Council and Authorities Concurrent Meeting - Dec. 9, 2025

Video

Transcript

Segment 1

[00:05:12] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Good evening, everyone. I'd like to call the meeting to order. Confirmation of a quorum, Assistant City Clerk?

[00:05:19] Assistant City Clerk: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Yes, you have a confirmation of a quorum.

[00:05:23] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right. We have two items for closed session. Uh, are you Deputy City Attorney, Assistant City...?

[00:05:31] Assistant City Attorney Sue Reuter: Thank you, Mayor. Uh, the Council has two items on closed session this evening. Item 1A, Granicus file ID 25-1688, is Public Employee Performance Evaluation pursuant to two Government Code sections 54957 B1 and 54957.6 A. Uh, the designated representatives on behalf of the City are Mayor and Council and City staff members Marco Mercado and myself, Sue Reuter. Uh, the the employee at the subject uh of this item is an unrepresented employee, City Manager.

[00:06:18] Assistant City Attorney Sue Reuter: The second item, Item 1B, is Granicus file ID 25-1664. It's Conference with Labor Negotiators. City representatives, City Manager Jōvan Grogan, um Aracely Acevedo, Marco Mercado, Ashley Lancaster, Allison Hawk, uh Vitas Leung, Charles Sakai, and myself, Sue Reuter. Employee organizations listed: Unit 1, Unit 3, Unit 4, Unit 9A, and Unit 9B.

[00:06:40] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Uh, do we have any public comment on our closed session items?

[00:06:49] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Do you have a public comment, sir?

[00:06:51] Public Speaker: Uh, yes.

[00:06:52] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: On closed session item?

[00:06:53] Public Speaker: Uh, on the International Swim Center.

[00:06:55] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Oh, no, that's our regular meeting, so we we go at 7:00.

[00:07:00] Public Speaker: Oh, okay.

[00:07:01] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Okay. You're just a little early.

[00:07:03] Public Speaker: All right.

[00:07:04] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right. Do we have anybody online for closed session?

[00:07:08] Assistant City Clerk: We have no one online, Madam Mayor. And just wanted to note for the record, closed session will convene in the Sares-Regis room.

[00:07:15] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right, very good. Thank you. So we are now going to adjourn to closed session and we will be back here at 7:00 PM for the regular meeting. Thank you.

Segment 3

[00:13:55] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Ben, we're ready? We're okay? All right. Good evening everyone and welcome to the Santa Clara City Council Stadium Authority Concurrent Meeting. Could you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and remain standing for our statement of values.

[00:14:10] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: 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.

[00:14:25] Councilmember Karen Hardy: As we gather, we humbly seek blessings upon this meeting. May we act with strength, courage, and will to perform our obligations and duties to our people with justice to all. Let us seek wisdom so that we may act in the best interest of our people, our neighbors, and our country. All this we ask so we may serve our community with fairness and respect, putting their needs before all.

[00:14:54] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Please be seated. Assistant City Clerk?

[00:14:58] Assistant City Clerk: Roll call.

[00:14:59] Assistant City Clerk: Councilmember Board Member Gonzalez?

[00:15:01] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: Here.

[00:15:02] Assistant City Clerk: Councilmember Board Member Chahal?

[00:15:04] Councilmember Raj Chahal: Present.

[00:15:05] Assistant City Clerk: Councilmember Board Member Hardy?

[00:15:07] Councilmember Karen Hardy: Present.

[00:15:08] Assistant City Clerk: Councilmember Board Member Park?

[00:15:10] Councilmember Kevin Park: Here.

[00:15:11] Assistant City Clerk: Councilmember Board Member Jain?

[00:15:13] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: Here.

[00:15:14] Assistant City Clerk: Vice Mayor Vice Chair Cox?

[00:15:16] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: Here.

[00:15:17] Assistant City Clerk: Mayor and Chair Gillmor?

[00:15:19] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Here.

[00:15:20] Assistant City Clerk: Thank you. The AB 23 announcement. Members of the Santa Clara Stadium Authority, Sports and Open Space Authority, and Housing Authority are entitled to receive $30 for each attended meeting.

[00:15:35] Assistant City Clerk: Statement of behavioral standards. The City of Santa Clara has adopted a code of ethics and values and behavioral standards for public meetings to promote and maintain the highest levels of conduct. This includes mutual respect, robust discussion, and allowing city business to be done in an efficient and consistent manner.

[00:15:55] Assistant City Clerk: Please note that as the presiding officer, the Mayor and Chair's direction in matters of process and decorum should be followed and that use of the gavel indicates all conversations must conclude and everyone in attendance should come to order and attention. Welcome and thank you for your participation.

[00:16:15] Assistant City Clerk: For those of you joining us this evening in the capacity of a registered lobbyist, we ask you to please identify yourself as such and identify clients and or organizations that you represent. This is pursuant to City Code section 2.155.110. Thank you Mayor.

[00:16:35] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Good evening everyone and welcome. For today's meeting the Council is back in person and is conducting its meeting in a hybrid manner. The public is welcome to attend in person and the City continues to use a Zoom feature to allow participation from your home or office.

[00:16:55] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Members of the public can still join via the link and or call into the Zoom meeting phone number shown on the screen now. If you would like to speak on an agenda item or during public presentations, please raise your hand on the Zoom application or press star nine on your phone. Please only raise your hand while the item you're seeking to speak on is presented. Staff will enter your name or the last four digits of your phone number and I will call on you to speak.

[00:17:25] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: As a friendly reminder, members of the public have two minutes to speak on an agenda item and three minutes on public presentations, and those are reserved for topics that are not on the agenda. Prior to each agenda item, staff will lower your hand to ensure that members of the public are seeking to speak on the appropriate agenda item.

[00:17:45] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: So we'll move to the agenda now. So next we have reports of action taken in closed session. Assistant City Attorney?

[00:17:55] Assistant City Attorney Sue Reuter: Thank you Mayor. I have reports for both the December 2nd special meeting and tonight's meeting. For the December 2nd special meeting there was one item on the closed session agenda, conference with labor negotiators. Listed units were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 6, 9, 9A, 9B, and 10. There was no reportable action taken in closed session.

[00:18:25] Assistant City Attorney Sue Reuter: This evening we have two items on the closed session agenda. The first is public employee performance evaluation for the unrepresented employee of City Manager. There was no reportable action taken in closed session. The second item, conference with labor negotiators, units listed 1, 3, 4, 9A, and 9B. Again the Council took no reportable action in closed session. Thank you.

[00:18:55] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Next we have continuances, exceptions, reconsiderations. Does anyone on the Council, the staff, or the public have a continuances, continuance and exception or a reconsideration? Anyone online, Assistant City Clerk?

[00:19:15] Assistant City Clerk: Seeing none.

[00:19:18] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Alright, we're going to move into our first special order of business. For our first and only special order of business this evening, the City of Santa Clara commends the Santa Clara High School Bruin Marching Band in honor of their first place win at the Gilroy Garlic Classic.

[00:19:40] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Santa Clara High School Bruin Music, under the direction of Johnny Erdman, offers a vibrant and comprehensive music program for students of all skill levels. The program boasts five curricular ensembles providing a strong foundation in instrumental and vocal performance, two concert choirs, two symphonic bands, and a string orchestra.

[00:20:10] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: The Bruin Marching Band is a competitive marching band that recently concluded its 2025 season with a second place finish at the Western Band Association Regional Championships. The band's competitive 2025 season featured the show 'Strike: A Call to Action'.

[00:20:30] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: On October 11th, 2025, the Santa Clara High School Bruin Marching Band was awarded first place at the Gilroy Garlic Classic Band Competition held at Gilroy High School. In addition to receiving first place, they also won the awards for Best Music, Best Effect, Best Color Guard, and Best Percussion.

[00:20:55] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: I would like to take a moment this evening to recognize dignitaries from the Santa Clara Unified School District Board. We have Dr. Michelle Ryan and Board Member Jodi Muirhead. If you're in the audience, could you please stand? There they are in the back there.

[00:21:20] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: And we also have Deputy Superintendent Mark Schiel who's here as well. I think, there he is, Mark. Thank you. And they're all here this evening to support the phenomenal efforts of the marching band.

[00:21:40] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: So I now would like to invite Music Director Johnny Erdman to the podium to share a little bit more about Santa Clara High School Bruin Marching Band. Welcome.

[00:21:55] Johnny Erdman: Hi. Thank you so much for having us. Our marching band had a fabulous season this year, and we're really really proud of the achievements that they had throughout the season. Our score at our final competition at the Western Regional Championships would actually place us as the top four band in our division in the state.

[00:22:15] Johnny Erdman: Wow. So we're really fortunate for the efforts of the students and the parents and the community for coming out to support us. We're really really proud of everything that they do on and off the field because we're proud of the culture that we have, so it's about kindness and caring and compassion that really drives what we do and I think that that reflects in the success that we have.

[00:22:40] Johnny Erdman: We'd love to see you guys or anyone come see the music program perform. We have our concerts tomorrow and Friday as a little shameless plug at 7 o'clock and and those curricular ensembles will be playing some great music that we'd love to share with anyone who'd like to listen.

[00:23:00] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: I've been to your performances before and they're pretty amazing I have to say. Wow. It's really fantastic.

[00:23:10] Johnny Erdman: Thank you so much. Yeah we have a good time with it. It's fun.

[00:23:15] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Right, great. So we have a commendation for you. So I'm wondering if we could have the band members up here? I, how many do you have with you? I think we'll all fit up here. And maybe the board members of the school district if they'd like to join us too to take a photo.

[00:25:30] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: So our next order of business is actually an alum from Santa Clara High School to give us our legislative update is our Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens. Patrick? And I want to know were you in the band Patrick?

[00:25:45] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: I was not smart enough for the band. But I am really proud to be a Bruin. Congratulations everyone. Hello Mayor and Council.

[00:25:58] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Oh wait I have a think I think I have an opening. Hold on a second. Yes I do, to talk about you. Next we have a legislative update from Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens. Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens represents California State Assembly District 26 which includes the cities of Cupertino, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, part of the city of San Jose, and an unincorporated area in the county of Santa Clara.

[00:27:05] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Assemblymember Ahrens serves as a member of the California State Assembly Standing Committees on Budget, Business and Professions, Communications and Conveyance, Rules, and Transportation. Select Committees on Asia California Trade and Investment, Biotechnology and Medical Technology, CalFresh Enrollment and Nutrition, Child Care Costs, Domestic Violence, Housing Finance and Affordability, Master Plan for Higher Education in California, and Sea Level Rise and the California Economy, and Budget Subcommittee Number 2 on Human Services.

[00:27:55] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you for taking the, after all that, thank you for taking the time to come here. I'm so glad you had a few minutes in your day to give us a presentation on what you've been up to. Welcome. Welcome Assemblymember.

[00:28:10] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Thank you Madam Mayor. Thank you very much. And I want to thank the community, my hometown of Santa Clara, for inviting me back to give a very brief legislative update. I know we have a lot of issues at hand so I will go through the slides and see if there's any questions.

[00:28:30] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Next one? We we can skip the biography. So this is just a quick slide to encapsulate what we've really accomplished in the past year. We've supported 337 constituents call my office needing help with EDD, unemployment benefits, trying to get a DMV appointment, you know, needing help with some state agency or another and we've been able to help over 139 EDD cases that secured over $110,000 for our constituents.

[00:29:10] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: We've participated in over 1400 meetings and events, organized and partnered on 43 major events throughout the district, engaged in one form or another with over 12,000 constituents, and we have 22 interns and roughly 60 volunteers. So as you can imagine representing Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and West San Jose and Alviso, half a million residents with just a few staffers, I'm really thankful to the public servants who are both in my office and on your city team that have really partnered very well over the past year serving the district.

[00:30:00] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Next slide please. Those are all the committees. I don't sleep very much. But it's really important that we have local representation in Silicon Valley as any major report finance report in Sacramento will tell you the technology companies that are headquartered here in Santa Clara and in my district and their ability to succeed and do well is largely the result on whether or not we're going to have a balanced budget or a budget deficit in the state of California. So our, the success of of Santa Clara is the success of the entire state of California and that is both exciting and concerning given how quickly and easily our economy can fluctuate.

[00:31:00] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: So in spite of a very difficult budget impact we were able to secure $52 million for food banks, an increase of state funding for affordable housing and preserving $500 million in low income housing tax credits, $60 million in one-time funding to support students in block grants, $5 million for one-time funds to support financial aid, over $100 million to support organizations serving crime survivors. And I really worked hand in hand with Senator Wahab on securing these funds so I really want to appreciate not only Senator Dr. Wahab's office but her personally for helping me secure this funding for our district.

[00:31:50] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: My first bill was signed by the Governor to decriminalize truancy. Right now in the state you can be a parent of a student who if you miss at least three unexcused absences you can serve up to a year in jail and a $2000 fine. That obviously isn't isn't going to compel students to go to to school more when we're threatening their parents with incarceration. So I can officially call myself a lawmaker now that the Governor has officially signed our bill.

[00:32:30] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Next slide. This is there I've ran a lot of foster care bills that a lot of vulnerable populations in Santa Clara and in Silicon Valley need a lot of help with foster placement or help in the juvenile justice system. And so one of these bills was to ensure families whose children are not regularly attending school are offered more help. So next slide.

[00:33:00] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Our transitional housing placement bill was signed by the Governor making it easier to place foster students in houses that are willing to to take care of them and house them. Was a co-author recognizing Diwali as a state holiday.

[00:33:20] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Our bill 1476 our meal program for citizens was signed by the Governor allows sites distributing at least one meal a day for senior citizens throughout the Congregate Meal Programs in California to provide meals served hot or as to to-go meals. I know many of the council members I worked with volunteered during COVID delivering these Meals on Wheels program. So we've got a streamlined program there signed by the Governor.

[00:33:50] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: And we've also introduced a few bills that came in two year bills which means hopefully they'll be signed next year. Next slide. Our Mobilehome Residency Protection Program. This district has one of the largest mobile home populations in the state of California when you include Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, and Cupertino. And so this bill protects and goes after bad actors who are not sufficiently taking care of the mobile home parks.

[00:34:20] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Our water conservation Water Wise designation program supporting better water use for our businesses that will hopefully be signed next year. Online work permits. This is really to go after juveniles or as many of you know when I was a student at Santa Clara High School you can get a worker's permit at 15 and a half but there's no national statewide database as other states so we don't know if students are getting hurt on the job or if they're working more hours than they should. So this would propose an online database to help keep track.

[00:35:00] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: And AB 1359. It removes penalties for families receiving CalWorks. Again if you are a truant student the state of California can take away your CalWorks benefits which again doesn't help their student go to school anymore when you take away food and housing assistance. So we are going to be introducing that bill next year. Above all for next year my priorities are going to be housing, foster youth, technology, education, and affordability. These are by far the issues that the district is facing and would like me to work on.

[00:35:40] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: A large legislative process as as many of you know but for the public it goes through bill introduction, it goes to committee, it has to go to the floor, I have to get at least a majority of my colleague 80 Assembly members to agree, then I have to convince Senator Wahab to agree and the Senate and then it would go to the Governor's desk for final approval. So the sausage making and one one quick photo.

[00:36:10] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: This was our Fall Harvest right here in Santa Clara that many of you attended and it was a great success. We gave out free pumpkins, free meals, arts and craft decorating, and talked about legislative bill ideas and many many members of the public submitted their own bill ideas as well. And we also gave a free laptop giveaway to 250 students at De Anza College.

[00:36:40] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: We did a Trunk or Treat program with the Bill Wilson Center to help shelter kids get some semblance of a safe holiday. And we had a big health care roundtable. Right now in Santa Clara County as many of you know due to HR1 and the federal government they cut over a billion dollars out of health care which is completely disastrous for our health care system. As many of you know our county has bought a lot of hospitals over the past several years and I convened leaders with the the legislative delegation meeting with all of the major hospitals including Sutter, Kaiser, Sutter who's expanding in Santa Clara we're very excited about that, our county hospitals, and we are working on legislation to protect the integrity and the access and affordability of our health care system in Santa Clara County. I'm sorry that's a really big photo of me but is there any questions?

[00:37:40] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: I think we're going to hold the questions to the end of after Senator Dr. Wahab's presentation. Thank you so much for what you do for us. We appreciate it. Thank you.

[00:38:00] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: So our final legislative update this evening is from California State Senator Aisha Wahab. I see Elizabeth Vaca here but oh Dr. Senator Dr. Wahab's online. Senator Aisha Wahab represents California State Senate District 10 which includes the cities of Santa Clara, Fremont, Hayward, Milpitas, Newark, Union City, Sunnyvale, part of the city of San Jose, and unincorporated areas in the county of Alameda and Santa Clara.

[00:38:30] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Senator Wahab serves as the Senate Assistant Majority Leader, Chair of the Senate Housing Committee, and Vice Chair of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus. Senator Wahab is also a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee, Senate Governmental Organization Committee, Senate Insurance Committee, Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senate Budget Subcommittee 5 on Corrections, Public Safety, Judiciary, Labor, and Transportation. She is a busy busy person. So I now invite Senator Aisha Wahab to the podium to begin her presentation. Welcome Doctor.

[00:39:20] Senator Aisha Wahab: Thank you. And I just want to thank the Mayor, the City Staff, the Council Members, everyone that is here. I apologize I had another presentation in Alameda County and so sometimes the traffic just beats us if you will. So I want to also thank Assemblymember Ahrens for the partnership. A lot of the effort in regards to this district is the fact that we collaborate, that we check in with one another and much more. So I really just want to thank him for his partnership on the Assembly side. The two houses do operate very independently of each other. So I will just try to go as brief as possible but you know I have a lot of content so I will try to go fast. If we can have the slide deck up?

[00:40:20] Senator Aisha Wahab: So first and foremost I just want to highlight that this past January we had one of the worst fires in American history happen here in our great state in the LA area. I have personally gone down there multiple times and it's something that I'm deeply concerned about when we're talking about even our district. Our district is in a flood zone, it is in a on a technically an earthquake fault, as well as potentially other dangers. So I just want to say that that is something that on my mind pretty much every day and we can go on to the next slide and I'll kind of talk about what we've done.

[00:41:00] Senator Aisha Wahab: So this year I am Chair of Housing and Housing is incredibly important. I think many of you guys I have shared the story my family lost their home during the great foreclosure crisis of American history in the last you know 15 years. I am still a renter, it is very hard to purchase a home in our own district, and so this is what we've done from a financial perspective. The Dream For All program which is for everyday individuals to be able to apply with the state for down payment assistance if they are a first time first generation home buyer. We put in $300 million to make sure that that dream is still available to Californians.

[00:41:40] Senator Aisha Wahab: We also prioritized the development of housing through two funding mechanisms. One the local city councils all know as LIHTC funding or Low Income Housing Tax Credit that pretty much stabilizes a lot of the older buildings to maintain affordability. $500 million there for multi-family housing development for affordable housing $120 million and for what all of the cities deeply desire is more support for the Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention Program that largely allows for local communities like the city to be able to get people off the street into temporary shelters and eventually permanent affordable housing, the $500 million that we secured there for the HHAP funding. There's a lot of funding that we prioritize but I will say this is one of the most important things that we have done. We can go on to the next slide.

[00:42:30] Senator Aisha Wahab: So I have carried a massive bill. This bill a lot of people said that you know she's in over her head she can't do it and yet we have done it. SB 681 was roughly 60 pages for a single bill and it covered a number of different things and the goal that I had was to be able to tackle the issues that every single type of person dealing with housing has to deal with. So for example renters, those that are first time home buyers, those that own a home, those that are building a home, those that want to build more affordable housing including the developer and much more. So I'm not going to go through every point but I want to highlight one of the efforts that I think that is largely missing in the state of California is the conversation regarding renters. Renters are a big missing piece of the real conversation and the narrative in the state as well as the local communities I'm going to be very frank. As a renter it was important to elevate the voices of renters. We quadrupled the renters tax credit to put money back in renters' pockets. This is the first time it's been done in literally decades so renters benefit immediately off of that.

[00:43:50] Senator Aisha Wahab: Also there was a story in the LA Times and a couple of other stories after regarding people that were trying to do something in their own home and they live in a HOA type of property and they were hit with fines. In fact the one woman that was featured in the LA Times she reached out to her office she was hit with fines of $500 per day $3500 a week and she was going broke just based off the fines. We capped HOA fines to $100 unless it is about the health and safety and security of the entire community. So we limited those fines to 100 bucks and so many people have emailed us and messaged us saying that they are extremely grateful.

[00:44:30] Senator Aisha Wahab: I will also say that folks like my parents who had a foreclosure some of them believed that they actually got rid of this foreclosure by declaring bankruptcy or whatever the case may be only to be hit by debt service collectors and banks on mortgages that they thought they got rid of and handled and you know they thought they did all the paperwork 15 years later they were hit not only with the original debt but also 15 years of fines and penalties and back pay that they have not actually even known about. The Zombie Mortgage Protection stops unfair foreclosures by strengthening the noticing requirements and loan servicer accountability on second mortgages hence the Zombie Mortgage Protection. This is the strongest consumer protection on zombie mortgages in the nation first and foremost and I will say that the banks and debt collectors were very upset about this they wanted it to stop and be undone and much more so they have decided to sue us to stop and litigate on this particular issue. So I will say just even those three as you guys can tell it is specifically for the regular average person that is definitely a priority.

[00:45:50] Senator Aisha Wahab: But we also expanded the Surplus Land Act to allow for schools to build on their sites when it comes to workforce housing affordability and even student housing. We helped expand what pro-housing means. Those cities that take care of their homeless population that provide shelters that provide safe camping zones and much more SB 262 allows for the pro-housing designation. So the cities of Sunnyvale and Hayward in my district we helped get that pro-housing designation. The smaller cities that you know I for example represent we have to compete with bigger cities like LA, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and much more that have a population size of 500,000 or more to compete for funds right? And it's not really fair to us and so I want to help our cities actually get technical assistance get funding support getting a lot of these efforts kind of you know some stability and some support. So we've been able to do that. We've also worked on housing in disaster areas making sure that developers can build quickly protecting tenants and homeowners in the wake of an emergency. So a number of different bills that really just kind of prioritize the average individual but also streamline some of the building and much more. This was SB 681 was a heavy bill it is law I'm very proud of it and we can go on to the next slide.

[00:47:20] Senator Aisha Wahab: So besides those couple of bills that we did on Housing I tried to prioritize Public Safety, Women, Workforce, Consumers and Health. We capped the co-pays to a maximum of $35 for a 30 day supply of insulin. We know insulin is one of the biggest medicines if you will that people use especially when they are dealing with diabetes like my father is and we want to make sure that those life-saving medicines are affordable. We also worked with Santa Clara County to protect the average employee who has done...

Segment 2

[01:29:35] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: The city council and stadium authority have returned from closed session.

[01:29:40] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: We will now adjourn the concurrent City Council, Stadium Authority, Sports and Open Space Authority, and Housing Authority meeting to the regular City Council meeting at 3:00 p.m. or soon thereafter. See you then.

Segment 4

[02:15:00] Senator Aisha Wahab: all the work but is not paid by the employer, we want to hold those employers accountable, making sure that they pay their worker for the work that they have done. We also tackled some of these outdated laws. I think a lot of the women in the audience would appreciate this. There are many laws that are outdated in the sense that they're several decades old. For example, we believe rape is rape, regardless of whether or not you are married, rape is rape. And the laws on the books prior to this law passing basically said if you are a disabled spouse, rape is not rape. And so we fixed this to remove the exemption.

[02:15:42] Senator Aisha Wahab: I will say a number of the women in Santa Clara County brought this forward. This is, again, deeply from the district. And another example is also SB 701, which is the signal jammers. One of the things that we've noticed, we worked with our law enforcement partners, there are these tools that people can buy online called signal jammers and it basically breaks any type of communication on Wi-Fi, on cellular service, and many of us use a cell phone now.

[02:16:13] Senator Aisha Wahab: So criminals are utilizing this particular tool to basically rob a person. And that person, if they are home, God forbid, they are not able to call 911. And what we also learned about this tool is that our local teachers also use it to ensure that students don't cheat. So to ensure that kids don't text each other or Google an answer to a test or whatever the case may be.

[02:16:40] Senator Aisha Wahab: So the way we drafted this particular bill was that if the signal jammer is used in conjunction with a crime, it is illegal and you will get penalized. So it just goes to show that we've worked on a lot of different bills, much of this signed into law. We can go on to the next slide.

[02:17:02] Senator Aisha Wahab: Um, well, there was one slide prior to this, but I'll just go over this for now. You know, in the City of Santa Clara, we try to prioritize a lot of budget funding for some of the work that is being done. The goal that I typically have is to prioritize, you know, social safety nets, infrastructure, housing. These efforts cost a lot of funding, but also is incredibly important to the larger community. It's not just one community, sometimes it touches two or three cities.

[02:17:32] Senator Aisha Wahab: So, example: the Santa Clara overnight care location. We made sure that $1.8 million comes to that. We also made sure that our public safety have the radio systems that they need, so $1.75 million for that. We worked with the County of Santa Clara for faith-based reentry programs, and just a resource there, as well as the County again for $1 million for land acquisition for a thirty-unit family shelter in regards to housing.

[02:18:03] Senator Aisha Wahab: One of the big projects, and I know that the City has worked on this significantly, we have worked with the City Manager as well, we meet with the Bay Area Host Committee pretty regularly. One of the big efforts this past year was to secure $10 million for security of the World Cup. The World Cup will take place in the City of Santa Clara, the first time in this nation in 30 years, and we want to make sure that there is no incident, that there is no concern.

[02:18:33] Senator Aisha Wahab: And so making sure that our law enforcement partners, our transit partners, and a lot of the effort when we're talking about international dignitaries as well as celebrities and athletes and much more, and the amount of tourists that are going to come into this district, are taken care of and their-- our district is properly secure.

[02:18:52] Senator Aisha Wahab: We do partner with a lot of different companies. I have brought my colleagues to companies like Nvidia and Synopsys and Applied Materials and so many other organizations to really elevate this district in the fact that it's an advanced manufacturing district. We have more manufacturers in this district than anywhere in California, number one. And number two, the fact that people understand our district, right?

