April 30, 2019 Joint Special Meeting of Mountain View City Council and Shoreline Regional Park Community

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, we'll call this meeting to order the study session, and we'll start with the city clerk announcing attendance.

[00:00:08] City Clerk: Council member McAllister is absent. All of the council members are present.

[00:00:11] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Thank you. And the item for tonight for this study session is the sustainability strategic plan, and our presenter search night, our environmental sustainability coordinator, Steve Attinger, and assistant city manager, chief operating officer, Audrey Seymour Ramberg. And we'll start with a staff presentation. I'm not sure who's giving it.

[00:00:38] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Thank you, Madam Mayor. I will start. And in addition to introducing Steve, I'd like to acknowledge other members of the sustainability team, Anna Perkins, and Aaron Brewer, who she's upstairs copying the right version of the PowerPoint, which will get replaced for you momentarily. And I will go ahead and next slide, please, take you through an outline of the presentation and kind of let you know the game plan. In addition to staff, we have our consultant, Philip Krychek from Cadmus Consulting. And he and Steve and Aaron and I will be available to answer questions at the appropriate time in the process. Before that. Steve's going to present 3 slides with the context for climate change, both globally and locally, with our own response. Philip is going to present just the highlights of our program assessment and the major components of the strategic planning framework. That will all be brief so that the majority of the presentation as well as I imagine your deliberation time is going to be around the resource needs and funding strategies associated with implementing the strategic plan. Um, then I will finish up with next steps. And then there are 5 council questions that staff is seeking direction on this evening. And with that, I will turn it over to Steve for climate change context.

[00:02:16] Environmental Sustainability Coordinator Steve Attinger: Thank you, Audrey. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, council members and members of the public. Um, I'm going to just cover in 3 slides here, uh, global context for climate change, and then a local context. Um, so Mountain View, 1st thing to be aware of is Mountain View is a signatory to, um, the we are still in, uh, Proclamation, which was, uh, signed by 100s, maybe 1000s of elected officials across the country, in response to, um, the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. So that happened a couple of years ago, and it signaled Mountain View's commitment to uphold the principles of the Paris climate accord. And then late last year, the intergovernment adult panel on climate change released a special report last October. And, um, as you see on the slide here is a summary of the kind of key findings in what we learned from the special report. I'll just highlight a few of them. First thing, just to be aware of, is that we're looking as a global society to keep our emissions, excuse me, to keep our temperature, global temperature rise below one. degrees Celsius, sort of going beyond above that, introduces the possibility of severe climatic issues with the planet. Even small increases in temperature rise can have a very large impact. And the other major idea that came out of the report is that we've got a relatively short runway within which to kind of turn the ship around, if you will, and the report calls for a 45% global reduction in emissions by 2030. The impacts of climate change are already being felt. And that said, the changes that we make as individuals and as cities across the globe will have the potential to substantially reduce the potential impacts of climate change. So there was a strong call to action on the part of individuals and cities and civil society to do everything possible at this point. So in terms of where we are right now, with our local emissions, what you're looking at are preliminary results from our 2017 greenhouse gas inventory, and the key findings are on the right hand side. What you'll notice is that our 2017 emissions were actually 6.7% below our 2015 levels. which was the 1st time that we actually saw a decrease in our emissions. They've been climbing steadily up until our 2017 inventory. That said, our emissions are still about 3% above our baseline 2005 levels. So we're still sort of going in the wrong direction. And at this point, we would be looking at basically about a six, 16% reduction needed to stay on track for our 2020 reduction target. And so in order to achieve that 2020 reduction target, in essence, our emissions would need to decline 50% faster than they have recently. And my last slide here, just in terms of what the city has done in the last couple of years in response to climate change, and this is, I think you'll appreciate just a very small subset of everything we've done. But about a year and a half ago, the council appointed our 2nd task force, that task force was brought together to generate community input around climate change, finding out what the community wanted, the city to further be doing in that regard, and generate overall support for that. And then as you probably know last June, the task force produced 36 recommendations for council consideration. Subsequent to that, the city council and the city manager authorized funding to hire a consultant, who is Cadmus sitting on my right here, and the Cadmus engagement, the purpose of that was to not only do a program assessment of the program itself, but also to develop a strategic plan, which is what we're here to discuss tonight. And so as part of that process, We've begun sort of a change management, internal change management. process internally, which is included formation of kind of a task force, cross-functional task force, so we can begin to look at these issues and decisions in a more explicit, cross-functional way. The sustainability program itself was moved into the city manager's office, and formally made a division within the city structure. And we also collaboratively as staff developed a draft, sustainability vision, which is highlighted in the staff memo. And with that context, I will turn it over to Philip, from Cadmus, and he will take it from here.

[00:07:52] Consultant Philip Krychek: Great. Thank you, Steve, and thank you, everyone, for having us here tonight. I'll start Cadmus's involvement in this process. I started as a research process to understand the progress that the city has made to achieve its environmental sustainability goals to date. The overarching goal here was to establish what would it take to enhance mountain view's ability to meet its goals. And as shown on the slide, Many of the questions we addressed were around collaboration opportunities, how to identify constraints and process improvements and examples from other cities that may be adopted. Next slide. So like many other cities, Mountain View has taken laudable action to address climate change, a few particularly noteworthy highlights include, first, the formation of Silicon Valley clean energy, which is expected to bring electricity to less than, or approximately one% of the greenhouse gas inventory. Secondly, Energy Upgrade Mountain View, which did a tremendous job of engaging citizens and resulted in a 6% and a 14% reduction in electricity and natural gas consumption among participants, respectively, achieving a silver bicycle friendly communities, uh, designation for since 2012, uh, achieving a 78% diversion rate of waste in 2017 and saving over 2700000 gallons of water per year through the recycled water program. Next slide. Despite this progress, we identified several key gaps, including that the staff whack clarity on sustainability, particularly in terms of how they should prioritize it, and what its scope entails. We also identified that as Steve mentioned, greenhouse gases have been increasing. And despite the ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goal, there's a lack of what I would call 2nd tier goals that would help the city achieve those greenhouse gas emission goals, such as EV adoption rates, vehicle miles traveled, and adoption of technologies in the building space, for instance. Some of the key constraints here are that the community is growing rapidly. Staffing is limited and it has competing priorities. The departments do not have explicit responsibility for sustainability outcomes, and finally, there's no formal cross departmental sustainability coordination process. So as a result of our review of the greenhouse gas inventory and our review of the gaps, we identified some of the top areas of focus need to be decreasing the volume of traffic and emissions from traffic, increasing the prevalence of cleaner vehicles and fuels and decarbonizing buildings. So next, we selected 10 benchmark cities to show what sorts of actions Mountain View could be taking in these areas. And they were selected based on the criteria on the slide, including their reputation for sustainability, excellence, policy initiatives they have in key categories of interest in Mountain View, the fact that they are similar size to Mountain View and have had similar growth trajectories to Mountain View. You can see the list there, and it includes examples from across the country as well as in the Bay Area. Next line. Here just to show the progress that each of those cities have made on greenhouse gas emissions. You can see that Mountain View is a bit of an outlier, as of 2017, where it is one of 2 of these cities that have had an increase in emissions. Next slide. So we selected 4 levers to structure our strategic plan, because we found that these 4 levers encompass all the major spheres of control and influence that the city has available. We feel they are broad enough to enable new ideas to be added, but also clear enough to show the actors that the city must work with and the actions that need to be taken to achieve sustainability goals. The 4 levers are to integrate sustainability and resilience across city government, to mobilize the local community in sustainability and resilience action, to partner regionally, and finally to manage inclusive and sustainable community growth. So for the integration of sustainability and internal operations, we identified three primary strategies, one was to elevate and make explicit the importance of sustainability and provide necessary funding and staff resources. Second was to adopt sustainability practices in internal facilities, upgrades, and in operations. And third was to track and report on sustainability metrics across all city programs and departments. For engaging in the local community, we identified 6 strategies, they included getting input from residents, getting input from small businesses, larger employers, and nonprofits, uh, getting, uh, developing and implementing a communication strategy to celebrate winds and build momentum. Next slide, developing direct outreach and education programs, imposing sustainability requirements on property owners, and finally facilitating and directly enabling sustainable behaviors and purchase decisions in the community. In terms of regional actions, we identified 2 primary strategy areas. One was to find alignment with pure governments, on what mutual accountability exists, should exist and what frameworks should be adopted. And second was to share resources, data, information, and funding. So 4th in the, for managing growth, we focus primarily on transportation and land use policy, as well as new buildings. and building sector. Excellent. So for each of these levers, we looked at all the actions that we could conceive of, and we categorize them into, foundational, advanced, and innovative levels of response to help the council consider the different levels of investment to choose between. Foundational was generally characterized by incremental action and mitigating future increases in environmental impacts. It's also where the governance structures are put into place to enable higher levels of effort. And it's important to note that this is not a characterization of where Mountain View is today, that this is a level that could be selected by council. There are several actions that we identified and foundational that are not yet taken by Mountain View, and there are also advanced and innovative actions that Mountain View has taken that, so it's just to reiterate this is not a characterization of where you are today. So adding on to get to an advanced level of response, this is where sustainability is really mainstreamed across all departments, and it's where you start to see substantial progress in reducing greenhouse gas and waste in the community. And finally, at the innovative level. This is where the city adapts and scales its effort in response to the success of its existing program and its results. And it's an aggressive level of effort, with rapid progress and holistic approaches to that strongly incorporate equity and regenerative sustainability in the approach. So I'm going to turn it over to Audrey to talk through some of the resource needs and options.

[00:15:26] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Thank you, Philip. So as part of the strategic planning process, we really wanted to identify what were the resources that the city would need in order to elevate its impact to a higher level. And we looked at staff as well as other programmatic costs, professional services, and capital. We recognize that some of the resources that we would need would be ongoing, and we would expect them to be funded and provided on a year-to-year basis. Others would be more short term in nature, and that might be for those kinds of things that we wanted to accelerate up to some certain point, for example, in our infrastructure development, around active, um, transportation for, um, bicyclers and pedestrians, or it might represent things that we wanted to pilot, and newer approaches that we wouldn't make necessarily ongoing staffing commitments to. But we recognized that duration was important, that anything that we tried, we would need, you know, a firm period of time to get it off the ground and implement it and also to be able to make commitments to the staffing, even if they were a limited period so that we could secure resources with some continuity as limited period positions, often funded just one year at a time can be harder to recruit and retain. We also recognize that some costs might be just one time in terms of startup or in terms of a project cost that once the project was implemented wouldn't be ongoing. The source for identifying these resource needs came both from Cadmus and its discussions with and review of benchmark cities who were having success at different levels, implementing the kind of strategies that Mountain View might wish to implement and looking at what kinds of capacity and staff and resources they had on board that the city of Mountain View does not. It also was through the process of kind of an ongoing facilitated conversation among our operating departments around where they felt they were falling short. And by falling short, I mean, where they just didn't quite have the staff capacity to do the things that they, you know, let alone the things that might be new approaches, new programs that were coming out of the strategic plan, but even just to do the things that they already identified that they would want to do towards sustainability. So the structure that we think, in terms of the location for resources, the structure that makes the most sense, is to have a core team that's relatively small in the city manager's office for sustainability, with the role of being the architect for the vision and collaboration with the operating departments and kind of the overseer and coordinator around planning, but not the implementer of all of the individual initiatives. Instead, there'd be, although highly collaborative, a more decentralized structure where there would be resources, both those currently dedicated to sustainability, but any additional ones that were able to implement through council's direction this evening in the operating department than departments. And not surprisingly, because the largest sector for emissions is transportation, the largest number of potential staff members that we've identified would be in public works around transportation planning, as well as they've got other areas in the utilities, with waste, water, waste water, and also city facilities in city fleet. So all the way up to the innovative level, that would be the largest area where staff might be augmented, 2nd to that, or actually both community development and the city manager's office would have a smaller increase in staff, if staffed up to the innovative level. And for community development, the focus is on both the building sector and the ways that we regulate buildings and incentivize more energy efficient uses in existing buildings and also how through development review and land use planning, transportation, demand management, and other land use practices would support sustainability outcomes. Next slide, please. And what this slide, which I imagine, is too busy for most people to read, is meant to imply is that there are a lot of potential functions. that would be made possible through the addition of the staff and other resources that have been defined at the 3 levels of response. And what follows this slide. And I'd rather than taking the time now prior to public comment, I'm assuming that we can come back to this in the follow-up slides, which are one slide for each of these levels, to give you more of an opportunity to see the potential of what could be achieved at those levels and to, you know, ask questions and review and spend the time if needed on that later in your deliberations. But the summary here that I would highlight is that at the foundational level, we would expect to add 5 and a quarter FTEs, um, and at the advanced level 9 FTEs, um, which would be additive to the 5 and a quarter. So that would be a total of 14 and a quarter. And then, um, 17 and a quarter um, additive across to the innovative level. And one thing I would say, and is that, um, we acknowledge that we are at a high level of planning with the strategic plan. We're providing you with, um, uh, an idea of the broad strategies within the 4 levers that Cabinus believes will help the city make a bigger impact in its sustainability goals. And that our next step in the process, as we'll discuss later on, would be to develop a more detailed programmatic plan that would identify in a phased way, what the specific strategies and programs or actions to achieve them would be, and the specific budgets associated with those. And that this has been a fairly iterative process. And so they're likely would be some need for flexibility and some adjustment for staff as we put together that more specific programmatic plan. So we can kind of go through these next 3 quickly. They're there for us to return to if we need them. That's the list of strategies at the foundational or a summary of potential actions that advanced, and then also at innovative. Um, then if you kind of add up our best efforts to estimate the cost impacts of the resources needed to deliver on those types of potential functions and actions, um, we've got those listed here, separated it out by um, ongoing and what would be limited period, and within each of those staff versus other costs. And then what we total to at the bottom is not only the total cost for a year of implementation, but if you were to fund 3 years of sustainability, that with those both ongoing costs, 3 years of limited period positions and one-time costs, those would be the totals for a 3 year period. So for foundational, that amounts to just under $4000000 and for advanced, just under $12000000 and for innovative, you'll see their a little over 13.5 . What I'll also note is that the TBDs and the plus and plus pluses. What we found, I think originally the aspiration was to come with complete estimates for each of these levels of response. But as we looked to the more aspirational or higher levels of response had advanced and especially innovative, the types of strategies became a little bit more speculative and the cost estimates were really harder to come by because it would depend very much. So if we're talking about transportation partnerships, the specific strategy and the degree of investment that the city wanted to provide towards, say, enhanced TMA, transportation management authority programming to make it more available beyond just those who are currently mandated to participate and be more robust as a community wide resource. The costs could vary quite a bit depending on what it was that the service evolved to be and what role the city saw for itself in terms of direct investment. So the TBD there could be quite substantial at the innovative level. Moving on to the next slide. So obviously those are big numbers. It's, you know, Dan has reminded me more than once that it is not every day that a staff person comes to council and talks about 17 and a quarter additional staff. I mean, that's bigger than some of our city departments. Um, and, uh, investments to the tunes of multimillion dollars. And so clearly we needed to come to you with some ideas about how we could fund that, maybe not for all of a, you know, 2 decade response, uh, or 18 year response to get us to 2030 or now it's, yeah, that many, 11 years. But, you know, out to 2050 was the other number I was trying to come by. Um, but certainly how might we get started? Um, and what resources might we have to both in a symbolic way demonstrate the city's uh, investment in sustainability, but also in a way that is, um, uh, very real and concrete, putting aside resources that then could be used to fund um, annual budgets of sustainability programming, um, and our goal was to be able to identify what that would be for a three-year period of time. Um, and what the possible funding sources of that might be. So moving on to the next slide, the possible funding sources that we identified 1st was just looking at what did our current narrative budget that was presented to the council last Thursday include in the way of funding that wasn't supporting ongoing operating costs, and the 1st and largest of those is the fact that For the current fiscal year, the estimate is that, um, we'll close the year with $4.5 million of unallocated general fund balance. In addition to that, there are some contributions that either were authorized in the mid-year budget or were more recently suggested in the narrative budget that different choices could be made around using those to support a sustainability reserve. And that includes $2000000 um in the narrative budget um for cowpers, um, which would be from the fiscal year 19 carryover. And that would be above and beyond the $4000000 contribution already in the budget for fiscal year 19. then for staying with this current fiscal year. There's currently 2000000 allocated to spar, which is the strategic property acquisition reserve, and 1000000 for OPEP, which is other post-employment benefits or retiree health. So looking beyond this fiscal year, the narrative budget for the coming year proposes, and another $4000000 contribution to cow purse, that's in addition to the $10000000 that as those funds are realized from the Google parking lease that the city has already earmarked for cow purse, so that 4000000 is in addition to that. And then another $1000000 in the 1920 proposed or rather narrative budget would be proposed for the property acquisition reserve. So that totals to 14.5 million, all of all of this, you know, any of these sources could be considered. none of them could be considered. They can be considered up to these amounts as they are in the budget or less than. And if you'll go back to the prior slide for me, the one before that, you know, to our best ability, it would be to fund those three-year amounts that are at the bottoms of the foundational, advanced and innovative columns. Going back to the slide on the funding sources, these aren't the, you know, obviously these come with trade-offs. Our long-term liability to fund our pension system is very important as are these other reserves. But this is an opportunity for council to think about how it wants to and whether it wants to establish policy priority for sustainability in a similar manner, to the way that it has done so for these other important city and community purposes and create a reserve for that purpose. slide. So following tonight, with your direction on the questions of creating a reserve and what level of earmark funding for that, we will return with the proposed budget on June 11th. And we wouldn't have more detailed programmatic allocations or appropriations, if you will, until the next sustainability action plan is developed. I know we've said a number of times to the public that we anticipate or had hoped to bring that to council on June 30th. I think Steve and I gave each other a little reality check recently and looked at the, you know, turnaround time between now and the direction that you're going to give us regarding the level of response you'd like us to plan for and June 30th wouldn't allow us to be very detailed and what we would bring back and that it would be preferable for us to have more time and more input and be more, you know, detailed and what we bring back for a action plan. So we'd like to do that in the fall instead. And between now and then, if that June 30th date is needed depending on where we end up tonight, if there are still some policy questions and some direction that council would like to give us or that staff feels it needs in order to move into the sustainability action planning, we could use that June 30th time slot for that. So that concludes, well, actually, if we'll just show this next slide, you know, council won't get into these questions until the public has had an opportunity to provide input. But these are the 5 questions that were in the staff report, slightly reordered, but keeping the same numbers. So if you've made notes on your staff report, you can keep track. And I think that it will be helpful to kind of think about things in kind of major decision chunks. 1st is, you know, is there a desire to dedicate funding for sustainability through the creation of reserves so that we can have a higher level of activity. And I think, you know, Cadmus has said that our current results, you know, our current efforts are what are producing our current results and to have different results. It will require increased effort. And so if the council is wanting to dedicate funding to that, what would it be interested in having a sustainability reserve and what would be the preferred funding sources for that reserve? And I think kind of it's a little bit of a triangulation between that and the preferred response level. at the 3 that have been identified in the CADMA strategic plan. What I would like to say is that, um, I think it's, it's possible definitely to look at those response levels as a continuum where you can make progress along the 3 levels, but it's also important to note that the way that Cadmus has structured the plan is that those, the levers and the strategies within them have a high degree of interdependency, and the things that you'd do at an innovative level. Some of them are more of what you would do at the advanced level, which is more than what you would do at the foundation level. Sometimes they're just completely different kinds of things that you wouldn't necessarily be able to get into without the organizational structure and capacity that are built at the earlier levels. And so there's a limited ability to kind of pick and choose among the different more specific actions. And I think for council's review of these questions, it will be helpful to staff to kind of hear your broader perspective on the types of roles, you want the city to play and the level of kind of impact that you're hoping for the city to have. And then that is kind of the triangulation with what are the funding sources, and what could we put forward to a reserve, and then what might be our ability in an ongoing way to to build that reserve, to continue to make more progress. So with that, that concludes staff's presentation and, um, I turn it back to the mayor.

[00:34:04] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you all very much. Since this is a study session, we will open it up for public comment next and then we will have council questions and discussion. Could I see a show of hands of how many folks want to speak tonight? Okay, it looks like there's quite a few. So we are going to limit input to one. 5 minutes, and we have a new process tonight, and that is at the end of the time, you'll hear a sound. So listen for it, and if you don't hear it, you'll be hearing me. So, um, For public input, be sure to fill out a blue card either before or after you speak and leave it with our city clerk. And if you want to come on up, start lining up, that would be great.

[00:35:06] Bruce Carney: I'm looking forward to finding out what the sound is. My name's Bruce Carney. I was the chair of the Sustainability Task Force. One of the things that struck me about the report was that it was a strategy without having chosen a goal. Up until now, the city has taken a goal of absolute greenhouse gas emissions, and in this task force, we recommended a different goal, per capita, greenhouse gas submissions. Depending on which goal you choose, different strategies suggest themselves as being the preferable ones. In my short amount of time, I can't go into why we chose per capita, but it's all in the task force report. So I would encourage you to look at that recommendation. The other thing I'd like to say is that Mountain View takes its AAA bond rating very seriously. What that means is when you borrow something, it's highly assured you'll pay it back. We've borrowed carbon emissions from the future, from the young people in the audience, and there's no assurance that we'll pay it back. So I think we need to really focus on the consequences of having missed our missions goals for the last 10 years, and not only meet our emission goals going forward, but to repay the universe, the young Mountain View residents, for the myth that we've had up until now. So I'm looking forward now to that sound, which is only 3 seconds away. And I look forward to hearing what others have to say as well.

[00:36:37] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Thank you. Mix, please.

[00:36:44] Mike Balma: Mike Balma, Task Force one and two, the strategy we're talking about is going to define how Mountain View is successful or whether Mountain View is successful or the next 10 years. I think what's been presented is a good strategy for integrating a cross functional within the mountain view as an organization, which is great. However, as Bruce pointed out, it really does not give us enough information. In essence almost to make this decision. It doesn't say, if we go with this choice, what this level will get this much emissions reduction. The task force spent a lot of time actually developing a dollars per emissions reduction, and I don't see that integration here, which is unfortunate. So the only way that I can really take a look at this, to make this decision is by looking at these as probabilities, that if we take a look at the foundation level, my estimation would be that there's a 50-50 chance that we'll be successful in reaching the emissions goals. It's like, you know, we'll probably make it, but we might not. As we have missed it this year. or last year. So the 2nd level of advanced, maybe a 75% chance, which is great. But if all of the counties and cities just have a 75%, then globally we will fail. Only the last option has a 95 to actually 100% chance of success, and that's because it offers the option of having the emissions budget and offsets. I strongly encourage folks to look and go for the most innovative option. Thank you.

[00:38:24] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[00:38:29] Mary Dadio: Mary Dadio, I was on the ESTF. If I walked up and threw banana peels and other various trash on the floor, we would all be shocked, I believe. So I'm not going to do it, but picture that if you will. So greenhouse gases are garbage. And every day, we are dumping garbage into the atmosphere. So we know we know that we should be shocked and we know it's not right. not right. So together as a city, we are dumping way more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than we should be dumping every day. So we know the major steps we need to take. We need to electrify everything in sight, and we need to give people alternatives so they don't have to drive cars so much. We know those are big projects, so we know we need to staff up, and we need to allocate funds. So we very little time to make this happen. We know projects have a really long lead time. So tonight's the night. Tonight's tonight to decide we're going to make some progress on this. So we need to stop dumping our greenhouse gases as quickly as possible is everybody's responsibility to do what they can to do that. Please authorize staff, to take the most aggressive steps possible. Thank you.

[00:39:46] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Thanks, please.

