February 25, 2020 Regular Meeting of Mountain View City Council

Video

Transcript

[00:10:44] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Right. Good evening. Welcome to our Mountain View City Council meeting for February 25th already. Um, we'll call the meeting to order at 6.40 p.m. and Counselor McAllister, will you lead us in the pledge, please? Thank you. Uh, we... City clerk, would you mind announcing the attendance?

[00:11:27] City Clerk: All council members are present.

[00:11:29] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Thank you. Item three, we have a presentation for 3.one approclamation and recognition of African American History Month, the month of February. I don't know if we have a... I'm gonna come down to the podium. So, over the years, we have recognized February, which is nationally recognized as African American History Month, and so, we are continuing with that recognition, and, um, I am pleased to have Mr. Lon Bellington here from African American community services, um, that, uh, services, uh, the South Bay. And so I'm going to go ahead and read this. Whereas February is designated as African-American History Month, and is observed in our diverse community and local schools with a series of special presentations and exhibits. And whereas this observation affords a special opportunity for all to become more knowledgeable about African-American heritage and to honor the many African Americans who contribute to the progress of our nation and of our community. And whereas such knowledge can strengthen the inside of all of our citizens, regarded issues of human rights, the great strides that have been made to eliminate the barriers to equality for all ethnic groups, and the continuing struggle against racial discrimination. Now, therefore, I, Margaret Abikoga, mayor of the city of Mountain View, along with my colleagues on the city council, do hereby proclaim the month of February as African-American History Month, in our community, expressing special commendation to the committees, schools, and dedicated volunteers who make this observance a reality in our area. Signed and sealed this 25th day of February 2020. I know it's later in the month, but I'm glad that we were able to recognize this month. And thank you very much for all of your service. And if you'd like to say a few words, we have ideas. Should we do a photo?

[00:14:19] Executive Director Milan Ballington: Thank you. Good evening. My name is Milan Ballington, and I'm the executive director of the African American Community Service Agency, which is located in downtown San Jose, but we've been serving Santa Clara County since 1978. If you've never been down to the African-American community service agency, I personally invite you. Thank you to the mayor and the amazing council members that are behind me for your childless work and making sure that this happens to recognize the contributions of African Americans in this country. Today, I accept this pro. I accept this proclamation on behalf of Catherine Johnson, who recently passed away yesterday at 101 years old. She, yes. She was the American mathematician that got the Apollo 11 to the moon. She has inspired me to make sure my nieces learned about who she is and who she was in the world. And today, as an executive director of a nonprofit, I remind them by her quote. Girls are capable of doing everything men can. Sometimes they even have more imagination than men. I agree with her at times, of course. But I share that because she inspired me to let them know about hidden figures in our communities, although oftentimes in society, we think that everything is okay, but sometimes we need to partner with other communities of color to support racism that still goes on in our society. And today, Black History Month is to teach not only our community, about our history and where we come from, but how the United States of America was even formed with African Americans working within this country. So today I accept this on behalf of Catherine Johnson and all of my ancestors and all of you in the city of Mountain View. Thank you.

[00:16:12] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you, Mr. Valentin. Great. We will move on now to item four, our consent calendar. These items will be approved by one motion only. One motion unless any member of the council or audience wishes to remove an item for discussion, the reading of the full text of ordinances and resolutions will be waived unless a council member requests otherwise. Are there any members of the council wishing to pull an item I see, Council member McAllister?

[00:16:44] Councilmember John McAlister: I just like to comment on 4.7?

[00:16:47] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: And Council member Manachek?

[00:16:49] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: I'd like to pull item 4.8.

[00:16:54] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Are there any members of the public wishing to speak on any of the items on the consent? If not, I'll bring it back to council. Council member McAllister, would you like to comment on 4.7?

[00:17:06] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, please. Okay, so 4.7 was our annual council work goals. And I would like to remind our council that we do this because we try to regulate the flow of work that goes to our staff, and the burden that lands with us. So when I see, and don't take this too wrong, is that we always have to seem to have a cause of the month, that influences the direction that council directs staff to approach some item. Now these items are all very important. But a lot of the items that we look at has a single advocate or a different advocate to, and comes up, and we, we have a tendency to jump into it. We, as a council, sometimes we have to be a little more restraint in our appreciation for what's being done, to really focus on what's really, what we need to do for our city, in the way of budgeting our very limited resources. And I've saw a couple of items that we've come across, you know, they can be labor, they can be guns, they could be whatever. And they have a tendency to, in my opinion, sometimes over influence, the true work that we need to do for the rest of the residents of Mountain View, and to improve their quality of life. And sometimes the projects that are the cause that comes up is very poignant, and, well, it's very important, I still think our council needs to start looking at these and saying, thank you, but we're not going to bring it up at this time. So, um, I will be in support of 4.7. But as I say, there was a couple of items in there that I don't support because there are existing laws in place that addressed a couple of these issues. And if we had an easy tweak, then we could do it, but sometimes our counts, our staff wants to do the best job possible, and sometimes they go a little further than, I think, but they are doing their job to make sure we get all of our information. So, to finish up, have a little bit of self-control, not react to, as I say, the cause of the month, and stay focused to what we are and what we're trying to achieve. Thank you.

[00:19:37] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Any other comments on item 4.7. Um, I actually would respond to that, that I look at it. I think we are very restrained, and we try to follow our work plan, but it is a two-year work plan, and I feel that we need to also be nimble and flexible at times, and there are times when issues come up, and it calls for some kind of response from the city. And sometimes that those issues bring up at least a review. It's worth reviewing what our city policies are around that issue. And so, um, as much as I, I think we were very constrained. And this was probably the 1st time that we looked at how to lighten the load in a sense, but I also do think that it's important for us to be able to be somewhat flexible and responsive in a timely manner. So, Councilman Ramirez. Did you have comments on this as well?

[00:20:33] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I'm just gonna move the balance.

[00:20:34] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay, great. Thank you.

[00:20:35] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. I move the balance of the consent calendar, including item 4.3, adopt a resolution to approve the closure of certain streets in the downtown area on Saturday, May 2nd, 2020 at 2 A, yeah, the button isn't there. At 2 AM until Monday, May 4th, 2020 at 2 AM for the Chamber of Commerce, a la carte, and art festival, to be read entitled only further reading waived. 4.4 adopt a resolution amending the city of Mountain View master fee scheduled to change the fees for electric vehicle chargers to be read entitled only for the reading waived. Adopt a resolution of intention to vacate public easements at 355, 365, 401, and 415 East Middlefield Road, to be read entitled only, further reading waived, and set a date for a public hearing to consider the vacation for March 17, 2020. And 4.7 adopt a resolution approving the new classification of communications manager and adopt a revised salary plan listed as exhibit A to reflect the new classification to be entitled only for the reading wave.

[00:21:36] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. So there's a motion by Council member Ramirez, 2nd by Council member McAllister, and this is for all consent items, including 4.7, but excluding 4.8. Any other discussion? If not, please vote. Motion carries 70. And thank you. We will now move on to item 4.8 and council member Metachek. Would you like to speak?

[00:22:05] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Thank you. First, I want to say I appreciate staff working continuing to work on safe parking, and I appreciate the county working with us on this. Since they have an exemption that allows us to do some things we were concerned about doing on our own. So I don't want to miss the opportunity to say that, because it's great, we can work with the county on this. I had a couple things. I just, first, I just want to make sure we're on the same page when it comes to the vehicles that will be in the safe lots. And I did have the opportunity to go back and forth a little bit with our county supervisor's office. And I received the email, and, you know, I'm sorry to be so picky about this, but I, you know, we spent quite a bit of time being very intentional about the vehicles that we wanted to, um, allowed to use the safe lots. And so, um, we had for criteria. And that was that there would be children in the Mountain View school districts. The second would be, the person was previously a resident of a Mountain View, and we said how they would have to prove that. We also said elderly or disabled. And when I got the email, which had more detail than we had the opportunity in a conversation, and it said, to the extent possible, we will verify Mountain View connection. Prior residence, we will direct our provider to do so. So I guess I'm wondering, maybe the city attorney can help with this one. When we originally talked about this before we had the opportunity to work with the county, I don't remember it saying to the extent possible. So, how are we going to handle that? If somebody couldn't necessarily prove, their residence was Mountain View. I think it was in the past five years. How were we going to handle that?

[00:24:26] City Attorney Krishan Chopra: I think there was a clear intention that that was a specific preference criteria, and usually, when the city employees preference criteria, whether it be for BMR units, or some other, there's a rigorous check, and other factors are looked at pretty closely to determine that. And we found that it was a reasonable way to verify that status. So I think that's a verifiable status. If that answered your question.

[00:24:58] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Yeah, so I guess I would not want it to be to the extent possible. It would be, we will verify the residence. And if someone can't verify that, then, you know, if they can go find other documentation that does prove it okay, but...

[00:25:17] City Attorney Krishan Chopra: Yeah, and maybe a clearer way to look at it is those preferences, I believe, are in the safe parking ordinance. So, that is a set group of criteria, and it's, if a lease, just hypothetically, a lease with the county were to say, we will come, or the lessee shall comply with those preferences, that's just an absolute requirement, there's not, yeah, so.

[00:25:46] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Okay. And does our contract with the county say that?

[00:25:49] City Attorney Krishan Chopra: Well, the contract is being negotiated tonight, we're looking for authority to finalize that because of the time crunch? We're still working on that, but that's the intent, the only exception that was agreed upon in concept was the hours of operation, to go to 24/7, otherwise compliance with the balance of the city's ordinance.

[00:26:12] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Okay. That's great. Thank you. The other item I wanted to bring up is the percent of passenger vehicles. Um, I understand the rationale that we might want to allow some, especially if someone meets the criteria, especially I would say, the families with children in the school districts, um, 25% seemed a little high to me, um, especially since the existing safe lots are only accepting passenger vehicles. They're not accepting the oversized vehicles. And we've been trying to find a place for the oversized vehicles. And so I don't want to have so many passenger vehicles that we're not addressing the oversized vehicles. So I would suggest maybe it'd be maybe 10%. Um, and that we direct people to other lots where passenger vehicles are being accepted. And hopefully this would help encourage other folks who might have lots to open them up. And I was wondering how my colleagues would feel about lowering that to, say, 10%.

[00:27:28] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: We have Counselor Ramirez?

[00:27:30] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. So I, um, the way I was thinking about it is we would provide sort of the first run of refusal to households or individuals and RVs, and then once we have exhausted that demand, I guess, then any leftover would be for passenger vehicles. I was not really enthusiastic about setting a specific percentage. It's just more, let's get, if we have 29 RVs, you know, pack it with RVs, and then if we don't, we have 28 or 25 or 20, Then rather than just keeping the space vacant, then allow for any potential clients who have signed up, who are living in passenger vehicles to take up the balance of the space.

[00:28:16] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: So, um, I had also thought of that, that, um, but I was wondering if that is more difficult to implement, like, um, how quickly would you get enough oversized vehicles, and when do you say, oh, we can't get any more, so we can open it to passenger vehicles. I just thought that would be harder to implement. But if it is easy to implement, I'm okay with that.

[00:28:42] Unknown Speaker: Can I ask a quick clarifying question for staff? So my understanding of the order of operations is we would fill shoreline first, but with 247 parking, we could operate Evelyn concurrently. And that, for now, is, that's, that's time restricted. That's overnight only. Could we have passenger vehicles go to Evelyn? You know, if we have, let's say, there's extraordinary demand, we can't provide every everybody an opportunity to park at shoreline. We prioritize RVs at Shoreline, and then if we have passenger vehicles, they would 1st be directed to Evelyn, or if there are private, safe parking lots, maybe we can direct passenger vehicles to those areas.

[00:29:31] Unknown Speaker: So, currently, as the, um, uh, as Council member Metochick noted, the faith-based programs are able to accommodate only passenger vehicles, and that's a total of 8 spots, and those are full with the waiting list. I believe council's direction for both the shoreline lot and the Evelyn lot were to have those be, for the oversized vehicle, for the reasons noted that the faith-based lots weren't able to accommodate those. And what we weren't trying to open a can of worms, and I apologize. Um, uh, there was some sense that with the 247 wraparound services that would be available at Shoreline, that there might be an assessment made on intake by CSA by, um, by home, by the county, that there were people within our preferences, still, um, um, complying with the city's safe parking ordinance, who would be well suited to that lot, and, but not be an oversized vehicle. So that was the reason for us asking if there might be some flexibility, up to some certain amount, so that it still would be available for, you know, the majority of the spaces to be for the oversized vehicles, since those are, you know, harder to find locations for. But the council can choose at this point to, um, to change that preference for, or the size requirement for shoreline. I would ask the attorney's office. First, I would want to verify, was that direction by the council regarding the Evelyn lot? Is that your understanding? And whether or not we're sufficiently noticed to be able to change that?

[00:31:19] City Attorney Krishan Chopra: It's not an ordinance. It's not in our ordinance language. It was just direction. Yes, there would be flexibility to change.

[00:31:26] Unknown Speaker: Okay. Okay. So, really, that's something that the council could decide. Did that answer your question? I'm not sure I may have given you more than you wanted, and not everything that you asked for.

[00:31:38] Unknown Speaker: Well, I think the way my takeaway is we can provide a preference for RVs in the shoreline lot, if there aren't 29 RVs that want to occupy that space, we could allow passenger vehicles, and we could direct passenger vehicles to other lots, you know, as long as there are vacant spaces. Terabella, Evelyn, the faith communities, that kind of thing. But if we want to set aside. So I think, so what I think what I'm understanding is staff is recommending that we set aside some number of spaces for passenger vehicles where individuals or households have a particular, you know, they're extremely vulnerable for whatever reason. And the 24 hour wraparound services would provide, would meet the needs of those particular households. It's not just any passenger vehicle.

[00:32:33] Unknown Speaker: Right. particularly vulnerable people. That was the reason for us to bring it up. And the only thing that I would say is not to set aside, but to allow for. It's just allowing for the flexibility.

[00:32:48] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Any other comments? Suggestions?

[00:32:52] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Well, I guess my suggestion was to reduce that percent. I understand that you might want some. I was just concerned about 25%. So I was suggesting we do 10%. And I think it would be much more difficult to, um, implement, and I guess, if the folks in the county want to comment on this, um, to say if you don't have enough oversized vehicles, and you could allow passenger vehicles. I was thinking that would be harder to implement, but very open to your input.

[00:33:30] Homeless Concerns Coordinator Michelle Covert: Good evening, this is, uh, Michelle Covert, uh, how's it going homeless concerns coordinator at Officer Supportive Housing, and, uh, I think, as has been noted, it's, you know, the, the quicker amount of flexibility we're given, um, would be helpful. You know, as you mentioned, 25% does sound a bit high, but, you know, that's, you know, 4 or five, 6 vehicles out of 30. So, I think Arkansas is, you know, we like as much flexibility as possible if, if the council chooses 3% or, you know, 10%, that's 3 vehicles, you know. Um, again, the can, the ideas, as uh, Council Ramirez was saying is, if we find, um, through our targeted outreach, and through the intent of finding the, the individuals or families, which we have preference, um, and they're in a car, we want to, you know, be able to meet those needs. So for example, you're talking about a vulnerable population. If we had somebody where, if you one of the family members had a physical disability. And so leaving back and forth or driving the vehicle was more of a challenge for them, we'd like to be able to put those vulnerable individuals in a 247 lot. So, um, we understand the intent, just the, the flexibility, but we don't exactly, the intent is not to go straight to, oh, we always want to have 6 cars. It's just giving us that flexibility based on the preferences that Mountain View has.

[00:34:52] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: So it's my understanding that each space that's was geared, if you had 30, I'm going to round off here. Actually, I'm going to wound off to 28 because it's reduced by one. If we had the shoreline lot for later. So it's really 29, but for ease of math, say it's 28. So 25% is 7 RVs, but 14 passenger cars. Isn't that correct that there's 2 passenger cars for each RV space? Correct.

[00:35:21] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: So if there were 7 spaces that were allowed to be used by passenger vehicles, passenger vehicles take roughly half the space of the oversized vehicles that it could accommodate more. That doesn't sound like that's your understanding. I mean, that's the way that we spaced out the Terabella lot, for example, which is a combination of oversize and passenger.

