Apr. 28, 2026 Joint Meeting of the City Council and the Capital Improvements Financing Authority

Video

Agenda

• 1. CALL TO ORDER & 2. ROLL CALL (STUDY SESSION): Call to order and roll call for the 5:00 P.M. Study Session. (00:00:00)
• 3.1 Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan - Draft Review: Presentation and discussion on the draft Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan. (00:06:24)
• 1. CALL TO ORDER/PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE & 2. ROLL CALL (REGULAR SESSION): Call to order, pledge of allegiance, and roll call for the 6:30 P.M. Regular Session. (04:16:16)
• 3.1 California Parks and Recreation Society Award of Excellence for Rengstorff Park Aquatics Center: Presentation of the award. (04:19:38)
• 3.2 Fair Housing Month Proclamation: Proclamation for Fair Housing Month. (04:25:25)
• 3.3 Earth Month Proclamation: Proclamation for Earth Month. (04:39:05)
• 4. CONSENT CALENDAR: Approval of the consent calendar, including adding an emergency item (4.8) and pulling item 4.4 for discussion. (04:44:50)
• 5. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE PUBLIC ON NONAGENDIZED ITEMS: Public comments on items not on the agenda. (04:49:16)
• 6.1 Mixed-Use Development at 843-903 Castro Street, 700 West El Camino Real, and 750 Fairmont Avenue: Public hearing and council action on the mixed-use development. (04:58:12)
• 6.2 Federal Fiscal Year 2026-27 Annual Action Plan: Public hearing and council action on the Annual Action Plan. (05:16:05)
• 6.3 Approval of Lease Revenue Bonds for Public Safety Building Project: Public hearing and council action on the lease revenue bonds. (05:43:29)
• 7. COUNCIL, STAFF/COMMITTEE REPORTS: Reports from city council members and staff. (06:00:52)
• 8. ADJOURNMENT: Meeting adjourned. (06:05:25)

Transcript

1. CALL TO ORDER & 2. ROLL CALL (STUDY SESSION)

[00:05:56] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Okay everyone, we're going to get started. All right, um, good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us for our study session. The City Clerk will take attendance by roll call.

[00:06:12] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember Hicks.

[00:06:13] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Here.

[00:06:14] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember McAlister.

[00:06:15] Councilmember John McAlister: Here.

[00:06:16] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember Ramirez.

[00:06:17] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Here.

[00:06:18] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember Showalter.

[00:06:19] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Here.

[00:06:20] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Vice Mayor Clark.

[00:06:20] Vice Mayor Chris Clark: Here.

[00:06:21] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Mayor Ramos.

[00:06:21] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Here.

[00:06:22] City Clerk Heather Glaser: You have a quorum with Councilmember Kamei absent.

3.1 Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan - Draft Review

[00:06:24] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: All right, thank you. So we will now begin with item 3.1 Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan, Draft Review. The purpose of this study session is to review and provide feedback on the draft Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan. Assistant Community Services Director Brenda Silvia and Lauren Stoneburner, environmental scientist with the San Francisco Estuary Institute, 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.

[00:06:59] Brenda Silvia: Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Councilmembers. My name is Brenda Silvia, Assistant Community Services Director and project lead for the Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan. I'm joined this evening by Lauren Stoneburner, environmental scientist with the San Francisco Estuary Institute, who have supported the development of this plan. Also with us this evening are John Marchant, Community Services Director, Russell Hanson, Urban Forest Manager, and Lindsay Wong, Senior Management Analyst. We also have Selena Pang from the San Francisco Estuary Institute joining us virtually. Tonight, we're here to present the draft Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan and receive your feedback.

[00:07:38] Brenda Silvia: To briefly summarize the project background, this effort began in June 2021 when the City Council identified two related projects as part of the strategic roadmap. To update the 2015 Community Tree Master Plan, and define biodiversity requirements for landscaping. As that work progressed and strong community interest emerged, it became clear there was support for a more comprehensive approach. These two efforts were ultimately combined into what is now the Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan.

[00:08:08] Brenda Silvia: The city partnered with SFEI to develop a plan grounded in science that also reflects community values and priorities. Last fall, the draft plan was presented to both the Parks and Recreation Commission and the Environmental Planning Commission for review and feedback. In January, PRC reviewed an updated draft and recommended that it move forward to the City Council for review and adoption.

[00:08:32] Lauren Stoneburner: Good evening to the Mayor, Vice Mayor, and City Council members. Again, my name is Lauren Stoneburner and I'm an urban ecologist with the San Francisco Estuary Institute or SFEI. And so the Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan is designed to outline a strategy to increase access to and benefits from nature.

[00:08:57] Lauren Stoneburner: And the commitments stem from three core inputs. It integrates science-based guidance and assessments with community needs and priorities, and city input on what's feasible to achieve. And in this plan, we refer to biodiversity as the diversity of all living things in an ecosystem, such as mammals, pollinators, plants, and birds. And the urban forest is the entire population of trees in the urban area, including both in built-up areas and in vegetated areas.

[00:09:28] Lauren Stoneburner: So in this presentation, we'll go over briefly the project timeline, we'll introduce the city project team's role developing the plan, we'll summarize public input and feedback across the project, we'll provide an overview of the feedback we received from the commissions and their recommendation of the plan, and discuss your comments and questions.

[00:09:53] Lauren Stoneburner: So first on the project timeline. This slide is an overview of the touchpoints that we've had with the Parks and Rec Commission and with the public to receive comments and input as we've developed the plan. And briefly, just to summarize, the city brought the proposed scope of work in June of 2022. SFEI was brought on shortly thereafter, and we presented our first update in February of 2023. And we've come back to the city repeatedly to seek input and feedback.

[00:10:31] Lauren Stoneburner: This slide is then an overview of the draft plan review timeline. So it was a year ago that we first had a complete draft of the plan, and we received feedback from city staff as well as our technical advisors. The city staff reviewed the draft a few times, and then we took the plan to the Parks and Rec Commission in October of 2025. Shortly thereafter to the Environmental Planning Commission of October 2025.

[00:11:02] Lauren Stoneburner: We received input, made revisions, presented a revised draft to the Parks and Recreation Commission in January of this year. Upon in that meeting, they recommended the plan to City Council. And that's where we are today presenting a draft plan. We'll receive your comments, make revisions, and the current timeline is to give you the revised draft in June of this year.

[00:11:33] Lauren Stoneburner: And so the city project team was critical to incorporating input from across city departments. The city project team was led by the Community Services Department, and it included representatives from the Public Works Department, Community Development Department, and the City Manager's Office Sustainability and Resiliency Division. And so the city project team supported the plan development by providing data, technical input. They assisted with community engagement activities. They helped facilitate our stakeholder workshop. We held an implementation-focused workshop with them where they helped us develop feasible actions and metrics, and then they reviewed the draft several times.

[00:12:17] Lauren Stoneburner: And then input from the public was another core pillar in developing the plan. So the goals of engagement were to increase awareness of the plan first, and then generate meaningful input from a diversity of participants to help us craft the vision and to prioritize goals and actions. So we ended up with over 1300 community interactions over six workshops, three pop-up events, an online community survey, and postings on the project webpage.

[00:12:52] Lauren Stoneburner: And so I'll just go over very briefly some of the themes that we heard. We received a wide range of feedback, but we heard time and time again that there's a desire for more tree canopy cover, especially in heat-vulnerable areas, a desire for more native plantings and pollinator habitat, and there was an emphasis for the critical role that local stewardship and public participation play in achieving biodiversity and urban forest health. So this graphic here is just an example from Chapter 4, summarizing survey responses where we asked the community to imagine what Mountain View would look like in the future. And so this community feedback directly informed our development of the vision and goals.

[00:13:41] Lauren Stoneburner: So we synthesized the input from the science, the community, and the city staff to develop the plan. And there are five components which I'll walk through briefly, from vision to action and evaluation.

[00:13:57] Lauren Stoneburner: So the vision statement is a single sentence that represents the city's North Star. So it distills the community's shared values and ideals for the city's future landscape and community. It reads, Mountain View is a healthy, connected, and resilient community where people and nature thrive together.

[00:14:17] Lauren Stoneburner: So this reflects the core themes from community engagement. We received feedback that centered heavily on human and ecosystem health and resilience. The community highlighted the importance of connections, both connections to community and connections to nature. And the community imagined Mountain View being a place where people and nature thrive together, where it reflects the community's strong emphasis on balancing the strategies for nature and for people.

[00:14:55] Lauren Stoneburner: Next, the goals translate the vision into long-term tangible aspirations, and it acts like a compass that directs the city to that North Star vision. The first goal is connect people and nature, and this represents connections in all directions. It's connecting people to nature and to place, connecting nature to nature, and connecting people to each other and their community.

[00:15:20] Lauren Stoneburner: The second goal is foster places of refuge, which is balancing improvements of natural resources for both people and for nature. Build resilience is building resilience of the urban forest, of natural resources and habitats, and resilience in a changing climate. And lastly, activate and collaborate is about collaborating with community, with practitioners and projects, collaborating across city departments, and then with other external agencies.

[00:15:55] Lauren Stoneburner: Each goal is paired with two to four objectives. And objectives translate the high-level vision and goals into specific, measurable, and practical commitments that guide the city's implementation. So just as an example to work towards goal one, connect people and nature, objectives include supporting a network of connected green space and fostering a cultural shift that spotlights biodiversity to instill a sense of place. So we won't go through each of these objectives individually, but we can always flip back to this slide and dig in more if it's helpful.

[00:16:34] Lauren Stoneburner: There are then three more key components that drive the day-to-day execution of the plan itself. The implementation component is the actions. They're the concrete steps that the city can take and implement to make strides towards the objectives. In this plan, there are 25 objectives that are organized into short, medium, and long-term timeframes and paired with relative cost estimates. The targets and metrics are the evaluation tools. So 25 metrics are the methods of measuring progress, and targets are the milestones along the way. And the city project team played a critical role in helping us develop these components specifically, and identifying the steps that are feasible and tying the actions to city processes and operations.

[00:17:27] Lauren Stoneburner: Lastly, in Chapter 5, there's the final section, 5.4 Implementation Framework. And this section was developed specifically to address Parks and Rec Commission and Environmental Planning Commission feedback to outline the procedural and structural mechanisms that ensure feasibility and accountability.

[00:17:48] Lauren Stoneburner: So the framework covers the following topics: leadership and responsibility, plans for cross-departmental city implementation team, and it highlights the need for dedicated staffing capacity to drive implementation. Priorities and initial steps. It outlines the first actions to implement immediately upon plan adoption, and it introduces a phasing strategy for medium and long-term priority actions.

[00:18:22] Lauren Stoneburner: Costs and funding outlines the preliminary cost estimates and a process for securing funding for currently unfunded initiatives. Monitoring, evaluation, and reporting tasks the city implementation team with coordinating the collection and reporting of metrics. And adaptive management tasks the city implementation team with periodically refining priorities and approaches as needed.

[00:18:50] Lauren Stoneburner: Our team also provides a set of complementary guides. These guides are designed to provide detailed, specific, and applied guidance and resources to support the day-to-day operations and decision making. And the guides include Guide A around urban landscaping is about translating the vision, goals, objectives, and actions into practical landscaping design guidance. The plant list Guide B provides a native plant list and an updated city tree list. Guide C, Urban Forest Policies and Practices is about supporting urban forest operations, guidelines, and pest management strategy. And Guide D, Monitoring and Targets will help the city develop a monitoring protocol and track metrics and setting targets.

[00:19:42] Lauren Stoneburner: So now I'll just briefly summarize some of the headlines from the comments that we've received from the commission review in October and in January.

[00:19:55] Lauren Stoneburner: So first on the major updates we made after the first commission review from the PRC and the EPC in October. There were comments around requesting more direct language and strengthening accountability and commitment. So we, just as an example, we replaced passive terms like could with more commitment-based language like will. And we added the section a word from the city at the beginning to clarify the city's voice and commitment. We also simplified and strengthened the vision for greater impact.

[00:20:30] Lauren Stoneburner: And we received feedback to clearly balance aspirations with feasibility, with cost considerations, and with other city priorities. So in response, we developed that 5.4 Implementation Framework section that I just provided an overview of, including providing more details on phasing, level of cost, and roles and cross-departmental coordination.

[00:21:03] Lauren Stoneburner: Then after the second Parks and Rec Commission review in January of this year, we reprioritized action 23 as a short-term priority. And this is the action related to incorporating recommendations from this plan when developing and updating precise plans. We added a metric to track privately managed trees through community submitted data. We strengthened the coordination with the Parks and Recreation Strategic Plan, particularly around advancing equitable access to shade, cooling, and biodiversity benefits. And we strengthened the implementation framework, namely by affirming the city's commitment to providing adequate staffing capacity to coordinate and advance plan implementation.

[00:21:39] Lauren Stoneburner: So as a result of these edits after the commission review, we're hoping that this implementation and action framework is more achievable, more transparent, and aligned with the available city resources while still advancing ambitious long-term goals.

[00:22:09] Brenda Silvia: Okay, so upon plan adoption, we can immediately get started with an initial focus on coordination. Staff have already been advancing some of this work within their existing responsibilities, and we plan to establish a formal cross-departmental city implementation team to guide the effort, since many actions span multiple departments and programs. I've been leading the development of this plan, and following adoption, I will transition into the lead role for the implementation team to help ensure continuity and momentum as we move forward.

[00:22:37] Brenda Silvia: That team will be responsible for prioritizing actions and aligning them with existing city efforts, including integrating actions into current work programs, capital projects, and ongoing initiatives where possible. Funding will rely on a mix of existing and future sources, including the general fund, capital improvement projects, tree mitigation fund, grants, partnerships, and other opportunities.

[00:22:59] Brenda Silvia: We can begin implementation using existing resources, particularly for the near-term and smaller scale actions, and by leveraging current capital projects and programs. At the same time, not all actions are fully funded today. Implementation will be phased over time with additional priorities brought forward through the annual budget process and external funding opportunities. So this slide highlights we're ready to move forward starting with coordination and existing resources while continuing to build toward the plan's long-term vision.

[00:23:32] Brenda Silvia: In conclusion, the draft plan reflects extensive input from the community, stakeholders, technical professionals, and advisory bodies, along with strong collaboration across city departments, and we appreciate the time and effort that has shaped this work. The plan represents a very bold step for Mountain View and positions the city as a regional leader in advancing biodiversity and urban forest planning. It establishes a long-term framework to guide implementation and helps pave the way for agencies exploring similar efforts.

[00:24:00] Brenda Silvia: Within the staff report, and on the next slide, we provided a question to help guide Council's feedback, and your input will help inform the final version of the plan as we move towards adoption. Does Council agree that the draft plan is generally consistent with the community priorities and city policies and plans, and that it provides an appropriate long-term policy framework that balances ambition with flexibility to support phased implementation, or does Council have any other feedback? We look forward to hearing from you and are happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

[00:24:35] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Okay, thank you. Would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide comment on this item? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk. We will take in-person speakers first. Each speaker will have two minutes. So we will start with up top. We have Robert Cox, followed by Shani, followed by Tracy, followed by April. I'm sorry, Mayor, did you say two or three? Two.

[00:25:09] Robert Cox: Is this on? Okay. Okay, thank you, Mayor Ramos, Vice Mayor Clark, and members of the City Council. This is a great Biodiversity Plan. It has, I read through the whole thing, and, but I just have a couple thoughts. One is on the subject of tree canopy. You know, we've been losing a lot of tree canopy due to large developments in this city, and one of the things I'm asking is how much can we do in a short period of time to improve the situation? The goal seems to be only to get an additional 1.2% over an eight-year period, and I'm wondering if we can take a deeper look at what we can do within our parks and our school open fields since no developer can touch them.

[00:25:59] Robert Cox: Second thing is on creek beds, particularly the Stevens and Permanente Creeks. Recently, we saw the issue with 555 West Middlefield and also over at Avalon Creekside where additional, I mean, changes to the development in there, you know, had the potential of impacting on the creek sides. And I, there are some nice comments in the document that, you know, talk about the idea of the tension between development and preserving these areas, but I mean, I would like to see something in a little bit more detail about what we could do.

[00:26:33] Robert Cox: In particular, could we do any kind of like special zoning for these areas? Um, do we need to be concerned about how the state density law is written and how the ADU law is written so that, you know, we can carve out maybe some exceptions for these? Lobby the state for that. There is lobbying on AB 131 right now, so sometimes laws that are passed need little tweaks to them to make them a little bit better. And the third thing is, is can we offer incentives so they won't want to take these kinds of steps, develop and impact these areas near the creek sides. So those are my thoughts. Thanks for listening to me.

[00:27:08] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Next is Shani, followed by Tracy, followed by April, followed by Celia.

[00:27:17] Shani Kleinhaus: Thank you. I'm Shani Kleinhaus with the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance. This is a really wonderful plan to move forward with, I have to say. This is outstanding. It will be a benchmark that we'll look at other cities and whether they achieve the same or not, and we'll definitely advocate, we already have been for, moving forward on similar plans. But it's important to get it right because of those reasons.

[00:27:50] Shani Kleinhaus: And while it's really, really good, there are some improvements that we have proposed in the letter that we sent together with Green Spaces Mountain View. Um, the commitment to native, locally native species is important. That's the basis of biodiversity and food webs. Animals don't do well or bugs, there are the food for the birds, when you bring species from other spaces. We asked for more protection of trees and more incorporation with other city processes, whether it's public works, mobility, etc.

[00:28:24] Shani Kleinhaus: But the really important thing is accountability. And staff has started working on that. But I think the basis of biodiversity plans usually, you see adaptive management, which means we do something, we do our best, every now and then we come and reevaluate and what is working, what is not working, what do we need to change and you realign. And I think it's really important to have in this plan, or in the city, both a person that is really responsible for looking at how this percolates through the different departments, projects, whether they're city projects, private projects, where it can happen.

[00:29:04] Shani Kleinhaus: But also to continue monitoring, so that every three, five years you can have a review of the plan, of the program, and see what needs to be changed and how. And that is really, really critical. So thank you so much.

[00:29:15] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Next we have Tracy, followed by April, followed by Celia.

[00:29:24] Tracy Farrier: Hi, I'm Dr. Tracy Farrier, I'm a biologist. And I want to thank you for envisioning and bringing this plan forward and to all of your work. I want to ensure that this plan leads to meaningful action, and I want to ask you to prioritize native plantings and establishing clear metrics for success. Without specific safeguards and expectations, there's a risk that this will lack the necessary urgency, similar to the Burrowing Owl Preservation Plan. Now we're losing another person that's been helping our volunteers, I just found out today.

[00:30:03] Tracy Farrier: Biodiversity depends on native species. For example, while a native oak supports 270 different types of caterpillars, a non-native ginkgo biloba, which we like to plant here, supports only two. And given that a single nest of chickadees requires approximately 6,000 caterpillars to go from hatching to flying out of the nest, the absence of native plants will directly contribute to the decline of our local birds and pollinators.

[00:30:37] Tracy Farrier: We can't lose sight that if we aren't planting natives, we are not supporting biodiversity, it's that simple. Currently, our city trees are only about 15% native. We need to be working towards changing that. I would even suggest a moratorium on non-natives. Every day that we continue to plant the non-natives, we are losing biodiversity. So I hope you'll take these comments seriously and ensure the plan includes necessary metrics, financing, and long-term commitment to be effective. And I'm grateful, and this city will be grateful, and the population will be grateful in the future to be watching the butterflies and birds that we will have because of your work. Thank you.

[00:31:34] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Next we have April, followed by Celia, and then we'll go into our virtual public comment.

[00:31:43] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: I got your email, April, about, were you gonna have people cede time to you, or?

[00:31:51] April Webster: Yes.

[00:31:58] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: If you are ceding time to the speaker, please raise your hand for the public comment. Alex can do it. Okay, got it. Okay, no problem. All right. Make sure you guys turn in your blue cards, but I count five so.

[00:32:13] April Webster: Hi, good evening. Tonight I want to focus on implementation. A few folks already talked about that. Mountain View has adopted strong goals around biodiversity, climate resilience, active transportation, and people first design. But there's still a gap between policy vision and the systems that shape what actually gets built on the ground, and I think this plan presents an important opportunity to begin closing that gap. Next slide, please.

[00:32:50] April Webster: Over the last several years, we've adopted, as I mentioned, increasingly progressive goals, but we still have that gap. And that gap is often shaped by standards, implementation frameworks, engineering guidance, maintenance practices, accountability systems, and reporting mechanisms. It's like the last step in getting us over the line. And it's these systems that determine how consistently our policy and our plans are translated into the public realm over time. We are not the only ones facing these challenges. Other cities are, Caltrans are. It's just how we're moving through all these new policies and sort of progressive way of looking at things. Next slide, please, please.

[00:33:40] April Webster: One thing I noticed while reviewing the plan, and I think a few other speakers mentioned that, is that we rely heavily on language like 'where feasible,' 'appropriate,' 'encourage,' 'consider.' If you look at policy and bills, these are usually not as strong types of language. And it's not really about the words themselves, but the implementation expectations that are attached to it and how clear they are and how consistently they shape long-term outcomes. Aspirational language, like on the left, it sets direction, it's great at the policy level, but if you want to see things, something follow through and actually be implemented on the ground, you need to use more operational language that embeds priorities into those actions, recommendations, etc. Next slide, please.

[00:34:35] April Webster: Some cities are already starting to take this step. What you see on the left are a few actions from Urban Forest Plans, on the left actually sorry, that's Mountain View. And some of our, I really appreciate staff taking feedback and starting to change some of that 'could' and that language to stronger language. We still have some of that hanging around in some of the actions and I think we can take, our council can take a few steps to strengthen that. Other cities like Palo Alto and Fremont have moved a bit further in that direction. You'll see a lot more 'ensure,' etc. Next slide.

[00:35:11] April Webster: And this is where it takes us. You really need that strong language to get what you want when you have implementation. On the left, you know, we see a street, it's protected, it gets us part of the way there, but it's not necessarily comfortable, it's not usable, it's not people first, it's not shaded. And this is starting to become increasingly more important, even at the Caltrans level. They're starting to introduce climate resiliency at the policy level. Their design guidelines have integrated it. They have landscape architects on their complete streets teams, and I just saw the first project come through the shop, which is like our pavement plan, that includes green infrastructure. So we're getting there. But I just want you guys to keep this vision and how we need to take that next step. Next slide, please.

[00:36:08] April Webster: This is one of the places where we can also make a change. So often with policy and our visions and goals, it starts off the policy level, gets into our plans, we need to have it in our actions, but we also need it in the engineering diagrams that people who do the implementation do. And this is an example of one that could benefit from some revisit, some research, and rewording. Next slide, please.

[00:36:36] April Webster: Just to compare, a few other cities have already taken this route. You can see this is the site triangle. The site triangle is a sort of a triangle that you have from the sidewalk going back where you need to maintain a line of vision for people in their cars so that they can see people walking and driving to them. This is just the pedestrian triangle for Mountain View and those other two cities. But you can see in these spaces often you'll have trees removed, you don't want to have anything too high, that works for mature trees, but if you're planting new trees or shorter trees and it's blocking site, line of sight, they often won't go in or they'll get removed for redevelopment.

[00:37:21] April Webster: So you can see, given, we, I think we have about six times as much area square footage as Sunnyvale for our line of, for our triangle. So that means that we... if you go to the next slide... we have the potential to either have many more trees removed during redevelopment or not even have the opportunity to add them in the first place. And this number is coming from some analysis that a Stanford student did for us, he was an intern, in 2023. He was working under Rick Kos who is associated with the Mineta Institute at San Jose State University. And so he looked at what we had for our triangle and did an analysis across all the driveways in Mountain View and he projected, based on that removal or just lack of planting in the first place, that we could potentially impact 11,000 street trees. And that's our target. So it's something to consider. It has a huge impact if we ask our staff to review this and consider updating it. Next slide, please.

[00:38:36] April Webster: One thing that stood out to me in the plan, and this is probably just like a residual gap, but we established measurable shade expectations for parking lots, but not similar expectations for sidewalks, bikeways, transit stops, or other public gathering places. In a warming climate, shade for people should increasingly be treated as essential public infrastructure and should be prioritized. As I mentioned all those things, sidewalks etc., those should all be considered. And it really directly impacts if people are comfortable walking and biking and whether they even choose to use infrastructure.

[00:39:19] April Webster: I do this presentation a lot in different places, and when it's not comfortable, it's too hot, people don't even use it. And you'll, there's plenty of research on this, they will take different routes, or just avoid using it and get in their car. So this is really important for us to start thinking about is the climate safety and comfort aspect. Next slide.

[00:39:54] April Webster: Just the next couple slides, this was included in the letter that was sent out last night by Green Spaces and Mountain View Coalition for Sustainable Planning. It's just showing some of the types of reporting that we can work towards. This is Fremont's Urban Forest Plan. They have an accompanying implementation and monitoring plan. You can see that they attach a timeframe, metrics to it, and then also they often I think have costs associated with it. Next slide, please.

[00:40:29] April Webster: And this is just showing something else that they have in that plan. It's really nice, it's like almost like a report card. I've seen this in other domains where you have a summary and a nice neat card that has all your metrics in it, or relevant information for something that you're tracking. And I just thought this was a really nice way of, I do a lot of data modeling and visualization, and I thought this was a really nice way of presenting it, that could be used for Council on an annual basis or even for the public. It's a lot easier for us to digest, it's all out there, and if you have something like this that you can consistently show year over year, it's a lot easier for people to digest and really understand what kind of progress we're making. Next slide, please.

[00:41:27] April Webster: So just to call out some of the ones that we in the community, there were eight that were shared in the letter that got sent out. I just, what you all received was a copy of those so you have them handy. There were three that we thought were perhaps higher priority. Those are listed on the screen. These are really related to creating people first infrastructure.