[00:39:50] Ida Rose Sylvester: Good evening. I'm Ida Rose Sylvester Carbon Free Mountain View Board member and also supporting the letter sent by the Mount View Coalition for Sustainable Planning. Today, more than a 1000 pages of reports, countless hours of analysis and brain power and passion of dozens and dozens of citizens, citizen advocates, city staff, and consultants have brought us here. We have come full circle. The Kadmus study came to many of the same conclusions as ESTF 2 did, particularly in regard to the city sustainability program, specific staffing levels, and the need for public mobilization. We have just 10 years to play our part in avoiding ecological apocalypse. We have the money now to set up reserves. We have the ability to become a desirable partner in collaboration with other people, by modeling the way and having the fortitude to be the 1st to do so. Please pick the innovative level. It is the only level, I believe, that will get us to where we need to be to achieve our goals. Lesser efforts have not worked. Create a robust sustainability office with achieve sustainability and resilience officer and appropriate staffing, mobilize the community with outreach and a citizen advisory body, provides staffing focus and mandate to create collaborations like the SVCE. And please accept that sustainability is the foundation for livability. EVs are quieter, waste reduction leads to better rates, electrified buildings are safer and often cheaper to build. Better public transportation is a social justice benefit. Thank you.

[00:41:24] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Perfect. Thank you.

[00:41:29] Mohan Grunathan: Good evening. Thanks for taking my comment. My name is Mohan Grunathan. I'm a 10 year resident of Mountain View. I live in Mountain Dew with my wife and 2 young daughters. I'm actually representing a group of about 15 supporters here. Can I ask them to stand up, please? Given the size of our group. Could I request some additional time up to 7 minutes to deliver our statement?

[00:41:52] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So, we do ask that you arrange for this in advance, but I see folks are here, but we can give you 5 minutes.

[00:41:59] Mohan Grunathan: Okay, thank you very much.

[00:42:00] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. And if you guys could turn in blue cards as well, we would appreciate it so we know who's you're speaking on behalf of.

[00:42:07] Mohan Grunathan: Thank you. You can see they're all holding cards that say green Monday, I'll explain what that's about a little bit later. To begin with, I wanted to say we are facing a real emergency here. This is an existential threat. to us and to our children's future. Experts tell us we have less than 12 years to make dramatic changes to our economy and to our lifestyle to avoid catastrophic change. I think nothing less than the innovative approach is called for here. So I would implore you to take the steps outlined in the innovative approach. However, when experts speak about climate change actions, they frequently talk about transportation, renewable power, land usage, water usage, and waste, but there is an elephant in the room that nobody talks about or that rarely comes up. I believe this topic needs to be addressed and needs to be considered as part of our sustainability platform, and that topic is food. The process of raising 1000000000s of animals for the meat, dairy, and egg industries, also called animal agriculture, is the single most environmentally destructive human enterprise on the planet. It is estimated to be responsible for at least 18% and possibly up to 51% of greenhouse gas emissions. By comparison, the transportation sector. This includes the emissions of all cars, planes, buses, ships, and other vehicles in the world is estimated to be responsible for 14%. Therefore, I want to emphasize, the largest sector of our emissions is not transportation. It is food. It is not properly accounted for in the way that the sustainability analysis has been performed. In addition, animal agriculture is a leading cause of a wide range of other environmental issues. Among them, deforestation, wild species, extinction, fisheries, depletion, air and water pollution, ocean dead zones, pesticide overuse, fresh water scarcity, and antibiotic resistant disease. Going to a plant-based or vegan diet, reduces an individual's carbon emissions by 75%. In fact, it is the biggest single biggest step a person could take to reduce their impact. A 2018 article by the University of Oxford published in the Journal Science concludes the following. A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just through greenhouse gases, but through global acidification, utrification, land use, and water use. It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car. They continue. In order to keep climate change, under 2 degrees, US citizens need to eat, 90% less beef, 90% less pork, 60% less milk, 50% less eggs, while eating 4 to 6 times more beans and pulses. The same messages echoed in numerous scientific studies. These include reports by the UN, the World Watch Institute. The final message is clear. We have no hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change unless we can enact diet change. I would like to introduce you to a program called Green Monday. Green Monday has 2 objectives. One, to reduce our meat and dairy consumption. in order to substantially shrink our carbon footprint. Two, to bring public awareness to the devastating impact of meat and dairy production on climate change in the environment. Last fall, the city of Berkeley enacted a green Monday resolution, and it was passed unanimously. Here is what a citywide Green Monday campaign may look like. number one. The city council would lead by example and only procure plant-based meals for meetings and events. Number two, city owned and city managed facilities and programs would feature healthy plant-based meals on Mondays, and they would identify them as green Monday specials. Number three, restaurants are encouraged to add plant-based green Monday specials to their menus and to display green Monday badges. Number four, Green Monday volunteers and interns will table at farmers markets, fairs, and other community events. Number five. The city schedules educational programs on the environmental impacts of our food choices. Green Monday can provide speakers and videos free of charge. And number six, libraries and community centers display green Monday posters and booklists all downloadable on the green Monday website. Ultimately, we will need to go farther than Green Monday. But every journey begins with a small step. Green Monday will bring the importance of plant-based eating into the public consciousness. This is desperately something that's needed if we are serious about stopping climate change. I invite you to look at the Green Monday website, green Monday.us.org. We have volunteers and staff members who will work with you to help implement this program in Mountain View. Thank you for hearing my comment and your consideration.

[00:47:13] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you very much. Next, please.

[00:47:21] Public Speaker: 40 year resident of Mountain View, and part of the Environmental Sustainability Task Force in Carbon Free Mountain View.

[00:47:29] Mayor Lisa Matichak: You have a few more minutes.

[00:47:33] Public Speaker: Anyway, the comment I will make is we had a lot of good comments about the fact that it's for the young people. It's obviously very important. We're getting into management of the things, but I think one of the things that we fail to meet at times or understand is the fact that it's a team effort. And when Mountain View leads, others follow. We started this, great example, this is carbon free, is Soca Valley clean energy. Silicon Valley, Clean Energy was something that started by Sunnyvale. And then suddenly, we had Cupertino, Mountain View, and the unincorporated areas, join in. So what happened after that? We got a much larger facility, we've got now every single city in Santa Clara County that can actually be part of something. The other ones are part of other organizations. And now we have a large amount of budget to actually do things that are important. So when Mountain View leads, other things follows, and it comes back and multiplies to us. So we have to think about not just this giving us to us, but we're giving it to everybody, and ultimately everybody gives back to us because unless the planet is fixed, it doesn't matter. Thank you very much.

[00:48:50] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[00:49:16] Public Speaker: The most important way to help Mountain View's climate change is, uh, green Mondays, because... in one hamburger, you waste approximately a little over 600 gallons of water, while in other things, such as showers, we need to do about... Less. Um... My sister's gonna say more about that, 'cause she knows more about that, but, um, yeah, in my opinion, I used to meet this Mondays, or Green Mondays. Thank you.

[00:50:05] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Hello. Could you speak into the microphone so we can hear you?

[00:50:09] Nancy: Hi, Nancy. I'm here with Mohun and the Green Monday group. Um. I think we should do meatless Monday to reduce the impact of meat dairy in the egg industry. Um

[00:50:49] Unknown Speaker: Do you do meatless Monday?

[00:50:58] Nancy: Two years? My sister and my dad went vegan because I told them about the effects that had not only the environment, but on the animals in themselves.

[00:51:31] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you very much. Next, please.

[00:51:35] Clarissa Chen: Hi, I'm Clarissa Chen. I'm a freshman at St. Francis High School, a school environment club member and a Mountain View resident. We need to take action now. We only have 11 years to dramatically reduce carbon emissions before climate change becomes irreversible. According to the October 2018 IPCC report. Carbon emissions need a fall by about 45%. From 2010 levels by 2030 in order to limit global warming to one.5 degrees Celsius. This year, youth have voiced their opinions on solving climate change through climate strikes, action projects, social media, and so much more. Youth are ready to make changes towards a more sustainable planet, but we need the city's help in order to do so. I back to school, and I don't always feel safe biking to school. Biking on busy roads with narrow bike lanes is stressful, and some parts don't even have a bike lane. On Mayor Monte. There are places where the bike lane just doesn't exist. The city needs your help to make changes that so that it is more convenient and safe for citizens to be sustainable. If bike lanes were safer, more people would bike. The more that we can do to make the city environmentally friendly and safe will encourage anyone who lives or visits Mountain View to make choices towards a more sustainable world. As you make decisions, please remember youth and that our environmental impact now will affect our generation and future generations to come. Thank you.

[00:53:07] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[00:53:14] Kimball Smith: I have staff, counsel. My name is Kimball Smith. I'm a longtime resident of Mountain View. I think I've been here since '92, '93. Anyway, I worked briefly with Akter in 2016. We did volunteer energy audits, energy off Great Mountain View. It was a successful program. It was free. We gave away free stuff. I think we need more incentive programs, either partial credit for energy audits that Santa Clara County offers to encourage people to improve their homes. You know, electricification is nice, but it's not cheap. Beyond that, I'd say that things done at Foot Hill College, like they put in a gas fire generator that heats the pool and delivers electricity to the school, in addition to the solar panels, we need to look close to home, for example, Stanford University, which has more money than us. Redid the entire energy plan for the whole campus. I'm sure they have some ideas that could help us, specifics on the 2nd most important thing, transportation. We should work with Sunnyvale and Palo Alto in other cities on the peninsula to do grade separation of the tracks in preparation for the high-speed rail. Our governor is wrong to not continue this project and start from both ends and meet in the valley. Thank you.

[00:54:41] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[00:54:47] Theta Corns: Hello, I'm Theta Corns. I was vice chair of the Environmental Sustainability Task Force, also on Carbon Free Mountain View and Great Streets Mountain View. Um, I look at this as invest now or pay later. As you know, our number one source of greenhouse gases is transportation, and we can invest in, as many speakers have said, in sustainable transportation, which means biking and walking in transit. Right now, we have a lot of interested but concerned bicyclists, who would bike, but don't currently, because we have a lot of, we don't have a full bite network, and actually one of the recommendations of Cadmus is to complete the bicycle plan that we have. That is, that is an investment that will definitely take time and money. But I think it will result in a much better quality of life for Mountain View, or we can sit in traffic because a lot of people do now. The other thing is, we're building a lot of buildings, and we can either invest in making those buildings energy efficient, and saving money for people, and saving the environment, or we can continue to build buildings that aren't designed to be efficient, and have people pay more, and also have them be less environmentally sustainable. So I look at it as we can invest now or we can pay more in the future. Thank you.

[00:56:15] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[00:56:21] Jamie: Hi, I'm Jamie, a sophomore at St. Francis High School and a Mountain View resident. As I'm sure you all know, we're in Silicon Valley, the technological heart of the world. Nations and communities around the world are tracking our progress in every aspect of our policies. So what sort of example are we setting? The recommendations before you should have been passed years ago. And yet the council has generally been inclined to be tight fisted with funds, considering actions, instead generously assigning research teams. I'm not against thorough research, but some very intelligent and thorough people have already done that. By my last count, you have hired no less than 4 separate teams to write and rewrite these goals. And I appreciate that the task forces have done a great work to hone these propositions, but now is the time to vote them in. They are very low risk, and the bare minimum of what needs to be done if our city is going to combat climate change. Because if the wealthy, liberal, technological stronghold of Mountain View does not even care to enact the bare minimum of climate policies, why should anyone else? There is no more time to plan and prepare. Now is the time for action. We have the technology. We need to make this issue a priority and send an example for cities around the world. Meanwhile, PG&E made the same mistake with the recent fires. They try to be penny pincers, to be cost effective and wait as long as possible to fix an urgent problem. And rather than update outdated and dangerous power lines, they ignored the problem to avoid the expense. And now look what has happened. Scores of people are dead, thousands of homes have been burned to the ground. And it was estimated by Accuweather that fires in 2018 alone cost California $400 billion. The plans that an environmental task force presented to your predecessors have instantly analyzed for months. Thank you.

[00:58:00] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. So anyone else who wants to speak or share their thoughts with us on this topic? If so, please make sure you fill out a blue card either before or after you speak. Yep.

[00:58:15] Steph Lao Chen: Hi, I'm Steph Lao Chen. I'm a Mountain View resident of close to 20 years now. And I just wanted to comment, I wasn't aware of Green Monday, and I have been practicing Meatless Monday for a couple of years now, and I posted on Facebook every Monday, and show what my friends, what I'm eating, and the food is great. If you adopted as a city council, You will not starve. You will eat wonderful food and set a real leadership example of what it can be. Um, Just the food's great. I have oatmeal for breakfast. I have salads and wonderful burritos, and there's just a ton of great food you can have, and it won't cost you anything. It will not cost Mountain View to do that to take a leadership role and tie it with all the other sustainability goals that you have. I'd love to see Mountain View take on the innovative approach of the 3 choices that you've been given. Thanks so much.

[00:59:12] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak to us on this topic? Okay, seeing none, we'll close the public input portion of this and bring it back to council, and we'll start with questions, and then we'll get into the council questions that is of staff, as opposed to the questions staff ask us. And then we'll get into those questions and we'll kind of divide them up. Any questions from council members? Council member Clark.

[00:59:45] Councilmember Chris Clark: I just have one... I think this was addressed a little bit, but I just wanted to dig in a little bit on the on the estimated cost by level. At the innovative level, which is the highest over 3 years that it really just has a limited period and it's just a staff cost and everything else is TBD. So is, is, and I know you enumerated some of the goals and the things that could be accomplished there, but are you just estimating, are you just estimating the program, the ongoing and limited period program cost to get to that 13 600000 amount?

[01:00:31] City Staff: Yes, that includes the all of the staff up to that point plus the 3 additional limited period staff that have been identified by Cadmus as missing resources for implementing at the innovative level. But if we can go, Steve, to the slide, um, you go forward by, actually backwards. Sorry, to the innovative slide. These are some examples or a summary of examples of the um, types of, of, efforts that would be undertaken at the innovative level, above and beyond the things that were on the prior 2 slides for um, advanced and foundational, and where you wind up with less ability to estimate the costs are, you know, the direct investments and transportation solutions if the city were to um, work um, with helping to develop and bring to mountain view public private partnerships around mobility, for example, that wouldn't quite pencil out otherwise, or that really met the city's needs for reducing single occupancy vehicles and the city was willing to invest. That's an example of something that's in that TBD. and some other things along this list as well.

[01:01:55] Councilmember Chris Clark: So you're fairly confident about, sort of the the staff cost component or sort of the percentage overall that would make, but the true cost really comes from the program, the one.

[01:02:06] City Staff: Correct.

[01:02:07] Councilmember Chris Clark: Okay.

[01:02:08] City Staff: Yeah, and they really are rough estimates. And they are meant to provide, you know, an order of magnitude up to the point that we felt we could make those estimates.

[01:02:23] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Hicks?

[01:02:27] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So, first a statement and then a question. So, this, depending on how we do it, I think this may be one of, this may be the most important thing we do as council, we're in kind of a, we have, we're facing kind of a World War II type problem, except that we have, instead of Churchill, we have Donald Trump as our commander in chief, unfortunately. So we have to kind of be our own commanders in chief, I guess, at every city and county level. Um, I would commit a lot of resources towards this as long as we're being very strategic in the, you know, in the same way we would if we were fighting World War II. And one of the problems I have and questions I have in looking over what's been presented is I'm a little unclear on... I guess I need a more focused strategy, and I need to know if we commit a high level of resources. Will we be able to, how much will my question is, how much will we be able to craft that? And, um, I guess my, what I mean by a focus strategy is that I think we need the biggest bang for the buck we can possibly get, and we need that in the short term, because, uh, as the IPPC report suggested, and I think we all knew that short term is very important. I'm much more concerned about our short term, greenhouse gas emissions reduction, then getting there, you know, by 20, 50 or 20, 70, you're building towards that, although at some point, of course, we should. So, that's, and I, I don't think I want to get too into the weeds on, on biggest bang for the buck, but, um, that would include things like, um, picking two or three, picking the things that would really give us the largest, um, the largest reduction in greenhouse gases in the short term, and, um, not going down the road of diminishing returns for, you know, small, I really don't want to throw a lot of money on things that programs that would have very little effect. And I'm more interested in some of the things that you mention, I guess it's in the innovative level, like carbon offsets, which are basically can be used as a grant to other communities, to things that will have a big bang for the buck, you know, if other communities use that money that we have. So, my question is, given that sort of background, how, how much room do we have at this point to tailor the strategies so that it's short term and the biggest possible bang for the buck that we can, that we can get?

[01:05:32] City Staff: I'll start on a response to that. The actions before you tonight are primarily around making a commitment to establish a reserve and put resources towards that reserve for 3 years of activity. The activity, the programmatic actions themselves, would come back to council in the strategic, I'm sorry, the sustainability action plan in the fall, and the kinds of things that you just mentioned around Biggest Bang for the Buck. And we I think we should kind of respond to that too, in terms of, you know, what kinds of strategies, if any, could really give us something along the lines of a Silicon Valley clean energy. And that we may not have that option. It may be a lot of things together and with an integrated approach. Um, and not kind of going down a list of the of the highest, um, uh, impact projects without having the kind of infrastructure around them. But what we would like to hear from you and all your colleagues is, you know, are there core approaches and roles for the city that feel that that are important to you in order to be able to feel like that reserve of funds is being well spent, and then we would develop the action plan and come back with that, including both the phasing over time, because those those 3 year totals aren't things that we would need day one and we would, you know, phase over the course of that time as we ramp up. but also what the impacts and outcomes would be associated with that.

[01:07:26] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So you're communicating what you would want to see in the way of outcomes and the types of strategies that you would want to see. And I'm assuming that we'll hear that from other council members as well. Council member. Oh, did anyone else have a comment about in response to that question? Um... Council, I'm sorry, um, Vice Mayor Abbe Koga.

[01:07:54] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Um, I guess, like, first question is for, um... Sorry, from Cadmus, for Cadmus. I was looking at the case examples report and it just did a quick jotdown of the 10 cities and their population, their growth, percentage, and then the FTEs. And I actually noticed it's kind of, it's pretty broad. We have, you know, cities, I guess maybe half of them are around our size, but some are like twice as large as ours. And growth is from like 2.9%, or no, 0.4% in Evanston to 14.one% in Fort Collins. And then the FT is at .75% in Santa Mon, Palo Alto, actually, to 18 FT. So I'm trying to get a better sense of like where we fit in and all of this. And as we look at, well, what, you know, what kind of resources we really need to put in. And can you give me, like, can you give us a better, I guess, a better read on where we, where we fall in this list of cities and what really would be appropriate for us to consider doing.

[01:09:14] Consultant: Thanks, that's a very, uh, important question and a very difficult question to answer conclusively. So, the degree to which we tallied up the FTEs in the core sustainability offices in each of those cities, and each of the cities that we looked at has a varying degree of sustainability focused work that happens in the departments. And it really sort of, a lot of it depends on whether the city is implementing its program through, say, a central organization in a city manager's office, or a similar setting, or if it's implemented underneath a specific department, like the transportation department, or the community development department, and as such, each of the sustainability offices really has quite different roles and purviews in those locations.. And so it's difficult to say conclusively what where Mountain View stands in relation to those cities. I would say that many of the cities do have a significant amount of buy-in from their departments, much like Mountain View does and have given their staff a fair amount of leverage to work on or latitude to work on sustainability priorities, even if they aren't located in the sustainability office.

[01:10:42] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: So, um, I guess I'm, like, focused on the FTEs, we have to figure out what's appropriate for us. So, Is that because of integration that we have such some that are less than one and then the others that aren't as integrated have more FTs or how does that work?

[01:11:03] Consultant: So in the case, say, of Fort Collins, or some of the larger programs, they actually take a lot of the responsibilities that may otherwise have ended up in the departments and weave them into the sustainability offices purview?

[01:11:22] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay.

[01:11:23] Consultant: Whereas in places like Palo Alto, it's really the focus has been primarily on having change management approach and having the small office suggest ideas and implementation strategies that then the departments would have to execute on.

[01:11:43] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay. So then I guess I'm switching the staff, um, in light of the response, um, which approach are we trying to take with, um, these 3 calories?

[01:11:59] City Staff: Yes, we're taking more of a decentralized approach where we have currently in sustainability, 2.5 positions to regular and half limited period, and the narrative budget, we're proposing that the half limited period become a 2nd full-time analyst and we're also proposing office administration support to a total of 3.5 FTEs ongoing. And if the resources at the foundational level were added, that would increase the 3.5 to 4.5 in that central office, if it went to advanced, there'd be another one, it would be 5.5 in the central office and at an innovative, it'd be another two. So it would be 7.5 if I just added everything correctly. And so that would be the number you'd compare to the numbers that Cadmus identified because they were really looking at the core sustainability office. And so right now, we have a, you know, a small team and we, could potentially have a somewhat bigger team, but much more of the additions or the added capacity would be in the operational level where we would expect that that programmatic level work would continue to live. So it wouldn't be in sustainability that we would be, um, uh, doing TDM analysis. It would be in community development. It wouldn't be in sustainability that we would be working with regional partners around transit planning that would be in public works and their transportation division, for example.

[01:13:45] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: So, and that goes to my next question. I mean, you know, I think it's, right? We have trade-offs and I see that given what's being recommended for where the funding could come from. And there was mention that some usually our surplus goes to capital improvement projects. And so that's the question is, by shifting this funding, are we potentially pushing out, you know, CIPs and their completion. And how much of the projects, since we have quite a few transportation projects on the list already, are really tied to this, that, and my, you know, written question about overlap, um, not only overlap with other agencies like Silicon Valley, Clean Energy, but even within our operations, you know, how much overlap is there.

[01:14:45] City Staff: Yeah, that's a good question. tradeoffs. That's a good question. And there are both kind of competing priorities. You know, 1st there's just the context that Philip mentioned about, you know, just general capacity constraints. And then there are things that generally are, you know, that actually are competing priorities. And there's also synergies where things that support, say, vision 0 objectives around safety in our transportation network also support our livability objectives around congestion, and also support our emissions, reductions, objectives, and sustainability. And so for that reason, we do acknowledge that some of that +plus in those project, or those funding buckets, the different levels could be funded through the CIP process in the way that that CIP process works by designating transportation projects that have sustainability outcomes. However, interestingly, as the public works director has engaged in this process, we recognize that we don't actually have the in-house capacity to, when we're designing infrastructure projects, say what the greenhouse gas emission impact of those would be. So that's, you know, that's one part of the capacity that we need. For that reason, we did not include in the reported on this slide any transfer or reduction of funding for the CIP reserve, because that did feel a little bit like kind of a shell game of moving it from one pot to another, but still needing to support roughly, you know, the same or overlapping kinds of objectives. And so the funds that we've identified here are Calper's strategic property and other post-employment benefits.

[01:16:45] Unknown Speaker: Um,

[01:16:45] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: So I wanted to ask about measure P funding. When the voters voted for it, I think we added the 80% transportation 20% to housing split. Um, Legally. How, can we, how much of that funding could we use for these projects do they have to have a direct transportation connection to it or is it more flexible?

[01:17:13] City Staff: It was a... The council adopted a resolution, stating that was their intent.

[01:17:20] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay. So it's really an... So there's no legally binding, like, the transportation measures, county wise, they have specifics, but we didn't correct it.

[01:17:31] City Staff: was a general, let's do that.

[01:17:32] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Yeah, it was a general fun, and as I said, that was non binding. However, even with that, you know, dedication of 80%, a lot of that transportation could be used for projects that support sustainability.

[01:17:47] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: But we could do even 100%, that's transportation, sustainability oriented.

[01:17:53] City Staff: You could.