[00:35:44] Homeless Concerns Coordinator Michelle Covert: I'm not sure I understand the question. The smaller vehicles, I mean, we've sized the lot for all oversized vehicles. If one oversized vehicle space was not used by an oversized vehicle, It is our estimate that it could be used by 2 passenger vehicles. So 6 spaces would be 12 vehicles, 3 spaces would be 6 vehicles for the, for the, and it wouldn't necessarily be that it would be, um, above 29 total.

[00:36:16] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: It's actually 29 spaces, right? Not 29 vehicles.

[00:36:20] Homeless Concerns Coordinator Michelle Covert: Correct.

[00:36:20] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Right.

[00:36:21] Homeless Concerns Coordinator Michelle Covert: Correct. So if it was 10%, again, rounding off, you'd get about 6 passenger vehicles. Yeah, I guess I was doing a little more simpler math. I wasn't thinking about the idea of if we swapped out an RV for a car. We'd have doubles. So, but I understand. And in that sense, you know, I understand your desire to have no no more than 10%.

[00:36:40] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay. Great, Councilman Mary McAllister.

[00:36:44] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, uh, Councilman Matachek brings up a good point, so I hadn't thought about that before, but, um, are we opening up some more, um, churches? So what's opening up quicker? The car lots or RV lots?

[00:37:01] Unknown Speaker: Um, the progress on additional faith communities taking on safe parking is not quicker. It's not quicker. There's... Slow.

[00:37:13] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. And yeah, well, that's too bad. I mean, okay. So we had some other groups that were working on community groups that were working to try to help with the progress on that. I guess that's just taking time to get that going. Okay. Well, I do support, uh, Councilman of Matachek's idea that, you know, if we're trying to get RVs, They only have one option where the cars have more options. So if there's a way we can find some kind of a compromise that works, that I'll support.

[00:37:46] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you, Vice Mayor.

[00:37:47] Vice Mayor Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Um, so, I guess to talk about the percentage, I feel like, I agree with Council member Ramirez, I my concern about percentages and calling them out this way is that it's kind of, we're trying to get people to participate in this safe parking program. And so, you know, in every vehicle type. And so, um, I'd like the county to have as much flexibility as possible in terms of both providing services and space, however, that gets calculated, um, to happen. So I'm not sure that it, whether it's 10% passenger vehicles, 25% passenger vehicles. I guess I look to the county in terms of asking, you know, what provides you with the greatest flexibility. I don't feel tied to any type of percentage and would just like people to be able to participate in the program.

[00:38:44] Homeless Concerns Coordinator Michelle Covert: I would say, kind of our overall intent was, we came here very quickly. Yeah, we know that the city of Mountain View is a great partner of ours, and we came very quickly with this idea of doing 247 lots of entering into county leases. So we didn't expect to come to you with a perfect plan. And we didn't, we don't even expect that our, um, if, uh, decisions made to give, you know, the delegation of authority to enter and delease with us. We don't expect it to be a perfect lease. That's why we thought to come to you with a shorter term, to try this out at one location, and perfect as we go, and we may come back in a few months and say, you know, so we asked for that time period to do potentially a 6 month lease. But we really want to use every day of that 6 months and may not even need that amount of time to learn from this experience and craft something that is better. So you, whatever decision you guys, you know, that the group it tends to make tonight is at 10 or 25% or you decide to not give one. This is a kind of a short term idea to then get to something that is more perfect. So it just allows us the opportunity to, to explore and to, and to, um, uh, have a pilot project really. So.

[00:39:59] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Great. Thank you. Thank you. I agree, we need to be kind of holistic, and that the 6 month pilot is an opportunity to maybe get some of that information, and better inform us, when we have, hopefully, the potential to, um, do a longer term lease than just the pilot of the 6 months. So, for me, I think I'm leaning towards not calling out any type of percentage, but rather, follow the 3 recommendations a staff has laid out. And then perhaps ask the county, as we are having people participate in the program, what are the vehicle types you're seeing, and what would make us, the city, the county, as this partnership, the most nimble in terms of providing the maximum amount of spaces for people. Those are my comps. Thank you. Thank you for your answer. Thank you. Council member, I'm yours.

[00:40:50] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. So I'm gonna try and hammer out maybe a compromise based on the ideas we've heard here. So, so, I'll go ahead and move the staff recommendation, but, um, with a couple of modifications. So, the intention here, I think we all share a desire in getting vehicles off the streets, and in particular oversized vehicles, which are much more challenging to place. So that we really provide a preference for oversized vehicles. And then, if there isn't sufficient demand, or if you have households or individuals in passenger vehicles who are very vulnerable, and maybe there's like a visa, but that, you know, number that you can use to determine which households may qualify, and I'll leave that to the experts, but that, the intention is, if we're setting aside a space for a passenger vehicle, It's because that vehicle is housing someone who is extremely vulnerable, who really needs access to those services. that we don't necessarily sort of artificially limit that number other than we really intend, that the intention really is for RVs. And over other oversized vehicles, but to not limit your flexibility to provide space to extremely vulnerable populations that are in passenger vehicles. Is that, is that doable?

[00:42:18] Unknown Speaker: I certainly want to assist in facilitating motions, but we're already operating in a system of preferences. So adding a new preference, however well intentioned, may be confusing and hard to administer if we already have participant preferences that are set before that we mentioned earlier. So, and when you say very vulnerable, that would be potentially challenging to administer within the framework of the preferences we already have. So...

[00:42:57] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I'm sorry, I don't want to, I guess I know you're in the queue, but just a question for the county, do you have... You know, I don't really feel the need to dictate terms, like, what is the right visa, but that number, but do you have, when you were thinking about conducting outreach to people living in vehicles to place them in the 247 lot? Do you have some sort of internal sense or gauge of, you know, this passenger vehicle qualifies, because it's housing a very vulnerable person or household, um, that would sort of justify placement in the 247 lot. Is there sort of a number or a qualifier that comes to mind that you could administer internally and not really have dictated by us?

[00:43:41] Homeless Concerns Coordinator Michelle Covert: Now, I think the flexibility, you know, um, is ideal, you know, one example I can give is anecdotally, there is word in Mountain View that some RVs are rented to families where they actually don't own the RV, don't have the keys, the RV. And one option would be is maybe that the household has a car. And they, like I said, they don't own, own, own, their renting the RV, the RV needs to be towed or it's leaking and you don't want that RV to be used anymore. That family is going to be displaced and the only thing they have is a car. So that gives us that that loop, you know, that flexibility, for example, in those situations, because we've heard that's the one anecdote that we've heard repeatedly, we don't know how many RVs that is in the city of Mountain View, but and totally we've heard anywhere between 6 to 10 RVs or any one time, rented by families, but they don't actually own it. And those could be susceptible to being, you know, towed or not being able to be locked out of them. Um, just some unusual uh, experience, you know, situations. So potentially that would be a, that's who I was thinking of when we thought about the idea of being flexible, for households. And also, again, you know, somebody who met those prioritizations, you know, the families, the kids who were in the school, or seniors, you know, those individuals who potentially were in a car, it'd be good for them to be in a 247 lot, you, in the past, you've, one example is you had an 85 year old woman living in a, in one of the safe parking programs that had to leave every morning. And so that 85 year old might be the good exception to having a 247 lot where she didn't have to leave every day. So families, seniors, those would be the couple of suggestions I would make, but those fall within your existing pronounces.

[00:45:30] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Yes. Um, there is a motion and a second, um, but there is comment, comment, further comment, is actually, um, I wanted to ask Council member Ramirez to repeat your emotion. Is there some commentary in that in between?

[00:45:48] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: And, you know, there may be further modifications as we go along. But so I, I, what I'm, what I'm thinking is the staff recommendation, um, with some language, uh, worked out between the city and the county that would make it clear that the preference really is for households or individuals in oversized vehicles that meet the, the criteria, um, or the, I guess the, the preference, the participant preferences, that are described on the 2nd page of the, um, responses to council questions. And then, I mean, I agree with the vice mayor. I'm not sure I'm prepared to call out a specific cap on the number of passenger vehicles, but that it would adhere rigidly to these participant preferences in the county would really only fill spaces with passenger vehicles if it's, you know, if it's a very vulnerable household, so like a family, for instance, which would be consistent with, um, the 1st preference here. But otherwise, 1st and foremost, that we're using the available spaces to house or occupy RVs.

[00:47:14] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay, so we lost the seconder. Well, we'll go now on to comments, then, council member Matt to check.

[00:47:23] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Yeah, so, um, I think the reason we're doing this is, um, because we have parking regulations going into effect on bike lanes and potentially narrow straits, and those only apply to the oversized vehicles. They don't apply to the passenger vehicles in general. So, we are trying to find space for the oversized vehicles. So that's why, um, I feel like we're doing this as opposed to trying to find a spot for everyone who is living in a vehicle. So, I'll make a substitute motion that we do the staff recommendation. And, um, you know, I'm not too hung up on the 10%. So if it was 15%, and allow the county to come back to us if things are not working as planned, even within the time frame of the contract, and we can revisit it. But I'd say 15%, and then let the county come back to us.

[00:48:23] Councilmember John McAlister: I'll second it.

[00:48:24] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: So, we have a substitute motion, my customer, Metachek, and then seconded by Council member, McAllister. Any other discussion on the substitute ocean? Council member clerk?

[00:48:35] Councilmember Chris Clark: Just extremely quickly. I understand the sentiment, but I'm uncomfortable setting a threshold under which there may possibly be an empty spot there, because we've hit a threshold, and there should never, in my opinion, be an empty spot, if there's need by someone, whether it's an oversized vehicle or a passenger vehicle. So I would, um, I'm just not comfortable setting a threshold lower than 25% or whatever we think will be the most flexible.

[00:49:02] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Council member Hicks?

[00:49:04] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So, my most important, the most important thing, I think, that I've heard now is the need for flexibility, because I feel like it's very hard to, I agree with almost everything that's been said, but it's very hard to second guess what's going to, how this will play out. You know, I think we could discuss it all night and still not come up with that. So the ability to come back to us is the most important thing to me. You know, I could go either way on the resolutions. Um,

[00:49:38] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: I'll add my comments. Yes, I think the key here is flexibility, and also, some kind of mechanism to have a report back, and I guess, 6 months is probably the time frame, but I understand, I agree that the intent should be to make space for oversized vehicles, since those are what the restrictions will be placed upon. But I actually did not think of the different scenarios that came up. And so, um, in that sense, I do think we should be flexible. I really wasn't wedded to a number, to be frank. Um, you know, my feeling is, let's see how it goes, and let's try to be as, um, again, flexible and nimble as possible based on, um, how we, how things, uh, unravel. Um, And so at this point, 15, 25%, I'm not really, yeah, I don't really have a preference either way.

[00:50:45] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: So why don't we go ahead and vote on the emotions for the 15% with staff recommendation on the other items? But it was also that the county, even before the 6 months is up, could come back to us and say, you know, 15% is way too much. 15% is not enough. We've got other situations. So it's leaving that door open.

[00:51:07] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Do you want a specific check in time, or do you just want to leave it up to the county?

[00:51:12] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: I would leave it up to the county, because if they see issues within a month, we'd want to know. So I would just say, let's have the county just tell us how it's going.

[00:51:22] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay. Great. All right, any other discussion on the substitute motion for the, uh, yes, interim city manager?

[00:51:34] Police Chief Max Bosel: So just one thought from a perspective on staff side, the, um, staff report allows for up to 20, or up to 25%, um, we, you could ask that we, um, come back to you at a certain point to check in, and we can work with the county with that flexibility, um, as an option, I guess, or, you know, if, if, uh, that flexibility is built in, we can come back to you at a certain point, um, and give you progress updates. And then, as staff, work with the county to determine if it's viable for up to the percentage that's intended. If that makes sense.

[00:52:20] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Chew, clarify that a little further. Sensitive call. So you want to, you were suggesting keep the 25% cap, but then...

[00:52:32] Police Chief Max Bosel: For your discussions, if that's, um, amenable, as you discuss it, but as the staff reports written with the recommendation, it's up to 25%, and depending how it goes with the vehicles, um, you know, we can report back if it hits a trigger of some percentage and give you that feedback.

[00:52:55] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay, great. C customer Ramirez?

[00:52:58] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. So, I want to make sure I understand the recommendation here. So would it be, for instance, if passenger vehicles, um, become 15 or 20% or some number that makes staff a little uneasy with how we're filling the space, then you would come back to us and we could discuss it further, or, um, I'm not sure I understand what the intention is.

[00:53:33] Police Chief Max Bosel: For your discussions, if you want to consider that at a threshold, we could come back to you. If we hear from the county that there's 15% or 20% at a certain threshold, we can make you aware of that, but it still affords the county some flexibility in the event, their circumstances, that we have to go up or down.

[00:53:56] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you, Counselor Mermatic.

[00:53:57] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Well, I think that's what I was kind of saying, only I was saying the staff recommendation and have it 15%. But if the county, I guess when I said come back to us, I meant the city in general, not necessarily the council, and if they're saying, you know, we're seeing that there's not a lot of demand from the oversized vehicles, we could probably fill it with passenger vehicles, but instead of just automatically allowing up to 25%, let's do a check in, and say instead, it's 15%, and let's have communication during implementation of this, and let us know how it's going. So in some ways, I feel like I'm saying what you're saying, only it's changed to 15% instead of 25. And I think I do feel like we will have that discussion about, do we want to change it? Um, you know, I think it is a pilot. We want to work together. We do want this to be successful. So I think we're, at least I'm very open to having that discussion. I just wanted to start at a lower number.

[00:55:03] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: All right, any other... Yes, counselor Hicks.

[00:55:07] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Well, I'll just say, the lower numbers, to me means that we have the check in earlier, which sounds good to me. Yes.

[00:55:15] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: All right, any other comments on this motion? Substitute mission, yes, Council member Ramirez.

[00:55:21] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Just to clarify, is it a check in at 15%, or is it a hard cap?

[00:55:28] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: I would say a check in. Right now, it is when you're approaching 15%. You come and talk to us. And so that would be like staff to staff, it wouldn't have to come before...

[00:55:43] Unknown Speaker: Well, I think if a staff is recommending that we go higher, it would then come to council. Yeah. Yes, please. Sorry. That's okay.

[00:55:53] Unknown Speaker: So if we vote on this... If we vote on council member Mattachek's motion, as is, does that mean that that, I think what council member Ramirez is saying, is, like, does the cat move to 15, or does it stay at 25? I would vote for... Counselor Athmatichex motion if it stayed at 25, and that 15 was the check in point, but not if it was 15 and 15. So I think that's what customer Remembers is trying to clarify. And I am as well.

[00:56:25] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: So right now, I would say the cap is 15, and the county lets us snow if they're approaching that cap, and we have the discussion. Do we want to increase the cap? Or is there something else we should do to try to get RVs in the lot? And, um, I would go with that. I don't think, I'm not looking at 15 as a hard cap, but at least having that conversation at that point, um, so we can, um, if we need to change things around or, or if we see the need being more passenger vehicles, I mean, I'd be open to that conversation. And my interest is to try to get as many folks, um, the assistance that they're seeking and to, you know, get them rehoused, right? So whether that's through the folks in oversized vehicles or passenger cars. I just don't know. So I think the sooner we see the trend and we can revisit it, the better. So I'm fine with the 15% and um, making that a check inpoint.

[00:57:35] Unknown Speaker: Is that... Is that accurate, or do you want the hard cap at 15?

[00:57:40] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: I said the cap is 15.

[00:57:49] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: All right, that's fair. Did you?

[00:57:53] Unknown Speaker: Nope.

[00:57:54] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: All right, so, uh, let's go ahead and call the question on the substitute motion for staff recommendation with a 15% cap on passenger vehicles. Is that correct?

[00:58:08] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Yep. Sorry, I was, um, theft recommendation with a cap at 15% for passenger vehicles. But again, what staff didn't put in their recommendation was saying the county can reopen this, talk to staff, if we need to revisit it as a council, we will.

[00:58:26] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: So you would add that to the staff recognition. Great. All right. Let's vote. Ocean carries four, two, three. That right, with council number, Ramirez, Kamet, and Clark, voting no. So motion passes. Thank you. Moving on to item five, oral communications. This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the council on any matter, not on the agenda. Speakers are allowed to speak on any topic for up to 3 minutes during this section. State law prohibits the council from acting on non-agenda items. Are there any members of the public wishing to speak on a non agenda item? If you can, uh, please come forward. And if you can fill out a blue card before or afterwards. I appreciate it.

