only if if I were to tweak anything about the regular Gatekeeper evaluation process that's really the only sub-bullet that I might add in to some as something that we would consider. Um to Councilmember Ramirez's proposal for the Streamlined process what I captured was there's like the the thou the thou shalt bucket which is you know minimum thirty units per acre maximum si- or maximum site um area three acres and adjacent to one parcel that's allowing twelve units per acre that was what staff had already defined. I think there's some mandatory performance criteria which were minimum seventy-five percent native trees and landscaping. You're not gonna demolish a historic resource. I would just I don't think the funding contribution at at whatever it was point five percent or something really moves the needle. So I think as long as you're not destroying a p- a historic resource or um trying to use this as a way to um um to do that then I don't think we really I I don't feel strongly about the point five percent um contribution. But um and then I would add as a as a mandatory performance criteria I think the building we we're talking about residential here and I think um I think those should just be all electric buildings. I think that should be a mandatory p- performance criteria. Um on the mix and match um or and sorry all electric in in in in place of net zero because as much as I love net zero buildings I don't think we have any net zero residential buildings and I think it's probably gonna be a while before we do and we're a little ahead of I like being a little ahead of the curve but I think that's a little too far ahead of the curve. So I think for now just having it be all all electric makes more sense than having it be net zero. Um for the mix and match we talked about BMR requirements fine. Um where the the details are gonna get really um tricky in terms of crafting you know equivalencies and and things that where everyone isn't just going to exceed the BMR requirements by a tiny little sliver so they can avoid twenty-four percent of the site area being a public park. Um yeah yeah okay well we have to define that. Oh are they more defined than what I thought they were? Okay. Oh okay. Never mind then. Um I was looking at the slide not the uh the resolution. Thank you for pointing that out. Um and then there was the other bucket um so Streamlined applications would have a council study session. I have no idea at what point in time that would happen. Um but it's it's fine with me if that makes everyone feel more comfortable. Um the Gatekeeper policy modifications being done by council is fine with me. I think the council should always retain its ability to solicit input from its committees. Um but I think I think it's right to not have CPPC be be the the final or whatever committee be the the final say. Um so that that's fine with me. The North Bayshore precise plan plant palette being used until the Urban Forestry Plan is adopted is fine. I think the Urban Forestry Plan because it will look at different parts of the city should probably trump the um the precise plan at that point. That's fine. Um and then um I don't think we should leave it to staff to figure out what substantially similar is in uh a project coming back to us. I think maybe I I think it maybe instead of waiting two years they could come back at the next annual hearing if they wanted to. But um um basically I'm just trying to avoid things having to come back to us in the fall. So I think the more we define tonight the better. Um so the only and I'll stop talking the only one question that that brings up for me is um the Streamlined process mentions all uh residential only projects and I think it was Lucas who brought up a good point around you know I I'm not opposed to neighborhood serving retail or or neighborhood serving commercial businesses on the ground floor. So I just don't want to accidentally preclude I think those are actually good things those are rare for us now. So I just don't want to preclude a project that's one hundred percent residential from having a ground floor coffee shop or a you know a daycare or a pet daycare or you know choose choose whatever. I just don't want to preclude those. Um so I would I would allow some flexibility in the um in those ground floor uses for the Streamlined process. But otherwise that's a long way of saying I I agree with most everything. The biggest changes that I would make would be um you know instead of net zero residential I think starting with all electric makes sense. I think net zero will make more sense down the line. Um um and then I think I think we really have to figure out if we're going to do mix and match criteria we just have to figure out what um what makes the most sense there tonight if we can. And I'll stop talking.

[10:43:35] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Uh Councilmember Showalter.

[10:43:40] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yes. Well as the seconder, I have some questions too and and a lot of 'em frankly went right along with what um uh Councilmember Clark and Councilmember um uh Ramos were saying. So that's good. Um I I would agree as hopefully the uh the maker of the motion will is okay with the sustainability being changed to all electric building. Is that okay with you?

[10:44:05] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So through the Mayor if it's okay. Um if we change sustainability from net zero to all electric then I agree with Councilmember Clark that should be in the mandated for everyone.

[10:44:15] Councilmember Pat Showalter: That's true. It should. Okay good.

[10:44:18] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So so yes I would accept that change.

[10:44:20] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Okay good. And then another another change I would like to make to the um sort of the the things you can choose is to add another category that is neighborhood serving commercial. And so that if a if a residential building is going to provide neighborhood serving um uh resident commercial on the first floor then that would be one of the things that they could choose to do to um make their uh you know make their project um qualify. Is that okay with you?

[10:45:00] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I'm okay with that but I think we will need staff's support to determine what an objective standard would be that would be sufficient to justify the Streamlined process. So what would be like maybe a I don't know some arbitrary number floor area ratio with a commercial element that is above and beyond what we would typically see.

[10:45:25] City Staff: I think that's that's challenging for staff to do from the dais tonight to to suggest...

[10:45:30] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Well well what if we were just to say um I mean if we didn't have a...