[02:19:18] Senator Aisha Wahab: That people know that our district is a district to look at and understand the job market here, the economy here, the fact that we contribute to the fact that California is the fourth largest economy. It is the Bay Area, but more importantly it's my district. So I'm very proud of that. We can go on to the next slide.

[02:19:38] Senator Aisha Wahab: Yes, so the two slides got a little switched around. These are some of the previous bills I've worked on. We've worked on some big heavy bills in a lot of different spaces, from having the very first social housing bill signed in the nation by the Governor, called our Stable Affordable Housing Act, which HCD is currently still working on.

[02:20:00] Senator Aisha Wahab: We protect our seniors and of course even some of our women and children regarding AI, child porn, laws have been updated. In fact, we actually were able to arrest a cartoonist, a New York Times cartoonist who had over 130 images of children in questionable situations. A lot of the bills that I have worked on are actually bipartisan. In fact, last year 16 bills were signed and 11 of them were bipartisan.

[02:20:33] Senator Aisha Wahab: I want to highlight that in the Bay Area we see a lot on TV about these organized retail thefts where 15-20 people break into a Louis Vuitton store or Apple store or whatever the case may be. I actually saw this firsthand. So we made organized retail theft an actual crime in the State of California. We're very proud of being able to partner with as many people to get some of these bills done. We can go on to the next slide.

[02:21:04] Senator Aisha Wahab: And again, in regards to budget, I do just want to highlight that we have worked with a lot of different efforts to kind of tackle some of the issues that we care about. I did talk about the World Cup. I will say the City of Santa Clara compared to any other city, of course, knows exactly what is going on with the World Cup. We want to partner as much as possible to be able to ensure that our cities are made whole moving forward.

[02:21:28] Senator Aisha Wahab: I will flag that we also prioritize the $10 million for the Children's Holistic Immigration Representation Project. When we talk about immigration and deportations, as a former foster youth myself, I think that we should be protecting our children. They will actually put a child who is a minor in front of a judge to defend themselves. And this $10 million is to ensure that that kid has a lawyer and a social worker to help them. It is not fair and we know that we will continue to protect our most vulnerable community members.

[02:22:03] Senator Aisha Wahab: Including supporting the Jewish Community Center of the East Bay, as we know that security and hate crimes and much more are all a concern for our vulnerable communities. So, next slide. And many of the bills that you guys saw on our slide deck is actually directly from the district. We serve the community. Our office is always here and available to answer any questions, help with unemployment, Medi-Cal issues and much more.

[02:22:34] Senator Aisha Wahab: We do partner with our Assemblymembers who also represent this district, and the louder that our voice can be, the more resources we can secure. And so these partnerships are incredibly important and I'm happy to answer any questions along with our Assemblymember. Thank you.

[02:22:50] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you Senator Dr. Wahab. I'm going to ask our Assemblymember, Aaron, to come up to the podium as well. I know that you both are available now to answer any questions. Thank you for the presentation. You are extremely busy as well. Thank you for your advocacy on behalf of our City. Do we have any questions from the Council now that we have both of them right here in front of us? Are we still taking in all the information that we've just received?

[02:23:24] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Only positive questions you can ask me, any complaints ask the Senator.

[02:23:29] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right, here we go. Vice Mayor Cox.

[02:23:33] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: I'll throw one out. Assemblymember Ahrens, you said priorities for next year would include technology as one of them. Tell me a little bit more, what does that mean?

[02:23:43] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: So I serve as the co-chair of the Technology and Innovation Caucus and every month we are bringing in guest speakers from the business community, to labor organizations, to city/county officials talking about how we can implement sound regulations regarding what we're seeing come out of our technology companies to protect children or to protect children from bullying or privacy concerns.

[02:24:12] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: And so we're interacting with stakeholders throughout the district and the state and working with the State Senate and my colleagues in the State Legislature to see what that looks like. Additionally, a big concern that is talked about in what we're hearing from constituents is the rise in data centers and can we ensure that they-- we have enough capacity to build them? Are they-- can we make them safer? Can we make them more environmentally friendly? Where should we build them?

[02:24:44] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: There is a global race towards the adoption of these data centers for AI use and as the fourth largest economy in the world, California needs to remain competitive but there is a-- a really good and impassioned debate about where we should be building them and what effects will they have on our communities. And so many of these bills we've seen, we've seen over 50 AI regulated-- regulation bills just this past legislation alone. I expect that number to increase. And as the representatives of Silicon Valley, both the Senator Wahab and I are working together to see how we can properly regulate this new technology without inhibiting innovation.

[02:25:31] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Gonzalez.

[02:25:34] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: Thank you Madam Mayor. Um, I guess my question is, there's a comment as far as I think the LAO is projecting a surplus, I think it was up to $9 billion here. So as we might see maybe some new additional monies, part of that would obviously go to Prop 98 and education. As you look at the other funding and some of your priorities as far as housing affordability that you help us here in cities like Santa Clara to make sure that we can address some of the issues that we're looking at with maybe some additional dollars that that might be coming.

[02:26:14] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: And definitely not look at having mandates per se, maybe having like just grants that were provided to the cities. I know that the one striking thing I would tell you, going from School Board to City Council and understanding now as far as RHNA numbers and affordable housing, it just seems like local control to some extent is lost for Councils. And that's something that I think that that's important for us to be able to address and I say 'us', you know, our Senator Wahab and Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens, for us to work together to address the concerns of our constituents.

[02:26:48] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: If we don't have that ability to do that because of certain laws that might be coming from Sacramento, that's an issue. So I think that's something that as you make legislation that you keep us in mind. And I think you both do a great job of doing that, but just something that you know, keep there and maybe keep us in mind when that's happening.

[02:27:08] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Thank you Councilmember. No I absolutely agree, especially as Chair of the Senate Housing Committee, really appreciate Dr. Wahab's leadership on this. As a freshman I'm going into this really wanting to work hand-in-hand with our local cities and I do agree local control is very important as well as trying to reach our goals.

[02:27:28] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: And Santa Clara has been phenomenal at being visionary about wanting to build the infrastructure support, having a local power utility company that is 57% on average cheaper than PG&E's. Building the requisite amount of housing. You've always been good at that. Not every area of Silicon Valley is. But I hear you on wanting more flexibility and more support and I'll hand it over to my colleague.

[02:28:01] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Yes Senator, would you like to comment?

[02:28:05] Senator Aisha Wahab: Definitely. So I actually agree with the cities and as Chair of Housing I have actually pushed back on a significant amount of bills that largely, I'm going to just be very frank with you all, come from the San Francisco area that really push to basically support developers, right? And that-- that streamlining and those efforts, and I've been very vocal about it, hit in the media significantly about it, has not actually translated to cost savings for the consumer, whether it's the renter or the home buyer. It has largely just supported the developer.

[02:28:47] Senator Aisha Wahab: And here's the reality: we have not, with all of the permitting efforts and the reforms there, it has not translated 100% to increased production in the numbers that we need. We actually need 2.5 million homes in California. In 2023 we built 113,000 homes. Of the 2.5 million, 1 million needs to be affordable housing. So we're not even hitting the mark if you really want to talk about it, right?

[02:29:16] Senator Aisha Wahab: And some of the bills, one bill in particular in California this year, I have personally voted against and been allowed critiqued about it, to the point where that particular bill that had zero ownership, zero affordability and zero local control, had to get amended 13 times to put in those efforts that I've talked about. And I said if you guys would have just listened to us very early on, we wouldn't have had some of these concerns.

[02:29:48] Senator Aisha Wahab: That particular bill I will say that Assemblymember Ahrens and I are deeply concerned about because it also stripped away a lot of protections for our vulnerable community members, specifically the mobile park home residents, which we are going to correct this coming January. So those were all promises and a lot of negotiation. None of the bills are perfect in the Legislature and that's because you have 120 people having a comment on it plus a lot of stakeholders from special interest groups. So my job as well as Patrick's job is largely to elevate some of the issues that we care about in our district and we have been doing so.

[02:30:19] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Councilmember Hardy, you have a question?

[02:30:24] Councilmember Karen Hardy: Yes. Well first off I will say at the National League of Cities that I was at, data centers were probably one of the biggest hot topics. And there-- there was a lot of consternation and--

[02:30:37] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: They all want to be here in Santa Clara.

[02:30:38] Councilmember Karen Hardy: Yes. And we have a lot. And so it was-- it was interesting to have those conversations and help people understand realities and maybe calm some of the fears as well. But my biggest question was about the 10 million dollars for public safety because yes we invited the world to come to Santa Clara this next six months. And I was wondering how that is going to be allocated. Is that going to-- because you said it was for public safety-- I wanted to know if that's going to go directly to our public safety or if that was going to be part of a federal effort or state, if I can understand how that's going to come about. Thank you.

[02:31:28] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Sure. Um, so there are two sources of funding that we've secured. There's the 100 million dollars for public safety and then Senator Wahab and I advocated specifically in the budget for 10 million dollars to go towards the Bay Area Host Committee. And I know that the Senator has been taking a leadership on this role for even before I got elected so would love to have her chime in on the 10 million dollar allocation.

[02:31:50] Senator Aisha Wahab: Thanks Patrick. Um, so, uh, the 10 million dollars, and I want to be very clear about it, the 10 million dollars is split between LA and the Bay, because LA is also one of the host cities. So that-- and I want to be very clear on some of the math around it. Technically LA will have more games than us, so they are technically entitled to a slightly larger percentage. We have fought to make it a 50/50 split so the Bay Area will receive roughly 5 million dollars.

[02:32:24] Senator Aisha Wahab: That is going to be trickled down through state agencies into the County for those types of public safety efforts. So when we're talking about our emergency response and much more. What is happening and being discussed right now is also there has been a NOFA that has been released and I think that our City Manager in the City of Santa Clara has probably have more transparency on this as well. The goal is to make sure that each of the agencies, specifically the counties as well as some of the public agencies, are able to apply for some of this funding.

[02:33:02] Senator Aisha Wahab: It's roughly supposed to be about 50 million dollars again across the multiple different host cities regarding cybersecurity, regarding transit security, regarding you know just law enforcement in general. That is still up in the air, that's a completely different aspect compared to what we were talking about of the 10 million. The 10 million here is specifically about public safety and making sure that we have our district made whole in addition to whatever the Bay Area Host Committee has also secured from the federal level and their fundraising efforts.

[02:33:42] Senator Aisha Wahab: So I do just want to say that there's a number of different buckets of money. At least from the representative standpoint as Senator and Assemblymember, our goal was public safety across the board. I think there are efforts around transportation and much more and so we're working to secure every dollar we can to make sure that this event goes off without a hitch.

[02:34:05] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you, safety is our major concern. Thank you, I appreciate that.

[02:34:10] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: And the Senator and I are also in conversation in this year's budget process about potentially trying to preserve some more public safety dollars to add as a reimbursement should we expect their budgets to go over given the enormity of some of the games. Although I should would like to still lobby that we get bigger sports teams to come. I feel like we got shafted in the in the draw for those teams but let me know who to talk to about that.

[02:34:38] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: FIFA. Okay. Nevermind. Yeah. Nevermind is right. Uh, Councilmember Park.

[02:34:46] Councilmember Kevin Park: Yes, thank you very much for all the information that you've brought. I'm actually really impressed with all the bills that you've brought forward. I've followed a lot of other Assemblymembers through the years and I think that this is like the highest number of bills that I've seen brought forward, especially by a freshman, a new member. So thank you very much for your work. I do have some concerns about technology which is, we have a lot of people that work with AI for example, and AI and energy and data centers are all tied together and at some point we can't talk about these in isolation, we must talk about them together.

[02:35:24] Councilmember Kevin Park: I know that Ro Khanna, Congressman Ro Khanna has had local AI roundtables where we can meet. I've gone to almost every single Cal Cities conference and National League of Cities conference where we've talked about AI. Last year's Tampa summit for National League of Cities was very AI focused but I have not actually heard a decent discussion around AI concerning governance and policy. We have a lot of companies that are coming in trying to help. We've got the Googles, we've got the Metas, we've got the Microsofts, but they're not sending their data scientists, they're not sending the people that are concerned about AI, they're sending marketers and public relations people and they talk about the benefits.

[02:36:02] Councilmember Kevin Park: There's a lot of conflation between numeric logical machine learning AI and generative AI and I really think that we need to have some discussions and local discussions in the public and I don't know if you have any plans to do things like that.

[02:36:23] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Yeah well in addition to our tech caucus monthly briefings, we are planning on in the first quarter of 2026 bringing tech caucus legislators down to our district to specifically tour some of the big tech companies and have some open discussions. Be happy to have you or representative of the Council come and and join on those discussions.

[02:36:45] Councilmember Kevin Park: Thank you very much.

[02:36:48] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Um, do you have any closing comments?

[02:36:54] Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens: Thank you. Thank you.

[02:36:54] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Senator?

[02:36:55] Senator Aisha Wahab: Yeah just real quick on the technology piece. Um, there actually has been a slew of bills in the AI space and first and foremost I just want to say that AI and advanced manufacturing and a lot of the industries that we talk about on a national level is incredibly critical to our national security and global economy when we're talking about competitive edge. So that is something that I have prioritized, at least, you know, when we are inviting like I showed you guys, inviting a lot of Senators to the district to really understand what our economy just even on a local level is about, but then also protecting the research and and much more.

[02:37:39] Senator Aisha Wahab: The feds have cut a significant amount of funding on research and technology, let alone HUD and healthcare and education and you name it. But there are efforts right now specifically to support our industry in this district. So that's not only the advanced manufacturing industry, that is the semiconductor industry, that is also the AI industry, biotech as well. So there's a lot of efforts there but I will say that policy doesn't catch up to technology fast enough and a lot of the elected serving in the Legislature do not come from a tech background. So as much input as you guys would like to provide, please do so. So thank you guys again for having us.

[02:38:19] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you and we appreciate it. I enjoyed this so much, I'd like it at least two or three times a year. Thank you. Appreciate the updates. Thank you. Thank you Senator.

[02:38:32] Senator Aisha Wahab: Thank you guys.

[02:38:33] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. That was very informative. Appreciate that. All right. Um, moving on the agenda, the next item is the consent calendar. All items are approved with one motion unless an item is pulled for discussion uh from the Council or the public. Councilmember Jain.

[02:38:51] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: Yes I would like to pull item 3J, the power content label.

[02:39:00] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Can you read the whole thing please? The of the item you're pulling?

[02:39:13] City Clerk Bob O'Keefe: Note and file the report of the Silicon Valley Power SVP 2024 Power Content Label, PCL, designed to provide SVP customers with information regarding the sources of energy used to provide them electric services.

[02:39:28] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right thank you for that. Um, that item is being pulled. Is there anyone else that would like to pull an item? All right. Um, Councilmember Gonzalez.

[02:39:38] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: Move to approve the consent calendar having pulled uh 3J.

[02:39:44] Councilmember Raj Chahal: Second.

[02:39:45] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right we have a motion by Councilmember Gonzalez, second by Councilmember Chahal to approve the consent calendar minus that one item 3J. Please register your vote. And that passes unanimously. Thank you. We're going to move on to our public presentations and these are items that are not on the Council agenda. I think we have quite a few so um, Assistant City Clerk, when you're ready if you'd like to read the names?

[02:40:25] City Clerk Bob O'Keefe: Yes Madam Mayor. Uh first speaker is Adhav Avun followed by Claudia Freitas and Eliver Caparas.

[02:40:37] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. So Adhav followed by Claudia followed by Eliver. Just come up forward please. Welcome.

[02:40:47] Adhav Avun: Hello. Hello. Yeah, into the microphone. Thanks. Is the Council ready?

[02:40:54] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Yes, go ahead.

[02:40:55] Adhav Avun: Hello Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Adhav and I'd like to address the issue of PFAS in Santa Clara. I've lost two grandmas to cancer and when the second one contracted cancer I called her immediately and asked what had caused her illness. She told me the water she had been drinking contained harmful chemicals and no one did anything about it. However, a similar situation is happening in our own backyard. Next slide please.

[02:41:29] Adhav Avun: PFAS are man-made chemicals used to make everyday products resistant to water, grease, and stains. They also make cookware non-stick. Known as forever chemicals, these don't break down easily. They build up in the body and can lead to serious health problems such as birth defects, increased cholesterol, and the cancer that plagued my grandma. And it's not just people who are affected, animals are too. According to a study by EWG, close to 600 species are at risk of PFAS contamination because of PFAS contamination.

[02:42:02] Adhav Avun: PFAS levels are especially high in the Bay Area, including right here in Santa Clara. If you look at the chart in the next slide, you'll see many Bay Area cities have elevated PFAS levels or high CES scores, meaning their communities feel the impact of these chemicals. San Jose is located above the San Jose level-- label on the chart showing a concerning amount of PFAS exposure.

[02:42:27] Adhav Avun: Many everyday items contain PFAS: cleaning products, water resistant fabric, grease resistant packaging, and even firefighting foam. It is important to check labels for words like perfluoro or fluoro because those terms mean PFAS are present. And PFAS can enter your body through food and water but also through touch. The best way to protect ourselves is to avoid products known to contain PFAS whenever possible.

[02:42:57] Adhav Avun: That's why I'm asking the Santa Clara City Council to lead by example by adopting a purchasing policy that avoids buying PFAS containing products. Cities like San Francisco and the State of Michigan have done this too, so so can Santa Clara. Thank you.

[02:43:14] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you very much. And under public presentations we can't take any action but we've heard you and our staff has heard as well your request. Thank you. All right next we have Claudia followed by Eliver. Please come forward. Welcome.

[02:43:33] Claudia Freitas: Good evening Honorable Mayor Gillmor, Councilmembers and staff. I am Claudia Freitas as you heard, and I am proud to represent a large portion of the pickleball community in the City of Santa Clara. Pickleball has become a culture and lifestyle here in Santa Clara as well as nationwide. As advertised through Lifetime Activities, they state they're excited to continue offering pickleball as a key part of our community's recreational activities, to join in the game that has become one of the fastest growing sports in the community, and I might add the nation.

[02:44:08] Claudia Freitas: We are enthusiasts that enjoy the game for our overall health and well-being, which cannot be understated. Pickleball is not only a sport but it's turned out to be a culture and a lifestyle for many. It's been amazing to watch the pickleball community grow these past two years. We have met so many people from different-- from various walks of life that we otherwise would have never met.

[02:44:31] Claudia Freitas: This sport fosters positive connections with people across different cultures, age groups including a large community of seniors, embracing us regardless of status, title, rank or in, um, ranks in life. Interacting with others contributes to healthy socialization, friendships, a community with like interests, social connections, one's mental and physical health and replaces, um, senior isolation with the extra benefit of being outdoors.

[02:45:04] Claudia Freitas: The CRC pickleball began October 25th 2023, and I'm proud to say we've been a part of this growth watching as, um, Lifetime Activities steadily provided more hours of play, cleaner courts, easier scheduling to accommodate this continual growth of this sport. However, there does remain an enormous need for improvements that would benefit our pickleball community. Please note that the CRC, uh, tennis courts are rated 4.5 while our pickleball courts a measly 2.3 out of five stars.

[02:45:37] Claudia Freitas: So I am speaker number one. Eliver will be speaker number two and then my husband will be speaker number three. We were under the impression that we only had two minutes so we kind of broke it up so thank you for your time.

[02:45:49] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Eliver. And then followed by Tom.

[02:45:55] Eliver Caparas: Thank you so much CJ. That was great. Good evening Madam Mayor and Councilmembers. Um, my name is Eliver Caparas. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to present. Currently the City of Santa Clara via Lifetime Activities offer lessons with Coach Martin for approximately 100 students, uh, weekly with about 33% of them being seniors.

[02:46:22] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Can you just address us up here? Thank you.

[02:46:26] Eliver Caparas: Okay. Pickleball community is on a steady rise. Reservations in January 2024 average about 100 a month. Then it's gone up to about 500 to 600 a month. Last month it was 700. Uh, truly has grown dramatically. Santa Clara Adult Education offers pickleball lessons with Coach Cindy to about 150 students every week. So that is a lot of pickleball players, new ones every year.

[02:46:54] Eliver Caparas: Our neighboring Sunnyvale offers pickleball lessons about three times as many, to about three times as many students, 20% of which are seniors. The Sunnyvale Tennis Center has been supporting pickleball for the last 10 years and they have 12 designated pickleball courts and 16 tennis courts. However, pickleball is not just about the numbers. It's about people and the joy they find in playing.

[02:47:21] Eliver Caparas: I've had the privilege of playing with a wonderful lady who told me I am 59 years old and I never played any sport. I am so happy I can play pickleball. This is a new beginning at age 59. Her smile every time she steps on the court is very heartwarming. I've met Edward who immigrated from Malaysia this year to be with his wife Rebecca here, together with their family, the brothers Jin, Vin, the parents Leanne and Jack who happens to be a very good, uh, badminton player, found a community here in Santa Clara through pickleball.

[02:47:57] Eliver Caparas: I've seen Rami and Angela play with their two teenage daughters on a very consistent basis. I admire their family bond and hope that my own daughter will play with us when she comes back for on her break. We'll see. I've seen a gentleman in a wheelchair with his wife and their little girl sharing the court and having lots of laughs. Their presence is inspiring and I wish we could see more of that. A church group of 20 people regularly fills two courts. It can only hold eight but they have 20 people, because they're using it as a way to strengthen bonds and build deeper connections amongst their group.

[02:48:33] Eliver Caparas: I watch Friday morning open play grow from six players to just to 40 recently. These are not just games, they're stories of friendships and family connection and belonging. Pickleball is a lifestyle, a culture and a movement. Think about this: in one hour, 24 people can play pickleball compared to only 8 in tennis. That's 24 smiles, 24 lives touched. Even changing one life is extraordinary. Imagine if you can change 24. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Have a good evening.

[02:49:09] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Uh, Tom. That's a hard act to follow Tom. Followed by Helen. Welcome.

[02:49:25] Tom Freitas: Eliver did a great job with that I must say and I thank you very much for that too. Also I want uh the pickleball players in our group only to stand up please and introduce... please stand. So this is a group that we put together, my wife and I, and all the people here. We've all come together, one group. We didn't know each one of them, they're all different people and different lives. Some work, some don't, I don't. But anyway, uh, going on with what we have here.

[02:50:00] Tom Freitas: Um, if it comes up. Okay. Uh, good evening again Mayor, City Council members and staff. I thank you very much for listening to me tonight. As pickleball becomes more popular we are asking that the city support the growth by considering the following recommendations. There are eight dedicated courts for tennis with two additional sate-- what they call satellite courts near the CRC building on Kiely.

[02:50:37] Tom Freitas: These two blended courts they call them should be dedicated to pickleball only. That would provide six courts in one location. That would provide 24 pickleballers. Quite a bit more than tennis. Uh, um, I'd like to see number three-- number two on the list here would be permanently mounted nets. Uh number three would be expanding hours of play to marry-- to mirror the tennis hours Monday through Friday, uh 8 to 10 and Saturday and Sunday 8 to 8pm.

[02:51:22] Tom Freitas: Uh, prop-- number four would be properly numbered courts. We don't-- our courts right now are are not even numbered. Five: improved lighting for the nighttime uh activities. Number six would be improved wind shear netting which is important. Include sound absorption because we've heard complaints about that, so netting will help that sound absorption. Seating for multiple players to include sun protection. We have none now.

[02:52:04] Tom Freitas: Convenient available restrooms. None in that location. Courts divided would be appreciated so we can divide the courts and the balls don't mix. Protect the wall-- uh practice wall would be important for us. And number 11: no lifetime activity instructions during our primary or prime hours of play. 12: preferred reservations for Santa Clara residents. And number 13: a committee to keep uh up with changes in the game and and changes in the court and so on.

[02:52:44] Tom Freitas: Number 14, we'd like to see increase the number of dedicated pickleball courts throughout the city. Currently within the City of Santa Clara there are 200 tennis courts and only six pickleball courts. Uh, um, on behalf of the fellow pickleballers, my uh and the people here, we would hope that this presentation will influence you all to seriously consider these important changes. Let's help the City of Santa Clara increase its focus on health, happiness, community uh and by the way uh of uh pickleball we can accomplish that. Thank you so much for listening to me.

[02:53:28] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. And Tom do you mind sending that list to our city staff so that we can get that information? We have it? Oh it's as-- this I'm sorry I'm paying attention I'm not reading it. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right thank you Tom. All right we have Helen followed by Page. It's your turn Helen. Welcome.

[02:53:49] Helen Cox: Hi. Um thank you for having us. Um, I don't have any written statement. I just wanted to reiterate what they were saying, how important this sport has become to me personally. Um, I have uh lived in Santa Clara for over 20 years. I've been a-- I am a teacher. I used to be a swim coach at the local Cabana Club, at Santa Clara Swim Club. And building community and having a lifestyle that is healthy I find very very important. And as I age it's harder to find sports that I can do to stay healthy.

[02:54:28] Helen Cox: And pickleball has become um my outlet. And um there are many different things that we can improve in these courts to help um give this activity and this lifestyle benefit to more seniors and other people out there. I see young kids out there also learning so it's not just about seniors, but for me personally it is. Um, and I just am very passionate about sports and making sure there is an avenue for everyone to participate in sports um in at any age. And pickleball for me and for for my community has become a big passion. So um thank you for taking the time to hear hear us.

[02:55:04] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you Helen. Thank you. Um we have Page next followed by Aurelia.

[02:55:15] Page Fieck: Hi. Good evening. Um, this is my first City Council meeting.

[02:55:19] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Oh welcome.

[02:55:20] Page Fieck: Um I'm really here to parrot and support the community that I've developed outside um of my home which is uh the pickleball community. Um joined through the adult education um team-- um classes and which has set me up for a hopefully lifelong community of friends. Um I turned 60 this past year. I had a hip replacement um a year-- two years ago and this has been something that I have been able to play and interact and engage and meet some uh wonderful people.

[02:56:03] Page Fieck: Um it has been the only uh exercise that I've kept up with and I think that it's all because of the the community that we've built together. And um I would like to see more opportunities given to the the community at large so I think this is a great forum to ask for that. So thank you for your time.