[00:41:50] April Webster: The first one is just making sure that we have clear language that we're whenever we have opportunity with paving projects, any sort of transportation projects, that we are considering and integrating almost by default if we can green infrastructure into especially active transportation where people are going to be. And I also want to point out in disadvantaged communities. Shade and thermal comfort is very related to that. Standard details is what we need to do at the engineering level. And just for the last one, I'd like to say also consider standard details for how we plant trees. Emeryville has done a really good job of this and I point you to that. Thank you so much.

[00:42:34] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Our last in-person speaker is Jan Recker. Um, and then we'll go into virtual public comment.

[00:42:54] Nan Recker: Hello, my name is Nan Recker and I am a long-time resident here in Mountain View. And I want to just take a moment to say thank you to everybody for working so hard on this project. I know that, uh, you've put a lot of effort into it and I really appreciate it. Um, I agree with a lot of the comments that have been made here today. Um, especially my friend Shani. She and I have talked greatly about this. And I love the idea of utilizing, um, native plants and, and wildlife. So thank you for your efforts. Thank you. Bye now.

[00:43:32] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. And I apologize for mispronouncing your name, Nan. Um, now we will go to virtual public comment, to Maureen Blando.

[00:43:43] Maureen Blando: Hello. Um, this is Maureen, and I am a resident of Mountain View. Um, uh, thank you for the effort that has been put into this study. I appreciate, uh, Mayor Ramos, Vice Mayor Clark, City Council and the city staff for all of this work. Um, I want to echo a few points that Hala Alshawani, uh, submitted in her letter dated 4/28.

[00:44:09] Maureen Blando: Um, one is that she recommended that the Cuesta Annex be designated as a City Urban Forest, which I think is a great idea and very common sense move. Um, moving on, we are losing way too many heritage trees to development, and of course global climate change is accelerating, and you know we saw some of the results of that in Los Angeles about a year ago. I think we'll look back with regret if we don't increase the tree canopy. Uh, and so as Robert had mentioned earlier, um, I think we should look at requirements and incentives to, um, retain the heritage, via, uh, work by developers.

[00:44:46] Maureen Blando: Uh, that's about all that I will say except I also want to say that I really appreciate the other, uh, presentations made by the viewers today. Some excellent points, and I do think that something like that urban forest report card would be very valuable. Thank you again.

[00:45:18] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Next up we have Rashmi.

[00:45:25] Rashmi: Can you hear me?

[00:45:26] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Yes we can.

[00:45:28] Rashmi: Great. Um, thank you. Uh, I've read this plan three times now and it's a really great, forward-looking plan. Um, so I have a lot of praise for it, but since I have two minutes, I'll focus on the areas that I think need strengthening. Um, three specifically. The first one is protection of heritage trees. The plan points out that large trees provide greater cooling, health, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity benefits than smaller trees. City staff also states that trees are the only infrastructure asset that increase over, in value over time and are not easily replaced.

[00:46:03] Rashmi: Despite these benefits, the plan comes up short of meaningful actions to protect heritage trees. For example, I'm looking at my time and I don't think I've spoke, ah, okay it's going backwards. For example, objective 3C which seeks to use greening opportunities to adapt to future climate conditions, only includes actions that involve planting new trees. This seems like a missed opportunity since heritage trees already provide significant cooling benefits. Moreover, they provide these for free, whereas each new tree planting costs the city an average of $3,000.

[00:46:32] Rashmi: In 2023 and 2024, an average of 900 heritage trees were removed per year. Even if the city meets the ambitious tree planting targets outlined in the plan, it will still have a hard time making up for these large canopy losses. To really protect heritage trees, the plan needs to establish metrics for tracking them and limits on the amount that can be removed each year.

[00:47:03] Rashmi: The second area that needs strengthening is prioritizing native plant species. This has been well described by others so I'll just say that I strongly support that.

[00:47:14] Rashmi: Lastly, and most importantly, the plan needs stronger accountability to implementation. As written, the only way many of the actions can be implemented is if staff and City Council continually prioritize nature over the next decade, which history has unfortunately not shown true. An illustrative example is the adoption of the Dark Sky Ordinance which um currently says it's in progress but um has been stalled indefinitely. And even if this plan was adopted, that um there's no...

[00:47:33] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Next we have Ronnie, reminder that it's two minutes.

[00:47:51] Ronnie Fisher: Good evening Mayor Ramos, City Council and City staff. My name is Ronnie Fisher and I am the chair of the Environmental Advocacy Committee for the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance. I ask you to accept the recommendations in the letter written by Green Spaces Mountain View and the Bird Alliance from April 25.

[00:48:13] Ronnie Fisher: In this letter we have suggested ways not to just aspire to biodiversity, but how to word the plan so that biodiversity, especially native plants and trees, really happens. Our recommendations ensure robust implementation with clear accountability, including regular reporting to the community and to City Council on progress toward goals, and adaptations of actions as conditions change.

[00:48:37] Ronnie Fisher: Our recommendations focus on habitat enhancement and restoration, not just maintaining existing conditions. And our recommendations move beyond business as usual in how the city designs and manages landscapes and protects trees and canopy.

[00:48:54] Ronnie Fisher: Thank you for your leadership in the past on the environment. I look forward to the day when Mountain View becomes part of the natural ecosystem and supports our local insects and birds with the native plants and canopy they need to survive.

[00:49:19] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Next we have Hala Alshawani.

[00:49:26] Hala Alshawani: Uh, good evening City Council members and City staff. My name is Hala Alshawani. I'm a long time resident of Mountain View. Um, I wanted to thank the staff and the consultant for a great job on the plan. Uh, they have listed all the benefits, highlighted the benefits and echoed the community's um, uh, uh, requests for um, you know all the native plants and and increasing the shade um, and listing all the the benefits as you know them.

[00:49:55] Hala Alshawani: Tonight I would like to focus on uh, how we can make this this happen for the community. Um, there are three things, three points I'd like to bring. The first one is that um, in fact we do not have an urban forest in Mountain View. The plan clearly states that the patches of green spaces are clustered around Shoreline and Stevens Creek areas, which are on the peripheral of our city.

[00:50:23] Hala Alshawani: But Mountain View has a a wonderful space called Cuesta Annex, uh the only contiguous 12 acres of um open space with native trees. If we enhance it and and take care of it, then this can be our mini urban forest, um with all the benefits that the plan uh mentions in uh pages one and two.

[00:50:50] Hala Alshawani: Second is that the plan really does not address the development projects and how that impacted the um uh the sensitive areas, uh for example on Stevens and Permanente Creeks. The developments um have or will endanger the sensitivity of of some species in that area. So we need to have more incentives and um uh things that will entice the developers uh to protect as many of those trees as possible.

[00:51:16] Hala Alshawani: And the last thing is, please increase the number of trees that you're planning to plant from...

[00:51:26] Public Speaker: 20 some percent to 30% by 2030. Let's let's do 30% by 2030.

[00:51:34] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Next up, we have Jesse Cupp.

[00:51:40] Jesse Cupp: Hello, Mayor Ramos, and City Council. Thank you for having me. So I just wanted to second some people have been saying about planting native trees to help our local biodiversity, help the local insects and birds and things like that. I think that should be a bigger priority and have some numbers behind it.

[00:52:02] Jesse Cupp: And also we should be mandating shade for people walking, biking and taking public transit. And not just for people who drive cars. So as climate change gets worse, if the cars and parking lots are nice, nice and shady and cool, that's that's what people are going to do instead of reducing their car usage. So we need to make walking, biking, and public transportation more attractive in order to convince people to make that switch. So that means lots of shade, seating, etc. Just making it a nice, pleasant experience. Thank you.

[00:52:38] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. And our last speaker is Sherry.

[00:52:43] Sherry: Yeah, hi. I'm a resident of Palo Alto, although I did live in Mountain View for a long time. I just want to put in a plug for big, old native trees. You know, we're losing them in Palo Alto as well. People move into these beautiful tree neighborhoods, and then the first thing they do is they cut down the big trees in their yard.

[00:53:03] Sherry: And these are 100-year investments. So I think we not only need to be planting them, but thinking about incentivizing maintaining them and not removing them. And I don't know what that looks like, but we could really use some help here between the development pressures and pressures from electric line work, our big trees are getting hammered, and I know people in Mountain View say it's very visible. Raptors need them, cavity nesters need them, and they're important sources for food. So I just wanted to mention that.

[00:53:38] Sherry: I have a random question, which is whether water features in parks could be used in some way to sustain more natural habitat. I'm not sure. I really like the emphasis on chipping and downed wood, and I'm just looking at other resources that things may need, and water is a really important one. But anyway, I think it's fabulous that you guys are working on this. I hope Palo Alto does this as well. And I just wanted to put in a plea for big, old native trees. They're irreplaceable 100-year investments, and they are disappearing really rapidly. Thanks very much.

[00:54:17] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. We will now bring this back to Council. The Council will now have the opportunity to ask questions and then discuss and provide feedback on the study session questions. Does any member of the Council have questions? And I see on my docket, Allison. Councilmember Hicks.

[00:54:36] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Thank you, Mayor. So I wanted to bring up a couple of questions. I asked questions in writing, and thank you for the comprehensive answers, but I wanted to ask some questions that the public comments have brought up.

[00:54:52] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So first, do you, does staff, several people mentioned having a bigger target for our tree canopy and in particular highlighting saving bigger trees or heritage trees. Does staff or SFEI, do you have any advice for how that might be incorporated into the plan? Any suggestions for response to that?

[00:55:23] City Staff: One of the action items is to, and it's a short-term, upon plan adoption is to start working on updating our Heritage Tree Ordinance. We're planning to take that in phases because it's a large ordinance and addressing the protections immediately. So that's one of the things we're going to be taking a look at right away.

[00:55:45] City Staff: Yeah, and regarding the target for tree canopy cover, I think there are constraints for tree planting. If Russell wanted to add anything, feel free, but I think tree planting is, the Urban Forestry program has been increasing its capacity to plant trees, so I think that the target takes that into account. And yeah, tree protection is also major, and I think that the updates to the Heritage Tree Ordinance will be a big part of that.

[00:56:26] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And then my second question from the public comments is, do you have any suggestions for additional ways to protect our creeks and the vegetation around them?

[00:56:43] City Staff: Yeah. So this one is addressed in action two. And maybe if Brenda, there's anything you want to add to this that I'm missing, but there are also constraints related to the channel and creek restoration given the complex management agreements. I might not be calling that exactly what it is, but yeah. So there needs to be cross-agency coordination, particularly with Valley Water who owns a lot of that land. The city has easements to manage some of those parcels, and it will require negotiation with them on improved management and restoration along creek corridors.

[00:57:32] City Staff: And we started some of that work on making improvements and shoring up some of those that are falling away, if you will, and building those relationships with those agencies and those organizations that we partner with, I think that's a big piece of it, so that we can make bigger and broader improvements to those areas.

[00:57:54] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I know that has been an issue on several of our projects in the past. Perhaps our Council member who works with Valley Water can comment on that later in the meeting. So those are my questions. Thank you.

[00:58:08] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: All right. Any other questions from Council? Councilmember McAlister.

[00:58:13] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, I just have one. The thing about the minimum of 300 trees annually, is that net new trees? And how does one keep track of that you're putting out 300 new trees?

[00:58:28] City Staff: I'm going to call Russell Hansen, our Urban Forest Manager, to the podium.

[00:58:35] Russell Hansen: So thank you first and foremost. Russell Hansen, Urban Forest Manager within CSD. Thank you for your question, Councilmember. The 300 as it sits today is actually a combination. It involves both mitigation planting for trees that were removed as well as new tree plantings on top of that.

[00:58:54] Russell Hansen: The intent is that one of the things we're trying to do is build capacity to do so in a reasonable way that is sustainable, more critically, because I have seen planting initiative after planting initiative fail when it pushes numbers. The million tree initiative in LA, the million trees in New York. What frequently ends up happening is they're so keen on putting trees into the ground, they're not doing the establishment maintenance, they're not maintaining those trees the way they need to and you frequently get a higher failure rate, where we strive for 90 to 100% success rate, some of those projects were as low as only about 50 or 60% success rate. And so what we don't want to do is kind of ramp up so quickly that we end up having failures out there that it isn't really reaching what it is.

[00:59:40] Russell Hansen: But ultimately, yes, we will have a new database. We're kind of working currently with our IT team to start tracking our assets a little bit better than we have in the past. And we absolutely will have little identifiers or otherwise so that we can tag each of these trees as either mitigation or new tree plantings that ultimately we can start counting towards that growth of canopy.

[01:00:03] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. I missed spoke. I have one more question. I was intrigued to hear about Cuesta Annex and that there's quite a bit of desire to make that a sanctuary, you might say. So describe what is being proposed for Cuesta Annex.

[01:00:20] City Staff: Uh, that was the first time I'd heard that, so I'm not sure if that is in line with the Parks and Recreation Strategic Plan or competes with it. I'll hand it over to John Marchant, Community Services Director.

[01:00:30] John Marchant: Good evening. John Marchant, Community Services Director. This is a new item that is being brought up at the moment. If Council so desires, there can be in action 4, city staff to come back to Council in relation to that interest. And we can start bringing back some additional information what that could look like and what options might be available to make that happen.

[01:01:06] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Thank you.

[01:01:11] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: All right. Do we have any other questions from Council members? I have a quick one based on public comment.

[01:01:20] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: There was a request to have a possible a moratorium of not planting non-natives. I'm sorry, there's so many negatives, but basically only planting natives. Now, why wouldn't that already be in the plan if it's not?

[01:01:40] City Staff: Yeah, so there is a call-out box kind of discussing the tradeoffs in planting native versus near-native versus non-native. And it is a complex decision-making matrix. But essentially, it is important to plant native where it's feasible, where it's appropriate. But for one, there are a fewer array of native plants locally, native plants to choose from, and those plants tend to be riparian plants so they have large water demands and they often need a lot of space. So in an urban environment, there are space constraints.

[01:02:23] City Staff: And then there's more urban stressors. So there are many cases when planting regionally and locally native trees is not appropriate. We want these trees to survive for decades as well. And with a changing climate, that needs to be a consideration.

[01:02:43] City Staff: And then so just one point I wanted to make is to think of nativity as a gradient as well. So there's locally and regionally native, but there's also California native. There are species that are native to the western continent of North America. So considering what is native and not native is just something to be thoughtful about and like what are the benefits and services you're getting out of planting a tree and what is appropriate to that site. So it's not so black and white.

[01:03:13] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Okay, so like when I'm thinking about non-natives, you're not like plucking a mango tree from the Philippines and sticking it here.

[01:03:19] City Staff: Right. Right.

[01:03:20] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Okay. Redwoods are non-native? Oh my god. All right. Any other- no other questions from my colleagues?

[01:03:34] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: We will now move to comments by Council, which should include feedback on the questions staff posed in the staff report. Don't all hop in at once. Okay, Councilmember Hicks.

[01:03:48] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I'm going to start, well, start by saying thank you for this plan. It was a pleasure to read it, and it really marks, I think, a paradigm change for what the city does, and hopefully it can be a model for other cities. And I know it's something that many, many members of the public have really looked forward to.

[01:04:10] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So with that, I have, I generally like it very much. I do, I'm going to say a little bit on why I think it's important, which you might wonder why I would do that because much of the plan said why it was important, but there are a couple things that weren't even in the plan that I thought were would be good to bring up.

[01:04:36] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And then a couple of things that I think could be tweaked or highlighted. So the first, why I think it's important. You know, sometimes people have asked me, why a biodiversity plan in a city? And we're a fairly dense city. Why not like out in the countryside?

[01:04:53] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And from reading I've done, the countryside, a large, large part of the countryside is agriculture. And it's mass farming, which with heavy pesticides, and the whole purpose of heavy pesticides is to kill small creatures.

[01:05:12] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So much of what we think of as the country is becoming less diverse. And I'm reading that basically what we're doing here is very important for biodiversity in the country as a whole and for food sustainability and so forth.

[01:05:36] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And the second reason is that this is really one of the things, you know, I've been on Council for seven years, and it's one of the things, I mean, people really want this.

[01:05:49] Councilmember Alison Hicks: In particular, I'd say there are three things people talk to me the most about. Affordable housing, parks, and trees. And so this urban forestry and the biodiversity connected to it, this is really important to people.

[01:06:19] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And the third is, I think that this is, how did I take notes on this? I think something the plan only talks about a little, but I think is important, is the concept of green infrastructure and ecosystem services.

[01:06:36] Councilmember Alison Hicks: You know, we on Council spend a lot of time looking over our Capital Improvement Projects, in short-hand called CIPs. And I really think we need to lean into more, looking less at brown infrastructure and looking more at green infrastructure.

[01:07:05] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So those are my whys. And I hope they're inspiring in addition to all the things you already, the 200 pages you already wrote about why. So the things that I would like to tweak, the first one, and some of our public speakers spoke about this a bit, is the city is working on objective design standards for private development.

[01:07:46] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And also on design standards for roadways and streetscapes, that would be our public things, which if you dig into it, they the engineering documents or standard details.

[01:08:03] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I'm really interested in a very strong relationship between the development of those, which we'll be doing over the next couple of years, couple of decades, I don't know, I hope that the city will be leaning more into long-term planning rather than everything kind of last minute.

[01:08:26] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And that I would like the Biodiversity and Urban Forestry plan to really inform the objective standards and roadway standards as we develop them. And it's mentioned a little in the plan, but I think that could really be strengthened.

[01:08:44] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And that relates to some of the things that members of the public have brought up. Which are, make sure that we have shade trees over sidewalks and bikeways and things that people have brought up to me in the past about lane reallocation.

[01:09:05] Councilmember Alison Hicks: That's when you turn some lanes into planting strips and some lanes into bikeways or wider sidewalks. You know, that we look at green infrastructure, whether it's bioswales, whatever, how we're planting street trees, when we do all of those things, which we'll be doing.

[01:09:24] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So, and you know in terms of private developments, you know there's all the streetscape, roadway standards, but I hope also like I find our townhome and rowhome developments to be very, there's a lot of hardscaping there, and I think that they standards for things like that could be greened as well.

[01:09:45] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So that's my first one that I'm hoping the rest of Council will agree with that we lean into that a little more.

[01:09:52] Councilmember Alison Hicks: The second one is I'd really like a paradigm shift in how we think about infrastructure and capital improvement projects or CIPs. I said this a bit before, but you know the plan says that green infrastructure is important, talks about it in terms of stormwater treatment, I think it's much more than that.

[01:10:17] Councilmember Alison Hicks: It's also cooling and carbon sequestration, public health, etc. But I'm hoping when we look at our CIP funding that greening, not just brown CIPs, but green CIPs can be a part of our regular CIP funding.

[01:10:41] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Maybe another way to look at it is my neighbor here, Councilmember McAlister, has brought up that sometimes our CIPs look over-engineered. Maybe we could reduce some of those things and add trees or other elements of greening.

[01:10:59] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So maybe a 21st century way of looking at infrastructure and CIPs. And then the last thing is I think that oversight and metrics are very important, so I would like to lean into that a little bit.

[01:11:17] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I would like to make, maybe other council members have advice for that, but I don't just want to put a bunch of good stuff out there, I want to make sure that it actually happens.

[01:11:30] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I think as you said, putting one person in charge, I don't know whether the sustainability staff can become more involved, that's something the city manager would decide, but that's one possible idea.

[01:11:45] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And I want regular check-backs with the Council and especially with the Parks and Rec Commission to make sure that we're actually doing this. I would also like us to take the comment letters...

[01:12:00] Councilmember Alison Hicks: The comment letters that we've received have I think been very important. They haven't been, some of them are letters from individuals, but a lot of them are letters from a large number of members of our public.

[01:12:13] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I would like to take them in for consideration. I'm sure you won't adopt every word in them, but for consideration for I guess the final draft of the plan.

[01:12:28] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And in particular to look at the letter from, gosh which one is it? The one with that came with Appendix A and had from I guess it's MVCSP, but had highlighted actions, they highlighted what they called Action 1, Action 17 and Action 26.

[01:12:57] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Which had to do with green infrastructure integration into transportation projects, shade integration, and thermal comfort, and standard details and specifications.

[01:13:10] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I think those are three of the more important things we can do overall. I want to make sure that our city, the public places that we all spend time in, get greener, and I'm less concerned about things like green roofs, things that are pretty privatized, or education was mentioned in the plan, a little bit of education is fine, but I really want an emphasis on actually greening the city. Which I think these three that I that was were highlighted in that particular letter do.

[01:13:50] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So, those are my comments. Thank you.

[01:13:55] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Next we have Councilmember Showalter.

[01:13:59] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yes. I'm so excited that this is before us. We, you know I know you've been working on it for many years and we've been hearing about it for quite a while, and as has been said, this is something that our community cares a great deal about.

[01:14:15] Councilmember Pat Showalter: This is a great plan and all the staff and the consultants and the community members that have contributed to it really should be justifiably very proud of this of this document.

[01:14:29] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Again, we've been talking about building the Mountain View of Tomorrow. And from my perspective, a big part of the Mountain View of Tomorrow is the green infrastructure that our community members want to have.

[01:14:45] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And that's really what you've described here, and that's great. We all want to enjoy the green space, we want to spend outside time outside, we want to make our active transportation infrastructure more attractive so people use it more.

[01:15:05] Councilmember Pat Showalter: So we want to be healthier, if we do you know if we are active, we're healthier. And we want to enjoy the natural world around us. And we want to do our part to protect the planet from climate change and adapt to the climate change that we have here.

[01:15:30] Councilmember Pat Showalter: So I think that that's you know that's kind of one of the major concepts behind this. And then one of the other concepts I want to bring up is that this is something that we control locally.

[01:15:48] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And in the current climate, the government climate, there are many things that are kind of being taken out of our control or some of the policies we have enjoyed and profited from aren't available to us.

[01:16:05] Councilmember Pat Showalter: But this is, these are actions we can take. So I think it's very important that we take them, you know that we use this opportunity to do the things to improve our local community that, you know, that we can.

[01:16:22] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And certainly planting lots of trees is something we can do. We can choose to do that. So I'm, you know, I'm all for it, let's do it.

[01:16:32] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Okay, so I wanted to emphasize a couple of talk about a few things and about the change of emphasis. You state in the plan that it isn't regulatory. And I get that.

[01:16:50] Councilmember Pat Showalter: But even though it's not regulatory, I think that we should consider this plan as one of the foundational documents moving forward.

[01:17:00] Councilmember Pat Showalter: So when we work on projects, people should look at the criteria and talk about how it aligns with this plan or how it doesn't. And I think that that will be a real important part for implementing it going forward.

[01:17:15] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And I think it might be good to add a statement to that effect in the word from the city. I know you changed that, and I understand it's better, but I would like to maybe add something like 'While the Biodiversity Plan is not a regulatory document, it is the city's intention to have the plan's recommendations integrated into the city's plans and processes', or something along those lines. You could come up with the proper language.

[01:17:44] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Developing this plan is a huge first step. But as many, many people have said, we need to implement it.

[01:17:52] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And so I think that a couple of the things that are really important as have been said is the metrics. Thank you so much for putting together that good list.

[01:18:04] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And having worked on monitoring an environmental science for many, many years, I know that you start out with a list, and you work with that list, and you may find out after a while that that's not the best list.

[01:18:19] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And I think that what's been brought, I was delighted to see that adaptive management is in here. And that's because we're going to learn a lot as we go through this. And we may find out that the list where we put together of metrics isn't appropriate anymore, or it's not the best one, or it needs to be fine-tuned. And that's a that's good, we should be thinking about that.

[01:18:43] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And because there's so much that's going to happen in the next year or so, I hope we'll have to have we'll be able to have a community meeting in about a year after we've adopted this to say okay, what have we done now, where are we?

[01:19:00] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And then after that, I think it will be more like a three to five-year evaluation or whatever staff finds is appropriate to to do that. But I think that making adaptive management routine is is very important.

[01:19:17] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And if I've been involved in a lot of plans that say they're going to do a lot of adaptive management, there aren't very many that actually do. We have one locally however that is does a really good job, and that's the South Bay Salt Pond project. So if you want to look at kind of how you do adaptive management, they would be good people to talk to.

[01:19:38] Councilmember Pat Showalter: But it's the other thing is I think that as has been mentioned by several people, this is really new. This is this is kind of new science. There are ser- there are some plans like this in some other cities around the world, but they're not commonplace.

[01:20:00] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And so as we implement this, I think that we we should make sure that our community organizations are involved, and we should also make sure that local academia is involved.

[01:20:16] Councilmember Pat Showalter: We have Stanford has the Doerr School of Sustainability that was just founded about I think it was about five years ago, and they have made outreach to that they want people involved and help and working with policy.

[01:20:33] Councilmember Pat Showalter: SFEI is a long term renowned agency to handle this up to to to deal with. So I think that keeping these policy groups involved is is valuable if we can afford to do it. It would be a great thing to do.

[01:20:52] Councilmember Pat Showalter: I also would like to say that native plants are great. But other other trees are great too. For instance, all of the citrus trees and the apple trees and the fruit trees that we all dearly love and many of us have in our backyards, they're not native.

[01:21:10] Councilmember Pat Showalter: That's not to say that we shouldn't plant them, it's just that we need to have native plants too. So I really strongly support increasing the percent of native plants considerably.

[01:21:24] Councilmember Pat Showalter: But I think we want to think about the other things that plants you know that trees bring us and beauty and whether they're going to grow well, and and you know it's a it's a complex question.

[01:21:40] Councilmember Pat Showalter: So while I think we should up the percentage of native trees considerably, particularly with respect to oaks. You know I understand that locally sourced oaks do better, and oaks also evolve so that we should we should let them take advantage of that.

[01:22:02] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Um, another thing I would I can concur to with my colleagues comments about utilizing the comments from the Green Spaces letter, from the MVCSP letter, Daniel Shane wrote a letter, there are a couple more, taking a look at those and seeing do they fit and are they reasonable as you go forward.