[01:17:53] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay. I wanted to ask if Jesse. Going into the financials. So, um, you know, and I, you know, no big, I'm sure no big surprise, but, um, a concern is where we're pulling the funding from, and, um, you know, a lot of, like, we've worked really hard to maintain our AAA credit rating, as Bruce mentioned, um, but that, if I recall, that, you know, was based on things like our reserve, um, funds, um, our debt pay, you know, liabilities, and how much we've paid into. those. And so if we were to begin pulling away from OPEB purrs. And then, you know, we've recently dropped our reserve, um, requirement from 25% to the, you know, the range from 20 to 25%. At what point will that start to affect things like our credit rating and other?

[01:19:00] City Manager Dan Rich: Jesse can fill in, but just to be clear, none of these potential pots, and they're all potential, and absolutely, it's all about tradeoffs. Yes. You know, there are differing goals and priorities, but none of these would ever take us below a policy, a reserve policy requirement. These are all kind of extra funds. So we wouldn't specifically be out of compliance with any of our reserve policies.

[01:19:26] Unknown Speaker: Right, I understand that. But when we did the lower reserve policy, the argument was being made that, you know, some of that would be to pay our liabilities, and so that was a tradeoff that would maintain our still our credit rating. But if we're starting to pull, you know, lower reserves, and then take away from our liability funding, like taking funding away from paying down our liability, at what point does that start to affect our financial status?

[01:19:55] Finance Director Jesse Takahashi: Yeah, good evening. Jesse Takahashi, the finance director. To answer that question, as the city manager pointed out, the current funds are not being taken away from that. And as far as our credit rating goes, they typically will look at our overall level reserves. I believe the way that this would be allocated, even if you reallocated some of the funding from one pot to another. These reserves are still subject to future councils, changes and reallocations, meaning that in case of a need, there would be the flexibility to reallocate those away from sustainability if we had an emergency or some other fiscal need. So in total, the totality would be our reserves would still be there, at least for the immediate future. And, you know, presumably our current level, as the city manager mentioned, our minimum requirement for the 20 to 25% range would still be intact. And so generally that would bode well. I don't see that this would have an adverse impact on our credit ratings. So there are many other factors that go into that particular evaluation from the rating agencies. But in terms of what's being requested here and how it's being requested, um, you know, I believe that wouldn't have much of an impact on that.

[01:21:20] Unknown Speaker: So I guess just to be more specific, you know, we were talking about last week or Thursday, the budget, OPEB, we want to get to 80%, funded, and purrs, you know, somewhere in the high 70, 70s range. This would obviously get us away from that. And so that's my concern is that if we do that, what, you know, what we're, yeah, what kind of places that put us financially?

[01:21:46] Finance Director Jesse Takahashi: Right. And so, you know, there's a certain pace of what we have targets that are set and we discuss certain target funding levels. You know, this certainly would probably slow us down a little bit into that regard. Again, but again, it's the totality of counsel's discretion and how you want to allocate those use of funds. It doesn't mean that we're going to be going backwards. It just may mean that it will take a little bit longer to attain those other desired targets, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Credit regencies will look at, are you going in the right direction? And are you addressing? And I think the history of the city has been to go in the right direction in terms of funding its reserves and trying to address these particular issues. You know, there's certainly another competing need. And I think, you know, that's something that they do take into account. And, you know, as far as future results go, we potentially will have future dollars that can be allocated as well. So, um, again, I think this, we're still going in the right direction and it's just a matter of how you want to allocate, you know, these current resources, but um, I don't see, again, there being in an adverse impact at this time.

[01:23:07] Unknown Speaker: And sorry, one more question. The ongoing staffing, um, So our long-term planning or financial, um, protections, we are projecting a recession. So what is the plan then to pay for the added staff on? I mean, is it something that at that point in time we're going to have to look at cuts? Is that the plan? Or do we have another plan to keep funding these new positions we might potentially?

[01:23:38] Finance Director Jesse Takahashi: And the city manager may want to address that. At this point, this is really to set aside reserves. So to set aside a pot, not necessarily well, and we may be getting into the to the decision of allocating how we want to allocate that. But, you know, certainly at this time, it's more of, let's sort of earmark a set amount of funds towards this purpose, how we go about appropriating that, you know, taking the consideration. There may be an economic downturn in the near future, can then affect how we go about at what rate we want to spend these funds.

[01:24:13] Unknown Speaker: Okay.

[01:24:14] City Manager Dan Rich: Yeah, just to add onto that. Audrey may have more to add, but you're right. I mean, the intent tonight was to show you how you could get to three years of full funding for these levels without the plus plus components of it. And a good portion of it is limited, period, by design, but there are ongoing costs. And I want to be very clear, we do not currently have identified sources, you know, to sustain it for the long term, but we want to be able to at least get through 3 years, you know, see where our budget is, see where the world is, see where our results on sustainability are. And frankly, you know, there's a possibility there would have to be adjustments and tradeoffs between different priorities at that point in time.

[01:24:57] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: If I might just add a little bit to that. One of the things we didn't get into the level of detail to show is that there is some of these positions and programmatic costs would have nexus with our development services fund, and so we would be able to also utilize that fund for some of the ongoing expenses. We haven't done a lot of looking at the utility, the enterprise funds. But again, if there's nexus there around sustainability programmatic costs. And then as you've already raised, there's the question of the measure P funding for transportation, which, while that is, you know, to address big ticket transportation projects, I think the shuttle was identified as a potential funded program through that that has an operating component to it. And so that is the one source potentially of ongoing revenue that could be in support of a sustainability funding level.

[01:25:56] Unknown Speaker: Answer, but like the shoreline fund, could we allocate some of it to that? Do we, I think there's mentioned, do we look at a sustainability impact fee on development? And, you know, at one time, we did do a survey on affordable housing, parcel tax. We look at that. So I guess I would like to explore other funding possibilities. Thanks.

[01:26:23] Unknown Speaker: I had more funding questions, but do you have funding? Do you guys mind if I did my funding questions? As long as we're talking about funding? So, would we make contributions to Cowpers and OPEM, if we in the next few years, um, or is the proposal to eliminate our contributions in total?

[01:26:50] Finance Director Jesse Takahashi: Well, I think that would largely depend upon how our operating results do, you know, for the next year, the next couple of years, because a lot of the contributions are a result of how we project the year to come out, just like at the last mid-year. We saw that we were going to have, you know, surplus that would enable us to then make those decisions to pay down some additional debt. So really, almost kind of depends year to year, how we end up looking. That will then determine the outcome of whether we can recommend, we pay down, or use that money, to pay down OPEB or Cal Perrs, or use it for another purpose.

[01:27:32] Unknown Speaker: Okay.

[01:27:33] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Um, and, uh, There's, um, also what we, I want to make sure we're making the distinction that we make contributions to cowpers as part of our ongoing budget, that these are kind of the above and beyond payments towards the unfunded liability. And then, as I mentioned earlier, um, council has earmarked, um, $10000000 in the parking, um, lease agreement revenue, for, um, uh, cow per, um, liability, which is another source that would be available to continue those above and beyond contributions or conversely, council could decide that it wants to earmark those funds in another way, um, force sustainability. For example.

[01:28:24] Unknown Speaker: Okay. So when you were thinking about how we would potentially fund this, I'm curious, if you discussed, well, maybe some of it could come from a reserve we set up and some could be built into the budget. Like, you know, we want to say 2000000 a year for the next 3 years from the general fund, for example, and the rest from, and then set up a reserve for the rest. And I'm curious if that was discussed and why you decided not to recommend that.

[01:28:59] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Part of it, I think, is timing because the narrative budget was already underway, and we were trying to create a placeholder, if you will, with funding that had sources that we could identify. Um, but it would be possible to look at those costs that we, um, believe would be ongoing and estimate those costs in terms of where did those fit within the narrative budget? Um, in 1920. I think there's about a $2.5 million, um, uh, operating balance above, you know, revenues to expenses for that, that, um, would provides a pretty slim margin on a budget the size of the cities if the city wanted to include that in an operating budget. Um, and going forward, as we do expect a recession in the five-year, um, planning horizon that would, to include those things in an operating budget would put us into a larger projected deficit at this point. And so our focus right now was around taking the opportunity that we have, because we are in a position of favorable, a favorable economic position, to utilize these things that could create a reserve to then be appropriated on an annual basis. But your point is very well taken, that when you have ongoing costs, you want to fund them with ongoing revenue. And we're getting part of the way there with this solution, but what's being put forward to you tonight, and would need to come back to tell you more about how much of this would be ongoing and ways and what would that do to our balance. If we're willing to project out to a negative balance into our five-year trajectory, that would be a pretty easy thing to do if we wanted to not be in deficit, then we'd have to look at the trade-offs within our operating budget, which was a bigger undertaking than looking at the trade-offs amongst our unallocated or our allocated operating balance.

[01:31:08] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Thank you. Council member Ramirez.

[01:31:12] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. Um, I guess 1st question for Philip. I want to make sure I'm asking this correctly. Can you help me better understand externalized costs and how or whether that can be quantified in the context of climate change?

[01:31:37] Philip: That's a very broad question. And I'd be interested in a little more specifics about what specific sorts of externalities you'd want to explore.

[01:31:57] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I guess this is where I'll probably need a little bit of help, but a couple of speakers alluded to, there's there is a cost incurred, if we do not make certain investments now. There are costs that are not currently being factored into some decisions that we're making now. And I'm not sure I have a full grasp of that concept. So I'm hoping you can sort of walk me through it just so I could better understand the very real trade-offs that we're making now. There's an investment we're being asked to make now, but there are costs that perhaps are not being factored into decisions that we're making now that would help us discern whether the investment we're being asked to make is appropriate. Does that does it help?

[01:32:44] Philip: Yes. So I guess to answer that question. I would start by saying a lot of the external costs are very difficult to project, and they relate to costs that would be imposed on future generations. And they are also the subject of a lot of research that's been done, for instance, by the IPCC and other entities related to climate impacts that we're seeing in the states and beyond. And the externalities that you refer to could be both within California or globally. And so, without getting into the specifics of all the various risks and climate impacts that could be that will be seen in future decades, I would say that there's expected to be quite a broad range of costs that will be quite significant.

[01:33:49] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Have there been efforts to try and quantify that? So in other words, if you're if you can reasonably determined that there is a cost to driving that that is not really factored into a gas tax or something like that or investment in pavement maintenance, is there an attempt to sort of quantify what that additional cost might be and then impose that as an additional cost on the driver or whatever the user is?

[01:34:26] Philip: In various applications, yes, various entities do make those estimates. And I would have to get back to you on any specific, sort of externality calculations that have been made to account for those costs.

[01:34:45] Unknown Speaker: Philip, if I might, with the example that you provided Council of Ramirez, there are things like congestion pricing for single occupancy vehicles. There's also parking pricing, which are ways to increase, you know, that take into account the environmental impact and congestion and other livability impacts of the behavior of driving and increase the cost of driving to reflect those impacts. I'm not sure if that's what you were getting at.

[01:35:20] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Well, first. I just want to make sure I understand the concept, because it's a difficult one for me to grasp. But this is helpful. And then 2nd question, I think probably for you, Audrey, we're not going to, so we're making an investment, but it's highly unlikely that we'll be able to ramp, if we, for instance, were to choose to go to advanced or innovative, that we would be able to ramp up to that very quickly. And I'm hoping you can help me get a sense of what the implementation time frame might look like to get up to 17 additional staff and make whatever investments we'll need to make to get to that. So is that is that a multi-year process or how quickly do you think realistically we would be able to do that?

[01:36:06] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: I can give you a partial answer to that. You know, we have, in the past 2 budget years, had, had, kind of a restocking of our staff that has resulted in a lot of hiring, and that, you know, typically has to be kind of prioritized by HR and, um, and the hiring process itself takes several months. So it is not likely that we would have 17 new staff people within the 1st year and which we would have and how we would prioritize amongst our recruitment resources, I think, would be what we would be bringing back to the council with a more detailed programmatic plan in the fall.

[01:36:58] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Okay, thank you.

[01:37:01] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member commit.

[01:37:02] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. So when we're looking at particularly, not necessarily the approaches, but the estimated cost by levels, I know there was a council question kind of related to this in terms of, um, trying to combine, but looking at costs, would there be a way to maybe, uh, do a combination, or, um, for example, somewhere in the middle of advanced or innovative, in terms of a funding level? Or would it be we either have to choose foundational advanced or innovative, and that's the set cost level, or is there any kind of wiggle wiggle room?

[01:37:47] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Well, um, There's a couple different ways to look at that. First, it, these are not exact enough numbers to say that if you, you know, had 1700 and not 18, um, uh, you know, one. 1800000 and... 1700000 and not one. you couldn't achieve foundational, right? These are estimates. Or if you had, um, uh, 10000000 for 3 years, you would be best just to stay at foundational because you could afford the 4000000 for, um, for the 3 years. Um, So I think it is appropriate to think about these as a continuum of of ambition, um, and investment and response. But we don't necessarily want to think about it on what is just one year's of activity or what could we afford just for one year because we want to make a significant programmatic investment to what we can accomplish over a longer period of time and especially based on what we would need to have a continuity of services over that time. Um, and, um, it doesn't work to necessarily pick and choose, as I've said before, amongst the, you know, the individual strategies and actions, which I don't think is what you're saying. But some things, you know, if it's the general intention of the council to, um, structure a program that allows us to be as innovative as possible with a comfort level of looking at a reserve and a multi-year commitment and a set number of funding sources, and that we would continue to endeavor to build that reserve. And then we would develop annual, um, program budgets and plans that reflective of priorities, and the funding that we could appropriate from that reserve within a 1st year. I mean, that would be, you know, a process for going forward.

[01:40:10] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So just a follow-up question on that. trying to find the chart. So the potential funding sources. So that is the that goes beyond the innovative amount in the column. So, you know, not that I'm trying to pick and choose, but I think that there was a little bit of conversation around OPEP contributions and purrs. Um, so would that's kind of where I was asking in terms, uh, that's kind of the source of my question.

[01:40:45] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Oh, I'm sorry. So you weren't, so, um, if the target were to, um, set aside the amount that's estimated for, say, the innovative level and, um, you could then choose some lesser amount of these, um, you know, choose not to touch the, the OPEB, for example, um, or choose to contribute some, but not the full 4000000 that's in the 1920 proposed budget towards Cal Purse.

[01:41:18] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. That was kind of at the heart of where I was trying to get.

[01:41:21] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: No, no, no, I misunderstood. Thank you.

[01:41:23] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thanks. Council member McAllister.

[01:41:26] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, since we're on this budget. My concept of this funding reserve, and under the concept of time is of the essence, we can only implement at a certain level. based on the dollars, or is there roadblocks or constraints to a rapid implementation? And thinking that you're talking about putting money aside, but using current money? So if the council has the fortitude, we could just say it's going to be budgeted, and then we don't have to reserve money in the future, that we could use for the present. So is there constraints that would prevent us from doing that? And I have that great look from the city manager away.ways.

[01:42:16] City Manager Dan Rich: Not sure I understood the 2nd question.

[01:42:19] Councilmember John McAlister: Well, it was a premise, Fred.

[01:42:20] City Manager Dan Rich: Try me again.

[01:42:22] Councilmember John McAlister: Why put money away? If the council decides we're going to budget it, so then we don't need to put money into reserve, we can use it for immediate use. But that's why I was asking, are the constraints to ramping up that says, well, I could give you $100 million, but we can only use $2 million because that's how the process.

[01:42:42] City Manager Dan Rich: I think that the constraints come in two directions. One, I couldn't find $100 million. And two, towards Council member Ramirez's point, what we can spend in a year is going to be constrained by our ability to bring the staff on board. and to have the infrastructure around how we make decisions and how we collaborate across departments established. I would say that we have a made a lot of good progress towards that just over the course of this consultant study. Um, but, um, there is a constraint on being able to do it all at this time.

[01:43:30] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, so... No, okay, so going back then, you have an idea how much to start the implementation, a dollar amount, so you're saying $450 million to get the process started. I'm just looking at the slide in front of us.

[01:43:49] City Manager Dan Rich: Well, the 14.5. No, that is the 450, just for year one.

[01:43:54] Councilmember John McAlister: For year one. Just let's forget Foundation advanced innovation. What do you have? I'm trying to understand the implementation in a dollar amount if they're correlated.

[01:44:05] City Manager Dan Rich: I do not have a year one cost. for you.

[01:44:09] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. But then if we do have the ability to budget, is putting a reserve aside is a guarantee that these projects will go forward, not knowing exactly how much money we'll need in the future anyway.

[01:44:24] City Manager Dan Rich: Right. We have about $2.5 million, if I'm not mistaken, in the operating balance for 1920. So if you wanted to have it all in the operating budget, that's about how much room you'd have to add into the 1920 operating budget.

[01:44:40] Councilmember John McAlister: But we don't know what that money buys us anyway until you get more in depth, then, correct? Correct.

[01:44:45] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Okay. If I can just answer it a little bit differently. I mean, I think the goal of the reserve is so that there's sort of a guaranteed pot of money that we would enable us to fund 3 years at whatever level you choose. It's not that we would, you know, use it all in year one or all in year three. We'd use it as, frankly, as fast as we could to achieve as much as we could. But there will be a ramp up here. And we know it's not going to be at the beginning. But we want to be able, you know, to have more or less a guaranteed funding for 3 years, in part, because a lot of this is limited period and one time, and frankly, it would be very challenging to hire folks without kind of some certainty around the duration of it.

[01:45:30] Councilmember John McAlister: Oh, yeah. What? So, basically, everything you're looking at is basically the three year period in here.

[01:45:41] City Manager Dan Rich: Let's go to the comprehensive transportation modal plan that we're going to be looking at. And a lot of the questions that you ask there will hopefully be addressed in that particular program. you know, direct investment in transportation that's going to look at and all those things.

[01:45:56] Councilmember John McAlister: Well, when we do that, well, we look at the greenhouse gases because and that will be part of that study so that we are going to, as we implement that program, which we haven't. And I don't know if it's that included in the RFP, can we include money into that now to include that as part of the RFP when we do our comprehensive modal program?

[01:46:17] City Manager Dan Rich: That's a great question, something that the public works director and I have talked about, so I'll let him respond.

[01:46:25] Public Works Director Mike Fuller: Mike Fuller, Public Works director, it wasn't originally part of the comprehensive modal plan, but I think it could be. I think we could hire a kind of a subconsultant to work with the prime consultant included in the scope. And I think if I'm not mistaken, We had a we had a number in there, an estimate for that. So yes, we could include it in that.

[01:46:47] Councilmember John McAlister: And when would we have to authorize that?

[01:46:52] Public Works Director Mike Fuller: It's included in the amounts of money that we're putting forward for you tonight. I believe, at the foundational level. So if we have funding at least at that level, that is one of the activities that we would plan to program into your one.

[01:47:09] Councilmember John McAlister: Could we just segment it and just say we want to go ahead and include that in the comprehensive model program?

[01:47:16] Public Works Director Mike Fuller: Um, you could?

[01:47:19] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. And when would that could be done?

[01:47:24] Public Works Director Mike Fuller: We're working on the scope for that right now. I think when we, I believe, we're returning to counsel for that contract, and, um, we could either include it at that time or you could or the contract, and we could return with an amendment. So either way, we could do it in the near term. I'd have to see exactly where we are negotiating a scope on that. But in either case, it would either be with the award of that contract or an amendment, Charlie thereafter.

[01:47:54] Councilmember John McAlister: And so when you came back to this with that particular contract, we can make the amendment to include it that night.

[01:48:03] Public Works Director Mike Fuller: Yes, and if we don't have sufficient funding in the CIP, we'd request a budget allocation for that, but it could be done separately from this process as part of the award of that contract.

[01:48:13] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Well, that's good news. Thank you. moving forward. The other question I had is on this, the term innovation. So could you sort of define what you mean by innovation, is that Mountain View is making these new solutions, or are we just taking best practices and implementing them?

[01:48:33] City Manager Dan Rich: Philip? Ping pong.

[01:48:38] Philip: Sure. Thanks for the question. We anticipate that due to the investments that other communities have made in identifying best practices, a lot of the work that would be done at the innovative level would build on other cities' actions. I believe there would be additional action and thought that would be invested by Mountain View and trying to figure out what are the next innovative actions that can be done and how would we tailor best practices that we're seeing arise around the country and the world and make sure that they make the most sense for Mountain View.

[01:49:15] Councilmember John McAlister: So there is no logical progression? It's sort of, we're gonna go here, and then we'll see around what's out there, that goes to the next round. Or is that what you're saying?

[01:49:26] Philip: Can you repeat your question or...?

[01:49:28] Councilmember John McAlister: The question is, we'll implement something. We'll do something. And then you'll say, well, we've carried that as far as potentially that it's return is good, and then we'll see what else that may tie into that to make it to the next step. Because when you're saying best practices, and you're saying, well, well, innovation is, well, we'll do something, and then we'll see what else is out there to see what we could do next. And that's why I'm so understanding. Is there some kind of a progression that we know what we're trying to, you know, once our goal is determined that, okay, well, this best practice out there complements what we're doing, and so that's our next step.

[01:50:06] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Can I, can I help or try to help? There are certain things that you just wouldn't do at the lower levels because they take a lot of effort. They're expensive. There's a lot of change management, both in terms of our organizational capacity and the community, the complexity of them, you know, the rarity of them in terms of best practices among other cutting edge jurisdictions. And so it isn't to say, well, we'll get a little bit into that at a foundational, and then we'll ramp it up a bit, and that'll be innovative. I mean, is that kind of the question you're asking when you're saying next step? Like, can we get a little bit into it, decide if we want to be, you know, taking it to a next level and that would make it innovative?

[01:50:52] Councilmember John McAlister: Well, that's what I was trying to underst- in the context of his question was that, you know, innovation is we'll look at the next best best practices out there. Because we're not going to do it. They're just going to tag along or they're going to complement what we were doing. And that's what I was understanding is, okay, is it going to be a logical next step or is it just something that another city is doing that we say, okay, that comes along?

[01:51:19] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Well, I mean, so an example of what other cities are doing might relate to, um, uh, partnerships with um, mobility providers and so there could be some best practices in that arena that if we wanted to be innovative and be investing directly in public private partnerships for lower carbon um, transportation or mobility services, we would certainly see what others had done out there, but we would design it in a way that would make sense for mountain view. And that's not something we would do at an advanced or a foundational level, but is something that we would do at an innovative level.

[01:52:03] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, I guess I'm just hung up on the word innovation and what it means, but now I'm getting a clearer understanding of that. To go back to Council member Hicks' concept of Big Bang for the buck, And you were saying that some of the things that might be an innovation might cost a lot, take a while. So if you took the 3 steps here and you categorize them for the biggest bank for the buck based on return of the reduction of greenhouse gas is one of our goals, would we see a different list?

[01:52:36] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Well, we don't have each of these strategies and levels pinned to specific reductions in greenhouse gas. What we do know is we know the sectors that are contributing to emissions in our community, and we know the types of strategies that other organizations or jurisdictions are using to see success in bringing down greenhouse gas. We don't have the next Silicon Valley clean energy as a strategy for that significant level of reduction. And so, as I mentioned, the types of strategies are likely to be more, um, uh, many different strategies to pursue. I do know that, You know, there have been some conversations around group buys, you know, if reducing the, um, uh, dirty fuel, um, transportation, um, sector within mountain view is one of our biggest areas to impact. One big action you could take would be group buys around electric vehicles, for example. And so that's something that we would have to analyze to see how much that would actually result in changed purchases and changed driving behaviors within Mountain View. But we don't, we haven't really looked at that compared to all the other actions and strategies that are before you to rank order them in terms of their greenhouse gas impact.

[01:54:22] Councilmember John McAlister: If we took a policy, if a council decides a policy that every new development in Mountain View will be all electric benefit's legal, where would that fit into this strategy or context?

