Video
Transcript
Segment 3
[00:00:00] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: So, um, in the way that the commissions are set up, um, it is the ability to say, 'I'd like to bring this up in a future commission meeting to discuss,' and then the other board, the other members of the commission could vote. And then if a majority said, 'Yeah, we would like to see this in a future meeting,' and then, um, and then it would be agendized. Is that in the power of the commission right now?
Segment 1
[00:00:03] Councilmember Linda Sell: Good evening. Let's call to order the special council meeting, closed session of November 18th, 2025 at 4:31. Um. Do we have anybody...
[00:00:20] City Clerk David Carnahan: Not at the moment, no.
[00:00:20] Councilmember Linda Sell: Okay, okay. Um, the city does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. The council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means council can regulate the time, place and manner of speech.
Segment 3
[00:00:35] City Manager Kent Steffens: So generally the council policy on boards and commissions gives the staff liaison, um, authority over the agenda. And the board or commission, each board and commission does propose a work plan that council approves, so that council has an ability to make sure that their boards and commissions and the staff that support them are working on policy areas that council would like them focused on. Um, there, you know, there are ways for them to request agenda items, but they don't have the same flexibility that council has to just direct staff to come up with agenda items and produce work. Um, because there, you know, the... there's been conversations of, of board and commission members having agenda items that don't require staff work, but realistically there isn't a way for a board or commission staff liaison to support a board or commission without work. We can't... I mean even if we're not preparing, writing a staff report, the board and commission staff are there to facilitate and help make sure that the meeting is running well. And if we don't know anything about a particular topic, we're going to need to research it before we support a meeting discussing the topic. I think our Assistant City Manager has something to add too.
Segment 1
[00:00:38] Councilmember Linda Sell: Speaker comments must be limited to the agenda item being considered by council. If a speaker's comments are not related to the agenda item, the presiding officer, um, will rule the speaker out of order. The speaker will not be ruled out of order because the disagreement with the content of their speech.
[00:00:58] Councilmember Linda Sell: Location and online meeting details are available on the, um, council agenda. Use the show captions button, um, to view captions on Zoom. Following the closed session, the joint study session with the board and commission chairs and vice chairs will begin at 5:30 p.m., followed by regular council meeting at 7:00 p.m. We encourage the public to stay tuned and participate in the study session and regular meetings.
Segment 3
[00:01:45] Assistant City Manager Sarah Johnson-Rios: Thanks. Sorry, I just wanted to clarify that if there is, um, any discrepancy between the staff liaison... the staff liaison and a board or commission, agenda decisions are appealable to the City Manager.
[00:01:58] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Okay. And then, um, so in mirroring like what we're doing at council, um, so a councilmember during the unagendized item sort of section says, 'I would like... this is my idea for a, uh, council priority project.' And then he says the idea and then the other colleagues, um, either say, 'Yeah, we support it.' And then if a majority supports it, it just winds up on a list. I was wondering if the commissioners, if they chose to do that, is that currently in their power or would that be a sub... the subcommittee would need to, um, examine that if the, um, commissioners thought that was...
Segment 1
[00:02:15] Councilmember Linda Sell: City Clerk, may we please have roll call.
[00:02:20] City Clerk David Carnahan: Mayor Klein.
[00:02:21] Mayor Larry Klein: Present.
[00:02:22] City Clerk David Carnahan: Vice Mayor Sell.
[00:02:23] Councilmember Linda Sell: Present.
[00:02:24] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Cisneros.
[00:02:26] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger.
[00:02:27] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Present.
[00:02:28] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan.
[00:02:30] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang.
[00:02:31] Councilmember Chang: Present.
[00:02:32] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Lay.
[00:02:35] City Clerk David Carnahan: Four present with Councilmembers Cisneros, Srinivasan and Lay absent.
[00:02:39] Councilmember Linda Sell: Um, Councilmember Srinivasan, excused absence. Councilmember Lay, excused absence. Councilmember Cisneros, excused absence.
Segment 3
[00:02:40] Mayor Larry Klein: Okay, sor... sorry, before, sir, before you answer that, we need to check in with Councilmember Srinivasan, uh, for a statement briefly.
[00:02:48] Mayor Larry Klein: Councilmember Srinivasan?
[00:02:52] Mayor Larry Klein: If... could you please unmute?
[00:03:05] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Can you give me, uh, two minutes? I, I am, uh, looking for the statement. One second, Mayor. Sorry about that.
Segment 1
[00:03:30] Councilmember Linda Sell: Members of the public will now have the opportunity to address the council on closed session items. Please submit a speaker card to the City Clerk. Raise your digital hand now, um, or dial star nine on the telephone to indicate you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first followed by remote participants. Speakers have, um, one minute to speak.
Segment 3
[00:03:33] Mayor Larry Klein: And we'll pause for just... for just a moment.
[00:03:35] City Clerk David Carnahan: Um, if it... if permissible, um, we could put Councilmember Srinivasan on, um, back on screen and I could share a statement that, uh, you could concur with if it sounds appropriate.
[00:03:47] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: I am ready. Okay. Sorry. I am participating remotely in tonight's council meeting under the just cause provision of Ralph M. Act included in the... in California Government Code section 54953(j)(2). And there is... there is no individual 15 years of age or older present in the room at my remote location. Thank you.
Segment 1
[00:04:00] Councilmember Linda Sell: Um, do we have any... I... uh, we don't have... Do we have any speakers in the audience?
[00:04:06] City Clerk David Carnahan: Uh, no Vice Mayor, we have no speakers in the room, nor online indicating a desire to speak on the closed session items.
[00:04:14] Councilmember Linda Sell: Okay. So, um... oh, just adjourn? Do I have to read the items? No? Okay. So I will close public comment. Uh, Council will now adjourn to closed session. See you back here at 5:30.
Segment 3
[00:04:17] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Vice Mayor.
[00:04:19] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Okay. Um. Back to my question. So, is it currently in the power of the commission to at the unagendized portion for a commissioner to say, um, 'I'd like this idea to be a consideration for our, um, um, council priority project.' And then the other colleagues with no discussion would say if they support it or not support it. And then if a majority support it, then it ends up on the list. And that at the end of the year, um, the commission could look at the list along with ideas they bring and that... and then that would there be their, um, council priority... you know, pick one for their council priority for their commission. Is that currently in their power right to do if they wanted to or not?
[00:05:15] Assistant City Manager Sarah Johnson-Rios: Thank you for the question. Vice Mayor Sell, Sarah Johnson-Rios, Assistant City Manager. It's not. Based on the direction that council took on, I think it was October 21st last month to update all of the council priority project processes and the boards and commissions policy. That's... that's not, um, something that's included currently. Uh, so that would be something to... tonight is to get general input and to identify possible items to refer to the council subcommittee on boards and commissions. So if... if that is, um, of interest tonight then that would be something that we would refer. In addition to that, uh, we did commit through the recent, um, study issues, uh, update that we would periodically evaluate the new process. And so, um, we'll... we'll be planning to do that as well.
[00:06:04] City Manager Kent Steffens: I was... if I could make a comment. I was... I was gonna actually share that same comment. Thank you, Sarah. Um, that... that we haven't even let this new process play out yet. Um, and, uh, we will revisit it. Um, a workaround for what you're suggesting would be if individual board and commission members have ideas that they want to bring to that meeting, they don't have to announce that at some other meeting and get support. They can just bring it... when... they can keep a running list on their own and then bring their ideas to the idea meeting.
[00:06:37] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Okay. Sounds great. Thank you.
[00:06:40] City Manager Kent Steffens: Thank you, Vice Mayor. And just as a secondary thing, you can always bring, you know, your ideas as many of you have to council, to different council members. You know, from... from a commission standpoint, it's good to have, you know, share those ideas at your idea meeting, um, and talk about, you know, how they might change and all that. But... but you always can talk to your council members, talk to your mayor about ideas that you have, um, that and even conceivably how to best frame those from a city standpoint. So... so that is also, um, part of the process to a certain degree. We're... we're... we're here to help not just the residents with ideas, but especially our commissioners who are often subject matter and subject matter experts in certain areas. So, thank you. Um. Other questions or comments? Sure. Vice Chair Briegel.
[00:07:34] Vice Chair Matthew Briegel: I... I want to reiterate support for this and I know that ci... the city staff just talked about like there's no way to do anything without staff load, but I would... I would reiterate my support for the ability for a commission to try to in the least laborious way possible put an item on the agenda. Like there's been a couple times that the BPAC has... members of the BPAC have wanted to like give a presentation to the commission itself. Like one of the members to give a presentation and that has been not possible based on... One moment. Zoom crashed, so... No. Okay. And I was wondering...
[00:08:39] Mayor Larry Klein: Put a pin in that thought and then continue it after we resume.
[00:08:44] City Clerk David Carnahan: Okay.
[00:08:45] Mayor Larry Klein: Okay. Okay. It appears that we have our livestream back up and running. Um. Actually no, so sorry. It is not functioning. Um. Can we... Councilmember Srinivasan, can we check in with you and make sure that you're able to hear us and we can hear you?
[00:09:22] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: I can hear you now. Audio froze for a while. Can you hear me?
[00:09:28] City Clerk David Carnahan: Yes, we can hear you. Um. I will continue working on getting our livestream to YouTube back up, um, but Zoom is functioning properly now.
[00:09:40] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Okay. Thank you.
[00:09:42] Mayor Larry Klein: So continue the meeting?
[00:09:43] City Clerk David Carnahan: Uh, yes. You may continue.
[00:09:45] Mayor Larry Klein: Okay. Just checking. Reconfirming. Um. Vice Chair Briegel. Continue your thought.
[00:09:50] Vice Chair Matthew Briegel: Okay. I don't know...
[00:09:51] Mayor Larry Klein: Perhaps you could restate briefly.
[00:09:53] Vice Chair Matthew Briegel: Yeah. I don't... yeah. I don't know what was heard and what wasn't, but the ability for the commission to put things on the agenda with as little staff load as possible would be really nice. Like I know that there's a bar threshold for what is required, but there's been multiple times the commission has wanted to like discuss something and been unable to do that. So that.
[00:10:15] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Uh, I have a quick question. Sorry, Councilmember Mehlinger, sorry. Uh, go ahead. Um. And, uh, Vice Chair Briegel, um, you know, when you... can... if... if you've got some examples of that, you know, commissioners, we did reiterate this I believe last year that all commissions are able to do, uh, commissioner led presentations if that can, uh, fit into the agenda, uh, and fit into the work plan. Um, you know, there is the process to, uh, talk to your staff liaison, appeal to the City Manager, appeal to Council. Um, were those steps taken?
[00:10:51] Vice Chair Matthew Briegel: Perhaps I am remembering the status quo from before this... like what you're referring to was updated or changed with... I think you're referring to a change last year and maybe I just have it mentalized as like still can't do this. Was it actually a change? It was more of a clarification that this was always allowed. Okay. But... Then maybe I need to just reattempt this. And maybe this is now possible. Okay. Thank you.
[00:11:21] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Um. Additional comments or questions? So I know that we have several chairs and vice chairs in the audience. Um. If you want to come to the lectern and, and if you have comments, questions, uh, definitely I know there... I see several in the room. And just come... come to the lectern and, and ask your... have your comments or questions. Go ahead.
[00:12:07] Vice Chair Carter: Uh, yeah. Just wanted to speak briefly about this. Um. My name is Carter, introduce myself for everyone here. I'm the Vice Chair of the Board of Library Trustees. And, um, I, I did want to sort of express my gratitude towards Council and towards the, uh, you know, city staff that made this change possible. Um. I felt like our commission had a lot of success with this. I felt like I was able to reach out to Council and I felt like I was able to get the adequate, um, staff help needed to advance what we ended up selecting for the council priority project. So so far I feel like this is a great success for us. Um. And, you know, without trying to speak for the entire, uh, you know, body, um, that... those are just my sort of personal feelings on the matter and I, I do want to again express gratitude because for me personally, it's a lot more clear what I need to do and having that sort of delineated, these are the things that you can explicitly do, I felt like was helpful. Um. So I just wanted to say that and, and thank everyone for improving the process at least from my perspective.
[00:13:29] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Yes. Chair. I can't remember Chair or Vice Chair.
[00:13:33] Chair Jeff Nabhan: Good evening, Chair. Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Councilmembers. My name is Jeff Nabhan. I'm the Chair of the Sustainability Commission. Um. Our commission came up with seven different recommendations. So the first recommendation was to increase engagement with the public to encourage participation in sustainability and other commission meetings. Uh. We can do this by utilizing more social media, maybe create a monthly calendar for all board and commission meetings, create a flyer to hand out physically, add a dropbox at community tabling events so the community can provide feedback and input to boards and commissions, and encourage board and commission members to do outreach as that's part of their role. Uh. Maybe as our new members we can encourage that. Um. Item number two was to increase engagement with youth at the board and commission. Um. Explore ways for the commissioners to engage students in local government operations and civic education. This could be a collaboration with other volunteer groups and could provi... or could be included with a pre-recorded video that could be shared. Uh. Consider adding a designated or reserved youth seat for boards and commissions that could be non-voting. This position could be responsible for creating social media engagement for the boards and commissions. Um. Consider adding a clause or policy requiring the city to publicize vacancies and application processes to nearby high schools and community colleges. As an example, maybe we could publicize to government classes in high schools and political science related classes at colleges. Uh. Number three was, uh, make emailing commissioners as easy as possible and more engaging process. Uh. So maybe better guidance on how commissioners could respond to those indivi... individuals and provide a toolkit for community members to engage or advocate in the template response. Uh. For item number four it was look for opportunities to consider joint study session meetings and the potential for cross-jurisdictional collaborations and or awareness. As an example, meeting with the county sustainability commission. Number five was make onboarding more effective. Um. Having a mentorship program with new commissioners and previous commissioners and potential the current chair to help onboard new members. Number six was keep looking for opportunities for board and commission to participate in meetings remotely. I know that's been brought up but, um, consider adding a legislative advocacy position for Council to advocate for changes to the Brown Act, especially for accessibility considerations. And our last one was consider adding brief commissioner bios to the city's website, maybe just a LinkedIn link in the bio, something simple. Uh. Thank you for your time and consideration on these items.
[00:16:39] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you very much. And... and definitely there's some, um, good items there that, that we've... we have been talking about, you know, especially youth representation and how that could change. So... so all these are... are great ideas to, um, take to that subcommittee and, and continuing those discussions as we're going forward from, from a council standpoint. Um. Any other comments or questions? Seeing none. Oh, sorry. Councilmember Chang.
[00:17:25] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: I had a question probably for the City Attorney again. For the commissions in the City Charter, are we allowed to add, um, a non-voting member such as a youth commissioner?
[00:17:39] City Attorney John Nagel: Um. Uh. Councilmember, that's... that's a great question. Um. That's something that I would have to to look into. Okay. Thank you.
[00:17:47] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Uh. Councilmember Srinivasan.
[00:17:50] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Thank you, Mayor. I had the... I had, uh, the same question as the now non-voting or non-voting member. Uh. Thanks, uh, Councilmember Chang for that. Uh. I also wanted to talk to, uh, ask City Manager and, uh, uh, what are... what is the process for joint session with, uh, not only other jurisdiction but also at the county level? What might be involved? For example, Sustainability Commission would be an, uh, a good commission to in... to work with the county commission.
[00:18:38] Mayor Larry Klein: Just make sure I understand the question. The question is what would be the process to have a joint meeting with a commission from another jurisdiction? Um. And then also from the county.
[00:18:49] City Manager Kent Steffens: Yeah. Um. It would be... I'll... I'll defer to the, um, clerk too if he wants to add anything but I think it would be dependent on the subject matter. You'd want to have an agendized, you know, reason to, um, have a joint meeting. There'd be coordination. It'd have to be noticed. Um. But, um, I do believe it is... it is something that we've occasionally done in the past. Um. I can only recall one instance where I believe the Council had a joint meeting with the Santa Clara Valley Water District Board some years back. Um. But I don't know if the clerk...
[00:19:25] City Clerk David Carnahan: Yeah, I would just add that I think, you know, similar to when we have joint study sessions between the city's boards and commissions, it's around a topic that they both would otherwise consider separately. So it... it's not a great practice to just have a meet and greet meeting, right? But if there's something substantive that the... another agency is going to consider that, you know, that that might be an opportunity to explore a joint study... a joint meeting. Um. You know, that that as the City Manager said, it's not a... it's not a light task for staff to schedule and support those, especially as you get to having a larger meeting body. Just having the space to do it can be a little tough. Um. But it's definitely feasible, but it needs to be really around, uh, something that's going to be productive for both meeting bodies and it's better for them to meet together than having just separate, uh, instances of their meeting.
[00:20:14] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Thank you. That's, uh, that was what I was also thinking regarding a location for in-person meeting, uh, would be really difficult, I would imagine.
[00:20:30] City Clerk David Carnahan: Well and... uh, yes, Councilmember, that can also pose a problem, um, under the Brown Act to have, for example, our... our meeting bodies meet in a jurisdiction that's not Sunnyvale. Um. You have to really thread the needle or have less than a quorum of our meeting body, uh, that attend there. The reason Council can have a joint meeting with Valley Water is because we share a jurisdiction. So Valley Water came to Sunnyvale. Um. We couldn't have Sunnyvale City Council go to Valley Water's headquarters for a joint meeting 'cause that's not in Sunnyvale.
[00:21:00] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Okay. Thank you.
[00:21:02] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you, Councilmember. Yes. Chair.
[00:21:07] Chair William Garrett: Uh, yeah. Uh. Kind of a related thing to the joint meetings. Uh. Something that's come up a couple times in HPC meetings is, uh, if the Council could explore ways for more coordination or collaboration between commissions. Uh. Especially when there are, you know, issues that might have some overlap. Um. I know, uh, at least some of our, our commission members are itching to, to work with other people in the city. So.
[00:21:37] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. And, and I do like that idea as opposed to going to separate commissions. The problem of course is normally that would become a just a special commission meeting. And then however many from each commission you could get becomes an issue. But, but definitely I, I do see that there is value in, in, you know, both the cross-pollination because some things go through both commissions in a regularly scheduled commission meeting standpoint, but the special commi... commissions conceivably, um, special commission meetings of both bodies I do think have a lot of value. Other comments? Other chairs? Whatever... lectern or, or just come up to the table. Chair Riviere.
[00:22:28] Chair Leena Riviere: Thank you. I also second the idea of having joint meetings as well, particularly between the Housing and the Planning Commission as many of their, uh, big projects may overlap in terms of timeline and maybe having an annual meeting where at least two of the commissions are able to join together on different projects and initiatives. Another, um, initiative that I also heard in support of earlier was partnering with local universities and colleges in schools for more, uh, commissioners that may be involved directly with other parts of our community and educators. And lastly, um, it has come up in our housing meetings as well, having a visualized dashboard or infographic that could show the progress of the differing, uh, voting areas and initiatives and projects that we're working on that could be either on our website that might be interactive that some of the, uh, citizens of Sunnyvale could see, um, more actively what, uh, different projects are being contributed to in the community. Thank you.
[00:23:44] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you very much. Um. Are there any other comments here? Are there any other vice chairs or chairs in the audience wishing to speak? Come to the lectern? Seeing none, let's... let's move to the public and I know we also have several commissioners in the audience that, um, if you want, uh, will come forward as members of the public. Um. I'll open public comment on the specific item. Members of the public wishing to address Council, please submit a speaker card to the City Clerk, raise your digital hand now or dial star 9 from your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on the members of the public participating in person first, um, and then City Clerk will ask remote participants, um, to unmute their microphone when it's their turn to address the body. Um. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. Uh. I have several speaker cards. First up is Neela R, followed by Maddie C. Go ahead.
[00:24:54] Neela R: Does this work? Oh. Okay, sorry. Uh, good evening City Council members, board and commission members and the audience gathered today. Uh, the topic we're talking about right now is reserving a seat on each commission for youth. I want to talk about the problem, why this problem is important and some solutions I can bring up. So first, what is the problem? So many commissions require members to be registered voters. For example, the Board of Library Trustees, Heritage and Preservation Committee, Parks and Recreation Committees, Personnel Board, and Planning Commissions have a voting requirement. So youth's perspectives and participation is omitted from these commissions. Second, why is this important? The decisions City Council makes are critical to the future of Sunnyvale. These decisions don't include perspectives from youths and thus might be less appropriate solutions. Youths bring fresh perspectives that the City Council is missing out. For example, works they do with advocacy groups. Youths have been able to get feedback from diverse populations in Sunnyvale. They can do the same thing for the commission which give input directly to City Council. Currently, youths cannot vote on any legislation. By reserving a seat on each commission and removing the voting requirement, we are guaranteeing that youths' voices will be heard in Sunnyvale. Lastly, some solutions that I have thought about is instead of a four year term, reducing the term so high schoolers can participate in it. Um. Next, advertising the commission openings to high schoolers broadly. For example, using social media and reaching out to different schools in the area. Lastly, provide volunteer hours so there is an extra incentive for youths to participate. Thank you for your time.
[00:26:54] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Um. Next up is Maddie C, followed by Peggy B. Go ahead.
[00:27:09] Maddie Chang: Good evening, City Council. My name is Maddie Chang and I am a high school student from... currently serving on the Sustainability Commission and am currently speaking on my own behalf. I wanted to speak in support of the discussion listed on tonight's agenda of having more youth representation on city commissions. In the last five to ten years, there have rarely been any students who have applied or been able to serve on these commissions and this is primarily due to a lack of awareness and outreach. In my own situation, I remember only being incentivized to apply because I was directly reached out to by a City Council member and the unfortunate truth is that yes, students can apply, but the application outreach process was simply not built for students with them in mind. And this isn't to say that there isn't any interest. Um. This last application cycle, I believe there were around seven students who applied for the vacant Human Relations spot and this was because there was direct outreach from students. Um. I personally reached out to a lot of high schoolers I knew to incentivize them to apply. We released, um, around three to almost five social media posts really promoting this opportunity, following as many youth as we could and that resulted in more engagement because the youth actually knew that this position existed and that they could apply. But unfortunately, we can't guarantee this kind of outreach without institutionalizing it. Sunnyvale can become a leader in the South Bay for making this kind of change following cities like Berkeley, Walnut Creek who have already created this position within their own commissions. They've already created a dedicated youth member on all of their commissions and that's why I highly emphasize this proposal to either add non-voting advisory members in case of concerns with reserving seats for only certain demographics or just reserving seats because unlike other underrepresented groups, youth aren't able to vote and therefore aren't even able to have a say in those who represent them. Or... Sorry. We need to pause again. Zoom just went down again. Now it's back, maybe? So give me... give me a second to get the livestream going. Sorry about that.
[00:30:40] City Clerk David Carnahan: Okay, Mayor, we have Zoom back up and the livestream to YouTube has been restarted. So we can continue the meeting... continue with the meeting.
[00:30:49] Mayor Larry Klein: Okay. And I didn't happen to see... Maddie, continue. Or restart.
[00:30:58] Maddie Chang: Oh, perfect. And so, and then my final point was to or the option of creating just some kind of policy that actually mandates outreach to youth so at least that this kind of outreach is actually institutionalized within all of our systems. This can take place whether that be through sending packets to all of our high schoolers in their beginning of the year like folder with all of the forms they get for school or this can be in the form of presentations that are made at schools, maybe having a staff liaison member or current student commissioners go to the school and just speak on their experience to really share these opportunities. I think also just outright stating on the website that high school students are actually allowed to apply would also be another great way to incentivize and really encourage this kind of involvement. Thank you for your consideration and have a great rest of your night.
[00:32:15] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Um. Next up is Peggy B followed by Charlene L.
[00:32:24] Peggy Shen Brewster: Good evening everybody. My name is Peggy Shen Brewster. I am the Vice President of Sunnyvale School District speaking on my own behalf here. Um. I just want to first acknowledge the composition of this room and thank our, um, chairs, vice chairs, council, mayor and all of our public servants here in attendance. I think this is wonderful. I am also here to speak on behalf of youth voice in our commissions and boards and making sure there are designated spaces for that. Um. Those of you that know me know my passion in leadership development, um, in establishing, um, Sunnyvale for Equity in Education. We have, um, made... we have driven some leadership forums in my work with Leadership Sunnyvale. My project was to create pipelines of leadership. I see some of my fellow, um, group mates here as well. Um. I think this is really important for us to establish these opportunities for civic engagement and for leadership. Um. This is as Maddie said, a great way for us to lead the way in the South Bay. Um. I'm very proud of Sunnyvale, the way that we are progressive and forward-thinking and if we're going to have dialogue about... about the future of our city, let's include the future of our city. So we have them sitting right here. If Maddie calls me and says I want you to show up for this and this is very important, yes, I will. Maddie, we have future leaders right here. And I know that many of you are also recognizing the stress of the trauma of our systems of government right now collapsing in many ways, um, by misguided leadership. So this is a... this is a chance for us to grassroots from our city establish ways for our youth to participate in government. To recognize how things move, how to drive operational change, how to change policy, how to move systems 'cause we can all see that this is very much needed in this moment. Um. This rebuilding of our community and this is a great opportunity for us to do that. So I would encourage you all to, um, to listen to the voice of the people and to, um, have staff look at different ways to include youth in... in many different ways. There are so many opportunities and, um, to continue involving our youth in all of these conversations that we're having going forward. That's how we teach, that's how we learn. We... we scaffold this learning. We... we create our future leaders. What a great opportunity this is. Thank you for your consideration. Good night.
[00:36:04] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. And lastly is Charlene L.
[00:36:10] Charlene Liu: Hello. Thank you for taking my input. My name is Charlene Liu and I also support youths on commissions and, uh, the main reason is the youths are just missing from our city process for the most part. Um. In fact not just youths but everybody in their first half century of life. Um. There are some exceptions but we just don't have enough young people. And here we have youths who want to be engaged. We are so lucky that we have such youths and why don't we take advantage of that? I'm a mom of two children who are just beyond their youth age although just, um, just in their later adolescence and I know when they were in high school I would consult them for various things about the latest trends, about what kind of policies they would want in schools and, um, so I took their... they were... they were and still are very thoughtful people. So I think having youths on commissions are important and, um, and in particular as you all know, I'm... I'm interested in BPAC the most. That's what I always follow. And we need youths there in particular because we are building safe roads primarily they are the biggest dependents on safe roads. They cannot drive, um, and they need to be able to get around independently. And so we don't currently have their viewpoint, um, we try to represent them, but who are we in the second half century of our lives to represent them? They need to be there themselves. So I would really appreciate having youths on BPAC. Um. And then my other point is not having to do with youths and, um, I don't think you guys talked about it at this meeting, but I know in past meetings you have so I just want to mention about the Transportation Commission. Now if we develop a new commission where we get rid of BPAC and we have a Transportation Commission instead, that's all fine. It's just a change in nomenclature, but it's also including other transportation modes which is important to integrate that. But I want to say that it's important in this commission composition to find commissioners who are interested in both biking and mass transit. And I say those two modes in particular because most... the vast majority of people in our city do not do them. And so how can they be the, um, uh, useful commissioners if they don't want to do them and if they don't want to promote them. So we have to find people who want to promote both biking and mass transit, not one or the other, but both. Um. You have to have that, um, rounded viewpoint in order to really build out our sustainable transportation. Thank you.
