June 11, 2024 Joint Meeting of Mountain View City Council, Shoreline Regional Park Community, MVCIFA

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Transcript

[00:02:52] Mayor Pat Showalter: All right, good evening, everybody. Thank you for joining us for our closed session. City Attorney Logue will make a closed session announcement, and then we will welcome public comment on the items listed for closed session. City Attorney Logue.

[00:03:06] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: Good evening. This is Jennifer Logue, city attorney for the city of Mountain View. There are two items on this evening's closed session agenda. Item 2.1 is a conference with real property negotiators, pursuant to government code section 54956.8. The property is 112 North Rangsdorf Avenue and 2312 Alma Avenue. The agency negotiators are Angela La Monica, Real Property Program Administrator, an acting public works director at Orango. The negotiating party is Zhang and Zao Hong, and Dao Dao Holdings, and under negotiation are price in terms of purchase. Item 2.2 is a conference with labor negotiators regarding labor unions, with service employee union, SCIU, local 521, the Eagles Association, the International Association of Firefighters, Local 1965, Unrepresented Fire Managers, unrepresented police managers, unrepresented DARP department heads, and unrepresented confidential employees pursuant to California government code section 54 4957.6 The agency designated representatives are assistant city manager, Arn Andrews, Human Resources Director, Maxine Gulo, Human Resources Manager, Lindsay Bishop, and Alison Hauk, of Sloan's Sakai, Young, and Wong, LLP. Thank you.

[00:04:38] Mayor Pat Showalter: Would any member of the public join us virtually or in person like to provide a public comment on the closed session items listed on tonight's agenda? I don't see anyone in person, and I don't see anyone online. Do you see anyone online, city clerk?

[00:04:54] City Clerk Heather Glaser: No?

[00:04:55] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay. Well, seeing none, then, um, we will recess to the Plaza Conference room, and for the closed session, and return to the council chambers at the close of the, to the close, to continue with the regular session. Thank you.

[00:05:48] Mayor Pat Showalter: Good evening, everyone. I'd like... I'd like to call this order. This meeting of the Mountain View City Council and the Shoreline Regional Park community, and the city of Mountain View Capital Improvements Financing Authority, to order. Please join me in the pledge of allegiance. City clerk, will you please take roll call?

[00:06:39] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Council member Abbe Koga? Council member Hicks?

[00:06:42] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Here.

[00:06:42] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Council member Ramirez.

[00:06:44] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Here.

[00:06:44] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Council member Ramos.

[00:06:45] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Here,

[00:06:46] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Vice Mayor Matachek,

[00:06:47] Vice Mayor Lisa Matichak: here,

[00:06:47] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Mayor Sholter,

[00:06:48] Mayor Pat Showalter: here.

[00:06:49] City Clerk Heather Glaser: You have a corn with council member, commit, absent.

[00:06:51] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you. All right, this evening we're going to start our meeting with some presentations. The first, these are presentations only, and the city council doesn't take any action on them at this time. Public comment will occur after the presentation items. If you would like to speak on these items in person. Please submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk now. So our first presentation is going to be on the Cal Train City partnerships ToolKit. We are happy to be joined this evening by Sam Sargent, the director of strategy and policy for TeCal Train. He's going to provide us update. Welcome.

[00:07:33] Sam Sargent: Thank you very much Mayor. It's wonderful to be here this evening, members of council. Before I get started, do I advance with a... No. Okay. Okay. wonderful. So tonight, I'm gonna give a quick update, 'cause I know you've got a long agenda ahead of you. On Caltrain electrification, but also our city partnerships program. Second slide, please. Next slide. So real quick, and first off, I just want to say thank you to both the council and to the people of Mountain View, because we are at a truly exciting moment in the life of this railroad. It's a railroad that's existed for 106 years. It's been a part of this community for, by my mark, 122 years, and we have completed, in essence, electrification, which is a dream of over a century long and has been in the works for, I don't need to tell everyone here for how long. So, you know, 2500 plus polls, all of our train sets delivered, first responders trains, the entire corridor energized, and we also appreciate the patience of all of our customers and community members over this past weekend, because we were shut down for the whole weekend to test our new schedule and confirm that our power system works, and I can tell you that it does. So, we are looking forward to a September 23rd start of revenue service this year. Next slide. We've done many electric train tours, and we're excited about all of the enthusiasm for this, and we're going to have still more to come, more celebrations in August and September. Next slide. And you've probably heard the benefits of electrification over and over, and I'll get very quickly into a couple of specific benefits for the city of Mountain View, but getting there faster, riding more and waiting less, new customer amenities on board, which is fantastic. Wi-Fi, smoother experience, outlets at every seat, digital onboard information, and accessible restrooms, and clean and green. At the end of the day, this is a sustainability project. This is good and clean for those onboard and offboard. Excellent. We've got fact sheets online that I would encourage members of council if you have a need for them and members of the community to look at, and they are community specific. So Caltrain.com slash service benefits. Next slide. And specifically here, on those fact sheets, you can see some of the benefits for the city of Mountain View in particular. And here you can see our decreased time between San Antonio Mountain View stations in San Francisco, but also a much quicker trip, or a slightly quicker trip to Palo Alto, as well as getting back to Deeradon. But the largest cost savings are on their way to San Francisco, which we're very excited about. Next slide? And testing. We know that many of you are aware of our testing. We've been doing it overnight for months now, and we also know that when we do overnight testing, that that is gonna cause our gates to come down. You may hear horns from time to time, and we, again, appreciate the patience of the communities along our corridor. We have completed all of these tests. They have been successful, and we are just finishing putting 1,000 miles onto each of these trains, which is required by both federal government, and to keep our warranty on these beautiful American built Swiss design Stabler trains. Next slide. Public outreach safety campaign, I was out here at Castro the other week. We are really trying to up people's awareness of these new trains because they are truly quiet, and we want to make sure that people stay very safe around them, especially as we get used to something different than the diesel that we've had out there for 40 years. Next slide. And Caltrain.com slash electrification for additional information. Next slide, please. So, what was agendaized? And this is really just an introduction of a topic, and I hope that I can come back and discuss this more with you in the coming months, because we have a lot to talk about here. So next slide, please. So Caltrain is in a state of growth, but it's not fast enough growth. It's in a state of recovery on both the writership and revenue side, but we are really looking at our toolbox inside of Caltrain to see what levers can we pull on the railroad side? I do think electrification is going to be a large driver of future, very near term ridership and revenue. But what are the other partnerships that we can engage in up and down the corridor and with our cities in particular, to try to keep growing ridership and recovering? Because, frankly, we've got one of the slowest recoveries in the region, and a lot of that is just due to the nature of work in our corridor. So what can we do to really move the needle? Next slide? As you all are probably aware, and this is certainly a large topic of discussion, both at the regional and in our three counties, worth of our three Caltrain counties, we are not back where we want to be in terms of ridership. And it's tough. We're in a very telework enabled environment. People's trip patterns have shifted, and we're trying to make sure that we can understand where folks are going, where they want to go, and better serve the commute and non-commute market. This has a very big impact on our bottom line, especially starting in fiscal year 26 and beyond. Next slide, please. So some of the things that we've controlled that we've really been trying to, uh, to implement, to move the needle. We've got a board adopted equity growth and recovery policy that's on the Caltrain website, I would encourage folks to look at that. It's under our business plan section. We revised our schedule, September, when we go into electrified service. We will have a schedule that I think will be far more intuitive. And I think most importantly, for many people, doubling of service on the weekends, because that has been our brightest spot, has been ridership on the weekends. And I think what's fantastic about that is that's when we tend to get families. We tend to get newcomers. We tend to get people who are riding Caltrain for the first time. So it's our first chance to make a first impression for many people, especially during giants and sharks games, and other events on the weekends, including farmers' markets. We've been coordinating closely with our regional partners. We've got our past forward program, which is a low income program, where we take some of our so-called leftover GoPass passes, and we're able to provide them to social service agencies to try to diversify our ridership base more than it may have been in the past. Improving our customer experience, fair promotions, including for families, and then I'm working internally to lead a task force to continue to grow our ridership through other methods. Ex slide? Next slide, please? Oh, there it is. Thank you. So, on the city partnership side. And this is something that I really hope to engage with city leadership, both in the staff and council level, is what can we do together to keep driving ridership? How can we work together to support downtown recoveries, although I know downtown Mountain View seems very recovered to me every time that I come here, which is great, but also trying to do what we can with employers to make sure that we can get more people into and out of our Caltrain cities, and also try to incentivize workers to return to the office where that makes sense. And if they do, try to keep the cost of that low by taking transit. And then, of course, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So we're working on a toolkit. We want to do this in partnership with our cities, and hope to continue this conversation in the coming months. Next slide, please. In some of the partnership models I touched on already, GoPass program, which has been our longstanding, very successful employer-based pass program, which includes cities as employers, transportation, demand management, development agreements, TMA work, station access. We're working on a large station access, plan and policy. So how can we pull people into our stations more easily, and also identify funding for those types of projects, which I know is a frequent topic of discussion between Caltrain and the city, which will have more specific conversations on in the coming months. And then transit oriented development, of course, which is well outside the perfume of Caltrain, but something that we certainly support. Next slide. So I know that that was at a high level, and I wanted to attempt to keep it fast, but in short, electrification is coming. It's essentially here. It's incredibly exciting. I just wanted to make you aware of this city toolkit concept that was discussed at our board meeting. Um, uh, director Abicoca and director Burt, uh, director Burt, I believe, may have been one of the 1st folks to bring it up last year, and it's something we just really want to pursue because we've got to find other levers to drive ridership and really create value for those on board and off board. So, with that, thank you for the time this evening.

[00:16:19] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay, so would any council members like to make comments? Council member Abbe Koca?

[00:16:29] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Thank you. I just want to thank, um, Mr. Sargent, for being here, and, um, it really is an exciting time. We're just about to see electrification happen in two months, three months or so, and it is also challenging time because we have lost a lot of writers. I believe that with electrification. We will see an increase in ridership, but definitely there's also a lot of opportunity to work together and revitalize the station areas. That's what I'm really excited to hopefully work on. So, just want to thank you for the presentation and lots to look forward to. So stay tuned. Thanks.

[00:17:09] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay. Oh anyone else? No. Okay, well, thank you very much, Mr. Sergeant. And also, I hope you will be sharing your presentation. It wasn't quite working on...

[00:17:21] Sam Sargent: Oh, yes, of course. I'll work with staff and make sure everyone has a copy as well as those links. Thank you.

[00:17:26] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay, thank you.

[00:17:27] Sam Sargent: Thank you very much, Mayor.

[00:17:36] Mayor Pat Showalter: All right, well, the next presentation is about immigrant heritage month. And I would like to ask Dirvana, Wokido, the chair of the Human Relations Commission, to accept the proclamation, and to join me at the lectern.

[00:18:08] Mayor Pat Showalter: Hello, great to see you.

[00:18:11] HRC Chair: Good to see you.

[00:18:17] Mayor Pat Showalter: On the side, so then I can see the audience. We have quite an audience tonight. So that's great. You know, as you know, we have a focus in Mountain View of being a community for all. And earlier today, we rose the pride flag. I think that's very indicative of the concept of a community for all. And then, right now, we're going to talk about the value that immigrants bring to our community. So, whereas generations of immigrants from every corner of the globe have built our country's economy and created the unique character of our nation, and whereas immigrants continue to grow businesses, innovate, strengthen our economy, and create American jobs in Mountain View. And whereas immigrants have provided the United States with unique social and cultural influence, fundamentally enriching the extraordinary character of our nation, whereas immigrants have been tireless leaders, not only in securing their own rights and access to equal equality, but also in having campaign to create a fairer and more just society for all Americans. And whereas, despite these countless contributions, the role of immigrants in building and enriching our nation has frequently been overlooked and undervalued throughout our history, and continuing to the present day. Now, therefore, I, Patricia Showalter, Mayor of the city of Mountain View, along with my colleagues on the city council, do hereby designate June 2024 as Immigrant Heritage Month. So thank you very much for being here. And, um, uh, it was a, we wanted to have Nirvana Com because of, uh, her special contributions to the community. She's from originally from Nigeria, but now she's from Mountain View, and she has been very, very active. She's the chair of the HRC, and the Human Resources Commission, and she is also the president of the Mauna Loba neighborhood association. So, she is very busy doing wonderful things to make our community richer. And thank you. We thank you for it.

[00:20:32] HRC Chair: Thank you so much. I thought I should just, you know, say a few words this time, because this is very important. Um, just to add to what the mayor has said, again, thank you for, um, you know, selecting me to receive this proclamation. I'm really excited about that is very important. As we know, you know, immigrants have always enriched the American society, you know, based on economy and culture, and in many countless ways. And since from earliest time to present, right, immigrants have always played this role in building the nation and advocating for democracy and the value and the identities that we all have, right? So, um, just the talents and the energy and the passion that every, in every facet of America, that immigrants um, have brought to the society. So I am so humbled, and I'm really proud to be receiving this. And as mayor said, you know, I'm born and raised in Nigeria, and coming here over 30 years ago. But now, resident of Mount TV for 22 years, I just want to share with you some of the ways that, you know, I've become part of, you know, the fabric of not just the country, but, again, locally here in Mountain View, where I am, of, like you said, the president of, you know, the Montaloma neighborhood, very vibrant and active neighborhood, and also part of, now the HRC chairperson. But I'm also part of the leadership mountain view. I don't know if you know about the Leadership Mountain View program. I'm also an, as we canceled there, and also an ambassador to the Chamber of Commerce. So yes, I am very busy. But again, what I'm trying to say is immigrants are not spectators, right? When you leave your country, you want to go to be better off, or to contribute to other countries, right? Where you want to make things better. So in this various ways that I contribute to this city, I'm very proud of. So this proclamation is also a reminder of our city to recognize immigrants and the contributions and the accomplishments that we all immigrants, or most of us, I would say, have brought in here. And so this city is a place where immigrants can thrive, and contribute to the mission, and also our culture, our diversity, but it shows more the acceptance that this city has for every immigrant, to be part of, to contribute, to thrive, and, you know, to feel accepted, to prosper, and to feel like you belong somewhere, say, again, I am so proud, and so humbled, and to thank the council, and I for this honor to receive this proclamation on behalf of every immigrant, and all their children, because it's immigrant heritage month. So that's where the heritage come, because some of us immigrated here, but our children are the heritage of our immigration. So thank you again.

[00:23:54] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay, would any council members like to make comments? No? It's hard to... Oh, Council member Hicks?

[00:24:05] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yeah. As everybody can probably tell from both the mayor's talk, and Nirvana's talking. Nirvana tends to show up here, there, and everywhere. And so... Thank you, Nirvana, again for taking a little time out of your evening and gracing us with your speech, and I expect to see you, you know, in coming weeks and months in your various roles.

[00:24:31] Mayor Pat Showalter: All right, so now, we're gonna move on to the consent calendar. But I understand before we do that. We need to have a short recess. Is that correct?

[00:24:41] Unknown Speaker: Yeah, but did you want to see if there was any public comment on these items first?

[00:24:44] Mayor Pat Showalter: Good point. Yes, is there any public comment on the two presentations? If so, please come forward. Seeing nobody rising? Okay. And there's no one on Zoom?

[00:24:59] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Um, you have two raised hands, but I'm not sure if it's for presentation items, or...

[00:25:05] Mayor Pat Showalter: Let me call them? Sorry, can you can you accept one of them?

[00:25:20] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Oh, Peter Cat. Yeah, it's probably, it could be Peter Katz.

[00:25:23] Mayor Pat Showalter: All right. Peter Katz, would you like to speak?

[00:25:30] Peter Katz: I would indeed. Thank you very much. Am I on?

[00:25:35] City Clerk Heather Glaser: You are. We can hear you.

[00:25:37] Peter Katz: Well, I just wanted to add the Chamber of Commerce's commendation and great gratitude for all the work that Nirvana has done on behalf of both Leadership Mountain View and on the Chamber of Commerce. We truly are a community in so many ways. And Nirvana, and her family. have just been a very, very dramatic part of that, and continue to be advocates, and ambassadors, not just for the chamber, but for all of Mountain View. And so we just want to express our thanks, and also look forward to seeing her in her many, many guys. So I yield the rest of my time. Thank you.

[00:26:22] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you. Okay, now I understand that we need to take a short recess, because the equipment needs to be restarted, so it works. Hopefully, it will work better. How long do you think this will take? All right, we can just sit here then. The next item will be the consent calendar, and if anybody would like to submit a blue card on the consent calendar. Now would be a good time to get up and get your blue card and fill it out.

[00:27:12] Unknown Speaker: Are you okay now? I have a beautiful picture of...

[00:29:32] Mayor Pat Showalter: Well, I'm not seeing anything on my little screen. Roger, yeah.

[00:30:05] Unknown Speaker: Technology is great when it works, right? so. Sometimes that's Sorry, Roger.

[00:30:46] Unknown Speaker: This is tonight. No? Do we need that to go on to... She can do the doom stuff. Okay, we could do it that way.

[00:31:05] Mayor Pat Showalter: All right. Okay. Can I go on? Come on.

[00:31:33] Mayor Pat Showalter: Um, All right. I know. Well, we seem to have it fixed except that my screen isn't to the right screen. So I'm just going to have to look at my neighbors, I think, for a little while, and we'll move on with the meeting, and hopefully this will get resolved. So we're going to move on to the consent calendar. That's item four. These items will be approved by one motion unless any member of the council wishes to pull an item for individual consideration. If an item is pulled from the consent calendar, it will be considered separately, following approval of the balance of the consent calendar. If you would like to speak on these items, or the next, oral communications on non agenda items in person, Please submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk now.

[00:32:33] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay, we now welcome deputy city manager, Kimberly Thomas, direct recommend a minor modification to item 4.4.

[00:32:41] Deputy City Manager Kimberly Thomas: Thank you. Staff is proposing a modification to the resolution in item 4.4 for the wording to be broadened, for the ability for CSA to use the one million grant funds for capital improvements to current and future CSA facilities, rather than focusing on the Sterling Road location. Steph is bringing this to your attention because we were not able to post this modification 24 hours in advance. So to ensure the public is aware of this recommended change, shown on screen, is the changes that are made. It was also provided for the council and for the record, the modified resolution. Shown here, you will see, three sets of changes. These are to the title, the recitals, and the resolved clauses. Oh, I hope you can see all that. And then we'll scroll down just to make sure it's all seen. And this all pertains to removing the sterlin location. Staff seeks a motion to adopt the resolution as amended and shown here, and that concludes staff's brief comments.

[00:33:53] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you very much. Are there any questions for staff related to this? No? Okay, good. All right. Would any member of the council, like to remove an item? All right. I see Vice Mayor Mattachek.

[00:34:13] Vice Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. I don't want to pull an item. I just want to register a no vote. on item 4.3. I was surprised to see that the CPC recommended removing a statement in there that, um, says that we oppose erosion of local control. I'm sorry, that we support. That what it says that we support. You removed it, that we oppose it. And I do oppose the erosion of local control. So I'm going to register a no vote on 4.3. Okay. And I would like to make a couple of comments as I often do. I don't want to pull these items, but I just would like to make some comments to bring them to people's attention. Item 4.4 is about the shelter crisis extension. And this is really an important resolution. It's so we can continue our safe parking program under the Santa Clara County's waiver. There was a meeting of all of the community based organizations this morning that serve as the ecosystem to support our unhoused residents. I want to thank everyone involved in all of these efforts to help provide these services. I think it's very much an important part of the fiber of Mountain View that we carry on with this program. And then, I also wanted to make a comment about 4.6. 4.6 is Cal recycle grant funding in Santa Clara County food recovery program. This is part of a great collaboration through the county's solid waste technical advisory committee, or TAC, and Joint Venture Silicon Valley. They make sure that food that would otherwise go to waste. This was already prepared food, like from restaurants, and often from restaurants, or catering events, and some of it's from grocery stores, that this food gets to the people who need it instead of the landfill. And this is a collaborative effort that's done all over the county, but we take a big part in. So I just wanted to say thank you for this effort. I really, it's very important. I know that, um, in discussions with, um, our staff and people who work at, uh, the community services agency, they have taught me that they're doing things to reduce food and security, is one of the things that actually helps prevent homelessness, because if people have to spend less money on food, that can spend more money on rent or other things. And then the other one I wanted to bring to everybody's attention. and give a special shout out to the public works group, is the Valley Water cost sharing agreement. This is, um, has been going on for, uh, we've been working on this for at least five years. So I want to give a huge thank you to staff for getting this tax allocation to us finally through the finish line. We are going to put this funding to really good work. One of the main things that's going to be used for is installing smart meters. And what these smart meters do is they enable you to see, and the city to see, on a real time basis, how water is being used. So if your system is leaking, then we can jump on that right away and get it taken care of. It's also really helpful, because when people know how much money they're using in real time, they can use that information to be better conservation, you know, to do better conservation. And it's really, really hard when you don't know how much water you've used until two months later, when you get your water bill. So this will be a huge improvement for that. And I want to thank the staff for moving forward with this. It's been something we've needed for a long time. Okay, so, um...