[10:45:40] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Can can I can I just interject? So there's a slide that we've put together so one of 'em it's the staff recommendation then there's amendments and then there's one for staff to evaluate. So rather than just say maybe that we can put that on the bucket of staff to evaluate the um neighborhood serving residential that would come forward um you know in the next iteration of of Gatekeeper but then that wouldn't preclude um some of these amendments were making tonight to be adopted so that so that we could use this amended Gatekeeper Gatekeeper process while also we have a couple um staff evaluation items and my suggestion would be if we could add it there if you're amenable.

[10:46:25] Councilmember Pat Showalter: We could we could do that. I have written down stuff like um typical neighborhood commercial like gym open to public, coffee house, child care, dental office, drug store, etcetera or something non-commercial like a satellite library, non-profit space, used book store, community center with publicly accessible activities or you know just sort of a general first floor public use that might be commercial. I think that's that can there are in there are certainly in places where that's an amenity. Okay so um so yeah uh I all in all I um I'm really happy with this process. I think it's I think you know we've we have gone through a number of iterations and we're adding a lot of clarity and that's really good. And then the other thing is I think that the Gatekeeper is to allow for innovation in development and um and it still does that in fact I think it does it better so that's good. And um I I think the idea of the Streamlined process is excellent and I like the idea that it's made a little larger you know the three acres instead of the two acres that includes more in that and um and I think that's good. And um so I you know all in all I'm I I think those are uh good. I was going to make the suggestion that we have this laundry list and and do do choose one or two and so that's been made so I'm happy with that. That's great. Um uh um and another thing I would like to bring up for consideration maybe in the future or ask staff how is is not as a requirement but in the regular Gatekeeper process to um uh list allowing your um site to be used for safe parking until construction takes place as something that is considered an amenity. And um uh we have been um trying for the last ten years to get safe parking lots distribut- you know more safe parking lots. We've been very successful at building a program particularly at Shoreline but we've had some success with um using affordable housing sites before they were affordable housing while they're in the construction phase for temporary um uh for temporary uh safe parking. So I'd kind of like to I'd like to be able to continue with that that custom if there if there's anybody who's interested. There may not be anybody who's interested but I think in the in the idea of clarity to make it clear that we are interested in hearing about that. Um I I I would like to have that added as a something that we'd like to hear the from the uh hear from people about.

[10:49:20] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. So did you want to put that into the for staff to further evaluate then?

[10:49:30] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah I thought we did that.

[10:49:32] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay. Okay. I just want to make sure.

[10:49:35] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Yeah I think that this is one area that we would have to look into more and I think one of the suggestions I would have for council this evening is to um whether it's this or all your other um very well intended suggestions is to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Because we can reevaluate this. You know we can incorporate everything that you have suggested so far. There are several areas for evaluation but what we'll need to understand is do you want these areas to be evaluated to be incorporated into this new policy because if you do that's gonna take time which means it's gonna have to come back again.

[10:50:10] Councilmember Pat Showalter: No I don't want to do that. I just I don't want to do that. I just want I feel like we've you know we have been working hard to try and get more um safe parking lots and I feel like this is an opportunity while we're clarifying what what's valuable to the community for us to say hey safe parking lots are valuable. If you can help us out for that with that we'd like that. So that's that's really what I'm I'm interested in and it would be appropriate to do that. I I don't want to stop this process for that. Um so I think that is basically my comments and thank you very much to um everybody for there so far.

[10:50:50] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. So did you want to put that into the... okay... Councilmember Hicks.

[10:50:55] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Mayor did you want to go first because you haven't spoken or we're responding to the...

[10:51:00] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Do you have more amendments?

[10:51:02] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yes.

[10:51:04] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay. So I don't want to talk until I've seen all the amendments cause I cuz I'm trying to...

[10:51:10] Councilmember Alison Hicks: But not much actually. We'll see.

[10:51:13] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Well we'll I'll have to sit here and find out. Okay.

[10:51:15] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Um yeah so I'd basically like where this is where this has gone and thank you to the motion maker cause it's much much more verbiage than I could put out there. Um but similar to my thoughts of having I want full council review of policy changes not on the consent calendar, have a study session, so all of those things I'm very supportive of. Um and I like the separation into eligibility criteria that you named and then required performance criteria I don't know what you're titling this and choice or optional performance criteria. I like those categories. Um I agree with all the changes that have been made so far in terms of putting all electric under the required performance criteria and also if I understood it right under optional performance criteria um either communi- community facility and or neighborhood um serving retail I don't know quite how we landed on that but that general concept I'm in favor of. Um I think the one thing or the things that I s- so maybe I staff can help me with some of this. The things that I'm seeing that are missing um are things like uh streetscape improvements in places like to me if we're going up from a one or a place with one or two story buildings to a place with who knows what you know five seven name your number. Um then you need a differ- you need wider sidewalks. Uh to me that's you know in a you're not gonna have the five foot minimum sidewalk next to a twenty story building I I hope we're not we're just not gonna do that. So so is there a way so is that something that we do we already require it in some way can we require it? To be quite honest I thought that was lacking none of you were a part of this so I can for the five five five Gatekeeper project I thought the interface with Moffett was um you know I came on board when that was in the middle of it and I thought it was not good. Um so it seems like something that we're not pay- to me like something we have not paid adequate attention to in the past.

[10:53:35] City Staff: Um Councilmember Hicks can you just please clarify are you talking in the context of the streamlined Gatekeeper criteria or regular Gatekeeper guidelines or...