[01:54:35] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Well, we're certainly looking at reach codes as part of foundational, but I don't believe that we have the support through the state's cost benefits study to require or mandate all electrics. So it would be above foundational and involve incentives and other strategies to have new development, electrify. And did I get that correct, Steve?

[01:55:03] Steve: Yeah, generally, that's correct. States cost effectiveness study was just released recently, and it does not find that a mandate for all electric is feasible, but there are a number of options that any given city can, based on this cost effectiveness study, implement as part of a reach code at different levels. And so there's flexibility, built into it, to enable each city to customize the reach code based on their jurisdictions and community's preferences.

[01:55:39] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: That's a project that we are actively working on right now. The council gave us direction to work on that on December 4th. And so we're moving down that path in a couple of different ways. One is monitoring the reach code effort that is underway right now, being led by Silicon Valley Clean Energy and Peninsula Clean Energy. We're actively involved in that process. We're looking at the cost effectiveness study. We're looking at what's possible. We're talking with our building official, and we've got a roadmap between now and the end of the year, for the key milestones that we're going to need to hit, in order to be able to have the reach code, not only vetted in the community, but also through council, so that it can be brought into effectiveness, either concurrent with the new building code on January 1st, or within a couple of months thereafter, depending on sort of how some things shake out. So that's one piece we're working on. The other piece we're working on, which you also gave us direction and funding for in December, is sort of a long term building decarbonization study, and actually Silicon Valley Clean Energy is in the process of working on that right now. So we're actively engaged in the conversation with them on that. That will enable us to learn more specifically about the age of our buildings and sort of which of our buildings, or using the most energy, so that we can more effectively target the reach code. So we're really addressing the whole building decarbonization element very aggressively in 2 different paths concurrently.

[01:57:17] Councilmember John McAlister: So I'm going to get weed just twice, and that's my last question. Would that move the needle?

[01:57:25] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Certainly, anything that we do that impacts the building code. has the potential to move the needle, bearing in mind that when we talk about the building code, if we're talking about just new construction, the amount that the needle gets moved is less. If we start getting creative, and we want to begin to develop policies and strategies to go after the existing building stock, which is where a much larger percentage of our energy usage and emissions comes from, doing that effectively would have a potential to move the needle a lot more, but that's sort of more difficult and lessen our control. The way I look at this is it's a both hand. We sort of need all hands on deck, looking at all of the options available to us. So, to me, it's not sort of either, or, we got to do something in the building code, through a reach code. We also have to get creative. Of course, based on council blessing, and the ability to sell this within the community. But how can we also perhaps look at the existing building stock and ways that, you know, when someone pulls a permit or they do a remodel over a certain percentage of the square footage? We can then ask them to make certain upgrades at that time. So, a lot of us options available to us as we go forward.

[01:58:50] Councilmember John McAlister: And this is for city attorney? Can't leave you out. So on a gatekeeper project, could we have the authority to say we wanted to be electric? since it's sort of a, you know, a different type of a project going forward. Could we ask them to make it all electric? I guess I want to know, number one, if that's feasible. And then we're asking them to comply with different building code requirements, then they're required to under state law,

[01:59:23] City Attorney Jannie Quinn: so I'd want to take a look at that.

[01:59:24] Councilmember John McAlister: I'm sorry, I mean, it's a negotiation. We're sort of giving them a path for a path to go advance versus... I know we chew trade offs on different things. I was just curious.

[01:59:34] City Attorney Jannie Quinn: Right. I just haven't had the chance to research it before I give you a definitive answer. I would just like to make sure that, number one, it's feasible, and number two, what is our authority to require something. in excess of what the current building code requires.

[01:59:46] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, thank you.

[01:59:47] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Just to quickly add on to that. There are some associations and organizations within the state that are looking at different legal avenues for mandating all electric. Um, uh, but as sort of echoing what Janny said. We haven't had a chance to really look at those too closely, and there's not a lot of precedent for that at this point. It's sort of untested. But I did just want to let you know that there are some entities that are interested enough in this that they are beginning to look at different angles, sort of outside of the building code. And I would just add, too, there's always the ability to have it be an incentive, that it would be, you know, if we can incentivize them to do that, that that might be looked more favorably upon by the council, as opposed to making an actual requirement. So there's multiple ways to get to the same place.

[02:00:52] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member, Hicks.

[02:00:55] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I think, related to what John said earlier, I think his concerns were related to some of the ones that I mentioned when I at the beginning of this session, that how we rank which projects to take on. I'm not sure whether those are, whether the ones that, I think, should be done first. I think they may be distributed over foundational, innovative, and whatever the one was in between, what is it? Thank you, and advanced. So, for instance, to get the largest return on our dollars, I've been told that we should do things like reach codes, EV buying, appliance buying, other things that would reduce electric use, and carbon offsets, and those are distributed over all three. So, you know, I'm more than willing to put aside a reserve, but I hope we can visit, revisit that, so that we're working strategically and getting the biggest return on the dollars that we spend. Yeah, I have one final question, and that is, in the staff report, it talked about mobility as a service, reducing car ownership and taking cars off the road. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that because the current mobility is a service that I'm aware of, right hailing. That actually, it might reduce car ownership, but it certainly adds cars to the road, and it reduces ridership on public transportation. So I'm wondering what you were thinking in terms of mobility as a service.

[02:02:43] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Was that in the staff memo or in the strategic plan? Or both?

[02:02:49] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I think it was in the staff report. I wrote down page 15, but I'm not sure.

[02:02:53] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: right? Philip, are you familiar with that as a strategy that was put forward and the thinking behind that?

[02:03:03] Philip: Yes, we did include mobility as a service and working with the companies that are involved in the landscape of new mobility generally as one of the example actions that you might be pursuing at each of the levels of response. And there is a lot that remains to be researched about the impacts of various types of mobility as a service and mobility on demand options, but generally speaking, there is potential for the city to shape those offerings in a way that will result in the outcomes that you desire, both from an environmental sustainability perspective and from a co-benefits perspective. So the recommendation or the actions and examples in the plan really were around making sure that the city is actively engaged in shaping what happens and using the best available research to decide what sort of public private partnerships it would implement.

[02:04:14] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Have other cities done that? That you're aware of.

[02:04:17] Philip: The research into what...

[02:04:20] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Private partnerships?

[02:04:21] Philip: of mobility as a service or...

[02:04:25] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Have they formed public private partnerships that have resulted in positive impacts?

[02:04:31] Philip: Yes, so there's a number of transit agencies in particular that are looking at how can mobility as a service augment ridership and maybe replace low performing lines or provide 1st and last mile solutions? The city had implemented its own pilot project around trying to shape TNC transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft, and their activities.

[02:05:03] Unknown Speaker: When we never did that.

[02:05:04] Philip: Yeah, so it had designed a pilot, yes. But so there is a lot of thinking that's been going on in this space and a lot that can be learned from looking at implementations in cities around the U.S. And depending on what type of mobility is a service and what type of partnerships you're looking at, I would have to get back to you with a more concrete list.

[02:05:31] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay, great. Thank you.

[02:05:35] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Clark.

[02:05:36] Councilmember Chris Clark: So I was going to ask, I was going to start answering questions, but I know there's a regular meeting, and so I wanted to see, do you want to get into that now, or do you want?

[02:05:46] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So I have been trying to figure out, is this a short discussion or is this a long discussion?

[02:05:50] Councilmember Chris Clark: Could be either, I think. And I think it could be either. So. This is really hard. I feel like it's maybe a long discussion, but... I feel like if we want to just talk funding levels and not get into specifics of the every single bullet point and what is in foundational and all the others, then it could be short, but if we're going to start mixing and matching foundational advance and innovative and talking about every single bullet in there, then that's probably a really long discussion. But if we want to just talk about how much money we're willing to put in, at least initially as seed funding, whether or not we do reserve and sort of a rough sort of where, and let staff figure out where that leaves us, then it could be short, but I don't know what everyone else wants to do.

[02:06:42] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Well, I don't think we should get into detail of the different levels, talking about the individual actions you could take. I thought the discussion was focused mostly around funding and do we want to create a reserve, how much, what level of, um, not investment, but um, of activity. Do we want to do? That latter part is easy. Like I have, I know exactly what I feel like I think we should do there, but that's just my personal opinion.

[02:07:14] Councilmember Chris Clark: Yes. Can folks be, uh, brief that we could power through this? Okay, well, let's do this. I'll start. Okay. And if we start to get into the weeds, we can break. Um, so, I think that we I think we should create a sustainability reserve. I think staff suggestion and other suggestions to, you know, make a multi-year commitment to this is important now while we can. As long as we understand that we don't know where we'll be. 4 years from now, and things may change. I think for folks, what I'm thinking of now is this is sort of setting up a framework and making a down payment, and I think other funding sources may come into play in a year or 2 with major P funds, and is, you know, if there is a TOT in Greece at some point, I think there will be other funding streams that come in that don't rely on the list that we're looking on now that would allow us to add some additional strategies. I think now what I'm looking at, so that people don't think I'm just being curmudgeony and conservative here is sort of setting the foundation that we can grow on in the next year or 2 as more funding sources come in. So I'm in favor of creating a sustainability reserve, I think in terms of the funding sources, the vice mayors live through this. I started on council, right, as we were coming out of the recession, and we were still dipping in the reserves, I'm not willing to touch Cowper's spar, or excuse me, Cowper's or OPEB. Those are commitments that we've made to our employees and our retirees in terms of ensuring that we fund those pensions in that retiree healthcare at a level that won't get us in trouble and as the vice mayor will attest, it's bitten us before and we don't want to go down that path again. So, I'm looking at the unallocated general fund budget, and perhaps some of the strategic property acquisition reserve. I don't think we should totally deplete it, but I think there's, um, I don't want to use the entire, an allocated general fund balance because I think it's, it's important that we have, you know, some cushion there, but I could see utilizing, you know, up to up to 3000000 or so of that, maybe um, 3 to 3.5 million of that, and then taking one to one. 1500000 out of the strategic property acquisition reserve, to sort of start at a dump, that gets us, you know, between 4 and 5 million. And while I think, I hope that we'll be able to commit more to that in the long run. I think as a starting point to at least make a three-year commitment and start hiring staff and start looking at some of these, some of the things under the foundational and maybe a few other high priority items in advanced or innovative. I think that would be a, that would be a good place to start. And that's not to say we won't put more in later on is more sort of long-term funding comes in, but in terms of what we have available at the end of this fiscal year, that's what I'm looking at. So that answers the preferred source, the preferred funding level. And yes, I think we should include sort of a three-year commitment to that in the proposed budget. And that's, I'm open to what others feel in terms of the exact amount, but I think I'm most comfortable looking at the unallocated general fund balance and the strategic property acquisition reserve funds and leaving the Cowpers and OPEB contributions and the loan.

[02:11:07] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Ramirez... Thank you. Sorry, somebody just dropped out of the loop here. Oh. Council member Ramirez.

[02:11:17] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. I'll try to be very quick. So just some high level thoughts. I think we I assume we all agree that the primary objectives are reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And to some extent, serving or becoming part of the regional leadership in addressing this problem. I think that there's value in that. I'm not sure how to quantify that, but taking more of a leadership role, I think, is, I assume, of value to all of us. And it's just sort of a matter of what does that look like? Um, So going through these questions of, in the new order question to creation of a sustainability reserve, yes, I support that. Question 3 is challenging. I'm probably not going to be as prescriptive as council member Clark. I think that looking at all of these makes sense, but I do agree with several council members who've mentioned openness to exploring other funding opportunities, maybe looking at measure P. I'm interested in opportunities to explore quantifying the externalized cost of a lot of the decisions that we make. And, you know, I think there's something to be said for if I don't know if this analogy is terribly helpful, but just as I've heard if, you know, a dollar invested in pavement maintenance today saves 5 down the road. It's much more expensive to completely construct a road than it is to, you know, put to conduct the maintenance that helps preserve that asset. And I see that as analogous to the work that we're doing here. It's cheaper, in my mind, to reduced greenhouse gas emissions now than it would be to pay for the mitigation efforts later after things become truly horrific. And I think we're probably already seen some of that right now. So that in my mind, that is how I could justify a higher level of investment now. So, look, for question three, I don't have a particular preference, I think we should be open to exploring all of these as well as other opportunities for funding. for question one, the preferred response or funding level. I think we need to look at innovative. And again, you know, there's my level of comfort with that is, is, in part, because it's not an investment that's going to be made immediately, the expenditures will occur over time, and I think that will give us a sense to reevaluate, you know, year one year two, you know, if the investment that we're making makes sense in the long run. But I think that's the level of investment or activity that will be necessary to help us achieve our greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. And I think that's the level of activity that will be necessary to project us into more of a vanguard rule that other cities could look to as they're developing their own sustainability programs or greenhouse gas emission production programs. So that I would like to look at that. Question for, yes, the 3 year funding estimate. And I think just for any other input, several members of the council and others, I think, have talked about this group by idea from the environmental sustainability task force to, I think one of the values of analyzing the potential greenhouse gas reduction impact of that is it could give us a baseline that we can use when determining whether the response levels are appropriate. So if we find that a direct investment in that kind of program, so a subsidy to help people purchase EVs or whatever it may be, if that yields a very significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, then maybe spending more time focusing on that kind of program rather than spending a lot of money on staff with a more speculative outcome makes sense. But I don't have a good sense of that because we haven't done that analysis. So that would be the only other input I would provide. Thank you.

[02:16:00] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Vice mayor, I'll pay Koga.

[02:16:03] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. So, I guess I'm gonna try to be more prescriptive as Council member Clark spoke and I appreciate his comments. So I think, and I looked at the, we looked at these issues, the study at our committee, our environmental sustainability subcommittee, at that time, we didn't have the price tags on. So I think, you know, I support an innovative approach, but I did put in the caveat of it, depending on the funding, funding of it levels, that would be required. Um, you know, I think we um, We want to be aggressive and do as much as we can. I think our community supports that. But I do feel very strongly about being financially responsible. And as Councilman Clark mentioned, you know, I live through, we're in a boom. We have been in a boom. I live through the bust and many sleepless nights trying to figure out what we had to cut. And so everything is, you know, for me, very, um, it's, uh, it's hard to, um, think about adding more stuff, ongoing stuff, knowing that down the road we may have to cut them. So I just want to be very clear about that and very careful. So I agree with Councilman Clark's approach in terms of funding sources. I could support the unallocated fund, general fund balance. I mean, you know, as long as we have a surplus, I think, um, we should, you know, go ahead and put funding, put some money away into a sustainability reserve. So I do support that. So of the funding sources listed, I would support the surplus, the surplus from 2018, 19, maybe not all of it again, as Council member Clark mentioned, I think it's important. It's important to have some funding just in case something happens. Um, I could support the spar, the strategic um, property acquisition reserve. I don't think we have anything we're looking at purchasing right now. Um, and then perhaps the, um, for 18, 19 and 1920. Um, And so, but I cannot support touching any funding related to Cowper's or OPEB. And, um, you know, as council member Clark mentioned, these are commitments that we have made to our employees, um, you know, during the tough times, the employees helped us, um, to, you know, to contribute to these, um, funds. And, um, frankly, when we were in a recession, 1st thing that we got, um, you know, we got complaints about or got criticized for was our um, unfunded liability. And some of the folks in the audience today, frankly, who supports sustainability, and I appreciate that, were also the sum of the critics. And, you know, the challenge here, and I, you know, I always the one I feel like is, you know, says the negative or the bad news, but, um, you know, we have to make hard choices. And we can't do everything for everybody. And my feeling is that, you know, our financial stability of this organization is number one. And so I cannot do, I cannot support, you know, taking money away from, um, funding our unfunded liability. Knowing that when we get a recession. I'm sure that will be our biggest criticism we will receive. So in light of that, you know, the other funds, you know, I'm fine with, I don't think we should necessarily use all of it. I think I calculated it's about $7.5 million. So my question would be is what can we get out of 7.5 million. I support the concept of, so yeah, so I can't answer one because I would ask staff to come back with, you know, what can we do with that funding? Um, And then let's look at, for future funding, you know, other sources, and actually would ask staff to come back and, you know, if you can let us know, how much can we apply to the shoreline fund, um, and measure P, and how much are, there's, is there overlap? And Council member Clark brought up a good suggestion. Do we look at a TOT tax and, you know, down the road to pay for this? I was thinking sustainability impact fee, but I think we're gonna need some kind of ongoing funding source to do all of this. So I think we need to start looking at what that can be. Um, you know, I've asked the questions. You know, I'm on Silicon Valley Clean Energy. I'm on the air district. I see what's going on there. We just talked Friday at our executive committee meeting about an EV charging station, charging infrastructure, strategy and plan, and we'll be coming up with that later this summer. So there's a pool being created, a funding, or we're going for a grant, um, grant many, um, with other clean CCAs in the area to create a pot of funding for EVs. So that's my question is all of this is happening. How much do we need to like, for instance, you know, if we want to, um, pay or do we want to subsidize, um, EVs or charging stations? Do we need to? Do we just need to set ourselves up to be ready to go after the grant money when it comes to us? Those are some of the questions I have that's tied to the allocate, the funding allocations. So I know we're not going into advanced in the different categories, but I do have questions on some of what's being proposed. And so I, perhaps maybe the next time we talked about this, we could get into more detail about that. But my, you know, my feeling from everything I've heard and learned, and I've learned, I think I've learned a lot, is built environment and transportation are the 2 biggest pots. So that's where we should focus. And so, within our what we have available and we can afford to do. Thanks.

[02:22:53] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Hicks.

[02:22:55] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Madam Mayor, if it council member here, because we would indulge me, just want to interject for 12nd to clarify, um, maybe a little confusion or misunderstanding about the 4.5 million. I'm trying to find that chart now. table eight. So just to be clear, that 4.5 million is not part of our reserve. It's not this is money that's left over from last year. Normally what we would do at the mid-year when we, and you may recall when we came to you in February. Instead of the normal procedure where we would allocate that, we would put some into CIP and some into purrs and some into whatever. This year we specifically said, we're recommending holding that aside, because we may have some big ticket items we want to talk to you about later in the year. And frankly, we were very much thinking about this. We were also thinking about employee housing, but we found another source for that. So, you know, my point is, this 4.5 doesn't cut into anything else. So I think you could comfortably allocate at all. If you choose, It's obviously up to you, but it's not going to impact our reserve or policy ratios or anything. It's literally just sitting there. Thank you. I just, I think the way the 2 of you are talking about it, you are concerned about using it all, and certainly you don't have to, but I wanted to clarify that it's not using it all does not impact our reserve rate or anything like that.

[02:24:23] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: And I think we're just discussing that's fine for this year, but we can't count on having that same amount next year or the year after.

[02:24:32] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Oh, yeah, absolutely. We're not, we're not, you know, suggesting allocating any future unknown reserves. We're simply saying what's in the bank.

[02:24:40] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: But even having some of that leftover for future, you know, life, if something comes up or, um, I mean, I'm really concerned about a deficit and I know we don't know when, but there is a deficit projected in the next 5 years and we need to be flexible or just nimble, so I'd like to just have some sort of plus to be able to do that.

[02:25:05] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Hicks.

[02:25:09] Councilmember Alison Hicks: As I mentioned before, I want to be work on this aggressively yet very strategically in terms of getting results for the money we spend. So the questions and the order you put them, number two, should we create a sustainability reserve, yes, number 3 preferences among funding sources. I agree with what earlier council members have said about making a down payment for the 3 years. I would be comfortable putting in most or all of the 18, 19 allocated general fund balance. I had talked earlier with the assistant city manager about the cowpers and thought, you can tell me whether I misunderstood you, that you had said, we have, that we've, um, put some money down on that, and that it, that it would not be such a bad thing to put, you know, some portion of that in, into this, um, down payment. So I, given that, if that's still true, I would, I would feel comfortable putting maybe a $1000000 into that, but not the whole thing. I would be comfortable with spar. Um, I would be, I also would like to look at additional funding sources that people have, that other council people have mentioned, such as measure P, TOT tax, shoreline funds, maybe I'm forgetting something. The preferred response level, I don't feel comfortable picking one because, like I said, I feel that the projects that would give us the biggest bang for the buck are distributed across foundational advanced innovative. So I'd prefer to come back and ask, you know, what can we best do? How can we most, how can we be most strategic? And how can we work regionally for the biggest impact? Should we include a 3 year funding estimate as a placeholder? Yes, and number 5 I've given my other input. Thank you.

[02:27:33] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member convey.

[02:27:35] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. So thank you to staff, Cadmus, and the Sustainability Task Force for your comments. It's, I feel like the staff report is definitely more robust than it was when we saw it at the committee council committee level, namely because we have a lot of dollar amounts now. But I think it's become a very comprehensive plan. And I think that it's taken a long road to get us here, but, you know, I'm proud of the work that we've done. In terms of creating a sustainability reserve. Yes, I do support that. Um, and my questions earlier, you know, would be my preference not to dip into cowpers or OPEB as funding sources, but I'm willing to explore maybe some as sources, but not all. and interested to hear back from staff on that. I think that there's been really good dialogue and discussion about additional funding sources up here with measure P, TOT, maybe some others. And at the on the committee level, when we looked at this plan earlier, I was really drawn to the innovative level. The difficult part now that we're seeing the estimated cost is that many of the columns are TVD. And I'm hoping that, you know, we can move in the advanced and innovative response and funding level with the hope that maybe we can fill in some of those unknown numbers to get a better sense in terms of the actual cost. Yes, I support the inclusion of the associated 3 year funding estimate. and just kind of any other input, which is really interested in the dialogue that we had up here about the electric vehicle group by, the incorporation of the reach codes, exploration of carbon offsets. And I myself do not eat meat. I think that it's, you know, meatless every day. But I don't know if this would be a time to incorporate any type of meatless Monday or Green Monday as a city, but I'd be interested in hearing more about that when this comes back to council. So thank you.

[02:29:47] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So what did you say about general fund, the use of that general fund balance? I miss that. I heard no Calpers. No OPM.

[02:29:58] Unknown Speaker: Yeah, be my preference, not right.

[02:30:00] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So no on the general fund as well.

[02:30:02] Unknown Speaker: Oh, no, I'm comfortable with that. Sorry, I didn't mention that.

[02:30:05] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Council member McAllister.

[02:30:14] Councilmember John McAlister: You know, the more I listen to this, more complicated it gets and the complicated it seems to evolve, but It's all good. It's all good. So... She told me to talk slowly.

[02:30:29] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So quickly.

[02:30:31] Councilmember John McAlister: Oh, quickly, not slowly. Okay. Got it wrong. Um, So I'm going to answer the questions in various different ways. One creation, so creation of sustainability reserve. That's fine. I was saying, hey, you spend the money when you need it. But if you're going to guarantee it for 3 years. But then the thought of 3 years is, I mean, that doesn't seem that's going to take you 3 years of measuring to actually see them what happens. So, It's the 4th and 5th, 6th and 10th year is where we're going to see results. I'm going to answer number one before I answer 3 because the questions of the fundamental foundational advance or renovation, they were all sort of intertwine. So I figured I'm just going straight to the comprehensive. I've changed the word innovation because it's a more comprehensive one for me. I'll say comprehensive. And then I'll go back to 3 and here's where rule number one, I'll trust staff to get me to innovation. So that's broad enough. The, again, the inclusion of a three-year. I don't think 3 years is enough because if it's if the assistance city manager says it's going to be a year just to see if we can get some bodies, and then the 2nd and 3rd year, it's just going to seem, so 3 here, if that's what the minimum is, but I think we should go longer. And then any other input is, yes, I would like to see if the council would like to give direction to the public works to incorporate the greenhouse gases in the comprehensive modal program.