[00:38:22] Mayor Pat Showalter: Is there anyone? Oh, we have a speaker on Zoom. Devin Connolly?

[00:38:39] Devin Connolly: Good evening, Mayor Show Walter, and honorable council members. My name is Devin Connolly, and I'm an 18 year resident of Mountain View. I wanted to share my support tonight for item 4.4 recommendation one. Specifically the one time homeless services agreements. These safe parking sites have served Mountain View Wisman school district students and families when they are in dire need. The homeless student population in the school district has jumped in the last 5 years, from 175 students in the 2019 2020 school year, to 333 students last year. This year, approximately 20% of the students enrolled at Castro elementary school are homeless. Having a safe place to spend the night, that is partnered with case management to help families find stable housing, is an important piece of the puzzle in supporting these children. Thank you for supporting the services agreement.

[00:39:32] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you. And we have we have another speaker on Zoom, Albert Jeans.

[00:39:45] Albert James: Hi, good evening. It's Albert James, the real one.

[00:39:49] Mayor Pat Showalter: Welcome.

[00:39:50] Albert James: Reiterate the comments made by my friend Joel Dean about 4.5, the trip cap report. Um, yeah, it looks like, you know, numbers really haven't rebounded yet from pre-COVID levels. So why is it that when I went out to Shoreline this morning around 9 o'clock, traffic was backed up all the way to the Safeway? And the reason is not because there are more cars than you think going to shrines, because of the traffic signals, particularly the one at pair, is not set correctly. In fact, it's now sort of freewheeling and not even adhering to the 2.5 minute cycle time that all the other lights on Shoreline, uh, are bound to, because of that, that signal is completely unsynchronized. And you can imagine the chaos that causes, you know, people, cars that are supposed to go through it are suddenly stopped and that backs up all the way up the pipeline. Belt both on the shoreline and on the 101 off ramp on 101 and 85. So, yeah, we're not sure why. I mean, the signals were working correctly at one point earlier this year. And then for some reason they were changed and now we have chaos there again. So it's not because of traffic numbers gone up. It's just because the signals are not set correctly. And I hope that somebody in the city can address this quickly because a lot of people are wasting a lot of time and burning a lot of gas, waiting for the lights to change there. Thank you very much.

[00:41:15] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you, Albert, and thank you for bringing this to our attention. Okay? Anyone else on Zoom? No? Okay. So that brings our, um, uh, consent calendar discussion to an end and we have a, um, no? I'm sorry, I can't I can't see it. Ah, all right. Well, we have council member Ramirez.

[00:41:39] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. I'll move to approve the consent calendar, including 4.1 minutes as amended, because there were some corrections. Item 4.2, adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View, calling a general municipal election for the purpose of electing four members of the city council, requesting the board of supervisors to authorize the registrar of voters to contract for election services, authorizing the city clerk to contract with the county of Santa Clara, pertaining to services to be performed by the county in connection with the general municipal election to be held on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, and related actions to be read entitled only for the reading waived. And adopt a resolution of the city council, the city of Mountain View, adopting a 200 word maximum for a candidate's statement of qualifications and charging each candidate for a fixed share of costs for the printing, handling, translating, and mailing of the general for the general election municipal election to be held on Tuesday, November 5th, 2024, to be read entitled only for the reading waived. Item 4.3, adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View, amending city council policy, A 16, positions on ballot measures and legislative advocacy to be read entitled only, further reading waived, with the no vote registered. 4.4. Adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View, finding that adoption of this resolution, and the actions taken herein are exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, and authorizing the city manager, or their designate to, one. Amend the lease agreement with the county of Santa Clara County for safe parking at Shoreline Ampitheater Lot B to extend the term through June 30, 2025, to amend the lease agreement with Terabella 2, LLC, for safe parking at 1020 Terabella Avenue, to extend the term through December 31st, 2024. Three, amend the sub lease with the county for safe parking at 1020 Terabella Avenue to extend the term through December 31st, 2024, and update the required transition plan, and four, amend the lease agreement with the county for safe parking at 87 East Evelyn Avenue to extend the term through June 30th, 2026, and add a required transition plan to be read entitled only for the reading waived, and adopt a resolution of the city council, the city of Mountain View authorizing the city manager, or their designate to execute fiscal year 20, to 25 funding agreements with the Community Services Agency of Mountain View, Los Altos, and Los Altos Hills, for housing and related services, in the amount not to exceed $17,000, and the County of Santa Clara for homeless prevention services, and programs, in an amount not to exceed $825,000 to be read entitled only further reading waived, and adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View as amended, recognizing the Community Services Agency of Mountain View, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, CSA, as a resource hub, for the unhoused, and unstably housed, and awarding a grant in the amount of $1 million for capital improvements to current and future CSA facilities to be read on title only for the reading wave.

[00:44:38] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you very much for all that reading. Council member Ramirez, and I think we have a 2nd from Council member Abbe Koka. Do you want to make any comments?

[00:44:46] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Actually, yes, um, the secondary council member Hicks, I just wanted to, and I'm sorry, apologize for the delay. I was having trouble getting on the agenda. Getting the agenda, but I also did one at register a no vote on item 4.3. For similar reasons, as the vice mayor. Thank you.

[00:45:10] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay, and, um, we have a 2nd from, uh, council member Hicks. So, we have a, we have a, a motion, and a 2nd, and I don't see any names for any more comments, so it's time to vote. I don't think I'm going to be, I think we're going to have to do a hand vote. Or should we do a roll call? Clerk...

[00:45:39] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Whatever your preferences, Mayor, you want roll call?

[00:45:43] Mayor Pat Showalter: Um, sure. Yeah.

[00:45:48] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Council member Ramirez?

[00:45:50] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Yes.

[00:45:51] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Council member Hicks?

[00:45:52] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yes.

[00:45:53] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Can't remember Abby Koga.

[00:45:54] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Aye.

[00:45:55] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Council member Kamei?

[00:45:56] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Yes.

[00:45:57] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Hans member Ramos?

[00:45:58] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Yes.

[00:45:58] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Vice Mayor Matachek?

[00:46:00] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Yes.

[00:46:00] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Mayor Shalalter?

[00:46:01] Mayor Pat Showalter: Yes.

[00:46:02] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Motion carries unanimously.

[00:46:04] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you. Great. All right, so now we can move on to oral communications. This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address a council on any matter that is not on the agenda. Speakers are allowed to speak on any topic within the city council's subject matter jurisdiction for up to three minutes during this section. State law prohibits the council from acting on non agenda items. If you would like to speak on this item or the next item in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk now. Can I see a show of hands of how many people will be speaking? Thank you. If any member of the public joining us virtually would like to comment, please click on the raised hand button in Zoom. We will take in person speakers first, and each speaker will get one and a half minutes. So I think, uh, given that I don't, you have the speaker cards, you will need to call people up.

[00:47:09] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you. Michael Meredith.

[00:47:26] Michael Meredith: I live in Mountain View. Half of the six unit condo project I live in is available illegally is short term rentals on Airbnb. They're illegal because the CC&Rs for that condo project state, and I quote, each unit shall be used as a residence for a single family and for no other purpose, unquote. This is a condo project, which features dry rotted balconies and arbors, which could collapse in a minor, but local earthquake, tens of trip hazards, instances of substandard lighting and pedestrian walkways. It's one thing to live in a building with problems, and another to be a hotel guest arriving at night and groping around in the darkness for a realtor's combination lockbox. This has been going on under the city's web crawling radar for over a year. I've complained to the insurance company, and the insurance company has dropped the property, and there's no longer liability coverage as required by state law on this property. Now, I realize that STRs are a tough problem throughout the state. And I know that one chapter 44 of the municipal ordinance was enacted in 2018 SDRs and multi tenant settings, such as condominiums and apartments, were not anticipated. I'm just concerned that having laws that are too labor intensive to be enforceable are, such as chapter 44 of the municipal ordinances at this point, are really reducing public safety, limiting availability.

[00:49:08] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you. John Castleberry. Welcome, John.

[00:49:23] John Castleberry: Hello, all, as you, I've heard my name is Jean Castleberry, and I'm proud to be on the executive board of the City of Mountain Views, City Employees Union, local, uh, SA Local 521. I'm here tonight to ask our city council, grant our hard-working frontline employees of SCIU and the Eagles a fair contract. We represent everyone from our 911 dispatchers like me who work 247, 365 days a year in a chronically short staff center. So the employees here at City Hall, implementing constantly changing programs to serve the most needy. To our public works employees who do backbreaking labor every day to maintain our city to be such an amazing place to live and work. All we are asking is that we be given the same annual raise as employees and police and fire, whether you label it cola or equity or however, the city desires. Our employees are among the lowest paid in the city. Many of them struggling to make it day to day. Each year, we see articles from the Mountain View voice about how Mountain View is the most expensive city to rent in. Each year we see the cost of living in the Bay Area rice so steeply. Our city is so good at caring for the less fortunate, and we are asking you, our elected representatives, to give our employees the same treatment and respect to show so many others. Many of us, including myself, love working in Mountain View, and are simply asking, we be given the same respect as our police and fire and recognition of the high cost of living in Mountain View. Thank you for your service to our city, and I hope you humbly consider our request. Thank you.

[00:50:45] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you. Next speaker. Victor Citello. Welcome, Victor.

[00:50:53] Victor Sotello: Thank you. My name is Victor Sotello. I'm in the streets department. I've been working for, uh, Mountain View for 24 years, and, uh, in those 24 years, I have interview Lucas and Lisa, uh, to nominate them to be sitting on those chairs. I don't know if you guys remember my face, but all I'm asking is for fair wages for everyone.

[00:51:35] Unknown Speaker: Conclude.

[00:51:36] Victor Sotello: Yes, sir.

[00:51:38] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you. Next speaker? Roxanne Rutherford? Who are the next two, good to allow people to queue up? Mary, how and Eric Savage? Good. Welcome.

[00:51:51] Roxanne Rutherford: Good afternoon, Madam Mayor. Honorable counsel. As I pondered about this storm we're in the midst of, it caused me to speak to my parents, my father and my mother, my father, who was a, and still as an elder in the church, and my mom, who's a local politician, being the mayor of East Palo Alto on two occasions. While my mother served as mayor, she was also a forefront and establishing East Palo Alto as becoming a city. And my father was by her side, and I was a child at the time. Now, as an adult, I have, have had to come to my parents to negotiating compromise with them, and I feel like I'm in front of my parents now. So I'll speak to you the way that God directs me to speak to my parents humbly. And I asked that he let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable on his sight. It has always been a dream of mine for the world to live in peace, living together in unity, and one accord, with the ability to live without worry and anxiety, which creates depression. Before I allow my thoughts to get the best of me, my Lord reminds me of my history, and my strong urge, and desire to feed my own cubs. And protect my parents, and grandmother, who is currently 93 years old. It makes me think and reflect on the life of my grandfather, who, reluctantly, escaped the South in 1961, headed to California to gain an equitable life of inclusion with our newfound friends. As a result, a new generation of children, my brothers and sisters became...

[00:54:38] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Next, speaker.

[00:54:43] Meikau: I finally come to my first council meeting, and my name is Meikau, and I walk for the city of Mountain View, IT Department. Um, I'm here just to support the Eagles um, bargaining unit and SCIU. Thank you very much. Does it?

[00:55:02] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you. Eric Savage, followed by Tripp, Travis, Lilakano.

[00:55:11] Eric Savage: I am Eric Savage. I am here also as a part of the city of Mountain View IT Department. I am here as an eagle, and I am proud to support my bargaining unit. Thank you.

[00:55:23] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you. After Travis is Sean Mooney?

[00:55:33] Travis Liacano: Good evening, counsel. My name is Travis Liacano, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak today. I'm here to share my personal experience regarding the rising cost of living in the Bay Area and how it packs my life. As someone who dreams of living in Mountain View, I have found it incredibly challenging to make it this dream of reality, do the high cost of living. Despite working hard, I'm unable to afford housing in mountain view. To make ends meet, I currently am holding down 2 jobs. This requires me to work between 60 and 70 hours a week. It's exhausting. me no time for anything else. But it's a necessity to cover my basic needs and expenses. This rising cost of living in the Bay Area is putting immense pressure on the individuals like me. It's not just about paying bills or rent is about quality of life. The ability to save for the future and have time to enjoy work or beyond work. An increase in cost of living adjusts would provide much needed relief. It would allow people like me to reduce the number of hours worked, spend time with our families, live healthier lives, more balanced lives, and would help us move closer to the communities where we work, reducing commuting times and cost. In conclusion, I urge counsel the real life impacts of the cost of living, residents like me. A meaningful increase would make a significant difference to our lives, helping us not just to survive, but to thrive in this beautiful region. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

[00:57:07] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Sean followed by Ed, followed by Raquel.

[00:57:10] Sean Mooney: Thank you all for your time, and it's a privilege to be here tonight. My name is Sean Mooney. I've had the privilege and honor of being a fleet equipment mechanic here for seven years now. I'm also very privileged to call Mountain View home, and I was born at El Camino Hospital. just down the road. Now, the unfortunate part of calling Mountain View Home is the cost of living. A one bedroom apartment averages about 2,500 to 4,500 here. As you know, just going to the grocery store, filling your car with gas, charging your EV vehicle. Every time we do it, especially the last few years, it's getting more and more expensive to do so. Our last few contracts, unfortunately, have not kept up with the cost of living, and therefore, it is becoming increasingly difficult for myself to live where I have always called home, as well as my brothers and sisters here behind us. We take a tremendous amount of privilege and pride in what we do. Speaking personally, it's because it's not just our community, which is so beautiful, but it's my community. When we go outside, we see the best parks in the peninsula. Our streets are clean, our medians are clean, and that's all because of the pride that we all show here. So we are asking the city to return and show pride in us by giving us a fair contract.

[00:58:25] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you. Let's hold your applause to the end, please, so we can get everybody to speak. Who's the next speaker? And followed by Raquel, followed by Carlos. Thank you. Welcome, Ed.

[00:58:46] Ed Pereira: Good evening. Good evening, council members. Thank you for having us here tonight. My name's Ed Pereira. I'm a seven year employee of the city in the Fleet Services Department, and we're basically here tonight. Um, to, to get a, a fair cost living adjustment in our latest contract that expires this year. We've historically fallen behind the other bargaining units, despite being, on average, the lowest paid bargaining unit, and we all work very hard for the city. We love our jobs. We're happy to be here. And all we are, all we're asking for is a fair contract that matches what the other bargaining units have teed on recently. Thank you.

[00:59:42] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you. Raquel followed by Carlos, followed by Garrett.

[00:59:50] Raquel Guerrero: Mayor and vice mayor and council members. My name is Raquel Guerrero. And I'm here today to appeal to you and to ask you for your assistance in your help, your empathy in supporting us with a fair contract. Thank you.

[01:00:13] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you. Next speaker. Carlos, followed by Garrett, followed by Alicia.

[01:00:19] Carlos: Good evening, counsel. My name is Carlos. I've been here for eight years. I started off on streets. I went to water, and I'm in utilities, and, um, I commute every day from San Lorenzo, um, because that's where I can afford a home with my family. And I have a lot, you know, little ones, older ones, and as they get older, their knees and their wants are more expensive. And, um, we're asking here for a fair contract, not just for us, but also for our families. And I support my union, my coworkers, and I just want you guys to, you know, give us a fair contract, not just for us, but for our families. Thank you.

[01:01:07] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you. Next speaker. Garrett followed by Lacia, followed by Lisbeth.

[01:01:15] Garrett: Good evening, cancel. My name's Garrett. Uh, I work, uh, utility systems, and I'm just up here to show you that I'm supporting my bargaining unit, and hopefully you guys can get us a fair contract. We really appreciate that. Thank you.

[01:01:29] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you. Next speaker.

[01:01:34] Alicia Barros: Hi, my name's Alicia Barros, I work in the building department, and I'm here to support my union, um, and ask you guys for a fair contract. Thank you.

[01:01:44] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thanks, Beth, followed by Jim, followed by Tony. All right.

[01:01:49] Lisbeth Kaliana: Hello, good evening. My name is Lisbeth Kaliana, I'm with the building division, and I'm just here tonight to say I support my union, and I'm asking for a fair contract. Thank you.

[01:02:03] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Next speaker? Jim and Tony, then Juan. Welcome, Jim.

[01:02:09] Jim Peterson: Good evening. Um, my name's Jim Peterson. Um, I'm a saying you're building inspector, and, uh, community development. Worked here for coming up on 10 years. Um, and, uh, I do appreciate my time in Mountain View, and, um, you know, I have many, uh, professional accolades that, uh, I've had a lot of sport with, and, um, I really would like to finish my career in Mountain View. I got a few more years to go, like 15, 18. But this has been a special place, and it's a bit of a commute, you know, from Santa Cruz to here. And I'm here to support my bargaining unit, and, really, I'm here for all the people that were able to make it tonight. And for my wife, my four children, and our family. And so, I thank you very much.

[01:02:58] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you.

[01:02:59] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Next speaker. Tony, then Juan, then Shannon. Welcome, Tony.

[01:03:04] Tony Racquanelli: Thank you. Thank you for having us tonight. My name's Tony Racquanelli. I've been with the city of Mountain View for about eight years now. I'm one of the senior building inspectors as well. And, um, just kind of up here to support my bargaining group, and, uh, say that it's been a great experience so far working here. And with 30 years left until my retirement, I hope to hope to make Mountain View my forever home. Um, so that's why we're here today, um, hoping for a fair, um, fair equal contract. Thank you.

[01:03:38] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you. Yes, next time. Juan, then Shannon. Welcome one.

[01:03:48] Juan Cortez: Hello, thank you. My name is Juan Cortez. I work for the Street Department. I've been working for the city for the past nine years, a little way over. I'm here to support my union and my coworkers. Um, we're just looking for a fair wages, uh, for a contract, and, uh, so we can feed our families, and, uh, as you know, uh, economy. It's doing well, but everything is just cost of living is just outrageous. Uh, so we're looking for, to be just fair with us. And, um, trust me, everybody here takes pride on their work, and uh, we're just gonna continue doing our job. Thank you.

[01:04:28] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you. Bye now, speakers, Shannon. You're Shannon? Welcome.

[01:04:44] Shannon: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Wow, this is, uh, didn't know this is gonna be so emotional, but it is, um... I worked for the city of Mountain View for... I can't believe it, 24 years. I remember the day I started. How many people that work for the city of Mountain View live in Mountain View? So a few people. Rent or do you own? Rent, own, few owners. So as you've heard a lot tonight, about the affordability of even living in Mountain View, it's impossible for pretty much all of us. And I know that we all love Mountain View. We love working in Mountain View. We love maintaining the parks and the roadways and everything else. So, uh, um, I'm here for the same reason, just to ask for a fair contract, and uh, consider our needs also, um, so we appreciate all of you and enjoy working and making Mountain View a beautiful place. So, thank you.

[01:05:57] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you. Are there any speakers on Zoom? Oh, okay. All right. Well, then, that brings us to the end of our oral communication section, and we are going to take a 10 minute recess, again, for technical issues. So. Hopefully that will resolve it. Thank you so much for coming.