[02:56:24] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you Page. All right. Next we have Aurelia. Okay thank you so much though for signing up in the first place. All right. Khanh. Please come forward. Yes, hello.

[02:56:40] Khanh Do-Nguyen: Good evening. Um I just want to say real quick, uh pickleball brings um great community to an affordable cost, allowed everyone stays healthy physically and mentally. Um in fact I see a lots of uh people come play pickleball with their excitement joyful. Um thank you very much for your time.

[02:57:15] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Um, we hear you loud and clear. We do. And my daughter she's 25 she loves pickleball. And I I haven't played yet but I'm looking forward to it. Sounds so fun. Um, Hot Dog Dude. Your turn.

[02:57:20] Hot Dog Dude: Hello everybody. No I'm not here on pickleball but uh I am here to rub it in for all those people out there who didn't make it to the Christmas tree lighting. This was my first year there, was not a vendor, but I saw all you guys out there and we had conversations and uh kind of know about stuff. Um, I guess we're going to be talking about something that applies to me later tonight but uh I did want to say that the uh Bay Area Host Committee did reach out to me and we are in negotiating and working a deal out. The NFL has basically, they don't care about a little guy.

[02:58:18] Hot Dog Dude: But Albert you know why I'm here. We need that parking out there at the Great America train station. I'm going to keep coming no matter what. They all them know, Chahal knows how I am, Suds knows, Karen knows. I will bug you and bug you and bug you until you show up at that train station. If not I'll bring somebody in to do sign language, maybe you'll understand that one. You need to come out there and see what's going on.

[02:58:51] Hot Dog Dude: Um, it's really not-- I'm not worried about making money off the people driving in there, but there's a lot of commuters that we've lost and we can't get them back if we have no parking. Uh, you know so let's do something, let's bring some parking back. In your position you can convince them to work with the land owners out there and everything to take care of it. Uh I guess I have to wait till the other part to really get down dirty and everything. Um, oh I know, last uh meeting there was a lot of people saying good things about me. I want to thank them for looking over my shoulder there because I'm getting booted out of the, well I can't go there. Booted out of there. I thank you Mayor because you said something to stand up for us. I forget who uh one of the other Councilmembers said something good for me-- about me actually. Surprisingly. But I--

Segment 5

[03:00:00] Hot Dog Dude: Let's do it. I'm going to come back. I'm going to shut up before my three minutes is up. Thank you.

[03:00:07] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. We'll see you in a few minutes. All right. Thank you, Howard. All right. Young followed by Craig.

[03:00:20] Young Tran: Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Councilmember. I've lived in Santa Clara for 20 years and this is my first council meeting.

[03:00:27] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Oh, welcome.

[03:00:29] Young Tran: I normally don't go to council meeting because I trust and I know that you guys do the best for the city, but I'm here to support my fellow pickleballers. Growing up, I played soccer, volleyball, tennis, badminton, table tennis, you name it. But I learned to play pickleball six weeks ago. And I also learned that this is a sport that every member can play. You can see a five year old kid or an older person to play and every member in your family can play together. And I enjoy the sport. I urge you to consider to make those two tennis courts at the CRSC permanent. It's a prime location. The surface needs to be resurfaced. It's a perfect time to do it. I've done my share of project management for the City of Palo Alto for 30 years so I know that the space will be perfect and with that, thank you.

[03:01:20] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you, Young. Thank you. Craig. Could that be a pickleball racket in your hand?

[03:01:29] Craig Larsen: Well, it's called a paddle. It's not strung.

[03:01:31] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Oh, a paddle. Thank you, sorry. I'll get it right soon. Apologies.

[03:01:35] Craig Larsen: Okay. You can borrow mine if you want to play with us.

[03:01:37] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: I want to learn. Thanks.

[03:01:39] Craig Larsen: Okay, awesome. Okay. Dear Mayor Gillmor and council members, my name is Craig Larsen. I've been a city resident since 1983. As a slight aside, I didn't know until recently that our mayor had such a great singing voice, much like that of Ariana Grande. So, congratulations on your singing.

[03:02:01] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you.

[03:02:03] Craig Larsen: I've been playing pickleball for about two years. Pickleball is an exciting court game enjoyed by players of all ages. I've played pickleball in cities such as Sunnyvale, San Jose, Palo Alto, Pleasanton, San Bruno, and Montevideo, Uruguay. Many of these cities have dedicated public courts for pickleball only. Sunnyvale has 22 public courts. Palo Alto has 15. The other cities have many dedicated or mixed-use courts. All have facilities such as tables and restrooms. At our Central Park near the Community Center, we have six public overlaid pickleball courts, which are shared with two tennis courts. The courts are used for open play, scheduled play, and classes. The court lines for each sport are overlaid with contrasting colors, which can often be confusing. The tennis nets are permanent. Temporary nets are rolled in for pickleball. The courts are in fair condition. However, a recent private event, the pickleball lines were redone with colored tape. And when the tape was removed, the adhesive stuck to the surface. It's terrible right now. So the lines now look terrible. At the Central Park facility, we use the restrooms at the Community Center, which are available only when the center is open. Center is not open on Sundays and other holidays. So you have to go elsewhere throughout the park if you have to use the facilities. There are no picnic tables and there are no other areas to rest. There are lights. In a June 25th Parks and Rec community workshop, the priority investment rating for pickleball facility was rated at 75, which is a medium for that. Also in a January 25 meeting for the Senior Advisory Commission was to work with the Parks and Rec Commission to report monthly on the status of pickleball facilities in Santa Clara. Now, it's not clear that what the status of those communications is. I looked over several agendas and didn't see that quite stated and kept up to date. So, you know, we can play also at the adult community center, but that court is shared with basketball, volleyball, and indoor soccer, and they only do classes there, no open play. I just want to say we have a vibrant and engaged group of pickleball players at the Friday open play sessions. The courts are often filled with a maximum of 24 players with many people waiting. We had a Halloween event. We had a small tournament there. It's great. And many of the friends that I play with every Friday and every other day are with me here tonight. So thank you for your attention to this matter.

[03:04:50] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you, Craig. Thank you.

[03:04:53] Craig Larsen: Come join us anytime.

[03:04:54] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: I would love to. Thank you. Brian? You're next? Followed by Betsy. Welcome, Brian.

[03:05:05] Brian Darby: Thank you. I might take that up. I'm a klutz, so I hope it's okay. This isn't the first time I've spoken at the city, and it's always been an honor. I spoke at San Jose today and saw Mayor Mahan and Sam Liccardo talk about the state and federal issues and everything. And I had something written out and I was going to share it and I thought, a lot of times I don't really know what to say for people to because what you folks do is a lot more complicated than what I'm used to. I sort of understand it, but to try to understand what really comes to me, once in a while if I really want to get grounded on something, I watch stories about Medal of Honor winners. I watch stories about people who overcome adversity. You see that in the community with people with disabilities. And one of the people I worked with, I won't mention her name, but it was a long time ago. She was three years old. She used to dance and she spoke French and English. She used to translate with her father. And then she had a terrible injury caused by a temperature and became extremely developmentally disabled. And I've been working with her for 36 years now. I took her rafting once. This person just enjoys very simple things. And I sort of tie that in with the Medal of Honor winners and the people who overcome... it seems like people who deal with severe adversity appreciate very simple things. It might only be just a string, or it might be... One story about a gentleman named Art that was on like a Bay Area Backroads kind of thing. And he was, spent... his 50th bomber run over Europe, he was shot down and taken prisoner and put in Stalag 1. If you can look that up and that was, if there is a... you know, that place, that's probably it. Close to, it was close... Anyways, he became very bitter and angry. And somebody gave him a little origami bird. And he looked at it. He kept it in a box 50, 60, 70 years later. He was 101 when he did the story. That, you cannot put a price on. If you do, shame on you. That is what makes us human beings. That has been going on for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. I'm here to try to remind us that we stand on the shoulders of giants. People we may never know. Thank you. Merry Christmas.

[03:07:52] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you, Brian. All right. Next we have Betsy followed by Kirk. Welcome, Betsy.

[03:08:04] Betsy Megas: Thank you. Good evening. Betsy Megas, speaking for myself. I wanted to thank Suds for the newsletter piece about illegal dumping. He attended some conference with Alameda County people. Illegal dumping is a frustrating and persistent problem, and I'm sure we have a few unregulated haulers and others, but I don't think most of what happens in Santa Clara is comparable to Oakland. My informal observation is that a lot of dumped furniture shows up outside apartments and other rental housing. And it's pretty easy to tell what's going on. Someone has to be out by the end of the month and that old sofa is not worth keeping. Unless it happens to be cleanup campaign week, putting that old sofa on the street is illegal dumping. But for someone who gets away with it, which is most people, it's cheaper than moving the stuff and losing part of your deposit when the landlord has to deal with it. What I'm asking is simply to look to change the incentive structure. Make sure that people have information and resources so that proper disposal of that furniture is at least as easy as improper disposal. And the cost is comparable. I think it would go a lot further towards fixing the problem than trying to penalize it. I would also say that it's currently a little bit inconsistent in my experience whether a MySantaClara request gets forwarded if it is actually for another agency. So a lot of people don't know that, you know, if it's on an expressway, it's the county's problem, for example. And so sometimes requests that should be forwarded are and sometimes they're not. So that's another small thing that we can do to mitigate this problem. Thank you.

[03:10:08] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you, Betsy. Uh, Kirk, you're next, followed by Kathy. Welcome.

[03:10:19] Kirk Vartan: Uh, good evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you, um, uh, for hosting us on your bimonthly play, you know, time. Your time is very valuable and we appreciate all the time you dedicate to all of all of us. I'm commenting on a community meeting about the Agrihood that was held last month. One of the comments that was made that the site was not good for density. Uh, and I would challenge that. There was no reason given for that or the developer just said it wasn't good. Uh, even though they agreed to it. Uh, it's across from Valley Fair. It's very walkable and close to transit. The other thing that was listed, it was not a good place for assisted living. And the only reason given was that it was close to another one, for example, Belmont Village. And I wanted to highlight the fact that there are over 11,000 people a day that turn 65. The need for assisted living will never go down. So I guess I'm just asking you to ask some questions so you to think about. Um, what do you think of the comments that were made by the developer? Um, is this really the spirit of the Agrihood that you, most of the people on this council supported and advocated for and approved? And how can we imagine, uh, a little bit better uh for our communities and what can we do and how can we really deliver on that? So I'm going to share a quick video. This is from uh last month.

[03:11:52] Video: A new 100% affordable housing complex opened up today in Oakland. This is The Phoenix on Pine Street near Interstate 880. It offers permanent supportive housing in West Oakland's Prescott neighborhood. At the site, residents will have access to substance abuse treatment, mediation and family support, physical and mental health services, and employment assistance. The complex is a collaboration between East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation and Abode Housing Development. We're going to be welcoming home 101 households here in Oakland where we desperately need permanent supportive housing. Half of these households are coming in from homelessness, which is why we do the work. A $5.2 million grant from the state's Community Care Expansion Program helped pay for the development.

[03:13:19] Kirk Vartan: And so I I just show that as an example of, this happened, that was announced uh last month in in West Oakland. And so why, you know, if if West Oakland can do it, why can't Santa Clara hold themselves accountable, do the same kind of thing? It's being done. That's a a you know, a 100-unit, 101-unit place for of all affordable. To hear that that can't be done on a site that has affordable housing and that the only solution is townhomes is it just doesn't square. And I hope that uh you can look at this. This is just an example of those exact services that could complement the existing residents that are there, the seniors that are there. How can you make a holistic vision on this site and who knows, maybe even throw a couple of pickleball courts in the open space. Thank you.

[03:14:05] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Play into the crowd, Kirk. All right, very good. Ying. Is Ying here? Yes, please come forward.

[03:14:23] Ying Wu: All right. Oh, sorry.

[03:14:26] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Wait, she said racket.

[03:14:28] Ying Wu: Paddle.

[03:14:29] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Oh, she's new. Okay, I get it. Welcome, welcome.

[03:14:34] Ying Wu: Thank you. Um, good evening, council, um, Mayor and Council Members. Uh, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak. I'm here to talk about pickleball. Um, I'm here to strongly encourage the city to convert Central Park's current two tennis courts into six permanent courts. An investment that serves all ages, all backgrounds, and our community from the crack of dawn through lights out, probably at 10 o'clock. Um, Central Park is very unique where it doesn't really have um residential uh surrounded by it. So, and currently the tennis courts also close at 10 p.m., I believe the lights out. Um, so pickleball belongs to, uh, pickleball brings people together in a way many sports can't. It's inclusive, easy to learn, and accessible for families, seniors, teens, elementary age kids, and beginners. Um, I personally have two young adult sons who are willing to and excited to play with us parents, um, because pickleball closes the generation gap. It creates a space where we can share the court, compete, laugh, and spend real quality time together. Um, it also brings together people of all walks of life. On a pickleball court, social hierarchies disappear and everyone is a simple partner ready to play. Um, many of us from the Lifetime Activities Wednesday and Friday open play stay connected, find partners to play with, um, and they, I consider them now friends and also um they, I hold them very dear. Um, so I started playing pickleball maybe about six months ago and attending the class or attending the um Central Park open play. Um, so now all the, everyone who were strangers are now um back then are now my friends. Um, let's see. That's it. Um, these courts are really um just a recreational upgrade. Um, they're meaningful investments in health, connection, and a community building for every resident and of every age. Um, I hope you guys uh make the decision. Thank you.

[03:17:17] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you very much. I don't see any other speakers. Is there anyone else that would like to speak? I don't see any... City Clerk, do you have any others? Um, so again on pickleball, our city manager's heard, our director of parks and recreation is over there shaking his head. It's heard loud, loud and clear. Loud and clear. Okay. Thank you so much for coming and giving us your perspectives on pickleball. We appreciate it. All right. I don't see any other public presentations, so we're going to move on to consent items pulled for discussion. Councilmember Jain, you pulled an item 3J. And that is... Note and file the report on the Silicon Valley Power 2024 Power Content Label, PCL, designed to provide SVP customers with information regarding the source of energy used to provide them electric services. Councilmember Jain.

[03:18:18] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: Uh, yeah. The thing that concerns me is what's called the uh greenhouse gas emissions intensity of our non-residential. As the public may know, all of the residential electricity in Santa Clara is carbon-free, um, offset with RECs. Um, but the SVP non-residential electricity, I see here, has 25% natural gas, whereas the California utility average is 10% natural gas. But the emissions intensity is 483 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour versus the California utility average of only 359 uh pounds of CO2. So I know that there's some notes in here which I didn't quite understand, saying that this label doesn't reflect compliance with RPS. So I'm trying to understand if you can maybe have a alternate power content label that might be not as... wouldn't be strictly compliant with the state but would actually give us a better sense that we're doing better than the state average? And I know we're actively building, you know, battery facilities like Trolley and we're, you know, just got a new contract with Calpine for geothermal and you know, we're trying really hard to be uh less carbon intensity, but why are we doing worse than the state average?

[03:19:57] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Sure. Thank you, Councilmember Jain. We'll have Kathleen Hughes, a Senior Electric Division Manager, respond.

[03:20:04] Kathleen Hughes: Good evening, Honorable Mayor, City Council. Um, so a couple things with this power content label. I think in the past we've kind of given you that really what that 24/7 profile emissions is, and we didn't provide it, sorry, sorry, this year. Um, apologies, we can get that to you. Um, but one thing that's the problem with this label, so the CEC, the California Energy Commission, decided to be the um the body that decides what the emissions factors are and they have the official label. And we have to publish that label and we have to follow their rules. That is changing in 2027 where they're going to go for a 24/7 profile, which really is reflective like of our profile. So right now we have the unspecified in there that shows a good chunk. And right now the um no matter when you pull from the grid, it could be when all the solar is going and there's almost zero emissions on the grid, the state still mandates us to have a a 428 emissions factor. So if we back down our natural gas plants to take on that excess solar, we actually it's almost actually dirtier than our natural gas plants. And that's what they're trying to fix in 2027. Uh, because they have no way to rectify it right now. The 428 is an old number. It doesn't reflect the grid and we're only as good as the grid. Um, I think the current uh, like for example, 2024 label or uh emissions factor for the CAISO grid, the California Independent System Grid, was um 238 versus 428. So really it's a matter of what numbers they are using. And we can provide you what our profile really looked like for every hour of the day. Um, it's we we can get that to you in all councils. You can see really what the apples, what it really is. This label was created to really be kind of a nutrition label, but it really didn't compare apples to apples. So you'll see some cities that say, oh, we're 100% carbon free based on these emissions numbers, and you know at 9 o'clock at night they're using natural gas. So in some ways it kind of penalized utilities like ours that have natural gas fleets and even if we're producing at um for others, like at when it's getting dispatched, when we don't need it, we have all renewables, for example, um, we still get penalized for that carbon. So it's not really reflective of how it should be for us. We can show you what we think it should be. We used to do that for years with our customers because it's really the reality of every hour of every day. And again, in 2027, the state is going to move forward with that hourly accounting, which will really represent a different picture. But we are adding resources onto the grid. Um, we have a good resources stack going forward. We have a lot more work to do as we add more load. Um, but we still have our natural gas fleets and it's really, and and also all the work like uh Basil Wong has been doing on battery storage and the rest of the resources team is really to capture those hours and capture those renewables to lessen the carbon on the grid. So we have lots of different strategies. It's just this unfortunately this label is kind of archaic and really doesn't reflect what we're doing.

[03:23:13] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: I guess my question is, you know, for some of the data centers we're buying RECs, is that reflected in here? Because, you know, in the middle of the night, we don't have wind, we don't have solar. We're basically getting natural gas and those data centers are humming along.

[03:23:30] Kathleen Hughes: And we have geothermal, so we we have things, we have hydro, we have all those things in our portfolio. Thank goodness, it's diversified. But when a a data center um does a carbon offset or a REC, the CEC does not count that as emissions. It has no bearing on the emissions at all um on what they give us as our profile number. Um, that's just something secondary. It is not factored in, unfortunately.

[03:23:59] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: Can we create our own internal version that would make me feel better?

[03:24:04] Kathleen Hughes: Well, yes. I I can because I I think um a couple years ago we used to kind of provide you, hey, this is what the CEC forces us to do and here's the unpublished of what we do. And we can go definitely go back to that and you can see because it really is a reflective of how we operate our system, how we optimize, and how the the grid requires us because we have to sell everything in, buy everything back and it's really how our load works. Um, that's easy to do.

[03:24:27] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: Thank you.

[03:24:28] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Are there any other questions from the council? All right. Thank you. Do we have any member of the public that would like to speak on this issue? Okay, seeing none.

[03:24:44] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: Motion to note and file.

[03:24:45] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Can you put your light on please when you want to make a motion? Thank you. Councilmember Jain.

[03:24:49] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: Motion to note and file.

[03:24:50] Councilmember Kevin Park: Second.

[03:24:51] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: We have a motion by Councilmember Jain to note and file this item, second by Councilmember Park. Please register your votes. And that passes unanimously. Thank you. All right, we're going to move on to our uh General Business, Public Hearing General Business, Item number 5. Action to re-adopt a resolution declaring an urgency in accordance with City Charter Section 1310, Contracts on Public Works to Allow for the Award of a Contract for the International Swim Center Rehabilitation Phase 1 Project without re-advertising for bids, award a public works contract for the project to International Swim Center 2026 LLC, a joint venture between Adams Pool Solution and Mark Scott Construction Inc, authorize the City Manager to negotiate and execute all documents associated with the award and approve related budget amendments. City Manager.

[03:26:09] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Sure. Thank you, Mayor uh and Council. Jōvan Grogan, City Manager. Uh, as we all know, uh due to health and safety concerns, our International Swim Center was closed in January of 2024. Shortly thereafter, the City Council uh directed staff to really do three things: immediately support our swim clubs, the thousands of uh youth that were impacted by that closure; immediately look at remediation and mitigation items to re-open the the ISC as soon as possible; as well as work on long-term solutions. Also important to note, in April of 2025, the City Council provided direction to staff for an expanded scope of work, the the adoption of an urgency ordinance to award a contract without advertising bids, and an and an interim transfer of funds. As you all know, that was before Measure I. Uh and we certainly as a city did not have the funds to fully rehabilitate the International Swim Center. At that time, the project was divided into two distinct phase phases. One, a critical phase to rehabilitate the three bodies of water uh to restore access as soon as possible. I'm happy to say uh sitting here less than seven months later with frankly a savings of approximately 11 months, um that we are that we have a fully designed ISC uh and uh a permit ready for council's action tonight. So tonight staff has prepared a presentation that will allow you to move forward with construction. Uh I will now turn over the presentation to uh Carolyn McDowell, a Senior Management Analyst with the Parks and Recreation Department to walk us through the presentation. After her presentation, uh she, our Director of Public Works, our Public uh Parks and Recreation Director and myself are available to facilitate question and answer. Thank you.

[03:27:59] Carolyn McDowell: Thank you. Thank you to all of you. Can you hear me well enough?

[03:28:02] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Yes, we can.

[03:28:04] Carolyn McDowell: Fantastic. Thank you, City Manager Grogan and good evening, Madam Mayor and Members of the Council. Thank you for having me here this evening. My name is Carolyn McDowell and I'm representing the Parks and Recreation Department as well as our friends in the Public Works Department to summarize the background of International Swim Center for the folks that might be viewing us tonight. Remind Council of the actions taken in April of 25. Share details of the schematic design and construction drawing process, including the results of our internal stakeholder meetings, input from our aquatics user groups, establishment of a joint venture, and recommend to you the award of a construction contract to the joint venture. I'm here tonight with the Parks and Recreation Department Director, Damon Sparacino, our colleagues in Public Works, representatives from LPA, Adams Pool Solution and Mark Scott Construction. Also present with us is Santa Clara's finest, not those with a shiny badge, but our aquatics community. We have members from the Dive Club, the Artistic Swimming Club, and our Swim Club. I think you all recognize this facility. It was designed in 1965, constructed in 1966, and the famed International Swim Center opened to the public on July 1st, 1967. Located within Central Park, this aquatics facility features three pools, a training pool, a racing pool, a dive well, viewing stands for approximately 3,000 spectators, changing and shower facilities, staff offices, training rooms, several support spaces, and of course a dive tower. In 2000, the facility was renamed the George F. Haines International Swim Center in honor of former coach of Santa Clara Swim Club for 23 plus years. Since 1999, yes, that's a long time ago, there have been three significant periods where Parks and Recreation Commissioners and the City Council have held discussions related with ISC. On a number of topics, everything from a ISC master plan, expansion of the existing site, potential for a new site, improvements or reconfiguration of ISC, and the potential for a Swim Hall of Fame. The 2002 economic downturn and the 2008 Great Recession really tabled any sort of discussions for funding um for improvements. Subsequently, the Parks and Recreation Department did an overall aging infrastructure um which led to the facilities condition report, which you often have been referred to as the Kitchell report. In 2018, this visual assessment determined that the majority of the ISC was in poor to critical condition with many components being deemed beyond their useful life. Unfortunately, the 2020 global pandemic discontinued discussions for improvements at that time as well. However, the city has recovered from the pandemic and reviewed the Kitchell report and hired LPA in 2023 to conduct an assessment of the facility's building, fire, and county code, including architectural, structural, mechanical, ADA compliance, and forensic engineering. Meanwhile, the aging infrastructure continues to have more and more apparent deficiencies causing increasingly frequent and longer closures. In the last full year of operation, 2023, ISC was closed for over 100 days due to a variety of operational issues. As the City Manager mentioned, due to health and city health and safety concerns, identified in LPA's assessment that led to the closure of January 2024. Since that time, the staff has worked with the aquatics community, particularly Artistic Swimming and the Swim Club, for the use of Mary Gomez and Warburton Pools. Unfortunately, the city does not have another dive well or dive tower and hasn't been able to provide an alternative to the Dive Club. In June of 2024, Council approved $1.86 million to remediate a small portion of the deficiencies identified by LPA. In July of that same year, we issued request for bids for the required improvements to replaster the two pools, the training and racing pool, and repairs to the fencing. Council awarded two contracts for that work. However, in November 2024, we had a game changer. As you know, residents of our city passed a $400 million ballot measure creating a funding mechanism to address pre-identified projects based on the city's aging infrastructure, including its pools. Of this amount, $115 million has been dedicated to Parks, Library, Senior Center and Aquatics, with $49.5 earmarked for the community aquatic facility and or ISC replacement. With ISC temporarily closed and the passage of the General Obligation Bond, it created a funding mechanism for to pursue a solution to rehabilitate the facility. It's one that is going to allow city programming to return, the community at large to return, as well as our famed swim clubs. In December of 2024, the Parks and Recreation Department began meeting monthly with the members of our aquatics community. In particular, we discussed the daily operation of Gomez and Warburton Pools. We talked about the rehabilitation of ISC, particularly at that time the replastering and the fencing um improvements. But at one point after April of this year, we started talking about expanded scope of work and the clubs' wish lists, priorities for use and rates for the structure for the city's pools, which you approved uh earlier tonight. And also dreams of returning the facility to its heyday. The training and racing pools were drained in January of this year. Seems like not too long ago and seems like a long time ago. A little bit of both. Um, at that time we were addressing the items that the county had highlighted, the pool replastering, the ADA access, and the exterior fencing. These improvements, I want to remind you, were meant to be temporary and they were going to restore the facility with a limited capacity of 200 participants. We also would be without the shower and locker room facilities that you know to be at that facility. Three weeks into the project, Adams Pool Solutions identified extensive damage to the gutter infrastructure, the plumbing, and the pool decks. These concerns, combined with the known issues with the mechanical systems and particularly the boiler system, caused staff to pause the project and can reconnect with the Council. We sent you a memo in February of this year and we also invited you to come meet with us on site to re-evaluate the situation yourselves. In April, you took a bold action. You approved the expanded scope of work for the rehabilitation of ISC. You adopted a resolution declaring an urgency in accordance with City Charter Section 1310 to allow for the contract to be awarded without advertising for bids. The award for the expanded scope of work to the existing contractor for a not to exceed amount of $10 million. That of this amount, $8.1 million was transferred for the General Fund Land Sale Reserve until the bond funds were going to be available. Always with the intent of returning those funds to that account. Since Council's action um in April, seven months ago, the Phase 1 scope project has expanded further to meet county requirements while the site is already under construction, make the site more user friendly during construction, and reduce the timeline and costs of the project as it transitions to Phase 2. For example, the demolition of the small set of bleachers on the north end of the facility adjacent to the dive well. By demoing that in Phase 1, it allows space for the new mechanical facility to run the pumps and equipments for the pools. This also, by locating it in this in that location, allows for maximum use of the length of the site for the future building. Another example, demolition of the administration building in Phase 1 will allow pool operations at a later date uh to continue without impact by the contractors. It'll also allow for equipment staging during construction and without impacting the balance of the park and limited impact to Patricia Drive. A final example to share with you tonight is upgrading all of the infrastructure. So upgrading, laying and stubbing out the site's major utilities, everything from water, sewer, electrical, gas, technology, in Phase 1 will allow us not to disrupt the newly poured concrete as we go and approach the building in Phase 2. This project expansion is estimated at about $13.5 million. And I know that's a lot of money, but it is intended to bridge Phase 1 and Phase 2 for overall efficiency and effectiveness. While this is an added cost now, it is intended to value engineer the overall project. In addition, after soil, geotechnical, civil, and structural analysis, rehabilitating the existing dive tower had more risks than potential rewards. So a new dive tower mitigates these risks, restores the Dive Club's ability to return to the site for practices and eventually meets. The renderings featured here today show, the first one on the left, the back side of the dive tower from the softball fields. The center one shows the dive tower from the middle of the facility. And then the far right slide shows a view of the dive tower from the large set of bleachers uh on the park side of the facility. Next, I'd like to share with you a full uh rendering of the site. I do want to bring attention that the full project scope is kind of um uh a view here today. I want to make sure to note that the space uh for the building on the far right is truly just a placeholder, as is that for the shade canopy and the accessory buildings. If you take a look at the site, you can see at the far north the new dive tower. You can see at the north just to the right of that where the kind of the softball um diamond is, you can see the new pool mechanical building with outdoor showers, a new pool mechanical building, a staff office, Parks Division Aquatics Storage, and a delivery driveway for some of the more um heavy and uh and dangerous items such as chlorine and acid. You'll see the rehabilitation of the three pools, the training pool, the racing pool, and the dive well. If you look closely, you will see the elevated pool deck for the training pool, excuse me, the racing pool, for deeper racing of the pool. Currently at the site we cannot dive into the pool going long course because it's not deep enough uh based on current county code. This increases the depth of the pool to not only allow for diving not only long course and short course, but also that pool now being available to Artistic Swimming for some of their younger age groups because it's now deep enough to do that. There's also a staircase in the training pool if you look at the far south point of uh the image. And that staircase has been added for ease of access for water fitness, learn to swim programs, Special Olympics, as well as senior swim. You'll see where the two trees are by the flagpoles, there's a storage area with no roof. Um so that way we have a place for lane lines and pool covers and they're not scattered amongst the pool deck. You see a new perimeter fence. You see installation, well maybe you don't see it, but it is installation of major utilities and conduit for the full site infrastructure. And this site, the way it's laid out now is fully ADA accessible throughout the pool deck, entrances, and exits. Adams Pool Solution was awarded the contract for the initial replastering of the pool. And we've worked with them in lockstep as LPA and city staff have um done schematic and construction drawings for the project. As the ISC project team um began to fully realize the full scope and the direct connection between Phase 1 and Phase 2, it became apparent that a general building contractor would be required to support the work of Adams Pool Solution. In accordance with the California Contractors State License Board, Adams Pool Solution and Mark Scott Construction formed a joint venture titled the International Swim Center 2026 LLC. The LLC has all the prerequisite licenses for the project and provided a bid to the city on December 2nd. The bid um from the LLC totaled $24.5 million. The engineer's estimate for the project was $23.5 million. Tonight, staff will recommend re-adopting the urgency resolution and proceeding with the award to the joint venture with a 15% contingency. The bid does include the estimated $13.5 million in infrastructure costs that will reduce future expenditures and accelerate Phase 2 progress. The re-adoption of the declaration of urgency reconfirms the findings set forth by the original resolution, rescinds the award, the original award to Adams Pool Solution, and reissues the award of contract to the joint venture. I know you're all anxious to know how long this is going to take. The average timeline for construction for a project of this size and scale, particularly an aquatics facility, is about 18 to 24 months. But by working closely with the joint venture over the last seven months, we're anticipating a 15 month contract uh construction duration. And it's been estimated that at that time we'll have substantial um completion, pending any unforeseen equipment acquisition, staffing, supply chain, or weather delays. If the award of a contract is approved this evening, staff will move forward with the contract execution in January. We will begin construction estimated in March of 2026 with substantial completion in summer of 2027.