[00:59:23] Stephen Goldstein: Stephen Goldstein, 12 year resident Mountain View, I just want to again address one major issue that seems to be not being addressed regarding measure D, and that is, in fact, measure D, in its language, takes the CSFRA and takes complete control and gives it to the city council. In my opinion, that is poor judgment because of one key thing. The reason why we have such a housing problem in the city of Mabulo and the whole state of California is that state councils do not know how to do rudimentary, quantitative business analysis. The fact is, the council adopted the idea that it could set aside 20 to 25% of any new project to be for below market rate housing and so on. Problem is, most of these housing projects are luxury units. That means, in effect, if you're looking at a normal bell curve, only 16% of any new project should be luxury units, because any higher than that, and you end up with a surplus of units that are not going to be of any use to anybody. And if you noticed in the A-Bag and the RHNA reports, there is a consistent proof of that because they always establish that there is a surplus of luxury units in every section of the state of California, let alone Santa Clara County and the city of Mountain View. And of course, the owners are turning around saying, well, we need the city council and so on to give us subsidies so we can fill those places with people who don't have the earnings to be able to pay for them. I think that's ridiculous. That was inappropriate allocation of land. It goes to show the incompetency sometimes of people not understanding the reality of the situation. And what's really needs to be done is if need be. Those people who develop these properties and can't sell them because there's no need for them. Let them go out of business, and then you can take over the property and use the property the way you see fit. But at this point in time, given the fact that the city council adopted, such as a ludicrously dumb idea of saying that we will only provide luxury units. It's like, uh, for motor companies saying that they will only sell mustangs. No, that's completely insane. And so the bomb line is, I think, giving the city council that kind of power over the CSFRA would be nuts, because in the long run, that poor judgment is going to be conveyed over, the measure D gives complete power over, even to the point where a RHC member can be removed for any reason, based on the idea that if it can, if 4 of the city council members will vote to remove them, for all causes. There is no definition of cause in this situation. So this is nothing but intimidation on the CSFRA by the city council, I say, this is proof that you can't trust the city council. Thank you.

[01:02:26] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you, next speaker, please.

[01:02:32] Public Speaker: Hi, thanks. So I've been a resident slash homeowner of Mountain View for over 25 years. Actually, my dad owned...

[01:02:42] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Speaking to Michael Little, there you go.

[01:02:44] Public Speaker: My dad owned a restaurant here in Mountain View in the late 70s, early 80s, because it was cheaper to rent in Mountain View than it was in San Jose at that time. And I was a waitress there when I was a teenager at that time. Um, and so I've seen Mountain View change a lot over the many, many years. And the reason why I moved here in the 90s is because I really loved this community, right? This place is great. It has a small town feel kind of to it, but they also have international sized companies. right? We have both in the same place. But I am a little bit concerned about the direction that our city is going in. Um, So, there was an article in the Los Altos Town crier last year, and it talked about depression. And it talked about the groups of people, how depression is a much bigger issue than we know or aware of, and that the largest group of people who are depressed are millennials. And the 2nd is seniors. So, I look at the direction we're going in, and I think, so how does a 7 story office building help with any of the issues like affordable housing, uh, traffic that's being that's getting worse and worse? And the fact that people aren't really around people, right? There's, in downtown Mountain View, we have restaurants that have outdoor seating. If you just walk around, it's really nice to be there, right? The, what used to be the beer house, right? There's a community tables where people could go and sit and be together. We just spent quite a lot of time talking about people who are now in vehicles. You think about people who are there. Having a place like the beer houses for the price of the beer or a soft drink, they can go and sit with people and be part of a community. I can't imagine that these guys can afford to go to a restaurant anywhere in Mountain View. So I think about, you know, where our planning is really now starting to address, that person for me said, luxury apartments, office buildings. I think that we, if as a city, would sit down and say, let's make a priority on how this next project is really addressing things like, um, people who aren't, you know, having people be part of the community, be able to, um, feel like they're part of it, you know, if they can't really afford some of the things that others can, right?

[01:05:38] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Thank you. Any other members of the public wishing to speak on a non-agendized item? If not, I'll close public comment, and we will move on to item 6 public hearing, which we have none, so we'll move on to item 7, study sessions. 1st one, 7. One is on the Ranks Store of Park, Aquatic Center, Replacement, Design, and scoping options. And, let's see, here, we have, do I have it on here? Now I don't. We have, uh... I know we have Christine Crosby and...

[01:06:17] Senior Project Manager David Printy: Good evening. Mayor, vice mayor, council members. My name is David Printy. I'm a senior project manager of Public Works in Mountain View. Christine Crosby, to my right, is a recreation manager, excuse me. with the Department of Community Services. And we're here to discuss the Ringstorf Park Aquatic Center replacement project. And our purpose here is to receive council direction on the project's scope adoption for the Ringstorf Park Aquatic Center replacement project. As a matter of context, the project is located in Ringstorf Park. It is surrounded, or by Cresanto and Rankstorf Avenues, as in the park itself, there are many amenities used by the public. The facility was first opened in 1959. And not much has changed. So for further context, the existing facility has a 49,000 square foot, six lane, 25 meter lap pool with a water slide and a one meter diving board. It also has a 900 square foot waiting pool. And 48 parking spaces. It's supported by 5,200 square feet of buildings, which have equipment for the facility, and lockers and showers and staff areas. A little more on the project background. In 2014, a council passed the ring store park master plan, which included the renovation of the existing building and replacement of the pool. Since that time, Council in 2017 approved funding that included the complete replacement of the building and the pool together. Thank you. In 2018, staff hired, or the city hired, consulting architects, and began the public outreach process with three meetings in the fall of 2018. And we further developed the project scope. And in 2019, we had a citywide survey to receive further input from the public. And we also commissioned an operational study to determine how best to operate the facility. And throughout those processes, we developed three scope options here before you. Option number one has the following features. It has a 4,200 square foot, 8 lane, 25 yard lap pool, a 2,000 square foot leisure pool with water slide, 7,200 square foot of building, and 58 parking spaces. It is also surrounded by approximately, excuse me, 23,000 square feet of green space for leisure areas around the pool. And it's anticipated to cost about $15.3 million. Option two, has a larger, more versatile pool, a main lap pool, which is 10 25 yard lanes, and 825 meter lanes in the opposite direction. It is adjoined by a little over 3,300 square foot leisure pool, with a waterslide, and two 25 yard cool down lanes, which are relatively shallow, and could be used for other recreational purposes. It's an adjoined by an 8,000 square foot building, and again, 58 parking stalls. This option has a little less square foot of green space around it, but it's still fairly comfortable. and is anticipated to cost $18.1 million to construct. The last option, option three, has the largest pool of 12,300 square feet, and it is an 8 lane, 50 meter lap pool, and with 25 yard lanes in the opposite direction. It's adjoined by a 2,000 square foot leisure pool with slide, and a 9,000 square foot building, and 58 parking stalls. The buildings get larger, just by wave information as to support the larger water bodies and treatment of the water and filtration and heating. This one, and again, other option, another feature is that this facility has about 10,000 square feet of green space around it. And we limited it so as to not encroach further into the park. And this option 3 is expected to cost around 21,6 million to build. After these three options were generated, staff commissioned an operational study to evaluate them, and see how they fared against the local market, they looked at the regional population, and to determine which of the three aquatic facilities would have the best operational performance in terms of cost recovery, and services to the the residents. Part of the assumptions were the Ringstorff would become the year round pool. Eagle would become a seasonal pool, Eagle Pool, and Eagle Park, excuse me. And the study used the current rates and fees for its analysis of cost recovery and expenses. So, upon review of the materials, the consultant came back and recommended that the city proceed with option 2 because it provided the greatest economic cost recovery, and provided the more recreational swim, or fun water, which they found to be sorely lacking in the region. This slide shows the various initial, fixed initial one time costs for design and construction, and the operating cost per year, when these are also in your report. Last month, at the Parks and Rec commission, presented to the commission, and received input from the public, the Parks and Rec commission ultimately advised that they recommend the city proceed with option two, and bring it into the conceptual design process. Their reasoning for this stated at the time was that Rangstorf Park was intended as a community neighborhood park, and they felt it was not appropriate venue for an elite or regional aquatics facility, and that the relatively small site should be designed to accommodate recreational functions for youth, as well as seniors, while also providing for the lap swim programs. So, as the staff report states, we come to the council with these questions, does council concur with staff in the PRC's recommendation for option two, and does council have any other comments or direction for staff for the conceptual design process of the Ringstorf Park Aquatic Center replacement project? Thank you.

[01:13:31] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. So as this is a study session, we will take public comment first. So are there any members of the public wishing to speak on this item if you could raise your hands? Okay, um, how, how about, let's do two and a half minutes, and if you can come on up and line up and fill out a blue card before afterwards? If you don't mind lining on this over here on the side, so we can have you come up quickly one at a time. Appreciate it. First person, welcome to start us off, anybody wanting to start us up? Please come to the mic. Who would like to start? Don't be shy. Thank you.

[01:14:21] Chris Campbell: Good evening. My name is Chris Campbell. I am a Sunnyvale resident. However, I've been a member of Mountain View Masters for 30 years since 1990. A coach with them since 1998. I am currently a member of the United States Masters swimming board of directors. I serve as the executive vice president of community services. I think that option 2 is a little bit short-sighted. I'll ask the question. What price do we put on possibility we dwell in the realm of potential? If we think about this, We want to sort of have a vision for the future. We can fit in the 50 meter facility here. We are not asking for an elite facility. We are asking, oftentimes the PRC at their meeting, they spoke of Santa Clara, Aquatic, the aquatic center, the Stanford University Aquatic Center. That is not what we're looking for. Better equivalent would be St. Francis High School, uh, Fremont High School in Sunnyvale, uh, Sacred Heart up in Atherton, Lynbrook High School. These are perfectly adequate facilities. We're not looking to host regional meets. We're not looking to host elite events here. What we're looking to do is provide opportunities for growth. One of the nice things that you can get with a 50 meter pool is that you can put in multiple programs at the same time. It allows for growth. It allows for potential. We are at ground 0 in this nation for developing swimming talent at the elite level. And the best thing that we can do is, you know, while we celebrate achievement, we need to enable achievement and success through opportunity. A 50 meter facility will offer that. The 25 meter facility described an option 2 actually does not buy us anything more than we currently have at Eagle Park Pool. So I'll challenge you to think bigger and to think of the future. Thank you.

[01:16:40] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Next speaker, welcome.

[01:16:48] Greg Rogers: Hi, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for holding this hearing. My name is Greg Rogers, and I'm a swimmer. I'm also a senior. I'm 73 years old. So, seniors up on your board there. I've been swimming at the Eagle Pool for about seven years now, three days a week. Getting in shape, had some heart issues, and that helped. What I'm asking you to consider is what the previous speaker did, is to consider the possibility of a 50 meter peel. Cool. It's not an elitist thing. Believe me, I never swam in high school, I'm not a competitive swimmer. I am an exercise swimmer, and I enjoy the fellowship of the people that are there. It's the eagle pool is a good facility. A 50 meter pool would be better because it would give us more opportunity to stretch our lungs and stuff in the pool. And also, it could have competitive issues. You know, there's been a Santa Clara swim club that's been around for ages, and they have produced some really fine swimmers. Mountain View could participate in that. It's not an el elitist thing. The things you require in order to do it is generally a swimsuit, goggles, and maybe a swim cap, and that's about it. There's no barrier for entry for cost, except for the minimum fee to use the pool. So I would suggest you think about it. In terms of the shape of the pool and what you can do, you could use it as both a 50 and a 25, if you proportion it appropriately, and you could make one end a little more shallow, so that you could use it for younger students who need a shallower end, perhaps, or put a separate waiting pool or something next to it. But to abandon the idea of a 50 meter pool, I think is a mistake, the prior speaker mentioned the future, and I think things will change. You have a growing, uh, group of people here are a growing, uh, community here, uh, rapidly growing and, uh, they're young people, and they will want something like that, I think. Thank you.

[01:19:03] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Thanks, Speaker, welcome.

[01:19:11] Pat Stone: Yes, members of council, thank you very much for the chance just to voice my opinion. I am a resident of Mountain View. My name is Pat Stone. Um, I've been living here for 34 years, something like that. I'm 72. I really think the pool has been, I'm instrumental in, um, allowing me to, uh, uh, maintain a high level of health, even though, you know, we all have our health issues as we get a little bit older, and I'm definitely no, no, exception. But the pool has been a wonderful addition to, um, uh, uh, you know, I used to ballroom, dance, and, and tennis, and Questa Park tennis courts. Anyway, the pool has definitely, um, remained. I think my primary form of exercise and on a very daily basis, 6 days a week and here I am today. I'm, you know, this many years past the day when I actually moved in, but I really appreciate that pool. I think the pool, at least if we, give a serious look to option three, the 50 meter pool, I think it has the chance to be a timeless centerpiece for the city of Mountain View in terms of aquatic facilities. And, um, will, uh, at least, um, when looking at, what we have here to offer to the community for swimming, um, would really uh, put the city of Mountain View in a position where we're maybe one notch above a lot of the other neighboring communities, and, and that could have a lot of positive, positive effects, I think, for uh, attracting the types of families that really would like to see their kids grow up and have opportunity to, um, either competitive swim or lap swim or whatever, whatever they do. But thank you very much. I'm just here to advocate for a 50 meter pool. Thank you.

[01:21:34] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Next speaker will come up. Thank you.

[01:21:38] Matt Grumwald: Thank you. So, I'm Matt Grumwald. I'm a resident and former college swimmer, age group swimmer, a master swimmer in Mountain View, lifeguard. Um, so just had a lot of time around pools and now my kids are participating in uh, various swim teams in in and around now, you, including uh, Lambac and Covington Critters. One offer 3 reasons to consider the option three. One, I think, just echoing that the value of having an Olympic sized pool in Mountain View. So for those who aren't as familiar with competitive swimming, the season is split up into 2 seasons short course and long course. So short course, is for, you know, during the school year. That aligns with NCAA championships, high school championships, those sorts of meets, and then the long course season is maps to, you know, Olympic trials, which is coming up, Olympics, national championships. Right now there's no opportunity to train for long course or have meets, you know, in Mountain View. So that would just be a clear win for having that 50 meter pull. You can't get that with a 25 year pull. Number two, I think the ROI is there. So just doing some quick calculations. You're talking about doubling the number of lanes that you'd have at one time, a ring source. So going from 10 to 20 lanes for lap swim, for 9.7% higher operating costs and a one time charge of 19% increase costs. So, you know, to be able to get that benefit of having twice as many people to have their own lane or more people, fewer people sharing lanes for both lap summers and competitive swimming, I think that's pretty compelling. The last would be just meeting current and future demand. So I think today, you may not be getting an accurate measure of demand for both lap summers and wreck summers. I know that when my children were smaller, we would look for an opportunity to swim, direct swimming. But Eagle Park was only open during their nap time, like one to 4 PM. So we would go to Burgess Aquatic Center and we eventually joined the Elks Club in Palo Alto. So I think there's a lot of demand that's unmet today, if you're looking at some of the numbers of attendants of the pools, just because of the shortened schedule. And lastly, future demand, you know, Bayshore gets built out, you're going to have a lot more people who are interested in swimming. I dont know if we were planning on building another pool in North Bay Shore. So where can those people go to swim? You might want to ask staff for quickly, like a metric, like swim, lane hours per capita, and see how we compare to other jurisdictions. Thank you.

[01:24:16] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Next speaker, welcome.

[01:24:21] Fariba: Hi, my name is Fariba. And I have lived in Mount of your own, my home.

[01:24:26] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Just speaking to the mic. There we go.

[01:24:28] Fariba: for 44, 42 years. I injured my back around 2001. And the one thing that saved me was the pool. And I reinjured my back again, and the pool is the only thing I could do until I get better. So, that's one reason. But the other thing is, Currently, there is not enough lanes at Eagle Pool. So we are talking about making it smaller, or the same amount of lanes, and the city is growing. So, I am going to request the council to consider the 50 meter pool, please, because otherwise, it is not helping the community. There are so many people that take advantage of the pool for their health. And as we heard, we as we age, we cannot do all the things that we could do when we were younger, and the pool really is a way to keep the aging population healthy. Don't forget the kids and the junior youth and all of that stuff. So I really, really hope that you all consider the 50 meter pool. Thank you.