[02:32:11] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, so, yes, I support the creation of a sustainability reserve. So it looks like, I'm gonna summarize as we go along here. that there is support for doing that. And then the preferred funding options, I agree that I do not want to dip into the contributions we would make to OPEB or cowpers, and it looks like there is unanimous, the majority support not doing that. Um, I actually don't want to use the spar reserve. I feel like things come up opportunistically, and so I want to be able to react if they do. I guess if there was another source of funds to purchase property besides spar, then I'd be okay taking the spar reserve, but I want to have the flexibility of something opportunistically comes along. And from the general fund, I would say I'm good with almost all of that, if not all of that. And I like the idea of other sources that have been mentioned, the restructuring of the business license fee, any contributions from shoreline. Yes, if there's grant money available, and I think it'd be interesting to see about a sustainability impact fee. So in that, and for that question, I believe there is support for almost all of the general fund, no on OPEB, no on Calpers, and then the investigation of other sources. And when it comes to question one, I actually like the way council member Hicks described this as aggressive but strategic. I also would like us to focus on where do we get the most returns 1st in terms of reducing our carbon emissions. So, our emissions from carbons. And I'm not sure there was consensus on that one, unless you would say that's kind of innovative, but, um, we were kind of all over the map on how we described what we're looking for. But I do believe we all said we're interested in the goal of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. That's kind of the point of all this. I didn't hear anybody talk about overall or per capita. which was certainly brought up by a member of the public. And then I'm fine with a three-year commitment. I feel like we have to do at least a 3 year commitment. I guess I'm kind of wondering, though, the way it's worded here, was that in the council questions, was that assuming that we would take reserves and put it in the budget for just the next fiscal year versus what I was thinking is, it's in the budget for 3 years, but not necessarily all in the next fiscal year, because we're looking for new sources of funding. So I don't know how it, We wouldn't necessarily realize all of those new sources immediately.

[02:35:32] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Well, the original intent was to use identifiable sources now for 3 years of funding at the level chosen by council, that those would all go into a reserve, and then they would be appropriated into an annual budget based on the sustainability action plan when that returns. At this point with the preferred sources of fund. There isn't 3 years of funding for beyond beyond foundational. So what I've heard is, um, uh, majority support for most, if not all of the unallocated, for some, uh, if not all of the spar, for none of the OPEB or cowpers, which if you used all of those other than OPEB and Spar get you to 7.5 million. Um, and, uh, then for us to, I guess, come back and explore other sources, which we couldn't commit to a 3 year funding level now, if they're not put into a reserve now, but I do take to note and agree with the comments about the fact that, you know, that's the advantage of reserve is you can contribute to it over time as you have the ability. I mean, reserve basically says, we recognize something important. that costs a lot, that's going to spread out over a long period of time, and we are going to identify funding sources over a period of time to fund that reserve. And then we would appropriate into the annual budgets as we developed those program budgets. And I think your earlier question is correct that, you know, ultimately some of these ongoing costs need to be part of the ongoing operating budget. So what I feel like I heard is we have a strong commitment to 3 years of this program, and that it would be funded at a very healthy level. We've identified some sources now, but we're counting on some other sources to contribute, but we'd need more information on how much we might be able to get from those other sources, to know how much total funding we would have. But we're interested in significant funding.

[02:37:59] City Manager Dan Rich: That creates a bit of a dilemma. I mean, we can certainly explore additional sources that will take time. That's not going to be done, you know, probably when we would hope to come back to you with an ASAP if we're exploring a TOT that must go on a ballot. If we're exploring a new fee, There needs to be a nexus and analysis and whatnot. So, you know, absolutely, we can do that. But I think if you and the community want to know how much is kind of guaranteed for the next 3 years, as Audrey says, right now you're talking about 7.5 million. So that's fine. That can be our foundation. That's where we can start. And as we explore additional funding, You know, we can add that to the pot, but we can't staff up or prioritize initiatives at a higher level, less and until that funding is secure. I mean, I just want to be clear about that.

[02:38:58] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Folks okay with that? Uh, Vice Mayor...

[02:39:05] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Um, yes, so, uh, I guess... Measure P funding is the most real right now. Like when or how can we look at that as even if it's just like allotting a $1000000 a year that gets us closer to at least advanced level? Can we do that? And then Shoreline, you know, am I expecting usually 20% of all most things or can be allotted to shorelines? So that might be the difference. how quickly can we get that kind of information to make those decisions as to whether we can at least get to the advance level.

[02:39:53] City Manager Dan Rich: Shoreline funding has there has to be a clear nexus to benefit in shoreline. So if it's a capital project that's benefiting the North Bay or 100% could be there if it's, you know, a staff person that's working on something that has a partial benefit out there, then a portion of it can be a portion of there, that's really kind of more on a project by project basis. So we'd have to give some thought and analysis to that. Measure P. You have discretion. We will not see any measure P revenue until next January. So, but we do expect to see 13rd of the funding in the current fiscal year that is built in to our budget estimates, right, Jesse, for this fiscal year. So, to allocate it differently than in the budget would, you know. Yeah, about a 1000000 and a half a revenue for, yeah, about 2 million, probably a little bit less than 2000000 in year one. So, again, you have discretion to reallocate that, whether it's to transportation solely the benefits, sustainability, or to say, well, we're going to put some of that into, you know, staffing and ongoing resources towards sustainability.

[02:41:12] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Hicks.

[02:41:19] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Well, that was the majority of my question. The other part of my was measure P, the other end shoreline. The other part was enterprise funds and Airbnb, but are those, I am not clear on enterprise funds and Airbnb, I imagine, is not as much.

[02:41:36] City Manager Dan Rich: So there is likely potential, additional revenue that is not currently budgeted from both cannabis, depending on the final outcome of that issue, as well as Airbnb. We will start seeing revenue from Airbnb in the 3rd quarter. I mean, the revenue. Well, actually, revenue technically is starting to come in as of now in January. We won't have any numbers, you know, for 3 to 6 months. We do hope that that generates probably about a half a $10000, but we have not budgeted yet because it's uncertain, similarly cannabis, depending on the ultimate number of dispensaries, if any, and how well they do, could be in that same neighborhood. So there could be additional revenue sources in the future, just we haven't programmed them in because they're uncertain at this point.

[02:42:33] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, any other comments? So um...

[02:42:44] Unknown Speaker: What do you mean? I mean, I would like to make sure we have more funding than 7.5 million, and I think I've heard of at least, um, and this would be ongoing from the business license fee, and short-term rentals, and cannabis, I'd be very open to allocating all of those to this.

[02:43:07] City Manager Dan Rich: But those would be ongoing revenues, but we need ongoing, revenues to do the ongoing expenses.

[02:43:18] Unknown Speaker: No, so unless...

[02:43:23] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Yeah, if folks are okay with that level of funding. Um, Council member McAllister.

[02:43:30] Councilmember John McAlister: Concerning measure P money? Since I was a big advocate for transportation, I have as long as I would feel more comfortable if Measure P Money was used for transportation issues to greenhouse gases instead of just saying major funding for some. So as long as it stayed within what we had agreed to, and let the community know, 'cause I hate to have the word get out. Oh, we're switching our mind already, that was one of the concerns. So, yes, as long as it stays with transportation, I'm fine.

[02:43:58] Mayor Lisa Matichak: That would be my intention, that they measure, that the funds from that go toward transportation to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

[02:44:06] Councilmember John McAlister: Yes.

[02:44:08] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. So I think I've summarized the council input. Did you guys have any questions?

[02:44:22] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Sorry, can you just repeat the, I think there were two additional things in your last summary, measure P. Was there another component to it as well?

[02:44:30] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So I think we said the incremental TOT from short term rentals. cannabis, um, text, and then the measure P, but focused on transportation, to reduce greenhouse gases. But we don't know how much that total is. We kind of estimated it, so I feel like we're gonna have to kind of see. And if there are other, I would be interested if there are other areas that you think we could tap into. It might take longer to do, like a nexus study for a sustainability impact fee. I mean, if there are other opportunities, I think we should look at them, but I feel like this is, um, what I've heard is this is where we can start. Vice mayor, Abbe Koga. This was supposed to be short.

[02:45:39] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: I know, sorry. Well, the TIT tax is actually very intriguing to me. We have next year is an election year, so we could tee it up for next year, and that would be ongoing, and I know we've talked about the, yeah, that we should raise our TOT texts and relative to neighboring cities. So maybe that becomes our ongoing source for sustainability makes sense to me. So maybe, yeah, not all of it, but it's some amount of it. So I would be interested in further pursuing that.

[02:46:16] Unknown Speaker: I'd be interested in pursuing that as well.

[02:46:18] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Are there others? increasing our TOT. Yes. Okay, it looks like there's support for exploring that. Okay, any other comments?

[02:46:33] City Manager Dan Rich: So just to be clear, on May 20th, we're coming back to you with the prioritization of your council goals. We just added another project. Things you're talking about tonight are adding to that list, and so that will have to be part of the, you know, where the line gets drawn, so to speak on all those issues.

[02:46:52] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you, yes. Okay, any other comments on this? Okay, then we are going to end the study session, and we will start the, actually, it's a special session. Let's start it at 8 o'clock. Okay, we're going to start the special session. And we will start with the pledge of allegiance. So if you will join me for that.

[02:47:29] Unknown Speaker: Super flag of the United States of America.

[02:47:48] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Next our city clerk will announce attendance.

[02:47:51] City Clerk: All council members are present.

[02:47:52] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Thank you.

[02:47:58] City Clerk: The next item on the agenda is the consent calendar. And these items will be approved by one motion unless any member of the council or audience wishes to remove the item for discussion. The reading of the full text of ordinances and resolutions will be waived unless a council member requests otherwise.

[02:48:18] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Are there any council members who want to pull an item? Council member McAllister.

[02:48:27] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, I had a question on 4.6. 4.6.

[02:48:31] Councilmember John McAlister: And, um, I had a question on 4.5. I also had a question on 4.52.

[02:48:39] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Any others that council members? Any members of the audience wish to pull an item? Oops. That was not meant to be. Okay, so why don't we take the balance, then we'll go back to 4, 5, and 4, 6. So we have a motion by the vice mayor and a second by council member Ramirez for... I assume everything, but...

[02:49:11] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Yes. And I believe I have to read 4.4, which is an to adopt a resolution. adopting a project for fiscal year 201920 funded by the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 to be read in title, only for the reading waived.

[02:49:30] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. So we can vote on those. That's unanimous that everything but 45 and 46 on the consent calendar passes. And then, did you want to talk about 46?

[02:49:49] Unknown Speaker: Yeah, I just had a question in the future. I guess we could include that as the motion, because all it was is a question. So for the public works, sir, question is that this is 4.6 Shoreline Boulevard northbound off ramp realignment project. My question is, I saw the words right of way acquisition. And has that begun? Is that with VTA then to?

[02:50:12] Public Works Director Mike Fuhs: Yeah, Mike Full Republic Works director, yes, it is. We need right away for 2 projects in the same area. One is a utility crossing. You've saw in the CIP. I think we're doing some new utility crossings, water and sewer, and we're doing one just to the east of the off ramp, and then we're doing the off ramp. We started talking to the VTA about the off-ramp right of way several years ago and we 1st started planning it just to make sure there weren't any major deal breaker issues and they talked about some improvements. They wanted us to design around and so on. And now that we have the final alignment for the utility crossing and for the off-ramp. We were going to start some more detailed discussions with the BTA about valuing valuing that property. There's a bit of a triangle there that extends out towards shoreline or kind of be cutting that off and acquiring that part of the right way. Where they keep their RV parking there. So we're not going to, we're going to take everything, we'll run our off-ramp, and then we'll take everything to the west of that. Yes, and when we acquire it, it'll create a standalone parcel between the off ramp and shoreline. And, um, we are likely going to have to, um, relinquish that to Caltrans because they don't want to allow any access rights to that short, to that little parcel. And frankly, we wouldn't want anybody coming in and out of there either.

[02:51:42] Unknown Speaker: Okay, thank you. Oh, this is on 4 points. Okay, that was my question, or 4 point. Six.

[02:51:48] Unknown Speaker: I'll ask you a question of 4.8 or 4.5. Five? So I noticed that the public art was $18,000. What was the percentage, did we have a percentage of the for any project over a $1000000 that there was a percentage of the?

[02:52:05] Unknown Speaker: Yes, it should be one% of the construction estimate.

[02:52:10] Unknown Speaker: And the construction, does that include the total estimated cost at $2.58 million?

[02:52:20] Unknown Speaker: Let's see. Well, there's construction cost, then there's total estimated cost. So how do you define construction cost?

[02:52:31] Unknown Speaker: Everything? Just, no, just the construction costs.

[02:52:34] Unknown Speaker: It does include all the other soft costs associated with construction, so it's gonna be... Actually, it's the 2.5. And what we do is we estimate that number based on the original construction estimate. Sometimes the estimate will go up as we go through design, and we generally don't recalculate that number, which is probably why it's not 21, 21,000. So we could do that, though.

[02:53:06] Unknown Speaker: Okay. Thank you. I had a question about four or five. And that is, um, We, when we talked about this before, we said we wanted artsy benches, tables, we wanted art incorporated into the park as opposed to like standalone art. And so is that the direction that's We're heading.

[02:53:31] Unknown Speaker: We did a call for artists and we mentioned that as a possibility, but didn't confine them completely, and we did get some proposals that were, you know, benches and other things that were functional. We're going to go to the visual arts committee, early May, for a recommendation, and then we'll bring that to council and we can show you what we did get. We did get some proposals that were more standalone, though, and we did get some that were, you know, benches and other things that were more functional like that.

[02:54:05] Unknown Speaker: Okay, so when it comes back to council, we would get to, I mean, if the visual arts committee recommended a standalone piece, but we wanted benches, we would change it.

[02:54:17] Unknown Speaker: Yeah, it's councils, yeah, council ultimately makes the call.

[02:54:21] Unknown Speaker: Okay. Thank you. I don't really want to overrule them, but I think we also the majority of us said we wanted it to be incorporated.

[02:54:30] Unknown Speaker: And I think we can certainly say that in the, we'll be presenting some materials to the visual arts committee, and we can certainly, certainly tell them that.

[02:54:38] Unknown Speaker: Okay. Thank you.

[02:54:40] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, so we have 4.5 and 4.6. And we need emotion, the vice mayor, 2nded by council member McAllister.

[02:54:51] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: So I'd like to make a motion approving for items 4.5 and then for 4.6, adopting a resolution, approving a cooperative agreement number 04 dash 2716 between the city of Mountain View and the state of California, Department of Transportation, Caltrans, for improvements to the state highway system, for the California streets and highways code sections 114 and 130 for Caltrans to perform quality management work, including independent quality assurance and approvals the plans, specifications, and engineering estimate, PSNE, right away, and construction for the Shoreline Boulevard 101 northbound off-ramp realignment project 19 59 and authorizing the city manager to execute the agreement to be read entitled only further meaning waived.

[02:55:42] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Ready to vote. So, items 4.5 and 4.6 on the consent calendar pass unanimously. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is oral communications, and this portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the council on any matter, not on the agenda. Speakers are allowed to speak on any topic for up to three minutes during this section and state law prohibits the council from acting on non agenda items. So, um, be sure to fill out a blue card either before or after you speak, and, um, in case you weren't here earlier for the study session, um, we have a new feature, where at the end of the time, um, you will hear a bell. Or a Dane. So, please come on up.

[02:57:09] Albert Jeans: Maybe made a matter check. Council members. I thought we'd get a head start on next week's meeting, because judging from the EPC meeting yesterday, I'm not going to get a lot of time next week to talk, but the topic is actually more than just about 7, 7, west middle field. Specifically, I want to talk about unbundled parking at 7700 and West Middlefield, all the parking will be unbundled, which in principle is a good idea. It gives people that don't have a car, essentially credit. And we're talking about, could be up to, and more than $1,000 a month. The flip side is, if you have a car, now you have a big incentive not to park in the structure. And the reason I think this is going to be a problem is because we already have an overflow parking problem in our neighborhood, around San Lucas Avenue, by the way, my name's Albert Jeans, and I've lived in Sisterwin State for 30 years. I live on San Lucas Avenue. I would say, you know, every night, at least 50% of the space is occupied by vehicles not belonging to my neighbors. On San Verone, which is right, you know, right outside the San Verone apartments. It's always full. And similarly at other apartment complexes like San Ramon Avenue, and I even went to one really large complex in San Jose called River Oaks. There are still people parked on the street here. This is like a Sunday. And the problems with street parking, and you might not realize this if you don't have the problem in your neighborhood. There's actually a very profound loss of feeling of security when unfamiliar cars are always pulling in front of your house and parking. There's glitter, there's ineffective street cleaning because they don't move on street cleaning days. And, of course, reduce visibility in terms of traffic problem. I mean, a traffic safety issue, pulling out your driveway, you can't see who's coming. block driveways. I actually had the city paint part of my curb red because of this. I was having people park there so many times. The city agreed to paint my curb red. And just aesthetics. So wide do I think this could be a problem? Village Lake? This morning I went to Village Lake just to walk around. Actually, it's a very beautiful complex. And I timed, how long it took to walk there to my house? It was like 3 minutes. It's less than two tenths of a mile, 2 blocks. So, given that, I think we should require residential parking permit program to protect the nearby residences. The especially this should be implemented before the place comes online, because if people move in there, they know there's no option of street parking. They're going to have to make a decision. You know, are they going to buy this parking space or not? If they think, oh, you know, people are parking the street. I think I'll just take my chances there. There's 2 ways. You're going to get tons of overflow parking. And so I'd like to recommend that as a condition for approval for village lakes, that residential permit parking permit program, be institute, you know, paid for by the developer, because this is the problem that they have to deal with. Thank you.

[03:00:10] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please. Oh. Anyone else wishing to address us on an item that's not on the agenda? Okay, we'll close this portion and we will move on to item 6.one, which is a public hearing on a new residential development at 525-531-5555-569 and 769 East Evelyn Avenue. And tonight our presenters are senior planner, Jeff Roche and planning manager, zoning administrator, Stephanie Williams. And then I believe the applicant has a presentation.

[03:01:01] Planning Manager Stephanie Williams: Okay. Thank you, mayor and members of the council, the project before you tonight would demolish the existing mini storage facility on the site and construct a 471 unit apartment complex consisting of 2 buildings ranging in height from 3 to 5 stories in an approximately 0.6 acre future public park. Two levels of below grade parking are also proposed. In this slide, you can see the surrounding uses, which are townhouses to the west, apartments to the east and the south and East Evelyn Avenue and Caltrain lines to the north. In this particular slide, you can see the site plan, the landscaping proposed, the open spaces that are proposed and how the site is consists of 2 buildings, separated by an emergency vehicle access and a future public park up along the East Evelyn frontage. This particular drawing, which is very important to us and to the neighborhood and to the city, is the massing and relationship of the neighborhood and this particular slide. You see the different colors representing the different number of stories being proposed and how the project is stepped back significantly from the adjoining property lines and the heights of the existing neighborhood. The site, as I mentioned, also includes a future public park. This will be subject to a design review process, outreach to the community. You see people walking in it. that is a hope that people will use this, but the design has not been done at this point. It would take its place in the queue with other similar parks throughout the city. Previous meetings and hearings, the project started with a gatekeeper's hearing in December of 2016, going through its last public hearing at environmental planning commission earlier this month in April 3rd. Some of the community benefits associated with this project is a contribution from the developer of approximately $7.8 million, and the applicant has proposed to prepay the 2nd amount, which is a housing impact fee of approximately $22.8 million earlier than typically required by the city. This particular slide is also very important to us as part of our environmental impact report and the transport traffic analysis. We looked at numerous intersections in the neighborhood, including some that the neighborhood was concerned about. All of our review concluded that, and we'll talk about that in a minute, that there were no significant unmitigated impacts here. Intersections would experience an increase in level of service, which is the standard in the city right now, but the level would not go to an unacceptable level as a result of this project. As part of the environmental impact report, you know, we held a scoping meeting. The draft environmental impact report was circulated last fall. The final environmental impact rate report was posted as noted earlier this spring. And again, no significant unmitigated environmental impacts were identified through our process. In conclusion, I would like to say that the planning commission recommended 70 that the council certified this EIR and approve all of the accompanying resolutions and ordinances with the project. I would also like to let the mayor know that in the city council that we have also have Wayne Chin, our assistant director, Amy Ashton, with David J. Powers Associates, the project environmental consultant, and Gary Black with Hexagon Transportation Associates, the traffic consultant, in the audience tonight, if questions arise, this concludes staff presentation. Thank you.

[03:05:17] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. That was quick. The folks around Prometheus have a presentation, Mr. Moss.