[01:11:25] Mayor Pat Showalter: All right. Well, I'm going to bring this meeting back to order. It seems like, at least for the moment, we have our technical difficulty solved. So, we're going to move on to item six, the study session. 6.1 is a holistic citywide review of street parking regulations. The purpose of this study session is to provide an overview of existing city parking regulations and obtain council feedback on the findings and recommendations from the review. Senior traffic engineer, Carla Ochoa, and acting city manager, community development director, Don Cameron, will present the item. Anytime you're ready.

[01:12:17] Senior Traffic Engineer Carla Ochoa: Good evening, mayor and vice mayor and council members. My name is Carlo Cho. A senior traffic engineer in Public Works, and I'm joined by Don Cameron. Acting assistant city manager and community development director, and we're here to provide an overview of existing street parking regulations and receive feedback on our findings and recommendations. As part of the 202325 council work plan development council had adopted a priority 8 project to do a holistic city wide review of street parking regulations. In advance of this study session, Stab has started to, um, field verified the postage street regulations and summarize the parking provisions that are in our municipal code. The draft maps and the summary are in the attachments to the council memo. To provide some context on the use of parking regulations. First, we want to provide some background on public right away. Generally, the public right away encompasses the roadway, the sidewalk, and often extends behind the sidewalk as well. And within this right away, we provide space for vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians to travel, as well as some public amenities that can include trash cans, bus benches, landscape, or street lighting. Underground, the right away often has utilities, such as water, sewer, electrical, and telecommunications, and when right away space available, We also provide street parking for public use. Parking regulations are implemented for a variety of reasons, including public safety to provide access to fire hydrants, or in advance of crosswalks, to setback parking and improve visibility of pedestrians, or at corners to allow for safe maneuvers at intersections. We also use them to encourage vehicle turnover to support nearby land uses, to support maintenance or construction of utilities, or even to allow for large public events, such as a wine art and wine festival, or the holiday tree lighting. We also use parking regulations to meet state and federal guidelines, especially those related to accessible parking where parking stores are marked. And parking and regulations also allow us to accommodate multimodal improvements, such as bus stops and bike lanes. Parking provisions begin with the California vehicle code, which establishes statewide restrictions prohibiting prohibiting parking within 15 feet of a hydrant is an example of one and also not parking while blocking a curb ramp. The CBC also enables local jurisdictions to set our own regulations through our local code. The MountView city code includes citywide provisions such as no parking, of vehicles that discharge sewage, and no parking, of commercial vehicles, over 5 tons in residential areas. The code also enables council and the city traffic engineer to establish site-specific restrictions. Council, for example, can establish time limit parking and overnight parking restrictions. The city traffic engineer can eliminate parking if it's expected to create a safety hazard or loading zones in business districts. There are several types of parking restrictions, no parking, no stopping and red zones are an example. For instance, the image is from downtown where we use red tons to setback parking in advance of the crosswalks along the pedestrian mall. Parking restrictions can also be set for specific days and times. We have these types of regulations around some school areas where school parking or traffic are concerned. Loading zones can be used in business districts to allow curbside loading of passengers and materials in an effort to reduce double parking. And parking can also be restricted to specific types of vehicles, such as a 5 time limit of commercial vehicles. Time limit regulations can be from a few minutes to several hours, and the time is typically set to support nearby land uses. The blue zones are established near parks or public buildings to provide accessible parking, but we do have some blue zones, also established in front of single family homes to accommodate resonance with disabilities. Temporary parking stones are set for construction, maintenance, or special events. And last but not least, the CBC does not require the marking of several of the statewide regulations, but sometimes we mark the parking restrictions to emphasize where vehicles cannot park. An example is fire hydrants, when these are not readily apparent to the motors, the red zone can be painted to let drivers know they cannot park at this location. The city also has a residential parking permit, RPP program. That's within the city code. The RPP is the goal is to provide a relief for residential neighborhoods from overflow parking from adjacent commercial, transit, school or other non-residential uses. The program is initiated by resident petition or by council. It includes qualifying criteria and permit fees. The RPP streets would have time limits where the permit would exempt the vehicle from the posted time limits, but it does not reserve or guarantee any parking. There are no existing RPP posted zones in the city, and council has already provided some direction and feedback for modifying the petition postcard and feed requirements of the program. In an ideal scenario, we would have um, a balance between the street parking supply and the parking demand. However, we're seeing trends where the street parking capacity will be reduced and the demand for street parking may increase. For instance, purposing the existing right away to allocate for complete green streets improvements, frequently requires that we either minimize or reduce parking, or eliminate or reduce parking, while the reduction or elimination of on-site parking can lead to significant increase in the number of vehicles seeking street parking. These trends will create a greater imbalance between the parking and supply, parking, supply and demand. The state frequently amends the CVC. This includes the parking provisions, AB 413, is a state, new state legislation that went into effect earlier this year, and it prohibits the parking within 20 feet of the approach side of a marked or unmarked crosswalk, and we can start issuing citations as early as January 2025. Generally, we found that the existing code provides tools to that can be used for safety or parking management. It also has several outdated or redundant regulations that overlap with CBC. And well, the city code does include regulations for, uh, the restriction of vehicles of 5 tons, uh, it doesn't have specific provisions to the use for business purposes or for storage. Additionally, the RPP hasn't been updated since 2017, and now that we're seeing potential future impacts, restructuring the program may be warranted. And based on the key findings, staff recommends completing the field verification of the existing posted street regulations and updating council resolutions as needed. And also updating the city code to remove outdated regulations specifically those that are overlapping with CBC. With the current workloads, we also recommend that these be a lower priority test to be completed as time permits, with the target dates as shown. Therefore, we ask council, if they have any feedback on the recommended approach for updating the resolutions or the city code. Staff also recommends a comprehensive review of the RPP program to determine what changes can be warranted, to address new parking challenges. Key scope elements are proposed in the staff memo. If supportive, staff will return to council in the fall for budget allocation to retain a consultant to assist with the project. So there, we ask council if they support the comprehensive review of potential new approaches in the RPP program. And if so, do you have any feedback on the scope of work? And in addition to the 1st 2 questions, we also ask if counsel wishes for staff to conduct any further review of the on-street parking regulations. Thank you. That concludes my presentation.

[01:21:35] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you. Okay. Since it's a study session, we start with public input. So if any member of the public, um, joining us virtually or in person would like to comment, um, they may do so. If you are here in the chambers, please submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk, and if you are on Zoom, please raise your hand using the, um, click on the raised hand button. So, I see. I don't see anybody in the chambers, but I do see two virtual speakers. First one is Robert Cox. And each speaker will have three minutes.

[01:22:25] Robert Cox: Can you hear me?

[01:22:26] Unknown Speaker: Yes, we can.

[01:22:28] Robert Cox: Okay, mayor, show alter, vice mayor, Mattachek and members of the Mountain View City Council. Thank you for the opportunity comment on the holistic citywide review parking regulations. While I am the co-chair of the downtown residential parking subcommittee of the Old Mountain View Neighborhood Association. I'm writing to you as private residence rather than in my capacity as co-chair of the subcommittee. We have appreciated that in the past, staff included our council approved parking subcommittee, and its outreach efforts before presenting parking to council. We would appreciate being included in further outreach on this item. I've already written you a letter on the topic, so I'll just hit the highlights. Number one, please reopen discussion on the residential parking permit program. This program, although it has been around since 2016 and amended once, has failed to produce any permit areas even in the areas where parking is tight. Other cities like Sunnyvale near us do have zones, particularly near public transit. number two. Please let our residents and our visitors know that parking in front of driveways, even their own, and part and in, In red zones, partially or fully is not appropriate. Red zones on my street. You have fire trucks, a place to park. If they need to use the fire hydrants, parking in front of driveways when driveways are next to each other, diminishes driver visibility for people trying to get onto the street. Number three. Please find a place or practice for private delivery vehicles so that they stop parking in the middle of our public streets, particularly Houghton, Villa, and Dana. A neighbor of mine lost his car slide. We were trying to get around an Amazon delivery truck sitting in the middle of a street. Number four, please let people know that placing a pods for days on a heavenly parked street is a parking violation. Thanks for listening to my concerns. Our parking subcommittee is very interested in continuing our dialogue with the council and staff on these parking issues. I yield my time.

[01:24:31] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you, Mr. Cox. Next one is Silja Pod Pamer. Sorry, without butchering your name. Welcome.

[01:24:41] Silja Pod Pamer: Thank you. Mine's just a brief comment. I noticed the site on temporary parking restrictions, and I would ask if, um, that gets looked at that we consider adding a language that prevents the no parking, a frame signs from being obstructing sidewalks. Right now, they'll put them up days before the no parking is enforced, which means that there is, like, sometimes up to a week of the sidewalk being completely unlockable. It's about parking. It's not about walking. So please put them in the parking spaces that they apply to, or find some way that doesn't obstruct either. Thank you so much for your time.

[01:25:20] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you. Um, so, with that, I'm going to bring it back to council, with an opportunity to ask questions and then um, discuss and provide feedback. So first, let's start with council questions. Who would like to ask some questions? Council member Hicks.

[01:25:48] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So, this is a question, I guess, about the RPP, or maybe not about it. Um, in some cities, I've seen residential, I don't know whether they're called residential parking permit programs, but time limited parking programs where the residents get free parking permits, but they're not resident initiated. So, for example, when I have family in Boulder and Golden, Colorado, and in places near restaurants, and so forth, there's three or four hour limited parking, and the residents have permits, it was the city that decided they needed that program in that area. I just want to be clear, because when we make comments, I will be making a comment on this. But I want to be clear that we don't have that at this point here. We have time limited parking, but there are no, for, if there are residents in that area, there's, as far as I know, there's no free parking permits for residents in those time limited areas. Am I right? Or is there something I don't know about?

[01:26:58] Acting Assistant City Manager Don Cameron: Thank you for the question, Don Cameron, acting assistant city manager, community development director, for one more week. Fill that in. Thank you. So, you are essentially correct. Our residential parking permit does allow to provide permits to residents where there are time limited parking. If they meet the if the area meets the qualifications under the RPP program, and there's usually resident initiated. Although the program does allow counsel to initiate it, and it still would go out for a postcard survey, though, and those properties affected by that would be part of the permit program, would still need to vote in favor, a certain percentage vote in favor of it. And we currently do charge for the parking permits. Or if they are established.

[01:27:58] Unknown Speaker: Okay, so it's, it's, um, we, we have rules that would allow us to do that. Council has just never done that, is at this telling me.

[01:28:11] Unknown Speaker: At this point, council has, one time, in my recollection, initiated the surveying process without waiting for a petition, but what that did was that just skipped the petition step, but there was still a postcard survey, then sent out to all the potential affected residents, and we, you know, still followed the process, where a certain number of postcards needed to be returned, and a certain number of votes in favor. I believe in that particular case, there were not enough votes in favor, so a residential parking permit program was not established for those streets. And for the council initiated process, the threshold is the same as for a resident initiated process.

[01:28:57] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yes, it is. number of votes.

[01:28:58] Unknown Speaker: Okay, I understand now. Thank you very much.

[01:29:06] Mayor Pat Showalter: Council member Mattachek.

[01:29:08] Vice Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. A couple questions. Yeah, we receive some communication, and certainly we hear from residents from time to time about, uh, there are so many vehicles who are illegally parked. And I was wondering, you know, I don't know if it's a question of they don't know what the laws are. Are they choosing to ignore them, um, or what, but what can be done about that?

[01:29:41] Unknown Speaker: So, our police chief is here today, and would be happy to share some information with you.

[01:29:54] Police Chief Mike Campfield: Mike Campfield, police chief, regarding the ability to do enforcement. Enforcement is conducted by our community services officers, our police assistants, and our police officers, predominantly our proactive enforcement, tends to be downtown, but other areas of higher parking need, and that is done by our police assistants and community services officers. When we receive complaints, our patrol officers or our community services officers will go to an area and examine and look for problems, the number one thing I would say is provide us with information, with the locations that we're seeing problems, and the general time. So if we get those complaints, whether it's through Ask Mountain View or any other manner, we can start to address staffing towards problems. But it's a big city, and there are vehicles everywhere. So unless they're brought to our attention. You know, we certainly can't be everywhere for every type of parking violation. But we want to be notified so we can address the issues with our staffing.

[01:30:55] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Great. So residents could send in, say, an ask Mountain View, request or contact the non emergency number, um, send an email, lots of different ways. They could let you know if there's a particular area that seems to have an issue.

[01:31:09] Police Chief Mike Campfield: Absolutely correct.

[01:31:10] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Okay. And do we do, typically, any sort of, um, notification of new laws? Like, do I think everyone knows about the new law that was passed about being 20 feet away from the, is it the approach side of a crosswalk? I'm guessing a lot of people don't know about that. Do we try to do any education?

[01:31:32] Police Chief Mike Campfield: We do. That new law is an area that we need to be sharing through our social media or other outreach engagement efforts. Currently, our community services officers, our parking attendants, would make a notification and warn somebody of it or enlighten them to the new law, as was stated in the staff report. It becomes siteable at the calendar year. But the goal is to educate as many people. So, I would say, stand by for some social media notifications, but also increases in formal notifications.

[01:32:08] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Do we have anywhere in the city, sort of like the list of the parking rules. So if somebody wanted to find out what they were, or we wanted to publicize it through neighborhood associations, we could point them to a page on, say, the city's website that says what all the parking rules are, just in case they don't know.

[01:32:28] Police Chief Mike Campfield: I'm not familiar, um, if, uh, other staff is aware. Please chime in, but I don't believe so, but certainly we could make a ready reference chart for most of the laws. There are a lot of parking rules and requirements. But we could make a fairly easily ready reference guide for neighborhood association meetings where other community engagement efforts that we like to be part of.

[01:32:53] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Okay, thank you.

[01:32:54] Police Chief Mike Campfield: Absolutely.

[01:32:55] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Well, that's it for me. Thank you. Um,

[01:32:59] Mayor Pat Showalter: Council member Ramos.

[01:33:01] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Mayor. I had a question. It was slightly based on one of the public commenters question that related to signage when it comes to no parking and notification of that. So, I'm thinking in a more broader sense. We have a lot of signage to let people know there's certain like no parking here, no parking there. Is it part of the scope of this project to maybe discuss unlike having those signages not impede the sidewalk or have it like essentially make it more of the street problem than the sidewalk problem? I don't know if that's within scope.

[01:33:38] Ms. Ochoa: I appreciate the question. Thank you for asking it. In general, the comment referred to when we need to put out A frame signs for temporary no parking, and this is usually in related to some kind of construction, or maintenance work that requires bringing up the parking area. Our instructions, typically, for our own contracts, contractors, we work with private developers, they are not to block the sidewalk. And when we are notified, it's happening or one of our inspectors has seen it, we will require that they remove those signs away from the sidewalk. They can either go in the parking strip, I mean, the planting strip, if there's an area between the sidewalk and the curb. And if they won't go there, then we need to find a way to get them into the street, somewhere that they can be seen. But they are not supposed to block the sidewalk, and when we do receive Ask Mountain View or other notices that signs are out there, we send out an inspector immediately to talk to the contractor and get them moved.

[01:34:45] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you. But I also, it was more of, what about our permanent size? Not that I think that we're going to just uplift all our permanent signages off of the sidewalk. But like as we do any kind of work. Is there maybe a discussion of like, hey, can we have that signage either in the planter area or in the street area? I guess probably not literally in the street, but like,

[01:35:10] Ms. Ochoa: So our current practice is to prioritize either the planter area and when there's no planter area. We try to place it behind the sidewalk if we do have right away, and if we don't have right away, we try to place it in the back of the sidewalk, so as much of the sidewalk is clear as possible. So that is our standard protocol right now.

[01:35:29] Unknown Speaker: Yeah, I'd like to add that, um, a couple years ago, we actually went to the bicycle pedestrian advisory committee, because they were asking about this as well, and brought to them the guidelines that we're now using, that includes, uh, as what Ms. Ochoa was mentioning, Plant Strip, behind the sidewalk. If there is no room to do that, minimum width of sidewalk being left unobstructed, not just for ADA, but even beyond that, for where the poles are. And so we went through all of this. And, of course, the bicycle pedestrian advisor committee does encourage us wherever we can. Let's move the polls, and we do when we can. But we did go through a process to explain what the rules are and work through that with them.

[01:36:16] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you.

[01:36:21] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay, I have a question. It's related to the residential parking permit program. I wanted to bring up about the cost. It's my memory that when we put this together in 2015 or 16, the idea of the cost was to make this cost neutral to this city. Is that correct? Is that how the parking permit fees were, um, sort of established?

[01:36:53] Unknown Speaker: That is correct, that when the fees were first established, and when we first went back and checked the records, was looked at what the cost will be to administer the program, and as I recall, it was not going to be full cost recovery. And I'm going to, I don't quite remember the number, but it was only going to work at the fees that were set, would only work out to be about 50 or 80% of the cost of staff time to administer the program. But that was the starting place for establishing what the permit fees would be.

[01:37:32] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay, and do you remember approximately what the cost was thought to be?

[01:37:40] Unknown Speaker: Wow, you are prepared. Very good. Well, what you have here is the fees. So, no, I'm sorry. We would have to go back and check. It's from about 2015 or we'd have to go back and check the original program report and study that determined what the fees would be. Because I think that's an important policy going forward. that we would want to talk about is, do we want this to be related, the fees to be set up for recovery, or do we want to see this as something that's really part of our economic vitality program. You know, there are many ways to look at it.

[01:38:21] Mayor Pat Showalter: And then the other question I had is, Have we ever used this as part of a TDM plan?

[01:38:37] Unknown Speaker: I believe the short answer is no, at this point, the idea of residential parking permits have not been part of a transportation demand management program. And I'm not sure it would be. The reason is the whole idea behind transportation man management programs, as you know, is to reduce the number of vehicle trips and minimize the need for parking and providing residential parking permits on the street. Do not necessarily correlate with the desire, what the goals and purpose of a TDM program are. Unless there's a point, there's a piece of your question I'm missing.

[01:39:25] Mayor Pat Showalter: Well, I was just thinking about, you know, we have, there are a lot of state regulations now that limit our ability to require parking, but we can still have TDM plans. And, um, so I was thinking, is it sort of an extended, unbundled parking. You know, you can't you, um, and would it be something that we could, you know, we could say that was part of the program, moving forward. I've never heard of it done in the past, but I was thinking it might be another tool in our toolbox.

[01:39:58] Unknown Speaker: I appreciate the further clarification. We're not certain that saying providing street parking would be part, or you know, allowing you, per building in, street parking as part of a TDM program. However, the relationship we see is, as developments come in with reduced or no parking, potentially. It's a more robust TDM program is absolutely essential. to reduce and hopefully eliminate the parking demand that that development will create. In other words, that their future residents will not be dependent upon driving vehicles. for their mobility.

[01:40:42] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay. All right. Thank you. I see some more... Council member, Ramirez?

[01:40:53] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. I don't have any questions, but I found the February 23rd, 2016 report, which includes a total estimated annual cost for the residential parking permit program, and the estimate is $200,700. And there's a bunch of information here. But I'll share that that is analogous to the figure that we've been quoted for residential parking permit programs in my day job. So $200,000. Thank you.

[01:41:28] Mayor Pat Showalter: Council member Hicks?

[01:41:31] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I'm just wondering what the line items are for administering it. Is it, um, so it's not the setup, so it's not like putting up the initial signs. I'm, is it enforcement or giving people permits? I'm just wondering what the line items are, because it's hard for me to imagine. And one of the reasons I'm asking is the staff report talked about ways of simplifying the, you know, giving free permits, maybe may cut the cost of administering it. But I'm not getting a picture of what administration is set up, I can picture, but administration I can't. So, um, what I can...