[10:53:45] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I just think that's a necessary thing. I mean if you're going to go up that and I know I could say more about it and I won't but um I just think it's something that we have to do and that there are ways of widening a si- I understand if you mandate widening sidewalks you're taking away from the developable um square footage but we just saw in the San Antonio area um and frankly I talked to the YIMBYs about this to some degree uh that they did a cantilevered second story and widen the sidewalk even though they kept the amount of developable space the same. So I think there are ways of doing that. I just I just think it's a mandatory thing.

[10:54:20] City Staff: Sure. So I think um if if this is focused on the Streamlined Gatekeeper as part of the discussion um it is very important for us to have objective criteria to evaluate their eligibility for a particular project. Um I think it would be particularly hard to do that given the range of potential projects that could come in. Um for regular Gatekeepers we already have something giving a nod to that as an example related to constructing wider sidewalks. But again it's not overly prescriptive given it's a regular Gatekeeper suggestion or indication of how to be evaluated favorably. Um in both categories Streamlined and Regular don't forget that these projects will still go through the very intensive development review process. And so given that these are legislative um amendments that are required staff will be looking for all of those critical things that it knows council um wants to see in projects and pushing for those to the maximum extent it can. Unlike the regular development review process not associated with legislative amendments where we are limited by objective standards requirements and other provisions in state law that curtail the ability for staff to push for things that are not in adopted standards. So it's a very different framework for project review of either a Streamlined Gatekeeper or a Regular Gatekeeper where we have much more discretion to push for wider sidewalks or other kinds of um things that we know council wants to see in projects.

[10:55:42] City Staff: I think the only other thing I'll add is that they you know these projects are like any development project will be required to do what the minimum adopted you know policy for whatever that streetscape is if there is one too. So if there's already something that is adopted for the area that you know this project would be going into that's a minim- that's a just a basic project requirement um you know that doesn't have anything to do with it being Gatekeeper or not.

[10:56:05] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yeah so I'm just trying and maybe this will come along with objective design standards which is you know just like biodiversity and urban forest another one of those projects that will we'll be doing. But I'm seeing you know for streetscaping over and over I've seen it not be done to my satisfaction and on Gatekeeper p- I mean I mentioned the five five five project on Gatekeeper projects as well. So I would like some way of us being able to you know like maybe it does come through the objective d- design standards but um you know the other thing about the five five five project is it didn't have in my opinion enough attention to circulation. It didn't talk about when we first started bike lanes, it had a big garage exiting on a small pedestrian oriented street with hundreds of cars coming out. It was like a lot of those things had not been thought about and I would like some kind of list and maybe it is objective design standards some kind of list so that we don't short those things in the future.

[10:57:00] City Staff: I think it's just hard like to use the sidewalks as an example to know what that objective criteria would be even as a guideline like how much is enough? Is it ten percent or twenty-five or fifty percent more than you know a minimum standard? I think it's hard to say. And with right of way improvements you know as one key example it's difficult to know what other constraints there are with the right of way or with sight distance or any number of different sort of site level characteristics that affect the ability to you know construct wider sidewalks as an example.

[10:57:35] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So we can't say address how so we can't just ask for a description of some of these things like address how as your building gets taller you're going to widen the sidewalks but not you know not uh have maybe it's not a criteria or not listed that way.

[10:57:55] City Staff: I mean I think it may be possible. I think it's hard to envision for me in the Streamlined Gatekeeper context as a a criteria or guideline. In the Regular Gatekeeper perhaps there could be more specificity in the examples to say at minimum explain how the project would provide sidewalks you know proportionate or appropriate to the intensity of development or wordsmith something along those lines.

[10:58:20] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay. So um yeah so I'll I'll say one other. There's a list here on the in the staff report it said um trees uh and biodiversity and to me I like what we've said so far about biodiversity and I won't repeat it under required performance criteria. There's another thing that sometimes goes on where there's like at Cascal's for example um where there's a large tree that's pretty much where you'd want to develop the building and one of the and they chose to to work around it. And we've had more than one project that does that. That doesn't seem to be in here anywhere as so I don't know if that could be a choice but then I do run into what Councilmember Clark mentioned of making sure that the choices are roughly equivalent. Of course not everybody has a huge tree somewhere in the middle of their lot. Um but that's one that that um I could imagine including.

[10:59:30] City Staff: Thank you. I think um again in the Streamlined Gatekeeper criteria it's hard to imagine how that would be objective enough for us to evaluate at the staff level. I think as it relates to the criteria for the Regular Gatekeepers um there is indication of prioritizing the preservation of mature healthy trees. Um and again sort of with along the same lines as the explanation for sidewalks um the city retains significant discretion as to whether to approve the project and will have study sessions that can allow focusing in on key trees or aspects of building design that could adversely affect tree preservation as uh the input opportunity for the council or the EPC to offer that feedback.

[11:00:10] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay. Well I think those are my comments.

[11:00:15] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. So um I'm gonna call the question. Um and I just I think my comments would be you know uh since my tenure on council th- we've spoken about this uh five times. So I I think while uh I think the you know the City Manager makes great advice which is you know don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good I think we're all making compromises tonight and then with the understanding that we can reevaluate we can make tweaks as this goes forward. Um but I think just wanna share that I do think Gatekeepers are above and beyond that we have our our General Plan our Precise Plan and other ways to move forward with development in the city. Um and so um I I want to enable and incentivize and understand that different circumstances come forward um but I really do want to make uh forward movement tonight um given all the lengthy discussion we've had. So let's vote.