[03:05:28] Applicant Representative Moss: Appreciate that, and maybe I can take a few minutes that, um, staff didn't use in there? No, okay. So, I do want to thank you for providing us an opportunity to share our plans with you this evening, and the staff has done an excellent job. Stephanie Williams and Jeff Roach. were a pleasure to work with, and they comprehensively covered all the issues that we saw in the staff report. It's rare that we agree with everything in the staff report, but we actually do agree with every single word that they had in there. We especially agree with the conclusion, which I believe, if I'm not mistaken, was a recommendation for approval this evening, and we also appreciate the EPC, as was mentioned earlier, a few weeks ago when we met with them, unanimously recommended in a 70 vote to the council for approval as well. And speaking of unanimous, back in December of 2016, his staff mentioned, that's when we started this project with a gatekeeper, and the council did unanimously approve at least us studying the gatekeeper. And so what I want to do is just take a few moments to focus on what has changed since our initial plans were proposed to the city. The one thing that hasn't changed is the unit count that we have. That is the same, but we have refined and changed and improved a lot of elements of this based on feedback from the city. So if I can get, let's see. Here we go. Hold on. Sorry, but that would be the beginning slide, by the way, so it'll take a moment to enjoy that. We'll move on. So one of the reasons that we were one of the couple of gatekeepers that I recall getting approved back in 2000, end of 2016 was because the environmental issue associated with the site. It was impacted severely, and we committed to the city to go forward at that time and spend considerable monies in considerable time working with the regional water quality board. We have virtually concluded that process, and we, through a lot of sophisticated injection methods, have remediated the site and cleaned it up, and the regional water quality board, we understand, is ready to issue their no further action letters. So we have fulfilled that commitment. Secondly, the park. The council staff wanted a larger park on the property, and we went ahead and redesign the entire project to accommodate that. So we've now have a 36% increase to go from a half acre to 0.68 acres for the park, an account I mentioned hadn't changed. And what I want to point out here, the adjacencies, the staff have touched on it briefly before. You can see the red line that delineates the border separation with Sunnyvale, just to the bottom of the slide. And just to the right of our property is the Rome 116 unit affordable housing project. under construction, just to the left of that, is the 151 Mandrian townhome property developed about 15 years ago, just to the bottom of the red line, or 100s and 100s and 100s of Sunnyvale apartments that were built in the 60s and 70s mainly. And then the more park mobile home development of 138 units, is just on the far left-hand side of the screen. I bring all that up because this is a neighborhood park, and our expectations and hope is that everybody at our development, but in addition to that, the neighboring developments as well will utilize that park. This is exciting. So, you know, the former use on the site was the Mount Eden Floral Company's property or business, affectionately referred to, I think, as the flower mart site. So Yoshimi Shabata was the founder of that property, and he operated it, what we understand, for 56 years in the city of Mountain View, and he was, we understand, very involved in the community as a leader. And what the reason I bring a lot of this up is what we like to do is pay homage to the flower or floral company by putting, and it was brought up by a couple of council members to put maybe a plaque in the park, at a minimum, without a doubt, a flower garden somewhere in the park, and we don't design the city will, so we're hoping that they will do that. And we'd like to counsel to consider possibly naming the park after either the floral company or its founder. He was also, as you can see, inducted in the Society of American florists, way back in 76, which is quite an honor. I don't know if any of you know anybody who's been inducted to that Hall of Fame, but it is rare that that happens. So we think that's really cool, and we were branding our property a lot after what the flower market did for all these years. So real briefly on this. I'll go through this quickly because staff did a great job. So the massing did change. It changed dramatically from 4 stories on the left-hand side to 3 stories on the right, and that was given feedback by the city and by the neighboring property owners as well. And then we increased the setbacks as well. And we did so by increasing the size of the courtyards, to the left, next to our neighbors at Mandrian, in addition to the bottom part with the Sunnyvale neighbors. And you can see that the courtyard sizes, one from about 7000 or so to 21,000, so it's almost a threefold increase in terms of the size of the setbacks and open areas between the 2 properties. Architecture. Okay, so we heard from council. We heard from EPC, we heard from staff and we heard from DRC and everybody else, I think, in the Bay Area, that we needed to go ahead and change the original design from what was considered to be a fairly contemporary modern design with flat roofs everywhere, as you can tell, on the top one. So we changed the roof designs in a significant way. We have hip roofs, we have gable roofs, we have shed roofs, we have dormers, we have every kind of pitch roof, imaginable under the sun. And I think the DRC did a great job of working with our architects and our architect is here tonight as well, to answer any questions that you have. But we also went ahead and refined the details of the architecture as far as the bay windows, the projections, the overhangs, the stoops, at all the entries that we have. We have porches on every single unit, trellises, the patios, the porches, and then we varied the colors as well. We also vary the materials. So now we have lap siding, we have board and batten siding. We have plaster and then we have a considerable amount of stone at the base as well. Again, we have DRC to thank for a lot of that. neighborhood outreach. We had a couple of meetings, one back in 2017. We noticed to a 1000 residents, by the way, or a 1000 households, I believe it was, sorry, a 1000 feet from our property. Unfortunately, the turnout at the 1st meeting was only 6 people, about half of the 6 were neutral and half opposed, mainly because of traffic. The 2nd meeting about 9 months ago, attended by staff as well, and the results are in the staff report, but there was about 15 or 16 folks that showed up at that meeting. I would surmise that about a 3rd were in favor, a 3rd word, neutral, and the 3rd were against. The ones that were against were mainly against for reasons of traffic. And we will address that in a couple of moments, but there was a traffic study, as was mentioned by hexagon, that traffic studies done by the city, not by us. We fund it. They do a comprehensive review. And not only did they not have any adverse impacts, but there were no changes to the LOS and any of the intersections that were aware of at all in that study. And then as part of that neighborhood outreach. We actually received a couple of support letters. We received one from the Rome development, and I want to just quote from that letter real briefly, from the vice president of Rome, saying the purpose of this letter is to convey that Rome Development Corp owns the adjacent property, consisting of 116 affordable units, and the support of a Prometheus real estate groups application to redevelop the flower mart and stowage property site. And then we also had a letter from our Sunnyvale neighbors, as well, that own a couple of the larger developments over there. We own the adjacent Palm Villa apartments. We feel the increased density is required to address the need for housing opportunities for the employees of many Mountain View businesses. Finally, Prometheus has the means and vision to construct a very high quality and luxury development on the former JASCO site, which has had vacant for many years. In our opinion, this will be a welcome addition to the neighborhood. I want to mention that briefly. And then the Affordable Housing. This is really important. So we went ahead and formed a partnership, initially an informal one with Palo Alto housing when Candace Gonzalez was the CEO of that organization. This was 2 years ago. And shortly after that, I went through the NoFA process and that was approved, and then that document or that meeting went to a city formal city council meeting where there was an adoption of the funding for us to be able to fund directly to their project. Since then, I understand there is not a direct link there anymore. But we do think that having an affordable housing developer provide the housing has a lot of advantages. We've got a big increase in terms of the dollars here, 23 million. There's more affordable market rate housing because that project would probably not have gotten underway without our funding. And then we can deliver it faster. So the condition of approval stays 2 weeks from today, we would be giving you 22.7 million instead of that building permit, which saves at least 6 to 9 months for delivery of that. And a wider range is important because if Palo Alto housing or another nonprofit doesn't receive funding. Here, the project will either not go forward or they may get county funding. And that will not address the missing middle because there's a 50% requirement as many of us know. for homeless housing. The expiration is important too. We own a property a couple blocks from here, that's almost 55 years old, and you would lose the affordable housing on that as well.

[03:15:46] Mayor Lisa Matichak: You could wrap it up.

[03:15:48] Applicant Jonathan: Okay. The other item was, I won't go through the slides on it, but the services that are provided by affordable housing, developers are radically different than what we do, and I had a couple slides, but I won't take you through all these, but these are all the services that are provided for some of those nonprofit housing developers. They're significant and very different than what we could provide. And community benefits are almost $50000000 in total. I think if you wasn't that long ago, we could build almost 470 units with $50 million, period, but we're providing that to the city. So that is.

[03:16:25] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Council member McAllister.

[03:16:28] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Uh Okay. Well, we can take questions later. Well, the applicant's there right now. Okay. So, Jonathan.

[03:16:39] Applicant Jonathan: Yes, sir.

[03:16:40] Councilmember John McAlister: Uh, I know the project to the East, the Rome Project, is providing bus service for the kids to school. Are you guys gonna provide any kind of transportation for your young residents there?

[03:16:56] Applicant Jonathan: Yeah, that's a good question. So what we've done is many months ago, we reached out to the folks over at Rome in order to coordinate so that we could jointly provide services both for their residents and for our residents. And they are most interested in sharing that van service, if you will, so our expectation is that we absolutely will join with them in providing that service for both developments.

[03:17:22] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, so I've been pushing this council towards trying to get us into the 21st century concerning fiber and broadband. Are your buildings going to be wired fiber or the streets or that kind of capacity?

[03:17:34] Applicant Jonathan: Yeah, we absolutely will. So our intent is the future proof these buildings and be able to provide the highest level of internet service, that's currently available and that's fiber. So we will be bringing fiber into the building. So each apartment will have fiber up to their room. That's our expectation.

[03:17:52] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you.

[03:17:58] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, before we open it up for public comment, are there any questions from council members for either the applicant or staff? Council member Ramirez.

[03:18:17] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, just one quick question regarding, well, the last item on their community benefit. So, a while back, there was a resident from Sunnyvale who provided some comment regarding the possibility of a cycle track along Evelyn. And I'm on the Sunnyvale side, I could potentially connect to a cycle track on the Mountain View side. And I'm wondering if that would be an appropriate use of this funding, if there's if there are already plans for a cycle track on Evelyn or if that's something that we would need to, um, provide comment on here.

[03:18:58] Unknown Speaker: Our public works director would be happy to answer that question.

[03:19:04] Public Works Director Mike Fuller: Mike Fuller Republic Works record. My recommendation would be to program this money as part of the capital improvement program process, and then we can address the possibilities for his cycle track, how much we might need for that, and what are some of the other competing funding demands.

[03:19:21] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Any other questions from council members? Okay, I had one, and that is... As part of this project, we are looking at changing the allowable density for R4 zoning, and I'd say throughout the city, but there's only a couple sites. Do we have to do that to approve this project? Could we not just change the the density on this on these parcels? Like either in their precise plan or just for the parcels?

[03:20:08] Unknown Speaker: Madam Mayor, if I may. The density is part of this request, without the change to the zoning, the change to the general plan only gets some part of the way there. We believe that increasing the density to 80 on this site from 60, which it currently would be under other zonings, is appropriate. The adjoining property, Bernardo has the same issue, you know, the Rome project has the same R4 and then the other project is in North Mountain View off of Devonshire's an existing apartment complex. It is really a package the way it's been presented to you, and we believe that it meets all of the city's standards and guidelines the way it's proposed and presented this evening.

[03:21:02] Mayor Lisa Matichak: What's the density of the Rome project? Sorry, I shouldn't have sent that one in, but I didn't think about it till now.

[03:21:10] Unknown Speaker: It's about 60 units to the acre. So it meets the current R4 zoning. That's correct.

[03:21:17] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Yeah. So they are for parcel off of Devonshire. What would so I think that's surrounded by our 3 dash two? I think I sent that question in, that was the answer. So what's the allowable density of R 3 dash two?

[03:21:42] Unknown Speaker: Well, it's based on the zoning, it does the general plan does guide the zoning, but in R3 dash 2, it's based on the formula for that, depending on the lot size. And I don't have the exact lot size of that property, but it's a sliding scale. So for so many square feet, you get another unit.

[03:22:04] Mayor Lisa Matichak: I guess I was thinking for the parcels around that are for off of Devonshire. What could they go to? And is 80 units per acre substantially higher than what the surrounding parcels could go to?

[03:22:19] Unknown Speaker: Yes, it would be, because that would be commensurate with the high density general plan designation as opposed to the medium density.

[03:22:30] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Any other questions from council? Okay, then we'll open it up for public comment. Can I see how many folks want to speak on this topic? Okay. We will give you 2 minutes each. Please be sure to fill out a blue card before or after you speak and leave it with our city clerk. And, um, again, we started the process tonight where we have the, Yes. Yes, the bell at the end. Please come up.

[03:23:07] Michael Ortega: Hi, how are you? I already filled the card. Michael Ortega, I'm a homeowner right across the street from where they're proposing. One is they say they consulted with the neighbors. They scheduled them in such a way that it was almost impossible to attend those meetings. That was the 1st one. Second one. I would like to introduce you to a pig called Prometheus. They like lipstick. This gentleman here presented to the planning commission about 7 years ago about the Madera development. What happened that time is they got variants to build higher than allowable at the time to 4 stories, and then proceeded to install a 5th story elevator shaft that was not in the original elevations. So my ask to the city council is to 1st look at the history of the company and 2nd to hold them to the elevations they showed. These look very pretty. My house is across the street. I would like to see that. However, they're liable to go and put other stuff on top. They added a rooftop terrace in Madeira that was originally not approved. And they added elevator shafts. The only thing they got from the committee, from the planning committee was to agree to sort of disguise the box that was the elevator shaft to sort of fit in more with the architectural element. So basically, literally putting lipstick on the pig. At the time, they the planning commission said they were not approved to go to 5 levels, but it was already built. The gentleman here was there. He basically told the planning commission that it was basically going to result in a lawsuit if it had to be torn down. There were lots of neighbors at that meeting that were complaining and so just look at the history of the company. So I'm just asking you guys to hold them to the elevations they presented and not allow them to deviate later with like rooftop terraces or 5th level or 6th levels or whatever. That's all. Thank you.

[03:25:05] Mayor Lisa Matichak: X please.

[03:25:08] Kelsey Baines: Good evening, city council. My name is Kelsey Baines. I'm a psychologist at the Palo Alto VA. I do not live here in town. I came here from out of town, and by the way, I'm speaking for myself here. No one has paid me to come here to speak. I came here from out of town because the urgency and the severity of the housing crisis is something that I really see firsthand every day, not just through my work at the VA, where I'm working with homeless and formerly homeless veterans, but also just with the staff, for my own personal experience. I have no future in the Bay Area, unless we do something drastic to increase our housing supply so that we have more room for more people. So, I think this is a lovely looking project. I like the design changes. I think it's vastly improved from where it started. But the aspect of this that I would draw attention to, in addition to, there just being quite a lot of units, which I think is very needed. It's also a very large contribution to your affordable housing fund, which is really important for affordable housing developers and for people like me who are supportive service providers. So I go and I work in nonprofit developments. And if they didn't exist. The people that I serve wouldn't be living there. They wouldn't have a roof over their head and I wouldn't be effective at my job. So, um, I would just encourage you to think about housing delayed being housing denied. It means it's literally not there for someone to live in. And we desperately need these units. We need more affordable housing. We also need more market rate housing. So I would just encourage you to move this project forward. Thank you.

[03:26:56] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[03:27:02] David Watson: Good evening, city council. I'm David Watson. Housing delayed is housing denied. Yeah, that one seems familiar. I think I've heard that one before. I like that one. The, this is a great project. It's a large number of units. It's in a good location. and Speak reform you said that this is how we also get funding for building our own affordable housing. I think there's upcoming projects that are going to cost a lot of money and this is how we get the money to pay for that stuff, as you guys all know. So I think you should approve this project. And not only that, it is a good opportunity to raise the density of R4. I think, as you noted, or you spoke to staff, I guess there wasn't that many parcels that are our 4 in the city, and so it wouldn't have as big an impact as I might like, but at the same time, if you're worried about the impact, maybe that makes it a little less scary. I don't know. Either way, both increasing density on our 4 is good. Approving this project is good. So this all sounds pretty nice. So thank you.

[03:28:07] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[03:28:13] Mike Lozzo: Good evening, mayor, members of the council, Mike Lozzo for Layuna Local 270. We had submitted written comments about a month ago, having reviewed the EIR, and they were based on the comments of an expert, certified industrial hygienist engineer, Mr. Francis Offerman, about indoor air pollution of the project, and the emissions of formaldehyde. Mr. Offerman, who was a renowned expert on indoor air pollution, actually did the main study that led to the air resource board, requirements that are out there, estimated that the cancerous indoor air, or people residents of the project breathing it would be in an order of 125 to 180 per million. It's about over 10 times more than the air districts significant thresholds for health risks, which is 10 in a million. And this issue is not addressed at all in the EIR, because it's not addressed, the fair argument standard applies. And Mr. Offerman being an expert has provided his expert comments on that. And that is substantial evidence of a fair argument, that this is a possible issue that needs to be addressed. He actually maps out how to do it in the context of an EIR. He assumes compliance with all the carb standards for the materials in the building. So, obviously, those standards, in his opinion, aren't going to be sufficient to address the issue, and seek is also clear that you can't simply reference in other agencies regulations, and that's enough to address an issue, you actually have to disclose it. We think in an EIR, let the public digest that, make comments on it, go through perhaps the process that Mr. Offerman presents in his comments, and that would address this issue in the proper way under Sequel. So those are the comments we have on the EIR. Thank you very much, if you have any questions.

[03:30:04] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Is anyone else who wants to address this on this topic? Okay, then we'll close the public input portion and bring it back to council for discussion and action.

[03:30:28] Unknown Speaker: Well, you need a 7 people and you do it. Oh.

[03:30:35] Mayor Lisa Matichak: No comments? No. Okay, cancel my room, McAllister.

[03:30:41] Councilmember John McAlister: I make the motion that we adopt a resolution conditionally approving a planned community permit and development review permit for a 5 story 71 unit affordable studio apartment development.

[03:30:53] Unknown Speaker: You're not reading the right one.

[03:30:55] Councilmember John McAlister: Oh, 6.one. Boy, they like that one. I'm sure Randy's getting excited. Randy, yeah. It has 6 parts. Oh, Randy, I'm sorry.

[03:31:08] Unknown Speaker: You'll have a heart attack later. Freudian slip.

[03:31:15] Councilmember John McAlister: Adopt a resolution certifying the 555 East Evelyn Avenue Residential Project, Final Environmental Impact Report, Sequa Findings, and a mitigation monitoring and reporting program to be read entitled only for the reading way attachment went to the council report. Two, adapt a resolution approving a general map, Plan map, amendment for the properties located at 525-531-555569 and 769 East Evelyn Avenue from General, from General Industrial, and Medium Density Residence to High Density Residence, to be read entitled only, further reading wave, attachment to the council report. Three, introduce an ordinance approving, a zoning text amendment to the R4 high density section of the zoning ordinance to be read, entitled only, and set a second rating for May the 14th, 2019, attachment 3 to the council report. Four, introduced an ordinance approving a zoning map amendment for the properties located at 525 531 555-565-569 and 769 East Evelyn Avenue. From the P330, Sylvindale precise plant, and R32-2 multifamily residential district, to the R4 high density resident, district, to be read entitled only, instead a 2nd reading for May 14th, 2019 attachment 4 to the council report. 5. Adopt a resolution condensally, conditionally approving a planned community permit and development review permit to construct a 470 unit apartment complex with below grade parking, relocate a wireless communication installation, and dedicate a .68 acre public park and a heritage tree removal permit to remove 16 heritage trees to be read entitled only. Further reading, wave, detachment 5 to the council's report. Six, adopt a resolution conditionally approving investing preliminary parcel map to reconfigure the existing lot lanes to be read entitled only. Further reading wave, attached 6 to the council report.

[03:33:25] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So we have a motion by council member McAllister and a 2nd by council member, Clark. Council member Clark, did you have comments?

[03:33:35] Councilmember Chris Clark: It was a comment slash question. I, as a public works director mentioned, do we, I assume tonight we don't need to program those community benefit funds? I mean, I think there will be a number of CIP projects in the area, we can find whether it's the cycle track, the underpass at Bernardo and other things, but I assume we don't need to program those tonight.

[03:33:54] Public Works Director: That is correct.

[03:33:55] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Any other comments by council members?

[03:34:02] Unknown Speaker: So, um, I do want to disclose that I met with the applicant, and, uh, I do want to say that I think we should direct some of the community benefits toward traffic calming on Sylvan, and as well as, and I'm not sure if it's traffic flow, traffic calming, um, but look at the traffic on Moor Park and Evelyn, um, like before and after, and if it's deteriorated, then try to address the traffic on those 2 streets.

[03:34:42] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Any other comments? Did you? Can some member Hicks?

[03:34:53] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yeah, I would just agree that we should add the traffic calming measures.

[03:35:00] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, then, um... What? I'm gonna go somewhere to vote. And that passes unanimously. Thank you.

[03:35:43] Mayor Lisa Matichak: The next item on the agenda is item 6.2, which is 950 West El Camino Real, which is an Affordable Housing Project. And the presenters tonight are senior planner, Matt Van Osten, project manager of Affordable Housing, Vera Gill, and planning manager, zoning administrator, Stephanie Williams. And council member Clark.

[03:36:13] Councilmember Chris Clark: So while everyone's getting settled, um, I, due to an interest in real property that is something like 36 inches too close, or I don't know, it's, it's, it's a matter of feet, um, but it's still too close. So I will be recusing myself from this item, and since from this item, 6.2 and 6.3, which is a related revenue bond item, which also means that you are rid of me for the night. So, I will watch your council committee staff reports from my couch. Thank you.

[03:37:09] Mayor Lisa Matichak: I think we're waiting on the presenters. Sorry, Randy.

[03:37:34] Unknown Speaker: I would do the presentation, but I am lacking in the architecture design. So we'll wait for Matt to come up. Thanks.

[03:38:06] Unknown Speaker: If you're a, um, maybe a suggestion that the mayor, um, is a manable tool, we sort of start in the middle of the presentation, and do the part that Vera, the affordable housing side of it, and then we'll come back to the design part of it.

[03:38:19] Mayor Lisa Matichak: That's fine with me.

[03:38:25] Affordable Housing Project Manager Vera Gill: Maybe start on slide nine. It is. Slide eight. So this is the part where I thank Matt for the introduction. and say good evening to the honorable mayor and council members. This evening, I'm going to go over the notice for a notice of availability of funding or NoFA as well as the affordable housing application process. Just in general to give you a refresher and a little bit about this project as well. If you'll notice, this project actually came to the council just about this time last year and they came asking for a reservation of funding. And before that, as all affordable housing developments go through, it's a long process of filing an application, going through some financial feasibility, studies with the city and with our consultant, as well as going through some elevations with the planning division. And so after about 6 or 7 months, we get that project so that it's at a point where it can go before the no for review committee and they can consider that project. So this project did go to the No For Review committee in April of last year. And they were essentially 2 parts, 2 funding scenarios with this project. Palo Alto housing had proposed going to the county of Santa Clara. Actually, they filed an application with the county of Santa Clara for measure A funding. The request was to do some transitional age youth housing, some developmentally disabled, and then some chronically homeless. The response from the county was we would like to see 50% of this project for the chronically homeless or permanent support of housing. And after trying to negotiate Palo Alto housing basically came back to us and said, we just don't feel comfortable with that. We'd like to look at another funding scenario. And we worked with them on that funding scenario. The funding scenario was what you heard about earlier this evening with Prometheus, where they approached Prometheus to see if there was a way that that funding could be used for this to take out a guest supplant the county measure funding. The No For Review committee looked at both scenarios and basically made the recommendation that the 2nd scenario with the Prometheus funding proceed to council. This went to council. again, last year, May 15th. At that point, I'll go ahead and tell you after that meeting, there were a couple of community meetings, there were a couple of design review committee meetings that Matt took this project to, and most recently, the environmental planning commission meeting where they've given us a recommendation on this project too. So to talk about what happened last year in May. The council was asked to reserve, and I'm incorrect in the staff report. I've gone through the minutes 3 times, and it's really difficult and really confusing, but I think we've watched the video and gotten to the point where we believe that the council reserved up to 22.800000 in May of last year. The part that we are clear about, for sure, is that the 1700000 in pre-development funding was actually funded through the budget and not done during a mid-year appropriation. The pre-development funding is currently in use to cover staff time. So Matt, staff time, my staff time, consultant agreements, traffic studies, developer costs, such as architectural and engineering costs are also covered with that pre-development agreement. I want to go over some of the typical project funding sources. This is the permanent funding for the project. So we're looking at the tax credit investor capital, about 16, a little over 16 million. The city of Mountain View. Again, this would be money that would come from the BMR fund. So perhaps the prepayment of the Prometheus funding, as well as current money that we have in our affordable housing fund, a total of nearly 22.8 million. Um, We would have, they would have a bank loan to cover another 5.50000 and their general partner contribution, which is actually a portion of their developer fee, as well as almost 500,000 community development block rent money, which you will be. Well, I believe that was already last week at the hearing. So almost 50000000 in funding for this. This table is a little hard to read because there's so much information on it, but you do have a hard copy that was given to you with your with your answers to your questions. So we've provided that for you there so you can see that. I like to do this in each report and I like to do this at each meeting just so you can go over what our costs have been in the past. A lot of these projects go back to 2012, 2013. So I know they're getting a little old to be reviewed, but it's a good idea of where we've come from and what we've been doing with our affordable housing funds. So finally, if this project proceeds, we would have the 40% tax credit application in May, the construction would start in September, and it would probably take about 24 months to complete. And I think what we'll do is go ahead and start at the beginning.

[03:44:11] Senior Planner Matt Van Osten: animal trade places. Thanks for going over the NoFA process first. Apologies, mayor, vice mayor, and council. I'm Matthew Van Oston, the project planner for this, 950 West El Camino Affordable Housing Project. The project location is on the north side of El Camino Real, just west of Castro Street. It's surrounded by a two-story hotel to the west. Two-story multifamily housing to the north, and one-story retail to the south and east. Just some brief project information. It's this project is 71 units total with 70 Affordable Studios and one Manager's unit. And of that 70 units, it includes 15 units for persons with developmental disabilities. There's 32 parking spaces on the site parked at a 0.5, a 0.45 per unit ratio. There's a 55 foot height, with some projections for the rooftop use. Heritage true removal is 8 with a replacement of 16 trees on site, plus 4 additional street trees on El Camino Real that don't exist there currently. This project includes a density bonus of 5%. and is asking for 5 waivers, and those are 2 building height, side setbacks, common usable open area, open space and pavement coverage. And just quickly to look at the site plan, you can see that the building is situated along El Camino Real, near to the sidewalk, along with a landscaped area, to buffer the project from the sidewalk and provide some additional pedestrian amenities along El Camino Real. In addition to moving the building close to El Camino Real, it provides parking in the rear to screen that parking, as well as provide a buffer and a setback to the residential properties in the rear of the project. And so for project design, you can see there's a kind of a mid-century modern look to it. There's a horizontal element on the east side of the project, and then a more vertical element, on the west side of the project, connected with pedestrian plaza area and lobby space. There's also ground floor activation with the community center and lobby space as well. And just for the rear of the project, you can see that the materials and design aren't just on the front facade, they do wrap around the building to the rear. And this is what you would see on the rear of the property, as well as the project is keeping all of the 8 redwood trees in the rear of the property too, that furthers the screening from the residential property. And here's just a close-up shot of the lobby area and gathering space with the landscaped areas around the El Camino Real and the small plaza. All right, and so with that, the recommendation, staff recommends that the city council adopt a resolution conditionally approving the project, appropriate the funds for the BMR funds for Palo Alto Housing, 71 Unit Affordable Housing Development, and authorize the city manager or designate to negotiate the loan agreement terms. This concludes staff recommendation. Thank you.