[01:42:17] Unknown Speaker: We can tell you what would be involved for staff, should there, once, or should there be a permit parking zone established, but I can also relate it to a previous position I had, where, um, I worked for jurisdictions that had have a residential parking permit program, and it was, uh, the permits were, uh, good for two years, and every two years, the permits had to be reissued, and I noticed that Mountain View was set up very similar in terms of the steps involved. So one of the initial steps is frequently reminding people, and sending out letters, saying, Your permits are going to expire. You know, this is a courtesy, technically, you could skip this, but there's an effort involved in that, to let them know their permits are going to expire, and what the process is to come in and renew it and get new permits. And then we had to produce all the permits, and have them linked to each address, and be ready to go as people came in to pick up their permits. So, it was an entire process. I remember I had two permit texts, would spend a week to two weeks just getting ready for the renewal, and then they had to be ready for people to come in. They had to present identification and proof of where they lived, to show they were eligible for the permit, and then go through a process of receiving their very specific permits, signing for them. And it was a couple hundred, maybe more people, and it was quite an effort to go through. So there is quite a bit of staff time involved. And Mountain View was even stricter because it was going to be vehicles specific. That's how it's currently set up. At least the one I worked with. It was address specific, but not limited to a vehicle license plate. It was a tag that could be moved from vehicle to vehicle. So that was one of the reasons when we were looking at ways we could cut down the costs, one of our suggestions were, don't make it vehicle specific. make it address specific, um, so that every time somebody gets a new car, a new license plate, they didn't have to come in for another permit or exchange it.

[01:44:35] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay, thank you. That gives me a much more clear picture than I had before. What I saw going on in Boulder was it basically gave them the equivalent of several parking garages worth of additional parking. So, producing a parking garage also has costs. Probably not, probably more costs than what you just described, but what you just described is significant labor as well. So thank you.

[01:45:04] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay, so that brings us to the end of the question section. The council question section. So now it's time for us to make comments and answer the questions that staff has asked of us. So, um, there are three questions, and, um, I think it would probably be easiest to just go down the questions. So, um, I'm going to make a chart, and, um, who would like to go first? You put up the questions? Thank you. Okay, I'm not seeing anybody really jump in, so, um, Council member Hicks.

[01:45:48] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Very good. Thanks for everybody pushing the buttons. So, I don't have a lot of elaborate things to say, for all 3 questions, I do think that we're kind of, it's good, we're looking at this. We're facing really a sea change, I think, in terms of parking, with changing state laws near transit, changing vehicle use, with hybrid work, if you looked at the one of our consent council consent items. It did show that people are using single occupancy vehicles a little more. So, and our active transportation plan is going to place, this was a part of the staff report, a major part of it, thankfully. Our active transportation plan will be putting some demands on our street right away that could decrease parking. And then our new affordable housing with the housing element and builders remedy, you know, is a lot denser in some places. So all those things are gonna, just like the staff report said, it's going to, um, increase the demand for parking and decrease the supply. So I think this is a really significant thing we have to look at. I don't, for me, the main, my main thing I want to look at is, um, the RPP as one of the tools we can use to address that. I don't think it's the only tool, but I am interested, as I indicated in my questions. Well, I think it can be an important tool, and I've seen it used in other cities. So I'm looking, I would be looking to enhance places that maybe not just council, but also staff, could say, you know, this is an important area of town, where we're going to add bike lanes, or we're going to change the way we're using the right away. We're going to broaden the sidewalks or whatever, and we're going to eliminate parking. That's, you know, something we've been doing on El Camino and California. and so forth. And that maybe we want an RPP in those areas, and we want it city initiated, even by staff, maybe, not by, or, um, so, enabling ways we could enable that to happen, and looking at other cities that have done it, and how they've made a success, because, uh, you know, as I said, during my question, when I visited some of these cities that have quite a number of downtown visitors in these various Colorado cities, they were really using it as a major way to make sure that either residents or people at offices, weren't using the streets as all day long parking lots. So that, you know, their restaurants and retail and so forth could thrive, um, because of the time limited parking. But I think one of the problems that we've had is we are mostly asking residents to arrange that. And if it's a tool for making our, for making our active transportation plan or our downtown or our village centers function, then it shouldn't be up to the residents to initiate. So that's my big thing. Oh, and then the other, um, the other thing that I wonder about is, counsel, counsel has voted to, um, not require parking minimums for affordable housing, I would just like some indication around our affordable housing. I'm not clear on whether, you know, if we do family affordable housing, or if people using our affordable housing are essential workers, like many of my friends who live in our affordable housing, work as nannies, or they have multiple gig jobs, and they have more cars than my family does, and we don't live in affordable housing. So I just like a reality check on that. I'm not saying we're going to change our position because it may make the affordable housing pencil out, but I just, you know, and our safe parking lots and our life moves, parking has been a big concern of those residents. So I'd just like to know, I'd just like a reality check on our policies, if that's something that's not too difficult to do. So those are my main comments. A couple of other comments are, there's some, you know, interest from the public on, making sure our streets aren't used for storage, for pods, or, you know, other vehicles used as closets on street closets. Um, and, uh, you know, maybe more as delivery is a bigger and bigger part of, um, the way our streets are used, thinking about that a little more. And then I would like the old Mountain View Neighborhood Association committee to be notified of further, um, discussions on this subject. And that's all I have. Thank you very much.

[01:51:27] Mayor Pat Showalter: All right. Council member Kameh.

[01:51:30] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thanks, Mayor. So, um, for question one, um, I, yes, I agree with the recommended approach that we're taking, I think one of the things I'd love staff to come back with more information on was, um, touched upon, which is the state legislation that we may face. So, um, should this move forward, uh, we'll have, um, you know, our updated restrictions or updated code. How would we kind of include the changes that may come from Sacramento. So, obviously, there'd be a bill, you know, a start of when the bill comes into effect, but I think with that combat, you know, what's the process for that? And then how would we be educating the public on those changes are something that I think would be helpful. For question number 2 about the residential parking permit program and the scope of work. Um, I tried to do some research on, um, jurisdictions throughout the state, um, particularly our neighboring um, jurisdictions. And it seemed like many have zones, parking zones, and they included maps, which I think would be very helpful. They have a whole, some cities like the city of Redwood City, has a website where it talks about the permit zones, with the maps. They talk about the petition process, how to apply for existing permit zones. And then, um, it also has um, contact information frequently asked questions. I think something like that would be of interest as we go forward with the RPP. And then I know some jurisdictions also do, as council member, Hicks was talking about visitor permits, or is it, you know, free parking until X time, and then the permits, like I think more information when this comes back? Um, would be helpful. And then I know this may be a little tangential, but we, I know that in years past, the city would sell, I think, parking permits or, um, for businesses. And I haven't heard about updated numbers, or if we're still doing that, I feel like in years past, we've heard that the program was maybe oversold or utilized heavily. And so do we need an overhaul of that program, or maybe more information status update now with our hybrid work environment would be something of interest, I think, that kind of touches the residential parking permit program a little bit because it seems like they're kind of competing a little bit. And then for question three, um, anything further about on street parking regulations. Um, I feel like, uh, some public comment and some colleagues have surfaced some, which are delivery zones, or how do we handle double parking. I think we're seeing that all along our residential streets and in downtown, and how might we address that? I really liked Council member Matachek bringing forward the education of parking rules. I think many people feel that it's their driveway, and they can park in front of it. Um, but, you know, just one, for example. So I think hearing that PD can help in that education component would be great. And could we, when this comes back, learn more about that? And we are also surrounded by cities that have paid parking, and I don't know if not that we need to look into that, but is that something that at some point we need to discuss? I don't I don't know. So I would ask staff for a little bit more information when it returns. Thanks, Amir.

[01:55:46] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you, and thank you for bravely bringing up paid parking. I haven't heard that in Mountain View in quite a while. We used to talk about it a lot. Council member Ramos.

[01:55:57] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, mayor. So I'll just go down some of the questions. Overall, I don't have much to add to question number one that my colleagues have previous mentioned. I would slightly push back. We know that there might be some, um, demand on parking with affordable housing, even though we can't, uh, in many cases we can't require it. I think we might want to shift how we view that, though, and maybe, uh, similar to how when we had the Terabella project, and we're still trying to figure this out, uh, about like the undergrounding, it maybe the parking shouldn't be up to that new development to figure out, but maybe we should find a way to, to, to figure out how to address that parking issue rather than putting that burden on the affordable housing. Um, that, that I know that's a huge ask. Um, so that's that's something I would just like us to kind of think about. Um, I would agree on, um, on council member Hicks's, uh, suggestion I'm now in question too, of seeing what we can do in more of a city initiated RPP because it's, we're, this is, this is mile more, to be aligned with city goals. And, and so also make it easier for that to happen. So what kind of wiggle room do we have? Um, I do like the idea of visitor permits and then permits that, uh, businesses have access to. If we're looking at those RPP and permit zones. The one that comes to mind is Palo Alto. Um, I, I used to work at, uh, on Cal Av, and I, my, my boss got me a parking permit, and it was good for either a garage space or street space depending on the zone we were at. And so that's something to think that I agree with more education on state laws as council member Kame mentioned. The outreach to the parking committees of local neighborhood associations. I have a feeling there's only one neighborhood association that has that. But just in case the other neighborhood associations have parking committees, um, that would be something that we should outreach to. on a basic level. We probably should reach out to neighborhood associations about these parking issues. Um, And uh, the streets not used for storage. Um, I have this vague memory of council member Ramirez's like personal war against unhinged trailers or something like that. Uh, +one to that. I know he's probably going to mention it again. And I am open to looking into what a paid parking structure would look like. And I applaud council member commands bravery on that. Um, and, uh, I believe that that covers all, but, I sorry, I think I jumped through most of the questions on that, but thank you for your patience.

[01:59:12] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you. Next is Vice Mayor Matachek.

[01:59:16] Vice Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. I had a couple of general comments, and then I'll get into the questions. You know, I've got to call this out that in the staff report, on the top of page 8, it says, most TDM programs do not offset parking demand to the extent that may be required to avoid street parking impacts. That sentence just spoke volumes to me. And I would be interested in learning more about that. How effective are they or ineffective, are they? Um, and I'm very interested, and this is probably to answer one of the, part of one of the questions. I would like us to have more realistic assumptions in TDM programs going forward now that we have data on their effectiveness. I also found attachment very four, very interesting. That was the bicycle network, or that was my term for it. It's the map of bicycle routes, and I thought, This is exactly what I was looking for when it comes to the network. That was a great chart. So, to the questions. The 1st one, I do agree with staff's approach to updating the relevant documents. And for question two. Um, I already mentioned about um, the GDM assumptions, having more realistic assumptions in those programs. Um, I thought in the staff report, it said we were considering city initiated RPPPs, because we would be looking at areas that could potentially have impact from changes to state law, or where there's development, or that kind of thing. Wasn't that already in there as a potential approach?

[02:01:09] Unknown Speaker: We did suggest that if counsel is supportive of doing a comprehensive review of the residential parking permit program, and seeing if new approaches were needed, part of that scope could look at more city initiated. programs.

[02:01:27] Vice Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, so I do absolutely support that. Um, I think it would streamline the process, um, the city might have a different view than a smaller neighborhood, um, and we're probably more familiar with all of the upcoming changes. So I think it makes a lot of sense for the city to take a look at this. Let's see. In question three, anything further? Um, I do appreciate the comments about, um, delivery vehicles and the challenges we have with where they park. Um, I think it is important to try to do some education on the parking lot. I'm gonna assume people, maybe, just don't know them as opposed to their just ignoring them. So maybe not just education on the new laws, but education on the existing laws, would be helpful. I'm sure neighborhoods would be happy to distribute that information to the members of their neighborhood associations. I think it would be very useful, or a place to point them to. Um, I would like to revisit the downtown employee parking program, um, because I think it has had a major impact on the availability of parking spaces. And, um, I agree that uh, doing outreach to the old Mountain View neighborhood association parking subcommittee, um, is important. They spend an awful lot of time looking at this. And I think they have some valuable information to share. And let's see. Are you going to go back through things that maybe we didn't mention to see if, uh,

[02:03:08] Unknown Speaker: You're going to try to?

[02:03:10] Vice Mayor Lisa Matichak: I'm going to try to. Okay. So that's it for me for now.

[02:03:13] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay. Next is Councilman Robbie Coca.

[02:03:17] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you, Mayor. I don't have a lot to add, I think. My colleagues have gone through most of the items with question when. This is a comprehensive approach. Yes. Yeah, the only thing I had with this is that I personally have been curious as to why some streets in my neighborhood have time limits and some streets don't in a all in a residential area. So it would just be helpful to understand and also educate, including me, like why, what's the historic, um, perhaps the historic reason for some of these, um, designations in certain neighborhoods, like when, the street over from me is, I think it has 2 or 3 hour time limits, but our street doesn't and just curious as to know why that one street has that. Um, this question too. I understand and I agree with my colleagues, I think the challenge is that as we implement more TDM measures and we have less ability to require parking, that is going to necessitate more of a residential parking program. And so we should. I know we've been talking about this for years and we just haven't really done a program that has been utilized. So I think it is important that we get something together. And I agree that it might have to, it might have to be city initiated or it should be city initiated more than putting it on the neighborhoods to come up and organize it themselves. I was thinking just as a whole, well, some of the other comments, delivery vehicles, yes, my driveway gets used as an Uber lift stop all the time with people coming into even my driveway to pick people up. But, um, there's just a lot of, and I think it is enforcement. I don't know if in the future technologies will allow for better enforcement, but sometimes, and I saw it in the email too, even with like the 17 to 2 hour restriction, you know, you have to wait 72 hours to call, and then it's another 72 hours, so it ends up being 6 days, right? And so by then, usually people move. But so how do we, yeah, better monitor and force these, you know, rules? I have a red zone in my driveway and my neighbors and, you know, when churches at Saint Church is in session, people park in the red zone in front of the stop sign on the curb. It's just ridiculous what people do. It's just so dangerous. So I really think, yeah, hope that we can find better ways to monitor and enforce our laws. Um, and then just in listening to some of the questions I've just brought up to my mind, um, like the question of, art, we've done downtown parking strategies and talked about it, and I'd just like to get a comprehensive status report of where we are, because we've talked about paid parking. We've talked about parking garages. We've talked about building parking garages. We talked about residential parking, you know, program in relation to downtown. And I just don't have a grasp of where we are. And I, to be frank, you know, I've been here for 16 years. And I feel like we've talked a lot about it, but I haven't seen much implementation and I just would like to see where we are in a timeline and a path moving forward to actually implementing these strategies. And even this, you know, I appreciate that things change over time, but again, I feel like we've been studying it and restudying it and, you know, my, my, yeah, feeling is we just need to actually start implementing some of these strategies. And that's all I have. Thank you.

[02:07:25] Mayor Pat Showalter: Council member Ramirez.

[02:07:31] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I'm a little reluctant to provide input after your comments. I don't know if my talking will help all of the talking that we've been talking about. Um, but I'll go ahead and respond to the questions. Um, question one, yes, um, I would actually like to do this faster. We removed from our work plan, the good government objective of cleaning up the Munichode, and this is consistent with that. It's more narrowly scoped than I would have liked, but it's important, and I'm glad that we're doing it. And especially where we have in resolution something that's different from what's actually been signed. So that's that creates consternation and confusion and confusion in the community. So I think it'll, it's just a good thing to clean this up. For question two. Um, I don't have too much more to add. I think my colleagues have provided a lot of very valuable guidance here. I do want to be mindful that the 2016 cost estimate was $200,000, and I can't imagine that things are cheaper now than they were 10 years ago. So, this is, you know, absolutely worth studying, but we should be mindful of the cost, and I have a preference for cost recovery generally. That's a lot of general fund revenue to expend on an important purpose, but one that will help only a subset of people in our community. So I think we need to be very thoughtful in how we approach that. And we have to remind ourselves, too, we've been told previously, I think the last time we looked at the residential parking permit program, which I think was maybe 2019 or 2020, that there was some guidance from the attorney general, clarifying that we could not exclude residents in multifamily housing. And so, if that may affect the way we roll out this kind of program, since, as many have mentioned, there are many residents who have, you know, different parking needs and who may be more or less interested in participating in the program where they may have to pay for the privilege of parking on public right away. So these are sensitive points. And I think it's good to be thoughtful and to, you know, go back and revisit the work that we've done, but I don't think the answers will be simple. For question three, I'm saying the same things with different words, I do want to figure out a way to address the problem of non vehicle storage on public right away. That's not what public right away is for, right? So the pods and, I think, in the past, I've talked about boats and things of that nature that, you know, clearly cannot operate on our streets, and yet sometimes people, you know, because they happen to live in an area where there isn't a lot of proactive enforcement, and maybe people don't know to, you know, call the city, may take advantage of that. And that, I think, is something that we need to, education, as the chief had mentioned, may be the best way of addressing that in many parts of our community. as many members of the council have brought up and members of the public as well, the problem or impact of delivery vehicles, which are ubiquitous now, and they tend to park in problematic areas, right? Especially for those of us who ride our bike regularly, or even just navigating, right? I live on California Street, near Del Medio, and it's an impacted area, and sometimes thoughtless people will park right in front of the driveway. You know, they don't intend to be there for very long, but then I can't go home. So I have to wait for them. Um, And, uh, I think I don't know how we solve that problem. But there needs, that's an important convenience for many people. And so we do need to be thoughtful as we design, you know, our public right away, for reasonable accommodations for things like that. But, um, I'm, I don't envy the staff who have to do the hard work of figuring out how do we make sure that there's a place for these vehicles to go, um, where they're not obstructing traffic or creating public health and safety hazards. But with, you know, the limited right away that we have, it's not an easy problem to solve. And several members of the council have already commented on this, but our regulations are only as good as our ability and willingness to enforce them. I work for a city that has many regulations that the city is incapable of enforcing. And that was a big part of our budget discussion over the past several months. Um, so it's, you know, good and thoughtful, or it's good to be thoughtful about how we approach these kinds of regulations, but, um, enforcement is costly and staff intensive, and so we want to be mindful that, you know, this is worth him barking upon, but we probably should prioritize regulations in the parts of the city that would benefit from them most. And the last thing I'll mention, some members of the council commented on this already, but sign clutter, I think, is a problem, right? Especially in areas with very narrow sidewalks. And if you've got, you know, a sign that obstructs, like, a Ford foot sidewalk, and you've got a sign that's posted, you know, probably achieving some important public purpose, but, um, especially if that's a heavyway trafficked sidewalk. Um, that creates a different set of impacts. So again, I'm not really sure how you solve these problems. I think it's, well, I mean, there are many, many things that we're trying to achieve, right? Again, a lot of them are public health and safety related. So this is absolutely important work, but there are trade-offs with everything that we do. So I'll just express my gratitude to public works staff and everyone else who will be involved in this Herculean effort. Thank you.