Segment 6

[03:45:00] Carolyn McDowell: Thank you. Prior Council actions have provided for interim funding of 1.86 million for ISC. Following the passage of Measure I, however, an additional 8.14 million was allocated via the Land Sale Reserve with the intent of paying that back.

[03:45:24] Carolyn McDowell: In September of '25, Council approved 24.2 million in Tranche 1 for aquatics. Of this amount, 22.2 million was intended for Phase 1 construction, and 2 million was intended for Phase 2 schematic design. Based on the proposal tonight, Phase 1 is expected to cost 24.5 million.

[03:45:44] Carolyn McDowell: While not expected, this amount could rise to a not-to-exceed amount of 28.2 million, should all of the 15% contingency funds be utilized for unexpected expenses. To bridge that funding gap, we've come up with a plan where... for a funding gap, between the 22.2 million available and the potential for a 28.2 million dollar contract.

[03:46:08] Carolyn McDowell: Staff recommends appropriating 3.8 million of Mitigation Fee Act funds on an interim basis to the Community ISC Aquatic Facility project. It is anticipated that these funds would be reimbursed in the second tranche of the Measure I bonds. If all of the MFA funds are not needed, however, the funds would remain in the project.

[03:46:30] Carolyn McDowell: If approved as recommended, this leaves approximately 21.3 million dollars remaining for Phase 2 construction of ISC, as well as improvements to the City's other aquatics facilities. Tonight, the staff recommendation also includes fully repaying the General Fund Land Sale Reserve, the 8.1 million dollars that was temporarily allocated to the Parks and Recreation Department.

[03:46:58] Carolyn McDowell: Here's a photo of our other three aquatics facilities, and I mentioned previously that between our steering committee and our balance available, we will be talking more about this at a later date. However, the Parks Master Plan intended for City Council in early 2026 does detail a long-term funding strategy for the balance of the City's community aquatics facilities, including but not limited to Measure I funding.

[03:47:29] Carolyn McDowell: We're at the point of the recommendation, and Mayor, you already read it. It's very lengthy. But I'd like to remind you what our recommendation is this evening by going through it. We'd like to have... you authorize the City Manager to execute any and all documents associated with the necessary... and excuse me, with the necessary completion and acceptance of the project, including any potential change orders up to 15%, which is about 3.6 million, for a not-to-exceed amount of 28 million, 184 thousand, 536 dollars.

[03:48:08] Carolyn McDowell: We'd also like for you to consider approving the number of Fiscal Year 2025 budget adjustments, including the transfer from the Parks and Recreation Capital Fund of 8.1 million dollars to the General Fund Land Sale Reserve; establish a new Community ISC Aquatic project and appropriate 3.7 million dollars in Mitigation Fee Act funds; recognize the transfer of those... of the Parks and Recreation Capital Funds to the General Fund; and direct staff to return to Council with Phase 2 project implementation.

[03:48:43] Carolyn McDowell: With that being said, Mayor, Council, thank you for your trust and support to deliver this recommendation to you, and particularly to our broader aquatics community. Before we move forward with any questions that you may have, I'd be remiss if I didn't communicate to you the collaborative effort that it really took to get us to this point, from April until now.

[03:49:10] Carolyn McDowell: Between City staff, our stakeholders in the aquatics community, our County partners, design and construction team... I tried to put together a list of everybody that's been involved in this project from April until now. And you can see, the project was brought to you tonight by a mighty group. So, although this concludes the staff presentation, many of these people are here tonight to help with any questions that you may have. Thank you for your time. We will gather your questions and, as appropriate, staff will respond to your questions.

[03:49:38] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you, Carolyn. And I would be remiss if I didn't say thank you for your help and your collaboration with all of the aquatics groups. I've heard nothing but very good things about how well you worked with them, and we appreciate it. I don't think we'd be to this point if it wasn't for you. So thank you as well.

[03:49:59] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right. Questions only, Council. Councilmember Hardy.

[03:50:09] Councilmember Karen Hardy: I will say that this is what I wanted to see happen. I was the lone voice saying no to the 2 million because I wanted to make certain we fixed this permanently. I didn't feel like the patchwork Band-Aid approach was best, and once they got in there and saw that it wasn't going to work, I was actually relieved, because then we had also passed Measure I.

[03:50:39] Councilmember Karen Hardy: So it looks like you've brought us a hybrid of Phase 1 and Phase 2 that you think can speed this up. And I would like to just hear from staff, Carolyn, you have been wonderful, if you feel that this is keeping the spirit of Measure I and what we told our residents when we walked precincts for that. Thank you.

[03:51:05] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: Thank you. I think to go off of that, if we go back, even before I was on Council, when the initial suggestions were being made about the swim center, we were seeing proposals in the range of, you know, a hundred million dollars for this. When Measure I came up and earmarked 45 million, at first blush with the 10 million dollars it was approved in Phase 1, in the spirit of Measure I, I think because this was about the ISC repairs and swimming facilities, there was opportunity to look, like you said, at Mary Gomez, at Warburton, at those.

[03:51:55] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: There was also talk back then, when we were looking at hundred million dollar projects, that there would be fundraising from the ISC community as well. So, I think my first question really is about if we have exhausted all of this money, are we living within the spirit of Measure I? Because we have used it completely for one group, one source. I understand there's many groups, but we do not have that capacity then to look at other facilities in the city for repair.

[03:52:23] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: I know that we're at like 19 million with a budget of 21 in Phase 2, but the likelihood if we went 13 million over on Phase 1 is we will certainly go over on Phase 2, particularly when the original inceptions for this were over a hundred million dollars. So I want to understand that.

[03:52:43] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: I want to understand more about the declaration of urgency and joint ventureship here. Urgency was really built around the pool being decrepit and the speed of service, and that was a specialized need for Adams who could deal with a pool. I'm concerned right now because we've added a construction company into this that doesn't fall within that state of urgency. It does help us with a timeline, but it feels a little bit like instead of going out for bid then, we've attached somebody onto a declaration of urgency and used then the sole sourcing, perhaps out of its scope.

[03:53:28] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: So I want to understand, you know, I understand you can create a joint venture. I don't know that I feel good about doing this for the construction piece which wasn't urgency, and then saying that this doesn't go out for competitive bid. And I routinely see that we sole source justify a lot of things. So I'd like to understand if this joint venture is a way beyond that. And then, I think, so yeah, ISC funding. That'll be it for now, Carolyn. Thank you so much.

[03:54:10] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Councilmember Jain.

[03:54:20] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: Yeah, when we approved the resurfacing, we also approved this fencing. Was that ever installed and did we end up losing that investment with this new design? And then when I looked at the rendering on page 10, I of course didn't see any solar panels. And so I was wondering about whether any of this would include any sustainability features.

[03:54:52] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: And as I read through the document, I barely see any mention of sustainability and, you know, use of heat pumps or such to mitigate... pools use a tremendous amount of energy. So how we can offset that with solar panels... In the past we used, you know, solar thermal pool heating, but that's not as good as using regular solar panels and heat pumps.

[03:55:15] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: And then, you talked about the stairs going into the training or wading pool, and I know when my son was taking lessons there, it gets pretty cold for older people there. Is there any consideration to put a cover on that pool for older people? Because you talked about water aerobics and things like that. So typically those pools want to be warmer than other pools, and it's nice to have a cover on there. That's all I had. Thank you.

[03:55:35] Councilmember Raj Chahal: Thank you, Mayor. First of all, thank you for your presentation and all the hard work you put in, and not only you, all the team. And I know where we were a year back, like there was a communication breakdown and everything was sort of falling apart. But as a team, like everybody contributed, including all the stakeholders, so I appreciate that.

[03:56:03] Councilmember Raj Chahal: I know this was an urgent and imminent need to get this pool back to usable water capacity, basically. So the single source is justified to a large extent. But my question is, we got an email from South Bay Labor and the Santa Clara & San Benito County Building Construction Trades Council, from Jean Cohen and David Bini. And they wanna make sure that prevailing wages and benefits are taken care of, state certified apprenticeship utilization is there, and the skilled and trained workforce requirements along with robust compliance and payroll reporting is there.

[03:56:54] Councilmember Raj Chahal: So I wanna take assurance, although we did have a single source justification, but are we taking care of all these requests from our labor groups basically? That's my question. Thank you.

[03:57:14] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: Thank you, Madam Mayor. My first question was around the prevailing wages, just to make sure that we get that addressed and that we're implementing that. As far as the, if we were to fully implement the design as pictured there, what would be the total cost? I don't know if I saw that. Any ideas on how we can work to get there?

[03:57:44] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Councilmember Park.

[03:57:47] Councilmember Kevin Park: Yes, thank you very much. I think that when we first discussed this, we were talking about how to get water for the aquatics teams as quickly as possible. And while we were doing that, while we were doing this quick fix, we would be looking at longer term solutions. It looks like this is going to be the longer term solution because we're putting all of our money into this design. I also saw some other designs earlier, I don't remember how public those designs were, but it looks like those are all being discarded for the designs that we see here.

[03:58:39] Councilmember Kevin Park: I know that there are a number of issues that we have to resolve. We're removing the sub-water viewing area, but the pools were all connected, I believe also with the pumps, so we've got that issue that we're doing. Are we isolating the water? And again, I think the boiler, the boiler was the biggest issue. The boiler was always breaking down, and the problem was we could not get parts because it was very old.

[03:59:06] Councilmember Kevin Park: So things will be very modern. I think that if we're looking to something like this, kind of touches into Councilmember Gonzalez's question of how much will the entire design cost. I'd like to touch onto Councilmember Jain's question of, if we're going to do any of these things, I'd like to look at what the green, what the sustainable solutions would be. I would like to see actually solar panels everywhere, and use that to make the park not require additional electricity for things like electricity lighting for the tennis courts, other parts of the facility.

[03:59:49] Councilmember Kevin Park: I know that restrooms have been a constant issue at the park, and I want to know if there is a way to make some of the facilities like restrooms available, or other parts available, without making the entire facility available. And I want to make sure that the fencing, I mean, I've heard of people going into the pool area even while it was closed, and I want to make sure that those are not just we're doing what the requirements are, but we're actually doing our best to make sure that the facilities and the people that are trying to get in, or preventing people from getting in, that people are safe and the facilities are safe as well. Thank you.

[04:00:20] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. The questions I have are... in this Phase 1, how much money was allocated for the demolition of the buildings and also the deck replacement? Because I know we're at what, 24 to 28 million, but that's going to include a chunk of money that was allocated for Phase 2 that we're paying for Phase 1. So, how much of that are we funding in Phase 1?

[04:00:52] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: And what is the timeline for the demolition of the buildings? Because they're an attractive nuisance, and they have been since this whole site is an attractive nuisance right now. So when would we be demolishing the building? And then I saw that you said we would start the process for Phase 2 right away. So I assume it's all going to be done concurrently. Would the Phase 2 building be able to... would we be able to start construction on that Phase 2 building before Phase 1 is finished? So it's done concurrently? So we're not waiting, you know, until 2027 and then start the buildings. So those are my questions.

[04:01:38] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: So, would you like me to go to the public before you answer those questions or...?

[04:01:45] Carolyn McDowell: I was going to suggest something slightly different. It's been a long time since you guys have had a break. Although I have responses to many of these, I am going to recruit some of my colleagues for a couple specific items. So I would like the opportunity to just quickly confer with them, divide up a couple things and return back. But it would be great to get public questions as well so we can fold those in. Are you agreeable to that?

[04:02:10] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: So how about we... We're negotiating here. How about we go to public now and then take a break? Does that work? So then you can incorporate the public questions as well.

[04:02:21] Carolyn McDowell: Fantastic. That would be super helpful.

[04:02:24] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Councilmember Park, you have an additional question?

[04:02:26] Councilmember Kevin Park: Yeah, so I know that we had the old restrooms... the restrooms that were, well, recently abandoned were actually the old restrooms. But initially, we had a replacement, we did a fix, we built new restrooms about, I don't know, a decade ago, two decades ago, 20 years ago. And those restrooms, the new restrooms were almost immediately not usable because of pinhole leaks, because of things like that. And there was pending litigation. I actually don't know what happened with that.

[04:02:54] Councilmember Kevin Park: Like when we demolish everything, everything kind of goes away, but I'm kind of curious what the city did or what the disposition is of that... of the legal issues, because we were, you know, we were complaining about monies that we had spent on new restrooms that we were never able to use. And I feel that with this new construction, those will go away, but how are we recovering costs from the money that was previously spent?

[04:03:23] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: That might be a longer... Okay, very good. All right. Okay, I'm going to... public now. All right, we're going to start with Erica, followed by Brian. Welcome.

[04:03:58] Erica Valentine: Welcome. Good evening Mayor, City Council members. My name is Erica Valentine. I'm UA Local 393, Political and Communications Director representing San Benito and Santa Clara Counties. Representing 3,100 plumbers and pipe fitters that have built Santa Clara for over the years. Today I'm asking you to all pause on this motion and to not approve it. To me it seems that there's been a lack of experience that has not been allowed into the room.

[04:04:23] Erica Valentine: There was only one contractor that was talked to, when actually we have had our contractors, Devcon Construction and several other contractors that have built the 49ers stadium, have built the Santa Clara Square, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara University STEM nationwide building, as well as several hotels with pools as well as the apartments with pools in the area. So to me it seems that there's an opportunity that we could, are actually missing out, to make a smart investment with the contractors that have been able to provide us the work that they have done already in this area.

[04:04:55] Erica Valentine: Also, we're missing out on our local workforce, no promises to local workforce on the skilled and trained apprenticeships. We are also going to be missing out on different other groups that have not been asked to be participating in this. So today I am asking you to please reopen this up for a bid, so that it is open bid, so that you are able to have the investment that your taxpayers have been investing in you, the faith that they have provided for you. This is an iconic project that, as well as the other ones that have been built in Santa Clara, deserves the time and the respect and the investment of the community as well as the skilled and trained workforce. Thank you so much. I urge all of you to please pause and vote no.

[04:05:34] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Brian, followed by Farokh. Welcome.

[04:05:42] Brian Pors: Hi, good evening Mayor and Councilors. My name is Brian Pors and I'm a Business Agent for UA Local 393 representing over 3,100 plumbers, pipe fitters, and HVAC service techs, many of whom lived their whole lives in Santa Clara. So today, I'm here to ask you all to return to the leadership values that this community was built on, and vote no on this resolution. This pool project must be put out to bid in my opinion.

[04:06:08] Brian Pors: Our local signatory union contractors deserve a fair chance to work on this project, and our community deserves the opportunity to receive a high quality project. It is very surprising to me that the City of Santa Clara is proposing to go this route. I spent over four years as a plumbing apprentice working on all nine Santa Clara Square buildings. I am proud that I was part of such a successful and responsibly built project that carried such a great benefit to this community.

[04:06:41] Brian Pors: I spent nearly a decade toiling as a non-union plumber before going through my five-year apprenticeship. Joining the union changed my life forever and turned my job into a career. That is why I stand before you today. I can say with the utmost confidence that union workers provide a safe job site and deliver an end product that the voters, local swimmers, and our community youth can be proud of. Considering this project carries a 24 million dollar investment, I ask each one of you to be responsible by voting no, and support that this project go fairly through the bidding process. Thank you kindly for your time.

[04:07:16] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Thank you, Brian. Next we have Farokh, followed by Amanda. Welcome.

[04:07:25] Farokh Mehr: Good evening Madam Mayor and Council members. The main cause of deterioration of concrete structures within swim centers are due to chemicals and moisture penetrating in the concrete structures and corroding away the steel rebars, which in turn breaks up the concrete. Such failures in the US only are costing hundreds of billions of dollars each year, and disasters such as Surfside Condo in Florida are due to corrosion of steel rebars.

[04:07:49] Farokh Mehr: If the current design uses steel rebars, the same failure is going to show up in a few decades. The perfect solution is to use Caltrans approved cost effective non-corrosive fiberglass rebars. With over 18,000 design wins, many of them are large and small swimming pools, seawalls, besides bridges, buildings, tunnels, and across the globe. Not only the corrosion would be eliminated, but also it will lower the overall cost, speeds up construction by few months, lowers the CO2 footprint, and the structure would be sustainable and greener, and with fewer cracks and longer term maintenance costs.

[04:08:29] Farokh Mehr: So I would like to ask the Council to at least request engineering to allow value engineering utilizing fiberglass rebars as alternative to steel rebars to save taxpayers' money in both short term and long term, and complying with the state green and sustainable structures. Thank you.

[04:08:49] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Thank you, Farokh. Amanda, followed by Vikas, who I think is online. Welcome.

[04:09:04] Amanda Pease: Hi, good evening. My name is Amanda Pease, and I'm here on behalf of Santa Clara Swim Club and Santa Clara Aquatics Foundation. Our head coach Kevin Zacher sends his regards from Houston where he's with our athletes at Junior Nationals. I want to take a moment to thank Carolyn McDowell and her extraordinary work on the ISC project and for her steady, thoughtful leadership in guiding the ISC user groups. Carolyn, your dedication, your clarity, and your commitment to engaging all of us in the process have made a real difference. Also your empathy.

[04:09:32] Amanda Pease: You have helped keep this project moving forward during an incredibly challenging time, and our community feels the impact of your work every day. As a member of the Santa Clara Aquatics Foundation, I also want to share how excited and eager we are to partner with the City as we look ahead to securing funding for Phase 2, if needed. This project is not just about rebuilding the facility, it's about preserving a legacy, strengthening our aquatics community, and ensuring that future generations have a place to learn, train, and thrive. Thank you, Carolyn. Thank you, Damon. And for everything you've done to help make that future possible, and thank you to the City for your continued support and collaboration.

[04:10:14] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you, Amanda. Next we have Vikas who's online. Vikas? Hello, hello. Can you hear me?

[04:10:27] Vikas Gupta: Yes we can. Go ahead please. Excellent. Good evening Madam Mayor, Council members, staff, and members of the community. My name is Vikas Gupta. I am Vice Chair of the Parks and Rec Commission, so I am not speaking on behalf of the commission today. I am also President of the Santa Clara Aquatics Foundation. I am a swim parent and an over 27-year resident of Santa Clara. As you know, aquatics community has been through a lot and lots of ups and downs in the last few years.

[04:10:57] Vikas Gupta: Despite the challenges, our athletes have performed exceptionally well at the national and even international level. This has happened through their hard work, that of the exceptional coaches we have, and the strong support from you all and the wider community. Thank you for your recognition a couple of weeks ago of that achievement. I am delighted to speak tonight to thank City Manager Grogan, Parks and Rec staff Director Sparacino, Project Lead Carolyn McDowell, Recreation Manager Castro, and other staff members within the Parks and Rec Department and staff members across all the departments involved in moving the ISC rehabilitation project at a rapid pace.

[04:11:29] Vikas Gupta: Their hard work, creative methodology of expediting the process, and dedication is greatly appreciated. We stand committed to aiding and assisting staff in every which way to continue to move the Phase 1 work forward and urgently and earnestly embark on Phase 2 design and subsequently construction. I urge you to approve the staff recommendation. We no longer can continue to delay and cause mental suffering and financial cost to the community.

[04:11:55] Vikas Gupta: Before I finish, I want to also thank Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens and Senator Wahab, particularly for the elimination of the criminal treatment of school truancy. My spouse and I have personally received such a criminal notice for my then 10-year-old child attending an elite level swim competition instead of accommodation and commendation. I am happy to report that the same child is now at an elite public university thanks in great part to his involvement with swimming. Again, thank you so much for your support to the aquatics community and happy holidays and thank you.

[04:12:32] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you, Vikas. Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak on this? All right. We'll take a 15 minute break till 10 o'clock. Does that make sense? Is it 10 o'clock? Yeah, till 10 o'clock.

Segment 7

[04:33:49] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: I'll support the the question and answer myself, Carolyn McDowell, the community... the Parks and Rec Director, Public Works Director as well as the contractors that are here. First we'll begin with the question from Councilmember Hardy that was actually repeated by Councilmember Cox and it was in short, does the proposal for this project truly keep with the spirit of Measure I? And staff feels that it does. It is an expanded Phase 1 and we'll go back through that a little bit more. But it very much keeps with the spirit of Measure I in rehabilitating the International Swim Center. And importantly doing so in a very cost effective manner.

[04:34:28] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Part of the the questions from Council really talked about some of those original designs that I think we all know that were 80 to 100 plus million, some well over 100 million. Important to note that several of those projects were for a total rebuild, right? Scrape the entire site. And some of those were for actually rebuilding in a different location. You'll remember one was actually building in the parking lot of what the current CRC is. So one of the reasons why we're able to rebuild and bring this project before you is because it is actually frankly a rebuild of the existing... three bodies of water with a new building in Phase 2.

[04:35:13] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: And so we did work quite some time with the swim committee... swim community really to talk about frankly how the bodies of water functioned and really came to an agreement with the swim community to keep those bodies of water for... in order to have a very, very cost effective project. Also worth noting that... when we first started this, there was no Measure I, right? Measure I was was actually conceived of, put on the ballot and and approved during the process where we were looking at a very skinny project for approximately $10 million and we really we pulled from our land sale reserve and and the general fund really to potentially make that work. And so as we said earlier, this very much refunds those funds and utilizes the bond funds.