[11:02:35] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. So that passes six-one. Um I would love a a motion from colleagues so that we can continue our meeting.

[11:02:45] Councilmember Emily Ramos: I move that we continue the meeting past ten.

[11:02:48] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. That's seconded by Councilmember Clark. Let's vote.

[11:03:00] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. Um.

[06:00:00] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: That that same spread, 6-1, with Councilmember McAlister dissenting.

[06:00:05] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: If if colleagues are okay, we're just gonna power through. Uh, we we saw this item um not too too long ago, so um and staff is already seated here and ready to to go.

[06:00:18] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Um, so let's move on to Item 2, Reconsideration of Density Increases in R3 Zoning District Update Change Areas. Community Development Director Christian Murdock and Assistant Community Development Director Amber Blizinski will present the item.

[06:00:32] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: If you would like to speak on this item, please submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk now, and we will begin with the staff presentation.

[06:00:54] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Councilmembers. I'm Christian Murdock, the Community Development Director. Uh, I'm joined this evening by Amber Blizinski, Assistant Community Development Director.

[06:01:08] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Um, at the outset here, uh I want to remind Council uh about a couple of the fundamental points uh related to the consideration of the R3 change areas and upzoning opportunities for study.

[06:01:21] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Um, back at the March Study Session, the Council considered uh fundamentally two questions: whether to study uh Option 1, which is uh known as the R3-D2 uh zoning subdistrict or the higher density option for upzoning uh of certain change areas that were identified.

[06:01:43] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Um, that Option 1 goes to uh an upper limit of between 75 to 110 dwelling units per acre. Or to uh pursue study of Option 2A, known by the zoning subdistrict R3-D1, or in other words, the lower density option for the change areas.

[06:02:08] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: During the March 25th, 2025 Study Session, um the Council supported the staff recommended change areas. Um, Council also uh added change areas for condominiums uh in areas identified.

[06:02:22] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Added rowhouse/townhouse change areas, um also identified as options by staff. Determined the R3-D2 or um higher density option, Option 1, was appropriate for four of the change areas that had been identified.

[06:02:39] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: And then uh determined that the R3-D1 or Option 2A, lower density option, um should be evaluated for the remainder of the change areas.

[06:02:51] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Um, subsequent to the Study Session, um Council on April 22nd uh voted to reconsider the densities that were identified for study in the change areas. Um, particularly looking at those uh change areas identified for the lower density option, Option 2A. And to uh consider uh tonight whether to redesignate those for study for the higher density Option 1.

[06:03:16] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Um, following tonight's discussion, um presuming that there are some changes to uh densities to be evaluated in the change areas, staff will continue through the environmental review process, which we've already started.

[06:03:29] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Um, we will commence work on drafting the various standards including commercial/live-work strategy, small lots strategy, uh as well as conduct additional outreach to affected neighborhoods and properties, focused initially at least on those areas um with uh changes to their um densities to be studied.

[06:03:49] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Um, later on we will return to Council uh for confirmation of the zoning approach um that we've put together, um targeted for Q1 2026. And then we would return later in 2026 for City Council adoption of the R3 update.

[06:04:08] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: Uh, and so at this time staff's recommending that Council discuss the 13 change areas previously identified for the lower density, Option 2A. And I have slides um following this that can help facilitate that discussion of each of the change areas whenever uh the Mayor and Council are ready. Thank you.

[06:04:26] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Does any member of Council have any question?

[06:04:32] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay, not seeing any, we'll open up 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 star 9 on your phone.

[06:04:47] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: A timer will be displayed on the screen. Each speaker will have three minutes for sticking with us for so long. We'll start with in-person. So James Kuszmaul, then Alex Brown.

[06:05:03] James Kuszmaul: Thank you. Um, James Kuszmaul, speaking for the YIMBYs of Mountain View YIMBY sentence. Um, as a reminder, we are in a housing crisis and we also have uh RHNA numbers to meet for the total amount of housing we're supposed to build before 2030.

[06:05:22] James Kuszmaul: Um, making so that it's so that we have more zoned capacity for that housing to get built will be good for people who want to live here and will be good for getting soft-story buildings replaced and will be good for keeping the city in compliance with state law.

[06:05:39] James Kuszmaul: And so we encourage you to make it so that we study in the Environmental Impact Report as many possible sites for further for future upzoning effectively as possible so that then when Council goes to actually approve these um zoning changes, we have as much flexibility as we can to do so and to make it so that more people can live in our wonderful city. Thank you.

[06:06:12] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Alex Brown.

[06:06:18] Alex Brown: You're welcome. No. Uh, hi friends, again. I feel like I've commented on R3 what, multiple times a year for the last five years? I love it every time.

[06:06:33] Alex Brown: Uh, I'm glad this came back to Council. I think that uh the result of the last vote disappointed me a little because I don't think that reducing the amount of information that we as a city are gathering about what we can do to address the housing crisis is a good move.