[02:13:54] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay, so I'm going to take a stab at it, and then we'll go through some straw poles. I think we can do that pretty quickly. First of all, I want to thank the staff. To me, this staff report was basically parking regulation 101. And I felt like it was really good to get us all on the same page, and to educate us. So thank you. I really enjoyed reading it. And one of the things that I noticed, however, is that this review was silent on enforcement. And a lot of what we have heard is the problems of enforcement. And, um, I think that's, that's something that we really need to, um, uh, we need to work on it. But I do, the other thing, the general thing I wanted to say is this really falls just right in the middle of our good governance work. From time to time, we need to look over all the regulations we have on various topics, and this is one of interest, so I'm glad we're doing that. And then another thing I want, you know, as the water geek on the council, I wanted to put in a plug for street sweeping. One of the reasons that we do, one of the major reasons that we do street sweeping is to keep our streams clean. especially in an area like where we live in, where there's not rain, half of the year, lots of little particles that have fallen off of our tires and our brake pads, build up on the streets. And they need to be cleaned off, because they're primarily composed, or they have a large component of heavy metals, which is very, very toxic to aquatic life in our stream. So, it's really important that we do this street sweeping, and it's really important that you move your car so they can street. They can sweep the streets. So, I thought it was interesting. I ask a question about why we didn't have, you know, we didn't have regulations in each part of the city, and the answer made perfect sense, which was that basically, it would cost too much to do the signs. And, you know, you didn't think that that would help things any. But I do feel like the street sweeping from an environmental point of view is really important for aquatic life in our streams. So I just want to share that. But now, two the questions. First question, yes. I think the first bullet sounds good. But with the second bullet, I would like to see it happen sooner, if possible. Um, the second question, does the council support a comprehensive review and potential new approach to the residential parking program? Yes, I do. And I think that the comprehensive review is, of a, I would stick in the words after comprehensive review of the changes that we expect to see based on the changes in the state parking regulations. Kind of, what are they, where the staff think these problems are going to, you know, are gonna show up, or where are they showing up? And consequently, how should we respond to them? I think, and that will take some thinking, and I thought the idea of you having a consultant to look at that is probably very helpful, but I really do think we want to kind of get ahead of this problem. We know it's coming, or in some places, it's already here, and we want, you know, we want to be proactive about it. And then, uh, I, like most of the, my colleagues said with the residential parking program, uh, yeah, I, I think we need to relook at that. And, um, uh, I feel like, um, uh, it might be a tool. It might be a very useful tool, and also looking at the employee parking. That's a great idea. I hadn't thought of that, but that's a great idea. And then I just wanted to say, for question three, which is basically anything else. To me, the anything else is enforcement. How can we change the enforcement? So people feel like it really is working. And we've had a whole bunch of things mentioned that where the enforcement is really being a problem. Delivery trucks, storage on the streets, and I think, for the two things that came up the most. But how do... Oh, and parking in red zones, and parking in front of driveways. Yeah. Those are enforcement issues that really need more attention. Because they are real safety, uh, real safety issues. Okay, so that said, I think I came up with a few things I want to do straw poles, and I hope we can kind of do lightning straw poles. That's going to be my desire here. Okay, we're ready. First one is, uh, the idea of city initiated RP peas. Yeah.

[02:19:05] Mayor Pat Showalter: Study city initiate. Right. Okay. To study paid parking.

[02:19:16] Unknown Speaker: Well, we haven't done it. We may have done it, but we might want to refresh our memory on it. So, may I, um, ask, well, provide some information, and then ask for some clarification on this. So, as Councilman Brabi Koga mentioned, we did do a downtown parking strategy, and definitely captured your request to get an update on that. And in that downtown parking strategy, It did also include consideration of paid parking. And this paid parking would be potentially, definitely related to our city owned lots and garages, but also the possibility of metered street parking, as well. And these were listed as potential feature actions that could be taken as part of parking management for downtown. I bring this up, because one of the things is, what we're talking about here, in terms of residential parking permit program and parking in general, is citywide. So when you ask that we, you know, revisit paid parking and look at it, is it in the context, again, of the downtown parking strategy, and that's where your focus is, or are you asking us to look also at the possibility of such metered parking in other areas of the city?

[02:20:43] Mayor Pat Showalter: Councilman. Councilman Brobby Coca.

[02:20:46] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you, Mayor. I certainly would like to look at citywide. Um, and I would even add, I brought this up in the past, but, um, even with, like, private companies that might lease land from the city, like what are our, what are our abilities? And this is really having to do with, you know, again, taking out SOVs and really encouraging the use of transit more. So, that's how I look at paid parking is really a parking management strategy. and reduction of SOBs. So I would like to see, not that I'm going to be here, but yeah, what else could happen in other parts of the city?

[02:21:41] Mayor Pat Showalter: Council member Kameh.

[02:21:43] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. So I'll just clarify that my comment was, for a lot of the residential parking programs that I've seen in other jurisdictions, they couple it with paid parking. So in Palo Alto, in Redwood City, in San Mateo, in San Jose, there are metered streets, there are paid lots, and there's also different neighborhoods, or zones, where there are parking permit programs. So I think there's been some discussion about enforcement, and in my mind, enforcement is not just the police department, but enforcement can also be in paying for parking. So that's, I just want to clarify for my colleagues in the public. That's why I brought it up, not because I necessarily want to, you know, charge it, but I want to understand the implications on, we've had an RPP program since 2016 that has not existed. nobody has successfully petitioned. And I'm curious, is it because there isn't anything else helping lead it to success? I'm trying to understand the fuller picture. So that's the point of view that I am coming from. So I'm open to zones, neighborhoods, or citywide.

[02:23:07] Mayor Pat Showalter: Council member Hicks?

[02:23:10] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I'm curious to hear further details on what council member Epicoga was talking about, about citywide, like what sorts of places you were thinking, because it's usually mentioned just in the downtown, what sorts of, I can't picture exactly what other places you might be talking about. But I'll say, I have some hesitancy to do, um, paid or metered parking in or near the downtown, given that, um... You said Palo Alto does meter... I know Redwood City does, but they're not our immediate neighbor, that most of our... What's that?

[02:23:49] Unknown Speaker: Palo Alto does in some places on university.

[02:23:54] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I'm hesitant to do it with the kind of the state that our downtown is in, because I think a lot of people, like people I who live over by the high school, they're like, when they think about going out, they think about where they can park easily, and if it's, you know, whether they're gonna go to downtown Los Saltos, or downtown Mountain View, or downtown Sunnyvale. So, um, I'm just hesitant to do that, um, study it. We can study it. I'm fine with studying it. But I also, I do like what the urban land institute said when they studied our downtown, they said, Don't confuse yourself with San Francisco, that, you know, San Francisco can put paid parking throughout all their restaurant and retail areas, whereas, we can only do it in Mountain View, and we're not going to, you know, if we did it in downtown, we wouldn't be able to do it in downtown Los Altos. So, we only have jurisdiction over a small area, and we're competing with other areas, and that's kind of the worry that I bring to that.

[02:25:09] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay, um, uh, Council member Ramos.

[02:25:13] Councilmember Emily Ramos: I mean, we're kind of opening the box, and I'd rather not delve too much deep into the box of that is paid parking, but there's a lot of options there, like congestion pricing. Like, we know that there are times when, like, it just, it's just bad. And we know that there's major events that happen, that we want to think about how to manage that demand with paid parking as a tool. I also want us to think about, um, the reverse consequences of, like, if we do the paid parking only in our garages, but not on our streets, that there's the exact opposite of what we kind of want. So also how we, we can, when we think about paid parking and thinking about like how that can serve. But yeah, I think it's an important tool more than what we were looking at with our downtown paid parking study.

[02:26:06] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay, I'd just like to interject that that, um, while having the staff look at paid parking is sort of part of all the tools in the toolbox for TDM, I think is very valuable. I'm not sure that this is the right place for it. This evaluation of our parking regulations, and I wanted to ask staff if we're sort of going off course here.

[02:26:31] Unknown Speaker: Um, and that, and that would be a better place. I really do appreciate the question. It really isn't necessarily related to our parking regulations. One of the things I heard from several council members was a little crossing over from parking restrictions and regulations, to, again, what was studied as part of the downtown parking strategy, which not only includes the concept of paid parking, but also included the permits that we sell for the use for employees to use our our lots and our structures, and that has nothing to do with us regulating our street parking. So it would be nice to keep those particular discussions and considerations in the context of the downtown parking strategy where it's also dealing with how we're managing our parking lots and garages. Um, however, um, Council member Kemay has brought up, which we could definitely look at, is other examples where they may have used pay parking in conjunction with residential parking permits and zones. So that could be explored a little bit more thoroughly, uh, through this residential parking permit, study that's going to be done, because we definitely want to benchmark and look at what other jurisdictions are doing. The last time we did this was when the program was set up 10 years ago. We don't know how it's evolved since then. So that narrow scoping to just focus on how it relates to residential parking permits and how it may have been used in other jurisdictions, I think is definitely manageable to put into a scope.

[02:28:25] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay, so let's have a straw poll on, uh, uh, this camera's motion. Everybody in favor? Okay, good. All right. Back to our straw pole blitz. Enforcement. We're all interested in improving enforcement. Education. I wanted to bring up, people mentioned neighborhood associations. We have a few areas in town that are covered by really active neighborhood associations who would do just a dandy job at getting this information out. But they don't cover the vast majority of the city. So if we were educating people through the neighborhood associations, We miss a lot of people. So I would just like to give staff the direction to figure out what's the best way to do this education. I was thinking maybe an article in The View might be a good way. I know if it's probably the summer one is already ready, but maybe the next one. But the idea of giving education for parking regulations, we could certainly put a page on the website relatively easily, that lists them, but to get them out to everybody. Is it okay to let staff follow up on that as they see fit? All in favor? Okay. All right. So the next is non vehicle storage. Anybody, is anybody for non vehicle storage on streets? No. We don't like that. Okay. All right. Delivery, vehicle, behavior, and right of ways. I think that this is really, you know, this is a problem that's very important in our community and really everywhere now. So figuring out how to deal with that best is something we're interested in. everybody in favor. Okay. And then, um, another concept that came up in the discussion is sign clutter. Everybody concerned about making sign clutter as, well, reducing sign clutter as much as possible. Now it's OK. Okay. Oh, sorry. Council member Kameh, you have your light on.

[02:30:48] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: I just... What sign clutter? So the sign clutter that we put on in their streets, and because I feel like there's quite a...

[02:30:57] Mayor Pat Showalter: Yes, thank you, Ms. Karen.

[02:30:58] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: I just feel like that also is, like, opening.

[02:31:03] Unknown Speaker: So, um, we understand, and we also strive to reduce sign clutter, and one of the ways we tried to do that also is if we do have to have multiple signs on a street. Can we put them all on the same pole that helps to reduce clutter, but it's, what we have to remember is that the signs we have posted out there, we have to have posted in order to enforce the parking regulation, and they have, and you have to have the postings frequent enough or in good locations that they are visible by the automobile driver, may be choosing to park there, because you can't enforce if they didn't have, you didn't have reasonable expectations they were aware that that was a signed area.

[02:31:50] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Well, I think I should have made my description a little wider, 'cause I think what we meant was sign clutter on sidewalks. That's what. Yeah, there are all sorts of people, there's realtors, there are electrical companies, there's pavement companies, but, I mean, in my neighborhood, in a process that's gone on for the last year, We've had contractors come up, they've put up a sign that says, The street is going to have work on it, and you're not supposed to park for the next month. And they put the sign up, you know, like a week before the month starts, and then they only work three days of the month. And so, people get, you know, that sort of thing I think we can improve on.

[02:32:35] Unknown Speaker: I can take that back to staff in terms of the temporary signs that do go up in preparation for construction work, and we can definitely look at that. In terms of others putting up signs like realtors and so on. I would have to look, you know...

[02:32:55] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Probably the education is what...

[02:32:57] Unknown Speaker: Right, yeah, the education. Yes. Well, it's, oftentimes it's a no parking.

[02:33:04] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought in the realtor signs.

[02:33:05] Unknown Speaker: Thank you right. Thank you

[02:33:06] Unknown Speaker: That's not a no parking one.

[02:33:07] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Yeah, I was just thinking of sidewalks. clutter.

[02:33:09] Unknown Speaker: Wait, yes, we can definitely, when it comes to the temporary A frame signs and so on, continue, you know, I'll take that back in terms of making sure we're only putting them up for the time that's necessary to be up, for when work is going to be done. We do put them up a week at a time to give everybody plenty of notice, but also making sure that they don't obstruct the sidewalks. That's very important as well. Thank you.

[02:33:33] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay, well, that gets me to the end of my list. Is there anything that people felt like I missed? Okay, all right. Well, that brings us to the end of this item, and I'd like to thank the staff for this report, and everybody for a robust discussion, and, um, uh, we can move on to item 7.1. Okay, item 7.one is a public hearing. This is the fiscal year 2024, 25, recommended budget and fiscal years, 2023, 25, council work plan, 12 month project updates. City manager Kimber McCarthy and Finance and Administrative Services Director, Derek Gramponi, will present the item. If you would like to speak on this item in person, Please submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk now. Staff, whenever you're ready. And I would like to, just before they get going, thank the staff for the vast amount of work. That is always included in the budget. I know it's the people that are here on the dais, and it's probably half of the staff of the city of Mountain View, who are not here at the diets, who have been working on this. So we really appreciate their efforts. And are you ready? Grace? Okay, all right. Thank you.

[02:35:36] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Thank you, Mayor. going to kick us off. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the latest recommended budget update. I am really pleased that I am here once again to be able to present to you a structurally balanced budget, and I'm joined by our finance and administrative services director, Derek Rampone, and our assistant finance and administrative services director, Grace Seng. And you see that our department head team is also here in the audience to answer any questions as we go along. So one of the things that I want to point out before we get in about this budget in particular is that it is very focused on long-term service delivery and just focused on our core services that we provide to all of our residents in Mountain View. There's also focus on continuous improvement efforts within the organization, and also focus on council strategic priority projects next side. So just to give everyone an overview of how this whole process culminates. It's about an 8 month process, definitely does not happen in a vacuum, starts every year in November, with the department submitting their budget requests, and it kicks off from there. This year, we also had really good touch points with the council finance committee members, giving really good feedback about the budget document itself, and we were able to incorporate a lot of their really helpful suggestions into this document and we know we have more ways to go, but that really also helped us start this process. So in thinking about how we wanted to craft the actual document itself. Um, you can see going along the time continuum, the the big update that we provide to council, besides this one is in February, the mid-year budget update. And at that time we present council with the status of the budget, you provide recommendations on various initiatives that you may have priorities on. We bring sometimes staffing recommendations, recommendations on our year-end fiscal position and how to spend that one time money. And it really helps also provide direction about what the preliminary financial forecast is. So that's really the time where we start really shaping what our revenues look like around that time in February. And then you can see that it ends with this evening. So we've shown the next slide before. It's a history of our sound financial practices. And I think it really is important to just repeat this again, because, uh, not only our residents, but our employees and, um, everyone can feel really proud to be in a place like Mountain View, where we have a long-standing history of making really sound financial decisions, that would include balancing our ongoing expenditures with our ongoing revenues, only spending one-time money on one-time costs. We do maintain adequate reserves. So those reserves are not only for emergencies and contingencies, but also for programs that benefit the public. We've talked a lot about purchasing land the importance of that. That is essentially what a lot of the reserves are for, these really priority projects and capital costs. And then also it, um, goes without saying that it really helps to have an organization where we have staff with really sound financial experience, significant financial experience, in both the private and public sectors, and we do enjoy that here in Mountain View. And lastly, that we are one of very few cities in California to have a AAA credit rating, which helps us with all of our financing. So the economic outlook now. This will not be a surprise to all of you. You've heard us talk about this really not just since February, but in a lot of the other agenda items that come before you, when staff is talking to you about the costs of the rising costs of projects, or you all having to approve more money on a capital program, or we're talking to you about the price of goods going up. So that has just continued. And that is really driving a lot of what's happening with the economic outlook and the impact to our budget situation right now. So we are in a stable budget situation. That is the good news. The the, the thing that we're dealing with now is that we still have a lot of unknowns on the horizon. And these are not different than what we've been talking about the last few years. So persistent inflation, the rising costs. You all are very aware of the elevated interest rates. That's affected home sales in Mountain View. We have had significant drop in home sales. Last year in 2023. There were 235 home sales compared to 405, 2 years ago. So that impacts property taxes, not just for the city, but other taxing entities. So all of these economic factors combined just really kind of paint still a real uncertain picture of where we're gonna head. Also, the state budget is facing a $45 billion deficit right now, and that has real impacts to the city. We have had less funding be available to us for various grants, various programs. Council is well aware that the grade separation project. We're working really hard with State Senator Becker and other legislative advocates to try and secure funding for grade separation project that was cut out of the state budget around $20 million. That's just one example of the impacts of the budget shortfall on our own home. There are many other examples, but all of this comes into play when we start to craft this recommended budget to bring before you. And we all know there's a lot of things just happening abroad and in the upcoming election that just create uncertainty on what's going to happen with Rovenues and with the economic outlook. Next slide. So really what that means to us here in Mountain View and the revenue impacts is that we have had stable revenues, like I said, this is a stable balanced budget. However, what's different this year than in other years is that we've had less growth. So, in other years, we've been able to have a lot more ongoing new budget recommendations come before council, and Mr. Rampone's going to talk about that in a few more slides. But this budget really has primarily one time costs. We have very few new ongoing positions that have been recommended, very few new ongoing programs. Primarily, we are using our one time revenue for one time expenses. That's because the revenue is just not growing at the pace that it has in the past. So one of the things that will be no surprise is that one of our biggest losses of revenue is in our business license tax. So you all are well aware that the new business license tax was passed in 2018. It was passed as a head count tax. So if you think of all the corporate layoffs that we've experienced in Mountain View over the last year to three, 4 years, the business license tax revenue has just decreased every single year. So that's been a significant loss test. It's been about a 15% decrease. Why is that important? That's important because council carved out 80% of that towards transportation, 10% towards affordable housing initiatives and 10% towards just general government programs. So we have less of a pot of that excess money. So that's one of the big impacts. Property tax has also not grown as fast as it had in other years. Like I said, housing prices have caused less homes to be sold. And then we just have stagnant sales tax and TOT, hotel tax revenues. TOT is transient occupancy tax. So, as I mentioned, this really just is a stable budget. There's not a lot of new bells and whistles, like we've been able to bring before council in prior years. Next slide. So that really leads us to what we've been talking about these last, certainly this last year, but these last couple council meetings is thinking about the mountain view of tomorrow. So knowing that our revenues are not growing as much as our expenditures and our very bold initiatives, one of which we talked about tonight. We really have to start thinking about how we are gonna fund some of these significant projects and programs that council and the community want in the future. So we have a significant need for additional funding. We have facilities, improvements that need to be made, the public safety building, to fire stations. We know we need to improve our bicycle and pedestrian safety. Looking at the active transportation plan, all those programs that are falling under that traffic and railroad safety we've talked about. We have very ambitious carbon neutrality goals by 2045. A lot of programs that fall under that. Um, goes without saying affordable housing. We know that that's a huge priority in Mountain View. Right now, we have a $500000 shortfall. on our current projects in the pipeline, and that's just growing. And then lastly, we know that we need to buy and build new parks. And really look at open space. And that is something that we're also actively trying to do, but all of this takes a lot of money. And so we are glad that council will be considering a potential revenue measure to place on the November ballot. You all will be deciding that in the next city council meeting. So that's all part of the story of what's happening with the budget right now and this recommended budget. Next slide. So, as I mentioned, this budget is stable, there are a limited number of new ongoing positions in the general fund. There are 4.25 new ongoing positions compared to prior years. where there have been 20 or more positions, and that's because we don't have the ongoing revenue to meet these ongoing expenses. So it's a less, less, less growth than we've seen in prior years. Um, I think we are, we have done something that's pretty exciting that councils talked about before, we've really overhauled our performance measures. We know that the performance measures we've had in the past, excuse me, a lot of them have been really outdated and not really helpful or informative, not just for counsel, but for the public and even for staff. So this last year, we worked with a consultant to totally overhaul all the measures in every department. They worked with department staff. And so what you see reflected in the budget book is what we hope to be more helpful performance measures and transparent measures of meaningful information and data that's helpful to you all and to our public. And then this budget's also focused specifically on downtown and the economic vitality of our entire city, and really creating funding and programs that will go towards that long-term service delivery. As I mentioned earlier, I talked about the continuous organizational improvements. There's funding allocated towards looking at more improvements this next year. And then as I mentioned, the innovative programs that are really important in our community. So, um, that's a summary of the budget, and I'm going to turn it over now to Mr. Rampone to get into the numbers more, um, to tell the story of what's happened. Oh, actually, excuse me, there's one side here, just to call out the downtown initiatives that are actually recommended in this budget. So, we have $300,000. This would be in contract services. And this is for downtown strategy consulting, and it will help us create a communications and branding plan for downtown and storytelling. So we're really hoping to attract even more so than it already is, um, downtown as a destination, not just for folks in Mountain View, but for people to come from all over the region and spend money in Mountain View and come to our awesome restaurants and retail establishments. Um, we also have $250,000 to help with contract services for land use planning and zoning changes, uh, code implementations that will, will help support easier, and better development in downtown. And I'm happy to say that we should be bringing some updates to you all in the early fall, that we believe will really help facilitate downtown growth in businesses in downtown. We also have 100,000 in contract services for the implementation items in the down in the economic vitality strategy. We're gonna hire a retail consultant to work with the businesses, to, um, really hone in on those vacant spaces. So we need someone with expertise in that area to help us with that. And then, lastly, 20,000 for the storefront window design services to help our businesses. So now I will turn it over to Mr. Rampone to talk further in further detail about the actual specifics.