[01:25:38] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Like speaker. Welcome up.

[01:25:42] Public Speaker: Hi. Thanks, thanks for considering this. We've been going to these meetings throughout the planning process. And I think that considering this 50 meter is a really valuable option, I have 4 kids who swim on land back. Um, they, their whole world is swimming, and it's, it makes a huge difference to be able to train in that size pool, which we don't have currently in Mountain View. I think it would be a real valuable asset in our community. Um, I was actually talking to a fellow swim parent this afternoon and she said she went to lap swim today at noon, and there were 5 people in every lane. So, you know, to speak to the need in the community. It's not just the swim team, it's masters. It's lap swimmers. It's, you know, we've had like underwater rugby. We've had all these groups come to advocate for a larger facility because Mountain View is only growing. We have a very healthy population. A lot of people are looking to swim. It's, I think, short-sighted to build something that barely meets the needs that we have now because as you've noted, it's every 60 years, we have the opportunity to do something like this, it would be really nice to take advantage of the opportunity. Um, and I had one other thought. Oh, well. Okay. Just, I would really appreciate your consideration. I think this would be a sadly missed opportunity to go small. Thank you.

[01:27:15] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Next speaker, welcome.

[01:27:21] Rajan Sheth: Hi there. My name is Rajan Sheth, and I have lived in this area for about 26 years from when I started college here all the way to now as a father of two. And what has attracted me here is the community. The community is incredible here compared to almost anywhere else that I've lived. And I really want to commend the, the, the Mountain View leadership for building out the, the community center for building out the pools. It's incredible to see what has been done here compared to even other cities around this area. Now, with this project, this is a very long term decision. As you've shown, it's pretty much stayed the same since the 1950s and I think we can assume that what we do here is going to last for decades. And so I also would argue for, given that it's a long-term decision to put in the 50 meter pool. And my argument for it is community in that I've seen this as both a young person that was a swimmer that learned how to swim and did this for fitness as a way that was bringing young people in the community together. And especially having a bigger pool, you bring more young people together here. And then also, I've seen this as a father of 2 uh, with 2 kids in the in the swim program, um, where as a result of this, we've met many more people into the in the community and the swim team is growing very, very rapidly, um, as a result. I think there are a couple of key reasons for this. First is capacity, as people were talking about the pool is already quite crowded during lap swim, and it's going to continue to get even more crowded. And it's actually been a limiter for us to be able to bring more people into swim teams or get more people to swim overall. The 2nd thing is it actually brings the team together. So right now, the team that we have here in Mountain View has to swim at 2 locations because of the split schedule that was mentioned before, because there is no larger facility. In addition to all of that, this would be distinctive compared to any other city in the local area, in terms of having a pool of that size. And the revenue would pay for itself. So I really appreciate you considering putting in a pool and doing this renovation and would really encourage you to consider option three. Thank you.

[01:29:49] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Thanks, speaker. welcome.

[01:29:54] Public Speaker: Thank you so much for your time tonight. It's exciting to be talking about a project like this, and, um, we are in a very fortunate position to be able to have the opportunity to not only fit in the 50 meter pool, but the spaces are, the space is already there. It's really unique. Most times when cities in this heavily populated areas in the peninsula and all throughout California, there isn't space for something like this. So, this is really a unique and great position to be in. Um, and then the other thing I wanted to say is that, um, the, as you all know, this is a 50 year opportunity, these don't come up very often. So it's time to jump, jump for it and go for it. So thank you so much.

[01:30:44] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Thanks, speaker, welcome.

[01:30:50] Greg Colodonato: Thank you, Mayor Abby Koga. Counsel, my name's Greg Colodonato. I'd like to add my voice to the chorus of people in favor of option, considering option three. I've been swimming more and more. Uh, last year, I was in the YMCA, YMCA triathlon club, and we'd meet at 6 AM at St. Francis Pool. Uh, it's not that convenient uh, to get to swim at 6 in the morning, although the masters probably do that every day. It'd be great if there were more capacity in our Mountain View City pools that would enable more people to get a lot of swimming exercise in normal daytime, daytime hours. The fact that the pool in option 3 is 50 meters long, but if I remember Craig was 20, 25 yards wide. So you're just, if you run it that way, you just have a lot more capacity, and I don't see why you wouldn't spend the extra 2 or $30000 to get so much extra capacity. Uh, I don't know if I'm going to be here for the 3rd version of the pool, uh, because as you can tell, my beard is gray. And so I'm part of the aging population. So I'd like during my twilight years to be able to swim in such a nice pool. So hope you go with option three. Thank you.

[01:31:57] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Next speaker, welcome.

[01:32:04] Bob Stans: Hi, Counselor, my name is Bob Stans, I'm a resident of Mountain View for the last 23 years, and a lifelong swimmer, and, um, I think I'm excited to be here. I'm be talking about a new pool. I'm here in support of option three. I've let a lot of you know, all of you, I think, know about, you know, the reasons for it, via email, and also, I have, um, an amount of your voice, I published a letter with arguments. I want to add to those arguments that, um, That a 50 meter pool is a pool that's gonna be used year round. January through December. And I think you've heard the others speak about how often it's gonna be used. So I'm not saying a 50 meter pool is going to be everything to everybody, but I know it'll be used all year round. And five years from now, we have a 50 meter pool, no one's going to second guess that decision. You can go there any month of the year, and you would see it being used a lot. So I wanted to leave you with that and his one other item. I believe this is a study session, so I don't know if the decision has to be made today. If a decision is made today in support of a 50 meter pool. I'm all for it. If a decision today is not as supportive of a 50 meter pool, I ask you defer it, put an agenda for a decision. So we have another shot at this. Thank you.

[01:33:24] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Thanks, speaker. Welcome.

[01:33:27] Alex Brown: Hi, Alex Brown. Invest in the future. Build it bigger. Thanks.

[01:33:33] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Any other members of the public wishing to speak on this item? If not, I'll close public comment and bring it back to council. Council member McAllister.

[01:33:46] Councilmember John McAlister: Thank you. So, I'm looking at all these diagrams and statistics and specs, but I don't see anything about people in any of these things. of how many people can it accommodate? What are people gonna do with the pool deck? What are people gonna do on the lawn? What is the Park and Rex idea of this area? Is it something that somebody can offer a picnic and put their stuff around? So, I'm trying to get a better sense of, you know, everybody's looking at this as a recreational thing, but they're forgetting the people. So, could you put some context of, what are the people, your vision of what people are gonna be doing with this thing?

[01:34:24] Recreation Staff: Sure thing, that's not a problem. So, for our aquatic programs, we'd be bringing over a majority of our programs, it would be the recreation swim during the summer season, swim lessons during spring and summer. We would have lap swim year round. We would work with our user groups, Mountain View Masters, and the Los Altos Mountain View, Aquatics Club to offer their swim programs, and also offer pool rental programs. The opportunity of having 2 pools in one facility, as well as a community room inside the building, will provide us with some opportunities to expand our facility rental program. So that's something to look forward to. The green space around the pool, which you are mentioning, that would be utilized for parents that are waiting during the swim lessons, that be utilized for a child to take a break during a recreation swim, or for the adult swim, 15 minute break during recreation swim when everyone gets out of the pool. Also, during the practices for the swim team, that'll be a place for the parents to hang out while the kids are swimming or to take a break. And then also, for the swim meets as well, there'll be some space around the pool for that. As far as people go. Currently, a comfortable swimming for lap swim is 3 to 4 people circle swimming for per lane, that does seem to get a little crowded sometimes, but 3 to 4 is what's most comfortable. For swim lessons, we have roughly 2,500 youth that participate in swim lessons in the spring and summer sessions. Lap swim is around 70 people per day, and that's a combination of our noon lap swim and our evening lap swim program, as well as our weekends. And then recreation swim varies, but I believe last summer we had around, um, Oh, let me just look real fast. Around 6,800, um, people participate in recreation swim at both Eagle and Rank Surf Pole last summer. If there's any specific program numbers that you would like, I can definitely look into that as well.

[01:36:30] Councilmember John McAlister: Well, my concern is not the programs. My concerns is the family wants to come down on a hot Saturday and use the pool and go swimming. You have it programmed, so I'm looking for free play, free swim, that, you know, a couple hours, three, four, five hours instead of going, Well, we can squeeze you in. So.

[01:36:51] Recreation Staff: That would be the recreation swim time frame. That is the open swim program currently, and the swim hours on for the weekends, for Eagle Pool is 130 to 4, and that ring store, if it's 130 to 6 p.m., which was a new change with summer 2019. We expanded those hours to provide more open swim time. Also during the summer, we do have weekday swim, that is catered around the swim lessons and lap swim programs, with the opportunity of expanding to 2 pools on one site. We'll be able to increase concurrent programming where there is potential opportunity to have lap swim program going on in the fast water pool, and having more recreational swim going on in the leisure pool, especially with the slide, the 0 depth entry, and the potential for the 2 additional lanes that would be associated with it. So there are options to look at doing concurrent programming.

[01:37:50] Councilmember John McAlister: What's the capacity of people? Do you turn people away on free swim?

[01:37:54] Recreation Staff: So it's funny that you say that. So, if we're just looking at rank surf pool in its current form, Um, one of the programs that was initiated, uh, 2 budget cycles ago was a free recreation swim when, um, there's a heat advisory. We had 3 of those this past summer where we had to turn people away because of the increased number of folks wanting to utilize the pool. At one time for safety purposes. We can accommodate between 150, 200 people during the recreation open swim, as well as generate a wait list. So as people leave the facility. We can take the next family in. So on those free recreation swim days when it was open to anybody. We had roughly 450 people come through during the recreation swim. On a regular recreation swim day, our numbers will fluctuate pending weather, of course, between, I would say, 50 to 200 on a nice, warm day for then total day.

[01:39:00] Councilmember John McAlister: So you're saying the capacity at one times 200 swimmers, 200 or

[01:39:04] Recreation Staff: 200 people in the area? 200 people in the area.

[01:39:08] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, so that's parents, and he goes, okay. And you're looking at the current capacity, right? So when you were looking at these capacities and various programs, how far in the future were you looking at? How far you're looking at something now, but I mean, we've got people mentioned years down, and then we've got all these apartment complexes coming up, we're growing. And where do you discuss that this pool will handle a capacity, or I'm still trying to determine your capacity in five, 10 years, that all of a sudden you're maxed and we got to turn people away?

[01:39:54] David Printy, Public Works: David Printy with Public Works. Sorry. I think to your question, I think it was something that was raised at the PRC, which was asking staff to investigate the potential for opening both pools concurrently. Um, we, you know, we would maintain, uh, Eagle Pool as functional, uh, just not open year round. And so to your question of, you know, we reached the capacity point. That secondary pool could become the safety valve to program it to remain open longer, you know, at certain times during the year, if that was determined to be advisable.

[01:40:37] Councilmember John McAlister: So what is their capacity? I mean, have you looked at, okay, Mount View is 80,000 now. We figure in 10 years, it could be 90, 100,000. Are these pools gonna be able to handle that amount of people? Because if you're only doing 200 or 300 at the time, I'm still... I'm still trying to grasp where we're trying to achieve.

[01:40:58] David Printy, Public Works: Well, what I can say is that the operational study we did, did project out to, at least 2024, and they were showing a Mountain View residency of about 90,000. They were also looking at regionally because we do have, we do have, users from outside of Mountain View proper. In fact, the numbers that we use to evaluate our operational costs were based on all the zip codes of all the users of this facility over the last, I think, 5 years. So, and I apologize, I don't have the exact number of capacity, but I think Christine provided you the ones that we have historically.

[01:41:36] Councilmember John McAlister: Mm hmm. 200 at a time. Is there a time limit? So if all of a sudden, we have a hot day, and 200 people show up, and they decide to stay there for four hours, then...

[01:41:47] Recreation Staff: Currently, there is not a time limit. But this was a new program that was implemented, and we've only had three days that we've had to utilize it, with each time we do finesse it on the procedural side. And that could be something that could be explored if we see that it's a continuous problem.

[01:42:05] Councilmember John McAlister: Are people gonna be able to bring a picnic? And within the area of the pool, or is there gonna, I mean, can they make it a date on the green space, or is there shade tables, and so forth?

[01:42:19] Recreation Staff: Yeah, some of the features of which you're mentioning will be further explored during the conceptual design process, but currently families are allowed to bring food into the facility as long as it's not on the near the pool.

[01:42:31] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. So, basing this option 2 over our current status. How many more people can you think that it will be able to accommodate? Over the current rings worth, Paul?

[01:42:46] Recreation Staff: So, rings are poll currently has six lanes. Option two would be moving to 10 lanes, plus the two additional cool down lanes, a total of 12, 25 yard lanes. So you have an increase of 6 lanes that would be available. Compared to eagle pool currently, there are 8 regulated regulation 25 yard lanes. Um, so it would be a net increase of four. with the option two.

[01:43:12] Councilmember John McAlister: So, from what I see, that this pool is really designed for swimmers, and not necessarily for the community, of free swim, because you keeps talking about, we got these lanes, we can handle that. So I'm still trying to, I'm getting the sense that it's more designed to accommodate swimmers and clubs and so forth versus the community as a whole. And that's a comet, so I won't go there. But okay. If we went with option three, Would that give you more flexibility if you were trying to accommodate the community of free swimmers or people just looking for a place to go and hang and swim and play around?

[01:44:00] City Staff: It is more body of water, and could accommodate more people entering the facility during recreation open swim program times. Um, just like with option two, there is still the option to have concurrent programming. It's just in a different, um, slightly different fashion. There are ways that we've seen other facilities operate and where they've, say, dictated that lanes, one through five, were going to be for one user group or for one program or lanes, 6 through 10, could be utilized for a month of program. So there is that option to even within a pool, split the lanes to have concurrent programming and have additional programming in the 2nd pool. Both of that can be achieved with option 2 and three.

[01:44:43] City Staff: I would note, excuse me, that with option three, however, you have a reduced buffer zone around the pool. You could increase it, but you would be encroaching further into the park. And so that's a choice to be made. There would be some pressure to increase the buffer zone, the green zone, around, say, option three, beyond the current diagram or showing, if that was a desire.

[01:45:10] Councilmember John McAlister: And, you know, I had some friends that wanted to sign up for swim lessons, and they fill up pretty quick. Yes. So that's one thing. But is there, uh, do you see a demand for free swim? Or is it this facility? That's one question that ties into the other one. The facility wasn't the most pleasing facility, some might say, are welcoming, the location, so forth. Do you think, with this new facility, we'll have more community people wanting to come? Do you anticipate that? Was this part of your design, this new fresh pool will encourage more free swim people to come to the there?

[01:45:44] City Staff: Yes, I would think that the new facility will attract more folks to this park into this pool. One example is the most recent renovation at the Mountain View Community center. It was very similar fashion prior to the renovation. And since then, we've seen a significant increase in the number of user groups. The enrollment for winter programs has skyrocketed over previous seasons. And we've also seen more folks that are, you know, having their special moments there, their weddings, their baby showers, their engagement parties. Um, we anticipate a very similar, um, effort taking place over at Ranksorf pool. We feel that enrollment will increase 1st one lessons held at that facility, that we will have a larger number for recreation open swim, especially with the features that could be planned for the 2nd leisure pool, as well as an opportunity in options to and 3 to increase lap swim and swimming opportunities in general.

[01:46:53] Councilmember John McAlister: My last question is, you use the $16 an hour. as projections of some of the costs. We already know the Mountain View is 1605, and that's the very low end. How would we interpret these design numbers? Was it the operational dollars, and so we know that, down the road, you were given cost of operating. So was that based on the $16?

[01:47:19] City Staff: For the hourly wages, yes, at the time that we commissioned the report, staff was not aware that there was going to be an increase as of January 1 to the 1605. Um, We anticipate that when we do come back for operating costs for the facility based off of whichever design is selected, that we will do a further dive into the operational model, and that would be presented through the fiscal year 2223 budget process. So once we have a design selected, and we further went through conceptual design, we'll be able to further analysize the hourly wages, and we would definitely project ahead for the oncoming increases.