[00:39:28] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. That was my last speaker card in the room. City Clerk, do we have any remote speakers wishing to speak on this item?
[00:39:34] City Clerk David Carnahan: Yes, Mayor. First up is Satya D, followed by Martin P. Satya, you've been unmuted and you have three minutes to address the City Council.
[00:39:45] Satya Dandi: Thank you. But good evening, City Council. Um. Of course as you know my name is Satya Dindi and I'm a high school student who wants to get more involved in the city and I want to add on to tonight's discussion like many other people about the youth representation on city commissions. So until recent Instagram outreach, I didn't even know that high school students were eligible to serve on commissions. That alone shows how important communication and visibility are to us in general. I believe that if young people knew that these opportunities existed, I'm confident many of us would apply and bring real dedication and effort to the work. If there's one thing high schoolers do well, it's making sure our voices are heard and in this case we'd be representing hundreds of students who care about their community but may not know how to get involved. Adding youth seats would give a direct line of perspective that may have not always been included and continuing to share these opportunities on social media especially Instagram would make a huge difference in awareness and engagement in our community. Thank you for considering greater youth involvement and I truly believe we can contribute. Thank you.
[00:40:28] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Next up is Martin P followed by Joshua C. Martin, you've been unmuted and you have three minutes to address the City Council.
[00:40:35] Martin Pyne: Hi, Martin Pyne, Planning Commissioner, speaking solely on my own behalf tonight. Uh. Just wanted to reiterate some comments I've made previously that especially in light of the new... I'll slow down... that I'd just like to reiterate that in light of some comments I've made previously that in light of changes... the recent elimination I should probably say of the study issue process, I think we should be taking a close... close look on how commissions in... give recommendations regarding the annual budget. This is a mand... bud... this is a mandate under current council policy 7.2.19. I don't think we do it ver... I don't think we do it very effectively right now. Frequently that feedback comes after the budget workshop which is too late to be useful and I think that's something that should be evaluated. Thank you.
[00:41:24] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Next up is Joshua C. Joshua, you've been unmuted and you have three minutes to address the City Council.
[00:41:30] Joshua Czarnota: All right. Hello, Sunnyvale City Government. My name is Joshua Czarnota. I'm currently a high school junior at Fremont High School invested in advocating for youth leadership and representation in city government. Firstly, I wanted to thank you for the opportunity to talk today about the prozo... proposed seat, uh, reserved seat for youth on city commissions. This monumental step is such a great way to include youth view. I will bring up three talking points about how youth voice exists, what we can do about it, and how youth can actually make a difference in city government. So first of all, uh, many youth voice is not reaching, uh, the commissions that are currently in place. Many students want to be involved in government and make a difference. I personally know a student who is committed to increasing Asian American participation in government and she's been doing this through panels, inviting students to attend and have been met with lots of positive feedback. And many students in law and business electives are looking for real world experience and want to apply their knowledge with a fresh perspective which I think Sunnyvale could totally use. Additionally, another reason that students haven't been applying is that the process feels very intimidating, hard to navigate and honestly isn't marketed as well as it should be. The city must actively communicate that you... youth voices are valued and wanted and I don't think that that is truly being expressed as much as it should be. For example, I didn't know that youth were actually encouraged to apply to commissions until just recently when I found an Instagram post. Um. And then how youth can actually make a difference on government is that, uh, recent... like before this, uh, meeting I went up to a lot of my friends and I asked them what would you do if you had a voice in st... in Sunnyvale government. And the most common response I was met with was that I have a voice in Sunnyvale government? They were very confused that they were actually... their opinion was valued. So that I think is the biggest thing that we need to, uh, advertise to our youth. Um. And then finally, youth would participate, uh, if they knew they could on things like parks and rec, transportation, and bringing a fresh perspective to those, um, uh, commissions that are definitely needing some more input and could use some more, um, uh, youth input specifically. Thank you.
[00:43:34] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Mayor, that was the final remote public speaker for this agenda item.
[00:43:43] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you very much. With that we will close the public comment on this item and bring it back to our chairs and vice chairs. Chair. Vice.
[00:43:49] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Thank you, Mayor. Um. Considering what we've just heard from the public, logistically what do we do now to try to make it happen so that our youth can be involved in our boards and commissions?
[00:44:05] Mayor Larry Klein: So I'll... I'll ask City Manager. Yeah. Go ahead.
[00:44:08] City Manager Kent Steffens: I was... I was just gonna reiterate, um, you were, um, we're referring things to the Council Subcommittee so we would address it in that way. So it'll get followed up on.
[00:44:18] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Chair Riviere.
[00:44:20] Chair Leena Riviere: Thank you. In appreciation of all the comments of everyone here today and also I have a question on, uh, at one point in time, um, also being a Fremont High alum and in the area, there is a Teen Advisory Board and Teen Advisory Committee that is involved in events and city planning with high school students. If there is a current connection or way we can leverage individuals who are already involved or maybe connections to getting high school students involved in Leadership Sunnyvale, if those are potential possibilities as well. And also seconding the involvement of students in the public transportation piece as many do either walk to and from, bike or use... utilize VTA, um, to get to their schools and their classes. So thank you.
[00:45:03] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. And... and I want do want to bring up one thing. Um. We don't actually... and I know if this is boards and commissions, but from a committee standpoint, having the... the TAC coming to Council, um, as either the TAC Chair and the Teen Advisory Commission, um, conceivably the Chair and Vice Chair should be invited to this and I don't think we've done it historically and I think conceivably that should be part of this process. And I know it's kind of an adjunct to...
Segment 2
[00:59:37] Mayor Larry Klein: Good evening. Let's call to order the Joint Study Session with the Board and Commission Chairs and Vice Chairs. The meeting of November 18, 2025 at 5:30 p.m. This city does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. This Council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means the Council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to the agenda items being considered by Council and the Board and Commission Chairs and Vice Chairs. If a speaker's comments are not related to an agenda item, the presiding officer will rule that speaker out of order. A speaker will not be ruled out of order because of a disagreement with the content of their speech. Location and online meeting details are available on the Council agenda. Scan the QR code on the screen or click the language access and translation link on the Council agenda to read and listen along in more than 60 different languages. Use the show captions button to view captions on Zoom. Following this Study Session, the regular Council meeting will begin at 7 p.m. First up, City Clerk, may we please have roll call.
[01:00:39] City Clerk David Carnahan: Mayor Klein.
[01:00:40] Mayor Larry Klein: Present.
[01:00:41] City Clerk David Carnahan: Vice Mayor Sell.
[01:00:42] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Present.
[01:00:43] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Cisneros.
[01:00:45] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger.
[01:00:46] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Present.
[01:00:47] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan.
[01:00:49] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang.
[01:00:50] Councilmember Chang: Present.
[01:00:51] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Lee. Four present with Councilmembers Cisneros, Srinivasan, and Lee absent.
[01:00:59] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. And please note that those absences are excused. Councilmember Srinivasan is... should be joining the meeting, he's just landed in Salt Lake City and should be joining the meeting relatively soon. Moving on to our Study Session item 25-0196. Is there a staff report?
[01:01:20] City Clerk David Carnahan: Yes, Mayor and Councilmembers. This is David Carnahan, the City Clerk. Council meets annually with Board and Commission Chairs and Vice Chairs to review and improve effectiveness of Board and Commission meetings. In the last several years, there were a number of changes that were made operationally and some policy changes. There's two outstanding items from past Joint Study Sessions. One is preparing a role-playing training for new Board and Commission members. This would be... take place as part of new member orientation once developed. And then another item that is still queued up for follow-up as time permits is cutting together highlights of parliamentary procedure... great examples of parliamentary procedure usage in Sunnyvale. And then there was a recent change to sort of the overall policy planning for the organization for the City of Sunnyvale, and that was changing, moving away from Study Issues and Budget Proposals to a new Council Priority Projects prioritization process. And so there was a change in the Board and Commission policy, Council meetings policy, and the Study Issues process turned into the Council Priority Projects process. So what this effectively means is, you know, there's a little bit less of a year-round role for Boards and Commissions to play in the policy prioritization process for the future, but there is still a role to be played for Boards and Commissions in the Council Priority Projects process. And then later on during tonight's meeting, Council is going to consider a number of policy changes. One of them would be a change to the Council policy on Boards and Commissions related to the Council Subcommittee. The proposed change would expand the scope of the committee, the subcommittee, beyond bylaw amendments, and it would replace a Standing Committee with an Ad Hoc Advisory Committee. And the two reasons for these proposed changes: one is this aligns more closely with how the City has been using that meeting body, it doesn't meet necessarily on a regular cadence the way other Council Subcommittees like the Neighborhood Grants Subcommittee. And also having a broader scope with the Ad Hoc Committee would make it a little easier to meet on an as-needed basis. And then of course any changes to the policy or other policy-related parts of Boards and Commissions would be referred to the full Council. And then the staff recommendation for that item will be to make those changes. Some topics that we would potentially be considered by the Council Subcommittee in the future, in 2026, ideally early in the year, either with a continued subcommittee or an Ad Hoc Advisory Committee, would be looking at the excused absences provided for Board and Commission members and potentially adding religious holidays or religious observances as an excused absence justification. Potentially adding a limit on the number of excused absences Board and Commission members could have. Looking at ways to potentially add additional youth representation on Boards and Commissions. Looking at maybe adjusting the scope of this annual Joint Study Session, maybe holding this biennially instead of every year. And then there may be some changes that we want to explore in relation to a change in the Brown Act imposed by Senate Bill 707. A number of those things in that bill pertain mostly to City Council, but some also apply to Boards and Commissions. And there's a few pieces where there's kind of choices for Council and we might want to discuss those with a subcommittee before having a conversation with the full Council. And we would potentially look at the scope of work for each Board and Commission to see if it still aligns with the City's needs. And then maybe looking at different guidance for the level of detail and what's included in meeting minutes. And with that, you know, any policy changes that are discussed could be considered by City Council or recommended to the subcommittee. Anything of an operational nature will be discussed with the City Manager to ensure that staff capacity exists to implement and support any operational changes. And then with this background, we're ready to hear the conversation and discussion between Council and the Board and Commission Chairs and Vice Chairs.
[01:06:55] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you very much. First up, were there any questions from Council to the City Clerk... I think that's the main thing... or to the City Manager?
[01:07:06] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Yes, Mr. Mayor. Is my hand showing up?
[01:07:09] Mayor Larry Klein: Yeah, it is now. Thank you. Sorry, Councilmember Mehlinger.
[01:07:11] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Briefly, the suggestion on changing the meeting cadence for this meeting. Remind me, biennially means every other year or twice a year?
[01:07:27] City Clerk David Carnahan: It means every other year.
[01:07:29] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you. That's very helpful.
[01:07:33] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Vice Mayor Sell.
[01:07:36] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: I had a question. It was mentioned that we might consider the composition having a youth representative. Is that what we would do tonight? We would decide that? Or is that like, you know, suggest that and then we look into it in the next year?
[01:07:56] City Clerk David Carnahan: It would be more of a... if it's something Council would like staff to explore, we would look into it and meet with the Council Subcommittee to discuss in more detail. There's some nuance right between the Charter created Boards and Commissions and then the ones that were created by Council via ordinance or resolution. So there's different amounts of flexibility for what Council could incorporate based on how each Board and Commission was created. So if Councilmembers have interest in that, I think it would be great to hear what your visions might be for how that could work to help inform a future discussion.
[01:08:27] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Okay. And then we would do that after we hear public comment and the commissioners and everything, right?
[01:08:33] City Clerk David Carnahan: That would be an appropriate time, yes.
[01:08:35] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Okay. Sounds good. Thank you.
[01:08:38] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you very much. That's all the questions from Council. So, while we're here meeting here tonight, it's to hear from the Chairs and the Vice Chairs and... oh, Councilmember Chang?
[01:08:53] Councilmember Chang: Yes, sorry, I just had a question about SB 707. I think this question is maybe for the City Attorney. Does it apply to commissions, the expansion for more remote participation?
[01:09:13] City Attorney: If the City does have the option to apply those teleconferencing rules to different legislative bodies, and any of them that do utilize them do need to follow the expanded rules.
[01:09:29] Councilmember Chang: Okay, thank you.
[01:09:33] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Councilmember Mehlinger.
[01:09:35] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you very much Mr. Mayor. Chair Wythe asked if we have enough staff to do what we need to do. The answer I think is pretty definitively no. I'm not sure we will ever. But we are going into an operational year and I'm sure the City Manager is looking into where we can be upstaffing. The second thing I wanted to say is... I appreciate the thought of moving this meeting away from November. I would beg with tears in my eyes that we do not move it to May with the Budget Workshop. Literally any other time.
[01:10:13] City Clerk David Carnahan: June, May...
[01:10:14] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: June. March, April. Literally any other month. Thank you.
[01:10:20] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Going back to the Chairs and Vice Chairs. Yes. Chair Kesting.
[01:10:26] Chair Kesting: I think you guys can hear me. Thank you for having us here tonight. I do appreciate being able to come to this meeting. And just to cut back on your idea of moving it... I think it's great right now... but I could also see it being really wise to have something happen like towards the end of the year, potentially even after the election... potentially you could have the new Chair coming in with the former Chair to talk a little bit more about the process. The first time I came to this meeting, I didn't say anything. I didn't say anything at all. I waited until after the meeting was done, I wrote up a whole bunch of notes and I emailed all of you guys about what I thought would be a great idea to do with the Commission. One of the ideas that we had for the Commission was to have a couple of meetings about what we should say at this meeting. The meeting before the meeting apparently. So we had two, and during those two sessions we came up with a handful of takeaways. I'm going to start with the part where we had a continued interest to hold meetings on-site at City parks. We did that just recently at Las Palmas Park which is the next park up for slate for renovation. And I can't tell you how incredibly helpful that was. We had in attendance for that meeting, I don't know, like probably close to 15, maybe even two dozen people from the public who showed up for it. Vice Mayor Sell was present. It was a really important part of being able to speak to the community about what the Parks and Recreation Department does, what the Commission does, and how the public can influence policy moving forward... specifically for the parks that are near and dear to their heart. That being said, there were also some issues that happened during that meeting. There was a need for maintaining decorum at the meeting... with some citizens like trying to shout over others about what had to happen, what had to be done. So I think we should continue to be able to do that. We should continue to do these on-site specifically for ones that are pertinent to our policy... things that are coming up for discussion with the City and with our Commission... but we should also be maintaining a quorum and an official discipline that's happening at those meetings so that everybody is represented. Furthermore, we talked about a need for... don't lose my place... There was a question about whether or not we should be having as many meetings as we do. Though that was a split... some of the commissioners were concerned that we have these 12 meetings or 11 meetings every year and sometimes there's just not enough policy to discuss... but that was kind of hemmed and hawed... some people were for it, some people were against it. And the flip side of that, I mean I personally think we should have the meetings that we have if not more of them. The flip side of that is when we set the agenda for next year and Mr. Regoza who is leaving right now will attest that we have a full slate of items for 2026. So I'm not really sure about that particular policy, but that particular part. However there were commissioners who thought that was a good idea. But getting back to something that's been said previously and getting back to the idea of what's being discussed... well I guess it's already been implemented, was the idea about the Study Issue Process and how that's changing. Everyone at the Commission saw the value of having input to City Council on what we thought good policy was. And I think the reason for that is because we deal with the public like directly all the time. They come to our Commission on a regular basis with their ideas and their concepts, what's good and what's bad with what's going on with the City. And our Commission over the course of the last five years has authored something like 35 pieces of policy, 35 studies. Right? It's a lot. And I can't tell you how grateful I am for having had the opportunity to partake in all those. And some of those went absolutely nowhere. Right? But I can't tell you how many of them implemented change right away. Like right away. And a lot of the times the reason for it wasn't because it came up to you guys and then got appropriated for budgets, it was because people at Staff were like 'Well hey man, we can do that.' We can take that idea and we can turn it into a concrete result and we can have that result put into place by the time we have our next meeting. And other times it's been put into place by having whoever the consigliere for City Council was at that meeting to say... 'you know maybe that study issue isn't going to get legs and isn't going to carry over... but I think that we can implement it specifically by doing this other process such as like slowing down traffic along safety corridors... specifically along Park lanes like at Washington Avenue.' So I think maintaining some kind of quorum where our Commissions have access to creating policy... it's something that we shouldn't just get rid of. The ability to sit down and write policy and discuss it at our Commission level and then implement it towards City Council is incredibly valuable. And I think maintaining some kind of tool for that is quite valuable. So with that I'll cede. Thank you so much for having me here.
[01:17:48] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Thank you Chair Kesting.
[01:17:50] Chair Briegel: Could I respond or ask a question? I wanted to just double check I understood what you were saying properly. The value you and the Commission got out of the Study Issue Process was not even the Study Issues themselves, it was being able to communicate about the problems in the Commission environment and then instigate action from them. Like it sounded like the examples you gave of when process actually changed were from either staff doing something directly or the City Council going and pulling some strings behind the scene... as opposed to having a fully written up and drafted Study Issue that went through the whole Study Issue Process. Is that how I should be interpreting what you're saying? Or did you also find value in the actual Study Issue Process itself beyond just being able to discuss the issues?
[01:19:18] Chair Kesting: I would say out of the 35 Study Issues we authored... the ones that actually got funding were I want to say like three. However, the value of the Study Issue Process that I see at the Commission level was the ability to have a frank conversation about the City's needs and to have the ears of the Staff, the other Commissioners, and of Council when we said it. Like Assembly Bill 45... having the ear of former Vice Mayor Srinivasan at the City Council meeting to discuss how we should be implementing that along our City parks because there's no reason whatsoever that anyone should be driving more than 15 miles an hour along a City Park street, right? That was incredibly valuable. And I certainly... that's what I see as being one of the main tools of that process. Thank you for asking.
[01:20:25] Chair Briegel: And then does the new Council Priority Project Process not fill that need in your eyes? Or...
[01:20:33] Chair Kesting: It's so new I don't even know how we're going to use it, man. You know I have complete faith and trust in City Council... I don't envy them with the decision that they had to come up with. But I fully expect when Mayor Klein said we need... they need a tool to a lever to pull, we'll still have one. But that's the reason why I'm here right now to discuss it. Thank you for asking.
[01:21:06] Chair Briegel: I guess the same value as Chair Kesting... just the Study Issue Process is just being able to discuss and have a earnest ear from the Staff at the meeting and maybe just having Council Liaison hear what we're talking about I think is really valuable. And I'm not sure the Council Priority Project Process will have as much of an ability to do that because it's once per year as opposed to with the previous thing you could like raise a Study Issue in a meeting and then it would be saved for later at the actual Study Issue meeting. I mean there was... it was a way to do it organically throughout the year as opposed to just once at the end of the year. But perhaps the process will still fill that need just at a yearly cadence. Thank you.
[01:21:51] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you. Comment. Thank you very much for the input on this. I think that what's worth remembering here is that the Study Issue Process wasn't really ever intended to drive operational changes. And the way to drive operational changes... changes that do not it turns out need a Study Issue... is to work with the Staff Liaison, to email Council, to email the City Manager. And those are all things that every Commissioner and every resident is strongly encouraged to do if they see an area that's in need of improvement. What I will also say is having run a few of the Study Issue ranking sessions for the BPAC myself... I did find that process to be very cumbersome. And what I'm hoping is that with the Council Priority Process... having a single meeting without the overhead of ranking but being able for a Board and Commission to say 'This is what we're going to put our weight behind. This is the big idea. Yes you can have that free flowing exchange and discussion, but ultimately like, you know, pick one, put it forward.' I'm hoping that that can get us something that will still have that channel to Council, that ability to drive policy change from a Commission level, but a lot more streamlined. Thank you.
[01:22:57] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: I had a question. So currently on the un-agendized part of the Commission meeting, can a Commissioner just say... like Chair Kesting was talking about that law... could they just say 'This is an interesting law I heard about' and can the other Commissioners comment on that or would it have to be agendized in the current process?
[01:23:28] City Attorney: If there was any... so everything that's discussed to any substantial level needs to be agendized. So if a Commissioner wants to make a comment about a law, that's fine. If they want to engage in a discussion or debate about it, it should be agendized.
[01:23:49] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Okay. Thank you.
Segment 4
[02:15:05] City Attorney John Nagel: So, Mr. Mayor, that is something to consider. This is typically for Council's boards and commissions, right? The Teen Advisory Committee and several other committees are staff advisory, so they're not advisory directly to the City Council and they're not appointed by Council. And part of why they're not covered by the Brown Act is because they don't take direction from Council. So it could complicate the way that they are made up and the way they operate if they're coming to give feedback and get direction from Council instead of staff.
[02:15:38] Mayor Larry Klein: And I appreciate that. I do think that getting their voice directly to Council or, you know, it's like for me, and I appreciate what the Chairs and Vice Chairs do on their subjects of expertise and what their commissions and boards are doing on their areas of responsibility. That being said, feeding that information into the TAC of what is going in front of the different boards and commissions as also a kind of a secondary item, I do think has value. And it's like, as we've heard from many of the youth tonight, you know, they would like a seat at the table for these boards and commissions. But since we already really have, and it's staff advisory, but at least from an educational standpoint, I do think that conceivably what's on the docket for each of these boards and commissions could be at least given to the TAC as, if you want a voice in sustainability, in planning, in art, in, you know, all the different topics that we have, they have an opportunity to make their voice heard, whether or not it's through email, through Zoom meeting, through being here in person. So I do think that that does have value. And whether or not they, we've never had them in my nine years on Council, we've never had the TAC actually here. And I do think that even that, I know it's advisory to staff, but the concept that it's advisory on where the state of the city is from a teen standpoint, and I do think that that has value. But that's my takeaway. Next up is Councilmember Mehlinger.
[02:17:34] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I would like to echo Commissioner Pyne's point about commission feedback on the budget. I think that's something that's actually very important. And it gets to some of the things that Chair Kesting was bringing up earlier because for a long time, like we think, okay, the study issue process, the study issue process, but prior to last month, this is how you get things changed in the city. But there's also the budget. And the budget is absolutely critical document and having effective board and commission feedback on that is important. My experience with the, when I was a commissioner, was that it was a very uneven process. So that's one thing I'd like to raise. The other thing I would like to raise, I do think that having consideration of youth commission members or non-voting youth seats is important. But I'd like to ask what the implication of that is when we have appointed voting youth members of city commissions, right? Is that going to mean that, well, are we just not going to appoint youth members, members of the youth to full commission seats anymore because, well, there's the dedicated youth seat? So that's a thing worth considering. And I imagine that this is, I certainly hope this comes back to the committee on the subcommittee for boards and commissions. But I would encourage the advocates who've come and spoken on this issue tonight to think about that and consider, you know, what you want to see here and what dynamics that might create. So those are the comments I have on that. I do think it is really important that we get youth engagement in commissions. Definitely think that in general increasing social media engagement for our commissions would be highly valuable. Having more targeted outreach to the high schools and community colleges is very worthwhile. I'm interested in the idea of youth commission seats. But like I said, I want us to think carefully about how that would interact when we as a council have put voting youth commissioners on seats. It might be best to, for instance, limit the non-voting seats to charter commissions which cannot have youth members, right? Thank you.
[02:19:53] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you, Councilmember. Next up is Vice Mayor Sell.
[02:19:55] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: I think it would be great if the subcommittee who is looking at the commissions could come up with some proposals of incorporating more youth voices on the commissions. And also, if possible, if they could get input from youth that would want to give input on that organization, just as more ideas. So I know we have really great people, really great councilmembers on the subcommittee. So I defer to them to think about it. But me as a councilmember, I know from my many years of working with youth that they are a strong voice. They have great ideas. They have an infinite amount of energy. And so their input is invaluable. So I would want to make sure that we have that on our commissions if possible in a very productive way. So some thought needs to be put into that as Councilmember Mehlinger said because we want to make sure that their time is useful and that it's utilized in a really productive way. Thank you.
[02:21:19] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next up is Councilmember Srinivasan.
[02:21:20] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Thank you, Mayor. As I see, there are two issues. One is the youth participation in the commission directly. The second is the input of youth in the commission. For that, we need to make sure that, I know the first issue the subcommittee will be looking at. The second issue is also very important. That is making sure that our youth will know about the agenda, commission meetings and other forums. So for that, what I would suggest is, is there a way for our youth to not only get on the mailing list, which is a straightforward thing, but more importantly forwarding all these agenda items to their social network and their network. Not all people want to be on the mailing list, nor they should be. There are other channels like Instagram and then TikTok and other social media which city doesn't participate. So I would urge our city staff to look into the opportunity of ability to forward our agenda items of any commission to our youths so that they can send it across to their network. So that will improve the participation of our youth and we will hear their voices in our commissions. Thank you.
[02:23:00] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Councilmember Chang.
[02:23:03] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Thank you. I agree with the sentiments on expanding youth representation. I also want the subcommittee to look at the SB 707 updates. The council liaison is able to join from Zoom and many of our commissioners are volunteers and sometimes they travel or are sick. So I would like to see if we can look at that for more flexibility as well.
[02:23:35] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Any final comments from Boards and Commission Chairs? Chair Fife?
[02:23:40] Chair Fife: Why does the City ask if an applicant has voted? What's the reason behind that on our applications for boards and commissions?
[02:23:49] Mayor Larry Klein: I think so historically I think it was just to see are you part of the, are you part of the process. And I think that for many of the, so it's are you active in your community? Are you making your voice heard? I'll leave it at that. I, you know, it's been there for years. It's been there I think as long as I was on the commission 20 years ago.
[02:24:10] Chair Fife: Is it worth maybe relooking at? Possibly?
[02:24:12] Mayor Larry Klein: Something we'll talk to the subcommittee on. Thank you.
[02:24:15] Chair Fife: Thank you.
[02:24:17] Public Speaker: Yeah, I kind of had the exact same comment. I completely forgot that I had to checkmark that box, you know, that are you registered to vote? And to be quite frank, I run into a bunch of kids in the city and I tell them that they should just apply for the commissions and see what happens. My memory is the last go around for commissions, we had a lot of people apply for spots. I have zero problems with someone under 18 being on the commission, much less having a voting capacity on the commission. I see no reasons for not having something like that. If that meant we had to increase the number of commissions, commissioners that we have, we currently have five, right? I mean if we were to increase that by two, would have six, seven seats? That seems completely reasonable to me.
[02:24:48] Mayor Larry Klein: Right. And several of the commissions that are under the charter have the voting requirement. So there's a difference between when was the last time you voted and are you registered to vote. And some of them actually require voter registration. So that's, there's two different boxes from that standpoint. Anything else? Okay. I just want to thank you all for joining. Thank you for the commissioners and chairs and vice chairs that are also in the audience. This is valuable. You know, and remember that you always have an opportunity to pull aside your liaison or just pull, you know, email your favorite councilmember, vice mayor or mayor with any issues that you might have and any ideas that you have. But thank you very much and the subcommittee will be looking at this. With that, I see no other comments from staff. We will adjourn the special joint meeting at 6:57 and we will start again in three minutes. Thank you.