[02:49:40] Mr. Rampone: All right, thank you very much, city manager, McCarthy. Uh, good evening, Mayor Shal Alter, and Vice Mayor Matachek, council members, the staff, and the community. Um, we also just wanted to mention that we do have, um, some staff that are supporting this item that are on Zoom, so, in case we need to reach out to them. I'm gonna kick off the budget overview section with a chart on the total recommended revenues, city wide, all funds. The total recommended revenues for $24,25 is $452.5 million. As you can see in the pie chart here. The general operating fund, enterprise funds, and shoreline regional park, community fund make up over 80% of the city's budgeted funds, with the special revenue fund, other general fund related funds, internal service funds, and capital projects, making up the balance of the rest. Now, turning to a switching to citywide expenditures, The total recommended expenditures for 24,25, citywide is $541.6 million. Once again, you'll see the general operating fund, enterprise funds in the shoreline regional park community funds, making up over 80% of the expenditures. However, you now see that the special revenue funds are a larger portion of expenditures are included in that 80%. And that's due to some expenditures, budgeted, related to affordable housing in the special revenue funds for this fiscal year. You may have noticed that the expenditures in total are higher than the revenues citywide. These are due to some expenditures such as capital projects, and housing related loans, and other special revenue related grants. They're being funded from existing resources that we already have from fund balance. The general operating fund is the largest city fund and provides funding for core community services of the city, such as public safety, parks, recreation, library, some planning, and public works, sustainability, and all of the city administration support functions, including the city attorney's office, city clerk, city manager, human resources, finance, and information technology. On this slide, you'll see that our revenue projection for the general operating fund for next fiscal year is 1.8% increase, or only $3.3 million, when compared to the adopted budget for fiscal year 23, 24. Continuing with the general operating fund revenues, you can see on this slide, the city's economically sensitive revenue sources, which are mostly the taxes collected in the general fund. This table on the slide shows the change in the dollar amount and percentage from the 2324 adopted budget amounts to the 2425 recommended budget amounts, and also from the estimated actuals in the far right two columns, the estimated actuals for the current fiscal year we're in, as compared to the recommended budget for 2425. You can see that some of the changes are positive, as shown in black, but a few are negative, as shown in red. Meaning that the 2425 recommended budget did revenue amounts are less than the 23, 24 adopted, and less than some of the estimated actuals for 23, 24. If you look at the business license tax line, a good example of that is, we're projecting a 6% decrease when compared to the fiscal year, current fiscal year 2324 actuals, we're budgeting a 6% decrease in the fiscal year. The next slide here shows the historical growth of major revenue sources in the general operating fund. This chart does not include the use of money and property, which are, as you know, our lease revenues and investment returns, as these tend to be relatively stable when compared to some of the other revenues in the general fund. As you can see by the light, blue, dotted line there, the 15 year average is approximately 6.3%, but we are expecting less than half of that for revenue growth in 24, 25, and even less than 1% that we've experienced, we're thinking for 23, 24. I think this chart's really helpful in seeing how revenue projection grow for the growth for the current fiscal year, and next fiscal year are lower than the average. Now we turn to expenditures in the general operating fund. As you can see on this slide, we're expecting expenditures to grow by 6.6%. or 11.3 million when compared to the 23, 24 adopted budget amounts. In comparison, as you may recall in a previous slide, revenues are only expected to increase by 1.8% or 3.3 million. So definitely another example of how we're seeing revenues growing at a lower rate than expenditures at this time. This slide is the general operating fund forecast. As you can see for fiscal year 2425, we've got a balanced budget with a $311,000 operating projected operating balance. looking ahead at future revenues and expenditures. This slide will show a visual of the general operating fund five-year forecast, showing revenues and expenditures, and any deficits there, you'll see in the next four years after 24, 25. Those deficits ranging from 1.4 million to 4.4 million in the last fiscal year. Although these are concerning, that projected deficits are roughly 2% or less of projected revenues, as stated in the transmittal letter, you know, balancing the general operating fund in future years while maintaining a structurally balanced budget, may require a pause in adding new staff and foregoing the addition of new programs or enhancements of existing programs, unless additional, dedicated, ongoing funding sources are identified. Oh. Well, this chart should be showing a general operating fund revenues, uh, by type. I dont know why it got cut off there. So we'll skip forward here. This one's good. Now we turn to the general operating expenditures in the general fund. By function, as you can see here, which is typical in cities in California, your public safety, make up almost a majority of the, almost half of the costs in the general operating fund, as these are required to be staffed 24/7, are available to all residents, employees, and visitors in Mountain View, and without fees or a dedicated revenue source. Now we're going to turn to the recommendations for 2425. As you can see there, and as a city manager, McCarthy mentioned earlier, a majority of the recommendations stem from limited period costs. There's $9.2 million in one time costs that will directly support city programs and staffing of city programs that serve the community. We have an additional $1.8 million in discretionary costs. These are mostly comprised of the three fire captain positions, an IT analyst position in the police department, and reclassification of three firefighters, two fire engineers, and then we have the total nondiscretionary costs. These are ones that are somewhat unavoidable, that have been entered into contracts such as for software and licenses, utility costs, such as gas and electricity. Those are all included in the 1.6. As you know, there are other major funds of the city, such as the Development Services Funds, which is a general fund program that has been separated out from the general operating fund and is used to track revenues and expenditures related to the development activity in the city. Staff is currently projecting an operating deficit for this fund in 2425. The Shoreline Regional Park Community Fund, which is a special government district administered by the city, is another major fund that we discuss in the budget. In addition, the Shoreline Golf Links, and Michaels at Shoreline Restaurant Fund, which accounts for the golf course and restaurant at Shoreline, which is expected to roughly break even next year. And then we have the housing fund, which is comprised of all the below market rate, housing impact fees, rental housing impact fees, and other miscellaneous housing grant funds. It's projected to have expenditures that far outweigh the revenues in this fund, and these are mostly related to various housing loans that are contemplated to be issued in 2425. I will now turn to the capital improvement projects that are included in the 2425 recommended budget. The fiscal year, 2425, CIP is balanced and maintains all fund reserves as required by council policy. This section of the recommended budget starts on page 61 and contains the details of each of these categories, and can be referenced for further details. These projects were discussed at the April 9th CIP study session, and the recommended budget document includes any changes that were directed by the city council at that meeting. As part of the 2425 recommended budget, staff is proposing contributions to various reserves, as can be seen on this slide, the amounts range from $1 million for the general liability fund to $5 million for the capital improvement reserve, these reserve contributions will be funded out of unallocated one time funds, and the reserve contributions are in accordance with council policy A11, which is the city's reserve policy. Next up are the recommended utility rates for fiscal year 2425, there's no action on this item tonight, other than the public hearing. We are presenting this information as part of the public hearing, for the recommended increases to utility rates. As you can see on the slide, we used an average single family resonance that has seven units of consumption and 132 gallon cart. The bill, the customer monthly bill will increase by approximately 7%, or $11.87 per month. Additional comparisons of other types of households can be found on page 7 80 of the recommended budget. And now getting to next steps. We will return to council on the June 25th with any updates or modifications that are discussed tonight. In addition, we'll be seeking approval of the utility rates and various fees that are charged to customers by the city. We will also have our GAN limit appropriations as a separate item for approval that evening, as well. And now, in conclusion, here are the recommendations that are included in this item tonight. Grace and I and others are happy to answer any questions you may have.

[03:01:55] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay, thank you very much for the presentation. I wonder if any the 1st thing we want to do, this is not a study session. So we have our council questions first, and then we'll hear from the public, and then we'll come back for deliberation. So, what council members have questions that they would like to ask? Council member Abicoga.

[03:02:29] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you, Marathon, thank you very much for the presentation. I actually just have one question. It has to do with OPEB, the other retiree pension, something, something. But I noticed we're at 103 or 106% funded. Um, do we stop putting a fund more funds into that reserve account or um, what do we do? since we're overfunded at this point.

[03:03:04] Unknown Speaker: So once we reach the 100% or more funding, we'll basically pay as you go and we want to maintain the 100% funding. So we have an actuary that does a report every 2 years, and that funding percentage could change based on the market. Hopefully, it doesn't, but it will probably change a little bit. And basically, we will fund it based on the actual aerial recommendations to maintain the 100%. So it kind of just depends on what that report reveals and how the market does. But as of right now, you're correct. We're over 100%. So we're not, it's like, this year, we're not actually putting into OPE. Not anything above and beyond what our normal cost would be, what our required contribution would be.

[03:03:46] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay, because we're pecos, so... Okay, got it. Great. Thank you.

[03:03:53] Mayor Pat Showalter: I swear, Mattachek.

[03:03:56] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: I know it's surprising that I have more questions, given the volume of questions I sent in, but it is a 655 page document, chock full of information. And, but I do have a few. Why is it, um, that we don't have reserves in the Shoreline Special District for, like, infrastructure things, like roads, water, sewer? Is it paid for by the shoreline community, or is that a different fund, or I was trying to figure out why we don't do that?

[03:04:32] Unknown Speaker: Yeah, so historically, we've put away reserves based on studies that we've had done, such as the sea level rise, and other studies that we've done, it's really up to the council. We do pay, as we go, for the most part, on some of those, but it is up to the council or the board, um, the shoreline to commit reserves.

[03:04:54] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Okay. Let's see. And then I had a question about the neighborhood grants. And it's my understanding that the council neighborhood committee asked staff to take a look at changes to the neighborhood grant program, and I was not at the meeting, so I don't know what they said, but I was wondering, um, if staff could comment on what changes they suggested we look at, and if staff has been working on those, if there's an update on this?

[03:05:29] Wayne Chen, Housing Director: Good evening, Wayne Chen, Housing Director, thank you for the question. So, during the April 17th, CNC Grant, um, consideration meeting, uh, first, there were, this was the first year where we were significantly over subscribed, uh, in that particular amount, and we had some new groups that were being formed. Some of the groups did geographically overlap with some of the more established groups. So the public input did have some questions about that, largely from the existing groups. And then the CNC committee directed staff to do some research and analysis on this item. Staff have not had the opportunity to work on that analysis, and we are planning to do that once we sort of wrap up the neighborhood meetings, and then prepare for the CNC wrap up meeting. The key items that we will be looking at is maybe clarifying or seeking CNC committee input, whether some of the guidelines should be modified. We will be looking at the question of overlapping boundaries. And then there was also some discussion about the distinction between neighborhoods and community. Part of the goal of the CNC grant has been articulated to create community. And I think part of the new groups that were being formed, was being formed under that concept of a community, and maybe, um, a more expanded definition of what the geography could entail. And so those would be some of the key components staff will be analyzing and coming back to the committee on. Thank you.

[03:07:09] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: That's helpful. Was there something that was done that kind of, um, spurred these groups to submit, uh, applications for grants that we haven't seen before?

[03:07:26] Wayne Chen, Housing Director: One possibility could be, we're trying to just do more outreach about city programs, and so as a result of more outreach efforts, there could be more folks who are receiving the information, and I'm signing up for the webinars to get more information about how to apply. So that could be one reason. We also saw some groups that were applying on behalf of communities, maybe representing the multicultural community, and we suspect that there may be some interest, just given the race equity inclusion initiatives that the city may have. And so we feel that maybe that could be part of that as well.

[03:08:05] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Okay. Thank you. Yeah, okay. Um, that's it. Thanks.

[03:08:11] Mayor Pat Showalter: Great. Council member Ramirez.

[03:08:14] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. Um, I have uh, notwithstanding the uh, whatever, 40 questions I submitted. I do have a few more. But I'll start 1st by saying there's a tremendous amount of valuable information in this document, and I really do appreciate the work that staff put into, especially the continuous improvement initiative memo. And, I mean, there's a lot of information generally about many of the things that I care about. And so most of my questions are answered in this document. But there were some things that, um, staff provided in the responses to council questions that I did want to delve into a little further. And the first has to do with the City Hall Space Planning Study, which, I think, has resulted in some very important changes within this building to help accommodate the growth that we've experienced as an organization. And I wanted to better understand whether this is an exhaustive list, or if there were, if there's more that were likely, or that we should anticipate and plan for based on the result of that study.

[03:09:28] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Thank you, council member, Ramirez, well, our assistant city manager and community development director, Don Cameron, is coming up here. I will say that, um, I would anticipate having to do new or different improvements down the road as the organization changes. You all know that we had to lease new space at 888 Villa just because we're bursting at the seams here at City Hall, given that we've added new positions over the last several years. Um, even though we have staff working remotely. We still don't have enough room here at City Hall. So we have been able to move a couple different divisions there, and it's a really, really nice space. And I know that, um, as Cameron and her team is working really hard on making changes, but I would anticipate there being potentially further changes than what's listed in here, but I'll let, um, Ms. Cameron speak further to that. Thank you very much.

[03:10:24] Don Cameron, Assistant City Manager: So, as city manager McCarthy had mentioned, um, there, I would say the results of the city hall planning study did help us identify how to best meet both our near term and also talked about what our long term needs are going to be. So the near term needs were met by renting the additional space downtown, and moving, one of the divisions we moved there will eventually move into the new public safety building, so that has been sized to accommodate them. But we need to be aware that about half the space is being used by city hall staff that, when or if that lease is let go, they have to be brought back to city hall. And we're not saying we have a home for them. But by moving, all the moving around we did, we were able then to start to accommodate staff that's growth in the various departments, public works, community development, finance, city managers' office, where we've got people, 3 people sometimes crammed into an area. It should be one person will be able to give a little elbow space. So the actions that you saw that list and that came out of there will help us for the next few years. But it did also identify and looking at our future needs and the likelihood of how staff needs are going to grow as the city grows. We are going to have to look for brand new additional space. It looked at, were there any ways to add more space to city hall, you know, build a 2nd story over the lunchroom area, or other ways to do that, but that could be very, very challenging. So, it definitely highlighted for us that we have to keep our eyes out, and I'll just note that a couple things that, you know, we put on the table, the city manager knows about is, is there more we can do at the MOC, and this is long term? For instance, it has a single story admin building out there, that could be rebuilt to be 2 stories and move even more city hall employees there. We've been talking about for the public safety site that there would be some potential surplus land of about 3 quarters of an acre that could be left, and that could be the potential site for another city building to be able to meet our growing demand at city hall. So, yes, we're on path for the near term, but we definitely will have future needs in the long term. Thank you.

[03:13:02] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: That's very helpful, and something, it wasn't called out in the continuous improvement initiatives memo, but something that I think we should all be mindful of, especially given, I think the longer term desire to continue growing the organization, or a very ambitious council, and we have a very ambitious community. I don't anticipate that, um, we're gonna shrink anytime soon. So, I would like to continue understanding progress being made. And, you know, I regard most of the building as inaccessible to me. It's not my job to go around and see what's going on. But the city clerk's office is accessible. And I can't help but think maybe there's a more efficient use for that space, for instance. Um, so, uh, that's that's helpful. Thank you. I have some questions about the equipment replacement. reserve expenditure, which is significant. That's the most I've seen in the, what, 15 or 16 years, I've combed through the previous annual comprehensive financial reports. And I wanted to better understand, is this... I read this as we're spending down the reserve, but there's no narrative associated with it. So it might be helpful to know or understand. Like we did with the Firefleet. I think it was last year, we just replaced everything. Should I interpret this as maybe there's, this is page 7 52 and 53. Are these on a similar kind of cycle, like the fire fleet was, and that's why we're spending $12 million on a whole slew of things, or are we consciously spending down the reserve? Is there any insight you can share with us?

[03:14:57] Grace, Assistant Finance Director: Thank you, council members. Um, Grace St. Assistant Fan is an insurance service director. For the equipment replacement fund, the dollar amount here includes we budget items. Traditionally, um, each year we have a spending plan for the cream replacement fund, but due to staffing or um, supply training shortage, um, a lot of the time we are not able to replace the item in the year that we budgeted. So this amount here includes any unspent balance that we have for this year that got carried into the next year that we hope to spend.

[03:15:26] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Do you know, I don't recall seeing that figure. Do you know what the re budget, so there's net, the additional expenditure, and then the re budget from the prior fiscal year, what was the re budget value?

[03:15:37] Grace, Assistant Finance Director: I don't have it. here at this moment, but we definitely can pull those for you.

[03:15:42] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Okay. As you know, I have been curious about this reserve for many years, and so the expenditure is noteworthy, and I think it would be helpful maybe in future budgets to include maybe some narrative around this, just so I understand, or future councils can understand. As staff did such a good job with the Firefleet replacement memo, right? That was a midyear appropriation, and there was a lot of explanation for that, that made sense to the council. So, too, I feel like when we have something of this magnitude, it might be helpful for us to understand. Um, and then, uh, the last question I have is about my favorite program, which is the abandoned shopping card abatement program. I asked the question about cost recovery. You know, I'm glad that we're, you know, actually levying some fees now, but it only pulls in a third of the cost. Could the council tonight say, you know, we actually want this program to fully recover its costs? Is that something that we have the ability to direct staff to do, or is there a good reason why we shouldn't do that?

[03:16:53] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: So I would say that, I think, given the time and workload this might cause in the past, we have considered this a potential work plan item, I'm not sure how deep staff would have to go in the full cost recovery and the whole program and how that would work. It is something that we've been talking about, but it would likely need to be put on the work plan next year if you wanted a full comprehensive program.

[03:17:21] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So it's, I, I should interpret that to mean it's not as simple as saying the 35 figure can jump up to 65.

[03:17:30] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Correct.

[03:17:30] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: And, okay. And then I should also interpret that to mean that this is not included within the scope of the fee study that we're undergoing.

[03:17:38] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Correct.

[03:17:39] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Why not?

[03:17:40] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Feast, the feast study is really focusing on the current city fees that are within each department charged to users and, uh, I guess you would say, residents for use of various city services. I'm not sure if it's something we might be able to consider. Let's see what Don has to say about that.

[03:18:04] Don Cameron, Assistant City Manager: Thank you. So a couple things to know. And I know this was in the Council Q and A, and it's more fully spelled out there. But 1st off, in terms of the $35 fee that we can charge for shopping carts, there are actually state laws in place that mandate that if they do come and pick up the carts within 72 hours, and those carts are properly labeled. They have to be properly labeled. We can't even, we cannot charge a fee. So, um, so the fees that we have collected are for the carts that were either not properly labeled, so they didn't get that 72 hour grace period, or they remained in the MOC yard for longer than 72 hours, and then they were picked up. One of the great, um, advantages we have seen over enforcement of the $35 cart recovery fee and also bring them all to our MOC, has been just a general decrease in the abandoned carts that you've seen out there, including the fact that one of the biggest contributors. Walmart has actually fixed their system that keeps the carts from going off the property as much. And so that's been a significant decrease. But the other piece that's mentioned there is there's one additional fee that could be charged, and we're looking at how to roll it out now, and it's a $50 fee per occurrence, and we have to look at how we're going, how we structure that and roll it out, and do the same thing we did when we started to really enforce the $35 fee of notifying all the stores. But basically, the way that works is, every day, we go out and we find carts that are abandoned. That's an occurrence. It doesn't matter how many cards. They could have ten, but it's one occurrence. They have more than three occurrences in a six month period. We can charge $50 for the fourth occurrence, $50 for the next one. And that is another way to not only cost recovery, but really what we were hoping for, that these fees would do would be a deterrent, and to get the stores, to take more responsibility for their own carts, and we have scenes tremendous success there. Thank you very much.

[03:20:39] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: If nothing else, this will be my one contribution as a council member to the city. Thank you.

[03:20:45] Unknown Speaker: Council member, Ramirez, I have additional information for equipment replacement fund questions. I do a quick look for the fleet items. We have about $7 million for this for next year's budget, amount that about $5 million in new items, about $250000 is all carry over with budget items. Um, because we have a couple big vehicles that we schedule to replace next year. For example, we are hoping to replace 5 large thumb truck, which is about $one.7 million. And then we have 2 big sweep per, um, that's about a $1000000. So that contribute, um, contribute lots of the equipment placement plan schedule.