[04:35:57] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Lastly and I'm connecting to a question that was from... later to another council from another Councilmember. That 45 million, it was envisioned that we might have 5 million for other aquatic facilities. And so that's why the language in the expenditure plan doesn't just talk about the ISC, it says... and other aquatic facilities. And so approximately there will be approximately $19 million left after... Phase... after Phase 1. And so... one of the things we're going to have to do is we do believe that we can build a building and the awning for 19 million.

[04:36:35] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: However as you all know, when we get bids we'll have an engineer's estimate but you really don't know until you get bids. And so as we also heard from the Swim Club... or one representative of the Swim Clubs, they are willing to raise additional funds if needed. And I think many of you will remember that was talked about a lot when we started looking at... other designs prior. Next there was a question about the urgency ordinance and this project. And so for that I want to turn to Louise Haro, one of our Deputy City Attorneys.

[04:37:12] Deputy City Attorney Louise Haro: Good evening Mayor and Council. I've got to say this is my first time addressing Council, it's a privilege and honor to be here. To answer the question, I do believe the award of this contract is an appropriate use of our urgency declaration. As you remember, we originally or Council originally adopted this urgency declaration in April. And many of the same facts, if not all of the same facts, still exist today. And so that's why in the resolution proposed and presented to Council tonight, we re... we reiterate those same facts supporting the declaration.

[04:37:50] Deputy City Attorney Louise Haro: And to name a few of those facts... supporting facts... the aquatic groups continue to experience significant ongoing disruptions to programming schedules due to the lack of consistent space since ISC's closure. Alternate loc... alternate locations do not match what the ISC has to offer. There's increased travel time associated to and from alternate sites causing signif... significant challenges for families. Movement of equipment from site to site causes increased wear and tear and reduced repla... and reduced replacement schedule. And also notably there's significant financial strain on organization... on the Swim Club organizations due to increased pool rental costs, increase of membership dues and also other factors that increase the burden on... the burden for families.

[04:38:46] Deputy City Attorney Louise Haro: To name... to those are some of the facts constituting the... the declaration that we proposed back in April. Those same circumstances exist today. And so that's why I believe that the urgency declaration is still appropr... an appropriate use to award this public works contract. And secondarily... and really the crux for bringing this back to Council today is that the original declaration specifically named Adams Pool Solutions for... for the award of contract here because of the joint venture legally were required to reissue the award of contract.

[04:39:32] Deputy City Attorney Louise Haro: Adams Pool Solutions will still be doing a significant portion, right? And Adams Pool Solutions as you know... they received previous contracts competitively which was a significant reason why we've chosen them or the Council in the past has chosen them to complete this work. However they can't complete the full scope, there are some things that they can't complete such as the building of a mechanical building. That's why they've brought in the general contractor to complete the rest of the scope. But the substantial portion of the project will be completed by Adams Pool Solutions.

[04:40:28] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: And Louise, before you sit down, Councilmember Cox asked if the construction was a part of the urgency ordinance. Will you just clarify that point?

[04:40:45] Deputy City Attorney Louise Haro: Yes, the declaration of urgency only relates to the construction aspect of it. We're adopting or we're using the Charter City provision that relates to public works construction. And so the... the... the urgency declaration that we're adopting today solely relates to the construction element of of the project. As well as the prior one, right?

[04:41:08] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: City Manager, is this... Louise, is this just for Phase 1?

[04:41:11] Deputy City Attorney Louise Haro: Yes.

[04:41:12] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: Yeah, not Phase 2.

[04:41:13] Deputy City Attorney Louise Haro: Correct.

[04:41:15] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Right. And so Mayor, we are not envisioning using the urgency ordinance for Phase 2. That will be a standard design bid build project... yes. So we'll... we'll come back to that.

[04:41:28] Assistant City Attorney Sue Reuter: Tying in... just to complete what... tying into what Louise was saying, what you will hear a little further down the line of speakers is that because it is a pre... a public work, there are a number of public works related provisions that we will follow despite the fact that it's done through urgency. So the prevailing wage... and the the...

[04:42:00] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: Did you say... can you speak in your microphone too? Sorry.

[04:42:03] Assistant City Attorney Sue Reuter: Oh so sorry. So prevailing wage for example is something that we would include as a result of it being a part... a public work despite the urgency piece.

[04:42:15] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: Thank you.

[04:42:17] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: And because we talked about that, why don't we jump to that question and I want to ask Terry from Adams Pool to come up and just talk about labor compliance and important to note that the project will be done with prevailing wage as well.

[04:42:37] Terry: Good evening. We currently do a lot of city projects. For a number of cities we comply with all the prevailing wage, we comply with the unions, we join their apprenticeship programs, we sign up with the unions. We notify them the 72 hours before a certain phase of construction. There is no union out there that that is just for swimming pool contractors. So as our different phases, we do comply with all the local unions and the city's prevailing wage thing on all of our projects.

[04:43:19] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Thank you. Next there was a question from Councilmember Jain that referenced the prior approval that included fencing. And so I'll turn that over to Carolyn.

[04:43:44] Carolyn McDowell: I promised you we had a lot of people involved with the project, so we're involving all of them tonight. Related with the fencing, Councilmember Jain, we had two different issues at hand. One issue was we were not current in our compliance with the County as it relates to the codes for fencing. A couple of different specifics for you were the gaps in the gate and the amount of space that is allowed between the cyclone and the the post of the gate. The the depth from the ground to the gate. And then in some cases the actual size of the cyclone. In some cases it actually needs to be down to one inch versus the two inch square.

[04:44:30] Carolyn McDowell: So we were required because we still had water in the dive well to make those corrections despite be having a closed facility. Not only to remain in compliance with the County, but obviously for our own health and safety risks and to mitigate those as an organization. So we did make those improvements and they did get signed off. However I do want to point out as part of the cost for this facility, it will have new fencing in its entirety. So... as you will see in the rendering above, we will replace really the band-aid fencing that we put together with a new fencing to complement the new facility.

[04:44:58] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Next there was a question from Councilmember Jain about sustainability, really referencing not seeing solar panels and a question about heat pumps. So I want to call up LPA for that response just to talk about the design of the equipment.

[04:45:18] Dennis Berkshire: Hello. Good evening. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm Dennis Berkshire with Aquatic Design Group, the aquatics consultant to LPA on the project. And again it's it's a pleasure to be here in front of this team, Mayor and City Council. In terms of the the energy and green design for this, this is very much at the forefront of our design and our approach. To begin with your existing facility had pools that were co-mingled. Specifically the 50 meter pool and the training pool were treated as one. That meant that the training pool had to be at the same temperature as the 50 meter pool, competitive pool that wants to be cooler.

[04:46:04] Dennis Berkshire: Second thing is that both... all three of these pools were currently filtered with what's called a diatomaceous earth vacuum DE filter that requires it to run 24 hours a day at 100% flow. So by going to a new system that allows us to isolate the pools, we go to a premium efficiency high rate sand filter, we're able to reduce the electrical draw for the pumps by over 25%. In terms of the heating system, California Title 24 Energy Code says that pool heaters have to be a minimum 78% thermal efficient. We're currently calling for condensing heaters, albeit gas heaters, that are 97% thermal efficient.

[04:47:02] Dennis Berkshire: The challenge that we have with heat pumps is that heat pumps require a lot of space and heat pumps are very efficient with warm, humid air. And when we have cold, dry evenings here in Santa Clara, they're very inefficient. And until we can get a large array of solar panels with rooftops, of which we don't have buildings to support, we can't really support that. So that's something that's being looked at for Phase 2 to be able to go to heat pumps and to go into that type of a heating system. Thank you.

[04:47:45] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Okay. The next question was also I believe from Councilmember Jain with regard to a potential covering for the training pool noting prior experiences where it was cold. So important to note the training pool does not have a awning or cover over it because this is a facility that is used for events and so to maintain that viewability. We do have pool covers that will cover the pool at night to help maintain that temperature. And staff also noted that really historically our pool at the Senior Center because it does have a natatorium has really been used as that warm water pool for our senior community.

[04:48:26] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: The next question was with regard to prevailing wage and the trades and so we we answered that question. Councilmember Park asked a question about... or had a statement about it looks like we're looking at the longer term solutions. Absolutely. And so important just to note the trajectory of of really how we got here again. Back when the pool was closed in January of '24, we immediately begun looking at short term solutions. For various reasons we we we realized that that was not a viable option. We then pivoted in April 2025 to a roughly $10 million project that was still a interim solution but the important part of that project is... when we did the initial study of the ISC, we did not do what was called destructive testing, right? Because the the pool was full.

[04:49:27] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: And so a part of that approval that you provided in April... or I'm sorry, actually prior in '24, we were able to drain the three bodies of water. That revealed that the structure was sound, albeit having corrosion of the rebar. And so that really tipped us into, you know what, the core structure is sound, let's look at a more permanent solution and then frankly Measure I was passed and that changed the entire ballgame to where we began looking at this as a full-time permanent solution, a two-phase project with the urgency ordinance and then partnered with the swimming communities in sort of a a very expedited but a a assessment of is the core structure and size of these three bodies of water sufficient for future operations? And that was a yes, but with a minor modification. And that's why you see the the deck of the pool raised so it will meet current standards. And so it's a minor modification but it's frankly keeping the the structure that we have had and that has worked well.

[04:50:30] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Councilmember Park also mentioned a question regarding other designs that were that were looked at and why those were not brought into what's before you. And so... restating a little bit of what I said earlier, those designs were for brand new facilities either on this site or elsewhere in the city or in Central Park. And so once we really centered on a redo of the existing structure, that's why we're we're with this model. And also Councilmember Gonzalez and and a few other Councilmembers including Park asked a question about are we separating the bodies of water? Absolutely with this project each three bodies of water will have separate equipment and new equipment attached to them.

[04:51:09] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: There was again another question about solar panels. I think we've answered that. We will look toward Phase 2 for the inclusion of solar panels. Really the only structure that is being built in Phase 1 is the dive tower which doesn't have room for solar panels and the very small equipment room. And so Phase 2 will include the larger building as well as the awning over the grandstands and so we will look to both of those facilities for incorporation of solar panels. There was also a question about lighting and restrooms and I'll turn that to Carolyn.

[04:51:47] Carolyn McDowell: Thank you. Um, we do have, obviously at this point, two restrooms. They're not really easily seen on this photograph, but if you look in the bottom left it shows one of the restroom facilities that is there now that is ability to be accessed by the park. There's a similar one on the opposite side that just isn't shown with the shade canopy there. So those... staff has the ability to open those for use during the day and then locks those up at night. The way the gate structure is there is it could have access to just the restrooms or you can open up a secondary gate and have access to the entire facility. So most of the time that secondary gate is locked and it's just accessible for park users from from that standpoint. So we are using those in our lavatory count for the interim facility and as we move forward with Phase 2 design we'll look at some minor ratifications to those as well.

[04:52:51] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: And lighting.

[04:52:53] Carolyn McDowell: Lighting. Right now we do have lighting on the site. It's much different than what we will have moving forward. The lights currently are attached to the building which will be gone. And then to the shade structure that will be gone. So the new sports lighting that you can see on the pool deck is meant to become the future lighting for the site. And if we choose to add lighting through the shade canopy or through the facility moving forward once we're building and designing... designing and building Phase 2, if there's a need to do that we can do that. But you can see why we've incorporated sports lighting because the two locations where lighting is accessible now will be going away very soon.

[04:53:39] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Okay. Carolyn, if you'll stay up. The next questions were from Mayor Gillmor and it was regarding the cost for the decking and demolition and really the cost of what was originally Phase 1 and then the expanded Phase 1. Could you talk a little bit more about that in the the cost differential for those items that were added as shown in slide 8?

[04:54:04] Carolyn McDowell: Correct. Thank you very much. So the slide that we are trying to show here... and I provided a few examples during the presentation... is intended to show all of the expanded scope of work as well as improvements that will take place in Phase 1 that will be a cost and time savings in Phase 2. We separated them out so you can kind of see the the benefits of each, but in totality this is what comes to the $13.5 million that we reference in the report. So... there was a comment made that the project was over. It's really that we are transferring some of the costs from Phase 2 to Phase 1 to really... I don't want to use the word foundation because we're not pouring a foundation, but as foundational to where we will be headed in Phase 2.

[04:54:58] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Totally. And getting at the next question, part of the reason for adding some of those items to Phase 1 is frankly cost. We know doing things sooner rather than later is less costly. And so another question from the Mayor was really will we begin constructing Phase 2 simultaneously with all the work we're talking about? The unfortunate answer to that is no. And the reason for that is through the urgency ordinance we were really able to shorten the time to do this work. We're aiming to do all of this including the design in just over two years. We have said that we are not planning on doing an urgency ordinance for Phase 2. That will be your typical design-bid-build process that we know from tons of city experience is typically a 3.5 to 4 year project. And so with your approval tonight, we will begin finalizing plans for construction of Phase 1 and then we will start Phase 2 that may be a up to a 3.5 to 4 year project.

[04:55:57] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Caveat, we of course just like we did will move as fast as we can. We've assembled a team across multiple departments to really make this priority number one which is what Council said in in 2023. In addition, there is an active Charter Review project going on right now. One of the things that is being looked at for that project is a potential design-build amendment to the Charter. That if adopted by by Council and put on the ballot would certainly speed up Phase 2. But if we do a normal design bid build process, you know, you're always looking at roughly a year to a year and a half for all of your design and permitting process. Then you have to go out to bid potentially a a six month process and then you have to construct. And so that's why you have that elongated time and and you know we we all know that from experience where you know a project is conceived of and you know it's more than one election cycle before it comes to fruition and that's because we do the design bid build process and we do not have a design build option now in our Charter.

[04:57:02] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: So through the urgency ordinance we're able to do this sooner, but Phase 2 if it is design bid build, we are looking at that normal process. Lastly, questions from Councilmember Park around... old restrooms... Councilmember Park I believe your question, you said restrooms but you were talking about the shower facilities in the current building that we often refer to as the new shower facilities. The reality is those are 10 year old shower facilities that really never worked. And so the history behind that construction project and issues there... unfortunately staff sitting here tonight do not have that history but all options to pursue claims or issues with regard to that construction... and I think the swim community knows better than most of us here. We still call those the new showers but the new showers never worked and and that was several several years ago that that project was done. And so unfortunately I don't have that history for you but but certainly when the building is demolished that will move forward into a new chapter. And lastly... there was a comment about fiberglass rebar and I want to turn back to Rodney from LPA just to talk a little bit about that.

[04:57:57] Rodrigo Gargazi: Thank you. Hi folks, how are you? My name is Rodrigo Garcasi, I'm your architect of record for this project. So while that kind of rebar has its place in some industrial applications, in our project it's very much not required or warranted. Really when it comes to... that kind of rebar has a different structural capacity to standard rebar. And when it comes to meeting building codes, but very specifically seismic codes, you know we are building a dive tower and a new building to house all the pool equipment. And so that's why really when it comes to those kinds of applications for seismic and seismic design, that kind of rebar is very much not... not recommended. However at the heart of the question really is about the maintenance and maintenance of concrete. So what's important here is that in our project we do have a concrete mix design that has a integral waterproofing chemical. So what that means is that really straight from the concrete mixing plant, this concrete is already waterproof. It basically has the ability to to seal all these microscopic pores into the concrete and thus really increasing its longevity and its maintenance. Thank you so much.

[04:59:11] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Thank you. That is the Q&A. Back to you Mayor.

[04:59:18] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right, thank you. I have Council comments now. Councilmember Hardy.

[04:59:22] Councilmember Karen Hardy: Thank you. This came to me while we were listening to a lot of the questions and comments. If I understand correctly, the tiling company, the original one, Adams Pool Solutions was chosen through a bid process. I wanted just to have confirmation for that. If we wanted to go out for bid on Phase 1, what would that add to the timeframe because right now we want... we're looking at 15 months and I'm nearly positive it would add quite a bit of time. I would like just a guess at that. And then Phase 2 will go out to bid. I understand we're hoping to have the possibility or the option of doing a design-build instead of a design... design... no, the the bid... yeah, the other... the process that we have now that's much slower. So I just want to make certain that our residents understand what's before us. Thank you.

[05:00:35] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Councilmember Jain.

[05:00:37] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: I also wanted to know how much time a bidding process would take. But I also wanted to ask Terry what he meant by 'they will comply with all local unions'. I wanted to understand where the workforce is coming from. Is it all union workforce and will there be apprenticeships involved? Because you did mention that. And then finally, are we at 100% design? In which case it should be relatively easy to bid out, say the mechanical room... if we're at 100% design because usually with design bid build you have 100% design then you bid it out. So if we're at 100%, might be relatively easy to bid that out.

[05:01:31] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Vice Mayor Cox.

[05:01:33] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: So I think we're all kind of asking the same questions here. I don't feel like I understood fully the process of the addition of the joint venture. I don't know that in the documents it was really shown what the split of that work would be. So looking at the April 8th approved expanded project scope... again it really was about pool decking, circulation systems, plumbing, boilers, perimeter gutters, refurbishing the dive tower. And now we've got $13 million of additional work put into that and at some point along the way the plan changed enough that we needed a building contractor too.

[05:02:14] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: So again, I understand the urgency here and we did the declaration of urgency as kind of a barebones measure, get the swimmers back in the pool as fast as we can, this is what we can do to open the pools and then Phase 2 was going to include everything else that required contracts, biddings. So I I still am not following at what point it changed enough that we added and I don't believe the City did it if I'm understanding, I believe that Adams selected the the group themselves, brought in another contractor, did a joint venture now. And so we have bypassed again I would say a process that would have said competitively the additional stuff that was going to be in Phase 2 has now for the sake of time, whatever it is, and I don't want to delay this either. I just if you guys can make that understandable, I don't think that we're going to ask questions anymore about why aren't we going out for bid.

[05:03:10] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Councilmember Gonzalez. They're all questions so far so we're going to get all the questions.

[05:03:16] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: My question is fairly similar to the Vice Mayor as far as... and also Councilmember Jain as far as what does it mean to be working with labor. I think that you know one of the things that that here in Santa Clara I think we pride ourselves on having is much local folks participating in in the work and doing the work and typically if you're not a in a labor union you're not going to be covered as well. So I think my my question is basically in line with with the other folks. And really a comment that one of the questions I usually ask in my previous stint as School Board was have we talked to our associations, our labor unions to see what they think about whatever policy or things that we're bringing forward and I guess we didn't do that in this case and maybe things changed as far as the scope as Vice Mayor Cox mentioned. So maybe if we can address those questions and see how we can move forward and it just seems that since we we've already have the design that if we did go out to bid again I don't... doesn't appear that there's going to be a large delay, obviously whether it's weeks or maybe a month and a half or so but I don't see it being much longer than that.

[05:04:30] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Well listening that a design takes three and a half to four years... City Manager please. Yeah.

[05:04:36] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Sure. A number of questions and we can answer all. I think straightforwardly, is the design 100%? Yes. Can we go out to bid? Yes. It is not a simple and straightforward process to do a public RFP bid on this. It takes about 6 months. Sometimes a little less, sometimes longer. So if there is a desire to go out to bid, we're adding potentially 6 plus months to the effort. Next there were questions around complying with local trades and prevailing wage. And so I'll ask Terry to come back and address that and then we'll address the joint venture and talk a little bit more about the stair-step process of how we got here today.

[05:05:31] Terry: Okay. On public works projects we have a group of girls in the office that comply with all the local unions, Laborers Union, Masons Union, all the different unions. We sign up with them, we comply with their apprenticeship program, we bring apprentices out, we get local trades in the area to help. And we currently do... we currently have 7 public works projects right now that we are doing the same thing on. We contact the local unions in the area, most of our stuff is Laborers Union because that's what a lot of it is, but we also use the Plumbing Union, we use the Masons Unions and use their apprenticeship program and also their journeymen on some projects. But we do comply with all the laborers and the prevailing wage... city prevailing wage requirements.

[05:06:33] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Okay. Now to take a step back and talk a little bit more about the stair-step process. I'm going to turn it over to Carolyn to go through that. But it's important to talk through... why don't we say April 2025... right... before Measure I, when Council authorized a project to... once we knew that there was corrosion of the rebar, the decks needed to be replaced but the pool structures were sound. We estimated that at roughly a $10 million project and brought forward an urgency ordinance to the City Council. There were a number of things that that that happened after that to get us here today. We've talked about a lot inclusion of other items. Included in that ur... that item was a potential rehab of the dive tower. Once we got into it, we realized the dive tower could not be rehabilitated or rebuilt. That was 2.5 million of the number that's in that that's in front of you, right?

[05:07:36] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Also important to note, one of the things that we did to accomplish the City Council and the community's mission was we attempted to move at the speed of business. Which frankly meant that we needed to design while we were investigating, right? And so when we expanded the project it was important to say okay, you know, let's use the dive tower. We don't know if the dive tower can be rehabilitated or rebuilt so let's do testing as we have our designers go out. They in short order realized that it was not salvageable and so we immediately flipped with LPA and said give us designs for a total rebuild. Right, same thing with the pool deck, right? We did not envision raising the pool deck of that of the main pool for... I think it's almost an additional foot to to allow diving in. But that happened, that that added in cost, right? And then again accomplishing the Council's vision of the full rebuild, it was realized that if we're going to redo all the plumbing and the piping, we can pour concrete for the entire deck. That will help out Phase... Phase 2. Also there was a request stemming from a number of Council comments to look at demolition of the building due to the vandalism that we were seeing and so that was that was added in. But I'll stop because I know Carolyn and Damon really lived this component of the project from April to to now.

[05:09:49] Carolyn McDowell: And I think we're going to tag team this but one question that I don't want to get lost in the process tonight. Councilmember Hardy, you asked about Adams and whether it was a competitive process to begin. So I want to let you know that we have replastered two pools in recent years, Gomez in 2019 where there was a competitive bid and Adams Pool Solutions was the ultimate contractor. Similarly in 2023 we had a competitive bid for the Senior Center pool replastering. They won that bid as well. They won the bid for ISC. You know we started that process and then we stopped so obviously they were paid for the work that they did but they didn't complete that project. But for the last three competitive bid processes Adams Pool Solution was the winner.

[05:10:35] Damon: Jovan did a great job or City Manager Grogan explaining some of the things that we realized as we got through design... The other thing is at any point had we stopped and went out on competitive bid, it would have added 6 months to the entire project. Whether it was at the moment that we realized Adams needed to do a joint venture which to Adams' credit and to the luck of the city they were willing to do it and look into it. So that also saved 6 months on the project. So at every step of this this as we were learning as we were going as we were building this project, we were looking at opportunities to save time and to get the residents back in the water. And that was that was a real decision point on all of these issues. The infrastructures that were being built, the dive tower, you know a lot of the things were touched on. So making sure that we were ready to go on Phase 2. And again, always keeping an eye on trying to save the time of the 6 month bid process. We did this entire design... Adams and Scott did the joint venture. All of this happened in roughly the same amount of time that a normal bid process would take place. So. Yeah.

[05:12:17] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: And to expound upon that, your normal design bid process is about a 12 to 15 month process, right? We're sitting here 7 months after your April 2025 approval and so that's the time we were able to save by doing it this way. Okay. Mayor back to you.

[05:12:34] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Okay. Any other comments? Questions? Closing statements?

[05:12:44] Councilmember Kevin Park: So I hear the statement about and that was my concern, that when we demolish everything, all the past work and all the past mistakes will also be cleaned up. But at some point we must have a name of the contractor that made the new showers that were never used. And at some point I would think that the city if it were pursuing litigation would have records of of who the contractor... of who the the the people were. And at some point I would think that we would have names or we would have something that we would go to them like at you know, how do we know that we're not using these people again? Like how do we know that we're not you know there's there's all these different things. And whether we cover everything up with new construction, I I would like to to know personally what the who the people were or who the who the the entities were.

[05:13:36] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Sure. So an answer to that, our lovely City Attorney's office has been doing research and just found the answer to your question.

[05:13:49] Assistant City Attorney Sue Reuter: So in 2018 it was determined by city staff that there were issues in the showers. There was initial claims submitted to various insurance carriers both for the city as well as for the contractor who did the work. And there was testing that occurred in 2018. And finally a claim response from the from the carriers which was not in our favor. That's when the negotiation with the various carriers began. And ultimately it resulted in a Council approved insurance claim settlement that was that was entered into in March of 2020. And so I can get you the names of the parties, I don't have those at my fingertips I just have the...

Segment 8

[05:15:00] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: insurance information... um but that that uh insurance claim relating to the dry rot and mold in the showers due to the pin the pinholes um that was a Council approved insurance claim settlement. So there wasn't any further litigation beyond that insurance the insurance claim.

[05:15:23] City Attorney Glen Googins: Understood and that money was was used some place it went some place and would not be used for this this purpose.

[05:15:29] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: that I I don't know I don't know what the Thank you.

[05:15:34] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Councilmember Hardy?

[05:15:35] Councilmember Karen Hardy: Yes I'm really I'm ready to make a motion for uh staff's recommendation I don't know if you want me to read the whole thing but I have been convinced that this is going to be our best way to get our ISC open to take care of the basic pool realities that we have and that we have done our due diligence and I appreciate staff willing to answer all these tough questions so I'll make a motion for staff's recommendation.

[05:16:12] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Is there a second?

[05:16:14] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: I'll second that.

[05:16:19] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Motion and a second for staff recommendation. Uh City Manager your light's still on do you have comments?

[05:16:25] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Um no.

[05:16:26] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Council comments? Anybody? Vice Mayor Cox.

[05:16:33] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: Yeah I um I just want to go on record I absolutely love the swim center I want to support this. What I'm having a problem with is our process in this um we did not go out to bid the first time for Adams uh not on April 8th we did not. Um correct me if I'm wrong it says in our ordinance right here we did not.

[05:16:55] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Could you just clarify that because I heard something different.

[05:17:00] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Yeah. For the for the uh initial uh replastering we we did have a competitive process.

[05:17:03] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: April 8th 2025 though when this new phase was say it says right here we took action to approve urgency to allow the award of a contract without advertising for bids.

[05:17:14] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Yes that that's through the urgency ordinance um authorized um um not going out for bids again.