[01:22:27] Councilmember Pat Showalter: I don't want that to be something that takes you months and months and months. I'm not hoping that this will be something that I don't want us to direct you to do anything tonight that is going to lengthen the ability to get the report back to us in June. Just that they're really thoughtful comments and if you could take them into account, that's great.

[01:22:57] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And then another thing I wanted to bring up is the idea of using volunteers. You know we've had great luck, I guess it's not luck, it was hard work working with Canopy and to plant a lot of our trees.

[01:23:19] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And I think that there we put in a couple of pollinator gardens with volunteers, and those are both examples of how we can move forward and involve volunteers.

[01:23:33] Councilmember Pat Showalter: I think there also might be opportunities for neighborhood organizations to do some beautification. We might want to found or encourage the founding of some friends of various parks groups. I mean we have a Friends of Stevens Creek, and they plant lots of plants and have over the years. But I think it would be great to if we also had some you know friends of the parks.

[01:24:02] Councilmember Pat Showalter: So I'm hoping we could we could put a small amount of money into this year's budget to get a beautification fund started that that local organizations could tap into if they wanted to and encourage that to happen.

[01:24:20] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And so I just like to sum up and say this is a great plan, let's make sure it is used as a foundational document as we build the Mountain View of Tomorrow. In order to make sure it's implemented, let's make sure we have a robust monitoring program with specific staff assigned to see that it happens. And let's have a good adaptive management program so we can learn as we go. And thanks to all of you that have gotten us this far.

[01:24:55] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you, Councilmember Showalter. Councilmember Ramirez.

[01:24:58] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. I was commiserating with the Community Services Department Director a little bit earlier about the extraordinary workload that the policy arm of CSD has has been making progress on.

[01:25:17] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: The entire time many of us have been, all of us have been on the Council. Especially since the onset of the pandemic. You've done, you and your team have done extraordinary work bringing to the Council nearly complete Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan, and Parks and Recreation Strategic Plan, a lot of the other work that we talked about that doesn't have to be named right now.

[01:25:42] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: But it's a remarkable amount of work with a great deal of very valuable and thoughtful participation from the Parks and Recreation Commission, from many members of our community, from the consultants and other key stakeholders.

[01:26:00] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: And I've just marvel at the document that I think this Council will have the good fortune to approve I think within the next couple of months. So thank you, thank you for putting together what I agree with Councilmember Showalter, what I think will become one of the foundational plans for the city's work in the next several years.

[01:26:25] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I agree with the remarks shared by Councilmembers Hicks and Showalter, and don't have a whole heck of a lot to add. I do support the recommendations that were shared in the letters that were referenced.

[01:26:40] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: There was one from April Webster on behalf of the Mountain View Coalition for Sustainable Planning, and Green Spaces Mountain View that I thought was thoughtful.

[01:26:49] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: And the way I think about that letter, and several others is, we can't tie the hands of future Councils, we can't compel them to adopt a certain set of standards. That's your job. Hold the people in the audience accountable who are running for City Council.

[01:27:04] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: But what we can do is use these plans to guide the development of the deliverables, right, the desired outcomes. Right, so when the next Council reviews the standard details or the objective design standards, they will be shaped by the direction provided in the plan that we're adopting.

[01:27:27] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: And so I think it makes sense to have language in these plans that gets us close to the deliverable that we want to see. And I think April's letter does a good job of helping define what those desired outcomes should be. The letter from Celia Pamer and Shani Kleinhaus on behalf of Green Spaces Mountain View and the Silicon Valley Bird Alliance similarly.

[01:27:53] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I think a good set of thoughtful recommendations and I, I praised him in an earlier Council meeting, but I do commend Daniel Shane for his extraordinary persistence and continued engagement in the types of work that the city has been doing around regulations for private development.

[01:28:14] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So I do agree, I think if staff can take a look at those letters and pull out those recommendations that can be incorporated into the final product, without substantially delaying the work, I would support that effort. So I think I'll conclude there. Thank you.

[01:28:40] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you, Councilmember Ramirez. Councilmember Kamei.

[01:28:43] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Thanks, Mayor. Well I want to first echo the thanks that my colleagues had shared to all the different hands and individuals who have touched what we are are seeing tonight.

[01:28:55] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: I think it's 5 years of hard work, well spent, when we consider that literally thousands of people have given input on the Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan. And I'm really excited, as some of my other colleagues mentioned, that we're here now.

[01:29:13] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Um, and I was I am excited too that this is this plan will not stand alone. The staff report noted that the Biodiversity and Urban Forestry Plan complements and supports a bunch of other existing plans that we're working on or in progress.

[01:29:30] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So kind of like how Councilmember Showalter was mentioning how it's not regulatory, at least it's building into the city processes and hopefully people will understand our point of view when they come to Mountain View and want to develop here.

[01:29:49] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Um, I think one of the things that I'd like to share that I haven't heard touched on yet by colleagues was recently when we've been looking at different plans, through our city budgeting process we use an equity lens.

[01:30:07] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: When we were most recently talking about our economic vitality strategy, one of the rubrics was equity, and equity was not necessarily mentioned often in the plan. And I'd really like to uplift that.

[01:30:22] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: And when this comes back to council for final action, um, build that in. And I I know it exists and it's there, but one of the things that the staff report mentioned is that you know this, one of the objectives and goals was to advance equity by prioritizing investments in areas with lower canopy cover and higher heat vulnerability.

[01:30:49] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: But I would like to think that in the city of Mountain View, we're prioritizing equity throughout our city. Right now we're all elected at large, and our city... I don't want to think of this plan as just increasing tree canopy and lessening heat islands.

[01:31:13] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: And I want to think about how a lot of the feedback we've been receiving as we've been looking at various development projects, as we were looking at our housing element, was talking about how we are advancing all of the neighborhoods in our city to feel like one community.

[01:31:32] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: And this plan could highlight that more. And I think that would be great to see you know the, in the actual Biodiversity and Urban Forestry Plan, equity was only mentioned twice. One of them was related to action 17 and the other was related to a Senate bill.

[01:31:52] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So I'd love to just find ways to to think about things more broadly, especially given all the time that we've spent on the the topic of this plan.

[01:32:09] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Um, and then another thing that I wanted to think about was one of the tensions Council has been working through and one of the Council questions talked about how we will be using the plan that we adopt as a kind of blueprint to integrate biodiversity into development.

[01:32:35] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: And I I think it's not just development, but biodiversity into the culture of Mountain View. Um, and I think my various colleagues were bringing up topics on how we can think about that.

[01:32:50] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: It's it's in development, it's in our CIP, and how we approach things. Um, and I think that that would just strengthen um all the hard work that has been put into this. Thanks, Mayor.

[01:33:04] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you, Councilmember Kamei. Councilmember McAlister.

[01:33:08] Councilmember John McAlister: Uh, I concur with everything my fellow council members have said, so I won't add anything to them, but I do always have a little bit of a different perspective.

[01:33:20] Councilmember John McAlister: I've lived here a little longer than most of you and Pat was talking about fruit trees. I moved in when this was all apricot orchards, so we did have other trees coming in.

[01:33:31] Councilmember John McAlister: Growing up, uh we had butterflies all around where I lived, we had a variety of different birds that were flying through, I remember watching robins eat pyracantha berries and get drunk, and we could catch them with our hands. So you may never experienced it, but it's quite a scene.

[01:33:50] Councilmember John McAlister: We had a lot more wild wildlife, we had snakes in the area. I was fortunate to grow up next to Stevens Creek, so I had that Tom Sawyer adventure, we had the creek and we had all the nature around us.

[01:34:01] Councilmember John McAlister: And so when I see this report, I go god, this would be great. And I always say, somebody says how's the quality of life, and I said honestly it was a little better when I was growing up.

[01:34:09] Councilmember John McAlister: But this this report is is fantastic, it hopefully will bring back nature to us to where we see the butterflies, the caterpillars, the small insects, the bees for you know, if we're gonna pollinate things we got to have bees and so forth.

[01:34:25] Councilmember John McAlister: And that's what I hope this will this will do. But it's it's something that for the council to start considering, many times in this report it was aspirational plan. And it was based on staffing and money.

[01:34:40] Councilmember John McAlister: Now this council is a very aspirational council. They have a lot of great projects they want to do, they want to do this urban one, they want the park plan, they want the homeless plan, they want the low-income plan, they want the vitality plan, they want the downtown plan.

[01:34:55] Councilmember John McAlister: And you guys bring up a lot of great things, but somewhere along the line we have to focus on what we really want to get done. And this plan says well we will get some things in here, when we get some planning in...

[01:35:10] Councilmember John McAlister: And we just got to get focused on what's really important to us. Yes, everything that you say is great, everything what the city wants is great, but I come in, I don't have a lot of time here.

[01:35:22] Councilmember John McAlister: And some of you know I like to use the expression GSD, that means get stuff done. And this plan sounds it's going to be a long-range plan, it's going to take time to get the staff, it's time to get the money.

[01:35:38] Councilmember John McAlister: And I hope we if this comes back, we can say okay let's focus on this, let's pick our priorities that this is important. Yes, everything that we do is prioritized, we need to try but you know, we're gonna be looking up out for a bond to get some money. Well where's that money, that money seems to be already spent.

[01:35:56] Councilmember John McAlister: So I'm just asking the council when you start looking at these projects to go wow, it's great, is it going to get great when Lucas comes back in two or four years? So I would like to, but it's interesting because I came back and Chris and I came back and we're seeing projects that are still being worked on or haven't even been touched.

[01:36:15] Councilmember John McAlister: And so that's why it's important that we have our we have limited time, we have limited funds, and I'd like to see everything that was talked about this taken care of, it would be a great product.

[01:36:48] Councilmember John McAlister: project. Um I also liked which when somebody brought up Quest Annex. That has been going on for 50 years or whenever it started. That would be great to be able to put that to rest and know that we will take this garden... it is really the only open space that we can put in what we want. It's a clean slate, clean palette that we can print and paint whatever we want. So we do that. But that's what I like, to think just to do, to get this list done. So, and potentially that you said this comes back in June? You know, four or five years in the process of getting this, a lot of people touched it. I think I talked to the Community Services Director sometimes of how we can still get a public input in but make it a little more efficient and get things going so it doesn't... I hate to use the word bog us down in trying to get the good things done. Because we had a lot of touch points on there and that was great but there at some point we can do it. So, um, those are my comments. Let's just focus let's see what we can do to get this thing done and get it done, implemented quickly and uh the sooner the better.

[01:37:39] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Uh just for some clarification Councilmember McAlister. I'm I'm setting up... thank you Councilmember Showalter for getting me started on getting a bunch of straw polling questions ready to go. Um and I've been trying to list it out. But um you mentioned Cuesta Cuesta Park Annex. Um what what do you want to...

[01:38:02] Councilmember John McAlister: I would like to see it incorporated into this green open space with trees. I mean if you look at it there's a lot of space to put some trees and I know there's trees coming from some corporations that are working on it. I know since I live over by Stevens Creek I've seen trees come in from Intuit. I've seen trees from Google come into it. So we have partners who are putting in various items. But what I would like to see is that somehow that open space is great but if we want to do some experimentation or put the garden there was uh what's the garden the pollination garden right there at the corner there. Merriman there on Cuesta. You know those type of deals to enhance it that we could put this as here's our our our zoo or park that's plant you know with the plants and all that stuff. Like you know you go out to Arizona and they got the big uh cactus. So we could do our little thing. But I'm getting off course but that's what I would like to see with Cuesta Annex.

[01:39:05] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Okay. I I'm okay.

[01:39:08] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. One word. Enhance it. Okay.

[01:39:09] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Okay. Cuesta... Or bring it to its full potential.

[01:39:12] Councilmember John McAlister: How's how's that? I'd like to just bring it to the full potential. And if there's a question I'm voting yes for whatever comes down.

[01:39:21] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: I guess one of the the things to ask about oh... I guess we could go with Councilmember Clark now. Did you want to go? I guess okay, I'll ask this question first. Um I know that there were plans for Cuesta Park Annex a long time ago. What happened to them?

[01:39:44] City Staff: So if I recall, I did look this up recently and now I need to jog my own memory. Uh there was a agreement or a project that was being worked on between the City of Mountain View, Valley Water to put in a retention basin. And uh so a design was created and eventually Valley Water determined that they did not need to build that retention basin at that location. And so they basically walked away from uh the project and at the time the city did not continue um with its own design because the um the relationship uh was no longer necessary. And so basically that um that initial plan at that time never moved forward.

[01:40:14] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: So are there currently... Cause my understanding is that there were several iterations of a plan for Cuesta Park Annex. And so when the retention basin was the most recent one. So when the retention basin ended, do we revert back to an old plan or did just everything just die?

[01:40:33] City Staff: There is currently not an active plan that the city is working on for Cuesta Annex.

[01:40:38] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Okay. Okay. Uh Vice Mayor Clark.

[01:40:46] Vice Mayor Chris Clark: Yeah, just to briefly say I think the plan is great. I don't have anything to say that I can uh that would add value compared to what my colleagues have said. Um I think I'd only be uh trying to I'd only be allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good. So um but uh but one thing that will animate me is uh the Annex. As in I think it will animate a lot of the community. Um I I do not disagree uh with kind of the intent, but I think that adding the Annex to this or doing anything with the Annex as part of this will require a significant community conversation and probably a standalone work plan item that um I think kind of defeats the the goal of moving this forward as quickly as possible and not creating additional distractions. Um I think if anything it will actually um result in this taking uh an maybe an additional year or two just on that item alone, um which I I don't want to I don't want to risk. So that's my that's my only feeling on that. Um and then I guess we'll see if we need straw polls on anything anything else. Or or if you um but anyway I just wanted to chime in on that. Otherwise I'm I'm fine with the direction of everything else.

[01:42:08] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Okay. So I I do have a list of straw polls um to do. Most of them I actually feel like they're gonna be seven seven, seven, except for for the last one. Um okay. Um alright so I will list all the items uh that I that will uh attempt to straw poll on. We might be able to like consent calendar it. Um but I will start with um I'm just gonna read it. Thanks Councilmember Showalter. Um although this plan isn't regulatory, Council supports the implementation of the plan. This plan should be considered as one of the foundational plans of the city like the general plan, plans or precise plans. Concepts and criteria in plan should be considered in city projects going forward in budget development. Then two, a specific staff member should be assigned to oversee the plan's monitoring program so it doesn't get lost in the laundry list of responsibilities most staff have. This will also be crucial for making sure that collaborative collaboration across departments happen. Of course there will need to be staff from many departments involved. I I added a plus one because I believe or uh Councilmember Hicks also mentioned it in their uh comments. Uh three, the plan concepts will be used to develop objective standards as appropriate but especially with respect to roadways and development. I also added a plus AH on that one. Um four, an adaptive management plan is needed to make sure that we learn as we go. It should include a community meeting in about one year. After that evaluation should be done every three to five years. Um I think that was what um Councilmember Hicks also said, regular check-ins. Um next is emphasize planting native trees and understory locally sourced where possible. This is particularly important with oaks. Um I guess that was also like increase the percentage of native... okay. Um six, staff should carefully consider comments from MV Green Spaces, MBCSP, Daniel Shane, uh incorporating suggestions as reasonable. I'll also add the Bird Alliance one with that I heard that from Councilmember Hicks as well. Um well Councilmember Hicks actually pointed out uh emphasized on the actions 1, 17, and 26 that was mentioned in Green Spaces and MBCSP's list. Um also from Councilmember Showalter's list, use volunteers and partners in implementation, um essentially funding for beautification. And then um from Councilmember Hicks uh include greening in CIP funding. Um and I think that covered also what Councilmember Hicks should have. Um I have Councilmember Kamei with an equity lens review and ensure that this uh this plan is distributed throughout the city. I kind of viewed it as like um when we think about like say the housing element, like there was talk about affirmatively furthering fair housing and like trying to get housing in places where like you don't usually have. So it it's kind of like the reverse we there are areas in our city that aren't as greenified um in in and that's kind of like how we invest in neighborhoods without gentrifying them essentially.

[01:44:42] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I'm happy to keep it as a comment for when it comes back. Mine was just comments to the question. Not a straw poll. If it was a straw poll I would have asked and said it was a straw poll. But I think it's a comment and if others feel you know I don't know how staff feels but it was just a comment because I know that that it's it's out there so. Thanks Mayor.

[01:45:04] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Okay I'll just I'll just cut it as a thing.

[01:45:08] Councilmember Alison Hicks: No worries. Although I do like the idea of running the equity lens through it.

[01:45:13] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Um and then uh finally we have uh Councilmember McAlister throwing in Cuesta Park Annex. All right. Does anyone want to pull something from that for a straw poll? Vice Mayor Clark.

[01:45:26] Vice Mayor Chris Clark: So I'm I'm just just a suggestion for moving forward. I I'm fine with all of that. My the only thing that I would say is some of the some of the items that are more prescriptive like um I'm fine with having an initial check-in in a year or whatever. I just don't want to be prescriptive tonight around like it shall be on in June of 2027 or I think I think staff can take all this back and understand what's important to us and and suggest make suggestions in the just incorporate all that. And then just I I just as much as I would love to see a a more usable Cuesta Annex, I just don't want to I've I've learned over my years here that that is one of the third rails of Mountain View politics and I don't want to muddy the waters at the at the finish line here. So um that's one thing I can't support. Everything else is is fine with me.

[01:46:19] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: All right. Uh Councilmember Hicks.

[01:46:20] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So how do you want us to handle this? Do you want us to say what we will vote for and what we won't on it and then you're going to run it through the... oh we have a City Manager comment.

[01:46:33] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Oh. Go ahead City Manager Kimbra.

[01:46:35] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Thank you Mayor. So what I would suggest uh it seems like most of these things are generally supported by all. So I would take uh everything in a batch except for the Cuesta Annex. I think that should be straw polled separately. And then I would take the rest of them uh together as a batch because I think uh it's things that all of you have essentially uh given a nod to or you've made a comment saying I agree with prior comments from my colleagues. Um I did want to make one clarification about the funding for beautification. So Council had uh its budget workshop uh in a couple meetings ago. So is this uh direction that Council is giving to carve out some funding when the budget comes back in June? Is it CIP? I guess I would just want a little more clarification on what you're seeking regarding the budget.

[01:47:39] Councilmember Pat Showalter: I I think that if we could carve out a little bit now, that would be great. Um uh I I but I'm not thinking of a lot of money. I mean like then maybe $20,000, $50,000, something along those lines. But it would be as I mean I would yeah that would be great if we could do that. And and what what staff thinks would be appropriate.

[01:48:05] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Okay. And then the funding would go towards uh volunteer efforts is is that what you're thinking like volunteer efforts for beautification around the city?

[01:48:11] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah.

[01:48:12] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Okay. So maybe staff can take a look at what we would recommend and then bring that back as part of the budget. Okay great. So just to summarize I think take take the batch of things see if Council is supportive of the batch. Take Cuesta Annex separately.

[01:48:36] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Oh look at that everything lit it up. Um Councilmember Hicks.

[01:48:40] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So most of my questions were answered with that. But um can you repeat the one one of among the things I said the objective standards one was the most important to me. So can you either read it or can it say something along the lines of um integrate objective standards for roadways and private developments with the uh biodiversity and urban forestry plan just say that sentence which is pretty similar to what you said.

[01:49:11] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Yeah. So like I wrote down objective design standards for private development and roadways, long-term planning, green infrastructure. That's what I wrote down. I assumed that was similar to what Councilmember Showalter wrote down is like the plans concepts will be used to develop objective standards as appropriate but especially with respects to roadways and development.

[01:49:34] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yeah that sounds good.

[01:49:35] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Okay. All right. Good good. Um

[01:49:36] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yes, so um thank you very much. I'm done now.

[01:49:37] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: All right. Uh Councilmember Ramirez.

[01:49:38] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Uh thank you Mayor. Uh really quickly uh on the budget item I know we're uh fairly constrained this year. Um I'm I'm curious if staff what the Measure G resolution uh which allocated 30 to 35% of Measure G revenues to uh open space and parks also allowed for biodiversity. Would it be possible to use some of the funding that we had set aside for Measure G to achieve some of the uh I don't I don't er was it beautification or but the biodiversity implementation?

[01:50:12] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Yes, that's actually what I was thinking. We would likely come back and do. I think there was around a million dollars carved out for that and getting the thumbs up. So 1.2. And I think that could certainly come from that uh pot of funding.

[01:50:26] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Okay. Thank you.

[01:50:30] Councilmember John McAlister: Uh talking about funding I thought there was about 200,000 already allocated to this. So when you look at it I'm just saying we do have money so I don't know you said you opened how we're gonna use it so I just bringing that to your attention.

[01:50:48] City Staff: Councilmember McAlister, you are correct. Uh we do have some funding in an existing CIP for biodiversity. The the area that we were looking to utilize those funds is um specifically along El Camino Real. Right now that area um is in need of um we were looking to include biodiversity new trees is and that will include the need for uh new irrigation systems. So that's where we were looking to utilize those funds. Um and I was thinking about those as well as this discussion was going on. Um but if this is a a carve out for specifically for volunteer projects then um we can certainly look at that as well.

[01:51:27] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Sounds good? All right. Uh Vice Mayor Clark.

[01:51:37] Vice Mayor Chris Clark: I was just gonna offer a suggestion. One thing instead of instead of creating an entirely new grant program, one thing that I'd be open to although I'm open to that if you think it's okay. Um we could piggyback on some of the neighborhood grant programs and create specific buckets that way we're not reinventing everything but but but adding an allowed use in a in a bucket. So.

[01:52:01] City Staff: And I will highlight the fact that uh community service staff another one of our work plan items is looking at a volunteer um platform and coming back to the city council with a proposed policy related to utilization of volunteers. And different ways we can do that. And so uh staff is currently working on that. We hope to come back in late fall with some of the um things that we're thinking about and able in a way to enable um volunteers to be more involved different ways to get involved um and changing some of the ways that we look at uh integrating those. So um I think there's a nexus between that and then also the way that we look at the timing of this funding as well.

[01:52:47] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Does that sound good to everyone? All right. Uh Councilmember Hicks.

[01:52:56] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yeah I was going to say something very similar to Councilmember Clark. But I'm I'm also thinking we would you know highlight it at the Council Neighborhood Committee meetings and I mean actually diversify those meetings. As a resident I stopped coming to them because people just talked about traffic. But if people were talking about this as well I would start coming. So um so yeah I think highlighting it and and doing outreach through those meetings and also intern I will not be voting for the Cuesta Annex item because I agree essentially with what Councilmember Clark said. But I think it's super important I like the enhance it and I like enhancing it through um you know maybe a grant like this and neighborhood work is something we could do proactively before some the next Council can take on some very long-term planning there. So thank you.

[01:53:48] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: All right. So um most of what I thought was going to be a straw poll is looks like staff has understood. That leaves the Cuesta Park Annex item. But from what I've been hearing it's not likely that we're going to get something that's a full program.

[01:54:08] Councilmember John McAlister: I just wanted to enhance it. That's up to the the experts.

[01:54:16] City Staff: And just to uh inform council uh we work with Green Spaces MV they uh have that Cuesta pollinator habitat and they're expanding into the Annex. So we've been supporting that uh for about eight months now. So there will be more more plantings going on in that kind of that front corner of Cuesta Annex.

[01:54:37] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: All right. So I think I think we are good. I think we have the staff have what they need.

[01:54:45] City Staff: We have everything we need. We have all the themes that we heard tonight and we really appreciate all the fantastic feedback and and uh all the support. So thank you very much.

[01:54:53] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: All right. Thank you. And that completes this item. Um it's not a meeting adjourn but uh we will now go to our 6:30 we're going straight to our regular session. Um calling to order now. Um Good evening everyone. Welcome to the joint meeting of the Mountain View City Council and Shoreline Regional Park Community and the City of Mountain View Capital Improvements Financing Authority of April 24th, 2026. Our meeting is still happening. Um please join me in the pledge of allegiance.

[01:55:59] Attendees: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[01:56:25] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: April 28th. So um City Clerk will take attendance by roll call.

[01:56:31] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember Hicks.

[01:56:32] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Here.

[01:56:33] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember Kamei.

[01:56:34] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Here.

[01:56:35] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember McAlister, he's in the back. Councilmember Ramirez.

[01:56:38] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Here.

[01:56:39] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Councilmember Showalter.

[01:56:40] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Here.

[01:56:41] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Vice Mayor Clark.

[01:56:42] Vice Mayor Chris Clark: Here.

[01:56:43] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Mayor Ramos.

[01:56:44] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Here. We have a quorum.

[01:56:45] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. In recent weeks, the city along with a few of our neighboring elected decision-making bodies has been subjected to disruptive racist verbal attacks by anonymous callers during virtual public comments. The City of Mountain View is fully committed to racial, religious, and cultural equity and justice as we strive to create a welcoming, safe, and inclusive community for all. The council welcomes respectful non-threatening public comments on matters within our jurisdiction. Comments deemed otherwise pursuant to the council code of conduct and the government code may be grounds for terminating a speaker's comment period. Additionally, this is a challenging time for many of our neighbors in the Cuesta Park area. Approximately 67 households have been without drinking water since Friday. We know this situation has been more than an inconvenience. We are now at day five of this localized emergency which happened last Friday when a contractor hired by the city was performing water main replacement activities. The city's emergency operations center has been activated since Friday night. We are dedicating resources needed to address your immediate household needs. We are also working in tandem with state regulators to restore safe drinking water to your homes as soon as possible. I want to thank our city manager Kimbra McCarthy for leading us through this emergency response. Thank you to Fire Chief Brian Jones who is overseeing the EOC and Lisa Au and Mike Vasquez who are diligently working with the state to get the drinking water restored. And a huge thank you to our city employees who are dedicating around the clock hours to this incident. They include our water utility crews, firefighters, police officers, and public works, community services, finance, library, legal and public information employees. To the residents impacted by the Cuesta Park area water main incident, we are sorry this happened and we will continue to do all that we can to get your water restored as soon as possible.