[03:21:25] Mayor Pat Showalter: Great, thank you for the follow-up. Okay, I don't see any more, um, uh, council questions. So I think that it's time. to take public comments. So I'm going to open the public comment period. Would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide comment on this item? If so, please, um, raise your hand in Zoom. If you're in the council chambers, Phil, come forward and fill out a blue card. Do I see any people in the council chambers who are interested? speaking? No, okay. I don't see anybody on Zoom either, do you? All right, so that makes that easy. Okay, we can close, close the public, um, comment period. All right. Um, So now we come back for, um, Council deliberation and action. Um, And, uh, So would anyone like to make comments? Actually, I will make a few comments. because while people wait. First of all, I was really glad to see that this is a balanced budget. I mean, we've heard in the news, just, it seems like every day, there's more information about the state's deficit, or the county's deficit, or, you know, somebody else's deficit. So, the fact that we don't have a major deficit is really good news, and, um, I, for one, am very relieved and very pleased. So thank you to everybody who's, you know, contributed to that. And I think, honestly, what we really, this group of people who work at the city now are to be thanked, but also, many of the people who have worked at the city 20 years ago, and set up some of the fiscal systems that, you know, that we have that support us, like our lease payments, just thank you, thank you, thank you. That really served us well. Okay, so I wanted to mention that. And, um, I wanted to also say that, um, you know, just the old thing about how, um, the budget is, um, the budget is a statement of our values. And we have a lot of programs in here to, um, to make sure that we are keeping our house in order, that we're building more housing, um, that we're, uh, you know, we're buying the equipment that we need to buy, that we're supporting good staff, all those things are really important. One philosophical thing, however, that I did want to mention is there was a comment about, you know, one way we could get through the period of, if we have deficits, we could deal with the deficits, was to not hire, um, not hire new staff. And if it was only about money, I would think that that was a very good idea. But it isn't only about money. We are a city. We are going to be in business for the next 100 years, 200 years, a long time. It's not just a quarter by quarter, or year by year thing. We have to look at the concepts of growing our staff and making sure that we have the people to provide the services that our community needs. And since we live in a tech dominated world or a tech dominated economy, it turns out that when the tech jobs are downsizing, the government jobs become much, much more attractive. So this is an opportunity for us to hire people, and even to use limited term positions. So I was really glad to see that in the listings, and in talking to the city managers, we are adding four permanent positions at this time. I think that's great. And we also have about 15 or 20 limited term positions throughout the staff. And I think that this is really wise, because it allows us to bring on people, and see how they work in our organization, what they have to offer, what their work ethic is, and then, hopefully, fill in vacancies as they arise, because they certainly will with people retiring and moving on. So that was just one philosophical thing I wanted to share, is that, although we, we can't be fiscally irresponsible. I think one of the things that we should consider is that this is a hiring opportunity because of the economic situation. So with that, I have another light. Um, Council member, Abbe Coca.

[03:26:51] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you, Mayor, and I just want to reiterate my thanks to the staff for all of their hard work, as it was mentioned by the city manager. This is an 8 month process. And as soon as we pass this budget, I know that work will begin for the next one. So I want to thank staff and appreciate that we continue to have balanced budgets, as the mayor mentioned, that's not the case. I see it. I see it all over that there are cities and entities, agencies that are facing budget deficits. So it is always a source of pride and gratitude that we are able to continue to balance our budget. Um, you know, I would say that, yeah, the downside, I guess, that we see is that our surpluses are not as um, abundant as they've been, the last many, that last many years, really. I think since I came back in 2016, we've had mostly surpluses and it's amazing that even during COVID, we had that, but, I actually say, I think that, I mean, I, you know, appreciate that we've grown as a city and so our organization has grown as well. But, you know, not to date myself, but I was here during recession lean times when we didn't, couldn't grow. And I think, um, you know, that's really the, of the skill of our staff to trying to balance all of that, um, you know, the revenues versus expenses growing when we can. But, um, also being mindful and pulling back when we have to. And, you know, I'll be leaving this year and the future, the next few years look a little leaner than they've been. So I would, um, you know, hope and expect that, um, staff in the council, future councils will be mindful of that because, unfortunately, we can't always keep growing, um, and I think, right, frankly, we're probably right sizing the organization right now, even looking into the future. You know, I appreciate the staff that we are adding in the fire department. I know the call volume has increased quite a bit, and so that's something that is needed. But yes, as you move into the future, You may have to, you know, hold back a little more. And, um, but again, it's a cycle. So things will change up, I'm sure, upswing again. I did want to say that, um, you know, we don't have, we haven't had to talk about our unfinded liability. Um, but that is something that I have always been aware and concerned about because there was a time when that was the big focus of the community. You know, I was recently asked, well, you know, what's the optimum amount of funding that we should have in our pension plans? And I, you know, I actually think 85, 90% is probably optimal because, you know, and someone, the person said, well, why not 100? And I think what we see, that has happened with our actuarials, shows why we really, it's really pretty hard to get to 100 because there's aerial numbers change. But, um, I think it's just, you know, something to be mindful of that, um, as actuarials change and we might dip in our funded percentage. You know, perhaps we look at using limited funds or surpluses to prepay some of the amount, but also realizing or acknowledging that getting to 100% is probably pretty difficult to do. But I think we're in a good position. So just want to say thank you to staff and look forward to passing this budget at our next meeting. Thanks.

[03:31:09] Mayor Pat Showalter: Okay. Vice Mayor Manachek.

[03:31:14] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Thank you. And yeah, thanks for having a balanced budget and all the work that went into this. I did spend a lot of time going through it, as you could tell. And like I said before, there is a lot of great information in here. So I hope others take the opportunity to peruse it. I know we're talking about the budget for next year, but I just want to add one thing about this year. Um, it says that we would be making a contribution to the, um, open space acquisition reserve. And I actually would like to put the, I think it was $3 million into the, um, strategic property acquisition reserve instead. That one is more flexible as a reserve. We can still purchase open land for open space with it, but I don't think it works in the reverse. So I would like to put the money in the spar rather than the open space. So I am very comfortable with the budget that you've put together for 2425. The general fund is basically balanced, and we have a track record of, you know, being very mindful of how we're doing throughout the course of the year, and making adjustments. And so while we are showing a deficit in outer years. I have confidence that we will address those and take care of them, and we'll still have a balanced budget in the outgoing years. I do have a couple of suggestions that I would like to see. I would like to see larger contributions to the sea level rise reserve in the shoreline, regional park community budget. We increase the funding from $3 million to $6 million. That's what's proposed. But given the cost of all of the projects, over 122 million, at least currently. I sure it will escalate. Um, I feel like I'd like to put more money into that sea level reserve. Um, so that's maybe an item we want to take us drop hole on. I also would like us to, um, at every opportunity, um, if there is an opportunity, put money into this strategic property acquisition reserve next year. We don't have it planned right now, but as we go through the year, I'd like us to look for opportunities to put money into that reserve. As the mayor said, I so appreciate previous city managers, finance directors, everyone, council members who had the foresight to purchase property, because it really differentiates Mountain View. And it has been very good for our fiscal health. So, I want to make sure we keep on doing that, because it is so valuable. Plus, um, we can purchase property for affordable housing and for parks and other things that benefit our community. Um, I am concerned about the neighborhood grants that are proposed. Um, for me, you know, when I look back at all the years that I've been tracking that, we haven't provided grants for neighborhood groups that overlap each other. And so I'm concerned that, um, we might do that this year. And typically, if a new group is formed, they check with an existing group and try to coordinate their boundaries, so there isn't overlap. And there are some instances where there is, at least on a map, a neighborhood association within a neighborhood association. But I don't believe they actually include each other in their activities. I've been to ice cream socials and block parties and things for many of them. And, you know, some of them are very small because the neighborhood boundaries are very small. So I actually am concerned about doing that, especially if we take a look at the policy or the rules for the program, the guidelines, and we change them, and then the overlapping neighborhood association or group does not get funded the next year. I feel like, you know, it's hard to give them money one year, then take it away the next year. So I kind of feel like I'd rather be more thoughtful about what we do this year, so that doesn't happen. So I would ask that we take another look at that. You know, maybe there's another solution. I was speaking to someone else here about this, and they suggested, well, maybe we take the money and just divide it in half between the two groups. Um, you know, I think there might be creative ways to address this, but I do have the concern about it. Um, I also have concerns about the steady growth of the rent stabilization division. And I really want to make sure that the RHC is really digging into the activities of the division, and they're really striking a balance between tenants and the housing providers. Those are my comments on the budget. In terms of the metrics. I really appreciate the revamping of the metrics. There's a lot of things that are really good in there. I'm not coughing. I still have some of my allergies. But it's really nice to not be coughing through a council meeting. I would suggest a few tweaks to the metrics. First, I feel like the planning division. I was kind of surprised at how few metrics there were. And there were some questions sent in about it. And, um, while I understand the responses that, you know, there are state rules that we have to meet. Do we always meet them? I don't know that we do. And so I think they're still worth putting in. And then there's a lot of new things that the planning department is doing, like, um, you know, our ADUs approved really quickly, like, on the first application. Our solar installations improved really quickly, on, say, the first application. Things that I feel like the planning department has spent a ton of time addressing. It feels like we should be seeing more about how those are going, and the improvements we're seeing as a result of all this activity that's been happening. So, I'm not an expert on what the metrics should be, but I think I would like to see some others, included for the planning division. Um, and I also, you know, I sort of hesitate to say this, but, um, I would like to see, um, for the Parks and Open space metrics. Well, we have one in there about the open space acres per 1000 people, including North Bay Shore. I think our community really watches for other things. like excluding North Bay Shore and excluding the school property that we joint use agreement now for. And while I know we're going to revisit these for the, as part of the park's and open space plan, Um, you know, I don't think it hurts to include them now and change them later. But those are things that I think people are very much focused on, and that I would include. in this one. Um, I also would include, um, if not, the response time for As Mountain View requests. The number of Mountain View requests, um, for each of the different divisions and departments. I know public works gets a ton of them. But I see them nodding, yes. But I think it would be helpful for us to know if other departments are getting them and how many are they getting? And that's more of a workload measure than, say, a metric, but they all should be answered in a timely fashion. I think we commit to within 72 hours, maybe? So in terms of the format of the report, a lot changed this year. And I don't think those of us who provided input on formatting changes thought of all of these, so, you know, appreciate y'all taking a fresh look at this. Um, it was still, um, a lot of information. Yeah, 655 pages of information. I feel like I'm always going to remember that number. And I was thinking there might be some ways to make it a little bit more compact. And there are some things that were repeated, like the, there's three paragraphs about new performance metrics. And I thought, Oh, gosh, I would put that in the general notes section, and just put a footnote in all the divisions and departments. So it's not repeated. Because I get that somebody might not read the entire document. But I just didn't think that needed to be repeated everywhere. Um, I was also looking for other areas, um, where it could be consolidated. And, um, one of the things that, um, I feel like has always stuck with me, is, um, places where I've worked, they say, you know, you can tell a lot about an organization by, um, like their website and their budget and how things are organized. And I thought, yeah. Um, I feel like we could have a more collaborative, uh, look and feel for some of this, um, and, uh, take the accomplishments, um, that are across divisions and departments, and consolidate those. And I'm always thinking in charts and tables, as you all know. I can envision a table that says all the accomplishments, and all the divisions and departments, and you say, you know, lead, like, public works as the lead on this one, but they were supported by the legal department, and then tick all the other ones. To me, that says, you know, we're an organization that works together. And we accomplish a lot together as opposed to repeating things in the individual sections. And I'm coming up with these things, but I don't know that I had the expectation that all of that can be incorporated in this one. Um, but next year, um, if it can't be incorporated, you know, opportunity for next year. I also thought the department overviews and functions were often repetitive, and it could just be consolidated. The continuous improvement section. I very much appreciated getting that information. I appreciated the volume of work that has gone on to change and improve operations within the city. Certainly, what jumped out to me was the number of new applications or systems that are being implemented, um, which, you know, gosh, we should tutor our horns about that. There's a lot that has been done. I think it would be a little bit helpful to provide a little bit more context. for them. Like, why did we do this? And what was the impact of doing it? So we can really show, how much we've improved, because we have done a lot, which was great to see. So thank you for all of that work to do these things. I would like to see, um, some amount. I don't know what it is of policies that, um, similar to what, um, Fasdi did this year, um, where you said, ah, we have these policies, and you know what? They're outdated, and we really kind of do things differently. and we updated them. Um, in addition to updating um, signature authority limits. Um, I would like us to check in with policies in all the departments from time to time and say, here's what the policy says. Are we doing that? And if we're not, should we change the policy, or should we change our what we're doing to match the policy? Um, We've got a lot, so it will take a long time to get through all of those. But I think it's important to see, are we doing what we say we're doing? And you know what? I forgot to say one thing when we were talking about the metrics. I had a great conversation with our fire chief today. And I really appreciated the discussion we had about how the metrics came about and what they really represented and what our actuals are. And I thought, you know, sometimes when we use these standards, they might not be projecting what is really happening. Um, so, like, response times, you know, their standards, and yes, we're meeting it, you know, 100% of the time. But we're beating it 95% of the time. And I think it's really important, and I'm just making this up. We're actually much better than that. So I thought, well, how would I change? And I think I would actually maybe put the actuals in there for things like response times, because you'll see how much better we are than those national standards. And I think that's important for residents to know that, um, you know, we've got top notch organizations here, and, you know, especially, you know, since I dug into the fire department, you know, we're doing a terrific job in terms of response times. We should highlight that, so people see. And there's probably other examples like that. that maybe we need to revisit, so that we are, um, providing information to our residents, um, that reflect how great, really, the city operations are, because they are. I often say, you know, I never intended to get involved in local government, but, oh, my gosh, I'm so glad I did it here, because this is an incredible city with an incredible organization. I'm very proud to be affiliated with it. So let's, you know, share that great information so others can see it. And on that note, I'll stop.

[03:47:00] Mayor Pat Showalter: All right, thank you very much. Next is Lucas Ramirez.

[03:47:05] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate following the vice mayor, because I agree with almost everything that you've said. And we'll start also with appreciation and gratitude for staff for the immense amount of work that is often invisible to the council that was put into preparing the document. And the additions that were provided to help the council understand, a lot of the work that the organization has been doing, that otherwise would have remained invisible to us. if you hadn't taken the time to compile it. So I just want to, I guess, 2nd several of the things that the vice mayor brought up, including some of the suggestions around the shoreline community reserves and spar. I think those are important as well, and would appreciate staff's recommendations for how to bolster them, appreciating that those are important council priorities, on the list of improvements. I agree, I think, um, I don't know if I expect the continuous improvement initiatives, letter, or memo to appear in a substantially similar way in future budgets, but I think a lot of those things are things that we would appreciate checking in on in some way, shape, or form. But with some, as the vice mayor said, context, or I like to think of it as narrative, right? There's a lot of narrative in the budget that is designed to help the reader. And the council predominantly understand where we've come from and why we've made the decisions that we've made that led us to this particular document. And I think that's something that would help a reader of the continuous improvements initiatives similarly understand. What is it that we're trying to achieve? Why did we prioritize some of these initiatives or, you know, there are some of the things that we didn't elevate, but maybe now that staff has heard some of the questions from the council, like the, you know, uh, uh, the city hall space survey, that's one that's important to us because I think many of us, understanding that we need to be fiscally prudent and may need to pause growth, nevertheless, would like to see the organization continue to function well and be able to respond effectively emerging community needs. that means we'll have to be thoughtful about space. And that means there's going to be future financial impacts as we try to accommodate the growth that we are planning for. So some not as robust as this list, but maybe some progress report similar to this in future budgets would be extremely valuable. And I'm very open to staff suggestions for how to achieve that goal. I like the idea of including informational measure of ask Mountain View inquiries, or maybe it doesn't have to be just Mountain View, ask Mountain View, but we know that staff respond to a tremendous number of inquiries from the community. And that's a workload impact. Most of those, I think, are good and time well spent, responses, but oftentimes, I think you get dragged down into neighborhood concerns and things that were often copied on by email where it's helpful for us to understand that there is a significant resource implication to the constituent service that the organization provides. And I think just even a measure of, you know, here are the number of things that we've responded to over the past year, would be a very valuable reminder for the council, or I'll speak for myself. I would find it useful. And I agree with the vice mayor's recommendations around planning measures. I also felt that compared to building in some of the other departments and divisions. comparatively few measures, but there are some really important things that we should be tracking. So, I think the vice mayor brought up comment letters, for instance, and the council, the staff response to the council questions reminded us that there are strict state laws that we have to adhere to, but there are grave consequences when we don't. And the example that comes to mind is 570 South Ringsdorf, where we did not respond in time at the end of 2019. And so, consequently, that application was deemed complete, and the replacement requirements in SB 330 consequently did not apply. And so we had a very difficult vote. That resulted in the displacement of the folks who live there now. And that was because we did submit our comment letter in time. So I do think that's an important metric. I mean, are we now, you know, following that example, meeting the state requirements 100% of the time, or if we're not, then, you know, what can we do to ensure that we do? And then I'm also, I don't know if there's an easy way to do this, but I think rounds of review would be an important measure, because it's something that we hear very frequently, as council members, and maybe there are things that, a lot of it, understandably, is on the applicant side, they need to provide us the information that, you know, we need to be able to respond. But maybe there are things that we can do procedurally or clarify in regulations to help reduce the number of rounds of review. And then the last, there weren't too many with economic vitality or economic development, but my understanding is the economic vitality strategy included the measures that were likely to use moving forward. Is that right? I'm seeing a gentle head nod. Thank you. So that list will become much more robust. I think that was everything on my list, and likewise, I look forward to approving the budget when it comes back to us. Thank you.

[03:53:22] Mayor Pat Showalter: Council memoramos.

[03:53:25] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Mayor. I... Okay. So, um, I'm gonna just respond to most of the stuff that was said before. I really, uh, last year I was very fortunate to be in a brown act with the vice mayor and I really miss that this time around because she she follows so much detail to such a large document that is incredibly impressive. Um, I agree with most of the suggestions that were proposed by the vice mayor and council member Ramirez with some exceptions. Um, there was a, uh, it, it blipped there. The neighborhood grants proposal. It was, I'm on the CNC along with Council member Ramirez and the mayor. It was rough when we, uh, when we found that, um, we had our pot of money and there were a lot more people that wanted more of that pot of money. Um, and it was hard for us to, we tried to find a compromise. We ended up denying about 4 new, um, organizations. I'm happy that it looks like in the document that we asked for just a little bit more money to cover some of those newer organizations. So we got the 50,000. Um, I, I, We should rethink how we do those neighborhoods as we've seen that they have gone more popular. It's kind of like one of those, yay, were successful. Oh, no, we're successful kind of moments. Um, so, uh, I would love for us to obviously look into that, but obviously fully fund what the CNC recommendations were. Um, uh, the other part, which was, I don't think, was an actual recommendation, just a concern, but um, in the terms of the budget for the rent stabilization committee, um, they, they are an relatively independent committee that are responsible for their own budget. And one of the interesting things is that they look through their own budget. And one of the things that they also do is compare it to other cities that have rent stabilization programs. They, comparatively to other cities, they are, we get a lot of bang for our buck from the staff that we have in that department. I understand. I think it's just like a mountain view thing to expect a lot from our staff. Um, and, uh, I think that if their staff believe that they need more help to do the work that the rental housing committee needs to do in order to properly implement the rent stabilization program in our city, I'm inclined to listen to that need and move forward, especially since it's 100% cost recovery. Um, And the important thing about the more robust our rent stabilization program is, the easier it is for us to find solutions in another one of our goals is our displacement response strategy. So it's kind of like a twofold from a program that is 100% cost recovery. So, I'm happy with how it has grown from really, when it 1st started, It was literally just 3 people carrying the entire weight of that program. And I'm glad that they are getting some help, making sure that our residents are protected, that landlords understand and know the law. The education is out there, for the services that we have in our community, and that it's well integrated with our city and the needs of our city. And so, another one that I, this one is more of an agree with is the getting the response time of Ass Mountain View and the number of requests, I think that's actually a great idea. It's interesting because Ask Mountain View is essentially the equivalent in other cities of their 311 essentially. Um, and a lot of these cities, they actually have a lot of the data about publicly available about the use of their, their equivalent of Ass Mountain View. And I would love to see more of that kind of available. We, I remember looking at that. I was part of a hackathon a while back and we were looking at pothole reporting data. And that's one of the really common things that you could, it's one of the options that you could do in Ass Mountain View. It's a really common thing that you put in, like, other cities equivalent of Ass Mound of View. And then some cities actually have that data available. So like you could have, you can see all the potholes. It's really kind of fascinating. Um, and Not just because it's really cool, but like it's also really interesting to see what data that we have as a city available for our residents to improve our city. We have a robust volunteer, an activist ecosystem. It's really kind of cool to see what we can do to empower kind of that through. That's not that's not like an immediate project. But it's something to think about as we look at, like, the information that we want from things like Ass Mountain View. Um, I, I, uh, one of the things I was thinking about is that last night I was sitting through a budget hearing for another city, and I kind of chuckled to myself that we had like 0 public comment as I sat through last night, 4 or 5 hours. Five hours of public comment for another city's budget review, which was not fun. So I'm glad that our residents are very happy with our budget the way it is and not out in full force of being very angry about it. And I also, There was another council meeting that I sat through, and there was a resident that was really upset when they looked at their org charted that city, and they actually pointed out that Mountain View, if we look at their overchart, on the top of that list is Mountain View residents, that they are the top, and what they, um, And that's something that, like, I'm happy guides us through, um, with our city and what we, um, how we make our decisions because we are looking at, how does this affect our residents, how does our residents view this? And I'm very happy that how we plan our budget as the mayor has said, the budgets are a statement of values, and those values are led by the needs of our residents.