[03:47:52] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Did the applicant have a presentation?

[03:48:00] CEO Randy Suda: Well, good evening. For the record, my name's Randy Suda, and I'm the CEO of Palo Alto Housing. It is exciting, exciting to be back in this council chambers for the first time in front of council. As most of you know, Palo Alto Housing, we are a longstanding affordable housing developer here in the mid peninsula. currently operating in southern San Mateo County and northern Santa Clara County. We are soon to be celebrating our 50th anniversary of our operation. So we have been in part of both the Mountain View community, Palo Alto community and continuing to expand to other communities. We've been doing that for a long, long time now. We currently have 3 projects that are either under construction or approaching construction. We hope that, but the council's approval tonight. will be the 4th. And as I think most of you are aware. We also own 2 additional sites here in Nonview that we hope to advance in the near future. So as Vera pointed out, we really started this process in in fall of 2017 when we were able to purchase this site with the assistance from the housing trust of Silicon Valley and the county of Santa Clara with 2 acquisition loans, one of which are still on the property. Um, and with that, we we progressed into the NoFA phase, we returned to council in about a year ago, May of 2018, and at that point, council did take action to reserve the uh, reserve the funding for the project of nearly $22.8 million, and then directed staff to uh, include the $14 million in, um, pre-development funds, into the FY 1819 budget. So based on the funding commitment and reservation, of funding. We have progressed the project to get it to here at this point this year. And we were very excited to get hopefully council's approval. and allocation of funding tonight. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Diane Dittmar, who is our project manager for the project, and she will actually begin walking you through the details. Thank you.

[03:50:13] Project Manager Diane Dittmar: Okay. So, I'm going to pull up the slides here if I can. Okay. So, um, so while Lily's, while Lily's doing that. Thank you. I just wanted to say, I'm really excited about presenting this project because I love this project. And one of the things that, um, I love about it is that as I've started working on this project, I gotten to know Mountain View better and I've gotten to know some of the things about Mountain View and some of the values of Mountain View. And one of the things I've learned is that Mountain View very highly thinks very highly of inclusivity, diversity, and really honors that tradition here in Mountain View. Okay, we're going we're going to cancel that and I'm just going to move on. Okay. So I think that Vera's gone through quite a bit of the history of this project and how we've moved through Mountain View City. And, um, this is the view from El Camino Real. And I am going to let Fred talk about some of the architecture in a few minutes, but I'm going to go through some of the people. One of the, one of the things that we appreciate is, as I said, the, um, the inclusivity of Mountain View and how Mountain View wants to have a vibrant, um, a vibrant community that has people across the entire economic spectrum. This particular project will be 100% affordable at low income and very low income, targeting between 50 and 70% AMI for a single person household. You can see the numbers up there on your screen. It would be a little bit higher for a two-person household. One of the exciting things about this project is that almost everyone who would be living in this project would be someone who is being displaced or is in danger of being displaced from Mountain View, because they would have a Mountain View live work preference, and up to 21% of these units would be reserved for self-sufficient adults with developmental disabilities, were excited to partner with housing choices on that. And for this population, many of them have jobs, but don't drive cars, which I think works well with the location of this project and also with traffic mitigation. Here is pair. He had to leave early because it was running a little late tonight, but his mom's here. And so I think they may be speaking later about some of the differences that this housing has made in Paris life because he's living in affordable housing very similar to this in Mountain View. In addition, Palo Alto housing, we typically like to do infill sites, promote bicycle ridership, this particular project has a one-to-one bicycle parking. We have guest bicycle parking. We like to promote public transit ridership, this particular project's within a number of transit lines, including buses and the train. We don't believe that it's going to be a parking problem at the onset of the project. We did a green trip study that projected the used to be 0.037 stalls per unit or less. We're currently providing 0.45 stalls per unit. So we don't think that it's going to be a problem for the community. There's a lot of stuff within a half mile parking radius, which makes it great for our residents. Within the community, we also have a lot of unsigned amenities that allow residents to really have a high quality of life. Vera went over some of our funding sources. We also have gotten acquisition funding from the from Santa Clara County and housing trust Silicon Valley, in addition to all of the funding sources that Vera went over. We also are looking at potential gap funding if we end up with a gap from Santa Clara County for adults with developmental disabilities, if that becomes available next year, as they promised, and HP as well. Our estimated project schedule were basically good to go. So presuming we get council approval tonight, we'll be submitting for permits within 2 weeks. We hope to have our building permits at the end of September, our TCAC funding reservation in October and start construction in December so that we can house people as soon as possible in summer of 2021 or even spring of 2021. So with that, I'll turn it over to Fred.

[03:55:02] Architect Fred Pollock: Good evening, council members. My name is Fred Pollock, with Vanita Williams Pollock, we're the architects. Many of you have seen the plans before. Matthews presented them and did a nice job of describing it. I just wanted to point out a couple of key features. One's a location, and it is almost a civic sort of presence along El Camino real at that location, and that's part of, I think you called it mid century modern approach. I heard that, that's referred to in the architecture, but I like it. I'm going to remember it. So I think that that's part of the kind of presence that the building is thought of in this particular location. Other key things about the building really is the fact of where it's placed. It's 70 feet from the adjacent residential property on the north side. So there's a lot of privacy to the adjacent neighbors that's been an ongoing concern from residential neighbors in Mountain View. So that's respected, and the trees provide great screening there. Let's see what we have. The other thing I wanted to mention is that the building has surface parking. And one thing we always try to look at as we're working on affordable housing is really trying to be as prudent as we can in the design of the buildings in a layout. Surface parking saves a lot of money rather than going subgrade. And in this particular case, the building is laid out as a simple, what we call double loaded corridor building. So it's a single corridor with units on both sides. It's very efficient in terms of the way that it's built and very efficient in its use of space for housing people. So it really is a great mechanism for cost containment. The surface parking, and the double loaded corridor. And, you know, certain sites don't work that way. And we're fortunate that this site really is able to provide that. So this are kind of key items in the design of the building and the thinking of it. There's great amenities worked into the space. The streetscape is thought of very carefully addressing the precise plans, requirements, and creating an active street frontage. The units themselves are also thought of as very efficient, but very livable. So how does this thing have to run? We have a little. So there's also this film, I think maybe a few of you have seen this before also. This is walking past the property. It's on the right, screening of the parking, landscaping, the street trees. So we're moving down toward the courtyard, the bike parking. This is the main entry on the right hand side. be turning in. Now we're going to walk a little bit past the building, turn around, and come back toward it. Uh oh. And on that, I'll let the film speak for itself. Thank you.

[03:58:20] Mayor Lisa Matichak: While we're watching this, do any council members have questions either for the applicant or for staff? You can just say. Vice Mayor Abbe Koga.

[03:58:37] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. the video. Oh, say that. I'll watch it. Well, you ask questions. Question for staff. Um, the 22.8 million, um, that's a loan, correct? And what is what normally, what are the repayment terms usually? I know the agreement still has to be executed, but in general, for affordable housing projects.

[03:59:03] City Staff Vera: So typically we will um, so typical 3% residual receipts, um, and so we negotiate that and we execute it at the tax credit closing. And so one of the things we really wanted to do was be able to recapture the prepayment of that, instead of the BMR funds from Prometheus, the prepayment going directly into the project, we wanted to be able to recapture it for the city. So we asked that that money be deposited with the city so that it could be loaned out and captured in that way so that it would be returned to us.

[03:59:40] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay, great. Thank you.

[03:59:48] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Hicks.

[03:59:50] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I have a question for the applicant. And I may have asked you this before, some of my apologies if I did. The community space, is that something that the building itself, is that something that the larger community could ever interact with, like rent out a room or nonprofits use it, maybe nonprofits that are associated with the residents there are not associated? Is that something you've ever thought of?

[04:00:16] Project Manager Diane Dittmar: I don't believe that we're really allowed to do that by TCAC regulations, unfortunately. We would love to do it.

[04:00:28] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, any other questions from council members? Council member McAllister?

[04:00:35] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, question. So, you said the $22 million was a loan, but why on the chart you call it a subsidy?

[04:00:46] City Staff Vera: The loans are typically considered subsidies. So, um, that is the city's portion of that subsidy. So even though it's called a subsidy, it doesn't mean that it's a grant, it could be, it could come in the form of a grant. It could come in the form of a loan. Typically, what we will do is to subsidize the affordability of the complex is provide a loan. And then we recapture that. And it takes a long time to recapture that money. I'll be honest with you. So we might not see repayment of that. until 15 years out when the tax credits are refinanced, or we could start seeing smaller payments in year 14, 15.

[04:01:29] Councilmember John McAlister: Does this project have the 55-year sunset?

[04:01:36] City Staff Vera: So we will have a resale, I'm sorry, not a resale. We will have an affordability restriction recorded against this, but the tax credits are also will record affordability restrictions as well. They have a 55 year term. on them. And so, we do have options where we could continue to have this development as affordable for a longer period of time.

[04:02:06] Councilmember John McAlister: And how are those options exercised?

[04:02:09] City Staff Vera: So when the developer chooses to, they could, we could extend it beyond the affordability restriction that we have in our agreements. So if the council so chose, we could say, um, I think that TCAC only allows it to go out to 65 years, Diane might know better, but we could extend the affordable.

[04:02:34] Project Manager Diane Dittmar: Sure, how long TCAC will allow it to go. I know that typically it's 57 years, 57 because we have 2 years of construction and 5 years of actual folks living there. I'm sorry, 55 years. What are we doing?

[04:02:50] Councilmember John McAlister: I remember some discussion, I don't know if included Google, but there was perpetuity to it.

[04:02:54] City Staff Vera: Sorry, there was what?

[04:02:56] Councilmember John McAlister: In perpetuity.

[04:02:57] City Staff Vera: Oh, and I think that, um, Wayne might be better able to speak to this, Wayne Chen is our assistant community development director, but I think that they're talking about longer terms with the BMR affordability restrictions as well. I know the 777 project, which will be coming to you soon as a gatekeeper, what they offered was those to be affordable in perpetuity.

[04:03:21] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. And so you said this project probably take 24 months to be built.

[04:03:30] Vera Fund: It really depends on the weather. I think both of the developments that we currently have under construction with Rome and with Palo Alto housing have seen some delays. Typically, it takes 24 months. for the developments to be constructed.

[04:03:46] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Sorry, any other questions from council members?

[04:03:55] Councilmember John McAlister: So when you said that, um, the loan would, did you say start being repaid back in 15 years?

[04:04:04] Vera Fund: Potentially? I would have to look, I honestly would have to look at the performance to see when they are they go out the full 55 years. So I would have to take a better look at that, to tell you exactly when we would see payment. Typically, what will happen is at year 15, that is when they are eligible to refinance and buy out the investor. So whoever bought the tax credits. And so you're 15, they might, a lot of the developers will refinance, and they will buy out the investor, and they may start making payments back to the city at that point.

[04:04:44] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Start making payments and then it could be that our payments continue for the life of the 55 years.

[04:04:52] Vera Fund: It could be, depending on the refinancing. I can tell you for some of our developments, we see $3000 a year, some of them, we see $15,000 in residual receipts a year. It really just depends on the financing that they secure at that point.

[04:05:11] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. So then, I had some questions for the folks from Palo Alto Housing. And, um, you said this so quick about gap funding. Could you go through that again?

[04:05:28] Project Manager Diane Dittmar: So one of the things that I know we've all been talking about is the escalation of costs based on land costs, construction costs and interest rates. And one of the things that we're trying to do is do everything we can from a value engineering perspective to keep the cost of this low, but also keep the quality of the product high. And I think Fred talked about some of those things like having a double loaded corridor, having service parking. One of the things that has been unpredictable in this area, because of the construction labor shortage, has been how much construction costs are going up. And if we do end up with a gap, um, based on the final numbers coming in from the subs, which is where a lot of the construction and escalation is happening, um, we anticipate, that would probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe, you know, 500,000 to a 1000000.5 somewhere in that neighborhood. Um, we've identified a couple sources that we may be able to access so that we could close that gap.

[04:06:33] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. And have you identified any other sources for the initial funding?

[04:06:40] Palo Alto Housing Representative: For the initial funding with this population, We don't have any additional sources. If we were to change our population to, for example, as we discussed before, a supportive housing population where we had 50% supportive housing, of course, you know, there's there are other sources available for chronically homeless populations, but then we would lose a lot of our mountain view live work preference.

[04:07:08] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Can you talk to me about how you, um, how you think about which properties you look to purchase? Like, what's the process that you go through and what's the thinking behind which ones you purchase? And actually, do you own this one or do you have an option to purchase it?

[04:07:27] Palo Alto Housing Representative: No, we do own this one. And I think I'm going to let Randy talk about that because I think he's going to be a lot better at being able to explain that than I am.

[04:07:39] Randy (Palo Alto Housing): I think 1st and foremost, the philosophy of Palo Alto housing in the last 5 years is to really identify and look at sites where there are transit opportunities, either currently or in the or in the near future. So you look at the, the, I mentioned that this would be the 4th project that we, uh, that is either under construction or approved. All 4 of those are on El Camino for a low income population. It's the most heavily served by the bus line, the bus infrastructure. In this case, it's in particular also very, very close to downtown. So you have advantages provided to not only being on the 522 and 22 lines. You have proximity to the downtown transit center. So we've really focused 1st and foremost on getting sites that are in the right locations, have robust transportation, transit access. The obviously the other 2 sites that we own in Mountain View on Terabella, where the city is going to be investing a lot of money, 1000000s of money, in transforming the shoreline corridor with reversible bus lanes and dedicated cycle tracks. Again, investing a lot of money into transportation resources. And that's another site that we've targeted those sites. we targeted for being, it kind of meets our criteria where we want to be. So we're looking for sites where we can provide housing in places where the low income, our low income residents have alternatives to driving. And those sites happen to be, oftentimes, more expensive. The ones that have transit proximity, robust transit, infill locations tend to be more expensive sites.

[04:09:26] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So during that process, do you contact the city to talk about the parcel before you close on it, to talk about the economics of the project?

[04:09:39] Palo Alto Housing Representative: I know that my predecessor, Candace Gonzalez, had a number of conversations with city staff in this process, and I think Vera would verify that. Um...

[04:09:54] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So I was the one who sent in the question about construction costs, and it looks like construction costs. I mean, I'm roughly guessing maybe over the past two years, 50% increase. It's like one to 2% a month. Does that?

[04:10:15] Palo Alto Housing Representative: The, um... Staff sent you the information, so... I think that it's looking at the, it's looking at, um, I think what they sent you was something that does not look at it over a long, it's not 50% a month.

[04:10:36] Mayor Lisa Matichak: No, 50% over the past 2 years. It's pretty high.

[04:10:40] Palo Alto Housing Representative: I would not, um, I would say it's probably been averaging. You have another source that you were looking at, I can't remember the name of it.

[04:10:51] Randy (Palo Alto Housing): Oh, so. Yeah, we have the TBD consultants index that we look at and rely upon. I think the source that the staff sent you today is out of the ENR, the BCI index. They used 2 very different methodologies. BCI is really looking more at the materials costs, the index that we utilize factors in material cost escalation as well as escalation in terms of the pricing that are is coming out of the subs and our GCs. So we believe it's a more fully loaded cost. Neither one of those indices factor in the escalation land cost. which over the last information that we've gotten from our broker, is the escalation of land cost in Mountain View, frankly, blows away any indices you want to look at in terms of labor increases in construction materials increases. So when you put all of that together, there's it's significantly more expensive today than the build, say, as Vera was mentioning in 2012, 2013, with some of those other comps. So depending on which index you use and how you weight the land costs and the and construction escalation, um, In some cases, under our index, some of those costs per square foot, our costs are actually less than some of the projects, you've approved in the past. If you look at the ENR index, you come up with some different results. In some cases, the ENR index provides a higher cost in our index, some cases it's lower. So it's really hard to give you a definitive response as to exactly how the cost of this project measure up to something done in 2012 or 2013.

[04:12:53] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Well, some of these projects, like the other one on El Camino, that's a fairly recent one. The at 1701.

[04:13:01] Randy (Palo Alto Housing): That's our project, yes.

[04:13:03] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Yeah. And that one. The, when you look at the, um, difference in cost per unit, the city subsidy, from 119 to, uh, Actually, sorry, I have last year's report there to 320 something, right?

[04:13:24] Unknown Speaker: Yeah, 327.

[04:13:26] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Yeah, just no, there's 2 years? Well, in 3 years, it's compounding increase in land values of 17% here, compounded. Not to mention the increases in construction costs.

[04:13:42] Palo Alto Housing Representative: And I think it's important to remember in that case, we have a different population type in that project. That is not a project that's targeting and reserving units for adults with developmental disabilities. That is a veterans housing project. Different population, comes with different funding sources. In this case, we were hoping to target units for adults with developmental disabilities. There hasn't been a project in Mountain View that provides housing. for those folks since 1st community housing did that project. And I think that was one of the 2012 or 2013 projects, Vera Fund, if I recall correctly. So, and that was a 26 unit project. So, you know, we wanted to provide more housing for the developmentally disabled. And the struggle with that is it comes with less funding opportunities. And I should also bring up the point. I think that we were very, very fortunate with 1701. timing is everything. We were working on that project. The state happened to release a NoFA for the veterans housing funding. The county happened to open up their project-based vouchers, and it all lined up perfectly. It is probably our most leveraged project. And we owe it all to good fortune, that it, this project was able to get approvals from the council quickly, it was able to apply for these other funding sources that just so happened to release their nofas around the time that they were receiving their approvals. Luck is everything.

[04:15:21] Vera Fund: Those nofas are only released once every couple years. So we were very, very fortunate with that. And we always try to line everything up. It's really very, very hard to hit the funding sources. We just missed this year's federal home loan programs, AHP money application. So, you know, the chances are we would have to wait. Palo Alto housing would have to wait until next year for that. Luckily, they're going for 4%, which allows them to be more flexible, and that's another big issue. 9% tax credits provide you with more funding, but it's competitive, and it's only 2 times a year. And it's really hard to line it up. and figure out what the competition's going to be and apply for that. 4% tax credits are guaranteed. And we're having a tougher hearing later this evening to talk about that. The 4% tax credits are guaranteed and they can apply at any point during the year, but they do receive less funding for that.

[04:16:21] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Was this property on the market? And it was a competitive situation.

[04:16:39] Palo Alto Housing Representative: Fortunately, neither one of us was involved in the acquisition of the project, so we couldn't give you a definitive answer on that.

[04:16:46] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, but before you sit down, on Terabella. What's the size of that parcel?

[04:17:00] Palo Alto Housing Representative: One at Linda Vista, at Linda Vista and Terabella is 0.7 acres, and the one at Terabella and San Rafella's 0.47 acres.

[04:17:16] Mayor Lisa Matichak: And what was the cost prohaker of those? Sorry. Ooh, um, or your total cost and we can figure out the costbreaker.

[04:17:25] Palo Alto Housing Representative: Let me think a second. I don't know off the top of my head what the one, what the cost for Linda Vista was, I believe the Terabella cost was around 5 million. Um, this is this was 8 million. It is a better site in terms of public transit than the Terabella sites and the Terabella sites are zoned industrial at this point. So that really that affects the cost as well. But on a per acre basis, I believe that we paid more for the close to or more for the Terabella sites.

[04:18:08] Mayor Lisa Matichak: And you own those?

[04:18:09] Palo Alto Housing Representative: We own those, yes.

[04:18:11] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Um, I think that's all my questions. Any other questions from I'll try one more time. Okay. Then we will open this up for public comment. If there's anyone who wishes to speak to us on this topic. Please be sure to fill out a blue card and leave it with the city clerk either before or after you speak. And, um, As a reminder, um, At the end of 2 minutes, you will hear a bell and a chime. We're trying to figure out what to call this new sound. And that means your time is up. So if you could wrap it up right before then, that would be great. So if the first person could come up, You can pull the microphone down. Thank you.

[04:19:16] Susan Bargain: Susan bargain. In 1972, I was a teacher earning $8,000 a year. And I was able to buy a $35,000 house in which I still live. I doubt very much that anyone in my situation today could afford a house and barely even an apartment in Mountain View, and it gets worse and worse. I have seen my friends and neighbors priced out and having to move far away. I have seen people I do business with. The guy at the gas station, the woman who cuts my hair, the man who used to cut my grass, they've all had to move out because rents have gone up and up and up, and they can't stay here. I have seen legislation that allows a few affordable housing units that we have to be raised and replaced by luxury condominiums. I have seen legislation that is going to force people who have no recourse except to live in their vehicles, no longer able to park on public streets, and given only vague promises that within 6 to 18 weeks, maybe perhaps somewhere safe parking might be found, but we don't know. So it's all up in the air. It is a crisis situation. And this is one positive step that can be made to help so many people that are important to this community. And looking at this beautiful presentation, this would be an asset to the community, and I hope that you will approve it, and it is only the 1st of many others like this to come. Thank you.

[04:20:46] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Next, please.

[04:20:49] Linea Wickstrom: Good evening. My name is Linea Wickstrom. I'm here to urge you to support 950. As the aging parent of an intellectually disabled young adult, I know how crucial housing is to young people who are learning to live independently. As a side note, I sent a picture to you, which you may see tomorrow. 9 people turned up here to speak from 1585 studios, which thanks very much to the city of Mountain View for building. Nine of those people came to speak tonight, but they had to walk home before the agenda item came up. Two of them, including my son. Two of them are here to speak. My son, like these young ladies who will speak to you, lives in the pioneering housing development at 1585 El Camino in Mountain View. It was a fantastic opportunity for him, and we need more units of the same kind of thing in our area. The units proposed for IDD people will provide housing in their own community, close to all their natural support system. Housing right on ECR, a major transit route, is crucial for them to get to jobs, shopping, and entertainment. Housing with neurotypical individuals will further integrate them into their community. A new building, excuse me, a new building with universal design for accessibility, community facilities, good security, and on a major transit route is key for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Please adopt, appropriate, and authorize. Thank you.

[04:22:34] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[04:22:38] Public Speaker: Hi, guys. Okay, um, I really like those studios. They are very kind to me, and I like, um, transportation to work, and I really like enjoying the community room at the studios and hanging out with my friends. Thank you.

[04:22:55] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[04:23:02] Jane Paulson: Hi, hi. My name is Jane Paulson, and I love living at the, um, 55 studios. It was a, it was a good place for us to live there in the, according to the community, it's not easier for us to actually use the public dissertation. So I hope that you go to have a chance to go up and take the, take the hook bus and go anywhere in the community because it's the best place for us to live there and take transits where, where, where we have to go. Thank you.

[04:23:45] Mayor Lisa Matichak: You're very welcome.

[04:23:46] Jane Paulson: And I hope you guys have a chance to help us too. Say yes to 950.

[04:23:55] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. You're very welcome. Thanks, please.

[04:24:06] Janet Van Zorin: Evening mayor and city council members. My name is Janet Van Zorin, and I'm not a resident of Mountain View. But I just wanna applaud you for what you've been doing for affordable housing. I'm so excited about the opportunities that you're creating for a good mix of people's, of all different affordability levels and all different ability levels. It's really exciting to see that happening not only within the individual projects that some have housing for this group and some have housing for that group, but also when you look at the entire stock of affordable housing that you have here in Mountain View, it's exciting to see that array. I think diversity is very important. I think it makes our community a healthier community. I also want to address the need for housing for people with developmental disabilities. You guys are great. Those 50, those, um, Now I'm forgetting the numbers. But the project that Julie and Becky are at, those units, if you could go over there and see how happy, those individuals are with their newfound independence, living on their own, making their own choices, who they who they get together with, how they decorate their place, when they come and go. It's just so wonderful. And if you consider all that you've done with special education in your community, you need to have a place for them to live when they grow up and become adults. Many of these children, many of these young adults were born in years when many of their peers were in institutions, you have nurtured them, you have helped them to grow and help them to become important members of your community. It's only right that you help them find housing in this community too. Thank you very much.