[06:06:51] Alex Brown: I think that we should try to be maximalist in at least the information gathering stage to know what the consequences would be were we to redevelop these pieces of R3, although I would rather see the entirety of the zone be evaluated, which maybe eventually we'll get to.

[06:07:11] Alex Brown: Uh, I like seeing what's coming up because I think that the more we can do, the better. And doing it parcel by parcel feels, I don't know, feels like a waste when we could do it, you know, R3 wide. I don't like parcel by parcel. Anyway. It's late. I'm good. Yeah.

[06:07:33] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: We'll move on to virtual public comment. Leslie Friedman, then Robert Cox.

[06:07:51] Leslie Friedman: Unmute. Thank you very much. I have just uh one thing to say, which is I respect the discussions and research that went into the previous decision from the Council, and I respect the process that the Council used in studying the situations throughout Mountain View.

[06:08:21] Leslie Friedman: And so for me and other people um who admired the way this worked out through the Council, I would recommend not changing the vote that was already taken.

[06:08:38] Leslie Friedman: It's um an unusual thing to to have a re-voting. I understand that this time was considered um a good choice to re-vote. However, my personal study of the situation, I think it's a good decision and there's no need to change it. Thank you very much.

[06:09:05] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Uh, Robert Cox.

[06:09:12] Robert Cox: Can you hear me?

[06:09:14] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Yes.

[06:09:15] Robert Cox: Okay. Mayor Kamei, Vice Mayor Ramos, and members of the City Council. Robert Cox, speaking for Livable Mountain View. We don't support the new vote on these densities approved by the Council on March 25th.

[06:09:29] Robert Cox: Since that time, no new information has come to light and development conditions are substantially the same as they were three months ago when the Council voted on this item. Making a different decision now undermines the public's trust that Council decisions once made can be relied on by all stakeholders, including residents and voters of Mountain View.

[06:09:53] Robert Cox: Um, so anyway, we supported last time the EPC decision that, except for the Del Medio area, we would go with Option uh 2A, uh the lower density option. And we still have the same position, so we haven't changed on that.

[06:10:14] Robert Cox: Um, I'll just make a comment about, you know, in I had been on the EPC for eight years and I have been watching Council meetings for the last 15 years. I've never seen the case when people studied some some project that was coming forth that they didn't end up accepting the whole project.

[06:10:36] Robert Cox: Because how do you even take the study that's being done and then, you know, decide 'Well, I want to tweak it here to move it back a little bit' or whatever. I don't I don't really feel that that justification uh is in line with what is what will really happen if you add the increased densities because I don't believe, I mean, you'll have the basis for a decision to back off.

[06:11:04] Robert Cox: You won't know because all you will have studied is the larger density option. So I think you need to make the decision based on what you really think is the best thing to do. And, you know, I think that decision was made back on March 25th and I don't see the point in changing it. So thank you.

[06:11:24] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Manuel Salazar.

[06:11:29] Manuel Salazar: Yeah, hi again. Uh, good evening, Mayor and Councilmembers. My name is Manuel Salazar and I'll be speaking again on behalf of Mountain View YIMBY.

[06:11:37] Manuel Salazar: Uh, I want to start by thanking Staff and Council for your continued leadership on the R3 zoning district updates. I know this has been a very complex process. It's been going on for years now, and we want to recognize the thoughtful work that's been going into it.

[06:11:49] Manuel Salazar: Uh, we're especially encouraged by several steps the City has taken. You know, things like expanding eligibility to include additional infill and adjacent sites shows a flexible and responsive approach.

[06:12:00] Manuel Salazar: Uh, we also strongly support the selection of Option 1 zoning for key areas like Del Medio and Central Park Apartments. These were well suited for higher density and help position the City to meet its housing goals.

[06:12:12] Manuel Salazar: With that said, we remain concerned that the current framework doesn't go far enough. Uh, without clear implementation tools, it risks falling short of what the Housing Element calls for and what our community needs.

[06:12:24] Manuel Salazar: First, we urge the City to release a feasibility study. Uh, without one, there's no way to assess whether the proposed densities are truly buildable, uh especially on smaller or constrained lots.

[06:12:35] Manuel Salazar: Second, uh key opportunity sites are still missing. Parcels near mobile home parks, R2 adjacent lots, and sites near the downtown transit center should be included if the City wants to fulfill its RHNA uh strategy.

[06:12:48] Manuel Salazar: Third, there's still no plan for tenant protections. We've consistently called for these changes to be paired with safeguards like right to return, enhanced relocation support, uh permanent replacement ordinances, et cetera, et cetera.

[06:13:02] Manuel Salazar: Uh, and without these kind of policies, we risk displacement in the name of progress. We don't want to build and lead to displacement. We want to be able to do both at the same time. Uh, not displacing, pardon me. We want to build without displacing.

[06:13:17] Manuel Salazar: Uh, in order to kind of address some of these issues that we've highlighted uh above, I'd like to recommend a few things. Uh, firstly, completing a feasibility study within 18 months of this initial adoption. Um, that should give ample time for, you know, staff to go back and kind of see how things have been going and then make modifications if necessary.

[06:13:35] Manuel Salazar: Uh, secondly, expanding the change areas as identified in our prior comments. You know, some of these areas can be zoned for higher densities, and we would love to see that.