[04:00:26] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you so much, Steph. All right, so that has brought us to the end of our comments. Um, I guess one thing I think maybe we should talk about next year at the work plan is, um, is do we want to have this budget meeting the same way, um, in future years, or do we want to try something else? I know in Sunnyvale, for instance, they have a special workshop meeting that's just devoted to the budget. And, um, it is as, uh, vice mayor, Mattachek has mentioned, several times 658 pages. And... Oh, 55. Sorry. So that is a lot to absorb. And so I think that's something we might want to bring up in the future. Anyway, that said, I have made a list of a few things I think we should have straw poles on. And so I'm going to go down that list, and then if there's anything that people think I have left out, I'm sure that you will let me know. First one is to increase the contribution. No. Um, to make contributions to the open space, to spar, um, because it's more, this fiscal year because they're more flexible. Is that okay with everybody? Okay. All right. So to make the contribution to from the open space.

[04:02:07] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Just real quick, confirming that that's for 2324 current fiscal year. And just want to confirm those was approved in February council meeting, as a meet your staff, report.

[04:02:22] Mayor Pat Showalter: pour. So you want to change that. Okay. Is it okay to change? Yeah. Okay. All right. Everybody in favor of that? All right. Good. Okay. All right. We'd like to increase the contribution. to the sea level rise reserve from $3 million to $6 million. That's what's proposed. Oh, it's proposed. That right. It's proposed to increase it from 3 million to 6 million. And we would like to do more. Now would you think that the staff should come back with a suggestion? Okay, and we would like to have to come back with a suggestion. Is everybody in favor of that? Thank you. And then we would like to have staff put as much money as possible during the year into the strategic property acquisition reserve to enable us to purchase property as much as we can, because that's just such a good, it's a flexible reserve, and it's powerful to be able to purchase land. Is that what you wanna say? Okay, all right. So in favor?

[04:03:41] Unknown Speaker: I'm voting for it, but I don't think we should just purchase as much as we can.

[04:03:45] Unknown Speaker: Well, that's true. We have to be very strategic.

[04:03:49] Unknown Speaker: That's right. Putting it in there, yes. Putting it in there. Okay. I will. That was it. So, Mayor, I'd like better, more clarification on that, because, as I mentioned, I have a concern about our pension obligations, and I would like to look at doing some prepaying as well. So I don't want to put all our surplus funding into. So, yeah, I'd like to get, like, what are we talking about or staff can come up with some... I mean, I was expecting staff would come back with recommendations on use how to use those one time surplus funds. So, you know, I'm fine to include putting more funding into our spar, but I do want to make sure that we are looking at other ways of using the funds to pay for some of our obligations too. So

[04:04:42] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: thank you, mayor and council members. A couple things. We are getting ready or maybe we perhaps already have. I'd have to ask, Mr. Rampone, um, engaging and a unique sort of actuarial consultant to think about, um, speeding up our unfunded liability payments to become more funded, so that is something that staff is actively working on. And I think that's something we could bring back to the council as a more comprehensive update. on our contributions and just what the plan is towards our unfunded liability. As far as putting the money into spar over the year, we will know better about where we land at the end of this fiscal year, once council does their, or excuse me, once staff does their annual year-end review, we won't know that until really the end of this calendar year. It's kind of when we have the final numbers, and that's always in our year-end comprehensive annual report. So I think perhaps what we might be able to do at that time is look at what we have at that time and either bring a recommendation to council. We can also bring it at midyear. So I think we have enough direction from you all to bring you some options. Both the unfunded liability piece and put in more money in this bar.

[04:06:08] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you. That's a good clarification. Vice Mayor Manachek, you have your light on? Okay, so the next one would be related to the neighborhood grants. And, um, really, 2 concepts have been foot forward. One is going forward with the staff recommendation. And the other one is, um, uh, not funding or asking staff to reconsider how to share the funds for the overlapping district. So, first, I'm going to add, oh, Council member, May. Great.

[04:06:46] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Thanks, Mayor. So, from my reading of the budget, It sounds like the grant program is transitioning from a different department. It sounds like I prefer maybe not to be prescriptive and I know as it's evolving and changing, perhaps this is the feedback that we can say is, um, if there's any overlap. see if there's potential consolidation. I think the other thing that stood out to me was there's neighborhoods I see missing, you know, how do we engage with those parts of our community who are not applying for the grant. That would be my comment. So I think, I don't know, I look to staff if they have enough direction, but I think consolidation and seeing where there might be gaps in our community and encouraging those who aren't currently applying to apply, if there is a neighborhood organization, would be of interest to me. But I know they're tweaking the program, so.

[04:07:53] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Mayor, if I may. Um, thank you, council member Kamei. So yes, just to confirm for the full council, the CNC program and the way we're doing it is going to be somewhat of a collaboration still between the housing department and the city manager's office, but eventually will transition primarily to the city manager's office. With some components of it, housing helping with. But I think that's something that city manager staff can certainly take a look at. We hear what's happened. We know what's happened at the CNC, we hear what you all are saying tonight. I think we need to take a look at the neighborhoods themselves, and perhaps there are smaller geographic areas that we might need to carve out. And if there are certain neighborhoods that this is happening in, I think we can just dig deeper. If it's not really happening citywide. Um, I think we can just take a look at that and probably carve out some some areas to delineate the differences. So, yes, city managers office staff will be taking a look at that. It will be in 2025 though, I believe. I'm looking to our assistant city manager.

[04:09:05] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour Ramberg: Yes, 25.

[04:09:06] Mayor Pat Showalter: Yeah. Council member Hicks.

[04:09:11] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I agree with the direction council member Kame is suggesting in the city manager. And the one additional thing that when I look this over that I want to make sure, and maybe everybody already knows, but it seems like some of them are not neighborhoods, they're interest groups like Frisbee and art. I don't know, you know, maybe I'm reading it wrong, maybe art is a neighborhood. Okay. But, um, yeah, that's just something, it seems like, using the program for something that's not meant to be used for. So to look out for that. I think you could define it with a neighborhood and really, you know, I could define it around my house and several of my friends who live near me, but I think that's not those kinds of things are not the purpose. Okay, so, um, but I think that that leaves us with, do we, this year, do we want to go forward with the staff recommendation? That's really, you know, the question we're left for with.

[04:10:09] Mayor Pat Showalter: So, um, the staff recommendation, uh, if you're... Right. The CNC and the staff recommendation, if you're in favor of the CNC recommendation, please, please raise your hand. Just for this year. What was... CNC recommendation? Okay, okay, we have four. Thank you. Okay, um. The growth of the rent stabilization committee that We're going to go forward with that. There was quite a bit of discussion about metrics. And I'm not really sure, looking at staff, what's the best way to go forward with this?

[04:11:05] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: So what I think we can do. There's one that I think is pretty easy that Council identified, which is the one about AskMB and just to include that and all the departments just to count the number of ask and be requests they do. I'm not quite certain right now about the turnaround time. I would imagine that that would keep track of that within that 72 hour time period. But I think that's something we can add. And then I also heard interest about, perhaps seeing if there might be maybe a few more that planning division might be able to add. So I think we can try and take a look at what we might be able to do before coming back and then in the adopted budget, but I would say a more comprehensive look would be more for the next fiscal year budget. So we'll take a look at the metrics that you all express interest in and, um, come back to you all with what we can do now.

[04:12:04] Mayor Pat Showalter: I think that's a great answer. All right. Let's see. My list here. Vice Mayor Manachek.

[04:12:14] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Sorry, so I certainly mentioned quite a few. Did you mean just the ones you mentioned you'd come back to us with, or others as well?

[04:12:23] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: I have notes on all the ones you mentioned. So we'll look at all of those. Some we might be able to do now and others will make sure we can.

[04:12:29] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Okay, thanks.

[04:12:30] Mayor Pat Showalter: incorporate next time. And then, sort of on a similar note, there was quite a bit of comment on the continuous improvement data. Everybody seems very happy with it. But, um, they felt, I heard a, um, uh, desire to, for some improvements, I think that these would be in the future.

[04:12:54] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Yes, thank you, mayor. So what I have, and I'll talk with the team about, I think what we can do is provide a progress report on the continuous improvement memo. So I would want to talk to the team about the best timing for doing that. If it's in 6 months, if it's in a year, um, including some of the things that were called out and the council questions, I think there were like 4 items that weren't included, so maybe including those in with it. So, um, we'll talk about that as a team and we'll certainly just bring a progress report back to council. Might be an off agenda memo if it's earlier than a year. we'll make sure that that's done.

[04:13:32] Mayor Pat Showalter: And it seems like in my memory, when you put together your evaluation memos. They often have included very extensive lists of accomplishments and who, you know, and what departments they're in. I don't know who that is distributed to except for the council. But it seems like that... Okay, it seems like that, that could be extracted. I mean, that's kind of what we were talking about, is that, we really love that list. Okay, and I see council member Kameis, let's number again.

[04:14:07] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Well, I guess I'll be the lone voice, saying, I liked it in the budget, the continued improvement list. I, you know, I hesitated to make comments. I think it's great. The document as is. I think one of the reasons why I appreciate it in the budget is some of some colleagues surfaced. It's such an important document, and we've made headway in terms of being educ- being able to educate the public more. We have our super awesome video. Um, we have, um, education with our civic leadership academies. We've taken a document and really brought it to life, I think, in full color. And when people ask us, how's this going, where, what's the progress on this, we actually can point it out in the document. When we get an off agenda memo. They won't see that update. And if, as council member Ramos mentioned, our residents are at the top of our organization chart, I think it is really important for them to get the same information that council gets. So that's where I thought having it in the document was something that at least I appreciated. So I, considering it's the first time we've had it in the document, I hesitate to say take it out. I'd like to adopt it, give residents the opportunity to read it and get back to us and tell them what they tell counsel what they think.

[04:15:44] Mayor Pat Showalter: I didn't understand, that's what we were saying. I just thought we were.

[04:15:48] Mayor Pat Showalter: Oh, I just thought we were saying, in the future, these are some improvements to it. But I think, you know, all the points that you made about it being eligible to the public are really right on. And particularly that list, we get, I think it would be great to include in this in the future. Okay. Okay. So, um, that brings me to the end of my list. Were there other things that people thought were mentioned that we needed to kind of check and see if there was general agreement on? Okay. Well, that's great. I told my husband the meeting was going to be over at 11 o'clock, where it's not quite, but we're going to be... Where are we close? When are you very close? Okay. So, with that? I think that we can close this public hearing. And we will move on to the next item. Which just have a few more items. And again, on behalf of myself and the entire council, we just really, um, feel very grateful for all the work and effort, um, and expertise that you, uh, expend to this kind of, um, document together for us and for our community. Thank you. All right. So, I think that brings us to, I've got to find the agenda flow, but I... It brings us to item eight. Everybody's favorite. Council reports. So who would like to go first? Council member Ramirez.

[04:17:27] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. I don't have any reports, but I do have two quick referrals. I had discussed these with staff earlier, and I'll look to them for any corrections, but the first would be to actually bypass CPPC, but bring to council a revision to council policy, K2, that would empower the council appointments review committee to interview and make recommendations for peace applicants rather than have the full council. interview. When we appointed everybody all at once, that made sense. But I think now that, you know, it's not that it's an unimportant body, but it's stature or its profile within the community has diminished, and I think it's appropriate to delegate that back to the cark. And then the 2nd referral would need to go to CPPC, but, and I'll, your assistance with this one. It's a separate revision to council policy, K2 that would, based on some work staffs done, include definitions for committees, boards, and commissions, and specifically to, I think it was define or something to do with the charter. To help clarify which of these bodies are subject to provisions of the charter that have specific membership requirements and those bodies that do not. Thank you. So those would be the 2 requests for referral.

[04:19:08] Mayor Pat Showalter: Do you want to make a motion along those lines?

[04:19:12] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I move that we refer to counsel bypassing CPPC, or revision to counsel policy K2, to allow the CARC to interview and make recommendations to counsel for PC applicants, and then two, refer to CPPC, you know, at staff's discretion on timing. This is not urgent. But revision to the council policy K to do what the city attorney said.

[04:19:46] Mayor Pat Showalter: So, um, council member Abby Koger, do you want to respond to this, or do you want to make, you know?

[04:19:50] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay, so I will second that motion?

[04:19:55] Unknown Speaker: So, can I second? Okay. All right. I can second it.

[04:20:04] Mayor Pat Showalter: All right, so do we have any discussion? All right, so, um, let's have a vote.

[04:20:19] Mayor Pat Showalter: Great, that passes unanimously. Thank you, Council member Ramirez. Council member Abi Koga.

[04:20:25] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you, Mayor. I just had a few items to report on, I wasn't sure if someone else was going to do it, but I'll do it with the council sustainability committee. I want to thank staff. We're coming back quickly with options to, in light of the reach codes, suspension on all electric buildings. I don't know when that's going to be coming to the full council, but I appreciate the options that we came up with there. Um, I know we meant all of us or most of us attended the Chinese Language Leadership Academy. I got to present to the group and then the graduation and I know there were like actually quite a few suggestions on ways to change it. And I always wanted to ask staff, like, well, that come to council or I was thinking, is it the REI committee? How will we deal with some of those? Suggestions. You can get back to me. It can be offline if you'd like. I think it was a very successful program and they had some really good ideas for the future to improve on that. Lots of transportation things going on. We had a VTA ad hoc committee on our grade separation projects. We're actually having a meeting tomorrow with a number of state agencies, California transportation commission, the DOT, some of them are... Berman staff, Senator Pecker staff, um, this was uh, we're headed by Carl Gardina, who's the chair of our CTC. I had mentioned to him, our challenge with the funding for Ringstorf grade separation project being taking out of the budget. So we're trying to come up with alternatives and I want to just think staff. We've been working very quickly to try to make this happen and find a way to save our offending and that was awarded to us by the state that's now been taken out and we're trying to restore it so that we can continue to apply for federal funding. So, um, hope to have a good meeting on that tomorrow and be able to report out, um, good news there. And then, um, you may have heard, uh, SB 1031 at the NTC level was a legislation to try to create a regional transportation measure, um, that bill has been pulled. And tomorrow at our MTC meeting, we will be discussing next steps. And the proposal is to come up with a select committee that will work to potentially put another piece of legislation forward working with state senator wiener. Thank you.

[04:23:20] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you. Vice Mayor Mattercheck.

[04:23:23] Vice Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. So on May 30th, the mayor and I attended the Moffat Quarterly meeting, and it's always interesting to hear from the various groups that are operating at Moffat Field, what's going on there as well as from Sunnyvale. On May 30th, I attended a board meeting for the Silicon Valley Regional Interoperability Authority. And, um, we always cover a lot of topics, but the one that was pretty interesting was all the planning that is going on for the major events that are going to happen at Levi's Stadium, such as Super Bowl and World Cup. Um, and communications is a really important piece of these major events. Um, and then on June 4th. We had a council transportation committee meeting that I participated in, and we discussed the personal delivery device pilot program, as well as the, what is now combined, the Vision 0 action plan, and the local road safety plan, and how, you know, those in, um, together, but also how it fits in with the active transportation plan. That's it. Thanks.

[04:24:36] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you, Council member Kameh.

[04:24:40] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. So yesterday, I attended a special board meeting for CHAC. I think many as many of us received the email from Chat talking about, um, they're, um, looking into acquisition with an organization called Pacific Clinics. So, um, we are continuing to work through that process with this special meeting and then should meet at the end of the month. This may include formal council action when we return from the summer recess. Thank you.

[04:25:12] Mayor Pat Showalter: Thank you. And I have a few things to add too. This is really been a very busy period. Lots of, you know, into the school and budget related kind of activities. We all, most of us went to the employee appreciation lunch on May 29th, and that was, as usual, those were, you know, really well organized and lots of fun, great to talk to all the employees, or as many as, you know, as we had time to talk to. There has been a great deal of celebration of Nelly Meyer on her retirement, and we put together a little certificate of appreciation, but it turned out to be difficult to give it to her. I went to the retirement party, and there wasn't an opportunity to do that on Wednesday. Most many of us were at that. So I returned to the board meeting on Monday. And there was more celebration of Nelly, and I was able to give the presentation to her, and say a few words about the importance of the collaboration between the school district and the city. And I think that was really well received. The other thing about it that was nice was the new superintendent of schools was there, and we got to meet him. So that turned out to be good, even if it was a lot of work to get rid of that one little presentation. And, um, I had a, uh, the city manager and I had a very interesting evening. On Thursday, May 30th, we spoke at the Mona Loma Neighborhood Association. The vice... I mean, the city manager is a, you know, a neighbor, a resident of that neighborhood. So, it was really wonderful to be able to answer all of the community's questions and give a presentation on. They were really interested in the grade separation. The park issue, and what was the third one? What was another one? Great Separation Parks. The revenue measure. Ah, the revenue measure, that's right. The revenue measure. And, um, it, it was, um, it was really well attended, and I just was, as somebody who's been on the council neighborhoods committee for a number of years, It's so fascinating to see how the different neighborhood associations have evolved, and how sophisticated some of them are, versus others, and monoloma really has its act together. They've been doing it for a long time. And they have a newsletter, and a website, and all these activities, and, you know, they've got their act together. That's great. I've got Nirvana. And they've got Nirvana, exactly. And then on June 1st, I went to Moffatt, to the Women's Veterans Day celebration for the 129th Rescue Wing, and that was really a wonderful celebration. I got to hear the head of the veterans administration for the state of California speak, as well as a general from the Space Force, and the commandant of, Kent Roberts. So it was really interesting to hear these military women talk about their experiences. On June 8, I attended the rental housing, summer kickoff program. at Ringsdorf. And it was a great event. They must have had 25 organizations set up with information sharing there. So, there were several hundred people there, and one of the things that I got to do along with council member Ramos was to judge the chalk art contest, which was really fun. Lots of very, very cute kids who were creative. So, um, it's been a very busy time. And, um, I'm kind of looking forward to the summer recess, I have to say. And anyway, so that brings us to the end of item eight. And then we go to item nine, which is the city attorneys report. City attorney, do we have a report?

[04:29:50] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: No final action was taken in close session this evening. Thank you.

[04:29:54] Mayor Pat Showalter: With that, this meeting is adjourned at 11:08. We will see you all on June 25th. Thank you.

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