[02:35:07] Mayor Larry Klein: Good evening. Let's call to order the council meeting of November 18th, 2025 at 7:06 PM. First, Councilmember Srinivasan, do you have a statement that you'd like to make?
[02:35:20] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Yes, Mayor. I am participating remotely in tonight's council meeting under the Just Cause provisions of the Ralph M. Brown Act included in California Government Code section 54953(j)(2). There is no individual 18 years of age or older present in the room at my remote location. Thank you.
[02:35:48] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you very much. The City does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. Sunnyvale prides itself on the rich diversity of our residents. We are committed to creating a culture of belonging where members of our diverse community feel included, safe, and respected. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means the council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to the agenda item being considered by Council for consent calendar or public hearing items. Speaker comments during oral communications must be limited to matters within Council's authority, generally referred to as Council's subject matter jurisdiction. If a speaker's comments are not related to an agenda item, the presiding officer will rule that speaker out of order. A speaker will not be ruled out of order because of disagreement with the content of their speech. Location and online meeting details are available on the council agenda. Scan the QR code on the screen or click the language access and translation link on the council agenda to read and listen along in more than 60 different languages. Use the show captions button to view captions on Zoom. Comments on matters not on the agenda or the presentation item must be submitted prior to the time I call the item for oral communications. Comments on agenda items must be submitted prior to the time I close the public hearing on that agenda item. Speakers are requested to keep their comments to the time period set for that specific item and time limits will be strictly enforced. Guidelines are posted on the City's website and on the council agenda. First, please join me in a salute to the flag.
[02:37:28] Mayor Larry Klein: 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.
[02:37:48] Mayor Larry Klein: Next up is roll call. City Clerk, may we please have roll call?
[02:37:51] City Clerk David Carnahan: Mayor Klein?
[02:37:52] Mayor Larry Klein: Present.
[02:37:53] City Clerk David Carnahan: Vice Mayor Sell?
[02:37:54] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Present.
[02:37:55] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Cisneros? Councilmember Mehlinger?
[02:37:58] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Present.
[02:37:59] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan?
[02:38:00] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Present.
[02:38:01] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang?
[02:38:02] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Present.
[02:38:03] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Lei? Five present with Councilmember Srinivasan participating via teleconference and Councilmember Cisneros and Lei absent.
[02:38:12] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Next up is our close session report. Vice Mayor, may we please have the closed session report?
[02:38:18] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Okay. We had a item number 0, conference with legal counsel, initiating litigation pursuant of paragraph 4 subdivision (d) section 54956.9, potential case. So direction was given to initiate litigation. Once the litigation has commenced, the defendants and other details will be provided to any person upon inquiry. Item number A, conference with labor negotiator, agency designated representative, Sarah Johnson-Rios, Assistant City Manager, employee organization, Communication Officers Association. Nothing to report.
[02:39:15] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you very much. Next we have a special order of the day. Let me come to the lectern. Good evening. Before we begin tonight's meeting, we have a special recognition. We would like to recognize the Saturday after Thanksgiving as Small Business Saturday. Small Business Saturday is dedicated to the promotion of small businesses nationwide and to recognize their resilience over the years. We are joined in a special recognition by a staple in our small community, Lee Odom. Please come forward. The owner of Lee's Favorite Books and of course the children's bookstore, Bookasaurus. Lee fosters a sense of community, running events and clubs that offer residents an opportunity to engage and build bonds throughout Sunnyvale. Some of these events include author signings, multiple monthly book clubs. The book clubs don't actually just benefit the readers and followers of Lee's books. They're just, they're also meetings at local restaurants. The clubs integrate into the in support our wider small business community. It's these types of small businesses and especially the interconnections that they can create which make our community that much richer and help our community thrive. Lee, you know, I just want to first thank you for what you provided for so many years in our community. And I would love for you to say a few words.
[02:41:08] Lee Odom: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me tonight. I really appreciate it and very grateful for the support of my community. Without you, we wouldn't be here. So thank you. I'm really passionate about bringing community to Sunnyvale. When we moved here, it was kind of sleepy at first. And I have a passion to bring book clubs and ways for people to connect either in the store. We've had couples meet in the store. Someone got married once in the store. We've seen a lot of dates go through. But we have book clubs where people get together and you can just speak freely about a book. We have author events. And I just I want to get people, give people a reason to come out and connect with people that they wouldn't normally connect with. You know, people in different age groups or different backgrounds. Hear what they thought about a book. So thank you so much. I really, I really appreciate this. Come out on Saturday at Small Business Saturday. We're going to have some really fun gifts for people. We have a, some special tote bags that are unique to Sunnyvale. We also are revealing our new Lee's Favorite Books tote bag. So that's a new thing. And then we have some other fun gifts and Shop Local pins. So come on out, celebrate with us. If not, just have a refreshment. Thank you.
[02:42:28] Mayor Larry Klein: So, Lee, just stay for one moment. The City of Sunnyvale proudly supports our local small businesses. With over 5,700 small businesses, including over 350 eating establishments, which I've been to quite a number of, and over 400 personal service providers in Sunnyvale, we have a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the small business owners and what they're providing in our community. The small businesses comprise over 90% of the local business community. So on behalf of the City of Sunnyvale, it is my pleasure to declare Saturday, November 29th, 2025 as Small Business Saturday in Sunnyvale. I encourage all of our residents to visit a local establishment like Lee's Favorite Books, like Bookasaurus. You know, they are unique to our downtown. And you know, as much as people buy online, buy local as much as you can. So, please support our Sunnyvale economy. Thank you, Lee. Thank you everyone who shops local. You really do make a difference in our business owners and our community. Thank you. And thank you, Lee.
[02:44:05] Mayor Larry Klein: Next we have a special presentation. We have a joint legislative update from Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens and State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab. Assemblymember Ahrens, thank you for joining us here this evening. Please come to the lectern. And I think you have a slideshow that will be pulled up very quickly.
[02:44:28] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Thank you, Mayor. Hello. It is really great to be here to give you all a legislative update to the largest city in my state assembly district, Sunnyvale. And I will just say it's been quite a year in the legislature and for all of us and I'm really grateful to the Mayor and the Council for being one of the best, well-run cities in not only Silicon Valley, but the state of California. And really just want to appreciate how much my office has greatly enjoyed being able to work with all of you and advocating for the best interests of Sunnyvale. And it, as my first year, it's been very fortunate to be able to work with Dr. Aisha Wahab in representing Sunnyvale's interests in Sacramento. And I will also say that I also did bring a few dates to that bookstore. So thank you, Lee. It's been quite the budget challenge in the state of California. But despite that, my colleagues and I passed our 2025-26 California State Budget. In it, we have allocated and prioritized the needs of many of the residents that have been calling and emailing into our office. Which has included $52 million in additional funding for our food banks, many resources of which we are directing to Sunnyvale Community Services, the Bill Wilson Center, and other nonprofits that directly serve Sunnyvale. We have increased state funding for affordable housing by preserving $500 million in Low Income Housing Tax Credits, $60 million one-time funding to support students, a student block grant, $5 million in one-time funds to support financial aid and outreach for community college students, and saved $4.6 million for the 2025-26 year and $14 million in the 26-27 year for our CalWORKs program. As well as over $100 million to support organizations serving crime survivors. I've passed my first bill that the Governor texted me about, which makes me officially a lawmaker, to decriminalize truancy in the state of California. As many of you all know, the last thing we need to be doing is fining up to $2,000 or threatening imprisonment of parents whose students are truant. The data doesn't suggest that that helps our students go to school more and common sense doesn't. And so I'm really proud to work with our Silicon Valley delegation and the state of California to officially decriminalize that in January. In addition, my office, just a few highlights, and I would like to then open it up for any questions. My district office with really proud to have my District Director, Victoria Low, here and Victoria Pham. Wave Victoria. Say hello. That's my District Director and Victoria Pham is one of my field representatives. And if there's anyone else named Victoria here who would like to work for the people of California, they can apply. But we've helped over 400 constituents this past year with direct casework. We've helped secure over $110,000 in EDD benefits for community members who are struggling to get the support that they need. Since taking office, I've joined or hosted more than 1,400 meetings and events throughout Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and San Jose, listening to residents, small business owners, educators, and local leaders. We've partnered with over 43 community events from community coffee chats to resource fairs, tabling at major festivals like Silicon Valley Fall Fest and Berryessa Diwali. We've connected with over 12,000 constituents at these events and served more than 1,200 meals through community coffees and our signature internship and volunteer programs. We've also built a very strong volunteer network where we're trying to be as visible and transparent as possible, including volunteering at many schools in and around Sunnyvale. I've really appreciated the partnerships that we have developed together. Part of our job is obviously lawmaking in Sacramento, but it's also about staying connected to see what we can do to help our everyday residents. Just this past week, we were able to secure $20,000 for the Bill Wilson Center to serve tutoring for the Sunnyvale shelter, as well as participate in a laptop giveaway where we secured 250 laptops. Many of those laptops went to Sunnyvale Community Services, the Bill Wilson Center, a litany of other really notable nonprofits who are here serving directly the needs of everyday residents in Sunnyvale. My first signature event was our Policy and Pancakes event this upcoming January. We're going to have it again at the Sunnyvale Senior Center where constituents can write directly to me their bill ideas. Not all ideas should become a law, but we shouldn't be getting all of our bill ideas out of the infinite wisdom of Sacramento or special interests. They should come from people who see problems and want to see them fixed in our community. So we offer the public the ability to submit bill ideas to me as well as ideas that should not become a law or things that need to be repealed. I'm grateful to work with also our mobile home park community with Gail Rubino and other Sunnyvale leaders to addressing some of the issues that we are seeing with our recent housing laws that have been enacted and making sure that we're not leaving our source of affordable housing in our mobile home park community behind by working, getting commitments to work with many of my colleagues to address those issues as well. So a lot, a lot in there but overall I'm grateful to the bills that we've signed. I'm grateful for the money that we've been able to secure for our district. I'm grateful for my staff and the City of Sunnyvale's excellent city manager's office who've just been real professionals in helping us advocate for Sunnyvale. And I almost went to as many meetings and events as the Mayor, but no one can quite be as many as you are, Mayor Klein. But I appreciate that he is the Mayor that calls me the most and asks me what I'm doing for Sunnyvale on a pretty regular basis. So I appreciate the partnership. I'm looking forward to the many of more events that we have upcoming and really grateful to work with Senator Wahab in representing the City of Sunnyvale. Thank you.
[02:51:13] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you, Assemblymember Ahrens. And thanks for the presentation and the update. Next we have Senator Dr. Wahab on the line. Thank you for joining us this evening.
[02:51:22] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: Definitely. Thank you, guys. So I'm your State Senator, Dr. Aisha Wahab. I'm very proud to represent this district. I know that, you know, a lot of the times folks don't exactly know exactly where we spend our time and I just want to shed some light on that. I want to be able to address any questions and kind of go over just the year of work that we had behind us. So if you take a look at our slide deck and I'll go through each one of them, I want to say that this year was largely marred with the fact that we had the worst fires in in California's history. And I'm actually standing in front of a photo right there in LA. We went to the Palisades and Altadena and some of the neighboring areas and that is something that we have spent a lot of time to work on not only on legislation but policy and budget overall to basically tackle some of the issues that we're going to have with our climate issues. Sustainability, you know, wildfire resiliency, and much more. So I'll go through some of it. We were able to also honor our Nonprofit of the Year that services a lot of families. And I'm actually very proud of this nonprofit. It's been around for nearly 30 years. It's the Friends of Children with Special Needs. It is very under the radar in my opinion but they service so many people from cradle to graduation. They have spent time with folks with special needs but also their families and really have created a community. So I'm very proud to at least highlight those two things and some of the work we did there. But I'll go to the next slide and really give you guys a rundown of what we've done. You know, Assemblymember Ahrens actually talked about our investment in housing. I will say I am the Chair of Housing. This is my first year as Chair of Housing in the Senate. And I want to flag how kind of the budget conversations have happened. In January the governor typically rolls out his budget and we spend the next six months debating over each line item. And I have previously, you know, worked on the budget as Chair of Sub 5 and right now I'm a member of the Budget Committee as well. And so I really try to advocate for the things that people need most. You know, it was mentioned regarding food security but I also want to extend that to a lot of the concerns our district has including local legal aid to those folks dealing with immigration concerns. And I think in our district we have a significant population. I represent both Alameda County and Santa Clara County and we worked with our counties to make sure that the Bay Area is taken care of in a lot of different ways. But as far as housing being the number one issue across the state, I want to highlight that we fought specifically and I will highlight on the next slide as well, the Dream for All is a down payment assistance program for first-time homebuyers. We put in $300 million here. And that was a specific effort on behalf of my team because that is something that I think a lot of people especially in the Bay Area struggle with. I will also flag that we put in another $500 million to the Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention Program that largely supports local cities tackling our homeless effort and addressing the homelessness crisis with accountability measures of course. This when it was originally introduced for the budget of this past year in January, it was at zero dollars. And I really want to highlight how much we work to make sure that we put in money so our local mayors and city council can actually address what's happening in their communities. We also put in Low Income Housing Tax Credits at $500 million and $120 million for multifamily housing program. This is specifically to create and construct deeply affordable housing but also many of you guys have been working with developers with LIHTC as they call it, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, and making sure that current housing projects are rebuilt and kind of built to our standard for today and making sure that the developments that we have now still are viable in the future. So a lot of people rely on this money. This is just the tip of the iceberg of what we did on housing and I'll talk about it a little bit more in the next slide. Next slide please. So I like to really do the work and I will say that this was a wonderful year in regards to legislation. SB 681 was not like any other bill. Most bills are just a couple pages. My bill SB 681 was rolled into the budget and signed into law this July and I want to flag how important SB 681 is. It was over 60 pages long. And I highlight that because it was an effort for me for more than a year where I wanted to be able to do something for renters, for the first-time homebuyer, for those that have their first home, for those that are dealing with land and a lot of the conversations that took place actually comes from our district. And I'll give you guys an example. Our Zombie Mortgage Protections that got rolled into the budget this year. I had a constituent, a business owner who called me and said, hey Aisha, I just got hit with a letter that says I owe thousands upon thousands of dollars for a mortgage that I thought I foreclosed and declared bankruptcy on. And I'm getting hit with 15 years of fines and penalties and late fees and the original loan in itself. And I said, how is that even possible? So we looked into it and the truth of the matter is that this Zombie Mortgage Protection that we made into law just this year is the strongest in the nation. What we are seeing and NPR did a story as well as Bloomberg and many others across the nation, debt collectors are going after people who 15 years ago during the Great Recession thought that they were you know free and clear and they filed for bankruptcy and they lost their homes and you name it. That they're getting hit with that second mortgage or whatever the case may be, and it's case by case, with 15 years of back pay and penalties that they owe to these debt collectors. No communication from that debt collector in the last 15 years. This is completely illegal in my mind and so we made that a law. And now the banks and debt collectors want to have a conversation to undo that. And the governor's team as well as our leadership in the Senate said, you know, Aisha, what do you think? And I said this is the strongest protection we have in the nation and it was highlighted and flagged as that by many different publications across the U.S. This is a growing problem and California now has the strongest laws to protect people. I want to go on to the limits of HOA fines. We have seen people and LA Times actually wrote about this where there were people that live in HOA communities that were getting hit with $500 per day fines. We limited that to $100 with time for the person to fix any error that violates the HOA agreement. And also unless it has something to do with the safety and health of the area and folks, that the fines are capped at 100 bucks period.
Segment 5
[03:00:00] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: the opportunity to correct the mistake. Um, the person that brought this up was being charged $3,500 a week because they were being charged $500 a day. They were going completely broke and possibly even on the verge of bankruptcy because they could not afford these fines and could not fix the problem uh fast enough. I want to also highlight that we increased the renters tax credit, quadrupled it, for the first time in decades. And this is to give renters a leg up. I'm, when I got elected, I was the only renter in the Senate, and we know that we have significant concerns there, and it's very hard to kind of explain what renting is like today. So I just want to highlight some of those things, but also in our district, we were told that schools that are trying to sell off land are having difficulty to prioritize affordable housing. So we expanded the Surplus Land Act and and much more.
[03:00:58] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: Um, so this bill, and I'm not going to go through everything, but it has so many different pieces that help develop homes, help um streamline some of the red tape that cities, and and I'm not saying our district, but definitely throughout the state of California have, uh making sure that affordability is one of the biggest priorities, making sure that consumers are protected, um as well as, you know, giving some money back to those that are the most vulnerable. Our fastest growing demographic amongst our homeless population is actually our seniors. So it is a personal issue to me just because I faced a home foreclosure with my family, and I don't want to see more and more people on the streets, and we need to make sure that people stay housed longer.
[03:01:45] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: I will also highlight SB 262, which expands what stable housing is. Stable housing is pro-housing. Uh HCD has this designation called pro-housing, and we know so many students, you know, sleep in their cars. We know that, you know, there are so many cities that create homeless navigation centers and safe parking zones and much more. And we think that smaller cities, for example, today, Sunnyvale is now named a pro-housing city. And it's designated that, and I'm very proud to have been able to work with HCD to grant one of our cities uh like Sunnyvale that, but also Hayward, another city in my district, the pro-housing designation. This helps the cities compete with funding as well as technical assistance as well as much more when, you know, we are not necessarily at the population size of Los Angeles, Oakland, San Jose, or San Francisco. So I really want to fight for our smaller cities and really give them a level playing field. Um, we did a number of different things in housing and disaster areas, um and I've carried a number of bills that got signed. All of these were signed, so I'm very proud of that. We can go on to the next slide.
[03:03:16] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: All of this uh in our 2025 legislation, besides the SB 681 that got rolled into the budget, all of the bills in front of you were signed by the Governor and now official law, except for SB 257, which I think many of the women here would, you know, be upset to hear. Um, it basically would have allowed women who discovered that they are pregnant to be able to apply for, let's say, better health insurance or for the first time health insurance, um specifically around the fact that they are pregnant now. And that's a qualifying life event in my personal opinion, and I think many others. Uh that bill was vetoed specifically for cost efforts. Um but we got a number of other bills signed into law. For example, we have wage theft judgments that was uh a collaboration with the Santa Clara County uh to make sure that people who worked for their money get paid for the work that they um have done.
[03:04:35] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: We also protected disabled spouses on the books. Sadly, it was that rape is illegal unless your spouse is disabled. There was an exemption there. Um we removed those exemptions. We worked with uh women's coalition in Santa Clara County to get that bill passed. We also have worked to ensure that we are capping insulin copays and much more. If you take a look, we have worked on a wide variety of issues with our law enforcement partners, with women's groups, with health groups, um and with consumer groups. And the reality is that most of these bills come from my district. I do not need um a lobbyist to tell me what's going on. We specifically know and hear directly from our constituents and we are here to serve our constituents. So, happy to go to the next slide.
[03:05:42] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: Uh I've only been a State Senator for roughly now three years and I will say that we have had a number of bills passed and signed um by the Governor. Just last year alone, we had 16 bills signed by the Governor with 11 of them being bipartisan. And we continue to work across the aisle, you know, good policy is good policy. We tackled retail theft, we tackled um a lot of mental health issues, we tackled some labor issues and much more, including new technology like artificial intelligence and protecting children and women in particular who tend to be victims of these types of crimes, um as well as our seniors, of course. So, um very proud of the work we continue to do. All of these bills are signed and again, many of them originated from our district. Next slide.
[03:06:53] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: So for Sunnyvale, I want to be very clear, we have done a significant amount of events. Um you'll see some photos with our Mayor of course, our um Police Chief, and some of our, you know, Chamber members and and much more. Uh we have also brought a significant amount of money into uh the city as well as the district. You know, $1.75 million for a safer walking and biking infrastructure uh near Lakewood Elementary, $500,000 for the County of Santa Clara regarding uh Re-entry Resource Center. Uh just recently a million dollars for land acquisition for a family shelter. And $10 million for the World Cup that will be happening in this district. And I'm I'll talk a little bit more about that, but that is an opportunity both for an economic boom, tourism, and much more revenue being generated in every single local city uh that we are working on. Uh happy to go to the next slide.
[03:08:14] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: And so, you know, we some of the things that we talked about, you know, I've already mentioned some of the money uh coming in, local investments, but also for our public transit and something that I'm very proud of but I still think we need more funding for it, the Children's Holistic Immigration Representation Project. Um some of you guys know I grew up in the foster care system and people with different immigration statuses, especially children, are placed in front of a judge and uh expected to know what their legal uh situation is. These are kids. And with the $10 million that we made sure that these children receive, it's specifically for a lawyer and a social worker for any kid that is caught in the crossfires of our immigration system. Um it is not fair to put a kid who's a minor, who potentially doesn't speak English, let alone read and write, um to defend themselves. And and I'm very proud of that work and I still think we need to do more.
[03:09:27] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: Um I did mention the World Cup. Uh I meet with them pretty regularly. Um you know, this is an opportunity for the district from a economic um, you know, setup. Our Chambers, our local businesses, restaurants, and hotels. The city of Sunnyvale, I'm sure their hotels are going to be booked up, and I want to flag that so the cities know where to focus on, how to generate some of the funds that are coming in. The World Cup will be taking place this summer um and it will happen for about two and a half weeks. And it's something that we are all going to be impacted on uh when we're talking about our transit, our law enforcement, our hotels, our restaurants, sales tax, uh the hotel tax, and so much more. So there's a lot of opportunity here and we want to make sure that this is not only successful, but the Bay Area Host Committee stays for the long term. So, um we can go on to our next slide.
[03:10:48] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: Um again, this is previous funding that we have brought in and I want to highlight that I primarily try to focus on infrastructure, housing, and social safety nets. Um these tend to be the most costly and also the hardest to uh receive funding for. And of course it always goes up every year with inflation and much more. So I am committed to making sure that the money that we bring in serves the entire district as well as um the regional efforts and partner cities and much more. Um so for example, you know, for the city of Hayward, we made sure that the hospital and the fire department receives funding because both of those institutions serve the larger area, not just Hayward. So, um that's kind of the mindset that I have around this and we can move on to the next slide.
[03:11:56] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: Um and you know, we have uh Elizabeth from my staff in person for you guys. If you guys have any follow ups and want to have a one-on-one conversation, but my office is here to specifically serve our districts, specifically serve you all. So if you guys have questions, have constituent cases like unemployment or food security issues or much more, we are happy to answer any questions and help navigate um, you know, the state departments that kind of handle some of this stuff. So uh happy to answer any questions you guys may have.
[03:12:33] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: I want to flag one thing for Sunnyvale. SB 79 that was passed into the law. Um I will say that I originally voted no on. Um it had a lot of problems. I I still think it has some concerns. I have met with our mobile home parks um in a very large meeting. Uh I was able to secure before the end of the legislative cycle um the commitment from Senator Wiener in writing um that he is committed to me and, you know, my concerns regarding very specifically the impact on mobile home parks. Uh we have a cleanup bill that we will be introducing this year, um hopefully in January. And I want to flag to everybody that um our mobile home parks are very much a part of our community and I identified the concern first and foremost, informed the Sunnyvale lobbyists and Sunnyvale um team. Uh and so our mobile home parks are actually very happy with kind of the solution we have. The only reason why it was not amended into SB 79 originally was because the legislative process has deadlines and it was already passed the deadlines. Um but we are committed and we have informed uh the mobile home parks and residents that um we are moving forward with this. So again, happy to answer any questions and here to serve you all. So thank you.
[03:13:54] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you very much, uh Senator Dr. Wahab. Um thank you for all that you're doing. Um I just want to say um um I appreciate, you know, this update. Uh we do need to take a quick recess. Um sorry, sorry, before we get to questions and we I know council has a few questions for you. Um we need to take a five-minute recess. Um and then we'll be coming right back. Thank you.
[03:17:52] Mayor Larry Klein: Okay, let's go ahead and reconvene. And we'll bring it to council questions of our Senator and our Assemblymember. Um Council, do you have any questions or comments that you'd like to start with? Uh, Councilmember Srinivasan.
[03:18:19] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Thank you, Mayor. Uh thanks uh Senator and Assemblymember. One of our residents uh resident groups uh contacted your office about uh food desert in Northern Sunnyvale area. Uh they're looking for some kind of help uh from the state. Uh what are their option, either of you or both of you, please? Thank you.
[03:18:53] Mayor Larry Klein: Senator or Assemblymember? Is the Senator still there? Assemblymember.
[03:19:03] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Um, thank you, um thank you Murali. What specifically, Councilmember, you said about food insecurity? Food deserts? Yes. Thank you for bringing that up. Uh there I've also had uh many constituents, particularly in Sunnyvale, but throughout Silicon Valley, email and contact my office. We've had a few legislative inquiries regarding our uh unintended consequences of many of our housing-first policies is is really the destruction of a lot of local small business and retail that I know the many of our cities rely on not only for livable, walkable, bikeable communities, but also for tax revenue.
[03:19:50] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: And I've met with several constituents and we are actually planning on uh reviving a law that has been attempted before to provide tax incentives and grants to housing developments that are moving forward that retain uh grocery retail square footage space so that we are not unintentionally creating food deserts in our communities. That's something that um uh a few of our Northern uh Sunnyvale residents have greatly um uh been affected by and it's something that we are we will continue to see throughout the state of California if we're not addressing some of the incentives to keep our local grocery and mom-and-pop stores. And so I'll be introducing a bill in January to directly um alleviate that concern. Um and work with my colleagues in the State Senate and the State Assembly to be bringing up this issue. But there's a lot of different ways to solve this problem uh, you know, beyond the bill that I will be introducing, but we'll be sure to keep you updated on that, Councilmember.
[03:20:59] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Thank you very much, Assemblymember.
[03:21:04] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you, Councilmember. Uh Councilmember Mehlinger.
[03:21:09] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you very much. Uh Councilmember Srinivasan beat me to the question. Um so I just wanted to say thank you very much for your efforts on this topic and please let me know if there's anything I can do to support. Thank you.
[03:21:19] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Thank you so much, Councilmember, and you can learn more at my Policy and Pancakes event at the Sunnyvale Senior Center in January.
[03:21:27] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Uh Vice Mayor Sell.
[03:21:31] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Yeah, I want to thank um Assemblymember Ahrens and Doctor Senator Wahab for coming today. Uh throughout your uh term, you both have been very present in Sunnyvale. Um when I talk to my constituents or people in Sunnyvale and they have issues, um then the next thing they said is that they've been talking to um Assemblymember Ahrens' office, his staff, or Dr. Wahab's office and staff. And they've been getting advice and reassurance. And then next I hear that there's going to be a bill. And so um for um you both to represent so many people and to be so present with people, um it's a testament to um your service as our elected officials. So I just want to thank you for what you're doing. Keep doing what you're doing. Um our constituents really value that.
[03:22:33] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Thank you, Vice Mayor.
[03:22:35] Mayor Larry Klein: Thanks, Vice Mayor. Um next up is Councilmember Chang.
[03:22:37] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Thank you, Assemblymember and uh Ahrens and Dr. Aisha Wahab for presenting tonight. I had a question for Dr. Wahab on, if you could expand a little on SB 681, the Surplus Land Act expansion? If you could just speak a little more to um for how it impacts school districts and how they can utilize that.