[01:48:01] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, thank you.

[01:48:03] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Counselor, I'm out of check.

[01:48:05] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: So following up on some of Council member McAllister's questions, when you're talking about area for, as you were saying, the community to do swimming, recreational, um, leisure, I was comparing the 900 square feet that's there now, um, to, it's 2,000 square feet under option one and three, but 3,360 square feet in option two. So that's a huge increase in John. The amount of areas. So am I reading that correctly?

[01:48:43] City Staff: So, for ranks of pool, the 900 square feet is a toddler size waiting pool currently. So during recreation swim at that facility, both the waiting pool as well as the large pool is utilized to accommodate both programs. Okay. But yes, option 2 is an increased leisure water pool.

[01:49:03] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Okay. Dedicated?

[01:49:05] City Staff: Yes.

[01:49:05] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: How, um, does it work in terms of, um, the average resident swimming at one of the other pools in the area that's 50 meters, such as St. Francis? When is that open to the public? Is it, you have to sign up? Can you do it, like, on a one time basis, or how do the other 50 meter pools in the area work?

[01:49:31] City Staff: Somehow, I know, sorry. We'd have to further analysize that and come back with more information if that's something counsel desires.

[01:49:38] City Staff: If I may, we are aware that there are some foothill dianza is available for rental. Some of our existing groups do take advantage of that 50 meter pool. Um, at a time when we were looking for some, uh, wondering what we could do as far as, um, if one of our pools does go down, looking for some additional capacity, we did reach out to St. Francis at the time, they were saying they did not have any additional times available. So, um, what exactly they do have available, I don't know. We did reach out a while back at the time there wasn't any available.

[01:50:12] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Okay, so we heard from Mr. Apollo Donato that he swam there, but that was part of an organized group, right? Okay. Okay. And then my other question is, I know this just was a 1st cut, conceptual kind of thing, but do we have any estimates on the amount of encroachment into the park for the different options, even a relative amount? Like, option 2 is 25% more than current, and option 3 is 40% more, or do we have any guess?

[01:50:49] City Staff: Um, I apologize. I don't have precise numbers for you. I mean, the intent, I'll give you the intent behind why those options are arranged such as they are. The intent was to try to minimize, and they're all fairly close, in the diagrams, you can see a background image showing the outline of the existing park, just for relative purposes. What I would say is, for example, you go back to option one, it probably has the most flexibility to, say, avoid, say, a heritage tree, or so we could, you know, like the park currently does, has a very, doesn't have a rectilinear shape, and so it could be shaped more freely. When you get to the larger pools, such as option three, Those opportunities or less, and you have more constriction. It really comes down to the direction we receive in terms of how much buffer space around the pools is desired, if, say, option three we're gone with, would they like it to look more like option two and have a greater amount of green space than is shown currently. Those are all questions that we would have to evaluate during the conceptual design phase. So I guess I want to preface and say something I failed to mention earlier in the presentation, which is, we're not designing the facility here. We're just selecting which direction to go. We will be coming back to both PRC and Council in the coming months with more fleshed out designs and options within that scope universe, if you will. So if that makes sense.

[01:52:23] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Okay, thank you.

[01:52:25] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Council member Hicks.

[01:52:28] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Before I ask my questions, I wanted to compliment staff. I thought the report was very clear and complete, and also ELS is, I wanted to compliment whoever chose them as an architectural firm, because they, I've been, they work out of Berkeley, where I went to school, and I've been following them a bit, and I really respect their work. So I'm sure they'll turn out a good product. But the one thing to me that was unclear in the report was, the report is about the, the, um, pool that we'll be building, but to me, Rengstorf Park is a very special park. I used to go there when my children were young, and I visited again this weekend, and it's just very, very heavily used compared to some other parks, and the, especially special thing about it is the winding paths that are the winding tree lined paths in the green space. And there are people at just all times of the day, all ages, walking and biking and scooting on those paths. So the part of the report that I remain unclear on is how the different options, and council member Matachek touched on this. How they affect the rest of the park, because we're also going to be adding magical bridge park, which will take away a little of the green space. So, and I would like to make sure that I feel like we've done a good amount of surveying of what people need from pool use, but not so much how this is interacting with the rest of the park that's so heavily used. So my question is, or one of them, is the three options, the way you show them. Is it true that the borders that are shown are not set in stone? It's a, at this point, we haven't, we're starting the design. We're not finishing it. It's only conception. Is that true? True.

[01:54:37] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay, good. Um, and then I noticed that the, that is very different in terms of the amount of, um, if we're gonna do recreational swimming, in terms of the amount, like, when I've done recreational swimming with my kids, there's a lot of people in and out of the pool and sitting around the sidelines. And that option three, to me, did not left hardly any room for that. And it also, it was, the borders were so close to the large edge of the larger pool that I didn't understand, I know it's only conceptual. But it looked like it might be not completely safe or not completely easy. I know you don't run around the pool, but for a lot of people to walk around the pool. And so that, that, it looked to me like that option had was the most likely to expand even further than in the picture into the rest of the park. And I'm wondering, unless we wanted to keep those margins very slim. Am I seeing that right? Is that the potential?

[01:55:44] City Staff: Correct. So in each of the diagrams, there is the outline of the existing fence line that you can use as a reference point for the existing pool. So in this, in option three, what we're showing is a pretty small boundary on what would be the south side of the pool, and that is to try to limit the encroachment into the park area. And so if option 3 is chosen through the next design phase, we would be bringing back different options for you to look at. Some may actually be encroaching further into the park so that we can increase the amount of space around the pool. But currently, we were showing the minimum amount required just to have a safe location for our lifeguards and possibly some circulation around. It would be very tight in, given the, um, the design as shown in the report.

[01:56:41] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, it doesn't really provide for good recre, you know, good the fun water, but that's getting to comments, I guess. I think it would have to extend more into the park. So my last question is the potential for, um, the potential for expansion at some point at Eagle Pool, 'cause I have to say, that perk is very different. I find it, except for during soccer, I live near there. I pass by it all the time, is fairly underused. Nobody wants, unlike Ren Starfark, where people want to walk, people... It's full of people walking. Nobody wants to walk around the middle of Eagle Park. And if I were to put in a 50 meter pool, honestly, that's where I would put it. And is there any possibility of that, or what are your comments on that?

[01:57:43] City Staff: Any remodel or renovation of Eagle Park pool has not been discussed. The facility itself is in good operational condition. It has not been listed as an even unfunded project within the city's capital improvement project. So, right now, we have not looked at that as an option down the road. There could be an option to look at that with associated parking and circulation. It may be viable, but we have not done any research into how well that would work.

[01:58:15] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay, I'm not putting it on the table now anyway. So, okay. Thank you.

[01:58:20] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: meeting for that. Counselor Ramirez.

[01:58:23] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. A lot of really good and helpful questions. Um, I only have one, and my apologies, if this is answered somewhere else, but, um, the, the staff answers to the council questions indicated that there are, there's a roughly $4.5 million as uncommitted balance in the parkland dedication fund. And it wasn't really clear tips. So we have enough money to pay for any of these options, but it wasn't clear to me whether, if we did, you know, option 2 or option 3, whether that would eat into the uncommitted balance. So how much funding do we have set aside for this? So if we did option three, for instance, would we still have $4.5 million in uncommitted balance, or would we lose some of that?

[01:59:08] City Staff: When we come back to council with our next design phase, We will bring back to you some of the funding sources. When we do come back, we anticipate to have enough fees collected to be able to offset the cost of each of these scenarios and still have the existing balance left, if not more.

[01:59:29] Unknown Speaker: Oh, so so it wouldn't eat into the uncommitted balance at all.

[01:59:33] City Staff: That is correct.

[01:59:34] Unknown Speaker: Wow. Okay, thank you.

[01:59:36] Unknown Speaker: Thank you. I had a couple of questions. Um, let's see. I just wanted to make sure I heard correctly. In terms of, so Eagle Pool would become the seasonal pool, but at some point in time if we did reach capacity, we could look at making both year round pools, is that correct?

[01:59:59] City Staff: That is correct. It would require some analysis on our part and to study whether we have the staff resources to open a 2nd pull, but if that was something to be explored, we would look at appropriate fees to ensure that we meet cost recovery to have both pulls in operation.

[02:00:15] Unknown Speaker: Okay, great. And then, um, there's mention about the breakdown of residents versus non-residents, um, and I should have asked this in, uh, in a written comments, or written questions, but, um, and I don't need, you know, exact figures, but do you have a sense of where the 40% of non-residents come from?

[02:00:38] City Staff: For the swim groups that we mentioned in the room?

[02:00:41] Unknown Speaker: Yeah, masters in land back, that's 6040 split.

[02:00:44] City Staff: Correct. So from our usage of the pools, the primary non-resident cities would come from Los Altos, Santa Clara, Palo Alto, um, and a small amount from San Jose, but majority in Sunnyvale, yes, in Sunnyvale. So majority would be coming, though, from our most surrounding neighbors. But in Los Altas is the largest, I do not have that level of detail.

[02:01:16] Unknown Speaker: And then, is there a preference in any way, if we're reaching capacity, for residents over non-residents, for instance.

[02:01:28] City Staff: Right now, um, the differential between our residents and our residents is a difference in fees, um, that is pretty much across the all programs and recreation. There's not any that I can think of off top of my head that are resonant only.

[02:01:43] Unknown Speaker: And then, I know the closest, I believe, 50 meter pool is Sunnyvale's Fremont High School pool, and I was trying to look on the website, but that's like a public pool, isn't it? It's open to the public, and I know they have like a swim team there. So does it operates very similar to our pools?

[02:02:02] City Staff: Um, yes and no, it is a public facility, um, that is a shared use through the school district and city of Sunnyvale, but it is a contracted out operator that runs the pool.

[02:02:15] Unknown Speaker: Okay, great. And then, um, it sounds like maybe St. Francis, but have we talked to other facilities? I don't know if the high schools have capacity, but I was thinking about that. And, um, you know, I was just trying to think of, well, if we really need a 50 meter pool somewhere, are there other sites? And, and we, you know, we've just, um, assisted with Los Altos school district and purchasing their, uh, school and, um, you know, their, they're supposed to be shared use of their facilities and like have we thought about talking with them about building a larger pool there. Um, yeah, have we explored other options? I guess, and for other locations, if we need a 50 meter pull.

[02:03:01] City Staff: So, in relation to a 50 meter pool, I think the shared use with the school would, um, not help what the residents that you heard from tonight would be helping, um, due to the school time availability daytime, um, our, um, our lap swim when we have a large number of users is during that lunchtime and, um, an afternoons. So the availability of that 50 meter pool at a school site would be limited. Hopefully we would, if we could come to some agreement, there would be some summertime opportunities. I don't know what their current use is. I know that there's there are some other user groups that do use the pools. Okay. But I just don't know what their availabilities is at the moment, in relation to, um, negotiations with the Los Altos school district. As of now, it's my understanding that, um, it was direction to be comparable to the existing middle school location. So shared track field and then gymnasium, but a pool itself has not been discussed as far as I know.

[02:04:02] Unknown Speaker: Okay. And then, um, I just wanted to make sure I heard the right number for lap swimmers is at 70 people per day.

[02:04:11] City Staff: That is the average, yes.

[02:04:13] Unknown Speaker: So we have eight lanes, and... so each lane has less than... 10 people within... But that's, like, throughout the day, correct?

[02:04:27] City Staff: Right, yeah, the 70 average is throughout the day, so that's a combination of the noontime, which is really a 10.30 AM to one p.m. swim time slot, and then the evening hours, which is 6 to 8.30 p.m. And pending the swimmer, they could be swimming for 30 minutes to an hour, depending on their style of workout. And so it's not 70 people all at once, but it's throughout the time frame.

[02:04:54] Unknown Speaker: Great. All right, thank you.

[02:04:56] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Councilman McAllister.

[02:04:58] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, one question for John. So, with the cost of the pool, when you talk about cost recovery, are we trying to talk about the in relation to fees that we charge people? Would that be based on the construction of the new pool or just in our standard scheme of things that we're gonna say, well, this is what we're gonna get?

[02:05:18] John: It would not include the construction cost. It would include the operational cost. plus necessary staff time.

[02:05:25] Councilmember John McAlister: Yes, okay. Thank you.

[02:05:27] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Great. So I think we are done with questions, it looks like. Um, so my thought was to ask the question, number one question, um, with a show of hands. Um, and then 2 is a little bit more open-ended, but, um, I could, or I could entertain, overall, general comments first, if you want to dive into that. Want to do comments? All right, let's do comments. Council member Hicks.

[02:06:04] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So, I just wanted to say that I am, um, leaning towards staff's recommendation, and the reason is what I was, what I was trying to explore during my questions, that the park is, I think, uh, uh, uh, somewhat unusual park in, uh, in our, um, in our, I don't know, what you call our selection of parks in Mountain View. It's in a, you know, it's in a relatively low income area. It's surrounded by apartments. People who don't have backyards, who come there daily for, I don't know if they all come daily, but they appear to come frequently, all the different times that I've been there for recreation, and I just feel very sensitive to encroaching into people's green space, you know, people without green space in their housing, and many of them live in in apartments without, without pools or recreational facilities as well. And, um, so, and I've seen them at all times of the day that I've been there. So I feel that we need to be sensitive to that. I also feel that if we are trying to do the fun water, that the way it's drawn currently in option three, it's not really very pleasant. Um, so that I feel it if I were designing it to be pleasant, I would want to push it out into the park much more, and I'm hesitant to do that. So I just feel like it's not the right place for a 50 meter pool. If we're really gonna be serving that community, and I think that Rengstorf Park should be a community serving, you know, really serving the local residents. I, you know, I don't live very near there now, so I go more often to Pioneer Park at this point, but, um, but, uh, yeah, I feel like to be respectful to the residents in the area, we should, um, go with the staff recommendation.

[02:08:14] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Anyone else?

[02:08:16] Unknown Speaker: Do you want comments?

[02:08:20] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: I think any comments are fine. That's my matter check.

[02:08:26] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Uh, so I also am leaning toward option two for the same reasons that council member Hicks, um, articulated. I did have a couple of other comments though. I do like that all the options have two pools. Um, and I definitely like the increase in the, um, amount of leisure water, um, in option two. I would suggest that we take a look at on the days when we open the pools for free, for use, when it's hot days, that perhaps that's limited to residents only, so that we're not turning away residents. I'd rather be turning away non residents, um, if we're gonna turn anyone away. Um, I also think that, um, as was mentioned in the Ballard King report, that we should potentially take a look at the fees and see whether or not we want to tweak those, um, especially for non residents, um, so that we had greater cost recovery. And, um, probably my biggest concern with any of the options is encroaching on the park. Park Space is so scarce, in a way. We're still trying to get to the metric of 3 acres per 1000 people. And we're not there everywhere. And we are, we have taken, and we have plans to take even more space from Rangstorf with the Magical Bridge Playground. We took some, I think, for the community center, the pickleball courts. And it's like, ugh, when do you say we can't continue to do that, because that park is heavily used in the green area, for walking, playing ball, all kinds of activities. Um, you know, if there was a way to do the 50 meter and not take away park space, I'd be much more open to that. My concern is, though, that, um, at least how it's drawn here, and I get that these are just conceptual, you know, there isn't a lot of space around that, and I think there should be. Um, there definitely needs to be space around the leisure pool for folks to just hang out, um, if their children are in the pool or they're taking a break or they're just enjoying some time there. Um, how that is, uh, programmed, uh, is really important and critical to me, um, no matter which option we go with. But again, right now, I am leaning toward option two. Um, yeah.

[02:11:16] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Counselor McAllister.