[05:17:20] Craig Larsen: Yeah I think we were just trying to demonstrate that Adams had previously been awarded yeah for for previous projects and they won competitive bidding processes including the rehabilitation project but not and then that was part of the Council right um action in April.

[05:17:41] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: So again I I will not support this motion not because I don't want the swim center open and I'm sure we're going to have votes for this but I do not feel like this process for bidding makes sense to me. I'm not saying it's not ethical but to tack on 13 million dollars more work on a 10 million dollar project that now includes building scopes and other thing without doing a competitive bid is a bad look for our city. So.

[05:18:09] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right thank you. Councilmember Park.

[05:18:11] Councilmember Kevin Park: Yeah so what I'm hearing is that um the companies involved with the joint venture will actually go out to the local unions for the work. I mean I want to be very clear that this this is the case. Uh I'm I'm hearing seeing a lot of nodding I'm hearing yes.

[05:18:29] Councilmember Kevin Park: Uh I want to and again it sounds like we did have competitive bids which Adams Pool did did win. The reason that they brought on construction is because I mean they're a pool company and there were things such as the the boiler rooms there was construction that had to be done that was not going to be done by Adams Pool.

[05:18:54] Councilmember Kevin Park: Um I also have concerns about not going out to bid I understand the the urgency and wanting to get the pools up and going as as quickly as possible. Um trying to save time by doing things doing testing while we're doing our research and doing design while we're looking at um what what the problems are and I just want to be absolutely sure that uh well first of all this is for Phase 1 only Phase 2 we will go to the standard process and there will be out to bid and we will get all of the the uh local unions um involved in the process but I just want to be very clear that for Phase 1 um the local unions will not be precluded that we will actually reach reach out to them and I'm hearing yes uh and for Phase 2 they will definitely be part of the process in a in an open bid process because that will be the the full process.

[05:19:49] Councilmember Kevin Park: So I also have concerns that we didn't go through you know the standard process by I understand the urgency in time and if again if people can just state for the public that they will go to union we will look for union work we will look for local we will pay prevailing wage which I think have been stated um I think that would make it much easier for for everyone.

[05:20:17] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Uh I mean you yeah I'm he's already said that so I'm I'm thank you. Um are you finished?

[05:20:25] Councilmember Kevin Park: I'm done.

[05:20:26] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Councilmember Jain please.

[05:20:30] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: I'm assuming that um Gomez in the senior center when those were put out to bid that Adams came within a reasonable amount of that bid there was not a huge cost overrun and that when we were going out to bid for just the replastering that was actually a bidding process that Adams won it was only the urgency to do the the bigger project the bigger scope that was not bid out but the actual replastering was a bidding process that Adams won.

[05:21:10] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: The other thing that um is appealing to me is that we had an internal cost estimate and that the um bid from Adams is within 4 percent of that internal cost estimate so that gives me some comfort that we're not just throwing money away. Um so I will be supporting this. Thank you.

[05:21:37] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Councilmember Gonzalez.

[05:21:39] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: Turn on your microph- there you go. Thank you. Um I also have concerns but um it it seems like we have uh our our uh construction folks who are saying that they're going to be making sure that they uh reach out and and uh you know work with our labor unions local labor unions as local as possible to to get this work done.

[05:22:07] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: Um we need to um open this pool as soon as possible and I think that the urgency that uh that the Council has had is something that we've seen staff kind of run. Maybe th- this led to uh this process that we have today and um in in the future I think you know we maybe we have just we have to be clear as far as hopefully uh making sure that we do the the design bid and build to make sure that we uh address the different concerns that we may have. Um but definitely I think um staff probably did what we wanted them to do and try to get this done as soon as possible so thank you for for that. Um.

[05:22:49] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Councilmember Chahal.

[05:22:51] Councilmember Raj Chahal: Thank you Mayor. So ideally I agree with the some of my colleagues that this should have been gone to the bid but given the circumstances where we were like I know we have been playing around this thing for more than a almost a year given take when we closed the pool in January and this Council chamber was full of residents and the stakeholders requesting that pool should be opened ASAP. And uh one of the reason for us to make a decision over here is to listen to our residents listen to our stakeholders.

[05:23:29] Councilmember Raj Chahal: And as I said ideally I would love to get get the all these all the contracts go to the bidding process ideally but given the circumstances where we were and given the time crunch we had and given the urgency of getting the pool back to working condition for our stakeholders and now that we have a legal opinion about urgency ordinance all those factors tell me that yes this was not an normal condition and we have to work on something so that we can get this thing rolling as fast as possible.

[05:24:08] Councilmember Raj Chahal: And this applies to at our house also if a pipe breaks down we don't we are not going to find out a cheapest contractor to fix that we first our job will be how soon my house heater or my house furnace or my house air conditioner can be fixed ASAP basically. And I think I'm correlating that thing to this situation also in a bigger concept basically.

[05:24:38] Councilmember Raj Chahal: So uh and we had some concerns about the prevailing wages and the labor laws to be followed and the um contractors have already assured us that they will be following all the prevailing wages conditions uh so I feel comfortable um moving ahead with this um motion basically. Thank you.

[05:25:08] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Councilmember Gonzalez are your light is on again?

[05:25:10] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: Yeah just a quick comment. Uh if we had a PLA agreement in place would this have eased made things sooner faster or not? I don't know if that's a something that we can address today or just let us know in the future but would that have helped uh speed up the process?

[05:25:25] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Would not have sped up the process.

[05:25:31] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right. Um I'm going to go ahead I'm going to support the motion and I'll tell you why. Um the closing of the International Swim Center has been devastating to our community and we have since January of 24 when it was closed all of our swim programs have had to scramble to try to find new locations at an not only a a massive expense to the groups but devastating to the to the children that have had to travel after school and travel all around the Bay Area um as opposed to being here in Santa Clara.

[05:26:04] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: But it's not only just the the competitive swim programs and dive programs and and artistic swimming but we've had such a loss for our seniors who use the pool regularly um for our learn to swim programs. So when you look at it this the pool will be closed like over three years. Think of all the kids that have learned to swim. I learned to swim there hundred years ago. But what I'm saying is that our special needs programs that that are swimming there. It's it's it's part of the heart and soul of our community and when I ran the Measure I bond campaign and knocked on I don't know how many doors I was actually surprised that the first thing most of the people would say to me is does this include rebuilding the swim center? And I I said yes we're going to do it right away.

[05:27:14] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: So um I know that the swim clubs and all the the swimmers in the city have been very patient with us. I am I am you know always dead set on competitive bidding there's no no doubt in my mind but in this case for the water only I am okay with this because we have tried to do everything we can on this City Council to try to get that pool up and running as soon as we can. And I know the extra work is the the deck and demolishing those buildings and I know that on Phase 2 we are going to be going through our regular process which we all feel more comfortable with but the fact that the contractor is saying yes they're going to follow our public works um criteria and protocol by using union labor and I think you've heard us loud and clear we want you to use our local union labor with our local people um paying prevailing wage and that you're going to follow all again all our public works um criteria because you've worked with us in the past.

[05:28:26] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Uh I think that it's it's time for us to move this ahead. I didn't like what I heard about Phase 2 taking three and a half to four years. I mean come on people build things really fast other cities seem to put up buildings City Manager I think you've got to you know improve on that because that is a long time for a for a smaller in square foot building like we can ask some contractors how long it would take em I think that is enormously too long. Uh because I want to get that going as well but I think we need to get this water um built as soon as possible and I'm really um pleased with our all of our staff. It took a village literally took a village to put this together and I know you're always looking out for the most part of our best interests in the community so I um I'm going to support this motion. I think it makes it makes total sense for us. So City Clerk we have a motion by Councilmember Hardy for staff recommendation and a second by Councilmember Jain. Please register vote.

[05:29:43] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: And that passes 6 to 1. Thank you so much and thank you for ev- Oh before we go City Manager do you have something to say?

[05:29:52] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: I do Mayor uh and thank you. You know I'd be remiss if I didn't take a moment I know we've been here a long time for this item but really just to congratulate uh Carolyn. Um this week unfortunately is Carolyn's last week as a City of Santa Clara employee. Um she has accepted a position to be the Assistant um Director of of uh Community Services for Cupertino.

[05:30:27] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Um when we started this project and when we we we needed someone to really lead this effort Carolyn was a Management Analyst in the Police Department. Uh and one of the great things about uh being a City Manager is supporting people uh and putting people in positions where they can truly shine. And so I had a conversation with Carolyn and she said hey I'm I'm I'm a Santa Clara resident I'm I'm here to serve the city and you may not know this but I used to work in aquatics and I'd love to get back into aquatics and so we created this role for Carolyn to lead this project and and frankly we're here because of her diligence and care and support and love for the community. So Carolyn um thank you.

[05:31:13] Craig Larsen: I just want to also Yeah I know vote no on that and just and thank you for indulging us for a couple of minutes uh Madam Mayor and Council and congratulating Carolyn on um her new opportunity with Cupertino and we just wanted to take a moment also and um recognize her for the long time she's been here most of which was in PD but the little bit of time that I got to work with her um we saw tonight how befitting to go out on one of the largest projects in Parks and Recreation history that she had an imprint an impact on. So I want to thank her on behalf of the entire Parks and Recreation Department and on behalf of the city.

[05:32:02] Craig Larsen: And we have this is this is a little sentimental we have a a blanket and it is a picnic blanket so then whenever Carolyn is picnicking in our parks for which she lives in the city she can be reminded of us and then if ever she needs the warm side she can wrap it in herself in it as a blanket and be wrapped with the love that she gave to us and we return to her. So thank you very much Carolyn.

[05:32:32] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Aw you're gonna make her cry. Thank you. Aww. Wahid?

[05:32:41] Assistant Police Chief Wahid Kazem: And of course she only did this for about 5-6 months of her career because the previous 12 years was spent at the Police Department. Carolyn thank you for all that you did for the Police Department for pouring your heart and soul into our mission every day. Uh I know you're a much different person after you spent all that time in PD you were Carolyn before PD and now Carolyn after PD. But uh we are definitely going to miss you having you in the city available to us but really proud of you and happy for you for your new opportunities.

[05:33:32] Assistant Police Chief Wahid Kazem: And like we do with all our employees that leave uh in a good place we honor them with a flag that was flown above the Police Department and encased uh inscription that has Carolyn's dates of service on here. And in addition to that uh on behalf of Police Chief Pat Nikolai who couldn't be here tonight he also spent uh sent a special uh coin uh that I'm gonna hand you as well. So thank you.

[05:33:53] Carolyn McDowell: I have 48 hours left I'm talking. So indulge me for a second. I know I have my three minutes Nora start the clock. Um I've spent 24 years here. Um so tonight's bittersweet. Um I'm a third generation Santa Claran. Um this place means a lot to me. Um I've spent equal amount of time in the Parks and Recreation department as I have in the Police Department departing for a bit and coming back.

[05:34:27] Carolyn McDowell: Um but what I want to say is this kid started off as an 18-year-old head cashier at ISC. Um so to come full circle and to be your capital projects manager and to take this project to the point where it's at and trust me I have told all these gentlemens ISC is part of my walk every morning. So Terry's going to see me and I know the code to the gate so you better not change it. Um but I'll be following the project as we move along.

[05:34:58] Carolyn McDowell: Um but I've created some great memories here I've been given some amazing opportunities but most importantly I've had the opportunity to meet some amazing people and they have really shaped my career starting from Earl Carmichael to Larry Wolf, Rick Hutchinson, Jerry Scott and then our current team who are all present here today in in support of um you know this career opportunity. So this means a lot to me. Thank you very much and um I'll be in touch.

[05:35:28] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Okay. Oh it's only 11 o'clock we're moving on. At least you were heard before midnight. Lucky you. All right. I'll wait a minute well people are leaving. Thank you everyone. So next.

[05:36:13] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right next we have action on introduction of a specialized event zone ordinance regulating and prohibiting certain activities within a protected area in connection with the 2026 major events at Levi Stadium. City Manager.

[05:36:28] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Sure. Thank you Mayor. Um the next item um is Item 6 regarding the introduction of a special event zone uh this ordinance reflects the City Council's feedback from November and includes several refinements aimed at improving clarity and reducing impacts on residents and businesses. I'll turn the presentation over to Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz who will walk us through the updated ordinance.

[05:36:50] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: Good evening um I know you have a few more items this tonight so let's get through this one. Um so as Jovan mentioned um what I'm will be doing is walking through the refinements that we have made since the November meeting. Um we've narrowed the ordinance to reflect the guidance that you have provided us. I do want to thank Chief Morgan and his team um our Community Development Director Afshan Hamid and our Assistant City Attorney Jennifer Byers who have been instrumental in helping us craft this updated ordinance.

[05:37:22] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: Since the November 18th meeting we have taken Council's feedback to simplify clarify and narrow the ordinance. You asked for clearer regulations limited restrictions and better communications to our residents and our businesses so they can easily understand what applies to them. Based on your feedback we significantly narrow the ordinance so that it applies only to Super Bowl 60 at this time. We will return later with a FIFA related timeline and map once those operational plans are further developed and understood. We've also worked on removing unnecessary sections improving clarity and strengthening the community education efforts.

[05:38:06] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: The special event ordinance is intended to help the city responsibly oh let me next slide. Okay. I might have skipped one. Okay. Um the special event ordinance is intended to help the city responsibly manage the scale and impacts of major events um like the Super Bowl. These events create unique public safety healthy um health and mobility challenges throughout the city due to the volume of people and international attention um that it attracts. It can draw in significant unpermitted and unregulated commercial activities um to the area. This ordinance is not intended to hinder residents or existing businesses. In fact it actually protects them by reducing unregulated activity ensuring safe um access and preventing crowding and unsafe conditions during the large scale events.

[05:39:18] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: Regular business operations remain unchanged and all existing City codes that support residents and businesses continue to apply. The ordinance gives us consistent tools to maintain emergency access prevent unsafe crowding ensure safe movement of vehicles residents and our attendees. It supports coordinated logistics credentialing load in load out uh security event operations and emergency response. It'll also prevent um unpermitted vending or help prevent unpermitted vending counterfeit goods and unsafe food sales and ultimately this is about protecting communities welfare safety and the city's image during these global events.

[05:40:02] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: The revised ordinance includes six temporary regulations all of which apply only during the special event time period and within the special event zone. Everything else sidewalk vending outside the zone signage noise rules counterfeit enforcement continue to follow existing City code and state law. This structure avoids creating new overlapping rules and keeps the ordinance focused and easy for the public to understand. The key elements are straightforward. Um there will be a pause on sidewalk vending permits within the zone. Vending remains permitted throughout the city outside of the zone.

[05:40:48] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: Um there is no temporary outdoor food or beverage sales visible from the public right of way unless it's part of a business's normal um permitted operation. There will be no um outdoor merchandise sales except um by authorized permitted um business operations as well. This will help deter counterfeit goods and also just um increased um congestion from um unauthorized commercial activity. Um there is no vending or advertising from mobile units like vehicles trailers or wheeled carts. Major events um tend to attract mobile marketers um pop up businesses that can significantly increase um congestion and create unsafe conditions for pedestrians um and traffic.

[05:41:40] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: For example without this rule we could see multiple promotional trucks drive in and line the streets and hand out samples of goods or food um and it could create block visibility it could disrupt traffic flows um it could draw large crowds into the roadways. Restrictions on product sampling and giveaways are also um prohibited to prevent crowding. However coupons for distribution by existing businesses would allow to be um distributed um but were prevent were prohibiting food and um goods um because of the congestion that that could create and and it would attract more people.

[05:42:22] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: Um temporary structure permits are required um for tents or canopies to ensure safe safety and compliance. This will not apply in non-residential areas. So it would just be for um businesses if they want to put up a temporary structure they would be required to get a safe um a permit from the city. Um these regulations are targeted temporary and focused on safety mobility and protecting the general welfare of the public. They are not intended to restrict normal business operations and do not impact permitted activities that follow the city's established process. Um in response to Council's direction we have um removed a few items for the original ordinance.

[05:43:03] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: First special permits for parades races and events. They were removed because they are already covered in our City code um and that gives us the tools that we need to address any concerns and permit issues there. This ordinance does not prohibit special events from being held within the special event zone. One of its purposes is to limit large unregulated gatherings around the stadium due to the safety risks associated with special events. The city will consider these impacts when determining whether it can make necessary findings to approve a temporary use permit or a special event. Second the proposed restrictions on outdoor signs um and advertising were removed as existing sign regulations already cover the concerns about um unpermitted signs throughout the city. These changes reduce unnecessary burdens and reflect your request for more clear and understandable ordinance.

[05:44:03] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: For the Su Super Bowl we're proposing the activation period from February 1st to February 10th um starting at 8 am and concluding at 10 pm on the 10th. Um for other major events including FIFA matches we will be bringing that resolution back that will indicate the time period it would apply to and also the zone. Um and this will give us um once we see what happens after Super Bowl we'll have a better understanding of what the impacts were with the size of the zone and whether or not we need to make any changes on the timing or um on that map.

[05:44:39] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: Um and Council also um provided some input about um a reduced map size. Um so we've brought two maps forward. Uh Map A is a more reduced zone focused on just essential operation uh just the essential operational footprint. Map B the original map reflects the full anticipated footprint for Super Bowl operations including circulation routes staging and adjacent properties. Staff recommends Map B because it better aligns with how the Super Bowl is expected to function particularly for mobility safety and logistics. So I'm going to just guide you through the map. So this is the reduced Map A. What you'll see is that we've removed the residential and commercial property just um to the south of the stadium um and east of San Tomas Aquino Creek. Um this is um intentionally limits the regulatory zone to the immediate surroundings of Levi Stadium in the highest impact operational corridors.

[05:45:43] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: So we're still protecting the parking lots and some of the event spaces that potentially will be holding events during this time period. Um it is designed to minimize regulatory effects on businesses and neighborhoods farther away from the stadium while capturing the essential event footprint. The map concludes um includes transit access points emergency routes and expected areas of high pedestrian and vehicular congestion. And Map B is the um the original proposal. This um includes the residential and commercial as you can see um extending Lafayette down to Montague and Lick Mill. And um just as a reminder one of the reasons we included this area is that Montague and um Lafayette and Montague and Lick Mill tend to be uh ingress and egress areas when traffic comes through for drop offs and pick ups and so that is kind of the starting point for for the zone.

[05:46:39] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: Um Map B encompasses the full event operation area including the stadium perimeters parking lots transit um transportation corridors. The map reflects long standing major event planning standards and aligns with Super Bowl operational pat um patterns that we've followed in for past events. Um it ensures con um consistent expectations for residents and businesses across the full impact of the area and provides more comprehensive control over outdoor commercial activity. For enforcement um this will be a coordinated tiered system. Code enforcement will take the lead supported by the police department and event security partners. Mobile vending violations will fall under um existing vending um law under Chapter um 5.05 of the City code and all other violations um will use administrative penalties.

[05:47:29] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: Um for serious safety risks immediate abatement or seizure may occur. And also the remedies provided in the ordinance do not limit the city um the city's authority to pursue additional enforcement under state federal common law for conduct that independently um violates those laws. Importantly we will use an education first approach. Um um multilingual outreach in person engagement and onsite support for businesses and vendors. In response to Council's feedback outreach has already begun. We've launched a dedicated um special ev zone event zone webpage with maps and FAQs. We will be pushing updates through newsletters social medias and business associations. We're also planning to coordinate with HOAs property managers and the stadium relations ad hoc committee to make sure nearby neighborhoods receive clear communication around these events.

[05:48:13] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: Um we have sent emails to all the businesses in the original proposed zone as well as every permitted mobile vendor citywide. We have received questions about event operations and logistics. There is also desire for our local um vendor community to be included in community events so we're creating a list to keep them aware of opportunities throughout the city. Um although the city is not required to adopt a special event zone ordinance both the league event agreement and also the FIFA assignment and assumption agreement anticipate the City Coun that City Council will consider one. Under the LEA if Council does not approve an ordinance by today it triggers a mandatory meet and confer process with StadCo. Um if no agreement is reached by January 8th StadCo may elect to terminate the LEA although we think that is um unlikely.

[05:48:48] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: Termin termination would move operations back under the original stadium lease which involves significant legal and financial uncertainty. Um adopting the ordinance today keeps us aligned with operational expectations and ensures clarity for the Super Bowl. Um staff recommends introducing the uncodified ordinance with Map B waving the first reading and directing staff to return for adoption at your next regular meeting. Uh we're also requesting authority for the City Attorney to make non-substantive edits um I'm happy to answer any questions that you have at this time.

[05:49:20] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right. Um Councilmember Hardy.

[05:49:22] Councilmember Karen Hardy: Thank you. Um the word that threw me off a little bit and you just mentioned it cause it's right in the recommendation was uncodified. I want to make certain I understand why that was in there and more than once. And also when you look when I looked at the maps when I read this I kind of understood that there would be different rules for really close around there. I didn't I was a little surprised that the the smaller map that you drew was mostly parking lots but no not just exclusively that. And uh did not include any of our residential and if we adopted the smaller map I want to understand the ramifications because I felt it was almost too restrictive it didn't even go over to Lafayette that didn't make sense to me. Thank you.

[05:50:28] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Uh Councilmember Gonzalez.

[05:50:31] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: Thank you Madam Mayor. Um thank you for uh taking our input back at the November meeting and uh bringing forward as far as uh I have a question on the map itself uh Map uh Map B obviously is more encompassing and similar to what we had previously um just wondering uh as far as why why do we need to uh include what what what I I I call Rivermark proper right they basically Rivermark and uh moving on west to uh along Montague all the way to um to the 101 and past Lafayette because it does include Lafayette it does include all the uh area from uh Hope up to uh Tasman which is where I live and the other area on the other side of Lafayette other residential area on the other side of Lafayette so definitely there there are residents that would be impacted even with this event zone but um if you can just clarify why do we need to make sure that we uh include the basically the Montague Lick Mill Montague uh Agnew Montague uh Lafayette areas um that would be that would be uh something that I want to hear as far as um having heard our Chief last time mention that that it didn't have to be that big even though I'm sure we're going to be monitoring those areas as well whether we have the event zone there or not but just uh maybe a little bit more uh wise it that we need to have that event zone that large.

[05:52:06] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Councilmember Jain.

[05:52:09] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: I think one of our goals is to try to attract a lot of people to this area um just to be part of the excitement that may not have tickets and it seems to me that they're going to get hungry. So will there be like licensed food trucks or licensed vendors at say Mission College or somewhere to support those people because it seems like there's no mobile food vending allowed in this whole zone which doesn't exactly make sense to me. We want people to have a good experience we want a lot of people to come here to be part of the excitement even if they don't have a ticket. It's like when I go to um Giant Stadium there's a lot of people that just go they don't have a ticket to go in they just like to hang out and be part of the the experience listen to the cheers and all of that and maybe listen to the game on their radio.

[05:53:14] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: So part of the the changes I like the changes to the residential the residents. Um but unless I missed something were there any changes to the businesses in the larger map area or are they same the same restrictions as there were before when we were here last time because we are telling our businesses especially our small businesses you know that we want them to thrive during Super Bowl and World Cup I know we're only talking Super Bowl tonight. So does this have the same restrictions if they want to put a tent outside or you know how how are they going to be able to benefit if we're putting these you know these conditions on them. So did it change at all for for the small businesses is what I I'd like to know. And that's it for the questions.

[05:54:14] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: Um and so I'll start with Councilmember Hardy. Um uncodified ordinance um yeah we've working with the City Attorney's office we thought about codifying it problem is there's a lot of overlapping provisions and other City codes we didn't have time to eventually I think it would a codified ordinance makes the most sense but really knowing where to update all the other City codes because there could be conflicting provisions. And so that's why we weren't sure how we were going to formulate it so right now it's an uncodified ordinance it still means it's a it's a regulation just does not appear in the City code it's just something that we can keep reenacting by resolution. So that's how we would um reenact it for every event we would just adopt it by resolution. But I think long term we are considering a a special event permit just from an ongoing perspective.

[05:55:15] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: Um maps you mentioned um and I'll kind of go back to them so we can take a look but um potentially having different regulations for different zones that was going to be a little too complicated for an implementation standpoint and we thought by simplifying the regulations that would be applying really six restrictions um to the entire zone was um a better from an enf um implementation and enforcement perspective for us especially during this one week period or really I guess um nine days that this would be effective. Um and then the ramifications of the smaller map um and I think I might need clarity from Councilmember Hardy you mentioned something about the residential being taken away or or the parking lots I I couldn't understand what that um.

[05:56:56] Councilmember Karen Hardy: I just noticed that there's no residential in your smaller map but you also haven't gathered even all the parking areas. That's I wanted to understand that Map A.

[05:57:08] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: Okay. So Map A the parking areas are all captured if you look at all the gray those are um parking areas that will be supporting the stadium event. So all those gray lots um are stadium parking. Um the residential there is still some residential if you look north of Agnews um next to San Tomas Aquino Creek and just south of Tasman as well across between Lafayette and Lick Mill. So there's residential there as well. What was removed is the uh residential just south of the Agnew um and that Rivermark area um residential was also removed. Um to Montague. Yep. Um and I'll I'll jump to because I know there was some overlapping questions with Councilmember Hardy and Councilmember um Gonzalez um why Map B.

[05:58:02] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: And just to highlight you know we couldn't take you can't take all the residential out. If you can't go all the way to Tasman only because that Lick Mill stop is a high is a is the um last transit stop into the event. So there will be significant pedestrian um access coming down Tasman. And so you want to make sure you have a buffer from other people coming in and impacting the um the event course or either getting dropped off or coming in through that Tasman. And so that's kind of why um excuse me I'm going the wrong way. You got it. Can you go back to um A? Yes. And so that's kind of why we had to create a a little bit of a buffer between Tasman and Agnew um to create to so some residential is included there. Um but I do want to kind of um answer the question about Map B.