[03:22:59] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: Yeah, so it's it's funny because um we have been seeing a decline in student population and enrollment and all of our local schools are struggling um with the funding uh algorithm that really, you know, the local schools, especially uh K through 12 um absorb through student attendance. Um so with that, one of the things that we kept hearing is that a lot of the local schools are trying to sell off certain pieces of land. The Surplus Land Act, the way it would work, is that schools that are seeking to sell off land, they would have to prioritize that land being sold for affordable housing. And some of the schools are able to be able to um prioritize workforce and teacher housing as well as student housing depending on, you know, what project they're looking um at. So uh the Surplus Land Act originally did not cover schools in in particular. Um and it also allows, it it works in a couple of different ways. The schools are able to not only prioritize affordable housing, work with the local cities that usually deal with land use issues because the local schools don't really actually do land use. Um and uh like I said, they can do teacher housing slash student housing, um but also that housing can just be affordable housing for the general public. Um it depends on their project, it depends on what they're trying to do as far as development and um potentially um having a third party kind of take over the land and and develop it, which is not the business of what education institutions typically do. So that is a big piece of it.
[03:24:31] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Great, thank you. And this question might be for both of you. Thank you for the uh information about this past year. If you could give me a little bit about what you envision, what you see as you go back to Sacramento in January, what the what the vibe is going to be like.
[03:24:44] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: I'll refer that to our seniority, Senator.
[03:24:50] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: Um, so uh number one, I think that uh both Assemblymember Ahrens and I um deeply value our district, right? And I think that that's one of the biggest things that you guys can see this. You know, Patrick said it, I said it. Um a lot of the effort is really bringing our real life issues to Sacramento, and I think that that's a big missing piece in Sacramento. Um that's first and foremost. So uh we are very deeply in the district to hear from constituents what are um is tend tends to happen, what is going on in their lives, what are their concerns, as well as our elected officials, right? Um you guys as City Councilmembers are the closest to the people um on a day-to-day basis. Um and so having that, you know, correspondence with you all matters. Um I will say that, you know, one, we're doing a cleanup to SB 79. Um I am more than happy to work with Patrick um on his effort because he also lives in the area that some of the constituents talked about um regarding the food desert. Um but one of the biggest concerns I think for this upcoming year is backfilling, preventing, reducing the impact of the federal cuts. I think that that is going to suck the oxygen out of the room. And there is no way that the state of California, including our massive budget that we have historically um dealt with, is able to backfill any of the cuts that we are seeing.
[03:26:24] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: We have heard just more recently um announcements in HUD funding being cut, and I think that's going to tackle really our lowest income um housing needs assistance programs, right? Um we are going to see obviously the the cuts for HR 1. Um and that is the way that bill was even written is that the cuts will also come even after next year, right? And I think that uh the larger public is not ready for that, let alone the state of California. The research cuts that we have seen from educational institutions and and much more, when we are talking about the cuts that are happening that really impact our semiconductor slash advanced manufacturing industry in this district, I think we are going to see cuts across the board that we want to minimize. Um and so I think that our budget is going to be the biggest decision um that we are going to make this year. And that's at least what I'm going to be focused on. Um but of course our bills, you know, we have a number of bills that we're interested that protect again the most vulnerable community members.
[03:27:24] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: And I'll just add quickly that, you know, I agree with the Senator on all of those points about what we are facing and what is coming at us. Uh a lot of that is going to be hard to explain and show our constituencies about, you know, preventing more damage from happening while also trying to increase opportunity. And that's the balancing act that the Senator and I are working on in Sacramento. And let me just also acknowledge uh even without the um the federal cuts, which are uh immense and difficult to uh tackle next year, I think we also need to acknowledge that um we need to be more focused on delivering on the affordability concerns that we hear uh call, you know, through our constituents who are calling both of our offices, who we're meeting with at our farmers markets and our community coffees. And that's at the end of the day, um we are a two-thirds majority, super majority state legislat legislature as Democrats, uh but we're not uh focusing enough on the true affordability concerns and actually being able to bring down the cost of living and uh really addressing those concerns. And so I'm going to be working with anybody, um regardless of party, regardless of uh where you stand on some issues or others, we have to come together, whether they be progressives, moderates, Republicans, Democrats, to lower the cost of living in our district. Uh arguably our constituents that Dr. Wahab and I represent feel it more than anywhere else because of the stratification of wealth in Silicon Valley not being equal. And we do need to have hard conversations in our budget process about lowering taxes, about finding other solutions. It can't always just be a tax increase. We need to s talk about government efficiencies and the 80 plus billion dollars that we give away in corporate tax breaks, but don't always do a good job at seeing if they are actually doing the things that they set out to do or uh a litany of other issues. And so uh it all boils down to how do we make things more affordable for folks. And so that's what uh our Silicon Valley delegation uh can and should be focusing on this next year.
[03:29:24] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Great, thank you.
[03:29:26] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you, Councilmember. Um I have a few questions. Um but I'll just wrap up. First uh uh Senator Dr. Wahab, um you talked a little bit about the Surplus Land Act uh for schools. Does that also apply to private schools or is it that only public schools?
[03:29:51] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: Um it's for the most part um all public schools. Um the private schools is not necessarily taken because that could be private land, private uh corporation, and much more. So they don't have the same um statuses if you will.
[03:30:03] Mayor Larry Klein: Okay, appreciate that. And then uh I wanted to also give you an opportunity to talk about the potential food deserts in North Sunnyvale and conceivably things that might be done from your side um to kind of work on that problem.
[03:30:22] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: Definitely. Um so I I think our Assemblymember addressed it um very early on when it was asked. Um more specifically, he's going to introduce a bill that kind of addresses some of the concerns. Obviously he lives in that area, so um we are going to be supporting our Assemblymember in that effort, number one. Number two, I do just want to highlight that um food deserts were talked about, but um the definition of food desert is a federal definition, and I want to be very clear about that because people throw out these definitions and they don't actually know what they um mean legally. Um a definition of a food desert is that you do not have a place to receive food uh for up to a mile, right? So if it's beyond a mile, you don't there's nowhere to go, right? Uh you have to go beyond a mile to get food. Uh that's not necessarily the case within our district, and I want to be very clear about that. There are certain parts that we do see, um but uh those definitions are very hard to change at the state level, and and I want to be very clear about that. I think what our Assemblymember is proposing and some of the efforts that we as the state have have already done regarding food security and making sure that we have laws that also say that convenience stores and some of the local uh shops provide fresh food, um are smaller efforts. But I will also say that the food industry is a very difficult industry to crack. Um when we're talking about our agricultural industry, our um, you know, food health and food security and the funding behind it. Uh I will say that when we had the federal government shutdown in this past month, um, you know, the state backfilled uh what was missing from the feds with $80 million of an investment, a surge investment. And when you take a look at the 58 counties that we have in the state of California, uh that $80 million doesn't go that far, right? But $80 million is a huge investment. Um and that's the sad reality of what we are dealing with. And there are counties that are far less affluent than the district I represent and Patrick represents. Um but our main concern has consistently been our most vulnerable community members that actually rely on um these uh services and and need more. So we will continue to kind of prioritize that, but like I said earlier, we are also faced with significant budget cuts that are going to affect people's Medi-Cal. Um and that's going to go into effect this January, right? Um let alone uh food security, housing, and much more. So it is a balancing act that we're going to have to play and we're going to be on defense this year in my personal opinion.
[03:33:12] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you, and I appreciate appreciate your perspective. Um thank you for your work. Um next up is Councilmember Mehlinger.
[03:33:23] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. And this is for Assemblymember Ahrens, I have one other follow-up question after this. Um you mentioned affordability and that's going to be a central a central part of your agenda next year and I greatly appreciate that. Are there any particular initiatives that you're planning to spearhead that you'd like to highlight?
[03:33:40] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Thank you. Um well, I think that uh what the conversations that I've been engaging with as a member of the Budget Committee specifically is uh really inter entering into the conversation about what we are doing with our corporate tax breaks. Like I mentioned earlier, we give out over 80 plus billion dollars in corporate tax tax breaks every year in this budget, and many of those tax breaks uh allow for high wage income earners and good union jobs, a litany of other good corporate jobs that add to our tax base, which is which allows California to be successful, uh to stay in California and keep jobs in California, which is a huge priority for the Senator and myself. Uh but many of them, we're not sure if the uh tax break is doing what it says it did, or maybe it was doing as intended 30 years ago, but there is not a comprehensive, transparent way in which uh these tax breaks are reviewed. And so uh rather than go back to the voters to ask for tax increases continually, I think we need to enter in other solutions, and those should be reviewing our budget, going line by line and seeing uh if these tax breaks are working so well, then these organizations should have no problem coming before the public and defending how well they are working and how many jobs they are keeping in the state of California or whatever the incentive that the taxpayers are helping subsidize them for, and seeing what is working, what isn't, what type of dollars uh public taxpayer dollars could we be saving uh as we review those programs instead of going back to the voters to deal with the uh the urgency of meeting the moment as the Senator had mentioned with the federal cuts. And I think we need to be nimble and all options need to be on the table. Uh and the solutions can't continually be tax increases on uh working class, middle class people as uh as I have seen more and more of. We need to be doing a balance here and ultimately addressing affordability issues as uh as we have continued to hear that from the residents of Sunnyvale.
[03:36:13] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you. And my second question, this is for both the Assemblymember and the Senator. California is a substantial net contributor to the federal budget. When you look at the money we pay in taxes...
[03:36:24] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: Assemblymember Ahrens clearly, clearly stated um some of our concerns...
[03:36:31] Mayor Larry Klein: Um. Go ahead.
[03:36:33] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: I think our Zoom may be having some issues. Uh Mr. City Clerk?
[03:36:40] City Clerk David Carnahan: Yeah, I I do see that Dr. Senator was attempting to speak but it wasn't coming through. Um can you make another statement and we'll make sure we're able to hear you? Senator?
[03:36:54] City Clerk David Carnahan: Uh no we're, I I can see you talking, so I'm not hearing you. Uh let's see.
[03:37:02] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Well the Senator was just mentioning how she fully supports my agenda in Sacramento and she'll be voting for all of my bills. Thank you, Senator for that full-fledged support.
[03:37:16] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: For the public, we have been having issues with Zoom outages all night. I wonder if it has something to do with the Cloudflare issues earlier today.
[03:39:20] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: Can you guys hear me now?
[03:39:22] Mayor Larry Klein: Yes we can.
[03:39:23] City Clerk David Carnahan: Yeah, we can hear you now. Give us just a moment because uh we need to get our live stream going again.
[03:39:26] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: No worries.
[03:40:48] City Clerk David Carnahan: Okay, thank you for your patience. Uh and we are almost there. Okay, we are ready to continue on with the meeting.
[03:41:29] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: Okay. And I apologize. Could you guys, I wanted to touch base on the affordability question, but I believe there was another question when um my audio was paused.
[03:41:43] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Let's uh why don't we get your answer to the affordability question because I I think that you started saying something and it got garbled.
[03:41:52] State Senator Dr. Aisha Wahab: No worries. Um so as far as affordability, it it is the number one issue uh for residents, um myself and my family included. Um you know, last year we, I specifically presented our leadership with an affordability package that I wanted to kind of pursue. Uh that affordability package turned out into an affordability working group that eventually the Assembly also adopted. And our package was uh very very focused in workforce development, uh energy, because the cost of energy is significantly high, as well as of course my bill SB 681. And um the issue of affordability is an issue that will continuously be there. Um I think that that is one of the biggest concerns. Um my my additional concerns as the economy changes as um we are seeing some of the impacts, it's not just playing defense and, you know, backfilling a lot of the uh funding cuts, but it's also the unemployment that we are seeing within our tech companies, especially in our industries of advanced manufacturing, semiconductors and and um you know, much more in the tech industry. They are far more nimble than most other um industries and or retail. Um and that is why I highlighted also the World Cup because it is an opportunity that most cities should grab onto um to kind of promote some of the uh revenue being generated by the local economies. So um with that, I think many of our bills and efforts again focus on the most vulnerable community members. Um I gave you guys some stats on who that tends to be, and it is communities of color, it's our senior population, it's uh women, and it's uh college going kids and much more. Um so I think that that will always be a concern and the lens that we see pretty much any other person's policy that comes before us as well.
[03:43:48] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: All right, thank you. Um and what I was saying before uh our technology so rudely failed us, um California is a substantial net contributor to the federal budget. We send in considerably more in taxes than we receive back in federal funding. And that has been dramatically exacerbated over the past year, beginning with the denial of fire relief for LA County and continuing with the draconian cuts in uh HR 1. Um Governor Newsom has adopted a uh somewhat pugnacious stance on this, which I appreciate, but what can the state do to fight back and ensure that our residents are, you know, receiving our fair share of what we put into the federal budget?
[03:44:58] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Well, that's a softball there. Yeah I know. Councilmember. I I'll just say that um you know the way in which we fund our taxes is everyone pays them uh individually. And so there's no there's no practical way to withhold federal funding. Um but the best way that the Legislature has responded to that is um we disagree with the President where we believe we uh disagree with him and we uh direct our Department of Justice through our Attorney General Rob Bonta to sue the federal government where we feel uh unlawful uh decisions are being made. We have won in this uh the state of California has won two-thirds of those court cases against the federal government. So by and large, the money that we are investing in paying the Department of Justice, uh we are saving hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars by defending uh the existing uh money that should be appropriated that Congress via the Constitution has given to the state of California. Uh and we will continue to support uh the Justice Department. But let me underline, uh will not be using our legal system because we disagree or don't like the President. We can do that in the ballot box, uh we can do that in the midterm elections, we can do that in this past election. But uh disagreeing with the President is not what our constituents uh want us to fight with him about. Primarily it is if you are breaking the law. And uh if uh we we believe that that they have, and we will take that matter up lawfully through our democratic process of the court system, which we've been able to do and defend Californians two-thirds of the time.
Segment 6
[03:45:00] City Clerk David Carnahan: ... tonight so we will have that posted online after the fact so it will it'll incorporate all of our glitches as well as everything that was said as we thought we were broadcasting so just for the record we will have everything recorded and available tomorrow.
[03:45:15] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you City Clerk. And with that, we will move to Oral Communications. This is now the public's opportunity to address Council on topics not listed on tonight's agenda or the presentation. This section is limited to 15 minutes may be extended or continued after the General Business section of the meeting. Individuals may only speak once during this section. This City Council meeting is considered a limited public forum which means that Council can regulate the time place and manner of speech. Speaker comments during Oral Communications must be limited to matters within Council's subject matter jurisdiction which is known as Council's subject matter jurisdiction. If a speaker comments are outside of Council's subject matter jurisdiction the presiding officer will rule that speaker out of order. This allows Council to conduct its business in a reasonably efficient manner and protects the rights of other speakers. A speaker will not be ruled out of order because of a disagreement with the content of their speech. Please submit a speaker card to the City Clerk, raise your digital hand now or dial *9 on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. First up is Charlene L. followed by Jin Z.
[03:46:40] Charlene Liu: Hi my name is Charlene Liu. Tonight instead of talking about policy I'd like to share with you a personal story. I have two daughters who are the love of my life. Raising them has been my most enlightening and fulfilling endeavor. When my children were young, 8 and 10 years old, we went backpacking in the Sierras for the first time in their lives. In the alpine wilderness they did a surprising thing. They freely roamed around laughing and exploring as children are meant to do. Their behavior was surprising to me because back in Sunnyvale they were afraid to leave my side. I realized then that in Sunnyvale they were scared of cars and rightly so. Because of how dangerous the roads were, I had to bike with my children to school every day until they reached fifth grade. I also had to bike with them to the orthodontist, music lessons, friends' houses, library, stores, basically everywhere until they were well into high school. I spent 20 years biking by their side teaching them how to avoid a car crash on the streets of Sunnyvale. If the roads had buffered non door zone bike lanes like Hollenbeck Option 1, my children could have biked independently at a much earlier age. I could have saved myself a lot of time also so that I could focus on running a household and earning a living as a research engineer. Note that unbuffered door zone bike lanes like Hollenbeck Option 2 would not have liberated my children. I would not have let my children bike on those alone. Indeed as an adult, I avoid the Option 2 style bike lanes on Mary Avenue whenever I can. Our dangerous streets have caused another profound misfortune. For many years living in Sunnyvale I used to not know my neighbors except the ones right next door. Then realizing that a neighborhood is a place to make human connections I made a concerted effort to know them. Biking was instrumental in my quest to know them. When I bike, I invariably have chance encounters with them. Yet despite having lived here for 23 years and making this concerted effort, I still don't know most of them. Even the ones just two doors down. If I see these neighbors at all, I see them only when they come out to get in their cars to drive off. It's so fleeting that I wouldn't even recognize them if I were to come face to face with them. They are car bound because they think it's the only way to get around. To get around safely. Focusing on driving leads to dangerous roads and isolation. Biking makes our roads safer and brings us together. To make our community into the Council priorities vision of an engaged and welcoming community we have to make biking possible for all ages and abilities. On Hollenbeck it means choosing Option 1. Take it from me, a mom who biked with her children for 20 years in Sunnyvale. I would not let my children bike by themselves on Option 2 bike lanes. Option 1 is the only option. Please choose community and freedom over parking. Please choose Option 1. Thank you.
Segment 5
[03:47:50] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you.
[03:47:53] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. And that was all of council questions. Um uh Senator Dr. Wahab, uh uh Assemblymember Ahrens, I just want to thank you for for presenting to council tonight, giving, you know, giving updates on all the hard work that you've done for Sunnyvale and the district and, you know, all the good things that you'll be doing in Sacramento in the upcoming year. So I appreciate that and and we will be moving to oral communications after this. Hopefully someone from your staff will stay around to at least hiss there's a few people that want to comment on the presentation, uh but you can always watch watch the recording afterwards as long as our technology is working. But thank you, thank you for being here.
[03:48:58] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Happy belated birthday yesterday to our Mayor. Thank you.
[03:49:03] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you, Assemblymember.
[03:49:05] City Clerk David Carnahan: Um, sorry Mayor, before we continue onto oral communications, let me just state that um while we're having some challenges, uh Zoom is having a a na a worldwide challenge at the moment that we are uh getting to experience. We do have local recordings of everything.
Segment 6
[03:49:50] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Jin Z followed by Steve S.
[03:50:08] Jin Zheng: Good evening Councilmembers. My name is Jin Zheng and I'm a regular patron of Sunnyvale Public Library. For months I reported repeated violation of policy A 11 including a patron regularly eating inside the Technology Center. But on August 27th staff abruptly stopped documenting violations even though visible on the surveillance. Reversing the practice followed just the day before. I immediately escalated the sudden change to the Superintendent, cc'ing the City Manager's office on August 27th and again to this Council on September 11th. No substantial responses were received and the City never contacted me for evidence or statements. Because the City declined to review any evidence I independently collected 22 surveillance captured violations, just a fraction of what occurred daily. The predictable consequences of this non-enforcement followed. On September 22nd the repeatedly offending patron threatened me. Documented in the public safety report number 25266097. On November 15th another patron threatened me as well. To this day no investigation has been communicated to me and no one from the City has contacted me for evidence or statement despite prior notice of all these violations, two threats and one police report. These incidences occurred because the City stopped enforcing its own policy and stopped documenting violations. I respectfully ask this Council to ensure full enforcement of Policy A 11 and A 12, require proper documentation and review any internal directives that prevented lawful reporting. I place this on the public record for the protection of myself and the community. Thank you.
[03:52:55] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Next is Steve S followed by Tiffany H.
[03:53:28] Steve Scandalis: Hi. Thank you. I have a presentation up here. Wanted to talk to bring you an update of something that I started independently a few months ago since July. There I've been doing independent surveys on Hollenbeck and I'm bringing you six more additional ones to the ones that I had before. It's interesting to notice that service vehicles outnumber bicycles in the latest six that we have here. These are the the earlier surveys we had. So the main thing is to to show that on various days and various times of day weather sometimes there's soccer at Challenger, sometimes there's an event over at Resurrection Church or Sunnyvale Presbyterian, that there's quite a variety of the uses of of the on street parking. And I know we have Option 1 and two different Option 2s A and B and an Option 3 that we're looking at in two weeks. Here's something also might be interesting to you. On November 5th a Wednesday 11:50 a.m. there was a large event. I don't really know what it was. It might have been a funeral or something else. But these are three different pictures of the the traffic. There were probably about 35 extra vehicles on the two sides of Hollenbeck and there were approximately 30 vehicles down on Cascade both East and West on Cascade that were extra and not residences. I live near that area there. For what you're coming up with in two weeks I'd like to propose a new option for you to consider. A 2C. We heard recently a bicycle aficionado talked about two features that have been included in the very expensive pricing estimate of $5 million on some of these options 1, 2A, 2B. And I was pleasantly surprised to see that he agreed with me that there are some of those features that don't need to be removed. Bicycles can transition through them and they are so valuable to the community that we should consider keeping them. The 2C in a simple sense is it's 2B with three primary changes. You retain the pork chop and slip lanes at Fremont at Hollenbeck. You retain the left turns at Torrington. And you address the crossing needs specifically Cheyenne, Sheraton, and Harvard first and there might be one or two additional ones. This greatly lowers the cost very significantly. The bicycles I've looked at the the pork chops we have there are pretty easy to get around. You don't have to go through anything on that. So please consider this 2C between now and two weeks from now and you may be able to save a lot of our money. Thank you.
[03:56:38] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you. Just a quick question for staff. Mr. City Manager my understanding is that in general we have been in the process of removing pork chop turn lanes in the city for some years now. I know that they were removed at Matilda and Maude and a variety of other intersections. Is that an ongoing practice or priority or do we have a policy on that? Or perhaps Mr. Taylor might speak to that.
[03:57:05] City Manager Kent Steffens: Yes I'll I'll turn that over to to Chip Taylor.
[03:57:11] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: Thank you. Chip Taylor Public Works Director. It wasn't expecting a question so I ran down here. Yes so with the with the pork chop islands and removing those throughout the city we do try to work through the city and and remove those as far as it's a practice through the Vision Zero plan through the Active Transportation Plan to provide better crossing for pedestrians so they don't have to cross that uncontrolled movement for the right turns. So as we work through the Active Transportation Plan or other projects that's when we try to remove those.
[03:57:43] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Understood. How long have we been doing that out of curiosity?
[03:57:46] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: Oh gosh it's a good question. I think mostly I've been doing it over the last maybe 15 years slowly but you know really ramping up maybe over the last 10, 5 to 10 years you see it a lot more throughout cities. It's pretty common.
[03:57:58] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Okay. Thank you. No further questions.
[03:58:00] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Next up is Tiffany H followed by Jignesh S.
[03:58:10] Tiffany H.: Hello Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Councilmembers. Thank you for your time and consideration. I'm a resident on Hollenbeck Avenue. This slide deck that you see provides a richer description of the people who make up the community on Hollenbeck Avenue. There's been a lot of discussion and advocacy from both sides and it has evolved into one side versus the selfish, privileged, and entitled homeowners who could not care less about anyone else's needs. These are the common sentiments that I've found online that are hateful and divisive not community building. Let's be clear disagreement is not hate. The Hollenbeck bike lane study provided an opportunity to understand that the corridor is made up of segments with different characteristics each with diverse uses and needs. Let's take a step back to look more closely at the community who actually live on and regularly use our street. These are the people who may take a survey or write a letter but they aren't going to attend a Council session for a variety of reasons. And for the purpose of this presentation it's hard to see so I want us to think of the term high density housing to generally refer to apartments, condos, townhomes, duplexes, and triplexes. If you look at the map on the graphic you'll see Hollenbeck horizontally with Danforth on the left and Remington to the right. Most of the street is single family residences but we haven't taken time to look at the high density housing that's just off of the map to the left or north of Danforth here. Two apartment complexes on the northeast corner of Hollenbeck and Danforth and lots of multi-unit housing. The small yellow box is a community care facility that specializes in caring for adults with autism. They are all on the east side of Hollenbeck. Staff's proposal would remove parking on which these neighbors rely. Next slide please. Cumberland Elementary you've already heard about. The school district has made great efforts to relieve the stress for families by offering to bus students to school. There remains high on street parking usage particularly in the mornings for those who want to avoid the bottleneck traffic of getting to school via Danforth Avenue. Speeding and red light running continue to be a big safety concern at this intersection. Next slide please. And lastly there are nine triplexes immediately north of our study corridor on Hollenbeck Avenue where there is already no on street parking and a bike lane currently exists. None of these neighbors I spoke with know about the bike lane study. One person who works in a restaurant and lives in the apartments gets one parking spot but by 8:00 p.m. that spot is taken. Another shared that their location does not have on street parking in front of his triplex due to the bike lane and already walks five to seven minutes to park. If parking is removed the biggest concern was when this would happen and if it is time for him for for them to find a new place to live. Obviously the parking provisions for high density housing are currently insufficient. Let's not be a city that forces these community members who work as restaurant workers, mechanics, PE teachers, and electricians away. Thank you.
[04:01:05] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Councilmember Mehlinger is your hand... Okay. No problem. Jignesh S followed by Zachary K.
[04:01:25] Jignesh: Hi my name is Jignesh and I live on Hollenbeck as well close to Remington. And just continuing on Tiffany's presentation. So I have two kids who are in college now and one's past college and both of them used the bicycles to to bicycle down Mary to Homestead. And they said they would continue to do so even if there was a bike lane on Hollenbeck because Mary is much safer. Continuing on the presentation, so between Sheraton and Cascade there's high density housing businesses and community users. I think this was mentioned before by Steve as well. The Challenger pickup and drop off is the most impactful for traffic flow during commute hours. Off street parking at churches and the mortuary is insufficient for weddings and funerals or or holidays. And off street parking at Challenger Park is insufficient for Sunnyvale Alliance and AYSO practices and games. And that's multiple times a week. And coming to the Challenger community right, so 10 years ago Challenger listened to its neighbors and changed its policy regarding pickup and drop off in order to you know make sure that the that the parking situation the traffic situation was eased. And they listened to it and really helped. And now we are trying to do something else which is just going to take all this away. Not sure why we are doing that without listening to the listening to the neighborhood. And what what will this lead to is just another Chick-fil-A or In-N-Out type of situation on Hollenbeck especially during school hours. During soccer games families already park along Hollenbeck between Torrington and Fremont and also along Torrington and Vanderbilt. They even park in front of the fire hydrant. This is from one of the neighbors. What we need are crosswalks at Torrington and Vanderbilt. And then in addition to that there are oh sorry oh there are single family homes there many many people who are above 60 years old right. Have we listened to them? Pulling your car out of the driveway is already quite hard as it is. What will be the impact be on these people? You know the older you get the harder it gets to drive. And also the services and all that that need to be rendered to them whether it's for home repair or for other it's it gets harder and harder. One of the residents who's who's elderly said what do you propose for those of us who are dependent on walkers or wheelchairs? Do we do we not count? Am I fated to confinement rather than freedom? Yes I'm old but not quite to the point of confinement yet. Right. So let's make sure that we we we address the needs of everyone in the community. Thank you.