[02:11:19] Councilmember John McAlister: Uh, okay. Other perspective? I'm leaning towards three. And the reason is, but I'm also very concerned about the park encroachments. If Don Lecher was here, He be all over us on this one, so shout out to Don Lecher for keeping us honest. Um, Yeah, but the reason I'm looking at 3 is, we haven't, you know, I keep talking about the people, free, free swim and so forth. And I think if we're gonna do this, we're gonna do, I hope to see us do it big. and allow a lot of people to come enjoy it. I do have concerns about the grass area. It's a little small, and it needs to be bigger. But for $3 million, we should be looking down the road. It's not that much of a bigger investment. And I'm not thinking of the swimmers or all the programs. I'm thinking about the everyDA residents that will have the opportunity to go there. I think it will open up more swim lessons, and people will get out there and enjoy it. There was a talk about, well, if one poll closes, Whoa, we're in a bad situation. So at least if we go with a bigger pool, and, uh, so, uh, Eagle Park decides to do some kind of remodeling or something goes down, we still have capacity to to handle the crowds, and, um, I think in the long run, we, I think we need the space. I think it gives us more flexibility, more options. And the fee is important, too, but I'm not looking at the fee. I'm trying to get people to come out and enjoy it. And I don't know, I think a crowd can come out on a hot day. There's a synergy. People feel comfortable, but again, you have to do the grass around it and so forth. And yeah, it does go into the park a little bit. But, again, I think it gives us more flexibility. If a poll goes down, it gives us more options, and we got to build for the future because you're saying 90,000 and 24. Well, we can just look at 3 apartment complexes and that's going to put us at the 90,000. So and that's going to open up in 2 years. So, I think we need something bigger for the population as it grows.

[02:13:35] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Vice mayor.

[02:13:36] Vice Mayor Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. So I haven't had a chance to thank staff, so thank you so much for your report. So I want to thank the public. We got so many emails on this topic. And your public comment today is really helpful. Um, and so I don't want to kind of reiterate points that I've already heard. So what I'll do is instead say, um, some of the ideas and the concerns brought up by council member Hicks and Matachek, um, are ones that I have as well. And so for me, I feel torn, I think we do need to be forward looking as option three. Um, is, um, but kind of where are we now as a city? And so I want to maybe have a little bit more information with when this item comes back about demand and capacity. So, wood, for example, opening eagle to year round, help with the demand that we have. Um, in terms of access to the pool versus going towards the 50 meter pool. just like a little bit more information on that. If that could be an option. You know, I think the questions of, um, kind of placemaking and how ego might be, one that can facilitate the 50 meter, as council member Hicks was saying versus, um, kind of the personality and character of Ringstorff is one that I also thought of, but given that we just kind of have done all these renovations. I know that that might be something that we would plan for in the future. Is that a possibility? I don't know the longevity of pool aquatic life. And so, kind of, given that we just did the lobby renovation, I think what, last year or earlier this year, you know, kind of what are, a little bit more information about where eagle is now and how long and when we could look about, perhaps thinking about if 50 meters could be a possibility there. Um, and so I think those are kind of, my thoughts aside from just the character and the other items and having access for residents and have that community building. I think kind of more that that information would help me make kind of a, take a more holistic view on, on the issue. So, where I am, but leaning towards Step's recommendation of option 2 right now, kind of given the information at hand, but perhaps with more information when the item comes back, I think that that could be, um, we can make a more informative decision. Thank you.

[02:16:18] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Counselor Clark.

[02:16:20] Councilmember Chris Clark: So coming into tonight, um... Yeah, I, I generally felt that, um, just with the, the community focused orientation of Ring Store Park and the existing facilities that, that option to, um, probably made the most sense. And part of my thought there was, you know, if we did want to do a facility that was more, um, more of a sort of regional draw or draw beyond mountain view, that, you know, that would be the sort of facility that we might look at putting in as a new facility someday, whether it be in North Bay Shore, or where there's a lot of development going on, or East Wisman, frankly, if a large community serving park, where to, um, were to materialize there, we could program it, and maybe have an additional aquatics facility there. I think, I am open to studying option three, or doing a conceptual plan there, but I think the only way that I would support that would be if we, if the concept allowed us to sort of what you've laid out here, but some different options for the buffer zones, so that we can make a determination about, um, Okay, even with the least, even with the least amount of buffer, that's too much encroachment, and sort of reverting back to something more like option two, that draws the process out, and it creates more work. But also, in my mind, you know, this isn't, like, the thing that has to start this year, sort of, like, it's, it's important that we do it soon, but it's not super, super time critical. And so if we were to study a concept of option three and look at the different options for buffer zones, and how that encroached on the park, and what we'd be comfortable with, combined with, here are all the other things that we're planning to do at Rainstore Park, like Magical Bridge, and all those things as a more holistic approach, then I could see supporting doing a conceptual plan for option three, but I think that's the only That's probably the only approach that I'd be comfortable doing that. Otherwise, I think option 2 probably makes the most sense unless we want to go down the path of doing a concept for option 3 and then being prepared to sort of revert if we if we're just uncomfortable with the general level of encroachment. But that also creates more work and more time. So I'm open to what my colleagues have to say here. I probably use the aquatic facilities in the city, the least. So I'm willing to hear what others have to say there.

[02:19:11] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Yes, I remember Ramirez.

[02:19:13] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. I'm struggling with this one. I was impressed with the community support, at least, the number of emails and incumbents that we've received in support of option three. And I think that's, as several members of the council had expressed. I think that's something we should explore if there was opportunities with redevelopment or, you know, at Eagle Park. I'm comfortable with exploring, you know, other ideas. And I think that's why, um, you know, I'm really pleased with, um, when we were talking about the East Wisman precise plan, focus on new public facilities because clearly there's a strong demand for them. But I think I'm probably also leaning towards option two, I think, um, you know, the questions about free play and recreational use, I think, or, um, sort of instructive for me in thinking about what where the demand is or, you know, who are serving and, um, you know, the, the additional, square footage for the leisure pool, I think, helps address that need. more so than what option 3 appears to provide, but, you know, I would challenge you, council member Clark, I probably use the aquatic center less than you do. So I'm also not, you know, really in the best position to say, you know, I'll largely be deferential to staff, I think, on where we're identifying the need. And it's just about figuring out, how can we address the need within our community best? So not opposed to option 3 at all? I think, you know, finding a location for a 50 meter pool at some point. Um, whether it's a ring store for eagle or or, you know, one of the, the, areas that, you know, the change areas in the city. I think I'd like to get there. But, you know, based on the recommendations provided by staff and the analysis that we've been provided so far, option to make sense, at least for now.

[02:21:24] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Um, would you mind if I, uh, chimed in? Thank you. So, um, thank you to Steph, uh, for, uh, the report and thank you to members of the public for coming to speak as well as all the emails we've received. Um, I, uh, I too, um, was looking at option two. I appreciate staff's analysis. Um, I don't know if I'm one of the most frequent users of our pool facilities, but I have been over the years with my own children and then myself trying to train for triathlons way back when. Um, and so, and it's been a few years, uh, admittedly, but, um, um, my observations back then where, um, swimming lessons were, you know, oversubscribed and you had to sign up the 1st day or you were pretty much out of luck. Um, when we go for Rex Swim in the summer, especially, it's very crowded and and lots of families there. Um, and, um, when I did the lap swimming, I, I'm sure it's increased, but usually there'd be two, 3 folks in a daytime hours when I went, um, and circle swimming, is hard for me as a, not that great swimmer, but, um, you know, you get by. And so when I was looking at this being Rangsdorf pool, the location is very key to me. And I agree with my colleagues who say, who mentioned that, you know, it's a community park, um, I also feel that we've really, um, programmed a lot at that park, um, which is great. It's being fully used. But my concerns with a larger pool at this time is the encroachment into the park facilities. As long as, like, if we did that, I was thinking, do we need to look at parking, more parking spaces, you know, when there's something at the community center, it's hard to find parking as it is, um, with a larger pool. And, you know, this is what, I guess I was thinking, um, you know, it's a community pool, maybe the smaller size is, and like, maybe we look at more an open opening eagle pool, but it's much, to me, a much more, um, community oriented pool rather than a competitive pool. Um, I've been to 50 meter pool facilities. And when I have 2 little kids, it's intimidating to go in there. So maybe you can fit more people, but I guess the question is, what types of folks are we trying to serve? Um, so for me, at this location, I think I had been thinking it's really should be more community um, friendly. And, um, and then, yeah, I was thinking about the free, the hot days, we get more of them now, um, knowing that we have to turn folks away, um, made me think, um, you know, a larger pool, but something that is more accessible to more people would be, um, helpful at this time. Um, and that's not to say, though, that, um, you know, we can't look at a 15 meter pull down the road somewhere else, and I do agree with, um, some of my other colleagues who said maybe Eagle Park is a better location, or, frankly, as our community grows, um, we, You know, I I have been thinking we do need to look at more facilities. Um, you know, I had looked at San Antonio being, um, being, uh, satisfied, hopefully, with, um, the lost out to school district, you know, lands there. I don't know, and maybe it's worth us going back and talking to them about a pool too, or the, you know, the Wisman area is in need of facilities. So those are areas that I'm thinking of down the road where we would need to add more facilities. And at that point in time, perhaps we can look at a larger size pool. I also was thinking shoreline park, you know. So I think there are other options and, you know, and I know folks think, or might it be thinking, this is, what was 1959? So what was that? 60 years. I probably, I think we're probably going to be discussing this. I mean, it won't be us. sooner than 60 years from now. And my concern was actually the other way around is that if we dragged this out even longer with, and, you know, I would be open to conceptual plans, but if we dragged the timeline out on this project, My concern is that we might miss our opportunity in light of where we are economically. So, yes, $3000000 may not seem that much more, but I guess my question is, you know, given the financial outlook, I'm not even sure if we'll have that. So, I'd like to just get going on this project and get it done, and then we can look at the next, you know, the next step. So, I'm, uh, yeah, so I would prefer option two for those reasons. Um, I do agree with some of the comments, comes from, or Mattachek mentioned, you know, this is always, it's been a pet peeve of mind over the years. I know that you know, I think it's important that our facilities are open to everybody. But, um, considering that some of our neighboring cities don't even have certain facilities, um, you know, especially with these joint um, sports programs. We've carried the load with, you know, little league and softball and swim team. Um, That's the challenge. That's always been a concern to me. And so, you know, I do look for some way of delineating a preference system for Mountain View residence first. Um, right? Residents, 1st council member, McAllister. So, um, so those are my comments. It looks like from the tally, one, two, three, four, four, definitely for two, um, one was for three, and then two, uh, leaning towards two, but open to three, I think that, that's what I had. So, um, Is that clear enough? So, um, the majority supports option two. There were at least two members open to looking at three, one definitely for three. And I don't know if the folks who were looking at, or being open to option three wants to elaborate on that idea of Counselor Metachek in the queue, though.

[02:28:31] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Thanks. I just wanted to add, you know, we've talked a little bit about maybe there's another place in the city to put a 50 meter pull. I don't know if any of you have had discussions. I'm assuming you have with some of the major property owners in different areas like North Bay Shore and East Wisman. But I've certainly had the conversation with at least, well, let's say, three major property owners in the East Wisman area, and one of them specifically mentioned that they thought it would be nice to have a pool in that area. So I think we could potentially talk to them about making it a 50 meter pole. And in North Bay Shore, um, there, that property owner in the gateway has talked quite a bit about having a sports club, and, um, the one that I toured in San Jose, had a lot of pools. I'm not sure if any of them were 50 meters, but they had lots of pools, maybe we could talk to them about a 50 meter pool there.

[02:29:24] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay. I think Council member Clark?

[02:29:27] Councilmember Chris Clark: I'll just go ahead and move the staff recommendation, and then I do, I think staff's probably... part our...

[02:29:33] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Sorry. Study session. So we've just given George...

[02:29:38] Councilmember Chris Clark: Oh, okay, I thought I didn't realize we moved to a study session.

[02:29:41] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: It's okay. Okay. Are we... stuff? Are we good?

[02:29:48] Unknown Speaker: So, based on what we've heard tonight, our next steps will be to look at option two and bring some different design elements and variations of option number two.

[02:29:59] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Right, yes. All right. Okay, good, good. Thank you. Would, uh, counsel like to take a 10 minute break? Yes, well, we have one who's already doing it, so we'll take it to a minute break. Thank you.

[02:19:28] (archive recording) Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Our public works director, Don Cameron, and this Mr. Lightbody?

[02:19:33] (archive recording) Lightbody: Yes.

[02:19:34] (archive recording) Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Welcome.

[02:19:36] (archive recording) Lightbody: Good evening, thank you. So the purpose of the shuttle study was to evaluate the transit needs for Mountain View residents with a particular focus on the travel demand for seniors, youth or students, and 1st and last mile connections. The primary transit and shuttle services that we examined included the Mountain View Community Shuttle, the MVGo Shuttle routes operated by the Transportation Management Association, and the Valley Transportation Authority of VTA bus routes, and how they interconnect and serve the entirety of the city of Mountain View in relation to also the light rail system and Caltrain system, and this map kind of gives you a sense of the coverage. of the existing transit and shuttle services. The study process began with, as most good study processes, with a fair amount of research in analyzing existing conditions. The shuttle study team looked at demographic data from the American community survey, which is done by the Census Bureau, to take a look at where you have the greatest need for transit, in the greatest likelihood for transit ridership, and developed a transit propensity map, also included an analysis of the current shuttle and transit services, conducted a wide reaching community survey, and stakeholder interviews. After producing a report in that was shared off agenda with the council and the community in November with the results of this initial research phase, the project moved on to looking at potential service improvements and strategies, which have been documented in your council report, along with a consultant report that is attached to your council report tonight. In addition, we started looking at the future operations for the community shuttle, taking into account Google's request and our plans to transition the operating of the community shuttle from Google to city responsibility. Based on the result, the results of the shuttle study, which are documented in your report, staff is recommending the following related to the community shuttle. Develop a two year agreement with the Transportation Management Association for Management and Operations of the Community Shuttle, Effective July 1st, 2020. Do not make any changes in the shuttle route and hours during this transition period to allow the new management operations to settle in and make sure that we're not adversely affecting our existing writers as we do this transition. Consider expanding service hours, uh, in 2021. We feel that this might be, this would be the most cost-effective, biggest bang for the buck change that we could make to the community share show in the near term. Staff would return to council for approval of any expansion plans, including extending service hours after the transition of the operations, and we'll bring forward a refined cost test minute, at that time, requests council to approve whether the city would commit additional funding to expanding the shuttle hours. And finally, during this initial two year period with this agreement with the TMA, the city and the team may work closely together to explore options for integrating the community shuttle and Envy Go shuttle in 2022 or later, to take advantages of cost efficiencies, Look at possibly single branding so that we're not confusing our community with 2 different free fare, open to the public shuttle systems, and what we can do to through this integration to increase overall utilization and availability of our shuttle services. So based on those recommendations, these are the questions our staff has for counsel tonight. First, does council support staff's recommendation for the community shuttle as laid out on the previous slide? Second, the shuttle study put on the table, various other strategies and options that could be looked at dealing with serving 1st and last mile needs, an area where we did identify more need is needed for certain areas of the city. Many of these, all these items come with costs. And before staff spent a lot of time delving in, doing a lot of research into them, we needed a sense from the council which ones interested you, that you thought was worthwhile for staff to put time into it. So we've laid them out, the 3 options that were put in the report here, and we'd appreciate hearing from you tonight, which of these you would like staff to take a deeper dive, investigate, and potentially come back to you with recommendations. The same is true for pricing and marking strategies. Are there any of these that you would like staff to take a deeper dive and potentially come back to you with recommendations? And our final question tonight is, is there anything else regarding the community shuttle service and our operational options, you would like staff to take into consideration as we move forward with the future of the community shuttle. So that concludes staff, presentation, and we're happy to answer any questions you have.

[02:48:49] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Great, thank you very much. As this is a study session, we will take public comment first. So are there any members of the public wishing to speak on this item if you would like to please come forward to the podium and fill out a blue card before after you speak? Um, And we'll give you 3 minutes. Thank you very much.