[05:58:36] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: So I want you to understand that the ordinance we're not trying to restrict how businesses operate. Yes if they do want to erect a tent or um um a structure of some sort in their parking lot they're going to need a permit for that. Like there we we want to be able to make sure that when people are coming and crowds are coming that those um those structures are safe for the public to come. But we're not prohibiting them from putting their you know permitted um their permitted signs up they're going to be able to continue to operate their existing businesses out of their where where their businesses are currently located. Um we're also trying to protect the residences right. This creates this prohibits um unregulated vendors and um commercial activities from coming in and just encroaching and just you know setting up anywhere throughout this zone. Um and so it helps prevent congestion crowding um and those um um ancillary effects that we might not want in the area. Um Councilmember Jain I I understand that you want to potentially have and this might be a question maybe for Jovan to answer. Yeah.

[05:59:12] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: So uh uh let me take that item. Uh Councilmember Jain um you said probably not an exact quote but you know it's our goal to attract a lot of people to this area even if they don't have tickets. I'm not sure that that is the public safety messaging that we're going to push out. Uh we certainly want to attract everyone to this area that has tickets to the the game that is going to one of our businesses or any of the other special events that that tilt up. Uh our public safety plan really does not contemplate uh throngs of people that may not have tickets just to be loitering around that the area. That causes uh potential public safety challenges uh during a normal um event and certainly could be magnitude around a Super Bowl and so there will be checkpoints there will be uh secure perimeters and we certainly want to drive people.

Segment 9

[06:00:00] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: establishments, but just um, you know um, I would actually say unfortunately, you know, we do not have Related, we do not have um, our stadium is not in a downtown and we don't have that um, um, Chase Center atmosphere where there is a outdoor entertainment area yet. And so until we have that, uh it's really uh, we want attendance limited to people going to specific uh, places of business.

[06:00:34] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: I have to answer that because I just want to say that we want people to come to the area. We want them to come to our small businesses. We want them, yeah, it's the opposite of what we actually want, what you just said. So, I mean the people that can spend the money to go to the game, that's different, but sometimes people just want to be in the area and that's when they're going to be, you know, at Rivermark or wherever just to be in the atmosphere. So we don't want to tell people stay away, that's the opposite of the message we want to communicate.

[06:01:09] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Mayor, if I can explain, I wasn't say stay away from the business. I was responding to people coming to the area that don't have a ticket sort of loitering outside. If someone is going to a existing business establishment, any special event that's tilted up or the game, absolutely, we want people to patronize our businesses. Just not um, loitering in the area if they don't have a ticket to hear the events that's going on at Levi's Stadium is the comment that I was particularly responding to.

[06:01:40] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Yeah, what changed from the last time we saw this?

[06:01:50] Amanda Pease: Um, oh my god, I really can't seem to go back the right way. Um, if we can go back to the beginning. I guess um, slide five please.

[06:02:07] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Because it seems like you came back with the same thing besides the residential area for our businesses on the Northside.

[06:02:14] Amanda Pease: Yeah. So, yes that's correct, a lot of these provisions have stayed. So the sidewalk vending permit provision is still in there. The outdoor food beverage sales and outdoor merchandise sales, we wanted to make clear in those that anything, any business that's currently operating in that manner can continue to operate in that manner. So we're not prohibiting any existing small business that does outdoor food beverage sales, outdoor merchandise sales, to not be able to do that. So small businesses would be able to continue to do that if that's part of their current operations.

[06:02:48] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Only if they're doing it now. They wouldn't be able to take advantage of something, you know, the Super Bowl special and put tables outside and do that. You're saying so any changes?

[06:03:02] Amanda Pease: Yeah. Any changes that's not within their permitted operation right now would be there. Um, and then the product sampling and giveaway, we are limiting, we're allowing businesses to hand out coupons, but then we're limiting any outdoor distribution of food or goods because that can create crowding and an attraction to more people. Um, and then I think that was it. The temporary structure permit um, is still there, but just requires a city permit for you to erect any type of structure.

[06:03:30] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Um, thank you. Councilmember Gonzalez?

[06:03:35] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: Yeah, sorry, I just missed the question, but um, I guess I want to have on Project X going on that day, but uh, as far as the um, can we have VTA stop at the Lick Mill stop, at the Calle del Luna stop there? I think there was somebody, one of the uh, the businesses there on the strip mall, Calle del Luna, mentioned that on game days and certain things like that, VTA just bypasses that. And I understand if the train is full or, you know, everybody's going to the uh, to the game or a game, and um, they might seem, they might deem it more appropriate to just bypass, which is maybe a quarter mile down before the stadium or whatever it might be, right? So it's not that far, but still it would limit um, folks from accessing those uh, the cleaners, some of those uh, eateries there.

[06:04:29] Amanda Pease: Yeah. I want to say that might be the last stop is the Lick Mill stop, but I'm not, I would have to...

[06:04:33] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: They usually go to Great America I think, if I'm correct.

[06:04:36] Amanda Pease: No, it's not going all the way to Great America for the Super Bowl. Yeah. So Lick Mill is the last stop and that's why that pedestrian access through Tasman is really important because the pedestrians are going to be coming through Tasman from Lick Mill. So that is the last stop for Super Bowl.

[06:04:49] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Councilmember Park.

[06:04:50] Councilmember Kevin Park: Yeah, actually the uh, discussion we just had about uh, people coming to the entertainment district area is one of the things that I've been trying to look at for the last three years, which is, that's the problem that I've been trying to address. Which is during, because of the ingress egress parking issues, there's no shuttles, um, the uh VTA light rail has a throughput of about 200 people every 30 minutes, something like this, that we tell people to avoid our entertainment district during the most popular, exciting times of the year when we have events. And I think that this is not conducive to an entertainment district, right? I think that, you know, when um, shed a tear, Great America um, resolves itself, maybe we'll be able to change, we'll be able to fix some of that.

[06:05:43] Councilmember Kevin Park: But I mean the reality is, you know, we need to invite people, we need to have exactly what Councilmember Jain, what the Mayor said, which is we need people to come to these places during um, events, during the big events. We need them to come, but we also need them to have restrooms and shuttles and parking and ingress and egress. We cannot have, you know, we cannot afford to have additional people come clogging up the already bad ingress egress uh, pathways. We need to have good pathways that can support huge amounts of traffic.

[06:06:14] Councilmember Kevin Park: You know, unfortunately we have what we have. We're not going to expand 237. We're not going to expand Lafayette. We're not going to expand Great America Parkway. I would think I would like to uh, look at maybe contracting out shuttle services that, you know, buses that just make a circle every 15 minutes. They're going from uh, the stadium area to some place else, whether it's the uh, you know, Caltrain stations, whether it's the uh, you know, I don't know, other places in Santa Clara that need or could use uh, additional customers like, you know, if we had a downtown, if Related was built out, if we um, you know, maybe down to Santa Clara Square, maybe down to, you know, El Camino. But if we had these kinds of things, if we could remove the cars, you know, improve the egress for people, but then we'd still have to have bathrooms and I don't know if we're going to have the food that I think Councilmember Jain was alluding to.

[06:07:13] Councilmember Kevin Park: Which is, you know, it would be really nice if we had food truck circles. I know in Palo Alto, um, they have days where you just go to certain streets or certain parts of the streets and they've got, you know, five, six, ten food trucks out there and everyone knows it's not an official uh, shopping area or food area, but it's become an unofficial and a, you know, common, expected, a scheduled food court of vendors, mobile vendors. Uh, and I know what the restrictions are, um, but my question is what kind of permitted mobile unit vending will there be? I mean there must be some. Um, I for one didn't have a problem with the larger areas because I understood what we were trying to do. I think that with the larger areas, it's really good because, you know, with the key elements of the revised ordinance where you're focusing on these things, I think that's good.

[06:08:07] Councilmember Kevin Park: Because I see a lot of places that aren't in map A that um, I think we really need to have these ordinance in place, you know, Rivermark proper as Councilmember Gonzalez says, uh along Montague Expressway where they've got uh places where, you know, they've got retail there. I would think, I would hate to think that uh, vendors would look at this map, see where the lines stop and then camp out at places just beyond the borders of the map that we approve and set up, you know, areas where they're selling illegal merchandise, bad merchandise, bad food.

[06:08:43] Councilmember Kevin Park: But I would like to also along with this, along with the prohibitions, uh look at, and I mean this is probably a separate action, how do we get people, how do we get vendors, how do we get mobile units, uh how do we get food, how do we get bathrooms, how do we get the resources that people need into this area in an approved way so that the people that come have a great experience? Right? I mean I think it takes both. You need kind of restrictions on one side to prevent bad uses, but you need to bring in the resources that people need so that the people who are there have good experiences in addition to trying to save them from bad experiences.

[06:09:24] Councilmember Kevin Park: And again, you know, this is the entertainment district. Uh, we need to think about being able to support as many people as we can, right? Trying to tell people, and this is what we do, every event, every stadium event, there's a stadium event, uh please stay away from this area. That is something that we have to learn, we have to fix that. We have to do something with that because we're never going to be successful here and it's a really bad precedent to set when we're trying to build the entertainment district in that area. Thank you.

[06:09:54] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Vice Mayor Cox.

[06:09:57] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: Thanks. I will join the party now, um, Liz. I want to know better about again, if I, and I appreciate coming back with the resolutions. I think the two big issues still remaining are again what we're talking about with our mobile vending um, things. And uh, and I am reading the one that's displayed in the fifth bullet point there. I think it's good that we're allowing couponing, but if I'm reading this it says we will allow coupon distribution on private property by businesses located inside the building. I don't, so that means that I think what's going to happen is people want to be creative and figure out how do we display our business right now, these are huge events, what do we do to like get our name out of there? So we're allowing people to coupon but the business must be located inside the building? Am I reading that wrong? I mean it...

[06:11:08] Amanda Pease: Or Jen's going to respond to that one.

[06:11:11] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: And then I think, I'll just double, I think the other thing um, just in terms of educating people when these things go forward, you know, advertising using vehicles. If like Roto-Rooter is driving through, um has nothing to do with it, but what are our stopgaps going to be so people know like, do we put in the public safety dollars that are essentially going to stop somebody and say you can't drive your plumbing truck through here right now because this is mobile advertising? Does that, is that limited to food, is that limited to sports? Um, and again, once this goes through, how are we going to equip our people to know what their limitations are and make sure that if they did something unintentionally, we have systems where they can get um, kind of like a free pass out of this with best intentions?

[06:11:50] Assistant City Attorney Jen Byers: Thank you for your questions. Uh, Councilmember Cox, uh Council and Mayor, my name is Jen Byers, I'm an Assistant City Attorney here in Santa Clara. So I'll start just by answering your first question about the couponing. The ordinance as drafted, it prohibits um, free distribution of products and coupons by most people. But businesses, we heard the Council's comments and concerns at the last meeting, and so we allowed couponing outside of the business for that business. So it's really restricted to if you're a restaurant and you want to hand out coupons, you're right outside the stadium, you see everyone walking into the stadium, you want to give them a coupon to come back to your business and have a meal, that was what this carve out was intended to cover.

[06:12:37] Assistant City Attorney Jen Byers: Um, I also if you don't mind want to take a moment to respond to your question about uh, mobile advertising and the provision in our code right now. It uh, does prohibit mobile advertising, but it also carves out if you are a like a Roto-Rooter driving through the area, that is not prohibited because you are just going from one place to another in your, in your van that has your logo on it. So that is not prohibited and that's carved out clearly in the code.

[06:13:14] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: Absolutely. I think that the follow-up was who, who is monitoring this?

[06:13:19] Assistant City Attorney Jen Byers: The monitoring is happening, so we have code enforcement and our Community Development Director is here and she may be able to speak to this. Um, code enforcement will be out there and not necessarily monitoring and actively enforcing everything because we have limited amount of code enforcement officers. But if there is something that's creating an issue, they will be there to address those concerns. I think from a practical perspective, the purpose of this ordinance is to message out to the community these things are not allowed with the hope that the community is going to hear that and follow those, the intent of this ordinance and those rules and regulations that are in place. Um, I'll let our Community Development Director speak if she has anything she wants to add.

[06:14:02] Community Development Director: Thank you. So we do have dedicated code enforcement staff and our dedicated code enst, code, uh code enforcement staff will be there um, during the event. Um, the first priority of course will be safety and anything that's illegal, but if there is, um, they will actively also be doing code enforcement during that event. And if they see something, uh they will um, basically go ahead and first do a notification to that property owner or to that business um, and then they will give a period of time um, before they take any action on that code enforcement.

[06:14:48] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: I'm just worried that our community is going to look at this, especially our businesses, as punitive. Like we are passing something that is punitive. Um, I can't imagine they're going to take this very well. Um, especially if we go to that entire area. So how much of this is public safety and how much is of this is the fact that the NFL doesn't want competition? I mean I think that's the, the, that's what we're trying to figure out. How much is really public safety? We heard the Police Chief say that he felt this area was too large. So, anyways, that's what I'm struggling with.

[06:15:35] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Mayor, if we can, we have a representative Eric Enos from our police department. Uh, and will say with the modifications to the ordinance, uh I did hear that the police department is supportive.

[06:15:46] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Oh so they've changed their mind now since the last meeting. Oh what a surprise, Jovan. Okay.

[06:15:52] Lieutenant Eric Enos: So hi, uh Eric Enos, I'm uh the Lieutenant of Special Operations with our police department. So on typical game days, I operate in the command post uh, running all law enforcement interior exterior um, throughout the stadium. So uh, we have looked at the ordinance and the issues, the public safety issues that occur are just surrounding particularly the vendors and the um, people coming in and out. It's so it's just with Super Bowl in particular and as it will be for FIFA, with the parking lots in a different formation, we don't have our typical ingress and egress routes, we don't have our typical parking lots.

[06:16:42] Lieutenant Eric Enos: It's really going to change our uh, pedestrian flow in and out of the stadium um, as well as all the different uh, because it's a large scale event and these aren't typical 49er games. Uh, fan behavior is going to be quite different. People will arrive at all hours and you have the increased uh, as uh Councilmember Jain spoke to, the increase of people who just kind of want to be in the area which uh, we don't want to encourage on the public safety standpoint. Just people coming to the area without tickets to just see, because that does cause problems. We're trying to bring 70,000 people into a stadium and then out of a stadium in a timely fashion with traffic concerns and uh street closures and uh all the other safety concerns that come with that. Uh, so that's why we are behind this ordinance just because of the help that it'll cause for our ingress and egress with pedestrian flow.

[06:17:30] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Do you care if a business is giving out coupons outside their building or not?

[06:17:36] Lieutenant Eric Enos: We do not. And I mean the portion of the ordinance that we're a big fan of is the administrative uh, you know, code enforcement kind of taking the lead. The, our main focus at the stadium is public safety. We are, that's our biggest focus. So our, you know, we're not going to prioritize vendors over a larger issue that is occurring, any kind of assault or anything like that. Um, so our focus will still be public safety, but this does help us in that mission in some portions.

[06:18:04] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Vice Mayor Cox.

[06:18:05] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: Thank you. I do, yeah. Understanding that this goes to a meet and confer if we don't um, reach a resolution tonight, I want to understand if perhaps through like the Economic Development Committee or something, if we're still permitted in working with our like local food trucks and stuff, the areas outside of it, um I know we talked about Rivermark Plaza last time. If we would be within our rights then to say, you know, we're outside of the safe zone, but this is going to be an area that we promote and uh allow vending to happen in within that time frame so that they still have a centralized place of business. I don't know if that flies in the face of this or if that would be allowable?

[06:18:50] Amanda Pease: So, so yes. So if it's outside of the zone and we want to organize, you know, just like we're trying to do some community um, activations, but if we want to organize our own kind of food truck events, we can do that, but so long as it's not within the zone where food, you know, food trucks are distributing and creating that. Because and the other, the other issue with just mobile vending in general, right, is we just don't want trucks showing up and then lining up and then creating that additional congestion when it's not regulated, right? We don't have control. Mobile, mobile trucks can just park um, you know, for a limited time and and operate. And so that's what we're trying to prohibit with this ordinance.

[06:19:25] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: How are you going to handle the food vendors that come to every football game and every, how are you going to handle that? It's going to be a very, it's going to be a challenge. Um. So they're going to be allowed to come? Will they be allowed? That's a, yeah. What do we do with that? They're going to be allowed? Because there's dozens of them.

[06:19:46] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: I mean um, Mayor, why don't I take that. They won't be allowed.

[06:19:50] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Well I mean, are we going to enforce? Are we going to enforce that?

[06:19:54] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: So we will have code enforcement. Uh, we do have other partners as you know, the County Health is out there uh during regular games to provide, to provide citations. And as the police department articulated, they are certainly present and can help with enforcement, however public safety will take paramount uh and they will not divert from a higher priority assignment to address vendor issues. And so the answer is no they will not be allowed, enforcement will occur, but it will be prioritized.

[06:20:23] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: So there'll be, you know, 50 of them or 100 of them all down Tas, like we've seen, all down Tasman and Great America Parkway and all those parking lots. They're, they'll come. What are we going to do about it? But are we worried about our other businesses in Rivermark and other places? But they're going to get inundated unless we do something about that. Why are we worried about the rest of the city when we should be worried about what's going to happen directly around the stadium?

[06:20:53] Lieutenant Eric Enos: Yeah, I agree Madam Mayor. And uh, they do cause significant concerns on on egress. Yes. So, um, we have changed our operation and as the City Manager spoke to, it's prioritized lower than some of our other calls for service, but we do assign officers specifically to vendor enforcement. They're out there and they're partnered with our public health uh partners that are out there confiscating food and trying to um, get them to move along. It's, you know, it's a complicated, there's a lot of issues with with vendors enforcement and how we do it um, and the implications of taking some of these people's carts and things like that. But right now we're confiscating food when we have our public health partners out there with us um, and that that has a significant impact on their operations.

[06:21:44] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: So I know that you educate all the time. We get the notices that so many education flyers were passed out, but I know we're going to all this trouble for all of this. I mean we will do the clean zone, but it's not going to be clean with you know, 200 vendors unless we're going to do something about that.

[06:22:08] Lieutenant Eric Enos: Yeah, well, I don't think we could ever have it clean without a huge fence that they'd all have to get through, but but we will be out there doing the enforcement with our our public health uh to, you know, do what we can with those vendors that are coming in.

[06:22:22] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Interesting. Okay, thank you. Um, Councilmember Jain.

[06:22:28] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: Um, so there is um, a state law which allows vending on public areas. And you can stop that if it's for a public safety reason. But if they're selling at Mission College, that's not really a public safety. Do we have legs to stand on for that?

[06:22:51] Assistant City Attorney Jen Byers: So the way that that um, the state law operates, um which is what we operate under for normal events, right, um, it requires us to specifically identify the public rights of way or pedestrian paths of travel that we believe are impacted by the health safety and welfare concerns um, that that you're referencing. And when we identify those, at that point we can stop people from blocking those pathways. Um, but the, in, according to the state law, the actual enforcement mechanism that we have is not criminal citation, it's it's it's um, issuance of an administrative citation with a fairly low dollar value. That's what we're limited to using under that law. Um, and so the, the clean zone ordinance essentially expands the scope of the area on which we can uh, do enforcement, but it doesn't necessarily change the fact that we still have to comply with the state law. Right, we're not, we can't except ourselves from the application of SB 946 by using using the clean zone ordinance.

[06:24:06] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: I guess, I mean, I can see, you know, you have some incident at the stadium and everyone's rushing out. You don't want food vendors there because it's a safety, but if you have food trucks at Mission College, that's not an issue. So I don't know if we have legs to stand on with respect to...

[06:24:25] Assistant City Attorney Jen Byers: The food trucks at Mission College are a different, that's not necessarily the same thing as a mobile food vendor cart, right? These are different rules, different laws.

[06:24:35] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: Okay, but a mobile vendor cart at Mission College where people are parking, is that a public safety issue?

[06:24:45] Assistant City Attorney Jen Byers: Okay, so again it's going to get, we're going to get a little bit into the weeds, right, because um, if you're a mobile vendor within a parking lot is not a pedestrian path of travel or public right of way, so SB 946 wouldn't apply to the, to that. And there are significant public safety concerns with that, with any vendor roaming within a parking lot where people are driving.

[06:25:08] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: On the sidewalk.

[06:25:09] Assistant City Attorney Jen Byers: Uh, so on the sidewalk, that's, if it's within our special event zone that's that's been identified, then we have health safety and welfare concerns within the identified zone that are sufficient to support the results that we have in the ordinance.

[06:25:30] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: So in essence, we can do this and have this clean zone, but there could be a hundred or more little carts all over the stadium and down the street and we can't do anything about it. I've seen how they affect, you know, egress after games and events are over and they're blocking the sidewalks and...

[06:26:01] Lieutenant Eric Enos: Yeah, it can have a serious...

[06:26:02] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: It gets really, it gets a little nerve-wracking.

[06:26:04] Lieutenant Eric Enos: That's where we rely on those public health partners to confiscate food and put an end to it.

[06:26:11] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: And then they just come back. So. All right. Thank you. Um, Councilmember Jain.

[06:26:18] Amanda Pease: Just to follow up, I mean, the intent of the ordinance is really to help try to deter the activity as best as we can, right? We want to be able to notice this out. We're going to have people who are going to try to, you know, push and and potentially challenge, you know, violate the ordinance, but we need these restrictions in place so that we have something we can, some teeth that we can point to for people to move them out or move them along outside of the zone.

[06:26:42] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Will this, will this ordinance give you teeth for those vendors that are there regularly?

[06:26:50] Amanda Pease: Well, it's more than we have right now. And so it's something that, you know, we'll have to try to use as best as our to our ability. Um, as the lieutenant mentioned, you know, we're going to have um, support out there to potentially help enforce some of these and so um, we're going to have to just move the vendors along as best we can.

[06:27:12] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right. Councilmember Park.

[06:27:14] Councilmember Kevin Park: Yeah, I mean, I think that the intent is that the special event zone would actually protect businesses like the fixed businesses um, by removing the competition where the businesses are, keeping those those clear so that um, you don't have people coming in uh pretending or taking a to be a business or taking away businesses from the legitimate businesses that are there. Um, but again, I think it's not enough to have exclusionary zones where you cannot set things up. I think that you also need to provide um, zones, oasis where people can buy food and drinks and go to the restroom and things like that. And I think that if you had those, again legally I don't know what we can do there, but I know that from an experiential uh standpoint, people are going to be, there's going to be more people than there are restrooms. There are going to be more people than there are, you know, possibly uh ability for people to make food and get drinks, you know. People are going to be uh in line for something and they want to, you know, they're not going to go walk five blocks away to get something to eat or get something to drink. Um, you know, it's not part of the the special event zone, but I think that there needs to be some consideration of where do people get the things that they want to get? How do we set up uh places where people can um, you know, get food, at food carts and things like that without having to build anything? Like, I mean that's that's why Palo Alto and some of these cities have these mobile, you know, mobile food courts that, you know, every Tuesday you go to this this intersection and there are five food trucks there, something like that. I mean, I think that that would be really good. I think that if we had um, I don't know, contracts with with specific vendors and we set things up, that would be, you know, I don't know if that would be a good thing or not, but I can just imagine that having places where people can go that are official may be a good thing in addition to having these exclusionary zones. Right? But again, I do see the intent of having uh this to prevent people from uh clogging up the uh legitimate businesses with with, you know, other business and thing like and things like that. I I hear what what's other Councilmembers are are stating and I hear the concerns about our our legal power to actually enforce these things. I'm hearing that these aren't really crimes, these are administrative citations where we, you know, they they can do what they want to do and we can ask them to leave and if they don't leave we can we can cite them and maybe perhaps get some money if they decide to pay. But other than that, I don't know what else we can do. But my concern again is how do we fulfill the the uh, the needs of the people who do come and that's a kind of a different, that's a complementary discussion. Thank you.

[06:30:08] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. I'm going to go to Councilmember Chahal then Gonzalez and then go to the public. All right, Raj.

[06:30:14] Councilmember Raj Chahal: Thank you, Mayor. So my take on this is just a common sense issue. Like this one is a Super Bowl, this is not a regular 49ers game. So we have to have some restrictions, we have to have some uh, public safety measures. And if we are putting these restrictions, these are not restrictions basically to restrict our common residents to go to these businesses for eating. No, nobody is restricting that basically, right? Nobody is restricting that. So it's a, why our public safety cost on this particular Super Bowl or these special events is much higher than the regular because we have much more enforcement to be implemented on these things. Talking about unpermitted vendors, of course we will have a much more enforcement of these things on those particular days. Why are we talking about this thing after 10 years Super Bowl? Why are we talking about six games into the uh, FIFA games? Because we want these restrictions, we want this message to be sent, we will not tolerate these things into these whatever zone we apply, whether map A or map B, we will not allow these things to happen. And that's the message we want to send it basically. That's the message the public safety want to send this message to the general public that we don't want this thing to happen. And that's why we are restricting these things. If me as a family of four want to go to Rivermark on that particular day to eat, I don't think anybody will be stop stopping me from going there. No, nobody will going to stop me. I hope not. And that's what I'm talking about. This is, I think these are we are just going into the weeds of it, what happens they're um distributing the coupon here or they're distributing coupon over there. Yes, these are restrictive areas we are demarcating. And that's the reason like uh we will have to do it. There is a reason for doing it. Like Super Bowl is one of the most uh safe events we want to make it happen all over the country. This is not specific to city of Santa Clara only. If it happens to ABC City, they will do all these things basically. And I'm I think we are uh putting in so much time into going into all these minor things, what will happen this way, what will happen this way. These are the restrictions which have been approved by the public safety staff, with by our legal team, by other parties involved, Bay Area Host Committee involved, and after coordination with everyone. The within the transportation map they are restricting those uh uh local trains will not be going within that particular area. So these are restrictions. So I I think these are common sense issues we are just dwelling into uh beyond what uh we need to basically.

[06:33:03] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: Thank you, Madam Mayor. And sorry I was I was going to make a motion but I forgot we haven't gone to the public, but um, I would make a motion to extend the meeting at, I'm optimistic, I think we can end in 30 minutes including the other two items.

[06:33:18] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Say that one more time?

[06:33:19] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: Make a motion to extend the meeting for 30 minutes.

[06:33:22] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Yeah, that's fine.

[06:33:23] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: Second.