[04:04:31] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you. Yes I do. Jignesh, was that right? Yes that's right. You mentioned something at the beginning of your comments that you your children mentioned that if if bike lanes were installed on Hollenbeck they would still prefer to bicycle on Mary is that accurate?
[04:04:48] Jignesh: Absolutely.
[04:04:49] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Did they give any reason why?
[04:04:50] Jignesh: Yes. Because primarily because of the situation at Challenger. So while while you're biking and first of all Mary is much wider they said. And my my son was was biking every day all four years and even on weekends because of sports right. And so he said Mary is significantly safer. You can get to Mary from where we live through you know Knickerbocker or other streets to Mary and then and all the high school students take Mary anyway. Right it's so there is safety in numbers for bicyclists for the students and they would all all go on Mary together. And so just that that's the feedback. I just met him in Atlanta this past weekend asked him this.
[04:05:33] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Wonderful that's very helpful and you know I certainly would encourage them to write in. And I don't think I have any other questions. Thank you.
[04:05:39] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Susan S followed by Zachary K.
[04:05:48] Susan S.: Uh thank you for thank you for your time. Let's just finish this up here. Um where were we? There we go. You know these accessibility concerns need to be addressed not minimized dismissed and fail to understand the difficulties. And there's a term for that and it's called ableism. And by not really listening to people who have accessibility issues that's what we're trying to do. We also don't need to hear this anymore. I mean this is a quote from somebody in social media. I don't really want to be here that I'm you know exploiting social welfare. Our community really needs safety and accessibility independent of whatever decision Council makes. No matter what we really feel strongly about traffic calming along this corridor. It just it everything is foundational upon that. We really need to address the accessibility issues for those who are not access uh mobile anymore. And even though it sounds like a nitpicky pain in the rear end problem how are we supposed to maintain our homes? We don't understand how this is supposed to happen. We really don't. People in social media say it's being done in other places. How do they do it? Is it the same situation as ours or different? Because I think this Hollenbeck issue is more complex in some ways because of all of the public use areas especially between Fremont and The Dalles. So we do want safety for all. Please stop the name calling. We really need empathy and understanding in order to get to a good solution set. We need to reach across the aisle. Since we want safety and accessibility for all there's three major choices that have been evaluated. Uh the sharrows which I understand is not really safer. Um Class 2 non-buffered Class 2 buffered with no parking on either side. Unfortunately none of those meet NACTO standards for safer bicycling infrastructure. Maybe we should be investing more on really safe infrastructure instead of band-aiding things together. Um and the rest of this is if we talk about the non-buffered bike lanes on the east side the scope should be expanded to in include more pedestrian crosswalks um having those things monitor uh I can't think of the right word but you know what I'm getting at. Because more people are going to be crossing the street. It's that simple. Um and again codify things for non-resident stopping, people handicapped people trades and traffic calming. And if we go with the buffered bike lane thing it's more of the same uh with the calming and all that sort of stuff. But the environmental impact report due to to Challenger. Thank you.
[04:08:58] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Zachary K followed by Marius R.
[04:09:10] Zachary K.: Assemblymember Ahrens. I read that Assemblymember Gregg Hart a non-supporter of SB 79 was absent for the SB 79 Appropriations Committee vote. Well what do you know his absence meant one additional NVR no vote recorded. SB 79 wouldn't have advanced to the Assembly floor. Assembly Speaker Rivas however decided to replace or perhaps the better phrasing filling in Hart with you. Your yes vote raised the tally to eight enabling the bill to advance and its ultimate passage into law. Some mystical LA Times story was cited. I wanted to give you a chance to clear that version thing of that version of things up. Going with that narrative your installation on the committee meant that the SB 79 bill got clear of the legislature. This is all second hand to me can we hear from you on these events? I would like to point out I turned in my speaker card for the prior agenda item. You chose to put my speaker card last. Success. Assemblymember Ahrens just left.
[04:10:33] Mayor Larry Klein: Next up is Marius R followed by Anne H.
[04:10:45] Marius Rovde: Good evening uh Mayor Councilmembers. I'm Marius Rovde. I am appointed as the new Executive Director of Sunnyvale Alliance Soccer Club. It's uh hopefully not my members who has this bad parking you're talking about but I know it's some of them. Uh I want to present myself we are the largest not-for-profit sports organization in Sunnyvale. Uh a quick update on my background I was a professional soccer player at the highest level in Norway Scotland England. I coached and directed soccer in four continents and more than 30 countries. I have coached in three World Cups. I spent 10 years as a coach and a director in Major League Soccer and I have the highest coaching education available in the world and a master in sports directorship from London. This is not to brag but we want to build something in Sunnyvale for the community. Uh for nearly eight years I've served as the Executive Director in Vancouver Canada and I have had uh two years in Bloomington Minnesota. Uh both cities the clubs I led doubled their membership and activity within a couple of years. Uh that growth didn't happen by by accident. It happened because we built programs that were inclusive community focused and centered on access for all families regardless of financial background. In Richmond BC our club became the first ever to win back-to-back Association of the Year and Leadership of the Year awards uh at the Chamber of Commerce. Um it uh was because of our community outreach programs and we created programs for underrepresented families Indigenous youth Ukrainian and Afghan refugees and we worked with organizations such as voices of Muslim women. We made a big diverse program. The same commitment is here now in Sunnyvale. Every year Sunnyvale Alliance provides close to $500,000 in scholarship and financial aid. Far more than probably the 10 neighbor soccer clubs you have in other cities. No child is turned away because of finances. And I want to expand this even further because this is how you build healthy resilient inclusive communities. And that's what I'm doing. But with growth comes demand and we will have to look at field situations for our members. We will soon be 4,000 soccer players. Thank you for listening to me.
[04:13:45] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Um next up is Anne H followed by Alok B.
[04:13:55] Anne H.: Hey good evening. Thank you so much for for taking comments. I'm going to focus only on uh Hollenbeck Option 1 bike lanes. I just want to list what I see as the pros and cons. Uh full disclosure I am a resident I do have two children who bike to school every day. The pros I think are very clear bicyclists will feel safer and they will have a more enjoyable ride. That is what I that is my understanding. The cons even Option 1 does not meet NACTO standards for safety based on the staff report that we have up to 13,500 vehicles per day on Hollenbeck. So if Hollenbeck feels safer and it's not there is a risk of bikers who are less experienced kids deciding hey this is safe enough to bike on when it is not is just a feeling. Um currently the only traffic calming on Hollenbeck are parked cars. So if you take those parked cars away I expect speeds will increase. Promises of traffic calming later are not the same as proven traffic calming in place when those changes are made. The most common type of bicycle accident on Hollenbeck is a broadside. That is not improved with bike lanes but it is indicative of a speed issue. Uh and so that's really what needs to be addressed with traffic calming. Also we will be adding pedestrians to the mix. Pedestrians are are very important too in addition to bikers so we want to keep them in mind for safety. So please keep in mind that we also need improved crossings regardless of what option if any we go with on Hollenbeck. So in summary I would propose the following. Please follow up with traffic calming on Hollenbeck. I understand that's separate from this study and I understand we are following following up and I greatly appreciate that. Slower traffic makes everybody safer. Second improve crossings at Hollenbeck including Cheyenne uh which is where I see a lot of bikers crossing between the Nimitz neighborhood and over toward the Serra Park area to get to CMS and uh Homestead. Three if bikers aren't happy with Sunnyvale Saratoga which I get it's also not NACTO approved or Mary please use the city resources to address that. Those are wider streets they have more options. Sunnyvale Saratoga doesn't have residential driveways every few feet. There are more options to make safe bike passages on those streets. So let's fix what we have instead of creating another broken option that bikers don't want to use. Thank you so much for your time.
[04:16:56] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Um Alok B followed by Kevin J.
[04:17:04] Alok: Um my name is Alok I am a resident on Hollenbeck Avenue for almost four years now. Um I want to invite our Mayor and Councilmembers near Challenger School between 7:30 in the morning and 8:30 to see the traffic how it gets backed up while I am dropping my two kids to Challenger which is literally 0.2 miles away from where I live and it takes me 10 minutes because I am in queue and I have a restricted window to drop my daughter at 7:45 in the morning and my son at 8:15 in the morning. It is a single lane towards Homestead but we are sharing this lane so for for people who want to drop their kids to get in Challenger and from the other side people are moving towards Homestead. Implementing bike lane on that street will only create a lot of chaos which is already chaotic because it's a very restricted space to get in school. And the same situation happens when we have to pick up our kids starting from 2:45 till 3:30 and there is a soccer practice and there are parking situations already on Hollenbeck Avenue because of AYSO and some other events that are going on. So we have raised this issue during data collection when when this was when this started in March many many times we reached out we sent pictures we sent event information but please consider these data points that were neglected in original data collection study for Hollenbeck uh bike lane implementation. Next one is I am also here on behalf of my 84 year old neighbor. He is an old uh he is a Navy veteran his wife is 81. Both have mobility issues. They are not tech savvy however they have written to you and all Councilmembers via USPS. They have called and unfortunately they have not heard back from anyone. They are supported by medical assistants they are supported by their veteran friends continuously. We help a lot especially with with anything that is needed with other day I was literally assembling a chair that that his daughter uh shipped from via Amazon. The the biggest problem that they have is if the if they if their visitors are not able to find parking their closest parking for for that house is 0.5 mile away if they are not able to find parking their only option is to sell the house and move on. This this segment of population has been completely neglected despite they have reached out to our Mayor and to Councilmember and please please consider given there are residents on this street who has been staying here for more than 30-40 years. Thank you.
[04:20:02] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Kevin and my last speaker card is Kevin J.
[04:20:08] K. Jackson: Oh I go by K. Jackson. Um good evening. Um I'm a nearly 50 year resident of Sunnyvale and one of the things I appreciate most about it is that our government uh consistently takes the long term view. It just makes things work better overall and I'm hoping you will do that for the Homestead bike lane or the Hollenbeck bike lane issue. Um and I'd like to uh make sure you're aware of an aspect that I have not seen previously addressed. That is the explosive growth of e-bikes and similar devices. This should be a positive development to replace many automobile trips but that works only if we plan our bike facilities to meet the need otherwise it will become a constant source of dangerous conflict due to the overwhelming of minimal bike facilities and the increased um speed disparities between e-bikes and human powered cyclists. Alternative 1 uh is a very good start and it also preserves options for further improvement as they become necessary. By contrast Alternatives 2A and 2B would be a disaster. Um they are barely minimal um adequate for the conditions of yesterday. We need to be building for the conditions of tomorrow. Um I'll take this opportunity to respond to a recurring concern that's been expressed about what happens if we need service vehicles and there there's no street parking. Well that's very simple every cyclist who rides regularly on uh streets without parking uh knows that if necessary service vehicles park in the bike lane uh and the police don't bother them. It's a made up issue. Uh I think the Public Safety Chief could probably confirm that. Um nonetheless it is safer to have it marked as a bike lane with no parking for several reasons. First the service vehicle operators will look for a legal space if there is one. If they can't then they park in the bike lane if that's what they need to do but they will turn on their hazard flashers put out orange cones take similar measures to alert all traffic that extra caution is required. And third they'll get in and out uh as quickly as possible rather than hanging around for a break if they don't have to go on another call right away. So all these things help and it's uh something that I hope you'll consider. Thank you.
[04:23:14] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. That was my last speaker card in the room. City Clerk do we have any remote speakers wishing to speak under Oral Communications or the presentation?
[04:23:23] City Clerk David Carnahan: Yes Mayor first is Lakshmi followed by Ari F. Lakshmi you've been unmuted and you have three minutes to address the City Council.
[04:23:31] Lakshmi: Thank you so much Mayor for giving me the opportunity. Hello uh Mayor and Mr. Vice Mayor uh Ms. Vice Mayor and all the Councilmembers. Uh I'm a resident of Hollenbeck Avenue for the last uh four plus years. Uh safety concerns is something which I'd like to bring forward. So eliminating the street parking would force residents including families with elderly members like my neighbors and young children as well as visitors to walk much farther to reach their cars particularly at night or during bad or inclement weather. We've noticed this over the past few weeks when we've had rains. Uh I fell once during the rain uh on the on the uh curbs. Uh we do we do not have very good curbs broken curbs. Uh these increase a lot of risk of accidents and personal safety incidents every single day. With parking shifted to side streets more people will cross Hollenbeck on foot raising the pedestrian safety concerns. What measures will the City implement to address increased pedestrian crossings and manage traffic speed and flow? The cyclists often travel at high speeds and neighbors have reported near misses when fast moving bikes cross driveways unexpectedly and this is a real safety concern for drivers and pedestrians alike. The core safety issue is speeding and not parked cars. Uh speeding is directly tied to safety risks and should not be considered separately from this discussion. If safety is the main reason for this proposal why is the focus on removing parking rather than addressing speed brought in here? Even the project team's own studies cite speed is a major factor. Finally the service workers such as delivery drivers gardeners home care aides uh have to park farther away increasing the risk of injury as they carry heavy items and cross busy streets. Uh mainly I would like to say that this is an unfair burden on residents uh undue burden on those who rely on street parking prioritizing the needs of cyclists over those of residents who live and contribute to the community. Prioritizing new bike lanes on Hollenbeck while leaving the existing issues on nearby roads like Mary uh and Sunnyvale Saratoga unaddressed is not an effective approach. Creating new problems without solving current ones do not serve the community very well. There are proven alternatives that can that can enhance bike safety without eliminating essential residential parking. Improving the design and maintenance of existing bike lanes on nearby streets making them safer and more attractive for cyclists is one such thing. Implementing better signage and wayfinding to alert both drivers and cyclists to share the road uh and use for reduce potential hazards. Adopting traffic calming measures such as speed humps chicanes traffic circles lane narrowing and medians to effectively reduce vehicle speeds and improve safety of all users without removing parking. Uh so the City should reconsider this proposal and instead pursue alternative solutions that improve bike safety while preserving the essential parking needs of our neighborhood. The proposed removal of the street parking on Hollenbeck will negatively affect safety daily convenience property uh value and quality of life for all of the residents. The City should consider these significant impacts and address the real safety issues. Thank you all.
[04:26:37] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Next up is Ari F followed by Rupa. Ari you've been unmuted and you have three minutes to address the City Council.
[04:26:45] Ari F.: Hello City Council. The city is planning to grow in population. To prevent future congestion and improve the lifestyles of all of our residents we need safe and convenient non automobile options to get around. This means building a network of low stress bicycle routes. Hollenbeck is a key part of that network. The only design that will be safe for all ages and abilities is Option 1. Option 1's buffered bike lanes will provide safe biking for children. Children should be able to bike safely to Challenger, to the library, to church, to Homestead High School and so many other places. Having children take alternative routes is not acceptable. Mary Avenue and Sunnyvale Saratoga have too high of a crash rate. It's unacceptable and taking those detours will add a mile to the route. If you think walking a few minutes to a parked car is hard, try biking on a high speed road with a small child. Adding buffered bike lanes will make Hollenbeck the safest north south north south street in Sunnyvale in South Sunnyvale for biking. I want to take a moment to address some safety concerns. First Option 1 will bring us the closest to meeting the NACTO bike guidelines. We should not let the perfect be the enemy of good. Even if we don't meet the NACTO guidelines with this project doing this project and specifically doing Option 1 will get us there because it gives us the ability to upgrade this facility in the future to Class 4 protected bike lanes. Next Option 1 is best for traffic calming. Parked cars are not a legitimate or safe traffic calming measure. They are not consistently placed and they are not continuous. But traffic calming will work. There are four types of eligible traffic calming devices for Sunnyvale's traffic calming program. There are traffic circles and chicanes which unfortunately do not work on Hollenbeck uh due to Hollenbeck's geometry and vehicle volumes. But curb extensions and chicanes can work on Hollenbeck. But they only work if there is a buffer in the street to place these traffic calming devices. Option 1 is the only option that has a buffer. Option 1 is the only option that allows you to implement curb extensions and chicanes across the entire length of Hollenbeck resulting in lower speeds everywhere. Additionally Option 1 could lead to protected bike lanes. This can take the form of delineators which just cost around 40 bucks a pop. You place them once every 20 or 40 feet and you have reduced vehicle speeds more than any traffic calming option. Again Option 1 is how we slow speeds on Hollenbeck which is something we can all get behind. Finally Option 1 will eliminate blind spots for drivers by eliminating the parked cars on the road. This means Hollenbeck will be safer to cross for pedestrians. Thank you.
[04:29:51] City Clerk David Carnahan: Thank you. Next up is Rupa followed by Stephen M. Rupa you've been unmuted and you have three minutes to address the City Council.
Segment 7
[04:30:00] Public Speaker: Uh, good evening, uh, dear Council members, uh, Mayor, and Vice Mayor. And thank you for this opportunity and your attention. As a resident of Sunnyvale, I have one question to ask. Has the city gathered any data from any other similar street in Sunnyvale which already has bike lanes and, uh, compared the data in terms of safety usage throughout the day, the street width, the traffic volume, the speed, and the conditions. Please compare and consider this data with Hollenbeck with the existing conditions in Hollenbeck before you decide to spend a few million, uh, dollars here which I'm sure the city can put to good use. Given the width of Hollenbeck, why can we not consider measures like sharing the lane between the cars and bikers which will automatically get the speed down and be of good use to everybody. Thank you so much.
[04:31:08] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you.
[04:31:13] City Clerk David Carnahan: Next up is Steven M. Steven, you've been unmuted and you have three minutes to address the City Council.
[04:31:20] Steven M: Good evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you for your attention tonight. So, I have been able to bike on Hollenbeck several times. I'm a big pickleball player and I've been riding from Fairbrae down Hollenbeck towards Cupertino Memorial Park and I can attest that while I'm biking there are very few cars but the cars that I encounter are often in the wrong place so that I'm pushed into traffic and then I have traffic going at high speeds making me quite uncomfortable and I'm an expert bicyclist. And what we're targeting with the Active Transportation Plan is the 85th percentile mother who would like their cyclist to ride to school. So we need traffic facilities that afford people the greatest amount of safety and that would be Option 1. And if Option 1 is too far to reach and you're not quite sure then the prototype of just doing a bike lane with and possibly with delimiters would be able to tell you what would really happen. And I do agree with other residents' concerns about safety and speed. Uh speed is a big problem on Hollenbeck, no doubt. And that's why we need traffic calming to take place but traffic calming is, you know, apparently a back big backlog and then the the actual facilities we have for traffic calming are things like bulbs outs and improved intersections and I think everyone I've heard agrees on improved intersections and agrees on traffic calming. So the only, you know, points of difference might be with regard to parking. In any regards, I think I would like to repeat the quote, perfect is the enemy of good. Option 1 is exceptionally good. So we should do what's good and then move forward. Thank you very much.
[04:33:19] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you.
[04:33:21] City Clerk David Carnahan: Mayor, that was the final remote public speaker for Oral Communications.
[04:33:25] Mayor Larry Klein: Okay, I'll go ahead and close Oral Communications. Um, let's go ahead and take a five-minute recess and come back at 9:10. Thank you.
[04:41:33] Mayor Larry Klein: Let's go ahead and reconvene. Uh, move on to our Consent Calendar. I'll open up the public comment on our Consent Calendar items. Please submit a speaker card to the City Clerk, raise your digital hand now, or dial star 9 on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards on Consent. Um, City Clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on Consent?
[04:41:59] City Clerk David Carnahan: No, Mayor.
[04:42:01] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. I'll close public comment, bring it back to Council for a motion. Vice Mayor Sell.
[04:42:08] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Um, I would like to move to approve Consent Calendar items 1.A to 1.H.
[04:42:15] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Councilmember Chang.
[04:42:17] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Second.
[04:42:18] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. City Clerk, can you please conduct the vote? Sorry. Can you please conduct the voice vote?
[04:42:25] City Clerk David Carnahan: Yes. Since we have, uh, whenever we have at least one Councilmember participating remotely, we need to conduct uh roll call votes uh per the Brown Act. First up, Mayor Klein, how do you vote?
[04:42:36] Mayor Larry Klein: Yes.
[04:42:37] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan.
[04:42:39] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Yes.
[04:42:44] City Clerk David Carnahan: Vice Mayor Sell.
[04:42:45] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Yes.
[04:42:46] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang.
[04:42:47] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Yes.
[04:42:49] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger.
[04:42:50] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Yes.
[04:42:51] City Clerk David Carnahan: The motion carries 5-0 with Councilmembers Cisneros and Lei absent.
[04:42:57] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Uh, we'll now move on to a Study Session, Item 25-0635. Um, Active Transportation Plan Progress and Reporting Update. Is there a staff report?
[04:43:08] City Manager Tim Kirby: Yes, uh, good evening Mayor, members of the City Council. I I wanted to introduce this item. Um, the agenda title is is uh we were struggling with it a little bit but the here I want to explain a little bit about the intent tonight. The intent is uh one of Council's priorities was uh is Active Transportation and um as part of that, um, we added a position to the budget uh for an Active Transportation Planner. And so part of our goal tonight is to just introduce you to Jose who's here tonight. Um and and Chip Taylor will do a little bit more of a robust introduction. And then also he's going to share some work uh that Public Works has been doing on on progress reporting is what we're we're talking about. So the actual um, he's going to show you a little bit of uh uh information that's going to go live on the website sometime in the near future. Um that'll give some updates and progress on um implementation of the Active Transportation Plan. The intent of this presentation is not to provide you an update on the status of the act implementation of the Active Transportation Plan. Um, I would encourage Council if you want to get a a recent update on that, um, BPAC received an update um on that item on uh August 21st and so of this year. And so if anybody wants to see the update the staff report is uh there's the YouTube video and also there's a uh a presentation on online that you can see um there for for an update. Um, so with that I'm su- I'm very excited about this. We're we're trying to make some really good positive progress in this area. Um really bring more transparency and information sharing about our progress on Active Transportation. And so with that I'm going to turn it over to Chip Taylor.
[04:44:55] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: Great. Thank you, Tim. Chip Taylor, Public Works Director. I'll use a line from Good Will Hunting. He stole my line. Yeah, cause he stole most of what I was going to say. Um, but if we go to the presentation we can go to the um the first um slide or the second slide I guess on there. So, you know, as Tim talked about we um, you know, this was a budget proposal to add the Active Transportation Planner. Um, and it was originally was sponsored by BPAC back in '23 and then it was adopted in the budget as part of the 24/25 fiscal year. Um and so Jose's been with us for maybe about six months or so. Maybe around that time frame. Pretty close. Um, and uh when Jose first came on board he kind of asked, well what is it that this position is going to be? What's it going to do? And I said, well a lot of it you get to define it. You get to be the first person in this position and really help us kind of push the boundary and really kind of push us as engineers and uh the whole department to really work toward how do we incorporate a lot of these things into everyday projects. Uh so we've given him a lot of latitude to do that um which is great. And one of the first assignments that we gave him was to look into um how do we start to get information out to the public about the Active Transportation Plan. So that's what you'll hear about tonight. Um and then the next slide um, you know, and I'll maybe I'll let even Jose talk a little bit about himself here. Um but uh essentially he's got some great background uh from kind of the engineering side um and he's got um uh some great background with Palo Alto and working on Active Transportation planning there. So, um, with that I will hand it over to Jose here just a second. One thing I will say is this is supposed to be a great night tonight. We actually have a really cool mapping tool that's going to be here. So that's what we wanted to do. It's the first time that Jose is going to be in front of everybody here. So, you know, don't don't beat him up too badly. Um but uh but we're excited and I think it's going to be a great tool. So with that I will hand it over to Jose.
[04:46:44] Active Transportation Planner Jose Palma: Hey, thanks Chip. Uh, hello everybody. Um, so uh about myself, um, just really quickly as well, I'm somebody who bikes every day when I come into Sunnyvale. I take Caltrain from San Francisco and I bike every day and I make sure I do that every day so people can know that I'm also a bicycle user and I'm somebody who really challenges myself to to change that habit. Um also my professional background as Chip was mentioning has been involved with co-managing the Safe Routes to School program with the City of Palo Alto. Uh in to- on top of that I've also worked with various consulting firms uh engineering and planning. And also just like I was saying some interest has always been to sort of be the person who's showing this world that I'm using those other modes of transportation that I'm going to talk about is something critical to me and that also involved my uh certification as a uh league cycling instructor which basically means that I you know I can teach people about biking but also I become a resource on you know bike riding questions that people might have and I feel very confident in uh exchanging those ideas and uh resources with people. All right. Um so um moving into the goals for this study session. Um you know as we were saying you know the Active Transportation Planner um uh that's me sorry and also we're moving into the ATP progress reporting so you know we're going to be showing you an online map that's part of what Chip was saying and we're going to be sharing um sort of a list of some things and also giving you a tutorial of that map as well. I'll be doing that myself and then sharing the next steps uh after that. So we'll go into the plan progress and reporting. So as it's been five years already since the plan uh was adopted. Um and BPAC and the public expressed this interest of showcasing more data and understanding where we are in implementing the ATP plan. And you know uh staff and myself we looked at various uh cities and what type of um way that they are sort of keeping track of this progress and we decided to focus on an online map. And so I'm going to go up to the front here and start navigating a little bit of what that looks like so be patient with me.
[04:49:14] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: We were going to get some Las Vegas magic kind of you know fire or whatnot to show it off but uh that didn't work out so well with the fire district.
[04:49:25] Active Transportation Planner Jose Palma: Yeah. Okay. So as you can see we have a oh where is the... um...
[04:49:38] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: And this is a live tool right now so we may experience a little bit of technical issues.
[04:49:43] Active Transportation Planner Jose Palma: David. Oh there it is. Okay. So, you can see here four tabs at the top and uh the first thing I wanted to explain on the left side is just a legend and each tab on the top here will have a legend on its side helping you understand what you're looking at and how to use this tool. At least what you're looking for and sort of navigate you on how to you know understand the progress of this map. So the first tab is called Bikeways Before 2020. It's just letting you know before the ATP ATP was adopted, we have a map here of existing bike facilities that have been there including our Class 1, Class 2, 2B, uh 3 and uh 4. So and we just have some other layers in here including just pub- uh public school boundaries that exist within Sunnyvale and the City of Sunnyvale's um uh city boundary as well. Um moving on, uh again this is based off the ATP plan and just so everybody knows again this is a beta version that we're working on and I will continue to improve on it and I'll emphasize a little bit more on that later. But this map essentially is showing all the um items that have been at least um adopted or that will be built by the ATP plan. And so it's showing you as a whole all those proposed uh projects and also we're aware here that it says a double of Class 4. Um but I just want you to know that we have various again the shared use paths and and that being on this map as well and just showing you where projects are going to be implemented as we move along. Um the next tab is just all the bike lanes that or sorry all the bike facilities that have been implemented recently. Uh but also you'll see gray on here. That is just an indicator down here that it is the bikeways built before 2020 so people know that there are bike facilities that exist but we wanted to highlight what is has been built. So for example down here you can see some of the Class 1 shared use paths and you can also see some of the um buffered bicycle lanes. But just note that this is a in still work in progress. We're trying to put this together but essentially um you'll be able to navigate this on knowing what's been implemented. Um the next tab is the statistics and this is still again a work in progress and you'll see sort of the statistic information that lets you know you know for example here total miles of new bikeways since 2020. So again um and now I'm going to go back to the slide over here. All right. Yeah. Okay. All right. So uh the next steps. So as you can see there as I was saying before this is still work in progress and what I'm essentially trying to do here is you know let you know that what's happening next including uh we want to add another tab that just talks about sort of where projects are at. For example where the planning phase is, where the design phase, and the construction phase. And people will be able to navigate the map and click and know where that is and where it's located and more information. Uh on top of that we're also looking to include also the pedestrian part and also the Safe Routes to School improvements and they will also be tabs that will be included as we continue to work on this map. Um we will also be expanding information including for the statistics part on bike facility and bike type as well of how many miles are being installed. Uh again and to re-emphasize it's just a living it's a living document and we'll continue to work on it and to uh improve it as as as much as possible. Um and yes, thank you very much.