[06:13:43] Manuel Salazar: Uh, and lastly, codifying strong tenant protections alongside new zoning. We want to build more units, but we want to make sure that people don't get displaced, um because, you know, progress with displacement isn't real progress.

[06:13:54] Manuel Salazar: Zoning is more than a technical, you know, exercise. It's a policy signal. We believe a bolder, more integrated approach is needed to fully align R3 updates with Mountain View's housing vision and its commitments.

[06:14:07] Manuel Salazar: We think, you know, again, Staff and leaders and Council for their leadership on this item. And, yeah, look forward to seeing how this develops. Thank you.

[06:14:15] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. So seeing no other um public comment, we'll bring the item back for Council deliberation and action. Councilmember Ramirez.

[06:14:28] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. Um, I appreciate uh the members of the public who spoke and submitted comments. Uh, one I I one speaker referenced uh it it it has been, I think, in practice, it's it's common for the Council after expending a significant amount of time investigating a land use issue to um, you know, to ultimately adopt the project or uh take some final action.

[06:14:57] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: But uh I was reminded in in 2019, I was actually part of the uh I was the seconder of the motion to not accept the Terra Bella Vision Plan, which was something that a prior Council had spent a lot of time um developing.

[06:15:10] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So it's uh it is it's not um uh it is not something that we have that's completely unheard of. So um I I do as I shared in in March, I I'm comfortable with for CEQA purposes studying the higher density option.

[06:15:32] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Um, but I know that there are strong differences of of opinion and in a uh uh in an effort to keep the meeting short, I'm going to propose a uh what I think may be a compromise uh motion, and that's to uh proceed with Option 2A or R3-D1, the lower density option, in all change areas except for the following four, which are on page 2 of the staff report.

[06:16:08] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Uh, I'll wait for everyone to pull up the staff report. Page 2 has the change areas that were uh that are listed for Option 2A. The the motion would be uh Option 2A, the lower density option, for all of these change areas except for the following four: Number 1, Del Medio North, where I live; Number 4, California/Ortega; Number 5, California/Latham/Rengstorff; and Number 11, Solano Apartments. So those are the four that would uh proceed for study with uh for Option 1 or the R3-D2 zone.

[06:17:02] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Yes, so the um thank you Councilmember Ramirez. Um, there are 13 different change areas. So he's proposing um Del Medio North, 4 is California/Ortega, 5 is California/Latham/Rengstorff, and 11 is Solano Apartments. Does the motion maker have a second?

[06:17:31] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay, and that is seconded by the Vice Mayor. Um, is there any discussion or shall we take the vote? Uh, Vice Mayor Ramos.

[06:17:50] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Um, I'll speak to my second. If I had my way, I probably actually would select Option 1 for all 13 areas. Um, but I don't think I'll win that vote. Um, and so uh primarily the big ones that I uh I I care deeply about is 4 and 5 uh because California/Ortega and California/Latham/Rengstorff has there they're I do feel like those are the apartments that are in most danger of being displaced and getting a net loss if you put rowhomes or whatever.

[06:18:31] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Um, they those are the apartments that we have the highest risk of getting a we we won't get net loss anymore because of SB 330, although it is a a temporary law that will expire soon.

[06:18:45] Councilmember Emily Ramos: But we will um that is that is an area where we really need to make sure that we get the density we need so if we do need to re-redevelop, and that is a large area where we do have a lot of soft-story buildings. We haven't really studied soft-story yet because of how expensive it is.

[06:19:03] Councilmember Emily Ramos: But if we do have to redevelop those buildings for whatever reason, we hit a major earthquake, I want us to make sure that we can do a one-for-one replacement requirement and um should should they get redeveloped and you increase those odds by increasing that density.

[06:19:19] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Um, so that that is that is my hope uh as we we take R3 with our anti-displacement and one-for-one replacement requirements. So that is why I'm pushing for at least 4 and 5. Uh, Del Medio is is a good one. I I actually wasn't sure about 11, but I would have actually supported I Option 1 for all 13, so thank you.

[06:19:47] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Councilmember Hicks.

[06:19:50] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I'm I'm leaning towards voting for this as a compromise, but I have to say the the um process I am deeply uncomfortable with. And the reason is we if if we're going to uh if we're saying we're studying this, we're not choosing a density now, we're studying the envelope um for CEQA, then that should have been the process or maybe that should be the process that we announce to the public from the beginning.

[06:20:25] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Because we had a lot of people here some number of of whenever we last looked at this, weeks ago, um and those were people who thought we were doing the density then. I uh we say that we want input from the public and we're doing all sorts of taking all sorts of measures to make sure that we do that, widening where we where we distribute flyers, making sure that we translate into multiple languages.

[06:20:49] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And I think another thing that we have to do is have a clear process so people know what day to come to make the comments that are important to them um and not get kind of beaten down by Council coming up with an ever-changing process.

[06:21:06] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Um, so that's so if we're going to do this study wider envelopes, we have to tell everybody that from the beginning, in my opinion. That's one thing. And then um the second thing is I do wonder whether to what extent we're just putting off to say that this is not a density choice.

[06:21:30] Councilmember Alison Hicks: You named one project in the past or one situation in the past where that happened, but really most of the time this is I think it is a density choice under another name, studying the CEQA envelope. Um, you know, I wonder what is the chance that we will actually change it. Um, so anyway, those are my statements. Um, I I said which way I'm leaning. People can convince me to change my mind.