[04:26:10] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[04:26:15] Executive Director John Stokely: Good evening, mayor and city council members, I'm John Stokely, executive director of housing choices. We are a nonprofit organization that advocates for quality affordable housing for people with developmental disabilities. We currently support 26 residents living in studio apartments at 1585 studios just up the street from 950 West El Camino. There's a very long waiting list for those units. The project's been a huge success. San Mateo County will be bringing a bus load of San Mateo County leaders to visit the property this Saturday during affordable housing week to learn more about what you've done here in Mountain View to create housing for people with developmental disabilities. So congratulations. But we ask you not to rest on your laurels. We really need your investment here at 950 West El Camino. There's almost a 100 adults with developmental disabilities in Mountain View on our waiting list for affordable housing. They're living at home with aging parents, and the clock is ticking. Families really want to help transition their adult to independent living while the parents are able to be part of the solution. 950 is incredibly well located for our community. The amenities, the community room, will be well used by our community. If you visit 1585 studios, you'll find abilities United and many other community organizations, they're conducting activities in the community room, and that's what you'll see here at 950. I know it's a huge investment that we're asking you to make specifically so that you can have affordable housing that includes people with developmental disabilities rather than going after county funding for the chronically homeless. It's an issue cities are having to look at because the funding dollars are really much needed for all groups. But this is a community that you can be proud of making possible for them to continue to live in Mountain View, where they grew up and have support systems. So thank you.

[04:28:20] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[04:28:25] Public Speaker: Hi, I'm back again. So, you guys like unanimous votes, right? I remember last week, you unanimously voted for item one. 9 a study session on displacement and net loss, that was great. That made me proud to be a mount of your resident. I think it would be a great opportunity right here to vote unanimously to do something else to avoid displacement. That's what this project is. I think it's an amazing project and I think the thing to say here is that you shouldn't delay this also. I mean, if you, you know, don't don't approve this. We're going to, even if it is going to be some other thing developed here, it's going to take time, it's going to be delays and uh, Housing delayed is housing denied, right? Okay. Thank you.

[04:29:11] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[04:29:15] Kelsey Baines: Good evening again. My name is Kelsey Baines. That was cool to see unanimous approval, so quickly. I've never seen that in Palo Alto. So that was pretty exciting. But I would just encourage you to approve the funding for this development, as you've already heard. This is really needed in the community. It is a large investment for Mountain View, but I would just encourage you to think about this being an investment in people, and an investment in the community, and the health of the community, investing in vulnerable populations, and letting them have a place in Mountain View, where they can stay in their home, and remain connected is really important. And then I also know that displacement has been a big focus for Mountain View. I think that's great. So this would be a way to mitigate that displacement that you're seeing. And yeah, I'm just encouraging you to approve this. This is something that all of Mountain View is going to be really proud to have in your community and be able to keep vulnerable members of our community housed. Thanks.

[04:30:22] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[04:30:29] Mitch Manikin: Hi. Thanks the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Mitch Manikin. I here from Silicon Valley at home. The Voice of Affordable Housing in Silicon Valley. And we've endorse this development because it provides many benefits to Mountain View, but I'll highlight just 3 for you tonight. Housing for underscored populations, the location and the long-term investment. So first, these homes are helping individuals who are making about 65,000 or 46,500 under those 2 numbers, respectively. That means people who would be displaced otherwise, Mountain View. There's no other option for them. And as you've heard, it also provides 15 homes for people with developed disabilities, who lack options across the county. Second, this is an ideal location. It's really important to provide affordable housing in good locations with access to transit. In this case, El Camino provides access to bus transportation, which is especially important to people with intellectual disabilities who may not be driving. And in addition, if you look down Castro Street, you're going to see a lot of help wanted signs. It's clear that people can't afford to work those jobs and live in mountain view. This is the kind of housing that would allow people to live close to their jobs. not to commute a long way. And it could be a housing solution for the barist distant waiters that you see when you're down on Castro Street. Now, 3rd, and perhaps most importantly today, it's expensive to build housing here in Solicon Valley, one of the most expensive places in the world. land and construction costs going up 5 to 13% a year. But as we look at the sticker price, let's not invest forget this is investment that's going to be riding 55 years of affordable housing for 71 people. That's 55 years, people will be engaging the community, adding value, making Mountain View a better place, looking at these costs and spreading them over that long time period, I think you'll see that it's a worthwhile investment. And luckily, if I'm not mistaken, we just got the funding from that from the Prometheus prefunding. So I guess I'll close on this. So far, the council has already allocated the pre-development money. It's already allocated the staffing time, but you should continue that path and approve this development tonight. Thank you very much.

[04:32:32] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you, but before you go, council member McAllister has a question to review.

[04:32:36] Mitch Manikin: Of course.

[04:32:38] Councilmember John McAlister: First Dave.

[04:32:39] Mitch Manikin: Oh, David? Yeah. He couldn't be here tonight, but like next week he'll be here.

[04:32:43] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Thank you.

[04:32:45] Mayor Lisa Matichak: That was your question? Mixed, please.

[04:32:54] Barbara Goodwin: Hello, hello, Barbara Goodwin, longtime resident. Um, I do support the project, but I'm hoping that the city is going to be able to come up with a box to restore El Camino real. It's getting taken a beating over. Have you been on it recently? I try to avoid it. But they're talking about the property across from Safeway, 777, and that would be a big, big project. This is not a big, big project, but it's going to cost money to bring those El Camino back to life. I don't know what you're going to do for money on that one. That's my concern for the moment as a resident. Thank you.

[04:33:44] Unknown Speaker: So I'll just clarify, El Camino is owned by the state, and Caltrans has is the one that we contact to fill the potholes and other things, and they're planning on... I think it's in a couple years. completely redoing it, but we contact them a lot to say fix the potholes.

[04:34:06] Barbara Goodwin: Yes.

[04:34:12] Shanie Kleinhaus: Good evening. My name is Shanie Kleinhaus. I'm a resident of Pal Alto. I've worked with Housing Choices. I was on their board for a while and have advocated for housing for the development, mentally disabled adults in Palo Alto, Cupertino, and I'm here. It's really, really important. I have friends here. who can't leave their home because they have these adults living with them that cannot be on their own at home and they need a place that is safe for them. And it's an urgent need in mountain view. Thank you.

[04:34:49] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Is there anyone else who wishes to address us on this topic? Okay, seeing none, we'll close the public input portion and bring this back to council. For additional questions or comments. Vice Mayor Abbe Koga.

[04:35:14] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: I was actually gonna go ahead and make a motion, but I see. Oh, okay, great. Um, so, uh, I just a few comments. I supported this project when we looked at this earlier. I pretty much have supported every affordable housing project. I think the city during my time has looked at, I think, you know, the need is there, obviously, especially like this project because it serves the developmentally disabled and others, and I actually like the mix. I do hear from more folks more and more about the need for housing for the population. And so, I think that's very important. I know there's some concerns about the cost of it. as it's been, you know, it's been clear and the construction costs, I've heard numbers of like 30% increases in annually. Land costs, obviously, are high. I think it's interesting because, yes, TODs are exactly where we want to put affordable housing. In one sense, it supports what we're trying to do into trying to maintain and hopefully someday expand transit. Frankly, the lower income population are the ones who are our writers. Some of them are transit dependent, and so it makes sense to place affordable housing near transit. But I think because of TODs, that those areas are also highly desirable and end up becoming more expensive at times. So I, you know, despite that, I think it's important for us to move forward with this project, um, I, you know, the funding is there. You know, my concern is if we hold off and wait. You know, costs can continue to rise. At some point, I know we'll hit a recession, but not knowing when that it will be. I think it's really important to take the opportunity when it comes to us. And so I would like to go ahead and make emotion. So I have to read number one, which is to adopt a resolution conditionally approving a planned community permit and development review permit for a 5 story 71 unit, affordable studio apartment development, including one, 2 bedroom managers unit, and a density bonus request with waivers, a provisional use permit for rooftop amenities above the 3rd floor, and residential accessory uses utilizing the ground 4 commercial setback. and a heritage stream removal permit to remove 8 heritage trees at 950 West El Camino Real, to be read in title, to be read in title only for the reading waived, and then 2 and three, I'll just go ahead and read since one sentence, appropriate 21.07 to 844000000 in below market rate funds for Palo Alta Housing's 71 unit Affordable Housing Development, located at 950 West El Camino Real, and authorized the city manager or his designate to negotiate the loan and agreement terms, and execute a funding commitment letter, loan agreement, and related loan documents. One final comment. I know, you know, measure a funds, a lot of Mountain View, the voters voted for them. It's been rather challenging and disappointing to access those funds. I was surprised that developmentally disabled projects don't have a lot of funding sources. I did talk to one of our county supervisors and I believe since that they have, they've told me that they're now looking for projects in North County. So I hope that means Mountain View. And I hope that we will soon see the see the change of the name Palo Alto housing corporation's name to something that encompasses Mountain View. So with that, I will make the motion. Thanks.

[04:39:13] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member McAllister?

[04:39:16] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah. Okay. So, in 2015, I was mayor, and I had the privilege and honor to do the grand opening of the 1585 project. So it was, I got this chiller, I got to see it, and I get current updates on it. Some of my neighbors live over there. And so it was great to see that the diversity of housing that we could put out there. When this project initially came to us, I was thrilled to see that it was originally designed to house a population that normally wasn't going to be housed. I think there was some juveniles that were going to be or helped, and there was a nice mix, but again, the funding wasn't there for them. And so they had the Palo Alto housing had to modify their project to meet the funding. It was mentioned a couple of times about this placement, and that this project would take care of people's housing in the future. Well, I had a chat with Mr. Suda yesterday here. And he said, you know, it'd be nice to have unanimous folk because it would give us signal to the nonprofits. But Randy, I can't do that. And the message I want to send is that the nonprofits have to start looking at other options about displacement. I've been advocating for 6 years that Mount View should buy existing affordable housing units, renovate them, and so that you don't have to be displacing people. You don't have to buy new products, and you have people that are living in a community that they're familiar with. And that is a direction that I would like to see, nonprofits go. We're spending a lot of money on this particular property. It's because of the location, but I think if we continue not to change the narrative, that we are going to lose a lot of people to displacement, and it doesn't make sense to build something for people that are being displaced if you bought the place that they were brigely in, and they wouldn't be displaced. So I hope to be sending a message. minor as it may be. This project will pass tonight. You'll get the 5 votes. But the community as a whole. Silicon Out housing. Day was where with us, that we need to change the narrative, start looking at other options that you can do to prevent displacement. So I support the project and especially the residents that you're going to put in there, but please start looking at the other options of having the mountain view or some city buy a property and the nonprofits spend the money to renovate it. We need to look for different solutions than what's going on now because we're just doing the same old things and it's not working.

[04:42:18] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member command.

[04:42:20] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thanks. So I 2nded the motion. I think for me, this is my 1st time as a council member that I get to vote on an all affordable housing project. The last time I got to see a project was studio 819 when I 1st became a planning commissioner, which feels like many years ago, but I haven't aged, right? But, uh, so, you know, I think that what, um, for me, uh, tips the scale is that this uh, targets, um, people within a certain, within the very low, low, which I think is something that we have been talking about trying to create units for, I think that, um, from the conversations that I've heard from staff in both powell to housing, they have tried to do the due diligence to find the funding source. And while they were able to do that and there was kind of, as you'll mention the perfect storm for 1701 on El Camino, you know, this is uh, it wasn't here for 950, but I don't think that that should, um, hold up the project. I think that we need to send a signal that we are sticking by the council goals that we discussed last week, which is trying to find ways that not only mitigate but prevent displacement. And last week, we looked at something that targeted the missing middle and we adopted some council goals that talked about looking at missing middle. And this is a project where we're able to tangibly be consistent with those goals that we discussed. And so for me, that's what, you know, compels me to second. it. I also think, um, both last week, this week, we're talking about state density bonus law. Um, because of the proximity to El Camino real, I think that it does make sense to, to, um, you know, have that. And, um, I, you know, think that projects that are all affordable housing are going to be case by case. I think it's going to be trying to be as aggressive as we can to leverage various sources of funding. Um, but I think now more than ever we're feeling, um, the the effects of of what it means to, you know, rent in our city and we need to put tangible steps forward, um, to address that. as a council.

[04:45:05] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Ramirez.

[04:45:07] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. I will be supporting the motion, and I agree with all of the comments made by the vice mayor and vice council member come may. Just responding quickly to council member McAllister, I don't think that our objectives are mutually exclusive. I think it's important to support these kinds of projects, which provide a level of service that we may not be able to incorporate into the kind of project that you're talking about, which I agree with. I think we should explore opportunities to acquire older housing stock, especially if we can make strategic purchases that help, you know, if there's a demographic, if there's a population living in a given department complex that is especially vulnerable for whatever reason, I think it's appropriate to explore that opportunity. You know, we were talking about displacement, if we're displacing the folks living in that apartment complex, there's a separate set of challenges associated with that. But beyond that, there's also the challenge of the cost of the acquisition and the cost of rehabilitation, which will likely be enormous. I'm not sure there's going to be a lot of, we may not see those kinds of opportunities being any more economically advantageous than we're seeing with this. There's just sort of a lot of financial challenge with any route that we go. But I would like to pursue both. I think this is a good project to support. It's providing housing for a demographic that we're not seeing a lot of housing opportunities for. I really appreciate the level of service being provided to those folks who will be living here. And I also want to support you, council member McAllister, in looking for opportunities to strategically acquire properties that we can rehabilitate and preserve as affordable housing and perpetuity. So I hope we can win your vote for this project.

[04:47:07] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So, um, the last time this project came to us, I certainly expressed concern about the cost of it. And actually, the cost has gone up since we talked about it. And so I still am very concerned about the cost of this project. And I don't have any issues with the project itself, you know, the building, and I think it's great that the demographic they're targeting is, you know, a good one, and there's a need for that. It really does come down to the city subsidy on this one for me. And I've certainly gone back and forth on this one a lot, and I have finally concluded that, um, I don't want to see a whole bunch of these. So I certainly hope the other ones that are in the pipeline. We can find other funding sources for to not have such a large city subsidy. But because Prometheus is providing more than required, in terms of the BMR phase, I guess I can live with that. I do want to, though, if the vice mayor will let me, propose an amendment that we explore making this affordable for as long as possible. I'm not sure everyone was totally clear on how many years that was, but the maximum number possible, and preferably forever. If there's if there's no issue with doing that, I'm more than happy to do that. I guess I just assumed originally that since affordable housing developers developing it, we could do that. If there is there any restriction against that?

[04:49:01] Unknown Speaker: The only issue might come up with the tax credit project, there are investors and there may be limitations placed on it by that, but to the extent possible. I think we could explore that.

[04:49:13] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay. Yes. I'm more than happy to explore it and extend it for as long as we can.

[04:49:20] Mayor Lisa Matichak: And is that okay with council member come A? Okay.

[04:49:24] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Any other comments? Okay, so we have a motion by Vice Mayor Abbe Koga and a 2nd bike, Council member, which is basically the staff recommendation with the addition of exploring having it affordable as long as possible, hopefully forever. Let's vote. And that passes 5 to one with one recused. Council member, Clark, accused and council member, McAllister, opposed. Okay. So it passes, yes. Sorry, difficult. Don't you say that? Okay, so that finishes that item. Thank you. And we move on to item 6.3. And it's actually after 10 o'clock. So, um... Okay, and I'll certainly support that. Are folks okay with that? Starting a new item past 10 o'clock. Well, yeah. I didn't have it there. I was. I didn't have it. Now we do. Okay, so this is item 6.3. Multifamily housing revenue bonds for 950 El Camino Real Apartments, and our presenters tonight are project manager, Affordable Housing, Vera Gill. Well, actually now, you guys keep on changing up on me, who's presenting?

[04:51:09] Project Manager Vera Gill: And I'm joined by Tim Wong, who is our housing neighborhood services division manager.

[04:51:14] Mayor Lisa Matichak: I thought, yeah, I'm reading this going on. I don't think so. Thank you.

[04:51:22] Project Manager Vera Gill: So this is a tough rehearing for the multifamily housing bonds that are going to be issued by the California Municipal Finance Authority, CMFA. So the city of Mountain View is required to hold the public hearing under the Tefra, um, under Tefra to approve the proposed financing. And it's not so much because we are subsidizing this development, but it is more because the development is located within the city's jurisdiction. So 950 El Camino Real proposes to obtain tax exempt financing to go along with their 4% tax credits, and it's in an amount not to exceed 35 million. CMFA is a joint powers authority who is formed to assist local governments like Mountain View, nonprofits and businesses with the issuance of tax exempt financing, and the debt issued by CMFA for this development is the sole responsibility of the developer. Well, actually, the limited partnership, 950 L communal real. The city will have no financial obligation or legal obligations or responsibilities in regards to this bond issuance. So here is the recommendation. We'd like you to conduct a public hearing under the requirements of the Tefra, as well as the internal revenue code, and there's some wording for the resolution that goes along with it. And if you have any questions, Anthony Stubbs with CMFA has come up from San Diego area to be with us this evening and he can answer any questions on the bonds and I can answer any other questions that you might have on this. Thank you.

[04:53:08] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Okay, are there any questions from council members? Okay, we don't have any. We'll open it up for public comment. Is there anyone in the audience who wishes to address the council on this item? Okay, saying none. We'll close public input. And then we will bring it back to council for if you have any questions or deliberation in action. Vice mayor Abbe Koga.

[04:53:44] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: If there are no comments or questions, I would like to go ahead and make the motion, uh, to adopt a resolution approving the issuance of tax exempt bonds by the California Municipal Finance Authority in an aggregate principal amount not to exceed $35 million for the purpose of financing the acquisition, construction, improvement, and equipping of a 71 unit, multifamily, rental housing facility for persons and households of low Income located at 950 Westell Comino Real in the city of Mountain View, California, and certain other matters relating thereto to benefit notice of public hearing to be read entitled only for the rating waived.

[04:54:29] Mayor Lisa Matichak: We have a motion by the vice mayor and a 2nd vice council member Ramirez. There's no further discussion. We can vote. And that passes unanimously. Thank you. Okay, items seven Council staff committee reports. Are there any... Vice mayor ali coga?

[04:55:01] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. So last Thursday, I'm in the middle of our budget session. I went to join the legislative committee task force on housing by APEG, created by ABEG and MTC. And I did send out an email report. I hope you all saw that. The main it, the major bill we discussed was actually the recent combin combining of SB 50 with SB4. Um, and so SB 50, I know we're we've sent a record letter against SB4 was the one about allowing for up to 4 plexes and any available in through a streamlining process. So they've combined the 2 In addition to that, they added the 600,000 population threshold in the county. So any population above that number, county with above that number will be subject to SB 50 rezoning, and those are the ones that we are concerned with. And then those under will be exempt and they'll have a different process to go through. It was noted that 15, only 15 counties in the state have more than 600,000 have population. So half the folks, the counties represented at this committee are now exempt from SB 50. So it's rather interesting, I think, some of us surmised, it's, you know, an attempt to get the votes to pass the legislation. So, of course, we still continue to have concerns about SB 50. We will be meeting again Wednesday to talk about, I'm trying to finish up the 1st the, um, the 12 the dozen of bills that were originally um, outlined for discussion. And again, we are just providing comments. They are transcribing those comments. Our comments will then go to the ABA, MTC, combined legislative committee that meets on the 10th, and then it's up to them to decide how they're going to relay that to the legislators. So it's rather a, yeah, convoluted process to my commentary. So that's that. And then the other item, um, I, uh, attended, um, the Rena subregion committee meeting on Friday afternoon. This was a committee. created through the city's association, and a few things, we should be coming back to us. We will need to pass a resolution to decide and decide whether we want to join the subregion or not. And we need to do that or have all of that together and submit to a bag by the end of this year. So the timeline's actually been moved up. Um, I guess it'll get agendized, but, um, when caveat is, even if we say we want to join, we could at any time choose not to go through with it. So, I think the plus side is at at least we can have some good conversations about housing at a regional level. So yeah, that should be coming down the road. Thanks.

[04:58:40] Unknown Speaker: So do we need to talk about putting that on the agenda? Because actually, I would like to discuss it rather than just adopt a resolution. Like, what are the pros and cons?

[04:58:49] Unknown Speaker: The plan is to put it on the agenda. My understanding is the deadlines not till the end of the calendar year, so we'll schedule it sometime in the fall.

[04:58:56] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay. Yeah. So we have to submit by the end of the year, but we need to get all of our resolutions and everything in place and then submit the paperwork. So I think we're going to be asking for it to be done before the summer, or at least like September at the latest.

[04:59:17] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Ramirez.

[04:59:19] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. I just had a question first. Thank you to the vice mayor for sending the update by emails. I think most of us don't have a chance to follow all of the legislation very closely, so it was helpful. But just to clarify. So, um, with the with the amendment made to SB 50, are the the counties with populations greater than 600,000, not subject to the SB 4 provisions, the incremental density? So it's either or?

[04:59:45] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: It's actually all for SB4, the 4 plexes. But then the SB 50 requirements would only apply to 600,000 plus.

[04:59:57] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Exactly. Thank you.

[04:59:59] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member complain.

[05:00:01] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Last Friday, I participated in a panel for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and game changers, the intersection between housing and transportation, talking about all the amazing things that our city is doing, to create housing in our city.

[05:00:20] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member McAllister.

[05:00:21] Councilmember John McAlister: Well, we had a VTA meeting workshop last week. And we were talking about the Route 22. Some of you might be familiar with the all night hotel. The staff is recommending that we will continue the 22 in the near future. There was disappointment because when we reached out when staff reached out to other county or other nonprofits to find housing for the homeless, there was not much of a commitment from those nonprofits or the county to help out with the solution. And so the BTA was a little disappointed on that. And I also, I just wanted to do an observation, since I always seem to be doing those every now and then, a grumpy, grumpy old man. I am I guess. This is about the sobrado property that Pear Avenue that was came through, and I just, it's observation, so we're not going to discuss the boat. But for the newer members, that if you have a project, It's been president where if you're new and you came along, a project had proceeded along, you don't have to vote for it because if you remember, 3 new council members came along, we changed the precise plan in North Bay Shore. So you are voted here to vote your conscience. And that was one part. The other part is that the Sobrano property, if you looked at the total cost of the project was $410 million, and there was quite a bit of discussion about $8000000 of giving them to credit, that's 2% under 2% of the value of the whole construction project. And I just want you to think about it, that that 2%, if any developers building a project with a plus or -2%, then they are very poor developers. So always think about the full context of the cost and what they are asking you, and you think yourself, are they really going to stop a project because of 2% of their project cost. So that's something to think about down the future. Thank you.

[05:02:33] Unknown Speaker: I attended the Santa Clara, Santa Cruz County Round Table. I think that was last week. Yeah, between our 2 meetings. And, um, nothing really to report as a result of that meeting. For that update. Yeah. I just thought I'd tell you we had the meeting.n't that in an mail. Okay, do we have a closed session report?

[05:03:03] City Attorney Jannie Quinn: Not this evening.

[05:03:04] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. So we... will adjourn the meeting to the next city council meeting to be held on Tuesday, May 7th, 2019, at 5 p.m. in the council chambers, 500 Castro Street.

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