[04:53:42] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: And and I'll add just a little bit. Um, you know, this is a tool that um the group um in Transportation was a little uncomfortable putting this out just yet because they thought that they wanted to really get it perfect, right? They wanted to get it perfect and I kind I said, let's let's go ahead and get it out in beta. Let's get it out and try it out and let people see it. There will be some errors in here. There will be some things that look odd um and we're working to fix all of those and add to it. And the goal is to keep adding to this regularly. I mean we're just going to keep adding features um and adding a lot of uh ability to click on certain things and then go to information, you know, show the plans or go to the website or whatever it might be. So um a lot of good solid plans going forward um to make this really even a much much more robust robust tool over time. So hopefully you like it and we'll we're open obviously to any questions that you might have.
[04:54:37] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Uh, first up is Vice Mayor Sell.
[04:54:40] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Well, I wanted to thank Public Works and all staff that contribute to bringing you on board. You have a tremendous background, so thank you for coming to Sunnyvale. Um, you come from a rich background of biking in terms of coming from Palo Alto. My understanding is a lot more students bike in Palo Alto than in Sunnyvale. I was just wondering like have you like at a high level um do you see some things that might be low hanging fruit to try to uh um improve the um people wanting to bike more, increasing biking or anything that you see is low hanging fruit that that's what we're going to do first? Or is your approach like build a really strong foundation and what is your over like arching like plan or strategy? Like high level, really high level.
[04:55:45] Transportation and Traffic Manager Angela Obeso: I'll I'll chime in just real quick and then I'll let Jose talk about his his perspective on that. Um, but I'm Angela Obeso, Transportation and Traffic Manager. Uh when as as Chip had mentioned when we brought Jose on board we were we were kind of, you know, we had a lot of visions but we were looking to him to see, okay, where do you think we can make progress? And one of the things that was really important to us is all the feedback that we'd heard from the community about what is the status of the ATP? What is what have you been building? And so that was one of the priorities that that we the department put on Jose from the get-go is start dreaming about, start researching how we can do this in a in a very um clear publicly facing way. Uh and he he's he's humble and talks about the team but he he came up with a lot of these ideas. He worked very closely with our IT team to develop this and he's still got lots of more ideas. Um so to to go back to your question about the low hanging fruit, I'm sure that he's got some ideas about that. You know, he's already he jumped in from day one. He ran this last year's uh um Bike to Work Day. He did helmet fittings at Bike to Work Day and so he's got lots of experience with his with his LCI his his training and all of that and I don't know Jose if you have anything else you want to add about other trainings or educational opportunities?
[04:57:09] Active Transportation Planner Jose Palma: Um, I I would say that personally for me that's why I bike to and from work so people know that at least city staff as well bikes and I think that is an example to people that, oh, okay, at least I know that they're also riding the roads of the city and have that experience as well. So I think that is sort of maybe not the low hanging fruit that maybe you want to hear but it's I think a a great way for people to know, I think another example is like when I go out to the field I really try hard not to take a city vehicle. I'll go ride my bike to a location in order to ensure that I'm also con- you know contributing to lowering the amount of vehicles that are on the road. So I'm trying to change that perspective internally but also uh showing it to the city as a whole to to understand that we're trying as well.
[04:57:59] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: And and I'll add just a little bit. Uh one of the things that um um Jose wanted to do is to start to get more integrated with the schools um themselves and actually start meeting. And so that's kind of like our our next step, you know, because we do have um some of our um you know kind of bicycle coordination that occurs within our public safety group as well. And so we've been working with that and Jose's been working with them. So that's kind of some of the next steps is to start getting integrated into the schools, start learning more about them. As at the same time he'll be helping us to try to find funding for implementing our ATP around schools and our Safe Routes to School plans to get the infrastructure in place while he's working on kind of the the social aspect and and the schools themselves. So that's going to be some other pieces that'll go forward and that's one of the things that Jose wanted to do uh as soon as possible.
[04:58:42] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Okay. Well, oh, go ahead.
[04:58:45] Active Transportation Planner Jose Palma: I was just going to say I also uh work closely with the Safe Routes to School Coordinator uh on ensuring that we continue to improve the Safe Routes to School program.
[04:58:53] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Well you've made a lot of progress in the short time you've been here. So thank you very much and keep going.
[04:59:00] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you Vice Mayor. Next up is Councilmember Mehlinger.
[04:59:04] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. And thank you very much, Jose, for a great presentation. It's great having you on board staff. Um, first thing I want to say, Mr. Taylor, you made the right call showing us this early. I'm going to speak as a UI and a front-end uh software engineer now. It is always, always, always better to get the early unfinished product in front of your users fast so that you can get the feedback instead of showing it to them when you're all done and them saying, wait, what? Um, so thank you for doing this. I very much appreciate you doing this and I um my message to staff is I'm always eager to see work in progress early. Um, I think that that's a great thing to be doing. Um, could in that spirit, could we get the map on the screen please? Or the uh the beta?
[05:00:05] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Okay. So the first thing I'm going to say is this is great. Um, however, the Active Transportation Plan also includes the Safe Routes to School and the pedestrian improvements. And, you know, something I have heard a lot from the community is the sense that pedestrian improvements sometimes don't get quite the emphasis that they deserve. And so one piece of feedback I have on this is I'd love to see uh sections included on here. I'm not going to say how, um, but something on here about Safe Routes to School, about the various SRTS improvements, you know, that are in the, you know, maybe something like, hey, see the SRTS plan for your school and get a little mini version of this as to what's been implemented and what hasn't. I know that's pro- that's that's a V2, I'm sure. But um so but having the SRTS stuff there even in static form would be great.
[05:01:07] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: It and and I would I would say that that that is on the roadmap. That was something that Jose is right on target. So you're right right on there.
[05:01:13] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Excellent. Excellent. Um, something uh I will add on this is as we look at this some features that I think would be valuable. We've got old bikeways, proposed bikeways, new bikeways split out into three separate tabs. Um, there is a in the ATP, I don't remember which slide it is, but there is a slide that puts the proposed and the existing bike lanes together on the same map. And being able to see all three on the same map which I know could get noisy but there are visual ways that you can do it in terms of color desaturation and dash lines and so forth would be really helpful to sort of show what was the network then, what is the network now, what is the network going to be. Right?
[05:02:02] Active Transportation Planner Jose Palma: Yeah, I I was going to comment that we did have a section that uh we're still kind of finalizing but we didn't show today but it does show where you can toggle bo- what exactly what you were saying where we can see overlay and we could see where things were all in a glance, right? And then where things are going. So, yeah.
[05:02:18] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Wonderful. Um, something else uh you might already be able to do this. Oh I see you've got overlays for public schools. That's great. Um, something that you might, you know, being able to click on the legend and see just the Class 2s, just the Class 4s, etc. Um, so filtering.
[05:02:37] Active Transportation Planner Jose Palma: Yes. And I think um, you know, in regards to ADA as well that's something that I think about when I'm putting these maps together and making sure these maps are accessible to everyone. So exactly what you're talking about is something that I'm thinking about as well. But for this version we you just wanted to show you that but I'm I'm glad that you're bringing that up.
[05:02:56] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Absolutely. Absolutely. And like I said I'm I'm thrilled to see this early. I'm doing the UI engineer thing. Um, uh, and I will say I do not envy whoever has to do the accessibility work on this. Um, that uh it's very important and I I that's that's always challenging. Um, last couple things. I do want to ask about a couple items in the ATP if that's okay Mr. City Manager? And I'm not I know that the primary point I'm not going to go into too much depth on this. Um, but I did want to ask about uh bicycle signage and bicycle and and for that matter pedestri- bicycle and pedestrian wayfinding signage. That is called out in the Active Transportation Plan. Cupertino, Mountain View, Palo Alto all have really nice bicycle wayfinding systems. We still really don't. We have the numbered routes which are confusing at best. Um, is there a timeframe on when we're going to be looking at bicycle wayfinding standards and starting to get bicycle, you know, improved bicycle wayfinding signage in- installed?
[05:04:03] Transportation and Traffic Manager Angela Obeso: So I think I'll take that question. Um, there is not, short answer. Uh, we are looking overall at the entire ATP the higher priority items in all three sections, bicycle, pedestrian, and Safe Routes to School. And we're trying to identify uh grant and funding opportunities that are our deal ideal for those projects to move the higher priority things first. Uh, and so but if if we find a grant we've got a a handful of staff on the transportation team that are researching grant opportunities, Jose being one of them. And if there is an opportunity that wayfinding signage would be ideal for, we would go after it and and try to implement it that way. But as of right now there is not a schedule. Uh, in addition similar to the striping changes that we've been implementing throughout the city, if there is a project happening somewhere where wayfinding signage is is uh possibility for implementation, we have been working with all of our other teams to get that incorporated in their projects so that things get done sooner.
[05:05:07] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Do we have wayfinding signage standards? Or can we incorporate them from another agency for that matter?
[05:05:15] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: Yeah. I I don't I'd have to look and see if we actually have an old standard for that. We might because there has been some projects a long time ago that were done for bicycle wayfinding so I'd have to check. But certainly it wouldn't be it would be fairly straightforward to adopt something uh depending and if we wanted to go you know deeper into like a branded sign and whatnot that might take a little bit more uh if it's not just a standard type sign.
[05:05:38] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Okay. Um, I know Google installed some bicycle wayfinding signage or at least I think they did up in Moffett Park. Um, am I misremembering that Mr. Mayor?
[05:05:49] Mayor Larry Klein: I don't remember seeing any but.
[05:05:51] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Um, I I seem to recall they were talking about it at the very least as part of their...
[05:05:54] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: They may have installed some like on their private portion and not on the public portion but it you know so maybe a little bit of both.
[05:06:00] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Got it.
[05:06:01] Transportation and Traffic Manager Angela Obeso: I I'd also like to add in that that we've been coordinating with VTA and VTA is looking into wayfi- wayfinding signage standards for the county. Uh, and so we're we're working with them to see you know if they have some guidance that we can we can tag on along if we want to incorporate. So there are efforts going on in the background.
[05:06:22] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Okay. Excellent. Uh I I'd love to get an update offline on that and um yeah uh I think I think wayfinding signage is actually super important uh for bicycle and pedestrian accessibility. Um, the last thing I wanted to ask is, you know, in terms of the bike lanes that we've installed, we've only ins- my understanding is we've only installed a bit more than a mile of Class 4 bike lanes. Um, and uh there's something like 18, 19 called out in the Active Transportation Plan. Um, you know, we did we we've at least cleared the the street sweeper hurdle at this point. Um, when can we expect to start seeing more Class 4s going in?
[05:07:05] Transportation and Traffic Manager Angela Obeso: So as as I think you're all aware we we uh recently got some budget approvals for the street sweeping, you know, maintaining those facilities was a big concern of ours. And so now we have a plan for that and so we're looking for opportunities uh to incorporate those. Uh as of right now we don't have any specific locations planned but as we move forward with projects we're looking at if a Class 4 makes sense uh and and if so then we include it in our recommendations.
[05:07:37] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Okay. Thank you. Uh, no further questions.
[05:07:40] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you Councilmember. Next up is Councilmember Srinivasan.
[05:07:44] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Thank you Mayor. Uh, welcome aboard Jose. Uh, by the way, uh, Mr. Taylor, uh, Good Will Hunting is my favorite movie. So. But anyway, uh, uh, Councilmember Mehlinger asked uh about pedestrian. That was one of the questions I had. Uh, comments I had. Uh, uh, one of the uh I am working with high school students. One of the projects we are looking at is mapping the public arts uh in Sunnyvale. So these are uh uh pedestrian walkable uh public art locations. So any way to map that, uh what are the gaps or something like that, uh of pedestrians uh uh crossings and other things would be useful. You also mentioned that uh multi-mode transportation option. Uh another student group is working on VTA project uh for Sunnyvale northern Sunnyvale students to come to uh Fremont High and uh Homestead High. So what we have done is map the VTA bus route on the map. So that that's another layer you can lay on top of that. That would uh give us the not only the Safe Route to School but also safe uh option uh public option uh to go to school. Uh, the those are my comments for now but uh this is uh really very very good exercise. I also like the uh toggle of uh the layering and uh uh layering on top of that. I'm uh I have seen that many many times in my experience. But uh this is a good beta uh proof of concept. Uh very very good one. Thank you very much.
[05:09:49] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you Councilmember. Next is Councilmember Chang.
[05:09:51] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Thank you and welcome Jose. Uh, echoing similar comments, I did uh also want to say I'm really excited about you working with the schools and and if there can be a separate, I don't know if this might be the right tool but updates on how those projects are going when you do work with Safe Routes to School. Um, you know, any of the programs or uh things that you're working on or sidewalks improvement for example, you know once once it's funded and then if there's kind of updates or pictures that that might be posted somewhere. Um my other comment is I do would like to see the filtering. I know that you have mentioned it. I would for example want to filter out Class 3 bike lanes just I don't want to see them and then so I could see which ones might be better for me if I want to go a certain route. So thank you.
[05:10:41] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you Councilmember. And I just want to say thank you for for being here. Uh, you know, it's it was a lot of effort to, you know, add that from from a staffing standpoint and I I do think that conceivably this, you know, gives a different direction and and so I appreciate your perspective and and, you know, giving us this preview to a certain degree before it goes live. Um, I do think that there's a lot of value in in the sooner you get test people realizing that, you know, as we saw in tonight's meeting, things go wrong and, you know, it's whether or not that's software or whatever the case is, but but, you know, definitely being able to map this out being able to get um better views from an ATP standpoint. Um, just as a remi- just as a general request or comment, the update to the ATP and how that plan is, what's, can you tell me what the kind of the overall staff um goals for that ATP update are and, you know, when it starts, when when it completes and how that goes.
[05:11:48] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: You mean just update of the ATP in general or about...
[05:11:51] Mayor Larry Klein: Yeah. The document itself and the next steps cause we're five years in and so...
[05:11:57] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: Yeah. So.
[05:11:58] Mayor Larry Klein: You know, when do we start looking at that next update.
[05:12:00] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: Right. So we do have um plans to, you know, there's no there's no set date number of years that an ATP should be good for or standard practice. But when we uh prepared this ATP originally in 2020 we had foreseen about every 10 years that we would update the entire document. Uh so we're we're looking at in near future budgets to start having that conversation about what that effort would cost and look like as far as a CIP budget update year.
[05:12:35] Mayor Larry Klein: Okay. Thank you. Um, Mr. Kirby.
[05:12:38] City Manager Tim Kirby: Thank you Mayor. Just uh remembered that I wanted to raise one thing just for Council's awareness and this extends beyond this particular tool here but this the city staff is in the process of working through ADA compliance for our website and specifically with our mapping tools so that includes development projects and all those kinds of things. We don't have a um a solution in place yet for that. Um but so just heads up things may change and uh become a little bit less interactive than we would like um in order to make sure they're um accessible. So uh just wanted to share that little piece of uh information.
[05:13:22] Mayor Larry Klein: Okay. Thank you very much. Um, I'll go ahead and open the public comment on this specific item. Please submit a speaker card to the City Clerk, raise your digital hand now, or dial star 9 on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on the members of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have two minutes to speak. Um, I have two speaker cards in the room. Uh, first up is Charlene L followed by Kevin J.
[05:14:55] Charlene L: Hi, thanks for taking my input. Charlene Liu here. Um, first it's great to see...
Segment 8
[05:15:00] Public Speaker: ...the progress thank you Jose. Um. And it's great to hear about the role so far which is to push the active transportation envelope in the city and I fully support that. Now reporting status and educating staff on the bike related matters is okay but insufficient for this pushing of the envelope. What we need is for the Active Transportation Planner to review the designs of for safety compliance with NACTO all ages and abilities and Caltrans complete guide complete streets guidance. We need to formalize this as a role by putting design review by the Active Transportation Planner on the check off list. And this is so important because in the past, recent past, we have had things designed and implemented without any public review, um specifically the Class 3 bikeways on many school routes which put a double center line in the middle so cars and bikes have to conflict and it's just totally inappropriate on such a high volume road and goes against all ages and abilities guidance. Um and in addition another example is the bulb outs which push the cyclists into the path of the bike of the cars right at school zones. So again young people are riding and this is just not good. Um as far as the map I'm I'm really happy to see that progress and uh I do also think putting in being able to overlay the completed projects with the projects that have started and those that have not started on the same map is very useful and the ability to zoom in to intersections to see what is there as well as also in addition to the map provide a list of projects because we want to be able to do a search of the project we want and it's hard to do a search on a map. Um Class 4 implementation I don't know why we can't just do it as a quick build put in delineators uh right now. We're not waiting for repaving or anything we can do it now. Thanks.
[05:17:05] Public Speaker: Hello again. Uh I am really glad to see this effort moving forward and uh I want to emphasize uh the point about the importance of seeking input from BPAC and the public uh in the design of transportation projects. One thing you can see if you look at how um motor vehicle accommodation is so successful is that everyone involved in the transportation projects from initial proposal to final implementation is thoroughly steeped in car culture providing multiple reality checks at every stage of the process. Unfortunately this is not true of bicycle facility development so it's important to get the input of BPAC members and other cyclists who have extensive real world experience with these facilities. There is always a strong temptation to declare the minimum standards as objectively safe to leave more space for lower priority uses. When that use is street parking it creates another extreme hazard intruding from the other side of the bike lane, the deadly door zone. Making sure experienced utility cyclists are an ongoing part of the discussion is the best way to balance that urge for wishful thinking. This will produce facilities that make people feel positive about using a bike for more of their trips and help the city achieve its safety, sustainability and quality of life goals. Thank you.
[05:18:50] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. That was my last speaker card in the room. City Clerk do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?
[05:18:57] City Clerk David Carnahan: Yes Mayor. First up is Jonathan B. Jonathan you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the City Council.
[05:19:05] Jonathan Blum: Hi. My name is Jonathan Blum. I'd like to thank the staff for the ATP report and I'm very pleased to see our new Active Transportation Planner and his plans for the improved reporting system. I do have one suggestion and Kevin kind of stole my thunder but I'll go ahead briefly. Uh inevitably some of these projects come out better than others and I think that one way to help ensure good outcomes is to solicit advice on proposed designs from the BPAC and the public. I think Jose will be a great help in this respect but he can't know every street in Sunnyvale at least not yet. Now I don't fancy myself a civil engineer although I have learned a lot by listening to them in the last four years but users provide a perspective that I think can be beneficial even without formal training. If you're going to make a frying pan it is good to get input from the metallurgist but also from the chef who is going to use it. Your department is already very skilled at getting feed public feedback and working with the BPAC and I think that process could be used here without an undue amount of additional staff time or delays in the projects. I hope you will take this under consideration. Thank you.
[05:20:50] City Clerk David Carnahan: Mayor that was the final remote public speaker for this agenda item.
[05:20:55] Mayor Larry Klein: Okay. I'll close public comment. Um see if there's any final comments from Council. Uh Councilmember Mehlinger.
[05:21:00] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Just a quick question. Um in general when it comes to VTA transportation guidelines, NACTO guidelines, review of those projects, that's already done as part of the engineering efforts, correct?
[05:21:14] Transportation and Traffic Manager Angela Obeso: That is correct. We take into account all the various standards but also the guidelines, best practices and and what we're seeing other cities implement.
[05:21:24] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: All right. And that's typically a traffic engineer's responsibility, correct?
[05:21:30] Transportation and Traffic Manager Angela Obeso: It it is yes. I stumbled because uh a planner also has some of that expertise and can look at it in in as an engineer. I know that my worldview is engineering right but but planners can come at things in a different perspective and having a a planner who's also an avid cyclist is is a great benefit to our team in that he can bring those two perspectives which may be unique from some of our other perspectives. So a long way to answer that yes engineers that is their jurisdiction and their their role but the planners also are very familiar with those documents and will will help guide us through that as well.
[05:22:55] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: And that gets to what I was saying earlier about the importance of usability testing and user feedback gathering and getting a perspective from the people who are actually going to be using the facilities. So thank you. Appreciate it.
[05:23:09] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. That's all of Council questions. Thank you Jose. Thank you um for the update and looking forward to playing around with the with the new software and new website. Thank you.
[05:23:18] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: And Mr. Mayor could we have a quick recess?
[05:23:20] Mayor Larry Klein: Um absolutely. Let's go ahead and take a five minute recess and come back at 9:58. Thank you.
[05:28:30] Mayor Larry Klein: Let's go ahead and reconvene and we'll move on to Item 25-0950 consider below market rate alternative compliance plan for residential development at 1124 West El Camino Real. Uh applicant is DeAnza Properties. Um is there a staff report?
[05:28:50] Affordable Housing Manager Ernie Defrenchi: Uh yes there is. Good evening Mayor and Councilmembers. Tonight I'm presenting a report for you to consider a below market rate alternative compliance plan for residential development located at 1124 West El Camino Real. This project was originally approved by the Planning Commission as a mixed use commercial and residential development comprised of 111 multi-family residential units above retail and structured parking along with five two-story single family homes. The project as originally approved by the plan by the Planning Commission was for 111 multi-family residential units to be designated as rental units and the five single family homes were designated as ownership units. Since the original planning application for this project was filed and deemed complete prior to the reinstatement of the BMR requirements for rental housing in November 2019 the rental housing portion of this project is grandfathered in with the requirements to provide a housing impact fee pursuant to Municipal Code 19.75 rather than provide on-site units. For the five for sale ownership units no BMR units were required since the minimum threshold for BMR ownership units is seven units. Staff has always anticipated the collection of fees for this project rather than on-site units. After the project was approved in 2024 the applicant filed a revised tentative map for condominium purposes to create ownership opportunities for the multi-family units in the main building with the intent to sell 86 of the units and retain the remaining 25 units as rental units. Since the project has changed the applicant is required to comply with the BMR housing requirements outlined in Municipal Code Chapter 19.67. The 86 condos and five single family homes are subject to the 15% BMR requirement which results in 13.65 BMR units. As mentioned earlier the rental portion of the project is grandfathered in with the requirement to provide a housing impact fee. The City's administrative policy Chapter 1 General Management Article 24 review and approve an affordable housing alternative compliance plan requires that the Housing and Human Services Commission review and make a recommendation to City Council when an alternative compliance option is requested by an applicant. In October 20 2024 the applicant completed the affordable housing compliance plan to formally request City Council approval to pay an in-lieu fee rather than provide on-site ownership units. The in-lieu fee is set at 7% of the final sales price and is collected through escrow at the time each unit is sold. The Housing and Human Services Commission heard this item at its June meeting and made the recommendation to approve to the City Council the applicant's BMR alternative compliance. It's estimated that the housing impact fee for the rental portion of this project is roughly $950,000. The fee amount per square foot is outlined in the City's fee schedule. It's estimated that if approved the BMR in-lieu fee for the ownership portion of the project would be approximately $16 million which is subject to change depending on the housing market. Total collected would be close to $17 million. In prior budget cycle staff has anticipated collection of the rental housing impact fee for this project. Those funds have been earmarked to be used to assist future affordable housing options for extremely low and very low income households. Losing these funds would have an impact on future funding opportunities. Staff is recommending approval of the applicant's alternative compliance plan for the project as shown as Attachment 2 of the report. The rationale behind most alternative compliance options is largely the same, to collect enough in-lieu funds to assist non-profit developers to provide a greater number of affordable housing units to more households than than could have been achieved with standard compliance. Often these alternatives result in deeper income targets of the targeting of the units serving very low and even extremely low income households. This concludes my report and I'm happy to answer any questions.
[05:33:25] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you very much. Uh let's bring it to Council questions. First up is Councilmember Mehlinger.
[05:33:30] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you very much Mr. Mayor. Just for the purposes of this item the five single family homes are considered a separate project which are still exempt from the BMR requirement. Is that correct?
[05:33:40] Affordable Housing Manager Ernie Defrenchi: No that's not my understanding. They are one project. The condos and
[05:33:45] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: So they would be rolled in with the 91 units.
[05:33:48] Affordable Housing Manager Ernie Defrenchi: Yes that's my understanding.
[05:33:50] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Okay great. That was my only question. Thank you.
[05:33:53] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Councilmember Srinivasan.
[05:33:55] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Uh thank you Mayor. Thanks for the presentation. Uh in-lieu fee you mentioned that uh for the sale it depends on the sale uh of each item it's uh 7% of the item right the unit sale.
[05:34:14] Affordable Housing Manager Ernie Defrenchi: Yeah the in-lieu fee is right now is 7% of the final sales price that is uh collected at the close of escrow on each one of the units.
[05:34:25] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Okay. So uh we don't know when this 16 million or whatever the amount uh will come through it's as the sale happens right.
[05:34:40] Affordable Housing Manager Ernie Defrenchi: Yes that is correct.
[05:34:42] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Okay. How about the rental uh you said 950,000. When will that be collected?
[05:34:50] Affordable Housing Manager Ernie Defrenchi: Uh generally that could be would be collected prior to certificate of occupancy for the unit. The units.
[05:34:58] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Okay. Uh yeah sounds good. Thank you very much. Those are my questions.
[05:35:04] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you Councilmember. I have several questions. Um first you know from an in-lieu standpoint and I asked this question um in the Monday morning questions you know from an in-lieu standpoint we we have the requirement or or the the option of the 7% for um at time of closing. Um that being said we don't know how long it's going to take for that project to actually be built. And conceivably at the end of that the price the the the value of those homes have has gone up and so we still get that 7%. That being said there is opportunity loss that money that could conceivably have gone to affordable housing developers in the interim um doesn't get built at a cheaper cost conceivably and and so I was wondering from a legal standpoint you know this the way our our code is written now we can't require that a portion be paid upfront. Conceivably as a as a um as a benefit to the developer to say you know we're giving you this option from an in-lieu fee standpoint um you a quarter percent a thir- or a quarter a third a half some percentage some basically um money in that's paid ahead of time that will be paid when the final projects go um are sold. Or if this never gets built we've given them an option that has held up you know basically held up our requirements for from a property standpoint. It's um is there anything from a code standpoint that we could require that. Would that require a change in the ordinance? Um just trying to get a better concept of how you know time is money at the end of the day and you know having some sort of benefit that we've given the in-lieu fee option to them and in the meantime can put that money to work in the community as opposed to waiting a decade sometimes for for projects to actually be built.