[02:00:08] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: So now we will move on to Item 3. These are presentations. Please note that these are presentations only. The City Council will not take any action. 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 we have item 3.1, California Parks and Recreation Society Award of Excellence for the Rengstorff Park Aquatic Center. Yay! We are happy to be joined this evening by Trisha Mullen, California Parks and Recreation Society Region 2 Representative to present the Award of Excellence in Facility Design for the Rengstorff Park Aquatic Center.

[02:00:27] Trisha Mullen: Good evening. Thank you Mayor and City Council. As mentioned, I'm Trisha Mullen, the Region 2 representative of the California Parks and Recreation Society or CPRS. The CPRS annual awards program celebrates outstanding examples of quality facility and park design, programming accomplishments, effective communications, community leadership and professional successes that take place daily in our profession. Through our five award categories, we highlight the people, places, spaces, programs, and stories that make communities like the City of Mountain View so very special. This year, CPRS refreshed their Awards of Excellence programs with subcategories to provide better access to the awards. There were 186 applicants and 52 awardees. As one of five awardees in the facility design award of excellence and aquatic facilities, the City of Mountain View's Rengstorff Park Aquatic Center is a true testament to what aquatic facilities can provide the community. The Rengstorff Park Aquatic Center brings year-round swimming, wellness, and connection to the heart of Mountain View. The collaborative process utilized to create the facility's design ensured the final design reflected what the community truly needed. Reliability, inclusion, and spaces for all ages. Users of the Rengstorff Park Aquatic Center frequently share how much they love its welcoming design, dependable access, and expanded opportunities to learn, play, and stay active. The Rengstorff Park Aquatic Center is also one of California's first fully electric municipal aquatic centers. It also leads the way in climate-forward design. Congratulations to your City of Mountain View's Community Services team for winning the 2025 facility design Award of Excellence in the subcategory of aquatic facility. With that, this one-of-a-kind award plaque was handmade by an LA-based non-profit called Piece by Piece. Not only are you being recognized with a unique piece of artwork, the California Park and Recreation Society is also helping people who were formerly unhoused and low income develop marketable skills, self-confidence, and improved quality of life. Thank you.

[02:04:46] City Staff: Just a quick impromptu thank yous. And the Rengstorff Park Aquatic Center certainly was a long process not only to get started but to get finished. And there's lots of reasons for that and one of which is we are one of the few all-electric facilities in the country. And so we certainly were taking undertaking some new technology, making certain pieces components work together that have never worked together before. And between city staff and our contractors we were able to bring it to fruition. So a huge thank you to the community that was part of the design process and just as important is the staff that was involved to really number one communicate with the community, number two learn what the community was looking for, number three making this a really green efficient facility for the environment. And then also for their enthusiasm once it was time to open and bring new programming back to the facility. So I want to thank everyone that was involved and thank CPRS for being recognized. Thank you.

[02:05:29] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you for that. Congratulations to our Parks and Rec staff! All right. Now we will move on to item 3.2, which is the Fair Housing Month Proclamation. We are happy to be joined this evening by Daniza Roncal, a Fair Housing Community Outreach Coordinator with Project Sentinel's Fair Housing to accept this proclamation. Daniza, there you are! Alright, I will read the proclamation now. Come right here. Um, the proclamation reads, whereas adequate housing is a basic need and right of all people, and whereas this year we celebrate the 58th anniversary of the enactment of the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968, also known as Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act, which states that discrimination in the sale and rental of housing is illegal when based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, and whereas the Fair Housing Amendment Act of 1988 extends fair housing rights on the basis of familiar status to families with children and on the basis of handicap to disabled persons, and whereas California statutes additionally protect citizens based on the basis of age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and source of income, and California celebrates the 66th anniversary of the Fair Employment and Housing Act, and whereas the City of Mountain View supports fair housing efforts to eliminate discrimination in housing and recognizes the benefits of Project Sentinel to educate home seekers, apartment managers, and apartment owners on federal and state housing laws and to investigate complaints of illegal housing discrimination in Mountain View, and whereas in order to heighten public awareness, the City of Mountain View wishes to focus public attention on April as Fair Housing Month. Now therefore I, Emily Ann Ramos, Mayor of the City of Mountain View, along with my colleagues on the City Council, do hereby proclaim April as Fair Housing Month and encourage all residents and community organizations to celebrate the value of harmonious and diverse communities of neighbors and to support the goal of equal housing opportunity for all people. Would you like to say a few words? Oh, and here's your ta-da!

[02:08:04] Daniza Roncal: Thank you to the City of Mountain View and the Mayor for your continued partnership and support of Project Sentinel and fair housing in the community. Fair housing is deeply rooted in the civil rights movement and the protections we rely on today exist because of that history. While we've made progress, housing discrimination is not a thing of the past. It continues to impact residents especially during a time when housing challenges are front and center for so many families. Now more than ever support for fair housing is essential to creating real solutions that promote access, stability, and opportunity. Project Sentinel is committed to this work every day addressing housing discrimination one case at a time. To learn more about our services please visit our website www.housing.org. Thank you.

[02:09:11] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: And for the final proclamation of the night, we have Earth Month. Yay! We are happy to be joined this evening by Jean-Paul Renaud, Executive Director of Canopy to accept this proclamation. Jean-Paul, would you join me at the lectern? So, the proclamation reads, whereas the first Earth Day was proclaimed in 1970 in order to foster public awareness of the need to protect the environment and conserve resources, and whereas the City of Mountain View and our residents, organizations, and businesses have shown committed leadership to sustainable environments and demonstrated by the goals of the general plan, sustainability action plans, climate protection roadmap, zero waste plan, and various ordinances and policies. Whereas celebrating Earth Month continues to raise awareness for both achievements in sustainability and ongoing needs for environmental stewardship and resiliency. Now therefore I, Emily Ann Ramos, Mayor of the City of Mountain View, along with my colleagues on the City Council, do hereby proclaim the month of April as Earth Month in the City of Mountain View, and I urge all residents to celebrate Earth Month to support efforts to further protect our trees and environment and make Mountain View a healthier and more sustainable place for all. Now before you can say more words, I'll just use this opportunity for our call to action, call to service, call to community. So as you conclude your remarks, can you let people know especially our residents how they can volunteer with Canopy?

[02:10:45] Jean-Paul Renaud: You set me up so perfectly. Thank you. Um, thank you so much and I don't want to take too much time because we've been talking about trees a lot. Uh but yes as Mayor Ramos said we are planting up to 250 trees just this year, just this season in Mountain View. We're not doing it alone, we're doing it with you. And that is the importance, that is something that I want you to remember and take away from. Urban forestry is the science of adding trees to a city. It's the science of making sure that a tree in a city can survive, what species and how to take care of it. Community forestry, which is what Canopy practices, believes in all that but believes that we should all be part of the solution. We should all be part of the planning, execution, and care of those trees. So when we plant 250 trees, we have been engaging hundreds of you, hundreds of you in this planting. That means that hundreds of you are creating community. You're creating bonds of neighborhoods, of friendship, bonds of belonging with each other. That is hopefully what not only are these benefits of trees going to be ecological, but as Councilmember Showalter said when volunteers, when people come together in a common cause to do something good, to do something good for a morning, you will not only help grow the urban forest, but that urban forest will strengthen our community and will strengthen the bonds of democracy that we need so much more especially nowadays. So thank you for your support, thank you for your leadership. Thank you for believing in the model of community forestry.

[02:13:02] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Okey dokey. Let's see. Would any members of the council like to say a few words? Councilmember Showalter.

[02:13:12] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, I would really like to um thank all three of uh the people, the organizations that got presentations tonight. Um I think that they're very much in line with the uh study session that we just had on the biodiversity plan. Um uh even even the uh the pool, which you might not think a pool is, but we that that has been such a vital sustainability project. We are taking I mean we are not using um so much natural gas that would have been used otherwise. And that means we are saving so many GHGs. So it's in line too. Also um uh getting housing, affordable housing for people is is um so vital for creating a um a healthy environment for everybody and a community for all. And then of course you know you just can't beat Canopy's um uh vital contributions to our community and um helping us plant more trees.

[02:14:26] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you Councilmember Showalter. Uh we will now take public comment for the presentation items. Presentation items. Uh would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide comment on the presentation items listed on the agenda? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk. We will take in-person speakers first. Each speaker will have 3 minutes. I see none. Um we will now go to virtual speakers. I also see none. So we will bring it back to council and now we will move on to item four, our consent calendar. Um before we take up the consent calendar, we have one procedural item. As you are aware, a water main contamination incident in the Cuesta Park neighborhood on April 24th, 2026, disrupted water service to approximately 67 homes. On April 25th, the City Manager acting as Director of Emergency Services issued a proclamation of local emergency under the Mountain View City Code 11.6 as council was not in session and immediate action was necessary to preserve the city's ability to access any available financial or other assistance from the county, state, and federal agencies in response to the incident. The council must ratify that proclamation within seven days or it will expire. Under state law we may add the item to tonight's agenda with a two-thirds vote if immediate action is required and the need for action came to the city's attention after the agenda was posted. With that, do I have a motion and a second to add a resolution ratifying the proclamation of a local emergency to the consent calendar item as item 4.8. I see I have a motion from Councilmember Kamei and Councilmember Hicks... um I don't know if you have a script for that or it's just... Okay, we have a motion by Councilmember Kamei and a second by Councilmember Hicks to uh put it onto the do we need a vote to put it onto the consent calendar? Alright, so we'll uh take it to the vote.

[02:15:50] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Motion passes unanimously. So that will be added to the consent calendar. So items on the consent calendar 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 the approval of the balance of the consent calendar. If you'd like to speak on these items or the next item or all communications on non-agenda items in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk now. Would any member of the council like to pull an item? I see Councilmember McAlister.

[02:16:24] Councilmember John McAlister: I'd just like to make a comment on 4.4.

[02:16:28] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: 4.4. But not pull?

[02:16:29] Councilmember John McAlister: Nope.

[02:16:30] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Alright. Feel free uh to make... Actually let's go to the public comment then and then we'll go from there. Would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide comment on these items? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit a blue speaker card to the City Clerk. We will take in-person speakers first. Each speaker will have 3 minutes. I see no speakers in the queue. We will now take virtual speakers. I also see no speakers in the queue. Um we will now bring back the uh for council action and a note to a motion to approve the consent calendar should include reading the title of the ordinances and resolutions attached to the consent calendar items 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6 and the newly added 4.8. Um I believe Councilmember McAlister had something to say and also Councilmember Hicks is after.

[02:17:42] Councilmember John McAlister: Oh, I'll let ladies first.

[02:17:45] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I will be recusing myself from 4.2 uh which is on the entertainment zone I believe. And uh so I'll be voting for the rest but I will not vote for that. And just as a point of clarification in that case can I make the motion or do you recommend that I not if I'm recused because I would have to read it.

[02:18:12] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: I think you can still make the motion if you want to.

[02:18:18] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay, even if I'm recused. Okay, thank you very much.

[02:19:35] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah on 4.4 it's talking about the Senate bill the road repair and accountability act and it's talking about making sure our roads are in good condition. And I make a comment because uh this is great that we're doing it, but when we were talking the budget earlier in the year I asked to if we could reallocate some money from one project to uh road repair and you people thought that wasn't an appropriate use of money. But I want you to start thinking about something down the line when we're talking about our roads is that for the last 4 years our road conditions have deteriorated. We have what's called PCI and it's started at like a 69 and then went down to 67, down to 68, 66. And it was going down and now we're bringing it back up. But what happens when we don't spend money to maintain our roads, it's gonna cost us more in the long run. And I know this council likes to get a lot of things done and I hate seeing us spending more money on something that if we had done preventive maintenance it would have saved us money so that we could use elsewhere. So please consider that when we look at the road repair, yes it's not glamorous but it does provide a lot of things and it does will cost us more money unless we address it sooner. So that's the comment I wanted and I support this.

[02:19:44] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you Councilmember McAlister. I believe now I'll just throw it to Councilmember Hicks to read the motions.

[02:19:44] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I am uh making a motion to adopt an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Mountain View establishing an entertainment zone on portions of Castro Street consistent with Senate Bill 969 as codified in Business and Professional Code section 25692 to be read in title only, further reading waived. And I will be recused from that item. Uh also item 4.3 adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View approving a plan of finance of the California Municipal Finance Authority to issue and reissue revenue bonds with an aggregate principal amount not to exceed 35 million dollars to finance a res-

[02:21:24] Councilmember Alison Hicks: residential rental project located at 1020 Terra Bella Avenue and certain other matters relating thereto to be read in title only further reading waived. And, adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View declaring the real property located at 1020 Terra Bella Avenue which is intended to be acquired and immediately leased back to the developer to be exempt surplus land pursuant to the surplus land act to be read in title only further reading waived.

[02:21:56] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Also item 4.4 adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View adopting a list of projects for funding to be allocated during fiscal year 26 27 from Senate Bill 1 the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 to be read in title only further reading waived.

[02:22:12] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Also item 4.5 adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View amending City of Mountain View resolution number 18584 which conditionally approved a residential development project at 400 Logue Avenue to replace Exhibit A to resolution number 18584 with a corrected Exhibit A to remove condition of approval number 163 163 regarding the parkland dedication in lieu fee to be read in title only further reading waived

[02:22:47] Councilmember Alison Hicks: and also 4.6 introduce an ordinance of the City of Mountain View amending Article 5 of Chapter 29 of the Mountain View City Code to align it with state law clarify real property conveyance tax exemptions and to make other clarifying amendments to be read in title only further reading waived and set a second reading for May 12th of 2026. And also a newly added item 4.8 adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View ratifying proclamation of local emergency to be read in title only further reading waived.

[02:23:27] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Yay. All right, let's get to a vote.

[02:23:39] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: The consent calendar passes unanimously. Um, now we will move on to item 5, oral communications. This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the council on any matter not on the agenda. Speakers are allowed to speak on any topic within the city's 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. Would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide public comment on this item? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk now. We will take in-person speakers first. Each speaker will have 90 seconds.

[02:24:20] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: All right. Oh, okay. I had to... Um, the first speaker is Ramesh Babu. And then it's followed by Hormaz Romer. And then followed by Henry So. So Ramesh Babu.

[02:25:00] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: If, uh, if those who are after him can line up so we don't have to wait for you guys to come up, that would be great.

[02:25:10] Ramesh Babu: I have been Mountain View resident for past 32 years, and I was a member in Shoreline Golf Club Twilight member. Last meeting, I brought up the issue saying Shoreline is canceling without communication with us. Just yesterday, I received an email from the Shoreline saying that as of June 30th, your membership will be canceled. I have been member for 12, 13 years, so it's a nice way to walk and play golf. So I request the city to intervene in this matter and communicate with Shoreline. Thank you.

[02:25:50] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Next is Hormaz Romer, followed by Henry So, followed by Audrey Kim. If you guys can line up.

[02:26:01] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Mr. Romer just called me. He's late. Can he be placed later in the order?

[02:26:06] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: We can move him down. So we'll move on to Henry So. Henry So? Okay. Next Audrey Kim. Followed by Chris Lee, followed by Clarence Wong. So Audrey Kim, if you can take the mic.

[02:26:34] Audrey Kim: Audrey Kim?

[02:26:35] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Audrey Kim.

[02:26:36] Audrey Kim: Yes.

[02:26:37] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Yes.

[02:26:38] Audrey Kim: Okay, thank you. Please don't let Park and Rec Campus Sports cancel the Twilight annual golf membership. In my opinion, as a public resource owned by City, Shoreline Golf Links should not be operated with the primary objective of maximizing profit. As far as I know, last year Shoreline Golf Links made $350,000 in profit. So I don't understand why Campus Sports and City Park and Rec want to cancel annual membership and why Park and Rec prioritize higher profit over affordable public access to city-owned recreation facility. Please City Council make an agenda item to study this issue and to save Shoreline Golf Links annual membership program. Thank you.

[02:27:46] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Chris Lee.

[02:27:51] Chris Lee: Good evening, member of City Council. My name is Chris Lee and I've been a golf member at the Shoreline Links since last year. I'm here tonight to ask you to put a specific issue on a future agenda. The recent decision by Park and Rec and the Campus Sports to end the annual golf membership program. A public golf course should stay affordable and open to everyone, but this change happened suddenly without real public discussion or clear input from the community. It feels like the department is closing the door on communication rather than being transparent with the people on what they plan to do. For many of us, Shoreline is more than just a course. It's where we stay active, connect with our friends, and feel part of this community. I respectfully ask you to take a closer look at this decision. Please help us keep Shoreline Links a resource for many, not for just a few. Thank you for your time.

[02:28:56] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Next we have Clarence Wong, followed by Amy Yu, followed by Eric Chung.

[02:29:04] Clarence Wong: Good evening. I am Clarence Wong. I am here to add my voice to those concerned that the Shoreline Twilight golf membership has been eliminated. I'm a long-time Shoreline golf member, I've been playing there for 20 years. If you haven't yet gone out to Shoreline, if you go there in the early afternoon, you'll see many Twilight members are very active. You will see a wonderful blend of all ages and abilities. You will see members older than me, some in their 70s walking and playing. You'll see seniors, couples, singles, ladies, ladies groups. You'll see young people too. I've made many friends there. Younger than me and older than me too. And we all play together because we're friends at Shoreline. It's really wonderful. It's possible because Shoreline's membership structure was affordable for seniors like me, and those older, but also for younger folks who can't afford higher golf expenses. It enables folks like me to play and exercise multiple days a week. It also enables play during the weekend. The Twilight program is a big part of that, and is very popular. I am certain that eliminating that program will severely impact the community and the dynamic I've described. Please continue managing Shoreline as a vital public park and not make dramatic fee and membership changes to the program and all memberships. We understand incremental fee increases are necessary to keep pace with costs, but not tectonic changes please. I ask you to keep the Shoreline golf focus on

[02:30:35] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Amy Yu, followed by Eric Chung, followed by Jesse Roger.

[02:30:47] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Amy Yu? Oh, okay. Uh, Henry So? Okay. Go ahead, Henry.

[02:31:00] Henry So: Oh, hello. My name is Henry So. I'm a Shoreline Golf Twilight member since 2018. So during that time I make a lot of friends and I really enjoy golfing there. So I would like to continue golfing at Shoreline in the near future. So the purpose of the city-owned municipal golf course is to provide a recreation resources at an affordable price. So Campus Sports and City Parks and Recreation are prioritizing higher profits over golf inclusivity and undermines the public purpose of a city resources. It would be better if Campus Sports can modify the current program, for example, they can increase the rate or adjust the tee time, instead of just canceling the membership. So City Council, please make an agenda item to study this issue and save the Shoreline Golf annual membership programs. So I would greatly appreciate City Council would take public opinions into account. Thank you.

[02:32:16] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Next we have Eric Chung, followed by Jesse Roger, followed by Theresa Cho. Eric Chung?

[02:32:30] Attendee: Amy and Eric are late. They're on their way. I'm sorry.

[02:32:33] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: All right, we'll move Eric down. Um, Jesse Roger. Followed by Theresa Cho, followed by Melinda Cho.

[02:32:49] Jesse Roger: Um, my name's Jesse Roger. Uh, I moved here two years ago to become a full-time caregiver for my aged grandmother. And when I moved here, with the change in my life circumstances, I didn't think golf was going to be a part of my life anymore. But fortunately I found this program and something that I thought was going to be cost prohibitive was no longer cost prohibitive. And I was able to continue doing something I loved and build a sense of community. Every person who's spoken so far, I know them. And I know them because of this program. I think it's a really great outlet that is provided by the city. And changing it, particularly without any real discussion or, you know, opportunity for compromise is a big blow to a lot of the people that are here. I'm really hoping that there is an opportunity to discuss this more and put it on a future agenda so that myself and all the people here and all the people that enjoy this program are able to continue doing something they love and being a part of this community. Thank you.

[02:34:13] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Next we have Theresa Cho, followed by Melinda Cho, followed by John Satcher. Satcher? All right. Theresa.

[02:34:23] Theresa Cho: Good evening. My name is Theresa Cho. I'm also Special Olympic volunteer coach for golf. I'm here to ask you to protect a fair and affordable access to Shoreline Golf. Canceling Twilight membership is taking away one of the most affordable and reliable ways for us and the residents. Why it is that matter? First, it is affordable. Those working class and those people who is and a family, they can play golf because it is affordable. And also the Special Olympic athlete, like my daughter, she could practice at Shoreline. It is built with a strong community. Comparison, the change, it is contradict to the City Parks and Recreation goals. Access, remove one of the most affordable option. And then also it reduces participation. For inclusion, it impacts people with disabilities. For sustainability, it replace state...

[02:35:38] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you, your time is up.

[02:35:44] Theresa Cho: restore twilight membership, keep access fair and... Special Olympic... place this as an agenda for your next council meeting. And also, we need to...

[02:36:05] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Everyone gets 90 seconds, so your time is up. All right, thank you. Melinda Cho?

[02:36:17] Theresa Cho: Wait a minute, wait a minute, you have to speak louder.

[02:36:19] Melinda Cho: My name is Melinda Cho. I am a Special Olympics athlete. I practice... I practice golf... and... you're a twilight member for... 4... 4 years. Um... you're busy... I'm busy... during the days... and... you can only play on... I play on... weekends... but they cancel... they cancel the membership... is... and what do you do? I will... not be able to... play. So you ask... and I actually... the council... to continue... to let you practice golf... golf. That's the one you... love. Thank you.

[02:37:18] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. John Satcher, followed by Mike Pelham, and then followed by Hormaz Romer.

[02:37:30] John Satcher: Madam Mayor and City Council, last week I had a phone call with John Marchant to discuss how to collaborate and negotiate to save Shoreline Twilight annual golf memberships. Mr. Marchant responded via email, and I quote, "I support the decision to discontinue the Twilight membership program. I do not agree to discuss negotiating pricing, modifying playing times, or collaborate on continuing the program." City Council, why is John Marchant, the City Parks and Rec Director, aligning himself with a private equity company that refuses to collaborate with the public? Municipal golf courses are public utilities, designed to make golf accessible and affordable to everyone. Please, City Council, put us on the agenda in May so we can present how the 15-year Shoreline Annual Golf Membership Program achieves the purpose of a municipal golf course by providing accessible, affordable, and inclusive access to the public. Thank you again, please consider adding us to the agenda item. We would love for the Parks and Rec and Campus Sports to meet with us so that we can come to an agreement on how to continue this program. Thank you.

[02:38:53] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Mike Pelham, followed by Hormaz Romer, followed by Amy Yu.

[02:38:59] Mike Pelham: Hi, I'm Mike Pelham. I'm here to support the Twilight members. I've been a member for 5 years or so, and I've really enjoyed it. And met a lot of friends, especially the Special Olympics group, we play with them. And it's a fantastic wildlife park. So I was really just disappointed when they just discontinued the membership without any discussion. And I really believe that this membership brings a lot to the community. It's just a great time to be out there with friends. So lacking any communication, I still find it difficult to understand the reason for this. I don't believe it's purely financial, but maybe it is. In which case, the rules that they've set up, some of the statistics they give me just don't make sense. So the public can now book before the Twilight members, which was not when I joined. We could get a tee time. Now public can book ahead of us. So really we're just a bonus. I mean, they can sell it to the public and we just get a bonus and we take out whatever tee times are left. So that's how it sits. Anyway, I really think we should discuss this more and appreciate your time and consideration. Thank you.

[02:40:06] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Hormaz Romer, followed by Amy Yu, followed by Eric Chung. So we're getting to the people who uh getting back to the people. Go ahead.

[02:40:17] Hormaz Romer: Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Hormaz Romer, and I've been a proud member of the Shoreline Golf Links for over five years. I'm here tonight to actually congratulate the city on two things, and then ask an important question. First, in 2012, the city made a visionary decision to introduce a membership program at Shoreline Golf. Before that, the golf operations were losing money. Since then, they've become self-supporting and even profitable. This is rare. For comparison, the City of Sunnyvale's golf and tennis operations currently lose $800,000 a year. Second, the Community Services Department's mission statement is building community, enriching lives. That is a beautiful mission statement. Congratulations on that. And exactly the right one for the city. Which is why I'm troubled. The city is proposing to eliminate the membership program, and every justification we've heard has been primarily financial. So our ask is simple. Why fix what isn't broken? The financials are sound. The community has been thriving. Eliminating the membership program is in direct contrast to that mission statement. We ask that you ask the staff to reevaluate that decision. Thank you.

[02:41:28] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Amy Yu, followed by Eric Chung, followed by Curtis Banks.

[02:41:34] Amy Yu: Hello, my name is Amy Yu. I've been a member, Twilight member at Shoreline about seven years. And we really enjoy going there every weekend, playing with all these friends and create all this community bonding. But it's very disappointing now we learn that they are canceling Twilight membership. So can you please not let Campus Sports cancel the Twilight annual golf membership. As a public resource owned by the city, Shoreline Golf Links should not be operated with the primary objective of maximizing profit. Last year, Shoreline Link made $350,000 in profit. Why does Campus Sports, City Park want to cancel the annual Twilight membership? Why is Park prioritizing higher profit over affordable public access to a city-owned recreation facility? Can you please make an agenda item to study this issue and save Shoreline Twilight annual membership program? Thank you so much.

[02:42:38] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Following... Now we have Eric Chung, followed by Curtis Banks.