[02:49:12] Cliff Chambers: Cliff Chambers, resident of Mountain View. Also with Mountain View Coalition for Sustainable Planning, and Michael Apronson submitted a letter on our behalf, and I won't repeat all the points there. I just like to make a couple of key points. First off, Thanks, Don, for an excellent presentation. I think the staff report really sets out a good array of options. Um, The community shuttle is really a great community asset. I don't want to thank the council for having that, the ability to have a free mobility option for many residents is really important. I used it occasionally, and it's very, very well, utilized. The fact that it gets 27 passengers hour is incredible for such a service and certainly I think the highest priority is the financial sustainability of that service. And I think we have a great deal of gratitude to Google for funding this over this long period of time and extending it. So I really want to thank them. In terms of the comments, in terms of the staff recommendations. Um, I think I generally support them. I just have a couple of questions. There's probably a lot of value to doing a contract with the TMA. But I'm always, there are a lot of different vendors out there that provide transit management services that could provide even more value. So I always like to see some sort of competitive bid for those types of of services. The other thing is, is when we did approve measure P, and there was a great deal of support for it, I think there was an expectation of just like at the pool, thinking a little bit bigger in terms of the types of improvements, not just increasing the hours. But when the environmental sustainability task force was going about as business. We wanted more frequency. We want our more opportunities for the public. The schedule right now between 10 AM and 6 p.m. is limited. I'd really like to see, for example, on a Friday, Saturday having longer hours up till like 9 o'clock with frequencies, even though it was a pilot project getting some grant funding to test. What kind of ridership could you get with 15 minute frequencies during those really peak times? And I think that would open it up to a much broader market in Mountain View besides the people who really depend on transit and really use it heavily. It would broaden the market to more resonance within Mountain View. So I would really like to see some of those things uh, looked at uh, going forward and using some of the $4600000 to be able to do some of those kind of pilot demonstration programs. So thank you.

[02:52:11] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Great. Thank you. Next speaker, welcome up.

[02:52:19] Public Speaker: Good evening, Etta Mayor and Council. I have a couple of experiences and secondary information that I'd like to share with you, and my apologies, if the staff report actually did address these two, and I miss them. One is, I would love to be able to take any kind of public transit to city council meetings. And it would be possible for me to get here. But not to get home. Because everything stops before city council meetings end. Also, for more than six months, I spent a great deal of time driving somebody up to El Camino ER, or going to pick them up, because there was no bus available. when they were discharged, or there was no bus available when they needed to get there. So, I don't know how this can be addressed, but I'm sure that the one person that I spent a lot of time helping with that transportation is not the only one who needs it. Thank you.

[02:53:56] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Any other members of the public wishing to speak on this item? If not, I'll close public comment and bring it back to council for comments. Um... If you want to try to include the questions, why don't we do that? I'm sorry. Uh, Counselor Clark.

[02:54:23] Councilmember Chris Clark: Um... So, I'll start, just buy, um, one thanking staff for the comprehensive report, and, um, and laying out all the options and being, um, you know, willing to meet with us individually, um, to go over some of the initial questions, and then, um... Also, I think we should also, I also want to thank Google, not just for the initial funding, and helping get this off the ground at a time when we were, I think, in a much different sort of financial position than we are today, and I think our community show experiment would have. wouldn't have flourished to the extent that it has without, without that support over a number of years, and then a commitment to, at least extend it to the point where we can sort of look at one, evaluate whether or not it's been a success, which it clearly has, and then two, to find an opportunity to continue it, and in perpetuity, regardless of, regardless of their participation. I think I generally support all of staff's recommendations, I initially thought, you know, maybe it made more sense to do some additional expansion now versus later, but I think once you start looking at how all the different timelines line up in terms of the success that MV Go has had, and with their employer shuttles, and the opportunity to sort of integrate them as a service provider into this, maybe look at you know, having a single branded and unified schedule system that, um, that where folks can, you know, plug in a destination and regardless of whether it's on the community shuttle or MVGo or a unified system, they can get to where they need to go and not have to worry about, like we do so much in the rest of the Bay Area, having this, um, sort of web of transportation agencies that don't necessarily always have linked up schedules. So, I think for me, the most important thing that it makes sense to change the go ahead and expand the hours now. I think we can also do an analysis after that to see what the ridership changes are, because that may attract some additional students or additional, um, 1st and last mile users that we don't currently serve today. And then my understanding is that there may be an opportunity through, if we're successful with MVGo, to look at, you know, how things are operated in a longer term, based on that analysis. And so, I think rather than sort of make really significant changes now and spend a whole bunch of money, it makes the most sense to sort of expand the hours, see what that does to ridership on certain lines before we change those lines, expand or reduce them. And then utilize that data, along with MVGo, to try and expand the system to the extent that we can maybe permanently expand service hours and look at our other options then. So that's a long way of saying, I think all the staff recommendations make sense right now. The only 1st and last mile strategies that I think I want staff to maybe spend time on in the near term and maybe not even the immediate term, the one strategy that piqued my interest was perhaps the BTA peak trippers and sort of supplementing some of, um, some of those, um, frequencies and routes. But I don't feel super strongly about that, but that's really the only, I think the, I'm not sure the, just reading through the on-demand services and the TNC partnerships. I'm just not sure that those are, those will, the benefits of what might come of those is worth the staff time right now. And then on the pricing of marketing strategies, My guess is that the free transfers and the free fares will probably be, unfortunately, out of reach for us financially, at least in the near term. Um, so as great as those ideas are. I'm just not sure they're worth spending a lot of time on, just given the financial constraints associated with that. The one thing that I think would be good to have long term and would be a unified, um, for a single place where you can go to, if we wanted to, if an employer or the city or someone wanted to subsidize some of these, um, rides, even though the community show is free, we may have bike share, scooter share, all those other things, I think, play into this, and to have a unified place where an employer, or the city, or whoever happens to be to be able to ride, a monthly subsidy or whatever it is to utilize, you know, whether it's a shuttle or a scooter service or a bike service or whatever it happens to be, or maybe it's maybe you could apply it to a clipper card if you're using a VTA line. I think that's the one thing that seems the most promising to me. So, um, So just in some, I support the staff recommendations, I think, um, the VTA Peak trippers are probably, um, VTA Peak trippers are probably worth, at least a little bit of investigation, and then I think longer term, the most promising of the pricing and marketing strategies is probably some sort of unified mobility wallet, where you have the ability to add subsidies, not just to a clipper card, but to something that's unified that you could then use for scooter share, bike share, um, Clipper card, whatever it happens. be.

[03:00:10] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Council member McAllister.

[03:00:14] Councilmember John McAlister: Thanks. Uh, Dawn, so, I support, uh, staff report was, what I expected. But when we sat down... I, uh, We had this discussion. I was grinning the whole time, says, boy, this doesn't this sound like the comprehensive modal study that we're gonna do, and it's gonna feed into it. So, with this, the delayed timeline, with the comprehensive model starting over here and your timeline over here, we have time to blend that into the study, the shuttle study, then, won't we?

[03:00:51] Staff Presenter Dawn: Yes. Yes.

[03:00:52] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. So a lot of the questions that you asked will be able to be addressed and or highlighted or come to.

[03:01:03] Staff Presenter Dawn: Yes. So the, um, you know, one of the reasons where you see these very specific staff recommendations where for us, this was the more time critical decision making that the city needs to do, which is really focused on transitioning the operations of the community shuttle with the target date of this July 1st. And, and again, you know, in our initial analysis on how, you know, the 1st step in expanding or improving the community shuttle, the expanding the service hours, uh, in 2021, but as council member McAllister is referencing, um, some of these other 1st mile last mile strategies, as well as a future expansion potentials for the community shuttle or combined shuttle, can be looked at in the context of the comprehensive modal plan as it's developed. I'm done. Thank you.

[03:02:04] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Oh, great. Do you want to, um, a comment search?

[03:02:09] Councilmember John McAlister: No, I mean... I just made the comments. This page will be addressed when we do the comprehensible modal program, so...

[03:02:17] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: So you're good?

[03:02:18] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, I'm good there. recommendation. I'm coming back haunting her, so make sure that this gets going in 2021, but, yeah, I mean, it's everything that we talked about three, four years ago, so it's a no brainer, in a sense. But thank you.

[03:02:33] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Right, thank you, Counselor Mattachek.

[03:02:36] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Okay. Um, I do support staff's recommendations for the community shuttle. The one thing I would potentially add to that. And I got to thinking after we had, I think it was Council Mayor, or Vice Mayor, Kame and I met with you to talk about this topic. And I can't remember now what the vice mayor said, but it got me thinking that, um, we were talking about the cost of the shuttles, because they're electric. And I think you said they were 25% more expensive, then gas powered vehicles. You have to have more infrastructure, you have to figure out where to store them, where to charge them. Lots of complexity. And while I appreciate the fact that they're all electric, It got me thinking if that is a limiting factor to expanding the hours in the frequency, because it's the cost of the shuttles. Have we looked at if we expanded the hours in the frequency? If ridership increased substantially, would we have a greater reduction in our carbon emissions, because of the increased ridership, then we would from using electric vehicles. And I don't necessarily want to move away from electric vehicles, but that did get me thinking, how could we, you know, expand the hours in ridership with the funds that we might have available to us. And that was one option, and I was wondering if we had thought about that, um, at all.

[03:04:31] Staff Presenter Dawn: No, we have not done that type of analysis, but it is something, uh, is worth discussing, and eventually we've seen some direction from counsel on because, I believe I mentioned that MVGO is not running electric vehicles, and in fact, they went through an RFP process 3 years ago to choose a new shuttle operator and so on, and they, they asked for bids for both gas powered versus electric vehicles. And when the liquor vehicle service came in so much higher. It was one of the reasons they went with the gas powered, as well as the fact that there was no local infrastructure for storing and charging their shuttle vehicles. So I know that that is one of the key questions that we are going to face as this discussion of do we work on integrating these 2 shuttle systems. Must it become an all electric system versus are we open to maybe a combined electric and gas powered system and giving both ourselves and the TMA some flexibility as we study these options over the next 2 years of how do we get the biggest bang for the buck again in terms of the amount of service we can put on the road, generating that ridership, reducing that carbon footprint from increased ridership versus, as you're saying, focusing exclusively on electric vehicles. And the other trend to watch for is we fully expect the cost of electric vehicles and running electric service to go down over time. It just is going to take longer for, you know, the technology is still developing.

[03:06:04] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: So I feel like I'm very open to looking at the options. Um, because increasing the hours and the headway, I think, will increase ridership. I hope, hopefully quite dramatically. And so I want to see how we can get there. In terms of the other questions here. Um, I was interested in the on demand services. Um, I think it'll be interesting to see how the Cupertino pilot works and what we can learn from that. Um, I would like to make sure it's not one person, each time riding on demand, but it's a group of people. And I'm assuming they might be going to the transit center. I actually, uh, was not very interested in the VTA peak trippers, because I'm not, I had asked the question, how many people actually from Mountain View ride those? And I just, fundamentally, um, I guess I just, I fundamentally have issues with VTA. And I'm not sure they're the best agency to subsidize. And I'm definitely not interested in the TNC partnerships. We've had issues with them in the past, and I don't see that changing. And I think we can provide that, potentially, with the on demand services. Of the ones in number three. Um, I was looking mostly at the marketing and the customer information, because when you look at the survey results in the survey that we got late last year, one of the barriers for students to use transit was, they felt like it was the lack of information. And if that's one of the target populations, helping them have better information, more information on how to get around. I thought would be incredibly useful. And. I had also suggested that we perhaps look at just increasing the frequency during peak commute hours, in the morning and the evening. as another option. That's it.

[03:08:29] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you, Council member Ramirez.

[03:08:31] Councilmember Chris Clark: Thank you, Mayor. And just, uh, can we council member Clark, I'm grateful for staff's work on this? The report in the analysis was very helpful, and I'm gonna support the staff recommendation. And I'm also grateful to Google for sort of making possible this opportunity. And funding it, you know, providing us with enough time to sort of figure out how we want to maintain the operation of the shuttle. I remember being skeptical when the idea was 1st floated. But I'm happy to say that I was proven very wrong. So this is, it's very exciting to have this opportunity. I did have a couple of questions, though. Has staff determine whether a Title 6 analysis would be necessary if we are making changes to the routes?

[03:09:27] City Staff: That particular question, we're gonna need more time to research, and I think it keeps coming down to the same thing, which is, if, if the city has a shuttle system, does that necessarily make us a public transit operator, and, and we, we will have to look into the definitions, and also the other issue, question is, does that really only apply if you receive federal money? So it's sort of on our list of follow-up questions to investigate.

[03:09:56] Councilmember Chris Clark: Okay, thank you. And then, Mr. Chambers had brought up a question or a suggestion that we do an RFP for operators and not just necessarily look at the TMA. The staff have an opinion about that. Is there a reason why we wouldn't look at other operators and just move straight to the TMA or, um, whatever, you know, other ways of thinking about that question.

[03:10:22] City Staff: Well, there were two considerations as staff looked at this. First off, was the question, does Mountain View want to become a transit operator, and do we want to set up our own staff of transit planners and operations, and and become running the shuttle ourselves, which staff recommends that we not do that? And the other aspect that we're looking at is the fact that we do have this nonprofit organization that's already well knowledgeable and skilled in running a shuttle system, free fare, open for the public. That's our TMA, TMA. And if our overall goal potentially is to integrate these 2 shuttle systems and a single branding, then that leads itself automatically to thinking about working with the TMA. I will say a couple things. One is, if we enter into this partnership with the TMA, you know, we do have performance expectations with them and that they will operate the system as economically as possible while at the same time meeting our expectations. The TMA also uses good purchasing best practices. In about 2 years, they will be re-looking at their shuttle operations, and their practice is to do an RFP. to look at all the competitive pricing as well as the most qualified providers. And, um, you know, I envision that if we are a partner with the TMA related to community shuttle. integrating these shuttle services, and we are a member of the TMA. We do have a seat on the board. that we will be, you know, making sure this RFP process is done in a similar way that the city would do an RFP.

[03:12:06] Councilmember Chris Clark: Great, thank you. That's very helpful. Um, so just some sort of high level comments. Um, I also don't want to become a transit agency. So I think working with the TMA makes a lot of sense. And, uh, you've only solidified my, my, uh, um, my concurrence, I guess, that that would be a reasonable, uh, agency to sort of take control of, of shuttle operations. And I'm providing them the flexibility to, you know, do whatever they need to do to ensure the success of the route. And I like the idea of integrating the existing MVigo routes with the community shuttle and hopefully having the system that is accessible to all residents and remains free. But I think that it makes a lot of sense to me. The only the only longer term concern I have, and council member, Metachek's, um, comments sort of resonated with me. I don't want to subsidize BTA either. But a roundabout concern could be, you know, as we invest more in the shuttle, as the TMA shuttle operations become more robust, that could be, that could lead to VTA withdrawing further investment from Mountain View. You know, we already have a robust shuttle operation. We don't need to provide service to mountain view anymore. And then, in particular, the impact that may have on paratransit operations. So, I don't know, I don't have any helpful, you know, input to convey other than just, I want to be, you know, I guess, carefully monitoring what VTA may do in response to our decision. But beyond that, I'm comfortable with all of the staff recommendations. There really weren't any additional strategies I was interested in investigating. I think a lot of these, probably, we can work with the TMA to pursue, if there's interest, unless there's something that you think, you know, from staff's perspective, would have a meaningful impact on providing transit service to residents. There wasn't anything that really stood out, I guess. So appreciating staff capacity and resources. There's nothing that I'm really that enthusiastic about pursuing right now. Um, and I I don't have any other input beyond that. Thank you.

[03:14:32] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you, Counselor Hicks.

[03:14:37] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So, um, Council members, so far, have made a lot of my points, so I'll be short. Um, I, um, was happy to read the staff recommendations, because they were going in the same direction, I was thinking, as I read the report, only adding more substance. I'm, uh, would be particularly looking forward to eventually, um, adding service hours, adding more service hours, and maybe as council member Matachek said, even adding more in the mornings and evenings, when I think the use would be heaviest. Um, in particular, because, uh, one of the things at the top of my mind is that when, uh, when voters voted for measure P, one of the things, the thing that we were promising in that was a focus on traffic congestion, and so I think those early and late hours, I think we need to especially look through, uh, the steps we're taking here to make sure that we're addressing the things that we said we would. Let's see. Oh, I did have one question, which is the mobility wallet. I thought it was a great idea. I wondered how it would, how, um, lower income people who main, or end seniors who may not own cell phones, how they would, if you had ideas for them accessing it, maybe, I mean, I could, I'll let you speak to that, because I thought, I see various ways, but maybe you thought it through.

[03:16:12] City Staff: There. There are a number of cities and transit agencies around the country that have done this. And typically, they often do use a smartphone app, but they will also have some kind of a card or whatever. So residence can come in and get a card and use that also. So there's different ways of reaching different residents that might not have access to an app.