[05:37:35] Affordable Housing Manager Ernie Defrenchi: Well I'll I'll defer that question on the legalities to the City Attorney's office but I do know that our ordinance is very clear and that it says we would collect it upon the sale of each unit so I think we would have to make a change to our ordinance to require a developer to provide a a good faith down payment let's say of of some sort.
[05:37:55] Community Development Director Trudi Ryan: Mayor Klein I want to also add that um a number of state laws that address impact fees have very specific timing on residential impact fees at the time of occupancy so that there we might not have that opportunity even with alternative compliance. Um we would be getting the impact fee though at the same time that we would be getting a unit so there's really not really a timing difference um from that standpoint. Obviously it takes time to to use that funding for another project but the the timing is is otherwise pretty similar.
[05:38:40] Mayor Larry Klein: And for me it's it's I understand developers and and I would love for your staff to double check on on whether or not that would actually be a requirement. I understand from a from a state code standpoint as we're looking at legislation for 2026 um is that a is that an actual requirement because you know I do think there's value of the in-lieu program. That being said the longer you know the the amount of time that we wait for closure of you know basically close of sale for those for those units is longer that we're not conceivab- you know conceivably funding affordable housing. And you know ultimately it's a credit. It would conceivably be a credit for the final sale of all those units and even as projects develop often it's oh we do a third of the project and in open those up and then later another third and depending upon the size of the projects and those in-lieu fees so so conceivably you know we are we are waiting a long period of time before that last unit closes sale and I'm just trying from a city standpoint selfishly trying to say we could um better have a a sooner impact from affordable housing and having developers putting that money to use um and understanding that the the cost continues to go up. But.
[05:40:35] Community Development Director Trudi Ryan: We we're currently working on um a review of our below market rate uh program. Um part of what we're looking at is the percentage. Um we're also looking at the in-lieu fees and we can see whether or not um we can explore that as part of that study.
[05:40:55] Mayor Larry Klein: Okay. And I and I appreciate that. I think I think City Attorney Senior Assistant City Attorney has a comment.
[05:41:00] Mayor Larry Klein: Sorry about that.
[05:41:02] City Attorney: Yes uh thank you Mr. Mayor. Um unfortunately I think the state has different ideas about um the payment of development impact fees for most residential projects. So there are many classifications of residential projects where the state um has moved in recent years um to require that uh local agencies not mandate their payment until certificate of occupancy um so later in the process. And I think few years ago before um many of the housing laws changed uh cities often you know asked for development impact fees earlier in the process at building permit issuance but we have changed the process to uh follow the dictates of state law.
[05:41:55] Mayor Larry Klein: Understood. Except I look at as an in-lieu fee as more of a contract as opposed to it's not really and I'll I'll let you look at the val- what what the concept of a fee is. That being said impact fees transportation park mitigation that is a little bit different than in-lieu where basically creating a contract to a certain degree to say that that you don't have to meet the standard code. And and you know it's it's to me it's almost a development agreement between the the contrac- the the developer but not for something to be fully discussed here. You know I'm I'm looking for options because you know not that you know not that I'm trying to put more barriers to construction but there's a timeliness to to giving this benefit to a developer that we you know the city conceivably loses out on that timeliness and that and that's the only thing that we could put that money to work. So okay. Um and you answered the question about BMR so definitely so so yeah the 7% that's currently our in-lieu fee from a BMR standpoint um that's already being evaluated. What's the timely what's the time frame for that to come to Council?
[05:44:30] Community Development Director Trudi Ryan: Um we are um working with several other cities in the county on this study so there's a series of reports that would be unique and we've looked at an administrative draft and have asked for some um additional work on it. So it'll be early next year before the draft is available um and then we would probably have um a conversation with Council before we we move forward with with any particular. So perhaps a study session on it. So ea- early part of next year. February-ish.
[05:44:55] Mayor Larry Klein: Okay. Thank you. Uh next up is Councilmember Chang.
[05:45:00] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Thank you. I had a question um because of the market variability we're actually sure how much is deposited into the housing mitigation funds and staff said that um they could provide updates to the amount of funds collected each fiscal year. I would be interested in seeing that and how much is total uh in each year as well. Um on on Mayor Klein's point is I recognize there's um it's not till the certificate of occupancy but is there an opportunity rather than payment for a zero interest loan that the developer could pay?
[05:45:40] Community Development Director Trudi Ryan: I I'm not sure we understood the question. Instead of an in-lieu fee to offer loans to the to the purchasers?
[05:45:50] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: For an affordable housing project.
[05:45:53] Community Development Director Trudi Ryan: Um the alternative compliance section says or other alternative compliance uh that that's requested and approved but that hasn't been requested. What's been requested is to to pay the fee in lieu of providing the units.
[05:46:10] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Okay. Thank you.
[05:46:12] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you Councilmember. Uh let's go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item. Uh the applicant will be given 10 minutes at the beginning of the public hearing. Uh we'll open up for the general public and then the there'll be an additional five minutes for the applicant at the end of the public hearing. Please submit a speaker card to the City Clerk raise your digital hand now or dial star 9 on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. Um first uh the applicant.
[05:46:40] John Vidovich: My name is John Vidovich. Um.
[05:46:45] Mayor Larry Klein: Welcome John.
[05:46:46] John Vidovich: Yes. And we have been on this project for maybe five or seven years because we were told to wait for the general plan and it took a long time and that's why a lot of these things are grandfathered. Um we have done this before and we did it at Pastoria um which uh is on the corner of Pastoria and El Camino. Uh the units went for more than we expected and so more money came in much more money. In this case this is the the right thing to do because these units are big and they're not uh they're not suitable for BMRs. So right now I think housing is growing and if you stick with us um I'm hoping the sales price goes up and you know as time goes by you'll get more money. Uh you'll get market rate of money and you'll get the 7%. The only issue here is we have five units homes and those homes were dictated by a policy to buffer single family homes and so we have five single family homes in the back. Those uh five single family homes which are were uh part of a vested tentative map and so it was less than eight and I think you know all of us had the assumption that those would not have to pay BMRs because it's a regular subdivision it's less than eight uh and it was through a vesting tentative map. And now the map is changing just for condominiums but still that vested tentative map is not touched there. So I believe that it's not fair or legal uh to force this applicant to pay for that five lot subdivision for single family homes which are homes that buffer the existing homes. Um and they're expensive houses because we put them underground part of it so that the neighbors would feel very comfortable and we have very happy and comfortable neighbors. Um the project is great. Uh we have a car dealership there which we are going to hang on to and as I told the Mayor uh recently we did not realize that we had to have a whole bunch of car storage and high bays for the cars to be worked on. So we've had to put another floor underneath a tall floor just so that they can lift the cars and do do the things that they do underneath the car. That's all the cars now they lift it up they have uh cameras they even send you the the camera what they did to your car and uh they have to have those things. So we want the dealership there. Uh we're kind of stuck with it because we're putting all this extra money and uh but it's good for Sunnyvale dealer uh a dealership it doesn't impact anything. It's you know Santa Clara has it all on Stevens Creek and you're going to have one there that's going to be there forever and you'll get a lot of sales tax on cars which you should get because Sunnyvale people buy a lot of cars. Um so I agree with everything except I don't think it's fair or legal to force me it may be popular to do this on the grandstand but it's I have um a tentative map that's vested and we all thought that those units those five units would not be subject to the 7%. The amount of money would be 14 million 500 instead of 16 million. But it's it's uh that's my opinion on what it is. If there's any questions I'm here. Um I'm here. The Mayor is like pretty aggressive on on this thing but you know we we have to put up the money first and it's hard. Understood. It's hard. And this project by the way I can't phase it because it's one building. It's 110 build 110 so it's it's like by building a high rise. You have to build the whole thing before you can sell one one unit. So um thank you very much and uh I have a lot of respect for this Council and Sunnyvale. I like Sunnyvale. I've been building here and um staff is great. Staff is great and uh I'm getting older so I'm just you know you too Larry right. Yeah. All right. Thank you.
[05:50:35] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you John. There are no questions currently. So I will remind the public uh please turn in um a your comment card to the City Clerk raise your digital hand now or dial star 9 on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City Clerk are there any uh remote speakers wishing to speak on this item?
[05:51:00] City Clerk David Carnahan: No Mayor.
[05:51:05] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Uh the applicant has an additional five minutes if they want to speak.
[05:51:15] John Vidovich: I just want to say that I don't think it's right to have the 7% on the vested tentative map on the five lots in the back. Just so it's clear.
[05:51:30] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you very much. I will go ahead and close the public hearing um and bring it back to Council for questions or a motion. Councilmember Mehlinger.
[05:51:40] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you very much Mr. Mayor. Um the applicant raised legal concerns about the five homes the five single family homes and I'd like staff to uh respond to that and my opinion is that we should follow the law as it is written and I do not know if that means the five single family homes should be included or not and I would greatly appreciate um uh perhaps from the City Attorney or Director Ryan some guidance on that.
[05:52:15] Community Development Director Trudi Ryan: I'll take the first stab at responding to your comment. Um the the question of the prior tentative map before the revised tentative map only came up to to me moments before tonight's public hearing so my opinion right now is not well researched. Um I I saw that the new tentative map was a revised project and that there were now more units. Um I did bring it to the attention of um Assistant Senior Assistant City Attorney and um I don't know if she's completed her thoughts on it. Um if the Council is comfortable with the alternative compliance and wants to give us direction to complete that analysis we could make that determination if you wanted to delegate that to staff.
[05:53:15] Mayor Larry Klein: Does the City Attorney have any comment?
[05:53:20] City Attorney: Um thank you Mr. Mayor. So um before uh I respond I'd I'd like to say that so I just heard about it even more recently than Director Ryan um this issue because my understanding was that um this item had gone to the Housing and Human Services Commission um and the report say stated that those five single family homes were included um as um part of the total number of ownership units for purposes um in the of the inclusionary requirement and therefore um the calculation of the in-lieu fee. So um as the item was heard by the your advisory um commission um they considered it um the five single family homes to be included and this issue or dispute was not raised until this this evening. So um we don't have the the revised vesting tentative map before you. Um my understanding um is that it's a it's a revised vesting tentative map um and so the map is set which includes the five uh single family homes um and uh what is vested through the approval of a vesting tentative map um are the ordinances, policies and standards that are in place at that time. So um those standards the laws have not changed. We're not applying new laws. So um I have not been able to look at it or even look at the vesting tentative map this evening um but I don't the Subdivision Map Act does not specifically state that um that in this scenario that those five units that were part of the prior vesting tentative map uh would be uh excused from being counted towards the total number of units for purposes of the calculation of the fee and the inclusionary requirement. I'd also note that the staff report to the Housing and Human Services Commission said that um the project went to um the Planning Commission in August of 2024 and then in October of 2024 the alternative compliance application was filed. So um it seemed that it was very close in time where it was known that there would be many more ownership units um than than the five that appeared to fall under the threshold for the inclusionary requirement.
[05:55:58] Mayor Larry Klein: So um let me jump in if I may um Mr. Mehlinger. Um would it be pos- so not to presuppose what motion is available tonight but but if Council is um has the want to allow um the compliance the alternative the BMR alternative compliance plan um based upon Attachment 2 but that being said leaving it to staff to find the City's legal stance on is it 86 or 91 units after this date is that something that legally we can do or do we need to make that resolution tonight that decision tonight? Do you understand my question?
[05:56:50] City Attorney: Yes um I I understand um your question to be um can you approve the alternative compliance of payment of the housing in-lieu fee rather than providing the inclusionary units subject to staff's determination of the um whether that calculation should be based on 86 or 91.
[05:57:10] Mayor Larry Klein: Correct.
[05:57:15] City Attorney: I think you could make that determination.
[05:57:17] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. I hope that helps Councilmember Mehlinger.
[05:57:20] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: That does help because that was this is far beyond my expertise to be able to evaluate and I am happy to leave that question to staff. I will be ready with a motion but I think uh there is another hand up.
[05:57:35] Mayor Larry Klein: There is are there any more questions? I see no other questions. So.
[05:57:40] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Okay. Um so what I am going to do let me find the uh alternative. Um I move Alternative I believe this is Alternative 2. 1? This is Alternative 1?
[05:57:57] Mayor Larry Klein: Well it's Alternative 2 with modification so.
[05:58:00] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Yes so there are modifications. Alternat- it's Alternative 2 which is the staff recommendation with the direction to staff to identify whether the basis for the in-lieu fee should be 86 or 91 units.
[05:58:15] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Second.
[05:58:20] Mayor Larry Klein: To your motion.
[05:58:25] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Uh first Madam City Attorney does that motion pass muster? Is that motion satisfactory?
[05:58:35] City Attorney: Um Councilmember um Alternative 2 says is is um uh approve the staff recommendation approve the alternative compliance uh request with modifications. Is that is that what's
[05:58:47] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Correct. The modification being staff to identify whether it's 86 or 91 units that it should be based on.
[05:58:55] City Attorney: Yes. So approve the alternative compliance request for payment of a housing in-lieu fee is that right? Housing in-lieu fee um with a determination of the calculation of the fee whether it should be based on 86 or 91 units um as determined by staff.
[05:59:15] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: I'm not seeing okay I'm not seeing any objection from staff? Great. Um to my motion um this fee is whether it is 86 or 91 units um this will add a very substantial amount to our affordable housing fund. There is always a serious and desperate need for affordable housing in this region. As staff has noted uh fund uh in-lieu fees like this can be used to support deeper levels of affordability than many other affordable housing projects are able to do. Um and as the applicant pointed out the project as designed is not terribly suitable for inclusionary BMR units. Um I think that this is
Segment 9
[06:00:00] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: I think that this is going to be a great project for the city. I think that the additional funds in our Affordable Housing Fund will be very well needed and will go a long way, and I respectfully urge my colleagues I vote. Thank you.
[06:00:17] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you Councilmember. Next up is Councilmember Srinivasan.
[06:00:20] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Thank you Mayor. I agree with Councilmember Mehlinger's points. I also feel that this in-lieu fee will help the city to build more affordable housing at different levels, which might be the right way to handle lot of our affordable issues at the different levels. But anyway, sorry, I am blanking out. I am tired now. But anyway, I also support this motion. Thank you.
[06:00:58] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Vice Mayor Sell.
[06:01:00] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: I want to thank the developer for staying here tonight and presenting your arguments so well and being cooperative. And so, this is a wonderful development. It's actually in my district, and I think the way that you've built it so that there's houses near the residential, that's very thoughtful of you, and to keep like the retail, that's very thoughtful of you. And in this economic time to be building the housing. So I just wanted to thank you for your partnership with the community to bring this project to fruition. So thank you very much. I'll be supporting this.
[06:01:48] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you Vice Mayor. And I'll be supporting this motion. Thank you to the applicant for continuing to invest in our city and you know, ultimately as far as the the the utilization of the site, a mixture of commercial as well as housing. You know, making sure that we continue to get those sales tax dollars is always critical from a city standpoint. And to have, you know, new uh for-sale housing, especially condos, which we're not seeing a lot of in the city, I think is is very viable. I'm hoping, you know, staff will work out, is it 86 or 91 units, but that's beyond, you know, what we are here to talk about tonight. It's allowing, you know, allowing the that creation from um the utilization of in-lieu fees for those uh BMR units, which I think um is positive from a city standpoint. We we ultimately create, you know, fund those affordable housing developments within the city utilizing uh housing mitigation fees or in this case in-lieu fees. And so trying to uh create and continue our efforts as a pro-housing city. So, um happy to support this um alternative. And with that, City Clerk, can you please conduct the voice vote.
[06:03:05] City Clerk David Carnahan: First up, Mayor Klein, how do you vote?
[06:03:08] Mayor Larry Klein: Yes.
[06:03:09] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan?
[06:03:10] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Yes.
[06:03:13] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger?
[06:03:14] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Yes.
[06:03:15] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang?
[06:03:16] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Yes.
[06:03:17] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Sell?
[06:03:18] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Yes.
[06:03:19] City Clerk David Carnahan: The motion carries 5-0 with Councilmembers Cisneros and Lei absent.
[06:03:24] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a good evening. Thanks for staying. Um, our next item is Item 25-1046. Um, is there a staff report?
[06:03:40] Assistant City Manager Sarah Johnson-Rios: Yes Mayor. Sarah Johnson-Rios, Assistant City Manager and Interim HR Director. The item before you is the approval of the Public Safety Managers' Association or PSMA's successor Memorandum of Understanding. So PSMA's current MOU expires on December 31st of this year. The City and the Association have been in negotiations since July and reached a tentative agreement in October. The Association uh gave notice that their members ratified that tentative agreement on October 22nd, and so it's now coming to Council for approval. High-level summary, the focus during this cycle of negotiations uh was internal equity, following a similar approach to recent updates to the Public Safety Officers Association MOU. And this MOU also supports recruitment and retention efforts for the city. The staff report includes a more detailed summarized outline of all the significant items that are updated in the MOU, which will run for a three-year term with a possible extension for a fourth year. The fiscal impacts of the agreement have been considered and as outlined in the staff report will be incorporated into the fiscal year 26-27 budget. Staff recommends approval of the successor MOU as well as the associated resolutions which update the City's pay schedule and update the CalPERS contract to eliminate employer-paid member contributions to classic members' retirement benefits for for this bargaining unit. Those are um part of the MOU provisions. This concludes the staff report. I want to thank Human Resources Manager Michelle Alberg for being available online, and with that we're available for any questions.
[06:05:25] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Are there any questions of staff? Seeing none. Uh I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item. Please submit a speaker card to the City Clerk, raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City Clerk, are there any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?
[06:05:53] City Clerk David Carnahan: No Mayor.
[06:05:55] Mayor Larry Klein: I'll go ahead and close the public hearing. And bring it to Council for a motion. Vice Mayor Sell.
[06:06:05] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: I move with Alternative 1. Should I read it?
[06:06:11] Mayor Larry Klein: Yes, please.
[06:06:13] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Um, authorize City Manager to execute the Memorandum of Understanding between the City of Sunnyvale and the Public Safety Managers' Association and adopt Resolution 1, amending the City's salary resolution and schedule of pay to increase salaries for pay plan category M public safety captains and public safety deputy chiefs, and 2, for pay and reporting the value of employer paid member contributions to California Public Employees Retirement System for employees of Public Safety Managers' Association.
[06:06:58] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Councilmember Mehlinger.
[06:06:59] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Second.
[06:07:00] Mayor Larry Klein: To your motion.
[06:07:00] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Um, so our uh public safety staff is highly uh qualified and uh we have competitive salaries for them and we do exhaustive search in comparing them to other jurisdictions, so we are able to come up with a very fair but very competitive um compensation package and want to uh yeah. So I hope my colleagues support this.
[06:07:36] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you Vice Mayor. And I'll be supporting this motion. Um I just want to thank uh City staff for the negotiations with the PSMA. You know, to me, um it's a smaller group than some of our some of our um bargaining units, but this is also this is one of the critical groups um from from providing um a a management team um to our public safety officers and and making sure that we we have officers that want to move up in the ranks and take that leadership position. So so um fairly compensating them and I think this this does a good job of that um um is appreciative and so I just want to thank staff for for doing those negotiations and coming up with a plan that both parties are um feeling positive about. So thank you for that. And with that, City Clerk, can you please conduct the voice vote.
[06:08:33] City Clerk David Carnahan: First up, Mayor Klein, how do you vote?
[06:08:35] Mayor Larry Klein: Yes.
[06:08:36] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang?
[06:08:37] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Yes.
[06:08:38] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Sell?
[06:08:39] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Yes.
[06:08:40] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger?
[06:08:41] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Yes.
[06:08:42] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan?
[06:08:45] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Yes.
[06:08:47] City Clerk David Carnahan: The motion carries 5-0 with Councilmembers Cisneros and Lei absent.
[06:08:54] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Um, our next item is Item 25-0929. Uh, introduction of an ordinance to renew the franchise agreement granted to Air Products Corporation and Air Products and Chemicals Inc. for the distribution of nitrogen gas within the City of Sunnyvale. Is there a staff report?
[06:09:10] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: Yes, um Council, Chip Taylor, Public Works Director. I was able to sneak home real quick. I wasn't sure if you would make it this far in the agenda tonight, but I'm here. Um, I'll make this a kind of a painless item I hope tonight. Um, so this is the introduction of an ordinance related to the franchise agreement for nitrogen distribution. And next slide. So a little bit of background that was in the RTC as well, um is that um, you know, nitrogen is an inert gas, right? So it's not flammable or anything like that. It's used in a lot of uh packaging, manufacturing, even in uh things like potato chips, you know, instead of oxygen, they put nitrogen in there to kind of make sure that it doesn't um um uh oxidize over time. Um, the current franchise agreement goes all the way back to 1978, so these um kind of a series of pipes that have been in the ground that go to various businesses uh have been uh all the way since back then, at least some of them. Um, it's been amended several times over the years uh to either add time and in some cases changing the name of the company a little bit as they had changed their name. Um, the current agreement is um 15 years and uh old and so it expires um this December 31st. And um they had Air Products company had requested an extension of that agreement um for uh another 15 years. And the current revenue from it is uh approximately $40,000. Next slide. So we we looked at um um just to kind of conduct at least a survey uh of uh other jurisdictions and uh what they charge for um something like this. It's not uh overly common, but it's not uh but it is around as well. Um, there's not really a consistent methodology to charge for this. Um, and so we looked at the various rates and ultimately um we were trying to basically remain competitive so that we were ensuring that we definitely had um the opportunity for businesses to have access to this nitrogen if they wanted to be in the City of Sunnyvale. But at the same time trying to maximize the revenue associated with um uh with this um agreement. And so ultimately we are recommending a rate that's consistent with a couple of other cities in our area. Um, it tends it is the highest rate that we were able to find in the area, but again it is consistent. Um, and it would um make the rates or the uh annual income about $100,000 a year. So even though it's a large percentage increase, it's not necessarily a large dollar increase uh for that uh franchise agreement. Next slide. And so finally, alternatives as you've seen in the packet is um, you know, to introduce this ordinance uh tonight. Um, either or not introduce it or uh direct us to go back and negotiate something different. Um, and so with that the staff recommendation would be to introduce the ordinance. Um, and we think it's um something that we were able to come to some agreement with um and it looks um to maximize that revenue as well as uh remain competitive in the that field there. Um and with that, I'm open to any questions.
[06:12:10] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Are there any questions from Council? First up is Councilmember Mehlinger.
[06:12:12] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I will admit that this is curiosity more than anything. I did not even know we had a nitrogen gas network until I looked at the agenda for this night's meet this evening's meeting. Uh, do we know when this who built this and when? I'm I'm gonna assume this had something to do with Lockheed coming to town in the 50s?
[06:12:32] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: You know, I'm not sure that it was actually. There um it was it was actually in 1978 is when the first agreement that we found related to this. And so it was was with essentially the same company, um Air Products company that was uh doing this. And it it goes to a lot of, you know, small manufacturing, small research and development buildings, you know, things like that, um that they use for either some sort of manufacturing or some sort of packaging that they use. But um and it's it's just kind of in that area, so I don't know that it's specific to that. It goes back to that.
[06:12:59] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: All right. Thank you. No further questions.
[06:13:05] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you Councilmember. Next up is Councilmember Srinivasan.
[06:13:08] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Thank you Mayor. Who maintains this network?
[06:13:12] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: The company would. So the company that we're in we would be in the agreement with, they would be responsible for maintaining it.
[06:13:21] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Oh okay. So they have been maintaining this for this long?
[06:13:27] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: Yeah, I mean with pipes in the ground it's pretty straightforward in the sense that there's not necessarily a lot of maintenance. You know, they monitor the pressures associated with it. And it does go to other cities in the area, so it's not just here, it does connect in some other areas. Um and so they monitor and they maintain those to make sure they're in good shape. Um but that's something they'd be responsible for.
[06:13:48] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Yeah, the good thing is nitrogen is inert as you said, so even if there is a leak uh we won't uh... But where is the input coming from? Where are they getting the nitrogen from?
[06:14:00] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: I don't think it's actually an input into the pipe network in Sunnyvale. I think it's in um another area, but I don't know exactly where it is and where it connects to that, but it's I don't believe it's in Sunnyvale. I think it comes from another city where they actually uh insert the nitrogen into the pipes.
[06:14:15] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: So this is for our own area, the pipes?
[06:14:19] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: Yeah, I mean just for the Sunnyvale that like the other jurisdictions, they have similar agreements in place.
[06:14:25] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Okay. That's good. Thank you very much. Yeah, even I didn't know we had this nitrogen.
[06:14:32] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you Councilmember. Next up is Councilmember Chang.
[06:14:34] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Thank you. In the Monday morning questions, we there was a question that asked why the franchise fee was increasing by 230 percent. And it was noted uh the benchmarking against the other cities, but are there any external factors that you might be aware of?
[06:14:49] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: No, uh not necessarily. I you know, I don't think that this is, like I said, it's not overly common to have these types of um pipes in the ground, but at the same time it's there, right? In in certain areas. And so it wasn't as easy to find like a a standard or anything like that related to it. So um we just kind of relied on, you know, what we were able to find and and uh and what kind of made sense related to it. So I think it's I don't think there's anything more that we could have found really at least at this point.
[06:15:17] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Okay. Thank you.
[06:15:18] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you Councilmember. Um, and I asked this question Monday morning, but I kind of wanted to do a follow-up. Um, how big the network is of these of these lines within the city? They're they're in the public right-of-way, correct?
[06:15:37] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: That's correct, yeah. Mostly in in roadways essentially is where where they are mainly located.
[06:15:44] Mayor Larry Klein: And so my only question, you know, it's like because part of the question was how often are they updated and I'm assuming they're monitored for leakage. That being said, um have they been replaced? Do we know any of that over the last 15 years or 20 years? Because it's the ongoing kind of up, you know, ripping up of city streets, patching, much like we did with with PG&E and you know other um other cable entities that we have, you know, that have that have had to deal with with wiring. Here we have pipes. And most pipes in the city right now are city pipes of some sort, other than PG&E and potential gas lines. I would assume that we would have a good understanding of the network and how much of the city streets are being utilized from this standpoint.
[06:16:45] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: Yeah, you know, you'd be surprised at how many things are actually in the public street, right? I mean we have, you know, our water lines, we'll have sometimes Cal Water lines, and we'll have, you know, the wastewater lines as well as, you know, sewer lines for stormwater, as well as AT&T and Comcast will be in there too with various lines underground. Um and then sometimes things like this. So there's a there's a fair number of these. Um and um and as far as the pipes themselves, I mean some of these pipes can easily be, you know, 50 or more years as far as how um they can um, you know, their their lifespan. And they're they're fairly straightforward and fairly simple. Um we don't track everything as far as, you know, whether they're replacing them. They're just responsible, so if there were any issues, then they would be responsible for that. Um they do still have to get an encroachment permit as far as when they're going to do the work. They have to show their traffic control, and then they have to restore the roadway, you know, back to the way it was so we can inspect it and whatnot. So they still do those things, so there wouldn't really be a big concern and we haven't had a major concern. It's it's in a fairly limited area in the city, kind of in the north um you know north and northeast area uh and and some in the northwest area for the most part. So um it's it's not throughout the whole city, so it hasn't been any sort of major impact. And I don't expect that it will be, and they're not less necessarily looking to expand any further at this point.