[06:21:55] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Councilmember McAlister.

[06:21:58] Councilmember John McAlister: So I'll I think I'll jump a little bit on the process. So I I don't like being here tonight. I think it was an unnecessary step. Um, if I was to vote again, I would not vote for the reconsideration. Uh, I think it was a disservice to all those people that came before. They don't have a chance to publicly speak tonight.

[06:22:20] Councilmember John McAlister: And so those who prevailed and were complicit in this uh re- discussion is it's uh it's not right. If you're going to do something, you should do it immediately and the people have the right.

[06:22:33] Councilmember John McAlister: So um I'm not going to support the motion. And if this situation ever arose again, I would not go for reconsideration if it was so soon, but we need to respect the people that came here and I think tonight is a situation where we are disrespecting the public by not giving them a fair opportunity to discuss this.

[06:22:54] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right. Well, thanks everyone. I don't uh I don't have any further comments than the ones that I made when this item came forward um for for reconsideration, so let's take the vote.

[06:23:18] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: And that motion failed. Um, is there a Councilmember Clark?

[06:23:26] Councilmember Chris Clark: Oh, it just disappeared. I was trying to figure out who I'm trying to talk to. Um, I'll just make a guess. An educated guess. Um, I I agree with Councilmember Hicks on, you know, the concerns about the process.

[06:23:49] Councilmember Chris Clark: I think for me um and and I think um some members of the public made a good point in terms of, you know, it it's one thing if there's if there's new information or situation changes um um I think it's a or or if you have a really good um reason.

[06:24:10] Councilmember Chris Clark: I I think the the in terms of a compromise, you the thing that I and I'll just point out there have been other instances where, you know, we've we've studied the maximum envelope and we've or or not studied the maximum envelope uh and then scaled down. North Bayshore Precise Plan was actually um a good example of that where we were given the option to study like max max density whether it was office and or residential and we um at least on the office side I remember we we studied a smaller envelope and then when I think we actually reduced it from that.

[06:24:43] Councilmember Chris Clark: Um, but um look I I I am I have been swayed by by the the concerns about displacement and the the areas where um the areas where at the at the prior meeting that I was very on the fence on um was the the two change areas in kind of the California Street corridor. So those were were 4 and 5.

[06:25:09] Councilmember Chris Clark: Um, you know, if it if it gets us to yes, I'm I'm much more comfortable with with limiting it to those two because I think those are the areas where it makes sense to study the maximum allowable envelope. Um, I did think very hard and carefully about the other the other two that were that were proposed. I think Del Medio North and um Solano Apartments at the last meeting and um I just you know based on my conversations with with interested members of the public um before that vote, I just didn't feel um I you know I just don't think it's appropriate tonight for me to um I just don't have additional new information or or things that would change my mind there.

[06:25:52] Councilmember Chris Clark: But but I do think that in the context of studying the envelope, um the maximum amount of disp- or the the most displacement that would occur would be in that corridor and so I'll um I I I I would move that if if it gets us to yes um to uh to do R3 to study R3-D2 in the the California Street corridor. Those um I think it was uh Change Areas 4 and 5 but not 1 and 11. Um, so that that's my motion. We'll see where it goes.

[06:26:28] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay, well your motion has a seconded by Councilmember Hicks. Uh, Councilmember McAlister.

[06:26:34] Councilmember John McAlister: So I'm a little um getting back to this process. So if we voted to change and it failed, wouldn't that result go back to what we dif- the uh voted on the first time?

[06:26:48] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Um, my understanding is that the staff recommendation is just to discuss the the 13 change areas. So it doesn't it doesn't technically go back to the original motion because when the item came back for reconsideration it was to discuss the 13 change areas, process wise looking at the City Clerk and that that's my understanding, it doesn't automatically default. So we have I mean that's my understanding of the rules but right because I mean either way we have a motion on the floor so I'd like to call that question and then you know if we can yes but I can the City um uh Manager may if you'd like her to weigh in.

[06:27:26] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: So the prior full Council direction during the agenda item would stand where most of the 13 were Option 2 right now.

[06:27:38] Councilmember John McAlister: So the old our original vote would stand. So through the Mr. Clark Councilmember Clark, I don't understand if we voted one way, why are you looking to get to a yes if we already have a determined uh vote.

[06:27:56] Councilmember Chris Clark: Maybe I was wrong. My my assumption going into this was that you know through reconsideration we're we're basically I I shouldn't say this cause I'm I'm clearly wrong but it was just an extension of the prior meeting so um in my mind if we if if this vote fails then I think we should vote to reaffirm the prior action so it's very clear what the path forward is. Um, I'm I'm trying to strike a balance because I've I've heard from I've heard from others um some concern about the prior. I'm just trying to strike a balance and and move things forward.

[06:28:34] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Yeah, so maybe um staff can share the original direction and then we can take this vote. So last time it because it was I thought it was a slight variation from EPC, wasn't it? So it was 'cause they had done the the wasn't it? It was plus Del Medio and then I thought there was one other area. Central. Okay.