[02:42:45] Eric Chung: Good evening, City Council members. Thank you for giving us the time to express our opinion. I think as it's already known, right, Kemper Sports came in here to manage the golf course. They manage over 200 courses throughout the country. Their primary mission, of course, is making some money, because they're not a charitable organization, based on what I checked. So, what is a private company tend to do? They want to increase their profit year after year after year. Now, I'm working in the private sector. I understand how to make money. Do you want to make more and more? But as a city, which is not a for-profit organization, I think there is a little bit of a, you know, philosophical differences there, right? Now, I'm okay with them making some money because they hire people, they got to make some money. But are they pouring the profit back into the community, back into the course? Probably not. They probably wire it back to the headquarters. So, as a member, I think you see the numbers of uh, players being eliminated because of the cancellation of the program. But that's just purely a number. Behind those numbers, you have people like seniors that maybe golf is their only course of recreation. You have Special Olympic people. They play golf because they love golf. So those are not just numbers, those are people who actually enjoy and uses it, and they may not be able to afford it, right, if you keep increasing or cancel the program. Okay? So thank you for the time.

[02:44:02] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Now we have our last speaker of the night. Curtis Banks. Well, not for the night, but for oral communications.

[02:44:07] Curtis Banks: Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. My name is Curtis Banks. I have bad handwriting, sorry about that. I've lived in Mountain View and played Shoreline for 35 years. For three decades, weekend twilight times were never an issue. I wasn't a twilight member at that point. This changed in the last couple of years with a surge in the program's popularity, and I'm here to support staff's decision to eliminate unlimited weekend twilight play. Shoreline has become a subsidized designation for many golfers throughout the peninsula. My research shows that neighboring courses like Sunnyvale and Poplar Creek restrict their programs to weekdays only. Our programs allow folks outside the area, and most of the twilight members are not Mountain View residents, to play at a fraction of the going rates. Because our rates are already among the lowest in the area, we're essentially subsidizing golf for non-residents. I've used the twilight membership for tee time priority, and although this is changing, I've seen members continue to dominate the tee sheet, making it difficult for residents to book times. The community is great and it can still exist, but it shouldn't be built on subsidies that displace locals.

[02:45:22] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you, your time is up. All right, thank you. Uh, just as a reminder to everyone, state law prohibits the council from acting on non-agenda items. In order to put something on the agenda, it would be something at the end of our meeting. Um, but we have several items before that. So, um, just giving people a heads up on that. Um, so, uh, we will now take virtual public comments. Um, but I see none. So that ends oral communications and public comment. So we will move on to item six, public hearings. 6.1 is a mixed-use development at 843-903 Castro Street, 700 West El Camino Real, and 750 Fairmont Avenue. Councilmember Hicks, do you have an announcement to make?

[02:46:32] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I do have an announcement to make. Let's see if I can locate it here. Uh, yes. I am recusing myself from agenda item 6.1 mixed-use development at 843 through 903 Castro Street, 700 West El Camino Real, and 750 Fairmont Avenue due to the proximity of my personal residence to the project site. So I will be seeing you all later tonight.

[02:47:25] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Have fun. All right. Um, as Councilmember Hicks, uh, leaves, uh, we have Deputy Zoning Administrator Rebecca Shapiro and Senior Planner Edgar Maravilla that 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. And we will have our staff presentation.

[02:47:51] City Staff: Good evening Mayor Ramos and City Council members. As noted, I'm Rebecca Shapiro, Deputy Zoning Administrator, and I'm joined on the dais tonight by Senior Planner Edgar Maravilla, who is the project manager for this item. The project before you tonight is a mixed-use development located near the northeast corner of Castro Street and El Camino Real.

[02:48:11] City Staff: The 1.43 acre project site, which is outlined in orange, is at a gateway location in the downtown precise plan. The site's general plan designations are downtown mixed-use and medium density residential, the latter of which applies to the shaded area shown on the screen. The site is immediately surrounded by a one-story commercial building along Castro Street to the north, and three two-story homes that are to the north along Hope Street.

[02:48:35] City Staff: Gateway Plaza is located immediately southwest of the proposed project, and the lower-density old Mountain View neighborhood is to the northeast. The applicant is requesting multiple development permits listed here to construct an 8-story mixed-use development which is utilizing state density bonus law to achieve the proposed 140 residential unit count.

[02:48:57] City Staff: Along with the necessary development permits and proposed subdivision map, the project includes a request for the city to vacate and sell a portion of the existing Fairmont Avenue public right-of-way for incorporation into the project site, which is a decision that the city council has full discretion over. The proposed project site is bisected by a primary east-west paseo, which we refer to as the Fairmont paseo, that provides publicly accessible bicycle and pedestrian circulation roughly where the existing street is today.

[02:49:29] City Staff: Approximately two-thirds of the Fairmont paseo is open to the sky, with the proposed building covering the rest of that paseo as well as a north-south connection to Gateway Plaza. Other onsite pedestrian paths surround the building and provide access to the different building functions, and include a partial arcade along the Castro frontage.

[02:49:51] City Staff: Vehicular access to the underground garage is provided from Hope Street, which is on the right-hand side of the screen, and the ground floor plan is primarily comprised of commercial storefronts which are shown in blue along Castro Street, portions of the paseos, and Gateway Plaza, with residential uses in the balance of the project area.

[02:50:11] City Staff: The proposed building employs a contemporary architectural style with two primary materials, stucco and a fiberboard siding, plus additional accent materials. The image on the left shows the proposed building from the Castro and El Camino Real intersection, where you can see stone-like cladding on the ground floor commercial facades, and existing city street and Gateway Plaza trees providing some scale against the 8-story building.

[02:50:38] City Staff: The image on the right shows the project from Hope Street looking south towards El Camino Real. Here you see 8-story building areas visible, with some height step-downs and upper floor setbacks. Wood look siding and landscaping is also used to soften the transition to the lower density residential neighborhood.

[02:50:57] City Staff: Per state density bonus law, the project is eligible for and proposes a 100% density bonus. The applicant's state density bonus request also includes two waivers of development standards and a concession. Staff's analysis found that the waivers of standards are necessary to construct the project, and the city and applicant have also resolved the concession request through a negotiated settlement agreement, as discussed in the council report and density bonus findings.

[02:51:28] City Staff: As noted earlier, the site has two general plan land use designations, and staff found that the mixed-use project advances general plan goals and policies and is consistent with permitted uses under those designations. Except for the requested waivers that were highlighted on the prior slide, the project complies with all the applicable objective development standards of the precise plan.

[02:51:49] City Staff: Now, pursuant to state density bonus law, the proposed density bonus and qualifying waiver requests are not a basis for deeming the project inconsistent with the general plan or precise plan standards, or for disapproving the project. Per state density bonus law, the project is eligible for the proposed 100% density bonus because the project provides 15% of the base project units as affordable for lower income households and 15% of the base units as affordable to moderate income households.

[02:52:22] City Staff: The provision of the 22 affordable units meets overlapping city BMR ordinance and state density bonus law requirements, which are summarized on screen, and the project will also address tenant relocation requirements of both the city and state codes. The BMR proposal was also found by staff to be consistent with city requirements for affordable units to be reasonably proportionate and dispersed amongst the overall unit mix with the affordable units distributed across floors 1 through 6.

[02:52:50] City Staff: The project provides common usable open space in roof decks on floors 2 through 7 as well as private open space in balconies for each unit. The site plan also includes outdoor amenity spaces for the commercial tenants and landscaping and seating in the onsite paseos, as well as compliant buffer landscaping in required setback areas.

[02:53:13] City Staff: Per the landscape plan, the onsite canopy will increase from 10% as it exists today to 16% of the site area after 10 years, with additional canopy possible from the roof deck plantings. Overall, the landscape plans comply with the city's water conservation and landscaping regulations and applicable precise plan standards.

[02:53:34] City Staff: The project will remove seven onsite heritage trees, which are shown in orange on the screen. Those trees are in a mix of good and poor condition. The onsite heritage and non-heritage trees will also be removed due to direct conflicts with the project. The applicant is proposing to preserve one onsite heritage tree, which is circled in yellow, near the existing intersection of Hope and Fairmont.

[02:53:59] City Staff: The project will replace two existing street trees along Castro Street to facilitate solid waste service consistent with city requirements and remove existing Fairmont Avenue street improvements. The proposed onsite planting plan includes 54 new trees, which exceeds the city's typical practice for heritage tree replacements.

[02:54:17] City Staff: As noted earlier, the project includes a proposal to acquire one block of Fairmont Avenue between Castro Street and Hope Street for incorporation into the project site. The project would close the existing vehicular access but maintain publicly accessible non-vehicle connections through the onsite paseos. The Fairmont right-of-way related actions are part of the project recommendation before council tonight, and they must be approved for the project as proposed to proceed.

[02:54:49] City Staff: If they are approved and the transaction is completed, the city would receive approximately $4.2 million for the land. The project also includes offsite streetscape improvements on all project frontages, and the city's multimodal transportation analysis generally found the project to conform with the downtown precise plan and result in acceptable circulation and intersection operations.

[02:55:11] City Staff: The project qualifies for a categorical exemption pursuant to CEQA guidelines section 15332, which applies to infill developments. Analysis supporting this exemption is summarized in the project resolution and addressed in more detail within the CEQA exemption report, which is an attachment to the council report. This analysis included review of the project against the city's adopted VMT policy, which found that the project is anticipated to have a less than significant VMT impact.

[02:55:40] City Staff: The applicant voluntarily attended two DRC meetings and held one community meeting that was attended by staff during this application phase. Public comments from these meetings and written correspondence as well were summarized in and attached to the council report. Key topics that were raised in public comment included a focus on tree preservation, which included avoidance of offsite tree impacts, and concerns about the scale of the proposed development.

[02:56:07] City Staff: The zoning administrator and subdivision committee recommended conditional approval of the project at a public hearing in October of last year, and the notice of intention to vacate the public street and easement was made by council last month. In conclusion, the project has been found to be consistent with the general plan, zoning, subdivision, and environmental review regulations that are applicable to the project pursuant to the provisions of state density bonus law.

[02:56:32] City Staff: The staff zoning administrator and subdivision committee recommendations are shown on screen and in the council report for adoption of the street and easement vacations, the related real estate actions, and conditional approval of the project permits pursuant to the findings and conditions of approval attached to the council report. This concludes staff's presentation tonight. City staff from pertinent departments are available for questions, and the applicant team also has a presentation for the city council tonight. Thank you.

[02:56:49] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. We will now have a presentation for the applicant, Ken Rodriguez, project architect, Ken Rodriguez and Partners. You will have seven minutes on the clock.

[02:57:03] Ken Rodriguez: Thank you, Mayor Ramos, members of the City Council. My name is Ken Rodriguez, a local Mountain View architectural and planning firm. I'm proud to present the gateway to Mountain View for GPR Ventures. During the last three years, our team received community and staff design input for this exciting new mixed-use project in downtown Mountain View. Next slide. Um, the entire... next slide. One, one more. Sorry. Thank you, Edgar.

[02:57:34] Ken Rodriguez: Um, the entire Castro Street frontage will be retail shops and restaurants as staff mentioned. Above the street level will be the 140 units of housing, 22 of which are affordable housing, and this Castro frontage, with its stone arcade, will allow the public to shop, sit, and dine both inside and outside while at the same time bringing pedestrian vitality to the gateway and to downtown.

[02:57:59] Ken Rodriguez: The new buildings, next slide please, the new buildings will not only serve as a gateway to downtown, but also as a backdrop for the existing city park located at Castro and El Camino. This project will also be a strong catalyst to activating this park for members of the community and new residents of the gateway. One of GPR's... next slide please.

[02:58:20] Ken Rodriguez: One of GPR's main goals for this project was to use the highest quality of materials and design detailing. Materials include cut stone, exterior plaster, large glass windows, metal balconies, aluminum awnings, and wood siding. These materials, and the massing of the lower floor, are consistent with the city design guidelines and precise plan, while the upper floors step back multiple times to help break down the scale of the project. Next slide please.

[02:58:44] Ken Rodriguez: Fairmont Drive will be turned into a no-autos, pedestrian, and bicycle paseo, as staff mentioned, that include both outdoor dining, raised planters for seating, public art, and a real connection for the downtown and the neighborhood to the west. Next slide please. As the new paseo meets the neighborhood to the east, it becomes more passive, quiet, pedestrian-friendly, with outdoor seating, landscaping, versus the more urban design located along Castro. Next slide.

[02:59:08] Ken Rodriguez: A second paseo running north-south connects the Fairmont Paseo with the existing city park at Castro and El Camino. This paseo includes outdoor seating overlooking the park, landscaping, public art, and unique lighting to help promote pedestrian activity. The gateway to Mountain View will enhance and engage Castro Street, El Camino, and Hope Street with this new, very pedestrian-oriented, visually important mixed-use project, and add much-needed housing to our beautiful City of Mountain View. The entire project team, including the ownership, GPR Ventures, is here. We are happy to answer any questions that you have. Thank you so much for your time tonight.

[02:59:26] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Does any member of the council have questions? Seeing none... oh wait, we do. Okay. Councilmember Showalter.

[02:59:40] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, um, in the staff report, it it talked about uh, this was described initially as condos, and then there was some discussion about, um, uh, they would be rented as apartments at the beginning. So, uh, is there what's the the plan here?

[03:00:02] City Staff: I can start to to answer that question, I appreciate that there may be some confusion there. Uh the project before city council tonight includes a subdivision map which um will create condominium units within the development uh so that's part of the action before the city council tonight. Uh it's staff's understanding that the applicant is sort of leaving options open in terms of whether they immediately implement the condominium component of the project and sell the units or rent the units for some period of time uh and the applicant team may be better equipped to provide more detail on their intention in terms of the the condominium component of the project.

[03:00:49] Applicant: Uh hi Mayor and City Council, my name is Glenn Yonakura and I'm representing GPR Ventures. Uh, the reason that we need some flexibility with respect to condos or apartments is largely due to um the liability issues related to building condominiums, the ten-year liability and various things like that. Uh currently in the market um there's very few developments in the state of California that are condominiums and the reason is because of the liability, the ten-year liability issue.

[03:01:19] Applicant: And currently in the economic environment, banks won't underwrite these assets to give you a construction loan uh if they're condominiums, they'll underwrite them as apartments. Um and so that's what banks do, that's how you'll get this constructed uh they'll do it they'll lend money based on uh the value of the apartments and how much they would rent for.

[03:01:48] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Okay. Thank you. I guess my other, I have do have another question. Um, and that's uh, about all the uh, commercial space. And um, you know, we've had quite a bit of trouble um, renting commercial space, particularly in the San Antonio area. Um, that it's it's finally happening but but those buildings were built you know five or six years ago and they they stood vacant for a long time. So I wondered what is the the plan for um uh getting that commercial space filled?

[03:02:23] City Staff: Um, I I do believe this is another question uh that the applicant might be best equipped to answer. I I will say just anecdotally that um, my experience with the with developers proposing projects uh especially recently is that they they will not generally propose um the inclusion of commercial space that they don't ultimately believe that they'll have the ability to rent um and often have kind of a diverse uh uh palette of land uses that they potentially envision to to to get those spaces leased. But with that overarching answer, I would look to the applicant to to speak further about their plans for the space.

[03:03:02] Applicant: Uh sure. Uh we've uh historically met with various restaurants over the last three or four years, but there's a couple of tenants...

[03:06:24] Applicant: tenants that are existing in these parcels that will potentially move out and move back in that we have to preserve and protect because that's part of the agreement. So there's current tenants that we have to take care of but outside of that there'll be other restaurants but it's too early for us to have any detailed discussions with those restaurants at this point.

[03:07:14] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Well, um, there's been thought and the down... we've had some owners that are very good to work with um and have allowed their vacant spaces to be used for um like holiday pop-ups or um galleries um or or short term uses um when they couldn't get a long term owner uh I mean a long term leaser. Would you be interested in working with the city on that sort of thing if you

[03:07:47] Applicant: Sure, sure, we'd be happy to.

[03:07:48] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Because that is we we find that um uh you know having vacancies is is really sort of de-livens the area and it's much better for everyone if if something is is going on. Thank you.

[03:08:02] Applicant: Thanks.

[03:08:06] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Is that all your questions Councilmember Showalter? Okay. Now we have questions from Councilmember McAlister.

[03:08:12] Councilmember John McAlister: Thanks. Where is the parking for the tenants... for the commercial... how many parking spaces are designed for the the commercial spaces?

[03:08:26] City Staff: It currently they have 33 allocated for about 9,700 square feet of commercial space.

[03:08:33] Councilmember John McAlister: No, where's the parking for the commercial space?

[03:08:35] City Staff: And the parking for the commercial spaces is in the underground garage. Uh so those spaces will be accessible from that garage entry location on Hope Street.

[03:08:43] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, and how accessible would it be? Is there a walkway down? I didn't get to take a look at it. So how will they get to the parking spaces?

[03:08:50] City Staff: The parking levels are underground and so folks would need to drive into the underground garage, uh exit their cars and take an elevator to the surface level.

[03:08:59] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. And I noticed that the set back for El Castro is 12 feet on some and it goes from there?

[03:09:06] City Staff: The Castro Street setback is actually effectively zero. The precise plan calls for development along Castro Street to be built to the back of the walk. Um at the ground floor of the building there is a partial arcade so the storefronts are stepped back from the property line but generally speaking the building and the structure of the arcade are placed at the back of the sidewalk.

[03:09:31] Councilmember John McAlister: So I was reading that the... at the... once it gets to the third floor there's a 25 foot set back. So the first floor is basically the same as the commercial space that goes pretty much straight up and so that's the 12 foot...

[03:09:46] City Staff: Uh there are upper floors that have greater set back. So the second and third floors do extend even with the arcade so those will be proud of closer to the sidewalk than the commercial storefronts which are stepped back from the sidewalk to provide additional outdoor space in that arcade.

[03:10:08] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. And how much space... so I was at a VTA meeting and one of the big things that VTA is having an issue with is that new developments aren't providing uh space for buses to park and etc. So I noticed could I don't fully understand the one thing about the street right of way. It says five foot street and utility easement between Castro and Hope Street. Is Hope Street going to be reduced in any width?

[03:10:36] City Staff: Sorry about that. Uh to my knowledge no Hope Street will remain um the same width and there is a planned loading zone uh along the west side of Hope Street in front of the project for...

[03:10:50] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay will will that be on their development property or in the street?

[03:10:54] City Staff: It's a street side loading zone to to my understanding.

[03:10:57] Councilmember John McAlister: So it's public right of way that they're using?

[03:11:00] City Staff: Uh it will be usable for all sorts of loading including deliveries um uh which occur through the downtown on public alleys and streets uh and passenger loading so passenger loading um for residents and and visitors to the site.

[03:11:15] Councilmember John McAlister: I remember we used to have a sun calculation that if a building goes up how it would block the sun. So when the sun is in the west how does that project over the homes that are on Hope Street on the east side of Hope Street, the blocking of sunlight?

[03:11:36] City Staff: Um I don't have a mental map of their solar shading plan but generally speaking afternoon sun which would be as you noted to the west of the site um would cause shadow to be cast um you know onto Hope Street and um some of the properties on the east side of Hope Street as well.

[03:11:53] Councilmember John McAlister: Well is there... that was designed to try to give those... so how much of light will be blocked from the eight story building onto the Hope Street and wasn't there supposed to be some kind of an angle on it or is there any requirement that the light cannot be blocked so much?

[03:12:12] City Staff: So I I think the standards that you're thinking of are standards that exist in our R3 multiple family zoning district where uh the set back is uh required to effectively match the height at each floor of the building. Um there are different uh setback standards that exist in the downtown precise plan that that are different than the R3 standards. Um and uh the project complies with the applicable development standards for the downtown precise plan. Um but for the the items that are uh requested waivers um that are identified in the staff report.

[03:12:49] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay so there's no consideration for the sunlight then because it's not part of the precise plan in that area?

[03:12:58] City Staff: Uh the project complies with the standards that are in the precise plan um and where they could not comply with those standards they have requested waivers.

[03:13:08] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Uh to follow up on Councilmember Showalter's about the rental of the units that that was interesting because it was always projected as a a condo project but in your conditions of approval there's something concerning that 11 of the units are put in perpetuity to be affordable. So do they start out as rental units in perpetuity and stay that way if they start renting?

[03:13:40] City Staff: Um I guess the short answer to that question is um that they have the ability to sell the the condominium units with the the map that's being proposed if approved by council um but they also have the ability to to rent the units. Um the BMR agreements for the project will reflect the rental or for sale nature of the project at the time it's developed and if that changes um there are mechanisms within the um the agreements to address that.

[03:14:18] Councilmember John McAlister: So is that a in-house development agreement or is that a I thought that was a stated... is that the perpetuity is that a city requirement?

[03:14:26] City Staff: That's a a city um a city standard um and the project includes conditions of approval that address um scenarios for either sale or rental of the the units.

[03:14:40] Councilmember John McAlister: Is there a I saw a director of their standard for those projects. Did you have anything that you wanted to add or are you just stretching your legs? Okay thanks. Um okay there if these units were is there anything in the conditions of approval that would allow them that would require them to put it into condominiums?

[03:15:07] City Staff: Uh there is not a an applicable mechanism for the city to to require sale of the units.

[03:15:14] Councilmember John McAlister: So when if they do a tenants map they're paying extra to have this subdivided all these is there an extra cost? If you build apartments there's one cost but if you put in condos you have to put in a tenant map or something to individually recognize each unit.

[03:15:30] City Staff: Uh the project already includes a request for a vesting tentative map to create condominium units.

[03:15:37] Councilmember John McAlister: And does that cost extra?

[03:15:39] City Staff: Uh this project was reviewed on a cost recovery basis and so there were not individual flat fees charged to the project um based on the different permits that are being requested.

[03:15:49] Councilmember John McAlister: So if somebody has an existing apartments and they wanted to convert those to condos they would have to pay that fee? The tenant fee I mean uh...

[03:16:01] City Staff: Uh there might be a variety of permits that would be required for a conversion of an existing building from rental to condominium for sale units. Um the city has a section of the code about condominium conversions. Um and included in that would be the need for a subdivision map to create the condominium units. Um this project already includes a proposal for a subdivision map and so that's part of the action before City Council tonight. So the condominium units would be created through the subdivision map that's already been proposed by the applicant.

[03:16:34] Councilmember John McAlister: So if they start out as rentals and then convert them whatever is there any additional fees that they would be required to pay?

[03:16:47] City Staff: Um there would not be new permit fees to my knowledge. Um I believe the draft conditions of approval do include an HOA reserve uh which is part of the existing regulations that apply to the project. Um I don't recall just off the top of my head what the timing for the creation of that fund is but I think it's connected to implementation of the map uh and creation of an HOA um but that's just from from recollection.

[03:17:16] Councilmember John McAlister: And the comparison what was what was the height of the Chase Bank uh do you recall that side of that project?

[03:17:24] City Staff: Um I don't recall the height I believe it topped out at about six stories um but um I I don't recall the specific height.

[03:17:32] Councilmember John McAlister: I think it was six and then across the street they're I think they're four stories?

[03:17:36] City Staff: It's more like four or the the highest level maybe five along El Camino.

[03:17:40] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay thank you.

[03:17:42] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Alright any other questions from our colleagues? Alright. We will now move on to public comment. Would any member of the public on the line um or in person like to provide comment on this item? Uh if so please click the raise hand button in Zoom or turn in a blue speaker card. Um a timer will be displayed on the screen. Each speaker will have I'm not seeing any public comment. Okay. Each speaker will have 3 minutes and seeing none um we will go back to council. I have um oh well I was going to say we also take virtual speakers but we don't have that either. Um so we will bring the item back to for council questions and deliberation. Please note that a motion to approve the recommendation should also include reading the title of resolutions attached to the report. Councilmember Ramirez.

[03:18:43] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you Mayor I'll move to approve the staff recommendation including one adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View ordering the conditional vacation of the existing public street known as Fairmont Avenue between Castro Street and Hope Street and a five foot street and utility easement thereon to be read in title only, further reading waived. Adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View declaring the city owned portion of Fairmont Avenue between Castro Street and Hope Street to be exempt surplus land pursuant to Government Code Section 54221 F1E upon the vacation of Fairmont Avenue as a public street and public easement to be read in title only, further reading waived. Adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View conditionally approving a planned community permit and a development review permit to construct an eight story mixed use development with 140 residential condominium units, 9,743 square feet of ground floor commercial space and two levels of below grade parking utilizing state density bonus law replacing existing commercial properties and four residential units, a provisional use permit to allow residential uses on upper floors only along the Castro Street frontage and heritage tree removal permit to remove seven heritage trees on a 1.43 acre site located at 843 to 903 Castro Street, 700 West El Camino Real and 750 Fairmont Avenue, APN 158-06-008, 158-06-010, 158-06-036, 158-06-037, 158-06-038 and 158-06-039 and finding the project to be categorically exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act CEQA pursuant to Section 15332 infill development projects of the CEQA guidelines to be read in title only, further reading waived. And adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mountain View conditionally approving a vesting tentative map to create one parcel with 140 residential condominium units and six commercial units at 843 to 903 Castro Street, 700 West El Camino Real and 750 Fairmont Avenue APN 158-06-008, 158-06-010, 158-06-036, 158-06-037, 158-06-038 and 158-06-039 to be read in title only, further reading waived. I'm looking forward to our charter modernization which will mean we will never have to read all of these resolutions into the record ever again. Um I have a just a a couple of quick remarks first I um appreciate staff um for uh your work on this project I know it's uh many many many many many years in the making so it's nice to finally be at the approval stage and also I appreciate the work of the applicant to put together a project that um I think uh achieves many of the community uh priorities that we've heard over the years and I'll just name a few. One is uh providing uh nearly 10,000 square feet of commercial space and I appreciate the concerns that Councilmember Showalter shared none of us like vacant commercial space um but if you don't provide it at all then there's no possibility of any storefront activation or neighborhood serving retail so thank you for voluntarily providing that commercial space. One of the things I've I've been concerned about is um with uh the erosion of local control um there may be a time when many uh developers just don't provide commercial square footage at all um and we've heard um from staff in other contexts that um state density bonus law is pretty powerful and you can you know waive development standards or seek a concession that um may um allow a developer to get around a mandatory uh commercial square footage requirement so thank you for for providing I think pretty significant amount of commercial square footage. Um I also appreciate uh the affordable ownership units uh for low and moderate income families we have um a uh home ownership strategy that we've been working on um and uh state density bonus law already generally requires some amount of uh low income set aside which is great um but uh moderate income families often get left behind so it's great to see the inclusion of affordable units geared towards that um moderate income uh household uh that uh we have not been able to meaningfully serve in many of the developments that we've reviewed. Um I also am I think there are probably some different perspectives about this and that's that's okay. Uh I I think the the $4.2 million in unrestricted funds in exchange for the sale of uh that public right-of-way is is very worthwhile it's uh money that is otherwise pretty hard to come come by these days when we have diminishing support from the federal government and state government that has its own budgetary constraints so that's $4.2 million that uh the next council uh will be able to spend uh in uh support of our community. And generally speaking I think other I I believe this has been the sentiment of the council generally but um when there is uh funding uh provided unrestricted funds provided by private development we've often uh used those funds to benefit the the neighborhood uh that is impacted with the the development so um nothing that you know we can state today but uh or invest today but I would hope that future councils do uh find opportunities uh for that $4.2 million to to serve uh residents in this area. And then uh you are voluntarily providing parking I know a very wise man once said parking is good business that may be a very wise man who serves on the city council but I won't name John McAlister. Um but I think that's another thing that we we often hear concerns about um uh whether because of state law or because of our own uh precise plan or zoning standards um there are areas in the city where no parking has to be provided at all. Um but uh I think there is a recognition that uh parking uh makes a residential development attractive. Uh so uh I think uh you know notwithstanding concerns I you know that's not a concern I've historically had but I know that there are many in the community uh who want to ensure that there is a private parking provided so the neighborhood um off-street or what is it I guess on-street parking um off-site parking uh is not impacted by the future residents of of this development. Uh so those are uh some of the reasons I'll be supporting uh the project and the staff recommendations um and I'll conclude my remarks there thank you.