[06:18:05] Mayor Larry Klein: Okay. And and so, I was a little disheartened when we couldn't say exactly how many, how how big the network was since since they're paying per linear foot, we should have a very fixed value on that network and conceivably, you know, if they're upgrading, do are they expan you know are they expanding pipes, the pipe width, are they expanding the network itself. So there's, you know, the franchise fee is very dependent upon those pipes within our within our right-of-way. And so as opposed to we do much different things for cable and other things. Um but here we're here we're talking about width and and length of pipes. So, you know, my my I I felt my that's my only issue with this. I have no problem with the fee increase, especially in comparison to other cities. That being said, to me it looks like there's missing information because whatever we're collecting on a yearly base basis, those two components is the critical portion of what we're collecting. And and how we monitor and how we monitor that as they as they replace pipes or as they you know upgrade their system making sure that you know diameters don't change and our monitoring of that becomes very important.
[06:19:37] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: Yeah I mean I think it's a valid point. I think we do we actually do have a lot of that information in various spots and so we're we're looking to bring all of that together to make sure it's more consistent. Um you know since this agreement's been around for a long time it really hasn't changed that much. They they haven't, as far as we know, they haven't really expanded the network in any significant way. Uh but you're right, we will make sure that we um have at least as as detailed an inventory as we can so we can charge them correctly um and um and uh and ensure that we're just, you know, they're following the agreement at the end of the day. Adding new pipe would be easier for us to track. Replacing the existing is a little bit trickier, but I don't I think it's a little bit more stable in the sense that they're not changing it dramatically. But you're right, we will we will look to uh make sure we have the accurate data.
[06:20:25] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Yeah, adding to what Mayor said, what's the diameter of these pipes? Any idea?
[06:20:30] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: They're less than eight inches in general typically and even smaller than that in some cases. So they can they can you know come down um you know more toward the six or four inch range. Um so they're somewhere in that range for most of these.
[06:20:48] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Okay. And then the uh related question, are there customers in Sunnyvale or how does that work?
[06:20:55] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: Yeah, there's definitely... that's that's exactly what they are, right? Is they're serving various buildings and customers in Sunnyvale that use nitrogen in their manufacturing or packaging or something to that degree. So it's it's a it's a product that they need in order to uh do um their business in Sunnyvale.
[06:21:13] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Yeah. I would have imagined canning industry would have used that just as a preservative or something like that. I don't know. Anyway.
[06:21:21] Public Works Director Chip Taylor: Potential, potential... it could have, yeah.
[06:21:25] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Okay. That's good. Thank you very much. Yeah, even I didn't know we had this nitrogen.
[06:21:28] City Manager Kent Steffens: Mayor, if I can make a comment. I think uh there's a couple of things that are are um controls on this. The first is they have to get encroachments if they want to expand their system. So if they wanted to expand or replace it and tear up the street, um they'd have to get an encroachment permit with us. So we would catch it at that point. Um just addressing sort of the inventory piece. Um also, you know, traditionally this revenue has been about $40,000 a year and or less. Um so it would cost us easily 50 to 100 grand to do any sort of audit on pipe sizes, etc for a a net benefit that's probably not there. Um but also, these are um these are self-reporting, you know, uh industries that that are are are pretty good about this kind of stuff. I I don't uh we don't have a lot of basis for um, you know, there's not a lot of evidence that there would be fraud or or anything like that or or trying to expand the system significantly. Um I think just given the fact that you have to tear up streets to expand the system or increase the size um is limiting in and of itself. Um that being said, you know, they they do report to us, I believe if I remember correctly, you know, their their the basis for their payment. So we don't bill... this is kind of one of those ones where with franchise fees we don't bill um the company for the franchise fee. The franchise the company remits the franchise fee to us based on their franchise agreement. Um to your point about other utilities, they're mostly revenue based, right? We get a percent a percent of revenue. Um things like PG&E's franchise fee, that's well worth our auditing. And and we do do that. So just to offer a little clarity there. But I think given that this is getting a little bit bigger, it it makes some sense to to do some review on it as as as staff capacity becomes available.
[06:22:35] Mayor Larry Klein: Okay. Thank you. I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item. Please submit a speaker card to the City Clerk, raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City Clerk, are there any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?
[06:22:57] City Clerk David Carnahan: No Mayor.
[06:22:57] Mayor Larry Klein: I'll go ahead and close the public hearing. And bring it back to Council for a motion. Vice Mayor Sell.
[06:23:00] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: I move Alternative 1. Introduce an ordinance awarding a fifteen-year extension to the existing non-exclusive franchise for the distribution of nitrogen gas by Air Products Manufacturing Corporation and Air Products and Chemicals Incorporated.
[06:23:24] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Second.
[06:23:25] Mayor Larry Klein: To your motion.
[06:23:26] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Um, so I think uh staff has done a good job of comparing this to other cities and weighing um not spending too much time and money on this, but also getting revenues from it. So it's a good balance. Um so I hope my colleagues support this motion.
[06:23:53] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Councilmember Chang.
[06:23:55] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: I'll just add nitrogen gas is used uh in a lot of the major manufacturing, major electronic companies in our area. So it's important that we how they have that consistent um delivery.
[06:24:10] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Um I'll be in support of this motion. Yeah, definitely um looking at the R&D and manufacturing that's happening um in the east side and the north part of our city. Uh this is something that's viable. Thanks for staff for updating this franchise agreement and comparing it to comparable cities that that um that we're basically um keying our our franchise fee to. So I appreciate that work. Um and look for any additional information that we get in the future, but I do think I do agree with the City Manager, it's it is a limited amount at the end of the day and has only a certain amount of value from inventorying. Um so with that and happy so happy to support the motion. With that City Clerk, please conduct the voice vote.
[06:24:57] City Clerk David Carnahan: First let me read the ordinance title. An ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sunnyvale awarding a 15-year extension to an existing non-exclusive franchise for the distribution of nitrogen gas by Air Products Manufacturing Corporation and Air Products and Chemicals Inc. And then for the voice vote, first up, Councilmember Mehlinger, how do you vote?
[06:25:15] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Aye.
[06:25:16] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang?
[06:25:17] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Yes.
[06:25:18] City Clerk David Carnahan: Mayor Klein?
[06:25:19] Mayor Larry Klein: Yes.
[06:25:20] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Sell?
[06:25:21] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Yes.
[06:25:22] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan?
[06:25:23] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Yes.
[06:25:26] City Clerk David Carnahan: The motion carries 5-0 with Councilmembers Cisneros and Lei absent.
[06:25:28] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. We'll move on to Item 25-0045, Appoint Applicant to the Human Relations Commission. Is there a staff report?
[06:25:40] City Clerk David Carnahan: Yes Mayor and Council, this is David Carnahan, the City Clerk. And somewhere in all these documents, there we go, here is the staff presentation. Uh there is currently one vacancy on the Human Relations Commission. Council interviewed six applicants uh back on November 3rd, as well as four applicants earlier this year. And then there were two applicants that were not available to interview, um but they do remain eligible for Council to consider making an appointment. And then pursuant to Council policy 7.2.19, Boards and Commissions, when one or more Councilmembers participate via teleconference, the appointment process is conducted by individual candidate roll call votes. I will announce the vacancy, its term, and then we'll read each applicant's name. Uh Council will vote on the applicants. If one candidate receives at least four affirmative votes and the most affirmative votes, they will be appointed. Uh should the no candidate receive at least four affirmative votes, the vacancy would remain. Uh in the event of a tie, Council uh could vote again. Um uh sometimes though Council with in the event of a tie there may be a motion to just appoint one of the individuals to break the tie. Uh if in the case where a tie cannot be resolved, uh the City Attorney uh selects a name or ran at random. This concludes the staff report and I am ready to address questions from Council and hear comments from Council and the public.
[06:27:08] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Are there any questions of Council... of staff from Council? Seeing none. I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item. Please submit a speaker card to the City Clerk, raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards. City Clerk, are there any remote speakers wishing to speak on this item?
[06:27:35] City Clerk David Carnahan: No Mayor.
[06:27:36] Mayor Larry Klein: I will go ahead and close the public hearing. And ask my colleagues if they have any further discussion or advocacy on any of the applicants. Councilmember Mehlinger.
[06:27:49] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: So, um this is a very challenging one for me because our cup runneth over. We have a number of really excellent candidates. Um, what I'm going to say is I think that we would be very well served by appointing a student to this commission, especially given the input that we heard earlier this evening. Um, I was very impressed with Joshua Charnota's work on anti-smoking. This is something that uh is I think very salient right now. Um, I was very impressed by Nila's work with the Chamber of Commerce. Um, and I was impressed by Aditya as well. Um, I'm still not entirely sure how I'm gonna vote on this and I look forward to hearing from my colleagues. Thank you.
[06:28:38] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you Councilmember. Councilmember Srinivasan.
[06:28:40] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Yeah, it's getting late but I'll make it really quick. I also agree, I think uh we need to have youth perspective. Uh that's very important. In fact we had a high school student, uh he was for some time Chair of uh Human Relations Commission. That was very very useful. Uh so I have worked with Nila, I Joshua, Aditya, everybody. Yeah, it's a very very good list. I don't know once again how it will turn out, but uh it's a good list. Thank you.
[06:29:24] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Vice Mayor Sell.
[06:29:26] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Um, I agree it's a very strong list of uh candidates and I just um and Joshua and Aditya and Nila, they're all great. I um very narrowly um am going for the Nila because she has that combination of being a student, she also volunteered for the Chamber, and so she kind of has that other um um kind of vision and experiences. So.
[06:30:02] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Councilmember Chang.
[06:30:04] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Yeah, it's very difficult. We have so many great applicants and so many impressive students. I think it's important that we do uh support a young person onto the Human Relations Commission. I really liked Joshua and Nila. I I'm leaning a little bit towards Joshua just because he does a lot of um student government work as well as at Fremont High.
[06:30:29] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. And I'll agree with my colleagues. I really like Nila, I really like Joshua. I also wanted to remind people about Pranjali who's on the County um HRC commission as well. So has experience there. Um but that's the advocacy um that I have. City Clerk, can you remind us how this process is going to go?
[06:31:33] City Clerk David Carnahan: Um yes, well something else I should have mentioned, uh for Board and Commission appointments Councilmembers typically vote yes or abstain on candidates. We have uh we're going to do a roll call vote for each uh applicant. Uh and we'll do them in uh last name alphabetical order, so starting with Joshua uh Charnota. And the random it will be random order of for Council votes for each of the applicants.
[06:32:05] Mayor Larry Klein: Um just a moment. So the order that you gave us in the um in the packet was first name ordered.
[06:32:20] City Clerk David Carnahan: Okay. So give me a moment. We can...
[06:32:28] Mayor Larry Klein: So I'm fine I'm fine with that. It's just I need to...
[06:32:30] City Clerk David Carnahan: No no no, we will uh if you give if...
[06:32:33] Mayor Larry Klein: Well and and I'll I'll ask Council what they were ready for if did it matter?
[06:32:35] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: I'd say first name order just so that I can track the list in the packet.
[06:32:40] City Clerk David Carnahan: That's that was the sheet that I was following. Sorry.
[06:32:43] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Mayor?
[06:32:44] Mayor Larry Klein: Yes. Councilmember Srinivasan.
[06:32:46] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Quick question for City Clerk. Can you indicate uh who did not, you mentioned two applicants did not appear. I know the names but then for public reference can you uh mention who they are?
[06:32:59] City Clerk David Carnahan: Yes. Give me a moment to...
[06:33:02] Mayor Larry Klein: I can I can do that. Aiden Aiden Ramasetti and Vidushi Prayag.
[06:33:15] City Clerk David Carnahan: It's on attachment number one from our packet.
[06:33:18] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: And that's how I did my voting in...
[06:33:21] City Clerk David Carnahan: Yes. Understood.
[06:33:22] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Anyway.
[06:33:25] Mayor Larry Klein: And thank you and thank you City Clerk for for linking to the interviews. It makes things a lot easier for Council.
[06:33:45] Mayor Larry Klein: Councilmember Srinivasan. Do you have... are you ready for voting to start?
[06:33:49] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Yeah yeah I am ready. Okay. I just wanted to reconfirm.
[06:33:52] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Sorry. No problem. Just double checking.
[06:33:54] Mayor Larry Klein: City Clerk, are you...
[06:33:55] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Uh I was trying to look for that uh page. It's like I didn't bring it here, so. Okay.
[06:33:59] Mayor Larry Klein: So City Clerk, are you ready and and just to remind us it will be alphabetical from um Aditri Ramasetti to Yuria Valencia, correct?
[06:34:10] City Clerk David Carnahan: Correct.
[06:34:12] Mayor Larry Klein: Okay.
[06:34:13] City Clerk David Carnahan: Okay, first up for Human Relations Commission applicant uh Aditri Ramasetti. Mayor Klein, how do you vote?
[06:34:22] Mayor Larry Klein: Abstain.
[06:34:23] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger?
[06:34:24] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Abstain.
[06:34:25] City Clerk David Carnahan: Vice Mayor Sell?
[06:34:26] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Abstain.
[06:34:27] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan?
[06:34:28] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Abstain.
[06:34:29] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang?
[06:34:30] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Abstain.
[06:34:32] City Clerk David Carnahan: For applicant uh Dheera uh Vishwanatha... Vishwanath. Mayor Klein, how do you vote?
[06:34:40] Mayor Larry Klein: Abstain.
[06:34:41] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger?
[06:34:42] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Abstain.
[06:34:43] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang?
[06:34:44] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Yes.
[06:34:46] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Um, abstain.
[06:34:48] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan?
[06:34:49] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Abstain.
[06:34:52] City Clerk David Carnahan: For applicant Betsy Gisselle Ortega Flores. Councilmember Chang, how do you vote?
[06:34:58] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Abstain.
[06:34:59] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger?
[06:35:00] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Abstain.
[06:35:01] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan?
[06:35:02] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Abstain.
[06:35:03] Mayor Larry Klein: Abstain.
[06:35:04] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Abstain.
[06:35:06] City Clerk David Carnahan: For candidate Idan Chastenbaum. Councilmember Srinivasan, how do you vote?
[06:35:10] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Uh, abstain.
[06:35:12] City Clerk David Carnahan: Vice Mayor Sell?
[06:35:13] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Abstain.
[06:35:14] City Clerk David Carnahan: Mayor Klein?
[06:35:15] Mayor Larry Klein: Abstain.
[06:35:16] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger?
[06:35:17] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Abstain.
[06:35:18] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang?
[06:35:19] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Abstain.
[06:35:22] City Clerk David Carnahan: For applicant Joshua Charnota. Councilmember Mehlinger, how do you vote?
[06:35:25] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Yes.
[06:35:26] City Clerk David Carnahan: Mayor Klein?
[06:35:27] Mayor Larry Klein: Yes.
[06:35:28] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan?
[06:35:29] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Yes.
[06:35:30] City Clerk David Carnahan: Vice Mayor Sell?
[06:35:31] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Yes.
[06:35:32] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang?
[06:35:33] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Yes.
[06:35:35] City Clerk David Carnahan: For applicant Manjula uh Jayaraman. Mayor Klein, how do you vote?
[06:35:40] Mayor Larry Klein: Abstain.
[06:35:41] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang?
[06:35:42] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Abstain.
[06:35:43] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger?
[06:35:44] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Abstain.
[06:35:45] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan?
[06:35:46] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Abstain.
[06:35:47] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Abstain.
[06:35:50] City Clerk David Carnahan: For applicant Nila Rajkumar. Mayor Klein, how do you vote?
[06:35:54] Mayor Larry Klein: Yes.
[06:35:55] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger?
[06:35:56] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Yes.
[06:35:57] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan?
[06:35:58] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Yes.
[06:35:59] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang?
[06:36:00] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Yes.
[06:36:01] City Clerk David Carnahan: Vice Mayor Sell?
[06:36:02] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Yes.
[06:36:05] City Clerk David Carnahan: For applicant Nili Helman Caspi. Vice Mayor Sell, how do you vote?
[06:36:10] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Uh, abstain.
[06:36:12] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang?
[06:36:13] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Abstain.
[06:36:14] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger?
[06:36:15] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Abstain.
[06:36:16] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan?
[06:36:17] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Abstain.
[06:36:18] Mayor Larry Klein: Abstain.
[06:36:20] City Clerk David Carnahan: For applicant Ofri uh Weissman. Councilmember Mehlinger, how do you vote?
[06:36:25] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Abstain.
[06:36:26] City Clerk David Carnahan: Mayor Klein?
[06:36:27] Mayor Larry Klein: Abstain.
[06:36:28] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang?
[06:36:29] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Abstain.
[06:36:30] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan?
[06:36:31] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Abstain.
[06:36:32] City Clerk David Carnahan: Vice Mayor Sell?
[06:36:33] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Abstain.
[06:36:35] City Clerk David Carnahan: For applicant Pranjali Dani. Councilmember Srinivasan, how do you vote?
[06:36:40] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Yes.
[06:36:42] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger?
[06:36:43] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Abstain.
[06:36:44] City Clerk David Carnahan: Vice Mayor Sell?
[06:36:45] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Abstain.
[06:36:46] City Clerk David Carnahan: Mayor Klein?
[06:36:47] Mayor Larry Klein: Yes.
[06:36:48] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang?
[06:36:49] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Abstain.
[06:36:52] City Clerk David Carnahan: For applicant Vidushi Prayag. Vice Mayor Sell, how do you vote?
[06:36:57] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Abstain.
[06:36:58] City Clerk David Carnahan: Mayor Klein?
[06:36:59] Mayor Larry Klein: Abstain.
[06:37:00] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan?
[06:37:02] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Abstain.
[06:37:03] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang?
[06:37:04] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Abstain.
[06:37:05] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger?
[06:37:06] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Abstain.
[06:37:08] City Clerk David Carnahan: For applicant Yuria Valencia. Councilmember Srinivasan, how do you vote?
[06:37:12] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Abstain.
[06:37:14] City Clerk David Carnahan: Vice Mayor Sell?
[06:37:16] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Abstain.
[06:37:17] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger?
[06:37:18] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Abstain.
[06:37:19] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang?
[06:37:20] Councilmember Charlsie Chang: Abstain.
[06:37:21] City Clerk David Carnahan: Mayor Klein?
[06:37:22] Mayor Larry Klein: Abstain.
[06:37:23] City Clerk David Carnahan: Okay Mayor, give me just a moment to input this so I can display the results and share them with Council and the public.
[06:37:30] City Clerk David Carnahan: Sorry, me being remote added to your work. Sorry about that.
[06:37:35] City Clerk David Carnahan: Sorry.
[06:37:37] Mayor Larry Klein: Sure. We'll take a five minute recess and return.
Segment 10
[06:45:51] Mayor Larry Klein: Let's go ahead and reconvene. City Clerk, can you show us the voting results?
[06:45:57] City Clerk David Carnahan: Yes, Mayor and Council, here are the results for your Board and Commission appointments. You have two applicants that received five votes, which is more than the minimum of four required. Applicant Joshua Charnota and applicant Neela Rajkumar both received five votes. You do have one vacancy, so uh, you have a couple options. You could vote again or you have an opportunity if one of you would like to make a motion to appoint one of these individuals to the vacancy.
[06:46:31] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. And um, I don't think it's truly valuable to vote again. I would almost prefer a motion. Um, but um, Councilmember Mehlinger, I'll ask for your motion.
[06:46:43] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I am ready with a motion.
[06:46:46] Mayor Larry Klein: Go ahead.
[06:46:47] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: I move that we appoint Joshua Charnota to the Human Relations Commission.
[06:46:53] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: A second.
[06:46:54] Mayor Larry Klein: To your motion?
[06:46:56] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: This came down to two absolutely excellent candidates. And this is a, and I am regrettably being forced to choose on the narrowest of margins. What I will say is that what gives the edge to Joshua in my book is that he is a student at Fremont High School. I have heard consistent equity concerns since before I was in office about Fremont High School. Um, and I think having a uh student from that high school on our Human Relations Commission would be particularly valuable. Um, again, we have a number of excellent candidates and it is very sad to me that we can only choose one. Thank you.
[06:47:38] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Vice Mayor Sell.
[06:47:41] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Um, and I guess I moving towards Joshua because um thinking back on his interview, I was really impressed with all the aspects of where he's volunteered since he was a little child he's volunteered, he's volunteered a thousand hours and he's in leadership in student government. So um, he has a really interesting background and he has a very far reach. Um, so uh, he'll get out word about our Human Relations Commission.
[06:48:14] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next up is Councilmember Srinivasan.
[06:48:19] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Thank you, Mayor. Um, yeah, as uh Councilmember Mehlinger said, both are excellent candidates. Uh, I totally agree with uh a representation from Fremont High School. Uh, but having said that, I worked very, very closely with Neela. I uh I find her to be amazing. Unfortunately, we have to choose. Uh, I'm I'm not I'm abstaining from this motion for that purpose. Sorry.
[06:48:58] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Point of order, Mr. Mayor. Um, if Councilmember Srinivasan abstains, then his vote will not be counted towards the outcome of the motion. And I'm just raising that it is certainly his right to abstain, but um, that that could produce an effect. Thank you.
[06:49:17] Mayor Larry Klein: Yes, understood. Thank you.
[06:49:20] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Oh, point of order?
[06:49:23] Mayor Larry Klein: Yes. Go ahead, Councilmember Srinivasan.
[06:49:25] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: So for this motion we vote yes or no, not abstain? Is that the--
[06:49:30] Mayor Larry Klein: You can abstain but it's it's normally yes or no. Um, or--
[06:49:33] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Okay. Okay. Got it. Thanks.
[06:49:37] Mayor Larry Klein: Under-- Understood. Uh, yeah, the the question of abstention from a motion um is a slightly different sort of thing, so it's basically a no vote. Or it's it's reducing the number of quorum or or what the what the-- sorry. It's been a long it's been a long day. Um, but the maximum number. Okay. Um, I will support the motion. I I agree with uh Councilmember Srinivasan. Um, to some degree I I do think um Neela has certain aspects that that I would also like to see. That being said, I I appreciate Councilmember Mehlinger's um pointing out the the high school that that um Joshua is going to. I do think that that is important especially from some of the operations and things that we've been seeing. So from that matter, um I will support his motion. Um, but yeah, I definitely it was a toss up between two very good candidates. So with that, City Clerk, can you please conduct the voice vote?
[06:50:46] City Clerk David Carnahan: First up, Mayor Klein, how do you vote?
[06:50:48] Mayor Larry Klein: Yes.
[06:50:49] City Clerk David Carnahan: Vice Mayor Sell.
[06:50:50] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Yes.
[06:50:51] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan.
[06:50:52] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Yes.
[06:50:53] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger.
[06:50:54] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Yes.
[06:50:56] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang.
[06:50:57] Councilmember Chang: Yes.
[06:50:58] City Clerk David Carnahan: The motion to appoint Joshua Charnota to the Human Relations Commission for the term ending on June 30th, 2026 carries 5-0 with Councilmembers Cisneros and Lo absent.
[06:51:13] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Vice Mayor Sell.
[06:51:15] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: I'd like to move to continue Item number 7 to a date uncertain because of the length of this meeting so far has been very long.
[06:51:29] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. And I will second that motion.
[06:51:34] Mayor Larry Klein: And to your motion, do you have any comments? I I'll I have a I just have a quick comment. Thanks for everyone. Um, it's been a a long evening. Um, and I appreciate, you know, I I think we need to be a little bit clearer um looking at policy and um when we when we look at it at a future meeting. Um, so I do think it has value. It definitely has value, but I do think that our questions and our cognition at this late date um need a little more um awake time. So, anyway. City Clerk, can you please conduct the vote?
[06:52:10] City Clerk David Carnahan: First up, Vice Mayor Sell, how do you vote?
[06:52:12] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Yes.
[06:52:13] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Srinivasan.
[06:52:14] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Yes.
[06:52:16] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Chang.
[06:52:17] Councilmember Chang: Yes.
[06:52:18] City Clerk David Carnahan: Councilmember Mehlinger.
[06:52:19] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Yes.
[06:52:20] City Clerk David Carnahan: Mayor Klein.
[06:52:21] Mayor Larry Klein: Yes.
[06:52:22] City Clerk David Carnahan: The motion to continue Item 7 to a date uncertain carries 5-0 with Councilmembers Cisneros and Lo absent.
[06:52:30] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Um, with that, uh, we'll move to Councilmember Reports on Activities from Intergovernmental Committee Assignments. Are there any? Seeing none. Um, are there any Non-Agenda Items and Comments from Council? I see... Oh. Councilmember Chang.
[06:52:56] Councilmember Chang: I just wanted to wish uh Mayor Klein and Vice Mayor Sell a happy belated birthday.
[06:53:03] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you very much.
[06:53:04] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Thank you.
[06:53:05] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Should we sing?
[06:53:07] Mayor Larry Klein: After... after we adjourn the meeting maybe. We don't want to hear... we don't want to catch that on video. Um, uh and I just want to say um I look forward to seeing the Vice Mayor and Councilmember Srinivasan in Salt Lake City for the US Con- the US Conference... the National League of Cities. Um, going forward. Councilmember Mehlinger.
[06:53:30] Councilmember Richard Mehlinger: Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I do have a proposal for the ideas list. Um, we received an email this weekend from a resident regarding the issue of smoke shops. Um, this is something that I've found very concerning. Um, and so something that I will be putting on the idea list for consideration at the February workshop. And if the City Manager wants to comment on this, uh by all means, would be um, you know, restricting the develop- the restricting the establishment of new smoke shops as well as restricting the sale of certain substances within those smoke shops.
[06:54:09] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. And just as a reminder, we do not need a second for this. This is just an idea list. Correct. Thank you.
[06:54:20] City Clerk David Carnahan: Correct.
[06:54:21] Mayor Larry Klein: City Manager. Do you have... Do we need... We do...
[06:54:24] City Clerk David Carnahan: We do need co-sponsors though.
[06:54:26] Mayor Larry Klein: We do?
[06:54:27] City Manager Kent Steffens: Yeah, you do need a quorum...
[06:54:28] City Clerk David Carnahan: ...majority.
[06:54:29] Mayor Larry Klein: Oh, that's right. Yes. Uh, so I'm happy to co-sponsor that. Um, Vice Mayor Sell?
[06:54:36] Vice Mayor Linda Sell: Co-sponsor.
[06:54:37] Councilmember Chang: Co-sponsor.
[06:54:38] Mayor Larry Klein: Thank you. Thank you. Okay. That's fine. Thank you, Councilmember Srinivasan.
[06:54:42] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: Co-sponsor. Co-sponsor.
[06:54:44] Mayor Larry Klein: City Manager, do you have any Non-Agenda Items and Comments?
[06:54:48] City Manager Kent Steffens: No, Mayor. Thank you.
[06:54:50] Mayor Larry Klein: With that, the meeting is adjourned at 11:26 p.m. Um, thanks for everyone who participated this evening. Have a good night.
[06:55:00] Councilmember Murali Srinivasan: See you tomorrow.