[03:16:37] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay, great. So there are other options. Um, and then, yeah, I think that, um, I actually was somewhat interested in the VTA, at least exploring the VTA Peak Trippers, and possibly, just because I know a lot of people who take those routes and thought it might be useful, but, um, rolling that into, you know, visiting that when we visit the comprehensive mobile strategy, maybe it will, you know, you explore that, and look at that all as one package, maybe I'll end up deciding it's not a good idea.

[03:17:13] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you, Council Vice Mayer.

[03:17:15] Vice Mayor Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Thank you, staff. Also want to echo the thanks to Google for this long partnership. In particular, the communication. I think that we will send a great job of updating council and giving us updates on the shuttle as it's progressed, and I appreciate that. And I think one of the things that came up at our council goal setting meeting in February, when the TMA came during public comment, is I'd love an opportunity for the TMA, to be able to be integrated in this shuttle discussion. So, whether, and I've expressed this to staff. So we can have this be the venue for those conversations. I think that would be really great, one, to maybe have more than 3 minutes if necessary so that the TMA can share with us, and especially given the stack staff recommendation and where in the direction we're heading in, I think could be, um, really helpful. Um, and I think as we were talking about in the future, the comprehensive modal plan. Um, it just, it makes sense to kind of make the umbrella as wide as possible as we're discussing, um, transportation and transportation, um, options and solutions in the city. And so as we're looking at the questions for number one, I do support staff's recommendations for the shuttle. For question number two, I'd like to add like item D, which is I'd like to include micromobility. I'm really interested in buy scooter shares. I know that's coming in Q4. Um, and how that might be able to be a viable option for the 1st less mile strategies. Um, and maybe the lessons learned from other cities and municipalities as they've rolled it out, um, for being a solution. Um, in terms of number three, I think one of the things that I reflected upon from the shuttle study in October was a lot of the usage comes from the zip code, um, that I live in, which is 94043, um, particularly with their seniors and our youth, and as we are talking about transportation, making sure we're, um, able to include access and equity into the transportation, um, discussion. And so I don't know if this necessarily falls under 3 or number four, but that's one of the things I've been thinking about. Um, um, For item three, I like the possibility of a mobility wallet, but as someone who's taking public transit exclusively, um, to commute to work, I think one of the things that is my, um, frustration can be, uh, the communication from the transit entity on what the hours are, if there's disruptions to service. Um, or holiday, and if you don't get those holiday hours for the job that you have. Um, you know, how can we create, um, reliable transit options, um, for people to use it as as a alternative to driving to work or getting to school or getting doing some of their errands? And so I think, you know, those, these comments might fall under D, but I think trying to find, whether that's social media or something or, you know, some place where we can reliably go as transit users or shuttle users to be able to find that information, I think, would be helpful. And under item number 4 kind of other comments, I think one of the most immediate things that the city can do, um, is do, um, The frequency of service, you know, being able to get those rides every 15 minutes, I think, is really critical. Um, and I think the expanded timelines, I think the comments about maybe nights and weekends, so people can take that. Perhaps they want to take that instead of a lifter Uber, as they want to go out. I think that having that option would be great and providing that free of cost, is important. And then at a later time, when appropriate, I would like to look at expanding the roots. One of the things that I was reflecting upon with the study was kind of VTAs change in service and kind of their continual changes that are happening there. Um, and how the city might be able to, um, create some some stop gaps and be more reliable than what's happening there in terms of, um, their service plan. Thank you.

[03:21:57] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. So I'll add my comments. And then we'll try to do a little summary tally. I appreciate staff's work on this issue. I'm very excited that we're here. This has been a long time in coming. Um, starting from my 1st year on council back in 07 was a discussion. Um, I appreciate Google support and coming on board. Um, and my, the year after I left the 1st time around. And then 5 years later, we are here. It's been great to see the increase in ridership. You know, I had always thought that, well, about the shuttle program. It's flexible, if it's frequent enough, and, you know, our city is only 12 square miles, it should be able to cover most of the city, and if we could get a robust system that is frequent and gets folks to where they need to go in a reasonable amount of time. It should help with ridership and trying to get cars off the road. So, I think the data is showing that. And so, I'm excited that we're really looking now at how we can expand the program. I support staff's recommendations. I think that's a great start. What I've heard of, I think we've all heard over the years is, you know, the writership. the, the, the seniors and the, the students, and um, when it's at 10 AM, it's hard for the students, or they, they frankly can't take, um, the shuttle to get to school. Um, and um, so to be able to expand it into the morning helps there. And then going a little later after five, to give folks a little time to maybe get out after work, or get home from work is helpful. So, um, I appreciate I think that's a great way to start. And understanding that that is a start. Um, in terms of 1st number 2 question. Um, so, I guess, my interest here has been, um, a few things, and I think, um, having a TMA operate, uh, the shuttle program is the right way to go. I've been interested in how we can integrate all the different shuttle programs we have in the city, you know, to as few as possible, that's more, again, integrated, and if that could, um, you know, create efficiencies and then expand the service. Um, that was my interest. And when we, you know, 1st talked about TMAs, the origins of TMAs, Um, you know, it was the, a model that used was in Emeryville, and they were, they ran this community shuttle. And so that was always my, um, I guess my, you know, understanding is where we would go. And so the TMA taking on, um, our shuttle, community shuttle makes sense if we can integrate it into MV Go. great. You know, I've heard from other, um, private organizations, companies, um, who are not interested in running their own transportation system either. Um, and for instance, uh, Lucille Packard runs one and they've said, you know, they don't want to be a transportation agency. How can they, they've been interested, I think, in seeing if we can combine efforts. So perhaps with if, with the TMA, that would be the option is if we could get more, you know, companies and so forth to join the TMA, they can, they can, uh, satisfy their needs through that, through our, um, the TMA and then help us expand our service. Um, I would say too, um, before we look at, you know, next steps, and one is being the, um, altering the routes. Um, I was hoping we could maybe talk with El Camino Hospital further. Um, I know it's mentioned in a staff report that that section is maybe redundant, but I don't know if it's because folks don't know about the shuttle service they provide, or I'm not sure if that's temporary, but I think we should definitely, um, discuss with them how we could, again, maybe partner up if we can. Um, And then the other interest for me has been the um, on-demand services. So I think I mentioned, I spent a day going to Sacramento with council member Rod Sings from Cupertino, and he told me all about their via on-demand shuttle program. And um, that the, that program or those shuttles go to the Sunnyvale Transit Center. So why not the Mountain View Transit Center? And he's been sending me their data of their ridership, and it seems to be doing quite well. So, you know, as we look at, I mean, I definitely want to focus on Mountain View first, but I think we should start looking more regionally. And I know I wasn't a part of the Manzanita talk, so I don't really know exactly what was said there, but, you know, if we're really starting to look at regional, maybe we start with some, you know, smaller partners or a few partners and see if we can slowly build up a regional system. So, um, their program is 18 months, I believe, at pilot programs. So my concern there is just timing. Like, I wouldn't want that to end and then, you know, a snot. have reached out to them. So if we could maybe begin discussions before they end their program, that would be great. Um, I am not interested in BTAP trippers. I was trying to find, I think, my colleagues had some questions about what the ridership on the 51 and 52 bus are, and I went online to try to find something, and this data is outdated, but it was from like 2015, 2016 transit plan, and their weekday service. I didn't, I brought the wrong laptop or iPad, but 51 was something like 1100, and then 52 was about 440 riders. And then in comparison, their best route is the 22 at over 11,000. So my concern is that, is that these are 2 routes that are not very well used at this time. And I just wonder, like, the viability of the right, these routes for BTA, as in general. And, um, to be frank, like, I feel like BTA should be helping to fund our transportation effort, not the other way around, to be a frank. And these routes do crossover, like one ghost, I think, dance, college, the other to foothills. So I would expect the other communities then to join up then if we really want to look at supporting these routes. So I don't think it should just be on Mountain View. Other, and then the TNCs, in light of the fact that they don't share the data, and we, you know, didn't have a partnership we were hoping to have with them and not really interested in pursuing that. The Via, actually the Cupertino shuttle, they do share data. So, um, you know, perhaps we can look at other, other, um, agencies. Um, I like the mobility wallet idea. Definitely, that's something, you know, if we can get to seamless payment. Um, I think that would be very helpful. Uh, customer information. I was asking, you know, how do you see, like, which, if you need to get on the bus and then get to VTA or get on Caltrain, looking at the timing, and, you know, the best routes to get wherever, I guess it's maybe Google Maps already has that. Um, I don't know if there's ways we need to improve that or just get the word out about how to plan your routes, but definitely that would be helpful. And then... The other things, just a few thoughts I had, um, down the road, my, I would like to look at shorter headways, so frequency, Um, I, you know, I've always learned in my transportation tutorials that shorter headways, um, are the way to get more ridership. So I definitely would be interested in looking at that down the road. Um, and then my thoughts in terms of like electric buses and so forth, and, um, you know, maybe staff has already looked at this, and I, I need to look at it. But, um, the Bay Area air quality management district that I sit on the board of has the TFCA funds. Um, I know 40% is distributed by BTA, but I believe 60% is actually distributed by Bachmed. And they did help fund the Cupertino via program. And my thought is, I'm wondering if maybe if it's the purchasing of the electric buses, and whatever they're charging the stations, if it's a one time cost, I wonder if we could actually apply for funds there. There's also like the light duty and the heavy duty vehicle, grants funds, and there's a lot of funds programs I've learned at Bachmed. And, um, you know, I'll go and ask staff if there might be some opportunities there. So to try to offset some of these costs. And then the other thought I had too, was Silicon Valley, clean energy. Since we've done all electric buildings, our next big areas, transportation. So maybe this is something that we should look at too in terms of starting a program. So, Just a lot of thoughts on this. Thanks for your patience, I think. I'm going to try to summarize. And then I may need some olive council members to do some hands up if, yeah, to make sure I have everybody's comments. But I think everyone was in support of the staff's recommendations. Um, And then in terms of number two, um, I only heard 2 folks interested in BTA Peak trippers. So maybe I can, can I get a hand show of hands on who's interested in 2 A? Anyway? Not anymore. Okay? Well, but there's some things I think folks may not want to be, like, interested in, so whatever we can eliminate is, I think, helps. So, to be, anyone interested on demand services, I am, when the on demand services, like the via shuttle, um... And this is just to explore... Yes. Yes. Yeah. So, to be anyone? When, three of us? Four? One, two, three, four. Okay. Uh, TNC partnerships? Anyone interested in that?

[03:33:38] Unknown Speaker: Can I just confirm the fourth council member for the... I think it was condiment.

[03:33:42] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Council member Hicks, not a check, vice mayor, and my son. Oh, you weren't interested? Okay, so it's just three, then?

[03:33:49] Unknown Speaker: I believe so.

[03:33:50] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay. The van? So it doesn't? It doesn't advance, yeah. Uh, TNC partnerships. Anybody interested in that? Yep. All right, number three, pricing A, free transfers to VTA routes. Anyone? Nope. Free fares on VTA routes in Mountain View? Anyone interested in that? Nope. Three, mobility wallet. I've heard a few folks. Four? Uh, marketing and customer information. I would... One, two, three. Just three, do you want it? Four. Okay. Um, and then are there other community shuttle service or operational options? I did hear, uh, frequency of service. Down the road? I was interested in that. Eventually, one, two, three, four, five, six. Uh, and then, um, what else did I hear? Oh, yes, that would be the frequency of services is the increased headways. Of hours? Expansion of hours, yes. Anyone interested in, so... I think beyond the seven to seven. So, eventually. Yes, and this will come back to us. Exactly, yes. So, one, two, three, four, five. I think everybody. I don't know what counts. He agrees with everything, I think. Anything else?

[03:35:30] Unknown Speaker: Do I have questions for you?

[03:35:31] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Sure. Oh, the chef?

[03:35:34] Unknown Speaker: Is VMT gonna be at all explored on this? The reduction. When you decide your route.

[03:35:46] Unknown Speaker: I'm not certain how we would analyze VMT in relation to looking at routes and service. We mostly focus on what could generate the best ridership, best served folks. If you did any kind of EMT analysis, it would be, you know, kind of some kind of survey where we found out how many people had a choice to use a car instead, what, you know, and how many miles did we displace of car travel with the shuttles and, But in terms of using VMT to make the decision on where to put the shuttle roots, how many hours to offer, that wouldn't necessarily be a metric we would apply.

[03:36:38] Unknown Speaker: If you're willing, um, I would like to make a request as staff.

[03:36:44] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Yes. Please.

[03:36:45] Unknown Speaker: Appreciate hearing very clearly that there were, you know, at least four members interested in looking further mobility wallet and marketing customer information. We did hear three on the on demand services. And even though that didn't meet the magic for, because of the fact that Cupertino is running this pilot. I suggest that it is worthwhile that we do talk to Cupertino. We keep an eye on how their pilot goes, and if it's looking successful, that we do explore it for Mountain View to see if we, you know, we could also see such a similar option, because it is one way to reach into a lot of our single family neighborhoods that do not have the densities to support a fixed route service, but could benefit from improved 1st mile connections to Caltrain.

[03:37:40] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Yes. Are council members open to that? I think you've convinced a few more. So that's on the list. Um, I know, oh, I smire, you mentioned micromobility, and I'm wondering if that'll be something covered in the multi-mold old plan.

[03:38:00] Unknown Speaker: Yes. Okay. And of course, as mentioned, we will still be looking to launch scooter share later this year. So is that sufficient?

[03:38:10] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I just wanted the comment noted. I think that was the more important part to me. I don't need the strawberry strawberry. Like comment noted.

[03:38:18] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: All right. Anything else from council members? Staff is that clear enough direction? Great. All right. And then that concludes this item. Thank you to everyone. We go on to item eight. Council staff committee reports, are there any council members with reports? Like smear?

[03:38:45] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So, I just wanted to talk about the census. So today, the county held an update on the senses and outreach efforts. Um, there'll be a census launch press conference on March 12th. So just wanted folks to know to save the date. because I know we aren't meeting for a couple weeks. And then, um, the other thing, um, that's been circulating is some communities, um, have been, um, adopting a census resolution. So one of the things that the, um, the state is trying to do it, and particularly the county is, um, trying to reach out to hard to count populations and trying to do whatever they can to get people to participate. And both council member Hicks and myself have been approached by some community members to look at adopting a similar resolution. So I look to our ICM, um, to maybe follow up with offline if my colleagues are amenable to potentially looking at that.

[03:39:56] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Just do a straw hand boat now. Sure. Yeah. So those, uh, council members interested in a resolution? Yes.

[03:40:06] Police Chief Max Bosel: It'd either be a resolution or you could just proclaim it if you want, but whatever, whatever works.

[03:40:10] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Whatever's most effective. I think that the idea is there's a specific language that the city would adopt about, you know, reiterating that your information is private, that it won't be shared, won't be shared with law enforcement. You know, I think that's,

[03:40:27] Councilmember John McAlister: but I do want to proclaim I do want to proclaim it as well.

[03:40:31] Unknown Speaker: The person next to you can proclaim whatever she wants.

[03:40:35] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Why don't we... I think I saw more than four hands. So why don't we plan on doing a resolution? Great. Thank you very much. Next council meeting. Consent calendar, yes. Just for you, Council member McAllister. Oh, any other reports from... Um, I think we have to do this week, uh, but we, several of us attended this joint venture state of the Valley conference. Um, Yes, uh, this city sponsored us, yes. Um, I thought Dan Rather was quite interesting and that was a trait to listen to him. Very insightful. Um, and then I just want to thank our interim city manager, Max Bazell, this is probably his last meeting as ICM. But thank you so much for stepping in during this time and for your enthusiasm and willingness to step in. We will be welcoming our new city manager. next week, Kimbra McCarthy, and there will be a public welcome reception on March 10th from 10 AM till noon at the Center for Performing Arts. All right. So that is open to the public. Please come and say hello to our new city manager, Cameron McCarthy. Um, and with that, is there a closed session right now?

[03:42:15] City Attorney Krishan Chopra: There is no closed session report tonight.

[03:42:17] Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Great. Then thank you. Our meeting is adjourned at 1010 and the next city council meeting will be held on Tuesday, March 17th, 2020 at 5.30 in the council chambers. Good evening.

• ← Previous
• Next →