[03:22:07] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you Councilmember Ramirez. Um Councilmember McAlister.

[03:22:13] Councilmember John McAlister: Thank you for those kind words thanks. I you know you did bring up an interesting point. This is a financial question I don't know if any we've ever had this before so if you start out renting the the units the appraised value is based on that what happens when you convert those to condos does that then become individual property maps and then each property would be charged more for an assessed value? Anybody could take it.

[03:22:43] City Staff: Are you are you referring to property tax?

[03:22:46] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah property tax.

[03:22:48] City Staff: Um yes the the property would be assessed differently by the county um depending on the composition of the units there'd be an initial taxation with development of the project where if rental would it would largely be based it would be probably reassessed on the basis of um the improvements to the the land um and the the change in the property condition with the inclusion of the public right of way um and property tax would be applied to individual units if if or when they they are sold.

[03:23:17] Councilmember John McAlister: So it would be the city may generate more property taxes with the condos than the rentals?

[03:23:31] City Staff: Uh I I don't have a specific answer for for you on that one. It's a little bit beyond planning.

[03:23:36] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Councilmember McAlister each unit would generate individual property taxes they were condos.

[03:23:42] Councilmember John McAlister: Yes that's so potentially we would bring in more money to the city. Okay thank you. Um so I did I came in uh this project along along so I love condos I want to see the property the people being able to afford my daughter just bought well she bought a condo knock on wood she just bought it a month ago so she's entered the realm of the American dream. Um so but then I saw that you were interested in renting these out for 10 years and I go uh that's concerning to me. So uh I've seen enough projects in my 10 years on the council to see where projects start one way and the developer decides that he has to go another way and that's their right but I um it's not what I initially thought it would be and so I always wise to pay attention to what they're trying to do and and this is one that you know after 10 years they may just say hey we're just going to keep it this way. The other concern I have is the sunlight. These are small concerns I mean well there are big concerns for a lot of people and then I was looking at the the imaging of it. But my uh to be consistent what I've been talking about I do not believe in selling the city property. And um along with other concerns but that's one that uh I will not be supporting this project for a variety of reasons but one I think the city should maintain owning its property um and that we should be able to generate funds that way and maybe we can get a better use project that would match the needs of the city at the time. Thank you.

[03:25:26] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you Councilmember McAlister. Do we have any other comments from the dais? Seeing none we're ready for a vote.

[03:25:46] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: And that motion passes 4-2. We are going to take a break. It is currently 8:31. It's gonna be a 10 minute break so get back here in 10 minutes and we will be back at 8:41.

[03:32:10] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Alright let's take our seats. Let's get ready. So once we all settle I'm calling the meeting back to order at 8:48. I really like my thing. Um item 6.2 Federal Fiscal Year 2026-27 Annual Action Plan. Housing Officer Alec how do you pronounce your name? Vybral? And Affordable Housing Manager Julie Barnard 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 take it away.

[03:53:44] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you, does any member of the council have questions? Seeing none, uh we will move on to public comment. Would any member of the public on the line, like to provide comment or in person, uh would like to provide comment on this item. If so, please click click the raise hand button in Zoom or press star nine on your phone or submit a blue speaker card now. A timer will be displayed on the screen. Each speaker will have... um each speaker will have 3 minutes. Um, we will take in person comment first. Um Melanie Farr?

[03:54:24] Melanie Farr: Good evening Mayor Ramos, Vice Mayor Clark, and Councilmembers. My name's Melanie Farr from Upwards. Thank you for your continued support of Mountain View's child care providers and for staff's recommendation to renew funding for the Boost program. Our Boost team works one-on-one with low to moderate income family child care providers in Mountain View to strengthen their business and create teaching assistant positions to expand access to quality care for working families. We pair providers with experienced coaches to build personalized plans covering marketing, enrollment, finances, and staffing. We also give them continuous free access to a platform that streamlines their day-to-day operations, which frees them up to focus on caring for the children. The result is stronger small businesses, more local jobs, and more working families with access to affordable quality care right here in Mountain View. Thanks to Council's support, we've partnered with 10 local providers, created one new teaching assistant job on track to create the three, and expanded care for hundreds of local families. We've made solid progress but there's still more work to do given the need we're seeing in Mountain View. As you may know, nearly 60% of children under six in Mountain View lack access to a licensed child care slot, which leaves thousands of families, especially moms, single parents, shift workers, struggling to fully participate in the workforce. Meanwhile, child care workers here earn on average $18 an hour, which drives high turnover and deepens the shortage. The providers love caring for children but they need support with the business side to make it sustainable. That's exactly what Boost is designed to do. So we've coached over 500 family child care providers the majority of here in the Bay Area, specifically Santa Clara County, um created 180 new jobs and helped providers grow revenue by an average of 25% and expand child care slots by 30 to 50% all within the first year. Um, with council's approval, Boost can support 10 more providers this year, create three new teaching assistant jobs, and expand care for more families in the community. I also want to emphasize that sustainability is really at the core of the program. So our goal is by the end of the year, participating providers will have the skills and tools to continue growing independently serving families in Mountain View for years to come. Um, I'm available to answer any questions both as a representative of Upwards but also a former client who really appreciates that reassurance that the most affordable care option can also be the best quality care option. And that's what inspired me to join the team, and not just available tonight but throughout the year for progress updates as well. Thank you so much. And thank you staff for the thoughtful um process especially in a very um tricky year. So thank you.

[03:57:05] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you so much. Seeing no other in-person public comment we will move on to virtual public comment. Uh Georgia Bacil.

[03:57:18] Georgia Bacil: Good evening. Uh, can you hear me?

[03:57:21] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: We can hear you.

[03:57:23] Georgia Bacil: Thank you so much. Georgia Bacil, Directing Attorney of Senior Adults Legal Assistance, you know us as SALA. We provide free legal services to Mountain View residents 62 or older, targeting clients that are low-income or at risk of abuse or loss of independence. 77% of the Mountain View seniors we served last year were very low income. And 66% were 75 or older. We provide our services locally at appointments at Mountain View Senior Center and by phone for clients that cannot leave their homes or with emergencies. We are a current Public Services CDBG grantee and we thank you sincerely. Your funding supports expanded availability of our services to your residents. We are recommended for funding in the 2026-27 Action Plan before you. We thank the staff for their recommendations. We at SALA address a range of critical matters impacting our clients' lives. For example, we address income insecurity by assisting clients with legal problems related to the public benefits they rely on to meet their basic needs: Social Security, SSI, Medicare, and Medi-Cal. We address housing instability by assisting clients worried about eviction, clients needing reasonable accommodations in their housing, or clients whose housing is otherwise in jeopardy. We address elder abuse and domestic violence by assisting clients that are victims of abuse, usually by someone living in their home or someone they know, such as adult children, grandchildren, caregivers, even tenants renting rooms in their homes. Often this involves our attorneys obtaining restraining orders for our clients. SALA cannot charge fees or accept fee-generating cases under our Older Americans Act restrictions. The primary way that we support our services is through grants like CDBG. In this current climate, your funding is more critical than ever to provide us with the highest level of support that we can provide to your residents. So we hope the City Council will approve the 2026-27 annual plan funding recommendation by the staff uh for SALA and we thank you so much for your previous support and uh good evening.

[03:59:49] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Uh seeing no other virtual public comment, I will bring the item back to council for deliberation and action. I see a motion by Councilmember Hicks and a second by Councilmember Showalter. Councilmember Hicks, would you like to speak to your motion?

[04:00:07] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yes, my motion is to uh accept the staff recommendation and also to thank staff for all their work on this is not a part of my motion but I will be thanking staff for all their work on on um pulling this together. Uh particularly addressing the uh new addendum and federal executive orders which is a tricky thing to to work through. So thank you for doing that and explaining it to us clearly, so we had no questions on it. Um and also I wanted to thank the representatives of the various organizations who here were here. Uh Melanie from Upward Boost and Georgia from the Senior Adult Legal Assistance. Thank you for explaining your important programs and any other representatives who might be online listening to us, thank you also for your, or in in the public listening to us, thank you for you know all that you do for our community as well.

[04:01:06] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you Councilmember Hicks. Uh Councilmember Showalter.

[04:01:08] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah I'd just like to add that I always enjoy reading this report because it it gives us an opportunity to learn about um really valuable nonprofits that are active in our community and are providing services and it it really um is uh just a part of what we do to be a community for all. And and this time I want to echo the thanks of you know of of some of the people who spoke and and Councilmember Hicks about coming up with the um reasonable way to um both uh preserve our values of a community for all and also um find a way to uh you know to support these organizations. So thank you for your creativity and your hard work and um it's clear that uh these organizations will put that money to good use.

[04:02:05] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you Councilmember Showalter. Uh Councilmember Kamei.

[04:02:09] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thanks Mayor. Um so just want to echo the thanks to the um providers and staff. I would just say um thinking ahead if there's going to be like further creativity needed please let council know so we can support you and allow for that flexibility. All these organizations and staff are doing so much important work and we want you to feel supported and uh and I think that can be very difficult to feel in this climate. Um so please let us know. Thanks.

[04:02:42] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you Councilmember Kamei. I will echo those sentiments um thank you staff for your work on this. Thank you to these community partners that are really providing such great services to to our city and to those who who rely on us and support our city. Um I know that the federal landscape is difficult um and we will continue to fight for our residents and fight to get the funding we can. Um and with that um let's move on. Let's uh go to the vote.

[04:03:22] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: The motion passes unanimously. We will now move on to... thank you so much. Um we will now move on to item 6.3 approval of lease revenue bonds for public safety building project and related actions by City Council and Capital Improvement Financing Authority Board. First we will hear from Chris Lynch with Jones Hall the city's bond counsel.

[04:03:54] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Go right ahead, sir.

[04:03:55] Chris Lynch: Thank you. I think I'm waiting for the presentation to appear on the screen.

[04:04:38] Chris Lynch: Good evening uh Mayor Ramos, members of the council. I'm Chris Lynch, I work at a law firm called Jones Hall and we regularly represent the city when they undertake bond financings. Um tonight as required by the city's disclosure policies and procedures, I'll provide some information and training about the city council's responsibilities under federal securities laws when the city issues bonds. Um you've previously been exposed to this information in the staff report for tonight's lease revenue bonds and also in uh previous communications by the City Attorney. Um my message in a nutshell is first, the city is subject to federal securities laws when it issues bonds uh both when it does initial disclosure at the time of issuance of bonds and then continuing disclosure on an annual basis thereafter. Uh secondly, staff and elected officials should take reasonable steps to ensure that the city's disclosure is accurate and meets the standard required by federal securities law, and I'll explain what that is. Um third, for context I'll provide some uh circumstances in which the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is the federal agency that regulates and enforces federal securities laws, has brought enforcement actions against local agencies. And then finally, the city has adopted written policies and procedures, and I believe that if followed those policies and procedures will keep the city in compliance with federal securities law. Next slide.

[04:06:00] Chris Lynch: The Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 were adopted after the Great Depression, which saw widespread securities fraud. Those two laws along with two Securities and Exchange Commission rules 10b-5 and 15c2-12 regulate the sale of municipal bonds. Most importantly they prohibit the uh they prohibit fraud in the offer of securities. In this context that means that the issuers of securities must not uh omit material facts or misstate material facts when they disclose information to potential investors. A material fact is any fact that, given the circumstances, a reasonable investor would be likely to rely upon in making the decision to buy or sell your bonds. Next slide.

[04:06:47] Chris Lynch: So SEC rule 15c2-12 requires an issuer of bonds to prepare an initial disclosure document. Here on the slide is a picture of the uh Shoreline community's 2018 uh official statement. And the official statement is prepared by staff with assistance from outside consultants such as our firm. Um it is approved by the legislative body of the issuer, which is what you'll be doing tonight with respect to the lease revenue bonds, and it has to include all material facts. And material facts include in this context uh the terms of the bonds and then financial information and operating data about the city related to the payments to be used to pay debt service on the bonds. The city has a disclosure policy and it requires the Director of Finance and Administrative Services to collaborate with outside consultants like our firm in the preparation of the official statement. It requires the the official statement to be presented to City Council for approval, and it requires the agenda report for that uh official statement to describe your responsibilities under federal securities laws, and we have complied with those requirements tonight. Next slide.

[04:07:53] Chris Lynch: Rule 15c2-12 also requires continuing disclosure by issuers of bonds. And that takes two forms. Once, on an annual basis the issuer has to provide an update of the financial information and operating data of the type that was included in the initial disclosure document. And then uh there's an obligation to provide, when it occurs, notice of certain events, such as failure to pay debt service on time, bankruptcies, rating changes, draws on uh debt service reserve funds. The city's disclosure policy plays places the responsibility for continued disclosure on the Finance and Administrative Services Director as well. Uh next slide.

[04:08:20] Chris Lynch: Tonight you'll be asked to approve the issuance of lease revenue bonds and the related official statement which is pictured here on the slide. The draft official statement re- uh discloses first the city's financial information in its general fund because the lease revenue bonds are payable from lease payments made by the city from any available sources of funds including unrestricted monies in the general fund. There are two California enforcement actions that the SEC has brought against local agencies uh that provide clear guidance as to your responsibilities and the responsibilities of staff when uh you issue municipal bonds. And I'd like to briefly talk about those.

[04:08:58] Chris Lynch: In 1994, Orange County declared bankruptcy. It had pursued a uh aggressive investment strategy strategy of issuing short-term notes and investing the proceeds of those notes in uh to achieve above-market returns. The County Board of Supervisors approved the official statements for those notes, usually on the consent calendar, and but they failed to disclose the risky investment strategy that the notes were part of. In the wake of the bankruptcy filing, which did not result in any defaults in the payment of debt service on the notes, the Securities and Exchange Commission pursued an enforcement action against the Board of Supervisors and members of staff, but it also, most importantly, issued a report to emphasize the responsibilities of local officials under the federal securities laws. The SEC wrote that officials are expected to take steps appropriate under the circumstances to assure that any material facts that they're aware of, that could adversely affect the the issuer's ability to pay debt service on the bonds, are disclosed. That doesn't mean necessarily reading the 100-page official statement for the lease revenue bonds which you've received tonight, but it does mean that if you're aware of any facts that could impact the city's ability to pay these lease payments over the 30-year term of these bonds, that you make sure that they've those facts have been disclosed in the disclosure document, either by contacting staff or speaking with your disclosure counsel. Next slide.

[04:10:24] Chris Lynch: Later in 2007, after the Securities and Exchange Commission brought an enforcement action against the city of San Diego, the SEC Director of Enforcement listed five lessons that they thought issuers should learn from uh about issuing bonds and complying with federal securities laws. The first was to adopt written disclosure policies and procedures, and again the city has uh complied with that requirement. Second, issuers should provide appropriate training to their officials and employees involved in the issuance of bonds. So consistent with best practices and with your policies and procedures, you've received that training really in three different formats: first, this training tonight, second, the agenda report for the lease revenue bonds talks about uh the Orange County report, and then third, you received communication from the City Attorney that attached the Orange County report. Third, local agencies should focus in their disclosure on the big picture issues uh facing the local agency. For example, in San Diego where the SEC brought an enforcement action because of uh fraudulent statements in the city's audited financial statements, rating agency presentations, and official statements. Um they noted that the city's disclosure included a lot of facts, but they did not provide sufficient information about the key financial issue for the city of San Diego, which was their unfunded pension, which required significant uh uh attention during the city's budget process. So, typical of other California cities, the lease revenue bond the official statement before you tonight does describe Mountain View's pension and OPEB plans and the the status of their funding. However, for other local agencies, the key big picture issues could be litigation, it could be a big business or rate payer leaving town, it could be deferred public infrastructure work, it could be a structural imbalance in the budget. Uh fourth, local agencies should make sure that their disclosure discloses the good with the bad. It's very tempting to turn your disclosure document for an official for an initial offering of bonds into a marketing piece, but the SEC expects you to present the whole picture of the city, warts and all. Um finally, the SEC thinks that local agencies should hire competent professionals to help them with financial reporting and bond disclosure. Um and uh so those are the five things that the SEC thought you should be aware of. Next slide.

[04:12:38] Chris Lynch: Finally, you should know that the SEC has pursued uh enforcement actions against individuals when they acted with an intent to defraud or with a reckless disregard for whether they were the issuer was misleading investors. Um I have a couple of examples here. In Orange County, the SEC brought uh found that two individuals responsible for the investment and debt issuance scheme, which were the Treasurer and the Assistant Treasurer, had knowingly committed fraud and they were uh received a jail sentence and a fine. In San Diego, the SEC brought securities charges against a number of local agency officials for reviewing misleading financial statements and not and allowing their publication. Um another uh issuer the Westlands Water District, they uh reclassified certain reserves as revenues in order to show uh satisfaction of rate covenant when they went out for $70 million of bonds. And in the New York and New Jersey Port Authority, the general counsel of the issuer expressed a concern that they were issuing bonds for things they weren't allowed to finance and they did not disclose that to investors. Hopefully I've made it clear that uh city staff and elected officials should take reasonable steps to ensure that the disclosure document associated with the issuance of bonds includes all material facts. Um those facts that a reasonable investor would want to know about in making the decision to buy or sell your bonds. I believe the city's disclosure policies with its emphasis on training and its emphasis on collaboration between staff and outside consultants um should prevent intentional fraud and should prevent reckless disregard of facts because of the care given to this issue. I'm happy to answer questions, thanks for listening and um otherwise I'll turn it over to Derek.

[04:14:27] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you so much. Um we will now uh go to Assistant City Manager Arn Andrews and Financial Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone, uh who 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. Go right ahead.

[04:14:48] Derek Rampone: All right. Good evening Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Councilmembers. As stated earlier, Derek Rampone your Finance and Administrative Services Director. And joining me this evening is Arn Andrews, one of the Assistant City Managers. We also have Grace Tseng, the Assistant Finance and Administrative Services Director here with us tonight, and Wye-Si Fox from Urban Futures, our municipal advisor is also in the audience. Eileen Gallagher from Stifel, our underwriting firm is also available online. Tonight's item is to approve the issuance and related documents associated with the lease revenue bonds that will be issued in connection with the Public Safety Building construction. Um, tonight there is the City Council is holding a public hearing, and staff is recommending adoption of the item, of a resolution that includes the items you see on this slide, which are finding that issuance of lease revenue bonds will result in significant public benefits, approving the issuance of the 2026 bonds in a not-to-exceed amount of $140 million and authorizing related actions, declaring intention to reimburse expenditures on the Public Safety Building project that were made prior to the issuance of the 2026 bonds, appointing the financing team, and approving the form of financing documents and distribution of the official statement.

1. CALL TO ORDER/PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE & 2. ROLL CALL (REGULAR SESSION)

[04:16:16] Derek Rampone: documents and distribution of the official statement.

[04:16:20] Derek Rampone: As the Board of Directors of the Mountain View Capital Improvements Financing Authority, staff is recommending adoption of a resolution that authorizes the issuance and sale of the 2026 lease revenue bonds, not to exceed $140 million, and related actions, and approving the form of financing documents and authorizing distribution of the official statement.

[04:16:46] Derek Rampone: Here's an overview of the project that's, I think we've seen a numerous times. As previously discussed in prior meetings, this new building will replace the current public safety administration building, which includes the city's emergency operations center that was built over 40 years ago.

[04:17:05] Derek Rampone: The current cost estimate of $189 million, with $138 million that's anticipated to be funded through these bond proceeds that are pending approval tonight. All other funding required for this project includes the balance of $51 million has already been secured and will be described later.

[04:17:27] Derek Rampone: A quick background on what lease revenue bonds really are. We have a, kind of a description here. As you can see, there's a diagram of how lease revenue bonds work. They are a very common way for cities to finance major public facilities.

[04:17:46] Derek Rampone: They allow the city to build needed infrastructure now and pay for it over time. Investors or bondholders will provide upfront financing by purchasing the bonds on the market. The financing authority will issue the bonds and use the proceeds to build the facility.

[04:18:04] Derek Rampone: Once completed, the city uses the facility and makes annual lease payments from the general fund, which in turn get repaid to the bond investors over time, including principal and interest. And as a reminder, the bottom right corner, this is a long-term general fund commitment.

[04:18:24] Derek Rampone: Now diving into kind of the debt, the funding strategy in more detail. Like I just said on the previous slide, the bonds are issued through the Capital Improvement Financing Authority, which is a joint powers authority used as a financing conduit.

[04:18:38] Derek Rampone: The purpose is to generate about $138 million in proceeds, which will fund the construction or part of the construction of the new public safety building, demolishing the existing building and paying some debt issuance costs.

[04:18:54] Derek Rampone: The city will commit to annually budgeting and appropriating these lease payments, with the lease payments coming from legally available sources, including earmarked revenues such as Ameswell property revenues, Measure G revenues, and then also general fund revenues.

[04:19:12] Derek Rampone: Although they are not formally pledged, the general fund is the primary pledge. The leased property initially is going to be secured by this property here, the City Hall and the library, including the existing police department site or the public safety building site.

[04:19:31] Derek Rampone: Once the new public safety building is complete, it now then becomes the leased asset and

3.1 California Parks and Recreation Society Award of Excellence for Rengstorff Park Aquatics Center

[04:19:38] City Staff: the properties that are currently uh documented become released.

[04:19:45] City Staff: Here's an overview of the estimated uh of the kind of the debt funding details. Estimated principal is going to be around 128.5 million uh generating roughly 138 million in total proceeds.

[04:20:01] City Staff: The majority of that will be used to put in the go to directly to the project fund to pay for construction costs. There also are some costs of issuance and and discount uh costs that will be paid out of the proceeds.

[04:20:15] City Staff: A portion of the proceeds will be used to potentially reimburse costs that have already been incurred on the project. This results in a debt structure that will be level amounts every year and amount of around 8.3 million every year with final maturity in 2056. Payments will occur twice a year, um May and November with principal paid every November.

[04:20:41] City Staff: The current true interest cost is approximately 4.36% at this time. Um that will vary depending on when we go to market, but that's what we're uh looking at now. Um and overall this really provides predictable long-term financing with stable annual payments to support the project.

[04:21:02] City Staff: Here's another slide on the breakdown of the funding for the project. As you can see, the bond financing is the top part there, the 135 million, that makes up a majority of the funding. We've already, over the years, the city has accumulated funds in a reserve, um including recently a contribution from the shoreline uh community at the April 14th meeting. Also there's 16.3 million that has been put into the capital project fund itself over the years, and 2 million that was recently allocated from the general operating fund at the April 14th meeting.

[04:21:36] City Staff: As the market has its ups and downs, staff is recommending some safeguards and parameters to allow for the financing team the opportunity to execute when the market turns positive in collaboration with the advisors. A not to exceed limit of 5% for the true interest cost is what is being proposed, and up to 140 million um of maximum principal with a maximum of .5% for a principal uh underwriter's fee.

[04:22:06] City Staff: Locked in pricing really shifts to the underwriter on the bond sale date. Um there has been a full legal and financial review of the documents as spoken earlier, and the use of funds are really controlled by the uh indenture of trust.

[04:22:23] City Staff: There are a lot of documents associated with issuing a lease revenue bonds as you can see on this slide, the city and the financing authority have numerous documents, they are all listed here and some are attached to the uh staff report for this item tonight.

[04:22:37] City Staff: Getting down to the fiscal impact, as I spoke with earlier, the the city's annual commitment is about will be around 8.3 million dollars annually. Uh the city has dedicated funding for this, some earmarked funding from the Ameswell uh property as well as Measure G, in addition the difference will be made up out of the general fund. This is a predictable uh level debt structure with uh fixed payments.

[04:23:03] City Staff: A reminder that this is a a long-term liability for the general fund, an obligation through 2056. And the city's strong credit rating of AAA has kept uh financing costs low, and I'd like to expand on that last bullet point that just today we were notified by Standard and Poor's um that they have reaffirmed our AAA credit rating, so that's a great news.