[06:33:24] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Motion second to expen, extend the meeting 30 minutes. Oh, I like that. Okay. 12:30 uh, 12:34. Got it. Okay, let's act, let's talk fast now. Otherwise that last item is going to have to go next week. Look at his face. All right. Uh, motion and a second. Um. City Clerk when you're ready. And that means I'm adjourning at 12:34. Wherever we are in the process. Please register your vote. Can I find it? Okay. That passes unanimously. Do you have comments, Councilmember Gonzalez?

[06:34:19] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: No.

[06:34:20] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Okay. All right. I'm going to go start members of the public here in the Council Chambers first. Yes, did you?

[06:34:28] Assistant City Attorney Jen Byers: Mayor, if I may just, I want to clarify one point and it's been mentioned and discussed um, throughout the night. The purpose of this ordinance is the public's general, in the interest of the public's general health safety and welfare. It does have this side effect impact of protecting many of our businesses, but that's not the purpose of this ordinance. The purpose of this ordinance is really to protect our public gen, our general public health safety and welfare.

[06:34:51] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Well we'll see if they look at it that way, but thank you. All right. Um, Howie, please come forward.

[06:34:59] Howard Gibbins: Hello, I'm Howard, the Hot Dog Dude. Um, I am shut down during that time due to security area where I'm at. Um, the Bay Area Host Committee has been in contact with me. They have made a uh, offer to help me out with some of the losses I'm going to do. They are uh, because it is a three week loss for me. I've done this 10 years ago. It's a repeat for me. I get it. It's 10, you know, three weeks I lose business. They're going to help out a little bit, but basically during uh, the big game and everything, I am totally locked out. I will not be making any of my money. Uh, with the money that the Bay Area Host Committee will be paying me, I will still suffer about a $4,500 loss. That's the way it is, I guess. I doubt that old uh, Roger Goodell from the NFL is going to jump up and say, hey, that's a small vendor, let's help him out. So all I got to say Roger Goodell, go screw yourself. Now, back to the uh, the college. Yes. They cannot sell food out there. There is a provision in that SB 926 that guards um, uh, what do you call them, uh, the little, when you uh, anyway, the the stuff for the college. It, there is provisions in there to protect them. But you got to hit these vendors now, the illegal vendors now. If you hit them in the next three games, get the health department out there, full force, full force PD, and if there's not a red cart left in this Bay Area, they can not make enough to get them back out there. You just got to hit them hard enough to get them totally off.

[06:37:41] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you Howie. You're out of time. Thank you Howie. Does anybody else want to speak here in the audience? Please come forward. Hi Zaileen.

[06:37:54] Zaileen: Good evening, uh Mayor and Council. It's good to be here. Uh, I don't have a lot to say, it's late and I know that now we have a time limit, so I'm not going to talk a lot. But um, I just wanted to echo what Councilmember Chahal said. I thought you said it very well. This is the Super Bowl. Uh, it is a very big event that we are very proud to host and lucky to host in this market. And it comes with certain obligations to first and foremost protect the public safety of the event and of the fans and residents that are in this market. And that is the primary reason for a special event zone is to make sure that god forbid something happens that we are able to get law enforcement and PD in and out quickly uh and the public is safe. That is the first and primary reason to do a special event zone. Um, and the secondary reason to be honest, um for those of you who have been to a Super Bowl before, this is a big event. People who don't typically do business here will come here and they will try to take advantage of the people that are coming into this market. And our job is actually to protect the local businesses that are here. And so the second reason to enact a special event zone is to protect the businesses of Santa Clara. And so I just want us to make sure that we keep that in mind. There are a lot of things that we can get that can complicate this issue and we can get in the weeds. That will be actually the distraction of what these things are for. Public safety, protection of local businesses. Thank you.

[06:39:11] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Anyone else? All right. Um, online. We have SV Pro. SV Pro? Unmute yourself. Can you hear me?

[06:39:28] Jeff Fairbank: Yes, we can now. Okay. Uh, first off, good morning everyone. Uh, I support the the special zone because it's a tool. It... Hello? Wake up. Hello? Steve? Hello? Hello, hello? Okay, we'll come back to him. Uh Jeff, go ahead please.

[06:40:04] Jeff Fairbank: Uh, good morning Councilmembers, Madam Mayor. My name is Jeff Fairbank, the Director of Operations at the Santa Clara Marriott. Uh we are calling in tonight to strongly support the temporary special event zone for the Super Bowl. Uh this event, as Zaileen said, will bring enormous economic benefits, hotel stays, dining, local spending, but also challenges like traffic and legitimate public safety concerns. Special event zone helps us and public safety partners manage those challenges, keep residents safe and deliver a great experience for visitors. When guests have a positive experience, they return, spread the word, strengthening Santa Clara's reputation worldwide. It's a win-win for the city, hospitality industry is ready to participate with you all to make it successful. Uh thank you in advance for your leadership.

[06:40:53] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you Jeff. Uh thank you for staying up late as well. Steve, go ahead Steve.

[06:41:01] Steve Edwards: Hi, I'm Steve Edwards with Ensemble Investments. We own a number of properties and businesses in the Tasman East or the Clara district, uh which is directly to the east of the stadium. Uh I think the clean zones in general are a good idea um, to maintain some additional control or regulation during these really unique events. Um, as we're building out this district and as we're kind of establishing these businesses businesses in it, it'll be helpful to have you know, ability to enforce like things that might be happening willy-nilly out there. Um, so it just, I think it's another tool as one of the other speakers spoke about. I do agree with the Councilmember's comments that we do, I think we do want people here before and after the games even if they're not ticketed. I mean this is going to be an entertainment district in the future and it is now. Um, so I think more thought to towards what and how to activate the different areas would be wise before uh we get to World Cup. That's it.

[06:42:05] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you Steve. Uh Edward, go ahead Edward.

[06:42:11] Edward Strine: Yeah, I remember when uh Joe Montana wanted to build that hotel right across the street, he even came to uh the city, talked about it. I don't know if it was the NFL owners or the York family that put a stop to it, but uh that was very frustrating. Uh I don't know if it was separate from the Related project. I believe the Related owner is uh Miami Dolphins owner. So maybe like he said uh it has something to do with competition. But uh is there a way maybe to get some catering trucks into that former golf course? Uh would that be a safety issue? Uh it's really a shame that Related's really just slow walked this whole process and had so many groundbreaking delays. It's just uh really frustrating especially with the soccer event happening, international event and and Super Bowl. There's a lot of money that could have been made uh with the city and it's a shame that they slow walked this and um I think that uh maybe uh they should look at the OC Vibe project that's going on over by the Angel Stadium in uh Anaheim. They're talking about using gondolas like they have at Disney World in Florida. And maybe connecting some of the gondolas to help alleviate uh pedestrian uh traffic in the future. Maybe if the Related project uh the people that are leading that could look at OC Vibe again and maybe get some ideas from them. But uh uh hopefully in the future, another 10 years if we have another Super Bowl, uh I know it pro, we probably won't have an international soccer match like we did uh for this year and that's that's uh water under the bridge. Uh so uh yeah I just uh wanted to uh give a uh my idea on maybe how we can uh alleviate uh some of this uh these issues we've got. Thank you very much.

[06:44:05] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you Edward. Um, Eric. Go ahead Eric.

[06:44:10] Eric Adler: Hi, um good evening. Thanks for having me. Um, just very supportive. I'm uh oh I should tell you I'm uh the owner of Puesto Mexican restaurant in Santa Clara Square and I agree with Jeff over at the Marriott. I think it's great for our guests. They want, you know, a seamless experience. Um, happy to host them and excited for them to be able to go to the event. Um, you know, with the um, special event zone I think it's going to be much easier for them and um, you know, we want them to have the best experience possible. Thank you.

[06:44:45] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you and love your restaurant. Okay. Um, anyone else? Okay, uh Councilmember Gonzalez.

[06:44:56] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: Uh, make a motion uh for staff recommendation and uh for map uh, map A.

Segment 10

[06:45:13] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right, we have a motion by Councilmember Gonzalez, second by Councilmember... was it Hardy or Chahal?

[06:45:22] Councilmember Raj Chahal: I was second.

[06:45:23] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Councilmember Hardy.

[06:45:25] Councilmember Karen Hardy: Thank you. I've been looking at this map back and forth between the A and the B, and what pushed me to B is because it's very simple, we can say anything north of 101 and Montague. Because limiting that one side of Lafayette would be in the at one point one wouldn't, and we have three parks within this area that this would now capture, and that's our historic park down there around by Oracle, and Live Oak, and then right across on the Guadalupe River. And I would like to see us have some control in a positive way. And if we restricted it as we first talked about, we would lose that that direction that we're giving. And I think it makes it very simple to just say north of Montague. Period. End of sentence. I think that's easier. It's... we're going to have to get the word out to all our businesses, and we do want this to be safe, and that is the most important. We want a positive experience, but first off we want safety. And I I can support this motion.

[06:46:58] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and support the motion because I'm thinking that we're going to see how this works before we look at the World Cup one clean zone because that's going to be over a long period of time. So I'm hoping that we can start the outreach right away so that we can talk to our businesses especially, to let them know what's coming. But I'll tell you, we have to get a hold of the illegal vendors that are around the stadium because we can do this all day long, but we're still going to be inundated with those illegal vendors unless we have some teeth in something that allows us to move them out. So, anyways. Okay, so we have a motion and a second. City Clerk, when you're ready.

[06:47:50] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Did you want to say something, Liz?

[06:47:59] Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Klotz: No, I just want to say thank you.

[06:48:00] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: We haven't voted yet, Liz. Just stay there until we have our vote.

[06:48:08] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Please register your vote. There you go. Thanks Liz. Thank you. That passes unanimously, thank you.

[06:48:18] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right, I... our last item we can start it at least. Um, but we only... we have... I don't know, I have a lot of questions so we can start this last item.

[06:48:30] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: We have two items.

[06:48:31] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Two items. Oh shoot.

[06:48:32] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: We have the sewer conveyance fee which is a decrease of the current fee so that should go quick. But it is a public hearing.

[06:48:39] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Okay, let's do that one right now. Let's do that one right now. The other one is going to have to wait. Can we... um... So I am going to... I forgot about this one. I'm sorry Craig. Item number 7. Public hearing, Action on Resolutions approving the Sanitary Sewer Master Plan Update 2025 Report, Sanitary Sewer Conveyance Fee Nexus Study, and amending the fiscal year 25-26 Municipal Fee Schedule to update the Sanitary Sewer Outlet Charge Conveyance Fee rates. And this is a public hearing, so it's... Is it officially... I... we open and close public hearing? Officially open. City Manager.

[06:49:23] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Sure. Thank you Mayor, thank you Council, really quick. This effort began in 2002. You'll hear the presentation from Craig Mobeck our Public Works Director, but I will say this is a rare instance where government is actually proposing to lower a fee. And so if you do adopt this item, the next time someone says that government always increases things and never decreases it, you can cite this item.

[06:49:43] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: And we're doing it at this hour of the night where nobody's watching. Okay.

[06:49:47] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Craig, take it away.

[06:49:49] Public Works Director Craig Mobeck: Okay, thank you City Manager. Craig Mobeck, Director of Public Works, and I will try and give you the abbreviated version for this presentation. Um, so as discussed, it is the conveyance fee. It was established in 2007 and the primary goal is to look at capacity improvements that are needed as a result of the General Plan build out. And so when we do something like that and we issue and set up the development impact fee, it's governed by AB 1600, and in this circumstance is used for capacity growth. It can't be used for anything like maintenance. So after 2007 we did a number of updates and assessments in '09, '16, '22, and we're here now for the Sanitary Sewer Master Plan Update, updating the fee, the Nexus study, and you'll see that in the following slides. So in terms of the components of the 2025 plan, we've expanded the system hydraulic model to increase the number of pipelines modeled. Originally it didn't have the full system. This 2025 effort included the entire system. And we also calibrated it by putting flow meters in the system to get dry weather flows, wet weather flows, that helps us validate our model and make sure that the results in the model are reflective of what we're seeing out in the field. Other components include updating it with the latest water use, and that is important because water use is indicative of what the return to sewer rates are, and it also reflected the current land use changes. We re-validated the existing model, if there's any anomalies then we corrected those. And I will point out that this fulfills the regulatory requirements for the Regional Water Quality Control Board for System Evaluation and Capacity Assurance Plans. So in terms of the recommended program for capital projects, so when we looked at our current model and then we look out the build out of the General Plan in the horizon, right now it's 2035, that identifies a number of projects that would need to take place in the sanitary sewer system to accommodate that growth. We estimated approximately 13 projects at 150 million dollars that included the escalation. So the objectives were to analyze the cost of that program, which we did. We incorporated the existing fund balance as well as the interest, we escalated the project cost, look at what the timing might be of those projects, and then we laid out the cash flow analysis. And then once we were able to do that, then we were able to look at what the rates are. And so those rates are residential and non-residential. And I will add that AB 602 recently passed changed that we no longer charge based on dwelling unit for residential but per square footage. Um, it did not impact the non-residential, we're still doing gallons per day. So based on all the projects, the 150 million dollars, the proposed residential and non-residential aligning with the General Plan, it came out to a residential rate of about a dollar 14 per square foot, and on non-residential, 6 dollars and 34 cents per gallon per day. And so just looking at this fee, as the City Manager mentioned, it is being reduced. If you look at the top left with non-residential going from about 8.60 to 6.34, so that's roughly a 26 percent decrease. Residential, as I mentioned, there's a new methodology based on square footage, so we looked at three scenarios just to give you an example of single family, condo/townhouse, and high density, and you can see the decreases ranging from about 28 percent to 78 percent. And so there was outreach done with the development community and the public. So we did that back in September, had a meeting in October, put it on the website, and published the notices for today's meeting, but obviously with the decrease, not a lot of interest in being here tonight. So with that, there's the alternatives, which are to adopt the resolution approving the Sanitary Sewer Master Plan Update. Obviously there's one that if we were not to adopt the resolution. And then number 3 would be adopt the resolution approving the Conveyance Fee Nexus Study, amending the Municipal Fee Schedule for 25-26 and establishing the new outlet charge. And then 4 would be if we don't adopt that resolution establishing the Nexus and the new outlet charge. And then would be number 5 if you provided us with additional direction to staff. But we're recommending alternatives 1 and 3, which would be to adopt both resolutions approving the Master Plan, approving the resolution for the Nexus study, and amending the fees as I mentioned in the presentation. So that concludes everything and obviously here for questions.

[06:55:15] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: We'll start with questions, quick questions. Councilmember Hardy followed by Councilmember Jain.

[06:55:20] Councilmember Karen Hardy: I will admit, I had way too much fun reading this report because this is my wheelhouse. But I I want our residents, if anybody's still awake, if I'm understanding this correctly, this is the conveyance fee that will go down. Uh, the our costs for our sewer, we still have our water treatment plant and they will not go down that much overall. This is just the conveyance if I'm understanding correctly. And um... the re... I will tell you that we are also doing a similar study for the water treatment plant and there's a possibility Santa Clara's cost may or may not go down or may stay the same. But more data is helping us drive things in a correct manner. I will say that. Thank you.

[06:56:19] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Thank you. Councilmember Jain.

[06:56:24] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: Uh yes. Um, as I read this, it says the total projected program of necessary capacity improvements is approximately 102.5 million dollars. So I guess I'm confused because if we were charging a lot more before, wouldn't we have built up a huge um... capital reserve or would we not have any sort of necessary improvements because they would have all been paid for? So I know you're saying that the escalated cost of the program is approximately 149 million. So if you reduce the conveyance fees, I guess you can fund that 149 million. But where did all the other previous money go?

[06:57:23] Public Works Director Craig Mobeck: Okay, great. Uh so uh Councilmember Hardy, yes uh in terms of this conveyance fee, it's AB 1600, so this is related to new development. Um so does not affect uh the the current residential rates on on sewer fees. Um and then Councilmember Jain, uh yeah so there there is... this fee does take into account what's in uh the current account and what's been collected. Uh so uh over 50 million dollars uh has been collected. There's been a number of projects since 2007 that have been completed. Um and then obviously as we did the new analysis, it identified a number of other projects. And so when you take a look at the escalated cost because you mentioned the 102, that was non-escalated, so 150 is escalated. Uh you... we have 50 million roughly uh that we've already accounted for. Then we look at, okay, how do we collect uh that additional 100 million dollars. So that's how the fee is set up.

[06:58:22] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: Okay, I think I understand. Thank you.

[06:58:25] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Did... was that all the questions?

[06:58:28] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: I had one, I'm sorry.

[06:58:30] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Vice Mayor Cox.

[06:58:31] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: Sorry, I'll do it fast. So if if I'm understanding, this is really dependent on proposed uh square footage of development upcoming by 2035. And it leaves a very small margin of error. I mean, I think if we have a 58 million dollar surplus that we're using right now to kind of support this, by the end we expect our fund to be roughly 100,000 dollars?

[06:58:57] Public Works Director Craig Mobeck: So yeah, so this is a a fee that's calculated to build out what we feel will be necessary if the general plan fully builds out, right? So we can't collect more, we can't profit off this. Um and so yeah, so the it's a 150 million dollars uh if we if we set aside the roughly 50 that we have then it would collect that additional amount to to build it out uh within that period. But we know that, you know, development doesn't always happen that quickly. Um but that's how this fee is set up. Um and that's how it has to be because we can't be in a position where we can't provide sewer service to new developments as they're ready to come online. And really that's what this is all about, uh is making sure we have a plan to build out our capacity to match that of the General Plan.

[06:59:48] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: So I I guess my question is if the development doesn't materialize, does this then come back and hit the rate payers again if we've misjudged?

[06:59:58] Public Works Director Craig Mobeck: Yeah, so it doesn't go to the rate payers, it's it's based on development. But we update this Sanitary Sewer Master Plan um, you know, roughly we like to do it every six, seven years. And so we're we are evaluating and also watching how growth happens. And then we also would be taking a look at future fees to determine what's being built, what hasn't, what we have um, you know, in the account.

[07:00:23] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Right. Uh um if I'll just piggyback on that. Um it becomes a living and breathing document because we constantly update it, right? Um, also important to note, a conveyance fee like this is truly a best practice. Important to note that on the water side we do not have this same fee structure. And so you will remember or and we have some live projects uh like uh that are going on now, because we don't have this fee structure where we build a reserve to build out the sewer... um the water system, we have projects that just because they're the project to come in now they have to pay for the upsizing uh for sometimes a half a mile even a mile, right? So having this type of fee where we're building a reserve to upgrade our system is a best practice and we actually need to replicate this for our water system and so we're we're we're taking a look at that now.

[07:01:18] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Councilmember Park. Oh wait... Vice Mayor Cox are you finished?

[07:01:23] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: I was going to make a motion but...

[07:01:25] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: No, we can't, it's a public hearing.

[07:01:27] Vice Mayor Kelly G. Cox: Oh I'm so sorry, yeah.

[07:01:28] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Okay. Councilmember Park and then Jain and then we'll go to the public.

[07:01:30] Councilmember Kevin Park: Yeah so, and I I understand and I appreciate that we're where we do reducing fees... I reducing costs to the people that need needed the most. Um but when I think about uh products... cars... usually don't uh reduce the cost, they usually give you the same price but they give you additional features. Um and I I think one of them is to just lull you into not expecting at the price to ever go down ever again. Um and in this case I know that a couple of years ago we talked about sewer laterals. And there were a number of people that were talking about cost of replacement for sewer laterals and it's uh it's ten thousand dollars and people don't know that they own the sew sewer laterals and that that was the cost of replacement. And one of the um the suggestions that was brought up was why don't we distribute that cost and you know like an insurance policy to all the residents. Each resident would pay I don't know a dollar or something like that and um anytime a sewer lateral needed needed problems you know had problems needed to be replaced, the city would have a ongoing contract agreement with a sewer lateral fixing company and there there therefore would get you know discounts on on this kind of fix and the residents would um you know have a way of of fixing or addressing these really big issues that you know they don't even know about until it happens. And uh we would we would subsidize or we would um yeah well we would subsidize the cost of replacement for for these kinds of things. Um do we consider additional features, do we consider um services like this? Because I you know it's come up, we didn't vote on it then, we didn't approve it then, but I think about this all the time because it's I've heard about sewer laterals going bad more than once, which is you know I guess it's not uncommon but it's more common than I would have expected.

[07:03:37] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: Uh yes. Um as I read this it says... Oh sorry. Uh yeah so I think the City Manager sort of spurred this question. Um when we like let's say we're building out Tasman East and we have to build a big sewer line to support Tasman East. The first developer pays all of that and then gets paid back over time but that by the next developers. Which is a huge disincentive for that first developer to come in and do that project. And I think the City Manager said that that if we had 50 million dollars we could actually cover that and then get paid back because otherwise we have a disincentive for the first person at Tasman East to start that that project. And it also applies to the downtown. So is there a target reserve that we want to do that would then spur these investments of our specific area plans?

[07:04:37] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Is this on this topic? I mean... Are you able to answer that? Okay.

[07:04:43] Public Works Director Craig Mobeck: Okay. Uh so just first uh covering Councilmember Park, uh you talked about sewer lateral. So this is a development impact fee that's tied to AB 1600 that's specifically for development and increased capacity in the sanitary sewer system. So it cannot be used for maintenance, therefore it does not consider uh the programs that you mentioned lateral. That would be a a different program uh under uh the Water and Sewer Department. So not part of the development impact fee. Um and then in terms of Councilmember Jain, so this this master plan looks at the growth uh with the General Plan, right? And so it it modeled our current uh sanitary sewer system as well as took a look at running that model as we start building out. And so having this in place protects against one developer getting stuck with something because it recognizes that developers uh whether you know you're in different parts of the system you you still impact it, right? And so based on that analysis it identified 13 projects that would be triggered through the course of uh you know developing towards the General Plan and money would be there to be allocated towards it for conveyance, right, for capacity.

[07:05:57] Councilmember Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain: My my question is that unless the city wants to float it, there's not going to be the money there to build that big sewer line to Tasman East.

[07:06:08] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Uh let let let me clarify. So that is the express purpose of this fund so that we can build those capacity improvements. The point that I was making is that we do not have a similar fee for water, right? So having it for sewer is a best practice. And so it in in effect does exactly what you're saying, it allows allows us to upsize the sewer for our our our new developments because it's uh captured within the plan. We do not have that for some of our other enterprises.

[07:06:40] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right, thank you. It's a public hearing, I'm going to the public. Is there any member of the public that would like to speak on this item? No one in the audience. No one online. Is there a motion? Someone turn on their light? Councilmember Gonzalez.

[07:06:58] Councilmember Albert Gonzalez: Move to uh actually close the public hearing.

[07:07:02] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Second? Okay we have a motion by Councilmember Gonzalez second by Councilmember Hardy to close the public hearing. Please register your vote. That passes unanimously, thank you.

[07:07:35] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: So we have a motion by Councilmember Gonzalez for staff recommendation, second by Councilmember Chahal. Councilmember Park.

[07:07:44] Councilmember Kevin Park: Yeah so I just want to get a couple of things clear. The first thing is I understand that the fees for for this cannot be used for sewer laterals because sewer laterals are maintenance and it cannot be used for maintenance. I guess uh my question is, if we take moneys in, uh at what point do they become like uh disconnected with the source so that we can use them for anything or is there nothing? They're always... they're al... I I'm seeing some nodding there. So they're always tied so that we always know where it comes from so we can never use it for that. So if we did something like that we'd have to raise a fee, we'd have to do a fee specifically for the covering of sewer laterals and that, you know, that would be voted on and probably hated on hated by the a lot of the residents but, you know, that would be the way that we would do something like that. I think that my understanding of there is is clear, helped by some of the the people in the back. The other thing I wanted said... can I get the City Manager to repeat what you just said which is we don't have similar fee for water... what allows us to upsize and then can can you just repeat what you said uh to Councilmember Jain?

[07:08:50] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: This is a conveyance fee that uh allows us to increase the capacity of our sewer based on the stu based on studies for the build out of our general plan. It's it is a best practice. We do not have a similar fee for our water enterprise. That is why we have some projects where they are the last one in and they have to trigger uh they they have to undertake that upsizing and it may be cost prohibitive for that project. And so we are looking at similar fees for our other enterprises. Is is that helpful? It it's not dir I I can articulate...

[07:09:24] Councilmember Kevin Park: O okay but I mean along the way let's say that we've built out the sewer and then we build out build another development and then we need to upsize that sewer. So how how does that happen? How does that who how does that cost get distributed?

[07:09:36] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: So for sewer as we said this is a living and breathing document. We redo the study uh periodically uh and up and it's updated when we update our general plan.

[07:09:46] Councilmember Kevin Park: Okay but the the plan updates but how do we actually upsize the the sewers?

[07:09:49] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Uh through a capital improvement project funded by money in this fund.

[07:09:55] Councilmember Kevin Park: I see. So then that the the new the project would be fully funded by whatever came next or it would be...

[07:10:00] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: It's funded by the conveyance fee fund.

[07:10:03] Councilmember Kevin Park: The conveyance fee fund. Okay.

[07:10:06] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Call for the vote. City Clerk. Please register your vote. That passes unanimously.

[07:10:33] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: Um, City Attorney, do we have to vote to continue...

[07:10:35] City Attorney Glen Googins: A motion to defer.

[07:10:36] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: A motion to defer the balance of the agenda.

[07:10:40] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: All right. Thank you. Um motion by Councilmember Chahal seconded by Councilmember Hardy to defer the balance of the agenda.

[07:10:49] City Manager Jōvan D. Grogan: Mayor, um just want to clarify uh that is it it's a motion to uh defer it to a meeting non-specific. Um want to let you know your business calendar for uh your December 16th meeting is quite packed. Staff is polling for an additional meeting on December 18th. We're having a problem getting quorum for that meeting and so we will look for other days but you do have um frankly at this point more than enough business items that you can accommodate on December 16th and so we will need another meeting before the the balance of the year.

[07:11:24] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: We'll have to be a little more efficient won't we. All right very good. So we have a motion and a second. Please register your vote.

[07:11:40] Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor: That passes unanimously. This meeting's adjourned. Thank you everyone.

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