[06:28:57] Community Development Director Christian Murdock: So the Council action to be reconsidered is whether to uh apply Option 1A for study uh beyond the four change areas that Council voted on on March 25th. So um those change areas were Del Medio South, Continental/Dale, and portions of Central Park and Evelyn/Calderon. Those are on the first page of the staff report to show the Option 1A higher density options. And so um what the reconsideration vote was was to look at those lower density areas and whether any of those should be identified for the higher density uh to be studied.

[06:29:36] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So does that clarify Councilmember McAlister? So it was just so as the City Manager was saying, it's just for those ones that on table 1 or table 2?

[06:29:50] Councilmember John McAlister: Or so we're only we're looking at table 2 and table 1 is off the is not being considered? Okay. Thank you.

[06:29:58] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: 'Cause I think the original reconsideration had talked about broadening and looking at more areas. Okay. So does that help? Okay. So of the 13, Councilmember Clark is now recommending two. So. All right. Shall we take the vote?

[06:30:30] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right, and that motion passes. Thank you very much to staff for two very um meaty items. We will move on to Item 9, which is our Council, Staff, and Committee Reports. Do any colleagues have any reports to share? Councilmember Showalter.

[06:30:50] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yes, I wanted to share um two things. Um, on uh the Wednesday after our last meeting, I guess that was the 11th, uh we had a Silicon Valley Clean Energy meeting and um we it was very budget oriented and very technical. Um, we uh we talked about a financial stress test for the um that that's done every year and also uh some prepayment bonding.

[06:31:15] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Um, I've sent you uh through the Clerk, you'll be getting um a uh summary of the meeting and if you have any questions about that, let me know. But again, I'd like to reiterate that um next year Silicon Valley Clean Energy will be able to buy um 100 percent um clean energy.

[06:31:34] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And what that really means is 106 percent because you lose 6 percent in the transmission. So that's really good news. We weren't able to buy 100 percent this year because really it wasn't available. And um so that's good news.

[06:31:49] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And then the then the next night we had the um Council Neighborhoods um Neighborhoods meeting and um uh that was uh very it it was it was the first time we had met at the Portuguese um Hall and that and actually that turned out to be a great meeting, great great meeting place, great venue.

[06:32:10] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And um uh Christine Crowley, I mean Christine Crosby won the um the most questions answered. And um and this meeting was kind of distinguished by uh more people gave compliments to the City than I ever remember before. So that was a nice change.

[06:32:31] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Vice Mayor Ramos.

[06:32:33] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Mayor. Um, on the 12th, I uh was tagged in to VTA PAC. They had no actions, but they did go over their TDM policy which was or the the initial stages of them drafting the TDM policy, which was really uh fortunate because we just did ours. So that was actually nice to bring up when we talked uh about that with other cities.

[06:32:53] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Uh, then I hopped to Cities Association, Santa Clara County, and then uh CNC, which uh uh Councilmember Showalter mentioned. The next day, uh we had a Policy Committee for the Cal Cities Governance, Transparency and Labor Relations Committee. I'm on that I'm on that committee.

[06:33:11] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Uh, they largely talked about AI and they had various toolkits available for municipalities and uh one piece of legislation that they're following very closely, it's uh Durazo, I think it's SB 802, I I check me on that number. I actually put it I had it up on but then I closed my laptop.

[06:33:30] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Um, and it's about um uh virtual participation in in meetings. Uh, and then on the 14th, North Whisman Ice Cream Social. They had a Kona Ice truck, it was great. Um, then uh 6/20, I represented the City at the ABAG General Assembly.

[06:33:48] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Uh, we voted uh to change bylaws, accept the budget and um yeah, it was mostly the budget and bylaws. Um, there's there's some changes um where they will have the the rep, if you have if you are the rep from essentially the Cal Cities, you will also be the rep to the General Assembly uh from your City.

[06:34:08] Councilmember Emily Ramos: That was one of the major changes. And also apparently the old bylaws allowed for secret ballot for the Chair and Vice Chair of ABAG, and that's not allowed anymore. So uh we changed that. Um, and then finally on the 22nd, I went to the Rex Manor Barbecue Block Party. Yay.

[06:34:29] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Um, I just want to report that um I attended the Spanish Language Civic Leadership Academy on June 11th. We graduated our latest class. And then let's see, um June 12th, I attended the Cities Association for our annual summer meeting.

[06:34:44] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Just want to thank our City Manager Kimbra McCarthy who served on that panel. I think many of us were there um to to hear the wisdom about uh how we work together um as Council and Manager forms of government. And then um June 13th kicked off the Concerts on the Plaza.

[06:35:04] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: And um I serve on the League of California Cities um Governance Committee um where we met on June 17th virtually. And then many of us were at the um Alamo Drafthouse uh ribbon cutting. Um, excited to have something where the old Icon Theater was.

[06:35:22] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: And then um from the 19th to the 22nd, I was at the U.S. Conference of Mayors representing the the City of Mountain View at the 83rd annual meeting. Um, we had two members of uh or companies in our community um showcase, Waymo and Google. Um, so people realized where the City of Mountain View is. And that's my report.

[06:35:44] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So with seeing no others um with their hands up, I'll move item 10. Thank you so much for joining us, sticking with us. The Council will head into summer recess. So our next City Council meeting will be held on August 26, 2025. This meeting is adjourned at 11:32. Aloha. Bye.

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