[04:23:29] City Staff: Here's a preliminary financing schedule just to gonna give you an idea of the timeline and next steps. Um tonight obviously the council and financing authority board is is hearing um and possibly approving the issuance and of the bond and the documents. Tomorrow we will be posting the preliminary official statement. In early May we are anticipating going to market selling the bonds um and with receipt of the proceeds in mid-May which sets us up for the first phase of the project to begin this summer.

[04:24:04] City Staff: In conclusion, uh just like to reiterate why this action matters this evening. This really delivers a long planned priority and moves a 10 plus year project forward with funding. Um it enhances uh provides a modern public facility um including a very important emergency operations center.

[04:24:26] City Staff: This supports core services of the city, of public safety. It's a prudent approach that involves standard, proven financing, and also has uh protects some flexibility by maintaining some general fund capacity in the future. And with that we're happy to answer any questions.

[04:24:46] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Does any member of the council have questions?

[04:24:56] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Councilmember Ramirez.

[04:24:58] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, staff, for um the remarkable amount of work that you put into uh preparing all of these documents. That uh the what I forgot what it's called, I think it's the uh preliminary official statement which includes all of the disclosures is interesting. Uh it's very dense, but it has a lot of uh very valuable information.

3.2 Fair Housing Month Proclamation

[04:25:25] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: information. Um, I'm not concerned about the ability of the city to meet our debt payment obligations, but um, I I guess what makes me nervous is in the event there is some type of catastrophic impact like the passage of the Howard Jarvis measure which is disclosed as a risk. Um, and we have to use general fund revenue. What we don't know is what gets cut as a consequence. Um, so can staff share how you might think about a contingency plan in the event one of the risks that is identified like approval of that ballot measure you know comes to pass.

[04:26:11] City Staff: Uh thank you for the question. And as we were developing the financing plan which we spoke of two weeks ago, we do think of contingencies, you know at the end of the day it is a general fund pledge and we're very cognizant of that and we're very cognizant that we don't necessarily have the ability to eliminate services because one of our revenue sources. So a couple things have come to mind that we have discussed.

[04:26:36] City Staff: One is if you look currently at the structure, AMSWELL is the majority of the funding for the debt service and is a growing component every year. The AMSWELL revenues just four years ago were about 4.1 or 4.2 million dollars, they're currently programmed at 5.3. So why we have a level debt service which will not change, the AMSWELL will continue to grow, which will mean Measure G will become less reliant as part of the funding, if that's what we want to do.

[04:27:05] City Staff: Another thing that comes to mind is we've recently approved uh new business terms and the new DDA for a hotel here in town. While that is a very good thing, it does mean that it's a revenue source that has yet to even be considered in the city. Now granted that construct has revenues really coming to the city more in like a 10-year time frame, but there will be additional revenues coming to the city in 10 years that have yet to be programmed. So that's kind of a longer term solution if something were to happen.

[04:27:37] City Staff: A shorter term solution is in 2028, I will probably sit here and advocate for a revenue measure, likely a TOT. We are an outlier in the TOT space at 10%, and eventually that's something we should probably look at. San Jose is currently looking at that as are other communities and will continue to become more and more of an outlier. And so if Howard Jarvis were to go through and pass, I would advocate for that as staff as a recommendation to this council to consider that as a way to backfill the revenue.

[04:28:11] City Staff: So, without knowing the outcome, I think there are steps we can take. I don't think it would necessarily need to equate to a service reduction right off the bat, you know if AMSWELL continues to grow and the Measure G component is somewhere around 2%, you know we're talking about 1% of the current budget, I I think we'll be able to find solutions.

[04:28:31] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you.

[04:28:35] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Councilmember McAlister.

[04:28:38] Councilmember John McAlister: What kind of return would the buyers of the bond expect to get?

[04:28:44] City Staff: So they're getting the yield purchase premium when they purchase the bonds, and so they're looking at somewhere in the vicinity of what was quoted, somewhere between four and a quarter and four and a half percent.

[04:28:55] Councilmember John McAlister: What's our interest rate? Oh we don't we don't have one do we we just...

[04:28:58] City Staff: Uh so uh Urban Futures has provided runs to us and runs are theoretical based on current market conditions. And Wing-See can speak to it more, but the last run we did showed an all-in TIC of about 4.36%. But Wing-See, would you like to add anything?

[04:29:14] Wing-See Fox: Good evening Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council. My name is Wing-See Fox uh with Urban Futures and we serve as the city and the authorities municipal advisor. Um and as uh Director Rampone mentioned, the structure of the bonds that are being sold uh are 30 year bonds but actually one year, two year, three year all the way through 30 year bonds are being sold at different coupons and yields, and so depending on what bond an investor is buying, will be a different yield.

[04:29:42] Wing-See Fox: Right now it's a normal yield curve so shorter the bond, the lower the risk, a lower the yield that they get. The longer term bonds they get a bit of a higher yield. And that true interest cost is a blended yield across all the bonds.

[04:30:00] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you Councilmember McAlister. Councilmember Showalter.

[04:30:04] Councilmember Pat Showalter: I was wondering what happens with if the interest rates change dramatically. Um it seems like in the past I've heard about reissuance of bonds and what would trigger those and is that part of our history?

[04:30:18] City Staff: So there's two components to that and Wing-See please add anything. The first component is the day of pricing. And so the day of pricing we will get uh the best recommendations that we get from Urban Futures, from our underwriters to decide if we think it's a good entry point into the market. And so that locks in our initial rates. I believe what you're referencing is if there's ever an opportunity to refinance. And there is. If in the future we think rates have dropped low enough that we think it's advantageous you know from a time value of money to refinance, I'm sure Urban Futures would come to us and make that recommendation.

[04:30:53] Wing-See Fox: Yes typically right now in the market there's a 10 year call redemption protection, and so no uh refunding within that 10 years, but in 10 years, or getting close to that uh where abouts 10 years, you could start looking at refinancing.

[04:31:11] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you Councilmember Showalter. Councilmember Hicks.

[04:31:15] Councilmember Alison Hicks: And if construction and costs should escalate tremendously, do we have a plan B for that such as cutting back on on the construction in some way or some other plan B?

[04:31:27] City Staff: Uh thank you for the question. And I'll start by quoting uh our Public Works Director two weeks ago. One of the off ramps is the third phase of the project which is the building of the garage, which totals around 29 million. That would be an option if we're really thinking that we need to complete the building, those monies don't have to be programmed for a garage.

[04:31:50] City Staff: And at the meeting two weeks ago the council also decided to use a more proportionate allocation from Shoreline so instead of the 10 million council uh allocated 25.5. So we currently have a fairly good contingency. The project itself has a 9% uh inflation factor built in. So right now, I think we're in pretty good shape.

[04:32:13] City Staff: They'll issue the first bid package in July, it's the smaller package, but then probably about 8 months after that they'll do the second big package which will be the larger actual construction of the building package. And so we'll get a lot of good information uh then as well.

[04:32:33] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you Councilmember Hicks. Any other questions from the council? Seeing none, we will move on to public comment. Would any member in person or on the line uh like to provide comment on this item? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or press star nine on your phone, or submit a blue speaker card. A timer will be displayed on the screen. Um it looks like we have three speakers, so each speaker will have 3 minutes. We'll start off with Al Brooks.

[04:33:16] Al Brooks: Good evening. I'm here to speak against the proposal to encumber the people of Mountain View with approximately $250 million in debt over the next 30 years. $250 million is a number that's hard to even wrap the mind around. A quarter of a billion dollars uh over the 30 years at 8.3 million dollars is something that just seems absurd to commit Mountain View to especially considering all the uncertainty and the very little return that the community gets considering this is a proposal to use the people's money to police and incarcerate the people.

[04:33:52] Al Brooks: Uh there has been a number of people who have been speaking out against this proposal as as I'm sure you know for the many years of its um since its conception. And we've been one of the things we've been requesting is some consideration of the many ways to decrease the size of this project. Some of them were just discussed in terms of uh canceling the garage or I would really recommend you to consider not funding this uh firing range. It seems entirely unnecessary.

[04:34:20] Al Brooks: um considering again that the City of Vallejo across the bay just uh realized that their similar financing plan was too unwieldy, too irresponsible given the market uncertainties, given how much debt that they're incurring, uh and so they decided to put the brakes on their financing plan, and I would really encourage you to make a responsible decision there and slow down that process until you can really consider how uh cost effective this plan is and how much it can be reduced.

[04:34:50] Al Brooks: Um 250 million dollars is enough to put thousands of people through college. It's enough to house thousands of people at a time when there's a housing crisis in the Bay Area, when education is underfunded, when the transportation issues we continue to face are mounting, and we face a variety of different existential crises with our environment. It seems just mind boggling that this seems like the time to put $250 million into a project like this when uh social science and a variety of different political factors are coming to the conclusion that the policing models that we've been using are not serving our communities...

[04:35:25] Al Brooks: ...that the way that our communities need to be served, there are much better returns that communities can get when we invest in housing and education and transportation and mental health counseling. And instead uh this proposal seems so antiquated and will seem even more antiquated 30 years from now when people are trying to figure out why so much money has been uh invested in this for generations uh and taken away from the people of Mountain View.

[04:35:49] Al Brooks: So I'm asking you please to pause this project and shrink it as much as possible and divest from these types of carceral infrastructure and invest into people through housing, through education, through transportation, and through the types of things that build a community that people uh really need that can uh be commensurate with the broader future that people deserve. Thank you.

[04:36:10] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Our next speaker is Sarah Elzeni. I'm so sorry if I pronounce that wrong.

[04:36:19] Sarah Elzeni: Um so good evening. Um I wanted to thank Councilmember Ramirez for their question worrying about uh social services. I'm also worried about the next 10 years for Mountain View's revenue and this bond, so I'm also here to oppose um the bond. Um so my name is Sarah, I live in Santa Clara County, um I'm a professional software engineer and I work in tech. Um the Mountain View Police Department was recently sued for violating the constitutional rights of a Campbell resident.

[04:36:54] Sarah Elzeni: Um and how do you know that dedicating more money towards police won't cause the city to get sued again for constitutional violations? Teachers don't have honest benefits, pay, and classroom facilities. And from Item 6.2, um approving less than a million dollars for home and CDBG Mountain View. Um Mountain View has one of the worst homeless crises and the most RVs in the Bay Area, and I don't understand why this bond money isn't being used to fund schools or infrastructure for the homeless.

[04:37:23] Sarah Elzeni: Um when you choose to fund uh prisons rather than teachers pensions you make a choice for kids. When young talented people see teaching like a gig job instead of a career you have a crisis in public education. We have a lot of problems that we need to solve together. Um and especially this generation and especially with the administration. So do not put the city in more debt for another generation for the next 10 years. Um I urge you to seriously rethink what investments will make a brighter future and not fund a bloated um project for cops.

[04:37:56] Sarah Elzeni: Please fund housing for all, support mental health response. I call you to limit spending to the seismic retrofit. And also we just passed Measure A in Santa Clara County. I voted for it because people wanted to see more of our tax money going towards healthcare and people at a time when we are getting federal budget cuts. Um so yeah.

[04:38:20] Sarah Elzeni: Um studies show that police funding does not keep us safe, even for those of us who achieve the American dream or whom the police claim to protect. Um and appreciation for public workers, public school teachers, social workers, bus drivers, it takes all of our community members to make us feel safe. Um and I'm really just worried for the future of this country.

[04:38:38] Sarah Elzeni: And I think that committing ourselves to this amount of um bond debt um is not a good idea for again the next generation. So I would also encourage you to to limit the scale of this project um the way that you've been able to limit and budget for other projects um and also to increase funding for um.

3.3 Earth Month Proclamation

[04:39:05] Public Speaker: or homelessness and affordable housing and schools. So thank you.

[04:39:10] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you, that ends our in-person public comment. We will now take virtual speakers. Lina.

[04:39:25] Public Speaker Lina: Hello, I also wanted to hear, uh, to speak against the motion proposed. I agree with the previous public comments that a quarter of a billion dollars is irresponsible, and there are better returns if, uh, by actually investing inside the community in a real way.

[04:39:47] Public Speaker Lina: I haven't heard any arguments or really understood why a public building that's only a couple decades old needs to be torn down and be replaced. It honestly feels like a frivolous use of money.

[04:40:03] Public Speaker Lina: And, um, the, the bond saddles like, uh, decades, uh, and will burden us for decades as the members of, uh, Mountain View.

[04:40:12] Public Speaker Lina: And to be honest, we do need affordability in inside of the city, and if we were going to be using a quarter of a billion dollars, that's what I would want it to see it move towards.

[04:40:25] Public Speaker Lina: Not, uh, not cops, not, uh, over policing, not, not, uh, to, if we were to to to advocate for like public sector money, perhaps put it to our school system, to our social workers, to our housing. This, this is not the answer.

[04:40:47] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you. Next we have, uh, Renald Nobipti.

[04:40:54] Public Speaker Renald Nobipti: Uh, yes. Actually a good job pronunciation. Um, I would also like to speak against this measure. Um, and I know the the motivation behind this from the City Council and the Mayor's office might be public safety.

[04:41:13] Public Speaker Renald Nobipti: But I would like to reiterate like everyone, every speaker here has said, public safety is not in increasing policing. Public safety is investing in the community, investing in third spaces, investing in education, investing in affordable housing, and taking care of the people, not the police.

[04:41:32] Public Speaker Renald Nobipti: And for the city to try to spend, not to try to want to spend a quarter of a billion dollar in this hard financial times. And not only that, and pe putting that burden on set community that's already suffering and that needs that money to go elsewhere, ands to fund police under the pr under the pretenses of public safety, I believe that's utterly this that's disgraceful, and that sh that shouldn't be acceptable by this City Council.

[04:42:00] Public Speaker Renald Nobipti: This I I would like to urge the City Council and the Mayor's office to reject this proposal and not approve this bond. Because this city does not need $250 million of debt added to it.

[04:42:16] Public Speaker Renald Nobipti: And instead of that, I would urge the City Council and the Mayor's office to be more creative with the city's funds, invest in the community, invest in its people. Public safety is through by investing in the people, taking care of e one another and not funding the police. And I would really, really urge the City Council to please, please, do not approve this. Find more creative ways.

[04:42:40] Public Speaker Renald Nobipti: And, and I would also like to highlight this, we have yo the city is claiming this building needs seismic retrofitting. I've tried to look at the report that claims that this building needs to be broken down, and almost double in size, by the way, double in size and the personnel is not doubling, and almost double in size.

[04:42:59] Public Speaker Renald Nobipti: The city wants to have, I believe it's an eight to ten lane shooting range. Cities smaller, bigger than Mountain View do not have complexes this big. So once again, it doesn't even make sense from the perspective of a city of of the size of Mountain View to have a complex that costs this much.

[04:43:18] Public Speaker Renald Nobipti: So I'm not even sure how this expense is justifiable. Um, and if the building truly has seismic issues, I don't think breaking it down, doubling its size with unnecessary amenities. I mean, we just talked about a 29 million dollar parking lot or was it a garage?

[04:43:38] Public Speaker Renald Nobipti: I mean, how does that, I'm not sure how that makes any sense financially, but I would truly do urge the City Council to think about what public safety truly means and direct these funds appropriately. Thank you.

[04:43:56] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you. Next we have Delmo.

[04:44:02] Public Speaker Delmo: Yes, hello. Could you hear me?

[04:44:03] City Clerk Heather Glaser: We can hear you.

[04:44:05] Public Speaker Delmo: Yes. Hi. Um, so I would also like to oppose this bond and this, uh, the creation of this, uh, new building. Uh, the main reason why is because it's just money that the city can't afford. I am also a Santa Clara resident or a Santa Clara County resident, my bad.

[04:44:23] Public Speaker Delmo: Um, yeah, instead of putting a new building for not only creating a new building, but like the tax to create this new building, it would just be way more beneficial for the community to start creating more affordable housing and investing in programs that create more affordable housing like HOME and CDBG.

[04:44:43] Public Speaker Delmo: As well as just also more crime prevention programs and resources instead of

4. CONSENT CALENDAR

[04:44:50] Public Speaker: of having like a a new home for the police, we just pay more resources to help the community and really benefit the community and not just think oh like how how to um I guess keep the community in line, right? We really need to create more uh more resources to to show upcoming students in, Mountain View sorry, that and you know show upcoming students in Mountain View that you know there are better futures than just like oh committing crime and if they invest in them so we could really start creating um better communities, like invest more in communities, right?

[04:45:33] Public Speaker: And then also I know y'all have mentioned also the deficit in the budget as well. It just doesn't really make any sense if we're having a deficit in the budget to keep investing in long-term projects like this that don't really need any reason why they're, why it's being built. Because Mountain View also has one of the largest RV communities in Santa Clara County, and as well as like maybe even the largest, and so that also tells you how much and the need of more affordable housing needs to be invested in. So like yeah, I I will also say to invest more in resources, schools, and just things that community actually needs. Thank you.

[04:46:17] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you. Next up is Eva Tang.

[04:46:33] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Are you there Eva?

[04:46:39] Eva Tang: Wait, can you hear me? Oh, there we go. Hello Council, good evening. All right, I don't exactly know where the 250 million comes from because I'm looking at the staff report. Either way, like I'm just trying to avoid John McAlister pushing his glasses up and saying well actually, but either way it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money, y'all. In this economy, are you sure we need all of the bells and all of the whistles? This first, this plan first came out years ago. We were in better times. The Dow might be over 50,000 or whatever, but I'm pretty sure this cost is going to inflate, especially in this economy and I'm not happy about that.

[04:47:34] Eva Tang: I also have been doing a lot of reading on educational policy because we're out in the trenches out there. The school to prison pipeline is just too convenient to push our kids into and I am just going to oppose anything that is going to strengthen the school to prison pipeline. Once again, did you double check everything? Are you sure we need this? Are you sure this entire package is really necessary for our community? That's all. Thanks. Bye.

[04:48:08] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Thank you Eva. Next we have Malcolm.

[04:48:17] Malcolm: Um hello, uh can you hear me?

[04:48:19] City Clerk Heather Glaser: We can hear you.

[04:48:21] Malcolm: Okay, uh I I was just going to say uh in addition to everything that's been uh, you know, mentioned before me uh so that I'm not repeating the same points, uh I also like want to real quick bring us back into the context of the present uh where we live uh under uh an increasingly like fascist state. Uh we're seeing uh the ways that uh police surveillance have been used um around the country and around the Bay Area to uh target uh journalists, to target activists, to target organizers uh and really to target uh you know the ability to even dissent or have a difference of opinion. Um and this is this is a a trend that is um not just growing but is uh enforced

5. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE PUBLIC ON NONAGENDIZED ITEMS

[04:49:16] Public Speaker: very much by the police that you are then uh funding and throwing all this money to. Um, and the police are not the solution to poverty, the police are not the solution uh to, you know, uh, like uh, to a lot of the issues that we're dealing with in in society, to the mental health issues, to all of that. Um, and those matters require their own investments uh and require us to actually uh reimagine uh like how to resolve them by taking money from the police. Right? Uh, this is this is like we have seen this uh time and again where every single social issue uh seemingly, I don't know if we're if it's because we're entirely uncreative uh or, you know, because of the uh, you know, funds from the police unions which is essentially uh almost operates as like this sort of bribery of uh trying to develop these relationships with politicians and uh push them to invest more and more and more and more money into police. Uh, but that's really uh not what we need, um, and the expansion of this fascist police state uh is also the question ahead of you, right? How much uh money are you giving them? How much further power are you giving them? How much further are you enabling them such that they're not being able to be held to account, um, and that uh on the other end you're having uh people of color are suffering, uh you're having poor people are suffering, you're having organizers and activists being targeted left and right. Um, and then we go back home and we're like, wow, the, you know, the state of America is so bad and, you know, it we we never were this bad and there is so much fascism everywhere, and it's because of these decisions. So I would really urge you to uh go ahead and and use your conscience and logic um and vote no.

[04:51:16] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Next we have Sebastian Brisbois.

[04:51:23] Public Speaker Sebastian Brisbois: Hello. Uh, my name is Sebastian Brisbois and I'm a resident of Old Mountain View. I oppose the funding of the new public safety building, um, because it is not necessary infrastructure. Our city is lacking other infrastructure that is vital for our public safety, such as affordable housing and transportation that promotes and enables active transportation. So our core needs include things like housing and transit that we are already very behind on. So we don't need a new building that we already have covered. The new public safety building is also covering land near transit and downtown that should be used for things that more people can benefit from, you know, like housing, like I just mentioned. So I think the real question is, are we going to invest more in preventing things like homelessness and the other challenges our city and larger area, country, etc. face, or are we just gonna invest in things like policing the problems we create? So why don't we put more resources into fixing the root of our problems and the challenges our residents face instead of just a fancy new building. Thank you.

[04:54:16] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you. Next we have our final speaker virtually, Emma.

[04:54:23] Public Speaker Emma: Hello. Uh, can you hear me?

[04:54:25] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: We can hear you, Emma.

[04:54:27] Public Speaker Emma: Hello. Um, I am also here. I'm going to keep this pretty short and sweet because I think everybody's mentioned all of my points already. Um, but I'm also here to oppose uh this motion. I don't think it's necessary to um spend all this money to saddle the residents of Mountain View with all this debt. Um, especially as the previous speaker said, in order to police the problems that we ourselves create. Um, I think it would be very beneficial for us to start from the bottom and move up in terms of fixing the problems that Mountain View has. Um, one of the largest that comes to mind is um its unhoused community, which has um you know, at least to my reckoning when I go out to um provide food and supplies is um at least 40 uh folks who are currently unhoused, certainly more that I don't know about. Um, all living in RVs, um and all working contributing members of the city of Mountain View. Um, I would love for them to get the dignity and the assistance that they are owed um by the city. And also, um you know, I think it would be great if we could invest this money elsewhere. Uh, it's interesting to me that this money can be found um for solutions like policing, um, but I digress. Um, in any case, I think it would be much more helpful for all of the residents of Mountain View um if we were able to find solutions for these people, um to find uh ways to support um nonprofits from the previous speakers um in the previous motion 6.2. Um, but yeah, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. That's it.

[04:57:37] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you, Emma. And that ends our public comment. So, uh, thank you. I will now open the public hearing and bring the item back for Council questions and deliberation. Councilmember Clark.

[04:57:52] Vice Mayor Chris Clark: Uh, I don't have a question. I'm prepared to proceed if we're, when you're ready, yeah.

[04:57:57] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: All right. So since there are no questions or deliberations, we will now close this notice public hearing. Please note that two distinct motions will be required to approve the recommendation and the motion should also include reading the titles of each resolution attached to the report. Now you can go, Vice Mayor Clark.

6.1 Mixed-Use Development at 843-903 Castro Street, 700 West El Camino Real, and 750 Fairmont Avenue

[04:58:12] Vice Mayor Chris Clark: what California does is um is public safety and that's not just policing that is everything that supports public safety in the community and um this building is is the building that yes it houses our police department but it also houses all of our uh the other public safety apparatus. Um not not all of it we still have um local fire stations our around our neighborhoods but um I just wanted to to correct the record um that we are the total estimated project costs is $189 million and the not to exceed maximum principal is $140 million. And I will move that we adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View finding that the issuance of the lease revenue bonds um will result in significant public benefits declaring the intention to um to reimburse expenditures on the public safety building project made prior to issuance of the lease revenue bonds, approving the issuance and sale of the lease revenue bonds in an aggregate principal amount not to exceed $140 million, approving related documents including a site lease, lease agreement and uh bond purchase agreement and continuing disclosure certificate, approving a preliminary official statement and authorizing a distribution of the preliminary official statement and a final official statement appointing bond counsel disclosure counsel and municipal advisor in connection with the lease revenue bonds and authorizing official actions to be read in title further reading waived and then I'll make motion number two when we're ready.

5. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE PUBLIC ON NONAGENDIZED ITEMS

[04:58:19] Vice Mayor Chris Clark: Thank you. Um, and before I make the motion, I just want to again um thank staff for all the work that's gone into this over the years um and uh, you know, finding the ways to bring the the costs down here. Um, and also to prior Councils um, you know, Council members who who aren't here, who helped us um get uh and maintain our AAA bond rating which allows us to finance this at the lowest cost possible to our to our residents. Um, and um and um you know, that that work pays dividends uh when it comes to um being able to make investments in in infrastructure long-term. And before I want to make the motion, I do um because this is a a formal um uh, you know, what we're doing here tonight is very important, I just want to correct the record and um, you know, this is a uh a democratic forum, we do tolerate dissent, and I I I do appreciate those who spoke. Um, there were um, you know, very salient points in terms of the the tradeoffs that we make and and what we spend money on. Um, I do want to just uh note that uh I don't know where the $250 million number is coming from. The total estimated project cost is $189 million. The the maximum not to exceed uh principal is $140 million. And what we are doing with this money is not funding policing, we are building infrastructure, we are replacing a building that is older than I am, and if you've been to that building or been in that building, it is very obvious uh that it was not built uh to um stand the test of the test of many decades to come. Um, and it certainly wasn't built to support a community of what we're approaching 90 to 100,000 people, and what we're building is something that will need to uh span several decades. It doesn't just support our police department, it also supports our fire department, it will house our emergency operations center, which is also I think as old if not older than I am, and that is the base of operations if we have a major incident like a heaven forbid an earthquake or anything um that we we need to be able to protect and um protect our community. Um, one of the number one um things that a local government in California

6.1 Mixed-Use Development at 843-903 Castro Street, 700 West El Camino Real, and 750 Fairmont Avenue

[04:59:45] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: All right we have a motion by Vice Mayor Clark and it's seconded by Councilmember McAlister and we can bring that to a vote.

[04:59:58] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: That motion passes unanimously and I will bring it to Vice Mayor Clark for the second motion.

[05:00:05] Vice Mayor Chris Clark: I further move that we adopt a resolution of the city count of the excuse me adopt a resolution of the city of Mountain View Capital Improvements Financing Authority Board of Directors authorizing the issuance and sale of lease revenue bonds to provide financing for a public safety building project to be owned and operated by the City of Mountain View, approving related documents and directing related actions to be read in title only further reading waived.

[05:00:33] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: We have a motion by count uh Vice Mayor Clark and it is seconded by Councilmember Showalter. We will now move to the vote.

[05:00:46] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: That motion also passes unanimously. That concludes uh this item. We will now move on to item seven, Council, Staff, and Committee Reports. Uh do we have any Council, Staff, or Committee Reports? Councilmember Showalter.

[05:01:06] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Um not too many this time but I did uh um attend the BCDC meeting on um April 16th where we talked about sand mining and beneficial reuse and we also went through the criteria for a bike um lane pilot that is being um uh carried out over the Richmond San Rafael Bridge. That actually functions as part of the Bay Trail. Um there are now three huh about 375 miles of the Bay Trail. You know someday it's going to encircle the whole bay but we're not quite there yet. But anyway um uh it's it's kind of an um an odd component of it but um for the foreseeable future if you want to ride your bike over the uh Richmond San Rafael Bridge you need to do it um uh Friday Saturday or Sunday. Um also uh I had fun at the Earth Day Celebration. Probably everybody else was there. I I just want to thank all the organizations and the staff that were involved in setting that up. Those things are a lot of work but there were lots and lots of residents there asking questions and and having a good time. And then on April 21st I spoke at um Climate Week on a panel about uh financing sea level rise protections and I was able to brag about the good work that we're doing here in Mountain View. And let's see. Oh, on April 24th I went uh to um a Silicon Valley Clean Energy Executive Committee meeting and basically we um we prepare for the the board meetings that that are held every month. Thank you.

[05:02:56] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you Councilmember Showalter. Councilmember Hicks.

[05:02:59] Councilmember Alison Hicks: On April 15th I went to an Urban Land Institute forum in San Francisco. It's a was a housing forum and it covered a lot of interesting issues such as uh why isn't a lot of multi-family housing being built now and when will it be. The answer main answer being uh rents were going down so uh developers were not interested but rents are now going up so they are becoming interested. Um and uh also there the uh sort of keen fe featured debate was on is home ownership a uh still a relevant uh or sh is it an investment that should be encouraged for people hoping to build inter general intergenerational wealth or should we move on from that? It was your boss Mayor who uh was in that debate.

[05:03:48] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Oh really? Oh fun. Which one? Oh we'll talk about that... It's fine.

[05:03:53] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Vice Mayor Clark.

[05:03:55] Vice Mayor Chris Clark: Oh thank you. Um I wanted to uh ask my colleagues if um it's occurring it's I've been thinking more lately about um some of the briefings we've had on um on the we have the we have the RVs and the settlement that will expire in February and um in talking to some um members of the community I think it would be helpful um just to have a discussion at some point I I'm not sure whether it's a study session or or something else but I think ahead of February it would be good for our community to have some level of certainty around what will will or won't happen then um and uh and also if there are any actions that we need to take ahead of February to ensure that certainty or if there are any actions that we n need to take um before then to um address some of the concerns that have been raised from members of the public um whether it's those who are concerned about the RVs or those uh or unhoused residents who are living in in vehicles generally not just RVs or whether um or whether there are um actions that we we should take to either address the needs of of those who are living in vehicles who are unhoused or whether there are actions that we should consider taking to address some of the safety and other concerns especially given what's going on in some of um in some of our neighboring communities. And I attended a forum with the mayor um that was hosted by our county supervisor Margaret Abe-Koga about this. Um and so it just it feels very strange to me to not have at least some sort of discussion between now and and February um because I think the community will be very curious to know um what what exactly is going to happen if we do or don't take any action between now and then. Um so what I was thinking was that we basically if there are four of us to authorize staff to undertake some of this just to come back to us with some recommendations for things that we um we might consider. I mean it could be in my mind it could be a menu of options ranging from um things basically what happens if we do if we do nothing between now and February um if there are things that we uh might consider doing to address some of the concerns that have been raised um around um unhoused trailers, van lords, those types of things. Um ah and and I don't know where the where my colleagues stand on all this but I think I think we owe it to the community to at least have a discussion or at least have staff bring us some sort of um materials or menu of options or things like that and I'm open to others feedback but I don't think just sitting by and kicking the can down the road to let the next council deal with that is the right approach because once the new council is seated they start to have discussions, they start asking for things like I'm asking for tonight and that's going to take six or nine months right? And and then we're kind of a year from now uh is kind of the time where we can take make any I mean I'm not being very articulate a quarter after 10 PM. Sorry. But basically I think we should probably talk about this before February. And if there are three other people who would like to do that I would I would appreciate that. And if there aren't there aren't. But I just wanted to raise it. Um and this would be something that would probably be uh post summer break. Um I don't expect magic to occur between now and the end of June but um I just wanted to raise that and see um I don't know what the best approach is Mayor or staff to get a show of hands or if staff wants to kind of better uh better articulate what we what we might do that would be that would be helpful too.

[05:08:11] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: I was really hoping that the next mayor would be able to figure that out. But um uh I'm assuming that these hands up are actually for addressing that item. So uh Councilmember Ramirez.

[05:08:23] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Uh thank you mayor this is a very bad idea. For many reasons. But here are some of the reasons that it's a very bad idea. One reason is this is an extraordinary amount of work and I am reluctant to deprioritize things I actually care about to instead do work on something I could not care less about. Uh the next council is going to be different from this council and may have a very different set of opinions about what to do about this problem. And I'm uh I don't want to necessarily initiate a set of work plan items that the next council may not be interested in. Right so we've expe we've deprioritized some amount of things that our staff are working on now as Councilmember McAlister said earlier we're an extremely ambitious council. There's a lot of work being done and some of us are going away potentially forever and I would be very sad if things that I cared about that I've been waiting literally eight years to achieve get deprioritized so we can push homeless people around the city. Right so they don't they're no longer on Terra Bella but instead they're on Ernestine right where those folks reached out to me when I was mayor saying we're on this map where you say we you know RVs can park. And I spent like two hours talking with them explaining no they're not going to come to your street. So at any rate um I don't want unless you know you can tell me what we're going to deprioritize for this new set of significant workload items, what we're going to deprioritize, um and also give me the assurance that the next council and there are two members sitting in the audience listening to us right now uh will actually agree with what a majority of this council is likely to to pursue so that way that work that we've expended uh is not a waste since the next council may have a very different perspective. Um and and and I'll throw in the nuclear option too because I hate this idea so much. If a majority of the council approves this then find a different campaign manager for the bond measure. That's how bad this idea is. Thank you.

[05:10:37] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Okay. Councilmember Hicks.

[05:10:47] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay well I can't top that. So I I disagree with the first thing you said. But I'm a different person than you. You said you don't care about this. I actually care about this deeply and have a tremendous amount of stuff to say about it. But I agree with everything else you said except for the campaign manager thing which I'm not doing in any case but um that because I care about it so deeply and I could say a tremendous amount about it and I could write half the staff report on what I think we should do next but I have no people are very opinionated on this and I have no idea the next council will have to carry it out. So I feel like we would spend a lot of time on it go down some road hopefully my road and uh the next council won't won't agree with me at all. So I just I don't think it's worth our expenditure of time on this given that we're half of us won't be here anymore. So that the second half of what you said or the middle of what you said I agree with deeply.

[05:12:03] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Councilmember McAlister.

[05:12:05] Councilmember John McAlister: Well going back to agenda item number seven I did and I'll get back to your question Chris. I did attend a VTA meeting that uh because that should have been an eight but that's okay I attended a VTA meeting and we were talking about transportation and uh how to uh help uh disabled or all folks and there was a presentation put on by Jacksonville Florida which I happen to attend five six years ago and they have these autonomous vehicles that are ADA not approved but they work for well they are approved that the people with ADA issues can get on these autonomous vehicles and uh there was something that was rather interesting that we might want to consider for the city's uh our own shuttle service to do a short run like that so uh that was very interesting uh meeting that we had and so they're continuing to go down that path so that wasn't going to bring so to Chris's thing um I heard some pa passion I'm glad you let your feelings out uh Councilmember Ramirez I never thought you... That's good. Um there there is something that needs to be considered though. The residents of Mountain View did do a vote. They wanted to restrict where people were going to park. We see other cities that are putting up restrictions and people continue to come to Mountain View and our numbers keep growing and well somebody made a reference well we have the highest homeless population it's because other cities are putting restrictions on their city and so they're coming to Mountain View. And so when you say putting projects on staff and I agree putting projects on staff uh but it's also putting a burden on our community our business community and those people in that area. So there is a balancing act of one do we try to honor the uh the passage the restrictions that the citizens did. And when you say oh you want the next council to do it there's a possibility all we are is looking at options that because when it comes up to the end of February I know you don't want to put these items something to consider that's all I'm saying. Um but you are right we got a lot of projects and everybody wants to do something so it's a tough one but the only reason that I could sort of justify well because we are getting affected by businesses and the community expects us to follow up on their vote so uh it's something to consider.

[05:14:36] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you Councilmember McAlister. I'm going to swing it back to Vice Mayor Clark.

[05:14:40] Vice Mayor Chris Clark: I just wanted to clarify I'm not I'm not looking to throw our work plan to the wind and have three study sessions about this and talk and and ban overnight parking and all that stuff. I think I I'm trying to think I will still be four of us will still be here. Um I think it would be I would feel like a very bad policy maker if I had an ordinance that was um if I had something as significant as this settlement expiring in February um you know six weeks four to six weeks after a new council is seated. And the prior council didn't even at least put together a basic overview of of options for us to consider and not that they can't go in different directions that's perfectly fine they can say that work was all for naught. My guess is that our staff is professional enough that they aren't going to they've already done quite a bit of work probably on this they've been following this very carefully. Um and I guess what I'm asking for is not a whole bunch of is like issue the work plans for the end of the year I'm just trying to see if there's support to at least start to think about what the end of this settlement does or doesn't mean.

6.2 Federal Fiscal Year 2026-27 Annual Action Plan

[05:16:05] Vice Mayor Chris Clark: and what provisions and things we need to be thinking about now so that the next council is set up to make whatever decisions they're going to make in a timely manner because if they aren't able to start that until February, then you have this kind of mess of a settlement expiring and what does that mean at least at minimum like a memo to know what that means maybe that helps inform what decision we do or don't make. That's my goal is just not to be in a position where a new council is seated in January and like surprise everyone you have to deal with this this this you know ticking clock that expires in six weeks sorry the other the last council you know decided it just wanted to punt this one and let you deal with it because it's politically dicey and they thought they had other things to do. Anyway that's that's the goal behind it it's not um it's not anything beyond that but

[05:17:10] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you mayor. My recollection is that staff provided a memo on this topic to the council in December that included exploration of some policy options that the council could consider. So maybe what I would support is for staff not to do additional work but to reshare that memo with the council.

[05:17:33] Vice Mayor Chris Clark: The memo is not is what I'm asking for is well beyond that memo because it explores what actually happens when the settlement expires and and strategies for how we how we do different things. The memo was very helpful in explaining the state of the world. It didn't really at least if I recall correctly it didn't really go into strategies for a post settlement world.

[05:17:58] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I disagree with the idea. Um I'm going to vote no, but if a majority votes yes then I would hope that we'd be very clear about what items do not happen because we're now directing staff to do something else and I'm also eager to see who steps up to run the campaign for the bond measure.

[05:18:22] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay boys, can I can I uh offer can I offer a compromise or would that not be prudent? Is there a open is there open hearts at 10:20? I I need some sort of acknowledgment. Okay. So I think we're close to maybe a compromise between the two of you. I think that um at this juncture perhaps looking to our city manager that memo that we received, the off-agenda memo item that council received in December of last year, could that be updated to include new information. I saw the council connection which discussed this regional safe parking convening that the county supervisor put forward it would be great to have that those materials to see those presentations. I I feel like the state of the world changes every second of every day right now and so I do think it's worth updating and if my colleagues would be open to that perhaps we can receive that as an off-agenda memo item with all those materials and have a better understanding of the current state of affairs and then colleagues are welcome to bring things as you know item 7 or item 8 in the future. But I would appreciate so much has happened in four months and I believe um it would also be helpful to understand where the other 15 cities are. So often staff brings forward kind of a a rubric of what all the other jurisdictions are doing, our neighboring jurisdictions. I think that would be incredibly helpful because I do think there have been a lot of policy changes and I do know for example in the city of Palo Alto they had a whole sub committee related to safe parking and their program implementation. Um so might there be an openness to that and I look to the two of you.

[05:20:36] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right Mayor I got head nods and I agree so shall do we need to take a vote on that or is that alright?

[05:20:43] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: So um I don't know if Councilmember Showalter still wanted to talk on this item.

[05:20:48] Councilmember Pat Showalter: I was basically going to um suggest a similar thing to what uh Councilmember Kamei did. I think that we do um the situation is changing and we do need to be kept um informed about how how it's changing and also um I'd really like a much better update than I've had um about what transpired at that the meeting. There was a nice write up in in the um council connections I appreciated that. But um uh specifically what other communities are doing because it is clear that the impact of our neighbors' actions have have affected Mountain View. And so um and they're and some of those impacts I mean some of those policy changes are are very recent. So I I'd really like to learn about um kind of where we are right now or where we are in three months when you write the memo whatever however it works out.

[05:21:53] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: All right. Um so Vice Mayor Clark I I totally actually I I do actually get where you're coming from because I was really just hoping that it would just drop this in your mayorship. Because um I I I I also personally have strong feelings about um um this and and as as when you're mayor you have to be a little bit more controlled um and I'm not I I I worry about that at times for myself. Um and but I get like wanting to have some kind of runway like suddenly just like you become mayor and then suddenly you have to deal with this and I get that that's probably you don't want to deal with that. But I do like the compromise that uh Councilmember Kamei has proposed. Um so I am happy to bring that to a straw vote. Um are people okay with that compromise uh straw motion uh uh wow I can't. City Manager McCarthy?

[05:22:53] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Thank you mayor. Um so I'll just state uh for council and for the public that's listening. So this forum was essentially Mountain View presenting about our program. It was not uh really learning about what other cities are doing. So Palo Alto modeled a new program that they have after our program in Mountain View. So they did talk about their program which has 22 spaces. Um and as you all know we have well over 100 spaces and spaces for commuter vehicles as well. Um so it was really a forum to learn about how the county has supported the program and then myself and the deputy city manager presented at this to the other agencies that were there to listen and learn. And it was a information sharing forum um uh kind of a a discussion that that people had about what they were seeing but it was certainly not a forum to learn about uh what a variety of cities are doing in the county. It was more them learning from us. Um so I am happy to put the presentations in this memo um and let you all know uh more about what happened but I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of uh what what happened at the forum and our mayor and vice mayor were also in attendance at this forum. Um and I think we uh can certainly gather information about what other cities are doing but again um I don't want to set expectations high because there really are uh the leaders in this space are are Mountain View and I would say you know San Jose is is um doing their share. Um but I just don't want uh you all to be disappointed uh by the lack of information that we may be able to share with you on what uh is happening regionally. Um so I just wanted to put that out there. Uh we do have the pathways to housing that you passed about homelessness and so there's a number of efforts that council has identified in that plan. Yes. And part of that is regional collaboration. So that was something that you very clearly gave direction to staff on and we have you know taken it very seriously and we are working. We've talked to many staff in other cities done presentations, trainings. Um so we are definitely trying that regional collaboration approach but um I I do think there is still a lot to be done regionally within our county and our neighboring county. Um but if that is where council lands we're happy to update um and provide you new information since December. Um but I did at least want to let you know just to set set expectations about it.

[05:25:51] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Thank you City Manager McCarthy. Councilmember Hicks.

[05:25:56] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yeah thank you for thank you for that additional information. I guess what I was I like I like where this is going. I I like um the off-agenda memo and and I was when uh giving us information on what the other cities were doing was mentioned I didn't think it meant um just what sort of safe parking and other kinds of transitional housing other cities were doing because I really I agree with you it's we probably would not learn much although I would hope maybe I'd be surprised. Um but I was thinking more we're really affected by the legal changes and the sweeps. So and I know that other I would like to know what other cities are doing uh with regards to that. And and I also have heard that Sunnyvale is preparing for some and also what people are preparing to do I've heard that Sunnyvale is preparing some uh transitional housing changes and I'm not totally up on what what that is and I wouldn't even mind it may not be appropriate but you know during our item what is it three or whatever where people come in and give presentations. If there was anyone appropriate just to give us a presentation that we don't make any um remarks on. Um that you know I'd be interested in that too but an off-agenda memo is fine as well.

[05:27:23] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: We can make remarks we just don't vote on anything. Um are you still up um City Manager McCarthy?

[05:27:34] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: No I think that that's a fair point. I think we can also include information on what other cities have done for restrictions uh just so you all are aware of kind of the landscape now how it's changed between December and now so we can include all that information in there.

[05:27:55] Councilmember John McAlister: How often do you do counts?

[05:27:59] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: We did just do an updated count recently. I'm looking at our police chief um informal count we'd typically do it every summer in July uh but we did a recent count because uh we know that uh we have had an uptick um in Mountain View as other cities have made changes to their policies and uh ordinances. So I would ask our uh police chief I also have our assistant city manager actually I'm gonna promote um Ms. Seymour because she is going to give you specifically this information.

[05:28:39] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Assistant City Manager Seymour?

[05:28:42] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour: Um hello council members uh Audrey Seymour, Assistant City Manager. Um I uh concur with the City Manager's statements that we uh normally do this to count in July. Um we did it early this year in March because what we were hearing from um people in the community and observing ourselves during enforcement about an increase in the number of oversized vehicles parked in the various areas with um kind of extensive concentrated parking and kind of expanding into areas where there hadn't previously been concentrated parking by oversized vehicles. And what we saw was a um 42% increase between the numbers from uh last July and this March.

[05:29:35] Councilmember John McAlister: That still didn't answer the question when when will you do the next count?

[05:29:40] Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour: Oh my apologies Councilmember McAlister, it'll be in July.

[05:29:44] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. I think that would coordinate well. Thank you.

[05:29:51] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: I do recall taking part in the county point in time count but that's only of once every two years and that was a while back I think it was before I was mayor so and it was really cold. Um so we will uh so I guess we'll take it to a vote uh Councilmember Kamei's um suggestion. So all in favor please raise your hand. That is unanimous. Thank you for that compromise.

[05:30:22] Vice Mayor Chris Clark: Yes, thank you Councilmember Kamei if I may just thank you for rescuing I I did not mean to kick the hornet's nest. I regret that I didn't.

[05:30:32] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: I'm just glad we retained our campaign manager and in January I expect you all to give me a little lifeguard sash for tonight. Thank you.

[05:30:43] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: That was okay. Um so with that done um some of my uh report outs is um yeah we'll we'll continue on with the report outs. Um I also attended the Arbor Day festivities and I got my own mayor tree! It is a coastal live oak, it's super cute and it's gonna be super huge in like 100 years. So I look forward to seeing you all there. Um yours died? Okay. Um I also uh met with a group of Cub Scouts on April 15th and more students on International Day at Vargas Elementary School. It was it was really adorable. Um I also attended the uh regional safe parking uh event with uh Supervisor Abe-Koga and I attended the city leaders summit uh where we had a number of meetings with the offices of uh Assemblymember Berman and State Senator Becker. I also attended a child care panel there and the gubernatorial forum which was very fascinating. And then yesterday we had our uh CARC meeting, Council Appointment Review Committee where we are doing recommendations for the vacancy for the HRC and the Downtown Committee. Um Councilmember Kamei.

[05:32:05] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Okay I was also at CARC um and the other week I attended the Los Altos High School uh Latino Student Union um award ceremony. Um and then attended the Cal Cities Summit um as well as the Cal Cities board meeting. So um the mayor and I will be working on uh with the city manager on an update there's many things working through the legislature right now um and one of the things that may affect us is the obviously Howard Jarvis because we are one of 27 cities of the 483 cities in the state that could be affected for our RPTT the uh what is it the real estate transfer tax. Um and so um we're advocating hard to make sure that we retain our 15.3 million annually that we could lose. Um so those were the meetings that we had in addition to the peninsula division meetings that we had with our coalition. Um the mayor and I attended meetings with Senator uh Becker and Senator Berman um yes well but about this issue. Yeah those were the the peninsula division meetings. Um and um just an update as well is the Cal Cities board of directors voted to oppose um Howard Jarvis and so that might help us as we're advocating um to retain our our our revenue so just wanted to update everyone on that. Thanks.

[05:33:41] Councilmember John McAlister: So opposing. Which way when you say oppose Howard Jarvis what what's what's the bill are they saying we want it not to pass, do we want it to pass? I So what's position are we taking?

[05:33:55] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: We don't want it to pass.

[05:33:57] Councilmember John McAlister: So would that hurt us if it did pass?

[05:33:59] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Correct. We would lose up to 15.3 million dollars annually that we get. So we just passed our measure G bond in 2024 and it would come and take it.

[05:34:11] Councilmember John McAlister: Does it adjust property taxes all across the board or just we keep the status quo?

[05:34:16] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: They have three different oh.

[05:34:21] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: Go ahead.

[05:34:22] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: So so this affects uh cities that have uh property conveyanced taxes over a certain amount which we do and so this would essentially roll back uh the ability for cities to collect on when a when a when there's commercial or residential when it's when it's sold to collect on the sale of the property. So we would we would lose as uh Councilmember Kamei said around 15 million dollars a year. So this is a very big deal for the city we would absolutely oppose this. It has gathered enough signatures to make the ballot so uh there is a compromise um that is trying to be worked out right now. I don don't know how successful it will be um but we are actively advocating with our legislators and with others to uh forcefully oppose this measure.

[05:35:22] Mayor Emily Ann Ramos: All right. Anything else y'all? All right with that done, um our next city council meeting will be held on May 12th. This meeting is adjourned at 10:37 p.m.

3.1 Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan - Draft Review

[03:45:46] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: All right, let's take our seats. Let's get ready.

[03:45:56] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So once we all settle, I'm calling the meeting back to order at 8:48.

[03:46:02] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: I really like my thing. Um, item 6.2 federal fiscal year 2026-2027 annual action plan. Housing officer Alec Vibral and affordable housing manager Julie Barnard 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 take it away.

[03:46:36] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: Thank you. Hello Mayor and Council. I'm Alec Vibral, housing officer with the housing department and I am joined by Julie Barnard, affordable housing manager. Also available for questions is Wayne Chen, housing director. This item is for council to hold a public hearing, receive and provide input and adopt the fiscal year 2026 through 2027 annual action plan.

[03:46:59] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: I will also be providing funding recommendations for the use of federal grants and city general funds.

[03:47:08] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: The city's developing its fiscal year 2026 through 27 annual action plan, which is the second year of the city's 2025 through 30 consolidated plan that council adopted at last year's meeting in May. The 2026 through 27 annual action plan covers the period of July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2027.

[03:47:30] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: The annual action plan is required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD in order to receive federal grant funding and identifies the specific projects and activities that will be administered over the fiscal year.

[03:47:43] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: As a part of the public participation process, staff's funding recommendations were presented to the Human Relations Committee at a public hearing on March 5th where they were unanimously approved. Additionally, a 30-day public comment period began on March 28th for members of the public to provide feedback on the draft plan.

[03:48:07] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: The CDBG program provides funds to help address community development needs. A maximum of 15 percent of funds can be used for public service activities such as services for seniors and persons experiencing homelessness. A maximum of 20 percent can be used for program administration.

[03:48:24] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: The remaining 65 percent can be used for other eligible activities such as capital projects including the rehabilitation of affordable housing and minor home repairs for low and moderate income homeowners or economic development activities including assistance for small businesses.

[03:48:39] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: The Home program provides funding to help fund the development of affordable housing and related programs. Home funding allows a maximum of 10 percent to be used for program administration with the remaining 90 percent used for eligible activities such as site acquisition, construction and rehabilitation of affordable housing and homebuyer assistance.

[03:49:01] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: Before we get into the fiscal year 2026 through 27 annual action plan, we wanted to provide an update on current year funding, which will help set the stage as we talk about next year's funding.

[03:49:13] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: In spring of last year, council approved the fiscal year 2025 through 26 annual action plan. And when HUD sent the city its grant agreements, they included a new addendum that would impose new conditions requiring compliance with certain federal policy directives.

[03:49:30] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: Examples of the new policy conditions include prohibitions and restrictions on using funds to promote gender ideology, elective abortions or illegal immigration.

[03:49:41] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: The absence of clarity regarding federal agencies' interpretation and implementation of the conditions has created a high degree of uncertainty for funding recipients, including the city.

[03:49:51] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: Staff conducted an analysis of the new policy conditions and based on this analysis, undertook the following actions: joined litigation to challenge the legality of the new policy conditions, submitted modified grant agreements to HUD that are intended to prevent the enforcement of the new policy conditions, and will only use prior year grant funds and program income which were deemed not subject to the new policy conditions.

[03:50:18] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: The analysis that staff conducted was also used to inform the approach for the fiscal year 2026 through 27 annual action plan. Staff are using scenario A as the primary planning assumption for the next fiscal year, which includes the submission of modified grant agreements and prioritizing the use of prior year funds and program income deemed not subject to the addendum's policy conditions.

[03:50:45] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: Now that we've discussed the strategy, we will move on to the fiscal year 2026 through 27 annual action plan. The budget for the action plan consists of annual entitlement funding allocation, anticipated program income and prior year unexpended resources.

[03:51:01] Housing Officer Alec Vibral: The proposed CDBG allocations consist of funding for capital projects such as the Rebuilding Together Peninsula minor home repair program, economic development activities such as the Upwards Boost micro-enterprise assistance program and program administration. CDBG public services will be discussed in more detail in the following slides. The city's home funds will

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